Business, finances, forex

Infusionsoft is now known as Keap.

And Keap has a new smart client management software product built specifically for small businesses.

The Keap rebranding and launch is specifically designed to appeal to the large market of small home based businesses as well as those in the professional and personal service industries that have been previously shut out of automation because of the cost and technical requirements around software.

This software offering automates certain client tasks like scheduling appointments, following up on quotes and leads and even collecting payments. It targets small businesses like home repair, fitness and even business consulting as well as interior design and prompts the user when it’s time to make contact.

Brent Leary Managing Partner, CRM Essentials, added his expert input:

“Rebranding InfusionSoft to Keap and launching a separate, simplified product aimed at a bigger pool of smaller businesses with different needs to their traditional customer base is a big undertaking.  It couples reaching a new customer audience with one message while addressing concerns of current customers who may feel the shift in branding signals potential change in the products and services they’ve grown accustomed to,” he wrote in an email. “It will take a great deal of effort for Keap to attract new customers at scale for the new product, while retaining current customers for the long  haul.”

Keap Rebrand

The rebrand and new product launch are the result of two years of research into small businesses.  Keap CEO Clate Mask provided some statistics in a press release.

“We discovered small service providers waste time juggling five to seven tools just to book appointments, send communications, provide quotes or collect payments. That is 50 hours a month that could be spent servicing more clients, growing the business or at home with family.”

Features

Some of the important features include the fact new smart client management software streamlines important functions into one place. There’s also a mobile app so that small business owners can get access to client information 24/7.

There’s also a series of auto reminders and personalized follow-ups that are designed to save valuable time for small business owners. It streamlines and can almost eliminate going back and forth with clients through email or on the phone to follow up on quotes and proposals. It even makes it easier to chase late payments.

There’s a one click pay now button so online invoices get paid quickly and easily.

Work Ahead

Finally, Leary had a few words on the work ahead for the new venture.

“Keap will have to accelerate their efforts to gain the traction they need to scale up customers for the new product.  It took them 15 years to reach the 200K user mark.  With more competition from a variety of directions, they will have to take a different approach than what they’ve done in the past in order to scale up their customer acquisition activities to reach the “millions of users” goal they want to grow to.”

Keap were pioneers in both CRM and marketing automation small business.The company has over  200,000 users worldwide under the Infusionsoft and Keap product banner. They have headquarters  in Chandler, Arizona and other offices in  San Francisco and Atlanta. Visit them online at www.keap.com or connect here on Facebook.

Image: Keap

This article, “Infusionsoft Rebrands as Keap With Software to Streamline Client Tasks for Small Businesses” was first published on Small Business Trends

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Treasury yields fall further; European stocks unsettled by gloomy data

Did you know a staggering 44% of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast and an incredible 40 million people tune into podcasts for education, entertainment and inspiration every week?

We cannot ignore the fact that podcasts are becoming an increasingly popular and prevalent way to be informed about the latest business and industry tips, trends and updates.

In short, if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur and you’ve yet to jump on the podcast phenomenon, you could be seriously missing out on having easy access to this exciting information and communication medium.

Best Business Podcasts

If you’re unsure which podcasts to listen to, take a look at the following best 15 business podcasts that U.S. listeners can get right now.

Entrepreneurs on Fire

Entrepreneurs on Fire is an award-winning podcast that was founded and presented by John Lee Dumas. The podcast features John interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs to help aspiring entrepreneurs achieve a seamless journey to business success.

The Art of Hustle

The Art of Hustle podcast is co-produced by WeWork and iHeartRadio as an informative platform for entrepreneurs and marketers. This popular business podcast was founded by Anthem Salgado, a small business coach and marketing specialist. Each episode provides business advice and training designed to “untangle your to-do list and clear a pathway for new forward movement.”

Rise and Grind

Rise and Grind is hosted by Shark Tank presenter Daymond John, one of the most prominent names in America’s business landscape today. Each podcast sees John interview leading business figures on issues related to productivity, power and performance.

