Target’s Misstep in LGBTQ Marketing

Target, a retail giant, has long been known for its commitment to diversity and inclusion. However, in 2023, the company faced a firestorm of criticism from conservative consumers over its marketing and products centered on the LGBTQ community.

The Pride Month Collection

Each year, Target features Pride month displays in its stores, celebrating the LGBTQ community. However, in 2023, the company added products that specifically catered to transgender individuals, including female-style swimsuits that could be used for “tucking” male genitalia. This move sparked outrage among conservative customers who felt that Target was pushing a progressive agenda.

The Partnership with a “Satanist” Designer

Target’s partnership with a “Satanist” designer for Pride month further escalated the controversy. The designer’s brand featured occult imagery and provocative messages like “Satan respects pronouns” on apparel, which he claimed was tongue-in-cheek. This collaboration added fuel to the fire and intensified the backlash against Target.

Backlash and Adjustments

As a result of the outrage, some southern Target stores were forced to relocate their Pride merchandise away from the front of their locations to avoid further customer backlash. The company cited “volatile circumstances” as the reason behind these adjustments. However, this move angered over 200 LGBTQ activist groups, who demanded that Target denounce the extremists and restock all the Pride merchandise.

Impact on Sales and Brand Reputation

The controversy surrounding Target’s LGBTQ marketing had a detrimental effect on the company’s sales and brand reputation. In the second quarter, Target experienced a downturn in sales, and its stock took a hit. CEO Brian Cornell acknowledged the impact of the fallout on sales and the fact that employees felt unsafe at work due to the controversy.

Bud Light’s Partnership with Dylan Mulvaney

Bud Light, a classic American beer brand, also found itself at the center of a culture war in 2023. The company’s partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney for a March Madness social media promotion ignited a backlash from conservative consumers.

The March Madness Promotion

Bud Light’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney aimed to celebrate her identification as a woman for a full year. The beer brand sent personalized packs of Bud Light decorated with Mulvaney’s face to customers. However, the social media videos promoting the campaign triggered an angry reaction from conservatives and beer loyalists, who felt that the brand was abandoning its customer base in favor of far-left identity politics.

Alissa Heinerscheid’s Comments

Adding to the controversy, Bud Light’s former Vice President of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, revealed in an interview that she was directed to transform the brand from its “fratty” image to one that was more “inclusive.” Her comments, combined with the Mulvaney partnership, further fueled the backlash against Bud Light.

Sales Decline and Layoffs

As a consequence of the backlash, Bud Light experienced a significant decline in sales throughout the year. By May, the parent company, Anheuser-Busch, had dropped $27 billion in market value, and sales were down nearly 30% compared to the previous year. The company was forced to lay off hundreds of workers in July due to the financial strain caused by the declining sales.

Attempted Damage Control

In an attempt to salvage its reputation, Brendan Whitworth, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch, addressed the controversy in April, stating that the company never intended to be divisive and that their goal was to bring people together over a beer. Despite these efforts, Bud Light’s sales continued to suffer, with a 13.5% decline in U.S. revenue and a 17.1% decline in North American sales volume in the third quarter.

Lessons Learned and Implications

The backlash faced by Target and Bud Light highlights the risks associated with brands engaging in corporate social activism. While the intention may be to demonstrate inclusivity and support for marginalized communities, companies must carefully consider the potential consequences of alienating their customer base.

The “Go Woke, Go Broke” Trend

The controversies surrounding Target and Bud Light are part of a larger trend dubbed “go woke, go broke” by experts. This trend suggests that companies that take progressive social stances may suffer financially as a result. Recent polling from Gallup and Bentley University reveals that most Americans do not want businesses to publicly express their opinions on contentious political and social issues.

Importance of Customer Alignment

The backlash faced by Target and Bud Light underscores the importance of maintaining a strong connection with the customer base. Brands need to understand their core audience and ensure that any marketing or partnerships align with their values and expectations. Failure to do so can lead to a loss of trust and loyalty.

The Role of Authenticity

Authenticity is key for brands when engaging in social causes. Customers are more likely to embrace brands that genuinely embody the values they espouse. Companies must navigate the line between genuine support and perceived virtue signaling to avoid potential backlash.

In conclusion, the controversies surrounding Target and Bud Light in 2023 serve as a cautionary tale for brands considering corporate social activism. While it is essential for companies to demonstrate inclusivity and support for marginalized communities, they must do so in a way that aligns with their customer base and avoids alienating conservative consumers. By carefully considering the potential ramifications and maintaining authenticity, brands can strike a balance between social responsibility and financial success.

See first source: Fox Business

FAQ

1. What led to the controversy surrounding Target’s LGBTQ marketing in 2023?

The controversy surrounding Target’s LGBTQ marketing in 2023 began when the company introduced products specifically designed for transgender individuals as part of its Pride Month Collection. This move, along with a partnership with a controversial designer, sparked outrage among conservative consumers who felt that Target was promoting a progressive agenda.

2. How did Target respond to the backlash over its LGBTQ marketing?

Due to the backlash, some southern Target stores relocated their Pride merchandise away from the front of their locations to avoid further customer backlash. However, this decision angered LGBTQ activist groups, who demanded that Target denounce extremists and restock all Pride merchandise.

3. What was the impact of the controversy on Target’s sales and brand reputation?

The controversy had a negative impact on Target’s sales and brand reputation. In the second quarter, Target experienced a downturn in sales, and its stock price declined. CEO Brian Cornell acknowledged that the controversy affected sales and made some employees feel unsafe at work.

4. What caused the backlash against Bud Light in 2023?

Bud Light faced backlash in 2023 due to its partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney for a March Madness social media promotion. Conservative consumers and beer loyalists perceived this partnership as Bud Light aligning with far-left identity politics, leading to anger and criticism.

5. How did Bud Light’s former Vice President of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, contribute to the controversy?

In an interview, Alissa Heinerscheid revealed that she was directed to transform Bud Light’s image to be more “inclusive.” Her comments, combined with the Dylan Mulvaney partnership, fueled the backlash against Bud Light.

6. What were the consequences of the backlash on Bud Light’s sales and workforce?

As a result of the backlash, Bud Light experienced a significant decline in sales throughout the year, with the parent company, Anheuser-Busch, losing $27 billion in market value. By July, the company had to lay off hundreds of workers due to financial strain caused by declining sales.

7. What lessons can be learned from the controversies surrounding Target and Bud Light?

These controversies highlight the risks of brands engaging in corporate social activism without considering potential consequences. The “go woke, go broke” trend suggests that companies taking progressive stances may suffer financially. Brands should align with their core audience, maintain authenticity, and carefully navigate social causes to avoid alienating consumers.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Dennis Siqueira; Unsplash – Thank you!

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Iger emphasized the need for Disney to prioritize entertainment over messaging. He noted that during his absence in 2022, the company’s focus shifted too much towards messaging. Iger, who oversaw creative aspects in 2020 and 2021, plans to reduce the number of Disney films to enhance their quality. He stressed that engaging storytelling should be Disney’s foremost goal, a sentiment he has reiterated to his creative teams and partners.

Disney’s storytelling approach, which has historically blended positive morals, faced criticism from Republican politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz, particularly for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters in recent movies like “Lightyear,” “Strange World,” and “Elemental.” Despite these controversies, Iger is committed to returning Disney to its roots of captivating storytelling.

In response to recent underperformances at the box office, notably with films like “The Marvels” and “Wish,” Disney is under pressure to improve its business and increase its stock value. This situation has prompted Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management to propose new directors to Disney’s board, signaling a lack of investor confidence and the need for strategic adjustments.

As part of these changes, Disney has introduced two new board members, James Gorman, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, and Jeremy Darroch, former CEO of Sky. This move comes as Disney prepares for a possible proxy battle, with board member Francis A. deSouza not seeking re-election at the upcoming annual meeting.

See first source: CNBC

FAQ

Q: What did Bob Iger say about Disney’s movies?

A: Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, acknowledged that the company has been too focused on messaging in its movies, which has affected the quality of storytelling.

Q: Where did Iger discuss this issue?

A: Iger discussed this during the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York City, speaking alongside NYT Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Q: What is Disney’s new priority under Iger’s leadership?

A: Under Iger’s leadership, Disney is prioritizing entertainment and engaging storytelling over messaging in its movies.

Q: Did Iger mention any specific changes in Disney’s film production?

A: Yes, Iger plans to reduce the number of films Disney produces to focus on improving their quality.

Q: How did political figures react to Disney’s storytelling approach?

A: Disney faced criticism from Republican politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz for including LGBTQ+ characters in recent movies such as “Lightyear,” “Strange World,” and “Elemental.”

Q: What are Disney’s current business challenges?

A: Disney is facing business challenges due to underperforming box office results and a need to improve its stock value.

Q: What actions has Trian Fund Management taken regarding Disney?

A: Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has proposed nominating new directors to Disney’s board in response to recent business challenges and a perceived need for strategic adjustments.

Q: Who are the new board members recently named by Disney?

A: Disney named James Gorman, former CEO of Morgan Stanley, and Jeremy Darroch, former CEO of Sky, as new board members.

Q: Is there a change in Disney’s board composition for the upcoming annual meeting?

A: Yes, current board member Francis A. deSouza will not seek re-election at Disney’s upcoming annual meeting.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Younho Choo; Unsplash – Thank you!

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Tesla’s Previous Approach: An Unconventional Success

Tesla’s rise to prominence in the world of electric vehicles has been nothing short of remarkable. Since its inception 20 years ago, the company has disrupted the automotive industry and captured the imagination of consumers worldwide. Unlike traditional car manufacturers, Tesla has relied heavily on the enthusiasm and loyalty of its customers, who have become unofficial brand ambassadors. Additionally, the charismatic presence of Elon Musk himself has played a crucial role in generating widespread attention and interest in Tesla’s vehicles.

The Decision to Advertise: A Calculated Risk

Elon Musk’s decision to venture into advertising was not taken lightly. During a shareholders meeting, he expressed his willingness to explore this new avenue, acknowledging that it was an experiment rather than a fully formed strategy. Tal Jacobson, CEO at advertising technology company Perion Network, recognized that Tesla’s advertising approach would likely differ from that of other companies, reflecting the brand’s disruptive technology and unique personality. Jacobson also commended Musk’s ability to leverage media to amplify Tesla’s brand, describing it as an art form.

A Shift in Budget Allocation

Up until now, Tesla has allocated only a fraction of its budget to advertising compared to other major car manufacturers. In 2022, Tesla spent a mere $151,947 on advertising in the United States, while Ford, Toyota, and General Motors invested significantly larger sums of $370 million, $1.1 billion, and $1.35 billion, respectively. This low advertising expenditure is a testament to Tesla’s reliance on alternative marketing methods and the organic growth of its brand.

Expanding Advertising Channels: From Google Ads to Airport Displays

To kickstart its advertising campaign, Tesla initially experimented with a few Google ads. These digital advertisements primarily emphasized the affordability of Tesla vehicles, tax incentives available to buyers, and the high safety ratings of their models. Gradually, Tesla expanded its advertising efforts, developing around 300 different ads to reach a wider audience.

In addition to online advertising, Tesla has also ventured into offline channels. One notable example is the installation of an advertisement featuring the Tesla Model Y at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. This wall-length ad has caught the attention of travelers and locals alike, sparking excitement and curiosity about Tesla’s offerings. The effectiveness of these airport displays in capturing the attention of potential customers remains to be seen.

Facing Increasing Competition: Adapting to the EV Landscape

Tesla’s decision to ramp up its advertising efforts is driven, in part, by the growing competition in the electric vehicle market. As more car manufacturers shift their focus towards EV production, Tesla recognizes the need to maintain its market dominance and attract new customers. By adopting a more proactive approach to advertising, Tesla aims to differentiate itself from its competitors and showcase its unique value proposition.

The Power of Creative and Disruptive Advertising

One of the key expectations surrounding Tesla’s advertising campaign is the creativity and disruptive nature of the advertisements. Tesla has never been a company to follow conventional marketing strategies, and it is unlikely to start now. Elon Musk’s visionary mindset and ability to think outside the box have been instrumental in Tesla’s success thus far. As such, the advertising content is expected to reflect Tesla’s innovation, cutting-edge technology, and the brand’s overall personality.

Evaluating the Potential Impact

While it is still early days for Tesla’s foray into advertising, industry experts and enthusiasts eagerly anticipate the impact it will have on the brand’s growth and reach. By leveraging advertising channels, Tesla has the potential to reach a wider audience, including those who may not have been previously exposed to the brand. This increased visibility may translate into a larger customer base and further establish Tesla as a dominant player in the electric vehicle market.

See first source: Yahoo News

FAQ

Q1: Why is Tesla starting an advertising campaign?

• Tesla is launching an advertising campaign to amplify its brand message and reach a wider audience, marking a departure from its previous reliance on word-of-mouth and Elon Musk’s persona.

Q2: How successful has Tesla been without traditional advertising?

• Tesla has been highly successful without traditional advertising by relying on customer enthusiasm and the charismatic presence of Elon Musk to generate attention and interest in its electric vehicles.

Q3: Why did Elon Musk decide to venture into advertising?

• Elon Musk’s decision to explore advertising was an experiment to complement Tesla’s marketing efforts and leverage media to amplify the brand’s message.

Q4: How does Tesla’s advertising budget compare to other car manufacturers?

• Tesla has historically allocated a much smaller budget for advertising compared to major car manufacturers, spending only $151,947 in the United States in 2022, while competitors like Ford, Toyota, and General Motors invested significantly larger sums.

Q5: What advertising channels is Tesla using for its campaign?

• Tesla initially started with digital advertising on Google, emphasizing vehicle affordability, tax incentives, and safety ratings. It has also ventured into offline channels, such as airport displays.

Q6: Why is Tesla increasing its advertising efforts now?

• Tesla is increasing its advertising efforts to remain competitive in the growing electric vehicle market, differentiate itself from competitors, and showcase its unique value proposition.

Q7: What can we expect from Tesla’s advertising content?

• Tesla’s advertising content is expected to be creative and disruptive, reflecting the company’s innovative and visionary approach, cutting-edge technology, and unique personality.

Q8: What impact is Tesla hoping to achieve with its advertising campaign?

• Tesla aims to reach a wider audience, potentially expanding its customer base and solidifying its position as a dominant player in the electric vehicle market through increased visibility and brand recognition.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Charlie Deets; Unsplash – Thank you!

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The story of the “kidfluencer” phenomenon began humbly with a three-year-old boy named Ryan Kaji, who simply played with a Lego “choo-choo train.” His mother, Loann, uploaded the video to a newly created YouTube channel called “Ryan ToysReview.” Little did they know that this innocent recording would skyrocket them to stardom. Now 11 years old, Ryan, under the rebranded channel “Ryan’s World,” boasts an impressive 35 million subscribers, establishing himself as YouTube royalty.

Joining Ryan in leading the charge are other young influencers like nine-year-old “Like Nastya.” According to Forbes, Ryan earned a staggering $27 million in 2021, while “Like Nastya” made an impressive $28 million. These kidfluencers create content that directly appeals to their fellow youngsters, engaging in make-believe play, showcasing new toys, and even offering tutorials on various subjects. It comes as no surprise that a Pew Research Centre survey revealed that 81% of American parents allow their three to four-year-olds to watch YouTube.

Brands and marketers have taken notice of the lucrative potential of kidfluencers. Ad revenue from videos and brand partnerships have become significant income sources for these young stars. Companies are willing to pay substantial amounts to collaborate with these influencers and tap into a very young audience. For some families, this newfound revenue stream has become an opportunity for new experiences or funding their children’s education.

Initially, these kid-influenced accounts felt like family-run businesses, but now production companies are stepping in to seize the opportunity. For instance, Ryan’s World has partnered with pocket.watch, an entertainment studio collaborating with 45 top kid creators. This strategic alliance has allowed Ryan to land lucrative deals with brands like Nintendo and Mattel. Additionally, pocket.watch has expanded Ryan’s content to children’s television channels and streaming services, while also creating his own branded merchandise, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales worldwide.

Despite the thriving success of kidfluencers, regulatory concerns have surfaced. Watchdogs accuse some creators of not adequately disclosing sponsored content in toy videos. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cracked down on targeted advertisements on YouTube videos aimed at children and accused the platform of illegally collecting data from underage users. As a result, channels must now label content specifically for children. The FTC is also reviewing research on advertising disclosures, as current practices may not be effective for kids. Potential regulatory action could significantly impact kidfluencer marketing.

Some child influencers find themselves inheriting large followings from their “momfluencer” parents, who document their lives online. Families like the LaBrants have amassed millions of followers, even for their youngest children. Other mini influencers emerge, serving as ambassadors for clothing lines or represented by talent agencies traditionally working with actors. This shift in advertising is evident in the remarkable projected growth of influencer marketing, expected to reach $21.1 billion this year, up from $1.7 billion in 2016, according to Influencer Marketing Hub.

However, the landscape of social media is continually evolving, making it more challenging for new kidfluencer stars to rise rapidly. While the industry once believed anyone could become the next overnight sensation, experts like Greg Alkalay emphasize the increased difficulty. Critics also raise concerns about the potential exploitation of child influencers, who lack the legal protections afforded to child actors under the Coogan Law.

As kidfluencers grow older, their interests and aspirations may shift, leading to changes in their content. Families like Ryan’s prioritize their well-being and pivot into educational content and cartoons. Some kidfluencers seek transitions to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, exploring new opportunities. However, maintaining audience engagement during these changes can be challenging, as followers may have initially connected with them for different content. Moreover, some kidfluencers might eventually tire of creating videos and opt for a return to a more ordinary reality.

In conclusion, the world of kidfluencers is a rapidly evolving phenomenon. New stars are continually emerging, supported by their parents and partnering with production companies. Brands are keen to tap into the influence of these young social media stars, but regulatory concerns loom on the horizon. As the industry evolves, child influencers will continue to shape the marketing landscape, with their futures influenced by changing regulations and the ever-dynamic realm of social media.

FAQs

Q: Are there any regulations in place for kidfluencers? A: Yes, there are regulations in place to protect children involved in influencer marketing. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires channels to label content specifically for children and is reviewing advertising disclosures to ensure they effectively work for kids.

Q: How do kidfluencers make money? A: Kidfluencers make money through ads on their videos and by partnering with brands. Brands see an opportunity to reach a young audience and are willing to pay for collaborations with these influencers.

Q: Are there concerns about the exploitation of kidfluencers? A: Yes, there are concerns about the exploitation of kidfluencers. Critics argue that child influencers lack the legal protections afforded to child actors, such as the Coogan Law.

Q: What is the future of kidfluencers? A: The future of kidfluencers is uncertain. As they grow up, their interests and aspirations may change, and they may transition to different platforms or pursue other careers. The impact of regulations and the ever-changing landscape of social media will shape the future of this industry.

First reported by The Economist.

The post Regulation and the Booming “Kidfluencer” Business: What Small Businesses Need to Know appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The platform allows for image and video posts to be directly pushed through users’ feeds via story and wall-post features. This is a great natural way to break obscurity and let people know about your business and your message. By creating posts, you yourself can have free content to share your brand and your services with the world.

However, when you are just starting out it can be difficult to catch that wind and break your obscurity. When growing your small business it is good to have several tricks and strategies to make sure you are using your time and material to its fullest on the app. Here are several key components and strategies to help grow your small business on Instagram.

How to Grow Your Small Business on Instagram?

Use New Features

Instagram wants the adoption of its new features by fully utilizing the application to its fullest and most respectfully frequent amounts, Instagram will reward the post with boosted algorithm standing. Think about “the Carousel” feature, when it was getting pushed it got pushed first to the accounts with the highest usage and traffic. Subsequently, it became operable to the crowd with less frequent engagement both within the app and the app itself.

By utilizing new tools and opportunities a business can help boost familiarity and usher the UI – User Interface, experience to all the future adopters. Again, by harnessing a new tool and serving Instagram by boosting familiarity. This is huge.

Frequent Posting

As stated previously, boosting appeal is the number one way to get adopted. Instagram wants user retention on the app. This causes them to boost content that increases retention and has a positive response. Think Mr. Beast’s “replace ‘algorithm’ with ‘audience’ and restate the sentence.”

The app’s purpose is to push the content people enjoy to them so they will give more time and attention to the platform. For the marketing-minded this is to integrate an idea of necessity with the Instagram brand and to increase visual time and opportunity to sell whatever it is, a business is pushing them to sell.

Sponsored vs Organic Traffic

Think paid vs played here. What have you earned and how have you earned it? Where is your position within the algorithm? Where is your position within the audience? Frequent, high-quality posts will earn you followers. By gaining followers, the software recognizes you and pushes more potential followers your way. Likewise, if those clicks just aren’t coming through or your content seems to be falling on deaf ears you can always make the jump to sponsored content.

By utilizing either method you are able to unlock a platform for a new audience. Once that traction has been acquired you are free to roll forward however you see fit. Keep in mind that while boosting your post with sponsorship may help initially, there is no replacement for frequent, active engagement on the platform.

Organized Posting and Optimizing

Besides just posting often and using new features it is not uncommon for there to be an ideal time to post, when it will hit the best possible gamut for algorithmic dissemination. Maybe that’s Wednesday at 3 a.m. Maybe that’s Sunday evening. Or maybe it’s during your late Monday lunch break.

Regardless, knowing the little nuances of when and how can greatly increase the “intangible” impacts that your post may carry. By knowing this and harnessing the most optimum time to post, you can once again increase the “bang for your buck” with each post. Getting them to appear in a space where they can reach their full potential in either a consistent upload schedule or specific times of the day or the week can greatly increase traffic without added work or headaches.

The post How to Grow your Small Business on Instagram with Marketing appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

And unlike in more labor-intensive industries, AI-powered changes have largely been a boon for marketers and the brands they support. According to a December 2021 survey by Salesforce Research, 89% of automation users feel more satisfied in their jobs and nearly as many feel better about their organizations since they began using these tools. Fewer than one in five worry that automation will replace their jobs and about three in four say AI helps them get work done faster.

If you feel like you haven’t quite kept pace with recent trends in this space, or you fear you’re losing your edge against more nimble competitors, there’s still time to catch up. Here’s what you need to know about the AI-powered trends driving digital marketing in 2023 and beyond.

These 5 Emerging Tech Trends Are Transforming Digital Marketing

Each of these trends is already having a significant impact on digital marketers’ work. Plus, the people and brands they work for. That impact is only set to grow in the near future.

1. PPC Marketing Automation for More Relevant In-Search Ads

PPC marketing has always been automated to some extent, but the toolkit PPC marketers use is quickly growing more powerful and less human-centric. The space took a major leap forward in 2021 and 2022 with Google’s release and subsequent updates of Performance Max, a cross-platform solution that knits together (largely automated) campaigns in YouTube, Search, Discover, Gmail, Maps, and other channels.

According to Optmyzr, which offers automation and analysis solutions that complement Google’s PPC suite, “[t]he future of humans in PPC will be about data quality and amplifying that which computers are unable to simulate, such as creativity and nuanced decision-making.” For the foreseeable future, this will be particularly important for marketers and brands that use Performance Max, which has a reputation with some for its limited visibility and often confusing outputs.

2. Email Marketing Automation to Keep Leads “Warm”

Like PPC marketing, email marketing has long benefited from increasingly sophisticated automation solutions. Gone are the days of sending out generic email blasts and praying even a tiny fraction of recipients clicked through.

Today, email marketing is all about personalization and user journeys. That wouldn’t be possible without AI-powered tools that recognize and capitalize on useful patterns faster than humans can. These tools enable channel-specific email funnels, where (for example) funnels beginning with LinkedIn or Pinterest sign-ups each look different than website-originated journeys.

They also deepen the sometimes-standoffish relationship between sales and marketing, with (for example) automated “schedule a call with our sales team” emails and third-party calendar integrations that nudge prospects through the early stages of the funnel. AI-powered tools are integral here: Solutions like ACT! use machine learning to score leads and generate flows that, based on mountains of available data, are more likely to convert.

3. Landing Page Automation for Better Personalization and Targeting

Truly personalized, individualized marketing is still some ways off, but it’s coming. And AI-generated, semi-personalized landing pages already play a big role.

This role will only grow in the future. Many marketers do have reservations about going all-in on AI-generated content, but Google itself has made clear that it doesn’t automatically penalize such content. The same quality, helpfulness, and anti-spam standards apply. This means that as long as the end result passes those tests, the risk is low. Yes, humans will edit and curate AI-generated landing pages (and other AI-generated marketing content) for a while yet, but less and less over time.

4. AI Content Generation for More Efficient Social Media Marketing

Another area where AI-generated content is poised to transform marketing is social media. It is a resource-intensive channel that produces wildly divergent outcomes. Many brands spend years plugging away on social in the unrealized hopes of going viral and changing everything, burning embarrassing sums along the way. Others get lucky with surprisingly little effort. Still, others do enough to justify the investment without really breaking through.

Automated social content, especially video, and animation skews the odds in marketers’ favor. It costs less to produce even after accounting for human editing and curation. Plus, it can be more creative or “unexpected” than human creators. Statistically, the combination of lower production costs and higher “creative volatility” increases the chances of both transformational viral events and incremental performance improvements.

5. AI-Powered Chatbots for Better Lead Management (And Support)

Marketers’ jobs don’t end when a prospect converts or even when the sale is finally done. A holistic approach to marketing requires ongoing support for current and former customers. This is true even for relatively transactional businesses where the average order value is low and most customers don’t repeat. Customers talk, and in a world where frank opinions freely transit social media channels and product review pages, it only takes a few bad experiences to harm a brand.

Not too long ago, all customer support functions relied on human labor, either directly or one step removed. AI-powered chatbots now handle basic support in many settings. Expect them to continue to replace human CSRs for more complex tickets as well. They’re increasingly important for presale support as well, doing valuable work to keep leads warm while human marketers work on higher-value strategic tasks.

Digital Marketing Automation Is Just Getting Started

Each of these digital marketing trends qualifies as a significant step forward. Some are even more impactful. They’re legitimate leaps. If you could bring a first-generational marketer forward in time from the late 1990s, you’d likely amaze and maybe even scare them with what’s possible.

Now imagine, if you dare, what the digital marketing landscape will look like 25 years from now. Will we even recognize it as such? How much influence will humans retain over tactics and strategy? Will humans be involved at all?

The point is that, yes, digital marketing has become increasingly automated since the early days of the public internet. The pace has accelerated in the past few years thanks in part to accelerating improvements in AI. Yet we’re still early in the arc of marketing automation. We can’t even imagine what’s coming over the horizon.

We can control how we respond to it, however. And in a near future where fewer human marketers will carry ever-greater workloads, it’s important to stay as far ahead of the curve as, er, humanly possible.

The post The Power of Automation: How Emerging Tech is Creating a Shift in Digital Marketing appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This approach relies heavily on the ability of the salesperson to use nuance and their communicative ability to fetter out the proper and easiest path to sell the product. While both hard and soft selling could be equated to water – think something akin to the old Bruce Lee adage about water.

Soft selling in this sense is “becoming the cup.” Ascertaining the shape of your client’s needs and filling them appropriately based on the situation. While hard selling brings the client toward becoming accustomed to you, soft selling requires the salesman to become suited to the client.

In essence, there are three parts to an effective soft sell. Here is the general basis of soft selling listed below.

1. Ask Questions
2. Ascertain the Client’s Needs
3. Offer Appropriate Targeted Feedback

1. Asking Questions

Asking questions acts in essence to lay the groundwork for the rest of the sale. To keep the running theme of this article going, this is Jordan Belfort selling the pen – section starts at 1:36. This is the part where the needs of the client are assessed so that the proper service or product can be matched to the client. Salesmen are pushy facilitators – not con men.

By connecting the dots of needs and wants to purchase potential they are selling themselves time and likelihood of money. This is true of both soft and hard sales. Needs must be assessed and highly important and specific questions are necessary to properly figure out those desires. After this, it goes to the salesmen to listen well and think fast. This is where sales skills come into play.

2. Ascertaining the Client’s Needs

Largely done by positing the right questions as they appear in conversation, in this part the salesmen will begin building a profile of the buyer. I’m sure there’s a “Criminal Minds” reference here but it’s not really appropriate. By beginning to understand the client you can properly navigate them through and around your inventory. What time frame, what expense level, and maybe even what item they should be buying in the first place.

In this, a skilled salesman simultaneously operates passively in a conversation, while also formatting and effectively “cross-referencing” that with the inventory he’s able to capably move. Knowing the client’s needs is what will help you facilitate them toward the goal. This once again is part of both hard and soft selling.

3. Offer Appropriate Targeted Feedback (the Close)

This is the most distinguished difference existing between the two camps of hard and soft sales. Hard sales produce the offer in what is ultimately a more or less take-it-or-leave-it option. There can be possibilities for negotiation. But, these salespeople are here to close with that being the prime and typically only of their objectives. This is often referenced as the preferred method for short-term selling. Yet it can permeate into a long future of consumer/proprietor relationships.

Soft selling rather offers a more “friendly” consultation angle. Instead focusing on building a relationship and pursuing potential sales opportunities in the established relationship as they appear down the road. For your buzzword think, consultation.

This is the opportunity to implement the “Soft Sell” into your selling style. With all business and life, relationships are maintained through a mutual exchange of value. Be it real or perceived value is necessary. When working in a Brand to Brand (B2B) type business especially, the displayed value is often the best and most readily accepted way to present value within a company.

It’s free value, “it’s free real estate.” Offering a much more open consultation about services and products that can fit presented needs gives some salesmen an out for their conscience as you are providing an informed service.

Additionally, soft selling tendencies can also be employed freely in any form where a salesman opts to take a backseat and shelf their more assertive sales tactics. Once again opting to listen and inform the prospective buyer’s decision. This is an extremely employable method across the board that can and should be used in conjunction with hard selling to best navigate any tepid or tumultuous sale.

The post Soft Selling: What is it and How to Implement It into Your Sales Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

But like everything else in marketing, you have to stay up to date on proper practices and trends to maximize your return on investment. Now more than ever, content marketing is more important with social media having so much control over our sales and communities.

What exactly does content marketing do for your business? Check out this video from semrush.com for a good overview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-shSAxeKO0

Quick Takeaways:

• Content marketing is the premier way to reduce spending and increase traffic to your site

• Writing and publishing content your target audience actually wants to read is crucial

• Maintaining a consistent schedule is important to building brand credibility and authenticity

So what should your strategy look like headed into 2022? Let’s talk about it.

Check up on your fundamentals

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?

Source: FinancesOnline

When maintaining your blog it’s important to follow these rules to give you the best shot at SEO rankings. Playing this one by the book is important as browsers are picky about what gets put at the top of search results and what goes on page 4.

• Keep your word count between 1000 – 1800 words

Google likes articles within this range. Too little or too many might keep your hard work from ranking where it should!

• Know your keywords

For content marketing in 2022, SEO/SEM is most successful when you know what words are the most important to what you talk about. Back to our tech example, words like tech, wearable, watch, would likely contribute best to a higher ranking among similar articles.

• Have a compelling meta description

The hook is everything, right? Having a good description under your article title will be the blurb prospects read. If it’s boring or irrelevant to them, why would they click on your article?  

• Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks in your blog content that link to other pages within your domain. You should include 1-2 internal links in every blog post.

• Call to Action (CTA)

CTAs tell readers what their next step is for interacting with your brand, and they can increase conversion rates by 121%. CTAs are the get up and do this part of your article, and are crucial to getting shares and engagement from your readers.

Include calls to action like starting a free trial, subscribing to an email list, or scheduling a free consultation. Don’t leave your readers hanging and give them something to do next.

Check out new distribution lines

Ask what’s on your audience’s mind by communicating with them! This is an important step in identifying their interests and concerns related to what you’re trying to sell.

So how do you check up on where your clients are? Begin with a general audit of your social media habits. What groups is your company interested in online – and more importantly, where is your online voice the loudest? If you don’t have one, you aren’t controlling the market narrative.

By improving your online presence, you are also maintaining a pipeline directly to your customer’s screens. 

Organic engagement is crucial to the engagement of your pieces and the overall value of your brand. This isn’t exclusive to social media, though. Email marketing isn’t dead, and there are plenty of automated tools designed to show you where your message is being received and where it isn’t. 

Email blast services sites can provide insight and organized lists for information and content shipping. These can often be maintained with a smart content calendar.

(Don’t forget to check up on your sales email subject lines, too!)

Create relevant content you would want to see

Quality is one of the most important things when considering your content marketing in 2022. You can follow all of the rules and still fall flat on your face if you aren’t building something your readers will come back to.

Ultimately, content marketing is a business opportunity. So, ask yourself how to get the most out of this opportunity with published posts. You have to be relevant, credible, and aware of what your prospects are thinking.

Consider the audience you’re aiming for and what they ask themselves day to day. If your business was in computer monitors, your potential clients might be researching PC parts or tech blogs.

Content similar to 10 PC Upgrades to Improve Your Gameplay or How To Maximize Your Work From Home PC is a great way to send individuals directly to your site for an ideal prospect that you couldn’t get from a traditional ad.

These possibilities are more likely to convert than someone who is not in the market for new tools seeing your advertisement on a banner ad. Creating interest in your product organically backs your credibility, and thus your brand authenticity.

If your operation is expanding or you’re running out of time to properly handle your content marketing efforts, it might be time to hire some help!

There are two options for this that yield similar results. You can either hire experienced content writers that have experience in SEO writing, or – hire a content marketing agency to do the research, writing, and publishing. 

There are benefits to both, but with a consultancy, you often gain access to resources and experience you can’t always get with individual writers. Doing your research on both is important to find what’s best for your business.

Look to the future

Web 3.0 is the next step in the structure of the internet, and in turn, is the next big thing marketing professionals have to navigate to effectively boost their business’ revenue. 

Currently, you can go to Google Trends or Facebook Suite and look up exactly who is reading your content and where they tend to congregate online. It’s an important part of sharing your content through paid advertising that we’ve grown accustomed to in the world of Web 2.0.

This data is often bought in bulk or included in your subscriptions to these services. It’s not just important to your current marketing efforts, it’s actually the backbone of them.

With Web 3.0 becoming the standard, tracing purchasing habits and online presence will become much more difficult and less reliable than it is today. Not having access to mass data will change the way we think about finding our target demographics and prospects.

Wrap up

Keeping up to date on what’s going on in the digital marketing world and content marketing in 2022 will help you stay on top of your goals for 2023. The future is now, go see what improvements you can make to your online marketing strategy!

Want more ideas to grow your bottom dollar and amplify your small business? Check out our other content on https://www.smallbiztechnology.com to improve your marketing strategies now.

The post Tips for Content Marketing in 2022 (and Beyond!) appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Create a website

First things first, start a website if you don’t already have it. If you don’t have a website nowadays, it’s like you don’t exist at all. Then, adapt it for smartphones as many people use their phones for browsing and making purchases. Moreover, you should also be mindful of how you present your merchandise. You should collaborate with prominent influencers, to boost your online presence as well as sales. And finally, another crucial thing you can do is start a blog – more on its importance later.  

As we already mentioned, having a website for your fashion business is the first and utmost important step in advertising. It is the base. The pandemic outbreak has brought upon us a specific situation. Namely, physical stores have been closing, while the revenue in the fashion business has been increasing. That means that many people have moved their business online, which puts the focus on websites.

Your website should be appealing in a few aspects. It should look nice, modern, and suitable for the niche. It should also be highly responsive and user-friendly. Customers should be able to navigate it easily and find the necessary information quickly. Remember to include all the important pieces of information.

Adapt it for smartphones

When you have finished setting up your website, you should also make sure it is suitable for smartphones. Nowadays, people around the world use their phones for almost the same things as their computers. The only difference is the fact that we always have our phone on our hands and we can use it for shopping, ordering things, paying bills, and so on. We use them while waiting for the train, bus, or subway to finish these little things.

So, one of the great ways to get more customers is to offer them either a smartphone-friendly website or a smartphone app. In this way, you can make sure that your customers can always access your website and order things, wherever they are and regardless of whether they’re using a phone or a computer.

Present your merchandise in the right way

After you finish with the technicalities, you should work on presenting your merchandise in the right way. Start with getting quality fashion wholesale from reliable vendors. It is essential to have quality things to present to your customers. When it comes to the fashion industry and presenting merchandise, it is an industry that is highly visual.

So, you can do several things. First of all, you should get quality photos. You should present your fashion items genuinely, as realistically as possible. Make sure to use flattering lighting and take photos from various angles. Also, you can even make a catwalk video – it would mean a lot to potential customers. It is a great way to boost online sales.

Collaborate with influencers

Besides having a website that is suitable for phones, you should also work on your social media presence. That means being active across various social media channels, such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, among others.

Many of these campaigns involve working with an influencer. So, it is something you should consider as it has been proven highly successful. You should find prominent influencers and collaborate with them. There are different influencers based on the number of people that are following them, so that affects their pricing.

Start a blog

People sometimes overlook the importance of having a blog. Blogs are an essential part of every business as they keep the customers engaged. Writing blog posts for a fashion business is creative and fun as it could be about anything related to fashion. You could write about the newest fashion trends, style guides, how to take care of specific types of clothes and so on. These could be things people come back for.

Also, it’s a good way to build internal and external links, which boost your SEO. In turn, a great SEO strategy can bring your website to top search results. And that would mean, higher revenue for you.

Final thoughts

Being in the fashion industry and having such a business is creative, insightful, and amusing if approached in the right way. Hopefully, these practical tips and tricks can help you in boosting your online presence and advertise your fashion business.

The post How to Advertise Your Fashion Business in the Right Way appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

A typical example of a framing strategy used by business owners and marketers is reframing negative information about their product more favorably. Alternatively, you could focus on the negative aspects of your competitor’s strengths. Both of these examples reframe the data to present more persuasively.

