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Shopping At Amazon Could Be Hazardous For Your Local Merchants

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Mail-order stores are now aggressively at war with traditional brick and mortar stores.

Widespread access to the Internet and advances in shopping cart software have made it possible for online merchants to be quite profitable selling products with extremely thin margins. This phenomenon along with the downturn in the economy has made it extremely difficult for local merchants to compete with the sometime predatory practices of the online sellers. (American Express should be commended for its recent campaign to encourage spending at local retailers with its “Saturday Small Business campaign”.

One company is working especially hard to drive a nail in the coffin of the local merchant: Amazon. Last week Amazon released a program that encourages shoppers to check out prices at local stores and report the prices to Amazon using a special smart phone app, “Price Check”. The following is an excerpt from Amazon’s site for the app:

“Share in-store prices – With every in-store price you share, you help
ensure our prices remain competitive for our customers.”

For “assisting” Amazon, the app promises you a discount of 5%, up to $5, if you purchase the item from them rather then from the store you are shopping in. On Thursday, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the top Republican on the Small Business Committee, joined the fray. “Incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops is a bridge too far,” she said.

I agree and would willingly pay an extra five bucks to support a local store in my neighborhood. For example, on my shopping list is an HP wireless printer which Amazon sells for $59.99 and Staples in Branford sells for the same price. I could save sales tax and a whopping $5.00 off the purchase price if I buy it online from Amazon. But I prefer to forgo the three bucks and purchase from Staples who employees dozens of residents in the community. And I will happily throw in the additional $3.60 in tax to support the state of Connecticut.

So think twice before you click to send your money to Amazon.

5 reasons your Google Ad aren't being shown

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Google recently has launched a very aggressive campagin to encourage local businesses to setup their own Google Pay Per Click campaign. The offer of  free support and $100 coupons is quite compelling and many businesses have setup their own accounts. However, managing the campaign and getting the best bang for  your buck can be tricky.

One common question people ask is “Why isn’t my ad running”. After spending time setting up your account it’s frustrating to wait a week and see no zero impressions, zero clicks and zero spend. Below are 5 possible reasons, to explain the lack of activity.

1: Is your campaign or ad group active. Many people pause the the campaign or ad group while they are setting up and then later forget to activate.

2: Is your billing information correct. I check all my accounts on a regular basis, it’s not uncommon to see a great campaign that is stop running because the credit card payment was declined.

3: Your keyword bids are set higher than your daily budget itself. Example if your keyword bid is $10 and your daily budget is $5, Google will not show your ads. To correct, just lower your keywords bids and/or increase your campaign daily budget.

4: Low Search Volume for your keywords. Google will not display ads for keywords if there’s low search volume for them.

5: Are are ads “approved” ? Have you broken any ad words ad text policy guidelines, example, excessive capitalization etc. Normally you will receive an automated warning. However, you can double check in the ad words interface by going to ‘Reporting and Tools’ >> ‘More Tools’ >> ‘Disapproved Ads’.

Hope this helps. In later post we will discuss “conversion tracking” a great way to determine if your ads are really working.

 

 

 

 

5 Ways to Motivate Employees, a Christmas bonus isn't one of them

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Everyone appreciates a Christmas bonus but there are better ways to motivate and energize your employees. Below are 5 great ways to help them realize their full potential, make them happier and increase the profits for your company.

Be generous with praise. Everyone wants and loves praise and it doesn’t cost you a cent. Praise from the boss goes a lot farther than you might think. Praise improvements and good work that you see your employees make. Example one of your employees did a great job of handling a difficult customer, just walk up to her and say, “Linda I was really impressed with the way you dealt with that upset customer”. Once you’re comfortable delivering praise one-on-one to an employee, try praising them in front of others.

Encourage people to work together as a team, on an equal level with their co-workers. People will come in early, stay late, and devote more of their energy to solving problems.

Make your ideas theirs. People hate being told what to do. If an employee creates an idea, they will work overtime to ensure its success.

Take an employee to lunch once a week. Surprise them. Just walk up to one of your employees, and invite them to lunch with you. It’s an easy way to remind them that you notice and appreciate their work. During lunch try to avoid discussing business and focus on them.

Christmas and other company parties are great for team building and galvanizing your team. Have a company picnic, organize birthday parties, etc. Don’t just wait until the holidays hold company activities, organize events throughout the year to remind your staff that you’re all in it together.

Ok I had to add one more. But it’s included free of charge ;-0

This is perhaps the most important share the good and the bad. When your company does well, celebrate. This is the best time to let everyone know that you’re thankful for their hard work. Go out of your way to show your appreciation when people help your company succeed. If there are disappointments, share those too. You expect high performance, your team deserves to know where the company stands. Be honest and transparent.

How do get more fans for your Facebook page

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Now that you have your Facebook page running, your next step is to get more fans to “like” your page. Below are the 5 initial steps to follow. More advanced techniques will be discussed in future posts.

1: Update your Facebook business page frequently, at least every few days. The world is moving faster and faster and customers want the latest right away. Some page even post twice a day. New Facebook users that visit your page old information are less likely to “like” your page and if they become fans less likely to return. Encourage your fans to post questions, comments and photos on your page and respond quickly to their postings.

2: Add the tag line “Like us on Facebook” to all of your advertisements. Use Facebook icons on your printed ads and materials to encourage people to visit and like your business page.

3: Give people a reason to “like” your page, by offering contests, discounts and coupons to those who choose to do so. This is perhaps one of the best way to increase your fan base.

4: Advertise on Facebook. Your ads can appear on the pages of Facebook users. When a user’s friend likes a page, a notation of this appears on the user’s pages. Facebook “sponsored stories” is a simple and easy way to increase your number of fans.

5: Suggest your business page to your friends by clicking “Suggest to Friends” from the business page. Facebook also offers a downloadable “Find us on Facebook” badge that you can embed on your website.

Latest launch beauty site for women

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We just launched http://www.sonasmedspa.com/. The site was created in WordPress for Sonas Med Spa located in Madison CT.

This is a is a physician owned and operated cosmetic practice that specializes in non-invasive anti-aging solutions. Sonas, the Gaelic word for happiness, was founded by Dr. Susan O’Malley in 2002.

There were numerous difficulties with the original site, but this new site make it easier for the client to update and keep fresh.

Does your business thumbnail picture look weird ?

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You probably noticed that Facebook automatically creates a “thumbnail” image of your main profile picture, this image is displayed to the left of all your posts.

It’s important that the thumbnail is recognizable and looks good.

However, since the thumbnail image is a square, and most profile picture are rectangular, the “automatically” created “thumbnail at takes can look weird.

Not to worry there are two solutions.

1: Manually crop the image –
1. In the page settings, click on the Profile Picture menu.
2. Edit Thumbnail.
3. Drag the photo to select the desired portion.

Or:

1: Select “scale to fit” to use the entire image. This is what I did for the image for my Facebook page WaldenPondDesign.