Indie Hackers

Enjoy listening to raw and unscripted conversations with the founders of profitable online business on the Indie Hackers podcast. Host Courtland Allen interviews successful online business founders to find out how they have successfully marketing and grown their online business.

Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Over Coffee is an informative podcast which is recorded each week from a coffee shop by hosts Christopher Penn and John Wall. The podcast is designed to help small businesses with marketing, providing them with tips on the likes of social media, copywriting, SEO, affiliate marketing and more.

Foundr Podcast

Nathan Chan hosts the Foundr Podcast, designed to help small business owners and entrepreneurs learn from the greatest minds in business today. This leading business podcast is hailed as the “go-to digital resource for the growing ranks of craft, self-made entrepreneurs – at every level of experience.”

Business Wars

The Business Wars podcast dissects and analyses stories behind brands and their leaders. It looks at the inspiration and challenges some of the world’s biggest brands have been up against, such as Nike, Netflix and Adidas. Insight into inspiring real-life business stories is presented by David Brown, former anchor of Marketplace.

Hack to Start

Hack to Start is devoted to telling the stories of interesting people and the innovative ways they have achieved success. Each week co-hosts Franco Varriano and Tyler Copeland speak with a new guest about how they “created, hacked and hustled their way to the top.”

Mixergy

Mixery is a popular business podcast hosted by successful business owner and entrepreneur Andrew Warner. Each episode focuses on different aspects of running a business, from starting a venture to finding a sustainable, purpose-built business. Each episode features a successful and inspiring entrepreneur.

Startups for the Rest of Us

Startups for the Rest of Us is an extremely useful business podcast that helps entrepreneurs, developers and designers improve the way the launch software products. This popular podcast is hosted by the experienced web app professional and author Rob Walling and programmer analyst Mike Taber.

Hack the Entrepreneur

Hack the Entrepreneur is an entrepreneur podcast for anyone looking to develop their entrepreneurial mindset. Hosted by Jon Nastor, the podcast explores the struggles, fears and habits of small business owners to help entrepreneurs find success.

Demand Gen Chat

Host Emil Shour helps B2B marketers generate more leads and revenue on the Demand Gen Chat podcast. Each episode records a candid interview with an expert in B2B marketing, exploring different topics like SEO, advertising and career growth.

Inside LaunchStreet

Inside LaunchStreet examines the whole picture involved in setting up, running and growing a business. Each episode sees an inspiring figure in the world of business and marketing provide insight on how to successful run a business. Listeners benefit from actionable takeaways at the end of each episode. Inside LaunchStreet is hosted by Tamara Ghandour, founder of the thriving online education and business community platform, GoToLaunchStreet.com.

The Marketing Companion

Claiming to be the “world’s most entertaining podcast”, the Marketing Companion is a useful tool for businesses wanting to improve their marketing capabilities. Hosted by the globally-recognized marketing author, consultant and blogger Mark Schaefer, alongside the pithy research and raconteur Tom Webster, the Marketing Companion provides fun, witty and unique insight into all aspects of marketing.

StartUp

Described as arguably the number one podcast in the world today, StartUp looks at what it is really like to start and launch a startup. The podcast features professionals within the business world. This popular business podcast is hosted by Alex Blumberg and Lisa Chow.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “The 15 Best Business Podcasts Right Now” was first published on Small Business Trends

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Energy and chemicals group to lose ‘substantial’ deposit after talks fall through

Just like the number of people who walk in your brick and mortar store, the amount of traffic you get on your website will dictate the success of your business.

A new infographic released by Google AdSense lists four valuable tools you can use to get the most out of your website with the goal of increasing the traffic. Although AdSense is known for monetizing your site more effectively, it also has a suite of tools to help you increase traffic and reach more of your potential customer base.

How to Increase Traffic Using Google AdSense

For small businesses with a digital presence, optimizing the monetization and traffic of a website is absolutely essential. Google wants to help your site by sharing important tips on how to boost and optimize your web site with Google AdSense tools.

Google Search

It all starts with the range of Google Search console tools to improve the performance of your digital presence online.