If a product or service’s information is presented and framed effectively, it can impact sales positively. The following are some ideas for using the framing effect in marketing.

It’s How You Frame It

With the framing effect, marketers can sway customers’ choices and, ultimately, their spending habits. The framing effect means a cognitive bias in which a person’s brain makes judgments regarding information based on how that information presents. It uses the fact that people tend to react differently to the same data depending on whether it is presented in a positive or negative light.

How a sales pitch is constructed and posed is critical. Various things come into play when framing something, from wording to images. For example, instead of saying, “We are the third best-seller in the market,” why not say, “Our product is one of the top three best sellers in the market?”

In addition, people are far more likely to engage with information portrayed visually as opposed to information presented only in text form. Therefore, when delivering your product, it is essential that you include clear photographs, diagrams, and other forms of visual content and that you keep the number of words you use to a minimum.

An Appealing Picture

You have to frame your products and services marketing and promotions in a style that appeals to potential customers. You can accomplish this by following the tips below.

A Unique Experience

Consumers like products that have the power to appeal to their desires and interests. You can elicit desirability by rewarding loyal consumers with freebies or gifts. It’s a natural human instinct to want to repay the favors given. However, the gift should be as unique as possible. 

It’s essential to frame your gift to make the recipient feel unique and special. For example, when a consumer buys something from you, you can give them a personalized cup. As a result, consumers repay your kindness by returning to your store and making another purchase.

Know Your Consumers

Marketing a product to a specific demographic requires taking their preferences into account. Several factors influence an individual’s preferences, such as their tastes, preferences, and predispositions. Therefore, ensure your product frames your customers’ preferences.

Learn what a customer likes and doesn’t like about a product or service you’re offering. Try to focus on the features of your item that are most appealing to them. For instance, they found that your product was more affordable than similar ones offered by competitors. 

Therefore, you need to ensure that your advertisements frame in a way to convey the message that your items offer better value for the money.

Associate Products With a Lifestyle

Lifestyle marketing may be highly beneficial to a wide range of businesses. However, you must first know the values and goals of your customers to market your business to them effectively. The purpose of lifestyle companies is to inspire, guide, and motivate customers in their pursuit of a better way of life. 

The desire of consumers to feel as though they are a part of a particular social group is something that lifestyle companies capitalize on. People become attached to brands when they have an emotional bond with them. For instance, Coca-Cola frames its advertising to promote its product’s happy image to consumers.

Product Value

Consider charging customers based on the product’s value rather than its cost. Value-based pricing is based on the strength of the advantages you can demonstrate to clients. For example, you can frame your marketing campaign in such a manner as to indicate that your product has a better value. Even though it is initially more expensive because the after-sales service that you provide is more extensive.

Framing is Essential

How you frame and present your product will influence whether or not you successfully make the sale. This is because every product has both good and bad characteristics. Your goal is to make them believe that your product offers the best value when compared to those provided by your competitors. 

The post How to Implement the Framing Effect in Marketing Campaigns appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

One of the reasons for this is that most small businesses are too caught up with strategies that fuel their lead generation, customer acquisition, and business development efforts.

However, press releases have a huge role to play when it comes to boosting a business’s brand awareness, traffic, and overall competitive edge. Also, getting your press release on authority publications like the Associated Press or Businesswire is a great return on your marketing spend.

Companies usually share a press release to make news, attract attention, and create a community. However, press releases can be leveraged to achieve different business goals.

In this post, we will share types of press releases with examples to help your business get the attention it deserves.

So, let’s begin.

Strengthen Your Brand Awareness with These Press Releases

Here are the top 7 press release types you must include in your media list to generate publicity.

1. Events

Event press releases are written to inform the audience about an event your business is planning to host, sponsor, or attend. The event could be a charity initiative or a community gathering.

An event press release should pique the interest of its audience by sharing a newsworthy story. Further, it should carry interesting copy and imagery to get people excited about the event.

When it comes to creating an event press release make sure you address the 5W’s + 1H of journalism, namely who, what, when, where, and why + how.

• Who is announcing the news?
• What are they announcing?
• When will the event take place?
• Where is this taking place?
• Why should the audience care?
• How should the reader participate or register for the event? OR How is the company going about it?

Besides, your press release should share why your event is worth participating in or attending. The objective of this press release is to intrigue and drive attendance.

2. New Technology

If your product circles around innovations, the technology press release can help in not just creating noise around your offerings but also attracting technology investors. This type of press release carries information on the new technologies the business has invested in. Plus how it solves customer problems.

While it’s tempting to share every piece of product detail in a technology press release, avoid doing so. Your press release should be scannable and concise. Offer plenty of opportunities to link to product pages, company overview pages, and data sheets. Learn from these press release examples to create a release that’s more readable while portraying your strong commitment to SaaS technical excellence.

To write an effective technology press release, create an engaging headline that conveys the end benefits to the reader.

Good Headline: Neoteric Invests in AI and cognitive computing for Its Client AppOrchid
Better Headline: Neoteric Invests in AI and cognitive computing for AppOrchid to Build AI Models Visually and Substituting Programming.

Secondly, journalists are constantly looking for the announcement. So, it’s best to stick with the 5W’s + 1H we spoke about earlier.
Finally, remember to add validation like quotes from beta users or R&D engineers. Business development leaders or the top management can share how investing in this technology is impacting customers and fitting into the overall company strategy.

3. Product

A product press release is used to announce a new feature in the product, a brand extension, or a new product launch. It usually talks about why the product is different from the competition, giving people a reason to invest in the product. By highlighting the product’s striking features, you are giving your new representatives (PR professionals and journalists) reason to write about the product.

Here are a few quick tips to write a product press release.

• Begin with a captivating headline. Keep it short. Use action words like achieved, capitalized, delivered, empowered, and integrated among others to evoke an emotional response from people.
• The first paragraph should convey the product value. Remember that your audience is pressed for time. Make sure you include the 5W’s + 1H we discussed earlier in this post.
• Include quotes from top officials, spokespeople, or key company stakeholders to emphasize the core of the announcement.
• Share your boilerplate in the end. A boilerplate explains what your company does, its size, and key operating locations and shares details of your website and social profiles. Your product press release is incomplete without the boilerplate.

Journalists are constantly looking for stories that their readers will appreciate. Thus, a product press release is a huge value-add that entices readers to their article and persuades them to try the product.

4. New Business

A new business launch press release announces new ventures that could be addressing a gap in the market or a competitor’s offerings. This should tell the audience all the information related to the new business opening.

Small businesses planning to expand should leverage this form of a press release. Begin with the name of the venture and share the location and date of the business opening. The body should include an overview of what the business does and the gaps it will address. Plus, why it’s different from the competition. You may also add a few executive quotes to share the firm’s vision.

5. Awards

If your business has received a prestigious industry award or recognition, showcase the accolade through an awards press release. Sharing such news can strengthen your position in the industry and attract the attention of investors who can support your venture, especially when it’s scaling.

Here are a few elements you should include in your awards press release.

Name of the award. It sounds obvious but sharing the name of the award your company has received will help your readers understand its significance.

Moreover, offer context for the award for those readers who aren’t familiar with the strength and significance of the award you’ve received.

Share the reasoning behind your award. You’ve received an award, but why? Was the technology used in the product outstanding? Did your product help solve specific problems? Include a few sentences on the judging process to tell your readers that it wasn’t just a flippant win.

Avoid bad-mouthing competitors who didn’t make it. Your winning is enough for your audience to know that your company is better than the competition.

Express gratitude. Don’t forget to mention the critical role your team, investors, and customers played in making this award possible. This will go a long way in showing that your company upholds values like humility and team spirit.

6. New Hire

New hire press releases are especially important for small businesses because it helps build credibility as a sought-after employer. Moreover, if the business has an influential person on its team, it builds trust in their expertise.

Remember to highlight the responsibilities and priorities of the person in the new role. Sharing such information in the press release allows customers and investors to relate to the new hire and understand the role they will play in addressing their pain points.

7. Partnership

If you’ve been negotiating a partnership for months and it has finally come through, a press release can help you make it official to the public. The primary purpose of a partnership press release is to update your audience on the upcoming changes and how they will affect them.

One thing that you need to remember here is that like you, your partner will have a customer base. Hence, you need to create a press release that appeals to both audiences. Focus on aligning your values. Use this opportunity to delight a new set of customers (your partner’s customer base) with the features, services, or experiences they’ll get access to.

Summing Up

Whether you are announcing a new product in your existing line or partnering with a firm to introduce a groundbreaking technology, press releases can help you get the word out. Regardless of the type of press release you use, they prove to be great tools to attract attention to the business, build credibility, and gain a loyal following.

We are sure the press release types discussed above will help you generate publicity for your small business, steering it towards the fast track to success.

The post 7 Types of Press Releases Every Small Business Should Leverage appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Increased Brand Awareness

Implementing a social media plan will significantly boost brand recognition. Encourage workers, partners, and sponsors to “like” and “share” your page. Each shared post will introduce you to a new network of people. It might also produce a large audience for your business if used regularly.

You can include your brand in images to help increase the visibility of your logo or name. A strong visual can help you achieve high brand recognition. You can also use gifs or memes to respond to comments or spice up your feed.

Increase Website Traffic

Posts on social media and advertisements are effective ways to generate website visitors. Sharing high-quality material from your blog or website on social media is a terrific method to gain newcomers.

One of the most effective ways for increasing website traffic is optimization. Social media profiles, like your website, should be thoroughly optimized as it is excellent SEO practice.

Make sure you include relevant keywords in your social media bios.

Instagram’s massive reach makes it a perfect platform for marketing your business or website. The platform provides a variety of advertising possibilities, and its highly visual nature makes content creation easy.

Every Instagram user can post a link in their bio. This is the only area on your profile where you can directly add a link, so be sure to use it.

Your Instagram bio should always include a link to the website you want users to visit. Instead, consider connecting to a specific page or product on your website. Including terms like “link in our bio” in your posts is an excellent way to increase the number of people who click on them and help your social media marketing strategy.

Generate Leads

Use social media to connect with potential customers and generate leads. By producing relevant and informative material, you may attract new visitors seeking information about your products or services. This will improve the ranking and exposure of your website, as well as stimulate interest in your products and services.

Allowing potential leads to view customer testimonials helps boost your brand’s reputation and gives potential clients the extra nudge down through your sales funnel.

Also, social media is an excellent place for displaying customer testimonials. Take the opportunity to demonstrate how each happy customer has benefitted from your business, as well as how you’ve helped them in overcoming common consumer issues.

Running social media ads includes collecting essential data, analyzing it, then using it to more efficiently find your target audience. Ultimately, the goal is to minimize the cost of acquiring a lead. For some industries, this can be a very effective way to generate more leads.

The most popular social media platform for lead generation is Facebook. One of the reasons many businesses use it to market their products is because it offers the lowest CPC rates. Businesses can set up their own Facebook page, and the people who like the page are potential leads.

Go Viral

Going viral is not an easy task, but it would be nearly impossible without social media. Your content travels over the Internet when individuals share it with their networks, and their networks do the same.

Viral marketing is a combination of strategy and chance. The brilliance of this method is that posts frequently become viral by accident. When the post contains a product, it is common for the product to sell out for months at a time. TikTok is an example of a viral marketing hub. All types of content have the potential to go viral. If a product is mentioned in a post, expect it to sell out quickly!

Since viral material is shared by users, it does not require a large advertising budget. Small businesses can increase their lifetime orders because of a viral TikTok video. Rapid growth like this brings rapid lead generation and sales.

Featured items find their way into the media when posts go viral. This leads to a significant increase in exposure and brand recognition. 

Customer and Audience Engagement

Social media engagement is a broad term that involves a range of metrics used to determine how many people interact with your business across various social media platforms. On the surface, this can include your posts’ comments, likes, and shares.

Identifying your target demographic and consumers will enable you to better appeal to them. Indeed, the language, tone, and visual content used will depend on their age, gender, and interests.

Also, don’t be afraid to show your business’s personal and human side. This will make your brand more appealing and relatable to customers and help your social media marketing strategy. 

Keeping up with current events and conversations will keep your content relevant. This could include hot topics in pop culture, holidays, athletic events, and memes.

The best way to keep in touch with your customers is through a social media community. When you interact with your social followers in their preferred manner, you boost your exposure and reach. Having a community of loyal customers can help you stay relevant in the market for a long time.

The post 5 Advantages of Having a Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Bringing these two aspects together isn’t always easy, but you can learn how in this article. You aim to please both your readers and Google. Find a good balance between the two, watch your content rank higher, and rake in more website visits.

There’s a sort of formula used to achieve this. A cheat sheet if you will. Let’s dive in and examine how to get the most out of your writing.

Important Pointer: Keyword Research

Keywords are the reason for your writing. Okay, your audience is, but you must adapt your content to what your audience looks for online. That’s the first way to ensure someone will read your blog posts. 

Keyword research will tell you what topics to focus on and the keywords to include in your writing. Choose wisely what you focus on! It will guide where the meat of your text goes and should be as extensive as possible.

So now you know what to write about and should get to the actual writing. Let’s see. What should it look like?

Here are 9 steps to an SEO-friendly blog post.

9 Tips on How to Write an SEO-Friendly Blog Post

Here you’ll learn how to churn out great content.

1. Think It Through

Stop! Don’t just dive in without direction!

What do you want to say? What angle would you like your post to take? Maybe there’s a question you would like to answer? Is there something specific you would like your readers to have achieved after reading your post? 

Some writers want their audience to complete a certain action at the end, so the writing must be compelling and convincing. 

Use your search terms or keywords to find the best possible direction for this. You can look at it as letting your readers guide you.

2. Structure Your Post

Order is essential in a blog post. A basic structure comprises:

• the introduction, where you introduce your topic and give a little teaser to your readers
• the body, where the main story goes
• The conclusion, where you draw a conclusion or give a short post recap.

Figure out what you want to say in every part and write it down briefly. It’ll help guide your train of thought along the way. You want your ideas to flow naturally into each other so your audience can easily follow.

3. Break It Down

Have you ever looked at prose that has no breaks? Or the opposite: content that is in single sentences like a kindergarten storybook. It can be annoying and tiring to read.

Paragraphs help to organize content neatly. Use a different paragraph for every idea, and always summarize your point. Lengthy paragraphs are quite the eyesore and could make your reader skim over your work instead of properly reading it.

Headings add to the structure of an article and will guide readers on what to expect next. Subheadings also add to your SEO ranking. Throw in a keyword in one or two, and it gets even better.

4. Utilize Related Keywords

Utilizing semantic keywords is the best tip on how to write an SEO-friendly blog post. Keywords are great, but using them too many times in a single post makes your work look unnatural. It’s known as keyword stuffing and could make your rankings tank. 

Instead, use synonyms and alternative related words. Google will analyze your content for these, thus understanding your subject matter better. It’s getting smarter and wants readers to enjoy their reading.   

5. Use Transitional Words and Phrases

These show a relationship between different sentences and paragraphs. Phrases like ‘read on’ tell them there’s more to expect. ‘In short’ or ‘in a nutshell’ tells the reader a conclusion is coming. 

Transitional words will help your audience scan through your content since they add structure.

6. Add Links To Existing Content

Have you written on the subject on your website before? Let people know by linking to those other posts. 

You want your audience to focus on you and your work. It makes you look like an authority on the subject and improves rankings. Link to other authority sites, but be sure not to link to your competition.

7. Mind the Length

Google prefers you do lengthy articles, but what do your readers think? Depending on your subject of choice, writing skills, and audience, try to make your posts at least 300 words.

Whether long or short, remember to ensure it’s an SEO-friendly blog post.

8. Utilize SEO Tools

SEO analysis can be tricky but is necessary for this domain. You want your content to have a high chance of ranking well for your chosen keywords.

This is where SEO tools and plugins come in. What difference will they make?

• SEO tools suggest related key phrases. 
• These tools tell you how many times you should add your keywords and where to add them.
• They check your text for readability.
• You can check for both internal and external links in your content.
• They tell you whether you’ve used the keyword on another page so that you don’t compete with yourself for ranking.

All these aspects improve the quality of content you’re putting out. Isn’t that what you’re ultimately aiming for?

9. Put Fresh Eyes on It

Sometimes we write and some mistakes make it past. If you have someone who can look at your work before publishing it, that’s a great asset. They may notice something you missed and improve the whole article. Getting an expert on the subject matter is a plus since they can help refine the content.

Communicating your message to your audience is a necessity in this business. Otherwise, why would you write? Look for opinions on readability and whether the message hits home.

Conclusion

Now you have what you need to create amazing articles for your website. Go ahead and publish as often as possible so that Google knows your website is alive and should rank you higher. Take it a notch higher and use it for business! 

The post How To Write An SEO-Friendly Blog Post  appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Buyer Persona

 Even though creating a buyer persona is the most common thing you do in the beginning of the campaigns –  it is crucial to give it a look across multiple stages of your online marketing. More so, if your business has seen any of the following changes:

• Introduced new products or services
• Modified the existing ones
• Scaled your business (either up or down)

You can conduct research, surveys, and interviews; look at your customer feedback and customer satisfaction metrics to help you frame a more precise buyer persona for the future. 

2. Audit Your 2021 KPIs

In businesses, what you can’t see doesn’t exist. To level-up your online marketing in 2022, it’s important to see how you did this past year, which will help you pivot, optimize, or re-strategize whenever needed.

• Conversion Rates: how many people convert from visitors to customers?
• Customer Loyalty: count your repeat customers.
• Social Media Reach and Engagement: what are the number of likes, comments, subscribers, etc.?
• Inbound Link Building: how many people are linking to your website?

Tools to track your past year’s KPIs:

Google Analytics: view all important KPIs like bounce rate and traffic in one place

Twitter Analytics: to track people’s engagement there

Social Sprout:  a social media enabling and social listening tool (more on this later)

Ahrefs and Semrush: measure inbound links

Funnelytics: to visualize the performance of your customer journeys

Hotjar: Data-driven user insights and more

3. Social Listening Tools

Social media listening is important because it offers direct windows to what your customer thinks about your business at a ground level.

It is also something you need to do constantly as customers’ expectations of your business and how they feel about your business are dynamic.

Moreover, these tools analyze all your brand mentions in the form of comments, tags, etc and tell you if they’re positive, negative, or neutral – offering you highly valuable insights to tailor your online marketing endeavors.

Here are some good social media listening tools:

• Social Sprout
• HootSuite
• Falcon.io
• Buffer
• Keyhole
• BuzzSumo

 4. Automation

Did you know that 63% of companies using marketing automation outperformed competitors? (Moosend)

Automation in digital marketing can help you:

• Mitigate human error and lags
• Takes away simple, high-frequency tasks from your people, freeing them for complex tasks
• Make customers happy

Additionally, here are ways to automate online marketing processes:

• Social media: Buffer and HootSuite helps you automatically post on social media after you’ve scheduled the posts.
• Ticketing software: Zendesk helps you send tickets after a customer or visitor reaches out to you, reducing FRTs.
• Conversational Chatbots: ManyChat and Tidio use AI and ML to answer customers’ and visitors’ basic FAQs.
• Emails: Mailchimp helps you send automated and personalized emails.

5. Watch Trends

Watching trends will help you stay up to date with all that’s happening in online marketing. Here’s how to do it:

• Follow blogs that will help you stay updated with the latest digital marketing insights. Some examples are here and here.
• Be a part of LinkedIn groups on digital marketing.
• See what your peers and industry leaders are doing.

6. Personalize

Customers crave a personalized experience. Here are some numbers to support that.

71% of consumers get frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal. (Segment)

80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. (Epsilon)

80% of frequent shoppers only shop with brands that personalize the experience. (SmarterHQ)

Some tips for personalized online marketing:

• Collect and leverage customer data
• Make conversations human even when online through live chats
• Send personalized emails and texts
• Send special coupons and discount offers (especially on birthdays)

 7. Revamp Website

The goal of all digital marketing efforts is to bring customers to our website and convert them. Therefore, it is important to keep websites up to date in terms of speed, aesthetics, and even safety.

For example, here are some ways how:

Improve Hosting: makes websites fast and safe. Here’s how to choose the best hosting for WordPress websites. 

Attractive Landing Pages and CTAs: this directly helps in lead generation.

Overall branding: Logaster, a brand-building company, offers solutions from business name generation to business card designers and offers a wide variety of digital branding tools.

8. Focus on CX

The merrier your customers, the better your ROI. So, make customers feel good across the journey, from connecting with them through live chat to sending them personalized offers and targeting them with tailored marketing messages. 

9. Optimize for Voice 

Have a list of conversational keywords that prospects might use to search for your business. Adding those to your on-site content can help it become conversational and also make voice search keywords detectable. Hopefully, this video by Neil Patel, the world’s top digital marketer, will help optimize for voice and level-up your online marketing strategy.

10. Investigate Your Competitors

The first thing to do to optimize digital marketing is to see what your competitors are doing to increase their presence online.

Here’s how to do a quick competition analysis:

• Ahrefs, to know the competition’s search results rankings
• SEMrush, for insights on their paid ads
• GeoRanker, for researching your competition’s local directory profiles

So, to see their email marketing campaigns, just sign into one. We guarantee this will yield highly valuable insights.

Cheers to More ROIs

It’s easy to level-up your online marketing. So, we hope this article gives you actionable insights that you can take to your desks and start getting the ROIs on your digital marketing campaigns that you’ve always desired.

The post 10 Advanced Ways To Level-Up Your Online Marketing in 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Google Sheets

With Google Sheets and Zapier, you can automatically keep your Spreadsheets up to date with the latest data from your apps. Just select which apps you want to connect, and Zapier handles the rest. For example, you can use Google Sheets and Zapier to automatically add new rows to a Spreadsheet when new entries are added to a form. Or, update cells in a Spreadsheet when new data is added to a CRM. The possibilities are endless! With Zapier’s Google Sheets integration, you can certainly save time and effort by automating tedious data entry tasks.

2. Asana

Asana is a great project management tool, but it can be even better with the right integration. Zapier is one of the best ways to automate your workflow and connect Asana to the other tools you use. With Zapier, you can set up rules so that certain tasks are automatically created or completed in Asana when something happens in another app. For example, set up a zap so that a new task appears in Asana whenever someone subscribes to your newsletter. Or, you could have Zapier automatically add a comment to a task whenever someone tweets about your company. There are endless possibilities for how you can use Zapier to streamline your workflows and get more out of Asana.

3. Gmail

Gmail integration examples with Zapier are numerous and varied. With Gmail being one of the most popular email platforms in existence, it’s no surprise that there are a wealth of integrations available for users who want to get the most out of their inboxes. One popular example is to use Zapier to connect Gmail with a CRM system, allowing sales teams to manage their email communications more effectively. Another common use is to connect Gmail with project management software, making it easy to keep track of tasks and deadlines.

4. Trello

Trello, a popular and easy-to-use visual collaboration tool, enables you to organize projects and everything related in a user-friendly way. One example of potentially integrating with Zapier is to automatically create tasks in Trello based on new items added to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Or set up a zap that allows you to post a message in Slack whenever a card adds to a specific Trello board.

6. Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages are a great way to connect with customers. However, they can be even more powerful when used in conjunction with Zapier. By integrating Facebook Pages with Zapier, businesses can automatically send updates to customers, post new products or promotions, and keep track of customer interactions. For example, a business could use Zapier to automatically post updates to their Facebook Page whenever they update their website. Basically, this would ensure that customers always have the latest information about the business without having to manually post updates. Additionally, businesses could use Zapier to automatically post new products or promotions to their Facebook Page when added to the company website.

7. Twitter

Businesses can use Zapier to automatically post tweets whenever new content is added to their website. This ensures that followers always have the latest information, and it can help to increase website traffic. Zapier also creates the ability to send automatic Direct Messages to new followers. This provides an easy way to build relationships with potential customers. By taking advantage of the Twitter integration features offered by Zapier, businesses can maximize the power of this popular social media platform.

8. Shopify

The Shopify-Zapier integration can be used to automatically add new customers to a mailing list, send out shipping notifications, or even post new products to social media. What’s more, the possibilities are virtually endless, and the Shopify-Zapier integration makes it easy to implement them.

Using Zapier Integrations for Small Businesses

Using Zapier integration in your small business can help you to automate many tedious tasks, ultimately saving you time and energy. Indeed, there is a multitude of integrations available, so you’re sure to find one that will fit your needs. By automating these processes, you’ll be able to focus on what’s important – running your business.

The post 8 Zapier Integrations for Small Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

But not all small businesses can afford to hire these specialists.

The good news is, that you can easily increase the conversion rates of your campaigns without spending any extra money on specialists.

The facts are, that there are many factors that make a potential customer take an action. If you tweak any of these factors, chances are, you’ll increase conversion rates.

What does ‘increase conversion rate’ mean?

In internet marketing, increasing conversion rates involves optimizing a page for higher response. If you run Facebook Ads, you want more clicks. Entrepreneurs using landing pages want more sales. You may want more subscribers to your email list, more clicks for your emails, or maybe even more sales for your Shopify store.

If you have low conversion rates, you have erratic sales and if you have erratic sales, you have no business. For startups, increasing conversion rates should be the main business.

Web traffic is a vanity metric, while conversion rates are a true metric directly tied to sales. Unless you’re a mainstream publication relying on sponsored ads for revenue, your focus should be on getting conversions.

How do you boost conversions on low-traffic websites?

The best way to increase conversion rates on new sites is to write a sales page around specific long-tail transactional keywords.

I consult with small tech businesses a lot because my goal is to apply the skills I’ve learned, from leading marketing agencies to small startups.

Most small businesses have good products. Some run ads and get significant traffic, but no sales. They often think they need more traffic so they can get more paid customers.

Not so. The truth is if you can’t get one out of 100 people to take an action, you can’t get 10 out of 1,000 people to take action.

For this reason, most startups misfire their marketing efforts. They get little to no results, end up discouraged and finally give up.

But with good conversion rates, even a low-traffic website is a goldmine.

As a freelancer, I can honestly say that 8 people out of 100 people who visited my site downloaded my free eBook.

Eight is a low number for a free eBook download. But in comparison with other B2B sites that get 0.01% conversion rates, I’m 800 times ahead. It may not bring a direct income since the eBook is free, but the conversion rate acts as a vote of confidence to scale my marketing efforts with a larger budget.

Because small businesses often rely on social media, you have to increase conversion rates at all stages of your funnel.

• If you increase conversion rates on your Ads by 1.4X (40% more), and on your landing page by 1.10X (10% more) — that’s a 1.51X increase in conversion rate and sales.

Checklist: Increase your conversion rate by 1.4X on Google Ads.

Whether you run ads on Google, Instagram, or YouTube, chances are, your ad will be ignored. Why? Well, customers are actually looking for information and people, not ads.

So the best use of search engines such as Google is to make your ad mimic an informational piece, a.k.a. an advertorial. For YouTube, use infomercials and influencer partnerships. This is known as social search. For Facebook, use infomercials and viral-type ads. And if you’re advertising in an official-like trade publication, use a corporate style.

The secret is to blend with the platform so you get their attention. You are there to seek attention, you should not be ignored.

The small business product for this demo is CRM software.

• Did I use an advertorial style…instead of typical ads?
• Does my headline appeal to self-interest rather than general appeals?
  • Can you be a better email marketer rather than the best CRM software for email marketers?
• Do I add some curiosity to my headline?
  • Lessons from Hilary Clinton: Use emails to make you a better email marketer.
  • Look to Quora headlines to get a sense of curiosity.
• For social ads, do my ads invite a conversation?
  • The goal is to engage. Filter top posts on Reddit or any platform…that’s how your advertorial should look.
• Do you push your ads organically?
  • If you have the best product, you will want to do everything to ensure it reaches everyone.
• Is your product unique?
  • This “wow factor” causes products to trend (and even go viral).
• Did you add some urgency?
  • Why should people click now? Limited availability, limited editions?

Checklist: Designing websites that convert.

So which methods can you use to increase conversion rates on low-traffic and new sites?

• Messaging: Does my landing page stick to the principle of copy focus…or are ideas all over the place?
• Do my hero area and headline solve an urgent problem, call out a target customer, and continue the conversation from the advertorial?
• Does my product/service have credibility and proof elements, education, statistics, examples, case studies, track record, and demonstrations to back up my claims?
• Do I make a big, believable, unique promise?
  • This is the only way to move a saturated market.
• Do I have a clear call to action, and an irresistible offer someone would be dumb to ignore? A.K.A. “value.”

You’d be surprised at how many websites fail at each of these.

eCommerce: How to Increase Your Conversion Rates

Unlike B2B businesses, eCommerce drop shippers could be D2C and B2C businesses. As a result, their product pages require less copy and should be more graphic-rich. The aim of every graphic is to increase sales.

• Do I use direct response design tips?
• Do my images show the fulfillment of the promise rather than a problem, i.e. show glowing radiant skin rather than acne skin?
• UX: Is my website loading fast, with 99% uptime, with 1-3 clicks to checkout?
• Do I practice up-selling — recommending higher-priced packages, down-selling for abandoned carts, and cross-selling — recommending similar packages?
• Does my ordering system use notifications?
• Do I use countdown timers and scarcity plugins?
• Do I use customization? Am I calling visitors by name, location, using gamification techniques?

Unlike SEO, conversion rate optimization doesn’t change. These timeless principles remain evergreen.

People buy because they have a problem. All you have to do is to present a solution, like a caring friend, with utmost trust and clarity.

The post Looking to Increase Conversion Rate 1.51X? Use a Credibility Checklist. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

There are nearly 2 billion websites in the world vying for the attention of online shoppers. Consequently, small businesses need to gain visibility to drive traffic to their site while providing the best solutions to the unique problems of each prospect.

Today’s discerning consumers are motivated less by competitive prices and more by whether a company’s website provides a positive user experience. In other words, content marketing can help you build a following and increase conversion rates for ongoing success.

Keep reading to gain a better understanding of the importance of content marketing and learn how to develop an effective strategy for your marketing efforts.

Quick Takeaways

• Content marketing helps set you apart from the competition. As a result, it increases visibility. Likewise, it drives traffic to your site for higher conversion rates and revenue generation.
• Setting SMART goals and identifying your online shoppers help shape your content marketing strategy for optimal results.
• Mapping out content and creating a distribution schedule provides parameters against which to measure the success of your content marketing efforts.

Why is Content Marketing Important?

Content marketing has a far-reaching impact. Today’s consumers want to receive relevant, authoritative information. Therefore, the more quality content you create that resonates with your audience, the more trust, and loyalty you build among your followers.

This increases the likelihood that they’ll share your information with their own contacts and broaden your reach exponentially. In the same vein, quality content enables you to:

• Engage with your audience. Storytelling helps you connect and build lasting relationships with your readers. This is important because existing customers make 65% of a company’s purchases.
• Build your reputation. When you consistently deliver quality content, people will rely on you as a trusted source and industry leader.
• Boost your ROI. The conversion rates for content marketing are six times higher than other marketing strategies.
• Enhance digital marketing channels. Social media, email, video, and more benefit from quality content.

When you craft tailored messages that address particular issues, you deliver a positive experience to your audience. Consequently, search engines identify you as a valuable resource for their users and reward you with higher ranking placement.

This is crucial since 75% of online users don’t look past the first page of Google search results. The following video provides more detail about how to write for SEO to increase your visibility and drive more quality traffic to your site:

Content marketing is key to setting your small business apart from the competition, getting more leads, closing sales, and generating revenue.

5 Steps to Building an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

To benefit from content marketing, every small business must first develop a roadmap for creating and distributing quality content. Here are five steps to building an effective content marketing strategy.

Step 1: Set SMART Goals

Before you can plan your content, you must first know what objectives you’re trying to reach. Whether you want to drive more traffic to your site or increase audience engagement, set SMART goals that are:

• Specific: Whether it’s a number to reach or a deadline to meet, specificity can help provide direction for your campaign.
• Measurable: Milestones help you gauge the impact of your strategy.
• Achievable: Goals should be realistic and attainable. A series of small successes can help propel you forward.
• Relevant: Short-term plans should align with your long-term mission.
• Timely: Set an end date to motivate you toward success.

Setting goals will help you deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

For the greatest impact, you must have a strong understanding of who your online audience is. As a result, combining basic demographics like age and gender with insight into which channels they frequent (and how often) can help you build the framework for an effective content marketing strategy.

Analyze your data to identify audience personas. Likewise, learn more by monitoring their online activity to see what kind of feedback they give and what candid conversations they have about you and your competitors.

Use that information to plan content that specifically addresses concerns and frustrations and proves why your solutions are superior. In short, by understanding what your audience wants, you can create custom content that resonates and compels them to shop with your small business.

Step 3: Map Out Your Content

With your goals set and your target audience identified, you can begin to plan your content. Choose relevant topics that are meaningful to your readers. Content marketing encompasses a wide variety of materials, including:

• Blog Articles: Expert content includes high-performing keywords and links to reputable sources that help deliver a positive user experience and boost SEO.
• Videos: People can digest information while performing other tasks.
• White Papers: Research findings help establish you as a leader in your field while delivering essential information.
• Social Media Posts: Engage your audience and learn more about their preferences, pain points, and opportunities to provide solutions.

Based on audience behavior and preferences, choose the type of content that makes the most sense for your goals. Further, as you develop your messaging, be sure to keep the customer in mind. Address their specific needs and build trust with valuable information. After all, trust is a top priority for 53% of shoppers.

Step 4: Schedule Your Distribution

Knowing your audience and the type of content you plan to post will help you set a distribution schedule. You’ll know which channels you should use to reach your readers and when the best time is to post.

If your customers respond well to images, you know to focus on an Instagram campaign. For people who prefer email, you’ll have a better open rate with content sent in the mornings. Use all this insight to create a content schedule that helps you know what topics will be covered and through which channels you should syndicate it.

In addition to keeping you focused on your goals, setting an agenda helps you assign work to team members or outsource the work to a professional writing service. With the content subject matter planned out, you can find writers specializing in those topics to create expert messaging that resonates, brings value, and earns customer loyalty.

Creating a distribution schedule ensures organization, helps you create timely messages for greater impact, and sets parameters against which you can measure success.

5. Track Your Progress

Metrics are essential to determine whether your content marketing strategy is truly successful. Measure which channels are yielding positive results and identify areas that need adjustment. Engagement, open rates, and bounce rates can tell you things like:

• which avenues aren’t a good fit for your audience;
• what topics aren’t generating interest;
• time of day or day of the week that content distribution gets the best results; and
• whether you’ve accurately identified your audience and their needs.

In conclusion, there are lots of factors involved in a successful content marketing strategy. You can pinpoint what adaptations need to be made to achieve the best possible outcome by measuring progress.

The post How to Develop an Effective Small Business Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In fact, the entire field of online marketing wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for technology. But up until recently, most of the tech influencing marketing was simply a tool. A human had to decide how to use that tool, what it should do, and how it should function.

Recently, that has begun to shift.

Artificial intelligence has started to find applications in the marketing world. While it’s still very much in its infancy, AI is quickly becoming a popular option for many marketing activities — if you know how to use it.

The Benefits of AI in Marketing

Before considering specific applications of AI in marketing, it’s worth taking a minute to lay out why a marketer should consider doing so in the first place. After all, marketing is a business activity. As such, marketers should only apply technology if it has a specific (and profitable) outcome.

So, how does AI benefit marketing? To properly understand that, it’s important to differentiate the concept of artificial intelligence from other forms of modern technology. For instance, things like data collection and automation aren’t necessarily AI.

According to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s AI acquisition DeepMind, AI is the “science of making machines smart.” In other words, when you give technology the ability to make decisions based on the information that it’s given, it becomes artificial intelligence.

Marketers can apply technology that doesn’t just operate digitally but can perform tasks and functions on its own. When they do, it has a number of powerful benefits.

• AI can have a dramatic effect on the efficiency of an organization. Activities can be truly outsourced and left for computers to handle.
• The use of AI can also impact the quality of your work. It does this by maintaining strict standards and providing a sense of consistency and predictability to your outcomes.
• AI has proven itself capable of lead generation. It accomplishes this through things like increasingly sophisticated chatbots and virtual assistants.

From efficiency to quality to lead generation, AI can have a big impact on how effective a marketing campaign can be. One question still remains, though. How can you incorporate AI into your marketing strategy to start benefiting from these advantages?

How to Use AI in Marketing

AI is an exploding field. As such, it can take a little bit of work to uncover its most beneficial applications in an area like marketing. Nevertheless, there are plenty of ways that AI can make a difference.

Here are two of the best areas to explore. Start here to discover the various ways that AI can impact your marketing strategy in the months ahead.

Use AI in your content.

Make no mistake, AI isn’t at the point where it can flawlessly mimic a human’s inherent creativity. Nevertheless, it is still possible to employ AI when it comes to creating content. This is especially true if you find that you’re generating things that are more mundane and have a predictable format.

For instance, consider MarketMuse, a company that develops AI-powered content optimization tools. They point out that popular online publications are already using AI “in various low-level ways.” They also add that companies often do this with data-heavy content that tends to follow a highly structured format.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to use AI to create content is certainly becoming a reality. Not only that, but its growing capabilities can apply to content creation. This works in many different ways, from machine learning to automated reasoning, and beyond.

Use AI with your data.

Data and analytics are already one of the most powerful ways to apply technology in marketing.

However, adding AI into the mix can create a synergistic effect. According to the marketing text and analysis tool Monkey Learn, “Using AI-guided systems in your data analysis allows you to automatically clean, analyze, explain, and ultimately visualize your data.”

This application of AI can transform multiple areas of your marketing. For instance, by applying artificial intelligence to your current marketing data, you can identify gaps and issues. Addressing problems is suddenly much faster and simpler.

In addition to cleaning up problems, AI-driven data analysis can help you find potential opportunities.

