Small Business News
With 80 million active users and an audience base that is swelling by the day, Pinterest easily ranks among the most popular social networks around today. It’s rising in both numbers and significance at the same time which has made it a viable platform…
[Read more…] about Ultimate Marketing Tips to Promote Your Brand with Pinterest
Let me ask you a question. Do you really know what you are talking about, when you get up to speak to a group of people? Do you know what you want that group of people to do? Do you know the message you are giving to that group? OK. That was three…
[Read more…] about It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
When you have one metric derived from another, s ometimes you need to see another metric alongs session or average time in session. Doing so allows for a quick comparison. That comparison is why Google introduced a beta feature in its Google Analytics…
[Read more…] about Analytics Tip: How To Use Calculated Metrics in Google Analytics
This HTML mark up is a technical example of how semantic search works. It calls out specific parts in the code, like this callout designed to address a version of JavaScript called Polymer. Although JavaScript case like this is not an influence on SEO,…
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In meetings with several colleagues over the past few days, many did not know about the column I write each week - I’ve been remiss and not cross posting my writings from NewCo Shift here. It’s been interesting to move my main focus of writing…
Google AdWords can augment a mobile marketing strategy as well as a desktop marketing strategy Fall can be a great time to review marketing campaigns over the past year and make adjustments, particular with the holiday sales season around the corner….
[Read more…] about Paid search ideas to increase your conversions and extend your marketing budget
Analysis can be fun, discovering new marketing ideas from the data collected, but in many instances it is counterproductive to check metric changes daily. While advertising campaigns need it to make sure budgets are not exceeded, daily checks can lead…
[Read more…] about How To Plan Google Analytics Alerts To Improve Your Site or App Traffic
When youíve chosen a niche for your business, you have to know whatís new in the field that youíre in. Itís important that you stay on top of all of the cutting edge information.
If you donít, then the details that you have will be out of date and your audience will consider your content useless. Theyíll move on and spend their time and money with your competition.
There are some ways that you can keep up with the trendy topics so that you never fall behind the times. Learning how to research and be aware is an important part of your business success.
Trying to come up with topics that keep your content fresh and help make your niche as good as it was intended to be can be tough. But one tip you wonít want to overlook is one thatís right under your nose.
You see these every time you go to the grocery store or the pharmacy and probably never realized what a gold mine it was. Magazines are what you want to pay close attention to in order to find tips for your niche.
If youíve ever paid attention to the covers of magazines, youíll notice that theyíre full of attention grabbing headlines for the articles. These headlines are designed to hook the reader and make them feel like that must buy that magazine in order to gain access to the information in it.
One of the best fields where youíre always going to find whatís trendy is on the cover of womenís magazines. The editors of these magazines know that yesterdayís topics just wonít keep the readers returning.
They have no choice but to stay on the cutting edge of whatís hot in the world at that moment. They canít afford to fall behind the current information or the readers will seek out other magazines.
So take the time to read over the cover of magazines, especially the womenís magazines like Womanís World Weekly. The topics they cover are wide-ranging, interesting and can fit almost any niche that you might have.
Youíll always see articles on dieting because this is an evergreen topic. These articles will cover a variety of points about low carb eating, cutting out certain ingredients, or just learning about portion control.
You might see one headline that talks about how to get started changing your diet for health reasons like inflammation, or diet topics related to finances, such as how to eat low carb on a budget.
You might see another headline for an article on low carb eating that will focus on the audience like beginners or the over 40 crowd. Another one might offer a list of the top foods to eat on a low carb diet or to stave off the aging process.
Still others will offer a menu plan for a week or a month. Some will share how to shop when youíre dieting. Or how to handle dieting around the holidays. Youíll also notice that womenís magazines cover things like stress relief.
This is a huge niche and the topics that you can cover in it are almost unending. There will be articles written about how to deal with stress in romantic relationships. Youíll see ones that talk about how you can lower stress when youíre with your kids or when youíre visiting extended family members.
