1. Raise your prices. This seemingly counterintuitive piece of advice can actually bring you the kind of customers you want and your business needs: those willing to spend money on your services. In the case of Jeremy Brandt of We Buy Houses, increasing his prices lowered the number of “tire-kicker clients” who didn’t follow through on his company’s services, and raised his customer base thanks to “increased perceived value.” (From "Is It Time to Throw Out Your Standard Sales Playbook?" by Angela Stringfellow)

2. Keep learning. Resting on what your existing knowledge base is a sure way to get passed up by your competitors, writes OPEN Forum contributor Bruna Martinuzzi. There’s a wealth of free business and management-related courses online, not to mention in good old-fashioned books. (Fortune 500 CEOs read five to six books a month on average.) (From "One Key Thing That Can Make You a Better Business Leader" by Bruna Martinuzzi)

3. Tap Twitter for your holiday marketing plans. Twitter consumers surveyed by a third-party research agency for the microblogging platform want to support small businesses this holiday season—a whopping 80 percent of those surveyed. Ninety-five percent of the group “plan to shop at small retailers and 35 percent will shop on smaller e-commerce websites,” writes small-business expert Rieva Lesonsky. (From "How Marketing on Twitter Can Help Boost Holiday Sales," by Rieva Lesonsky) season/

4. Use vertical ads. Fresh off the news that 56.1 percent of all online display ads are never seen, Google suggests using vertical ads to promote your business online. These ads get you more bang for your buck because “they stay on screen longer as users move around a page,” according to research from Google. (From "How to Build an Unforgettable Personal Brand," by Bruna Martinuzzi)

5. Have minimal text on your home page. “Minimal text can lead to maximum interaction,” advises OPEN Forum contributor Erika Napoletano. “Visitors spend less time reading and more time doing. Give your site a once-over for text overload, and see where you can create on-brand graphics to replace some of those clunky explainer sections.”  (From “How These 5 Websites Crush Home Page Design,” by Erika Napoletano) 

6. Pivot after analyzing the market. Upon realizing that his laptop repair business was losing customers due to laptop’s increasing affordability, Arthur Silberman of LaptopMD+ expanded his services to make up for the dropoff in his original services. Now he offers smartphone repairs. I analyzed the market and realized smartphone usage was on the incline," Zilberman says. "With smartphone service, I was quickly able to offset the loss of laptop business with a bevy of monthly smartphone service requests." (From "Clues Your Customer Base Is Abandoning You (and How to Stop It)," by Geoff Williams) 

7. Use faces in your marketing videos. While b-roll that includes things like soaring birds, running waterfalls, taxis whizzing by, or your product have a place in your marketing videos, “people remember other faces, not other things,” writes small-business consultant Barry Moltz. (From "Get More People to Watch Your Marketing Videos," by Barry Moltz) 

8. Mix up your social media content. Your social media accounts should be a mix of promotional and informational. One way to do this is to follow Joe Pulizzi’s Social Media 4-1-1 method: share four pieces of content from industry influencers, one piece of original branded content, and one that’s promotional. (From "The Social Media Content Plan That Can Help Get Results," by Angela Stringfellow) 

9. Make sure you’re ready for new customers. What good is saying you want a young, mobile-ready audience if your current offerings won’t meet their needs? Don’t reach out to a new audience until you’re sure that you understand this new market’s needs and how you can adapt your business to meet them. (From "Expand Your Business by Attracting a New Demographic," by Danny Brown) 

10. Allow for quiet time. With offices moving to open-floor designs, it’s much harder for workers to think, let alone get work done. Let your employees have the time to think in isolation to come up with great ideas, and then schedule group meetings “to build and expand on those creative ideas,” writes OPEN Forum contributor Vivian Giang. (From "How to Supercharge Your Brainstorming Sessions," by Vivian Giang) 

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