Did you know 60% of Australian Small businesses fail within three years?

20% go under in the first 12 months.

Businesses with less than 20 employees are the official qualification to be considered small, but the majority of small businesses are sole traders with exactly 0 employees, which leads to one of the major reasons for failure.

As a sole trader, you need to cover not just what you do as a business, whether it be making jewellery or delivering singing telegrams (do people still do that? They should). You need to be able to market your business. Get your name and brand out there. Grab people out of their daily lives and introduce them to a problem you can fix. A problem that perhaps they did not even know they had.

For example. I was putting away my winter doona a couple of weeks ago in a crazed moment of optimism, it was of course a premature move as Melbourne then rolled out its infamous “Indian Winter” in December. However, I mentioned it to my sister and she immediately insisted that I get some vacuum-sealed bags that literally turn your voluminous sheep-dog-sized folded doona into the size of a large biscuit.

I did not know I had this problem. Taking up all my storage with unseasonal bed coverings. But I did. I put the doona biscuit under my bed and immediately started compressing everything in my linen cupboard, popping them into an old tim tam pack for safekeeping. It was a game-changer.

Now, if it had not been brought to my attention. I would still be cramming bedding into cupboards, knowing that the next unsuspecting opener would be hit with a fluffy avalanche.

What if your future core consumers don’t all have bossy sisters to tell them what to do?

How do you get your goods or services in front of the eyes of your ideal audience? You make it as easy as possible to find your website, and how do people find things these days? You better believe it is Google. So if you are typing in ‘Melbourne Singing Telegram’. You want your business to be on that first page (is there a second page?) If you are these guys. You are smashing it. Well done.

The singing telegram guys above have done the work and now, I am going to check them out. Because Google is telling me they are who I am searching for.

It is a whole range of things that keep your business, well ‘a business’, but getting clients to your website is crucial. Let me show you how. Start with my tips below.

See my top seven tips for increasing your Website traffic here.