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GROWING A BUSINESS

MARKETING & SALES

Marketing and sales are essential to building a fast-growing business. Read marketing insights on essential topics like closing the sale, getting the marketing mix right, and building your brand. Don't miss some essential business tips for building your marketing knowledge.

The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not those of Optus. The articles on this website contain general information only and are not intended to be relied on as legal, financial or professional advice. Readers should seek their own advice based on their specific business [or personal] needs.

Social Media ROI Hypocrisy

New research - published here for the first time - proves that executives who demand that Social Media ROI be calculated are hypocrites.

Five steps to creating an engaging online brand presence

A strong brand story will draw upon your natural competitive advantage, genuinely appeal to your customers and differentiate you from your competitors.

Management Development: 3 Simple Strategies

In today's networked economy, having a brilliant, visionary leader alone isn't enough to keep a company growing. You've got to have a well-trained executive and frontline management team to execute the vision.

Three ways to achieve more with Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free, simple-to-use web analytics tool that gives you insights about the visitors to your website.

How much progress has your company made in 2011?

How much progress has your company made toward a full-potential Net Promoter® system implementation? Answering a set of basic questions can help you identify opportunities to achieve the full benefits of your organization's Net Promoter system.

Maximise the chances of being found online

Gone are the days when customers use the paper Yellow Pages to find your business. Research is now done online, so make sure your business can be found there.

How to create Google+ business page in 5 simple steps

Google has announced the launch of Google+ Pages, pages specifically engineered for businesses on Google+. While Google indicated that Google+ Pages wouldn't be immediately accessible to all, it looks like they're actually becoming readily available.

Using online technologies can help draw customers to you

Verne Harnish continues to get CEOs and their firms to control the ink in their industry. In this column, Verne pushes leaders to start a blog, create a Squidoo page (as the expert in your industry), launch a column, or start a wiki.

Customer Lifetime Value

Investing to earn the loyalty of your customers often requires trade-offs, you must decide which of the many investments will result in the greatest return. A clear understanding of your company's loyalty economics will help you make those decisions.

The Power of Blogging for Business

Blogs are a terrific way for an organisation to tell its story. They allow you to take content in different directions that will appeal to specific target demographics without negatively impacting the strategy and content of your primary Web site.

10 Web Landing page tips to drive action

Marketing with Web landing pages is one of the easiest, cost effective ways to get a message read by a target market and a great tool to move prospects through the sales cycle. Done well, they can high response rates with effective calls to action.

The New B2B Lead Generation Calculus

Business to Business marketers fall into two camps, Those who believe in email registrations from white papers to drive leads, and those who believe in making content like white papers totally free. Which of these approaches are the best way?

8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral

Have you seen Will It Blend? It's a crazy series of videos by Blendtec, a small blender manufacturer. The series has been seen by millions of people. My favorite is Will It Blend? - iPhone.

Sales Performance Training: How to build a world-class sales organization

Training your sales staff is an important step to ensuring organisation success. There are key initiatives that can help shape your training process.

Developing a real-time mind-set

What sorts of attitudes and behaviors does it take to move up the ladder in your organization?

How to advertise on Facebook

While the radical new world of social media is drawing interest from the likes of Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble, SMEs are still trying to figure out exactly what the benefits are to being seen in the social media world.

Five ways to fire up your sales

With 2011 just around the corner and the economy clearly in recovery mode, entrepreneurs are all scrambling to address one question - how do I get my sales team fired up and boost my revenue?

Tweet your way to marketing success

Social networking giant Twitter has grown from an internet gimmick into a full-blown marketing tool. For SMEs, being able to spread your message and sell to millions of people with no cash required is an offer too good to refuse.

How to market your own business with an iPhone App

In the last 12 months, Australian companies such as CommSec, Qantas, Pizza Hut and Officeworks have all released their own applications, while smaller web-based businesses such as Lasoo.com and Catch of the Day have also developed their own apps.

The power of CRM

Australian companies spend the majority of their time trying to find the best way to convert occasional customers into loyal devotees. And while it sounds like a tall order, changing customer behaviour isn't as difficult as you might think.

The 10 next social media trends

Social media still dominates headlines as the new direction for business marketing, but it seems many businesses are resisting the call.

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