The Hottest and Most Brilliant Business Tips for YOU – Legendary Old School Marketing Techniques and More

Our fabulous research ninjas at Credit Suite smuggled out ten amazing business tips for you! Be fierce and score in business with the best tips around the web. You can use them today and see fast results. You can take that to the bank – these are foolproof! We’ve got legendary old school marketing techniques and more to wow your customers and keep your business running like a top.

Stop making stupid decisions and start powering up your business. Demolish your business nightmares and start celebrating as your business fulfills its promise.

And these brilliant business tips are all here for free! So settle in and scoop up these tantalizing goodies before your competition does!

#10. Talk Business to Me

Our first jaw-dropping tip is all about using chatbots for customer service. Big Commerce put together fantastic means for using this technology to help with customer service issues. For example, let’s look at a fer-instance.

A Story about Chat Bots

It’s Carl and Christine Consumer’s silver wedding anniversary in a week. What a joy! So Christine wants to do something extra special. She contacts a local restaurant for reservations and gets a constant busy signal. When she finally gets through, the person who answers the phone is harried and short with her.

Frustrated, she hangs up and makes different plans for her and Carl’s special day. The restaurant has just lost a sale for the evening, and maybe even a customer – for life.

But what if the restaurant had a chatbot to take reservations?

This time, Christine types in her parameters: she wants a table for two for eight o’clock on Saturday night. The night is not negotiable. Then the chatbot goes to work. Maybe it checks the reservations roster and discovers that time is booked, but could she take 7:30 or 8:30 instead? Or maybe the chatbot finds several possible tables open and even serves up links to images (or perhaps the images themselves) of the views from each table. And the chatbot might even suggest a bottle of wine or champagne to really make the evening memorable.

In this second scenario, Christine goes away happy, and gets to the restaurant with Carl and they have a fantastic time, buying a pair of expensive dinners and tipping generously. And all the while, the person answering the phones might still be busy. But they’re now a lot less busy because the chatbot did so much screening.

Great Details

The article goes into specific details about what a chatbot can really do, the different types, and even how chatbots sometimes just aren’t the solution you’ve been praying for. We urge you to check out this exceptional article when you get a chance.

#9. Is that a Pledge Pin? No, it’s a Pinterest Pin!

The next awesome tip is about marketing on Pinterest. The good folks at OnePercent Intent put together an awesome 21 steps to supercharging your Pinterest marketing. Pinterest in particular is a fabulous traffic source for bloggers, so if you are looking to promote a company blog, it could be your best possible destination.

What may be less obvious to most people is that Pinterest is actually just one big search engine. Hence the easier you make it for others to find your pins, the better.

A Toast to Engagement

So the following is a must. Let’s say your pin is about avocado toast. And let’s also say that’s a page on your website. Maybe your company sells toaster ovens or you’ve got an avocado farm. Or your business might quite literally cater to hipsters. That part doesn’t matter.

Which pin will do better?

Is it the pin with just the recipe and nothing else? Or is it the pin with the recipe, yes. But also:

• A beautiful image of the finished dish
• Keywords which go beyond just the ingredients in a recipe, such as words like snack, meal, toaster oven, or taste
• A link back to your website for more information or for related products or services
• A call to action telling pinners what you would love for them to do with the information you’ve just given them
• Easy social sharing buttons
• Human and SEO-friendly file names like avocado-toast.jpg rather than image1.jpg
• And the pin is placed on a board with a name which makes sense to pinners, such as Easy Snacks or Fun Meals or 1001 Things to do with an Avocado or Love Your Toaster Oven

Of course the second pin will do better! And be sure to check out the article for even more information on how to conquer Pinterest. And get pinning!

#8. Psst… Wanna Buy Something Online?

Our following life-changing tip, from eCommerce Platforms, concerns selling online. Chock full of amazing tips for beginners, this excellent article gives an entire soup to nuts perspective to sellers who are just getting started.

We were particularly impressed with their SEO section. And, in fact, even if you’re not trying to sell products online, the article is well worth it for these knowledge bombs alone.

It’s All about That Search, ‘Bout That Search…

Much like we talked about in tip #9, above, the same is true for search on an eCommerce site.

A Thought Experiment

Let’s look at the big gorilla eCommerce site, Amazon. Go to Amazon (don’t worry; we’ll be here when you get back) and run a search for storm doors with screens. Got that? Good!

So the first thing you should notice is over 1,000 results. Even the most conscientious shopper isn’t going to go through all of that. But then you notice there are a lot of hits that aren’t doors. However, they are related. You’ll see repair kits and hardware and the like. Amazon is intelligently (as are its sellers) offering up all of the trappings of installing such a door. But you’re still looking at too many hits.

If you click on screen doors, you get 21 hits as of the writing of this blog post. But many of those don’t seem to have storm insulating capabilities. Close, but no cigar. Clicking on storm doors gets you 19 hits but at least those doors have both storm and screen features.

Now, Amazon isn’t necessarily the best place to buy a screen door. But with the number of accessories and related products such a humble search delivers, it’s obvious that the site can be a superior place to turn for repair materials. Hence even though the search ultimately isn’t so great, that’s not a fault of search. Rather, it’s the fault of the site having too few choices. But even with a poor selection, Amazon could still, eventually, make a sale. And it all comes from that one search.

#7. We Gotta Get a Message to You

So for our next sensational tip, we dived into social media. And we took a look at Small Biz Trends’ report on selling using Facebook messenger ads.

The beauty of such ads is that they have a fantastic ROI. In addition, they are a great way to communicate with actual leads, rather than what more or less amounts to online cold calling, when you just advertise with standard Facebook ads.

This richly detailed article is well worth the read, as it breaks down, step by step, precisely how to set up such an ad.

