Author Archives: Jon Allo

About Jon Allo

MD of ad agency & internet marketer. 26 yrs+ in adv & marketing. Always providing business tips and advice for today's entrepreneur.

9 Things To Test To Make A Sales Funnel Work More Effectively

How To Make A Sales Funnel Work For Your Business

Make A Sales Funnel

Adding upsell, cross-sell, and downsell opportunities to your sales funnel will increase average order.

Firstly, what is a sales funnel? In simple terms, it’s the journey that you guide a prospect as they first discover your product or service to the point of them buying and becoming a repeat customer.

Part of making a sales funnel more effective is offering related products as part of your original offer. These are upsells, where they buy your product and some extras and even downsells, where they buy something different from you at a lower price.

Upsells and downsells can increase your average price point for every single order that your customers make. It also increases the lifetime value of every customer.

When you make a sales funnel that is a well-thought-out and includes the right offers at the right time based on your buyer’s journey, you’ll increase your ROI and bottom line. Here are 9 things to test when creating upsell and downsell messages to make your sales funnel work more effectively.

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What Do Customers Actually Think About Your Business?

7 Ways To Discover What Customers Think About Your Business

Your business wouldn’t be here without someone to buy your products or services. But there are most likely many other businesses selling the same products and services you’re offering. The opinion that a customer has about your business as compared to your competitor’s business will determine whether the customer will buy from you or from them.

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The best way to cement customer trust and loyalty is by asking them what they think of your business. Do you know how your customers would answer this question? Getting customer opinions and feedback is one of the best ways to keep them satisfied with your products or services.

Here are 7 ways to help you discover what your customers think about your business.

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5 Steps For Scaling Your Business And Preparing for Growth

The Effects Of Scaling Your Business

Scaling Your Business

Growing a business too fast can cause as many problems as growing a business too slowly.

The difference between a start-up or a small business and a successful and profitable business lies on time and experience. There are many factors that play a big part in how those businesses became successful. These include things like focus, hard work, having the right people and timing.

Scaling your business can make or break it. If you scale up too quickly or recklessly, you’ll create organizational problems that will be difficult to undo. Also, premature scaling can cause your business to fail. On the flip side, scaling your business too slowly could cause you to miss out on important opportunities that come with greater revenue and more resources.

So, as you prepare to take the next phase of business development, these five steps will help you have a successful and profitable scale-up.

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Is Disruptive Marketing Part Of Your Online Marketing Strategy?

What Does Disruptive Marketing Mean?

Disruptive Marketing

Can you make your audience see things differently and open their minds in a new way?

Over the years there have been several terms that describe innovation that disrupts the status quo. For example, “Killer Apps” and “Disruptive Innovation” both describe what happens when something new comes along and disturbs what people are accustomed to. A few classic examples are typewriters, VHS tapes, Floppy Disks and so forth. As you see, each of these things was useful until something came along to replace it.

Disruptive marketing is a lot like that idea. But instead of a product replacing another product it fills in the gaps from the typical marketing strategy by challenging conventional thinking or connecting the old way with a new way of doing something. The new way is the disruption that can get the attention of the audience in a way that might even go viral.

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How To Make Your Business Better Than Your Competition

Make Your Business Better Running your own business is rewarding and challenging. When you start, there’s so much to do, you’re full of enthusiasm and every day seems like a new adventure. Sadly, for many, if they don’t get the (financial) results they’re hoping for, their dream business can turn into a nightmare.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to make your business better and make the most of the opportunities it offers. Refining and mastering your craft is one of the best.

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10 Ways To Build Successful Habits In Your Business

How To Build Successful Habits

Most people think of habits as a bad thing. However, habits can be good too. Just as you can develop a habit of doing something unhealthy, you can also build successful habits.

Habits are one of the most powerful influences in a person’s life and are sometimes called ‘second nature’. They are actions, which we do almost automatically. They can become second nature and this can influence the results of your business. Of course, there are good habits and bad habits, so it’s essential that business owners work on building good habits, which will result in their success.

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Understanding Contextual Marketing and How It Can Boost Your Business

What Is Contextual Marketing?

Contextual marketing

Contextual marketing pays attention to what your audience is doing in real time in the real world.

During the Superbowl blackout in 2013, Oreo Cookies tweeted out a picture and a statement that said, “You can still dunk in the dark.” This is a classic example of real time contextual marketing. It was unexpected, not planned, but it was effective and went viral.

Contextual marketing focuses entirely on using content for marketing your products and services. Contextual marketing usually means that you’re creating content for your website, using specific keywords so that an advertisement platform delivers the ads of interest to your customers.

