Tag: building your business

Market Your Business Without Breaking The Bank

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don't break the bank

As a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you have to closely guard your cash flow to be successful.

But guarding the purse strings is not the same as refusing to spend your cash appropriately to build your business.

The important thing is to be strategic with your spending and make sure that your investments pay off.  You don’t have to blow the budget to make a big impact. In fact, there are lots of ways to market your business $400 or less, assuming you are willing to put in a bit of sweat equity.

Here are six easy to implement and inexpensive marketing strategies:

1. Do your market research. I’ve repeated numerous times just how important it is to research your market. The more time you invest and the more you refine your ideal client, the better you can focus your marketing efforts and target them to the appropriate audience. Also be sure to check out what your competitors are doing. Be strategic. Don’t try to compete with big players with an established brand, but analyze your field to see where weaknesses or gaps exist in the marketplace and take advantage of these.

2. Use email to your advantage. There are many email marketing platforms out there that offer free accounts up to a certain limit of subscribers or emails per month. And if you purchase a plan through an email marketing provider they are generally very inexpensive. Email marketing is a tactic that works. Many studies have proven that email is the preferred channel for clients and prospects to receive communications. But remember that nobody likes spam. There are rules in place that specify how you can legally prospect for business. Be sure that you are coloring in the lines.

3. Timing is everything. Most consumers search for a product or service online. Ensure that prospects who land on your website can access the information that they need to make a buying decision quickly and efficiently. Nearly all new websites are already optimized for mobile devices, but if you have an older same be sure that you have a mobile ready version available. Remember that nearly half of all browsing is now done on mobile devices.

4. Make sure you can be found. As noted above, most consumers go online to research products and services prior to making a purchase. As a small business owner or entrepreneur, make sure that you do keyword research and appropriately integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into the content of your site. Used appropriately, SEO can result in favorable SERP, or search engine result placement, in organic search results. When searching online, few people bother to look beyond the second page of results, so be sure that you are able to be found.

5. Use social media. But be strategic. Hundreds of social media sites are in existence, but there are only a small handful that are used regularly by the majority of people. When you did your research, you should have identified which of these social networks your prospects are most likely to use. Create profiles on those social networks and interact with your prospects and clients on the sites. Remember that these are places where people will post comments though, and make sure that you are interacting. You could consider making a small investment to sponsor posts on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook or twitter. All of these platforms allow you to target your ideal market as well as set a daily limit, ensuring that you do not overspend.

6. Expand your team. No, I’m not talking about hiring when you can’t afford to do so. Instead, I’m referring to the concept of creating strategic alliances. Sharing contacts and working with other businesses who can complement your offerings cannot only increase your brand awareness, but can also help you grow your business much quicker than you could on your own. Again, play fair. Make sure that the alliance works both ways.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Tips To Keep Online Customers Happy

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online customers

As online shopping continues to grow, it’s important to make sure that you provide a simple, seamless experience for your online customers.

Maybe you don’t have an online store. Perhaps you just have a handful of items or services that your offering to your visitors. Whatever the case, if you want repeat business, referrals and great reviews, keep your clients happy!

Consider the following five tips to help create a great user experience:

1. Make sure that your site is responsive. While Google is not longer directly penalizing websites that aren’t mobile responsive, having a site that is not responsive can hurt still affect your SEO rankings indirectly.  But it can hurt your user experience even more. People are using mobile devices like tablets and smartphones all the time. If your site does not respond and display well on these devices, users will become frustrated and buy from someone else.

2. Check your page load times. This tip kind of works hand-in-hand with the tip noted above. People want to see great pictures of your products and/or great descriptions of your products and services, but if it takes a long time to load, kiss the sale goodbye.

3. Do not make your users create an account. With more and more transactions happening online, the need to create an account or connect with the social media account has become prevalent. People are becoming fatigued with this process and are choosing, more and more often, to opt out rather than creating a new account. Make it as simple as possible for people to see what you are offering. You will get the information you need when they make a purchase, so don’t make it onerous for them to shop.

4. Watch the pop-ups. Depending on the type of site you have, you might have anywhere from one to several pop-ups on your page. Remember the golden rule. After all, don’t you find pop-ups annoying when you are trying to ascertain the contents of the site? Keep the pop-ups to a minimum to keep user frustrations also at a minimum.

5. Give people payment options. Limiting the way people can pay for your products or services will also limit the number of buyers. Be sure that people can pay with whatever method they choose, as easily as possible.

One final bonus tip: remember that people like to deal with people or businesses that they like, know, and trust. Do not treat your customers like strangers. Develop that relationship, build that trust and gain a loyal client.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Secrets To Marketing Your Business

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marketing your business

Summer is over!

