If you’re not sure who you’re voting for this year, check out the infographic below to see how each candidate stands on small business issues.

I’m sure it will change and hopefully we’ll get some updates. In the mean time check it out and let me know what you think. How much of an impact does the candidate’s stance on small business issues impact your choice?

Politics, Small Businesses, and You… originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

How are you, a small business owner, supposed to find the time to learn all the in’s and out’s of online marketing?

That’s why we put together the SiteFox Marketing Guide. It’s a 99-page guide that explains exactly what you need to know about marketing your business online. It also includes a set of action plans to help you execute a successful online marketing strategy.

The guide will teach you exactly how to setup your online presence, how to use social media, and maximize your reach through local marketing. Learn how to find leads and convert them into paying customers.

Preview the SiteFox Marketing Guide

Here’s a sneak peek at what’s included with the guide. This is only the start of the 99-page guide that will change how you market your business online.

Get the Guide for Free!

The best part about the SiteFox Marketing Guide is that we’re giving it away for free to all SiteFox newsletter subscribers.

Not a subscribers already? Just fill out the form below to join and you’ll get access to the marketing guide instantly.

The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide [Free Download] originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

Most likely you did one of two things: searched a business directory (maybe online) OR you asked a friend for a recommendation.

Having people recommend your business is the basis of word of mouth marketing. It’s doing something so memorable that people talk about you; it’s tied to customer service, viral marketing, and just being a business people like working with.

How are you maximizing your word of mouth marketing? What are you doing to make sure people talk about you?

Table of Contents

• What is Word of Mouth Marketing
• Why Word of Mouth Marketing is Important
  • Pitfalls of Advertising
  • During Product Creation
• Elements of Word of Mouth Marketing
  • Buzz Marketing
  • Influencer Marketing
  • Viral Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
• The Web’s Influence on Word of Mouth Marketing
• What Elements Facilitate Sharing
  • The Content
  • Ease of Sharing
  • Asking
• Campaign Tracking
• More Information
  • More Reading
  • Videos

What is Word of Mouth Marketing?

In it’s simplest form Word of Mouth (WoM) Marketing is tapping into the conversations that occur between people to sell your product. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WoMMA) defines it as:

Word of mouth marketing: Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place.

Effective WoM strategies cultivate and amplify these conversations, understanding that they are the most powerful way to convince a consumer to buy your product.

The Internet has redefined the power of WoM Marketing, removing a majority of the obstacles placed on it. For example, online we’re able to track the conversation with buzz monitoring tools, and we’re able to minimize the effect of geography. The web’s ability to bring us all together also breaks boundaries for conversations.

Why Word of Mouth Marketing is Important

Pitfalls of Advertising

As the consumer has evolved, WoM Marketing has become more effective. Savvy buyers have become skeptical of traditional advertising, and use the Internet to research before buying. They look for everything from professional reviews to what other consumers are writing about the product.

Empirical evidence suggests that advertising claims (in ads that are processed) are frequently not accepted. Calfee and Ringold (1994) reported the consistent observation in public opinion polls that roughly two-thirds of consumers claim they doubt the truthfulness of ads. Previous research (Obermiller and Spangenberg 1998, 2000) supports the proposition that consumers are socialized to be skeptical toward advertising, and the extent of their skepticism is a determinant of their responses to advertising. Credit

Television advertising has become largely ineffective, as marketers are attempting to reach a large audience with a broad message. Not only is the message not targeted, but most consumers simply don’t trust them.

The least trustworthy of advertising is online ads, which rank less than “Ads before movies”. The most trusted, after “Recommendations from consumers”, are newspaper ads. However, they have problems of their own.

Newspapers are experiencing a large drop in readership and are being forced to re-think their business model. Traditional printing is much more expensive compared to publishing online and many newspapers are buckling under the economic strain. As a result, newspaper advertising has become more expensive.

During Product Creation

If Word of Mouth Marketing is introduced as a strategy during product creation, it can lead to exceptional products. When product creators emphasize ‘wowing’ their consumers instead of bettering their bottom line, the latter comes from the former.

Elements of Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing is an over-arching category for multiple strategies; of which are buzz marketing, influencer marketing, viral marketing, and social media marketing. The techniques all require conversation between consumers, but differ in how the conversation is started, cultivated, and where it occurs.

Buzz Marketing

Buzz marketing is creating something that everyone talks about. Whether it be your product or a service, it’s effected people in a way that they need to tell their friends about it. The message (not one that you’ve defined, but the abstract message – that your product is something worth sharing) will pass from person to person.

Influencer Marketing

Whereas buzz marketing leverages a shareable product to get everyone talking about it, influencer marketing requires outreaching to influential individuals. The hope is that if the product is good, an influencer will talk about it to everyone they influence who in turn pass it to their friends.

Convincing an influencer to recommend your product requires that you be able to identify who an influencer is. You can use multiple criteria to do this: length of posts, number of comments, inbound and outbound links, velocity of posts, or social media friends.

Finding Influencers and Consumer Insights in the Blogosphere

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is creating a story, video, or ad that is passed from consumer to consumer. The difference with viral marketing is that your message is being passed, compared to the recommendations passed from influencer and buzz marketing.

This form of word of mouth marketing maintains the most message control, however it’s generally a hit or miss with what will go viral. There’s no formula to what people are likely to love, and what’s likely to be dumped in the trash.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing stands out because it requires a medium for which to market. Unlike the other forms of Word of Mouth marketing, which can occur online or offline, social media marketing is specifically using social networks, blogs, social media to facilitate word of mouth marketing.

The Web’s Influence on Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing occured before the Internet became an integral part of our everyday lives. But in those days word of mouth was limited by geography, and the number of relationships we could keep. The Internet has broken down the barrier of geography, increased the number of friends we can connect with, and increased how quickly we can reach out to people. It’s given us a number of new tools.

Social networks are the first, allowing us to visualize our relationships and keep in touch. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn allow us to segment out who are friends, who are colleagues, and quickly reach out to our entire network.

As more and more information is being archived on the web, Internet users turn to social news aggregators and social bookmarking sites to leverage friends when finding what’s important on the web. As users vote up or bookmark specific stories, the time required to find something we might like is reduced.

