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Marketing Matters & More Blog
Business insights, lifestyle tweaks, and the whimsical!


 

Weekly Featured Resource - SLS Event Planning

Featured Resource this week -

Sherrie at SLS Event Planning and Consulting LLC, organizes, sets up, and manages various corporate, public, and private events and meetings.

We’ve known Sherrie a long time and have confidence and respect for her amazing event planning skills, so please give her our regards when you call.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

 

Weekly Featured Resource - Infusionsoft

Featured Resource this week -

The Sales & Marketing Software for Small Business.

Customer & Marketing management: Manage and automate all facets of your customer relationships. Infusionsoft revolutionizes the way small businesses drive and manage their growth. With a robust dose of marketing automation, Infusionsoft replaces your diverse incompatible systems and provides you with an "all-in-one" solution that leaves you with more time to strategically grow your business.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Being More Productive in 15 Minutes a Day

Your day has 1,440 minutes in it, so what difference will 15 minutes make? At just over 1 percent of those potentially available minutes, it seems like no time at all. For starters, it’s long enough to get something done, and short enough to make sure you can chisel it out of your schedule.

If you’re prepared, you’ll be surprised to find you can get more done in 15 minutes than you can in an entire afternoon.

Balancing Your Time

“You’re my #1 customer,” says workaholic Howard Langston in the 1996 film Jingle All the Way. It may be a phrase that works wells for Langston’s clients, but it’s not what his wife wants to hear when she calls him at the office to ask why he’s not attending the graduation ceremony for his son’s karate class.  Like many of us, Langston is passionate about his work, but even when we’re passionate, we still need balance.

An interesting real-life example of devotion to business and family to the professed exclusion of all else is Carlos Brito, 55-year-old Brazilian CEO of InBev, which took over Anheuser-Busch in 2008. If you are a GKIC member, read about him in the January 2016 No B.S. Newsletter. If not, check out Fortune.com’s interview here.

Seriously??

Seriously?? You own a small business and you don’t have a membership site? Learn 7 reasons why you should reconsider and stop leaving money on the table and customers by the wayside — check out my latest article in GKIC's No B.S. Marketing Letter…

Using membership sites internally

Helping to make more satisfied, more productive employees

There are infinite ways to use a membership site. In previous articles, we talked about ways to externally use membership sites to make your business better. Have you thought about using one internally to improve your employees experience and productivity?

Weekly Featured Resource - Email Attacher

Featured Resource this week -

Automate Your Appointments Never Lose an Email!

Automatically attach your emails to Infusionsoft contact records.
The campaign and broadcast emails you send from Infusionsoft are automatically archived on your contact records. But do you then use personal emails to follow up, answer questions, and close deals? If so, then you need emailAttacher to continue archiving those emails on the contact records.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Weekly Featured Resource - FuseDesk

Weekly Featured Resource - FuseDesk

Featured Resource this week -



FuseDesk helps you and your team WOW your customers with great service. Happy Customers stay with you longer, spend more, and spread the good word about your business.

FuseDesk was built for Your Business, Your Support Team, and Your Customers. With FuseDesk, it’s easy to get the key insights into how well your team is doing, delightful for the support team to use, and fast for customers to get care.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Tax Planning For Next Year

In an iconic Calvin and Hobbs comic strip, Hobbs is reminding 6-year-old Calvin that his leaf project for school will soon be due. “You haven’t even started.”  

“I work better under pressure,” Calvin responds.

“You only work under pressure,” Hobbs grumbles.

When it comes to taxes, many of us can relate to Calvin. The forms, the hassles, the annoying number crunching and obscure rules can make it a nuisance we’d rather not deal with. On top of that, you need to plan for the future as well as deal with the present, which means not only filing this year’s taxes, but gearing up for next year’s as well.

5 Business Books You Should Be Reading

How do you build your business? What are the oncoming trends that you must pay attention to? Will some new philosophy come along to change the way business is done? Each year hundreds of thousands of pages and countless digital gigabytes are devoted to these questions. No matter how dedicated you are, you’ll never have time to read them all. You probably shouldn’t even try. Here are five of the best 2016 has to offer:
 

Weekly Featured Resource - FeedBolt

Weekly Featured Resource - FeedBolt

Featured Resource this week -

Automagically Email Your Infusionsoft Contacts When You Update Your Blog or Feed

With FeedBolt, simply enter your blog URL, select an Infusionsoft Tag, and choose your template. FeedBolt takes care of the rest.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Delegating Your Taxing Tasks

“I wish they made days that had more than 24 hours in them so I can get all of this done.” If you find yourself saying this too often, it may be time to delegate some of the responsibility for running your business. Though it’s tempting to want to keep your finger on the pulse of every little detail, it becomes more and more difficult as the business grows. If you haven’t seen the recent movie, The Intern, with Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro, check it out as an example.

Trying to be everything to everyone can leave you unfocused. You may end up forgetting deadlines or glossing over details because you have so many other things on your plate. You may even be forced to re-do some of your work, adding another job to your ever-growing list. By assigning less executive-level or more routine tasks to others, you free up more time to use on the core aspects of your business. 

Weekly Featured Resource - Sync2CRM

Featured Resource this week -

Start Syncing Infusionsoft with Facebook Custom Audiences in Seconds. Deliver Targeted, Money-Getting Ads, Every Time. Double or TRIPLE Your Earnings from every Infusionsoft email contact!


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Fiverr: An Inexpensive Way to Get Your Creative Content off the Ground

If you’re trying to get your online presence established for your business, you may have come across the name ‘Fiverr.’

The site is one of a new breed of marketplaces that are changing the way things are done online. Similar to other more well-known sites like E-bay and Etsy, Fiverr is an online marketplace, where sellers offer their products and services to potential clients. The site gets its name from the practice of offering a service or “Gig” for an introductory cost of just $5. The reach is global, and the Gigs include copywriting and editing, logo design, video and animation and more. Whatever your needs, the site says, there is likely someone registered with Fiverr who has the skills to do it. 

Use Holidays Great and Small in Your Marketing

The Christmas tree has been secured in its box for another year, the tinsel has been taken down and the colored lights are already a fading memory.  Yes, the holidays are over, and it’s time to get serious about your marketing for 2016. Right?

Well, not so fast. For smart marketing people, the holidays are never over. Even though the major ones like Christmas and New Years have passed, there are still plenty of smaller ones throughout the year. Each one of these presents an opportunity for creative marketing.