Category Archives: Online Business

5 Effective Ways To Promote Your Blog

How To Promote Your Blog

If you’re a blogger, you know that to get good traction for your content, you need to promote your blog. In fact, you should be spending at least 40% of your time on blog promotion. And your content must be good, otherwise all your efforts will fail.

This is why before you hit that “publish” button, you must make sure your readers have a clear takeaway from each post. Also, headlines have a huge impact on your blog’s success, because no one will click a title if it sounds boring and uninspiring. Writing good headlines is an important skill to master to help you attract more traffic to your blog.

Without a steady stream of traffic to your blog, there’s little opportunity to engage your audience and convert them to raving fans. Here are 5 of the most effective ways to promote your blog.

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Are Facebook Sponsored Posts Right For Your Business And Audience?

How Do Facebook Sponsored Posts Work?

As organic Facebook reach continues to decline for businesses, it’s becoming increasingly more important for your brand to leverage paid content in order to boost its visibility.

If you want to make sure that a greater number of your fans and followers are able to see your content on Facebook, you often have to pay to get better reach. Facebook sponsored posts appear in the Facebook user’s news feed just as any other post from your brand might.

On Facebook, a business can sponsor a post through their business profile by selecting the post they want to sponsor, setting a maximum budget for a set number of days, and choosing their targeting options. By giving a post a broader reach, it’s seen by more people, leading to increased brand awareness and user engagement.

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How To Create A Successful Sales Funnel For Your Business

What Is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a process that businesses use to turn strangers into customers, and customers into brand advocates. To create a successful sales funnel, it’s often broken down into four steps:

Attract: Use marketing and advertising methods to attract potential customers.
Convert: Incentivize potential customers to share their contact information so that you can nurture the relationship.
Close: Motivate potential customers to take action and become paying customers.
Delight: Overdeliver and delight customers in order to retain their business and turn them into brand advocates.

Create A Successful Sales Funnel

Image via HubSpot

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How To Start Influencer Marketing And Boost Your Business Reach

4 Steps To Start Influencer Marketing

Start Influencer Marketing

Regardless of the influencer, content is still the king of the modern marketing mix.

In a nutshell, influencer marketing is a step-by-step process where a business identifies and utilizes a high-profile individual who has an established and sizeable social media relationship and following with a core audience. This core audience are the same people who need and are known to purchase the goods and services that the business sells.

Influencer marketing builds and expands upon the idea of the old celebrity endorsement, with emphasis centered around a content-driven marketing campaign.

However, like any marketing tactic, when you start influencer marketing, it takes deliberate targeting and planning.

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10 Marketing Lessons From Apple

As good as Apple products are, their marketing is even better. The simplicity of Apple’s advertising campaigns coupled with the air of mystery around each new product launch is just some of the reasons why this tech giant is considered a leader in the world of digital marketing.

But that’s not all! Apple is also known for relying heavily on product placement. That’s why you’ll often see Apple products in videos posted by influential Instagrammers and Snapchatters. Once an influencer shares your product and shows millions of their followers just how beneficial it is, the seed is planted for leads to grow.

Another effective marketing strategy from Apple is leveraging reviews and testimonials. Something as simple as offering a free trial or sample in exchange for an online testimony or a review is a great way to get more customers in your sales funnel. Just make sure that each testimonial has the person’s name and image or avatar. If it’s a B2B relationship, don’t forget to add a link back to their website for further credibility.

If you are in need of some more marketing inspiration, take a look at the infographic below by The Website Group and discover 10 marketing lessons you can learn from Apple.

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3 Types Of Ads That Improve Your Conversion Rate

How To Improve Your Conversion Rate

To improve your conversion rate, you need to know what works with your audience and what doesn’t. Your potential customers have specific expectations, needs, wants and pain points. So make them an offer they can’t or won’t want to refuse!

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Sometimes, it’s fine if people don’t convert the first time. Maybe they don’t have the money to buy your product or maybe they won’t need it until later. But a well-written ad copy with good visuals, intriguing offers, and a compelling call to action will stick in your customers’ minds. And they may come back later and convert.

Let’s look at three types of ads that can improve your conversion rate.

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The Pros and Cons of Starting a Membership Site

How Easy Is Starting a Membership Site?

There are many ways to earn money online, and starting a membership site is a favorite of many marketers. A membership site is basically anything that you offer as a subscription where the customer receives a product or service automatically on a schedule until they choose to cancel or the subscription runs its course.

Delivery is usually on a monthly basis, but it can be more often or less. And the subscription can have an ending date or go on forever.

There are many reasons for starting a membership site, but it’s essential to take a balanced look at the subject because membership websites that make money do face a number of challenges.

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How to Create Clickable Social Cards in Seconds

If you’re looking for an effective way to drive more traffic from social media to your website and boost engagement rates, clickable social cards are a good best bet.

Social cards normally consist of an image and descriptive text underneath, but there’s one thing that sets them apart from regular images. Whereas regular image posts simply expand when clicked on, social cards send users directly to the landing page of your choice. This allows you to have more control over how your business is perceived and attract new customers.

There’s one problem, though. Creating clickable social cards from scratch can be a rather time-consuming and challenging process, especially for less-experienced website owners or those with no access to the back end of a website.

Luckily, the free online tool AnyImage allows you to create as many social cards as you want in just seconds. To find out more, check out the infographic below.

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

How To Make A Sales Funnel Work For Your Business

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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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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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 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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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 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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A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Lead Generation Funnel

Running a successful business means having customers who are willing to pay for your product or service. But how are you going to find those consumers? Who are your best leads? And how do you move them down the funnel and eventually convert them into customers?

That’s why before creating marketing campaigns and optimizing your lead generation strategies, it highly important to build a lead generation funnel first. A proper lead generation funnel will help you to skyrocket your entire conversion process.

This infographic will provide you with all of the data you need to build a lead gen funnel for your own business and help you track your leads as they move through it.

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