It is no secret that Facebook is a hugely valuable marketing resource for any business. Not only is it free (in the most part) but it is also effective and has a great return. But did you know that Facebook offers a range of ways to build an audience for your brand and one that you should never underestimate are “Groups”. 

But what are groups and why are they so useful to you as a small business? 

What are Facebook Groups? 

As the name suggests, a Facebook Group is designed to allow people to come together on the social media platform. Within this virtual club they can discuss their common interests, share their thoughts and perhaps just chat.

Often, a group is set up for a common cause, a common activity or perhaps to post particular photos. Anyone can set up a group, whether you are a business or an individual.  

Why your small business needs one!  

The next question that you might have is why it is worthwhile...

Advertising and marketing is clearly a huge part of running a successful online business and it’s not just essential when starting up a business; in fact it is even more important that you continue targeting engaging messages out to your audience as your business grows. 

Your online business needs to stay relevant and interesting to your customers as their worlds evolve. It’s also important to refresh your formal market research regularly, to make sure that you have all the data you need and are genuinely satisfying your customers most current needs. 

Question: So how much should you spend on marketing for an online business?

Answer: On average, 7 to 8% of your sales should be spent on marketing if you are making a profit of less than £5m a year.

This could potentially be up to 12% for your sales for rapid growth businesses or businesses that make more than £5m profit a year or require significant, step...

Over the last few years, experts have emerged in every field and one of the buzzwords of the decade is ‘influencers’. When it comes to answering the age-old question ‘how to drive traffic to your website’ there are some important global SEO experts who truly have the answer.

Here are the best (in our opinion!) ...to get you started.  Follow and learn from these guys as they share loads of valuable information.  

Neil Patel and SEO Analyser Tool  

https://neilpatel.com/ 

Neil is hugely well known in the field, and his website is packed full of often very long, full articles, explaining every aspect of SEO in detail.

On his website, you will also find the excellent SEO Analyser tool which can be used to spy on the competition or, if you’re feeling super brave, see what he thinks of your site. 

 
ClickMinded And Their Courses

https://www.clickminded.com/...

Another vital buzzword when it comes to driving traffic to your website is Backlinks.  It is essential that you get to grips with these as they really can help make a step change in your visitor volumes. 
 

What is BackLinking AKA Your Link Strategy ?

A backlink is a link your website gets from another company's website. They create a hyperlink referring to your website URL.  When a visitor to their website clicks on this link, they are taken directly to your website. 

Its a simple form of referral from one website to another website's content.

Link building is important as Google uses the number of people linking to your website as an indicator of your business popularity. 

The more popular you are, the more people who will naturally want to link to you and share your wonderful content.  It is also a great indicator to google that you are highly relevant to your audience for the topic you are known for and...

As soon as you start a business, people are going to start talking about your SEO and what you are doing to ensure you have good SEO. You will receive hundreds of emails a day promising you the best SEO results, and honestly, your head might start to spin.

Here's our guide to help you decide what you need to be doing next in order to drive traffic to your website. 

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’.  When someone goes to Google to search for a topic, SEO is the technique which determines which results are shown on the Google search results listing page.

Google uses robots, known as crawlers, to crawl all over every single web page on the internet daily and it indexes and ranks these pages according to the keywords and topics that the web page is talking about. 

Googles index of millions and millions of web pages is then used to match the words a user has typed into the Google search box with appropriate...

There are many forms of marketing. Social media, ads and flyers are just a few ways of communicating with your audience. But, did you know that one of the most effective tools to create potential leads is email marketing?   

So, how can you build your list if you are starting from zero? We'll share some tips to help you get started.

Why List Building Is Important To Your Business 

Building an email list is one of the fastest way to grow your online business. 

It's like the ecommerce version of achieving regular footfall outside your shop. According to Campaign Monitor, audiences are 6 times more likely to click through from an email than from Twitter. Campaign Monitor also reveals that your marketing messages are 5 times more likely to get noticed via email than on Facebook.

The biggest statistic that may shock you is that there are triple the amount of email accounts than Facebook and Twitter accounts put together.

You could be missing out on that huge...

There is no doubt that when it comes to starting a business, the modernentrepreneurenters into a different environment than their counterparts of 30 years ago.

Technology has changed the way that people create new companies, and for the most part, it’s a positive change.

So we thought we would take a look at some of the things that come into play when starting a businesstoday.

Easy access to technology and tools

We live in a modern world - so all of this connectivity and integrated technology that we have available is ideally placed to help entrepreneurs start abusiness online. There are many different tools for startups and most are super easy to use.

Look for free trial offers to help with costs and sign up to those first, then get to know the tool before committing to a monthly paid for account. 

We recommend a number of tools to help grow your business during our coaching sessions that we have found incredibly useful over the years and now can't live...

E-Commerce. It dominates our world. Whether it is a virtual shop, a growing online business offering their expertise, or a delivery service summoned via an App - the business models of the future are most definitely digital.

The reality is though that many e-commerce startups today will never radically change our lives. However, every now and again, an online business bursts through, transforming and disrupting everything we thought we knew. Let's take a look:

Uber

One of the most influential, controversial and innovative online startups of recent times, Uber works under a simple premise. You use their app or go the website and request a ride from one place to another.  The closest Uber driver swiftly arrives to pick you up and takes you to your location.

It is straightforward, easy to access and increasingly popular. The Uber online business model relies on what's known as the Network Effect - it's a business that needs to attract 2 sides of an equation to work...