The Internet has also changed our psychology on personal and private life. Things that would once be considered private are published freely on blogs. We’ve also changed our mind on what constitutes free versus paid content, as professionals begin publishing their thoughts and ideas. Both blogs and micro-blogging platforms (Twitter) afford us the opportunity to share our insights, our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences to the world.

What Elements Facilitate Sharing

There are certain elements to word of mouth marketing that can help a message spread. They are not based on statistics and studies, but experiences and a general idea. The three elements are “the actual content”, “the ease of sharing”, and “asking to share”.

The Content

This is the most important element of word of mouth marketing. Is your content, your product, your service so good that I’d tell my friends about it? Does it make me feel good when I share it?

Telling a story usually helps generate conversations. Not a story as in a fairy-tale, but a story that brings me into it. For a restaurant this might be the ambiance, for a product maybe how it’s better than the rest. People love to tell stories and making your marketing a story, makes it easy to share.

Ease of Sharing

The simplicity of sharing media online is what makes it so easy for content to spread on the web. Internet users are so used to quickly skimming articles and surfing on. Give visitors the ability to share, and they’ll do it. Don’t expect readers to take the extra effort to pass it on.

To remove those obstacles, add buttons like “email this” or “share this” to invite consumers to pass things on. The “email this” button removes the obstacle of forcing a reader to open their email application and find their friends. While the “share this” button allows users to add the article to social sites without having to open a new browser window and navigation to the social site.

You work hard to remove steps from check-out on an e-commerce site, and removing steps from sharing is no different for a strategy that is dependent on work of mouth marketing.

Asking

Lastly, simply asking your consumers to pass along your information helps. Dan Zarrella did a short analytical look at what defines a “ReTweet” or the passing along of a message across Twitter. He found that a tweet that included the word “Please” was ReTweeted 5 times more often than one without. Although this is by no ways definitive, it gives us an idea that simply asking (nicely) can help compel users to pass along the message.

Campaign Tracking

Once your message begins to spread you’ll need some way of tracking it. Figuring out who’s talking about you, what they’re saying, and if the message is even spreading, is important for the success of any campaign. Consumers and bloggers that have written about you should be highlighted as people to reach out to in the future when there are updates on your product or service. But how do you find people talking about you? There are a few ways, some of which are paid and some are free.

The first and what will pass for most people, is to use the free Google alerts. You can create an RSS feed, where Google will alert you whenever a page that includes the defined keywords is indexed. For example, I have one created for the term “Samir Balwani”. Whenever someone mentions my name, I get an alert in my feed reader to let me know where. With this information I’m able to track mentions of my name over time.

There are also many paid programs out there to track references to brand names, keywords, and other things. The two most well known trackers are Trackur and Radian6.

More Information:

More Reading:

Word of Mouth Marketing 101 from WOMMA.org
Influencers Handbook from WOMMA.org
Word-of-Mouth the Most Powerful Selling Tool: Nielsen Global Survey
eMarketing: Word of Mouth Works Worldwide
Marketing Vox: WOM Builds Loyalty as Businesses ‘Tribalize’
Marketing Vox: Consumers Seeking Products Online Share Findings via WOM

Videos on Word of Mouth Marketing:

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Definitive Guide to Word of Mouth Marketing originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

We quickly learned that it was really about maximizing our returns from each channel.

One of the things we did early on was setup a document to track each channel and gauge its efficiency for registering new clients. The efficiency is based off a number we derived after deciding on how much of our revenue we wanted to invest in marketing.

We’ve been using the spreadsheet for a while now and it’s really helped us strategically invest money in ways that maximize our return. So, we decided it would make the most sense to make it available for everyone.

If you want to download the sheet, just click here. (We hope you like the spreadsheet and will share this article with your friends too!)

Table of Contents

• Understanding the Spreadsheet
• Using the Spreadsheet
• Download it for Free

Understanding the Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet is designed to give you an idea of how much you’re spending on acquiring new clients, by marketing channel. It also, helps you decide on an optimal marketing budget based on the revenue from each client.

Use the spreadsheet to see determine what your profits will be based on fixed and variable costs per client. You can even see it graphed out, to ensure that as your company grows so will your profits.

Once you have that information outlined, you can choose how much you want to spend per client to attract new ones (the cost of acquiring a client). Input that cost to see how it impacts your profits and revenue.

When you manipulate the costs per channel, it will highlight red if it’s above your optimal acquisition cost. This makes it easy to identify which channels are underperforming.

Using the Spreadsheet

Using the spreadsheet is actually really easy. The formulas are set throughout the page to make your life easier. Just edit the boxes that are highlighted yellow to input the costs and profits for your business.

You can use a free analytics software like Google Analytics to get the information needed for each channel’s unique visits and goal completions.

If you need to keep track of offline marketing. You can add another row for that. Instead of using the metric “Unique Visits” for offline marketing, we recommend using “Reach” or how many people were introduced to your business due to your offline marketing efforts.

Note that the spreadsheet is specifically for marketing that has an ROI element. We use a different spreadsheet for our branding efforts and hopefully, once we see it working well, we’ll publish that one too!

Download it for Free

Click here to download our “Marketing Efficiency Spreadsheet”.

Once you’ve downloaded the file, just open it using Microsoft Excel and you’ll be able to edit and manipulate the sheet however you need to.

Next Steps…

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the sheet. Did it help you build your marketing strategy? Is something missing? What should we add to make it more comprehensive?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. Also, don’t forget to join our newsletter to be alerted when we release new tools and updates in the future.

Our Marketing Tracking Document [Free Download] originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

Businesses are continuing to grow their email lists and connecting with consumers through their newsletters.

Making sure you’re creating an active newsletter list directly effects your revenue from your emails.

Following a few core rules will make sure you get the most from your list and keep your subscribers happy and opening your emails.

Do: Use a Professional Template

The first tip is to use a professional template. You’ll notice that a lot of people use the plain text emails (they definitely have their plusses), but I highly recommend that businesses spend the time to create or buy a branded email template for their newsletters.

The difference between an affiliate list and a small business newsletter is that affiliates, mostly, don’t care about their brand and just want to maximize their clicks. Small businesses want to get the most clicks without sacrificing their brand.

