6 Ways to Grow Your Business in 2015

by Mark Bloom | Jan 14, 2015 | Content Marketing

You Need to Use All Your Inherent Advantages

happy employees help grow your business

If you’re a business owner, you have discovered the challenges of growing your business in a small market. You know how difficult it can be to find new customers amidst all the competition. Regardless where you do business, you can expand your reach and attract more customers in 2015.

The marketplace is changing, and if you adapt your marketing practices, you’ll capture more of the market than your slower competitors. Small businesses in particular have an advantage. They’re on a tighter budget, so they’re more likely to make sure every dollar spent on marketing generates revenue. But bigger businesses still can take advantage of the following advice; they only need the initiative.

2015 Changes and Challenges

The established ways of marketing and advertising are slowly fading. Fewer and fewer people read a daily newspaper. TV channels with the best shows allow people to binge-watch its episodes, sans commercials, thanks to DVRs. No one younger than 30 — an appealing demographic for many businesses — uses the Yellow Pages.

The tried-and-true ways of marketing your business have become unreliable. Smart businesses today are turning to new methods, with surprising success. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, here is some advice you can take to the bank.

How to Grow Your Business

Stop what you’re doing if it stops working. No matter what you’re doing to market your business, if you see a drop-off in your return-on-investment, stop and try something else. If that doesn’t work, try something new. The marketplace moves fast, and you have to act quickly to catch it.
Use social media. While it doesn’t work for every business, social media can help some businesses market themselves and attract a younger demographic. Social media campaigns don’t focus directly on sales, but on building brand awareness.
Update your website. More and more consumers are accessing the Web through mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you may be losing business. In fact, if you haven’t updated your website in the past three years, chances are it may look dated to new visitors.
Shift the focus of your online efforts. It used to be enough for your website to act as your digital storefront. No longer. Use your website to answer customers’ questions. Share information freely. Build a relationship with your customers, and they’ll buy from you.
Blog to attract a wider audience. A business blog that is well written can help your business attract customers you were never able to reach before. By answering customers’ questions about your industry, by offering advice about your products or services and by tying your business to popular topics, you can bring more traffic to your website.
Build better landing pages. When you run an online ad campaign, you direct the people who click on the ad to a specific landing page. If that page has a bunch of unrelated items on it, you may lose the sale. Target that page for the specific ad by providing proof of concept, a solid sales pitch and testimonials.

Let Ray Access help you grow your business in 2015. We’ll answer all your questions.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

Does Your Tie Speak Louder Than You?

by Mark Bloom | Oct 26, 2014 | Small Business Advice

We’ve Been Called Fashionable… and Worse

A good tie choice… or a Rorschach tie?

First, we want to warn you that this article represents our personal opinions. We may well be wrong, given the constantly changing fashion trends, but we’re good at what we do, we think we know what works, and gosh darn it, people like us.

While we’re on the subject, let us state for the record that we are not staid, conservative types. We like color. We like fashion-forward trends. Other writers have even called us fashionable, although it’s debatable if that’s an accolade or something we should keep to ourselves. But we’ve been professionals for many years now, and we understand what’s appropriate for certain occasions.

Dressing for Success

If you want to make a positive first impression, whether you’re meeting a client or attending a networking meeting, dress appropriately. That doesn’t always mean wearing a suit and tie (for men) or a formal dress (for women). But if you have to dress up, make sure your tie doesn’t scream to people to avoid you.

Not everyone can wear a bowtie… or a false nose.

Your tie, believe it or not, tells people a lot about you. You don’t have to regress to those outdated alternating diagonal slants of color, but leave the Gustav Klimt print at home. If you’re an accountant, your tie better communicate that. We’ve seen more and more people these days pull off a bowtie, which isn’t easy to do. But accountants, doctors, and professors can do it with panache. So unless you’re an abstract painter or web designer, your tie shouldn’t look like Jackson Pollack had his way with it.

Go with something that’s colorful, attractive and most of all, matching. Successful people dress tastefully. Unsuccessful people wear ties that have been handed down from an older brother while he was still in high school. When you shop for ties, keep in mind it will reflect you, your personality, and your profession.

The Difference Between Your Town and Asheville

Asheville is known as a liberal, laid-back business environment. “Asheville casual” is a look that may include jeans or khakis with a button-down shirt. But even in Asheville, you’ll find that some business meetings are formal occasions. Whether you wear a suit or just a shirt and tie, make your tie a bit more formal too. Power ties are just to show off, so unless you’re running the meeting, keep it simple.

Your tie should match your personality.

Big cities often foster a more conservative business environment than Asheville, but that doesn’t mean businessmen wear suits all the time. Business meetings can still be casual, or more casual, especially in the summer months. Everyone appreciates a good tie, but remember what we said above: your tie will reflect you.

A Final Word of Warning

The line between complementary and outlandish can be a fine one. Ask yourself this as you’re getting dressed: Do you want people to remember you for your tie or for your sparkling conversation? Let your tie match your personality. A loud tie can make an extrovert entertaining, but it will make a shy, unproven writer seem like he’s trying too hard to be noticed.

Yes, Mark knows from experience. Now he leaves the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tie for holiday parties and his Beatle ties for his friends and family events. You should too.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

by Mark Bloom | Jul 16, 2014 | Content Marketing

Thank You, Bob Dylan, for Giving Us the Words

Like many writers, we know we can always count on Bob Dylan lyrics to illustrate a point. These words, originally penned in the early 1960s, are truer now than ever before, but we’re not speaking of political turmoil. We’re speaking of technology and search engine optimization. Is it a stretch? We don’t think so, and we’ve allotted ourselves 500 or so words to persuade you, too.

Here’s the Situation

The Internet has changed the way we find information, products and services. Instead of the Yellow Pages, we turn on a connected device. Instead of the dictionary, we visit a dictionary website. Instead of a catalog, we search online.

Yet how that process works — entering a phrase or question into a search engine — also changes all the time. Ostensibly, the search engines want to serve you the sites that most likely will answer your question, but it’s often not an easy question to answer, no matter how many 1s and 0s you use.

As a result, the Internet has gone through several changes, as search engines look for the best algorithm to deliver the answers you want. Then you have the tech savvy developers who fudge the system with keywords, backlinks and paid ads. The past few years have seen this tug of war reach epic proportions.

On top of all that are the changing stylistic preferences of the public’s changing tastes. They want drop-down menus, menus down the side, fewer words, more words, sidebars, no sidebars, lots of photos or one good video. If you tried to keep up, you spent a lot of money.

And the point is this: What can you make of the mess that the Internet has become? If you have a business website, how can you stay on the first page of results when the formula the search engine uses to determine what’s “relevant” keeps changing?

It’s a serious question that deserves a serious answer. Luckily, you don’t have to rely on a search engine for this answer. You have Ray Access.

Assess Your Website

If you haven’t updated your website in the past five years, you may not be taken seriously. It’s no longer enough just to have a website; you need an active site. You need to provide useful information to your audience. To get their business, you have to first attract their attention and then hold it with the answers they are searching for.

Keywords matter, but not as much as having information people want. Readability — subheadings and lists that make the content easy to scan — matters too, but only if you have information people want. Let Ray Access give you a website assessment to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your current site.

Obviously, if the information on your website is out of date, no one will return, even if they happen upon your site. Your website is your Yellow Pages entry, your storefront and your company reputation, all wrapped up in a pretty package. If you’re not attracting visitors to your website, it might be time for a facelift. Or at least a remodeling with new content. If you need help, ask us for some affordable guidance.