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Archive for the ‘Small Businesses’ Category
Ken of S.A.S. German Auto Shares His Secrets for Success
February 9, 2012Meet Your Demandforce Ambassador – Stages SalonSpa
February 7, 2012I’m sure you all remember our Demandforce Video Contest, and enjoyed seeing all of the winners on our Facebook page. We took it one step further and interviewed our Grand Prize winner, Stages SalonSpa, to see how they utilize Demandforce to help grow their business in the competitive San Francisco market. Stages SalonSpa is located right in the heart of San Francisco, near Union Square, and truly encompasses the essence of a city lifestyle. We had a blast getting to know them, and they provide a great insight into how to help your small business not be so “small” anymore. 
Increase Email Effectiveness Now With These Key Tips
January 19, 2012
By now you’ve sent enough in the way of Newsletters and Custom Promotions to know the basics. Here are a few tips on how to supercharge your Newsletters and Custom Promotions to get what you really want from email marketing – more business:
Tweak your subject lines so your customers are enticed to want more.
The subject line is the awesome new sign you put outside your business so people walking across the street are curious enough to walk in and check things out. Here are some tips to make your Email Subject Line pop and increase open rate:
- Keep your subject line under 45-50 characters. Many email clients cut you off right around there.
- Segmentation is important here – you can have a friendlier tone with customers who’ve been in more recently, but perhaps you want to be more formal with your inactive customer base.
- If you have an incentive in your email, try to include it in your subject line message.
Here are some great enticing subject lines from my inbox just today:
(more…)
Are You Ready to Get Serious About Plugging In?
January 17, 2012
The phrase “plugged-in” has become an ever-expansive and all-inclusive mantra for many businesses today due to the rapid growth of social media in general. While we’ve all heard of Facebook, Yelp, and most recently Google+, there are many other social media platforms that, when utilized effectively, can leverage your business to a whole new level and help you grow as a brand.
Meet Your Demandforce Ambassador – Hernando Dental Group Family Dentistry
December 27, 2011And The Winner Is…
You may remember the video contest Demandforce hosted last month, calling for fun and helpful stories from our customers to share with the rest of the Demandforce community. We received some awesome submissions and can’t wait to share what we learned with you.
Recently we interviewed Sylvia and Kathy from Hernando Dental Group Family Dentistry, the winners for Most Dramatic Video in the Demandforce Tuned-In Video Contest. Below is some great insight and feedback that may help you with your practice, shop or salon.
5 Technologies to Automate Your Small Business
December 19, 2011With only 24 hours in a day, wouldn’t it be great if you could automate some of the minute-munching business work and take back that time to reinvest in your business, your family or your hobby? Good news–there are some excellent tools available today that can help you do exactly that. If you own an appointment-based business like a dental office, auto shop, spa or salon, this article is dedicated to helping you get back your time.
1. inDinero – Automate your bookkeeping
What Mint does for your personal finances, inDinero does for your business finances. It allows you to spend less time with bookkeeping and more time running your business. This tool automatically download your transactions and balances from all of your business’ financial accounts and then categorizes them into the right buckets. Instead of contacting your accountant and waiting for a response, you can simply log in to your inDinero account to view all the metrics that matter to you. Like a superhuman accountant, inDinero also monitors any irregular account activities, 24/7.
How To Solve The Twitter Dilemma
December 13, 2011How engaged are you in your social media? Odds are that your business already has a registered Twitter account. Maybe you consider yourself a certified tweeter. Or maybe, you feel like you’re the only one who’s not tweeting. Don’t fear, we’re here to help you assess this Twitter situation and find out if its a right fit for your business. Take a look at Flowtown’s Twitter Decision Tree for some guidance.
Get tuned up with Popular Mechanix
December 8, 2011Meet your San Francisco small business leader and the winner of TunedIn Demandforce Video Contest - Popular Mechanix. Nestled within San Francisco’s Mission District, the yellow and blue façade of Popular Mechanix makes this local auto repair shop really eye-catching. It’s in an “automotive alley” of sorts, operating next to several other automotive service businesses.
Andy and his Golden Rules
Andy Gescheidt, founder and owner of Popular Mechanix, has been working with vehicles for 30 years. He’s a whimsical man who acts with purpose and possesses an easy laugh. “We fixed anything that rolled,” he said, recalling the early days. But after partnering up with another neighboring repair shop, Andy decided to rebrand the businesses and specialize in Volvos. It’s became his philosophy to find one thing to focus on and be the best at it instead of dealing with a little bit of everything. In 1998, Andy was involved in a freak accident which nearly took his life – a dewired trolley pole from a bus fell and struck Andy in the back of the head as he was walking down a street, throwing him to the sidewalk and fracturing his skull. He was in a coma for a month and was not expected to live. He woke up, however, and learned to love and appreciate every minute of his life and his work. In a way, this accident has committed him to running a high quality business for the long haul. (more…)
To Google+ or Not to Google+?
November 12, 2011
On Monday, Google officially launched Google+ Pages – a social platform for business. For the past few days, I’ve been flooded with emails from our Small-Medium Business (SMB) network asking about this new tool and how to get started. Drawing from the most popular questions, I’ve created a short Q&A post to help you get started with Google+.
Q: Should I create a Google+ page for my business?
A: It depends. Here are the questions you should ask yourself before creating a page. (more…)
Social Media For Business Made Easy
October 21, 2011
You’ve heard it before, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it again – social media is here to stay.
The shift to interacting with our friends, family, colleagues and customers through social networking sites isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. And the true ROI of joining in on this social media bandwagon is that your business will still be thriving in 5 years.
Demandforce knows that keeping up with the newest trends can be daunting, especially when you have a business to run. So how can we make all this “Facebooking” and “Tweeting” easy for you while ensuring you stay relevant and in-tune with your customers? One word: Timely.
