All posts by Steven

Digital Branding

Video Marketing Tips to Get You Ready for 2019

Video marketing and video content, in general, will become more prominent in 2019. More and more marketers are using video content to convey key messages for one simple reason: the audience responds better to videos.

The video marketing landscape is about to get more competitive as we get closer to 2019, so it is time to bring your best game and craft a campaign that separates you from your competitors. These next tips and tricks will help you get ready for 2019.

Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-person-watching-video-on-laptop-1321732/ 

Tell a Story

I cannot stress enough how important it is to tell a compelling story when producing video content for marketing purposes. While promotional videos worked really well a few years ago, the way forward is capturing the stories around your products and delivering those stories in a positive and engaging way.

Storytelling should be a big part of your video marketing campaign. The best agencies like Spiel Creative now focus not just on the short-term, in-the-moment stories, but also on the bigger picture; they use long-term brand stories to convey their message to the audience. You should too.

Make Demos Interesting

Just because you need to start telling stories, it doesn’t mean you should drop making product videos altogether. There are still ways to utilize product videos and product-related tutorials to engage the audience. That said, you need to make demo videos and other relevant content more interesting.

One of the ways you can do that is by employing 360-video technology. Rather than displaying the product in a more conventional way, you can add a 360-degree view of the product in video format. You can then use the content on your product page and other outlets.

Go with Explainers

Animated explainer videos, as well as whiteboard videos, are also going to be more popular in 2019. They are as effective as they were this year, but with a few added tweaks you can now use to boost the level of effectiveness further.

For example, you can make an explainer video that also works when the audience is only listening to the audio rather than actively watching the video. This is a content consumption pattern that it is certainly a trend you want to follow.

Think Mobile

Don’t forget that the majority of your viewers use mobile devices, which means you need to start tailoring your content for mobile audiences first. Avoid text and captions that are too small, elements that will not work on smaller screens, and videos that will not work without sound.

The latter is another data-driven strategy based on viewers’ content consumption pattern. We see people staring at their screens without wearing headsets, tuning in to videos with clear captions and engaging content that they really enjoy.

Rely on Data

Analytics and data-driven decision making are also becoming more prominent in 2019. The decisions you make regarding your video marketing campaign and the content you put out must take the available insights into consideration whenever possible; by “whenever possible,” I mean most of the time.

Data and other supporting information give you the reasons behind usage patterns and other insights you gather from the market. A good video marketing campaign is one that gets evaluated and refined regularly. The more you rely on data, the more you will understand your users and how to best cater to their content needs.

(Always) Deliver Value

While storytelling is the core of many successful video marketing campaigns in the future, delivering value remains one of the most important objectives to achieve. You cannot expect viewers to continue watching your videos when they don’t deliver value.

At the very least, you must deliver relevant information about your products and services. Adding information about how to benefit more from the products and services you have is also a good way to add value to your videos.

Commit!

Consistency is another important element if you want to have a successful video marketing campaign. You cannot build a larger and stronger audience base when you only upload one video every two months.

You need to invest in making more content while maintaining – if not improving – your production quality at the same time. Ideally, you want to release a new video every week to keep users excited and wanting for more. That takes a lot of commitment.

Involve the Customers

Telling stories about your products and services doesn’t always mean telling YOUR SIDE of the story. You can also explore the products’ stories from the customers’ standpoint. In fact, you should. Testimonials and user stories are some of the most engaging video content to produce right now, and it will continue to be impactful in 2019.

Always find ways to connect with your real customers and the audience in general. You can feature their stories to build even stronger relationships with the viewers. Besides, you can never go wrong with investing in relationships and maintaining genuine connections with your audience.

Use Video in Other Activities

Video marketing – just like other digital marketing instruments – cannot stand on its own. However, there so many ways to use video content to help the rest of your digital marketing efforts. You can, for instance, use videos to boost conversion rates with a stronger and more compelling call to action.

There is no better time to start crafting and fine-tuning your video marketing campaign for 2019 than right now. We are still a few weeks away from the New Year, but getting a head start is never a bad idea.

Digital Branding

Empowering Small Business Tips For 2019

The Small Business Environment Has Changed

A small business can contend with a large enterprise through today’s technological solutions. Consider this as a hypothetical example: totally outsourced infrastructure. Using cloud computing you can outsource the cost of your internal servers, the cost of end-user portals, the cost of office space, and even the cost of certain personnel like those in payroll, or IT. This is all made possible through cloud computing. Computation, Big Data, software design, network management, and more can all be pursued through the cloud, and independent of location. All that is necessary is having valid access information for a given network, and a secure internet connection. One reason so many small businesses are going to the cloud is that they can save tens of thousands of dollars a month. Technology has a lot of little “life hacks” of this kind that businesses who are savvy will employ in 2019 to give themselves a competitive edge, increase profit margins, and decrease operational costs. Today’s business is on the edge of tomorrow, to make a cliché phrase. What this means is that you need to know what comes with the dawn of 2019. One area where you can be the early small business bird who gets the profit worm ahead of competing peers will be in the world of blogging. Following, tips from skilled bloggers with advice for small businesses will be explored to help give you an idea of what you’re facing, and what you can do.

1) Frank Telesphore, SEO BH

I realized a long time ago that my blog only has so much visibility on the web. It’s like a marble on a sheet stretched over an empty space. That marble’s weight is drawn by gravity into the sheet, and it pulls on the fabric’s elasticity, making a dimple. No matter the size of the marble, it only pulls the sheet down in one place. However, if you’ve got multiple marbles of similar weight across the surface area of the sheet, you can pull the whole thing down incrementally. This takes balance, and here the analogy breaks down; because round objects on such a taut surface will group together. The point is, you can make a bigger imprint if you’re pushing on the surface area of marketing outreach from multiple separate “nodes”—or, in this case, on the surface area of the internet from different blogs. Guest blogging is a great way to increase your online visibility. Basically, you send some of your content to blogs which are similar to yours. They have their own audience, and ideally, it has a crossover with yours. Ultimately, you can “double down” on the reach of a single piece of content. In terms of 2019 considerations, you’re going to want to ensure all content is optimized for smartphone use, as mobile web engagement has outpaced that of the desktop variety. Also, you’ll want to create content that is animated, pictorial, film-based, or of the infographic variety. Attention spans are down, but susceptibility to visual stimulus is up.

2) Robert Laumer, Brain Juice

One big trend I’ve noticed businesses following in 2018, and getting primed to be prolific in throughout 2019, involves co-opting user content. The truth is, people are social. They like to talk. They want to talk. They’re going to talk. And they’re not always going to have things to talk about, meaning over time, they’ll get in the habit of providing exposition for any aspect of their daily grind which is of interest to them. When you provide clientele with good products or services, there is a natural likelihood that they’ll go online and write about what you’ve done for them. Get links to that information and post it on your own pages. Whenever you have user reviews, you want that front-and-center. Search engines will key in on words and phrases matching what you do. User reviews can increase your online visibility. Also, you’ll eventually get customers loyal enough they’re essential “apologists” for your company. Think of those who love Apple, and those who love Microsoft. Or Chevy, and Ford. These rivalries cut deep. Co-opt them by contacting passionate customers, and putting their opinions on your blog. Becoming interconnected online, co-opting user content, and finding innovative ways to secure reviews will be key in 2019. As a closing cherry on top, one tactic to get reviews if you don’t have them is to write reviews for customers you know are satisfied, show those clients the review(s) you’ve written, and get their permission to publish in their name.

3) Hamza Mikou, Blogger, Digital Marketing & Web Development Specialist

Understanding and safeguarding resources are critical to the success of any business. And small businesses are no exception.And this will go throw a few steps:1- PROTECTING THE CASH FLOW: When it comes to cash flow, it’s smart to hope for the best while preparing for anything worst. So always try to choose the right customer that can always pay in time and minimize debt especially when it comes to your business charges.2- BE A SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTERFLY: You should be a social media butterfly fluttering around through the different online networks making friends and communicating with everyone. Also, don’t forget to establish an up to date social media crisis management strategy by listening and monitoring.3- ALWAYS GIVE SOMETHING EXTRA: Give your clients a discount or a free gift with their purchase. It can be an ebook, a report, a study or even a donation to their favorite charity. But don’t forget to give them a community to belong to, a blog, a forum, or any place with free resources to develop their own business or life.4- YOUR EMPLOYEES: Build a foster workplace environment and listen to your employees, don’t forget that they know your customers more than you do. A happy employee means more productivity and brings new & creative ideas.

4) Zahoor Bhat, PROS – San Diego Internet Marketing & Technology Company

The success of any business, large or small depends on your efforts to dominate the web. Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your business. This can be done by employing the latest digital marketing and technology tools which can also improve your user experience, build customer relationships, increase sales & profit. I would suggest selling your products or services on multiple channels & marketplaces including Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping to reach the maximum audience. Marketing automation is another major factor you need to focus on. You can accelerate your business growth while also reducing your team’s workload by automating processes and streamlining workflows.

5) Erman Ergun, JotForm

Customer feedback is quite important for small businesses. You need to know about what your customers need, and how they feel about your service. Their opinions are the key to making your service better. Our users choose Mobile Forms to keep getting feedback anytime, anywhere; even when they don’t have an internet connection.