Because of this difference, using a professionally branded email template is important.

Do: Incentivize Subscribers

People need a reason to sign up for your newsletter. For some, it might be enough to promise email updates every time something new happens. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes that users are willing to wait to get something.

Instead, cater to people’s need for instant gratification. Use a case study or free consulting as an incentive for people to join your newsletter list.

Make it clear what people will get for joining your newsletter (the instant gratification) and position the other emails as an added bonus.

Do: Keep in Touch

This brings us to the next tip – keep in touch. Your gut might tell you not to email your subscribers often, but instead make sure you are connecting with your subscribers every time you have something important to say.

Don’t miss an opportunity to email your subscribers and stay top of mind. Letting your list stagnate can make it difficult to build an active list since people forget when they signed up and for what.

So keep in touch and create an active two way conversation via email.

Do: Read Replies

When you send emails, make sure you use an account you check and can respond from. Invite your subscribers to email you questions and to interact with you through that email account.

The reason for building this kind of interaction is because it keeps your emails from hitting your subscribers’ spam box. Once a subscriber emails you back, you get added to their safe list and it’s more likely you’ll actually reach their inbox in the future.

You can’t have an active list if your emails are being put in a subscribers’ spam box.

Don’t: Add Me To Your List Without Knowledge

This is honestly the biggest no no you can do with your email list. Do not go to a conference, get a bunch of cards, and manually add them to your newsletter list. It will drive people insane and annoy them like crazy.

Only add people that have opted-in. It keeps your list statistics higher and reduces the number of unsubscribes.

Want to convince people you meet at a conference to join your list? Create business cards that have a link to a specific URL with a landing page customized for the conference. The idea is to create a highly relevant landing page for the people that you meet at the conference.

Don’t: Send Me Useless Emails

Treat your subscriber list as sacred. It’s very easy for someone to add you to their spam box and Google is making it easier and easier to just unsubscribe from lists. You should only send emails you think are worthy of an email and add value to the user.

Make sure to send resources and content to your subscriber list to continue validating the value of your newsletter.

Don’t: Hide the Unsubscribe Button

Emails are required to have an unsubscribe button to be compliant with online regulations. Sometimes, though, businesses will include the button but make it difficult to unsubscribe.

Instead of hiding your unsubscribe button, make sure it’s easy to find. The reason for this is because you don’t want people on your list that don’t want to be.

Subscribers have two options to stop getting your emails: either unsubscribe using your link or to spam your emails. It’s definitely much better to have one person unsubscribe rather than having them tell mail providers that your list is spamming them.

Remembers it’s not the size of your list, but instead the number of active subscribers you have.

Don’t: Use a noreply@ Address

It’s amazing that so many companies still use a noreply@ email address when sending emails. As a small business, it’s a definite no no. You want people to reply to your emails (automatically adds you to their safelist) and you don’t want to seem overly cold and corporate.

Making sure every aspect of your online marketing is on brand means reviewing what email address you’re using to send your emails. Are you fun? Maybe your email address is hello@. If you’re more corporate it could be messenger@.

Choose an email address that is on brand, interesting, and allows people to reply.

Next Steps…

If you don’t have a newsletter list, you should absolutely get started today. It can be a huge revenue source and keep you connected with prospects as they flow through your sales funnel.

Make sure to follow the best practices and the golden rule: your email inbox is sacred to you, respect your subscribers inbox as well.

Do you have a newsletter list? Have you been added to a newsletter you didn’t want to be? What have you found that works for your list? Leave a comment and let us know!

Image credit: ilamon, semibar, financialaidpodcast

Dos and Don’ts for Your Small Business Newsletter originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

Here are seven books that we highly recommend all small business owners read.

They’ll help you re-think your business strategies, marketing ideas, and motivate you to succeed in the new year.

• Book 1: The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.

  We love this book and refer back to it often. It’s full of smart thinking from an author that has experience growing a business and only working 4 hours a week.

  Most small business owners start their company to escape the 9 to 5 drag of the corporate world. The freedom to work when you want and how you want is definitely a noble cause to strive for. Use this book to help you gain the freedom you want.

  Get it from Amazon

• Book 2: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

  Success only comes to those that actually do. That’s why this book is one of our recommended reads. It will help you actually put things in motion and get things done.

  Learn how to solve problems and make your life simpler. Highly recommended for all new small business owners.

  Get it from Amazon

• Book 3: Rework: Change The Way You Work Forever

  We love the team over at 37Signals; in fact we use two of their products, BaseCampHQ and HighRise. Their philosophy on business is inspiring and thought-provoking.

  When you need to get motivated to get things done read “Rework”. It’s the perfect playbook for inspiring you succeed and showing you exactly how to do it too.

  Get it from Amazon

• Book 4: ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands, Mobipocket

  This book was recommended to us by @AriSGoldberg, CEO of StyleCaster. It’s definitely an amazing book for any business owners that haven’t cemented their brand yet.

  Your business’ brand is made up by how you convey yourself and how others perceive you. “ZAG” explains what makes a good brand and gives you a step-by-step guide for outlining your business’ brand.

  Get it from Amazon

• Book 5: Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

  We know what it’s like to have to market a business on a budget, we do it too! That’s why we loved this book. It had 101 useful and relevant marketing tips that helped us build the SiteFox brand and community.

  This book was one of the few marketing resources that made us stop and take notice. We actually had to use the bookmark option when reading this one!
  Get it from Amazon

• Book 6: Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements

  This book should be required reading for anyone trying to build an online community. It’s an easy to read and inspiring book that will change the way you think about viral marketing and online marketing.

  Brains on Fire (titled after their identify company) will help you learn how to turn your business from just another company, to a movement fueled on passion. It will make you rethink exactly what your business does and why.

  Get it from Amazon

• Book 7: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web

  We’re always wary of social media marketing books. Generally, by the time you finish reading them so much has changed they’re already outdated.

  Thankfully, @Tamar wrote a great book that outlines the philosophy and thinking behind social media. It’s not focused on any specific social network (although she touches upon them), that way you can learn how to apply the new marketing techniques to any social media platform.