This can come from areas that you thought were successful but still have more room for growth. It can also come from completely new considerations that you wouldn’t have been aware of without a thorough analysis of your data. You can even use this kind of data analysis to help you better understand your customers and create more effective buyer personas.

The time to embrace AI marketing is at hand.

Using tech in marketing is nothing new. However, many marketers are still cautious about the idea of applying artificial intelligence.

This hesitation may have been warranted in the past when AI was still too underdeveloped to help in the high-pressure marketing world. But the situation is changing as AI continues to increase its capabilities and more third-party software solutions incorporate AI into their tools.

All that remains is for marketers to find the tools that can help their particular situation and then create a strategy that allows them to tap into the powerful benefits of AI. This shouldn’t be done five or ten years in the future, either. It’s time to start right in the here and now.

The post How to Use AI Within Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The retail Metaverse is on fire, and here are some ways small- to mid-sized businesses can benefit.

In October 2021, Facebook, Inc. changed its name to “Meta” and announced multibillion-dollar expenditures in Metaverse technology. Indeed, launching the Metaverse into public awareness.

However, the move has many skeptics. Meta admitted that the Metaverse wouldn’t develop overnight. Moreover, it may take 10 to 15 years for retail Metaverse goods to be “completely realized.” Think what that means for fintech!

Hangouts on the internet?

“It’s a digital place to hang out,” said Lindsey Mazza. Mazza is a leader at Capgemini, a global retail supply chain domain leader. We were addressing issues via video chat.

More than that, it’s an immersive event, one in which we spend time and congregate with friends and family to create new digital and real experiences.

The transition to digital has been ongoing for some time. Many firms are already testing online games, where and how people consume movies or music, and the transition to a “Metaverse.”

For many, thinking about platforms like Roblox, where shops are starting to develop virtual real estate in the internet environment, is the simplest way to conceptualize the Metaverse.

Forever 21, a fast-fashion retailer, has opened a virtual shop on Roblox. Consequently, because the shop was so popular, the company manufactured tangible things similar to those offered in the virtual store.

People want to bond with their avatar and want to be able to experience things in both the actual and digital worlds, argues Mazza.

Many online merchants have already introduced augmented reality (AR) to their eCommerce systems as a first step toward blurring the borders between the physical and digital worlds.

Augmented reality (AR) applications included.

Using AR applications from prominent vendors such as Ikea and Wayfair, you can see how furniture and design goods might appear in your house.

You may digitally “try on” frames for glasses before purchasing them online. Therefore, you can even get a virtual makeover to see what products and colors would look best on your face using applications from cosmetics firms such as Mac and Maybelline.

One metaverse vision is a future in which all of these applications link together. That is to say, enabling buyers to digitally put on make-up and glasses simultaneously, with a smooth purchase process, https://www.papsociety.org/accutane-isotretinoin/.

Giant corporations are adopting augmented reality. Digital platforms have begun to roll out tools to assist small enterprises in offering virtual experiences.

Shopify, for example, allows 3D models on its product sites so that shoppers can examine things in AR and has specialists ready to assist design those 3D models.

Another vision for what the Metaverse may become is the growth of shopping on social media. Consequently, TikTok has already made strides in this area, and as a result, the Metaverse is becoming more attractive, alluring, and broadly accepted than ever before. Many consumers under 30 have never been to a shopping mall.

Test, then retest.

This may seem difficult for a small firm.

Still, a seismic change has increased access to the digital world across all generations in the past two years. Consequently, the ordinary customer is prepared to embrace this new buying option.

Don’t rush in with generating digital items too immediately, Mazza urges small enterprises. Therefore, test this market by establishing locations to hang out.

Let’s make it a place where your consumers feel at ease, where they can ask inquiries, and where they can buy tangible things. Stick to what you’re truly excellent at, what you’re familiar with — the items you already offer.

Examine and improve.

Due to the pandemic, practically all merchants were obliged to embrace internet retailing quickly. It’s now time for small companies to evaluate their online services and, most importantly, to optimize their online presence.

Mazza is unequivocal. If you just do one thing to prepare for the Metaverse, it should be to devise a plan for selling your physical goods digitally.

How can you include a place in the Metaverse where you can build an experience for your customers, especially if you’re doing it online? If you have an app? If you have a mobile site?

Small companies may build a space where they can communicate with their consumers in a new manner. However, that is to say, establish a shop in a new town. Therefore bring items to them in a new location, with an immersive experience — it’s the future!

According to Mazza, 2022 is when major brands will begin to explore the Metaverse. They have an immense hunger for these sorts of initiatives and are willing to spend a lot of money on them. Small enterprises must ensure that they do not fall behind.

The post The Retail Metaverse Is On Fire…and SMBs Will Benefit. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

It’s now or never to move your automation marketing to the cloud and gain added security.

According to marketing expert Clare Price, global corporations have been investing in automation for decades. During the epidemic years of 2020 and 2021, that investment paid off handsomely. During the early lockdowns, companies were able to swiftly convert to remote work thanks to automation. Price is the founder and CEO of Octain Growth Systems, a worldwide strategic planning consulting organization that helps businesses increase profits, productivity, and operational efficiency.

Because they had the automatic systems in place, she says, major organizations were in a better position for the hybrid work environment, which includes both in-office and remote employees. Small businesses and solopreneurs, according to Price, did not do as well. When the lockdowns came, they had to scurry to regain momentum.

What’s the end result? Small company owners increasingly see the value of automation in driving operational efficiency in their businesses, adds Price. Today’s technology can help company owners and marketers in any sector move all or part of their activities to the cloud. The following five marketing functions, according to Price, should be automatic.

Appointment Scheduling

Taking your appointment scheduling online allows you to escape the monotony. It provides clients with flexibility and ensures that your time is inviolate when you need it. These are definitely worth a look.

Individual client appointments may be done using calendaring software such as Calendly and Calendarwiz. Try TimeTap for a more comprehensive appointment-setting solution, as well as virtual administrative help for class scheduling and training. Multiple locations, class scheduling, customizable booking forms, and automated payments are all in TimeTap.

Simplybook.me is a professional services booking system that includes online booking, alerts, payments, and marketing incentives such as discounts, gift cards, memberships, and product sales. SimplyBook.me also provides a presence in their professional services directory.

Automation Software for Creating Proposals

Invest in proposal software if your organization sends job proposals manually. Particularly in professional services. Proposal software not only reduces the amount of non-billable time you spend crafting your proposal, but it also keeps track of the prospects’ responses by recording when, what, and how they look at what you supplied them.

Instead of guessing and sending blind follow-ups, imagine knowing when your prospect read your proposal. Imagine knowing which pages piqued their interest.

Was it because of the advantages? Features? Pricing? Knowing this will let you deliver a follow-up message that is tailored to their individual interests.

Proposal tools such as PandaDoc, Proposify, and BidSketch may help you achieve just that. The majority of them provide a limit-free free version or trial. This can help any small business.

Systems for Email Marketing

If email marketing is your major marketing strategy, there are a plethora of efficient and low-cost options available today.

Many basic marketing operations are automated by marketing automation software, allowing your team to thrive in demand and lead creation. Email marketing systems to sophisticated demand and lead generating and prospecting platforms are all available. Marketing automation is an important part of digital and social media marketing’s success.

Management of Customer Relationships (CRM)

One cloud sales enablement tool that no company should be without is a solid CRM solution.

Building customer connections is at the heart of CRM software solutions. They allow your sales force to engage with prospects and monitor their interactions with your company. From start to finish. Contact management, lead management, opportunity management, and sales forecasting are all features of CRM systems.

Integration with Marketing Automation Systems

To make remote work succeed, you must keep customers pleased by providing a consistent customer experience (CX) to each client. They anticipate receiving assistance as soon as possible via a variety of channels and gadgets.

Every provider must now provide an Amazon-like experience to their customers. In today’s trying circumstances, phone and email help are no longer sufficient. With two online CX investments, every small company owner can drastically improve their customer service experience.

Live Chat

Live chat transforms your website from a static informational resource to a real-time customer support center. It helps you to cut reaction times down to seconds rather than hours.

Most significantly, it aids in the growth of your business. According to the American Marketing Association, B2B organizations that employ live chat witnessed a 20 percent boost in conversions on average. Live Chat, ZenDesk, and Olark are the three suggested live chat software options.

Simply said, automation provides both top-line and bottom-line advantages that help your team, no matter how small, increase earnings, productivity, and efficiency.

The post The Best Marketing Automation Tools for SMBs appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Changes spurred by new technologies, such as improved customer experience and more revenue, are of interest to everyone. We facilitate rapid expansion by adapting our company to meet the current demands and expectations of customers. If you don’t adjust to the changing times, you risk losing clients to the competition.

Although enterprise-level organizations are at the forefront of technology adoption and spend heavily in its acquisition, small businesses benefit by investing their limited resources in marketing.

Technology plays a critical role in increasing operational efficiency. Given how things have evolved in recent years, the following technological trends may be able to assist you in improving the experience of both your staff and consumers.

Put Up Signposts Along the Internet

Digital signage entails displaying marketing messages for your company on display technologies such as LCD monitors, video walls, and projections. It’s one of the most efficient ways to publicize your small company.

The interactive LOOK DS infrastructure is appealing and has a significant impact on a customer’s decision. Digital signage enables you to communicate with customers in addition to promoting your business actively. We accomplish this by including some well-known and inspiring phrases on your display.

Using digital signage to promote your company can save you money on conventional marketing initiatives while increasing impulsive purchases.

“AI” Stands for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a method of simulating human mental capacities such as decision-making and problem-solving via computer systems. AI can help your small company become more productive and efficient.

Of course, machines, in contrast to human beings, work quickly and consistently generate high-quality output.

AI helps your employees to concentrate on higher-level activities. Automated systems handle repetitive duties. AI also saves you a lot of time and allows you to complete your tasks more quickly. Because you’re using less human fallible labor, your operations will be of higher quality and have fewer faults.

Marketing via Influencers

Influencer marketing is a sort of social media marketing that utilizes large-scale platforms to promote and mention your items to their audiences. Social media influencers often establish trust with their following, making it simpler for them to recommend your business. Influencer marketing is a good option for small companies to expand their brand on a tight budget.

Use influencer marketing alone or in conjunction with other marketing strategies. Its cost-effectiveness makes it a preferable option for small enterprises. The size of your audience and the topic you’re targeting determines the price you pay.

Shopping with the Help of Technology

Customer expectations have changed as a result of technological improvements, with the majority of consumers preferring speed and ease.

Consumers may buy a product or arrange a service from the comfort of their own homes when they shop online. The majority of individuals choose to get their goods online rather than wait in huge lines at shopping malls. This saves time while also enhancing client satisfaction.

In today’s world, mobile payments are frequently employed by both small and big organizations. As a result of lockdowns and COVID-19 measures in most states, this has grown increasingly common. Using online purchasing and payment to grow your company is a smart move.

Automation

The word “automation” refers to a variety of technological applications that eliminate human involvement. Employees at small firms and companies spend a lot of time on basic, low-level yet necessary jobs. Customer experience, data entry, and appointment scheduling are examples of these tasks, which vary based on the type of your organization.

Although these duties have a big impact on how the firm operates, they may be time-consuming and labor-intensive in the long term. However, with today’s automation systems and solutions, you can save expenses, enhance production, save time, and improve the efficiency of your small company.

It’s essential to take advantage of existing technologies improvements for your small business’s growth and profitability. You can take your small company to new heights with the correct techniques, including digital signage technology. You may employ systems, applications, and programs to affect your rankings and total visibility, depending on the type of your firm. Using the techniques above in your organization will result in a shift in your daily operations.

Accounting Technologies

We all know that CPAs are expensive. Even if they’re automated, nothing more than an app and an algorithm! And yet, you must keep your finances in order.

This is one area where small businesses must bite the bullet. You get what you pay for. So invest in your accounting services, whatever route you choose.

The post New Technologies for Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With the right email marketing software and a strategy to win over the hearts (and wallets) of your contacts, you could be raking in some serious cash this holiday season.

How to Boost Your Christmas Sales

Before we officially head into the New Year, we mustn’t gloss over the last major shopping season of the year. Consumers are ready to buy and they’re looking for the best deals on the internet. So how do you get their attention?

1. Shout out your website with a sense of urgency.

With wishes of “Merry Christmas” from family and friends filling up the inbox, there’s even more competition for your subscribers’ attention. For a successful bout of buying from your store, you’ll want to adopt a strong sense of urgency.

With copy that captures the essence of time is running short (but also points to a solution), your target audience will get the picture — your site is the perfect place for fulfilling any last-minute shopping this year.

2. Problem? Solution!

You want to create copy that’s clear and to the point. Keeping your email brief means your contacts are more likely to read it in its entirety and act on a compelling call to action. For the best results, we return to the problem-solution strategy.

The end of the year sets the stage for a major bout of last-minute shopping. The problem is clear…your shoppers are running out of time! Give them quick gift ideas by showcasing your best sellers or outline a current sale with helpful links.

3. Show off your customer knowledge.

It’s time to break out the flattery. With Christmas sale competition eating up valuable inbox space, your email campaigns will need to stand out with a bit of personalization. There are a few ways to go about this.

• Personalize product recommendations that capture your target audience.
• Capture cart abandoners with the old “get it before it’s gone” technique.
• Better yet, encourage would-be customers with a discount on the things they nearly purchased.

Personalized messaging goes a long way in email campaigns as it makes it easy for a customer to feel confident about a buy. Feeling like a company truly understands them takes the guesswork out of finding the perfect product to purchase.

4. Make your campaign website mobile-friendly.

Now more than ever, it’s important that your email message is compatible with multiple devices.

In this day and age, it’s likely that a good portion of your contacts will be shuffling through their inboxes on the go. With visually enticing and clickable CTAs, you invite your clients to swiftly follow through with an effortless click of the thumb.

5. Free shipping = a shopping cart follow-through.

Have you ever wondered why shoppers abandon their carts so frequently? The greatest influence is unexpected shipping costs.

The best way to get customers to complete their purchase this holiday season is clear: offer free shipping.

6. E-gift cards are here to stay (and for good reason).

They’re super convenient and don’t require any shipping wait time! Contacts that are really cutting it close with their last-minute shopping will be hoping for a solution this simple.

Give them a shout-out in your subject line, to the tune of, “We’ve got your last-minute gift right here.” With a clickable link that goes straight to your e-gift card options, consider the sale complete.

7. Go a different email route…with a huge shopping success rate.

SMS campaigns typically host an ultra-high open rate, so if you’ve had the opportunity to collect your contacts’ phone numbers, launching SMS automation might be the thing you’ve been missing when it comes to closing that sale.

Sending an automated text won’t do much good without a clickable link attached, so be sure to include one — and maybe even a photo if your platform allows!

In conclusion, what’s the moral of the story? Christmas isn’t over yet! Your customers still have time to buy! Employ those snappy CTAs. Whip up some attention-grabbing copy. Create clear, concise messages to get your point across. When it comes down to the final hours before Christmas, your contacts will be glad they opened your email.

The post The Best Ways to Enhance Your Pre-Christmas Sales appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

From the hosting servers themselves to the features and add-ons you’re using, everything impacts how much you’re paying for your website hosting.

Many people like to consider using a website hosting service backed by a virtual private server (VPS) because it’s considered to be more affordable than dedicated servers.

However, the search doesn’t end at the kind of hosting you use. You need to consider several other factors as well, such as the speed, security, and bandwidth that come with the specific plan you choose.

The good news is, you can optimize these factors to suit your specific requirements and budget. Below you’ll discover the methods you can use to cut down website hosting costs.

1. Switch to a cheaper website hosting plan.

Some hosting plans are far too costly. You might want to consider saving some money by switching. It’s always worth considering these types of changes to get ahead financially and directly impact your bottom line.

Every website hosting provider offers different hosting plans for various requirements. However, before you switch to a cheaper hosting plan, here are a few things you should keep in mind:

Know some basic website hosting renewal guidelines.

Some website hosting providers offer low prices for new sign-ups. They typically offer huge discounts for the first year. However, when it’s time to renew the hosting service, those prices may increase significantly.

It’s worth switching to a cheaper website hosting plan with another provider when faced with a situation like this. Your business can save hundreds of dollars or more depending on the plan and services you’re using.

This comparison report by Hostscore compares the difference between the sign-up price and the renewal price for several big hosting providers.

Apart from a few, it’s evident that most hosting providers charge as much as 300% more when you’re renewing your hosting compared to what they charged at sign-up.

When you’re switching over to another provider, they may offer similar deals for the first year. Make sure you find a website hosting provider that will keep low rates during the renewal as well unless you want to keep switching, which is never a good idea.

Analyzing your website hosting’s long-term cost will help you get a clearer picture of how much you’ll be spending over the years.

Another commonly followed practice in the hosting industry is limiting the number or scope of features provided after the first year.

For example, some hosting providers offer an SSL certificate in their plan…but only for the first year. After that, they may require you to pay for it. It’s better to go with one of the cheap website hosting providers that include an SSL certificate without time limitations.

Buy several years of hosting in advance.

If you do well with your research, you’ll figure out that some website hosting companies will offer huge discounts to people who buy 2-5 years of hosting in advance. When switching to a new website hosting provider, check if they provide lower prices for those who sign up for many years.

Godaddy, Bluehost, or Hostgator are some of the most popular hosting providers who offer a special price for buying multiple years of hosting at once.

A typical offer might require you to sign up for three years. When you do, you could end up spending two-thirds of the regular price. This translates into getting 33% taken off your monthly expenses.

Get rid of unnecessary features at checkout.

When switching to a cheaper host, be aware of features at checkout that you don’t need. These features can raise monthly costs without you noticing them. For example, some may include extra security features or add-ons (SEO services and back-ups) that are usually not needed.

When checking out, remove all unneeded features to ensure there aren’t any surprises when it’s time to pay.

Make sure all the boxes for additional features are unchecked and that there are no setup fees.

Likewise, if you want to lower your website hosting costs, you can go over the features you are paying for and revisit your plan’s features.

For example, if you have a plan that costs $14 per month and covers you for 100,000 visitors when you have only 10,000, consider downgrading your plan to something lower, say, a $5 plan covering your traffic up to 25,000 visitors.

This step is crucial. It can save you hundreds of dollars on features you may be paying for but don’t need.

Keep track of Black Friday and other special deals.

At certain times of the year, website hosting providers offer huge discounts, typically during Black Friday. Some hosting companies may offer up to 90% off their prices!

If you’re patient and can wait, you can economize considerably. It’s not uncommon for people to wait for this time of the year to switch website hosting providers.

You can take double advantage of a Black Friday discount by paying for multiple years of hosting in advance at the discounted price. It’s a win-win for you and the hosting company as well. This way, they’re retaining a customer for the long run.

Search out and use coupon codes and discounts.

When switching to a new hosting provider or renewing a plan, you should always look for coupon codes or discounts for that hosting provider. Many providers have dedicated pages with coupons code or their partners might have special deals that they can provide.

Try searching Google for “Coupon code + website hosting provider name” or “Discount voucher + website hosting provider name.” You might find some helpful, cost-saving coupon codes.

If you already have a website hosting provider, you could ask them if they offer special discounts for you before switching. Sometimes, they may offer exclusive coupon codes to help reverse your decision to switch.

Search for free website hosting options.

Some companies provide free website hosting. Of course, free website hosting is the non plus ultra of reducing website hosting costs.

However, it’s very often not a good idea to utilize a free host unless necessary. Some don’t allow a unique domain name. The ones that do may place ads on your site.

They often have strict limitations and poor customer support. If any technical glitches occur, you might even lose your site. If you go with a free host, it’s good to regularly back up your site and choose only a trusted hosting provider.

2. Use a CDN for faster site loading times.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can improve your site’s speed and reduce its loading times. A CDN serves content from a location close to the user. This reduces latency, lowering the burden on your web host.

Limiting the flow during a request enables you to save bandwidth and avoid additional costs linked to your hosting service.

However, it’s essential to note that using a CDN does have some disadvantages. Many companies use their own data centers for hosting and storing data. Others maintain server farms all over the world, so they are closer to users in different parts of the globe.

Owing to this, CDNs can become more expensive to use.

If you need a CDN only occasionally or for short periods, it might not be worth it. But if you’re planning your business for the long run, using a CDN often saves money. CDN providers use servers close to the client, saving additional burden on your web host. This allows for much faster delivery times and lower bandwidth costs.

3. Minimize the number of plugins and scripts your site uses.

Technology is constantly evolving and it’s essential to keep up. That said, it can be tough to do all of the upkeep on your site without getting overwhelmed. One way to make things easier is by minimizing the use of plugins or scripts so you don’t have a ton of data to host.

It’s essential to keep your website running smoothly and plugins can cause unexpected crashes.

Making your website less bulky will save you money in hosting costs down the line. There are many other advantages to minimizing the number of plugins, for example:

• Security Vulnerability: Most threats to your website come from malicious scripts added to plugins codes.
• Site Crashes: Some plugins can cause your website to crash.
• Slower Loading Times: Too many plugins take up server space and slow down a site.

Depending on your host and how big the plugins are, you probably shouldn’t go above 10-12 plugins total.

Additionally, regular WordPress maintenance also helps you keep your website and hosting up to date and error-free. Make sure to download and activate plugins from reputable sources. Delete unused plugins, update them regularly, and check if they are compatible with your version of WordPress.

Look at the number of downloads and reviews before choosing a plugin for your website. If they are downloaded a lot by other users, that’s a good sign.

4. Use caching plugins for static content.

Using caching plugins, you can significantly improve website speed and eventually reduce cost, regardless of the type of website hosting you use.

Websites contain many static data such as images, stylesheets, and scripts. Browser caching allows storing static content right into a browser so that the content doesn’t have to be downloaded every time a visitor comes to a site.

For example, a visitor comes to a website one time. The caching plugin will download the files needed for the page to display and cache it. The next time the page is visited, the load time is shorter.

Without a caching plugin, visitors would have to download the entirety of a web page with every visit. A caching plugin will remove many steps that WordPress performs when generating a page, increasing speed considerably.

Additionally, caching plugins can perform various server-side caching types, such as page caching and object caching, ensuring an additional layer of speed and cost optimization in your hosting.

Caching plugins offer other types of services such as CDN integrations, CSS, HTML and Javascript minification, and image compression.

Caching static content helps reduce the hosting cost because you do not need as much storage space for your images and database. You also don’t need a higher hosting plan to perform functions that a plugin is taking care of.

5. Switch to shared hosting.

If you’re using VPS hosting or a dedicated server, consider switching to shared hosting. Shared hosting helps you share a server and all of its resources with other sites, including bandwidth, storage, and all the rest.

VPS hosting is like having a dedicated server available for your site, including all of the resources and tools for yourself. Instead of having just one slice of the server, you have it all.

With VPS hosting, you typically get many extra features that you may not need, especially if you are at the beginning stages of using a website hosting service. These features might include additional security, ultra-fast loading speed, and more.

VPS is ideal for online stores and large sites. For those who aren’t there yet, shared hosting typically provides more than enough. VPS costs may vary from $20 to $100 per month, compared to shared hosting which might range from $1 to $15 per month.

You often can save money by switching to shared hosting if you’re using a VPS host.

6. Optimize your images.

Optimizing images helps you by reducing image size to the smallest possible file size without reducing the overall image quality. Many image optimization plugins or tools can reduce image size up to 80% without losing image quality.

Image optimization helps reduce the burden on your web host and helps boost image SEO for your site. The benefits of image optimizations include:

• better site speed;
• improved SEO;
• better conversion rate;
• less storage and bandwidth, which can reduce hosting and CDN costs; and
• faster back-ups, which can reduce the costs of back-up storage.

Reducing hosting costs is another advantage derived from image optimization. You’re less likely to reach your hosting limit and, if you’re on a higher-priced plan, you can reduce costs by switching to a plan with less storage space.

Images make up approximately 21% of a total webpage’s weight. Therefore, if you’re paying based on storage, image optimization will decrease your costs.

According to a study by Wpbeginner, a one-second delay in load time can cost up to a 7% drop in sales, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

When optimizing images, find a balance between the smallest file size and decent quality. You can also compress images before uploading them to WordPress.

There are tons of image formats available. You can use image optimization tools to make the task easier. Choosing the right combination of compression and tools can reduce image size by as much as by five times. You can use two types of image compression options:

• Lossy: This is a filter that eliminates part of the data. Images can degrade using this process. Therefore, be careful as to the extent you plan to reduce images.
• Lossless: This is a system that compresses data without reducing quality. However, the image needs to uncompress before being delivered.

Bottom Line for Website Hosting

There are many ways to reduce website hosting costs. It starts with realizing what your needs are. Many businesses pay for additional features included at checkout, or they have plans containing too many things that aren’t needed.

You may not know that there are huge discounts at some time of the year and therefore miss out on the chance of capitalizing on them.

The ideas listed above can help you analyze your site and determine where you can economize without sacrificing up time and reliability.

The post Best Ways to Significantly Reduce Your Website Hosting Costs appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What Is Consumer Data? 

It’s information provided by consumers and third-party sources ranging from names and addresses to purchasing behaviors and motivations. The data is supplied, collected, and stored through various interactions with a brand. These touch points can include the company website, eCommerce store, social media account, or even the checkout counter at a brick-and-mortar location. 

How To Manage Customer Data

As you might imagine, receiving data from a variety of touch points can get out of hand quickly. When you have multiple platforms being used by various departments, valuable insights and thus lucrative opportunities are lost. Therefore, businesses should consider using a Customer Data Platform (CDP). It’s a central database that gathers and organizes consumer data in a way that enables marketers and business execs to make informed marketing predictions.

How Customer Data Enhances Marketing

When a brand can develop a marketing campaign using insights from consumer data, it’s called data-driven or CDP marketing. Essentially, because you have access to relevant details about your target audience, you can use this to develop engaging content and strategies to get people interacting with your brand. Continue reading for a few more advantages. 

Stronger Consumer Profiles

You can’t know everything there is to know about a customer. Ultimately, you have no idea how they will behave or what it takes to make them take action. A marketer’s job is to make educated predictions that come close to reality. When they have tools like a CDP at their disposal, marketing teams can use the information they have to make solid predictions and build profiles around their audiences. 

Better Segmenting

As you know, no one customer is alike. Be that as it may, trying to create a marketing strategy to accommodate every individual would be tedious, if not impossible. That’s where segmenting comes into play. Marketers often separate consumers into groups to develop a more realistic profile. 

The more information you have on your target audience, the easier it is to segment them into groups to develop stronger marketing campaigns. For instance, separating your audience by their geographical location is broad, but using data like location, age, race, or income levels can help you make more efficient groups. 

Personalized Experiences

When it comes to customer engagement, experiences are a top priority. Today’s consumers prefer to interact and conduct business with brands with some connection and a level of understanding about their specific needs and desires. If you’re sending them advertisements, emails, blogs, or social media posts that have no meaning to them, they’ll turn to your competitors. 

CDP marketing provides a more personalized experience for the consumer. By analyzing historical purchasing decisions and behavioral patterns, marketing experts can make predictions and develop more efficient campaigns. 

For example, if you have a customer that generally purchases body wash every month, sending out a promotional offer a few weeks before they would typically buy more increases the chances of a sale. It tells the customer that you pay attention to their needs and rewards them for their loyalty. As a result, they’ll not only continue doing business with you but may also recommend you to others.

Customers are the very foundation of successful businesses. If brands fail to meet the needs of their target audiences and create a positive experience from marketing to sales, it will ultimately lead to their demise. By using concepts such as CDP marketing, companies can harness the power of data to develop or enhance their advertising efforts to attract audiences, generate leads, and convert sales. 

The post Harnessing The Power Of Customer Data For Your Marketing Efforts appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

1. Be On Time

If you have a meeting scheduled for a particular time, do not make your client wait. Time is money and your client will not be impressed if you’re late, thereby wasting their money. Show up early if you must, but short of an emergency, there should be no reason to make your client sit around looking at their watches. Being on time shows that you value the client and the client’s greatest resource.  Being on time costs you nothing in dollars but offers you incredible opportunities.

2. Be Prepared

Preparation is critical if you want to impress clients. The best service providers learn everything they can about their potential clients before they show up the first time. They do as much preliminary research as possible so they can ensure they offer the best solutions for the client’s needs. They don’t want to be caught off-guard by something that they could have know if they had taken the time to discover it. Alexander Graham Bell once said that “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” If you’re not prepared, you’re missing the key. Preparation won’t cost you money, but lack of preparation may cost you a client.

3. Be Kind

Some clients can come off gruff and rude. This doesn’t give you license to do the same. Kindness goes a long way, especially with clients who may have tried other solutions or service providers that didn’t meet their needs. They may already be frustrated and angry and unfortunately you end up at the receiving end of their stress. Kindness can help diffuse the situation and perhaps even turn a potential client into a paying client. Not only is kindness good for your health, it can help you win in business and in life. It doesn’t mean you become a doormat, just that you treat people with dignity and respect. In some cases, when they don’t deserve it. Kindness isn’t expensive and anyone can do it.

4. Dress For Success

How you dress depends on the industry you’re in and your clientele base. But you’ll impress clients when you dress accordingly. It shows that you value yourself, your expertise, and your client. If you’re a personal trainer, come dressed and ready. If you’re a real estate agent, make sure you look professional. If you’re about to close a high-end deal…well, you get the picture. Dressing for success doesn’t mean you need an Armani suit if you can’t afford one, but it does mean that you come looking and feeling like the professional you are.  

5. Buy Gently Used Luxury Items

Speaking of that Armani suit, you can save big money if you buy one used. It’s easy enough to hire a good tailor to ensure it fits you accurately, but for those of you just starting in your industry or who need to look the part, gently used luxury items will save you a big chunk of change. People love their high-end accessories as well. So if you have the suit, you might as well pick up a pre-owned A Lange Söhne watch. A good jeweler will only sell the most impeccable watches, so you can be assured they are genuine and in top working order. When you’re on the path to success, you can easily celebrate your wins with these

6. Make Eye Contact

Have you noticed how few people make eye contact these days? People are so used to looking down at devices that it feels awkward to connect with someone in the eyes. Eye contact communicates confidence, competence, and boldness in a way that looking down or away cannot. While you don’t want to stare, you do need to practice make eye contact if you want to impress your clients. Plus, it costs nothing.

7. Have a Firm Handshake

No one likes a wet noodle handshake. A firm (dry) handshake goes a long way to impress your client. Obviously, some people have stronger handshakes than others, so it’s vital you also don’t overdo it and crush your client’s hand. However, if you’ve done your research and your potential client is not American, it may help you to learn other ways to greet them.

8. Don’t Hide Your Costs

No one wants to sign up for something to later realize what they need is going to cost 25% more than they had planned. Share the costs up front for the entire project. Include a buffer for unforeseen expenses, and any other miscellaneous fees that you charge. Clients are not happy when they didn’t know about costs up front. Show your value, share the costs, and give the ask to your clients. Being forthright is an affordable way to impress your clients.

9. Answer Their Questions

New clients especially have a lot of questions. It can feel tedious repeating the answers over and over again, but you need to remember that for this client, it’s the first time they are hearing the answer. You’ll impress them more easily if you quickly answer their questions, and help them feel confident and excited to work with you.

Impressing high-end clients isn’t all about looking wealthy by the car your drive and the clothes you wear. Impressing clients has more to do with how you behave and how you treat them from the first point of contact, all the way through project completion. Don’t discount the power of kindness and honesty in 2021. You’d be surprised how they can go a long way to building client trust and respect.

The post The 9-Part Checklist to Help You Impress Clients without Breaking the Bank appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

If you think optimizing your online content isn’t worth it for your small business marketing strategy, think again. Here are several of the most important reasons smaller enterprises should take SEO seriously.

You Can Use SEO to Build Better Websites

SEO is always brought up in connection to search engines. And there’s no doubt that catering to search traffic is the primary function of search engine optimization. It’s in the name, after all. But SEO also has a synergistic effect on many other areas of marketing — including your website.

The digital marketing experts at Hennessey Digital ask the million-dollar question “Your small business website might look good, but is it actually working to attract new customers?” The inquiry doesn’t just revolve around color palettes or above-the-fold content.

It also has to do with SEO optimization. The marketing agency points out that a site designed by someone who understands SEO can ensure that it:

• Is mobile-friendly;
• Is responsive on different devices;
• Has user-friendly navigation;
• Converts visitors into paying customers.

From metadata to page layout to content, an SEO site is a boon for any small business.

You Can Use SEO For Local Search Engine Prowess

It’s easy for a small business to feel nonexistent. A regional retailer can shrink in the shadow of the Amazons and Walmarts of the world. A local coffee shop can feel unseen when compared to Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. But when you shrink the map, it’s easy to feel more significant. A local company may be a big deal in their hometown or county, even if no one knows them outside of that space.

That’s where local SEO comes into play. Nearly half of all Google searches are conducted in the pursuit of local information. Even more staggering, 86% of consumers say that they need the internet to help them find local businesses. 

This makes ranking in local search engine result pages (SERPs) important. It’s a space that’s much easier to stand out in. The geographic nature of local SERPs represents a significant portion of search engine queries that you don’t have to fight against major companies to win.

You Can Use SEO to Solidify Your Own Marketing Strategy

SEO also has the wonderful benefit of helping you solidify other areas of your small business marketing strategy. All good SEO should always put the consumer first and search engines second. In other words, with each piece of marketing content, you should always consider how it will provide value for your human audience. Only after that should you consider how to optimize it for search engines.

This attention to marketing message and quality can help to flesh out your overall strategy. As you consider keywords to pursue or publications to guest write for, you hone what you want to say and who you want to hear it. 

You’ll find SEO-related activities like video marketing that don’t just help your organic traffic. They also improve the quality of your marketing content. As you sort through your SEO needs, it always has a powerful impact on your overall marketing vision and direction, as well.

You Can Benefit in the Long-Term

Finally, there are many long-term benefits that come from investing in SEO in the here and now. As a small business, you may not see dramatic swings in traffic as you create quality content, optimize your website, and try to rank for certain keywords.

Nevertheless, as you invest in a variety of SEO activities, you should begin to feel the benefits from that effort over time, including things like:

• Greater website authority as your site gains backlinks, starts to attract keyword traffic, and is populated with quality, shareable content.
• More brand awareness fueled by things like positive customer experiences, active social profiles, and a filled-out Google My Business listing.
• Happier customers and more organic lead generation from consumers who enjoy visiting your optimized website and utilizing your quality resources.

It takes time to build SEO, and a lot of the work is an upfront investment. However, given enough time, contributing to SEO should eventually manifest benefits, even for a small business marketing strategy.

From a quality website to ranking on local SERPs to long-term benefits, there are plenty of reasons for a small business to invest in SEO. It’s important to keep these benefits in mind as you go along, too. At times, it will feel overwhelming and you likely won’t see the results you’re hoping for right away. But if you can stay the course, the benefits that begin to materialize over time will make every ounce of effort well worth it in the long run.

The post Why SEO Should Be a Key Part of Your Small Business Marketing Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Two decades into the 21st century, things have changed. Technology has streamlined and even cut out the need for many traditional marketing activities. Online marketing, in particular, has made an affordable and effective promotional world accessible to many SMBs (small- and medium-sized businesses.)

If you’re considering bringing your marketing in-house, though, you want to make sure that you set the stage before you make the switch. Here is some of the most important software that any modestly scaled in-house team will want in its tech stack to operate productively.

1. Communication Tech

One of the biggest upsides to an in-house marketing team is the communication factor. Removing a third-party agency can simplify your marketing communication and make it more efficient. 

Marc Anidjar, partner at the Law Offices of Anidjar & Levine, highlights “cutting out the middle man” as a critical part of his firm’s streamlined, in-house marketing efforts. Anidjar explains that “An in-house marketing team enables the firm to be nimbler and make quicker, more effective decisions.”

The business owner goes on to explain that removing the middle man enables his team to create relationships directly with advertisers. However, he also highlights that it added new costs in the manner of having to manage their own accounts.

In order to keep these additional costs at a minimum, it’s important that you utilize technology. Whether that comes in the form of emails, phone calls, video chats, or any other communication channel, you want to set clear guidelines for your marketing communication. 

This should be codified both for internal and external marketing interactions. Smooth, effective communication is ground zero for in-house marketing staff to manage its various advertising accounts.

2. Collaboration Tech

There are many facets to modern in-house marketing. SMBs and larger corporations alike must learn to organize and streamline their marketing activities if they want an in-house effort to be effective.

One of the best ways to do this is to find technologies that can bring a multi-pronged marketing activity into a single location. A DSP (demand side platform) is a great way to unify a critical marketing activity: buying and managing marketing inventory.

A DSP provides a single interface where you can formulaically purchase, scale, and optimize advertisements. The ability to do this in a single location can save your in-house team endless hours spent moving from one advertiser to the next. It can also help them maintain greater consistency throughout marketing campaigns.

3. Creativity Tech

The creative side of a marketing campaign is rife with an endless procession of various creative tech tools. Most of the creativity-driven applications you need will vary depending on the size and scope of your marketing strategy. For instance, a small, regional business can create a local ad for their Facebook page using a free content creator like Canva or Picmonkey. 

However, a larger company will likely need to utilize a more comprehensive CMP (creative management platform) software throughout its creative efforts. A CMP is a powerful tool that integrates many aspects of content creation into a single platform. 

CMP provider Bannerflow describes its platform as one that enables “small, in-house teams to produce complex digital campaigns, for multiple markets.” The goal with a quality CMP is to go beyond the mere creation of the content. The program should also integrate the rest of the process into the mix as well. 

In other words, if you’re creating a banner for your marketing, your CMP should help you through the entire workflow process for the campaign. You should be able to use the single tool to create, personalize, optimize, and distribute the piece of marketing collateral.

