Why you need to be on Google?

It’s true. Google can make or break your business. It’s safe to say that Google can be a sturdy back bone to your business and help you achieve success that you could not have imagined with the traditional marketing efforts.

Still not convinced why your small business needs to be on Google? The answer to that is simple and complicated. It is simple because Google is our answer to every question. Did you know that 62% of searchers never go on to the second page of the results and 90% do not go after page 3? This also means that one has to be on the first page of Google search results to be really able to make a possible mark into the target audience’s mind.

Here are a few reasons why your business needs to be in Google‘s good books:

1. Huge market

There are billions of searches happening on Google every day. Some of these searches might be pertaining to your business and if the search leads to your company website, you might get a small share of the big pie.

1. Local searches

If your target audience is city specific, then Google is even more effective and affordable. In case you are planning to advertise on Google for reaching out to potential customers in a specific city only, you might have to spend less and get a high ROI.

2. It’s complicated!

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea to understand Google and make it work for them. If you can do it for your business first, you will be beating a lot of competition even before they think of getting there. Hence, start now and understand how you can get there. An easier and effective way of doing so is to enlist your business on a B2B product search engine such as bizporto.com.

Bizporto.com spends a lot of time and effort in making the website very search engine friendly. Once you are listed there, you will be on Google’s first page result when a potential buyer is searching for your category of products.

3. New business

It is estimated that for every 10 online searches, 7 searches happen on Google. Thus, if those 7 people cannot reach you website when looking for your products or services, you are allowing potential customers to go to your competitors. Don’t you think you should do something about it?

4. It’s worth it!

It might seem cumbersome and tedious and too high a cost, but investing time and money on Google pays off. Imagine being the top search result for your business on Google. Business will go exponentially and all the efforts will then seem worth it.

Simple Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

You have a small business and limited resources to market. Is that a problem? Absolutely not! Here are a few tips on how you can best utilize your time, effort and money on marketing your business:

• Add a personal touch: Be it a Facebook post or an email message, add a personal touch to it. Make your brand more human by giving its voice a touch of emotions and sentiments. Whatever you write or send out, even the content on your website, should have a personal touch and a human tone because It helps in connecting with your target audience faster!

• Use your existing network: Charity begins at home and so does marketing. Your family, friends, associates are the first target audience that you have to reach out to. Their support will help you get further. It’s like a ripple effect. If your network promotes you on their social network or circle of friends. Their network promotes it among their network. That’s how the word gets out! But the most important in this is how you sell your business idea to your own friends and family and make them believe in you and your product.

• Let the picture talk: A picture speaks a thousand words! It has been concluded that images can potentially attract more attention, capture mind share and engage people. Hence, use images more than text on Facebook, websites and elsewhere. It allows you to build a better positioning of the brand. Even product images should be good quality so that the user experience on your website and other online portals is enhanced.

• Contests: Small contests and giveaway are a great way to engage existing and potentials customers. Keep aside a monthly budget based on your will and utilize that money for gifts and giveaways. Such activities go a long way in increasing your number of loyal customers. And if they like what they win, they will come back to you and buy the product!

• Get together: If other similar players in your industry are also small and mid-sized, it would be a great idea to join hands for joint promotion. A combined marketing activity is a great way to increase awareness about the product segment and reduces cost of marketing. You can approach media for PR stories on all the brands together. It’s a win-win situation for all.

• Network: Networking helps increase your personal brand and generate credibility in the market. You are the brand ambassador for your product by default hence people judge your product and brand based on your personality. Hence, meet as many people as possible and create a good impression on them to be able to generate a good impression for your brand.

Use blogging to build your brand!

Did you know that there are specialized bloggers who write about particular subjects and are great influencers when it comes to guiding people through their purchase decisions? For example, there are tech bloggers who review every new gadget and publish it on their blogs. Those looking out to buy a new gadget, look up their blog and decide which one to choose. If these bloggers write a positive feedback on the product, the brand will be benefitted manifold.

