Endorphin Web Marketing Audit
In this video, Erik Bunaes discusses the Endorphin Web Marketing Audit.
Let us help you gain visibility on the web, drive more web traffic to your site, and convert more visitors to prospects, and more prospects to sales (and $$$).
Watch the video now.
Follow this link for more details and to schedule a Web Marketing Audit.
Also, please feel free to contact Erik Bunaes at 415.595.6813 with any questions or to learn more about how this audit can improve your web marketing.
And finally, we are proud to offer the Endorphin Web Marketing Audit at no charge during the month of July 2010. So get one quick or you’ll be paying $149 starting in August!
Happy Web Marketing!
Web Marketing Strategy – Development, Implementation & Management Services
Endorphin Advisors helps clients develop strategies to drive increased web traffic to their web properties, and then convert visitors into leads, and leads into sales.
We help develop fully-integrated, focused, effective web marketing campaigns, which can be very effective in terms of building brand awareness, driving new web traffic and generating new sales from the web.
We follow a process that helps identify and target a defined segment of potential customers. Then, we create the strategy to broadly market certain information and services to your customers to build awareness and interest, which creates additional web traffic.
Then, we implement strategies to turn visitors into prospects, prospects into leads, and leads into customers, all using a continuous, automated promotional campaign to maintain interest until purchase decision.
Watch the video to find out more from Erik Bunaes of Endorphin Advisors:
If you have any questions, or simply wish to learn a little more about how we might help your business generate more leads and more sales using the web, please don’t hesitate to contact us for a chat.
Call Erik Bunaes at 415.595.6813 today and start growing your sales using the Web!
Add Web Endorphins and Grow Your Sales
Add Web Endorphins And Grow Your Sales!
Marketing has always been a fascinating combination of analytical and creative disciplines, and now a third element is added to the marketing mix: Technology.
Get a systematic review of all your web marketing, we offer the Endorphin Advisors Web Marketing Audit & Report.
In this audit, we review ten critical aspects of web marketing and provide a detailed report and score to help you see where you stand with your web marketing, plus areas for potential improvement. We’ll help you answer the question: “How does my company’s web marketing stack up?”
We deliver to you a detailed, written report summarizing scoring for each of the ten sections, an overall score, and recommendations for improvement. Plus, we review this report with you and answer all your questions.
Request a WEB MARKETING AUDIT & REPORT Today!
Erik Bunaes Earns Certification (with Honors Distinction) in Inbound Marketing
Erik Bunaes Earns Certification (with Honors Distinction) in Inbound Marketing
Certification Awarded by Inbound Marketing University Training Program
San Rafael, CA – July 7, 2010 – Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification with Honors Distinction to Erik Bunaes of Endorphin Advisors as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program. The Honors Distinction is awarded to graduates with an exceptional understanding of inbound marketing. The top 15% of exam takers with a 90% score or higher receive this honor. (Press Release – Bunaes Earns Certification in Inbound Marketing)
This certification acknowledges Bunaes’ proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.
Bunaes is Principal and President of Endorphin Advisors, a boutique management consulting firm and marketing agency, located in San Francisco, CA.
Bunaes joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. In total, 1,300 individuals have successfully passed the IMU program, with only a small fraction receiving the Honors Distinction.
To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, Bunaes completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam.
Planning To Cash In Your Business For A Comfy Retirement? You Have A 1 in 4 Chance of Success
Planning To Cash In Your Business For A Comfy Retirement?
Small Business Owners Have A 1 in 4 Chance of Successfully Selling Their Business.
Read on to find out some of the things that make small businesses less desirable than larger businesses, and this will give you some ideas about how to prepare your business to be sold.
Here are some statistics on sales of businesses in the U.S.
- Less than $750K revenue, 18% are sold
- $750K – $2M revenue, 25% are sold
- $2M – $30M revenue, 29% are sold
- $30M+ revenue, 33% are sold
Source: CABB & Tom West
This means that if your business has less than $750,000 in annual revenue, there is less than a 1 in 5 chance that you will be able to sell it. Even once you get up to $2,000,000 in sales, there is only a 1 in 4 chance of selling your business.
This means that the higher the revenue, the better chance of selling the business.
This is not so much just a revenue target, but reflects the fact that larger businesses have some things that smaller businesses generally do not:
- More established operating systems & procedures
- Stronger management teams
- Specialized, experienced staff
- Better marketing strategies and tools
- Ability to effectively compete in their target markets
- Broader product or services offerings
- Deeper client bases with repeat customers
- Wider geographic reach
- More established partner, alliance and vendor relationships
If your retirement plan and golden years are relying on you successfully selling your business for a nice, big chunk of cash, you may have some work to do between now and then to increase your odds of achieving that comfortable, leisurely retirement.
