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Articles by Karen Scharf

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54 articles by Karen Scharf · showing 50

Browse every published article connected to Karen Scharf, or search within this exact expert archive.

By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Using PR Effectively in Your Small Business Marketing

Don't have a small business marketing plan? Neither do most of the entrepreneurs we encounter on a regular basis. Many people naively enter the business world convinced that their product or service will sell itself. They expect prospects to find out about their new business as if by magic and to flock to their website or storefront without any prodding. Unfortunately, this isn't the way it works. And if you were being realistic, you'd realize that without announcing your presence to the world at large, there really is no way for your prospects to even know you exist.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog

Looking for ways to improve your blog? If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time, you might eventually start feeling as if your blog is getting stale. Or if you’re just getting started with your blog, especially if you plan to use it for small business marketing, you might be looking for ways to position your blog as professionally as possible. Here are 4 quick and easy ways you can improve an existing blog or get a brand new blog off to the best start possible. *** Improve Your Blog with Proper Grammar

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

SEO TLC For Your Current Web Site

Many of our new clients come to us thinking they need a new website, when in fact what they need to start with is a little search engine optimization. Before you spend thousands on a brand new website design, why not spend one hour testing your current site’s SEO? 2 Minutesr Start by logging into your website. Check the URL in the address bar. Is it the same one you typed in? If not, you might have a redirect going on. That can hurt your search engine raking, so fix it. 2 Minutesr Now type your URL without the www. Were you taken to the www version?

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Email Marketing Tests to Get You Started

If you’re utilizing email marketing, you should be utilizing email testing. But it can seem complex and costly, and many small business owners aren’t quite sure where to start. If you’d like to use email testing, but aren’t sure where to start, here are 4 of the easiest tests to get you going: ** Test Your Subject Lines Your subject line is basically the headline for your message. And any good copywriter will tell you, the headline will determine whether the rest of the copy will get read.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Blogging and Small Business Marketing

Blogging is an excellent way to supplement your small business marketing. However, there is a great deal of confusion about exactly what role the blog plays in small business marketing and how it helps you to make money. Contrary to what some people may tell you, the blog itself is not meant to make money. You can add some advertisements, sure, but this is very unlikely to become its own source of legitimate revenue. However, a blog can help you to make your small business more successful and here is how. ** Having a Successful Blog Doesn't Necessarily Mean Business Successr

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing with Twitter

Twitter is one of the many social networking services that have taken the web by storm. With this particular social site you only get 140 characters to type your message and let the world know what you are thinking. This is actually a fantastic tool to add to your small business marketing plan; the key is in knowing how to make your tweets the best tweets they can be.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Landing Page Optimization Tips

When we hear the words Landing Page we generally think of PPC campaigns or some other form of internet advertising. But I like to use landing pages for all of my off-line advertising also. However, you’re using it, a landing page is a web page, typically hidden from the site’s menu bar and other navigation – meaning the only way you can get to the page is to type the URL directly into the browser. The web page is directly related to the ad campaign that listed the URL.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
870 views
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Finding Clients for Your Small Business - Preparing for the Economic Uptick

It seems to me that the economy is slowly making a comeback, and now would be a great time to ramp up your marketing, take advantage of the renewed spending environment, and move full-speed ahead on growing your business. But many of the small business owners I speak with are still having a hard time finding new clients.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Defining Your Small Business Marketing Niche

Have you ever heard the saying "If everyone is your customer, no one is your customer"? Many small business owners are afraid to create a niche for their business thinking that they will end up turning away prospects or that they will cut themselves off from potential customers. The fact is, having a niche actually makes your small business marketing much easier. A niche gives you focus. It allows you to tailor your message to your particular audience. It allows you to have a better understanding of your target market and to craft a very clear and concise target market profile.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing with Video

The use of online videos in small business marketing has become an increasingly popular strategy. Research has suggested that immediately after viewing a company’s video consumers are far more likely to visit the company website or contact the company via phone. In fact they can be up to 40% more likely to make some sort of contact. This is a pretty dramatic statistic.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Improve Your Small Business Marketing with Pay Per Click

Have you added pay per click to your small business marketing plan? If you thought PPC was only for huge websites with gigantic advertising budgets, think again. Pay per click advertising can be a fantastic way to test the sales copy on a web page before publishing that page to the general public. At one time webmasters had to create a web page and then just cross their fingers, hoping the page would be

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Five Useful Tips For Kicking Off Your PR Campaign

Public relations, or getting publicity through mainstream media, has been around for hundreds of years and has been proven effective in bringing in consumer traffic to small businesses. But, is such an ancient marketing method still effective for today's high-tech small businesses? While it's true that typical public relations have existed long before the computer and the internet were invented, the fact is, it is still extremely effective for almost all online businesses.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing Principles for Success

