Here are some smart strategies you can use to identify and attract those critical first customers.

No matter what industry you’re in, every startup business owner has the same burning question: “How will I get my first customers?” Here are some smart strategies you can use to identify and attract those critical first customers.

1. Make a list. As you’ve done the groundwork to launch your business, you’ve undoubtedly met some people who could be potential customers. For instance, these could include people you surveyed in a focus group or connected with on social media. Put them on a list of prospects. B2B startups can put businesses they’ve interacted with on the list. You can also do some homework online to find companies that are likely buyers for what you sell and add them to your list.
2. Look for referrals. Ask everyone you know if they know someone who might buy what you’re selling. You never know where a great referral will come from, so alert your social media connections, neighbors, former co-workers, even your distant cousins that you’re looking for customers. Enlist your spouse, friends and other connections to help brainstorm ideas for first customers, too.
3. Work your network. Find out what local business networking groups exist for your industry and attend some of their meetings. Focus on sharing how you can help others, not so much on how they can help you. Connecting with other business owners is a great way to sniff out prospects, whether you sell B2B or B2C.
4. Show it off. Exhibit at trade shows that attract your target customer. For instance, if you’re starting a wedding planning business, a bridal trade show would be an ideal place to rent a booth. Just make sure you’re ready to deliver when a customer places an order or makes a purchase.
5. Attend industry events. If you’re selling B2B, you don’t necessarily have to pay for a booth to benefit from a trade show or industry conference. You can just go to meet people (be prepared with key marketing materials such as business cards or sales sheets, of course). Don’t try to pitch people with a hard sell; instead, focus on building connections with people who could be helpful in your new business. Then contact them when you’re back in the office and start building a relationship.
6. Team up with other business owners. Find another entrepreneur whose products or services are complementary, rather than competitive, with yours and ask about connecting you with prospective clients. If you’re starting a pool cleaning business, for example, see if local lawn-care companies know of any clients whose pools are looking shabby, and ask for a referral.
7. Build an online presence. Get your website up and running (even if it’s just a simple site) and use search engine optimization (SEO) to get found when people search online for what you sell. Your first customer could very well come from a search engine. Small Business Digital Toolkit provides professional website and content management services for small businesses. Visit www.SmallBusinessDigitalToolkit.com
8. Spread the word on social. Starting up your social media accounts before your business officially launches is a great way to generate excitement about your grand opening, products or services. Use social media advertising to target people who meet your target market criteria and get them to follow you for updates. Encourage them to spread the word to their friends, and so on, and so on.

Once you’ve got that first customer, treat them like gold. Make sure they’re satisfied and work to keep their business. As you build a history with your first customers, turn them into brand advocates to help attract more customers and gather customer testimonials you can use to promote your business.

Article Source: www.SBA.gov 

Just a few days ago, security researchers made public a critical flaw in all WordPress versions, which are older than 4.9.9. 
The flaw allows anyone with “author” privileges to completely gain control over a WordPress website. All WordPress versions from the last 6 years are affected.
If you are using a WordPress version, which is older than 4.9.9, you have to update to the latest version immediately so as to protect yourself from this vulnerability.
Even though the attack vector requires a profile with “author” privileges, access to such an account can be gained via multiple methods like phishing, password reuse, etc.
Once the attacker gains access to such an account, they can execute PHP code on the server, effectively taking over the whole WordPress website.
More information about this new vulnerability can be found in the original report from RIPS Technologies GmbH.
If you have any questions about how to update your WordPress website, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our tech support team.

Outsourcing represents an opportunity for you to reshape your company to be more successful. It can help you ease your workload and cut costs, both important to the short- and long-term health of your company.
But for this to work, you need to be smart about the way you outsource. Simply doing it doesn’t guarantee results. You need to be sure what you’re outsourcing is not something you could do better or more cheaply on your own, and you also need to be sure you’re working with reputable firms. 
To give you a better idea as to how you should be approaching outsourcing and how it can affect your business, consider the following points about making smart use of this practice.
It Can Help You Grow

A properly designed outsourcing strategy can actually help you grow your business. However, this can only happen if you make smart choices about what you outsource. 
For example, outsource those things you can’t do on your own. This ends up being a big reason why many companies choose to outsource things such as marketing, or HR functions such as benefits management. It’s difficult to find people who are able to do this stuff at a high level, so it’s better to go out and work with an agency that’s specialized in these fields and that has experience producing results. 
Take a look at the current structure of your business and identify areas where you could be doing better. Then ask yourself what it would cost to produce these improvements from within. If this is more than what it would cost to work with an agency, then outsourcing is going to be a smart move that should help you improve the performance of your company.