Some of the articles will cover stress in the workplace and how to deal with the pressure of the job or the coworker that gets your blood pressure soaring upward. The topics might also cover stress and how it affects your body physically, which you can use to spin topics for your niche in yet another direction.
The magazine headlines might talk about combating stress by using a method such as exercise. Or it will point out the benefits of meditation on stress. Youíll notice that these articles always bring awareness about a problem but then turn around and offer the solution.
Some examples of headlines youíll see can be examples such as stress in children, stress in teens, and stress in the elderly. Youíll see articles like what not to do when youíre stressed that cover ideas like not making a significant life change when youíre stressed.
Youíll see checklists that will cover the signs of stress. Many common niches you can think of have been covered on the front of a magazine. So if youíre scratching your head wondering how to keep up with whatís new, just look at those.
Obviously, you canít stand in the grocery store and make notes of the topics that you see on the front covers of the magazines. Not only that, but you donít want to buy an armful of magazines every time youíre looking for the trendy or hot topics.
That would be a quick way to break your budget. You can find these magazines online. Many of them will offer you a free downloadable copy of the magazine if you do a web browser search.
You can also go to the magazineís main website and just read the front cover. For example, if you search for Womanís World Weekly, the front cover of the magazine pulls right up and you can see headlines that cover the beauty niche.
There are headlines talking about how to make your skin look softer and younger.
Other headlines cover the weight loss niche, how to combat hair loss, or how to find relief from pain.
Prevention Magazine is another good one to look up online. They have a huge supply of ideas for your niche. Recently, they covered weight loss, menopause, foods, nutrition, beauty, skin care, emotional health, diseases, makeup, eating disorders, foot care and hormone replacement.
If youíre not part of a niche forum, you really should be. Being part of a forum community can be helpful to you when it comes to finding out what topics are currently trending.
What forums do is they let you discover what potential customers are going to be looking for. Itís an inside look at where the future is heading. Youíll get a jump start on what their product or information needs will be.
This will help you fine tune what youíre promoting or selling to your audience. Plus, youíll also see whatís popular and you can use that information to bring in traffic to your site.
These forums will have numerous threads where you can glean information and most of them are extremely helpful toward entrepreneurs who are new in the field. You can learn a lot simply by reading whatís on the forum and youíll often discover that someone else has asked questions that you need answers to as well.
When you need to be in the know about whatever is new thatís going on in niche marketing, you can check out the current posts. Youíll see that people there will start conversations about a topic long before it hits mainstream search engines.
Look specifically for the threads that start with things like, ìHas anyone heard ofÖî and those threads will talk about a particular product or a new research fact that will tie in to your niche.
Youíll also see other topics where multiple forum users are talking. When you notice these threads, thatís a clue. It means that interest is starting to peak about that topic. You want to pay attention and get in on the latest news to use it for your business before it hits mainstream and then everyone is talking about it.
Pay attention to a flurry of comments and questions when you see topics you donít recognize. For example, right before the hCG diet became popular, there were questions on the forum about it.
These questions came across as ìhCG users anyone?î And just by reading the comments and questions, you would be able to learn enough information to know what it was and be able to gauge the current level of interest.
You could then use that to start promotion of an hCG product or create an information report about it. Youíll also see people posting thing in the forums such as ìdoes anyone knowÖî and that tells you they havenít found a credible leader online for that topic.
If you donít know of any forums pertaining to your niche, all you have to do is Google what your interest is followed by the word forum or forums and youíll get a long list that you can check out.
You canít capitalize on information that you donít know anything about. You have to have the most up to date information in order to be able to compete well in your niche. Obviously, if you were to spend time every day searching, it would take up too much of your day.
Time that you need to spend on your business is precious. Plus, when something is a trending topic, by the time you get around to searching, that topic might be several hours or a day old, which puts you behind window of opportunity.