  Get it from Amazon

Next Steps…

There’s no better time to get comfortable and get some reading done, than after the holiday rush. Use the time to learn new skills and being planning 2012. Some of the books above will inspire you to grow your business and give you great insights into how to do.

Do you have a book you highly recommend? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Image credit: intherough

7 Books Every Small Business Owner Needs to Read originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

That’s why we put this in-depth small business website guide together.

Use this as a resource for creating and launching your own small business website. The article will outline every step from planning your website to integrating social media and email marketing.

Table of Contents

• The Benefits of a Small Business Website
  • Current Consumer Trends
  • Generating New Leads
  • Reaching Local Customers
  • Building Customer Loyalty
  • Extending the Brand
• Planning Your Small Business Website
  • Identifying Your Goals
  • Important Information Pages
  • Determining Your Available Resources
  • Setting a Budget
• Executing and Deploying Your Site
  • Necessary Tools and Services
  • Getting a Domain Name
  • Finding a Host and Server
  • Installing WordPress
  • Configuring Options and Installing Plugins
  • Publishing Content
• Integrating Social Media
  • Adding Social Media Buttons
  • Embedding the Facebook Widget
  • Embedding the Twitter Widget
• Adding an Email Marketing Strategy
  • Email Newsletter Providers
  • Adding Your Signup Forms
  • Optimizing Your Forms
• Making Sense of Analytics
  • Installing Google Analytics
  • Metrics to Track
  • Tracking Goals
• Advice from the Experts
  • The Most Important Aspect of a Website
• Next Steps…

The Benefits of a Small Business Website

The investment needed to have a professional business website is not only money, it also requires time. In some instances it actually has a greater time investment than monetary.

The high investment cost makes it necessary to outline the benefits of having a website.

Many times businesses look at a website as superfluous. However, a professional website has the potential to introduce new leads, close deals, and even extend the reach of your business.

Current Consumer Trends

The Internet is here to stay, it’s become a staple in people’s life. It’s how we learn information, discover new content, and consume media.

A study by Webvisible and Nielsen in 2009 (not much has changed since then) stated that about 63% of consumers and small businesses search for information about local businesses online. However, only 44% of businesses have a website.

That’s an amazing statistic. It means that there’s a huge marketing edge gained for businesses that have a website.

Generating New Leads

Launching a business website allows you to enter a new marketing channel and connect with leads that may have never known you existed.

Websites remove the obstacles between a customer researching your business and contacting you.

Instead of forcing a customer to see an ad in a paper and then pick up their phone to contact you; with your website they simply fill out a form and get a call from you. The easier you make it for customers to reach you, the more inquiries you’ll receive.

Reaching Local Customers

Websites allow you to reach local customers through search engines. Google has begun highlighting websites that are locally relevant.

This means that if you search for a plumber in Google, it’ll check where you are and attempt to show you plumbers in your area.

Small business owners can take advantage of this by creating a website that reaches these local consumers through search engines.

Building Customer Loyalty

Businesses that have a regularly updated blog are able to give customers a reason to keep checking out the business website. This keeps you top of mind and increases their loyalty with your business.

Blogs are a great way to interact with users, using the comments. It also acts as a great entry point to your social media profiles.

Customers are able to visit your website, engage with your business, like you on Facebook, and follow you on Twitter. These kind of interactions build customer loyalty over time.

Extending the Brand

Once you setup a business website, it introduces your brand to new customers. It also gives you the opportunity to invest in new advertising options.

With a website, you’re able to test out online advertising through AdWords, sponsorships, and display advertising. This allows you to reach customers that you may not have been able to reach offline.

Planning Your Small Business Website

Before launching a small business website, it’s important that we plan exactly what we expect from it and what we need to do.

You need to know how much money you’re willing to invest, what it should look like, and what goals you want to track.

Once you have that information, you’re able to create a strategy for how to setup your website correctly to maximize the impact on your goals.

Identifying Your Goals

Starting with goals in mind ensures that you don’t waste resources unnecessarily. The goals will change depending on what your business does.

For example, a restaurant owner might want to have people call in to make reservations. Whereas a B2B business might want more people to fill out an inquiry form to learn more about the product (and get a call from a sales person). Another company might be interested in having their latest white paper downloaded.

Once you have outlined your goals, you know what you’re working towards. Your goals will dictate how your website is setup, what will be highlighted, and how you measure results.

Important Information Pages

Most people will visit your website looking for specific information (who you are, what you do, and where you’re located). It’s important to create pages that outline whatever information a consumer might be looking for.

The three pages you should start with are an about page, contact page, and location page. This should answer who you are, how to contact you, and where you’re located.

If you offer specific services or want to highlight a special edge your business has (history or how you do something) you’ll want to create pages for these items.

Use pages to display static information, things that don’t change very often and are not timely, such as your contact information.

Determining Your Available Resources

Once you know what you’d like to get from your website and what important information you need to convey, now it’s time to identify your internal resources.

Start by answering the following:

• Do you have someone that can write the copy for each page?
• Do you have someone that can do the graphic design?
• Is there someone that can setup and configure your website?
• Who will keep the website up to date and write the blog?

Based on your answers to the questions above, you’ll be able to identify how big of a budget you’ll need (for outsourced work) and how extensive your website can be.

Setting a Budget

Regardless of whether you outsource work or not, there’s a number of costs that comes with launching your business website.

At a minimum, you’ll need to pay for your domain name and hosting services. This is the actual URL your website will be visible from and the servers you’ll use to display the website.

After those basic costs, there are costs for premium plugins and WordPress themes. If you’re going to integrate email marketing, then you’ll have to invest in an email delivery system.

Those that want advanced analytics on their website (managing SEO and email impacts) will have to signup for an extended analytics dashboard.

Some businesses will have the budget to hire a consultant to help advise on marketing strategies and best practices. It’s important to note that consultants can be expensive, and so many businesses don’t allocate budget to it.