It seems as if most of the entrepreneurs I've encountered lately are looking for the "get rich quick" version of small business marketing. Unfortunately, such a thing doesn't really exist, but if you're looking for some tried-and-true marketing principles that can accelerate your success, I've got a few to share with you: Pull Marketing Works Better Than Push Marketing

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

SEO Techniques – Easy On Page Elements You Can Optimize Today

You might think that SEO techniques involve some kind of trickery, or maybe some top secret steps that only the search engine optimization professionals are aware of. In fact, search engine optimization isn't extremely difficult, it simply involves following a few simple rules. There are a few very easy steps that even a novice webmaster can take to search engine optimize his website.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Affordable SEO Beyond Keyword Research

A huge part of SEO revolves around keyword research. Keyword research is inexpensive or free for those willing to do the work themselves and it doesn’t involve a whole lot of effort, other than integrating the keywords into web content. However, keyword research doesn’t just mean going to Google and finding the hottest search phrases that are related to your product and then littering your website with those terms. There is a lot more to SEO than that, if you really want to get the maximum effectiveness from the technique.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

There Is No Such Thing as a Duplicate Content Penalty

First, I want you to understand that I am NOT giving you license to steal other people’s content. There ARE repercussions to using duplicate content, but it is not a penalty per se. There continues to be a lot of misinformation surrounding the so-called "Duplicate Content" penalty. I actually have one client who was extremely reluctant to start repurposing his articles and distributing them on article directory sites because he was conce ed about getting hit with the duplicate content penalty.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
1,216 views2.5/5 (2)
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

How to Improve Your Local SEO

Though SEO as a whole can become a rather complicated technique, there are several steps that just about any small business owner can take to optimize his website and increase the chances of it appearing in organic search results. Most small businesses are locally-focused – that is, they cater to or offer their services to their local community. However, many small business website owners think "internationally" when it comes to search engine optimization.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Opt-in or Double Opt-in – Setting Up Your Email List

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the tight economy and how small businesses are currently under a financial strain. We’re all feeling the pressure to generate new revenue and improve our overall ROI. The financial news can certainly seem bleak and depressing right about now. But the good news, for your small business at least, is that there is a marketing tool that is still proving successful and generating high returns on investment. In fact, studies show that this particular tactic actually received an increase in 2009 marketing budgets.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing and Getting Referrals – Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to small business marketing getting referrals is a huge part of the profit game. Referrals are inexpensive to obtain and easier to sell to. You don’t have to place a huge ad in a high-dollar newspaper to find referrals, so referred clients are inexpensive to come by. And since you don’t have to spend as much time building up trust and explaining how your process works, referred clients are easier to sell to.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing - Finding Your First Customers through Referral Partners

If you're like many entrepreneurs I've encountered, you probably started your business because you are really good at what you do. At some point in time, you might have decided you were sick and tired of bringing home the bacon for your boss and you figured you'd be better off starting your own business and keeping the bacon on your own kitchen table. Or perhaps you have an exceptional skill, something that comes so naturally to you that all your friends and family have always said, "You should be making money with this. You should start your own business."

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Web Site Traffic – Driving Visitors to your Blog

It definitely takes a lot of time and effort to craft the perfect blog post. You must research your keywords, develop the perfect headline, craft a compelling opening sentence, create perfect subheads, design a visually appealing layout. Once your post is finally written, it would be easy to breath a sigh of relief, hit the publish button, and sick back and relax. But once your post is published, you’re only half-way done. Now it’s time to drive traffic and entice readers to your blog.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Mid-Year Email Marketing Review

Here we are, it's June already and the year is half way over. The time couldn't be better to take an objective look at your email marketing campaign and assess any changes or fixes that need to be made. What kinds of things should you look for? Here are a few pointers to get you started: Take a look at your subscription process. Are all of the forms on every page working? Where is the reader taken after registering? Are there any unnecessary clicks included in the opt-in route?

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

5 Small Business Marketing Strategies to Use Right Away

Marketing is the life-blood of your business; it is what sustains all businesses today, small and corporate alike. Marketing is the combination of strategies you apply in your small business to get new customers, to maintain customer loyalty and to increase your business profitability. If you want to grow your business, here are five small business marketing strategies you should put into practice right away:

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Google Announces New Algorithm Change

If you’ve been paying attention to your website traffic, you might have noticed a significant dip in the number of visitors coming to your website by searching longtail keywords. (Longtail keywords are search terms that have more than 3 words in the phrase. "Marketing" is a keyword. "Indianapolis Small Business Marketing Consultant" is a longtail keyword.)