Youíll want to set up Google Alerts so that you can stay on top of whatís going on in the field that you want to know about. What you do is you go to Google Alerts and a search area will be at the top.
You input whatever search words you want to get results about. For example, if you wanted information about weight loss, you would type that in there. It basically works just like the regular Google search engine.
After you put in the search words, youíll have options where you can choose how you want it and where you want this information to come from. There will be a box asking you how often you want to receive these alerts.
Itís important that you check ìas-it-happensî because thatís trending. Getting the information once a day will put you behind the curve. Then make sure you check automatic.
Youíll get to select the language that you want as well as the region. Youíll be offered a choice between ìonly the best resultsî or ìall resultsî so be sure and check all results. You want to filter the information yourself as to whether or not itís useful.
When you set this up, it allows you to be the first marketer to whip up a short report, even a $7 one, and get it in front an audience hungry for the information. If youíre first to bring the information to the audience when thereís not much information out there about the topic, youíll outsell your competitors because you had what the audience wanted all ready to go.
There are always new trends cropping up. Some of these trends take off so fast and suddenly, everyoneís onboard. The world is always looking for new answers to the same problems and always seeking more information to help their lives run more smoothly.
So new trends are going to appear in every single niche. Youíll have brand new weight loss pills, new diets to try, products that clear skin, medication that treats a variety of illnesses and so on.
Since you want to be ahead of the competition, youíll want to jump on that trending news and give it to your audience. But, you donít want to assume that everything is going to be wonderful.
Just as there will thousands who embrace this new trend, there will those who speak out against it. This kind of backlash always happens. As a marketer, you need to be prepared ahead of time for this to happen.
Thereís nothing worse than having people speak out against something youíre promoting and to be unprepared. It will make you look like you havenít done your homework and donít care about anything other than the money.
So what you have to do is have a plan so that you can go against the grain. You need to be prepared with a product or information that swings the other direction from whatever is trending.
If thereís a huge pro-hCG diet trend, then you can bet there will be a diet that comes out that talks about how bad the hCG diet is. What you want to do is if you see a product thatís trending and you suspect there will be a backlash, is have a product or information set to promote that guides people toward an alternative solution.
This way, youíre still capitalizing on the popularity of the product receiving the backlash. But if itís something that you believe in and itís a great moneymaker, you might not want to go the opposite direction.
If thatís the case, then you need to be up on the latest research about the product. You need to have as many facts lined up as you can so that you can defend the reason behind your support of the product.
For every researcher or scientific expert who debunks a trend, there are others who will defend it. You can use that research or those facts to help bolster your reason for supporting the product.
As an entrepreneur, youíre going to be faced with having to wear many hats. Itís up to you to make sure that your business thrives. But trying to do every task yourself can be a mistake.
By outsourcing, you stand to gain more for your business than youíll spend on the money it takes to pay for the outsourcing. Youíll be able to hire professionals who can do the task faster and easier.
This not only saves you time, but it takes the stress off of you since you wonít have to do it all yourself. You end up gaining more productivity because youíre freed up to focus on other areas of the business that only you can handle.
Plus, by outsourcing, youíll experience faster business growth because you wonít have to wait until you complete each step of a project.
Many tasks involved in running a business are time drains. You should outsource these tasks so that your time is freed up to concentrate on growing the business. You can outsource the writing for starters.
Whether youíre a good writer or not is irrelevant. Writing has the potential to take up a lot of time – and if you have dozens of writing projects you need to complete, you can spend many hours simply developing content that you have to have.
These are hours you could spend on something else. Itís faster and even cheaper to hire a writer. Some entrepreneurs worry about the cost effectiveness of hiring someone to write their content for them.
But if you tally up what your time is worth and what you can potentially make per hour versus outsourcing the work, youíll see that you come out ahead. Use a writer to write your eBook materials, to write your reports, your articles, your product descriptions and more.
Whatever you need written, hire someone else to do it. Youíll also want to outsource your graphics. It takes time to design the graphics that youíll use in your business.
