Here are the most important business lessons I've learned building iContact from 2 to 220 employees over the last eight years.

1. Just get started, have a bias toward action, and don't get stuck in analysis paralysis.

2. To grow your sales, it is critical to calculate the lifetime value of an average customer, calculate what you're currently paying to acquire an average customer (total monthly ad spend divided by customers acquired in that month), determine the maximum you're willing to pay to acquire an average customer, and scale your marketing cientifically by testing relentlessly and finding the channels in which you can acquire customers for less than your maximum acceptable customer acquisition cost and then growing spend within those channels.

3. Never raise more equity capital than 1x your current annualized revenue (monthly revenue x 12). If you raise too much money too soon you'll give up too much ownership and control of your company and be tempted to spend the money in ways that aren't carefully controlled. Wait to raise a large round until you have proven mathematically than $X amount of additional spending with generate $Y amount of additional revenue. (once you figure out #2 this is easy).

Every customer has a point of first contact with an organization. It is important to manage that first impression of how the customer perceives the quality and credibility of the organization.

Customers have choices and successful organizations understand the importance of paying attention to the details that matter to customers. Organizations should strive to ensure their customers have the confidence that they have found the right place to meet their needs.

Examples of Customer First Impressions

Company Website

Having a professionally designed website is a critical first impression for customers. Customers are now internet savvy and use it to learn about prospective businesses and what products and services they offer. A well thought out and designed website can offer customers information on location, hours of operation, products and services provided, service guarantees and a feel for the culture of the business. It is important to stop and take a good look at the organization's website and try to view it as a customer would.

PPC marketing and advertising is one of the most desirable methods to benefit from fast traffic to your website. Because of the tremendous range of strengths, thousands of internet marketers consider this strategy as a profitable form of marketing. The following are some of the rock solid tactics that'll help you cash in on the distinct features of pay per click marketing.

Well Targeted Keywords Are The Key

The success of PPC advertising depends upon your selection of keywords. When you employ the pay per click promotion strategy, you're asked by the search engine company to bid for some specific set of keywords. Whenever the users search those keywords, your website is shown in the sponsored ads segment of the search results. Always take into account that your PPC account is billed every time a user clicks on your ad.