Posts Tagged ‘Small Business Owners’

What Your Accountant Needs From You to File Your Taxes

Tax time is extremely stressful for most small business owners.  This is due usually to a last-minute rush to try and find the necessary paperwork needed by your tax accountant, or CPA, in order to finalize and file your small business tax return.

There is an easier way to avoid the stress of tax season.  Know what exactly your accountant needs in order to do his or her job properly and get those items together ahead of time.

There are a couple reasons to have your items together before visiting your CPA:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tax Time Is Just Around The Corner

Tax time is right around the corner, and right now is the best time to start preparing to ensure you have a smooth tax season.

And, one the of areas that seems to trip up small business owners the most is understanding deductions.

So, here are some tips to help you get a grip on what some common tax deductions are, and which ones you may have overlooked. Read the rest of this entry »

Easy Online Martial Arts Marketing Methods You May Have Overlooked

All your online marketing and activity should be a sign pointing customers to your martial art school.

There has never been a better time for martial arts marketing, because it’s never been easier to get the word out about your school. Online marketing and modern technology can take the grunt work out of promoting your programs.

Still, I know that many of you may not be leveraging the internet as well as you might to market your school. With all the different ways you can market your school online, it’s easy to get caught up with the more obvious marketing methods, and overlook the subtler and simpler ways to promote your school that are sitting right under your nose.

So, with that in mind here are several relatively quick and easy ways to boost your online marketing while barely lifting a finger (well, except to hit a few keys).
Read the rest of this entry »

Three Trends School Owners Need to Be Aware of When Marketing Online in 2010-2011

Google is changing the face of search... again. Are you prepared for what's coming?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should be aware that online marketing is of the utmost importance to your business in the coming decade.

As I’ve mentioned and discussed many times in recent years, the landscape of marketing small businesses locally has changed drastically since 2005.

Print is dead. Yellow pages are useless. Newspapers are the dinosaurs of our media. Better than 90% of the population turns to online media to research buying decisions. We’ve been through all this before on this site and my martial arts business blog.

But the marketing landscape changes at a breakneck pace in the new information age, and it seems to change ever faster as technology progresses. I spend a considerable amount of my time studying these trends and analyzing what they mean to small business owners, so I can advise my clients on how to best leverage new marketing technologies and opportunities.

If you follow the trends and know how to take advantage, there has never been a better time to market your business. But, you have to know the trends to take advantage of them. Here are three trends that you need to know about for marketing your business online in 2010 and 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

proposition – (Noun) 1. a proposal or offer In this month’s start-up article, I’d like to discuss a subject that is often very personal, and that tends to elicit strong emotions when discussed in the presence of savvy small business owners… That’s right – I’m talking about your “U.S.P” – your “Unique Selling Proposition.” USP: “Real or perceived benefit of a good or service that differentiates it from the competing brands and gives its buyer a logical reason to prefer it over other brands. USP is often a critical component of a promotional theme around which an advertising campaign is built.” Read that definition again a few times, until it sinks in. Your USP is what cause the customer to choose you instead of the goofball down the street.

Why This Is Such an Emotional Issue

Now, you’re probably thinking, “Mike, this doesn’t really stir up a whole lot of emotion for me… I mean, it’s just a selling point, right?” And that’s my point… If your USP doesn’t stir up any emotion in you, then it won’t in your buyers either. Be advised, if your USP isn’t something that fires you up, then it’s a good indication your USP probably sucks!

How to Make Sure Your USP Doesn’t Suck

In Bob Bly’s Read the rest of this entry »

When small business owners think about low-cost martial arts marketing ideas, they usually picture themselves running around a Wal-Mart parking lot placing fliers on cars (actually, sticky notes work better and are faster, but that’s for another article…), or perhaps walking up and down the side of the road in a gorilla suit with a sandwich sign over their shoulders (I actually saw a local martial arts school that did this – and yes, the gorilla was wearing a uniform).

However, as a martial arts instructor, your best low-cost form of advertisement is word-of-mouth. The thing is, sometimes you need to encourage your students to talk about your school. Guest pass programs are one way to do this; another method that has worked quite well for me in the past is to host Bring-A-Buddy nights a couple of times a year – during back-to-school time, in January, and right before school lets out for summer.

Basically, here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »

As a martial arts school owner, you have a million things on your mind. Student recruitment, testing, curriculum, overhead – the list goes on and on. The last thing you’re probably worried about is your website. However, more and more consumers are going online every day to research products and services before they buy. And, many of these consumers are doing their buying research after hours, when you aren’t open. For such consumers the internet is the primary way they research their buying decisions. Consider the fact that over 200 million searches are done Read the rest of this entry »

You know the type… they are never satisfied with “good enough”, and no matter how hard you work, they always want you to do more. The typical slave driver boss. Man, I’d hate working for a guy like that. But the thing is, I am sort of already working for a slave driver boss… me. Yep, I’m a slave driver when it comes to getting things done. Now, the good news is that I’m my own boss, but that doesn’t mean I get to slack off… heck no! Actually, I work harder for myself than I ever Read the rest of this entry »