Even if you have experience in this field, you still might not be able to afford to spend the time it takes to create the graphics that youíll use. Instead of tying up hours of your time designing them yourself, hire someone to create your graphics.
Youíll use graphics for sales pages, banners and buttons, and social media images. Youíll need logos, blog graphics, headers, add to cart buttons and the list goes on.
Every time you need something new, you donít want to have to stop what youíre working on to create it. That can slow a project down. Instead, assign it to a graphics designer and keep on moving ahead with a project.
Research is something else that youíll want to outsource. Looking up the information that you need can be a huge time drain. Youíll need to find facts and reliable sources.
Youíll want to read articles and sites that can give depth perspective. When youíre spending time researching, it can take multiple hours and in some cases even days.
You canít afford to do that yourself because while youíre spending time researching, everything else that you need to take care of grinds to a halt. Setting up a site is another area you want to outsource.
Despite some sitesí step-by-step setup guides, itís still going to cost you valuable time. Setting up a site can easily be a day or two project for you versus a couple of hours if you hire it out.
Tech details are something that you want to pay a professional to do, especially if youíre brand new. You can dig around behind the scenes on a site, mess up a simple code and crash everything.
Rather than trying to figure out the tech stuff, just let someone else take it on and save yourself the stress. When you work at home, youíre going to have to deal with customer service.
The good, the bad and the really ugly come out when dealing with customers. Not only can this drain your time, but there can be a lot of stress involved with handling the customer service side of any business.
Instead of letting that take up your time, outsource it to a virtual assistant (VA). You can also use a VA to help with SEO, your email marketing campaign, your social media, or to work on your blog.
A VA can send information to clients while youíre busy or out of the office. Many VAs specialize in different areas. You can find ones that have experience in whatever field you need.
Itís true that with the Internet, anyone can put up a site and claim that they offer great freelancing services. Rather than trying to navigate the sea of possibly inexperienced freelancers, you want to go to the sites where professional, experienced freelancers are known to frequent.
Not only that, but by going to these sites, youíll often get help from others like yourself who have used the services before and theyíll offer helpful recommendations.
You can go to places like Elance. When you go onto Elance, they have numerous freelancers that you can pick from to hire. You would need to go to the site and list the job that you want to hire someone to do.
Elance will take what youíve posted and then give you a list of freelancers that fit the parameters of the job. Once you have a list of people that Elance suggests or who bid on your project, you can look over these applicants and see what kind of proposal theyíre offering.
These proposals will often vary according to time to complete the task as well as the amount of money. When you look over the applicant proposals, youíll be able to see what kind of work theyíve done in the past and whether they have experience with what youíre looking for.
Youíll also be able to see what the applicantís client satisfaction ratio is. Once you choose an applicant, youíll pay Elance directly and the funds go into escrow. The site has the ability to use hourly time tracking if youíve chosen an hourly project.
Once the job is completed to your satisfaction, you release the funds from escrow and Elance handles paying the applicant from those funds. Another place to find freelancers is on the Warrior Forum.
Youíll find these under threads like ìwarriors for hireî and others. With the Warrior Forum, the people there are usually very experienced in what they do, especially with Internet marketing and other specific niches.
You can find copywriters, ghostwriters, freelance writers, tech gurus, virtual assistants, graphic designers and more on Warrior Forum. Another place youíll want to check out is Fiverr.
Some entrepreneurs shy away from the site, thinking that paying someone $5 means that the product will be low quality – but thatís not the case. What the $5 means is not necessarily that youíll only pay $5.
For example, some of the writers on the site charge $5 per certain word count. So if the provider says $5 per 200 words and you need a 600 word article, youíll actually pay $15.
Plus, you can find a whole wealth of categories on Fiverr – including proofreading, SEO content, design services and more. They have portfolios and feedback that make it easy to hire someone with confidence.