Learn more about exit strategy planning and some of the things you can do before you try to sell your business that will attract buyers to your business.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Thank you for your time and interest.
The Endorphin Difference: What Makes Endorphin Advisors Unique and Effective?
In this new video, Erik Bunaes from Endorphin Advisors discusses the philosophy of Endorphin Advisors and how our unique, consultative and coaching-oriented approach to management consulting has brought new energy, confidence, clarity and success to our clients.
For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please see the following venues:
Web Site: http://www.EndorphinAdvisors.com
Endorphin Blog: http://blog.EndorphinAdvisors.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EndorphinAdvisors
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/companies/endorphin-advisors
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/endorphin1995
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ebunaes
Thank you for your time and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
New Web Video About Endorphin Advisors (from Erik Bunaes)
Endorphin Advisors adds new video on its Flagship web site at www.EndorphinAdvisors.com.
In new video, Erik Bunaes, President & Principal, discussing Endorphin Advisors’ services, capabilities, experience, team and web properties.
More videos are on their way.
Thank you for your interest and support.
Business Owners’ Perilous Decision: When Do I Sell Out?
We Boil Down The Most Difficult Decision Every Business Owner Must Make At Some Point In Their Lives
One of the single most important calculations to a business owner at some point in time, particularly when contemplating their retirement or “end game,” is the balance between “what is my business worth?” and “will that be enough to comfortably meet my retirement needs?”
In most cases, both of these figures are relatively vague – or completely unknown – numbers when the typical business owner begins to factor in the variety of economic, business, financial, personal and estate planning variables that likely have an effect on those two main figures.
Value of Business Side of Equation
On the “what’s my business worth today?” question, the true value is what a buyer is willing to pay for your business at a given time. Potential buyers will take into consideration all kinds of factors including:
- profitability and revenue trends of a business
- asking price
- presence of intellectual property
- expansion opportunities
- quality of financial and accounting statements and records
- relationship with landlord(s) and lease obligations
- experienced employees and managers
- quality and distribution of customer base
- market trends of customer base
- industry outlook
- barriers to market entry or competitive advantages maintained by seller
- economic conditions and outlook
- availability of financing and credit
This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see some of the different factors affecting the value of a business from a buyer’s perspective.
From the seller’s perspective there are the inevitable “what’s the multiple for my business” question. That refers to vague rules of thumb such as “X business is worth 1.5 times revenue” or X business is worth 2 times EBITA, net earnings or some other units of measure.
The problem with rules of thumb is that they vary from industry to industry and company to company. More importantly, they are vague and often misleading.
The right route is to obtain a certified opinion of value (COV) from a certified business appraiser. For a generic small business, this examination should run in the $4,000 to $6,000 range (higher or lower depending on size of business, it’s complexity, and the appraisal firm engaged). For larger and more complex businesses, the cost can be multiples of that cost.
Just remember that a “certified opinion of value” is an opinion of value and not a sale price. While the COV is based on objective analysis and uses direct comparison to relevant, current industry data, the actual “value” of a business is the value of it in the eyes of the buyer. There is no guarantee that you will get a sale price as high as the opinion of value. You might get higher. Or lower.
Retirement Needs Side of Equation
Now on the other side of the larger equation of “should I sell now,” is the “how much do I need to comfortably meet my retirement needs?” question.
For this side of the equation, it’s prudent to address this in consultation with a qualified wealth management professional. There are many variables and scenarios that should be included, along with some detailed financial calculations (net present value of money, estimated investment returns, estimated interest rates, projected taxes, etc.), to do this with any accuracy.
Steps Forward to Addressing Equation
To avoid the vague soul searching of “should I sell now” and “how much is my business worth,” the two gut-wrenching parts of this decision, there is a relatively clear path forward.
The solution is to seek the counsel of two qualified, experienced experts: a business appraiser, and a wealth management professional.
Undertake the two exercises of obtaining a current COV from the business appraiser and a retirement needs analysis from the wealth manager.
Now One Clear Equation
Using the retirement needs analysis as your baseline, does the COV exceed your desired retirement needs?
If so, you have the green light, all other things being equal, to move forward with putting your business up for sale. (Now comes the part of finding a qualified, experienced mergers and acquisitions advisor, investment banker or business broker to handle the marketing and sale transaction of your business. Which type of professional depends on the size and complexity of your business).
If the COV does not exceed your desired retirement needs, hold off selling your business for now.
