With everything you have in your store and especially your store, you must market it properly to get the word out. Your store won’t be successful if no one knows about it. You must market it the proper way in order for your target market to know about your store. Market every aspect of your store, even your website. You need the traffic. So, FGmarket has a few ways that you can market your website to gain the traffic you need.

1. Directory Listings – One way to market your website is with directory listings, such as Superpages or Manta.You can search for free company rosters and you’ll find websites where you can list your business for no cost or maybe even a link back or little cost. Also, don’t forget to claim your listing on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

2.Comp PR – Write a press release is the first thing you need to do. Once you have it written, you can submit it to a PR service. There are several free ones and then some that you can pay for. Research the proper PR service that best suits your company. You must find one that you think will best get your name out there.

3. Social Media – Social media is a wonderful way to get your business’s name out there, as well as your website. So, you can definitely advertise your website on your social media page through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +. Of course, you should always include your website link on everything that you offer. Consumers do their research on social media sites. Once they get a feel of your company, your services and what you stand for, they will then move to your website.

4. Commentary – You may follow certain blogs and you may have a blog of your own, which is very helpful if you utilize it in the right way. If you follow certain blogs, start leaving comments and you can leave the link to your website, social media page or whatever link you would like to leave. If you even develop a great relationship with that blogger, you can then ask for a link back and help promote each other’s websites. Potential clients can then see your comments and may see you as interesting, captivating or an expert in your field and they may even want to check out your website, which you conveniently left below your comment.

5. Email Signature – You definitely notice emails that have the footer that includes their title, company name and maybe even a quote. This is a great place to include your website and information about yourself and company. It’s a simple and easy place to do this. So, when customers or anyone else Continue reading “Marketing Tip Of The Week – Advertise Your Website” »

There are so many aspects to your store. You analyze every detail and try to figure out what’s best for your store to work efficiently and satisfy your customers. With that, you have needs and wants for your store. However, how do you determine between the two things? Well, FGmarket has found a quote that sums up wants and needs. See how you can apply this to your store.

Seth Godin – When people have their basic needs met, it’s not uncommon for wants to magically become needs. It’s our hardwired instinct to seek to fill unmet needs.

That pays off for any marketer that has persuaded his market that they need what he sells. It backfires when those ‘needs’ are seen for what they actually are–luxuries.

When you sell a want, you have to work harder, you must seduce the market, because wants are fickle, picky and not easily bullied.

Owning a shop is hard work, yet rewarding. Like everything else in life, you must set goals so you can apply that hard work towards reaching them. Having goals is a must if you want to make anything better. You must have something to strive towards. Having something to work towards honestly makes you more successful than just taking your days as they come. So, FGmarket’s marketing tip of the week is all about setting goals and reaching them to make your business more successful.

Get started with writing your goals out. It’s important to write what you want to achieve by week, month or year. Your bigger goals can be set for yearly and make your smaller ones for weekly or monthly. Your goals can be anything. Whether it’s increasing revenue, gaining traffic to your site or just understanding your customers, goals definitely help make your business even more successful. So, start small and just write down what you would like to achieve.

Next up, you need to decide how you’re going to fulfill your goals. You have no idea how the future is going to turn out, so try and set goals that you may have more control over. Try setting goals that you have control over, like have you control your own performance. That way if any financial or personal setback interferes, it won’t interfere with your goals.

Within setting goals, you must set smart goals too. You don’t want to set off the wall goals, you must set realistic ones. They should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timed. They don’t have to be necessarily truly realistic, just attainable and not out of complete reach. You also want to be able to measure your goal and see if you’re close to achieving it. It’s important to know that you’re making progress. Make your goal relevant to your store and they help make progress in your store in a proper time manner.

So, set your goals that will help your store that you can have somewhat of control over and not have to rely on so many other factors. Make sure they’re specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timed. Once you have those goals, sit down and write out an actionable plan to achieve them. Having goals will help make your business even more successful and you will have something to strive for.

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Your store has many aspects to it. There are different strategies you use, you focus on your customers, there are products and of course, you have competitors. Dealing with your competitors and analyzing them is an essential part of your business strategy. You ask yourself, how can I be better and make my store stand out. So, this week’s marketing tip from FGmarket will be a few tips and ideas on how you can beat the competition.

Customer service is everything. Of course, the economy right now is still a main focus and how it’s still struggling a bit. If you are feeling the hit from the economy, customer service is everything in your business. It’s truly important that you are attentive to your customers’ every needs. Ask them what they would like to see more of in your store, be polite and always greet them with a smile. Customer service is definitely what makes them a loyal customer.