When you have a job that you want to hire a freelance ghostwriter to do, thereís some information that youíll have to share so that you can make sure youíre both on the same page with the project.
Make sure that youíre clear on what you want the style to be. A ghostwriter can write an article and sound comfortable and breezy like heís talking to a friend. Or, he can write an article and sound formal.
The style that you want is up to you, but the ghostwriter has to be clear on what youíre going for. Youíll also want to cover the topic. With this, youíll want to be specific.
You could end up with material thatís not what you wanted if youíre not clear. For example, if you need a few articles about the topic of genetically altered foods and youíre thinking of them in a positive light, you need to tell that to the ghostwriter.
Otherwise, you could end up with articles that talk about all the cons involving genetically modified foods. It can also be helpful if the ghostwriter knows the audience youíre gearing the article toward.
An article on driving will be slanted differently for someone whoís in their 70s versus a brand new teenage driver. The more information you give the ghostwriter, the more the material will sound like you wrote it in your own voice.
Itís imperative that you cover deadlines. If you post a project and you donít talk about the deadline, you might end up getting it long after you need it. If itís a rush deadline, tell the ghostwriter that up front. Many of them are willing to do a rush project for an additional fee.
Cover the cost of the project up front. State clearly what the job pays and donít be the kind of client who wants to add to the scope of the project after youíve outlined whatís involved.
If you need research done, mention that. Most ghostwriters are skilled at research and that can be included in the parameters of the work project. Sometimes, when new entrepreneurs post a project, they come across as pushy or demanding and then donít understand why ghostwriters are reluctant to work with them.
Donít treat the potential ghostwriter like youíre gifting them with a project. Itís a mutually beneficial deal. Plus, if they do a good job, youíll want to hire them again and again in the future.
There will be times during the course of your business that youíre going to want to outsource some of your tasks to a graphic designer. Itís not cost effective to have one on staff – especially if your business is still in the early days.
But it is cost effective for you to hire a freelance one on an as needed basis. Know that just because someone says theyíre a graphic designer doesnít mean theyíre actually any good at it.
Since the graphics will be representing a portion of your business, you want to hire someone who knows what heís doing. Graphic designers can handle a multitude of tasks.
They can design headers for your business sites. They can also create the header for your blogs, for your social media sites and more. If youíre working on creating some information products like eBooks, graphic designers can create your ecovers.
While you can create ecovers yourself, if you donít really understand how graphic design works, then your ecovers will look second rate, which in turn screams unprofessional to potential clients.
Itís always better to outsource your graphic design needs than to try and complete them yourself. Also, if youíre going to build minisites, youíll want a graphic designerís skills behind it.
Minisites get a lot of traffic specific visits and you want these visitors to see a page that looks well designed and draws them in. When you find some freelance graphic designers you think you could work with, the first thing that youíll want to do is to get a look at their portfolio.
This will contain work that theyíve done for other clients or it might showcase their abilities. Analyze their portfolios. Not every graphic designer will have experience in the area that youíre looking for.
Itís always best to hire one who knows what youíre talking about. It makes the jobs easier on both of you. For example, if youíre looking for ecovers, hire a graphic designer with experience in that area or one whoís willing to create a mock up to show you so that you can be sure he knows how to make one thatís what youíre looking for.
Most designers will give you a mockup free of charge. Before you hire the freelance graphic designer, make sure that know what your style is and also cover how long you expect the job to take.
If you need it in two weeks and the designer is booked and canít start for a month, that wonít work for you. Make sure that you and the designer both know the value of the job. You want an agreement spelled out before the work begins.
There are tons of virtual assistants that you can hire to help you with whatever task needs completing. But not every VA has the expertise or quality of work to be able to handle the project.
A VA that has the attitude of, ìI can do any job even if Iíve never done it beforeî is probably thinking more highly of his or her abilities than they should. For example, a VA who has never done an email campaign wonít understand the purpose behind it or how to gear it toward a specific audience.