For example, if you are using Google AdWords, it will deliver to your audience ads based on the content using the keywords in the content to trigger the right ads. This can be planned as well as happen in real time if you pay attention to how you can relate current happenings to your content marketing. Using as much of both planned and unplanned contextual marketing can rapidly boost your business.

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How To Leverage And Improve Your Email Marketing Results

Email Marketing Results Email marketing continues to be a reliable and cost-effective way for a business to promote, sell and generate sales leads online and offline. Successful marketers still run email marketing campaigns for a host of reasons. In fact, you can use email marketing to foster and grow your customer relationships as well as maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.

But, like other forms of marketing, in order to maximize your email marketing results, you should have a basic understanding of the metrics (obtained results) associated with your promotions.

Here’s 5 metrics that will show you how you can do just that.

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5 Steps You Need To Take To Add Value To Your Customers

Add Value To Your Customers To Boost Sales

Add Value To Your Customers

What value added benefits for customers do you offer?

There are many ways to boost your sales and grow your business, no matter your budget size. However, when you’re working with a tight budget can be daunting trying to add value to your customers and increase your sales while keeping advertising and marketing under control.

It’s easy to start a business online and start selling. There are numerous products online that you can sell as an affiliate but that also means there are many competitors selling the same products and services you’re offering. The difference between the competitor’s business and yours will determine how the customer perceives the added value that you offer. By setting up an effective value added marketing strategy potential customers will be more likely to buy from you, rather than a competitor.

Here are 5 strategies for creating value for customers.

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What Is Retargeting Marketing And Why Should You Use It?

Retargeting Marketing Explained In Simple Terms

In a nutshell, retargeting marketing, sometimes called remarketing, is a strategy that targets an audience who already knows your business because they have in some way already engaged with it.

For example, if your audience visits your website, you can deliver ads such as banner ads and social media platform ads about your business on other websites that they visit.

Essentially, display ad retargeting is all about using technology such as pixels and cookies that enable you to deliver ads to your previous website visitors. There are many benefits to using online retargeting advertising to get your messages in front of your audience.

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13 Ideas For Local Business Marketing

How To Do Local Business Marketing

Local Business Marketing

The more you know about your customer the more products and services you can offer.

Local business marketing can work for any type of organization whether you really are only local to the place you want to market to or whether you’re a global business.

Often, globally or nationally minded enterprises don’t think about the fact that local marketing can still work for them, especially when they’re a small business being run by a sole proprietor.

But you can, and it works too. Let’s look at some local marketing ideas that may work for your business and help you reach your target audience.

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How To Create A Continuous Stream Of Better Blog Content

8 Tips For Better Blog Content

Creating a continuous stream of better blog content is a lot easier than you may think. Being able to keep effective and interesting content flowing to your blog on a regular basis will boost your brand awareness, help establish as an authority in your niche, increase engagement and encourage more people to sign up to your email list. Not to mention help you make more money.

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What’s more, if you have the right blog writing formula, it’ll come to you easily and you’ll never struggle for content ideas again.

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How To Avoid Cash Flow Problems And Streamline Your Profits

9 Ways To Stop Cash Flow Problems

cash flow problems

Do you have more cash coming into your business than going out?

One of the main reasons a lot of businesses go out of business isn’t because they’re not making money. It’s because they didn’t keep track of their finances and cash flow.

They spent indiscriminately without regard to the money coming in and going out of their business and end up having trouble paying debt – often their taxes. This causes them to have to go out of business and even get fined.

Many smaller offline and online businesses face cash flow problems at some time or another. They will often say that it’s either raining money or it’s a drought. When a new business starts, it’s hard to know when and how the money will flow, and if it’ll slow down during certain times of the year or remain steady. No matter what type of business you have, though, you can fix your cash flow problems with a little bit of thought and planning.

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8 Things You Need To Know Before You Create Your Video Marketing Strategy

How To Create A Video Marketing Strategy

Video Marketing Strategy

Video accounts for at least 80% of worldwide internet traffic.

Developing a video marketing strategy is an important part of content marketing today. Video is just as important as using text-based content and beautiful imagery – maybe even more important.

Video is much more likely to get shared, to be engaged with and to go viral than a blog post. Over 80% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and over 70% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video (HubSpot).

Let’s look at the 8 things you need to know before you create your video marketing strategy.

