The number of businesses listed on the site has reached 2,700 and continues to increase daily. The number of brokers that have listed with site has been increasing steadily. The number of franchise opportunities that are listed in the site has also increased in the site showing the effectiveness of the company’s very active marketing campaigns. In Nov 2009, we attended the IBBA show in Reno, Nevada for the first time and received a lot of recognition from the broker community.

In 2010, we started to roll out a new Marketing Campaign that helped increase our presence within Social Media and continually increase our search engine ranking. We have introduced a Winter Promotional Offer where Business Brokers can register and renew their membership for $199 which includes a full year’s Featured Broker Membership and all the benefits the featured membership offers.

“The sites increased marketing efforts are being noticed within the Broker community. We have noticed the increase in number of views and inquiries of our business opportunities we have posted on this site”, says a leading business broker. In addition, Franchisors appreciate the sites clean design and highly navigable interfaces. “With our organic search results increasing everyday, it is helping us drive more Buyer traffic to the site. We have also increased our marketing efforts to help generate additional traffic. Be sure to look for us at the Spring 2010 IBBA conference in Orlando, FL!” said Sweta Shah, Marketing Director for BuyTradeBiz.com.

BuyTradeBiz.com is internet’s newest businesses for sale and franchises for sale listing website. Designed using the latest Web 2.0 concepts buyers and sellers are increasingly adopting the site as their favorite platform to find a buy a business and sell a business. Privately held BuyTradeBiz.Com, was founded by veterans of the software industry, to create a new paradigm for the business marketplace.

Google presents something called blended search results, which means they show images and videos alongside thext links for ANY search conducted through their site.  It is much easier to get an image to the first page of Google that it is to get any kind of text link or website.

If you consider both of these facts, along with the obvious fact that photos can tell a story about your business in a way that even the best written marketing language cannot, it should come as no surprise that having images as part of our web marketing of your business is quickly becoming imperative.

• Re-title your files: rename your image files to something meaningful like “business_for_sale.jpg.”  An image title that uses keywords is the first to optimize your images online.
• Add an image gallery:  The benefit of having these images directly on your website, is that they are linked to your main URL and this is beneficial from a search point of view.  The other positive is that you can link to share with anyone.  The other search tip for these images is that you should be sure to add “alt text” which is the text added in the code behind your image so that you describe it for those who cannon see it for any reason.  Search engines also read this text to understand what the image is of.
• Promote the images: you will want to try and share your images anyplace your business has an online profile.

Many small businesses have completely ignored online images area of marketing that could have a huge impact on their bottom line.

Twitter is the digital manifestation of word of mouth, allowing users to broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.

Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers but it can help find both suppliers and customers nationwide.  It can give a small business national presence in a way only large marketing and advertising budgets have allowed in the past.  Twitter is also a great place for information.  For example you can learn business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.

Click here to create your free Twitter account today and start connecting!

Now that you have set your new goal, that hard part is achieving it.  Below are three ways that can help you recruit new clients:

1. Go where the growth is:  Identify key industry segments that are growing and reach out to them with something as simple as attending their trade show.  “At Homestead Resort, in Midway, Utah, general manager Britt Mathwich says the hotel made a quick shift away from the corporate and training market to families, after seeing a slump in business travel.  The resort picked up more business by attending home-decorating and bridal shows, he says.”
2. Strategy of secondment: Partner with companies that provide similar or complementary services.  “Maclay, President of engineering-consulting firm Voler Systems, is now working on two projects that combine Voler’s electrical-engineering expertise with the other firm’s mechanical-engineering specialty.”
3. Online Tools: Maintain a blog or a social media profile which includes facebook.come, linkedin.com, and twitter.com.  Social-networking tools are also places to post promotions.  “Mr.Maclay says he gained new clients by posting the company’s resume on Craigslist.”

Take a few minutes to update your marketing plan and get your business off to a great start in 2010!

1. One-on-One Time:  The best public relations strategy is to b uild relationships with key members of the press.  You can easily identify a core group of media outlets that can deliver coverage vital to your business.  It takes a bit of homework to create your own short list of the media that influence your cutomers when they’re considering buying what you market.
2. Choose the Right Tool:  When sending a press release, make sure its headline contains a stat, fact, or compelling piece of information that’s new or revelatory, and that your first sentence has the power to sell your story.  Never send a stream of ho-hum pitches in the hope that over time you’ll capture attention.
3. Follow up to seal the deal:  Follow-up is essential for taking your new PR relationships to the next level.  You can make contact by phone, e-mail, or both.  The key is to determine that your pitch was received and whether there’s any interest in that particular item.  Most of all, you want to uncover what type of information you can provide that each media contact will find most compelling.

Maybe you’re press release will be the next big story on the home pages of CNN, MSNBC, and all the other major websites!

Many online directories such as crunchbase.com and wikipedia are great platform for small business to get their message out but small businesses should check monthly to ensure the information is accurate.

An easy way is to set up alerts from the directory and additional alerts such as Google Alerts.  Therefore every time something is added or removed from the listing the small business will receive an email.

Hurry and take advantage of all the free exposure and free advertising for your small business today!

Just like most products Google launches, Google Voice is available by invitation only. Because of the limited number of invitations issued by Google thus far, these invitations are being auctioned for as much as $100! What is an alternative if you are a small business owner? Click here to register for your invitation, and with Google releasing up to 10,000 phone numbers in the coming months you won’t have to wait long.