What you first need to realize is that starting your own business is hard. You know the saying, if it were easy everybody would do it? That directly relates to starting your own business and being successful. There are many risks that are present that you must be willing to take on. One of the best ways to know if your idea is among the handful of good business ideas that can be successful is performing market research. But what do you need to know?

STOP! You have got to keep reading this post. It will be fast and painless and it could be the one thing that super charges your business this year. 

Best practices are usually the most boring thing in the world. I mean who would really choose to sit and study best practices let alone really understand them. But they are simple and important and in the next 5 minutes I will hopefully prove it.

You’re scrolling through your Facebook news feed. Scroll, scroll, boring, scroll, ‘like’, scrolling, ew, scroll, comment, pause, scroll. Thirty minutes later you exit and go back to work. Does this about sum up what your Facebook experience is like? So what is it exactly that makes you stop on that one page or advertisement and decide to like the page, status or engage with the post?

It’s time to stop waiting for things to happen, and go out and make them happen. You're 2 years in from the day you started your business, you have staff, payroll, and you even have an accountant. But something’s missing. Every day you're met with this nagging thought that your business isn’t beating out your competitors. This nagging feeling won’t go away until you do something to pull away from the pack. Get standout-marketing tips here!

So you are new to Google AdWords or maybe you are questioning whether you have been doing them correctly at all. Either way it is important to know the basics of AdWords to ensure that you are taking the steps to grow your business, not being frivolous with your actions and spending.

Many people think all they need is something to “go viral” to grow their business for years to come. While this seems like a quick, easy fix, it’s actually not where you should be focusing your attention. Instead, the key is considering if you’re creating good or bad online content. If you’re producing good content it won’t matter if it goes viral or not. It will be helping your business grow either way.

Do you wonder why your business is not as successful as it could be? Do your employees or the people you manage walk in the door of the office with a blank face, a loud sigh and look of hatred on their faces? If this sounds all too familiar then you most likely are lacking company culture in your business and need to learn how to motivate employees at your business. To really be a truly successful business you need to have employees that love to come to work—this all depends on the work environment YOU provide.

We have so many clients that continue to want to push the majority of their social media efforts toward Facebook. However, is that really the smartest thing to do any more? Our response is typically, no. Facebook is no longer the powerful marketing tool it once used to be and studies show that engagement among business Facebook pages is definitely plummeting.

Kickstarter—the land of hopeful entrepreneurs who have good business ideas that they are wildly displaying for the entire world to see on the internet, all in an effort to raise money for their idea, product, cause, etc.

If you’re reading this and are still unsure as to what I am talking about and keep thinking about if you’ve been on Kickstarter’s website—Go there now and take a look. But be careful because you will be easily distracted! Plus, I want you to come back to continue reading my blog, of course. You’ll miss out on some of the cool Kickstarter campaigns I’m about to show you if you leave and don’t come back.

Internet Marketing has many names: Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing, E-Commerce, etc. however there are certain marketing strategies that almost any internet marketer would say are critical to a successful marketing campaign to grow your business.

There is no doubt if you are in business of any kind, that over the past few years, marketing has shifted significantly. The marketing strategies businesses are using have shifted from offline to online. Even if a business has not yet moved “online” with a website or social media account, Google may have already created a Google+ page for the business, or The Yellow Pages has listed the business in their online directories (but that’s another blog for another time).

Why has marketing changed?