Whether you’re utilizing smaller tools or larger CMPs, you want to have the right creative tools in place. This will enable your in-house team to produce internal content that is consistent and effective.

4. Data and Analytics Tech

Data is a key component of modern marketing. You want to collect and analyze data as you operate. This can help you perfect future marketing efforts and maximize your ROI.

Many CRM (customer relationship management) platforms can provide some of these key insights. However, you also want to consider setting up a CDP (customer data platform).

A CDP can aggregate customer information from across your organization in a more marketing-focused manner. A CRM manages limited, manually input customer data. A CDP goes further by gathering data from across the various customer touchpoints in your company. From there, it organizes it in a manner that yields critical marketing information.

Along with a good CDP, you also want a solid EOP (experience optimization platform.) An EOP considers a customer’s interactions across the entire marketing experience. It can implement testing and personalization tools that can perfect your marketing efforts over time.

In-house marketing has many impressive advantages. It can cut costs, improve creativity, promote transparency, and solidify your brand’s messaging. However, if you bring your marketing in-house, you want to do it the right way. 

Make sure you build a tech stack that is personalized to your company’s specific marketing needs. Use your tech to streamline time-soaking activities and fill employee skill gaps. If you can create a robust in-house marketing team that is equipped with the best MarTech for your needs, you can truly tap into all of the benefits of in-house marketing.

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Even if your current strategy is generating positive results, there’s always room for improvement. And that leads to the million-dollar question: what’s the best way to take your marketing strategy to new heights in 2021?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, there are several ideas you should definitely consider. Here are five of the best.

Review Past Performance

This is where it all starts. If you don’t know how your marketing strategy has performed in the past, you won’t know what to do in the future. 

Review your performance for 2020, as well as that of the first quarter of 2021. 

What worked best? Which marketing strategies fell flat? Is it time to implement new ideas to kickstart your marketing department?

With the right tools in place, tracking marketing performance is easier than ever before. There are software programs that can do all the work for you. The only thing you have to do is compare the numbers and decide what comes next. 

Bring in a Marketing Strategy Consultant

This is a big step forward for many small business owners, but that shouldn’t stop you from considering it.

There are many benefits of bringing a marketing strategy consultant into your business, including but not limited to:

• Expert guidance 
• Another person to share ideas
• A different view of your marketing strategy 
• New ideas

It’s scary to bring in an outside marketing consultant. They could change a lot in regards to what you’ve done in the past. It can also rub your marketing team the wrong way. However, if you feel that it’s the best decision for your small business, don’t hesitate to take action.

Tip: don’t hire just any marketing consultant. Do your research to ensure that you hire an experienced and knowledgeable professional with a good track record of success. 

Spend More Resources on Content Marketing

Did you know that 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing? 

That’s a big number (and it’s likely to grow in the future). As you learn more about your competitors, you’re likely to find that many of them — if not all — are spending big-time resources on content marketing.

This doesn’t mean you should go all-in on your content marketing strategy, avoiding other methods that have generated positive responses in the past. But it does mean that you should learn more about content marketing, including the types that have the best chance of yielding the intended results.

Some of the most common forms of content marketing including:

• Blog posts
• Social media content
• Video content
• Whitepapers
• Infographics 
• Slide decks

You get the point. There’s no shortage of ways to get started with content marketing. The most important thing is that you have a defined strategy. This will keep you on the right track. 

Buy the Right Software

Depending on your age, you may remember the days when business software wasn’t popular. It was only for the biggest and most profitable companies.

Fortunately, things have changed over the years, and now there’s software for almost every business-related task.

As a marketing professional, some of the software applications to consider include a customer data platform, a customer review platform, and an analytics platform. 

Before you spend money on any type of software, consider if there’s a free trial available. This allows you to take the software for a test run, thus helping you determine if it suits your wants and needs.

Tip: no matter what type of software you’re seeking, you’re likely to find several solutions. Compare the pros, cons, and features to ensure yourself of making an informed and confident decision. 

Expand Your Efforts

This is where many small business owners come up short. They know what’s worked for them in the past, and they assume that this is all they should focus on in the future.

It’s true that you don’t want to abandon the marketing efforts that have gotten you this far. But at the same time, you never know what else will work until you give it a try.

Slowly expand your efforts to see what other marketing tactics can generate a positive return on  investment (ROI) for your business. 

Tip: as noted above, track the performance of your new marketing efforts. This will tell you if you should continue or when it’s time to stop.

Common Mistakes

As you consider the many ways to improve your marketing strategy in 2021, it’s possible that you could slip up every now and again. And when that happens, it has the potential to cost you time and money.

On the plus side, knowledge of the most common mistakes can help you prevent them. Here are a handful of mistakes to plan for:

• Moving too fast: It’s a good thing to take action, but don’t get ahead of yourself. Should you move too fast, you could end up losing track of what’s most important.
• Spending too much: Even if you have the budget for it, don’t overspend on new marketing tactics. Take it slow and steady, track the results, and scale as it makes sense to do so.
• Doing it all yourself: This almost always brings trouble to your small business. Even if you consider yourself a skilled marketing professional, you’re only one person. And as a business owner, there’s a lot on your plate. Rather than attempt to do everything yourself, hire marketing professionals that you can trust to manage everything on your behalf. 

Final Thoughts

Regardless of your marketing goals — from building a brand community to generating more leads for your sales department — it’s critical that you have a strategy you can trust and rely on.

Take the time to think long and hard about the five ideas above and how they could transform your small business for the better.

Would you add any other ideas to this list? What have you had the most success with in the past?

The post 5 Ways to Improve Your Marketing Strategy in 2021 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Eliminate the Middleman

One of the reasons that DTC brands were created was to eliminate the middleman and the costs associated with not selling directly to the customer before. Instead of your supply chain being a long line, it can be shortened and made much simpler. Paying someone to get your product to your customer is a huge expense and leaves room for error to occur, after the order has left your hands.

Finding a reliable middleman was tough for a lot of businesses and now you no longer have to vet businesses to see if they would be a reliable partner for this operation.

Better Customer Service

When brands are DTC, they know exactly the reason a shipping order is held up or why a certain product is out of stock. When customers get to speak directly with the people sending the product, it enhances the customer service experience. Some companies that are not DTC will have third-party customer service that cannot directly answer most questions and complicates the experience for the customer.

When you have more control over customer service, you can keep a positive brand image a lot easier. The ability to respond to negative feedback can be instantaneous and the transparency will show through to customers that you care about them and their experience with your brand.

Brands Can Actually Build Relationships

When you aren’t dependent on retailers to sell your product, you get to know your customers better. No longer do you have to fight for shelf space or a well-placed rack for clothing at the front of a store. Talking to your customers and helping them make buying decisions can start and grow a relationship with them for years of loyalty to come. Since DTC businesses are not brick and mortar, customers may be hesitant to order without knowledge of how the product fits or certain features of it.

Brands Can Maintain Control 

Your reputation is everything as a brand. Bad PR is the first thing to pop up in search results and negative comments always rise to the top. Being a DTC brand means that you have more control over this image that is portrayed of you. If they say the person on the phone was rude, that’s your employee. If someone says you should carry more color options, you can make those changes. You don’t have to send the dreaded email to your customer that you are having supply chain issues or that you have no idea where their order went.

Brands Can Partner to Grow

It can be difficult to grow DTC businesses. How do you find new customers when you aren’t in major retailers? Where do people hear about you? How do you achieve growth year after year?

One way is to find an angel investor. Pitch your brand to an investment group like The Chernin Group (TCG), a multi-stage investment firm that got its start by acquiring and operating direct-to-consumer brands in media and tech. A glance at their portfolio shows that they still invest in DTC companies such as Dadi, which specializes in direct-to-consumer male fertility testing.

More Product Options

When you are trying to carry your product in regional or national retailers, you have to be selective about your products. Only sending the best-selling colors or models of your product is how you maximize your sales in retail.

When you are DTC, you can afford to carry more models and more products because you are holding all of your inventory and not sending it out to several locations hoping it sells. If you get feedback that your customers would like to see a certain color, you can act quickly on this and offer it in your online store while the interest is high.

Share Your Story

When you are a DTC brand, there is a greater opportunity to share your story. Consumers love to connect with brands and feel like they are a part of something. Focusing on becoming great storytellers can result in you selling more products.

How does this happen? You build your brand through online strategy. Use the enormous popularity of video to drive interest to your brand. Instead of posting a 3 sentence testimonial on your website, have it recorded on video with excellent visual presentation. This is much more likely to resonate with the viewer and impress them that such nice things are being said about your brand.

Personalization

Unfortunately, you don’t have many options for personalization in retail. You are dependent on whichever employee is working at the retailer that day to speak for your brand and hope they give the customer a personalized experience.

With a DTC model, you can add a personalized note or coupon that says thanks for your first purchase with our business or we hope you shop with us again soon. These handwritten notes could be the most personal shopping experience someone has ever had.

You can also personalize the shipping to serve as another advertisement for your business. Think of the life of a shipping box or bag. It travels on a shipping vehicle. Sits in a home for a while. Having a personalized shipping container can serve a unique channel to reach customers that see the package and want to learn more.

Why Is This Important?

Whether you are a business owner or a consumer, knowing the benefits of DTC is important. You can likely name brands that you already buy from that are a DTC model. Check out our website for more business operations articles like this one.

The post The Benefits of Being a Direct-to-Consumer Brand appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

To stay competitive, you need a solid mobile marketing platform with cross-channel support, scalability, and segmentation features. You also need to build and visualize the customer journey across multiple channels automatically. And you need the ability to engage with customers in real time, to seize moments of opportunity when a sale can be made if the customer is engaged immediately.

Mobile Marketing Platform Features

The right mobile marketing platform for your company will have these five features.

1) Cross Channel Support

Most people won’t go anywhere, even to the bathroom, without their phone. Plenty of people also wake up and grab their phone first thing. A strong mobile marketing platform will help you reach those people with emails, texts, or push notifications.

But it’s not enough to assume that customers will be content to research, shop, and buy without turning to another channel. They might use another channel for more information, customer support, or to make the final purchase. You need to be reaching customers across multiple channels — mobile, print, TV, social media marketing, SMS, and email.

2) Channel Scalability

Your company might be small now, but will it always be? Not if your mobile marketing campaigns are successful! Your mobile marketing platform should allow you to scale up or down as needed. This will let you use the same platform to manage marketing campaigns as the contact lists grow. Always ask about a vendor’s scalability before signing a contract. Also, make sure to get information on current clients and their messaging volume.

3) Segmentation

Few businesses cater to such a narrow demographic that marketing messaging doesn’t need to be tailored to the needs of different customer cohorts. Your customer base can be segmented into different groups or cohorts by age, shopping and purchase patterns, interests, profile completion, app usage, or more. To maximize the effectiveness of your mobile marketing campaigns, tailor your messaging to the specific needs of each customer cohort. Double check that your mobile marketing platform that lets you do this.

4) Journey Visualization

With large campaigns, you need a sophisticated, automated journey builder that helps you visualize the customer journey easily. Automated, multichannel journey visualization is a must-have feature that makes your mobile marketing platform ultimately scalable. A sophisticated journey builder lets you build massive, multichannel, automated campaigns with a small team of one or two employees.

5) Real Time Support and Engagement

A mobile marketing benefit is that you can use it to engage customers in real time. For example, you can send a mobile marketing message to a customer that left items in their cart. Or, you can offer customers a limited-time-only offer redeemable via text, email, app, or digital coupon. 

Real-time support and engagement means that customers aren’t allowed to simply lose interest and drift away to another app or site. Well, at least they can’t do this without a text, push notification or email reminding them to come back and finish checking out, or offering them a discount on their first purchase. It’s one of the most powerful tools you have as a marketer, so tuck it firmly in your tool belt.

A strong mobile marketing platform can help you grow your business by engaging with customers on their phones. Reach out to customers in real time to offer special discounts, promotions, support, and information. They’ll reciprocate with new enthusiasm for your brand.

The post 5 Things to Look for in a Mobile Marketing Platform appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

That makes social media marketing a key part of every business’s marketing strategy. This article discusses the top reasons why social media presence is still important for small businesses. 

Social Media Presence is Important

Social media marketing is ubiquitous, cost-effective, and highly profitable for businesses of all kinds.  

According to a study by The CMO Survey, marketing budgets for social media are expected to more than double (from 11% to 24%) in the next five years. Statistics also show that almost 95% of young adults follow a brand through at least one social media network.  

That establishes the fact that social media presence is still important and essential for small businesses that need stronger engagement and greater reach. 

Why is a Social Media Presence Important for Small Businesses?

1. It helps you better understand your customers.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be great resources to collect and aggregate data. Hence, you can get a clear understanding of your customers and your target market. Having a social media presence is key to finding potential leads and reaching your target audience. 

2. It increases customer reach.

On average, internet users generally have 7.6 social media accounts. The number of internet users in the world is 4.2 billion, and the number is constantly growing. This makes social media a very effective tool to reach a wider audience. Fifty-two percent of millennials have said that social media advertisements influence their purchase decision of a certain product or service. 

Along with that, communicating with your customer base is very important. Multiple contact channels increase reliability and brand reputation. Helping customers reach your business through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram can be very profitable in the long-run. Real-time and consistent engagement with your customers can lead to the effective growth of your business. 

3. It establishes brand presence.

It is undeniable that social media channels are the best way to establish your brand’s presence; however, that doesn’t mean you have to be on every single one. With the proper social media marketing strategies, you can express the voice of your brand and establish its presence and recognition in your target marketplace. 

Over 30% of millennials and Generation X members regularly interact with brands on a monthly basis. This calls for the need of increasing visibility, which is effectively accomplished when you have a strong social media presence.

We are living in a digitally-savvy generation, and consumers are more inclined to buy from a business that offers a positive social media experience. Brand engagement builds trust with Twitter users. In fact, when brands engage with their consumers’ Tweets, 77% of them feel more confident in the brand.

Having active social media profiles and a strong presence will also effectively enhance your visibility on search engine result pages. That will help you obtain potential leads and connect with potential customers interested in your products or services. 

4. It leads to better and greater brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty matters in today’s world. Most major brands as well as small businesses try to improve brand loyalty through their marketing plans and strategies. 

Social media marketing is definitely a key element in building brand loyalty for all kinds and sizes of businesses. It is a known saying that, “It’s five times more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.”

In today’s market, customers have a plethora of options and brands to buy the products or services they need. This means that your business needs to be consistent and efficient to retain a customer and build brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty is a two-way street. Customers expect businesses to offer them something in return for their loyalty towards the brand. Having a strong social media presence is a great way to build brand loyalty for your business. 

Chatbots on Social Media Platforms are Cost-effective and Very Useful

Chatbots are a great way to enhance social media presence. It can be a great way to offer quick and effective customer service. They enable automatic replies to frequently asked questions and concerns of your customers. It can also offer on-demand information without having to check your messages all the time. 

Chatbots are an important part of any social media marketing plan. We can effectively increase engagement, impress your existing customers. Also, it helps you acquire some new customers in the market.

Social Media to Ensure Success

If you were in doubt about social media marketing for your small business and if it would be a profitable investment, then we hope we have made the reasons amply clear to you. 

With the rapid increase in the popularity of social media networks, social media presence is not merely an option for your small business anymore. It has become a necessity in 2021! 

Make sure you hire the right professionals and adopt the right strategies for social media marketing, which can serve the needs and purposes of your business and ensure sustainability and long-term success. 

The post 5 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need Social Media Presence appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

They need a fool-proof strategy to move ahead in 2021. A strategy that is not just built from the lessons learned in 2020 but also an improvised version that will be able to tackle the challenges that they may have to face. 

If you also aim to succeed with marketing in 2021, you must have a strategy in place. And that’s where this write-up would come in. It will help businesses craft a successful marketing strategy for 2021. So, let’s get started. 

Analyze the Past Year’s Marketing Strategy Results

Creating a new marketing strategy for 2021 doesn’t mean you start all afresh (unless you are a startup launching in 2021). Instead, analyze the past year’s digital marketing efforts and metrics before getting started for 2021. 

This will help you identify what’s working and what’s not. 

Analyze the data from the past year to assess the results. Google Analytics, SEMRush, and other analysis tools can help you conduct an in-depth analysis. You need to have pointers for each effort put in, campaigns launched, and the results derived from them. 

Also, check what channels drove the most value in the past year?

Analyze each channel, be it social media, blogs, ads, outreach, link building, email marketing, and all others. Check for the marketing qualified and sales qualified leads received from each channel. 

Depending on your business goals, categorize each channel driving the most marketing qualified and sales qualified leads. This will help as a base for your next year’s marketing strategy. 

Define Current Year’s Objectives

The next thing that businesses need to define while drafting a marketing strategy is the objectives. 

• Is it sales? 
• Do you want business visibility? 
• Is your business looking to achieve more profits? 
• Do you aim to expand your business? 
• Or do you seek to expand your service horizon?

You need to know what your business goals are for the year. This is what will shape your marketing strategy. 

Once you have determined your goals and objectives for the year, it is time to analyze the multiple factors and market differentiators driving you towards that goal. 

Conduct Competitor Analysis 

The next step to take for crafting a fail-proof marketing strategy is to analyze the competitors. It means not just going by the marketing efforts they have put in but also analyzing the results. 

An in-depth competitor analysis can help discover strategies, keywords, demographics, and much more for your next marketing strategy. 

A SWOT analysis of the competitor is the way to go. Look for the following:

• Strengths of the competitor that you can also capitalize on. 
• Weaknesses of the competitors that you should avoid.
• Opportunities in the competitor landscape that you can clutch.
• Threats from competitors in regards to their digital expansion.

There are several marketing tools to analyze such data. This includes SEMRush, Quick Search, SimilarWeb, UberSuggest, and many more. Such tools can help you analyze your competitor well and use the data to shape your strategy.

Define Marketing Funnel and Channels

From the first step, you must have already shortlisted the most effective channels driving the most values for the past year. This will be very helpful in solidifying your marketing strategy for 2021.

You need to plan ahead and define the marketing funnel for the year. Any typical marketing funnel as four stages: awareness, engagement, conversion, and loyalty or advocacy (in the same order). This is the direction you need to take to draft a marketing strategy. 

Start with creating a strategy for building brand awareness. This could include social media presence, blogs, newsletters, guest posts, and much more. Once you have a presence, you can move ahead to convert those visitors. The funnel helps create a step-by-step process for getting more visitors, buyers, and advocates for your brand. 

For each phase or stage in the marketing funnel, make sure you have defined the right marketing channel. These channels are where all your promotions will happen. In order to define the right channels, you need to start by digging your data and analyzing what channels your user personas are most active on. Pick the channel that would be the right fit based on your business and offer amazing content. 

Invest in Great Marketing and Automation Tools

There are several marketing and marketing automation tools available in the market. A marketing strategy would be incomplete without using the right tools. Here are some marketing and marketing automation tools that you should use:

• Google Analytics: for analyzing the complete performance of the content and campaigns
• MailChimp: for automating email campaigns and close more leads
• HubSpot: for total marketing automation from creating and publishing to analyzing, campaigns, and email marketing
• HootSuite: for managing social media and scheduling posts across all channels
• SEMRush: for monitoring keywords, position, brand, and other things for your marketing efforts
• SharpSpring: to optimize conversions and boost sales and pass sales qualified leads forward
• KISSmetrics: for tracking, analyzing, and monitoring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts
• Google Keyword Planner: for choosing the right keywords and researching the competitor keywords

Marketing Strategy Recommendations for 2021

When it comes to marketing strategy, there are several marketing recommendations that one can use. Here are some recommendations that businesses can follow in 2021. 

• Re-check For Core Web Vitals

This is one of the latest Google updates, and businesses not optimized for this algorithm will suffer. It is imperative that businesses get their website optimized for this update or else they could be penalized and their SERP ranking might drop. 

• Revisit Your Interaction Tactics

The way businesses interact with customers is changing. A digital experience platform can be great in helping businesses increase their digital interactions. Make sure the message is consistent and is being considerate of the events around. 

• Invest In Social Media

Social media is not going anywhere. Instead, it will balloon in 2021. So, if businesses want to have a stronger impression on their visitors, connecting with them on social media is a must. 

• Optimize Site For Voice Searches

With Siri, Echo, and Alexa becoming common in every home, there will be a definite increase in voice searches. Businesses would have to optimize their content to be ranked for keywords with voice-search intent. 

Have a Marketing Plan for the Unforeseen

If 2020 taught everyone one thing, it is to be ready for the unforeseen. Everything is extremely unpredictable and the ability to pivot with the situation is what keeps a business going. Many businesses had to launch their website in a hustle. Those who afforded to bypass their digital presence had to outsource software development to be where their customers were – on digital channels. If they wanted to reach their audience even during the global lockdown, pivoting the marketing strategy to boost their web presence was imperative. 

So, coming 2021, businesses have a digital presence but they still need to have a plan of action for the unforeseeable circumstances as well. 

Innovative businesses survived the pandemic with an out-of-the-box marketing strategy. They found an opportunity even in the worldwide lockdown. This is what every business has to learn. Sometimes having a fail-proof strategy can also fail, owing to the situations around. This is why one needs to have a back-up plan or a plan for unforeseen times. 

Bottom Line: Go Digital for Successful Marketing Strategy

If we leave aside the chaos that 2020 created, it paved the way for massive digitalization for most businesses. It brought two years’ worth of digitalization in just two months. Businesses pivoted the way they marketed and sold their products and services. No wonder, 2020 became the year of digital sales.  

And this is not going to change anytime soon. Despite the vaccine, customers are still not confident to step out and make physical interactions. They are consuming more information through digital-only channels. 

The marketing strategy for 2021 would be about the end-consumers who are now on digital channels. To succeed in marketing this year would only mean strengthening the digital marketing game. 

The post How to Create a Successful Marketing Strategy appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Brand loyal customers are the real asset of a company. Businesses across the globe are investing good capital in building a brand loyal customer base. In fact, the brand community is a great way to attract, nurture, and increase brand loyal customers for a business.

Use these brand community groups made up of your most influential customers to boost your overall marketing strategy. The community will help you to retain your best customers and attract new ones via word-of-mouth and other essential data. And, that’s why more and more businesses are identifying the most interesting ways to build brand communities and attract consumers.

How do you build a brand community?

If you are struggling around the concept of brand loyalty and how to build one, we’ve got you covered. Building a brand community should be a systematic, strategic approach for successful outcomes.

This article focuses on the top five ways to build a brand community and why it is essential. 

#1. Target special interest of customers

When you are building a brand community, it is essential to foster the particular interest of customers. For instance, identify your business’s most popular product and allow members to access the product with certain points. Many loyalty management platforms offer reward points to access special products and meet people with similar interests. 

When you cater to the customers on the products of their interest, they feel more valued and are willing to engage with others. Hence, identify the special interest of the customer and group them together and encourage them to interact and build a positive brand image. 

#2. Create and foster online spaces

In today’s digital time, there are multiple platforms available to connect with brand loyal customers and build a community of the customers. For example, you can use social media channels to build a group of customers who make frequent purchases with your business. 

The digital space allows many opportunities for the group members to meet, communicate, and share thoughts about the brand. As the brand loyal customers engage with each other and with your business, they will provide helpful information about enhancing and improving your business.

#3. Promote content

This is one of the great ways to build a brand community and keep the customers engaged with your business. When you give valuable and informative information to the customers, they find another reason to stay connected.

You can publish the content through a blog or email and let the customers communicate with each other. For this, you can invite customers to contribute their thoughts via informative content.

#4. Cultivate a value-driven presence on social platforms.

Social media platforms help you engage with brand-loyal customers. Here you can easily group them and create a group of members to foster brand community. Also, you can share content and encourage the customers to interact with the posts.

In simple terms, social media increases the possibility to expand an online business presence while building a community around your company.

#5. Offer a Chat Group for specific members.

A members-only chat group allows members an opportunity to discuss new products, give reviews, and share industry secrets. Here, you can also label each customer’s membership and engagement level within their profile. A loyalty management platform like LoyaltyXpert is the best way to profile customers. It will help you to track and monitor real-time user preferences, trends, and behaviors.

If you introduce a loyalty program, it will also help in getting brand loyal customers. And, you can encourage them to participate in community groups and strengthen the brand community. Building brand community is essential for businesses that want to retain more brand loyal customers.

Why is building a brand community important?

A brand community is essential to gather the brand advocates and strengthen the loyal customer base. The members of the group communicate with each other by sharing the reviews and experiences of a product or service to create a positive brand image. The communication in the community group helps in attracting new customers as well. More precisely, here are some important reasons that insist upon building brand community;

• Brand community boosts loyalty programs where the members earn and burn rewards.
• Members of your exclusive community will motivate others to engage with your business offerings.
• Exclusive brand communities ease influencers and build relationships with each other.
• Selective brand communities help you accumulate vital data.
• Membership programs like customer loyalty can deepen customer relationships.
• Increase the efficiency of your other marketing initiatives.

All in all, building a brand community is imperative for businesses that want to sustain market competition by acquiring a large base of brand-loyal customers. Undoubtedly, brand communities will be helpful if they have built the right ways. Depend on the industry you serve and the requirements of your business, and you should select the ways smartly. However, selecting the above mentioned ways are all-time preferred. You can also link a loyalty program with one or more ways of building community and encourage your potential customers to enjoy value added perks along with the purchase.

The post Here’s How To Build a Brand Community appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Currently, this marketing method is shaded by social media dominance. The capability of this type of marketing campaign is often ignored by marketers. Of course, social media can boost your marketing strategies and give the results you wanted. However, marketing via email can produce instant results for your business in comparison to the social networks.

Want to know how? Check out these eight reasons why marketing through email is better than social media:

1. Personalization for improved outcomes

Email messages can be personalized more than a social media post. They allow you to easily segment audiences and send them personalized messages with more specific outcomes with CTAs.

2. Segments messages to boost conversions

You can easily slice and dice your mailing list per your strategic actions based on their prior actions. Details about the emails open and links they click let you use that behavior in segmenting the audience further. This should lead to better conversion rates.

On the other hand, social media will only give you some control in demographic targeting. It’s also troublesome to track at the individual level. Even though some social media channels allow demographic segmentation, none will work like email marketing.

3. Email builds relationships and credibility

People wish to do business with those they know, admire and trust. Email offers a direct connection to the customer, making it more personal rather than social media marketing. Customers can also quickly connect with you in case of questions or concerns via email.

Also, the personal appreciation messages you send will strengthen customer relationships and open the doorways for more future business.

4. Customers favor email for promotional messages

You can send promotional offers via email based on customers’ shopping patterns with this type of marketing. Rather than just sending a generalized promotional offer, you can embrace that opportunity to send special offers for the products and services customers are interested in. Besides, you can run a permission-based promotional campaign to improve sales and keep the customers attracted to your business.

5. Email reaches more mobile consumers

Undoubtedly, the number of smartphone users increases daily. Many of them check and respond to email on their phone. Unlike building an app or SMS marketing, email marketing does not require small businesses to invest a significant amount in new technology or various software.

6. Email is more cost-efficient

Email is an inexpensive way to reach people interested in hearing from you and regularly communicate with them. Plus, whether you want to run a marketing campaign or send promotional offers, it’s relatively cheaper than advertising on social media platforms. If you can get better results at an affordable price with email, why would you spend more?

7. Seamless integration with other marketing tactics

Another top advantage of marketing through email for small businesses is that it blends well with other marketing tools. Companies can craft emails to reach a variety of goals and promote a number of other campaigns.

For instance, you can combine email marketing with a CRM system. If you are running a precise campaign and want to measure analytics, marketing through email works. On the contrary, you have to be dependent on the network you choose for social media and the facility they provide.

8. Own your email list

With your own email list, you have a direct route to potential customers and interact with them. Also, everything you communicate with them is under your control, unlike other platforms. More specifically, you need to make communications with the target audience as per the social media network’s rules, regulations, and features they provide.

Reasons to make email part of your marketing strategy include:

• Email efficiently drives more traffic to your company website

• Email helps in generating higher ROI

• It can be an effective tool to generate brand awareness

• Emails improve customers’ engagement easily and quickly

• Marketing via email is useful for testing the various strategies

If you make email part of your marketing strategy, you will have a lot more benefits than choosing social media. The most common advantages of marketing through email include owning an email list, most personalized and one-to-one communication, inexpensive, audience segmentation, and much more.

Whether to choose marketing through social media or email, it should be your decision. Nonetheless, when you want to increase brand awareness, boost sales, or retain brand-loyal customers, the power of marketing through email should not be overlooked.

The post 8 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Better Than Social Media appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The Power Of The Consumer’s Voice

Over the past two decades, the internet marketplace has changed almost beyond recognition. With more companies than ever before moving online and a highly competitive selling environment, it’s never been clearer that marketing strategies need to change and adapt too. Companies have to work harder than ever before to stand out in the online retail arena.

However, a surprising number of businesses have failed to move with the times. Outdated techniques are still in use and pushy selling tactics can still be seen in operation. Yet, after running successful e-commerce, financial and marketing services business since 2003, Brian Greenberg is paving the way for a new generation of digital marketers, extolling the virtues of gathering reviews and using the customer’s own positive voice as a way of attracting more traffic and raising more revenue.

This is a technique that he has used to his own advantage over the years and that has led him to write a book inspired by his own experience entitled “The Salesman Who Doesn’t Sell”.

The Importance Of Review Gathering

Greenberg, the founder, and president of True Blue Life Insurance, is well-placed to offer expert advice about successful digital marketing, having generated more than $50 million in revenue from his own businesses.

Having discovered the statistic that 90% of consumers read reviews before visiting a company’s website and making a purchase, Greenberg took the idea on board by working on ways to generate more reviews for his businesses and, thus, to leverage those positive testimonials to raise awareness of his companies, to build up trust, increase the conversion rate, and to promote future sales.

The result was incredibly successful. So much so, in fact, that he has collected more than 10 thousand testimonials and customer reviews, and has earned the title of one of the financial service industry’s most creative individuals.

What About Negative Reviews?

It’s fair to say that, no matter how good a business may be and no matter how hard it tries to satisfy its customers, from time to time there will be negative reviews. Greenberg doesn’t necessarily see this as a problem. In fact, he sees it as a useful way to showcase the company’s customer-centric approach.

It’s only natural for would-be customers to read the negative reviews first before they read the positive ones. Therefore, they need to see that the business cares about those negative opinions and have pulled out all the stops to try to appease their dissatisfied clients. It isn’t the negative reviews themselves that are a problem, it’s failing to deal with them properly. 

Greenberg recommends a three-step approach to handling negative reviews: 

• Apologize – retaliation must be avoided at all costs. Take this chance to say sorry for the mistakes you have made and reinforce your company’s values by offering to put things right immediately.
• Rectify – once you’ve promised to put things right you have to actually put that into action. 
• Following up – once you’ve addressed the problem and rectified it, don’t leave it there. Follow up afterward to ensure the customer is now satisfied and ask them to take the negative review down. 

Replying publicly to a negative review also demonstrates to potential customers who read it that you aren’t just a faceless organization but are, instead, a business that cares about its customers and wants to do the right thing.

A negative review can, therefore, even work to your advantage and help show that you’re running a reliable and trustworthy company. Greenberg effectively harnesses this technique to his own advantage in his own business enterprises and extols its virtues to those he advises.

Incentivizing Employees For Getting Reviews

Greenberg places such great importance on customer reviews that he offers incentives to his employees for getting as many reviews as possible. By offering them bonuses based on the reviews they get, he scoops a double win – 5-star reviews that showcase his company in the best possible light, and a team of motivated, hard-working employees who are driven by customer service.

Making It Easy To Leave A Review

To leverage the potential of customer reviews, Greenberg emphasizes the importance of making it as easy as possible to leave reviews. Without facilitating the process of reviewing, customers are unlikely to put any effort into reviewing their experience. The only customers who are likely to do this are those who are extremely unhappy with the service they’ve received.

To this end, he uses an automated process to remind customers to leave a testimonial and includes direct links in the reminder that takes the customer right to the appropriate review page. Eliminating the need for customers to click around and carry out searches to leave their opinion, he simplifies that process and increases the likelihood of a positive review being left exponentially. 

Building Customer Trust – The Key To Selling Success

While Greenberg doesn’t engage in aggressive marketing techniques, he still manages to increase sales and boost profits in an impressive manner. How does he do it? The answer lies in his customer-centric approach.

By focusing on offering outstanding customer service and encouraging the customers themselves to do the selling through their own positive reviews, Greenberg is blazing a trail in the global digital marketplace, showing others how to encourage their customers to leave testimonials and how to use the power of those reviews to strengthen their reputation within their industry, increase their brand awareness, and grow their business exponentially. It’s no wonder that Greenberg has become known as the Salesman Who Doesn’t Sell.

The post How Brian Greenberg Made His Competitive Advantage In Getting Reviews appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Small to medium businesses (SMBs), which are now pressured to compete with larger enterprises, can now turn to technology to boost their effectiveness across various business processes. However, choosing which tool is right for the company’s situation can be tough given the large number of services and applications now available to SMBs. Companies must also consider which ones are the most cost-effective.

Here are five tools SMBs can use to overcome challenges in today’s ever-evolving digital landscape.

1 – Reason

SMBs have increasingly become the target of cyberattacks. Poor security measures applied by small businesses make them easy to hack. A single security breach can cause loss of data, downtime, damage to reputation, and potential lawsuits. Despite these risks, many SMBs are still not investing in capable security solutions.

Due to the advent of the recent SMBs hacking attempts on the rise, Reason Cybersecurity now offers its antivirus solution for Businesses – a dedicated version of their security solution specifically designed for SMBs. Reason features an antivirus that offers real-time protection and threat removal. Reason also has ransomware protection that prevents rogue processes from encrypting files. Reason also offers privacy-oriented features such as camera and microphone protection.

Reason for Business is currently available for SMBs in affordable subscription packages. Such security tools can help SMBs safeguard themselves from modern cyberthreats and help them avoid expensive costs due to breaches.

2 – accessiBe

Calls for websites to be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities have grown over the past couple of years. There have already been thousands of lawsuits filed against companies that are non-compliant to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While making the web accessible to everyone should be a priority for all, SMBs find themselves in a tight position. To become compliant, companies must abide by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which isn’t an easy thing to do manually, as it requires plenty of technical know-how to pull off. The lesser evil alternative is investing hefty budgets into accessibility consulting services, but many SMBs simply can’t afford it.

accessiBe addresses this problem through its platform. Site owners simply have to install a single line of Javascript and accessiBe can readily apply the modifications necessary to make the website ADA-compliant within 48 hours. accessiBe features improvements such as making websites navigable using special input devices and their content readable by screen readers.

accessiBe gives SMBs the opportunity to capitalize on the burgeoning people with disabilities market. In addition, SMBs will be able to make many services available to people with disabilities and avoid facing lawsuits as well. Depending on page count, websites can make their sites accessible for as low as $490 a year.

3 – ClickMeeting

SMBs must also find efficient ways to reach out to their stakeholders. There may be plenty of opportunities to perform cross-border business but a small company’s sales force may be hampered by expensive travel costs for them to do live demos and presentations.

ClickMeeting is a webinar solution that allows companies to educate staff and clients across the globe. The webinars can also be used to engage customers and prospective clients with product demos and presentations that can help them learn more about a company’s product and service offerings. The demos also come with a live chat and  Q&A feature which allows marketers to answer customer inquiries. The webinars can also be a great tool for communication and collaboration, especially when building and managing remote teams.

ClickMeeting is available for organizations of all sizes through different subscription plans starting at $25 per month.

4 – VideoBoost

SMBs can also work on building brand awareness to reach more customers and improve sales. One of the most effective ways in increasing awareness today is through video content. Video marketers reportedly increase brand awareness by 54%. However, creating high quality videos can be expensive as it typically requires having a team of creative professionals.

VideoBoost is a video maker app that allows companies to easily and inexpensively create videos from their phone, using a huge selection of templates, customization features, a stock footage library and an audio library. The resulting videos can also be readily integrated into various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and more.

VideoBoost is part of the BoostApps suite which help marketers create engaging content across various media. VideoBoost is a free app and is available to download on the App Store. Premium features such as attractive deals on stock videos and images are available through subscription packages starting from $9.99.

5 – pCloud

Many businesses are using cloud storage solutions to make file sharing and remote working easier. Cloud services are also the most cost-effective way to digitally store data. However, they can also be susceptible to security breaches.

pCloud enables organizations to store and share their files online via the cloud. This allows employees to access documents anywhere through any device. The storage service also features TLS/SSL encryption that ensures secure file sharing. For additional security measure, users can opt to encrypt their most sensitive files and make them password protected.

SMBs can avail the family lifetime plan for $500 which gives small businesses 2TB of storage and the ability to delegate access to others.

Conclusion

Careful selection and adoption of digital tools can help SMBs be competitive. The automation that these tools bring minimizes the impact of mundane tasks and time-consuming business processes. Many of these tools are now also made available through the cloud and can be acquired through subscriptions, allowing SMBs to easily find and adopt solutions that would give them the most benefits and are fit for their situations.

The post 5 Top Tools to Get Your SMB Up to Speed in Today’s Digital Landscape appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Hitting your online sales goals is one key performance indicator, of course. But what if you want to really get into the details and observe exactly how your visitors are interacting on your site? The answer is to use a heat map.

Heat maps is a graphical demonstration of how website users and visitor interact and resonate with your website.

In other words, what works and what’s not.

With visitor data that’s presented in an immediately-understandable visualization, you get facts about your visitors’ activity rather than relying on hunches. This information enables your team to level-up your website and give your visitors the experience they want. Which buttons are they clicking, their cursor movement, their eyes focus and more.

But because heat maps are seemingly easy to use and understand, many marketing teams formulate quick hunches at first glance without taking time to think about best practices. Avoiding the following common mistakes can make the difference between stagnate and stellar.

