The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

Showing appreciation for a job well done is important to the productivity of your employees and in turn the growth of your company. Here are some low-cost ways to show your employees that you’re grateful for the work that they do.

1. Free food. Bring in pizza for lunch or muffins and juice for breakfast.
2. Travelling trophy. Create a fun trophy that can be passed around from employee to employee.
3. Charity work. Let an employee or the whole team take a day off to do work for the cause of their choice.
4. Discounts. Give employees discounts on the products or services you provide.
5. Movie days. If the whole team has reached an important goal, take an afternoon to pop some popcorn, throw in a movie and celebrate.
6. Sleep-in days. Allow employees to earn “sleep-in days”—mornings when they don’t have to come in until 10 a.m.
7. Gift cards. Have gift cards for things like movie theaters, coffee shops or car washes on hand, so you can hand them out whenever they are deserved.
8. Family time. When the kids have a day off school, working parents can find it tough to accommodate. When this happens, allow star employees to work from home.
9. In-house entertainment. Consider providing games, TVs and other forms of entertainment in your break room.
10. Thank yous. Simply saying “thank you” or writing a hand-written note can sometimes be all it takes to make an employee feel appreciated.

These are simply suggestions. What’s really important to remember is that not all employees want the same things or will be motivated by the same gestures. Consider what each individual employee will respond to as well as the whole group and tailor your forms of appreciation accordingly. Most importantly remember that showing appreciation and rewarding your employees doesn’t have to be expensive.

Now that it’s November, most retailers have only one thing on their minds—the holiday shopping season. While it doesn’t officially kick off for consumers until the day after Thanksgiving (or if you’re my mom about two months ago), the implementation of holiday sales strategies for many retailers are already underway.

One thing that online retailers should look in to this year is the second annual Free Shipping Day, which will take place on Dec. 17. Online shopping typically declines around Dec. 12 because consumers fear that their packages may not arrive before Christmas Eve. This causes a problem for online retailers in the way of declining sales in the holiday home stretch. To combat the problem, Luke Knowles of FreeShipping.org created Free Shipping Day, which was designed to help these online retailers on the last day they can guarantee delivery before Christmas Eve.

Basically all that an online retailer needs to do is go to freeshippingday.com and fill out a short form with contact info and their Free Shipping Day offer. They also, of course, need to be willing to eat the shipping costs for that day as well as guarantee delivery of packages before Christmas. What happens when you fill out the form is that your logo will appear on the Free Shipping Day homepage on Dec. 1. Consumers that prefer to shop retailers with free shipping (which is 75% of consumers according to Forrester Research) can then click on your logo and immediately be directed to a page displaying your offer.

Last year more than 250 merchants participated in Free Shipping Day, including big names like Macy’s, Kohl’s and Bloomingdale’s. Between December 8 (when the site launched) and Dec. 18 (Free Shipping Day 2008) the site received 250,000 visitors—105,000 of which occurred just on Free Shipping Day itself.

While this is only the second year for Free Shipping Day, the site seems to have gained a ton of traction. For online retailers who have personally experienced a decline in holiday sales right before Christmas, I encourage you to check this out.

Taking clients out for business dinners can be a great way for you to interact with them on a more personal level. We live in a busy society however, so you must be respectful of other people’s free time. Find out what kind of schedule your client has. Does he need to be at home with his kids on week nights? Does she prefer to spend her weekends at her house on the lake? Sometimes just by showing that you’re being cognoscente of your clients’ busy schedules and home lives, you can go a long way in gaining trust and deepening relationships.

Any small business owner who has a website needs to know where visitors are coming from, what they’re doing on the site and where they’re going.

Luckily there’s Google Analytics—an awesome tool from Google (obviously) that can tell you just about anything you want to know about your website visitors. The best part for small business owners…it’s totally free.

Here are some examples of what Google Analytics can tell you about visitors to your small business website.

