Marketing is a science. Yes there is some nuanced art in it, but it is a science with measurable results nonetheless. Are you using good common sense and researching what has worked for you in the past so you can duplicate those results in the future?

What do I mean? Here are some examples:

Do you advertise store promotions by email? Have you tracked which of these email promotions actually get opened and then clicked-through for details? Have you checked to see if those products actually sold during that promo period?

Do you have an e-commerce site? Have you watched traffic spike in certain months and then gone back to try to determine the “why” so you can do that again? Why not?

Did you have an unusual number of service requests after a particular mailing or advertisement? Did you even pay attention?

Did you run a Google Ad Word campaign in just one way, or did you try rewording the heading a few times and resubmitting? Did you track results?

Much of your marketing efforts are wasted wheel-reinvention. You have answers but you haven’t asked the questions at all. Because of this you are throwing marketing money away. Sometimes results are based on things you can’t re-create (like weather), but usually they are the result of something you can try again in the future.

Keep detailed records of your sales campaigns, your email promotions, your discounts, your advertising. Note those that were successful and any special circumstances that may have impacted them, and set up a calendar reminder to run the same or similar promo again in the future. Be careful though. Too much repetition and your customers will stop responding.

When it comes to small business marketing, you really cannot track too much. In the end it saves you time, though, because you are not reinventing your marketing wheel!

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I’ve relayed a lot of information to you about small business issues: marketing, branding, legalities, human resources and management. I think it is time for a summary of the key components you should really be sure you are aware of and practicing. You should be building a business and not a job and your business should support your personal dreams. Here are ten things every small business owner should know and act on:

1. What your USP is and why it’s important. If you don’t know what makes your business unique in some way and why customers should come to you and not your competitor, than how should they? Nail this down.

2. That you must have aptitude in addition to passion. Passion is important but if you are out of your league in terms of skills, your business may be sunk. Make sure new endeavors do not involve a huge learning curve. Passion, aptitude and USP are the ways to success!

3. That marketing no longer goes one way-it must be relational. Billboards, yellow page and newspaper ads are one way marketing. People demand more these days. Blogs, websites, video, podcasts, social media, in-person networking and exemplary customer service are the way your potential customers want to be approached.

4. How to use a video camera and why it’s important. Smartphones and tablet computers like the iPad are changing our world. Are you going to keep up or are you going to be left behind? Grab a video camera and tell a story. Get your nearest teenager to help with editing if necessary. But take this important next step.

5. How to incorporate time off to stay innovative. The first few years of starting and operating your new business were probably grueling and you may have set bad personal habits during that time. You must incorporate healthy habits including adequate sleep and time off to continue to innovate and thrive.

6.  What truly motivates employees. It is the rare employee in a rare position who is motivated by just money and/or discipline. Do you know how to motivate your team?

7. What are your calls to action? If a viewer of your website or printed material is not encouraged to DO something, they leave. End of story. Is there a newsletter sign up, a video to watch, something to encourage comments or a special promotion. Do you even know what a “call to action” is? Time to brush up on this!

8. How to measure and compare marketing efforts and why it is important. You have to have a system of measuring so you know if you are wasting your marketing dollars on a particular campaign or method. Don’t run one, run several and always measure their success or failure. Be prepared to try something different as needed.

9. Who should be on your personal success team. Your team should include a top-notch mentor or coach, a qualified CPA and attorney you trust. Additionally, you should have a strong relationship with your banker.

10. What customers want.  They want to be noticed, cared for and have one or all of their problems solved. That is really it in a nutshell. In what ways could you do this better? Always be looking for the answer to that and you will always be ahead of your competitors.

Bloggers, both professional and personal, have a large variety of choices for blogging platforms. Many of these are free. However, I prefer the downloaded/hosted version of WordPress for a variety of reasons, the biggest being how it excels in search engine optimization.

If you are new to business blogging, you may consult with professionals who will encourage you to have a separate blog platform developed just for your business or to go with an expensive small business blogging platform company. Don’t! WordPress not only has great customization features, it can also function as a website and once installed, it is easy for the average user to update the basics. No more paying $100/hr or more to change a date of an event on your website!

WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com (the second is free and does not require web-hosting, BUT also has few customization capabilities). If you have NO technical ability, do not try to build or install a WP blog yourself. However, you can have someone design and build one for you for less than $1000. Sure, you can get a website built for that, BUT you will have trouble making updates. This is where this software really shines for the unskilled owner. With a few training tips, you can add blog posts, images and video with ease.

Unlike most blogging platforms, WordPress has pages like a website. You can add an About Us page, an Events page, a featured products page or whatever fits with your business and YOU can do this and make the changes as needed.

WordPress is the software, but there are themes which are user-tools and designs to improve its functionality. I use Thesis and I know people who happily use Frugal. Both are good paid choices. There are tons of free choices as well. If you decide to build your own, I recommend these. If not, encourage your designer/developer to use one of them because the dashboard is understandable and, if you are interested in learning, you can make design changes yourself.

Business blogging and having a website are important components of the online aspect of your small business. WordPress can function as both and is easy to learn and affordable. If you have a WPsite, let us know in the comments section below.

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QR codes are everywhere, but if you are like many people, you haven’t really noticed them on all kinds of products and in various places. QR=”quick response” and the Japanese are the creative force behind them. Developed back in 1994, they are exploding in all kinds of ways. I recently stopped to look into a shop and noticed one of these codes on their window. With a smart phone QR code app, I could scan this (they’ve signed up with Google Places) and get all kinds of information about the store! Right there… When a QR code is used in this way, it is called “mobile tagging”.

While QR codes were originally designed to identify parts in automobiles, their use has been growing daily as an ideal partner for the web and smart phones. You can find QR codes on business cards, on promotional and marketing products, on physical property (as mentioned above), geolocation tagging is using QR codes and many companies are offering discounts to folks who scan their code.

How can you get a QR code for your business? It is surprisingly easy.There are several online QR code generators and they vary.  Kaywa is offers you the QR code image that links to your website and not much more. Stickybits allows you to print out QR code stickers (and offer your code on a lot of other products like apparel as well!) and incorporates social networking. iCandy allows you to generate and then track and view stats when your code is scanned.

Take a few moments and consider how you might use a QR code for your small business, do a bit of online research into other companies practices, and then go and generate one!

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Video marketing is one of the key things I’ve been encouraging you to try. Nothing gives your potential customer a better understanding of what your business is and what you do than video. With the ability to incorporate emotionally enticing storytelling, share free information, search engines love it, and its ease of viewing on smart phones and tablets like the iPad, it is a smart marketing move for any small business.

But once you’ve filmed and edited your video, where should it go? Seems obvious but it isn’t.

If you have a blog or website, record a greeting to your visitors to put on the front page. Always make sure your settings allow viewers to mute you if they want or need to. Add a link to this video to your email signature and incorporate your topical videos into your blog posts.

Search engines LOVE video, with preference going to YouTube so be sure to develop a YouTube channel for your business. All videos on every site should have keywords listed just like your blog posts and web site do.

Vimeo is second to YouTube for video on the Web. Many people think the viewing quality is better, particularly for high-definition (HD).

Flickr was formerly just a photo-sharing/storage site, but added video capability last year and so will help you pop up in search engine rankings for images as well as content.

Viddler has some nice features for commenting but is essentially another YouTube or Vimeo. Like other sites, it allows you to customize your page and player with business logo, color schemes and fonts.

Don’t forget to incorporate your videos into social media spots, particularly Facebook (MySpace is good if you happen to be an artist or musician-otherwise it is not necessary).

Finally, here are several more sites you might consider uploading to: Mixx, VideoJug, MegaVideo, and Blinkx.

Healthcare reform passed, like it or not. I’m going to avoid the politics of the situation here or how in the heck it is going to be paid for, but  I know many of the small business owners across this country are incredibly confused about how this is going to impact them and don’t know where to go for definitive answers. The new healthcare laws were signed on March 23, 2010. Do you know where to get answers?

Small Business Health Care Tax Credit: You may have received a postcard about your eligibility but here is the link to determine if you are eligible.

The Official Word from the Goverment’s Healthcare Site (for small business owners)

Information on the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program that started in June 2010.