Not Using Other Analytics Tools Along with Heat Maps

Whether you’re working on a car, building a home or improving a website, numerous tools should be used to complete the job correctly. While you can certainly gain instant and accurate insights using heat maps, other tools (such as Google Analytics) should be used with them to confirm speculations and hunches or to cross reference data.

Perhaps one reason why some marketers use heat maps in isolation is that the graphical representation is easy to present to managers and colleagues. Simple visualizations are indeed a refreshing change from dull and complex Google Analytics reports. But supporting heatmap-driven epiphanies using other tools will keep you from taking the wrong actions.

When presenting the data, it’s always good to use heat maps. Everyone appreciates quick and intuitive visualizations, especially those who aren’t keen on spreadsheets and other traditional analytics

tools. Then, if someone wants more details about the data, break out the Google analytics information you’ve already uncovered. As always, the more preparation, the better.

Not Taking Sample Size or Time-Periods into Consideration

Heat maps are excellent for visual simplicity.

They remove the complexities and numbers that are found in spreadsheet data. But It can be dangerous to make decisions about your website (or even make website changes) when you forget that heat maps aren’t showing you the size of your data set. Are the colors representing 1,000 visitors to your site, or 50,000 visitors? Adjust the settings of your heat map tool to make sure your sample size is representative of your audience.

The sample time-period is also important. If you’ve set your heat map tool to collect data on the first 2,000 visitors, and that number was reached within the first 24 or 48 hours, how can you observe weekday vs. weekend behavior trends?

What about visitor behavior during the beginning of the month vs. the end of the month? Bottomline, you need a lot of data to reach the right conclusion.

Not Segmenting by New Visitors vs Returning VisitorsI

t’s a common mistake to lump all visitors together in the same heat map without differentiating the new from the returning. Returning customers and new visitors behave differently on websites.

Knowing the differences can be very important for seasonal marketing campaigns, special offers, and being aware of how often visitors are coming back to use your site.

You’ll want to see data for each segment because the two heat maps will look significantly different. You also want the ability to know what kinds of information both segments seek, and how they interact differently with your site.

Not Pairing your Heat Map Tool with Visitor Feedback

Once you’ve used a heat map to gain insight into your visitors’ behaviors, it’s time to go a step further by gaining context.

Heat maps give you a big-picture view that tells you what your visitors are doing. But customer feedback enables you to zoom in and learn the specific why’s behind your visitors’ activities.

When you discover roadblocks and drop-offs, feedback can tell you if the problems are related to product pricing, complicated website functionality, a lack of information on your site, or something altogether different. A couple popular website-feedback elements include:

Popup surveys – These are popup windows that ask one or two quick questions about your visitors’ experience. They should be used as a visitor is exiting your site. A popup window could ask something like, “What is your primary concern about making a purchase on our site?” A couple of choices are then given for the visitor to select

Feedback widgets – A feedback widget appears as a button housed at the side of a web page. When a visitor clicks the button, the widget enables them to highlight specific parts of the web page and provide feedback about what’s highlighted.

On-page surveys – This type of feedback survey appears as a small, unobtrusive window at the bottom of the web page. It’s similar in appearance to a chatbot text window.

Not Recording Visitors’ Activity

Heat maps are great for seeing the overall picture of how hundreds or thousands of visitors are interacting with your website. But the best heat-map technology on the market also gives you the ability to record your visitors’ activities at the individual level.

By recording your visitor’s website activity, you get deep insights that shed light on previously unanswered questions. Learn, for example, the pages that are leading to conversions (or falling flat,) how much time specific visitors are spending on different pages, and whether they’re using mobile devices or desktops. You might even be able to ascertain reasons why a large percentage of your visitors are quickly abandoning certain pages.

The more knowledge you have about individual visitor journeys, the easier it will be to turn your website into a well-oiled conversion machine.

Not Blocking IPs

For new web pages that receive very little traffic, you don’t want your heat map to reflect the activity of people from your own company.

If most of the traffic is coming from a company’s representatives (like marketers and web developers,) the heat map won’t be useful. The fix is to set the heat map tool to exclude your company’s IPs, including the IPs of your remote employees.

Best Practices + The Right Tool = Success

It’s key that you don’t let a heat map’s ease-of-use dull your vigilance.

Also remember that not all heat map tools are created equal. Look for one that enables you to record user activity and offers visitor-feedback options. The ability to differentiate between new and returning visitors is important as well.

The bottom line is simple: the right tool combined with the above best practices will enable you to fine tune your site for optimal results.

The post Are You Making These 6 Heat Map Mistakes? appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Fortunately, creativity isn’t a secret magical formula that comes and goes with the wind. Creativity is a skill — one of the most important skills for modern teams to hone. In fact, teams can “rehearse creativity” the same way they might practice sales tactics or software proficiency.

Leaders of creative teams are responsible for more than just projects and deadlines. They must also help maintain their workers’ ability to respond to challenges, come up with innovative solutions, and outthink the competition. Before the energy of your creative team starts to run low, use these best practices to help your employees shine:

1. Create positive conflict.

When you hear the term “team,” you probably think of a group of people who get along all the time. In truth, creative teams should clash. The reason isn’t that creatives are uncooperative “geniuses”; it’s that creativity, as entrepreneur and author Allen Gannett makes clear in one of the season’s best books on creativity, that requires community engagement and iteration.

What does constructive conflict look like? Gannett points to Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the duo who wrote the lyrics for the 2017 hit film “La La Land.” “Ideal collaborators balance out each other’s weaknesses and provide different perspectives,” he writes in “The Creative Curve.” “Creativity, after all, is a team sport, and even if you lack a close working partner like Benj Pasek or Justin Paul, other collaborators are out there.”

2. Set firm limitations.

Creativity, especially in a professional setting, works better within context. A person given total creative freedom with no boundaries might struggle to come up with anything at all, while a person with a specific objective and parameters can work quickly toward a set goal.

Before beginning any new project, ensure the team understands the practical applications of the work. Give teams goals and boundaries, then let them figure out how to bridge the gap on their own.

3. Keep up a stream of feedback.

The best creative processes include a constantly evolving conversation between boss and team. Don’t give your employees a goal and then wait three weeks to evaluate their progress. Instead, encourage team members to come to you with iterations of their ideas and provide regular feedback on whether those ideas will work in the context of the project.

Keep feedback as positive as possible. No one benefits from a boss who shoots down ideas. Research from Columbia Business School found that employees who receive performance ratings are less likely to respond to managerial feedback. When an employee comes to you with an idea that won’t work, search out the good parts of the proposal, and encourage the employee to incorporate those parts into the project. Your own critical thinking results in stronger feedback that can be applied by your team.

When you must reject an idea, don’t criticize it in front of others. Have a one-on-one talk with the employee about why the idea won’t work. Express your gratitude for the suggestion, and encourage the employee to keep it the strongest elements in mind for future projects.

4. Change the environment.

No matter how creatively designed, offices become routine and constraining after a while. Help your team keep its creative spark by getting out of the building and into the world by using team building Singapore activities.

More time in nature leads to improved mental functioning. If knocking down walls isn’t feasible for your company, make regular trips with your team to places outside the office. Go to museums, parks, and other areas of inspiration, then sit down over lunch to talk about what you experienced. Excursions like these provide excellent creative fuel.

As fun as employee adventures can be, keep them constrained to work hours. No employee wants to feel pressured to spend a Saturday hanging out with co-workers. Besides, employees need time off to refuel their creative tanks.

5. Provide time for independent exploration.

Teams who spend all their time working and little time learning tend to stagnate. Avoid that fate by providing the schedule and resources your team members need to pursue their own development.

Teams must be able to adapt quickly to changes and new demands. Provide employees with access to educational resources, as well as time to explore those resources. Make it clear that you prioritize the continued development of your team. Set monthly meetings for employees to talk about what they’ve learned on their own and how those lessons could help the team grow.

Your team needs you for more than vacation sign-offs and deadline management. Leaders who leave the creativity of their teams to chance inevitably see that creativity wane. Pressures to innovate will continue to grow stronger, and in the face of that pressure, leaders of creative teams must rise to the challenge to keep their workers ready for the challenges to come.

The post 5 Ways to Maintain Your Creative Team’s Spark appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

The Problem PantyProp Solves

Etienne created a full line of products for women of all ages and sizes. The product line includes not just panties, but sleepwear, swimwear, leggings, and bodysuits, too. PantyProp also has discreet, leak-proof underwear for men, too. Etienne has solved a problem in a variety of ways.

PantyProp was created in 2015 and is now a multi-million-dollar company. When asked about how she became so successful so quickly, Etienne attributes it to being self-taught:

“I never told myself no. If I wanted to do something, I did it. When I wanted to write my patent, I didn’t want to pay someone $7000. I actually read the website. Called the phone numbers. Then, I moved to Virginia for 30 days. It really is true!”

Why PantyProp became so successful

Etienne attributes her quick success to being able to teach herself what she needed. She came from a business background, so she understood numbers. She taught herself to make a website. She taught herself how to talk to people without being too direct. She said about her success:

“It was hard work, but it didn’t feel like it was. I was thinking big and figuring out what I needed to do.”

She quite literally started the business from nothing. Etienne attributes much of her success to luck, because she created a product that solved a problem that bothers people. One day, she was aggravated by using a menstrual pad and in her anger, she created the idea. It just turned out that other people were bothered by the same product and found that her products could ease the bother.

Word of Mouth and Wix– A Killer Combo

Along with luck, word of mouth marketing helped, too. When Etienne first started out, she designed her website – using Wix – and when she wasn’t busy, she would tweak it – again being self-taught. Eventually, she got to the point where she wanted to just make 10 sales per day. At this point, she had tweaked the website several times and started to write content, which wasn’t great at first. After a while, people began sharing her products with their friends. Etienne did it all – by herself, but she tried to make her customer interactions feel like they were corporate in nature. She lived by “fake it until you make it” and it worked.

When Etienne knew she made it

Etienne remembered the day that she knew she had made it. In March 2016, she went from 10 sales to 50 sales overnight and she had to bring in a real customer support team. She was worried that the 50 sales was a fluke, but it wasn’t. She isn’t quite sure what triggered the sales, but she gives some credit to small marketing boosts, like $10 per day. She reminisced about how stressful it was when she went from $10 per day to $20 per day. Now, she spends significantly more on marketing.

Marketing to Her Customer

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Bye, bye, period stains and incontinence leaks. Say hello to the PantyProp Hipster!

A post shared by PantyProp (@pantyprop) on Jan 25, 2019 at 8:00am PST

Etienne knows her customer, and believe that’s what helped make PantryProp successful. Marketing is still a mystery to her, but she knows who her customer is because she has asked them questions. She doesn’t do a hard sell on her customers, instead, she tells them directly what the product does. She doesn’t just tell customers something to make a sale, she tells them because they need to know the details. She takes great pride in being able to tell a customer not to buy everything, but to only buy what they feel comfortable buying.

Etienne also credits Wix with helping her get started. She used their online store and Wix helped her design an online store that was pretty and presentable. All she had to do was drag, drop, and implement a button. She continues to use Wix because it has grown with her. She considers her product a “taboo” product, but Wix has made it presentable and intuitive for the customer. Wix also helped her build the live chat feature that has become a vital feature.

Treating people with respect

PantyProp currently has 16 employees, including Etienne. She has never had any turn over because she treats her employees so well. Her return policy showcases how she cares about people: Because the product is a hygiene product, customers cannot return items, but they can make exchanges as long as the products are not worn or washed. Etienne donates returned products to a women’s and children’s shelter.

When it comes to hiring, Etienne has useful advice based on her journey as a small business owner. As her business was growing, people continually told her to hire staff. She didn’t do what people told her. She made her first hire when she realized that she needed someone to help her with something that she couldn’t do herself and didn’t have time to learn. She has continued this logic when it comes to adding staff.

The post Finding Success With A Business In A Taboo Niche Market appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Capturing Attention.

However, what they both have in common, whether they know it or not, is the ability to capture attention and call attention to their brand.

When one considers the “average” politician, they’re just that–“average”. They don’t cause too many waves and do things just like every other elected official does. Not Ocasio-Cortez or Trump.

Just last week (as of this writing), Ocasio-Cortez was mocked for her dancing, in a college video.  However she EMBRACED it and did a quick twirl of a dance right in front of her Congressional office.

View this post on Instagram

 

If Republicans thought women dancing in college is scandalous, wait till they find out women dance in Congress, too!

A post shared by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@ocasio2018) on Jan 4, 2019 at 10:36am PST

Method of Communication.

Sure, Ocasio-Cortez is a fresh face and has spunk but she’s clearly using that to her advantage and embracing social media (lots of behind the scenes video), speaking out, and being quite “unconventional”. This is causing some discomfort amongst her own Democrat colleagues and, of course, Republicans.

She uses her Instagram liberally with floods of stories and posts. Much like President Trump uses his Twitter account.

In the case of Donald Trump, out of a field of 12 Republican contenders for the Republican Presidential 2016 nomination, he beat them. All (or most) were seasoned politicians, except for him. I don’t think it was his IDEAS that were so revolutionary, but it was HOW he communicated them.  One of his signature tactics (for better or for worse) was giving his rivals names

• “Little Marco Rubio”,
• “Low Energy Jeb”, or
• “Lyin’ Ted” to name a few.

These things got the attention of the media and earned him, what I assume is millions of dollars of “free” publicity and, most importantly, attention.

Appearance.

Even how they look. Trump has an orange hue to his skin and a very unique way he combs his hair. Just flip on the TV and you’ll see dozens of actors impersonating him all over the world.

Ocasio-Cortez’s glasses are easily caricatured, and she has her signature hoop earrings. She even wore her earrings proudly to her first day in Congress. Leaving the ball in the court of SNL for a parody.

Lessons Learned.

So what can you learn from these two rabble-rousing elected officials?

Remember, you’re business is not special. A dentist, accountant, web designer, technology consultant, etc are a DIME A DOZEN. But what YOU can do is show how you’re different and communicate it to your audience.

Does the look of your design truly POP?

Are you amazing with your customers?

Is it the fun way your employees answer the phone?

What makes you special and different?

The post Ocasio-Cortez and Trump – Lessons in Personal Branding appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Who is Animoto?

           Animoto is a web-based company aimed to empower small businesses and individuals who are looking to branch out and work towards using video to better their business. Animoto uses a collection of tools and experience to make it simple for people with a small budget and no experience in this type of marketing or with little time to do it for themselves.        

By providing easy to use templates, called storyboards, that users can drag and drop their content into, Animoto makes video marketing easy for the average business owner. Someone who is less familiar with the most up to date technology can even use these templates to create a professional and appealing video for their business.

Animoto has been in business for about a decade. With over 100 employees who work to video production services, the diverse background and experience that Animoto offers are truly unparalleled. The experience and diversity is what has allowed Animoto to be successful in providing these tools for small businesses.

How can video really help your business?

           Video truly amplifies what already works for you in your current setting. There is nothing really new to adding video to your repertoire of marketing strategy other than enhancing what you already do. With the business world shifting to be more supportive of small business as well as the increasing audience, video could be a more powerful advertising and marketing tool than ever.

        Video can be used for a number of things to promote and advertise your business. Whether an informational clip, a testimonial, product demos, or even recaps of an event a business hosted, Animoto can help to create a video that packages this information in a clean and a video deposition to use for marketing.

To the Nay-Sayers       

Some people are still not on board with branching out into something new. People actually see video as being a newer form of communication and marketing, but this is not true. Video has been around for quite some time, the platform on which the video is used is just newer and more innovative. Video is perhaps the most quickly growing form of communication, but it has been around nonetheless.

Video vs. Social Media

        With nearly every social media platform having an option for live video, you may question why video marketing would be the better route to take over these live options. This is largely in part due to the ability to cross over platforms and to generalize your audience. Each social platform has an unofficial yet unique atmosphere, so each and every live video would have to be adapted to fit the platform.

Rather than the stress of a live feed (we’ve all been there – some of us are still there, not wanting to be in front of the camera), video marketing streamlines your information, can still use a clip or two that you put together, but can also simplify your approach so that it isn’t choppy or overwhelming for the viewer. One of the worst things someone can do when making a video is providing too much information that the main ideas get bogged down in the overabundance of detail.

Social media can also be trickier to navigate. Depending on the platform as well as the direct audience, a live video could be ignored or overlooked. A well-placed video with the right frequency of occurrence could prove more successful than an occasional live video.

Tips for making video work for you

Some ways that small business owners could focus on to make video work for what they need could include the following:

1. Make the first few seconds eye-catching – in a world of scrolling, make sure the initial clip captures the viewer’s attention so that they watch the entire video and are wrapped into the message being provided in your video.
2. Use what already works for you, and use the video tool to enhance and optimize this area of your business. For example, if you host a blog about your business, you can create a small teasing video that draws the viewer in to read the blog and then ultimately learn about the business.
3. If you already have popular images or phrases, use them! Go ahead and turn your most viewed things into these videos so that you may continue to grab that attention that these images and phrases have already done.

The post Harnessing Video’s Power with Animoto appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

All four generations have value to businesses, but they all need to be pampered in different ways and fortunately, myfrugalbusiness.com can give you more insight on that. Once you figure out the best way to attract each group, the next step is to gain their loyalty. Differentiated marketing can be done by any business with nearly any budget and it generally pays off when done well.

The names and age ranges of the generations often vary between sources. There are still a few remaining members of the generations that fought in World War II, fondly known as The Greatest Generation or the GI Generation, but the youngest of this group is 94 years old.

The Silent Generation

The Silent Generation is known for being traditionalists. They look for items that give them a sense of comfort and value. They also strive to belong. Even though they are senior citizens, they do not want to be thought of as old.

As the senior generation that did not grow up using computers and may have retired before using them in the workplace, many are still leery of technology. Therefore, the best marketing tools are the traditional ones that are printed, on the radio, or on television. Many still have landlines in their phones and they answer when the telephone rings.

Print material should be written for them and should include:

• Polite greetings with sir, madam, Mr. or Mrs.
• Large print
• Professional language
• No slang or need for sex appeal
• A phone number to call rather than a website to visit
• Nostalgia

Baby Boomers

Baby Boomers were once the largest generation, but according to the US Census Bureau, Millennials have surpassed them. Boomers have money to spend and many are retired or preparing to retire. This group worked hard and were socially active in their younger years. They have built wealth and they value good deals so they can protect their wealth. Most enjoy using coupons and are the most likely to shop for items on sale. Also https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/inventhelp is a leading inventor service firm, that can make your projects come true.

Baby Boomers have experience using technology. Most were in the workplace when computers were installed. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are both members of the Baby Boomer generation, so members are generally comfortable using text messaging and other basic apps on their smartphones.

This group appreciates both traditional marketing and 21st Century marketing. Whatever style of marketing you use, Baby Boomers appreciate techniques that include,

• The opportunity for face-to-face communication.
• Brands they recognize but are not necessarily loyal to.
• Well-written content without slang or hashtags.
• Products that look expensive, but have bargain prices.
• An appeal to their younger years – “the good ol’ days”.
• A way to improve their lifestyle.
• Simple uses of technology.
• Phone numbers with real people who answer.

Generation X

Generation X was originally known as the slacker generation, simply because they never really tried very hard. But, this group is at the peak of their buying power as the oldest of the generation is close to retirement. But, this group does not have the same wealth that Baby Boomers have – many are in debt. This group remembers the world before the Internet, but the majority of Gen Xers are adept with technology. Even though this group wants to set its own trends, it does develop brand loyalty. It is also more like to spend more on brands that give back.

This group does not get the same press that Baby Boomers and Millennials get, so don’t forget about them. They are a significant segment of the population and most have dependent children. When marketing to them, remember that they were known as slackers and many do not want to work hard to learn about products and services. This group used to hang out in shopping malls, so they do have a penchant for buying things.

To market to Gen Xer’s, keep these thoughts in mind:

• They do not want to read large amounts of content.
• They like email.
• The older members of the generation like mail.
• They become loyal to brands that offer rewards.
• They like Facebook and YouTube videos.
• They are turned off by hard-core sales tactics.

Millennials

Millennials make up the largest group and they do not know the world before the Internet and mobile phones. The last group just graduated from high school and many have already graduated from college. They are not as loyal to brands as older generations, so they can be tricky to convince.

Millennials appreciate products that help the environment or are made with sustainable products. They prefer experiences over things. And, the older Millennials have preferences that are different from the younger ones, like QM Design Group in Santa Clarita has great marketing and website design capabilities for brand development.

For example, older Millennials might already have children, work in a professional career, and have expensive college debt. Younger Millennials are in college and are still reliant on their parents. But, they all have a knack for technology.

When marketing to Millennials,

• Be active online, with blogs, social media posts (Instagram and Snapchat), and lots of video.
• Discuss the experience of ownership, rather than just the “thing” you are trying to sell.
• Use hashtags.
• Limit email marketing – they don’t check their email as often as Gen Xers.
• Talk about the cause your product supports or how it is sustainable.
• Give them an opportunity to experience the brand.
• Sell online.

Generation Z

The youngest generation that is beginning to develop its buying power is Generation Z or Gen Z. This group is just starting college, but this makes them young consumers. This group has their own money and they have their parents’ money to spend. To get their attention, you have to get their attention, which is difficult because there are plenty of marketers vying for their eyes and ears.

They are young, but they have all grown up with smartphones and they prefer to use them over a computer – both laptop and desktop. So, your company needs to have a website that looks great on their phones. They know what influencers are and they consider YouTubers celebrities.

To market to the oldest of the Gen Z group, businesses need to:

• Tell authentic stories.
• Meet them online, on their phones.
• Be socially conscious.
• Recognize that this group is young and will change as it ages.
• Avoid using traditional celebrities, because Gen Z doesn’t care about them.
• Make sure the website works quickly.
• Create a brand worth following.

Marketing To Different Generations

Once know your target market and who you’re trying to reach you may need to adjust your marketing strategy to meet that audience’s needs. Not everyone responds to the same cookie-cutter marketing approach. You’ll need to get creative and remember to be age appropriate.

The post 30+ Key Tips for Marketing to Different Generations appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Improve the customer experience

Many small businesses use data capture tools to better understand and subsequently meet the demands of their customers. Analyzing customer behavior and paying attention to reviews and feedback allows businesses to modify their presence online and alter products and services to best suit the marketplace. There are many secrets to good customer service, and one of those is using what you learn about customers to cater to their wants and needs and improve the shoppers experience.

Refine the marketing strategy

Contextualized data allows businesses to grasp how consumers engage with and respond to marketing campaigns, then make adjustments accordingly. This will give you what you need to know to ensure you offer consumers what they want. Marketing is evolving and now focuses on personalization. Businesses today need to personalize the customer journey on websites and social platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Segmenting data effectively will allow you to market to the people who are more likely to engage with your content. Keep in mind that fewer more profitable customers is the key to growth.

Make smarter business decisions

Businesses that utilize data gathering also profit from it. A survey by Helical IT found that relying on data to make a decision instead of intuition boosts the chances of success by 79 percent. This means that the implementation of a data collection process allows a business to make decisions based on data. Once you have a system up and running, the quantity and quality of data the business will collect over the years will influence its sustainability and competitive advantage.

Boost sales

Customer behavior data is so important today. This is why your business needs to glean valuable data to better understand your customer. When you can identify your customer’s buying preferences, you will increase conversions and drive revenue.

Optimize pricing

Pricing is often a challenge when introducing products. When you price items too high, you can drive customers away. Pricing them too low can negatively impact your profit margins and even skew the customer perception.

This is why you should use data from your CRP to segment your customers by different price points. It allows you to narrow down the ideal price range based on the group’s behavior, demand and price tolerance. When you combine internal and external data points, you’ll be armed with the insights you need to determine the optimal pricing structure to maximize your sales potential.

Before the digital age, traditional one-way mass marketing communication was a thing. The customer experience and personalization didn’t really matter. However, in today’s customer-centric world, our customers expect more. By using customer data, you can learn more about the customer and use the information to better your marketing strategy and increase sales.

The post 5 Ways Businesses Can Use Customer Data appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Excuses to avoid making powerful videos

When speaking to people who are shy, they give me plenty of reasonable excuses why they don’t want to make videos. Of course, the number one reason is that they are shy. But, there are several other reasons why they choose not to make videos:

• They don’t like how they look
• They don’t like their voices
• They don’t know what to say on camera
• They don’t have the confidence to appear on camera

Shy People are Missing out on marketing opportunities

As an empathetic person, I understand that these reasons and many more are valid, but there are so many reasons to make videos as a way to grow your business. Check these out fivebough .If having an opportunity to grow your business with a marketing tool that works isn’t enough for you to start making videos, then maybe these reasons will get you in front of a thermal camera:

• By not doing video, you are missing out on a proven revenue stream.
• People want to hear your message, knowledge, and insight.
• The more videos you make, the easier it gets to make more videos.
• Shyness will decrease.

On top of that, it is helpful to know that video is powerful. People watch videos. Then, they watch more videos. Once you start making them, your inhibitions should decrease and you will eventually become more comfortable with the red light in front of you.

If you are still too shy to make your own videos, there is another option: you can make videos with other people! Maybe you can interview someone, so you aren’t even facing the camera. Or, you could make videos with other people in your business. You could also hire someone to be in your videos.

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How does geolocation work

Your smartphone has positioning capabilities that use RFID (radio-frequency identification). Additionally, your computer has an IP address that can be used to give your location. These positioning capabilities are known as geolocation, as they provide a location of your position on earth. Because people use their geolocation services on their smartphones, businesses have figured out how to access the information and use it to their benefit.

How we use geolocation on our smartphones

Businesses of all sizes rely on apps like Foursquare or Yelp to help customers find their locations. If you’ve ever searched for pizza near me, you’ve probably received results from Yelp and Foursquare. If you’re near businesses that use geolocation apps, they can actually send you information when you are nearby or when you walk through their doors. That information can include promotions and specials or offers and rewards.

Social sites like Foursquare, LevelUp, Ibotta, and more use geolocation and social sites to find out when their customers are nearby. Then, they can update you,

• with offers,
• provide badges,
• and suggest other places you might enjoy.

All of the information is gathered by and delivered to smartphones. Most of the apps connect through Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram.

How you can use geolocation to grow your business

If you want to use geolocation to help market and grow your business, there are a few things you can do. First, you can work with popular apps like Foursquare, Yelp, and Google Maps. This way, you can easily be found if someone is in your area. If you have the appropriate tool, you can gather data about the customers who visit your store. This could help you with future visits and potential sales.

Geolocation technology for small businesses is still developing. Currently, geolocation apps can do a few things for businesses and customers. Stores with a large online and brick-and-mortar presence use these features, but small businesses are beginning to access them and use them to their advantage:

• Provide location-based offers (offer coupons or
• Connect Internet shopping with brick-and-mortar stores
• Provide a customer’s location
• Push a value exchange
• Create a sales territory
• Analyze data
• Share location-based photos

Small businesses that have the financial resources could develop their own apps that use geolocation to provide offers to customers.

The post How to Leverage Geolocation in Your Small Biz appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What is a Story?

Facebook Stories allow you to share photos and short videos to tell a “story.” Instagram and Snapchat have been using similar features for a while now. Facebook Stories are a relatively new frontier and aren’t yet seeing as much participation from the general user population. However, this is good news for you as a small business owner! Business content has a lower viewing priority on Facebook feeds. Start using Stories to get your content front and center. Literally. Stories are located at the top of a Facebook users’ feeds (mobile and desktop) making it the first thing your customers see. This prime real estate has the potential to increase engagement and should not be overlooked in your marketing strategy.

What are the Benefits?

The Risk is Low

While you have to pay to boost your content on users’ Facebook feeds, you don’t have to spend a penny to use Stories. You can test and try what works for your brand using Stories and see what kind of impact it has compared to posting on your feed.

The Limit Does Not Exist

There is no limit on how much or how often you can share promotional content in Stories. Facebook Business even recommends using Stories to compliment your feed.

“If you’ve already shared content to your Page or are currently running a Page ad, creating a…story can help you become more active and engaging with your audience by providing a different type of media to enjoy and connect with.”

So, go to town and share away!

Build Connections

A Professional like Gavin Wood can advise you, how Facebook Stories gives your business a way to connect with customers organically. You can more easily build trust and brand loyalty through the use of video marketing. Stories allow followers to stay up to date with what you’re doing behind the scenes. It can really make your business more personal and allow your Facebook followers to feel like they are part of your community and the experience. People love to feel like they are part of the story and Facebook Stories allows you to provide that to your customers.

Event Stories

Since people like to be part of the story, why not let them contribute to your Facebook Story? Stories can also be used in Group and Event pages and members can contribute to the story. So, if you are holding a launch party for a new product, customers invited to the event can share content to Stories right from the event. Your customers are doing the marketing for you!

Free Insight

Facebook allows you to see who is viewing your Stories. You can use this data to optimize targeting and adjust your efforts. Then, sit back and watch your followers and engagement grow.

In an age where video is marketing gold, don’t pass up to the opportunity to cash in on Facebook Stories. This more familiar and informal way of communicating with your customers through video will provide them with the experiential marketing they are looking for. It is also a fantastic supplement to the more traditional marketing tool of posting on your Facebook feed.

The post How to Use Facebook Stories to Increase Engagement appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Much like what newspapers, radio, and television did in the past century, the internet has transformed the way brands communicate with their audience. However, generating awareness and increasing sales has become increasingly competitive even with so many forms of digital media at their disposal. Businesses leveraging email marketing campaigns to promote their brand are seeing less ROI as most customer’s inboxes are flooded with spam from dozens of other companies.  In fact, 49% of emails are considered spam and only 34% of marketing emails sent in the U.S. are actually opened.

Small businesses need cost-effective solutions to reach consumers, but how can they do this without expensive digital advertising?  Mobile messaging is a largely untapped channel brands are just starting to turn to and is a great way to start a personalized interaction to reach customers, particularly for small businesses.

The Mobile Effect

With 99% of all text messages being opened and 90% of them being read within 3 minutes of receiving them, it’s interesting to see that brand marketers are just starting to explore this channel over the past few years.

To stand out this holiday season, mobile messaging can help your local business reach local customers to drive them in-store. Nowadays, consumers use their smartphone to research everything, from gift ideas to deals and coupons, hence why small businesses should consider reaching out to their customers via text message, to save them time and money in the process.  Making these deals easy for customers to share with their friends and family via text or social media is an important and easy way to grow your customer base. While it’s great to leverage text messaging to bring customers in, it’s also an excellent opportunity to deliver a personalized customer experience they won’t be able to get at a big retailer this holiday season.

The Value of Shopping Local

Supporting local businesses, particularly during the busy holiday shopping season, has become more important than ever as large corporations and e-commerce businesses are taking potential revenues out of local communities.  In 2017, more than 300,000 SMBs started selling on Amazon, but 0% of revenues went back to their local market.  It’s critical to support brick and mortar small businesses to keep communities running as those revenues and tax dollars to help fund local fire departments, parks, schools libraries and more. You can follow Butterfly Releases for more updates.

The Future of Mobile Messaging

Over the years, there have been many milestones with mobile messaging from emojis to gifs, but there’s still so much more potential for the future, particularly for brands. Today’s consumers, especially millennials, are mobile-obsessed and 89% of people always have their smartphone easily accessible. Texting is still the #1 form of communication amongst Americans younger than 50, thus, it is imperative for businesses to tap into this channel to engage with consumers.

This holiday season, small businesses don’t need to spend millions of dollars on advertising to compete with big retailers – just focus on channels where local customers are more engaged: in text messaging.

Authored By: 

Katie Wilson, Founder and CEO of TapOnIt

Digital advertising veteran Katie Wilson co-founded TapOnIt with her sister Sara Castillo in their home state of Iowa to help bring customers to small businesses while providing them with an easy way to save money.  Katie’s background in advertising and passion to serve small businesses inspired her to create TapOnIt to support local communities through simple, visual text messages.

Prior to starting the company, Katie was the Digital Advertising Director for a media company, The Quad-City Times where she built a $2 million per year revenue generating 1/2 priced deals program similar to Groupon. As the digital landscape evolved, Katie realized how important it was to preserve small-business culture in cities across America, especially as large e-commerce platforms continue to grow taking potential funds out of local communities.

Katie was named one of Editor & Publisher’s 25 Under 35 People to Watch and her digital program was named one of the top ten in the country that same year by the same publication. She has spoken at Advertising Week, DMA &Then, and other leading conferences to share her expertise on the future of mobile marketing and messaging.

The post How SMBs Are Using Texts to Engage Customers During The Holiday Shopping Season appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Wix Chat has already been a part of Wix, but now you can automatically greet a visitor, via chat, even if you’re not there live to assist. They feel “welcome” when they get to to your web site. Wix’s mobile dashboard works well on smartphones so you can interact wherever you are.

But what really excites me are the workflows in Ascend, With these workflows, Wix small business customers can now save time and be productivity by sending targeted messages, to specific customers or due to specific actions.

Let’s say a customer makes a booking? You can send an email based on that action. Maybe they’ve paid an invoice – that can be another action.

Customers want to feel appreciated and expect faster and faster response times. For owners of growing businesses, this can be a challenge. However with the power of automation a small business owner can do more, in less time with less resources.

I also love how Wix has a “short cut” keyboard to enable you to send quick offers to clients with as few clicks as possible.

Wix, like its competitors, is quickly moving from a company providing one solution, being website development to provide a full suite of marketing solution for its customers. If you want more marketing support for your business then consider contacting this Business listing distribution service.

While this is not a full blown marketing automation solution that Infusionsoft, Salesforce, Active Campaign or other solutions might provide – it’s just perfect for a business just starting out or a very small business.

Of course Wix Code was launched about a year ago and opened the Wix platform for developers to create full scale database solutions on top of the Wix platform. Wix Ascend is a further evolution of Wix overall expansion.

The post Wix Launches Simple Marketing Automation for Growing Businesses – Wix Ascend appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

As a small business owner on LinkedIn, you may question how you can stand out among the masses. Here are a few tips to make the most out of LinkedIn’s free resources.  

Your Personal Profile

The most important thing you need to do to stay relevant in an ever-changing social network is to continually keep your profile up to date. This includes any information you provide such as

• A professional picture,
• Contact information,
• Resumes,
• Portfolios,
• Your website,
• Associations, the list goes on…

If you are able to write well, put together an article about your business specialties (more on this below). If writing isn’t your thing, post updates to keep your audience abreast of what you’ve been up to.

Your Company Profile

First things first, get your logo and description up on your LinkedIn Company profile. Make sure all data is accurate, and create a keyword rich description of your business to entice potential customers– but this isn’t the place to be too sales-y. Next:

• Be sure you have a branded hero image,
• Create a calendar of company updates (this is a great place to share articles, your blog posts, industry-relevant pieces, etc),
• Encourage your employees to join your company page on their LinkedIn profiles,
• Encourage employees to engage with your posts & post their own updates about your company.

Connecting with Professionals

All the big names are on LinkedIn, from Bill Gates to Richard Branson. The unique nature of LinkedIn allows you to connect with the big fish of the business world. But, when you’re connecting with others be sure to:

• Do your research before ever sending a connections request. If you’ve never met someone and they just send you a request out of the blue, are you likely to accept? Be sure you have a general idea about the person or business you are hoping to connect with.
• Make your request message personal and set the tone for your brand and company within your first message. This is your first impression, so make it count. Keep your message short and sweet.
• Connect with people you actually know! Sure, it’s fun to have a connection with Barack Obama, but you should also connect with John Smith who you met at your recent Tech conference.

Join & Contribute to Groups

By joining or creating groups on LinkedIn, you are connecting with people that have similar interests or goals. This could be people from your real life, those with similar paths and backgrounds, or even people who are currently in positions which you are interested in one day having for yourself.

After making connections and joining groups, don’t just go into self-promotion mode. You need to provide value and share insight. Any good relationship starts with back and forth and exchanging of information. You don’t want to get kicked out of the group before you even get started.

LinkedIn Groups Directory: LinkedIn now has a Group Directory which allows you to find groups based on similar interests or specific topics so that you can broaden your outreach and expand your knowledge. This is great for the small business owner who needs to expand their pool of resources and connections for future references.

LinkedIn Articles

Do you have vast knowledge on a certain topic? Or maybe you have a tutorial or a great tip for a certain area? By writing a LinkedIn Article, you can share your knowledge with others across the social professional platform. Once an article is published, you can share it with your built-in audience: your connections. The article stays on your profile under the ‘Articles and Activity’ section. You can monitor how many views, likes, and comments your article has.

The better received your article is, the more it will be exposed to others, expanding the number of people it will reach.

LinkedIn Articles can help you drive people to your personal profile as well as your website.

LinkedIn SlideShare

LinkedIn offers the opportunity to share slideshows through their SlideShare platform. SlideShare allows you to upload clips of a presentation to help drive interest to your page. By adding these clips or images, you will automatically boost the recognition of your brand or company by leaps and bounds. To make sure you’re making the best presentation possible, be sure to add

• Images
• Bullet Points
• Backlinks

White Label SEO sure to proofread and use the appropriate keywords to optimize views, shares, and clicks.

The post 6 Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn’s Free Resources for Small Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Retooling an important feature

Along with the retooled Pages, LinkedIn also added two partnerships. One with Hootsuite and the other with Crunchbase. The Hootsuite partnership works with the LinkedIn’s Notifications API, which lets users receive notifications when they have new activity on their Pages. Geocode API is powered by strong infrastructure to return results in realtime. The Crunchbase partnership gives LinkedIn members the ability to see insights on their Pages, as long as they have a Crunchbase profile.

These new integrated features give LinkedIn members more knowledge about the way that users engage with their Pages. Ryan Holmes of Hootsuite said:

“We are thrilled to be the first social media management solution to build off LinkedIn’s new Notifications API so our customers can more effectively drive engagement on LinkedIn.” 