According to Google, you should submit your page to the Google index to see how the search engine views your site. This will diagnose any potential problems so the crawler can gain access for optimizing your ads.

You can then use Search Analytics to see the queries which are bringing more visitors to your site.

Traffic Analysis

According to Google, boosting the traffic of your site requires you to analyze, optimize and gain visibility.

With this analysis, you can determine who your audience is so you can tailor the content and ads on your site accordingly. Once you have figured this out, you need to optimize your website so it works seamlessly on all platforms.

This is followed by implementing solutions which allow you to gain the visibility of your site to rank high in searches.

With Google Analytics, you can track and monitor who is visiting your site and when. Based on this information, you can further optimize and customize the content and even the products and services you offer.

Additional tools include Google Trends to see what everyone is searching for, Market Finder to find new promotional opportunities, Consumer Barometer to determine just how people are using the internet, New Consumer insights for segmenting audiences with data, analytics and insights, and  Success Stories for getting valuable tips and tricks from the community of users.

Channel Customisation

After you understand what your audience is looking for, the next step is to customize your channels. This will further optimize your site in order to reach your users.

Google says you need to review its new traffic acquisition tips and create up to 2,000 channels to optimize the performance of your ad units.

With the custom channels in place, it is time to turn them into targetable ad placements so advertisers can choose to display their ads.

During the optimization process, Google recommends you follow the Google AdSense Program policies and Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile has surpassed desktop traffic. If your digital assets are not optimized for mobile traffic you are greatly limiting the number of users who will visit your site.

Whether you built your site yourself or you had a developer do it, make sure it is optimized for mobile. This will make it much faster to load and format on mobile devices to improve the user experience.

Google also recommends to start building AMP versions of your site, test your site to ensure it is operating efficiently on mobile, compare the speeds of other publishers with your site, and more.

Image: Google

This article, “Master the Art of Boosting Your Traffic with These 4 Tools from Google AdSense” was first published on Small Business Trends

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The dampened outlook is a huge disappointment to policy-makers as growth in the eurozone had until recently been regarded as one of the strongest engines of the global economy.

This came as economic growth in the eurozone hit a weak 0.2 percent in the October to December period, the same as the previous quarter, the Eurostat agency said.

The sluggish end of year for the eurozone comes a little surprise after the IMF and European Central Bank already warned last week of dark clouds over the economy in Europe.

Feeding into fears is that the slowdown is in part coming from Germany, the pillar of the European economy.

That was not the case duing the debt crisis, when Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy were the laggards of the eurozone.

Only the Italian economy still an active concern, as clashes between the populist-led government in Rome and Brussels has seen Italy tip into recession.

The International Monetary Fund lowered its growth forecast for the eurozone in 2019 to 1.6 percent, compared to 1.9 percent previously.

Eurostat also said that, in December, the unemployment rate in the 19 countries that use the single currency remained stable at 7.9 percent, the same a November.

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The Fraud Squad, the National Police and Sofia Police Department have broken up a phone fraud that has been going on for almost a month, said the press office of the Ministry of the Interior. The victim was a 71-year-old man from Sofia, who, in the period from 8 to 10 January, handed more than BGN 100,000 in total over to the scammers, leaving the money in the area of the Transport Hospital. On 23 January, the scam went on – the fraudsters persuaded him to sell a property and hand them the money, which was supposed to take place on 30 January. On that day, two couriers – a man, 61, with a criminal record and his daughter, 33, were arrested. During the operation, the police found and seized the money, mobile phones and SIM cards. Pre-trial proceedings were instituted against the two suspects. 
In another special police operation on 28 January, officers of the National Police and the 7th District Sofia Police Station solved another phone fraud against an elderly woman from Sofia. A 30-year-old man was arrested right after taking BGN 1,400. The money and other items related to the crime were seized. Police also found that he participated in another fraud committed on 9 August 2018 in Sofia for the amount of BGN 4,000. He is also being investigated for his possible involvement in other phone scams carried out between August 2018 and January 2019. 
The investigation of both cases will continue under the supervision of the Prosecutor’s Office.

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