Okay, even though the season is not yet officially over, Labor Day always seems to signal that summer is now a thing of the past. Now that holidays are over and kids are back in school, everybody seems to be getting back to business.

And now that we’re back to business, it’s a good time to focus on how to properly market your business. Last year we created a video series that presented five proven strategies to market your business. These strategies include things like building your brand, networking, using social media, etc. As we march forward for the final third of the calendar year, take a few minutes to check out our videos and see if you are utilizing all of these marketing tools to your advantage.

Watch our video series here, or watch on YouTube.


Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 3

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improve email open rates

A lesson in effortless selling.

Today we are bringing you the final installment of our three-part series about how to improve your email open rates.

Why do we send emails? Let’s face it; we are sending emails for a reason. It might be to get people to click a link. Or, it might be to get your visitors to purchase a product. Regardless of the motivation, we write emails because we want people to take action of some kind.

Check out these final seven tips to help get conversions from your emails:

1. Be sure that you are never putting short-term gains ahead of the trust your readers have placed in you. It can be difficult enough to build credibility and trust online. Don’t risk damaging your reputation for a short-sighted goal.

2. People purchase products to solve a problem, not because it is the next shiny object. The easiest way to make sure that you are getting buyers is to focus on the solutions your product provides, not what your product is.

3. Whether we like to admit it or not, scarcity forces people to take action. Make sure your offer is time sensitive.

4. Use analytics to your advantage. Use them to learn the exact point when your audience is prepared to take action and then insert the link to your offer.

5. Don’t just insert one link in your copy. Insert multiple links at various points within your sales copy to increase the chances of converting the reader. Yes, it might be obvious, but it works!

6. Remember to ask! People are more likely to act on something if they are asked to do so, so include that as a call to action within your copy.

7. In the “old days” of ad mail, statistics proved that adding a P.S. to any sales letter increased the chances of getting a sale. Email is no different. Add a postscript to every sales email that you send out. This gives you another opportunity to insert a call to action or to remind them of the time sensitivity of the offer.

And there you have it…

Everybody is busy. Everybody receives tons of emails in their inbox on a daily basis. And when it comes to priorities, your email is at the bottom.

The tips that we have provided for you during this series may not resolve all of your problems, but we can guarantee that by implementing them you should drastically improve your click through rate.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Improve Your Email Open Rates – Part 2

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writing engaging copy

Learn the secrets to writing engaging copy.

In our last post, we talked about the important role that the subject line plays in your email open rates.

But getting the subject line right is really only half the battle. It’s really just a few words, acting as a headline, to draw the attention of your audience. Now you have to provide interesting and engaging copy to your audience.  And that can be a lot more difficult!

Review these seven tips to help write engaging copy for your audience:

1. Be sure to keep your copy short. After all, this is an email, not an article or an e-book. If your engagement is suffering, heavily edit your copy. Less is more.

2. Write as though you are writing to a friend. Make your email personal and don’t be afraid to add some humor, if appropriate. Your readers want to interact with a human, after all.

3. Write your email as though you are writing directly to another person. Use the word “you”; it provides a powerful personal connection to your reader. Remember, your email should come across as a two-way conversation.

4. Write your email quickly. When you let the words flow, it helps your email come across as more natural and inviting. You can always edit once you have your ideas and your content written.

5. Don’t to follow a script. If you use the same technique with every email, your content comes across as staid and boring. Spice it up, and use emotive words.

6. Use different greetings. Write whatever comes naturally. Call people by their name, or use “hi” or “howdy”. Friendly greetings will create an immediate response from your reader. Avoid being mechanical.

7. Occasionally, write longer copy when you feel like it. It’s good practice and can help improve your sales. But remember, only do this open occasionally. Changing it up keeps your audience wondering what you’re going to offer next.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Ways To Improve Client Rentention

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client retention

Do you have loyal customers?

It’s one thing to obtain a client; it something else to keep that client.

There have been statistics as long as there have been sales. Depending on your industry, the rates might vary slightly, but overwhelmingly the statistics support the case for keeping your customers happy.

It costs a significant amount more, both in time and actual cash, to obtain a new client. However, once you have obtained that new customer, the costs to service and maintain that customer are markedly less. Therefore, doesn’t it make sense to ensure that you are retaining your customers?

Ask yourself the following five questions to see if you can improve your client retention rates:

1. How do your customers currently use your products or services? It makes sense that the more your clients are using your products or services, the more likely you are to retain them. Keeping your clients informed and engaged is a key element of client retention.

2. Do your clients know about all of the features products and services that you offer? Be sure that you are communicating with your customers on a regular basis, keeping them informed of the full scope of your offerings. If they don’t know that you can provide them with an additional service or benefit that they need, they may look elsewhere.