Blogs have a far greater reach when it comes to search engine results. A blend of SEO techniques and relevant content can do wonders for a brand.

Consider the following ways in which brands can get themselves to be talked about by bloggers.

1.      Blogging Contests

A brand can announce a blogging contest and get bloggers to generate content in the online space for itself. The blogging contest can be given a well-defined theme, like the USP of the brand, etc. When a good prize is attached to the contest, bloggers would automatically be willing to participate and write about the brand in their blog.

For eg, recently, Dove held a Real Beauty blogging contest where in the bloggers were asked to write about what real beauty meant to them. It had huge cash prize attached to it. It created a lot of hype around the brand. These contests can be announced through various blogging directories or social networks for bloggers.

2.     Blogger Meets

A brand can announce a blogger meet where in the city based bloggers can come together and experience the brand first hand. This can include seeing the product, using it and learning about it. The bloggers can then go back and blog about their experience. This creates a valuable user generated content for the brand.

3.     Company’s Blogs

A brand can have its own blog that can not only talk about the brand itself but about other things related to it. For example, a cosmetics brand can write about various beauty problems, prevention and precaution, etc. Along with it, it can write about the brand products, their usage and how it can help solve those beauty problems.

4.     Celebrity Blogs

These days a lot of celebrities maintain their blogs. If a brand can get a celebrity to publish a post about its products and the brand experience, it will immediately generate a lot of publicity for the brand. It will be like having a celebrity endorsing the brand in the online space. Celebrity blogs are closely monitored and thus have high readership.

5.      Micro Blogging

Micro blogging platforms like Twitter can also help in creating a viral or an instant publicity for the brand. There can be contests especially for those using Twitter. With the use of hash tags and the brand’s Twitter handle, consumers can post a lot of content about the brand that can be read by their followers. This is a great way of engaging consumers as tweeting requires very less time. However, the shelf life of a tweet is very short.

LinkedIn for MSMEs

Is every social media network for your startup? Every small (and big) company can be found on Twitter and Facebook. While this could be a must-do for most companies today, little do they have clarity on how is it helping them and what objectives they are trying to fulfill by exploring social media networks.
A big company which has an established brand name might use Facebook and Twitter as a two-way communication channel with customers. Most companies can be reached through these networks by customers with complaints , suggestions and other messages. However, a startup or a small business may not be known by consumers and the utility of these networks may not be very high for them. In such a scenario, a professional social network like Linked In is a great place for entrepreneurs, traders, dealers and even other small business owners to learn about how to grow business, managerial aspects of business, various tools available for business operations and connect with others to build business partnerships, etc.
Linked In, if utilized in the right way, can prove to be very helpful for any small business owner. Here are a few insights about this wonderful social network exclusively for professionals:

1. Great with Search Engines: Most LinkedIn profiles turn up on the first page of Google when looking for keywords in your profile or your name. This is a good way to increase your visibility on the internet.

2. Linked In Company Pages: They are a great way to showcase your company’s offering, brand, product details, services offered, key specialties and what not! Thus, once a user reaches your Linked In, he can access complete company information in a neat and clean, standardized Linked In format. You can even upload images and give an enhanced user experience to the viewer.

3. Search for people you cannot otherwise find: Let’s say you need a contact person in a newspaper or a magazine or a big company or a smaller company that operates in the IT/ITeS sector or any other sector. All you need to do is search with the specified criteria on Linked In and you have the profiles of people based on their geographic location, employer, sector, etc. You can even see if they are connected to someone you are already connected with. You can ask your common connection to introduce you to a certain person over Linked in. All this within minutes and you know have the contact details of someone you did not know a while ago!

4. Ask for recommendations: You are starting a new business and nobody knows you in the industry. But your previous work experience counts a lot in adding to your credibility. You can ask your ex-colleagues, ex-box, college professors, ex-business partners or even your existing and past clients to give you a recommendation on Linked In. This recommendation can be a long paragraph about your work qualities, your attitude, your strengths, etc. This adds a lot of weight to your Linked In profile.

