No matter what you are looking for, the friendly and knowledgeable staff at Metcalfe Realty will be able to help you find the perfect location for your business needs. Whether you need smaller office space in Ottawa or a large warehouse location, just go online and visit their website and you will be able to find something to suit your needs almost instantly.

Metcalfe Realty also offers monthly parking spaces in the city at both in-door and surface lots. To find out more information about monthly and hourly parking in Ottawa, visit their website for parking spaces at http://www.parkingottawa.com.

Give them a call for a free, no-obligation roofing estimate in Memphis or submit their online estimate form from their website to get your roofing quote today!

To find out more about Just Right Self Storage Ottawa and to get access to the latest promotions, visit their website at http://www.justrightselfstorage.ca.

Visit their new website, http://www.homeimprovementottawa.com, to learn more about the services offered by Great Canadian Home Improvement in Ottawa.

Bark Avenue provides a safe, clean, and fun environment for the four legged members of your family. They also offer a pet taxi service to help make your life easier and ensure that your beloved k-9 is able to show up to appointments on time without disrupting your schedule.

To find out more about the services offered by Bark Avenue visit their new website at http://www.barkavenueottawa.com which was designed by the Creative Designs website design agency in Ottawa.

Metcalfe Realty has parking lots across the city, some indoor and some surface, and have monthly parking spaces available for your vehicle. Visit their new website from your desktop computer at http://www.parkingottawa.com or browse on your smartphone and see results posted by proximity to your exact location with links to directions by Google Maps and pricing information.

The new parking website is an exciting addition to their portfolio of online tools to assist customers in finding the right information they are searching for when looking for parking in Ottawa. Metcalfe Realty also offer affordable office space in Ottawa. To browse their recent listings, visit their official website at http://www.metcalfe.ca.

Remember, if you’re looking for hourly parking in Ottawa or a monthly parking space in Ottawa, just visit http://www.parkingottawa.com and you will find the affordable, conveniently located, and safe parking in Ottawa.

Visit their promotions page on their new website, http://www.crystalcleanottawa.com to scoop up your savings while you can as deals this good are only offered for a limited time.

The team at Crystal Clean are young, energetic and knowledgeable about their profession. Honestly, these guys take cleaning seriously and to a whole new level. They just finished cleaning our offices and we have already noticed a difference in the air quality. We are happy to have been working with such a wonderful team of individuals and wish them all the best with their carpet cleaning business and highly recommend their services to everyone in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.

They offer both commercial and residential cleaning services in Ottawa and surrounding areas at extremely affordable carpet cleaning rates. Additionally, they are very honest, reliable, and experienced carpet cleaners. Give them a call or submit a free carpet cleaning estimate from their website and you will have a pleasant experience from start to finish.

Thanks again to the team at Crystal Clean! It has been and will continue to be a pleasure working with you.

Regards,
The team at Creative Designs Ottawa

Some necessary skills you will need in order to design and develop a website are:

• Knowledge of HTML – There are visual editing programs that can help you with design but some basic knowledge of HTML is necessary.

• Artistic ability – In order to make the site visually appealing you will need good eye for color and generally good taste as well as creativity.

• Graphic software expertise – You will also need some knowledge and experience with graphic editing/creation software in order to produce attractive web-ready photos, images, and graphics for your website. You will also need to optimize your images for the web so that they load quickly while preserving the quality.

• Navigation expertise – Another critical skill is understanding how to present information and create a flow within your website. This means that you will need to have an understanding of navaigational structures, design, and implementation in order to develop a website that presents your information in a user-friendly way. If your website visitors have difficulty finding information they will leave and go somewhere else. Imagine yourself in a store where you are waiting for someone to come help you. Most people would leave after a brief amount of waiting time and go somewhere else. Now you can just imagine how many of your website visitors will leave your website instantly if they have difficulty finding what they are looking for on your site — all it takes is a simple click of a mouse and they are gone.

• Programming knowledge - Depending on the features you require in your website, you may require advanced programming knowledge. If you require a database or interactive and dynamic content then you will need at least some knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, PHP/MySQL, ASP or programming languages to add interactive web pages or integrate your website with an online database.

• Marketing, advertising, and business experience – No matter how you cut it you need to have marketing and business experience to build a professional, feature-rich, user-friendly, and effective website. There are major business and marketing concepts and aspects that need to be taken into consideration when developing a website from the beginning stages to the official launch and maintenance.

I can’t do all of that, what do I do?

If you don’t have the time, energy, experience, or skills needed to develop your own website then the best option is for you to hire a professional website design company. Now, one important thing to note is that I mention company and not freelancer or designer. Website companies and firms can offer you three very important things:

1. Reliability and professionalism
2. Business and marketing experience
3. Quality assurance

Furthermore, website design firms will be there in the future when your business needs their services/products whereas freelancers come and go and may not be around in a year or even a month when you need website maintenance, support, or other products and services. Can you really afford to risk losing your investment or time, energy, and money by choosing a freelancer to work on your business website? Over the years I have seen several clients who have lost a lot of time and money because they were trying to save some money by hiring a freelancer. This is your business we are talking about and if your business is important to you then it should be worth the proper investment in order to create a professional image and increase sales.