Selling My Business Now Is Not In The Cards
If selling now doesn’t look like the right move, spend your time on improving your business so that when you do an update of this analysis, and the light is green to sell, you are ready to go!
Exit Planning Services From Endorphin Advisors
Endorphin Advisors has an experienced team of advisors to help you through this process. We offer confidential, expert advice, counsel and project management services to business owners contemplating the sale and exit from privately held businesses.
Endorphin Advisors has a full workshop on preparing companies to be sold. Please contact us if you are interested in learning more or wish to schedule a workshop.
Exit Planning Services From Endorphin Advisors
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Thank you for your continued interest and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
5/11/10
Google Analytics: Marketing on The Web Without Them Is Like Running Through The Dark Woods Without A Light!
Use Google’s Tools To Help Guide Your Marketing Efforts So You Don’t Crash Into Any Really Big Trees!
Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is a free service from Google which enables you to track traffic on virtually any web site. Importantly, it can also track web traffic on some social media pages, like Facebook.
Google Analytics also helps track performance of advertising on Google’s Adwords pay per click advertising service. This helps you closely track performance to manage ad buying budgets and individual ad performance.
Analytics is an incredibly powerful and relatively easy way to gain significant visibility into web traffic on your web site. Data in the basic views includes such items as unique visitors, page views and time spent on your site.
Data is tracked and displayed in pre-formatted, easy-to-read graphics and charts and includes such specific details as type of browser used by visitors, their Internet connection speeds, where visitors are located (i.e their geography) and how they arrived at your site (i.e. directly, from a search engine, or from another web site). The breadth and depth of data is impressive and easy to use, digest and maintain over time.
A good way to beginning using Good Analytics is to review some of the basic information and choose what are most important to you. I’d recommend printing out a couple of the key pages, put them in a binder or folder and start to track their changes from week to week or month to month. Then you can start to refine the reports you use, that measure the performance metrics important to you, and even create custom reports including only the data most important to helping you manage your specific marketing efforts.
In no time you will begin spouting off web traffic patterns and metrics and quoting increases in traffic improvements!
Go check out Google Analytics now and let us know if you have any questions or comments about its use. We’d love to hear from you.
Thank you for your continued interest and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
5/11/10
Small Businesses Are Small For A Reason – It Could Be Professional Negligence
I have worked with – and interacted with even more – small businesses over my consulting career. Often, I am inspired, impressed and occasionally totally blown away by the talent of many of the small businesses and their owners. These professionals and work-a-day folks alike are all trying to live their dream, make a living, compete on their own or build a company out of a hobby or skill they have seen in themselves and enjoy.
I’d like to talk today about the businesses and business owners that do not fit into this group. Today I’d like to talk about the business owners that I have seen, met and worked with that are small for a reason. Perhaps they are small for many reasons.
Let’s not ruminate today on specific businesses, business owners or examples. Let’s try and learn something from our experiences and observations, so that the business owners and professionals out there trying to survive, grow and build lasting businesses and companies can learn from – and hopefully avoid – some prevailing mistakes made by small business owners.
Briefly, here are some of our top observations preventing small business owners from successfully building larger businesses:
1. Failure to understand the selling process, and prepare for the selling cycle.
2. Not understanding the importance of the lifetime value of a customer.
3. Allowing ego to override requirements of bringing onboard talented help (whether full-time, part-time or outside consulting services).
4. Allowing ego also to prevent business owner from seeking help, in new ideas, capital, etc.
5. Negligence in defining and communicating a clear vision and purpose for the organization and its employees.
6. Ill-defined target customers
7. Failure to follow through on efforts to build and promote their brand effectively at all times.
I’ll come back to explaining my thinking in future blog posts, however, I will make the following comments.
It is surprising how business owners who are staking their livelihoods, careers and sometimes their dreams on their businesses fail to follow through on building up the brand of their business. This is often true even for experienced business owners, and it is often clear to even the business owner themselves.
In fact, if there was a court of law for small business owners where observers could walk in and tell a judge that the business owner knows or has an idea what to do, but that they are not doing it and know it, we’d have business owners being convicted of negligence.
Now I am not talking about legality here. I am talking about just plain failure to act on what is known – or good ideas that you are aware of – in detriment to your own business. I’m clearly stretching and distorting the term negligence here, but it is congruent enough to meet our needs in this situation.
Don’t be negligent with your business. Act on what you know and see and hear and learn.
Perhaps we will single out some particularly horrific examples of grossly negligent business owners as case studies in future posts.
In the meantime, thank you for your continued interest and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
5/9/10.
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