If you already offer health insurance to your employees, go here. If you don’t, go here.

CBS News provides a good general summary of the plan and its associated costs here.

I sincerely hope this helps you, my friends. I wish I could make it clearer for you, but it is government bureaucracy. If you’ve found great and useful information for your colleagues, please share it in the comments section below.

Location-based (also known as geolocation) services and social networking are the newest rage in relationship marketing. If you are a bricks and mortar business and you are not taking advantage of being registered on all of these geolocation social networking sites, you are missing out on a way to do three things essentially for free (less incentives you offer*):

1. Encourage traffic through offering visitors who check-in special deals.

2. Monitor location-based social networking traffic and reviews via site stats and individual members’ reviews/tips.

3. Reward loyalty by offering unique deals to individuals who frequent your establishment.

Location-based social networks allow users to “check-in” usually via a smart phone application. Depending on the site, visitors to your business can earn points and/or direct rewards, like a discount for checking in. They also provide reviews and tips to other members about your business (good parking spots, best time to shop, good menu items, etc.).

Foursquare is the most popular of the biggest three geolocation networking services. The pinnacle of being a Foursquare individual member is becoming Mayor of a location. Mayors are the individuals with the most check-ins at a specific location (your nearest Starbucks undoubtedly has a “mayor”). Mayors are generously courted with special deals* and individuals grapple to be the new mayor of popular establishments. As with the other two sites, members provide feedback and input about businesses they check in at.

Gowalla is similar to Foursquare’s location-based network with less emphasis on checking in the most (i.e. becoming Mayor) and more on attracting a larger number of unique visitors by offering deals that are more democratic. This Tech Crunch article gives you a clear idea on how this is done.

Yelp. Yelp came into the “check-in” system late, but now also offers this feature. It is really more of a review service for all types of businesses including restaurants, banks, gas stations, drugstores and more. You can also search special offers in the area you are in. Part of the brilliance of this is a business can check and then respond to poor reviews, thereby attempting to fix a customer service problem publicly.

Go to each of these sites and register your business. Offer a special. Test it and see how it works. No harm, no foul. Report back to our readers your results!

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Yes. I succumbed. And I’m not the least bit sorry. If you drooled over the iPad when it was released, it was for good reason. The iPad, like the iPhone and iPod before it, is setting the bar for all other manufacturers who are unlikely to come close. Yes, there are some quibbles, but all in all, I love mine. And, besides its sleek design, what makes an iPad a great productivity and entertainment device? The apps (aka applications)! So, if you have an iPad or are considering purchasing one, here are some of my favorites for business:

Perfect Browser Highly improves your overall browsing experience with tabs, allows you to set your search engine, enables desktop renderings of web pages.

Dropbox Allows online cloud storage of your files with the ability to share them with others. 2GB of storage is free and cost goes up based on how much storage you need. iPad app is easy to use.

Evernote I love Evernote which is essentially a personal web-clipping site/tool. As you are browsing and come across information you want to keep or share, you can “clip” pieces and save them for future research or to refer back to. The iPad app is brilliant and the link takes you to the story behind the scenes of developing an app.

USA Today This is where the iPad really excels-in online magazines, newspapers and books (Amazon’s popular Kindle is already in trouble because of iBooks). USA Today’s app is easy-to-read and intuitive. That’s all we ask.

Whiteboard A nifty little app for sharing business notes from your meetings and conferences. Take a photo and the app cleans it up and allows you to directly email to all of your meeting stakeholders!

Craigslist Pro I use Craigslist for a variety of reasons, including recruiting staff. Craigslist itself hasn’t changed much since it was founded (lots of people complain about this!), so the fact that the iPad app is so user-friendly is a nice surprise.

Ok. So those are my business apps. Here are a few of my downtime favorites:

Shredder The best chess app I’ve encountered so far!

FlickStackr One of my primary hobbies is photography and Flickr is one of my primary photo storage sites. FlickStackr gives full Flickr functionality (say THAT three times fast!) to the iPad. I use it regularly.

Logos I’m also a man of faith so the Logos iPad Bible download is appreciated. Offers access to a variety of Bibles and study guides and it is free.

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