Building a stronger community

LinkedIn has made these changes to build a stronger community for its 590 million members. With LinkedIn Pages, communities are easier to build because there is one location to interact with employees and customers. The enhanced social media platform also gives job candidates easier to access to information about potential employers.

Enhancing daily posts

On a daily basis, LinkedIn has over 2 million posts. As the LinkedIn community continues to grow, so do the daily posts of videos, articles, and other useful information. Pages is designed to enhance that growth so that real interactions continue to happen. Through Pages, users grow their audiences by:

• Managing interactions
• Posting updates
• Replying to comments
• Using the mobile app
• Using hashtags
• Researching topics
• Posting images and video
• Sharing documents

With all of these capabilities, the struggle that some users have is developing content. But, don’t worry – LinkedIn can help with that, too. With Content Suggestions, users can keep stay up-to-date with the latest topics and trends. As creating content is challenging, this is an extremely useful features that is unique to LinkedIn.

The updated Pages and all of the new features makes LinkedIn more effective for community building. It resembles another popular social media platform that also has pages and plenty of add-ons to enhance the experience.

The post LinkedIn Announces Enhanced Pages for Brand and Organizations appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

According to a recent Facebook post from Mark Zuckerberg, over 2.6 billion people all over the world use the platform to find new employees. While Facebook wasn’t originally designed to be a site for job hunting, it is easy to see how that feature evolved.

What is Facebook Jobs?

In 2017, Facebook created a special section called Jobs, which works similarly to Marketplace. Users can search full-time or part-time jobs, industries, and location. When users find a job they like, they can apply directly on the site by clicking on the “Apply” button. The link shares the applicant’s name, phone number, email address, and experience.

Success Story #1

For small businesses, Facebook Jobs is a useful tool for finding employees. One of those businesses is Bella Bridal Boutique in Minnesota. After sifting through 60 applicants, the hiring manager found three employees. Bella Bridal Boutique has a 13-person staff, so those new employees needed to be just right. To communicate with candidates, Bella Bridal Boutique used Messenger, Pages, and Page Publishing. There was a small fee to boost the post, but according to the co-owner Kirsten Walfoort:

“We spent money on all the job sites, but Facebook was the only tool that brought a diverse pool of applicants which gave us more choices.”

Success Story #2

Another small business that saw success using Facebook Jobs is Striper Sniper Tackle. In fact, the fishing tackle business can attribute 75% of its sales to Facebook itself. Instead of using Facebook to hire traditional employees, Troy Robertson – the owner – used it to attract brand ambassadors who loved to fish and did so in popular locales around the country. Robertson narrowed down his applicants to 27 and hired 15 of them, and many were professionals in the fishing industry. He found better applicants on Facebook than any other site.

To keep his ambassadors on the same page, he held meetings through Facebook Groups. On a regular basis, he meets with his group so they can share fishing strategies, tips, and more. They also speak to each other via Facebook Live. Facebook not only helped him sell products, but he was able to use it to build far-reaching community so he could build relationships and sell even more products.

Other Business Tools on Facebook

Even though the Jobs section of Facebook is relatively new, the site’s investment in helping local businesses is not. According to Dan Levy with Facebook, the company has invested over $1 billion to help local businesses and that includes helping them find quality employees. Many of the solutions that Facebook offers to businesses are completely free:

• Pages: Where businesses can share their profiles. There are 90 million business pages.
• Groups: Where businesses can interact with smaller communities. 200 million people belong to at least one Facebook Group.
• Events: Where events can be shared and publicized to the Facebook community. 700 million people post or show interested in Events.

Despite the grief that Facebook gets for outages, trolls, and analytics, there are good things coming from this massive social media platform. It makes the world smaller, so small that small businesses can grow and succeed.

The post Move Over LinkedIn: Facebook Jobs Is Here to Hire appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With the newly added updates and capabilities, Groups on LinkedIn can be vital sources for:

• Driving traffic to your website (sharing articles, updates, etc)
• Growing your LinkedIn Company Page following
• Sharing Industry Insight/Expertise
• Getting a pulse of the industry
• Connecting and networking
• Compiling survey results

When interacting in LinkedIn Groups, whether they’re your own or other industry groups, be sure you are being a good “social citizen”. ‘Like’ other’s posts, comment on things you find interesting, and share when you see fit. Below are a few updates to LinkedIn groups which will enhance your user experience.

Group Conversations

Previously, LinkedIn groups we’re often overlooked. You would have to navigate to the group section of your profile to access the conversation. If you had notifications turned on for groups, you would receive a number of emails, or group digests, however, if you’re anything like me, you deleted them and turned off all email notifications.

Now, LinkedIn is making it easier to access your Groups from your homepage. Visibility of groups has improved and conversations will be more easily accessed.  

What does this mean for small business: Instead of taking 5 extra steps to communicate in groups, you can now join the conversation right from your homepage. Small business owners are always running low on time and this makes life just a bit easier.

iOS & Android Apps

LinkedIn has had an app for years. However, their app was missing some key functionality, especially when it came to accessing their groups. If you are a group owner, you can now access and manage your group with a few thumb clicks.

What does this mean for small business: If you need to moderate a comment, jump in on a conversation, or post something on the fly (event insights or photos), the app will be endlessly helpful.

Rich Group Posts

LinkedIn Group posts have always had slightly limited functionality. Make a mistake? You have to delete the post. Want to reply to a comment? No way. Want to post a video? Sorry.

But now, LinkedIn has created richer group posting capabilities. Users are now able to reply to comments directly on posts, edit their posts after they’ve been posted, and even post native videos.

What does this mean for small business:  The more comment and post capabilities offer more in-depth ways to communicate with your audience and peers.

Streamlined Admin Roles

LinkedIn groups used to have a whole host of roles from editor to manager and admin. Now, Groups will just be offering owner and manager roles. The former roles were a bit confusing and often led to many back and forth conversations. Now, the choice is a bit easier.

LinkedIn Groups have always been a great resource for small business, and now they are upping the ante. As a free resource, LinkedIn groups are a no-brainer to include in your marketing strategy. It’s time to take advantages of the new updates LinkedIn groups have to offer and join in on the conversation.

The post Behold the Power of LinkedIn Groups for Small Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

As a marketer, and former recruiter, my favorite social media platform is LinkedIn. Mostly because I know it so well. I always recommend LinkedIn for clients who are looking to market and advertise their services and products to professionals. It’s important to note: LinkedIn is not the ideal platform for promoting every business. You need to make sure you’re putting your advertising dollars where they matter. If you have a younger audience who uses Instagram or SnapChat, invest your money there.

The problem with small businesses advertising is the small budgets that go along with them. A client of mine once told me:

“A small advertising budget is like winking in the dark… nobody sees it.”

Now, just because you have a small budget, doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the advertising options LinkedIn has to offer.

First, What are the Types of LinkedIn Ads

There are four general types of LinkedIn Ads:

1. Sponsored Content – When you open up LinkedIn and are cruising your homepage, you’re going to see a ton of content. A great deal of this content is Sponsored.

Why: Sponsored content works to drive users to your website.

What: In these posts, you can include text, an image or video, a link, and a ‘Follow’ button to increase your connections through the ads.

• Tips: Sponsored content should lead to a landing page where users are encouraged to add their contact information. (Either to trigger an automation campaign, download a whitepaper/freebie, schedule a call, etc)
• Don’t go too niche on your audience. You want to make sure enough people are seeing the post and you don’t want your Cost Per Click (CPC) to be astronomical (the more targeted the higher the CPC).

2. Dynamic Ads – You’ll find these ads on the right-hand side of your Desktop Version of LinkedIn. These types of ads use profile information such as photos, job titles, and company names to personalize ads. These targeted ads allow you to more quickly launch your advertisement campaign.

Why:  Dynamic Ads can either drive users to your website or can serve to increase the following of your LinkedIn Company Page. They can also be used to increase awareness and brand recognition.

What: Ads include a  headline, photo, and company logo.

• Tips: For your first campaigns, try a number of different versions to see what sticks and what resonates with your audience.
• Don’t send people to your LinkedIn company page unless you have it optimized with a keyword rich description, a high-res logo, and a header image. Also, you should make sure you’re posting consistent content for at least a week or 2 before you try and get more followers.

3. Text Ads – As a tool to increase brand awareness, text ads are cheap and to the point. Texts ads typically appear at the top of your LinkedIn homepage, or on the right-hand side of your screen with a small photo.

Why: These ads are pay-per-click and are a great add-on to a LinkedIn Campaign. I use Text Ads to drive home messaging, so if you’re already running an InMail Campaign or a Sponsored Content campaign, you can target the same people so they are seeing your messaging again.

What: Ads include minimal text, and some include an image/logo.

• Tips: Ads that ask questions tend to be the most impactful.
• Don’t run a text ad only campaign– you likely won’t see results. I recommend using these as a complement to another campaign rather than a stand-alone ad campaign.

4. Sponsored InMail – This type of sponsored content is sent directly to a user’s inbox. Depending on the LinkedIn user’s individual settings, InMails may double as an emailed advertisement. However, many savvy LinkedIn users have this feature turned off.

Why: In this inbox advertisement, you are able to create a more detailed message that can be longer than other forms of ads. It’s like an e-mail campaign without having to buy a list or hunt for addresses.

What: These ads can include text and some personalization to help with brand recognition in both physical banner ad design and electronic ads.

• Tips: Short, sweet, and to the point. People get a lot of InMails, you will need to really grab their attention and quick.
• Include an image and make it as personal as you can.

Now, How Do I get the biggest bang for my buck?

Cheap, fast and impactful: If you’re looking to hit the ground running, start with dynamic ads. They’re easy to get started and they are automatically personalized. We all love seeing our names, and with dynamic ads, LinkedIn does the heavy lifting for you. You can start with a budget as low as $100 per month to either:

• Drive traffic to jobs pages,
• Increase brand awareness,
• Grow your LinkedIn Company Page following.

Affordable and Impactful: With a budget around $250 you can get started with a Sponsored Content campaign. Create 4-5 different pieces of sponsored content, all with pictures and links. Leave the hashtags out. With this campaign, you can drive traffic to your landing pages and can couple the content with a small investment Text Ads.

Biggest Investment, Biggest Bang!: If you want to write long-form content and you really want a well-rounded approach, I would recommend:

• InMails
• Sponsored Content
• Dynamic/Text Ads

I wouldn’t recommend starting with less than $300, though. You’ll want to put the biggest sum of money in InMails and then trickle the rest down as you see fit. Text Ads should get the least investment as they are the least expensive.

As a professional platform, LinkedIn offers a variety of resources for small business owners, both free and paid. It’s important to promote your business while also providing industry insight, share content from other industry experts, and provide value. By using these tools and features along with strategically incorporating ads, small businesses can promote their products, services, and benefits without feeling like the pushy social media friend we all love to hate.

Whether your budget is minimal or non-existent, LinkedIn has options for you. If your message is strong and you know your target audience inside and out, they will come clicking.

The post How to Make LinkedIn Ads Work on Any Budget appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Do I Need Holiday Email Marketing?

Even outside of the holidays, email marketing is key to lead generation and customer acquisition. Despite the numerous avenues for digital advertising, email marketing yields the highest return on investment. Adding a little spice to your holiday email campaign will keep customers interested and will be well worth your time. If you need help starting up your email marketing, then consider getting help from Epsilon. Thanks to the changing times, living a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle isn’t the best option anymore – you need multiple income streams. With 100+ actionable (and effective) ways shared by http://workfromhomereviews.net/, you can open two or perhaps even more streams in no time. Simply pick the one you’re most passionate about, and take action!

Segmented Lists

Email list segmentation is an email marketing tool often overlooked by many businesses. By employing email list segmentation, or dividing up your list into small groups, in your holiday email campaign you recognize that you have customers in different demographics and with varying interests. Use the customer data you’ve collected to deliver timely and highly relevant messages to your audience. The possibilities of segmentation are almost endless, but here are a few effective tips to get you started:

• The holidays often bring new first-time customers. This is a perfect opportunity to target new subscribers by sending a welcome email or even a series of emails.
• Ask your subscribers how frequently they want to receive your emails and what kind of emails they want to see such as important updates, sale and discount notifications, blog post updates…etc. Allowing customers to have input on the frequency and topic of emails they receive will reduce their urge to click  “unsubscribe”.
• Segment by location to let subscribers know about upcoming events in their city. If you are running a big holiday sale at your small-town brick and mortar location, you don’t need to notify the whole world. If you don’t ship to a certain location, avoid sending emails to subscribers in that particular market.
• Abandoned shopping carts are a frequent issue for eCommerce sites. Use targeted emails to re-engage shoppers who walked away from their carts. (Most e-commerce tools have this built in, or tools like MailChimp can help!)

Personalization

Segmentation and personalization go hand in hand when it comes to your holiday email campaign. Personalization has the power to move some mountains, too. According to MarketingLand:

Personalized emails have an open rate of 30% higher than non-personalized emails and have more than a 40% higher click rate.

Almost any aspect of an email can be personalized from the subject line to the body of the email including things like a greeting, colors, location, and offers. Even transactional emails can be personalized. Use automation tools or a third-party collect data and manage personalization for you if you have a large client base. Don’t make the mistake of not personalizing your emails during the holiday season (and beyond) as it could literally cost you.

Dig Into Data

Loyal customers are the best customers, and they are your most important assets. That being said, it’s important to maintain a relationship through your email marketing campaign throughout the year. But, the holidays are a great time to remind your customers why they shopped with you in the first place. Did they love the gift they bought from you last year? Remind them just how great of a gift that was and suggest some products or services they might be interested in this holiday season.

Use shoppers’ purchase history to offer up-sells or cross-sells. If a customer recently purchased a gift, send them suggestions for add-ons that will complement their selection.

Your customer data is a gold mine! Tap into it for insights on your audience and their buying behavior. Once you’ve reviewed the data, set goals for the holiday season using benchmarks from the previous year or two.

Now that you have some practical ideas for a successful holiday email campaign, don’t forget to have a little fun creating your holiday-themed emails–the holidays are about finding joy and spreading cheer for all to hear!

Do you have a brick and mortar retail business? Don’t miss these holiday tips.

The post 3 Tips to Boost Your Email Marketing for the Holidays appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Emily’s Goal

Emily works to help companies tell their brand story. Her is social media marketing and creating a social presence. She also contributes to the continuing education and training of current employees and clients seeking to better their grasp on social marketing.

What is Zoho?

Zoho aims to become the primary operating system for small businesses. Offering over 40 products to help run businesses entirely from the cloud, Zoho aims to allow anyone to do business from anywhere. Many of these products also come with complementary mobile capability that even runs offline. This allows you to take your business anywhere, even where internet service is less than stellar. Once you reach a better internet connection, these products and apps allow you to sync your information to the cloud.

Email Marketing and Auto Responders

What exactly are email auto responders? Emily explains that many small businesses actually already use these when a customer buys a product or signs up for an email newsletter. That first welcome or thank you email is an auto response.

Emily mentions that if used correctly, email marketing can be incredibly efficient at pushing potential customers down the sales funnel, ultimately getting them to become a customer.

Emily tells Ramon that most companies stop there and only use the one email auto responder. She mentions that companies should easily be using three to five marketing emails each and every week. This doesn’t mean that each and every email needs to push product or sales, though. Emily explains that your first two or three emails need to focus on building a repertoire with potential customers. She explains that these could focus on related subjects that remain entirely informational.

Most customers expect to build a relationship with a business prior to signing on or buying. Instead of pitching product from the start, businesses should save the sales pitch for the fourth or fifth email. By this time, these emails are going to those people who have shown the interest in the business by clicking through three or four emails, so the sales pitch can sell them on the products or services. By using this method, you are able to build brand credibility and brand recall.

Brand Voice: How to Stay Unique

Emily explains that a small business has to be consistent in their branding from the very beginning, but especially in the very beginning.

Small businesses need to have their branding on anything and everything that goes out. Cards, emails, invoices, and anything that you send to a potential or existing client should have your branding somewhere on it.

While building your business and clientele, this helped with coherence – knowing what your company is about – and with brand recall.

How can you truly find a brand voice that works for your business? Emily thinks its ideal for a business to go with something that is uniquely them, representative of what they have to offer, and that is sustainable over time. She mentions, “Being hilarious works if you’re a hilarious person,” but offers that you have to be able to remain hilarious if that is your brand voice choice. She says that you can’t fall flat just shortly after starting or you will not have a successful brand.

Find what speaks to your company including your unique values and products, and build from there. Examine what you want your brand to say about you. Emily suggests surveying your current customers and seeing what they perceive your brand to be. If this is something you aren’t in agreement with, change it. Mold your brand into what you want others to see. If the current clientele aren’t getting the information directly from your brand, you have to change that. You can do this by using social media or blogging, but keep in mind that you have to remain consistent to the brand you hope to unfold.

The post How Can You Make Your Brand Relevant? Insights from Zoho Exec. appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Tip #1: Get busy marketing yourself online.

If your local community is filled with small businesses, consumers can only visit so many on this special day. The big box stores use doorbusters to bring customers in, but doorbusters don’t work for small businesses. Instead, focus on what makes your business unique. And, whatever you do, use hashtags like:

• #SmallBizSat
• #SmallBizSaturday
• #DineSmall
• #ShopSmall
• #SBS
• #SmallBusinessSaturday

As you post online, remember to choose attractive photographs that show off why customers should visit your shop or dine at your eatery. Post regularly so your business stays at the forefront of shoppers’ minds. But, don’t give away too much online. Leave plenty of reasons for shoppers to come in and see what you’ve got on the shelves. While your posting, remember to share your neighbor’s posts and ask them to share yours, too.

#SmallBizSat is less than a week away! Which #JerseyCity small businesses are your favorite to shop at? pic.twitter.com/bH6FZ0BxAN

— City of Jersey City (@JC_Gov) November 18, 2018

working hard to perfect our metal foil formula for the holidays…

(unfortunately, our camera is a little bit stubborn and doesn’t want to show you just HOW beautifully bright and gleaming they truly are!)#smallbizsaturday pic.twitter.com/gIoyTrVxOq

— dëb♡sugar cosmetics (@shopdebsugar) November 17, 2018

Tip #2: Open early and close late.

This is a special day that celebrates your local community and it just so happens to be the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Shoppers want to shop early and they want to keep shopping all day. So, open before the sun comes up and offer your early birds free coffee (recommend by your trusted Greatcoffeebrewers.com website) and a warm, inviting shop to visit.

Talk your neighboring shops to open early, too. Then, share those special holiday hours on your social media posts.

Tip #3: Decorate for the season.

Get into the spirit of the holiday with decorations inside and outside of your shop. Beautiful holiday decorations get shoppers into the spirit. They also make your shop look fresh and updated. You can even update your shopping bags so your holiday spirit can be seen outside of your shop. Play holiday music, sing along and wear your favorite holiday clothing so all of your customers see how festive and fun you are.

Remember that families are often shopping together on this special day. As you are decorating, consider adding some chairs in comfortable groupings. Customers appreciate having a place to sit, especially if your shop has dressing rooms.

Tip #4: Become a destination.

With a social media campaign and a shop full of great items, your location can become more than just a store. It can become a destination.

• Plan an open house with live music and local food.
• Invite your neighbors to bring their pets dressed up for a holiday pageant.
• Work with neighboring stores and arrange a holiday tea with a fashion show; if you sell tickets, you could donate money to a neighborhood need.
• Get creative and arrange the event to coincide with the excitement of Small Business Saturday.
• Work with your neighboring businesses to create a window-decoration competition and let shoppers determine the winner.
• Invite a local celebrity to show up at your shop.

Mark your Calender’s for next weekend! Nov. 24 is #SmallBusinessSaturday and #IndiesFirst. To help us celebrate this special day authors will be in the store all day as booksellers. For the full list of the authors attending https://t.co/p1NpfupOhj pic.twitter.com/1BTcqiAAnx

— Mysterious Galaxy (@MystGalaxyBooks) November 18, 2018

Hey @CoryBooker, only one week until #SmallBizSaturday! Here is your official invitation to @EatAtLorenzos located in Toms River, NJ. We feature many gluten-free and vegan options and would be happy to make a meal for you!

— Brigitte Jean-Louis (@BrigitteJL) November 17, 2018

Tip #5: Work with local vendors.

People love to buy from local vendors. Whether you have a retail shop or a coffee shop, find things that are made within a set distance from your shop. Then you can advertise that you support local businesses with an x-mile range – the smaller the range, the better. Local vendors are always looking for places to sell their jewelry, clothing, kitchenware, food, beverages, and more. Support your local businesses and your local shoppers will support you.

40+ artists in our complex are preparing to participate in #SmallBizSat next weekend on the 24th of November! https://t.co/Ke9risDMWN

— Western Ave Studios (@WesternAveArts) November 17, 2018

The post 5 Surefire Tips to Make Small Business Saturday a Success appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Solutions for small businesses

One of those was SAP Concur. While many large businesses are just too big to care about the success of their smaller counterparts, SAP Concur thinks differently. This company creates solutions for small businesses to take control of their expenses. SAP Concur provides automated invoicing for expenses and accounts payable. It also helps small businesses manage their travel expenses. All of this is done with innovative technology.

Growing relationships between small and large businesses

The senior vice president and general manager of SAP Concur, Christal Bemont, took time to talk to Ramon Ray about the growing relationships between small businesses and large ones like hers. Concur was once an independent business that was purchased by SAP. The organization continues to do this, but with the full resources of SAP behind it.

Bemont was ecstatic about the growing relationships between small, medium, and large businesses. Large businesses like SAP envy what she called “agility” in the small business world. According to Bemont, that agility makes small businesses “Nimble and scrappy … easier to be innovative and athletic.”

Becoming innovative and agile

Large businesses often have too much bureaucracy to be innovative. But, small businesses do not have to answer to anyone. This is what larger businesses envy.

Along with figurative agility and athleticism, small businesses are also turning heads for literal reasons. The makeup of small businesses is changing as more minorities, women, and millennials are becoming entrepreneurs. Hopefully, large businesses will take notice and include these dynamic populations in their mix, too.

It is easier for small businesses to compete in the local, national, and global marketplace because of technology. With Business Agility Consulting and technology, small businesses are filling in the holes that large businesses overlook.

The keys to business success

Bemont believes that large businesses will begin acting like small businesses to develop agility and to innovate in ways they never have been able to do. Since small businesses do not have access to a large workforce and the sheer amount of information that large businesses have, large businesses still have an advantage. The key is how that workforce and the information is delegated.

There are several keys to success for both small and large businesses. Interestingly, they are similar, other than in their scope:

• Passion
• Leadership
• Innovation
• Delegation
• Teamwork

As with all organizations, the people that are in any business will help it succeed or drive it to failure. When businesses hire the best people, innovation is easy. With great people, leaders are able to step away from day-to-day procedures and work on new ideas because of trust. SAP Concur helps those leaders and their great people set visions, be disruptive, and get results.

Check out more of Ramon Ray’s interviews from the B2SMB Conference.

The post Small Business Agility Attracts Large Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Where small business owners make mistakes

Small business owners often try to do marketing on their own. While there’s nothing wrong with doing it themselves, there are a few things that need to be done correctly. The first step is to create a marketing plan and all too often, small business owners are not quite sure how to do this. So, they don’t do it.

Then, the problems arise. One of the biggest problems involves automation. It is easy to overdo it and get overwhelmed with too many automatic marketing platforms. There are so many platforms and most of them do not play well together. So, when small business owners make changes, things fall apart.

But, with a thoughtful, purposeful marketing plan, problems like this can be avoided.  

What to consider in your marketing plan

To find success with your small business marketing, it is important to consider the entire lifecycle of the customer. It is important to find a balance between automated programs and human interaction. Consider what you can glean on the landing page of your website and when it is time to bring a human into the conversation.

Why hire an expert

If you are unsure of what a landing page is or a marketing automation platform, then it might be time to hire someone to help you with your small business marketing plan. With a marketing company on your side, you get to focus on your business, while they work on getting leads so you can convert them into sales. With this Constellation Marketing Agency you can achieve your business projects. A marketing company can help you build an automation map so you know exactly what is being sent by your company. 

If working with a marketing company frightens you, then you could be setting your business up to not succeed. This is different than failure. Your small business might do just fine with your marketing ideas, but a marketing company could take your business to the next level. To real success.

What marketing companies do for small businesses

Marketing companies understand how to maximize all of the possible channels that your customers might take to discover you. They also know how to turn new customers into return customers. They help you build a brand and they help customers develop brand loyalty. 

Marketing companies help small business owners create active campaigns by putting in practice Search Optimization Bill Lentis techniques. These are marketing events that involve several intricate automated marketing events, including:

• Emails
• Landing page specials
• Timely social media posts
• Timely web content
• Blog posts

Even though these sound like complicated and advanced programs, with a marketing company on your team, they are time savers that can take your business to the next level. Unfortunately, too many business owners shy away from active campaigns for a variety of reasons. Instead of trying something, they try nothing. And, nothing comes from nothing.

Don’t be afraid

Small business owners are often afraid that they are too early in their work to begin marketing. But, early marketing actually can create a compounding effect. It builds retention as well as new customers. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen by working with a marketing company? Even if you just start with something small?

With small steps, marketing companies can take your business where you never thought it would go. With fear, that all changes.

What will you choose? Success? Or fear?

The post Why Fear Gets In The Way Of Successful Small Business Marketing appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With the rise of alternate communication platforms such as social media and business messaging apps such as Slack, business communication is evolving quickly.

Along with these new technological developments, people’s expectations are continually rising. To better engage your customers, you need to leverage the latest in email technologies such as personalization and artificial intelligence (AI).

But what should you focus on? Where should you place your bets when it comes to your email technology strategy?

Trends That Are Changing Email Now and for the Future

Don’t worry – email itself is not going away any time soon. If you have an existing email list for your business, and you get a good response rate from it, you are using email well. But consider the following as an upgrade to your email strategy:

1. Personalization (Within Reason) and AI

Personalization these days is critical in cultivating and retaining customers. Using metrics, analytics, and AI, you can deliver exactly the kind of emails your customers are looking for.

For example, email marketing software company, Campaign Monitor, offers marketers a way to personalize email content dynamically based on how they engage with each email. For example, email workflows can be created that send emails to each individual subscriber based on what video they view or link they click on from a previous email. This ensures that subsequent emails are tailored to each subscriber based on their interests.

There is a fine line, however, between using personal information about a customer to deliver them the information and content they want and violating their privacy. So, be careful with your personalization and consider making it opt-in.

2. Include Rich Media In Email

For the small business looking to win a new client, one great new technology to consider can turn your email into a presentation device.

Mixmax, a productivity platform , makes it easy to embed rich media in emails. For example, using  Mixmax you can put a slideshow presentation, PDF, video calendar or even poll directly into an email, making the content more engaging for your audience.  Embedding rich media makes your email stand out in a crowd and also makes it easier for the recipient to respond, meaning you are likely to get more responses.

If you look down the line, you can see how this technology could end up making each email into a potential channel of its own, delivering content by putting it right in front of the user in their inbox.

3. Group Messaging

We mentioned Slack already, and if you don’t know what that is, check it out. It’s just one solution for business teams who want to work together through an integrated messaging app. Rather than using a group email, you can log in to Slack to check messages from other employees and join topical discussions.

Keep Up with the Changing Face of Email Technology

Email will still exist in some form for the foreseeable future. However, you can also count on new developments in email and personal and group messaging to change and grow as time goes on. For your business to remain competitive in this dynamic environment, make sure you keep up with the latest news and trends in email technology. You will be ahead of the game and better able to serve your customers well in the long run.

The post 3 Ways Technology Is Changing the Face of Email Forever appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Facebook Community Boost is an initiative of Facebook to educate 1 million businesses in how better market their business using Facebook.

Sure, Facebook is educating customers who will buy billions of dollars of advertising, but we small businesses NEED and WANT easy to use and low cost solutions to drive customers to our businesses.

The all day event, opened with a keynote from Facebook executives and local elected officials. The best part was a panel discussion with Two Blind Brothers and Charleston Gourmet Burger.\

The panelists shared a few core insights in using Facebook:

1. Start with a narrow audience. Don’t target “all women” – target women in a small town, who have certain demographics or interests. From there you can expand your market.
2. Use your own lists. Take your email list, upload it to Facebook and begin to target messages to that list.
3. Test your messaging. Spend $5 or $25 and test what advertising works.

There’s so much more to using Facebook but overall it’s a powerful platform to drive new business or strengthen your brand with existing customers.

After the morning sessions we broke into workshops. Some people were experienced and some people were new to Facebook. We learned how to create effective ads, we learned how to better use Instagram and more. Overall, it was a great experience and I was very glad I went. I met great people, learned quite a bit, and now have a better idea of how to position my businesses using Facebook.

The post My Experience at a Facebook Community Boost Event appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Who Does This Benefit?

This update brings Pinterest up-to-speed with other social media advertising platforms and stands to be leveraged by advertisers from large, corporate entities all the way to small businesses. Advertisers across the board should take advantage of Pinterest’s latest Ad Manager overhaul. Small and medium-sized businesses with limited advertising budgets, will be able to take advantage of Pinterest’s new features.

Small and medium-sized businesses can now identify and promote top performing organic Pins using insights from Analytics. The efficiency and ease of use of this new feature makes it possible for SMBs to manage their own ads. No longer relying on a third party, SMBs can save time and money in the long run. SMBs can also take advantage of the ability to measure your influence on Pinterest. Tracking monthly viewer numbers and optimizing ad campaigns to be more efficient and effective, offer new analytics.

How Do You Use It?

Small and medium-sized businesses can optimize advertising campaigns by creating ads with ease, define and size audiences, and access reports from the improved dashboard.

The self-serve Ads Manager consists of an easy, three-step set-up process that advertisers can use to create and set up Promoted Pins:

1. Choose your business goal
2. Identify the type of Pinners you’d like to reach
3. Create or select Pins that you want to promote in-home feeds or search results

In addition, advertisers can select multiple Pins to promote at once or create new Pins within Ads Manager. A streamlined campaign creation process allows you to schedule your ads as well as build robust targeting audiences with guidance from audience sizing and the recently launched Audience Insights tool.

Another great feature is the ability to test and optimize ads. You can duplicate top performing campaigns and ad groups to see what’s working and what’s not. If you analyze and adjust accordingly, you won’t have to waste time or money funding an ad campaign that’s not producing results. Advertisers will leverage the tool’s frequency management capability, allowing users to decided when and how often ads are published.

When Should You Use It?

Jump on it now! Pinterest made their big announcement just weeks before Black Friday and the start of the holiday shopping season. With the holidays right around the corner, consumers will be flooding Pinterest with searches for holiday gift ideas. What a perfect time to optimize your ad campaign and get your SMB’s product or service in front of a captive audience!

People use Pinterest when they are actively looking for what to do or buy next. The updated features allow small and medium-sized businesses an opportunity to reach people earlier in the decision-making process. Pinterest has made it easier for SMBs to strategically place their ads in front of people at the right time with Promoted Pins. You can even define your audience, making it as broad or narrow as you like, to reach the right customers.

The post Pinterest Overhauls Ad Manager: SMBs Gain Valuable New Tool appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What can small businesses learn from the big company? Take it from a pro: Suha dishes out 4 tips to succeed in the ever-evolving era of social media.

Know the Difference

Suha’s first tip to bring success to your small business through social media is to, “make sure you know the different strategies of every single channel.” There are many social media platforms out there today and they are all so different. You can’t treat every channel the same. Social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook have changed their algorithms over the years and they each prioritize content differently. Which means that your social media marketing strategies from 2 years ago aren’t going to cut it.

For example, Facebook wants brands to act like people. Suha has some great insight and she shares that Facebook wants brands, “to drive conversation, they want them to jump into conversation.” She suggests, “A great way to work with that is to have videos that ask questions so your audience can answer them.” As a result, your post then shows up higher in your followers’ feeds because it’s sparking conversation. Facebook is trying to build community through your digital marketing efforts, so definitely Incorporate and build that into your strategy.

Create Compelling Content

Everybody likes a good story. The best way to promote your business on social media is to tell a story and to get help from professional Instagram Services. Aside from images, videos are increasingly being published on Instagram. Instagram Views offer views for your videos to face out from the gang .Visit us to get more Instagram views. Don’t miss any opportunity, do this with everything you put out there. Suha says it’s important to not just, “promote your product. Tell a story of who or what the product is about. Have somebody evangelize it, tell their success story with it.” She also emphasizes that small businesses should always inspire emotion and creativity with every single thing that they post.

Elevate and Recruit Influencers

It’s important to find the right influencers. Suha shares that micro influencers may be the next big breakthrough for your small business on social media. But, not to worry, you don’t need to be petitioning a Kardashian or Will.i.am to promote your product or small business. Suha advises instagram infulencer marketing to really tap into the world of micro-influencers. Micro influencers may not have millions of followers. But, what they do have can be extremely valuable to your business. Micro influencers represent niche markets and they come with engaged audiences. You stand to gain the most from these kinds of influencers. They have all the right ingredients, “specific to your industry, specific to your market, resonate with your audience, [and] relevant content,” Suha reiterates.

Invest and Keep Testing

Don’t let the word “invest” scare you off. Even if you don’t have a huge budget, you can still apply this principle. Suha states that “the great thing about social media is that you really don’t have to invest that much in order to see ROI.” A small amount will produce a noticeable return. Just $5-10 on Facebook will get you far. Keep testing what works. If you’re pumping a lot of money in a certain direction, but aren’t seeing results, pull back, reevaluate, and try again. This is something you will have to do periodically, even if you think you’ve found the winning formula, as social media continues to grow and change, seemingly right in front of our eyes.

The post Salesforce’s Social Media Ninja Dishes Her Best Insights appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Load Up Your List

Google Maps’ newest feature allows users to create a shortlist of restaurants by scrolling through the app’s “Explore” tab. Long-press on any location to add it to your shortlist. Once a list is compiled, simply name it and share your shortlist over messaging apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp.

Exercise Your Right to Vote!

The message will contain a link back to Google Maps where you and your friends can vote for selections on the shortlist, by liking or disliking each restaurant. Members can also add or delete restaurants from the shortlist. Group members who don’t have the app can still view the list in their internet browser. And just like that, you’ve saved hours of headaches and heartache over where to eat.

Google Local Guides

Don’t even feel like making your own list? Google has the answer to that, too. When you swipe up, the app spotlights lists by the Google Local Guides team as well as by individual Local Guides. You can follow lists to keep up with Local Guide recommendations. There’s even a progress bar so you can see how many places you’ve visited on a followed list. Make sure your Location History is on and share your experience by leaving reviews and adding photos. .

The Google Local Guides team has lists starting in 17 cities including Bangalore, Berlin, Chicago, Dallas, Jakarta, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Moscow, New Delhi, New York, Paris, Rio, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seattle, and Tokyo.

Make Your List #LetsGuide Famous

Do you know all of the best places to eat in your city? Want to get your list featured as an individual Local Guide? Here are three simple ways to help you create a great list:

1. Give your list a clear title so people know what they are looking at. Romantic Restaurants, Kid-Friendly, Cuisine-specific…etc. The best one I found so far, “37 Restaurants Where You Can Eat In Your Gym Clothes.” I think it’s pretty clear that this list is perfect if you’re looking for a, “come as you are” place to eat.
2. Share more detail about your list in the description. Include pertinent information that only a local might know like, the best time to eat there, live music on Tuesdays, or a to get a table 6 instead of 7 for the best sunset views. Also, be sure to add #LetsGuide to increase engagement.
3. Include at least 5 local places that fit well with your theme, and go to Sharing options to make your list public for the world to see!

Why This is Good News for Restaurant Owners

Restaurant owners have been able to attract more customers with the ability to update menus in their Google Maps listings using the Google My Business (GMB) dashboard since early this year. But, the latest Maps feature will allow restaurant owners a relatively easy way to draw even more traffic to their establishments. Friends can now share their favorite restaurants, and you want to be on that shortlist! Obviously, good food is a key factor for getting your restaurant on local shortlists. But, making sure your menu is up-t0-date, your booking link is added, and your GMB profile is complete will make your restaurant an easy choice when it’s put to the vote.

The post Google Maps’ New Feature Slays Restaurant Indecision appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

First, Who is Animoto?

From Jason’s point of view, Animoto is a web-based company “all about empowering folks with the power of video”.

Their goal is to help small businesses and individuals who are looking to leverage video to better their businesses. Animoto uses a collection of tools and expertise to make it simple for people with a small budget and no experience to do it for themselves.        

By providing easy to use templates (or storyboards), users can easily drag and drop their content and Animoto turns them into beautiful videos. Making video marketing easy. Someone who is less familiar with the most up to date technology can even use these templates to create a professional and appealing video for their business.

Animoto has been in business for about a decade. With over 100 employees who work to produce quality video services, the diverse background, and experience that Animoto offers are truly unparalleled. The experience and diversity are what has allowed Animoto to be successful in providing these tools for small businesses.

How can video really help your business?

Jason points out that many people see this trend and say “I know I should be doing this but how do I catch this video wave? Oh, and by the way, I have no experience or time.”

Video truly amplifies what already works for you in your current setting. There is nothing really new to adding video to your repertoire of marketing strategy other than enhancing what you already do. With the business world shifting to be more supportive of small business as well as the increasing audience, video could be a more powerful advertising and marketing tool than ever.

Video can be used for a number of things to promote and advertise your business. Whether an informational clip, a testimonial, product demos, or even recaps of an event a business hosted, Animoto can help to create a video that packages this information in a clean and produced video to use for marketing.

To the Nay-Sayers       

Some people are still not on board with branching out into something new. People actually see video as being a newer form of communication and marketing, but this isn’t true. Video has been around for quite some time, the platform on which the video is used is just newer and more innovative. Video is perhaps the most quickly growing form of communication.

