Is Project Management Software a Worthwhile Investment for Your Small Business?

Sara Sentor
Monday, March 5th, 2012

Do you own a small business? Are you constantly trying to juggle multiple projects at once? You may wonder if project management software would be a good investment. Listed below are some pros and cons you might want to consider before making a final decision on buying this type of software for your business.

Advantages of Project Management Software

This software application can be invaluable if you have a number of projects that you are required to closely monitor. All employees will have the ability to keep a keen eye on the progress of various projects. With many eyes being watchful, there will be less chance for mistakes.
It will be easier for project budgets to be maintained. Project management software can assist in cutting down on overspending. This will save your company money that can be used in other ways.
There are a number of software formats available, so you should be able to locate an application that will fit your company’s needs. These packages are also offered at various prices and with a varying degree of installation options. You can locate an application that should be simple to install and use.
Organizational skills of all of your employees will be enhanced when working with this type of software. There are a variety of features offered that will assist your employees in staying on top of their assigned tasks, saving the company time and money.
You can find the technical support you will need if there are any problems or questions with the software. Project management software manufacturers want to be of service to their customers in any way that they can.
This software application makes it easier to communicate with employees who are in the field and may not be ideally located when issues develop that need to be discussed. Project managers and team leaders will be able to speak to each other from distances, just as though they were all gathered in the same room.

Disadvantages of Project Management Software

Some project management software programs may have many more features than you actually need, making the program somewhat hard to manage and learn.
If you have a number of elements involved in your projects, you may have to invest in several different programs in order to cover every aspect. One program may not have all of the components that you will need to work on the types of projects your business entails.
If you invest in a program with poor quality, you may experience a number of bugs that can make the application difficult to operate.
Depending on the application you choose, project management software can be somewhat pricey. If your business is very small or you are just starting out and need to keep your costs down, you may be required to wait on your purchase until the funds are available.

Project management software can be of great benefit to your small business if you invest in the appropriate package, but only you, taking into account the way your business works, can make the final decision regarding purchase.

This is a guest post from Sandra Hopkins. Sandra Hopkins writes on behalf of a site that compares project management software and helps small business owners find the right package for their company’s needs.

Posted in Small Business and Online Business | No Comments »

Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Fail in a Slow Economy

Sara Sentor
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Small businesses always have to struggle to retain their business. A faltering economy does not help. So what are the ways a small business can survive in a struggling economy?

I am resident of New Jersey. Last week, I decided to go up to Flemington, NJ to buy some dinnerware. A friend knew of some shops there that had unique china. Well, we got there to find a ghost town! Apparently, the economy caused so much damage that most if not all the shops had closed down. These were shops that had been there for twenty years or more!

This got me thinking. How is it that a thriving business slows down so much it is unable to survive a slump in the economy?

I did some research and found out that the reasons for failure of a small business can be attributed to five main causes.

The Five Main Causes of a Small Business Failure:

1. Refusal to Diversify

Small business owners fear change. They have one successful product and decide that this product will make them money for years to come. For the most part they are right. A unique product will bring them a lot of money. However, they have to retain that unique perspective and create a bigger market.

If I am a writer and am able to write great web content for say $45 per page for a while I will be able to find work. However, over time new writers will enter the market and they may offer the same services for less. At that point I have two choices: Diversify or Fail.

Lowering my price would not be a failure. What I could do is create a more user friendly package. Say write web content for the same price, but add a free marketing feature. Regardless, of a products success, it is necessary to keep updating or upgrading to retain the target audience.

2. Refusal to become more Technological

Living in a technological world it is amazing to realize that there are hundreds of business owners who simply cannot change with the changing technology. Let’s take the example of the shop owners selling dinnerware in Flemington. Did they consider having an e-commerce site? They could have created a website with a full inventory online. This would have reduced the overheads in their stores and maybe there would still be a shop in Flemington selling china!

3. No Risk Policy

The greatest fear of a small business owner is failure. They are so scared of failure that they refuse to take any risk. They have a great service or product but they play it safe. They refuse to market aggressively. They refuse to take a chance on online marketing. They refuse to spend money on growth of the business because they fear failure. The sad part is, this no risk policy causes them to fail!