You don’t need a complex process, actually, if you make the forms as simple as possible for your customers you can easily acquire clear feedback. Some of our customers use kiosk mode which enables them to turn their phones or tablets into a survey station. The main idea is, you don’t want to overcomplicate the process.

6) Simon Cocking, Irish Tech News

Have a clear and logical reason for why you are doing social media, and how it is helping to advance and raise awareness about your business. It is not enough to ‘just hire a millennial’ and tell them ‘to do social media’. You need someone who understands and cares what your business does, and is able to communicate this with others.

7) Tom LeBlanc, Emerald Expositions

Focus on service revenue. Small businesses should take a cue from their much-larger competitors and shift their focus away from selling products in favor of providing consistently valuable solutions to customers via service contracts or managed services. It requires significant infrastructure support and unique selling strategies, but the revenue model improves cash flow and insulates businesses from ebbs and flows in the economy.

8) Ramya Sriram, Kolabtree

With the rise of freelancing platforms and remote working culture, it’s getting easier to access talent from anywhere in the world. This is an immense opportunity for small businesses to take advantage of the gig economy and work with experts who can help them grow.  Content marketing is crucial for a small business. With Google’s algorithms increasingly rewarding trustworthy and authoritative content, it is essential for SMB’s to work with experts who can create high-ranking content. Having content written by a freelance expert writer with in-depth knowledge of a subject not only helps build credibility and trust among customers, but it is also favoured by search engines. By hiring qualified writers for online content, small businesses and startups can stay ahead of the game and be on a level playing field as their competitors.

9) Arash Asli, Yocale

Always enjoy the journey or the quest you’ve set out on and take some time to embrace your surroundings and be grateful for how far you’ve come and looked forward to where you’re heading. By working on that, you start treating your life and work more as a process of small accomplishments instead of as one big milestone you have to achieve. When you go hiking a mountain, and you have your head down trudging along and all you’re trying to do is get to the top fast as you can. You’re missing out on the best part… The journey and the view along the way. Remind yourself to look around and enjoy the moment.

10) Sunil Khullar, Outsourced Bookkeeping

Now it is a high time where people losing their trust in the largest brands like Amazon, Google and Facebook due to many serious scandals on human rights violations, privacy issue, and even online cheating. It is the best time for the small business owners to revitalize their communities in small towns. The best suggestion for every entrepreneur is to think out of the box to overcome these aforesaid shortcomings coming in the path of success of your business. We advise the small business owners to outsource their accounting and bookkeeping activities for all betterment of their business.

  • Cost control is one of the most obvious reasons to outsource. It controls capital as well as operating costs.
  • You will get technology and infrastructure without investing in extra capital. As a result, you will be in a better position to invest the fund elsewhere to get the most of it.
  • Avoiding large expenses at early stages gives your start-up and small business the financial stability and strength to compete in the market.
  • You can start a new project right away depending on the outsourcing services. Often it has been seen in-house staffs are not that expert to deal with the circumstances effectively.
  • Outsourcing frees up your staff and reduces their workload. As a result, you will get more time to restructure and deploy the staff force in some other productive work to generate profit.

11) Matthew Osborn, director of marketing, Apruve.com

Being a small business comes with one very large benefit, speed. Without the layers of red tape that exist in a large corporate entity, your business can quickly implement campaigns in less than half of the time. Use this to your advantage by creating numerous campaigns and continually testing what works and what doesn’t. Through marketing automation, small businesses can expand their reach to the size of a large corporate entity without the overhead but with double the speed.

12) Rebecca Winslow, Co-Founder at Flashion Statement

Make sure your website has a great user experience so that your potential clients are not overwhelmed or frustrated (is anything worse than a website that takes foreverrrr to load?!). It is important that potential leads can easily navigate your website, and quickly learn how your company can help them. Creating a separate mobile site, or making sure your website is responsive is increasingly important as more and more people use their phones for shopping and product research.  Once you have an upstanding website, you can further stand out by sharing your company’s story, visuals of your employees, and outline why you stand out from your competition. It is important for small business’ websites to connect and engage.

13) Daniel Miller, Benchmark Email

If you aren’t yet using email marketing to help grow your business, say goodbye to 1999 and enter 2019! With excuses ranging from “I don’t have time” to “It’s too complicated” here are 3 of the most important things, you can do to win at email marketing in 2019. Signup Forms with Welcome Automation. If you have a website or presence anywhere on the internet, make sure you have a way to capture email addresses from digital visitors. After that, make sure to set up a welcome email, or better yet, a welcome series. These are just emails that are automatically sent to each subscriber after they signup. Don’t overthink these emails. Just provide your new subscribers with a warm welcome and show them you have competence in your industry. Answer this question with a series of emails: Why should they do business with you? Cart Abandonment Automation. Over 70% of website visitors will abandon the cart. What better way to increase sales than to set up automation that brings potential buyers back to your store. It will take you less than 45 min to set up and can generate 15% – 25% more sales. Up-sell Follow-up Automation. The old saying, “Strike while the iron is hot” has come a long way and it’s still relevant. Happy customers are likely to buy from you again. Ride that way and set up follow up automation that offers upgrades, related products, and services or maybe a refer a friend deal. Whatever it is, strike while the iron is hot!

14) Shiv Arora, 3 Wise Bears

As a small business, we make use of cloud software to gain not only operational efficiency but improve client communication. The ability to see the same data at the same time as our clients lead to better conversations about business performance and tax efficiency. If you are a small business owner then we would recommend using either FreeAgent or Xero for your accounting needs.

15) Graham Lee, Marketing Manager at Vonigo

Optimize for your customers’ convenience. In 2019, that means recognizing that most transactions start with some amount of research online and that the bulk of that traffic is on mobile. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and offers customers the most convenient experience possible. Do you do deliveries or perform home services? Offer online booking. Need to confirm appointments or schedules? Use email automation and software tools that keep things up to date and on-task. Increasingly, businesses that recognize the value of their customer’s time will be the ones that win the business. Invest in your company’s infrastructure now, and reap the rewards of building an admired brand that stays ahead of your competition.

16)  Rohan Mendiratta, Marketing @ SendX.io

Despite so many new marketing channels emerging lately, it’s never been a better time for small businesses to enter the market. However, when it comes to actual revenue, Email Marketing still remains one of the highest and most predictable ROI channels there is. Most businesses tend to ignore it because they don’t see enough ROI upfront. Which makes their email marketing investments hard to justify and they end up trying out other channels instead. When it comes to Email Marketing, one thing that is frequently overlooked is optimizing for maximum efficiency throughout. It’s extremely important to focus on speed and on the things that actually move the needle. At the same time, being capital-efficient with software costs must be a high priority for your small business to ensure maximum positive returns. Getting bogged down on creating the most beautiful email or creating the most advanced automation sequence is only going to cost you time and money. Especially if you aren’t at a place where you can justify solid ROI from Email Marketing yet.

17) Jonathan Kruse, founder of How to Start a Clothing Company

The customer is everything. If you only have one customer or thousands, help them in any way you can so they have the experience you would want.

18) Amy Cook, simplus.com

You’ll want to focus more on mobile SEO and geotargeting. Nearly half of all Americans will check their smartphones before they get out of bed each day! And nearly one-third of these searches are location-based queries.

19) Ujwal Ratra, COO Astra Web Security

Businesses, both large and small, face huge threats. A single compromise has the potential to shut fledging businesses.  SMEs, in particular, may think that they don’t need security. However, they are the ones on the radar of the attackers out there as they are usually easy to target. One reason SMEs find security hard is that it is hard. Small businesses may not have the required skills to secure their online presence and, it does not make sense for them to acquire those skills or hire a security team. Another reason is the perceived costs associated with cybersecurity.

We recommend outsourcing the security of your business to experts. A few clicks and your business can be as secure as it can get.

Set aside some budget for security, consider this as insurance for your business. It is not as high as you think and is totally worth it.

This year, don’t rely on your fate to secure your online business, make sure your store gets the security it deserves.

20) Tommy Nguyen – Founder@ninjateam.orgNinja Team

Social Marketing is trending and Facebook is one of the best platforms where you can find your audience and customers, use this tool https://doopchat.com/ to transform your Facebook Comments into Sales.

21) Justin Knott, Intrepy Healthcare Marketing

Content marketing is a critical component of search engine optimization for any online business’ 2019 marketing strategy. Whether you are working on a shoestring budget or have a dedicated writing staff, you can grow your business online astronomically if you commit to creating consistent, engage long-form SEO content, videos, infographics, etc. that are well aligned with what your target market is searching for. In most cases, writing a blog post or creating a video can do done virtually for free (minus the time cost) which make the potential return on investment massive.Our clients have 3X-10X their website traffic and revenue by utilizing this content marketing strategy. You need to invest in doing keyword, competitor and search volume research to make sure you are not going blind and creating worthless content pieces. Imagine what you could accomplish with 10s of thousands of additional targeted website visitors in your niche? All you need to do at that point is to turn your attention to monetizing or converting them over to leads.

