First off, Happy New Year! You’ve probably already read a few blogs that are predicting what type of marketing will be the best for your small business in 2015. But, most of those blogs are actually not very helpful. This one however, is not like that at all...which is why you should keep reading!

Inspiration is something that is difficult and challenging to do, especially as a business. Inspiration happens when you don’t just talk about the facts but you talk about what could be and you give hope. In the business world talking about these things can be a bit fuzzy for people because it’s difficult to evaluate.

We all love to be inspired. It is in our nature as human beings. We want to have that fire in our being that give us the motivation to do better and to be better. I am going to give you an example to show how you too can inspire your employees within your business culture. But how do we create that spark in other people? Where do we find this inspiration? The answer is simple. Inspiration can be found everywhere.

Inspiration. It’s an abstract word that comes in many forms. The value from it comes when you motivate your customers to want your product or service and they continue to talk about it. Inspiration is often planned, but many times it comes in the form of spontaneous “aha!” moments. These moments don’t have to come to you through careful consideration, but can happen in your passion and provision company by deciding today to take 3 easy steps to become more inspirational to your customers and have a successful small business.

How do leaders and companies inspire others? There are so many ways to inspire and it comes in many forms. For business leaders, who are growing a business with both passion and provision, the two groups of people that need to be inspired are:

Your employees and staff

Your customers

When you, as a leader, are able to inspire your staff and inspire your customers, you have the opportunity to grow your business and be successful.

Are your customers truly happy with the product or service you are providing them? Are you doing it better than your competition? Do you even know where you stand when it comes to delighting your customers? Regardless, here’s a secret; you can always be better.

If you in fact want to be the best and have customers return over and over again, you will need to continue to learn, train and evaluate your small business. Many small business owners have the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” While that may have some truth to it, it can also leave you behind the competition and ultimately impact your success in a negative way.

Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough when you’re trying to get new customers. That’s when you need some momentum to push you forward into the realm of closing customers before they lose interest and turn to your competitors. But how do you do this?

Maybe you think you're doing a really great job at this inbound marketing thing. You’re attracting people to your company website by blogging 3 times a week, actively posting on social media platforms, and you think your keyword strategy is accurate. You’ve even started converting some of your website visitors with your stellar calls-to-action that entice them to click and fill out the form to download the helpful content your staff has created. But then these leads seem to vanish into thin air and you’re left wondering how you can hold onto them and close them as customers. Keep reading to learn three key things that you should be doing.

So many marketers set goals of increasing website traffic, getting more visitors to your website and so on…

These are important goals when using internet marketing for your small business, especially when you implement inbound marketing strategies. This is all fine and dandy and a really great place to start if you are just getting on the web or if your website isn’t attracting visitors at all. But increasing lead conversion rates is where you will start to see a real impact on your ROI and allows you to grow your business full of passion and provision.

So, what if you have 2000 people visiting your website each month? The real question becomes, “where are the customers?” As internet marketers we work really hard to make our client’s websites as “findable” as possible as people use search engines to research products and services. Here at Half a Bubble Out, we do this for our clients through the attracting stage of inbound marketing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a type of marketing that would give you the competitive edge that you need to take your successful small business full of passion and provision to the next level? Normally competitive edge requires having more money budgeted towards marketing. What if I told you that this type of marketing will allow you to compete with the big guys in your industry? Before we get ahead of ourselves let’s start with the basics of this special type of marketing.

While I’m not prone to prognostication I do love to look ahead and consider where we are going as a company and what we need to pay attention to. This holiday season I was reminded of some really great skills that I will need in business in the year ahead. The funny part of this inspiration is where it came from. They say good things sometimes come from the strangest places and this holiday season that’s no joke.

My college daughter, home for the holidays, decided to go all OCD on us and start watching multiple seasons of American Ninja Warrior. The show involves athletes competing on crazy difficult obstacle courses. My hands actually sweat as I’m watching the show. The ultimate goal is to make it to the mother of all obstacle courses, Mount Midoriyama. The competition started in Japan and came to America 6 years ago. To date no American has ever been able to complete the Mount Midoriyama course.