3. What’s the likelihood that your client would recommend your company to a friend? It’s true; referrals and testimonials are the best form of flattery. If your customer is happy with your services and would be willing to tell a friend about you, you are likely to retain the client – at least as long as you continue to provide them with the quality of service that they have come to expect from you.

4. Is there anything that would make your customers stop doing business with you? Communication with your clients is not only important as a means to keep them engaged with you, but is also an essential part of making sure that you are providing the services and products that will keep your customers loyal to you. Ask your customers if they are happy with your services. Find out if you are meeting all of their needs and expectations, or if there’s anything else that you can do to help them.

5. What, if anything, would your clients change about your company? Again, communicate, communicate, communicate! Phone your clients. Email them. Send out surveys. Ask questions, even if you’re not sure that you want to know the answers. If you are not meeting the needs and expectations of your customers, you can be guaranteed that they’ll find what they need somewhere else.

A happy customer is a loyal customer. And a loyal customer will bring you referral business. Treat your customers with respect and let them know that they matter.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Get Better Results from A/B Testing

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AB Testing

Are you using email marketing in your business?

I’m sure you are. Digital communications and digital marketing constitute a large portion of business promotion.

Nearly everyone has some form of email communication, whether it is a newsletter, a product promotion, or business prospecting campaign. And, if you are looking to achieve better results, you should be employing some form of A/B testing.

Simply put, A/B testing is trying different subject lines. We all know, just like in the “old days” of print newspapers and magazines, headlines are what draw the reader into the story. With people receiving hundreds of emails every day, it’s important that your subject line is one that will attract the most opens. After all, if your email is being opened, you’re not engaging your audience, nor are you selling any product.

With this in mind, consider the following for points to improve your A/B testing:

1. How do you develop an A/B test concept that actually gives you the results you looking for? As marketers, just like most people immersed in their own industry, we can’t always trust our own ideas. One of the ways to develop a great a be split test is to engage a handful of your clients and ask them to work through your sales funnel. Then, have them go through a competitor’s sales funnel and let you know how yours compares and where it can be improved upon.

2. What were the results from your last A/B test? Like every other marketing campaign you undertake, it is critical to review your results. Take your last campaign and compare the open and engagement rate as compared to previous campaigns. If you’re results were better this time, why were they better? Conversely, if they were worse, what changed?

3. What was it about the more successful version that users preferred? Was it the topic you covered? Was it the way it was presented? Were there too many or too few words in the version that did not work as well? What did users prefer about the winning version?

4. Was there anything that they preferred about the version that did not perform as well? Never negate the value of something that doesn’t perform as well as you want or expect. We build on things that are less successful to create winners.

All marketing campaigns, in order to either be successful or to allow you to build success, require a “post-mortem”. By tearing apart all aspects of your campaign, you can more easily identify those elements that were successful and those that did not perform as expected. An email campaign is no different, and proper utilization of an A/B tool can be a trailblazer to a successful email marketing campaign.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

6 Steps To Improve Your Content Marketing

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content marketing

Is your content marketing working for you?

To be relevant online, it is important that you are continually providing fresh, new material. This is not only critical for search engine optimization, but also to keep the visitors to your website -your clients and prospects – engaged and interested. You have to give them a reason to keep coming back. After all, if they’ve already seen everything you have to offer, why would they come back? And, of course, if they don’t come back chances are they’re going to miss something new when you do put it out there.

But you can’t just randomly put up content. You need to be original. You need to be relevant. And, if you are sharing material that you have found in other places, you need to give attribution.

Ask the following six questions to improve the content that you are providing:

1. Do your visitors find your posts, white papers, infographics, webinars, etc. relevant and helpful?  Most people, when searching the Internet, are looking for answers to questions or problems. If you are providing something of value they are more likely to learn to trust you, to become regular visitors to your site, and eventually your client.

2. When someone lands on the blog portion of your site, what do they read first? There are lots of software solutions out there that can help you to track and identify this information. Some will give basic stats, such as the number of visitors to the site and others will provide you with live tracking of exactly where they scrolled to on the page.

3. What was it about the article noted above that first caught the visitor’s eye? Was it the title? Was it the associated image? Was it the actual material within the article? All of these are important factors that can lead to more readership and a better response to the article. Just like in print media, a headline is important to capture your audience, and images must be relevant to the material you are presenting.

4. Do you know if your visitors enjoy reading similar content from your competitors, and if so, which ones? Let’s face it, much of what is out there has been said by others in different ways. Searching cyberspace for answers is kind of like watching TV; 500 channels all showing the same or similar programming. So make sure that your content is presented in a way that attracts and retains more readers than your competitor.