5. Display your past and present: All your awards and certificates, trainings and internships, work-ex and educational background can be displayed clearly on Linked In. This means that anybody who you want to business with can have a look at your professional profile and gain trust in your abilities even before meeting you in person.

6. Linked In Groups: Join relevant groups on Linked In for discussions on topics that interest you or to learn about something that you wish to. You can even ask specific questions or give answers to the ones that other post. This will increase your network and knowledge at the same time.

So what are you waiting for? A free Linked In account gives you many benefits and a paid one can be even more helpful as it has many options that can be utilized for the benefit of a small business. It’s really a small price to pay for the numerous features it provides.

It’s a good idea to provide a link to your Linked In profile in your email signature. But make sure your profile is regularly updated and is complete.

Why Online Presence Is Necessary For Your Business?

Gone are the days when marketing meant going door-to-door, trying to sell your product to the customer. That was ‘push marketing’ in its most raw form. Today, customers are bombarded with marketing communication at every step, nook and corner. Their attention span is less and there are many seeking the customer’s time and mind space. So what is the best way for your business to be available just when your customer needs you but at the same time not be too pushy with your product or service?

Increasingly, most customers go to the market with some background research in hand. They look up on the internet what are the options available for them to choose from, what are the reviews of the brands that they are considering, what are the alternative options which are more economical or suit their needs better. This essentially means that when a customer goes online and looks for the product or service in your category, your name should show up so that it becomes a brand under consideration.

If you are not present in the search results, your competitors will be! Thus, it has become more of a basic marketing necessity to have an online presence for your business. There are a few added advantages to this apart from connecting with the potential customer. Online presence gives you a local advantage plus a global exposure. It not only helps you build a brand in your geographical location and its vicinity but also allows the world at large to see what you are offering. And there is no constraint on who can see you and who cannot! If you have used tools available that help in SEO (search engine optimization), communication tools that help you put across your story well and content that is crisp and precise with detailing wherever necessary, the job is half done.

It is understandable that investing in a full-fledged SEO campaign may not be feasible for all kinds of businesses. In such a scenario, one cannot let go of having an online presence all together. Look for alternatives that can help you achieve your online marketing goals such as registering with search engines, listing your products with online sellers, e-retailers, etc.

An exclusive B2B search engine is a great marketplace for buyers and sellers of all kinds. These services may be free with limited benefits or you may enjoy added benefits by paying a small price. It not only takes away the burden of setting up an online presence by yourself, since you are outsourcing it to an external support, but it also comes at a very economical price too. Any business – manufacturing, trading or servicing, however small it may be, can make use of it to expand business and grow while building newer connections and stretching their network.

So what are you waiting for?

Attention SMEs: Must-have and Good-to-have Elements for Business Website

It is no doubt that Internet is capturing and influencing the lives of people to a great extent. Therefore, it is no surprise that small businesses/ SMEs are increasingly getting convinced that they need a website because having a website is the first step towards growing the online business.

Since website is the most crucial aspect of online marketing, the business owners need to pay special attention to the website, right when it is getting built. Many people restrict their involvement to design and layout. While those are important aspects, it is also very crucial that the site should convey important information and message to the visitor.

In this blog post, we will discuss three must-have and three good-to-have elements for a business website.

3 must-have elements:

1. Home Page that Makes an Impact: Researches have shown that more than half of your website traffic does not go beyond home page. This means that 50% of your website visitors are not looking at any other page than the home page on your site. Therefore, you need to ensure that the home page is crisp and clear and describes the details about your business in an appropriate way. The visitors need to have access to important information in a very short span so highlight the important items on the home page.

2. Separate Page Highlighting Product/ Services : It is mandatory that the website should have page(s) describing the products or services which you are offering. It is recommended to have images for the products so that the visitors get a clear idea about the products. If you wish to add little attractiveness to the website, display the products in an interactive format with images and descriptions rather than displaying the products linearly or in a plain format. No doubt this will keep the visitors engaged with your site.

