Results for: content marketing

How to Become a Brand Manager

Steven on January 8, 2020

I think you will agree when I say: that starting a new career in brand management is hard. What does the role entail?

Which skills do you need as a brand manager? How much do brand managers make annually? These are some of the questions you’re probably asking.

Turns out starting a career in brand management is easy if you know what you’re doing. And in today’s post, we show you exactly how to become a brand manager that every team wants.

Read on to learn the basics of starting a successful career as a brand manager.

Who is a Brand Manager?

A brand manager is responsible for “defining and promoting a company’s personality, both on the shelf and in the community.” The main role of a brand manager is to create a branding strategy for a company.

Brand managers wear many hats in an organization, covering everything from market research, branding, advertising, product development, packaging and so on.

Generally, brand managers are responsible for a company’s brand image and reputation in relation to the target market.

They carry out market research to determine what ticks, and then use the data to formulate creative branding and marketing campaigns that lead to customer engagement.

It’s an interesting career choice for anybody with a knack of creative thinking and a good grasp of analytical skills. A passion for all things marketing is an added plus.

Salary Prospects

If you want to become a brand manager, you’re probably wondering how much the job pays. Well, brand management is one of the better-paying marketing jobs.

Most brand managements work within teams on a full-time basis, which comes with bonuses, health insurance, house allowances, commissions, and such benefits.

According to Payscale.com, brand managers take home anywhere between $60,000 and $130,000 per year depending on skills, experience, and the size of the company.

Your salary goes up as you earn certifications and gain more skills and experience.

How Does the Future Look?

The future is bright for all brand managers especially with the advent of digital advertising and social media marketing.

Every organization needs a brand manager to remain competitive and expand their market share. You might have the best product in the market, but if your branding fails, you won’t sell much, if anything.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “…overall employment of advertising, promotions, and marketing managers is projected to grow 8 percent from 2018 to 2028, faster than the average for all occupations.”

That being said, how do you become a brand manager?

5 Top Tips to Start a Career as a Brand Manager

In the following section, we cover a couple of tips to help you cover your bases as far as becoming a brand manager goes. The tips will help you prepare for any brand management role, and ace the interview when you start job hunting.

Get the Right Education

Most employers require at least an undergraduate degree in marketing, business, brand management, advertising, or a related major. Some employers will also require a post-graduate degree such as an MBA for high-level positions.

Since brand managers must play many roles on a day-to-day basis, a bachelor’s degree is a great starting point for building a successful career.

Formal education offers you advanced instructions in various fields such as advertising, business, and economics, all of which come in handy as you scale the corporate ladder.

Gain Experience

Most employers usually require their ideal candidate to have some years of experience before applying for the job. You’ve seen this repeated in nearly all job postings.

It goes without saying that the more experienced you’re, the better your salary becomes like a brand manager. This applies to entry-level, middle-level and high-level jobs; more experience means better career prospects.

But if you’re just starting out, how are you are supposed to have experienced for the job? Well, you can start with a brand management internship.

Most companies are more than eager to offer brand management internships that come with a lot of on-job training.

An internship can help you develop real hands-on experience as a brand manager. The best part is most companies will offer you a salaried position after the internship.

But even if the internship doesn’t lead to direct employment, the experience you gain will look good on your resume when applying for a brand management job.

If you cannot get internships, you can try pro-bono work. Talk to your friends, charities, religious groups, and local businesses, and do their branding to gain experience.

Earn Professional Certifications

Academic qualifications show the employer you have the background to fill the position. Professional certifications, on the other hand, show the employer you have the relevant skills, expertise, and passion for the job.

There are a number of industry certifications available to all aspiring brand managers. Some notable certifications that will help you better compete include CBM, CPM, and ACPMPO among others. Earn as many as you can, and stand out from the crowd.

Certifications offer you advanced skills and resources that make you a better candidate in job interviews compared to individuals without certifications.

Network

If you want to work alone, branding (and even marketing in general) should be the last profession on your mind.

Brand management involves actively working with others in a rapidly changing environment. You will work with people, and that’s the end of the story.

As such, you should invest in building a network of likeminded people. While working with your team on a daily basis is great, you need to expand your network to people outside your company.

Network with other brand managers and marketing professionals via social media. On top of that, attend networking events to meet up with other people in the industry.

Don’t just go for the business card; endeavor to cultivate real relationships that can lead to better career prospects down the line. In other words, foster professional and/or personal relationships with your network.

I say this because you never know who will recommend you for your dream job. Don’t make it all about you; networking is supposed to be a mutually satisfying activity for all parties involved.

A simple “brand management events” search in Google should point you in the right direction. To be a successful networker, brand manager and marketer in general, you need to develop a cocktail of other skills, which leads us to our last point today.

Develop Your Soft Skills

As a brand manager, you must develop a couple of soft skills to thrive. It’s vital to keep in mind that you will need to communicate with your superiors and juniors on an ongoing basis.

This means you must hone your communication skills to ensure your team creates a cohesive brand image.

You’ll rely on said communication skills to explain your strategies to superiors based on real-world data you collect from astute market research.