• Google Analytics can tell you exactly where your visitors just came from when they reach your site. Did they come from a particular search engine? Were they directed to you from a social media site? Was it a marketing piece that sent them to you? Knowing where exactly your traffic is coming from will help you figure out where to focus your marketing efforts.
• Google Analytics can tell you which pages your visitors are frequenting. This can show you which kinds of content your visitors are attracted to and which kinds they aren’t. Maybe you could expand aspects of a particularly popular page into less popular pages.
• Google Analytics  can tell you how much time visitors are spending on your site, where they are spending their time, and ultimately which pages of your site they are most frequently leaving from.  This could help you troubleshoot why visitors are leaving and how you can make changes to prevent them from leaving. Perhaps it is as simple as changing some wording to make your message clearer and less confusing.
• Google Analytics can tell you where your visitors are geographically located. By looking at what is called the Geomap Overlay, you’ll be able to quickly see in a very visual way the varying locations of your visitors. You may find that the audience you’ve been targeting is not exactly the audience you’re getting. Maybe you’ve been marketing to Midwesterners but are also seeing a large following on the Eastern Seaboard. Knowing this will enable you to tweak and/or expand your marketing efforts.

Many small business owners shy away from using Google Analytics because they’re not IT experts. But you really don’t need to be. If you can follow Google’s directions (which are pretty good), you’ll be just fine. To get started just go to Google.com/Analytics.

Small business owners ponder long and hard about what their target audience wants. They think to themselves, “What would it take to get a potential customer to buy from me?”

While this is a great question, perhaps a better way to start is by looking at yourself. What would it take for you to buy from you?

The sad truth is that too many small business owners themselves don’t buy/use the products/services they offer. I’m not suggesting you beat yourself up over it, but rather that you take some time to think realistically about why. What would it HONESTLY take for you to walk through your own doors, open your own wallet, order your own products and utilize your own services? Once you figure that out…adjust.

The mere thought of cold calling makes many people’s stomachs turn. It’s a difficult and nerve-racking experience that takes courage, confidence and thick skin.

So if you’re nervous (which you probably are), it helps to warm up before you call. Run through your opening statement in your head or out loud. Anticipate potential questions. It can also help to warm up your prospect by sending out preliminary materials like fliers or brochures. That way when you call, your prospect will already have some context as to what you do.

As technology advances and consumers continue to upgrade their mobile devices and increase their usage of the mobile Web, research in this space also continues to expand. I recently found two pieces of research that I think small business owners should pay attention to.

Consumer Alerts
A recent survey from Harris Interactive measured consumer sentiment toward mobile devices as they relate to shopping, sales promotions and impulse purchases.

The research shows that consumers are interested in receiving opt-in mobile alerts from their favorite places—42 percent of 18 to 34 year olds and 33 percent of 35 to 44 year olds. The research also shows that 9 out of 10 U.S. adults make impulse purchases when they are out and about and hear of a sale or special going on near them.

Making the connection?

There is an opportunity here for small businesses to trigger these impulses through mobile alerts, so think about how your business could adapt to take advantage.

Peak Performance
Gomez Inc., a Web application experience management company, on Monday released results from a study examining the experiences and expectations of consumers when it comes to the mobile Web.

Unfortunately for many businesses, consumers seem to be pretty dissatisfied. Nearly 75 percent of respondents complained of slow load times. This is particularly scary because of additional results.

• 85 percent of consumers said they are willing to retry a mobile Web site two times or less if it does not work initially
• More than half are unlikely to return to a Web site that they had trouble accessing from their phone
• 40 percent said they’d likely visit a competitor’s mobile Web site instead

The lesson here is that businesses need to place the performance of their mobile Web site at the top of their priority lists to avoid this discontent and capitalize on the mobile opportunity.

Promoting the right person is important to the well-being of your company. So before you start moving an employee in to his or her new position, look at how the employee would handle the transition. Moving from co-worker to boss isn’t easy for everyone.  In fact, many people simply can’t handle it, so make sure that candidates would be able to lead objectively.