22) Fiona Foster, Marketing Manager, CUE Market Place

Focus on content that is relatable and valuable to your customer base. We have a small business blog and YouTube channel and continually need content. Over the years, I’ve learned that the most successful material is taken from daily interactions. It could be from our own business, a conversation with a customer, or something a friend says at dinner. Taking inspiration from real-life problems often gets more engagement than a piece we’ve crafted around keywords or trending Google topics. Plus the writing usually comes more easily.

23) Joel Whipple, Digital Examiner

Google isn’t a set it and forget it platform. We have seen important business information drop from Google business listings due to changes from Google. Remember to check your listings every few weeks!

24) Simon, WebSitePulse

Always constantly monitor your servers and network components, web sites, web applications and email infrastructure making sure that you will not lose any clients due to problems with your online presence. Remote monitoring services enable you to increase the efficiency of your business operations and to reduce the risk of failed Internet transactions and loss of revenue.

25) Chris Makara, Interactive Marketing & Digital Strategist

Identify tasks that are repetitive and look for ways to automate when possible. Leveraging this approach will free up your valuable time in order to spend it on more important tasks. An easy thing to automate is your social media scheduling. While that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t monitor and engage with your followers, it does mean that you can easily keep your accounts active with content in order to trigger the engagement with your audience.

26) Mike Forrest, Archmore

Business success does not come from just doing things right.

You have to do the right things right.

27) Rick Shimko, Unific

Learn to say no. As a small business with limited resources, you cannot act on every new idea or opportunity. Stay true to your vision and remember for every new milestone you hope to achieve, somebody in the organization is going to have to do the work to get you there. Continually changing priorities without that in mind will keep you spinning in circles, instead of running ahead of your competition.

28) Syama Meagher, ScalingRetail.com

Digital advertising is important, but don’t forget about inexpensive low hanging fruit like optimizing your product pages to increase sales and lower your abandoned cart rate. You can’t scale up by just doing more of everything you’ve been doing all along. Growing your company calls for a new game plan, new strategies and building out your team.

29) Chris Wagner, HostingPill

Don’t try to cut corners when it comes to Web Hosting and Site Design. Website is not only your digital identity but your ONLY identity. You are judged by the site you have. So, don’t go for free web hosting and get a professional designer to design your website. The amount you spend on this will be your investment and not an expense. Good luck!

30) Kevin Urrutia, Voymedia

Maintain a personal relationship with your business relations too, and both have to be combined, ask your customers how are they doing in life, ask them about their well being because it creates a personal relationship that is something which will last longer and it will create a long-lasting impact.

31) Charles Coxhead, WPDevShed

We have worked with many clients, developing sites and providing follow on support and maintenance, and we’ve noticed that the best performing client sites, the ones that attract the most traffic and customers, have a common thread….they all sell by teaching. It is a little counter intuitive, selling a service in particular, by teaching your market how to solve the problem that your product or service addresses. But it actually makes a lot of sense, when your market are looking for solutions they are probably not searching for you specifically. Instead they are searching for answers to the problem they have. Often this means they are Googling for solutions, and so if you are actively providing answers then you have a good shot at showing up and attracting those people looking to solve the problems you are expert in. And demonstrating your expertise is also another good reason for developing content that teaches. They very act of doing this shows potential customers that you know what you are talking about. And assuming your product or service solves a sufficiently complex problem there is a good chance those customers looking for answers will look to you to provide the solution.

32) Pamela Danziger, Unity Marketing

Don’t rely on Social Media. Get your website up to snuff.

Specialty retailers have largely been sold a bill of goods when it comes to social media. It has been over-promised, but too often under-delivers shoppers to your door. With retailers’ attention focused on social, they often overlook the critical importance of their home page to excite interest and draw shoppers in. With shoppers relying more on mobile to find places to shop, they are more likely to discover your store there, than on social.  Make sure your website’s home page sets the right first impression.  A recent study found 75% of shoppers base their opinion on a store based upon how the website looks and feels.  If that first impression doesn’t say you are up-to-date and in tune with what they are looking for, you’ve lost your chance.  Make sure your website and the all important “About Us” page communicates effectively.

33) Raul Tiru, founder of GlobalOwls

Create something you really love and don’t get obsessed with stories from people who claim you can get anything worth having quickly. Take your time in setting the foundation. Figure out your product/market fit, build up your domain authority, etc. Don’t get overwhelmed. You can build an entire castle by setting one stone at a time. Reach out to people and help one another. It may sound dull, but these are the things fellow entrepreneurs around me really struggle with. As far as marketing tactics, you can just Google them.

34) Glenn Brooks, WebWize

Don’t be afraid to have a fire drill.  Sadly many business owners fall prey to retaining clients that continually cost them money, increasing the chance to fail as a business.  A good business person will recognize unprofitable clients and send them packing.  We are all in business to make money, pay our bills and feed our families;  clients that continually ask for free services, bitch and moan about everything we provide and interrupt your cash flow needs to head on down the road.  Don’t be afraid to have a Friday afternoon fire-drill with those clients, I guarantee your profit percentage will increase.

35) Shovon Joarder, Freelancers HUB

Operational cost is always the main concern of all businesses, especially to the small businesses and startups. These operational costs are not only the employee salary but also the necessary technology that requires huge monthly subscription or maintenance cost. On top of it, in many cases, business owners may need to train up the newly hired employee for a few months at their own expense.Recent trend shows that many big companies like Google, Unilever, Facebook, Telenor, Microsoft, etc. companies are hiring professional freelancers who not only have the required skills but also equipped with market-leading software. Why are they doing so? – The only reason is to get the employee who really doesn’t need the training and can serve their projects immediately, avoid purchasing expensive software that is much needed to research & analysis, marketing or execution of different types of works.This trend is real and we can get a proof of it in the statistics too in the survey conducted by the topmost freelancing marketplace. The statistics report below shows the rapid growth of freelancing profession that booms in the USA.Freelancers HUBIn 2019 and also in upcoming years, this graph will move further to the north and so the small business should give a second thought on this if they really want to cut down their operational cost and maximize their profit ratio.

36) Liuda Nebozhak, Head of Project, Crello

1. Know your customer

I would say that chasing your user – knowing who they are, what their days look like and how your service or product fits within their life – is the best way to attract and retain customers. One of the strongest selling points for Crello has been our ability to release a lot of new designs continuously, be responsive to what the user needs and help them find the right visuals amongst the fresh and new stuff we keep uploading.

2. Help to learn the product

Tutorials and reviews work great because they don’t just introduce blogger’s existing audience to Crello, they are also great for SEO – people searching for, say, “How to design a classroom poster” or “Ideas on Increasing Sales via Social Media” will be able to find the tutorial and both get the answer to their question and learn that they can use our tool to solve their problem.

37) Vaibhav Srivastava, Techno Giants

Nowadays, individual businesses are gaining success with the right efforts. So, for the small business owners, must know some strategies which help them for creating a better future. Initially small business requires rigorous effort and some strategies are:

1) To build brand value, reach out to the local media. 2) Retargeting, engage your interested and valuable customers. 3) Do customer service, both online as well as offline. 4) Give good reasons to your customers to shop with you again and again. 5) Never underestimate online presence or networking. 6) Don’t feel shy to talk with the mentors.

38) Antonio Chau, Founder and President of the Digital Marketing Company Leads Ngin

For small businesses, knowing what your client’s “latent demand” is can be a huge game-changer.

How so?

A “latent demand” is something your client doesn’t know they want until you tell them about it—or until they figure it out after the fact. By introducing them to their own “latent demand,” your credibility and authority as an industry expert is further established.

One of our recent acquisitions is the perfect example.

We created a carpet cleaning business in order to build a portfolio for our marketing agency. During the research and training phase, we discovered something interesting: most carpet cleaning companies do not sanitize their equipment in-between jobs.

Immediately, we recognized the problem … and so devised a solution: a unique selling proposition that explicitly stated how we “clean and sanitize all our tools before we bring them into your home.” By eliminating the risk of cross-contamination, we addressed the client’s latent demand for a clean, infection-free environment.

Most businesses are capable of fulfilling latent demands. They just need to figure out what those are.

Some suggestions:

1)    Carefully review your business processes. Be as granular as you can. Examine each step and ask yourself; does this bring value to my client? If so, what is the value?

2)    List down the value proposition for each step and rank them in order of relevance. Which ones would your clients be willing to pay more money for?

3)    Identify which value propositions on your list your clients may not know about. The goal is to find the items that will get your clients to say, “I never thought of that,” or “I didn’t even realize that was so important.”

If you can get this type of response, you’ve figured out their latent demand.

39) Allen Greer, FUZE

Don’t try to pretend to be something you’re not. Many small businesses feel intimidated while attempting to navigate a vast ocean occupied by much larger fish. Instead, realize that in 2019 small businesses are back in style! You have nothing to be ashamed about or to hide from. In fact, something we here all the time at our small agency is how refreshing it is for clients to remove some of the corporate red tapes and operate in a consultant/client relationships that is a bit more casual and friendly. Harness the positive aspects of being a small business, and use them as sales and marketing tools. Make a list of the advantages you have over a larger company, and use it to your advantage. For FUZE, we have a lower overhead, a faster turn-around time and give clients a lot of personal one-on-one attention.