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Why Your Business Needs To Build A Brand Before It’s Too Late

8 Benefits When You Build A Brand

You probably know that you’re supposed to build a brand for your business but maybe you’re not entirely sure what that means. In fact, some people believe that a logo is all you need to brand a business. However, while a logo does play a role in your brand, it’s not your brand. It’s a visual representation, that’s all.

Branding is the process of creating a unique name, message and image in a consumer’s mind. The goal is to differentiate yourself from others in the market and to attract and retain customers.

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Should You Create Video Content For Your Website Or Not?

Why Create Video Content?

Create Video Content

Video can provide value, relevance, and the immediacy that your audience desires.

Some things are simply true whether you like it or not. One of those things is that consumers love video. They are more likely to watch it, engage with it and share it than they are text-based content. Overall people prefer video. More shares are generated by social videos than text and images combined.

Of course, you need to study your own audience to determine what they prefer and if you should create video content for them. Having said that, it’s likely that you’ll need more video content creation, not less.

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5 Tips To Gain More Profits From Your Upsells And Downsells

What Are Upsells and Downsells?

Nearly every business uses upsells. When you buy a pair of shoes, you’re offered polish to go with them or when you buy a burger at a fast food franchise, you’re asked if you want fries with it. These are time-honored examples of upselling in retail to increase the price point of each transaction.

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Another time-honored way to ensure you don’t lose a sale entirely is to offer a downsell. This is aimed at people who may have reasons for not needing or purchasing the main offer (usually a lack of funds) but may still want some element of your product or service.

The philosophy of upsells and downsells for any business is fundamentally the same. When your customer is in a buying mood, you want to offer them something else they may be interested in because that’s when they are most likely to buy. Here are 5 tactics to help you gain more profits with your upsells and downsells.

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8 Essentials For Your Online Marketing Strategy

How To Improve Your Online Marketing Strategy Skills

Online Marketing Strategy

Crafting an effective online marketing strategy will get you more leads and more buyers.

Crafting an effective online marketing strategy always starts and ends with your customers. Your job is to create or find solutions for their problems. Most people go to a website to seek a solution to a problem.

That solution could be just information (in the case of a blog) or it could be a product or service they need (in the case of an ecommerce website). Whatever it is, you need to make it simple for them to find what they seek.

When you put emphasis on developing your online marketing strategy, you’ll be a lot more successful. You’ll get more leads and more buyers than if you don’t develop a strategy.

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How To Become A Thought Leader In Your Industry

Become A Thought Leader

Take the time to pick and choose what you believe is important for your audience to know.

If you become a thought leader it can make a huge difference to your bottom line. The first thing you need to do is get really clear about your brand and the value you offer your audience. Know how you want your brand to be perceived by your audience and do everything to portray that.

Know your topic, know your audience, and know what you stand for because when you become a thought leader people will want to know what works for you and how it can work for them. That’s why it’s so important to know who you are and what you stand for within your industry. Here are some steps to becoming a thought leader.

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How To Shift Your Business Model To Generate More Online Sales

How To Generate More Online Sales For Your Offline Business

Generate More Online Sales

You’re not going to generate more online sales if nobody knows your eCommerce website exists.

If you currently have a business that is mostly offline and you sell a product or a service, you can start to generate more online sales if you set up your website the right way.

In the first instance, you may need to adjust how you target your audience. Those people who like coming to your store might not be the right people to encourage to buy online. Instead, target people who don’t live nearby. Knowing who your customers are, their values, and where to find them online will help generate the extra sales you’re looking for.

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How To Make Your Customers Feel Important

Do Your Customers Feel Like They’re the Most Important People in the World?

make your customers feel important

Do you know how to make customers feel valued and appreciated?

Providing excellent customer service may be one of the most important things you’ll do in your business. After all, if your customer service is poor, you’ll lose current customers and perhaps future customers too when they find out.

Your business wouldn’t be here without someone to buy your products, services or recommendations. That’s a fact. Learning to make your customers feel important so they feel super-special is part of the job as a business owner and should be a major goal going forward.

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5 Keys To A Successful Mindset In Business

How To Create A Postive Mindset In Business

Mindset In Business

Do you have the bold confidence necessary to succeed in business?

When it comes to having success in business, your mindset has more to do with your success or failure than you realize. You also may have a negative mindset and not be aware of it. A success mindset in business means that when you have challenges, you’re able to work through them with confidence and clarity.

It means that when you are presented with an opportunity you’ll be able to set fears aside and take advantage of the opportunity and build a more powerful, and more enjoyable, business

Here are 5 keys elements to achieving and keeping a success mindset in business.

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