Other Forms of Outsourcing
While we tend to think of outsourcing as giving work to other people, there are other ways to outsource. For example, automation is essentially just outsourcing to computers or machines that can do the job cheaply or more efficiently. 
Again, marketing is a good area for you to do this. Setting up lead capturing forms, or automating drip email campaigns, help to optimize your marketing operation and generate more leads you can use to turn into sales. 
Being smart about outsourcing means making use of the right solutions at the right time. And if you succeed in doing this, then you’re far more likely to reap the benefits of outsourcing.

It Can Help You Save MoneySmart outsourcing can lead to tremendous cost savings, reducing overhead and helping to make your company more profitable. But to get to this point, you need to spend some time working out exactly how outsourcing is going to save you money. And for this, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with how to do an accurate cost-benefit analysis. 
Focus on outsourcing wherever there are large infrastructure costs, as it rarely pays for you to take these on yourself. For example, IT and cybersecurity are critical to the success of your business, but they are incredibly costly to manage on your own. Outsourcing this task to an external firm allows you to share these infrastructure costs with other businesses, reducing the burden on your company and increasing your cost savings.
Not All Agencies Are the Same
Not All Agencies Are the Same

The final reason it’s so important to outsource smartly is that not all agencies are the same. Well, they’re the same in that they are all going to promise the best results. But they’re not the same in that they cannot all deliver on these promises in the same way.
As a result, you need to develop a good process for finding and choosing third-party vendors. Start by putting together a request for proposals (RFP), and send this out to firms that interest you. Make sure you specify what you’re hoping to get out of the relationship and be clear about the resources you’re willing to invest. Then, when you get responses, make sure to dig deep into the proposals to determine the realistic chance of accomplishing what’s being promised to you. 
But the next step is to do your homework on the firm. Ask around to find out if anyone has worked with them before and what they’re experience was, and also spend some time reading testimonials and other reviews so that you can be sure you’re working with someone who is capable of using your money to produce the desired result.

Make Outsourcing a Part of the PlanYou will outsource at some point in your business’ lifetime. So, the important thing is to have a plan for it. Start thinking about what you’ll outsource and when so that when the time comes you can be ready to engage with firms and make your company more successful in both the short- and long-term.




by Jock Purtle Digital Exits
Jock is the founder of Digital Exits, an online brokerage service specializing in the buying/selling and appraisal of online business. His work consists of consulting small business owners about business growth and exit strategies, which has given him considerable experience with what makes a business successful, something he enjoys sharing whenever he gets the chance.​

One of the most frequent questions our community members ask us — and themselves — is how to get more people to visit their site. There’s no magic formula, but there are ways to increase your website traffic with a few tools and best practices.
Use Keywords On Your Site
Make sure your site is well-indexed by search engines by using keywords in your site’s tagline, in your website content, and in tags. Keywords are terms that your target audience might use when searching for your site. To figure out what keywords to include on your site, think about what you would Google if you were trying to find that information. If you sell toys and games to play with toddlers, for example, it would be a good idea to use the term “games for toddlers” in your pages and blog posts.
Be careful about using too many keywords, though! If you repeat the same keywords multiple times, your content will read awkwardly — and worse, Google will consider that “keyword stuffing,” so doing this can actually hurt your site’s ranking.

Blog Regularly
Blogging isn’t just for hobbyists. Businesses, organizations, and professionals can blogs to boost their site’s traffic and get noticed. In fact, blogging regularly is still the single most important thing you can do to increase your site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization). People with a WordPress.com Business Plan can also use Advanced SEO tools to customize the meta description with a summary that does a better job at captivating readers and potentially increase the post’s search page ranking.
Even if you have a website with mostly static content, add a “Blog” or “News” section that you regularly update so Google can see that your site is active. All the SEO strategies in the world won’t help if you’re not adding content, so get to writing!

Spread The Word
Build your traffic in smart ways. SEO and traffic go hand-in-hand: the more people who visit your site, the higher your site will rank in search results. Luckily, SmallBusinessDigitalToolkit.com is a community in addition to a website building platform, so we have lots of ways to increase your readership. Use features like Publicize to alert your various social networks to your new content. Set it up to automatically share your new blog posts to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, so your current customers and fans never miss an update.
If you have a Premium or Business plan, you can also use the Publicize feature to re-share your content an unlimited number of times. 

​This article was made possible by WP.

Business Owners always ask me (What's some great marketing tips?) and I always asked them (Do you have a professional website for your business?) Having a professional, functional and responsive website is essential for today's new and growing small businesses.

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By: Veto Tran