40) Rob FitzGerald, Founder and CEO of Connext Digital

Every business decision we ever made was based on real, actual data. And for any business to reap positive results, they must always ensure that their data is up-to-date and accurate. They must perform regular data cleaning and enhancement. This is especially crucial before launching a campaign or before implementing a new strategy. Always verify your data. Data hygiene and appending will not only help you create more targeted marketing campaigns, but it will also allow you to increase your ROI by ensuring that your messages are sent to the right people, at the right time, through the right channels. I cannot stress this strongly enough.

41) Jess Thomas, Purple WiFi

Test everything, and never stop testing. A/B testing is a powerful way to increase conversion rates. There are tons of free and low cost tools available which you can find with a simple Google search… so no excuses. If you have two different headlines, or product/service descriptions, or contact forms etc. and you can’t decide which one to use on your website, run an A/B test to work out which performs best and brings you the most business. With A/B tests I’d strongly recommend testing only one variable at a time so that you can confidently attribute any increase (or decrease) in conversion to a specific change when the test is complete. If you do wish to test more than one variable at the same time, you should run a multivariate test which effectively lets you carry out a number of A/B tests at the same time. With multivariate tests, each visitor to your website will see a different combination of headlines, product/service descriptions, images, forms etc. When the results are in, you can then adjust your website accordingly. Testing is great as it lets you do two things; cut the crap and move forward with your successes. Once you have found something that works, don’t stop there, test it again to see if there is something that works even better.

42) Rob FitzGerald, Founder and CEO of Connext Digital

Every business decision we ever made was based on real, actual data. And for any business to reap positive results, they must always ensure that their data is up-to-date and accurate. They must perform regular data cleaning and enhancement. This is especially crucial before launching a campaign or before implementing a new strategy. Always verify your data. Data hygiene and appending will not only help you create more targeted marketing campaigns, but it will also allow you to increase your ROI by ensuring that your messages are sent to the right people, at the right time, through the right channels. I cannot stress this strongly enough.

43) Gabriela Damaceno, Media Shark

One of the first steps that small business owners make when starting their journey into the digital marketing and SEO world is to get backlinks to their website. Key start point! Get links leading to your homepage will help you to gain organic traffic. However, get links from spammy blog networks and low-quality directories can destroy your Google rankings. Remember: quality over quantity is the best way to go!

44) Nishma KhetiaWyzebulb

If I knew at the time of starting up, all the things that I know right now, I’d be too scared to start up. Good, I didn’t know everything. Sometimes being naive to certain things help. Courage is the only thing that takes you through the unknowns.

45) Daniel Troesch, Fourstarzz

Word-of mouth marketing, or people talking to people has always been one of the most powerful tools to convince and convert potential new clients. With the rise of online creators such as instagramers, youtubers and bloggers, who build strong communities, word-of mouth marketing at scale is possible. We are noticing, that big brands ask us to help them to integrate influencer marketing driven content strategies into their digital marketing mix. They want to leverage people talking about their products to stand out. With tools like Fourstarz Influencer Marketing Platform, small medium business can leverage the power of those online creators. Idea: Instead of asking models, ask a local influencer to come with their friends into your local store or restaurant. Or send product samples for exchange of great lifestyle pictures to influencers in your niche. The advantage of working with these creators: (i) create awareness, (ii) generate re-usable, high engaging and authentic content at scale. Smart marketers use it to leverage it for social proof on their website, newsletters, social channels and as well in Facebook Ad campaigns.

46)  Jazib Zaman CEO of TechAbout, TechEngage and WPArena

Whenever you implement a change in your site, you’ll first see how it affects the website’s ranking status on search engines like Google. The best way to grow your business is to grow your search ranking up. In search engine-oriented market, SEO is a more effective card to play and to win. For small and less budget business, it’s more complicated to face the established competition. Therefore, in all ways, solid marketing tips can give your firm an active boost up.

47) Alexandra Djordjevic, TheIuvo

Don’t ignore negative reviews if your business gets them. No business is perfect, so you are bound to get 1 or 2 stars Google at some point. However, it’s not the end of the world if you have 20 positive and 3 negative reviews. Those 3 minuses take nothing away from your reputation – on the contrary – they signal to potential customers that the other 20 positive ones are genuine. And if you can turn them around into pluses, you are doing a favor to your business in the long run. Negative reviews are an extremely valuable resource to SMBs because they provide you with information about the way your business is perceived by the customer, a picture about some downsides of your product you might not have been aware of before or the way you can improve your services. If you address them and act on them by resolving the issue at hand in the best possible way, it must be noticed and appreciated by both your current and potential customers. That’s how you build excellent customer relationships AND build your business at the same time.

48) Pryma Digital Marketing

A lot of small businesses take care of their marketing by themselves (often just 1 guy) if they haven’t got the budget to outsource this to an agency, and aren’t big enough to have a dedicated marketing team. This is not a problem, however when it comes to social media marketing, a lot of businesses are missing out on some low hanging fruits. Make sure to have your Facebook Pixel proper setup for your website (also with UTM tags, conversion goals etc) so you can let your pixel run and gather som data. A few quick tips to increase your ROAS when having a good pixel setup 1. Use campaign budget optimisation2. Split test minimum 1 creative each week3. Start using broad targeting -> Test into interest groups -> Test into LLA audience based on conversion/watch time etc4. Scale up profitable campaigns5. Repeat

49) Johannes Kanter, GettingGrowth

My best advice for small businesses today is this: – Try to analyze your operations daily and see where most of your time goes. – Make notes and analyse if doing that thing brings in revenue or not. Is it a core activity or a supporting activity. – If it’s a core activity, come up with creatives ways to optimize this process so that you’ll have more time. This can be starting to use a new tool, outsourcing something a new company or just doing differently altogether. – If it’s a supporting activity try to outsource or hire an employee to handle this tasks as soon as possible. Your time should only be wasted on driving the core activities. – Make quarterly plans and break them down into weekly sprints. This will keep you engaged and moving towards the goal. Remember only plan things that you feel that you can achieve within a quarter. If the tasks is too long then break it down and divide between multiple quarters. – Join online communities such as Facebook groups and spend roughly 30 minutes per day talking with peers and other business owners. Tell them what about your goals, struggles and also provide helpful advice from your experience. Don’t make it any more difficult than this!

50) Sameer Ahmed Khan, Social Champ

Social media in 2019! Make content, schedule it, engage with the audience, and then you hope and wait for some magic — And then…there’s,  the rest of your business to run. Emails to respond to. Problems to solve. A life to live with your friends and loved ones. So here I can give you a tip to manage your multiple social media profiles for your business. In order to reduce time spent on recurring projects, consider investing in a social media management tools like Social Champ, to streamline processes like social media publishing and reporting. This kind of platforms will help you stay better organized and leaving you time for what matters most, your business! – Social Champ

51) Bhavesh Nardani, Anova

Digital Leadership

Competent Digital leadership is needed to transform an organisation to be ready for the Internet-age, through a process of building new capabilities, plans and ways of operating.

52) Peter Boyle, Chief Copywriter/Head of Content of Jumper

Today’s customers are looking for the shortest, most streamlined, logical purchase journey possible. Optimising your processes to create a better customer experience is the key differentiator today. When you’re looking at establishing your next marketing campaign look at how you can make it as easy to complete as possible for the customer. In particular, look at the channels they use, the devices they favour, and the points of highest friction that cause the largest drop off. Then experiment with solutions that serve your customers the experience they want thought he devices and channels they prefer. If you don’t have the resources to fully analyse this, start with a conversational marketing solution. The intuitive experience generates much higher engagement and conversion rates.

53) Lindsey Winsemius, Vice President of Communications, ApogeeINVENT

Succeeding online nowadays is all about being transparent and authentic. Don’t be afraid to get personal with your customers, tell your story as a business, and connect with them as a person and not just a brand as much as you can. You can do this by blogging as an individual (“I”, not “we”), building the personal brand of your executives, leveraging video and experiential marketing, and using social media to reveal the personality of your brand.

54) Steve Eveleigh, Founder, Gripped

A decade ago, your website was there to support salespeople. Your target buyers would look through the site and get a basic understanding of your brand, business and product; then they would jump on a phone call with a salesperson and get into the detail. That’s not the case any more. Today, your salespeople support your website. Buyers want a self-service experience, backed by human interaction when they are ready to buy, not the other way around. Very few buyers want to speak to a salesperson at the start of their buying journey. And today most websites won’t cut it. Your potential customers have been training by their consumer experiences to expect slick, personalised, self-services experiences. If your website is discoverable via search engines, filled with rich content that guides a buyer and has helpful customer success folks waiting ready to support your buyer you’ll succeed. If it doesn’t, they’ll go straight to your competitors who have to grips with this brave new world.

55) Kapil Chopra, Intelegain Technologies

In an evolving tech ecosystem, customers are looking for solution providers that consider innovation as an end to end process. Start-ups and founders today not only need direction on building their tech platform, but also on cloud strategy and digital marketing to expand product outreach.

Ideating Start-ups need to deploy agile strategies that help build applications that scale starting with an MVP. Providing a seamless end to end User Experience to customers has to be the key differentiating factor. We need to always look at the end user who is at the bottom of the pyramid when creating applications.