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing - Making Use of a Mission Statement

Many entrepreneurs think they do not need a mission statement since their business is small. They mistakenly believe that a mission statement is something created by Fortune 500 companies to hang on the wall in the CEO's office. But a mission statement is especially important for a small business. A mission statement is a brief description of your business's purpose and overall goal. In a nutshell, your mission statement tells the world why your business exists and what needs your business fills.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Using Press Releases in Your Small Business Marketing Plan

The press release has been around for most of modern history in one form or another. When you have some small business news you want to share, using a press release is often the best route to take. However, there are some things you need to know about promoting your business with a press release. Keep these four tips in mind before setting up your press release. Target Newspapers First

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Blogging For Beginners - a Great Small Business Marketing Tool

A blog is a contraction word of "web log". It is a website that contains personal postings, usually the author's thoughts and feelings about things and events. It may also contain educational articles, videos, images, comments, opinions, descriptions of things or announcements of events. Blogging, the verb, is the act of making the contents of the web log on a regular basis.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

SEO Link Building – Share the Wealth

Are you concentrating all of your SEO link building activities on your home page? If so, read on. If you're one of the lucky ones, you might have noticed that more of your website's interior pages have been getting listed in the search engine results pages. If you're one of the unlucky ones, you might have noticed that you've lost a lot of ground as far as ranking for particular keywords.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Getting Started with Video Marketing

Video marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways for a small business owner to advertise his or her products or services online. YouTube is one of the most visited sites on the web and in July of 2010 it was the 3rd most visited website on the planet with over 100 million unique visitors for the month. With more people going online every day looking for information on how to do things, clearly video marketing on the internet is here to stay.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

What Does Google Instant Mean to Your Business?

Will Google Instant Effect Your Small Business Marketing? Typical web surfers take over 9 seconds to type their search terms into the Google search bar. Apparently, Google thought this staggering amount of time was unacceptable, and so on Wednesday, they quietly launched Google Instant, an new search feature designed to save searchers anywhere from 2 to 5 second per search.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Lead Generation with Social Media Marketing – How to Measure the Results

By now you've probably heard all the buzz about social media and how it can drive leads for your business. But when it comes to small business marketing, I'm going to assume that your budget is not unlimited. You need to know that every dollar you spend will bring at least $1.01 to your bottom line. So you might have been a little hesitant to dive into social media for lead generation because you weren't sure how to track or measure the results. If that sounds like you, I've got some great tips to share with you. ** Use link shortening to measure lead generation.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

What To Do When You Just Can't Concentrate

My email in-box is jam packed, I have several calls from sales people that I haven't returned yet, my desk is a mess, and I'm finding it very hard to concentrate. What in the world is going on here! Well, for starters, my friend Chris is undergoing her second brain surgery today (a 7 hour procedure that will hopefully eliminate what remains of the tumor), my husband is recovering from surgery that was definitely not as easy and painless as the doctor lead us to believe it would be, my staff is about to double from 3.5 of us to 7.5 of us. All of this has caused me to totally lose my focus.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

10 Quick and Affordable SEO Tips

An affordable SEO plan that is quick and easy and perfect for a small business budget.. The task of search engine optimization for your website can seem overwhelming at times. You have enough work to do just running your small business, so it’s easy to put SEO at the bottom of your priority list. However, without proper search engine optimization, your website is very unlikely to be much of a success. This can mean the money and time that you spent getting your website designed and developed becomes wasted.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Creating a Small Business Marketing Plan

It is imperative that, as a small business owner, you create a marketing plan. It's also imperative that you realize your marketing plan is going to be a work in progress. Your plan (and you!) must be flexible enough to change and adapt to the current market conditions, changes in the economy, advances in technology and so on. Here are 6 great tips to keep in mind when you begin creating your own small business marketing plan: 1. Establish Goals

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Choosing a Web Analytics Program For Your Business

Web analytics play a major role in the optimization of your online presence; however, if you’re like most small business owners, you probably have only a vague understanding of analytics. You might have heard of web site analytics, maybe even attended a class or a seminar about analytics. But the options probably seemed overwhelming and technical and a bit too complicated.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

7 Common Web Site Mistakes You Might Be Guilty Of

Generally when we're building new websites, our clients have several design and development ideas that they would like implemented into the new site. Most of the time, we try to take the clients' ideas into account, but we have several suggestions that pop up often that we have to politely decline, and here's why: Confusing Purposer We have a client with a very interesting company name; unfortunately, the name is not reflective at all of what the business actually does. They came up with a design concept that played up the name, with a cute cartoon character and all.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