Here’s a list of services that you can use:

• Domain Registration
  • NameCheap: $9.98 per year
• Server Hosting
  • Rackspace Cloud Servers: $100 per month We love cloud servers because it means you can scale easily and quickly. You don’t have to worry about your server crashing
  • MediaTemple Shared Hosting: $20 per month
• Premium Plugins & Themes
  • Gravity Forms: $199
  • Genesis Framework: $299.95 We love the Genesis Framework for any custom WordPress themes
• Email Marketing
  • CampaignMonitor: $55 per month Pricing for lists up to 5,000 subscribers
  • MailChimp: $50 per month Pricing for lists up to 5,000 subcribers
• Analytics Packages
  • RavenTools: $99 per month
• Marketing Consultant
  • Individual Consultant: $120 per hour
  • Agency: $200 per hour

The setup cost for all the tools and plugins is about $500, without the theme customizations and designs.

The monthly fee for using a cloud server and individual consultant for 5 hours is about $850 per month.

Without the consultant, the cost becomes about $250 per month.

Obviously, if you don’t use all the tools and plugins your startup cost and monthly fees can be less than what’s outlined above.

Executing and Deploying Your Site

Once you know what pages you want, what resources you have available, and how much you’re willing to invest; the next step is actually executing your plan.

Let’s start with the tools you absolutely need and then follow with a step by step guide for actually setting up and launching a website.

Necessary Tools and Services

The following setup process requires that you own your domain, have a hosting service, and are using WordPress as your content management system.

We highly recommend WordPress for your small business website because it’s simple to use and manage. It also has a robust community that’s always updating and adding onto the system.

WordPress is also extremely search engine friendly and customizable. Some major business and brands are using WordPress (CNN blogs are powered by WordPress).

Getting a Domain Name

The first step for setting up your website is getting your domain name. We highly recommend using Namecheap for your domains, they’re inexpensive and have great customer service.

You should try to get your business name as your url as a .com. For example, we registered “sitefox.com”.

When getting a domain, try to stay away from hyphens and numbers. These usually make you seem less reputable and can hurt the professional brand you want to convey.

If you’re a local company and cannot get your brand name, you can try to include your state in the url. An example would be if Paul Plumbing in NYC was looking for a domain and paulplumbing.com was taken, they could instead register paulplumbingnyc.com.

Your domain name should be as short as possible and easily remembered. Be sure your domain name can’t be accidentally confused with another word or profanity because of the order of words.

Finding a Host and Server

Once you have your domain name, you have your website’s address. Now it’s time to actually get the servers that will host your website.

At this point you have a choice of investing in a cloud server (that’s what we recommend) or getting a shared host.

Regardless of who hosts your website, you’ll be given a set of nameservers. Your domain will need to be pointed to these nameservers. This makes it so that whenever someone goes to your url, they see the website on your host’s servers.

Installing WordPress

After you’ve setup your domain and hosting, you’re ready to add WordPress to your server. The installation process for WordPress isn’t difficult, but the configuration aspect can be complex.

Since configuring WordPress depends on your specific goals, we’ll outline how to install the system and highlight general options you’ll want to setup.

The first step is to connect to your server using an FTP client. You’re host can provide you with information on how to connect to your server through FTP. Our recommended FTP client is FileZilla because it’s free and simple to use.

Once you’re connected to your server, the next step is to upload WordPress to your website.

You can get the files you need to upload from WordPress.org. Go to http://www.wordpress.org and download the latest version of WordPress. Once you’ve downloaded the file, unzip it and upload the individual folders to your server using the FileZilla client.

When the files are fully uploaded, the next step is to create a MYSQL database for your WordPress installation. Your host will have specific information on how to setup and connect to your database.

Keep your database information handy because you’ll need to enter it during the installation process.

Start the actual WordPress installation by navigating your website’s url. Once you’re there you’ll see the WordPress installation screen, which will step you through the entire process. Input your database information when prompted and complete the installation.

Configuring Options and Plugins

Installing WordPress is only the beginning. The next step is to actually configure options and add plugins to extend the functionality of WordPress.

The first option you’ll want to edit is the “permalink” configuration. WordPress default to an ID driven permalink. This setup is not optimal for search engines.

Instead, we’ll want to update the “permalink” to “/%category%/%postname%/”. This means that WordPress will include the category and postname in the url.

Next, you’ll want to add the SEO plugin by Yoast. This plugin allows you to edit the title tags and meta descriptions for your site, as well as configure your website settings to optimize it for search engines.

You can install the plugin by first navigating to the “plugin” menu item in your WordPress administrator panel. Once you’re on the plugin page, click “add new” to enter the plugin search page. Search for “Wordpress SEO by Yoast” and install the plugin created by Joost de Valk.

Once the plugin is installed and activated you can setup the options by navigating to the SEO menu item. Make sure to setup your indexation and title tags dependent on your SEO strategy.

Publishing Content

After configuring your theme and plugins, you’re ready to start publishing content.

The pages that we outlined early as informational resources for customers should be published as WordPress pages. Blog posts and updates should be published as WordPress posts.

Publishing content is very simple (which is why we love WordPress). If you’re still not sure exactly how to, you can check out the WordPress posting tutorial here.

Those writing and maintaining a blog should create an editorial calendar to organize when and what will be published. Your content strategy should keep your goals in mind, as well as work to elevate your brand as an expert or celebrity in the industry.

The web has changed how we market to users. It’s no longer about large advertising budgets, instead it’s about content and how you can help others solve their problems.

Use a website and blog to position yourself as a leader in your industry. Once you’ve done that, your website will start to quickly and consistently build new leads.

Integrating Social Media

The brand website is only part of a business’ online presence. Social media has introduced a number of new properties that brands can use to reach customers.

Regardless of how you use social media or what your social media strategy is, your website should always be your hub. It should be your hub because you own all the data and content on your website – it’s yours, unlike your social media profiles.

Integrating social media allows you to maximize the share-ability of your website and the reach of your social media profiles.

Adding Social Media Buttons

The easiest way to increase the share-ability of your website is to add social media buttons to your content.

Social media buttons includes the Tweet button and Facebook like button, but that’s just the beginning.

Look to include niche sites that reach your target demographic. For example, you may want to include the LinkedIn button to reach businesses and professionals.

There are three places you can include the buttons: at the top of the article, at the bottom of the article, or floating on the side.

Your website’s theme should dictate how and where your social media buttons will be displayed.