Learning from mistakes. Not everyday is perfect. You also can’t control your employees. Every once in a while you may get a bad seed. Plus, you may not know how to handle situations or even your customers may come and tell you about a bad experience that they had elsewhere. Take note of all of these situations and write them down. Think about how you should handle each one and place these scenarios in a handbook that you may refer if the problem arises again.

Doing business with your store should be easy. Customers should enjoy going to your store. They not only want to come to your store for the wonderful products you carry, but also because business is handled with such ease at your store. They expect friendly and skillful customer service that they know they can trust. Always keep this in mind. Your customers wants their trip to your store to be a smooth one.

Happy employees creates happy customers.Treat your employees with care. Make sure you train them, keep them up-to-date on all the latest news in your store and constantly train them on new and improved technology and strategies. If your customers know what’s expected of them and how to handle certain situations, they know how to handle the customers in a proper way.

If you’re wanting to rise above your competitors, it’s not all about the products you feature in your store, it’s mainly on how you handle your Continue reading “Marketing Tip Of The Week – Beating Your Competition” »

The first quarter is behind us. Have you sat down to analyze how your business did? If not, now is the time to do it. You must review everything in order to know what’s working for you and what’s not. This is important to know. So, this week’s FGmarket has a few tips on what to analyze and what to do with the results. You may find out everything is working out great or you need to change a few strategies within your business.

First off, how did it do? Have you closed your books and are you ready to start analyzing the numbers? Start with your sales. Break it down into ways that are useful for you and your decisions like geography, product line, etc. You need to review your sales and see what worked and what didn’t work. Maybe you had a certain product line that you did well with, you may want to consider expanding that line. However, you also may have products that didn’t do so well, so you may want to evaluate and see if they have the right fit in your store.

Next up, take a look at your gross margin. Did you make any revenue after all your costs? If yes, then you are doing something right. However, if you took a dip in numbers, start taking a look at your business strategy and see where you can cut back and what’s working and what’s not.

Also, don’t forget to take a look at product line profitability, job level profitability, inventory and cash flow. For your product & job level profitability, you should understand and know the profits for each service or product you offer. Do you know how often you are stocked with a certain product? It’s great to know what your best sellers are and what’s not. This way, you find out what products you need to buy more of and what you don’t have to focus much on. You definitely don’t want to have a years worth of supply of an item that isn’t one of your top sellers. Another important part to look at is your cash flow.

So, did you meet the goals that you set for yourself? If you did, that’s wonderful. You have a great strategy in place, however, don’t forget to always re-evaluate to make it better. However, if you were unable to reach your goals, there could be a lot of factors on why you did not. Start analyzing and Continue reading “Marketing Tip Of The Week – Analyzing Your First Quarter” »

Within marketing, strategies and tactics are always changing. New and innovative ways are always being developed. Do you keep up with these changes and see how you can implement them into your store? Do you think they will even work? These are all things to consider before you even start to plan out a strategy. The latest craze to hit markets is the daily deal. Have you thought about incorporating this into your store, will it even work? FGmarket has a few tips on the daily deal that may or may not work in your store.

Gifts and decorative accessories recently did an article on the daily deal in their March/April 2012 issue, which brought up some interesting points. Here are a few things to consider before implementing it into your store.

New & Seasoned Businesses – Daily deals are great for new businesses. This definitely helps get your name out there and makes customers want to check it out, especially if they are receiving some sort of discount from your store. According to their recent article & ForeSee, 55% of daily deal purchasers were new or infrequent customers of the business and more than 90% of the shoppers reported that they had already make a repeat transaction and 12% of customers had never heard of the business before seeing the deal. So, this is definitely great for newer businesses. However, if you’re a seasoned store and notice that your traffic is somewhat lacking, this can get you noticed again. This can help increase traffic and get your store’s name noticed.

Daily Deal Sites – Where do you even begin and who do you even use for your daily deal? Of course, there is Groupon & Living Social. The best thing is to research and see what consumers in your are use more. The best way to see what they are using is to simply ask. You can do this through your social media page or for customers who walk into your store.

Challenges You May Face – Like everything else, there may be challenges you face when using the daily deal. Consumers are going to see this deal. This will be their first impression of you, for those consumers who have not yet heard of your store. Therefore, you want to work with a site that is good for you and your customers. The challenge is seeing if it will even work, finding a site that will do your business justice and getting your Continue reading “In The News – Do You Feature A Daily Deal?” »

When it comes to marketing your business, there are so many options that you can include in your store. There are many forms of advertising and different business strategies that are out there. So, the questions is, how do you choose what suits your business best? What type of marketing strategy do you include in your business to help make it successful? This week’s marketing tip focuses on a few tips on how to choose what business strategy is actually best for you.