4. Lack of Management

Small and home based business whether service based or product based usually start with one owner. As the business grows, the one owner mentality stays. They offer personal and customized service. They put in their own money. If business is slow, the owner does not pick up their salary. They sometimes allow customers to pay late.

Soon their business closes. Small businesses pride themselves on having a ‘family’ type of management. However, a business can never be a family. Business must always primarily be a business to succeed.

5. Lack of Planning

A successful business is 1% innovation and 99% planning. If a business owner is not careful, methodical and hard working –the business fails.

A business plan is essential for a business’s success. The problem is most small businesses start unrealistically and future projections are ignored.

In order to be successful a small business must:

Have a business mission, vision, goal and plan
Have a HR policy
Have a capital investment
Have an accounting policy
Create an analysis of competition
Manage marketing and growth and
Suggest an annual budget and management policy

All these five factors are essential for a small business to be successful. The lack of even one can cause a business to fail.

Tags: Business, small business, Small Business Marketing
Posted in Small Business and Online Business | 5 Comments »

The Client-the Website and the SEO

Sara Sentor
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

As a former SEO Manager the most frustrating aspect of my work was getting the client to agree to my suggestions. As the SEO Manager, I would fulfill my job responsibility of getting the client listed in Google-within three months- guaranteed.

The listing was usually for small business owners in their local market. The client website got a ranking on the first page-top three results.

Instead of acclaim-I got complaints.

The client saw that he or she was ranking well but they had no leads.

We asked them to make the site interactive. No deal.
We asked them to provide coupons. No Deal.
We asked them to change the content. No Deal.
Yet my team, as the SEO provider, was considered the failure.

So I ask now, between the client, the website and the SEO- where do the responsibilities lie?

SEO Responsibilities

In an ever changing industry the SEO must constantly research, experiment and adjust a website in order to attain, sustain and retain rankings.
While SEO’s cannot guarantee results they can for the most part assure clients that after a certain time period, the client will see results.

Now here is the challenge. What exactly are results?

In SEO language results refer to ‘rankings’. The SEO will work to ensure the client website gets a good ranking in the major search engines for specific keywords.

The client may define results in terms of conversion. How many new clients they get or how many sales they make.

So another job responsibility of the SEO would be to educate the client.
The SEO must ensure that before they begin work for the client, the client understands what the SEO will be providing.

Client Responsibilities

Clients must be ready to make changes to the website
Clients must understand and have realistic expectations.
They must have a solid business plan.

Why does the SEO need to know a clients business plan?

SEO, like any marketing strategy, requires a business plan. The SEO must know what the client expects out of the search engine marketing efforts. If the client is uncertain of the business plan, the SEO will become unsuccessful.

Yes, the SEO will get the ranking, yes they will get the traffic, but there will be no leads, no new clients.

The SEO will create the marketing strategy based on the business plan. If the client website has a unique selling product [USP] or a service that is different, the SEO will work to promote it. However, it is the client’s responsibility to provide and promote that plan.

The Client-the Website and the SEO

Whenever, I took on a new client my first request would be the client fill a business profile brief. The client’s had a hard time providing answers to something as basic as:

What do you want from the website-leads or sales?

The client thinks that once the site is listed in the search engines, it will automatically be successful. That is wrong.

A website has thousands of competitors. In order to stand out the website requires:

Engaging content
Attractive images and web design
Constant updates
Landing pages
Easy navigations
Ways to engage and retain potential customers
Lead forms
Content updates
And more

An SEO can bring the traffic but unless the client is willing to work with them to make changes to the website in lieu with the business plan all SEO efforts will go to waste.

SEO and ROI

The bottom line for any investment is profit. The problem with SEO is that many times the investments seem out of proportion with the results. It takes 3 months just to start getting results! Once the rankings are in, it is still hard to estimate the tangible conversions.

Think of SEO in terms of ROI. If you have 100 new visitors but only 3 become customers you have a conversion rate of 3%. That is a pretty good ROI.

I had a client, a small contractor who worked in the tri-state area of NJ-CT and NY. He had great rankings and was on top of organic results for the keywords we were using in his campaign. However, he knew nothing about SEO. He allowed us to make changes to his site and work on our own.

