Chamber Seminar on eCommerce

Chamber Business Seminar: eCommerce and Your Business by Berkshire Direct

Date: Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Time: 8am-930am
Place: The Orchards, Adams Road, Williamstown
Speakers: Kevin Ellingwood, Jeff Stripp, and Allen Jezouit
Cost: FREE for Chamber Members

The team from Berkshire Direct will conduct another Chamber Business Seminar on Tuesday, February 22nd at the beautiful Orchards Hotel to talk about making the web work for your business. This presentation will focus on conducting sales transactions online, walking through the strategies and tactics required to be successful. Reservations are requested. Please call (413) 458-9077 or email info@williamstownchamber.com.

Berkshire Direct's newest partner, Kevin Ellingwood, ran Victoria Secret's website business for 5 years and followed that up with a stretch running the website and marketing for a successful online medical durable goods marketer. When combined with the Berkshire Direct team's other experiences in the online world, this seminar will bring you valuable perspectives on the strategies and tactics required for successful eCommerce in 2011 and beyond. The seminar will be relevant for folks considering the move to online sales as well as folks already selling online who are looking to grow their business.

Please contact Judy Giamborino at the Williamstown Chamber at (413) 458-9077 or via email at info@williamstownchamber.com to confirm your seat.

Gotta love 2011 so far!

The new year is certainly off to a positive start best we can tell. People are clearly back to investing in growing their businesses. We have seen a healthy uptick in inbound calls, leads, RFP's, etc. Very exciting for a small business like ours.

If you're a small business owner, you've got to be thinking about ways to expand your reach and grow your business without adding costs. In 2011, the right way to go is partnerships and collaborations. Let me give you an example.

At Berkshire Direct, We're super excited about our continued partnership with Miller Print & Litho and our new partnership with Zip'n Sort. Together we are able to provide the fully integrated services many customers want and we're able to use mutual referrals among our three customer lists to grow our businesses - yet we haven't had to take on any additional overhead or invest in any new equipment. That's a powerful combination.

Do you have any opportunities to partner with companies that are adjacent to your business whose offerings woud complement yours? 2011 is a time to explore those potentials. Leave no stone unturned.

The 12 Days of Holiday Revenue Maximization for Your Online Store

Our good friend Amber Chand of the Women’s Peace Collection forwarded us this article from Mashable about maximizing revenue in your online store during the holidays. The article is full of good tips to take on matters ranging from quality control to security to promotions. Well worth the read for anyone in the e-commerce business.

Read the entire article here.

5 New Online Services Perfect for Small Businesses

Found this great story on Mashable ... be sure to check it out. Learn about these five sites:

- Hashable

- Stipple

- Qwiki

- Storify

- Marginize

NY Times No More?

As the owner of a marketing agency (Berkshire Direct in Williamstown), I am constantly looking out for trends in advertising. The decline of newspapers has been underway for years. What's next?

Well, let's be honest. If the true impact of the remote control and the DVR were ever measured and publicly shared, I believe TV ad revenue would be devastated. Who watches commercials any more when you can either flip to another of the 500+ channels available at the push of a button OR simply fast-forward through the recorded show you are watching? How many people listen to their iPods or CD's in their cars instead of radio? What is that ultimately going to mean to radio ad dollars?

The bottom line is this: if you are an advertiser, you need to be measuring the results of your ad campaigns every day. You should not spend a penny on a campaign whose results you can't measure. Add ad-specific extensions to phone numbers so you know which ad people are calling about. Use URL's in ads that are just for that specific ad, so you can tell that the ad generated the website visit and not something else.

Finally, start investing in advertising on sites like iBerkshires. Their page views and visits are skyrocketing each month. When the newspapers are gone, these local micro news organizations might be the only thing left that people depend on daily for their local news. If you are a local business who depends upon traffic from local consumers, it may be your best bet. Plus, clickthroughs from ads on iBerkshires are totally measurable.