5. What topics would your visitors like to see next? Delivering what you are client or prospect wants is key to keeping them loyal to you. There are many ways that you can find out what your website visitors are looking for. Consider dropping in an online poll, or use some of that tracking software I mentioned earlier to ascertain what types of articles are attracting the most readers.

6. Where do your visitors typically go to find content that is related to their interests, job, or industry? By discovering the answer to these questions, you can reach out to specific sites and associations that they are engaged with and offer to provide guest content from time to time. This serves not only to help your SEO with back links, but also helps you gain authority as an expert within the chosen industry.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

How To Get Discovered With Organic Search

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organic search

How is your company getting found online?

There are tons of articles out there about paid search. SEO, Adwords, display ads, paid ads on social media… We’ve heard and read about them all. And, done properly, any and all of these methods can be effective and done with in a pre-set budget.

But prior to the development of these methods and the incarnation of the tens of thousands of companies and individuals who provide these services, there was something called organic search.

Organic search is simply being found online without paying for positioning on search engines. In other words, as defined by Wikipedia, “Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements.”

Of course, even organic search requires a strategy in order to show up on the listings. However, these tactics can be undertaken without the need to hire outside help.

Search engines obviously require input data that allows your company to be found. Things like keywords and backlinks are still important, but can be created through website design and data, clever content, and having your site backlinked to other sources, which helps determine the popularity of your site.

Review the following four questions to find out how users discover your company through organic search:

1. When searching for your keywords, what do users notice first: your website, your ads, or your competitors? If they are finding your ads, it proves that your paid advertising is working, but says little about your organic search. If they’re finding your competitors first, it’s definitely time to review your site and your content to make sure that you are targeting the appropriate keywords for your business. If they’re finding your website first, you are getting good organic search results.

2. What words are standing out to users on the Google search page results? Regardless of whether your site is being found on the first two pages of search engine results, review the words that are showing up on the results and make sure that you are using the words and terms that are being found.

3. If, and when, users are clicking on your link what do they expect to find? Make sure that you are using keywords that are appropriate to your business. Falsifying your content to gain organic search results is not the way to go. Users will be upset at what is a thinly veiled attempt to gain traffic and will boycott your site.

4. Does your landing page (or homepage) meet the users’ expectations? As mentioned above, make sure that you are being found by users who are entering a search query that is true to your business. You have only a matter of seconds to capture the attention of a visitor to your site. If they are not drawn to keywords and content that matches their interest, they’ll move on to the next search result.

Organic search results are an important part of online business success. Make sure that you don’t neglect this function. Keep your content fresh and current; both search engines and users are looking for this!

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

5 Ways To Optimize Your Forms

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optimize forms

Are your forms working?

Following up on our last article, where we discussed the creation of better converting landing pages, we thought it timely to address the issue of optimizing the forms that appear on your site.

There has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of research about how to create the best form to obtain opt-ins on your landing pages or website. It stands to reason that the form that works best for your needs is the one that is tailored specifically to your product or service offering. For instance, if your form is intended to invite a prospect to receive a quote or an evaluation of some sort, the form would obviously require more fields than if you are simply looking to gain email addresses for your mailing list through an offering of a free white paper or e-book.

Every day, we are invited to download free reports, e-books, white papers, etc. And, every day, we make decisions about whether we think that the value we will receive is worth the cost of our email address. Just like you, I have either declined the offer or have submitted my email address in order to receive the offering, only to unsubscribe later when I find that I’m receiving too many emails. But retaining prospects and clients on your email list is a subject that is separate from today’s focus.

So, back to making sure that your forms are actually working for you.

Review the following five points to optimize your forms:

1. Make sure that you have the right number of fields on your form.  As mentioned above, make sure that the number of fields on your form is appropriate to what you are offering. If you ask for too much information, your opt-in numbers will suffer.

2. Ensure that your forms are fully accessible to users who use a keyboard instead of a mouse.  Drop-down options are great, but you have to make sure that if somebody is using a keyboard that their arrow keys are fully functional for the form.

3. Test your forms.  Make sure that your forms work correctly and smoothly across all devices, screen sizes, and browsers. If your form does not display properly to some users, they will become frustrated and will give up.

4. How intuitive are your forms?  If the user makes a mistake when filling out your form, does it display error messages allowing them to correct the mistake immediately?

5. Is there anything about your form that would discourage the user from completing the process?  Let’s face it, we all are looking for forms that are simple and self-explanatory. We don’t want to have to work simply to provide someone with access to our email.

Using online techniques to market and promote our businesses is essential in this day and age. Encouraging people to become repeat visitors to our sites and to sign up for our offerings is an important component of online success. Make sure when you are developing your forms that you review these five elements to make sure that you are making the users experience as simple and as seamless as possible.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

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