Word of Mouth Marketing, the oldest form of marketing is gaining ground again. How can business owners beat the current recession with Word of Mouth Marketing?

Educate and Nurture Your Current Customers

Don’t put all emphasis on new customer acquisition, but affirm your current customers,
find ways to develop loyalty programs that increase the lifetime value of your customers. Reward
clients with your time, attention and little extras – they will become enthusiastic promoters for your products and services.

Get Known as an Expert in a Niche Community

Are you creating compelling stories (ideas, articles, informative presentations or videos) that are picked up and shared person-to-person via social networking sites or within niche communities? If not, observe successful entrepreneurs in your niche and find out how they have become experts and what has contributed to their success. Participate in discussions, create conversations and relationships that help you become an expert and share your ideas.

Continue reading…

Advertising is a key component of the lead generation. It is typically the most expensive tactic,  so it is important to create effective ads.

Browsing through a local business magazine, I noticed four common advertising mistakes:

Lack of an attention grabbing or confusing headline

While most of the ads had headlines, several headlines did little to communicate the benefit the company provides to their customers. Some were confusing when viewed in context of the overall ad. Two ads in particular made me think they were for health care companies, but after reading carefully, they turned out to be for construction companies.

Here is a headline from a construction company that does clearly communicate who they work with – “Let us show you how we make healthcare construction easier for your customers.”

Continue reading…

SimpleHR

SimpleHR is the #1 rated product on CNN’s List of Top 5 HR Tech Products for Small Business. SimpleHR is now used in over 25 countries globally from the USA and Canada to Australia and New Zealand. Recent studies have found that when companies use systems such as SimpleHR they can increase the value of their business by over 20%.

Human Resources software should make HR tasks easier. SimpleHR will do that and more. This employee management system can simplify your workflow, increase efficiency and quickly become an essential tool in your HR workday. SimpleHR provides the ability to maintain all employee confidential information in a single database. Manage Salary History, Benefits, Performance Reviews, Training, Vacations, Attendance, Health/Safety, Automated Reminders, HR Documents and 50+ standard Reports.

SimpleHR benefits small companies by providing One Place for all Employee Information and Instant Access to Personnel Files to help management answer common questions like: How many vacation days do I have left? Reporting allows users to easily report on everything from Salary history to company property usage. It increases Employee Retention with better communication and on-time performance reviews. By lowering Turnover you’ll reduce recruitment, training and overall administration costs.

Click here to visit SimpleHR.ca

Click here to apply to be a 2CO Spotlight.

There is only one more week left for South Africans to take advantage of 2Checkout’s no-risk free sign up offer.

The offer, which was recently extended through September, will expire Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 12:00 a.m. EST. South African businesses anxious to integrate a new e-commerce solution and try our system on for size, are encouraged to signup as soon as possible and enjoy the $49 USD savings.

Detailed information highlighting 2Checkout’s international advantages, as well as a link to the free signup offer for South African-based businesses is still available.

In related news, 2CO will soon be announcing the integration of five additional international currencies to its purchase routine, including the South African Rand. Stay tuned for more details.

Shockwave-Sound.com

Shockwave-Sound.com is a leading site for premier quality Royalty Free Music. After a one-time purchase, you can legally use their music in media projects such as (but not limited to) Film, Video/DVD, Website music, Games, YouTube film, Student film, Corporate videos, Relaxation projects, Theater and other In-public play, Telephone on-hold, Advertising/Commercials and much more.

Their Stock Music library is constantly expanding and renewing with new tracks added every week. Unlike some other Royalty Free Music sites where amateur musicians are invited to upload tracks themselves and “everything goes”, at Shockwave-Sound.com every composer/producer is a carefully handpicked professional music producer and every new track is vetted for quality and usability in media production. The vast majority of submitted content gets rejected. To put it bluntly, they wade through the mediocrity, so you don’t have to. As a result, they have “only” about 6,000 music tracks, but every track is of high quality.

Licensed music can be downloaded instantly after online payment in either WAV or MP3 format, and can also be shipped out to you on a physical CD at a reasonable shipping & handling fee. Every customer gets a real Invoice and real official Music License documentation with their purchase.

Click here to visit Shockwave-Sound.com

Click here to apply to be a 2CO Spotlight.