#6. Let Us Outta Here! Well, Okay…

This tip is so awesome, and it works! Fit Small Business saved our bacon with their handy guide to better business meetings.

We have all been there, eh? It’s that meeting from hell. You know the one that, paradoxically, never seems to stop and never seems to go anywhere. The first two bits are golden although they might seem to be obvious, “duh!” moments. That is, plan and use an agenda.

How many times have we seen meeting organizers spitballing? How often do they just seem to wing it? And how frequently does that result in a rambling discourse where little is accomplished and attendees may very well leave not knowing what they were supposed to get out of the gathering.

Ouch.

Another marvelous tip concerns the length of meetings. Most of them are scheduled for an hour. But the average adult’s attention span is only around 5 – 10 minutes.

Running shorter, yet more frequent, meetings can help with this. Another advantage of having meetings more often is that problems are caught quickly.

Therefore, putting these bits and bobs of information together, a short meeting with an agenda makes the most sense. And if the meeting is short enough, then an agenda is imperative, in order to be sure the right issues are covered.

#5. Legendary Old School Marketing Techniques Still Work! They May Be Old, But They’re Still Bold

Grab this mind-blowing tip while it’s hot! Just because legendary old school marketing techniques are less than cutting edge, that does not mean they have lost their value! As Blue Mail Media reminds us, the older tried and true techniques still have immense value.

One of our favorites was broadcasting on TV and radio. Do you still listen to the radio, and watch TV? Sure you do! So why are you pretending that advertising and broadcasting there no longer works? TV is a great medium, still, particularly for health club goers. They’re watching television on the treadmill anyway. They may as well be watching your content.

Another one we really liked was printed brochures, handouts, and flyers; although we think the article might have missed one thing – printed newsletters. Can paper be discarded? Of course; it can be tossed just as easily as an earnest marketing email can be tarred with the ‘spam’ brush. Printing and mailing are both expenses to take into consideration.

But consider this: how much paper mail do you get these days? If you’re like us, you pay many if not all of your bills online. You probably get a lot of your financial information online, too, such as bank statements and information about your retirement funds. And your family probably, for the most part, communicates with you via email or texting. Plus you can even send money to family through online means.

So paper could very well grab attention because of what is essentially a form of novelty.

Hey, everything old really is new again!

#4. Drop it like it’s Hot! For Shipping, that is

Check out this spectacular tip, all about learning dropshipping, from our friends at Pixel Productions. The basic concept behind drop shipping is that the consumer buys from a company which, in turn, has its supplier send the goods directly to the consumer. So it is, at its essence, a type of middleman program.

Why is this advantageous for a consumer? The consumer doesn’t have to try to find deals or suppliers or gauge quality or reliability. They rely on the merchant to do that. And for the merchant, there’s no need to keep goods in stock. And, in fact, the merchant could go on without a brick and mortar shop at all. Therefore, if one item doesn’t sell, the merchant isn’t stuck with it taking up valuable space on shelves.

If you think this setup sounds a lot like Amazon – you’re right!

For a merchant, their role is to market the goods, craft irresistible offers to consumers, and to make great deals with suppliers.

Want to get started? Then be sure to check out the article; it’s loaded with actionable tips.

#3. Hello! My Name is Your Business Partner

It’s not your imagination: this winning tip can help you make the right decision if you decide to take on a partner. YFS Magazine put together ten important money-related questions to ask any potential business partner.

We were particularly thrilled with their first two tips. The first one is to ask about the state of the potential partner’s personal finances. And the second is to ask how divide business and personal expenses. These two questions are related.

A Scenario

Picture it. You know you need help with your business. And you have thought about taking on a partner for a while. You’ve got two candidates: Frugal Fred and Spending Suzy.

Frugal Fred tells you all about his personal finances, showing you his most recent few bank statements and maybe even a few tax returns. You can see that he doesn’t spend on crazy indulgences and he pays his bills on time, or early if he can swing it. He may have debts such as student loans or a mortgage or car payments, but he pays his creditors like he knows he’s supposed to. And as for business versus personal expenses, he suggests looking closely at the IRS’s own guidelines. Together, the two of you come to an agreement on what counts as a business expense.

Spending Suzy either doesn’t show you her finances at all, or she shows you a ton of unsorted receipts in an old shoe box. The one bank statement she can find shows she overdrew twice during that month, and she put nothing into savings. She’s got a repossession in her past, and keeps trying to sweet talk her student loan creditor in particular to try to get a reprieve from paying. And when it comes to business versus personal expenses, she tells you she’ll know what a business expense is where she sees one.

What do you mean, you don’t trust her?

Reality

Your decision probably won’t be quite so clear-cut, so be sure to read the remainder of the article to get a handle on how to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to prospective business partners.

#2. We Accept Your Challenge and Volunteer as Tribute

Our second to last unbeatable tip can give you a new perspective on the challenges faced by business executives. The good folks at Forbes crafted an incredibly helpful infographic all about the five biggest issues business executives deal with all the time.

The first two should come as no great shock to anyone. The first is all about how to generate revenue. And the second is all about how executives simply cannot find enough hours in a day to get everything done that they need, well, done.

Be sure to check out the infographic for the other three!

#1. It’s a Faaaaakeeee!

We saved the best for last. For our favorite remarkable tip, we focused on the epidemic of fake negative reviews online. Impact created a comprehensive infographic to help with everything you need to know about dealing with fake negative online reviews.

What was most helpful to us was how to spot a fake review, and what to do about it – and what not to do. But do read their article and be sure to see for yourself!

So which one of our brilliant business tips was your favorite? And which one will you be implementing now? Will you give legendary old school marketing a go, or improve your meetings? The choice is yours.

If you are as passionate about succeeding in business as we are, please help us spread the word about how to take the plunge and save time and money – and your sanity!