A VA whoís successful in one area wonít necessarily be in another. Thatís why itís important that you find out what the VA is capable of handling up front. If youíre a marketer who has niche specific work, then look for a VA who has had experience in that field before.
It will make it easier if she understands all the buzz words associated with the type of job you need. You can ask to see the VAís portfolio or check out their client list if itís available.
Some VAs will share prior projects theyíve worked on for different clients while others wonít. Anyone can create a portfolio and claim experience. You want to know for sure theyíve had this experience.
Some virtual assistants will specialize in administrative jobs and that may not be what youíre looking for. Itís okay to ask for references and, depending on the nature of what you want the VA to do, itís probably a wise step to take.
You can find a Virtual Assistant by going to forum sites such as Warrior Forum or job sites like Elance, Intelligent Office, eaHelp, Fiverr, or Fancy Hands. In order to work well with a VA, you have to know exactly what you expect with hiring her.
You spell out what you need done and have a list of what you want accomplished. Make sure you have open and often communication and donít expect a VA to do a job you havenít equipped her to do. She canít do her job if she doesnít have all of the information.
Being an entrepreneur is something that a lot of people dream of becoming. Itís a great dream to have and there are so many avenues open to the person whoís willing to put in the effort to make the business succeed.
Part of succeeding means being honest about areas that you feel you lack in, such as advertising, writing, social media, etc. To be good at what you do means that you have to engage in continuing education.
Itís important that you do this because in the world of entrepreneurial pursuits, not growing in knowledge can kill your business. Strategies change and so do business models and you have to be able to keep up.
This is something that can be good for you as you discover things that can take your business to a new level. Not only will being part of continuing education in your business prevent boredom from setting in, but you can also find things that will feed your motivation and keep you excited about the business.
When youíre creating written content for your business, you want to let who you are shine through in your voice. Your lifeís experiences are what makes you unique.
Itís what helps your audience to be able to connect with you. Your writing should be as unique as you are. It should be something thatís 100% you. If you take writing from other people and plagiarize that as your own, you risk a couple of things happening.
First, itís not going to be fresh if youíre copying content from someone else. Second, plagiarizing is morally despicable and can hurt your business. Once people learn that youíve plagiarized something, your reputation is ruined online.
People donít want copycat information. Plus, if you do it, your actions can subject you to fines and other penalties because itís against the law. With the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the works that people write and put online are protected.
When you write, you need to write material thatís engaging. When you write in such a way that your audience can connect with you, itís easier to develop a business relationship with these people.
They will invest their time and money in someone that they feel they know over someone that they donít. When you write in an engaging way, youíll be writing things that others find interesting and theyíll keep returning to your site to see what else you have to say.
Many marketers have built huge careers simply because they knew how to engage an audience with their words. Whatever you write needs to be well-written.
You need to know how to formulate your thoughts and come across in a logical manner. If you write in a way thatís confusing and unorganized, your audience will label it as rambling material.
Your spelling and grammar should be good and what you write should be free of typos. Everyone makes mistakes, thatís a given. But if youíre constantly churning out writing thatís full of bad grammar and spelling mistakes, it will make you look unprofessional.
At the same time that you need to be sure your writing is free of grammar and spelling mistakes, you donít want to write in such a pompous way that you come across as talking down to your audience.
Write in a tone that reads like youíre sitting across from the person having a cup of coffee and conversation. Your material should also be up to date. If youíre always writing about things that are a few beats behind the information thatís fresh, people will turn to your competitors to get what they want.
Coming up with content yourself might not be a talent that you naturally possess. However, it can be learned. Take the time to assess your writing skills. You can analyze your shortcomings with writing content by being honest with yourself.
If you find writing a chore and you hate it, youíre not really going to want to give it your best effort because you just want to get it over with. If you know you struggle with grammar and spelling, you can either take some refresher courses, adult education courses, or you can outsource to someone else ñ even an editor for simple proofreading!
