If there were ever a post for today that really needed to be published, UnStuckDigital’s new post Minimizing Risk in Small Business is it.
When the economy is sliding that is NOT the time to pull back – it IS the time to be VERY pro-active. While other businesses are cutting back those who take calculated risks will benefit.
Now IS the time to collaborate with those who know what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t know where to invest wisely you must rely on someone who does. They will know because they have done it AND MEASURED THE RESULTS. Don’t listen to projections; ask how they know. Don’t agree to anything until you completely understand it!
If you don’t know who to ask contact us or Mike. Ask us for referrals to other top consultants. Only others in the same trench know who is truly sharp and who just writes or promotes themselves well.
As Mike points out you must “Risk or Die” and “Fail Fast and Fail Cheap“ and “Trying to avoid all risk ends up being the biggest risk of all. There’s no better way to ensure your own failure than to sterilize yourself with fear.”
We include his quotes because they are all absolutely true. Safety is only an illusion and doing nothing will guarantee you achieve nothing. Pulling back now will make a bad situation worse!
His post prompts me to share some good calculated risks for your consideration:
- Start new long tail pay per click (ppc) campaigns aimed at immediate conversions using exact match only. Target a mix of inexpensive ($60-$120) products, mid-range ($120-$400) and high cost ($400/up). Do this because less expensive products have a shorter latency period (time between first ad and consistent sales) but expensive products are the most profitable to advertise. Do NOT advertise anything that has an average sale amount lower than your cost of advertising. Even if these campaigns “fail” you raise visibility for those products and in your niche. (Read our PPC warning post first though.)
- Launching or improving a blog – make it fully optimized for both SEO and interactivity. Keeping in mind that conversions increase when all your potential buyers’ questions are answered, use your blog to answer those questions before they’re asked. Use it to find out what your visitors think and want. Use it to make suggestions and to target specific keyword phrases and products.
- Start growing Social Networking sites coordinated with your main site and blog at Twitter and perhaps one or two other Social Networking sites. Claim your brand on every Social Networking site and direct visitors to those over to where you are the most active. It is better to be consistent somewhere than spread so thin you do a poor job everywhere.
Now is NOT the time to spend in desperation. Do not part with a penny buying traffic from any source that will not reveal in a crystal clear manner where the traffic comes from and how it is generated. Losing money to black-hat SEO or spammers is not the greatest risk; ruining your business reputation is.