56) James Isles Founder and Managing Director of Nebulas Website Design

Be honest and transparent to your clients always demonstrating you have their best interests at heart not fleecing them for as much money as possible, clients are buying into you as well as your brand. Manage their expectations and in doing so your relationship will be long and fruitful for both of you.

57) Reed Wilson, Founder & CEO of Palmetto Technology Group

Focus on sales and marketing – fast!  Get systems in place to nurture prospects and customers through the buying cycle and to keep salespeople focused on your top opportunities.

58) Tabitha Jean Naylor, Women Entrepreneurs Can

Know your audience.  Too many people try to focus on an audience that’s far too broad, which can end up hurting more than helping.  Really hone-in on who your target audience is, and then fine-tune your messaging accordingly.  This in and of itself can improve the stickiness of your content, not to mention, make your brand much more memorable.

59) Robyn Kyberd, Optimise and Grow Online

If you’re a small business or entrepreneur investing in digital marketing of any kind, consistency, personalisation and human connection are what is required to achieve greater marketing reach and sales conversions – not a fancy automated funnel. Yes there are aspects like niche targeting, promoting/advertising on the right platforms, all the usual marketing stuff, is still valid. However, the businesses that have seen the most successful launches and continual business growth are commonly those who excel at consistency in showing up, consistency in branding, consistency in strategy, and creating and sharing content that is relevant, real and personalised.

60) Sarah Bauder, SophisticatedInvestor

Choose the right team, because the greatest asset of any small business is its employees. Equally as important, know your customers and clients – this is imperative to any small business.
Content is really the key to small businesses being able to compete against larger, more established competitors. Research the needs of your target audience and the answers they seek (related to your products or services, of course). Then dig into where the gaps are in the answers provided by your larger competitors. Fill those gaps with high-quality content that answers the questions to which your audience isn’t getting answers. And don’t be afraid to go big. A great piece of content beats 10 poor-quality pieces any day. The goal is to gain the eyes of your target audience and bring them into your bigger community of content to start building relationships that lead to sales. A thoroughly developed, very authoritative piece of content can end up helping you with SEO as well. People will share on social media, other websites may link to your content, and Google will ultimately deem your piece of content the authoritative voice on the matter and start ranking it in search.

62) Farhan Ayub, WPBlog

Business now a days is all about listening to your customers. Feedback from one on one conversation with your customers can take you a long way and you can do that in a lot of ways. One of the best ways is to create a Facebook group to engage your customers. The group will include all your customers and your job is to encourage them to post their feedback and ask questions there so that you can talk to them personally and get to know them and their problems better. This way you will drastically improve relationships with your customers.

63) Taylor Miles, Webbroi

Build an Anti Fragile Business, to weather the economic storm & maintain positive cash flow.
  • Keep your financial burn, and overhead to a minimum.
  • Maintain diversity of client base, different industries and geo.
  • Be flexible with your customers – Offer pause of service, or reductions.
  • Find new services and products to address new challenges
  • Shift resources from sales to support, easier to keep revenue than generate new.
  • Use Freelancers, and low cost labor abroad to supplement a reduced workforce.
Digital Branding

How to Generate More Sales with Digital Marketing Campaigns

In 2017, advertisers spent 209 billion USD on digital ads worldwide compared to only 178 billion USD for their more traditional TV counterparts. The statistics show that the future of marketing is increasingly headed towards the digital space, as more and more businesses compete, promote and sell their products and services online.

You may have always wanted to use digital marketing to do the same for your business, but you’ll need to initiate a series of actions known as campaigns to convert a potential customer into a buyer. But how can you generate more sales of your products or services with digital marketing campaigns? Here are some of the ways:

  1. Build a website for your business.

Businesses that originated prior to the Internet’s existence had to have a brick and mortar location so that people knew they were around. However, in recent years, it’s easier to start a business of your own even without the initial need for a physical address. All you need to do is to establish your presence on the Internet through the creation of a website where you can sell whatever products or services that you want your target customers to avail from you.

It’s entirely up to you if you wish to build a website on your own, if you have enough coding and web design skills under your sleeve, or outsource it to a web development agency instead. No matter the current size of your business, you shouldn’t skimp on building an updated website unless you want to earn a bad reputation for being out of touch with the times. Remember, the website is the face of the company.

  1. Optimise your business website for search engines’ top ten results.

Even if you already have a business website built, don’t expect it to generate a decent amount of visitor traffic and eventually sales of whatever products or services you offer on its own. To organically increase the number of potential customers visiting your business website, you should make some adjustments to it such that it would consistently appear in the first page of results of every search engine with the use of search engine optimization (SEO) practices.

A few of those adjustments you can make right off the bat include naturally incorporating keywords throughout your website content that your target customers would most likely type, putting descriptive and relevant alt text in all of your site’s images, and ensuring that every webpage of your business website has an easily readable URL.

After all, you wouldn’t want your business website to die a silent death after it gets listed anywhere other than search results page one.

  1. Make your business website mobile-friendly.

In 2018, mobile users make up a majority of Internet users. It only follows that you should make your business website mobile-friendly so that you can attract more customers who might chance upon it while casually browsing on their preferred handheld device. To optimise your business website for mobile, you should use responsive design wherein its layout as well as all images in it would adjust themselves to scale no matter the size of a device’s screen. All buttons in your business website’s mobile-friendly version should also be large enough to prevent anyone accessing it from tapping on the wrong button or link.

  1. Consider setting up a blog for your business as well.

Even if you’ve already established a website for your business, your target customers would want to seek a more genuine connection with you. They want to feel that they’re more than just mere digits to your business’s sales figures. That’s why aside from putting up a website, you should also consider creating a blog for your business as well where you can connect to your target customers and sell you’re your products or services without sounding too cold and distant. You can incorporate it as part of your business website just like how most others do it – though you can also try making a standalone business blog as well if your budget permits you to do so.

Just make sure to craft content for your business blog that’s uniquely yours, interesting, relevant, informative, and of added value to your target customers all at the same time. For best results, combine long-form content that anyone can easily finish in less than five to ten minutes, the occasional infographic, and video posts in your business blog.

  1. Use social media to your advantage.

Assuming you’ve already built a website and blog for your business, you might find their visitor traffic to be quite lacklustre. You can remedy that by tapping into the vast pool of potential customers known as social media.

You’ll very rarely meet anyone interested to avail of a product or service who still doesn’t have any social media account nowadays that it’s only logical for you to set up at least one for your business as well. However, you should identify which social media platform a majority of your potential customers often use. If most of your target market is on Facebook, for example, it won’t make any sense at all to sell your products or services via Twitter.

Conclusion

While traditional marketing has yet to go completely extinct, its digital counterpart threatens to displace the decades-long monopoly it once had, especially as more and more people learn about the products and services being sold by different businesses online. That’s why as someone who has a business of your own, you should allocate a good portion of your budget on doing the above-listed digital marketing campaigns to generate more sales of the products or services that you offer. But in case you find it difficult to implement them yourself, you can consider hiring a digital marketing agency instead – though you should ensure that they use a large file transfer service whenever they send their work back and forth with you.

Digital Branding

Guest Post and SEO Digital Marketing Training: Your Course Review Benefits

Guest posting and SEO (search engine optimization) digital marketing have become relatively common nowadays in the blogosphere. In our world today, both of these have become crucial in driving traffic to your website and business. Guest posting and SEO digital marketing are excellent strategies to build traffic, establish your brand, and boost search engine rankings.

Assuming you’re already aware of guest posting and SEO digital marketing as online strategies, are you also informed of their benefits? Both of these methods are actually useful for any business in all industries. If done correctly, guest posting and SEO digital marketing can lead to unique hits or traffic to your website or blog allowing you to reach more potential customers. If you’re into e-commerce, blogging business, or just any activity that requires marketing on the internet, you may want to consider training in guest posting and SEO digital marketing. In this article, benefits regarding a guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will be discussed.

1. Effective Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing

By joining this type of training course, you’ll be able to make use of more effective guest posting. Guest posting is as simple as having someone else write material on your site — or vice versa. Guest posting works both ways for the site owner and writer. Site owners receive more content to publish, while writers get to feature their content to a new audience. Doing guest posts correctly, you’ll be able to reap the benefits by having more views and traffic.

For SEO Digital Marketing, a training course will guide you on which relevant keywords to choose by having a clear website and quality content. Main goals will be:

  • A user-friendly website
  • Easy navigation
  • SEO keywords
  • Optimized tags and title tags

This course will also teach you to pay attention to details like keyword themes and relevant links to build more web traffic.

2. Guest Posting and SEO Digital Marketing Strategy

Next question you’re probably asking yourself is how posting can earn you traffic. A training course will teach you which ways your guest posting can influence traffic. These include:

  • Direct referrals
  • Social traffic
  • Organic traffic
  • Name recognition
  • + more

These are key strategies that can make your website reach its optimal level.

As for SEO, this makes your website easy to find, navigate and categorize. By helping out customers easily browse through your site, you drive more people to your business and online platforms. Factors that come into play are the selection of right keywords, behavioral marketing, mobile advertisements, banner advertisements, social media marketing, and others. This course will train you on how to achieve just that and more.