With companies like Animoto, the individual is now able to more easily capture the video trend to promote their business.

“We take the guesswork out of what makes for a successful video,” Jason adds.

With the experience and background available, video is a multifaceted advertising method that is now even easier to use.

Video vs. Social Media

With nearly every social media platform having an option for live video, you may question why video marketing would be the better route to take over these live options. This is largely in part due to the ability to cross over platforms and to generalize your audience. Each social platform has an unofficial yet unique atmosphere, so each and every live video would have to be adapted to fit the platform.

Rather than the stress of a live feed (we’ve all been there – some of us are still there, not wanting to be in front of the camera), video marketing streamlines your information, can still use a clip or two that you put together, but can also simplify your approach so that it isn’t choppy or overwhelming for the viewer. One of the worst things someone can do when making a video is providing too much information that the main ideas get bogged down in the overabundance of detail.

Social media can also be trickier to navigate. “They all kinda have certain characteristics and certain structure that make them successful,” Jason describes.  Depending on the platform as well as the direct audience, a live video could be ignored or overlooked. A well-placed video with the right frequency of occurrence could prove more successful than an occasional live video.

Tips for making video work for you

Some ways that small business owners could focus on to make video work for what they need could include the following:

1. 1. Make the first few seconds eye-catching – in a world of scrolling, make sure the initial clip captures the viewer’s attention so that they watch the entire video and are wrapped into the message being provided in your video.
   2. Use what already works for you, and use the video tool to enhance and optimize this area of your business. For example, if you host a blog about your business, you can create a small teasing video that draws the viewer in to read the blog and then ultimately learn about the business.
   3. If you already have popular images or phrases, use them! Go ahead and turn your most viewed things into these videos so that you may continue to grab that attention that these images and phrases have already done.
   4. Don’t be afraid to branch out. If you are short on time, experience, and budget, you can still use Animoto to create a video to assist in your marketing strategy.

The post The Power of Video with Jason Hsiao of Animoto appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With 87% of online marketers using video content to improve their marketing strategy, 51% of them have claimed videos to be the best content to give you ROI.  Also, viewers retain 95% of the information you give in the form of a video as compared to 10% when reading it in a text. But the fact is, that kind of success is not very easy. Your video marketing should also be bang on! With plr videos being the superhero of marketing, you will always get back what you put forth in your video marketing strategy. Avoid any mistakes and you will be on your way in producing a video that surely captivates the world.

Without further ado, let’s get into the details of various mistakes you are likely to make in your business’s video marketing strategy, how to get rid of them and rise like a star!

How to avoid 10 common video marketing mistakes

Let’s face it! Video marketing costs money. And when you are willing to lay a budget on this marketing strategy, a mistake is something you cannot afford. Below are the most common video marketing mistakes that even experts can sometimes make.

1. Choosing the wrong partner

Today, anyone can make a video easily with just a smartphone in hand. But, is that what you want? The customers of your business might equate the quality of your video to the quality of your business. Thus, you need to consult the experts. In order to save the budget, you might either try and cut a few corners of the video, or opt for the cheapest company. But, that’s like marrying the wrong person. Embarking any of this will be a huge mistake on your side so you should consider having a partner who has gone through marketing to students training.

When your customers see your video, they should feel comfortable spending their money on your business. For that, it is important to choose the right video production partner and create a high-quality video for your business. Taking the right professional help is your first step in video marketing. If you make a mistake here, it’s a mistake that can’t be taken back!

2. Creating extra-long videos

Well, today people are either busy, or they don’t have enough patience. Probably, it is both of these. However, the shorter the video, the better it is. That is the new thumb rule in video marketing. And keeping it too long is an easy mistake for you to make. So stay away from it. Too much of anything is always boring. It is best to keep your video short, sweet and to the point. A video that lasts between 60 – 90 seconds does the best magic work in your video marketing strategy.

The longer your video, the less likely are your viewers to finish watching it. Also, ensure to put the meat first. That is, mention your key points in the beginning and cut out any irrelevant content that extends your video length. Remember, your video is not a manual, but a hook to entice your target customers in video marketing.

3. Jamming your video with messages

What would happen if you stuffed your suitcase with too many things that it can’t hold? It would burst! Now, that is a mistake you can also make in your marketing video. Don’t pack all the messages you need to convey into a single video, but instead make multiple videos for different messages in your video marketing strategy. Cramming too many messages into one video will mean that none of them was conveyed properly. This will dilute and confuse the message, making your audience unable to follow up.

Hence, stick to one video-one message format. At the end of the video, your viewers should know what you have conveyed easily. Overload of too much information in a single video might result in them losing interest in your video, or even worse, trust itself. So pace yourself, and avoid the mistake of overloading your videos.

4. Poorly branding your business

Many times, chances are that you remember a great video, but forget who produced it. A similar mistake can happen in your video marketing strategy as well. It is important to effectively brand your business in the marketing video you make. Placing your company logo, mentioning the tagline, URL etc. are essential to convey your brand identity successfully. Sometimes you might get completely wrapped up in making the video that you forget about branding aspects. Don’t make this mistake. Involve in successful branding because that is what sets you apart.

Ideal location to include your business’s branding is at the beginning of your marketing video. By doing so, the viewers will remember your video as well as your business’s name and identity. Now, brand recall is something you might not want to miss out on due to poor branding right?

5. Don’t overdo your sales pitch

How many customer support calls have you hung up on? How many promotional emails have gone into your spam? Well, quite a few numbers? The reason could have been that they were too sales-pitchy. The truth is, nobody likes the feeling of being sold to. So ensure to not make such a mistake in your video marketing.

Don’t force feed your customers about purchasing because they might not like it. Customers wander in looking for things that are beneficial to them. So, that’s what your video should be about. Empathize with their need more than pushing your product into their viewership. Sales will automatically happen then. Build a relationship with them, understand them and make them feel that you understand them. Only then dive into your sales aspect. It’s a huge mistake if otherwise!

6. Avoiding a strong CTA

“Get in touch with us”, “Click here to download our app”, “Visit our website”. Have you used anything like this at the end of your video? If you haven’t, it is more of a sin than a mistake! Without a proper closing statement or a call-to-action, you are leaving your viewers in a dilemma about what’s next. Your video might just fade into the black like that. Also, this might mean that you just lost a valuable lead, a click or a sale. You do not want that happening for sure.

So, ensure to include a strong call-to-action at the end of your video, guiding your viewers about what to do next. This closing statement is as important as the quality of the video you make. After all the hard work you did to get your target customers on your website, you do not want them going in vain just because a strong CTA didn’t exist.

7. Disregarding the usage of SEO

Now that you have made your marketing video, next big thing is to get your target customers to see your video. Earlier, video meant Youtube. But today, that is not enough. There are several video optimization tactics and techniques, that can be provided by the best SEO agency in Singapore, you need to follow if your video needs to be seen by the masses. In order to see your video rank #1 on the internet, you need to optimize it with the right keywords, right metadata and good thumbnail image. Disregarding such factors of the video SEO will be a huge mistake because those who use them will go up.

Today, video SEO is a major part of every marketer’s life. If you wish to see your video popularize and become number 1, do not ignore SEO based marketing for even a minute. The results they can bring in are remarkable.

8. Under using available platforms

Notice anybody using a device, and you are likely to find them watching a video. Video lovers are so many now. But, it is not true that the video each of them watches is on the same video hosting platform. With every other platform hosting a video to increase their business, it is important that you make use of the right platforms for your video marketing.

Earlier it was either Youtube or Facebook. But, not anymore. There are so many social media platforms and business-oriented platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc. where you can upload your business video to make it go viral. Also, uploading videos on homepage or landing pages are also in trend. Taking into consideration factors such as your target audience, type of video, objective etc., you need to make your hosting platform choices.

9. Expecting instant results

It is said that great things always take time. The same applies for your video marketing strategy as well. If you are looking forward to some amazing marketing results overnight, you are more likely to be a little disappointed. Not everybody is lucky enough to get a million views for their video within hours of being uploaded.

The work does not finish once you make a video and upload it. Rather, it is after that the work actually starts for the marketing team. As a marketing individual, you need to understand that a good video marketing strategy requires time, patience and dedication to outperform competition.

10. Not using video analytics

Once you have a well-planned video marketing strategy, begin executing it. But, how do you know if it is working for your business? That’s when you need to get an analytics check done for your video marketing strategy. You can obtain information about who watches your video, what do they watch, how long do they watch, which part of the video did they watch more etc. This will give you an idea about your target customers interests which later become your leads.

Stats don’t lie. Hence, revamping your marketing strategy after a regular analytics check is always best. Not doing so will only result in you regretting about the mistake you did later on.

Final Verdict

Mistakes can happen to anybody. But, once you know that it is a mistake, you can always refrain from not committing them again. After reading this article, you know what not to do to get your video marketing strategy right. Also, keep yourself updated about the video marketing trends. Things that don’t seem like mistakes today can become catastrophic errors tomorrow. Definitely, you would not want to be a part of that. Avoid these errors and your video marketing is all set to fly high.

Koushik Marka is the founder and CEO of an explainer video production company titled Studiotale. With strong entrepreneurship and professional skills, his qualities do not end there. With expertise in Vector Illustration, 2D Animation, Motion Graphics, and Digital Marketing, he loves what he does. Apart from being a work enthusiast, his off-work preferences are playing video games and traveling.

The post 10 Video Marketing Mistakes A Good Marketer Should Avoid appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

This widespread adoption of learning online has also created an opportunity for small businesses to connect with their customers in an authentic way. By utilizing video to package up your expertise, product tips, best practices and more into an online miniseries, you can offer a valuable resource to your current customers and attract new ones.

One example is Patch, a plant and garden delivery business. As an added benefit to its current customers and to get discovered by new ones, the team at Patch developed a free online course on plant care tips. By signing up for the course, Patch’s customers receive daily emails on a new lesson in the form of a helpful video. Each video is less than two minutes in length and housed on the company’s website. Many small businesses, like Patch, are experts in their industries, products or services.  And they’re using this expertise to help grow their customer base and bolster their brand reputation.

As a small business owner juggling a variety of responsibilities, the idea of creating sleek videos may feel out of reach. In reality, modern video creation tools are turnkey with a low cost of entry. These solutions, like Camtasia, allow even the most novice of users to easily create engaging and eye-catching videos with things you already have, including webinar recordings, video clips, images, and PowerPoint presentations.

Creating professional quality videos is easier and more affordable than ever. Here are five ways you can use video to help boost your sales and enhance your marketing activities.

• Get in front of the right audience.

  By registering for your online mini-course or video series, your customers are opting into receiving more content from you. This allows you to continue targeting them with relevant marketing materials, offers, and more as they move through the sales funnel.

• Learn more about your customers.

  By analyzing the top performing videos and using this youtube video editor, you’ll gain powerful insights into what resonates with your customers and what they may want to see more of in the future. For example, if a video received significantly more views, comments or shares, consider creating additional pieces of content, such as social posts, blogs, or paid ads, with the same theme.

• Increase repeat visits to your website.

  Housing your videos on a specific landing page or centralized location gives registrants a reason to continue returning to your website. Use a website traffic tool, like Google Analytics, to track where they go and spot trends.

• Reuse and recycle.

  Consider the videos you create for your online course as evergreen content. Use them elsewhere in your sales materials or marketing campaigns. Videos are also favored on newsfeeds and therefore can be helpful in breaking through the clutter on social media as well.

• Give them a reason to come back.

  Most importantly, you’re offering a valuable resource to benefit your customers. By helping them learn more about your product, sharing your expertise, or providing best practices, you’re giving them a reason to return.

Sleek and engaging videos are no longer reserved for large enterprises with equally large budgets. Thanks to modern solutions, businesses of all sizes can easily create engaging video content. If you’re looking to grow your customer base and increase purchases, consider creating an online video series.

Want more information about how visuals are changing the way we learn and work? Check out our recent study.   

By: Matt Pierce, Learning & Video Ambassador, TechSmith

The post How to Use Video to Attract New Customers appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Evolving Advertisement – Because who even reads the newspaper anymore?

Probably not you, because newspaper sales have been down 11% respectively to the previous year, which might not seem like a lot until you translate that number to 31 million weekday newspapers. How many of us still watch T.V. normally? Wait, do you mean Netflix or Hulu?  Not even close, because most people have begun to steer clear of standard cable packages altogether, relying instead on streaming services. If you do subscribe to cable, you likely DVR your favorite shows, so you fast forward through most commercials anyway, eliminating a former key source of advertisement. Traditional sources of marketing and advertising, like print and television, have had to take a backseat. Out of necessity, marketers have had to become creative to ensure their products or services are being appropriately seen through effective advertising.

Hello, “sponsored ads,” is that you? We have all seen how often pop-up ads get in our way or how strange it was that a product we viewed before is now being advertised on the side panels of our favorite sites and apps. We have become well trained in averting our eyes from these ads. We are living in a society of disengagement. If something doesn’t grasp our attention and keep it, we will continue to scroll, and scroll, and scroll.

Video Ads Slide-In

Gif or video? You tell me, but either way, video ads have become more and more common. They typically appear when we’re waiting to watch a video or when we click on a popular website. The ads pop-up and we have to watch them in order to get to our requested content. Typically, they’re brief and it’s not even worth going to another tab. But for both music and video ads, you have to pay the premium services or else you hear and see ads for just about anything. Game of Thrones or Bejeweled? Pass on both. Consider yourself lucky if they’re only audio, because many are accompanied with video in an attempt to further engage the listener and to push their product or service that much harder.

Videos in Politics

Shout out to all the politicians in HD — a deviation from typical door to door campaigning, candidates are getting down to a relatable level by using a documentary style commercials for both TV and video streaming channels. This method has become a hot commodity in campaigning to make candidates more friendly, relatable and viral. As both primaries and a new presidential election approach, seeing your fave (and least fave) candidates on video is sure to continue to grow and light up the campaign trials for years to come.

Viral Videos in Marketing

In marketing, video has significant potential to greatly change the way that businesses, well, do business. Viral videos can increase sales and product interest by leaps and bounds. If companies have a video on their landing pages, they are more likely to land a lead and a potential customer.

A Wise Investment

Video isn’t always the cheapest advertisement option, but it is fairly reasonable and can be easily done.  Video offers a high return on the investment and allows for a deeper connection with the consumer. Depending on the subject matter, a video can pull at the heartstrings of a future customer far better than text or images alone. There is a level of intimacy a truly engaging video can use to build trust.

Some say that simply adding animations into online ads can increase your productivity and success significantly. Simple advertisements are the most basic (read: cost-efficient) and easy to work with when getting started. Social media platforms also have the offered option of live video broadcasting, which can easily be a second step in adding videos into your business model. Live videos can be intimidating at first, but once you’ve established a familiarity with the camera and an engaged audience, you’ll rock the red dot.

Video Funneling

Once you’ve mastered live videos (ala Facebook & Instagram), you can venture into the realm of video funneling–hello YouTube eternity! Consider this the ultimate goal of every ad and video you’ll create. This requires more work and likely outsourcing services, but it is purely the divine intervention that will take sales from 500 to 500,000.

All in all, it is wise to think about adding video content to your online business campaigns. No matter what end of the business spectrum you may land on, odds are video and animation ads could greatly impact your success. It’s easy to be afraid of change and new technologies, but it’s important to remember that we’re in a technological world and we need to embrace technology as the new business platform.

The post Why Video Matters In Marketing appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

“Talk Triggers” is all about thinking what YOU can purposefully create to stoke word of mouth around your brand.

What’s interesting about a talk trigger is that it can’t be TOO BIG. It’s not like giving away a brand new $50,000 jeep to every customer. No that’s too big and probably too expensive. But it seems like most talk triggers are simple, but memorable, effective and something that’s always done.

Indeed, large companies can create talk triggers and implement them at scale, but smaller business can as well.

Think about the jeep dealer who wanted to penetrate the NYC market. Manhattan is dense and a pain to get to and out of. Jeep dealer St. Louis has a service where they pick up your jeep and bring it back to you. It makes the entire customer experience that much easier. There are also dealers from where you can buy a used jeep for you.

Talk Triggers is filled with neat stories (to give you ideas) of companies who are using talk triggers to generate word of mouth marketing. But it’s also filled with the formulas and best practices for HOW to implement a talk trigger in your own company. Check https://www.westernmotorsfresno.com/ for more information.

While reading Jay’s book it got me thinking about my own talk trigger, which I didn’t think I had! My talk trigger is my energy (and a few other things). I was recently reading a post initiated by Joe Apfelbaum where he asked people what they most liked about Ramon Ray, ONE of the things that stood out was “energy” – this is a talk trigger.

While a talk trigger is most often associated with a big brand, for sure there’s a lot of things you can do to generate word of mouth marketing for your personal brand or your corporate brand.

The post Talk Triggers. Get New Customers with Word of Mouth Marketing? New Book by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

• According to one study, 99.3% of influencers use Instagram to execute their influencer marketing strategies
• Eighty-four percent of micro-influencers charge less than $250 per post, making it a very budget-friendly strategy to focus on
• According to a Nielsen study, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their online peers, even if they don’t know the person directly
• The average return on investment (ROI) for marketers who used influencer marketing was $7.65 per dollar spent
• Of the ten most popular YouTube channels, eight of them are hosted by influencers

Snapchat is designed to be fun and engaging for their users, which makes it a perfect platform for communicating with your market through an influencer strategy. Over the past few years, more and more brands—as well as influencers—have turned to Snapchat to get creative with their content.

Here’s how you can get started with influencer marketing for Snapchat.

Get Your Site Ready

Before you launch your influencer marketing strategy, be sure that your website is equipped to handle an influx of site visitors. You may unknowingly be using a shared hosting provider, and should consider switching to a virtual private server.

According to Dreamhost, “if your website’s audience is consistently growing, you’ll want to consider upgrading. You don’t want to run the risk of your website running slowly or, even worse, your server crashing because it can’t handle the traffic. Once you’ve completed all your website housekeeping, it’s time to move on to the next steps.

Choose the Right Influencer

Choosing the right influencer is one of the most important aspects of your influencer marketing campaign. After all, this is the person who will be representing your brand. Without the right influencer, you can consider it a wasted investment.

The key is to thoroughly find the influencers who are most aligned with your brand. By examining each of their social profiles—not just Snapchat—you can better understand their messaging and overall social personality. Fortunately, there are a few tools you can use to identify some key influencers, which takes away from the need to search manually. These tools include BuzzStream, BuzzSumo, Grin.co, NinjaOutreach, and Klear.

While each of these platforms are different and have varying capabilities, you should try each to see what works best for you. However, for the most part, you’re able to search for different influencers by industry, and filter by follower count, reach, and other metrics.

Once you’ve compiled a list of viable candidates, begin researching each of their social profiles. Pay special attention to the different ways they engage with their audiences. Are they just posting photos or commenting back? Are they telling interesting stories on Snapchat, or merely posting photos of themselves? These are all things you should consider.

To help you better understand what it takes to run a successful Snapchat account, take a look at these successful Snapchat influencers.

Let the Influencer Take Over

You may have heard of the “celebrity takeover”—a marketing method used by bigger budget companies to build a buzz around their brands. With influencer marketing, it works the same way. Once you’ve chosen the right influencer, you allow them to be your brand for a day. The neat thing about takeover is that the influencer promotes it on their own; this way, they can get their own audience to come over and tune into your Snapchat profile. Because of this, it’s a great way to grow your Snapchat audience without having to spend a fortune on Snapchat ads.

Furthermore, one of the biggest reasons takeover are so popular is because they’re raw and authentic; the influencer who conducts the takeover helps viewers realize how they themselves can connect with the brand, and they achieve this by giving it a voice.

Guide Your Influencer

Your influencer comes armed with an audience, but you have to put in some legwork, too. By guiding your influencer, you can ensure their messaging stays consistent with your vision. For instance, you might send them to a live event, like a conference in your industry. Or, you might help them better understand your product or service, allowing them to review it effectively.

Be sure that when you guide them, you don’t rule them. This means that you should refrain from giving them a script, and allow them the freedom to express their creativity and originality.

For example, they might encourage your visitors to enter a contest. Contests are a great way for you encourage your viewers to not just view your stories, but to get involved, and influencers are great at doing just that.

The post Tips for Starting a Snapchat Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Here are 7 ways to get media attention for your business:

Craft a Solid Story

Face the facts. No one will pay attention to your business unless you’ve created and shared an intriguing brand story. The goal is not to pull out all the stops and try to impress people but to tell the authentic story of your business. People want to know what lies behind a service or product.

It is essential to create a solid brand story foundation before you start seeking media attention. While things may start off on the slow foot, the story you share with media could be making the rounds years after its initial circulation. Take advantage of that power and make your story magnetizing.

To get the juices flowing, think back to a sales meeting or a time when you had to pitch your product or service. The way you actually speak about your product or service can help you form your story.

Keep Your Pitch Short and Sweet

While you may have a lot of ideas to share with the writer you’re pitching to, they simply may not have the time to read a lengthy pitch. In the interest of respecting your reader’s time and boosting your chances of being considered, keep your pitches short, sweet, and to the point.

Let your reader know right away you have a lot to offer. Share your biggest selling points in a few dynamic, concise paragraphs and link to your website and social media accounts for more information.

Focus on People Not Publications

Don’t trip yourself up by creating goals to be published in certain newspapers or other sources. Yes, big names can do a lot for your brand, but you may miss out on many other media attention opportunities if you have tunnel vision.

Your best bet is to send pitches to individual journalists. Spend some time researching major publications in your industry and find contact information for individual writers on platforms like LinkedIn. You could end up with an in-depth piece written about your business and a long-term working relationship.

However, if you are trying to reach the news titans like Reuters, Associated Press, and Dow Jones, make sure you’re using a press release service like AccessWire to help you reach the right people. 

Strategic Press Releases

One of the fastest and easiest ways to attract media attention for your business is a press release. Whether you focus on the initial launch of your business or more specific topics like events, product releases, or major milestones, press releases are a good practice. You will want to learn how to write a press release that will increase your chances of media distribution. 

Using larger platforms, you’ll be able to submit your press releases to thousands of smaller sources at once. While press releases don’t do much in terms of SEO, your piece is very likely to be picked up and published by a few sources. This can help your brand’s search results and aid in managing your online reputation. If you want to give it a try, NewswireJet is one of the best press release distribution services available to small business owners.

Try ‘Newsjacking’

Another strategic way to stir up media attention is to insert your business into a conversation that is already taking place. ‘Newsjacking’ is the common practice of finding a popular story and writing a piece about your business’ opinion on the topic.

If major companies have taken action in some way in response to a news story or event, you can even follow in their footsteps if it lines up with your business mission. This is a technique that could lead to follow-up mentions for your business in other sources.

Involve Your Brand in Local Events

Use your local community to help bring media attention to your brand and business. Seek out popular local events and involve your business. You can put your business on the map by speaking at local industry events or participating as a business in charity events.

To increase the likelihood of being noticed, make sure to wear clothing and accessories toting your brand logo and colors. Also, if you have merch, hand it out.

Hit Hard on Social Media

Last but not least, don’t slack when it comes to your social media game. The modern media uses social media for information and inspiration. Devote time and effort to your business accounts to make them stand out. Build a strong following, create regular posts, and you’re sure to be noticed by a media outlet or two. Use tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and  Zapier, to automate and make things easier on yourself.

Getting media attention comes down to engaging in a few strategic practices. Make sure your business content foundation is solid and start sharing what you offer with the world!

Sources:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/305231

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/274887

https://startupnation.com/grow-your-business/get-media-attention-free/

The post Getting Media Attention: A How to Guide appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

First of all, what is a Brand Story?

One of the common mistakes in brand storytelling is making the assumption that you must deliver a neatly packaged linear narrative. The word ‘story’ can be misleading, especially if you’re new to the marketing world. The first thing to understand about your brand story is the purpose it serves. Your brand story should communicate the essence of your business, service, and/or product.

Nevertheless, communicating the essence of your business in a way that will get through to consumers does include a basic formula. This is what you need to share through your brand story:

The Who

The first thing consumers want to learn about is who you are. They want to know where you started, what culture and values you embrace, and what mission you live by. It’s not only about you, of course. Exploring the Who also involves making it clear who you are trying to help through your business.

Answer these questions:

• Who are your target customers?
• Why are you the right person to help?

The What

Don’t leave consumers guessing or trying to fill in any gaps. Make it explicitly clear what service or product you provide. It’s critical to portray your business and product for what it is. This helps create trust and loyalty from consumers.

Answer this question:

What’s your sales pitch, how do you sell your business?

The Why

You can take the time to share your driving vision with consumers. They will want to know what made you start the journey to provide your service or product. Just make sure that you focus mainly on why it benefits them.

Answer this question:

• • What problem are you solving?

The Where

Sharing your ideas for future growth with your consumers will give them the sense that they are investing in something bigger than themselves. Your ‘where’ should be practical yet visionary. You want consumers to feel like they are supporting an important cause.

Answer this question:

• • Where are you going and why?

The How

Consumer loyalty is one of the most important parts of building and growing your brand. Give your followers an inside look into your brand story by allowing them access to details about the process that goes into creating your product or service.

Answer this question:

• • How (and why) are you different/better than your competition?

Outline Your Audience

Before you start telling your brand story, get clear on your target audience. You need to be thinking about your potential customer as someone you would have a normal conversation with. Think about your audience as individuals and ask yourself questions about them.

• What are their hobbies?
• What does a standard day in their life look like?
• What type of media do they use?
• What common ‘problems’ might they be trying to solve?
• What’s their income range and education level?

Fostering a specific image of your ideal customer will help you fine tune your brand story. When you think about this specific customer, you will be inspired to think about new ways your service or product can address their concerns.

You can then use your brand story to tell your audience that you are aiming to help them.

Authenticity and Originality

Let go of the need to create a spectacle. Authenticity is what modern consumers are after. Your brand story should dig deep into the depths of the truth of what prompted your business and deliver the real story to consumers.

Don’t leave out any of the real people, situations, emotions, and facts that were involved in creating and growing your business. Telling your brand story from genuine truth will create the human connection your potential customers want.

The Human Connection

Once you establish the human connection through the truth of your brand story, you need to maintain it. How can you do that? By reminding consumers how your business touches the lives of real people like them.

Using examples of other consumers is an effective strategy. But only if it’s done in an authentic way! Focus on keeping examples about people who are specific but still universally relevant.

Embrace your brand story as a tool you can use to spark interest in your business and develop a long-lasting relationship with consumers. Stick to truth and connection and you’ll build a loyal following.

Sources:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232069

https://www.columnfivemedia.com/6-ways-tell-brand-story-piece-content

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/marketing-tips-how-to-tell-a-brand-story-people-will-love/

The post Telling a Compelling Brand Story appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1.Get It on Video 

Video testimonials are powerful. Ask your client to create a short 45- to 120-second video about their experience.- Jean Ginzburg, JeanGinzburg.com

2. Brag About It 

When someone says something positive about your company, that’s cause for celebration. Spread the word. Post it, tweet it, Instagram it and frame it. Be proud, and make it known. – Colbey Pfund, LFNT Distribution

3. Encourage Sharing

I love asking my contacts to share testimonials on LinkedIn. Then my whole network sees them.- Jessica Gonzalez, InCharge

4. Create a Case Study

If your business receives a great testimonial, make the most of it by creating a case study page dedicated to that client’s project on your site. Showcase the client’s objective, your execution strategy and the project’s results that warranted the glowing review.  – Duran Inci, Optimum7

5. Share It Strategically 

When you receive a glowing review, the first thing you’ll want to do is share it everywhere, but don’t do that. That will immediately make the testimonial stale. Instead, use it strategically: Share it on one platform, and then later embed it in a press release. Use the testimonial as supporting evidence but not as the main attraction. This allows for multiple-use and won’t cause fatigue.  – Nick Friedman, College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving

6. Place the Testimonial Up Front

First impressions matter. If you run a website, add testimonials on your homepage where they’ll stand out. If you run a brick and mortar business, consider building a wall of testimonials with picture and frames. Whether you have a website, a shop or an office, you want your visitors to get that glowing first impression from all your recommendations. – Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net

7. Make It More Specific

Anyone can say something generic like “Your business is great.” But that doesn’t mean much. Tangible results are what’s really important. So whenever you’re working to get testimonials, do what you can to try and make them as specific as possible. Ask your customers to share the metrics or results that you helped them get, as this will resonate much more with potential customers or clients. – Sean Ogle, Location Rebel

8. Ask for More Referrals

A testimonial is great to publish on your site, but if someone really feels that strongly about your business, ask them for referrals, and give them a reward to make it worth their while. Testimonials are good for marketing, but referrals are real sales opportunities. Turn the enthusiasm of that testimonial into a real opportunity. – Dan Golden, BFO (Be Found Online)

9. Ask for Reviews

If a customer is willing to take the time to write a glowing testimonial of your product or service, they may also be willing to write a positive review on a site like Yelp. I recommend suggesting that these people share their thoughts on review aggregators to help increase your presence and average ratings on these sites and apps. – Bryce Welker, Crush The PM Exam

10. Ask for a Photo to Accompany It

Ask the person giving you a testimonial if you have permission to use a picture alongside their quote. Almost everyone has a LinkedIn photo, so this should be an easy request. A photo of a real person will give your quote a lot more reusability and serve as the true social proof people are looking for when it gets used in sales collateral, on landing pages, in brochures, etc.  – Roger Lee, Human Interest

11. Take It to Heart

A glowing testimonial is priceless. If you just slap it onto your site or testimonial page, you aren’t gaining all of its benefits. Read over all your testimonials and see if you find a common thread among the customers. If they say they really like a particular product, service or feature, that’s your gold. Whatever customers really like is where you need to focus your energy and invest. If they already like a feature, make it even better. Your customers will know you were paying attention, and they will appreciate that feature even more if it provides them with more value, convenience or greater opportunities. This helps you keep a loyal customer base, and it will encourage existing customers to refer others. – Blair Thomas, eMerchantBroker

12. Show Gratitude 

Show gratitude and be humble whenever sharing the testimonials on your website, social media or other advertising channels. This will help make your brand shine.- Liam Martin, Time Doctor

The post 12 Ways to Put Your Testimonials to Work appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Here are 7 tips to help you start marketing your products:

1. Know Your Customers

One of the easiest traps to fall into when you start to market a new invention is assuming that your product is for everyone. While it may reach wider audiences as time goes on, your marketing power lies in starting with a smaller customer base.

Think about the purpose of your invention. Who is the ideal customer? That is where you want to start. Begin by using marketing strategies that will target your base customer. Once you start building a following of loyal users, you will be able to expand your target range.

But remember: your original customers give the best indication of your product’s value and impact.

2. Start Narrow

Make your marketing plan specific. This ties in with knowing your customer base. Rather than trying to reach every person in a certain radius, identify specific characteristics like gender, age, occupation, interests, and send your product marketing their way.

When you start narrow, you’re able to grow a certain client base which is more likely to be a consistent and solid foundation. With an established following, your product will gain more credibility. That way, when you decide to branch out, potential customers outside of your original target group will be more interested in learning about your product.

3. Iterate, Evolve and Listen to Your Superfans

Be willing to go back to your product time and time again to see what can be improved. Your initial prototype may be the best possible version in your eyes, but once it hits the market, the people using it will offer you valuable insight into how you can enhance your product’s significance.

This is where your superfans come in. You’ll know them when you see them. As you begin marketing your product, you will attract superfans who truly believe in your product’s value and want to see it evolve in ways you may not have even thought of.

Be willing to listen to the advice of those who believe in your product and adjust accordingly.

4. Don’t Let Perfection Stop You

This is a good tip for all inventors. Perfectionism is a trait that challenges the best of us. At the end of the day, waiting for a product to be perfect before starting to market it is simply impractical.

Get your product to a testable stage and put it out there! The feedback you get from consumers is the juicy information you need to move your product closer to the perfection you seek.

5. Tell Your Story

The market is full of just about everything you can imagine. How do you make your product stand out in a crowd of similar prototypes?

Connect it to a human feeling. Tell your story!

Modern consumers don’t want to know how your product was made and what parts it includes. They want to know your personal connection to your invention. What makes you tick? Why did you feel compelled to share your product with the world? This is how you engage potential customers.

6. Get Media Attention

You can take your marketing to a whole new level if you get media attention. If you’re new to the marketing field, it may feel intimidating at first. Take small steps and start putting yourself in the position for media features.

Seek podcast opportunities. See if you can talk about your product on your local radio or news station for a few minutes. Media attention is a useful tool because it brings instant focus to your product and can lead to more traffic on your website and social media accounts.

7. Leveraging the Power of Video and Social Media

Last but not least, do not underestimate the power of social media and connecting through video. This era is all about instant gratification. People want to see the person behind the invention and feel that they’re buying from a real person.

Use video and social media to start building a personal brand.

Remember, the most important step in the marketing process is to get started!

Authored by: Cara Chatellier, reporter for Smallbiztechnology.com

The post 7 Ways Inventors Can Market Themselves (and Their Products) appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Social Media Marketing

SMS Marketing

Location-based marketing

Chatroom app marketing

QR Codes / mobile vouchers

Clickable WAP Links

The post 6 Essential Mobile Marketing Strategies appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

On July 24, Google began rolling out Chrome 68, which has a major impact on small business websites. The new update marks all HTTP sites as Not Secure to ensure internet users can easily recognize whether sites are safe or not. That means that Google’s browser now prominently displays a “Not Secure” warning flag next to a domain name in the address bar if the site is not secured with HTTPS.  Further inspection will reveal a warning to the user that they should refrain from entering any personal information into the site for risk of attackers stealing their data.

In an effort to drive the world toward a more secure global internet, Google Chrome began marking all HTTP web pages with forms as insecure last year, as well as HTTP sites opened through an incognito window. In just a year’s time, such a small change pushed 68 percent of Android and Windows traffic and 78 percent of Chrome OS and Mac traffic toward HTTPS. Now, 81 of the top 100 sites are using HTTPS by default.

The changes have a negative impact on owners of HTTP websites – many of whom are small businesses, where a “not secure” warning could drive potential customers and revenue away from their sites. With about 60 percent of all internet traffic utilized through Google Chrome, a change like this affects many small businesses.

While HTTPS everywhere is good for the larger internet, this change is concerning for small businesses  and individuals that don’t understand the nuances of security.  Even with all the best intentions, a new label that says  “Not Secure” on a small businesses’ websites may hurt a company’s reputation. Small businesses will be forced to explain what “secure” means to their customers, if given the opportunity at all, and explain why they don’t conform to it, even if they do using other controls. It may also cause customers to hesitate using the site, potentially driving business away. Thankfully, this can be solved by adding an SSL certificate.

Importance of SSL Certificate

While Google Chrome 68 requirements might not sound like a big deal for website owners that do not process payments or ask for information, the truth is all websites need HTTPS encryption and every website can benefit from an SSL. In fact, if you do not currently have an SSL installed on your site, you are already missing Google’s automatic search ranking boost from back in 2014. In addition, Google de-prioritizes HTTP sites. With an SSL installed, your site will have access to powerful API tools that users have come to expect in responsive websites, such as geolocation and audio/video streaming.  SSLs also unlock a significant performance boost by allowing your site to operate over HTTP/2, which by itself has the capability to improve your load times by up to 40 percent!

An SSL shows legitimacy and professionalism by ensuring your users feel protected while browsing. No website is too small. No data is worthless. And installing an SSL could not be easier with the number of options you have for getting the job done!

Ways to secure your website:

1. Acquire an SSL at cost and install it on your website.
2. Acquire your SSL free from Let’s Encrypt and install it to your hosting account manually. This DIY approach requires shell access to your hosting account, and a basic understanding of shell commands.
3. GoDaddy offers a one-click SSL certificate install for sites that are hosted with us. Our Managed SSL service will install, configure and maintain your SSL certificate for you. We ensure all of your site pages are correctly deployed with SSL to avoid mixed content errors. Plus, we take care of ongoing SSL maintenance and renewal so you don’t need to lift a finger.

Authored by:

Tony Perez is the General Manager and Vice President of GoDaddy’s Security Product Group. He is responsible for managing GoDaddy Security, Sucuri, and Media Temple Security brands. Tony leads a diverse and global team spanning over 20 countries from sales agents to software engineers. As a two-time business founder, Tony combines his understanding of the needs and concerns of small businesses with his expertise in cyber security products and services. Previously, Tony was the Vice President of Product Management for Sucuri under GoDaddy, Co-Founder, CEO, and COO of Sucuri Inc., Co-Founder and COO of CubicTwo LLC, and served as a US Marine.

The post Why Small Businesses Should Care about Google Chrome 68 and Raise the Bar on Website Security appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

As per the recent changes, Facebook will show less of posts from business pages, videos, links to external blogs – which means less visibility of the content posted from business and professional pages. However, the new Facebook update has come as a sign of relief for small local businesses because the change will make it simpler for the customers to find and interact with the local businesses. And, the change possesses a serious threat to Google Local. The social networking service is gradually making a transition to become a useful tool for the members.

4 Imperative Changes of Business Pages on Facebook

1) Prominence of the recommendation feature

To make it easier for the local small businesses, Facebook has made the recommendation feature prominent, which is helping local businesses to cultivate recommendations among the customers. Getting the user to click on the recommendation button will lead to a timeline post, which is then visible to the friends and family members of the customer. It is working as a potent stimulus for local businesses to reach their audience. And, it’s probably the most significant aspect of the Facebook Local.

