Debbi Arnold of D.A. Consulting is presenting Small Business Workshops at the Miles Nadal JCC (750 Spadina Ave, at Bloor). The next two are:
Time Management: November 4, 2011. 10:30am-12:30pm. Learning effective time management skills to set yourself up for success
Marketing 101: November 11, 2011. 9:15am-12pm. Learn marketing fundamentals to build a successful business.
Each seminar is $40. Register online via Paypal at http://www.daconsult.ca/
The number of daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial continues to grow but research shows that deep discount offers may be doing more harm than good for a small business’ on-line reputation.
According to a study by Boston University and Harvard University, small businesses that run ‘daily deal’ promotions on Groupon are likely to see their ratings on Yelp drop thereafter.
The data gathered included over 56,000 reviews for 2,300+ merchants who ran 2,500 deals on Groupon. The analysis seems to show the two sides of the deal-of-the-day website – from one perspective, the number of reviews for the business on Yelp goes up because of the daily deals (which for some could be seen as a good thing). However, the average rating scores from reviewers who reference daily deals are 10 per cent lower than scores coming from “business as usual” reviews.
There’s no explanation offered for why the customers using Groupon gave less positive reviews on Yelp, and the report leaves business owners pondering the question: is it worth running daily deals (expensive but can bring in new customers), if it’s at the expense of a lowered on-line reputation on user review sites like Yelp?
While world-wide car manufacturers don’t fit the profile of most Toronto small business (especially when it comes to social media marketing resources), I found this article instructive in showing several ways how investing time in social media actually has business payback:
When looking at sales funnel development for a B2B web site, I am struck by the similarities between the expectations for a website and those for a human sales rep.
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Sales Rep
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Website
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Develop Pipeline
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Capture traffic
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Differentiate Company and Solution
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Convince visitor you have their answer
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Close
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Convert visitor into prospect
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It follows then that the web site has to show elements that mimic a sales rep, especially when guiding a visitor down the path towards becoming a client.
Site navigation and properly placed CTAs (Call to Actions) that lead the visitor to make a commitment (such as signing up for a newsletter, webinar or whitepaper) are essential to ensuring your site becomes the lead generator you want it to be.
Follow this link to learn more about conversion
An entertaining and slightly ominous cartoon about Google+, Google’s best effort to date at competing with Facebook:
Learn the first steps to turn your Toronto small business website into a sales rep that creates new prospects for you.
Twitter celebrated its 5th birthday last friday, showing off a lot of high-powered traffic statistics but still unable to provide a monetization plan i.e. how will they make money?
What happens if Twitter runs out of investor money, in other words, they go bankrupt. A lot of social media consulting advice is directed at being engaged on Twitter, and so millions of users including small businesses are investing time and energy (and rarely efficiently) in the hopes that Twitter energy somehow will translate into a customer or two.
Seems to me that Google+ could easily extend their “Circles” idea to include a Twitterish experience.
To be truly effective in helping you grow your business, your website must convince visitors to stay on your site and be willing to share data
The New York Times reports that JC Penney, the department store, was achieving exceptionally high search engine results for all manner of products, even products they didn’t carry. The high rankings were achieved using “black hat” techniques for paid link-building that are considered to be contrary to good link-building practices.
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