Category: Financial

In our current age of increasing automation and the need for secure and reliable data storage, there’s a case to be made for building your own server. Nowadays, the barrier to entry on building a server is lower than ever.

The benefits of having ultimate control over your data can be enough of an incentive to overcome the technical jump needed to configure a private server.

From the ability to configure your own personal data backup system to storing security footage securely, having your own server can be extremely useful. These benefits apply for both personal use and for businesses.

But what type of server do you need? Should you build and host your server locally? Or is a hosted option a better fit for your needs?

We’ll take a look … Read more

A landing page is the first page a visitor sees on a website. When you set up your Facebook ad or AdWords campaign or share that Instagram post, your landing page is the first point of contact after your marketing piece. So, every business could benefit from a few landing page tips.

The challenge is that when visitors arrive at your landing page, you have about seven seconds to convince them to stay. So how do you keep their attention and stop them from leaving?

Building a landing page that converts visitors to sales and leads is a three-part journey that includes pre-launch, design and post-launch. This article will dive into each phase of building a landing page and will break down the key steps to take within each phase.

After examining each landing page phase’s elements, we’ll conclude with some final thoughts from experts.

Let’s get started.

Pre-launch: Before

As shelter-in-place orders wreaked havoc on businesses in cities and towns across the United States this summer, local leaders and their teams like Dan Henderson and the Gilbert Office of Economic Development had to make some fast decisions.

As director of the Office of Economic Development in Gilbert, Arizona, a community of more than 260,000 people southeast of Phoenix, Henderson’s team had heard from local brick-and-mortar and online entrepreneurs about plummeting revenue and skyrocketing debt from unpaid rent and overdue supplier bills.

“We engaged with 1,000-plus businesses,” says Henderson. “We knew they needed money to pay rent, leases and mortgages, their employees and to pay their extended family of vendors.”

Fortunately, in late May, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey allocated $441 million in federal CARES Act funds to cities and towns around the state. That included $29.2 million for Gilbert to use toward public safety and public health personnel expenses.

After … Read more

Pricing for web pros can alternate between challenging, frustrating, and rewarding. Obviously you anticipate covering your expenses and earning a healthy profit — but you also want to find a balance between losing clients based solely on price, and leaving money on the table. Turns out finding that balance can be much like walking a tightrope.

Know this: If you’re landing every client proposal, you’re probably not charging enough. Set a goal of pushing just to (or over) the limit, so that occasionally a client says no or pushes back. Then you know you’re close to the ceiling of reasonableness, and probably not underselling yourself.

As I’ve learned some hard lessons over 22+ years in the biz, I’m sharing what I’ve learned, so you can avoid these same pitfalls. Read on for 10 mistakes that could sabotage your pricing strategy.

Mistake #1: Charging for time instead of value

When I … Read more

Marketing your business rarely comes easily. There’s always room for improvement and new things to learn. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make marketing a little easier on yourself for 2021.

Let’s talk about seven ways to make marketing in 2021 easier — including marketing planning, marketing systems and marketing strategies.

1. Use quarters and sprints to plan your marketing.
2. Invest in the right tools for the job.
3. Focus your attention on results.
4. Make customer service first.
5. Develop relationships and partnerships.
6. Press pause on new and shiny.
7. Build your brand.

Related: 5 marketing lessons from businesses thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic

1. Using quarters and sprints for planning

In most cases, when you think about a tactical marketing plan (which campaigns you’re going to run, when you’re going to run them, what the offers are going to be, and where you’re going to run them), people think of planning on … Read more