3. Increased Rankings

Guest posts earn backlinks that can help you rank higher on Google, which in turn, creates more traffic to your website. SEO will also help you gain higher website ranks in the SERP (search engine result page) by performing well on social media marketing and digital marketing. The perfect guest post and SEO digital marketing training course will help you position yourself as a well-respected blogger as well. The course will teach you how to create the buzz that gets other people curious to look at what your site has to offer.

Digital marketing is a never-ending process, and you must be equipped enough to handle the ever-changing behavior and trends of your target audience — all of which will be taught in the training course. Numerous factors that will affect your site’s popularity and the time viewers spend on your page will be discussed in the training. Be the top ranking webmarketing123.com website by signing up for training today.

SEO and guest post best practices are constantly evolving — and a training course is the best way to stay on the top of the game. Has this article given you a more unobstructed view of the benefits of SEO digital marketing and guest posting? Digital marketing can be challenging and entail a great deal of work, but once you learn the ropes, developing strategies will be a walk in the park. You’ll have a well thought out optimization plan and traffic acquisition strategy once you take a training course if you’re up for it.

Digital BrandingSaaS Branding

6 Things to Keep in Mind When Hiring an SEO Expert

Although search engine optimization can be understood and implemented by most people, businesses should still consider hiring an SEO consultant. Hiring an expert is important, particularly for business owners who are overwhelmed with business responsibilities and lack the time for their website SEO. A professional can also help if the basic techniques applied on your website are not yielding the results that you desire. When hiring an expert for your business, here are a few factors to keep in mind.

Experience

Given the rapid changes in the search engine algorithms, it is crucial to hire an SEO professional who has experience navigating the regular search engine updates without compromising or affecting the effectiveness of your campaigns. When it comes to SEO, you should never judge the experience of a consultant based on the number of years that they have been in operation. Be sure to check case studies that demonstrate the past success of the professionals.

Results

With an SEO consultant, you should pay attention to the results that they promise to provide. You should steer clear of professionals who give big promises like getting your site ranked on the first page of the search engine within a short time frame. Unless your business niche targets the uncompetitive keywords, it is impossible for anyone to predict the time frame required to achieve a higher ranking for any keyword phrases. A trustworthy professional will make realistic promises of results that they can achieve.

Customer reviews

When hiring an SEO professional, you should seek customer references. You should not just rely on the testimonials that are published on their websites. This is because it is easy for anyone to make up these recommendations or even pay other people to write biased reviews. Request the SEO expert to give you the contact information of about five references. Legitimate professionals will have this information available for their clients and you should be wary of consultants who refuse to provide this information. Make sure that you get in touch with these clients and inquire whether their SEO projects were successful and whether they would work with the consultant again. You can get a lot of helpful information from these reference checks to assist you in determining whether the consultant will be a perfect fit for the SEO goals of your business.

Industry presence

When hiring an SEO professional, you should consider their industry presence. You need a professional who has established him/herself in the SEO industry. Such professionals will regularly publish guest posts on renowned search engine industry websites, for example, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Journal. They will also release white papers based on their experience and research and will be present in popular industry conferences. However, this does not mean that you should not hire upcoming SEO experts for your business just because they have not established themselves in the industry. With experts who have established an industry presence, you will be assured of getting excellent results because they already know their work and what is expected of them.

Provide clear expectations

Hiring an experienced and expert SEO provider is not an assurance that your campaigns will be successful. This is because it is difficult to tell whether your SEO plan will provide results just by looking at it. However, a good SEO consultant should explain to you what to expect when your campaigns are running. If you have already provided your needs and objectives, the professional should provide a detailed report on what he/she will do to meet your objectives. When it comes to SEO, metrics are crucial and by setting up clear expectations, you can easily determine the success of your SEO campaigns.

Cost of SEO services

When seeking SEO services, the fee charged by the consultant is a critical consideration. Very few businesses will have unlimited marketing budgets, and this is why you must consider costs when making your decision. You should be upfront about your SEO budget when speaking with prospective consultants. A good professional will offer ideas on what he/she can do with your specified budget and will inform you whether they are comfortable working within this spending limits. You should avoid consultants who are way out of your budget as it may strain your business financially.

Hiring an SEO consultant to help promote your business is a significant investment. As a business owner or website owner, you should mitigate your risks by hiring the right professional to provide quality SEO services. Therefore, keep the above-mentioned factors in mind when hiring an SEO expert to ensure that they have the knowledge, expertise, and experience to boost your website rankings and improve your business earnings.

Digital BrandingSaaS Branding

5 Ways How Knowledge Base Software Can Prove To Be Useful For Your Organization

The larger an organization becomes, the more important it is for it to ensure speedy communication between its employees. A customer service representative, for example, is going to need to be able to access information at a moment’s notice. After all, making an informed decision is one of the cornerstones of good quality customer service. A great way to make information readily available to all of your customer service representatives is to use a knowledge base software such as the one offered by Kayako. However, you might be wondering what a knowledge base software is in the first place.

A knowledge base is essentially a hub of information. It is a place where an employee of your company can put all of their findings and data in a way that would make it very easy to access. All it would take is a line of text and all of the information relevant to your search query is going to end up being presented to you. A knowledge base can also be used by CSRs to get their questions answered quickly without having to get up from their seat. There are clearly a lot of benefits associated with using a knowledge base. Here are some of the most prominent benefits that we have found.

#1 Boosts Efficiency at Work

If your employee has to scramble every time they need something, they are going to end up wasting a lot of time. Having instant access to the information they need can allow them to cut down on response and resolution times. This time will add up eventually until your employees are saving so much time that the number of customers they are able to serve will end up increasing significantly. A more convenient way of storing information also helps make work more dynamic. If your employee doesn’t have to scroll through endless lines of bland data, they are going to be more energized and therefore more proactive about the job that they are doing. It’s all about making life easier for your employees after all.

#2 Facilitates Employee Cooperation

One of the most important things to work on in your company is making sure that all of your employees are working together. This creates a sense of synergy that can allow your company to move forward because all of the cogs in the machine will be working in perfect harmony with one another. A knowledge base software allows your employees to communicate with each other much more efficiently. Instead of having to get up and go to where their fellow employee is to ask a question, they can just do that through the knowledge base software. Since cooperating and collaborating with their fellow employees will have become so much easier, your CSRs are probably going to end up doing it a lot more often which will definitely contribute to an overall feeling of synergy in your workplace.

#3 Helps Preserve Knowledge

Not all of your employees are going to treat your company as a lifelong employment opportunity. Everyone wants to move up in the world, and for the current generation working for too long in the same place can end up being a boring experience, so you should expect a lot of your employees to move on to greener pastures eventually. However, just because you are losing an employee does not mean that you have to lose the work that they have done. Through a knowledge base software, you can keep your employee’s contribution to your IP secure and easily accessible for all future employees.

#4 Allows Employees to Work Remotely

We live in a day and age where coming to the office is no longer a requirement in order to be a good employee. Nowadays you can work from pretty much anywhere and do a fine job. A knowledge base software can allow your employees to work remotely. It also makes it possible for satellite employees to communicate with one another, sometimes despite never having met each other! This can really improve your prospects by hiring employees that might have seemed impractical before due to how far away that employee is from your office.

#5 Improves Customer Satisfaction

Needless to say, a knowledge base software is going to really improve how your customers feel after they have phoned in with a complaint. Faster response and resolution times mean that your customers will be pleasantly surprised by how quickly they can get done with the call or chat. This is going to keep adding up over time until your company has a stellar reputation for the customer service that it provides. A knowledge base software can thus contribute a lot towards making your company’s future a lot more secure than it might be right now.

Digital Branding

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which is the Better E-commerce Platform

Photo credits: https://pixabay.com/en/ecommerce-shopping-credit-card-2607114/ 

Are you in the market for an e-commerce solution? If so, you’ll definitely love this short WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison. I also think you’ll agree creating an online store is a challenging feat. Turns out you can create an online store easily, and in this post, we help you to choose the better e-commerce platform for your needs.

We break down the post into sections such as features, pricing, and support among other things. By the end of it all, you will pick the right platform for your online store. Do you lean towards WooCommerce or Shopify? Let us know that in the comment section at the end.

Without further ado, let us weigh anchor and sail.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Basic Overview

WooCommerce is a plugin that you install on your WordPress-based website. It allows you to add powerful e-commerce features to any WordPress site. On the other hand, Shopify is a subscription-based e-commerce service. You don’t install Shopify; you simply sign up.

WooCommerce requires that you have a WordPress site first. Shopify doesn’t require you to have a website first; it’s a cloud-hosted e-commerce platform. While WooCommerce comes with a long (and often times arduous) configuration process, creating an online store on Shopify is a breeze.

Setting up a site on WooCommerce requires that you’re familiar with web-related things, even though it’s easy stuff once you get the hang of it. Things are a bit tidier with Shopify; setting a store on the platform is akin to signing up for a blog at, say, Blogger.com, or getting an email address at Gmail.com. Well, sort of.