Embedding the Facebook Widget

Small businesses that have a Facebook fan page will want to allow people who visit their website to easily fan their Facebook page. The best way to facilitate that interaction is by adding the Facebook widget to the website’s sidebar.

You can see the widget in action on the SiteFox blog sidebar under the Let’s Connect header.

Grab the widget code from Facebook by clicking here. Use the options on the widget page to customize the look and feel.

Once you have the code, add it (or have someone else add it) to your blog’s sidebar.

Embedding the Twitter Widget

If your business has a Twitter account, you can add a widget to your site that makes it easy for people to follow your business on Twitter. The installation process is similar to the process for adding the Facebook widget.

Click here to get the code for the Twitter widget. You can see an example of it in action in the SiteFox blog sidebar under the header “Let’s Connect”.

Install the code from Twitter’s widget page to your website’s sidebar to add the widget.

Adding an Email Marketing Strategy

Although social media has been all the rage, marketers haven’t lost sight of how powerful email marketing can be. If you’re looking for consumers to perform an action or buy a product, email is an extremely effective tool.

Reaching consumers through their email inbox puts you in good company, alongside their friends, colleagues, and family.

Email marketing doesn’t have to be difficult or time intensive. The hardest part is actually building a subscriber list, which is what we’ll focus on in the following sections.

Email Newsletter Providers

The first step to launching an email marketing campaign is identifying which newsletter provider you’ll be using.

Investing in a newsletter service provider is highly recommended because they force you to follow ICANN Spam laws and regulations. This means that not only are you less likely to spam your users, but you’ll look more professional when you reach out to them.

Most newsletter subscribers will manage the emailing of your subscribers and the management of your list. You simply give them the user’s information and what you want to email them, the service takes care of the rest.

The two newsletter providers I highly recommend are CampaignMonitor (this is what we use and all SiteFox members get access to a CampaignMonitor account as part of the package) and MailChimp.

Adding Your Signup Forms

Once you’ve decided on your newsletter provider, the next step is adding their signup form to your website. The basic setup requires you to simply use the code that the provider gives you and add that to your site.

If you want more flexibility, you can use a 3rd party plugin. We love GravityForms and use it for all our SiteFox sites. It gives us the ability to customize the form easily and pass along the information using the CampaignMonitor API.

Optionally, you can use Wufoo to create and style custom forms using their online editor. Wufoo is a great 3rd party form system that can be extended for other uses, such as surveys.

Your subscription form is one of the most important aspects of your email marketing workflow because without subscribers you don’t have an email marketing program.

Optimizing Your Forms

After you’ve chosen how you want to display your forms, the next step is to identify where you’ll actually show them.

Websites that are following a blog-style layout that includes a sidebar should embed a form in the top right section. This is considered a high value area because most user’s are drawn to look there.

You should also include a form at the end of individual articles and at the top of all category pages. This ensures that readers are presented with the option to subscribe at all major points.

Finally, be sure to embed a subscription form throughout major information pages. Pages such as the about page are great for converting users from casual readers into newsletter subscribers.

Although it may seem like you’ve added too many forms, the average user won’t see it more than once or twice. You have to make sure that every user sees the newsletter form, so you never miss a potential subscriber.

Making Sense of Analytics

The number one thing that separates online marketing from offline marketing is the in-depth analytics and metrics possible. This means that when investing online you can use analytics to measure the impact, instead of having to depend on anecdotal evidence of success.

Although analytics allows our marketing efforts to be more strategic, it can also make marketing more confusing. There are a lot of metrics that are superfluous or unnecessary. You must identify which metrics are important for your business and its goals.

Installing Google Analytics

The best service for tracking your website’s analytics is Google Analytics. The service is free and simple to use.

You can sign up for Google Analytics by clicking here.

Once you have an account, create a profile for your website. During the process you’ll be presented with a tracking code to install on your website. This will have to be added to every page you want to track.

Either install the code yourself or pass it along to your developer to be installed. After it’s added, check your Google Analytics account to ensure that it verifies the connection.

Metrics to Track

After you’ve setup your Google Analytics account, you’ll notice that there are a number of metrics that the platform tracks. It will show you everything about your site, including geography or your visits and even time they spent on your website.

Most of the metrics won’t be important for measuring against your goals. Instead, focus specifically on a set of core metrics.

Start with tracking your unique visits. This outlines the number of actual people that were introduced to your website.

Pages per visit is an important metric too because it show show engaged people are with your website. The higher the number, the more interesting your content and website is.

Finally, once you have goal tracking setup (we’ll go over that next) you’ll want to track how many goals are being completed. You’ll be able to cross-reference different marketing channels against how many goals they completed to measure effectiveness.

With the data available and goal tracking enabled, you’ll be able to maximize your investment and resources on marketing channels that impact your bottom line.

Tracking Goals

Setting up goal tracking in Google Analytics can be difficult. The easiest way to setup the system is to use a “thank you” page for whatever your goal is.

For example, if you’re goal is to have a user complete and submit a form you should have a thank you page that is displayed once the form is submitted. This “thank you” page becomes the goal url in Google Analytics.

Let’s say you have a sign up form at http://example.com/signup and your thank you page is at http://example.com/signup/thank-you. Your goal funnel would start with http://example.com/signup as a required step. Your goal url would be http://example.com/signup/thank-you.

Refer to this Google Analytics support document for a more in-depth tutorial on setting up your goal tracking.

Advice from the Experts

This guide wouldn’t be complete without asking for advice from some of our favorite small business experts. We went out and asked them what they think is the most important aspect of a small business website.

Who did we ask? Here’s the list of experts:

• Anita Campbell:
  Anita Campbell is the CEO of Small Business Trends LLC, a media and information company serving the small business market. She is the co-author of “Visual Marketing,” Wiley 2011.
• Lisa Barone:
  Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services and other Internet services.
• Tamar Weinberg:
  Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and manages Community Support & Advertising at Mashable. Tamar is also the author of The New Community Rules.
• Matt McGee:
  Matt runs his own Tri-Cities, WA-based marketing consultancy and has been offering SEO and marketing services since the late 1990s. He’s consulted for companies as big as Target, but his current client list is exclusively small business owners — and that’s how he prefers it. Matt is the Executive News Editor at Search Engine Land, and has been speaking at national and regional marketing conferences since 2006.
• Mike Blumenthal:
  Widely cited as the foremost Local Search expert in North America and affectionately known among his colleagues as ‘Professor Maps’, Mike Blumenthal is the author of the industry’s most respected blog: Understanding Google Maps & Local Search.
• Rieva Lesonsky:
  Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Follow Rieva at Twitter.com/Rieva and visit her blog at SmallBizDaily.com. Visit her website SmallBizTrendCast to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.

