Now Hiring

Cirque Online is a progressive Digital Marketing Company with a focus on helping Sellers on Amazon become successful.  We are seeking to hire a part-time Amazon Product Specialist. Applicants must have experience with:

• Best practices for product optimization.

• Deep knowledge of Amazon Seller and Vendor Central and the tools available to sellers. (advertising, stores, vine, A+ content etc.)

• Ability to solve a variety of problems that may arise with Amazon (examples: matching errors, variation fixes, resolving infringement issues etc.)

• Ability to build and upload accurate inventory feed files. Being good with Amazon feed files and Xcel is mandatory.

• Bonus points if you have experience with Helium 10 and love Slack and Asana.

Pay starts at $25/hour. This position could quickly become full-time. Remote work/work from home is the norm. Please email your resume and cover letter to chris@cirque.online Thank you.

Own a Small Business? Here's the easiest way to rank on Google

If someone were to ask me “If I was only going to one thing to make sure my business showed up on the internet, what should I do?” My answer would be, create a Google My Business account, fill out your profile completely and have a strategy in place to get reviews.

I officially launched my business this summer after 4 years of doing freelance digital marketing, SEO, and eCommerce strategy work I figured it was about time! Immediately after creating my LLC, securing my domain name, and building my website, I created my Google My Business listing for my business. Within just hours of verifying my business with Google my GMB listing was showing up in Google Search Results.

What my Google My Business listing looked like just hours after verification.

In this day and age it’s critical to drive traffic to your business using Google so how cool is it that you rank on the first page of Google in such a short period of time for FREE!

Now, this may not be the case for you if you’re in a competitive niche. Say you own a restaurant in a big city and competing against other establishments that have been in business for years and have a strong presence on GMB (ie. lots of google reviews etc.) It might take you long to rank BUT, you’ll still show up on Google Maps when people search “Restaurants near me” and a myriad of other scenarios.

I truly believe making a Google My Business account is the single most important thing a small business owner can do to rank on Google.

Have questions? Need help verifying your business? Leave a comment below or send me an email. chris@cirque.online

Free Tools for Digital Marketing & Small Business

My Favorite Free Tools for Digital Marketing

Running your own digital marketing agency, especially one that works with small or startup companies means you’re going to be doing all kinds of different stuff. One minute I’m writing content for a product and the next I’m designing an email header image. I might be chasing down sales leads or building back links. To stay organized, efficient and ahead of the game here are my favorite free tools. I think you’ll find many of them useful for your business as well.

All of Google

Gmail, Google Drive, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Photos, phew I pretty much use them all and honestly couldn’t do it without a few of these tools. The power that you can get out of these tools is amazing when you think that other than some ads they are totally free. The search functionality in Gmail is so good it’s almost impossible to lose an email.

Canva

I created my company logo, header image, graphics and business cards all with Canva. I am not an artist or a graphic designer but Canva makes me feel like a bad ass.

Hubspot

Hubspot is a free CRM tool that has a ton of features and tools. I actually don’t use Hubspot for Cirque Online yet, but I have set it up for several of my clients so I can hep them manage their business. Think of Hubspot as “Salesforce Lite” you can create sales funnels, manage leads, schedule tasks and follow ups and a lot more. It’s free forever unless you want more advanced features like sequenced emails.

Toggl

It’s hard to imagine that not much more than a year ago I kept track of my time with a pen and paper. I can’t believe I did that. Now I use Toggle to manage all my clients, projects, and how much time I spend on each. This makes invoicing so much easier and the paid version allow you to sink with various accounting platforms.

In Praise of Downhill Mountain Biking

My son Grady and I checking out the downhill mountain biking in Sun Valley, ID

I could go into a long diatribe about my history with mountain biking but to keep this blog post on point I’m just going summarize that I was lucky enough to do a lot of mountain biking when I was young, took a hiatus while my kids were young (lots of trail running and racing.) My son, now 10, loves mountain biking so I knew this summer was the summer I needed to get back into the sport.

I never totally left but training and running races the last 8 or 9 years didn’t leave much room for biking. I would get out 2 or 3 times a year on my old 2005 Giant Trance but running was my focus.

My goal for this summer was to have a new or at least a “new to me” mountain bike before Labor Day, as we had a family vacation to Sun Valley planned, my favorite place to mountain bike. I was also training for a 50 mile trail race on July 28th and knew after that race it would be time to make the switch. Mentally I knew I’d be ready, I’d already trained 500 miles for this race and I was ready for something different. Even before my race I was shopping for bikes.

I got really lucky when a friend of mine decided to sell his 2016 Giant Trance Advanced. He gave me a screaming deal and moving 11 years into the future of mountain bikes has been extraordinary! What was I waiting for? If you haven’t bought a new mountain bike in the last 5 years you owe it to yourself…trust me.

This same friend then invited my son and I to join he and his son for an evening of chair lift assisted downhill mountain biking at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The first image that came into my mind when he invited us was me flying through the air only to crash and burn. I was scared. I’m forty one years old, the last thing I needed was a broken collar bone.

I texted another friend of mine who works at Jackson Hole, he said, “Don’t worry, it’s just like skiing you can go as big or as small as you want.” That helped, so did borrowing a full face helmet, and protective pads.

So how did it go? It was awesome! I’m now the world’s biggest proponent of downhill mountain biking, especially for older guys like me who want to get more comfortable on their bike. The chairlifts make it easy to get quality mileage and just like skiing you can start on the easy runs and work your way up. After our day at Jackson Hole, one day in Sun Valley and another day at Grand Targhee I’m now comfortably riding and jumping on the “more difficult” trails and looking forward to tackling harder trails next summer.

A word of warning though…it’s addicting! When you nail your first trail from top to bottom, barely having to touch your brakes, banking corners and “catching backside” on the jumps there is hardly a better feeling in the world.