Basic Understanding Is Key. Of course, understanding what market your business is in is key. You must know who your customers are, how old they are, what gender they are, nationality and what economic group do they fall in. You also like to understand your customer’s buying habits like, what they buy, when and how often they purchase items. These are all key elements to know before you even implement a marketing strategy into your store.

First off, keep a profile on your demographic. Write down their characteristics, buying habits and purchases. Know your customers ins and outs. Next, start thinking about other possible consumers that you can reach. However, keep in mind that you cannot reach every type of consumer out there. Not everyone buys the same and definitely does not make the same purchases.

Next up, start devising a plan on what’s the best way to reach your customers. The best thing to do is simply ask your customers. They are the ones who know the answer to that question. You can even send out surveys to ask them what form of marketing they notice the most. It’s key to understand Continue reading “Marketing Tip Of The Week – What Suits Your Business Best?” »

When it comes to your store, you are faced with many challenges and problems that arise. It happens to everyone. Therefore, it’s all about how you overcome and pick yourself up. How do you handle the challenges that you are faced with? Do you already have a plan in action to take care of it or do you just deal with them as they occur? Also, do you make note of how you overcame the situation? Here is a great quote that you may look towards when your next challenge arises.

Seth Godin – Two things you might take away from this: First, there’s solace in finding someone who has done it before, whatever “it” is you’re trying to do. Knowing that it’s possible and studying how it was done can’t help but increase the chances you’ll stick it out.

Second: huge value accrues to the few able to actually do a thing for the very first time.

The next time you face a problem, remember that this won’t be your only one that you will face and it’s all about you handle it the best way that you can.

When it comes to marketing, there are many forms of it. There are various ways to market your store to consumers. You can reach customers through a variety of ways that are all effective for different types of consumers. However, you don’t stick to just one. You combine all types of different marketing tactics to market your store. So, this week’s marketing tip will focus on how you can integrate interactive marketing into your store.

What is interactive marketing? This form of marketing is a type of marketing where the emphasis is on dialogue between people rather than the traditional model. It is more of a personal focus that is all about the customer’s needs. It aims at fulfilling their needs. This is truly an important form of marketing. You want to build a great personal relationship with your customers, this keeps them coming back to your store and they build trust in you.

How do you use interactive marketing? There are several ways that you can incorporate interactive marketing into your strategy. The first way to establish a good interactive marketing base is with customer engagement. You engage with your customers and build up their trust up trust in order to deliver a service that always meets their needs. If a customer trusts you and know that they will always receive exquisite customer service, great products and you will always meet their needs, they definitely have the potential to become lifetime customers.

Your customers are key to your business, therefore, always go the extra mile in meeting their needs. They come to your store expecting to receive wonderful customer service and find the products that they need. So, make sure you always meet their expectations and go 110% out of your way to serve them. This will truly benefit you in the end. It’s all about the personal service they receive. Consumers like to feel important in your store, so treat them that way.

Of course, this seems like basic knowledge for any store owner. However, it needs to be planned out with you and your employees. Research what your Continue reading “Marketing Tip Of The Week – Interactive Marketing” »

When it comes to technology and different marketing tactics, they are ever evolving. People are always coming up with different concepts to help promote their business through social media sites and there are people who are always wanting to come up with different sites in general. Therefore, you must always adapt your marketing strategies to fit with the new sites that are out there. The latest craze to hit everyone is Pinterest. How can you market your store through this? Well, this week’s marketing tip will focus on how to use this site to your advantage.

1. Driving Traffic – Pinterest is being used by a wide variety of people and also has a large following. This can help drive traffic to your site, you just know how to use it to your advantage. Whenever you Pin a photo from your website, it could be one of your great products, it attaches a link to your site. Therefore, when customers see something they like and click on the picture, they’ll immediately be taken to your site. Therefore, make sure your website is up to par.

2. Great For Sharing – This website is also great for sharing. When users see something they like, they can just repin a photo on one of their many boards that they have on their account. It keeps going and going, yet it’s still linked back to your website.

3. User Popularity – This website has definitely gained a lot of popularity over the past couple of months. If you’re a fan or even have employees who are a fan of the website, it’s time to get on board. Create a few boards that maybe have a season theme, garden decor theme or gourmet food, and see what gets pinned the most. When you see a trend, start pinning more of those products that will help generate even more traffic.

4. Less Clicks – Consumers enjoy clicking on an item and being taken exactly where they would like to go. They don’t enjoy having to constantly click and find what they are looking for. So, this is the great thing about Pinterest. When users click on an item that you’ve uploaded, they are immediately taken to the location of the photo on your site. You can either paste the link in there and it finds the photo on the page or you can upload a photo yourself and then paste a link of where you want them to go.

5. Don’t Forget To Advertise – Don’t forget to advertise that you have a Pinterest account. Put the link on your social media pages, advertise it in your store and just tell your customers about it.

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