The Most Important Aspect of a Small Business Website

Anita Campbell:
What is the most important aspect of a small business website? I could answer this several ways. First, one could say that the home page is most important because it’s the single most visited page in nearly every small business site. I could also say that your About Us page is most critical, because it is where you establish your bona fides to convince the world. Or I could say that the presence of trust seals on your website is most important, because it shows visitors that they can place their trust in the business.

But, in reality, the most important aspect of a small business website is whether it converts. In other words, does your website get visitors to do whatever it is that you want them to do? Whether it’s sign up for your newsletter, buy a product, fill out a lead capture form, subscribe to your blog — you must have a goal that you want visitors to do, and the elements of your website must work together to drive them toward that one goal.

Lisa Barone:
For me, it’s a living, breathing blog. If I’m on your Web site, it’s because I’ve seen your product or heard about your service and it all sounds promising. Now that I’m on your site I want to learn more about you, the people who work for you, and what your voice sounds like. That’s huge for me. I want to do business with companies that I think “get” what I’m all about. And there’s no better place to steal that peek under the hood than a company a blog.

Whereas the rest of your content could have been written five years ago, an up-to-date blog tells me what you believe and what you sound like today. It’s a place for me to learn about what the company is passionate about, what your core values are, and who you are in your market. That’s a huge point of difference. The rest of it – just having a Web site, showing reviews, giving me accurate directions – that’s all important, of course, but a blog tells me who you are. And I’m on your site because that’s what I want to know. That’s the question I need answered.

Tamar Weinberg:
A blog is definitely the most critical part of a small business website. If you actually maintain it, you could put your company front and center, building relationships with your prospects and customers. It’s a way to be informal while professional by writing content that can build search engine visibility and position your brand as *the* one to do business with.

Matt McGee:
It’s hard to make generalizations about small business websites because small businesses come in all shapes and sizes, but if I had to pick one thing as the most important piece of the puzzle, it would be contact information. And not just having contact info somewhere on the website, but having it extremely visible on all pages.

This is a pretty regular source of frustration for me. Restaurants that don’t require reservations might think they don’t need to make their phone number very visible, but a lot of people have other reasons for calling: What hours are you open? Is there a dress code? How long is the wait right now? That’s just one example, but I think the idea applies to almost all small businesses: Make it as easy as possible for customers and prospects to get in touch by having contact information extremely visible on every page of the website.

Mike Blumenthal:
First and foremost is the need to build a website. The idea that a 3rd party social site (Facebook) or Google Place Page can function as a replacement for a website is what I would call a subprime strategy – if you invest in the equity of others you are likely to end up with none of your own. Check out this web equity infographic.

Be sure that website is clear about WHAT you do and WHERE you do it. Most SMBs websites are hyperlocal in nature and it is important that the search engines AND potential readers understand the geographic targeting of your business. If you sell lawn mowers in Boliver NY then you need to be explicit about that.

Build your website on a sound foundation that can support the dynamic nature of your business. You need a platform that, even if you don’t use it today, can easily be setup for blogging, SEO and easy regular updates that you can control. The days of an HTML website created by your son, daughter, sister or brother ended several years ago. Don’t get caught in that trap no matter how cheap it may appear.

Educate yourself. The basics of marketing have not changed but the specifics of them have. Realize that building a website is the beginning of a process NOT the end of it. Learn what works for you, learn whether you can do it yourself or need to hire out, learn what is time effective and what isn’t. If you need a good resource for education start with GetListed.org’s Local University

Rieva Lesonsky:
There are so many important elements to building a website people want to read.
Obviously it should be easy to navigate, full of useful information that your target market wants to read. And you need to make sure people can find it—so optimization is key.

But given the way people search today, I think it’s vital—if you are a local business, particularly a restaurant, that you create a mobile-friendly site. Consumers are using their smartphones and tablets to find what they need—even when they’re at home.

Next Steps…

Launching a small business website isn’t a simple thing, but hopefully this guide and the advice found within it makes it an easier journey.

How have you setup your small business website? Did you do it yourself or did you work with a consultant? How are you making it work for your business? Leave a comment and let us know!

Image credit: cjrphotos,

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Small Business Website originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

If so, it’s probably safe to say that you’re familiar with search engine optimization. You may have even thought about bringing on a consultant or expert to help you with your website.

Professional SEO’s are a specialized group, so it’s no surprise that they can be expensive. But how expensive?

Our friends at Onward Search put together an awesome infographic that shows the average SEO salary for the top 20 U.S. markets.

© 2011 Onward Search

Image Credit: emdot

How Much Should You Pay Your SEO? originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

SEO is setting up your website in a way that allows search engines to easily decipher the site. This can include optimizing your website’s title tags, header tags, and inbound links; important signals that search engines use when ranking a site.

The goal of SEO is to have your website appear in search results pages for keywords that your consumers are looking for.

Table of Contents

• Understanding SEO
• Maximizing Online Visibility
• Securing Your Online Reputation
• Capturing Organic Leads
• Investing in SEO

Understanding SEO

The goal of search engines is to connect searchers with the information they’re looking for. If you’re searching for a plumber in NYC, the search engines have to identify which sites are relevant and display them on the search results page.

When determining relevance, search engines look at a number of signals. Since the system is automated and controlled by a computer, we can identify which signals are important and help search engines return your website for relevant searches.

Let’s go back to the “plumber in NYC” example. If you searched that in Google, the search engine would try to return websites from plumbing business in NYC.

It would look for clues from the websites to first identify if it’s about plumbing. The search engine would try to look for the term plumber (or a synonym) in the title tag or content throughout the site.

