Are you making these 3 mistakes while operating your small business?

Are you making these 3 mistakes while operating your small business?
Is your business struggling to get customers in the door? Are you making these 3 mistakes while operating your small business? I've seen businesses come and go in our small town. Lack of sales, results in them closing before they really get going. Are they giving up too soon? These are some suggestions when looking to increase foot traffic into your establishment. You can adapt these to fit your stores needs.
Are you invisible? Make sure your business is visible and easy to be found. A sign from the local printer can be worth its weight in gold. You can choose from metal and wooden signs or even vinyl graphics applied to your store front. Make sure and add your phone number and website so it’s easy to contact you. Consider putting balloons out for your grand opening. The bright colorful bouncing balloons will catch your customer’s eye.
Are you keeping the store hours you set? Business is slow so you decide to head home early or taken an extra hour for lunch. As soon as you leave because business is slow, a potential customer will shop up. That is Murphy’s law. You want to portray a consistent business that does what they say they will. If you find you need to cut hours, remember to change your store hours on your sign in the front window, so your potential customers know of the change and can hopefully make plans to visit you again.
Are you advertising where your customers are? Do you have a way to reach your customer to let them know about your next big sale? The key to advertising is reaching your customer. Narrow down your niche and who your customer is. Get to know them and advertise where they are. Create a newsletter with a giveaway each month and/or hand out scratch off cards to be redeemed on their next visit.
Give your customer a reason to return. Give them a free scratch off card to be used on their next visit with an expiration date. They can scratch it now to see what the win or you can do a no scratch campaign and have them scratch when they return. The no scratch campaign promotes the excitement that comes with scratching off to reveal what they have won.
To be a successful, it requires hard work, motivation and changing something if it's not working. Listening to your customers and what they want is the key to keeping and maintaining a happy customer. Happy customers tell others. Nothing beats word of mouth advertising.
To find out how you can increase your business, visit www.easyscratchoffs.com for more business building ideas.

5 Common Mistakes Businesses are Making

Common Mistakes that businesses make -loss of traffic, customers and sales.

Out there on the world wide web, I'm always surprised at the simple mistakes I see.

If you're running a recipe blog and want to build a following, make it easy for your followers to pin those recipes to Pinterest. Add a plugin, lots of them run on wordpress.
What I've seen a lot lately and just love is "Pin for Later". There's no doubt that with information overload we just don't have enough time to do everything we want. Pinning  it allows your followers to find that great recipe, brag about your business and perhaps buy your cookbook. Pinning is in, do it.

On your Facebook business page, put your website address front and center in the about us section.
Make sure it's clickable. How easy is it to contact you? Have you used your keywords in your about us section? That is prime real estate, take advantage of it.

We've all heard not to put all your egss in one basket. This is so true. Diversify. Do not depend on google for all your traffic. They keep changing their search optimization requirements and a "slap" from google can really hurt you. Look at other avenues to advertise or sell on. Amazon, Etsy, Ebay are just a couple examples. They already deliver the traffic, take advantage of it.

Know your audience. It's so much easier to serve your customers when you know who they are.
Do a survey, interact with them on social media and learn what they like and what they're looking for.

Don't depend on one social media for all of your social media. Create a schedule for social media and track your results. Don't fall into the trap of being on social media hours and hours a day "working".

This is so important, build a newsletter. There are free and low cost ways to do this. I recently changed over to Aweber. Free trial and $19 a month. Mailchimp is free.

How to Make Scratch off cards

How to Make Scratch off  Cards in 

6 Easy Steps

It’s easy to make scratch off cards and I’ll show you how. Once you’ve made them you’ll wonder why you haven’t tried it before.

   1. Gather your supplies. You’re going to need card stock, scratch off stickers, printer. 

   2. You can design your card in your favorite graphics program or use a free scratch off template.

   3. Once you have your card designed, you’re ready to print.

   4.  Print your scratch off card sheets onto cardstock.

   5.  Apply scratch off stickers over the prizes.

   6.  Cut your scratch off cards apart with scissors or a trimmer.

That’s it! Now you can see how easy it is to make your own scratch off cards. You can visit www.easyscratchoffs.com for more free scratch off templates and a variety of scratch off stickers.

Scratch off stickers-SO Many new ones

Have you heard? We have added more scratch off sticker sizes to our line. Choose from different sizes, colors, and shapes.
We have our most popular silver scratch off stickers available in:
1/2 inch circle
3/4 inch circle
3/4 hearts
1 inch circle
1.25 inch circle
1" square
2x1 rectangle

Our gold scratch off stickers are available in:
1" circle
1" square
1.5x1" rectangle
2x1" rectangle

We also have 1" circles in these colors:
Red
Navy blue
Green
Autumn harvest
Sparkling holograms

We also have several shapes:
Red Hearts
Retro hearts
Footballs
Shamrocks
Diamond holograms



You can use scratch off stickers to make scratch off cards for party favors, direct sales incentives, and business promotions.

Scratch off stickers are not sold at Big box stores

I wish there was a place to report the fraudulent advertising that the big box companies are using. It hurts the smaller businesses by driving up the keywords unnecessarily. We have sold scratch off stickers for the last 7 years. Our most popular scratch off sticker continues to be the 1" circle in silver.
Our newest scratch off sticker is going to be great for school fundraisers. The mini scratch off sticker is smaller than a dime and you can fit 5 of them on one business card without it being crowded.
Think of the possibilities and how you can design scratch off games for parties and even trade shows.
We can design scratch off cards or we can print your design at no charge. We offer a flat rate and we don't hide our pricing. Call and ask us for a free quote for your next scratch off printing project.

Making your own scratch off cards is faster than doing it with the paint and tape, although that is a great option for those that are crafty and enjoy it. If you're short on time, you can purchase a 100 scratch off stickers for $5.00. When you make your own scratch off cards, you peel our scratch off sticker from the liner and apply over prize printed on your card. If you need some ideas, visit our website to get the juices flowing. Etsy is also filled with great ideas and adorable designs.

Scratch off sticker- Sale

Sale on Scratch off stickers

We're working on inventory and have put our 1" square scratch off sticker on SALE. Not just a little sale, it's more like oh wow, I better stock up at these prices sale! Best of all you can purchase a 1,000 with 1st class shipping. You can get 1,000 with shipping included for under $25. Retail for 1,000 with shipping is normally $40.

Best homemade laundry soap

My mom told me about this laundry soap she found on Pinterest. She sent me over some samples and I was in love. I made up my own batch for less than $15. I use 1 tablespoon. This stuff gets out blood, stains and puppy messes. I'm in love with it. My husband is allergic to some brands and so far we haven't had a problem. Warning this makes a large batch. I mixed mine up outside in a 5 gallon container with lid. I do a lot of laundry, 3-4 loads a day and I predict this batch will last us 3-4 months. That's a lot of savings!

We purchased a box of:
Baking Soda
Baking soda wash
20 Borax Mule
3 bars of Fels-Naptha soap- I put mine in the food processor, worked perfectly. Much faster/easier than grinding it.

http://beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/homemade-laundry-soap.html is where I got the directions. I didn't add the oxyclean and I've been thrilled with the results.
This summer I've been mama to newborn puppies and kittens, bottlefeeding, changing, washing, bathing towels, rangs and more towels. This laundry soap has been wonderful for this. Highly recommended. We love it!