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Email marketing has certainly exploded onto the scene in the past few years.  There are a number of great vehicles for spreading your news electronically.

Electronic newsletters are a great way to keep your customers up to date on your products, services and news related to your industry.  Paper-based newsletters did the trick, but are time consuming and costly to prepare and mail.  Consider the amount of time spent on printing, copying, preparing for mailing, and time to arrive at its destination (not to mention the cost of paper, ink and postage.)  With an electronic newsletter, there’s no printing, no copying, no postage, and it instantly arrives at your recipients mailbox.  And if you have a subscription to email marketing services such as Constant Contact, your address book can be used to send your newsletter automatically — you don’t have to ‘address’ each newsletter.  Taking advantage of this automation can save both time and money.

How do you get the word out when you have a special promotion?  Sending an email to everyone in your address book would be a great start.  Adding some appropriate graphics can make your message eye-catching and effective.  Email marketing tools can help you put together a great looking promotion.

When using email marketing, be sure to use your logo and keep your company’s brand in mind.  Stay consistent in look and feel with your newsletters and special promotions, and don’t let flashy graphics detract from your message or your company’s brand.

One important footnote:  Never spam people.  It’s the quickest way to turn off customers and potential customers.  Be sure to get their permission before adding them to your emailing list.  The easiest way to do this is to invite them to sign up for your newsletter.  Many email marketing services have tools to help you do this by placing a “Subscribe to our Newsletter” button or link on your website.

Many online applications say they’re easy to sign up for and use, but they end up being a total nightmare. Not so with Microsoft® Office Live Small Business.It’s easy to sign up and use, and the price is certainly right.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business is a suite of online software tools to help small businesses get up and running online without the usual hassles associated with creating a web presence.  Their tools help you develop a free website and email, and even help you promote your business with email marketing.  They also provide online tools to help you track sales opportunities and contact information for your customers; store documents that can be shared; set up workspaces to share selected information with your customers, vendors, employees (this feature is password-protected); and manage projects remotely.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business is perfect for the small business that is just getting up and running and would like to create a hassle-free web presence.  It’s also perfect for the small business owner who is nowhere to be found online (a definite no-no, considering most vendors and customers turn to the internet more than any other resource to find products and services.)

The price?  It’s free to open your account and free to setup your website.  Your first year of domain registration is free, however, there is a small fee after the first year.  The features that are not free are affordably priced, and considering the time-saving features they provide, the premium products can be a real time and cost savings to your business.

As with most “free” products, there are a few catches but as long as you are aware of them and they don’t hinder your business, it’s really not a big deal.  They have to pay for your online space somehow, so they use ads.  If you don’t mind their ads at the bottom of your email or on your website, you’re all set.

All things considered, Microsoft Office Live Small Business provides a great set of tools for any business just getting started, and the price easily fits within any small business budget.  We give this one a definite ‘thumbs up’ for small business.

In Google Business Solutions - Part 2, we explored the tools and resources provided by Google to help businesses and business professionals reach new customers.

In Google Business Solutions - Part 3, we will look at the search, mapping and security tools provided by Google to help you increase your productivity.

If you’re looking for affordable search, mapping and security solutions, check out Google’s “Increase Your Productivity” suite of tools. 

1. GOOGLE ENTERPRISE SEARCH SOLUTIONS provides tools to enhance your visitors and employees’ search experience from your website and within your organization, via “Google Site Search”, “Google Search Appliances” and “Google Desktop for Enterprise”.  Each of these search tools has a fee, ranging from $100/year for the Google Site Search (to search up to 5,000 documents from Google’s index) to $2,990 for the Google Mini Search Appliance (to search up to 50,000 documents).  Google also has a Google Search Appliance (full version) — you’ll need to contact their sales representative for pricing.  There are several good videos demonstrating the functionality and features of Google Search Appliance.
2. GOOGLE APPS provides some great communication tools for your employees.  They can access their email (Gmail), Google Calendar, Google Talk (free text and voice calling worldwide), Google Docs, Google Sites (for sharing team information) and Security and Compliance (for email security and to deleted messages recovery.  For more information, visit Google Apps.
3. GOOGLE GEOSPATIAL SOLUTIONS includes Google Earth Pro and Google Earth Enterprise (both are mapping tools allow for interactive 3D globe or 2D browser based mapping) as well as Google Maps which is Google’s web-based mapping solution for a “high performance web-based mapping experience.”  The Geospacial Solutions also include Google SketchUp Pro which is 3D modeling software that allows you to create 3D sketches for both print and digital presentations.  For more details, visit Google Geospatial Solutions.
4. GOOGLE SECURITY SOLUTIONS which includes security for email, email archiving, web security and email encryption.  Please note that the email and web security tools are add-ons to Google Message Security, Google Message Discovery and/or Google Apps Premiere Edition. For more information, visit Google Apps Security Services.