Social networking opened up the world for entrepreneurs. You can reach out online and have access to people thousands of miles away, in different countries and different time zones.
Itís made doing business faster and easier. Plus, itís a great tool for building relationships. Like any tool, though, you have to know how to use it well in order for it to perform for you.
There are too many people who come across as uninteresting, too business focuses or too standoffish and an audience doesnít feel a connection to those people.
These are the entrepreneurs who languish in relative obscurity while their competition builds thousands of followers. You have the ability to make social networking a powerful tool if you use it right.
When youíre online, donít retreat into yourself. Donít clam up and let self-doubt have a field day with you. This is what happens when that internal thought track tells you that youíre not interesting and that people donít want to hear what you have to say.
Donít sign up for social media and then stay behind the scenes. That defeats the purpose of having the accounts to begin with. Once you sign up with various social media sites, start to engage with people.
Thatís how you build your audience, your mailing list and basically your business. Let people feel as if they know you, as if they have a peek inside your life. Share both personal and business stuff on social media.
Personal doesn’t mean that you air your dirty laundry. Donít get on there and talk about your uncle getting drunk every holiday and dancing on the table. Itís okay to share things like photos of pretty flowers that you took or a picture of your dog.
You can start conversations about foods that you like, about a movie you recently saw or a book that you read. Some social networking sites are better than others depending on what your niche is.
For example, Pinterest is a good platform for someone in the wedding or fitness niche. You can post pictures of weddings and wedding accessories. Or you can post workout gear, before and after shots, or pictures of workouts.
Facebook is good for niches that use videos or tutorials and you can create a group dedicated to that particular niche – such as pets. You can share information about dog products, how-to train videos etc.
Google+ has a lot of tech people, a lot of professionals. Itís not used by the baby boomer crowd as much. So this would be a good social media site for niches that are into information products.
When you post on social media, pay attention to which ones get the most interaction. If you post a video and then a picture, if one got more interaction and more views, then you know what the audience prefers.
The timing of your posts is important too. Donít push any sales or information when thereís a national crisis going on. Youíll look insensitive. Likewise, you can use stats to tell you when your audience is most active on the site.
Advertising is something that never stays the same. All you have to do is look at the advertisements from 20 years ago to see that focus changes, attitudes have changed and people have changed.
What was cutting edge and worked then wonít work now. If your advertising methods are more than six months old, itís likely that theyíre out of date. You canít use old, outdated advertising strategies – not if you want to bring in todayís audiences.
Even though itís a powerhouse social media site, there are still many entrepreneurs who donít take advantage of using Facebook for their business advertising.
Thatís a huge mistake because currently, there are over a billion people on Facebook. You canít afford to overlook those kind of numbers. Advertising on Facebook is fast, easy and gets your business in front of a huge audience.
Make sure you know what the purpose of having the ad is for. For example, letís say you want to gain new subscribers. Then define your objective by using the ads tool.
Youíll be given choices like promoting your business page, boosting posts or having ads that will lead the audience to your site. In the ad manager, youíll be able to custom pick your audience according to where they live, their age level, what their shopping interests are, and so on.
Youíll also be able to set a budget based on how much you can afford to spend. You can also use retargeting. This is an ad method that uses cookies that are placed on websites.
Many times people visit a site and donít stick around. What these cookies do is they track the visitorís Internet visits. When this visitor heads to a different site, your retargeting service can follow the cookie trail.
Then your ads will appear in front of these visitors at another time on a different site. Retargeting works to land potential buyers because your ad appears again and they remember your site and their original interest.
They head back to your site and buy this time, giving you a boost in your ROI. With ads, youíll want to analyze them. By monitoring them, you can measure what youíre spending on the campaign versus what youíre gaining in new customers or revenue.
Follow the information on your ad tool dashboard in Facebook to tweak your ads. You may find that you need to change location or gender or other things that can improve how your ad performs.
