Are traditional business plans a waste of time?
One camp says to jump in and learn along the way because everything you’re thinking regarding your business is going to change anyway.
Another camp says: “If you fail to plan, then plan to fail”. Continue reading The 5-Minute Business Plan
We recently interviewed Darren Tow of FASTSIGNS of Orange to learn about some of his business signage tips. Signage is one of those things that you don’t want to rush into it without thinking things through. Well-executed signage can do wonders for your business. Continue reading Essential Business Signage Tips: Do’s & Don’ts You Need to Know with Darren Tow
I spoke to a prospect a while back and this person made a shocking statement. I can’t remember the exact words but it was something to the effect of:
“People still use websites?” or “Websites are still a thing?”
And for a brief moment, a shooting emotion of fear entered my body and the thought occurred to me, “Whoa, what if this person is right? What if I’m just old school and outdated now?” 😱
But logic and truth finally took back control of my brain and I realized that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
Some people think a popular social media account is all you need to run a successful business. And there’s some truth to that. A good social media following can get some people far. But for most businesses, you can’t and shouldn’t rely on a social media account as the lifeblood of your entire digital presence.
Let’s unravel this. Continue reading Are Websites Still a Thing & Are They Important for Business?
Today we are interviewing Josh Miller at Betterfit Benefits. We’ve known Josh for a couple of years now and we think he offers one of the most remarkable services for small businesses. He figures out how to give companies better employee benefits and save them money on their annual benefit costs. More importantly, what he’s really doing is improving employee retention and looking out for thousands of workers across the United States.
I have worked at so many companies where benefits were an afterthought. This is an important topic and if you own a small business, listen up! Continue reading How to Give Your Employees Better Benefits While Lowering Costs
We recently met Barb Flowers, a life coach who consults professionals on how to get their you-know-what together. At Judicious, Inc. we believe that coaching is one of the most potent drivers for small business success. Read Barb’s tips below and if you think you need her help, you can find her contact info at the bottom of this post. Continue reading An Interview With Barb Flowers: Time Management Tips & Work-Life Balance for Professionals
For many businesses, networking is hands down the most cost-effective activity for generating customers. For these businesses, networking will be the highest return on investment, and generate the highest quality leads and referrals.
The catch is it takes time to develop a solid network. But if you plan on being in business for a while, start networking ASAP!
In this guide, we’re going to write our hearts out on how to do this effectively and try to cover every possible detail we can think of. Please save this guide and share it with your friends and of course, your networking buddies! Continue reading Small Business Networking 101
“I can’t get a hold of him! I’ve been calling him and emailing him for weeks!”
Disappearing or unresponsive web designers have been a thing since the earliest days of the Internet.
This is partly because there isn’t a huge barrier to entry into the field of web design. The work can be done anywhere at any time of the day and with very little startup costs. That translates into a form of employment where there isn’t that much skin in the game.
This does not mean all website designers are flighty or irresponsible. It’s just that you’ll find more fly-by-night operations in this field than in pretty much any other. Continue reading What Should You Do If Your Website Designer or Developer Has Disappeared?
We know the road you could go down: Design mockups -> revisions -> copywriting -> development -> launch date -> postponed launch and thousands and thousands of dollars later and countless hours of your time taken up.
For many small businesses, there’s a much easier and less expensive route. Continue reading Don’t Want to Spend $5000 on a Website? We Can Help.
We released our Therapy Practice ROI Calculator last week. This tool allows you to calculate the return on investment your practice will receive if it engages with the Judicious, Inc. Therapy Maximizer Service.
If you head to our home page, you can try the ROI calculator out for yourself. Continue reading Therapy Practice Return On Investment Calculator
Looking to step into a money suck that will eat your time and leave you exhausted and penniless? Here’s how. These business ideas all look like short cuts or at least, like winners anyone can ride to the finish line. In reality, there’s no such thing. Every one of these business ideas requires more know-how (and, yes, often more up-front money) than you’d think at first glance. Let’s look a little closer. Continue reading The 10 Absolute Worst Businesses To Start
Before you incorporate, hire, buy a domain or launch your business: how much do you know about the market? Continue reading What’s the market for your business like? Let’s find out.
To roll out really kick-arse marketing you need an engaged audience: A group or list of people who want to listen to what you have to say.
For many businesses, this is the hardest piece of their marketing puzzle. If they focus on this part and solve it, the rest is pretty easy. Continue reading The Most Important Marketing Question: What Does Your Audience Want To Hear?
When you do a search on Google, a list of results appear after you hit enter or click on the magnifying glass.
Did you know, you can CONTROL how those listings appear? Continue reading The Simplest Free Internet Advertising
How would a steady stream of leads change your business?
Every business owner wants to expand their market share and reach new customers. A steady stream of leads increases stability and allows your company to achieve revenue targets, but business owners can get overwhelmed with the marketing channels. Continue reading Why Service Based Businesses Should Invest in SEO Over All Else
Search engines have ingrained themselves in the customer journey. Google processes over 8.5 billion searches every day, and some of those search queries can translate into revenue for your business. While other marketing channels force your message in front of people, search engines tap into permission marketing. Prospects use search engines to actively seek solutions to their problems, making the customer journey feel more natural. The search engine model is fundamentally different from the online advertising model, which forces a message onto the social media feeds of potential customers. Continue reading How to Get Quality Leads from Search Engines
If you’re starting an email list, you probably want something free.
And considering there are dozens of email marketing platforms out there, it can be quite daunting to figure out which one to go with.
So, we tried to tackle this ourselves. We went through every single email marketing platform to see who offered the free plan that gives you the most contacts / subscribers and the most emails you can send at a time. It’s feeling like MailJet might be the winner here. Who do you like? Continue reading FREEMAIL – Free Email Marketing Platforms
When it comes to online advertising, one of the oldest and most common advertising models is pay-per-click, or PPC.
One of the largest benefits of the PPC model is its efficiency. With PPC, advertisers only pay publishers when an ad is clicked. This allows advertisers to measure their campaigns in a more quantifiable way and prevents them from having to invest their budget in a campaign that might not net a great return.
It’s important to understand how the advantages of PPC put it ahead of other marketing models. Whether or not you feel like using the PPC model, it is still an important concept to get your head around. Continue reading What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
We recently asked Jahnavi Ray a few questions about demand generation and how to do it well. Read her responses below. Continue reading How Do You Build a Demand Generation Engine? An Interview With Jahnavi Ray
When your business moves, copies of the old address and contact information remain in Google, and in other places like local news sites and business directories. But what can happen is your new address will start trickling into other online databases and directories – sometimes, without you even knowing it. To Google, it now looks like you have two business addresses — for the same business. Continue reading Has Your Business Moved? Why You Need to Update Your Business Data Now
Building an audience for B2B isn’t easy.
In the B2C world, it tends to be much easier because you most likely have a product or service that people like (hopefully), and getting people to engage with something they already like really just requires marketers to be present. Show up on social media, market your product, engage with your audience.
Often, if a brand is big enough, people will automatically follow your brand on social media and/or sign up for emails. Half your work is done!
But B2B…eeeew. How do you build an audience for an HVAC supply distributor? Commercial janitorial company? Building elevator repair outfit?
Well, let’s find out! Continue reading The Cold Hard Truth of How to Build a B2B Audience