3. Contact Page: Once the visitor likes your website and understands your business, the next step for him is to contact you. So ensure that you make it easy for people to contact you or ask for quotation. Do provide a contact page with the name of the person to whom the visitor can contact. If possible, also provide phone number, email address and physical address of your business.

Good-to-have elements:

Once you have ensured that you have taken care of all the must-have elements on your website, time to look at some good-to-have pages. These pages will help you enhance the appeal of your site and also increase the comfort level of the visitor.

1. Social Media Elements: Social media is capturing the lives of people. So on your website as well, if possible, embed some social media elements on the site. Make it easy for people to share your website on their social media network. Because of the viral element involved in social media, this will enhance your chances of getting the publicity. Once people like your business/ products/ services, they will not hesitate sharing it with their network on social media and you need to give them an opportunity to do so – at least on popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

2. Management Profile/ Executive Team: It always adds to the credibility if your website mentions the people behind the business. Having a page dedicated to management team or executive team gives the visitors a comfort level and helps them associate a person with a business.

3. Company Videos/ Product Videos: It is no secret that videos are becoming popular. Use your website to display the video about your business, product or services. You could also upload a video of ‘message from CEO’.

4. Business Cards: Business cards have been popular way of increasing the network. But of course you cannot share your business card with your website visitors. However, you can share the online version of your business card. Make it available for download. This will help the visitors remember you even after they leave the website.

5. Discount Offers/ Promotions: Offers help you clear old stocks, attract more customers and make them purchase your products/ services, move the non-moving or slow-moving products and sell more. If you are running some discount offers or time-bound promotions, it is an very good idea to promote those on your website and make visitors aware about those.

But of course there is a price which you have to pay when you build the website. Usually website design costs anywhere between INR 5000 to 50,000. But, with online product search engines like bizporto.com, a ready website with ALL these features in available in less than INR 2000 (less than $50). Need more information about it? Click here or call Aarti at 800-777-5458.

5 Reasons Why MSMEs Should Use Social Media

Social media has become the buzz word of the industry. Although it is gaining popularity amongst business fraternity, MSMEs, especially in India, still have some hesitance in using it for business. Social media, when used properly, can be a very effective medium for establishing and growing your business.

Here are 5 reasons why you, as a MSME, should be on social media:

1. It’s Free: “Nothing comes for free” and you realize it all the more when you are a startup. Every activity which can get you closer to your prospects or customers (like ads, billboards, trade shows, conferences, meet ups) always come with hefty costs attached to it. But, with social media, it’s virtually free! Of course there is an investment of time, but you don’t have to put money on table to start with social media efforts. Almost all the popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more offer quite robust functionality even when you don’t pay a single penny.
2. It’s Viral: Social media has got amazing viral effect – no other form of advertising can match the viral effect which social media can achieve.  This allows you to instantly reach out to the audience which is not even on your radar in the first place.
3. It’s Engaging: Social media provides very engaging platforms for you to interact with your prospects and customers. People like to express themselves on social media and they are open to give honest feedback/ opinions. This helps you in having not so formal but yet very effective, engaging conversations with your prospects, customers or even business contacts.
4. It’s Easy: With so many benefits of social media, do you tend to think that it would be very difficult to get yourself acquainted with it? Then you are wrong. The social media platforms are extremely easy to use. All you need is the “will” to get started on those. And social media is all about sharing and helping each other. So you will always find some guidance (online) to help you with the setup and get you started.
5. Your Customers are There!: Last but not the least – your prospects and customers are there. You can’t afford to keep yourself away from the platforms where your prospects or customers hang out. You are risking losing on some important interaction by not being there. Millions of people are already on social media for various aspects like social networking, business networking, guidance, help, mentoring, sales and purchase of products and so on. In 21^st century, it won’t be an exaggeration if we say that it has become mandatory to have presence on social media.

So when are you taking a step towards creating your social media presence? Now?