If you want grow your business and increase sales, then you need to be part of the video marketing world. Video marketing helps you connect with people and build an audience right on your own blog.
Videos are popular because of the depth of the connection thatís available. With certain ads (and even text) on your site, you canít grab an audience with storytelling the way a video can.
Videos are more personable. Your audience can see you or visualize what youíre talking about if youíre showing how to do something. Because we live in a visual world, people tend to relate to videos over just reading something.
You can have a lot of success with video marketing because you can make them personal and fill them with tips or advice that can help your audience. Not just that, but your videos will have additional value over just a ìbuy meî sales pitch that the audience reads.
They get to see that thereís a real person behind the product or the information. Theyíre able to put a face with the name or with the brand. What this does is remove that wall of anonymity even though they wonít know in depth personal information about you.
With videos, you become a storyteller and you can literally captivate an audience and in some cases, create a viral marketing tool. When you use videos, they help convert the tire kickers into solid buyers more so than if they just read the sales copy.
Live streaming is an excellent way to market because you get to interact with the audience and there are several platforms you can use to do this with. One of them is Blab.
On this platform, your audience can join you once theyíre accepted and youíll be able to see what they want to ask you. It gives you and the audience the ability to have a conversation in real time that goes below the surface.
It builds trust and enables you to discuss ideas, offer solutions and itís great for getting feedback from your audience. Periscope is a live streaming app that lets you broadcast in front of an audience.
You can build a tribe, meet your audience and build a business by increasing sales. Youíll get greater exposure for your business with each broadcast. It gives you real time access to customers almost as if youíre having a face to face meeting with them.
This allows your audience to feel as if youíre authentic – and that in turn builds trust. People can use Meerkat with their mobile devices connected to social media to connect with their audiences.
With live streaming, what youíre seeing is what your audience sees. They can comment as they watch and you can reply back. Itís an instant connection and interaction.
Plus, the Meerkat platform lets you share the video and then it alerts the audience with a link. You can immediately have a thousand people watching your video.
You need sales copy in order to have sales of your product. But not all copy has the potential to convert. Sometimes there can be something missing that causes your audience to move on without ever making the purchase.
If you notice that people are landing on your page but theyíre not buying, thatís a good sign that they need a little more convincing because your copy isnít compelling enough.
You need to analyze how people are responding to your page. If you have a high bounce rate, itís time to make some changes. While you certainly donít want to copy your competition, if theyíre successful, then you do want to check them out to see what it is that theyíre doing right.
It could be that theyíre doing something with their sales copy that youíre not doing. Or maybe theyíre not doing something that you are. Either one of those could be something that you can tweak and see if you get better results that way.
Locate some of the competitors in your niche and go over their site carefully. Make notes of how they persuade an audience. Check out their ratio of sales push to advice.
How personable are they? What topics are they talking about? How often are they talking about new things? Study how much or how little detail they give about their product or information.
Could it be that youíre giving away too much? Or not giving away enough information to hook a personís interest? What is your competitionís sales to personable ratio of information on their site?
How fresh is their site content? Once youíve compared your copy to a competitor that you know is successful, you can make some changes on your own. One way to do that is to use split testing.
With split testing, you create two copies of something like your sales letter. Copy A would have one headline while copy B would have a different headline. Then you would send your sales letter to your email list so that half your list gets copy A and the other half gets copy B.
Then you can see which headline was more effective. You can figure that out just by looking at your data. You can check your colors, formatting, and even font this way to see how it impacts the buyerís final decision.
You can use split testing to send traffic to two separate landing pages and then you can see which one performs better. You can use video on one page and plain text on another.
To keep from getting overwhelmed by all of the possible changes you can make, only implement one change at a time. You can also make a hybrid sales page – using both video and text on your copy to attract your audience.
If you want to test this, you can use video in split testing and send half your list video and the other half text. Then compare those results to a hybrid mix, where you combine different media formats on the page, to appeal to more potential buyers.