2) Enhancement in local searches

While Google Local is the dominant platform for local search, Facebook wants to increase its market share, Facebook local is helping users in their search for local SMBs. Even though the search engines like Google Local dominates the local searches at 80% percent compared to 48% for the social networking site, Facebook is a dark horse in the race and probably the only one which can match Google’s size, resources, and audience. The new local search results are displaying information by popularity among friends and not strangers. Furthermore, for medium and small businesses with a brick-and-mortar store, Facebook is helping the users find a local retail shop without leaving the social networking platform.

3) Expansion of ‘Event’ feature

The ‘event’ feature of Facebook enables one to invite customers to any business event. According to Facebook, local businesses which sell tickets with the events feature witnesses an increase in the number of tickets sold. The timeline features the details of the event for customers who express interest in going. The post is visible to the friends and family members. It generates positive word-of-mouth publicity without the business doing anything.

4) Sharing of business information

Due to the updated algorithm of Facebook, business owners can easily feature information such as price, hours of operation, recommendation or even a menu on the business page. The new changes allow businesses to share information such as upcoming offers and events.

How are Retail Businesses Using Facebook to Realize their Marketing Goals?

For offline retail brands, Facebook is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity. With a little research about the audience and tactics to use the social networking platform, small and local businesses can exponentially grow their sales figure and increase their brand awareness.

Here are a few ways how Facebook is doing everything in its power to help the local retailers.

1) Reach customers earlier using relevant ads

Let’s say a potential customer is planning to purchase eyewear from a retail shop, but has not yet decided on the type of frame and its color. The retail business can leverage the advantage of dynamic ads to reach the customers in the initial phase of their journey. If the same person is interested in buying contact lenses instead of the eyewear, the dynamic Facebook ad displays images of the contact lenses and pushes the customer in the purchase funnel.

2) Increase in store sales 

The store sale optimization feature of Facebook enables retailers to find the right message to display to the potential customers. The feature is helping the local retail stores to take advantage of their offline data to drive in-store sales. The new algorithm ensures that the customers are likely to make an in-store purchase irrespective of whether it’s returning customer or a new customer.

3) Personalized retail catalog

Using the latest enhanced collection ads launched by Facebook, retailers can provide a personalized retail catalog to the audience. It provides the retailers with flexibility which was earlier missing on Facebook.  Retail stores can use the Collection to inspire product discovery and increase their revenue.

4) Online reviews 

Today, customers hardly purchase without reading the reviews on sites like Google or Yelp. Reviews help a customer to understand what the previous customers have to say regarding the brand. And, for reviews, retailers can rely on Yelp because in the United States 49.6% of the customers whose income is above $100k use Yelp before buying a product online. So, how can retailers use Facebook reviews when Google and Yelp dominate the online review market. According to research, Facebook accounts for 50% of the total social referrals and 64% of total social revenue. So, Facebook reviews do matter, and retailers need to give them importance.

Success Story of a Retail Businesses Using Facebook

Facebook and the retail sector are a perfect match because the social platform allows the retailers whether local or global to reach their marketing goals. Swedish food retailer Matsmart used Facebook to double its revenue in 3 months using a series of highly segmented and dynamic ad campaigns. The brand used Facebook to grow brand awareness and sales. In a time period of 6 months, the ROI of the company shot up to 4 times and the revenue from the Facebook campaign increased by 1.6 times. The campaigns run on Facebook were segmented primarily based on the demographics, and the campaign was designed to attract new visitors to the website. Relevant products were shown to the customers at the right time, which resulted in the massive success of the campaign.

Summary

The algorithm shift introduced by Mark Zuckerberg has left small business owners in a dilemma because the new feed will foster genuine engagement. Though the update will help increase engagement, businesses have to understand how to overcome the hurdles and ensure their content is reaching the right audience at the right time. Also, small and medium businesses with a limited budget need to reevaluate how to use Facebook and create a marketing strategy which will circumvent the negatives which come in conjunction with the latest changes. Facebook and the other social neighbors will continue to shock everyone, so businesses need to ensure they don’t get too comfortable with a single platform. To keep up with the social game, a business owner should be flexible, open to changes, adaptable.

Authored by: Priya Jain, reporter for SmallBizTechnology.com

The post Will Facebook Dominate Local? New Changes Challenge Google appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Majority of the digital marketers (54%) claim video marketing as the most appropriate form of ROI. 65% of the customers are more likely to purchase a product after they’ve watched the video on the pros and cons of the product. So, video marketing should never be the least prioritized item lying at the bottom of your list but it should be the integral and key part of the marketing and communication strategy.

Explainer videos – Be creative about your marketing efforts

It is worthy being unique and creative about your online marketing efforts. Animated videos and whiteboard animation add curiosity to the video. Here are few things to know on how a whiteboard animation can electrify your brand and improve your business.

Worthy reasons behind the soaring demand for videos

• Art that is drawn by hand is always convincing and scientific
• Easy to operate and doesn’t involve any high costs
• Writing in an animated manner and erasing on a whiteboard has always been entertaining
• Can be updated and edited easily
• Short-cut process of content marketing

Amalgamating e-commerce with art

If you take into account the creation of videos for engaging customers, they are an impressive way of capturing the imagination of people, regardless of the kind of business you have. This is one of the ways in which you can impress people on both logical and emotional levels. The animated videos are the kind of artwork which is the work of creative minds. The most powerful feature of these videos is that they are an easy way of informing the targeted audience on the brand.

There are different ways in which explainer videos can be related to purchases and sign-ups. However, the video can focus on the perspective of information. In fact, nowadays, there are many who enjoy knowing about products from videos rather than from reading.

Whiteboard animation videos – How they can increase conversions into buyers

It is a style of video where the viewer sees static images which are drawn by a person on the screen. The script is written in a third-person narration or is written in a case example which has to be extremely engaging and intriguing. Here are few ways in which whiteboard animation videos can be the best for your business. Read on to know how it can boost your conversions.

• They’re an innovative way of advertising

Whiteboard animation videos are one of the most innovative and exciting ways in which you can promote your products and services. If you set them against all the other forms of promotion, you will find them to be the most economical among them. They can cater to creating a specific message with no tone of extra fluffy things and this is why they fall under the category of explainer videos.

• They are placed anywhere, at any platform

Whiteboard animation videos are extremely flexible and versatile and hence they can be placed anywhere. While you can place them directly on the homepage of your website, you can also share them on social media or bind them to a specific landing page. You can specifically relate the page to any other page.

• Making them is fun!

When done in a proper manner, whiteboard animation videos can be extremely effective and impactful, provided they have a powerful script. The viewer can feel immensely entertained by watching such an explainer video. When you’re able to create a video that’s informative and fun at the same time, this boosts the credibility of your company. More clients become interested in working with you.

• They make it easy for customers to understand a product

When you create a whiteboard animation video creatively, they make it easier for the customers as well as the fans to understand your services or products. You can add them to social networking sites so that they can be shared by many others. This way you can spread the word about your product or service and also build the following.

• They are kept as memorable

Once you create an animation video, you will see that majority of the customers will tend to remember your video. Do you need to advertise your business? This company specializes on Graphic Recording to attract more customers. This way, they also remember the service or product. It is only when they remember you that they can tell others about you.

• They have a definite CTA

This is perhaps the most vital reason behind why the whiteboard videos covert more viewers into buyers. They have a definite CTA power. The viewer will exactly know what they require doing, whether they require visiting a site or calling a number or buying a product. They will be sure about completing the task.

Hence, as we see, all the reasons listed above play a vital role in converting more viewers into customers. These videos have a record of providing you with the greatest conversions when all are used in a specific form. They’re economical too.

Published in partnership with Spiel Creative

The post Whiteboard Animation Videos. Help Your Business Create Its Brand Image appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Her number one tip, and what Birchbox does so well, is that we need to create fans – raving fans.

Small business growth comes from our current customers. Selling one customers is “easy” but getting the customer to come back again and again and refer others is so important and essential.

Ask yourself, what does your brand stand for and how can we deliver an experience to our customers, way beyond the product itself.

If you do this right, your brand’s products or services will become something that they care about so much more for their lives that they can’t help but tell other people about their experiences.

In this way you not only have a customer but you now have a fan.

How to do this? Know your customer. Find out what motivates them to buy from you and why they picked you as opposed to the competition.

It doesn’t take any money to do customer research, just pick up the phone and ask five customers. Five customers is better than no customers.

The post Create Raving Fans Says Birchbox Chief Customer Officer appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Paychex regularly conducts polls to analyze the business climate. Their most recent poll can be found here. Paychex polled businesses with 500 or fewer employees regarding issues relating to human resources, finances, and customer relations. In the poll, respondents could answer on a scale of 1 to 100 with 1 being completely pessimistic and 100 being totally optimistic. The overall business outlook was good, except when it comes to finding employees.

Paychex will continue to poll businesses on a trimester basis, with the most recent poll representing 500 randomly selected businesses for Summer 2018. These businesses were polled during the week of June 18 and June 27, 2018. The business outlook overall was 65/100. They felt that they were most optimistic about finding new customers, which was rated 69/100. Other optimistic ratings were about access to capital 62/10, capital investment opportunity 59/100, and the overall economy 60/100.

In the academic world, 60/100 is a D and a below-average score. But in this poll, 60 is a good number. Of course, it is not as high as 100, but it is closer to 100 than to 1, which is why it is considered an optimistic number. In the poll, businesses in the Midwestern and Southern states were more optimistic than in other areas of the country.

On the flip side, employers were not optimistic about finding new talent to fill their empty positions. They rated finding part-time or full-time employees at 31/100. Interestingly, they were notably pessimistic about finding contract or temporary employees. This rating was 16/100. There are ways to become more optimistic about finding new employees through recruitment and other “outside of the box” ideas.

According to the respondents, manufacturing businesses have the most difficulty finding qualified employees. For those companies to find skilled employees, they are turning to the schools that prepare them. They are looking for recent graduates with the skills and they are working with the schools to develop programs to train future graduates.

Some industries may have more success finding new employees, especially the restaurant and hospitality industry. They will be able to use the Shared Tip Law so employees in restaurant kitchens can also be tipped for their hard work. This will make kitchen jobs and other formerly non-tipped restaurant jobs more desirable. This new law does not apply to management and supervisory positions.

If the Business Sentiment Report shows the feelings of business owners, there is real optimism. Other than the trouble with finding hiring candidates, now might just be the time to start a new business and get in on the optimism about the economy, capital investments, and access to capital.

The post Paychex Survey Says Entrepreneurs Optimistic About Business Outlook, Ability to Find New Customers appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Instagram is not only one of the most popular social media apps, it’s the second most popular app for younger demographics, just after YouTube. Advertisers with money to spend on digital advertising can almost always find their target audience on Instagram. According to a recent survey we conducted of over 200 small to medium business owners, the companies that focused their ad spend on Instagram do so because it’s easy to use and to identify their target audience. Everybody wants to get popular on social media. Having a lot of followers on Instagram, meant a lot to some people. Want to buy instagram followers cheap, then You are in the right place.

What are some best practices?

While Instagram may not be the best platform for every company, the ones that do run Instagram campaigns typically follow these best practices:

• They have a product or service that can be displayed effectively with imagery and videos
• They utilize the many targeting capabilities available to find their target audience, such as geotargeting, demographics, and behaviors.
• They use additional data sources, such as opted-in customer lists, to create custom audiences to target for a campaign.
• They test out new features, such as in-app shopping to make online shopping easier.
• They upload multiple images for their products & services, and frequently use a service to make them more visually appealing or to animate the ads.
• They use hashtags to increase the discoverability of their campaigns.

Ingramer info helps by combining geotargeting data with custom audiences to create relevant audience segments. This enables advertisers to reach their own shoppers, as well as their competitors, increasing the effectiveness of the campaign and the efficiency of their ad budget.

Can I measure the effectiveness of advertising on Instagram?

Effectiveness of an Instagram campaign depends upon the client and their desired outcomes. They can also Buy Instagram Followers (takipci al crovu) for better instagram campaigns and better reach. From our survey results, we found that most companies strive to generate ecommerce sales directly from Instagram campaigns, or to drive in-store sales.  Additionally, many clients are simply trying to generate brand awareness, which can be measured by profile visits or more standard engagement metrics. Facebook’s reporting tools also provide a wealth of information about campaign performance, and most smart marketers will use some additional tracking parameters to track conversions from all of their digital campaigns. You always think of  how to buy likes on Instagram  no matter how hard you work the fact of the matter is this: sometimes it just takes a little push to get you over the edge, and that’s where we come in!. Think of get instagram likes from mrpopular as online advertising – and if you think the big companies out there aren’t doing it you’re wrong. Investing a little of your hard earned cash in growing your likes will result in a multitude of benefits to you. To grow your instagram traffic  you can buy Instagram followers.

What difference does a personal account or business account make?

Unless you are trying to build up a personal brand, advertisers should run their campaigns through a business account on Instagram. This allows for the campaign to take advantage of all of the targeting features and product integrations that the platform permits, whether that’s through boosted posts or stories.

I want a video ad. Is it better to be short or long?

The new IGTV format that launched in June 2018, allows for videos up to one hour to be posted.  Because this feature is so new, there is not enough data yet to confirm its effectiveness. Standard video posts may be up to one minute in length, and it’s up to the advertiser to determine what will work best for them. The Vine app proved that engaging and entertaining videos can be short and sweet and still keep a consumer’s attention. However, stories that are compelling and need more time will also resonate, as long as they capture and hold the viewer’s attention. Here you will get the best video converter software to change file formats.

Authored By: Brian Handly

Brian is currently the CEO of Reveal Mobile. He was previously a GM of Microsoft’s Online Services division and possesses more than 20 years of technical, operational and executive management experience. Brian was co-founder and CEO of Accipiter, which was acquired by aQuantive in December of 2006 followed by the acquisition of aQuantive by Microsoft in 2007.

The post 5 Tips for Instagram Advertising for Small Businesses appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

If you don’t know how to market, sell, hire and manage your finances, it’s pretty tough to run a business, you will most likely need help from a company like the Ypick Seo Agency in order to take your business to the next level. 

Black and Latino businesses, who make up many in these underserved communities, often have it just a bit tougher than other ethnicities, for a variety of reasons.

Facebook is partnering with the National Urban League  to spread more educational opportunities to 13 cities across the United States. Digital marketing is one of the best ways that a small businesses can spread the word about their businesses and Facebook is one of the dominant platforms to make that happen.

Sure, Facebook makes its money through businesses buying ads on Facebook, but if they don’t know how to harness the basics of digital marketing they’re not going to have successful businesses and won’t be future Facebook customers.

Two other organizations, providing great education to small business owners are – SCORE, Small Business Development Centers

Here’s an FAQ which explains the partnership:

Q. What are you announcing?
A. From 1-3 August we will host Facebook Community Boost in Columbus, Ohio. There we will announce partnerships with Columbus State Community College and our first national partnership with the National Urban League (NUL) as we work towards our goal to train 1M people and small businesses by 2020. Sheryl Sandberg, who will keynote the FCB main-stage, will also speak to the NUL partnership at a fireside chat with Urban League president, Marc Morial, at NUL’s annual conference, in Columbus, Ohio.

National Urban League Partnership: Facebook will offer in-person trainings followed by online support at 13 NUL locations in 2019.

Hubs are Atlanta, GA; Baltimore, MD; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Cleveland, OH; Houston, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Kansas City, MO; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, CA; New Orleans, LA; Philadelphia, PA & Washington, D.C.)

The NUL will also join us as a national advisor to help us create more opportunities for small businesses from underserved communities as we work toward our 2020 goal.

Columbus State Community College Partnership: We’re working with CSCC to establish a Digital Marketing program so students can have access to digital marketing and social media strategy courses.

Q. What type of training will small businesses receive through the NUL partnership?

A. Small business participants at the NUL entrepreneurship hubs will receive trainings similar to what we’ve been offering business across the country (through our Boost Your Business Program) including the most up-to-date tools, insights, and best practices for growing your business on Facebook and Instagram.

Tools you can use: Learn about the tools available (Business Pages, Messenger, Instagram and more!) to help you connect with customers, manage your digital presence, and grow your business.

Ads you can create: Whether you want to increase conversions on your website, drive more people into your store, build awareness of your brand, or something else – advertising on Facebook and Instagram can help you achieve your unique business goals.

Ways to be creative: Behind every business is a story. Learn how to tell yours on Facebook and Instagram with just a phone, creative apps, and great lighting! Every business can create beautiful content and we’ll show you how.

Q. Why only 13 National Urban League hubs? Why not more?

A. These 13 hubs are tied most closely to the National Urban League’s Small Business Matters initiatives to offer support to small business entrepreneurs. This is just the beginning and we look forward to even more opportunities to offer resources, support and training to communities across the US.

Q: Why is Columbus not one of the partner cities?

A: We’re starting our work with the 13 cities that have entrepreneurship hubs that are tied most closely to the National Urban League’s Small Business Matters initiatives. We’re hoping to expand the program to more chapters in the coming months.

Q. How many African-American small businesses do you plan to train?

A. We know African-American-owned, Latino-owned and Veteran-owned businesses have had particular success on Facebook. Working with organizations like the National Urban League, who have such a strong commitment to civil rights will help ensure that we continue to reach small businesses and communities that most need support and contribute to their continued growth and health.

Q. Who is eligible for the training?

A. NUL will be marketing the trainings – those interested in participating can contact their local chapters about opportunities to participate.

Q. How many cities has Facebook visited for trainings?

A. Columbus marks the 25th city we’ve visited this year alone.

The post Facebook Invests in Educating Underserved Businesses About Digital Marketing in Partnership with National Urban League appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Often when you walk into a local convenience store you see two main brands – the store brand and the name brand you know.

The retailer makes a higher profit margin on the store brand – but 7 Eleven owner operators are saying that their customers aren’t buying the store brand.

This goes to show you the power of BRAND. If you have a STRONG brand, you can charge a higher price.

Frankly, I’ve tasked the off-brand food and it often doesn’t even taste as good most of the time.

The post No Cheap Brands, 7 Eleven Small Business Owners Push Back. Lesson About Brand Power appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Social media is awesome, I use it all the time, however, you must touch your customers everywhere they are and how they want to be touched – or communicated.

If you rely only on social media, you’ll be hosted to the whims and algorithms and changes of that particular platform.

The post Facebook and Twitter Shares Plunge Confirming That Email Marketing, List Building and More Are So Important appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

With the rise of social media reseller panel as a major marketing tool, small businesses have been able to grow their businesses at a relatively low price. But, as social media continues to grow, connecting with your audience and growing your business has become overwhelming, too.

What started as an easy photo-sharing app has now become an area for all types of individuals to attach with each other and share their amazing experience – for instance , even renowned actors, directors, and celebrities now have an Instagram account. Therefore, having more and more followers and likes are some things that a lot of people on Instagram want. Naturally, gaining these are often wiped out two ways – either during a n organic or in a paid manner. So, you’ll rely only on yourself when promoting your Instagram page by making engaging and interesting posts. You should check how to buy followers on instagram(como comprar seguidores en instagram) for engagement with more audience. However, gaining popularity during this way can take an awful lot of your time , especially if you’re a little business or have just a private account.

On the opposite side, there’s a mess of pages that sell Instagram followers and likes – obviously, for a particular price. you would possibly call this cheating the system, but this method works mostly just like the paid advertising one. Moreover, we all know that a random user which may access your Instagram page will certainly provides it a glance if you’ve got a high number of followers or if they’ve seen that one among your posts has thousands of likes. Therefore, let’s dive within the world of buy likes and see the advantages that come from using this method. When you buy followers and likes, you basically get a backstage pass to fame’s and recognition’s main show. After completing your transaction, you’ll be gifted with quite a few of many followers and with likes that appear to never stop coming. However, as we mentioned, your diligence doesn’t stop here – it gets even harder. so as to stay those new followers engaged, you’ll need to become more consistent when posting photos or updates on your page. Therefore, buying likes and followers is sort of easy – but maintaining and growing the newly created user base is simply as hard as going to your first 100 followers. However, buying these also comes with benefits which will make it easier for you to realize even more followers and likes. Let’s see how this works!

A simple choice

For those who are overwhelmed with social media marketing, the answer seems simple enough: hire someone to do it for you. But, outsourcing social media marketing does come with some strings attached, especially financial strings. Before you expand your marketing budget, let’s look at the pros and cons of outsourcing your small business’s social media marketing.

Outsourcing social media marketing is becoming common for small businesses, especially those who appreciate its power. You do have options when it comes to outsourcing and the prices can vary dramatically. Small businesses hire freelancers, agencies, and enterprises to do the work for them.

Outsourcing Social Media Options: Freelancers, agencies, and enterprises

• Enterprises are usually larger companies or corporations that specialize in all types of marketing; they will require a signed contract.
• Agencies tend to be smaller companies, usually small businesses, often local ones. Agencies can be affordable and they often employ experts in all areas of social media marketing, from content writers to experts in creating and editing videos.
• Freelancers generally are hired online and will work from any location; they tend to be the least expensive option. But, with freelancers, you might have to hire a separate person to write and someone else to create video. You also might need to hire someone to post for you, too.

The Pros:

• People are now graduating with degrees in social media marketing.
• Social media marketing needs to take place in a 24-7 marketplace.
• Social media marketers can manage and create content.
• You will have more time to focus on your business.
• You can hire an agency, a freelancer, or an enterprise.
• Your ROI could be substantial.

The Cons:

• The price can be high.
• You give up control.
• You might have to sign a contract.
• Your business’s new voice might not be your voice.
• You might still have to be heavily involved, especially in planning.

The answer: it’s up to you. Social media is an essential piece of marketing your business and engaging with your audience.  You can’t go without social media, you just need to decide which of the outsourcing options works best for your organization.

The post Outsourcing Social Media Marketing: Pros and Cons appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a number of significant upgrades to BI tech. IBM has announced the development of a new “smart storage” algorithm that uses a complex matrix of “data value” signals to determine caching priorities and render servers more efficient. Sisense has begun working with the new 6th Generation Intel Core vPro processors to deliver 300 percent improvements in BI analytics speeds. Teradata is rebooting its massive parallel processing (MPP) platform under the new brand name IntelliFlex, while reconfiguring the architecture of Intelliflex’s data warehouse to reduce down time and latency. And Hadoop distributor Hortonworks recently rolled out a new platform called DataFlow, which uses agent technologies to consolidate event records fired off by internet of things (IoT) sensors.

While big data may have seemed as mysterious as magic to marketers in its infancy just a few years ago, marketing itself has moved on from being a primarily “creative” field to increased emphasis on science, and it’s all enabled by tech advances like those described above. In practice, this magic is contingent on the inventive thinking of the CMO, or the marketing team member who devises queries and wrangles dashboards to come up with the “big idea.” It’s increasingly becoming about math – get the right algorithm, and you can get the right numbers on your side.

Following the money and the bytes

This type of marketing activity represents significant change from yesteryear’s imperfect methods of determining who a company’s buyer personas and existing customers are, what they want and how to engage with them most effectively. Now we can unlock insights like these based on huge collections of actual interactions, as our big data shows us how to best deliver the big idea.

Computer Sciences Corp estimates that the total amount of data generated by humankind will grow by a mind-blowing 4,300 percent between 2009 and 2020. Investors are betting heavily on the value of that big data for marketing and BI purposes, pouring in some $7.4 Billion for marketing technology funding and acquisitions over the course of Q4 of 2015 alone, according to VB Insight. No wonder Gartner predicts that IT spending by CMOs will soon surpass that of CIOs.

So what kinds of solutions are CMOs buying? They are buying the tools necessary to evaluate and refine marketing strategies. Today’s marketers are bent on measuring and optimizing their allocation of marketing resources, their conversion rates and their customer experiences. Setting up big bata capabilities in-house, however, is beyond the reach of most companies. The closing of that capability gap is where the big money is going.

Big data’s marketing impact point

Multiple channels are necessary for reaching the widest possible relevant audience with meaningful messaging that converts – which is the goal of marketing, after all. Multi-channel marketing demands prioritization and all kinds of other decisions, though, which are unrelated to the big idea yet necessary for delivering its power of persuasion.

In this sense, the insights that self-service platforms like Sisense can unlock for its clients form the basis for making touch marketing prioritization decisions quickly and effectively. Sisense simplifies business analytics for complex data by leveraging two innovative technologies. In-Chip Analytics forces data into the cache of a desktop computer or server, rather than having the CPU refer over and over again to stored memory. This accelerates the process so dramatically that data preparation steps can be eliminated, and the nimble, on-the-fly results necessary for business decisions become not just possible, but easy.

Single-stack architecture means that everything is handled by Sisense – the ETL (extract, transform and load), the data management environment, the analytics environment and the visualization. This allows the company to deliver business intelligence (BI) as a one-stop-shop to companies from SMBs with ten employees, all the way up to eBay and Lockheed Martin.

Self-service data-driven marketing

Effective BI software allows marketing departments to test concepts without being reliant on data scientists, and without the complex organizational and technical processes which block effective testing. Inexpensive, easy-to-access information gives marketers the power to make decisions about which types of customers are best engaged with through which marketing channels.

Knowing what’s the right channel, the right time, and the right way to reach out to the right people allows marketers to optimize their budgets and maximize their growth.

The post How Big Data’s Maturity Enables Informed Marketing Decisions appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Although effective content marketing is the key to web traffic, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Are you producing high-quality content that for some reason isn’t getting results? Have you been pulling your hair out trying to discover what’s wrong with your content?

If you feel your content truly is valuable to your audience, perhaps you don’t have a content problem. Instead, you might have a distribution or a viewability problem.

Many marketers don’t think about the importance of effective content distribution. The reality is that good distribution is just as important as the quality and value of your content. After all, if no one discovers your award-worthy content, few people will visit your website, become leads, or convert to paying customers.

Content Distribution Methods to Invest In

Here are a few content distribution methods and platforms that have been proven effective.

1. Content Distribution Platforms

If you’ve never used a content distribution platform, your content might not be getting the attention it deserves. How do these platforms distribute your content? They partner with large media outlets such as Time and CNN, and then place your content on such sites in the form of native ads.

You’ve probably visited highly-trafficked sites and stumbled upon content sections titled “Recommended for You,” or “From Around the Web,” or “You May Also Like.” The articles and videos in these sections look like editorial features, but they’re actually promoted content from a content distribution platform.

And the best part? The readers who come across your promoted content are already interested in what you’re offering. It’s all thanks to sophisticated algorithms used by the content distribution platform.

The rise of content discovery is significantly impacting the online-search industry, and its growth will most likely continue well into the future.

2. Facebook Ads

Facebook has over 1.4 billion monthly users. And of the 50 million small-business Facebook Pages, 2.5 million of them are Facebook advertisers. Is your business one of them?

Facebook advertising is a highly-effective way to distribute your content to a large audience who will find your offerings relevant. The pay-per-click format offered by Facebook is very controllable. Even low amounts like $100 or even $50 can attract attention to your content.

Facebook’s Ad Manager offers some of the best targeting on the planet. With the ability to target almost any kind of audience, you’re able to focus on those who are most likely to view and share your content.

Tips to consider:

• Besides creating Facebook Ads, another cost-effective way to reach more people is to boost Facebook posts that contain your content.
• Join relevant Facebook Groups, and share any content you’ve published and advertised.
• For extra momentum, create Instant Articles on Facebook to promote your content.
• Pin your best content to the top of your brand’s Page.

3. Twitter Ads

With 320 million monthly active users, Twitter offers marketers significant content-distribution opportunities. And like Facebook ads, Twitter advertising can be effective without spending an exorbitant amount of money. Several Twitter ad campaign types are available, including:

• Website clicks campaigns
• Followers campaigns
• Engagement campaigns
• App campaigns

In your Twitter campaigns, shoot for running five or six promoted tweets simultaneously. And to keep your campaign relevant and fresh, add some new tweets to the campaign every week.

Other tips to consider:

• In your content, encourage your audience to follow you on Twitter.
• As with other platforms, adding images and video makes your content more engaging on Twitter.
• When your audience shares your content on Twitter, retweet them!
• If your content included names or thoughts from any influencers, mention them on Twitter. With any luck, they’ll retweet the content.
• Keep your tweeted content pinned to the top of your tweets.

4. Email Marketing

Yes, this traditional method of content distribution is still effective and dependable. When done right, email marketing (such as newsletters) delivers excellent ROI and helps you maintain a strong connection with your audience. It’s also an effective way to regularly spotlight your brand, products and services. And as an important bonus, email marketing is known for being highly shareable.

When using email marketing to distribute your content, remember that traditional methods like “batching and blasting” aren’t effect today. (This is the tactic of blasting your entire email list with the same content regardless of your audience’s past web-browsing behavior or purchase history.) Instead, it’s far more effective to incorporate tactics like email segmentation, and geo-targeting.

Other tips to consider:

• In your emails’ signature line, add a link to more content you’d like to promote that week. Include a message like (“Check out my recent article on…”)
• Try to sponsor an email newsletter within your industry so you can feature some of your content in it.
• Ask an influencer with a large email audience if they’d share a piece of your valuable content with their audience. Their audience will benefit, and it could lead to more traffic to your website.

5. LinkedIn Direct Sponsored Content

According to a report from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. While LinkedIn’s popularity for marketers is well known, many people don’t realize that only around 20 percent of your followers see your LinkedIn posts. Direct Sponsored Content is a good solution.

Direct Sponsored Content allows a brand to distribute content to larger audiences on LinkedIn, while also targeting audiences by LinkedIn groups, skills, location, age and gender.

Also, unlike regular Sponsored Content, “Direct” Sponsored Content does not show up on a company’s LinkedIn Page. This allows brands to distribute as much content as they want without cluttering their Company Page.

Other tips to consider:

• Create status updates about your content.
• If you included the names or ideas of any influencers in your content, tag them in your LinkedIn status updates.
• Share your content in your LinkedIn groups who’d find the content valuable.
• Write a post on LinkedIn Pulse with a link to your content.

6. SlideShare

Smart content marketers convert their content into SlideShare presentations. Why? With millions of content-hungry users on SlideShare, it’s the most well-known slide presentation platform in the world. Consider these staggering facts:

• 70 million people around the globe are active on SlideShare.
• It’s a trusted source. Users know that many respected authorities and influencers, in several industries worldwide, are found on SlideShare.
• SlideShare can be used for lead generation.
• With a domain authority of 95 and page authority of 79, SlideShare offers excellent SEO.

Tips to consider:

• When re-purposing your content, create a single slide to feature your content’s main point. Use subsequent slides to further develop the main point.
• Make sure your images are attractive.
• Don’t be afraid to use as many slides as needed to make your presentation valuable.
• Add calls to action at the presentation’s close.

7. Quora

Your brand creates knowledgeable content that addresses many questions people in your industry have. If only there were a platform that enables you to find these questions! Of course, such a platform exists.

Quora is a popular question-and-answer platform with 1.3 million visitors each month in the U.S. When users type questions into Quora, they see search results for their questions that have already been asked by others – as well as answers from experts. If their question has never been asked on Quora, they can submit the question themselves.

One excellent way to use Quora for content distribution is to search for questions that your content answers. When you find the right question, you can then repurpose your content into a clear answer and provide a link to it in your response.

Other tips to consider:

• For effective branding, write a Quora bio that conveys your knowledge and experience. Your readers will see your bio every time they read your answers.
• Follow any Quora topic you have expertise in. You’ll receive email updates when new questions have been asked within those topics.
• Perhaps this should go without saying, but make sure your answers are always useful and never spammy.

Although this is not an exhaustive list, it covers many of the proven distribution methods that get results. If other platforms have worked for you, don’t stop using them! The more distribution methods you use, the better. The goal, of course, is getting your content into the hands of as many relevant audiences as possible.

If all these distribution methods seem like a lot of work, that’s because content distribution is a lot of work! But its importance can’t be overstated. In fact, it has been said that content is no longer king. Distribution is.

Like everything else in business, there are no shortcuts in content marketing or distribution. It takes consistent effort, research, and creativity. But the good news is that those who make content and distribution a priority will be rewarded with a loyal audience and a healthy ROI.

If it all starts to feel exhausting, think of the end results. When your hard work has earned you an audience and high web traffic, you’ll be thankful you put in the time and effort.

The post 7 Content Distribution Methods That Boost Web Traffic appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

Gary V. on Marketing and Doing Business

You have to market and do business for the year we actually live in. Gary demonstrated this throughout his career in many ways. In 1997 he knew that computers were starting to get big. He focused his business on creating a website, doing email marketing and using Google Adwords. Nowadays what you have to do is get a gmb listing verification.  Always focusing on what is relevant at the moment has led to his success. Let the team help you develop an online marketing strategy to drive more qualified visitors to your site and convert those visitors into leads and sales.

Gary V. on Patience and Persistence 

Gary has gotten a lot of emails from entrepreneurs over the years who claim they are being patient and wonder how long until they should just throw in the towel. Basically you just have to keep at it, and don’t quit! Want some inspiration? Consider that Gary did Wine Library TV for 19 months before it was really recognized on a large scale.

Gary V. on Criticism

Before writing his new book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary was looking through Amazon reviews of his first two books – getting angry about one and two star reviews. But he used that anger to fuel himself to do something better. He listened to the reviews to figure out what people were looking for, and then delivered it to them in his latest book.

Gary V. on New Trends

Although Gary started his Wine Library TV using Youtube, he let it go and ended up moving to another platform instead – a move he admits was a mistake. He did vow that he wouldn’t let the next big thing pass him by though, so when Twitter came out he recognized it as something great and decided to angel invest in it right away. And if you’re going to go into a new trend he says go ALL in. He spent hours every day when Twitter came out, just talking to people and answering their questions in order to build a following.

Gary V. on Family Business

Frustrated with your family business partners? Gary loved working with his father, currently loves working with his brother, and hopes to have the chance to work with his kids someday. “Family businesses, if you over-communicate and you care about the other person more than you care about yourself, are the single best thing you can ever do.”

Gary V. on Social Media Strategy

Social media platforms aren’t a place to just push your business out there and expect to get results. You have to create quality content that is native to the platform – for example, great pictures for Instagram, infographics for Pinterest, hashtags on Twitter, etc. You have to know who you want to reach and go to the platform where your target group is spending their time. If you know what you’re doing and understand the nuances of that particular social media platform, you can create stories about your business that are a perfect match for the platform…and that you engage with your target customers.

Gary V. on Social Media Content

Social media isn’t a place where you should run to beg for business or to brag about yourself. The point of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is that you should GIVE, GIVE, GIVE to your followers and fans. It’s a way to gain leverage with them. When you give and keep on giving, it gives you permission down the road to ask for business. It’s all about developing the relationship with all the key components that you want in any good relationship – trust, respect and connection.

Gary V. on Entrepreneurial Entitlement

With the creation of Facebook by college student Mark Zuckerberg, now everyone thinks they can create a startup. And when they have a business they believe that they are entitled to everything that comes along with it, including customers. But you aren’t entitled to anything – you have to work for it.

Gary V. on Storytelling to Make Sales

Storytelling can help you sell a product or a service to a customer. “You have to understand what’s the commodity and what’s not. What’s not is where you need to story-tell.” And a good story WILL translate into sales.

Gary V. on Social Media for Start-Ups

The first thing you have to do is figure out who you want to reach. Narrow it down to the demographic that you want to target, and then use social media to find them. You can use Facebook ads to find that exact demographic. You can also use options like Twitter search. But you have to win new followers and fans with interesting and quality content. You could start out by running an offer, but then you’ll get the “lowest common denominator fan” – the one who is following you to just get the offer. Instead you want to find people that are interested in your topics and truly want to connect with your business. Giving them the content they want will get them in the door, and you can market to them later.

Gary V. on What Social Media Platform You Should Start With

There isn’t one place that everyone should start if they’re looking to get into social media marketing. You have to look deep into what you want to accomplish and who you want to sell to – then go where those people are. So, for example, if you want to sell to 12-18 year olds you should start on Vine, but if you want to sell to 42 year old women you should start on Pinterest or Facebook.

Gary V. on Gaining a Twitter Following

You have to work to build a loyal following. Gary V did it by spending a lot of time on his Twitter profile, then searching and finding people who were interested in wine. He then took time to answer their questions – to jump into the conversations they were having and provide information and advice. Those people began to follow him and with time the base grew.

Gary V. on Facebook

Whereas some social media platforms are best for certain things – like animated gifs on Tumblr, real life pictures on Instagram, infographics on Pinterest – Facebook gives you a lot of freedom to do what you want. One new feature he recommends is Facebook dark posts – unpublished posts that can be used to target specific groups. That way you can send relevant, targeted posts to different groups, even if they’re not fans of your site yet.

Gary V. on Social Media Tools (Hootsuite, Google Analytics, Buffer, LocalResponse, etc)

All of these tools are fine and can work for your business if there is a good match between what you need and what the tool offers. You also have to know how to use the tools properly or you’re never going to see good results. You should also weigh the tool properties to what you want to achieve. For example, Hootsuite allows you to send out your messages to all networks at a click of a button – but Gary is completely against that because he believes you have to match the content with the specific platform to get the best results.

Gary V. on Investing

Gary has made a lot of investments in the past. Some are successful (for example, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) and some not successful. But when choosing who to invest in, he likes to “bet on the jockey, not the horse every time.” That means he likes to bet on entrepreneurs themselves – those that have the fire, the spark, the determination to succeed. One example is his investment in Birchbox, a female-owned startup that got a lot of “no”s before they got a “yes” from Gary.

Gary V. on Business Advice for Women, Minorities, etc

Being an immigrant to the US, Gary understands the difficulties certain groups face. But he boils it all down to execution. If you can execute your plan and make things happen then nobody will care. Underdogs can use their status as a motivator for the climb to success.

These are the main points from Startup Grind’s Fireside Chat interview, but if you’re hungry for more you can watch the full interview here. As you go forth, ready to try some new things in your own small business, remember the most important point – success doesn’t come easy, but if you’re willing to work hard, you may find it – just like Gary V. did.

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