All the same, both platforms come with enough features to launch a highly successful online store, whether big or small. Also, allow me to mention that the e-commerce platform that you end up picking from this comparison post boils down to personal preference and, of course, your needs.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Features

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that ships with enough features to create a basic online store. If you need more features, however, you can count on the wide range of free and premium WooCommerce add-ons.

Out of the box, WooCommerce ships with a ready-to-use cart, a checkout page, shop and a “my account” area where buyers can track orders and view their profiles. On top of that, it comes with five default methods of payment but you can add more.

Other than that, WooCommerce comes with an intuitive admin dashboard that makes managing your online store as easy as A, B, C. And thanks to a dedicated Products menu, you can sell digital and physical products on your e-store like a boss.

In terms of store design, WooCommerce is compatible with most if not all WordPress themes, such as the free BuddyBoss theme, since it’s just a plugin. There are, however, WordPress themes that are specifically made for WooCommerce. As such, designing the perfect e-commerce store is a theme or a developer away.

Shopify, too, shines in the features department what with a slew of nice e-commerce-centric features. Since it is a dedicated e-commerce service, you can expect all the features you need to build small and enterprise-level stores. You also get a free sub-domain (you can add a custom domain later) and free SSL certificate.

On top of that, Shopify comes with a good number of free and premium extensions that allow you to add some nice features to your store. Still, Shopify is incredibly easy to use no matter your experience or coding knowledge.

In the design department, Shopify features hundreds of themes. Well, the number of themes available for Shopify fades in comparison to what’s available for WooCommerce. All the same, the themes are professional and specifically designed for e-commerce.

An intuitive quick-start wizard helps you to set up either, but Shopify’s onboarding process offers you much more convenience. It takes fewer steps and effort to set up a store on Shopify, something we can’t say about WooCommerce.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Performance and SEO

On the web, content is king. Without amazing content, you cannot expect your store to perform well money-wise and on search engines. However, the quality of your content is only one of the more than 200 SEO ranking signals.

Nowadays, page load speed is an important SEO ranking factor. Now, this is where things get tricky, with some users claiming WooCommerce outshines Shopify and/or vice versa. Well, I root for Shopify here because it has dedicated servers that guarantee great speeds and uptimes.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have WooCommerce. The page load times you’ll record on WooCommerce depends on a couple of factors, the most important being the host you choose. Go for dirt-cheap hosts at your own risk – because, come on, what kind of performance do you expect from a host that charges a $1 buck per month.

In terms of performance and SEO, Shopify outshines WooCommerce since Shopify’s engineers do a great work of maintaining the servers for you. You just focus on the business side of things, unlike WooCommerce where you are in charge of site administration among other things.

Both platforms come with great SEO-related features, but that speed thing we just mentioned can be a deal breaker for WooCommerce stores, especially if you end up with a poor host. The chances of getting poor speeds on Shopify are slim.

Photo credits: https://pixabay.com/en/ecommerce-online-shopping-e-commerce-1992280/

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Pricing

As we’ve already mentioned, WooCommerce is a free plugin. However, to add more features, you will need extensions and these don’t come cheap. Your costs can quickly rack up depending on the extensions you choose, and this applies to Shopify as well.

To run a basic e-commerce store, though, you need about $29 bucks a month whether you choose WooCommerce or Shopify. But depending on the time commitment you put towards setting up a store, Shopify is the cheaper option in my opinion.

Besides, Shopify offers you a free 14-day trial to test the waters. You just need a paid plan to start selling. With WooCommerce, you need to find a web host, buy a domain name, set up WordPress, install SSL and then install the e-commerce plugin, before selling.

WooCommerce vs Shopify: Support

WooCommerce is open source, meaning you can get help on the support forums at WordPress.org. On top of that, you can sign up on the official WooCommerce site to get support. Shopify, on the other hand, is a commercial e-commerce solution. You get professional 24/7 support via email, chat or phone.

Final Words

Whether you go with Shopify or WooCommerce, running a successful online store is all about providing great value to your users. Endeavor to provide amazing products and user experience, and you’re golden no matter the platform you choose.

WooCommerce has a steeper learning curve compared to Shopify, but once you get used to either of the platforms, the cost, and effort required to run your store depend on the features you need. Shopify is for the entrepreneur who wants to hit the ground running. WooCommerce is perfect for the businessperson who isn’t afraid to play around with myriad settings.

Between WooCommerce and Shopify, which platform do you feel is the better option for your business? Please let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Digital Branding

5 Branding Strategies to Adopt for Vape Products

It is true that there have been speculations about vape branding; many of you would feel that marketing vape products and services would be risky. However, the truth is entirely different.

Ever since reports have come out in support of vape products, people have become more inclined towards switching from smoking to vaping. In fact, new bill has passed in favour of E cigarettes which will encourage businesses to promote vape products. It is being also claimed by NHS that vaping is 95% safer than tobacco cigarettes.

How do these ads affect people?

We all know the role of media in today’s world; people are more likely to pick things from seeing ads. According to the studies conducted by university of Kansas, watching advertisements regarding vape can stimulate one’s mind and attract a person to vape even if they have never vaped in their life.

CDC has also backed these facts claiming that expose to the advertisements about vaping products can definitely alter the brain chemistry of people making them vape. Hence, number of vape users is more likely to increase after being exposed to vape ads.

But how we market vape products?

It sounds like a tricky question, but to be honest, it is further from that. There are ways to brand vape products and spread word-of-mouth among people, like one of the best premium e liquids brand LongHornVapor did very well in its branding. Let’s talk about some of those strategies.

Creating an online presence

If you ever make a guess about someone and say they don’t use social media, you will lose that bet. It is one of the most cost effective strategies compared to conventional branding. According to Tobacco Control, it was reported that in the branding of JUUL, millions of dollars were spent online by the people in vape market. No wonder why there is so much buzz around youngsters wanting to add vaping in their lifestyle. What people see on Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms, suddenly becomes a hot commodity. Yes, we are still talking about vape products. Infusing attractive elements of hip-culture, fun and relaxing ads with a bit of sex appeal will do the trick just fine.

Sponsoring events is the game-changer

Be it a movie star, a musician or someone whose who is famous, you can sponsor an event under your company’s banner. Letting a top-performer setting the stage on fire can give the most enthralling experience to the people making them want to vape.

Some of you might think getting sponsorships might be hard because of all the fuss that has been around. At the same time, people have been realizing great things about vaping. And unlike smoking, there are absolutely no restrictions when it comes to promoting vape products in any way you want.

It all starts with the flavor

That’s right! If you are someone who is thinking about spending a huge lump of money on marketing, make sure you set your target market first. You can do that by having the right flavors in your vapestore, Flavors like Cotton-candy, Whipped Cream eJuice, Gummy bear and Candy King can attract the younger lot, while flavors like brain freeze can promise to cater adults’ needs and really increase the footfall.

According to Truth Initiative, more than 40 percent of the people only opt to vape because of the promising flavors.

Go Hollywood!

No, we don’t mean auditioning for roles in a film but fusing your vape brand with the film industry can be the name of the game. Moreover, Product Placement is one of the most sought-after branding strategies in today’s world.

It is not something risky as many have opted to showcase vaping in the movies. Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey and even Zac Efron have been seen vaping on the big screen. When stars vape, Boom! Everyone starts doing it. That’s the magic of right product placement!

Develop an app

Thanks to Google and Apple, a digital platform has been set for you to make your own mark and let your business flourish. But why would you need an app? It’s a very reasonable question to ask.

Many people who are having problems regarding vaping, the apps can be a way to provide them guidance. Apps like Vape Boss, Vaffle and couple more have been committed to providing useful information to beginners and people who enjoy vape-culture. You can also develop something on those lines. For that, distinguishing yourself from your rivals would be the key and focusing on the needs of people is a way to go.

Local Branding

6 Ways to Improve Brand Positioning (Fast)

Brand positioning is essential for any online business these days. It refers to the way your brand is positioned in your customers’ minds. It occurs whether or not you have a strategy in place because your customers will always have an impression of your business.

But you can help to direct your brand positioning by creating a distinct impression on your customer and ensuring they associate your brand with something desirable.

So, how can you set about improving your brand positioning? There are many ways, but here are six to help you get started—fast.

1. Determine Your Brand’s Personality

The first thing you need to do is determine your brand’s personality. Your brand already has a voice, whether you have made an effort with this or not. Customers will encounter this whenever they land on your website, see your social updates, or click your ads.

You should start by deciding what you want this voice to be. Should it be funny, strict, youthful, serious? Your voice will play a large role in your brand’s personality and how your brand is perceived by your customers. If you do not have a clear brand personality, you are increasing the chances that you will be forgotten all too easily by your customers.

Your personality is determined by the words you use, the design of your website, the types of social updates you post, the ads you run—everything that you do.

So decide what you want your brand personality to be. Create a firm idea of your brand voice, then write down exactly what you are going for and share it with all the stakeholders so they can use this to influence their activities.

2. Decide What Makes You Special

Why is your business different? Why would people want to choose you over your competitors? You need to know this if you want to stand out, and that means you need to know your unique selling proposition (USP).

This will help you to differentiate yourself in a competitive environment. Once you know what makes you special, you can communicate this to your customers.