He was high maintenance due to his lack of knowledge but we provided custom SEO solutions so we took all the tantrums in stride. Six months down the line he was getting excellent conversions, topping the search engines and we, the SEO team, were very pleased with our work.

The client came in one day and asked me to change the keywords. I was surprised as the current campaign was causing his business to boom. He had apparently been working with someone on a PPC campaign and had been told, our work was ‘competing’ with the PPC. I tried to explain the difference between organic and PPC but the argument fell on deaf ears.

Long story short, the client cancelled the SEO contract so that the work did not interfere with his PPC efforts.

Moral

The moral of this whole article is, we SEO’s have been abused a lot. Sure there are companies and individuals that do a sloppy job and run scams but that is true of any business. However, many times the failure attributed to the SEO comes through the lack of knowledge of the clients.

The clients have as much a responsibility for the failure of any SEO campaign as does the SEO.

Tags: local business, SEO, small business, web content, Website Traffic
Posted in Small Business and Online Business | 1 Comment »

Small Business Owners Success and Search Engine Optimization

Sara Sentor
Monday, November 29th, 2010

Small business owners are having a tough break in the current economy. Many have closed down, many have downsized and many are simply holding fast to their ideals of a traditional market.

I went to the mall after Thanksgiving and saw many shops had closed down-even while the economy was said be turning around for the better.

Why I asked myself would shops close down at the peak of the holiday season?

The answer is simple- The Internet!

People are shopping online and avoiding the holiday stress. Black Friday now has to compete with Cyber Monday. What would you rather do: Go out on Black Friday deal with the traffic, big lines and horrible stress or sit at home, in front of the TV with your laptop and click your way to shopping the best deals ever?

There is really no competition. The Internet rules.

Traditional brick and mortar businesses have huge overheads with numerous employees, office space, administrative overheads and more. Franchises like Barnes and Noble and Borders and Lowes and Home Depot are taking hits as people turn to their online websites to make purchases.

So what are the small business owners doing?

Closing down their businesses.

Do small business owners have a choice other than closing down their busines?

Yes, they do. Small business owners have to be ready to accept change more frequently than before.

I have worked as an SEO for tens of small business clients. Some have been contractors, some are vets, some are optometrists and others own house moving businesses. Others have e-commerce sites. The clients I saw succeed the most were those willing to change.

I worked for some of my traditional clients for three to five years and during that time they made NO CHANGE TO THEIR WEBSITE.

You got that right. No change. I could beg, plead, rave and rant and they would simply refuse to make a change.

The web content text had to be the same-for five years-the images, the structure everything the same-for FIVE YEARS.

Then when the economy began to spiral down the small business owners still refused to make changes.

I asked them to add coupons, reduce web content, add web content, and use social media. It was like a road block.

They refused to hear anything I said and simply insisted the only choice was to finish of the SEO contract since ‘it was no use anyway. They would have to close down their business.’

What really frustrated me was they were more willing to close down their business than give search engine marketing a chance.

See, many small business owners are failing to realize that in order to survive and thrive in the new economy they have to be in a constant flux of change. They cannot have a website and expect it to produce leads and sales. They have to work it. They have to test new content, new images, and new navigation.

They have to understand that the Internet is in a constant flux of change and in order to follow that wave of change they have to be more flexible.

In direct contrast to these clients I had the small business clients that were simply amazing. I had clients that were old enough to be my grandparents and yet, had the ability to understand that there very limits could be their downfall. They did not know how to use a mouse but had a son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter-anyone that could help come in and talk to me.

They would implement the changes I recommended without hesitation. Making changes to their 10 year old business strategy was no issue; in terms of online business strategy they gave me a free reel. The result-they thrived when the economy was falling and beat their competitors to become leaders in their small industry. Whether that was a local landscaper or local designer-they thrived.

So the choice small business owners have is to make and accept changes to their business strategy.

As a small business owner you may not understand the importance of search engine optimization but you should at least realize that if your competitor is marketing online then your should at least give it a real try!

Tags: local business, SEO, small business, Small Business Marketing
Posted in Small Business and Online Business | 3 Comments »