Once it’s identified websites that are relevant for plumbing, it needs to figure out where the business is located. Google would be doing a bad job if it returned businesses located in California if you’re looking for businesses in NYC.

To determine location, Google would use signals such as your office’s address or phone number (if included on the site). It might also use clues from maps, such as the embeddable Google map.

Optimizing your website means configuring your websites in a way that ensures that search engines return your website when consumers are looking for your services.

Maximizing Online Visibility

One of the best tools available for optimizing your website is launching a blog. Blogs allow a small business to continually expand their website and create new pages for search engines and consumers.

Imagine if you were the a plumber in NYC and had just launched a website. You want to maximize your online visibility, so you launch a blog.

On the blog, you might publish how-to guides for fixing and maintaining plumbing around the house.

It would seem counter-intuitive to give away information that makes you money, but the truth is that writing these guides can lead to new clients. Consumers that read your guides might realize that it’s just too much work and instead hire you to fix their plumbing.

Not only do these information resources position you as an expert in the plumbing industry, but search engines love these types of guides. Search engines use these guides as the content displayed to consumers with questions.

Although the local NYC plumber may not directly gain new NYC clients from these guides, the reputation the plumber gains (as an industry expert) will help the site gain relevance for key terms like “nyc plumber”. Google and other search engines reward those that are industry experts.

With a blog and well optimized site, your business can increase its online visibility. Each page published acts as a new entry point for the website and can increase the business’ relevance for high volume search terms.

Imagine if you were a plumber with a website that was on the first page for the term “NYC plumber” – you would suddenly be reaching 12,100 potential consumers every month (that’s the number of people that search for “NYC plumbers”!).

Securing Your Online Reputation

What happens if you Google your business name right now? What comes up? Is there a negative article? Is it all about your business or is there information from your competitors?

The search results page based around your brand name is your online reputation, it’s what consumers see when they look for your business. Ensuring your business is always being displayed in the best light is called online reputation management and can be influenced with SEO.

If the first result for your business name isn’t your website, then building your online authority through SEO can help increase the website’s ranking.

However, if there are websites that you don’t have to appear on your business’ search results page you can use social media profiles to change the page. (KnowEm is a great application for quickly securing social profile.) Building social media profiles with your business’ name can push other websites off the search results page.

Optimizing your website and your social media profiles for search engines can ensure that negative reviews have a difficult time impacting your online reputation.

Capturing Organic Leads

The most important benefit of SEO is that it can change your website from a simple online presence to a vehicle for lead generation.

We already outlined, above, how that could work with the example of the NYC plumber. But let’s say your industry is really competitive and you aren’t able to rank for a generic keyword like “NYC plumber”.

Search engine optimization techniques generally don’t only focus on major keywords. Optimally, a website with a blog will target the “long-tail” of keywords.

This strategy is based on the idea that the majority of searches are actually longer variations on the shorter term.

Let’s use the term “NYC plumber” as an example again. This short tail keyword gets 12,000+ searches per month. But, the related (lower competition) terms “discount plumbing”, “water heating plumbing”, and “plumbing emergency services” each get over 4,000 local searches.

If you were able to win these lower competition terms, you could end up with as much traffic as the term “NYC plumber”.

Not only does the long tail have the ability to equal or exceed the amount of traffic driven by a short tail keyword, it tends to be more specific and relevant.

Smart SEO experts will advice businesses to make very specific service pages so that the website is able to target these long tail terms. It’s one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website for the specific services that you offer.

Investing in SEO

Investing in SEO is no different than any other marketing channel. The more you invest in the strategy, the more you’ll get out of it.

As a minimum, all small businesses should invest in making sure their website is optimized and all the on-site configurations are done correctly.

If you have the resources available, I highly recommend launching a blog and investing in keeping it up to date with content. This investment could be time (if you’re writing the posts), or money (if you’re outsourcing the content).

Launching a blog allows you to use each article published as an entry point for new consumers. It also allows you to increase your visibility in your industry and authority as an expert in your niche.

Those that want to fully commit to SEO as a marketing strategy will have to invest in link building. Search engines look at the number of links from other sites pointing to yours, to determine authority (imagine each link to your website as a thumbs up or a vote for your business).

Link building is an SEO service that many firms offer, where they identify relevant sites and either request a link or write content specifically for the site. Be wary and do your homework, finding a good link building consultant is difficult and there are many that will happily take your money and offer you less-than-reputable service.

Don’t start by fully investing in the strategy. SEO requires a lot of patience. Start slow and use analytics tools like Google Analytics or RavenTools to measure and track success.

Next Steps

Just employing the basics of SEO will put you ahead of your competitors. It’s not a magic bullet for your marketing woes, but it’s definitely a necessary marketing channel.

Consumers are searching for your business and your services online. Is your website there? Don’t miss another opportunity, focus on SEO today.

How did you get started with SEO for your business website? What have you done? What confuses you? Leave a comment and let us know!

Image Credit: Kexino

Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Matters originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog

Here’s 21 quotes to help keep you motivated. When things seem to not be going your way, just remember it gets better. It’s not always easy, but the reward is worth it.

• The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

  by Vincent T. Lombardi

• It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect It’s successful outcome.

  by William James

• It’s not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you.

  by Zig Ziglar

• Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

  by Frederick Langbridge

• There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning.

  by Christopher Morley

• Everyone has his burden. What counts is how you carry it.

  by Merle Miller

• Never letting the competition define you. Instead, you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about.

  by Tom Chappel

• How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.

  by Martin Luther King

• Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

  by Mark Twain

• Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  by Winston Churchill

• Nothing can bring you happiness but yourself.

  by Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

  by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.

  by Napoleon Hill

• To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art.

  by Chinese Proverb

• Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

  by Henry Ford

• When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

  by Alexander Graham Bell

• Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

  by Niccolo Machiavelli

• Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

  by Albert Einstein

• Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

  by Howard Thurman

• Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

  by Henry Ford

• One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

  by Vincent van Gogh

Have a quote you like? Have one that impacted your business? Share it below and let us know, we’re always looking out for new ones!

Image credit: gensyn

21 Quotes to Motivate You When Starting a Business originally appeared on SiteFox - Small Business Marketing Blog