This can be surprisingly tricky, but one good way to start is to look at your competitors and see what they are doing. As you look over their products, can you pinpoint ways in which your products or services are better?

Perhaps your products have something special about them, or maybe the way you do things is superior. If you were trying to convince someone to choose you, what negative aspects would you highlight about your competition? Do they take too long to deliver orders? Do they charge too much?

A fine example can be seen in the chocolate brand M&Ms. Claiming to melt in your mouth rather than your hand is a simple USP that appeals to a consumer desire that they might not have acknowledged themselves. The chocolate market is one that is heavily saturated, and yet this USP lifts M&Ms above the fray.

Create a list of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and determine what it is about your business that would make your customers want to choose you. Once you know, you can start making sure your customers know about it.

3. Know Who Your Customer Is

You also need to know exactly who your customer is. You may think you know, but do you really? You cannot position your brand properly until you know this; you have to position it at someone.

Create a marketing persona, or a few of them, and determine everything about your target customer. This should include their interests, dislikes, hopes, fears, the movies they watch, and more. See what they do on social media and work out what is important to them.

This can have a huge impact on improving your brand positioning. If you know who they are, what they want, and what matters to them, you can position your brand more effectively.

4. Tell Your Brand Story

Tell your brand story based around how you came into being, the problem you solved, and how your product or service was the solution. You will probably have one main product or product line that determines who you are and how your business came into being. Perhaps this is the product that you started your business around.

Telling your story can help to form a bond with your customers and highlight your shared values, which makes you come across as more trustworthy.

You see this all the time with nascent ecommerce businesses looking to get ahead of competitors in the digital space. For example, electronics websites are a great investment for entrepreneurs. There will always be a market for the latest gadgets and tech, but in such a saturated market it can be tough to stand out.

By creating a unique brand story that resonates with customers, brands can position themselves as more than simply a business. Brands can become relatable, friendly, and human.

5. Create a Positioning Statement

When you have done all of the above, you’ll be ready to create your positioning statement. This is a short statement, just a sentence or two, that communicates your value. It should include details of who your business is targeted at, why it is special, how you meet their expectations and how you fulfill their wishes.

This is an internal state for your business, so don’t worry about how snappy it is. Simply use it to influence your decisions, especially when it comes to marketing.

Your tagline is a shorter version of this that is more customer-focused. This is an external statement that you can use on your website or packaging. It’s usually punchier than a positioning statement and more memorable, and it can help you to quickly communicate your brand value.

6. Connect Emotionally with Your Customers

Finally, focus on connecting with your customers emotionally. You will only reach your customers and have an impact on them with an emotional connection.

One of the best ways to do this is with content, which provides you with an opportunity to go more in depth. Use content on your blog, for example, to engage. Don’t just promote, and instead use your content to educate and inform to connect on an emotional level.

These six tips will help you improve your brand positioning in no time at all. But don’t forget one of the most important things of all: consistency.

You need to be consistent with your brand positioning if you want to maximize its effect. Once you have determined your voice and your values, ensure you remain consistent everywhere, including your blog, advertising, social media, customer support, design, use of words, images—everywhere.

This way, you will help to make your brand more memorable and avoid confusion, creating a stronger connection with your customers that will last.

Patrick Foster, Ecommerce Enthusiast, and Entrepreneur

I’m a freelance ecommerce expert & serial entrepreneur. I love to write articles on ecommerce branding and content marketing for ambitious online sellers and hope to share some useful insight that will help to grow your business.

Local Branding

A Guide To Environmentally Friendly Promotional Products

It is our responsibility as humans to care for the environment and keep the earth safe, not only for the sake of mankind but also for the animals and plants.  The majority of experts, and the non-experts agree that humankind has not done enough to keep up their responsibility.  It is time to improve on our work.

In an effort to continue moving forward regarding environmental care, we would do better to market our efforts.  Too many businesses rely on chintzy products that are funneled to landfills; thereby, adding to the problem of environmental destruction instead of environmental reform.  Our company advocates an alternative approach where your marketing collateral will help save the earth.

Instead of utilizing paper bags that are as detrimental to the planet as plastic bags, if not more, it is time to modify the bags into items that can be reused.  One should also consider clothing, office supplies, accessories and awards that are not created using renewable materials and do not pollute the water or air.  To make a dent in the green movement’s objectives, while still impressing customers and generating crucial band impressions, you should consider taking these factors into account.

Promotional Products That Do Not Harm The Planet

This post is going to focus primarily on bags.  Why?  Well, statistics show that bags tend to build more impressions than any other promotional item.  For example, a promotional bag will over 900 impressions per dollar; whereas, writing utensils and shirts receive only 500 impressions, and even billboards receive only 500 impressions. 

Taking these statistics into account, brand impressions increase for fewer items overall.  This means that you can purchase fewer products and be more environmentally friendly and you can get them at low low prices.  So, why do people insist on buying mountains of collateral when they could purchase some promotional bags and see the same level of promotional efficacy?

Of course, not all situations call for bags.  Regardless of whether you are sending thank you gifts to a customer, filling out a convention booth or dressing up a gift store, you may prefer other products.  With this in mind, below are our top ten favorite eco-friendly items from the baggy side of life and beyond.

1.  The rPET Bags

Considered the holy grail of all eco-friendly products, the rPET bag is one that can be reused each day and can be recycled itself.  The rPET bag is created using recycled poly terephthalate and is available if a four-color silkscreen.  It is developed using 80 percent recycled water bottles, and it comes in both matte or gloss lamination.  The 20-inch laminated handles are available for maximum comfort.  Use this eco-friendly bag when at conventions, trade shows, at a retail register or to say thank you to customers.

2.  Cotton Toiletry Bags

Cotton is one of the renewable and biodegradable resources, making it an ideal option for all types of promotional products.  Due to the fact that people require storage bags when travelling, we recommend the cotton toiletry bag as a promotional product.  They can also be used for alternative functions, such as a snack pack for health-conscious travellers, so you don’t have to rely on take-away services or as art supplies for children.

3.  The Cooler

Coolers are traditional fare for fishing trips, picnics, hiking, and other outdoor activities.  With a good cooler at your side, you can keep all beverages and food cold during a long, hot day without relying on an air conditioner or ice.  As the majority of people enjoy using a cooler, and keep them on hand in their trucks and cabinets, they are also a great promotional product.  Not only are you are guaranteed that the cooler will not be thrown away before their usefulness runs out, but they are a great canvas for store names, logos, missions statements and much more.

4.  Clothing

While shirts gain fewer impressions per dollar than promotional bags, 200 impressions is not something to turn your nose up at.  Moreover, clothing tends to last much longer than most items, particularly if you order items that are made to fit the human body – say goodbye to shapeless t-shirts for females!  When the clothing is made from 100 percent, organic cotton, then the item is also biodegradable.

5.  Storable Pouch Bags

The storable pouch bag has become a mainstay in grocery stores and artisan shops, primarily because they are so useful.  Our Ripstop nylon fabric with drawstring closure bags is lightweight, strong and cheerful; therefore, they are able to fold into small package for storage in center consoles, glove compartments, drawers and backpacks.  The final result?  A bag with high durability that will last for years, and will always be useful when travelling.  Due to the fact that it is so small, this type of bag is less likely to be thrown away than other bags.

6.  Reclaimed Cork Pet Mats

Humans and their furry friends have a long history of comradeship, regardless of whether you are a cat or a dog person.  So, what better way of drawing in the pet crowd than by using reusable cork mats?  The reusable or reclaimed cork mats are ideal for sleeping, eating and litter-boxing (in the case of cats).  They are made from reused cork, so you can use the material to absorb spilled liquids or give the companion a comfortable place to curl up.

7.  Kitchen Accessories

Kitchen accessories are an instant hit regarding reusable items ranging from customized bag clips to bamboo cutting boards.  The boards are a renewable resource and clips can be used until the end of time.  Providing promotional kitchen accessories is a great way of stocking customers with branded items, safe in the knowledge that you are not contributing to their world of rubbish.

8.  Beer Bags And Wine

We are not going to step over the line and say that all people enjoy beer and wine, liquor and cider, or even fizzy soda.  However, during a survey of family, friends and work colleagues, we came to the conclusion that most people enjoy a cold drink of some sort.  This is where beer and wine bags can be beneficial as they make the ideal gifts with value-added advantages and for-sale perks.

9.  Small Totes

Not all people enjoy an extra large grocery bag, particularly at a small boutique or trade show where items are less bulky.  In some cases, the more beneficial option is a small tote.  This tote bag is ideal for holding pamphlets and papers and conventions, clothing and jewelry at boutiques, and jars of truffles or olives at upscale grocery stores.

10.  Edible Promotional

The ultimate eco-friendly promo item is the one you can eat.  The edible gift leaves no trace, so it is maintaining a green approach to environmental care.  Aside from small packaging, nothing enters the landfill.  If you want to stack up on promotional items, you can always fill a bag with edibles for a gift basket or package for purchase in the store.  The latter offers customers the option to purchase gifts for others, and your branded bag leaves the store to begin generating promotional impressions.

Final Words

Using the information above, you can see that you do not need to look too far to find environmentally friendly alternatives to suit your needs and begin generating brand impressions.