The 5 Dos and Don’ts of Marketing for MSMEs

Here is a very common scenario amongst SMEs. The company gets started and the revenue starts flowing in with some ups and down. When the basic aspects are taken care of, the business owners start thinking about expansion and the most commonly used term which comes to mind at that time is “Marketing”. Now, we will not get into how marketing is different than sales or how marketing is not only advertising.

But here are some Dos and Don’ts for the MSMEs who are looking for expansion and are looking for some tips for that:

1. Do get a website. You cannot do effective business in 21st century if you don’t have a website.
2. Do have plans for online branding. Don’t depend only on offline promotion through print media, hoardings and billboards.
3. Do get on social media. That’s where your customers are. Don’t spend too much money on paid advertising.
4. Do online business thorough B2B market places. Don’t just depend on physical presence in one or few cities.
5. Do maintain a proper synchronisation between your offline profile (the products and services which you offer) and your online profile (what you showcase on website or B2B marketplace profile). Don’t assume that people will anyway find out which products or services you sell.

It’s high time that MSMEs start thinking about utilizing Internet as a powerful medium for expanding business. Once the potential of Internet is realized, there are tons of ways to utilize this medium without stretching the budgets.

Affordable Packages. New Interface. Online Marketing. Multi-Fold Expansion – All This and More in Last 6 Months at bizporto

As we entered the New Year 2011, we thought of taking a stock of things which happened at bizporto in last 6 months. We enjoyed every moment here with lot of new and exciting things happening. Our team grew multi-fold with new technologists, sales professionals, marketing minds and designers joining the team.

We announced a major release of bizporto and yes, that kept our engineers and user-interface designers very busy. We gave a brand new avatar to the complete search engine, made it very user friendly and easy to use. Now the site offers registration in 3 easy steps.

To support the increasing traffic to our search engine, we have ensured that the backend is equally strong. We have moved our server to a better ISP promising almost 100% up time, faster access and more secured environment.
On the promotion and expansion side, we have enhanced up our marketing efforts with the latest digital marketing techniques such as email marketing, social media marketing, e-press releases, blog marketing and more. The online brand is enhancing every passing day! This is helping our registered suppliers as well because it is helping in promoting their products and services as well. While going the online way, we are also expanding our physical presence in multiple cities across India. This is going to help us in being closer to our customers and providing them the required reach easily.

At the same time, through various packages, we have made it extremely easy for micro, small and medium sized business owners to establish their online presence and grow business multi-fold using Internet. We understand that MSMEs, in India especially, don’t always have hefty budgets and we did not want that to stop them from benefitting from the online way of generating business. We have therefore launched packages starting INR 750 which are very affordable for any business owner and these packages offer full value for money by guaranteeing leads.

We thank our partners and customers for showing the faith in us, supporting us and appreciating our efforts.

We are looking forward to a rocking new year ahead and wish everyone a very happy new year!

Checklist to Follow Before Choosing Your Online Business Partner

With the rise in B2B search engines, it has become harder to choose the right portal which can really help you – not only in terms of leads but also in terms of building your brand and also in your online advertising. When all the B2B search engines superficially provide similar offerings, you need to carefully check whether those are really offering what you genuinely need.

Here are some of the questions which you can ask yourself before choosing any B2B search engine as your online business partner:

• Does it offer true freedom to add your complete product portfolio – when you are taking your business online, you don’t really want to be bind by number of products you can showcase in your online product gallery. You need complete freedom to be able to showcase as many products as you offer
• Does the website truly justify your brand – you don’t need a canned website which looks similar to 100 other sites. You truly need something which is exclusive and look consistent with your brand. At the same time, you need flexibility to change it at any time without hiring specialized designers
• What are the various options which are allowed to the business owner to attract buyers online – one of the very commonly used ways is by means of offers and discounts. You need a complete flexibility to announce any number of offers and discounts on various products.
• Is it synchronized with your ERP solution – When you are maintaining all your records in your ERP about new additions to your product portfolio, you should be able to automatically update your online product gallery to showcase the new products which you add in your ERP. The auto-synchronization can save you hours of time of updating the product information at both the places (in ERP as well as the online product gallery)