For more information about the full suite of Google tools, visit “enhance your productivity“.

In Google Business Solutions - Part 1, we explored the tools and resources provided by Google to help businesses and business professionals reach new customers. 

In Google Business Solutions - Part 2, we will look at the tools and resources provided by Google to help you enhance your website. 

There are a multitude of resources on the internet to help you with graphics and content for your website but Google picks up where they leave off by providing tools to enhance your website and improve your visitors’ experience. Google provides tools to enable you to earn revenue from your website, analyze the traffic that comes to your website, conduct sales online, make your website more effective, and enable your site visitors to search your website with Google Site Search.  These tools are the “Enhance Your Website” tools from Google Business Solutions.

1. ADSENSE is a program that allows you to place Google Ads on your website and earn revenue when the ads are clicked.  AdSense is comprised primarily of text ads and banner ads that you place on your website by inserting the scripts provided by Google.  For more information visit Google AdWords.
2. GOOGLE ANALYTICS is an excellent tool to help you analyze your web traffic and better understand where your web traffic is coming from.  It provides reports that are easy to run and easy to understand.  These reports help you understand how effective your marketing campaigns are and where you might need improvements.  If you would like to find out more information, visit Google Analytics.
3. GOOGLE CHECKOUT enables you to process online transactions at no cost when you advertise with Google.  This is associated with Google’s AdWords program.  For more information, visit Google Checkout.
4. WEBSITE OPTIMIZER is a great little tool to help you test your website’s content and design for optimum conversion, to help you increase revenue and ROI.  For more details, visit Website Optimizer.
5. GOOGLE SITE SEARCH is a search engine for your website.  It places a small search box on your website, enabling your visitors to find information on your website quickly.  A great little customer service tool!  For more information, visit Google Site Search.

If you would like to build up your website for optimum performance, take a moment to see how Google can help you enhance your website.

In Google Business Solutions - Part 3, we’ll take a look at the tools and resources available from Google to help you incease your productivity.

Unless you’ve recently come out of a long-lasting coma, you’ve probably heard of Google. It’s currently the largest search engine and the best tool available for finding resources on the internet.

Google has come out with a bundle of great tools and resources for business, aptly named “Google Business Solutions.”  These tools and resources help small business owners and business professionals reach new customers, enhance their existing website, and increase productivity.

In this post, Part 1, we’ll take a look at what Google is providing to help us reach new customers.

1. GOOGLE ADWORDS  are small text and banner ads that appear on websites and help you advertise your business.  If you’ve done any searching on the internet lately, you’ve probably seen these ads on many of the websites you’ve visited.  Here’s an example:   Google makes it very easy to sign up and use AdWords, and the cost is minimal when compared to traditional advertising in magazines, newspapers, trade journals, etc. and is basically paid for on a pay-per-click basis.  You can create your ads based on keywords you select (Google has a tool to help you with this) and can be customized to display to readers in a particular region.  For more information, visit Google AdWords. 
2. The LOCAL BUSINESS CENTER tool helps your customers find your business on Google Maps.  There is no cost to list your business, so the price is definitely right.  If a customer (or potential customer) is looking for local information in your area, they’ll find your business name and your hours of operation.  This service is available to you whether or not you have a website.  To learn more about this listing service, visit Google Local Business Center.
3. GOOGLE BASE is like one big classified ad center.  You can post just about anything on there.  Their “populate item types” currently list:  Events and Activities, Housing, Personals, Products, Recipes, Vehicles, Hotels, Jobs, People Profiles, Reviews, Services, and Vacation Rentals.  Have a product or service you’d like to post?  Check out Google Base.
4. WEBMASTER CENTRAL is a fantastic resource to help you improve your website’s visibility.  You can learn how Google crawls and indexes websites - which is very important information if you’re creating a website or maintaining a website.  Google provides information on how to improve traffic to your site with Google Webmaster Tools, they provide a plethora of information, tips and best practices for webmasters, and provide instructions on how to submit your website to Google.  In addition, Google provides resources to help you find out if your site is indexed by Google, track your website’s traffic statistics (Google Analytics), provides website gadgets, provides a site search tool and tools to put Google Maps and Search on your website, and tells you how to promote your website with Google AdWords and how to monetize your site with Google AdSense.  They also have a tool, Google Website Optimizer, to help you analyze what your site visitors like best on your website. For more information, visit Google Webmaster Central.
5. GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH helps you promote your books by “matching content in your books with user searches”.  Google Book Search allows potential buyers to preview a few pages and then provides links to your website and book retailers to help you sell more of your books.  Need help selling books?  Check out Google Book Search.

If you’re a small business owner or business professional, take a moment to see how Google can help you reach new customers.

In Google Business Solutions - Part 2, we’ll take a look at the tools and resources available from Google to help you enhance your current website.