How to Create Social Media Ads that Work
If you’ve ever tried to stand out on social media, you know it’s no easy task. It can feel like you’re the proverbial polar bear in a snow storm. Targeted ads on social media are one way to get past that. But even with paid advertising, the click-through rate (CTR) for a social media ad […]
How the Trail to the Sale™ Can Help You Market Your Business
By Janice Hostager About fifteen years ago, after moving from a big city to a college town in Wisconsin, I decided to open a little design agency. Since it was just me, at first, I got new business by word-of-mouth. (Pro tip: if you live in a smaller community, a local Chamber of Commerce can […]
9 Things to Do Today to Grow Your Instagram Following
For many businesses, Instagram is a no-brainer for marketing. It offers you a platform where you can connect with your customers in an authentic way and set yourself apart from the millions of other brands. The problem is that there are so many different ways to use Instagram and it’s hard to know which ones […]
5 Social Media Mistakes that will Eat Up your Time
I love a lot of things about social media. For a business owner, it’s obvious that it’s free marketing. As a bootstrapper (and overall bargain hunter), there are a million people using social media every day, making it a powerful tool for reaching and engaging almost any online audience. But there is a hidden cost […]
How to Get More Website Visitors: SEO Beginner’s Guide
Who here could use more traffic to their website? 🙋🏼♀️ Very few of us have as many website visitors as we want and that can be a big frustration, especially if you have an online business. But fear not! There are many ways to drive traffic, and this week I’d like to focus on search […]
Content Pillars will Change Your Blogging Life. (Honestly.)
I was on a content hamster wheel. The thought “I need to get another blog post done!” followed by a stretch of quick brainstorming and hasty writing to meet my self-imposed deadline brought a level of stress much greater than running the business itself. And honestly, the result was usually a hodgepodge of content that […]
Customer Loyalty & After-Sale Service
You got a sale! Woohoo! But wait–did you think we would be done when the customer bought your product? Fortunately for us, the purchase step is not the end of the Trail to the Sale™. If you stop at this point, you’re leaving money on the table. Here’s why: You have a 5-20% chance of […]
How to Sell Without Discounts
When I started my first business, a custom invitation company, I had my product priced right. Any less expensive and I would have lost my profit. Any more expensive, and I would have lost my customers. So I really didn’t feel I could discount it any further. Let’s face it…sometimes discounting a product is […]
How to Price a Product or Service
So you’ve decided on a new product and maybe even have it developed or produced. Now…how should you price a product? Accountants have a standard pricing formula they often recommend called the cost-plus pricing formula: [overhead and materials expenses] + [profit] =price. It’s easy to figure out if you have a product and concrete […]
How to Get Customers to Buy From You
If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, you have probably asked this question: “how can I get more sales?” Sometimes it feels like we’re doing all the right things but customers don’t go to that final step and purchase. That’s when I recommend that they offer an evaluation step. Evaluate is […]