The best way that I have found to help business owners and entrepreneurs answer this question is to use an example that everyone understands. Deciding whether or not to hire a website design company to develop your website is like repairing a car. You can repair your own vehicle if you have the knowledge, tools, and the time and it will not cost you very much with your largest expense being time and energy. Of course if you are not highly trained or skilled in car repairs then the quality of your repairs may be much lower than the repairs completed by a professional mechanic. This is why the majority of people take their vehicles to professional mechanics in order to properly repair their vehicles. If you want or need your car to run smoothly then it is better to take it to a professional; especially if their work is guaranteed. Similarly when it comes to your company, you probably want your website to function properly, always be available, be user-friendly, search engine optimized, and feature-rich. So does it not make more sense to have a professional website design company manage your business website. This will allow you to use your time and energy to run your business while providing the peace of mind and security that your website is being developed and maintained by a reliable and experienced company.

Summary

The decision whether to hire a professional web design firm or to design and develop the site yourself depends on the skills and experience you have, how much time you can spare, and whether or not you want to do the work yourself or focus on the other tasks required to run your business.

When it comes to marketing your business there are many different options and strategies that each have their benefits. Even if you have enough capital and marketing dollars to fund an expensive and large marketing campaign you can usually achieve your marketing objectives by exhausting less expensive but equally effective options first.

Five Inexpensive but Effective Marketing Tips for Businesses on a Budget

1) Contact your existing clients and offer them discounts on services or products in exchange for referrals.

The establishment of an affiliates or referral program is an inexpensive way to foster new business. This tactic is great because it encourages old or existing customers to use or buy your products and services again while bringing you new clients. Another advantage with this approach is that the discount you offer your clients for the referral does not have to be substantial since they have already used or purchased your services or products at full price before. By offering them a discount or other incentive you are able to entice your previous customers to return and bring you new customers at the same time.

2) Stop marketing to customers who are unprofitable.

Many business owners have this idea that the more sales or clients you have the more successful your business is or will become however many business owners waste a significant amount of time, energy, and money with “break-even” customers. Essentially, you will be far better off if you market your products or services to new prospects than you would be to continue servicing or marketing to customers that are using more of your resources than they are contributing. Of course the familiar saying “It is less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new one” still rings true; however more often than not you will find that there are quite a few clients that are costing you as much or more than what you are investing in keeping them as clients. One easy way to curb this or at least minimize the impacts is to keep detailed records on all aspects of your business in order to determine which customers are break-even customers and which ones are worth a more serious investment and more marketing efforts.

3) Contact local media networks.

Local editorials convey far more credibility with prospective clients than paid advertising. Contact your local newspaper about running an interview about your business. Of course you will have to give them something to write about and it will have to be news worthy. Perhaps the new release of a service or product that benefits the community, some recent charity work, or even the launch of your business just to suggest a few.  Also, preparing a press-release and other information destined for the media will increase your changes of getting published.  In many cases, if you submit a ready-to-be-printed article your changes of getting printed are increased as local papers etc. often have “spots” that need to be filled from time to time. Why not help them fill that spot with your editorial.

4) Don’t let your customers fall through the cracks and slip away.

We have already covered the benefits of putting more effort, money, and time into customers that are profitable vs. those that are not, however every successful business owner knows the advantages of hanging onto clients that are worth hanging onto and you will most likely be able to distinguish between the two the longer you are in business. It is true that it costs far less to retain an existing customer (whether inactive or disgruntled) than to acquire a new one although you will need to use your business intuition to determine which ones are worth the investment of time, energy, and money. Send a personalized email or card, make a brief telephone call to see if all is well, or even send a small gift or discount card/customer appreciation card to let them know that you are and should still be a part of their day to day life.

5) Put your information on everything you hand out.

Put all of your contact details on every promotional material, letterhead, envelope, car door etc. that is used for your business. This may seem like common sense but you would be surprised at how many times we have received a business owner’s promotional materials with missing information or watched them drive past in an unbranded vehicle. Of course there are some objects such as vehicles that may be used for personal use as well so you would not want to permanently brand the object; however there are always alternatives. For example, you may share your vehicle with your spouse and would not want to invest in a vehicle wrap that permanently (can be removed but not easily or inexpensively) displays your company information. An inexpensive and easily removable solution is to invest in vehicle magnets.  There is really no reason why you should be traveling in a vehicle without displaying your company phone number, email, website, address, or at least your logo. Furthermore, only under extremely rare circumstances should you continue to distribute promotional materials with missing information. If you have a website then it should be clearly printed on every piece of paper, business card, envelope, or other item that you hand out. If you have recently acquired a company website but you still have thousands of business cards without this piece of information then you should order new ones with the website and put the old ones on reserve. Notice that I said reserve and not to toss them away. The reason you should keep the old ones is because they still have value, just not as much value as the new ones. Of course if you have paid for your website and/or would like customers to visit the website then you would not be doing your business or yourself any favours if you continued to hand out the promotional materials without the website address. The old ones are handy for specific circumstances and therefore are still valuable business tools. For example, you may find yourself in a situation where you are speaking with clients who would not be interested in visiting your website or do not have internet access. These are the perfect situations to distribute the old cards. Additionally, you can use them to give to acquaintances that have requested your number on a personal/friendship level. This serves two purposes: A) your acquaintance now has your contact details and will be able to contact you, and B) your acquaintenance may show the card to someone who would want your services or products or your acquaintance may even purchase or use your services or products themselves.

Conclusion

While these five steps may or may not benefit your particular situation, every business owner (like Owen Tripp) should invest some time in considering alternatives to expensive marketing strategies in order to utilize available resources and tools. There is no right or wrong approach to marketing as there are too many variables. The important thing to remember is to keep detailed records and statistics of your business practices, previous marketing strategies/results, customers and conversion stats, and any other form of data that can help to minimize the risks associated with marketing campaigns. Furthermore proper research, brainstorming, and a closer look at traditional forms of marketing can often yield great results while keeping within a small budget.