The Single Most Affordable SEO Tip Around

Our small business clients are always interested in affordable SEO ideas to increase the traffic to their websites on a very limited budget. And we typically offer the same search engine optimization tip to all of our clients: The easiest, most affordable SEO step you can make to drive traffic to your website is to add unique content on a regular basis. Many of our small business marketing clients don’t like to hear that. They’re not natural born writers, and they believe adding content on a consistent schedule is going to be extremely difficult.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Small Business Marketing: 8 Cross-Selling Tips to Increase Your Sales

When it comes to small business marketing, cross-selling is a great technique to increase sales and improve the bottom line. I often work with my coaching clients to create cross-selling programs for their small businesses. The problem with cross-selling is that it can sometimes confuse your customers and cause them to abandon their purchase in the middle of the process. It's important that you employ cross-selling techniques correctly so that your sales will actually grow and not dwindle. Here are 8 of my favorite and most effective cross-selling techniques:

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

They'll No Longer Pay for Botched Surgeries?

I came across a local news story a few months ago that had me absolutely astounded. A health insurance company here in Indianapolis released a statement saying they will no longer pay hospitals for performing the wrong surgery, performing surgery on the wrong body part, or performing surgery on ...

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Using Google Beat for your Small Business Marketing

Have you ever heard of the Google Beat? Well if you are a small business who uses the internet for your marketing, now is a great time to learn. The Google Beat is a new YouTube channel that combines information that is of great value to internet marketers all over the world with viral video to produce a short newscast detailing all that is new on Google. Loading seo etc.the Google Beat's primary focus is to let the business world know what is trending in the Google universe.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Keyword Research: Free Tools to Get Your Blog Started

Before you actually start writing at your new blog, it's important that you do your preliminary keyword research. Your keyword research is going to drive all of your current content - as well as drive all of your future traffic. Now, you can pay thousands of dollars to a search engine optimization consultant, or you can do a bit of keyword research on your own. If you want to get started on your own, here are a few tools that can be extremely useful. Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Use Customer Testimonials to Increase Web Sales

I've got to warn you – you're about to read about the pot calling the kettle black. That's because with each and every coaching client I have, I always discuss the creation of a testimonial capturing system. And yet I am woefully inept at using testimonials myself. Because I have non-disclosure agreements with most of my clients, I'm often hesitant to ask for testimonials. But I'm leaving a huge opportunity on the table. That's because using testimonials can help ease your prospect's mind and reduce her buying resistance.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Using Facebook for Small Business Marketing

Facebook is an excellent tool to add to your small business marketing plan. A big mistake that many entrepreneurs make when it comes to social media sites like Facebook is the belief that these sites are only useful for large companies that have big brands. In reality Facebook can be a great small business marketing tool for business of all shapes and size.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Website Copy Checklist

I love using checklists for all of my projects. I have a checklist for new clients, a checklist for installing Wordpress, several checklists for SEO, a checklist for Can-Spam, a checklist for video marketing, and on and on. And, while the overall system I use for my copywriting projects is rather complex, I have a simple checklist that I use to review the completed copy before I publish it to the web or send it to the printer. Here are the basic steps I use to review web copy before publishing it online (the steps are slightly different for direct mail copy): 1. Keywords

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

How to Choose a Small Business Marketing Consultant

As an entrepreneur, there will likely come a time that you feel the need to hire a small business marketing consultant to help with marketing an growing your business. There are many reputable agencies that offer consultant services; the key is finding the right agency for you. Here are some tips on how to choose a marketing consultant for your small business. Questions to Ask

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Email Marketing - 7 Steps to Getting Started

You probably know that I'm a huge advocate of including email newsletters into your small business marketing plan. Email marketing is relatively inexpensive, and it provides a great opportunity to stay in front of your clients and prospects in an unobtrusive manner. But before you open your Microsoft Outlook and start typing away, it's a good idea to create an overall plan for your email marketing program. Here are 7 steps to get you started. 1. Check Out Your Industry What are others in your industry doing with their email marketing campaigns?

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

Save Money With Geo-Targeting

If you're a local business on a tight budget, you can save money on your advertising budget by targeting only specific locations with your AdWords campaigns. It's pretty easy and straight-forward to use the geo-targeting feature in AdWords. Simply log into your campaign setting, the specify the areas you want to target. Your ads can be limited to certain countries, to certain states, to certain cities, or even a specific geographic radius, such as a 5-mile circle around your store. One of the neatest features is that you can draw your own target area using the map and your mouse.

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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By Karen ScharfRecently published1 topic

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is one of the many tools that Google provides to webmasters and marketers. Like most of Google’s many services, it is a free one. Google Analytics lets you discover various statistics about your website, such as the amount of traffic your site is getting, where your site visitors are coming from, and the keywords web surfers are using to find your site, among other things. What are the Benefits of Google Analytics?

Primary topic: Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy
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