The successful brand manager must also be creative. Brand management involves a lot of creativity, and the ability to come up with ideas that help the company stand out at any given time.

Other than that, you need to develop other soft skills such as responsibility, conflict resolutions, time management, focus, trend savviness and so on.

When you combine soft skills, experience, academic qualifications, experience, certifications and networking, nothing will stop you from becoming the brand manager every employer wants.

Conclusion

Becoming a brand manager is easy when you know what you’re doing. We hope our tips help you to start a fulfilling career in brand management. As we have seen in today’s post, the job is both exciting and lucrative for the passionate candidate.

Do you have any questions or suggestions? Please let us know. Cheers to a successful career as a brand manager.

Personal Branding

How to Start a Marijuana Business

Steven on January 7, 2020

As more countries turn towards the marijuana industry to bolster soft, slightly flagging economies, many of those who have been waiting on the side-lines are now keen to enter into the sweet spot of almost-legal status and get a head start to grow their own marijuana business. In this article, we highlight some of the considerations those wanting to start their own small business so that are better prepared to achieve the success they desire.

Know The Laws, Exploit When You Can and Abide All of Them

Each country around the globe and many individual states/local regions have their own laws governing the marijuana business. This is one industry you can expect to continue to have far-reaching and sweeping legal changes rolling through over the next decade. There are bound to be major clashes with a difference of opinion, regardless of any validated research showing the efficacy of cannabis components to improve health and wellbeing.

Conservative estimates for the rate of growth from 2017 to 2021 are threefold and every Government entity is going to want their slice of the pie. So, exploit any loopholes you can. Abide by all the laws, even if you don’t like them. Better to say on the legal side rather than lose a budding enterprise over a technicality, particularly when penalties care a mandatory minimum term to serve. Keep abreast of legislation in the pipeline and understand the current federal/government, state, and metropolitan laws and ordinances as well as the full extent of the licenses and permits you need to maintain in order to trade.

Decide What Type Of Business You Want To Grow

From cultivation to consumption and managing by-products and waste, there have never been more opportunities than now to get a foot on the cannabis success ladder. In the USA, the cannabis industry has gone from the black market to the mainstream and continues to be experiencing unprecedented growth. Do your homework and decide first if you are in it for the short, medium or long term.

Against each of the possibilities below, decide if it is something that really appeals to you. Be honest about the dedication you will bring to make it a success.

Grow Your Own on a larger scale for lots of people to consume
Create Infused Products
Open Your Own Retail Store or Dispensary
Distribution of Product
Hemp Opportunities
Value Added Services to the Cannabis / Wellness Industry

You may find you naturally gravitate towards one or two sections of the market. Delve into those further and keep brainstorming possibilities within it. Weigh your preference against the opportunities and the payback on your investment in terms of cash, resources and of course your sweat equity. Make sure you stay abreast of all the pitfalls, keeping careful watch as they develop.

Keep aware of all the tips and log them. For instance, for cultivators who grow for others, having fewer than 100 plants in your facilities means you avoid getting a five-year minimum sentence if convicted under federal law.

Learn the Lingo and the Technical Stuff

Unless you are already an enthusiast and up on the technical terms used in the industry, you will need to learn the jargon specific to your arena. At some point, you’ll need to keep track of the slang and the lingo used for different weed measurements and their typical price points. Failure to show familiarity may result in an unbalanced negotiation where you are always at a disadvantage.

Finally, make sure you understand the math and the calculations. For example, failure to convert US imperial measurements and the metric system used by the rest of the world properly can mean the difference between a very profitable business and a potential loss. It is probably best to double-check calculations through, just to make sure.

Take Stock

Next look at the commitment in terms of costs, times and skills you already have and compare to your ideas of the type of business you want to build. You don’t need to be an expert in everything, but you will need to rely on the people who work with you to help you achieve your business goals.

You can leverage your expertise to make your business fly but remember to bolster your weak areas too. All too often those with product fail to connect with potential buyers, this might be where you need to network or work with someone who can provide the services you need, be they accounting, marketing, etc.

Be Prepared To Deal With the Unexpected As You Get Down To Business

You will meet many challenges along the way, and one of them may be how to bank your money. It may be some time before every bank will back a cannabis business. Currently, the estimate is that 70% of those trading do not have bank accounts. Keeping meticulous records is probably the best way to show the legitimacy of your business.

Plan and re-plan, modeling several scenarios and options to refine your thoughts before committing. Set out your complete business plan and include everything you would for any other new business venture. This includes market analysis, the legal structure and organization, marketing and sales, staffing and other necessaries, and of course your financial projections. Remember to include the types of partnerships you will want to develop along your journey.

Make your plan as detailed as possible before you dive into the business. It’s better to plan more than getting taken in by a “never to be missed opportunity” which you can’t bring to a profitable pay-out.

The Final Word

Laws change all the time. Cannabis is still illegal under USA federal law, though it is legal in over 30 states. Around the globe, the penalties range from very minor right through to execution.

Keep aware of how production and transportation of products may be impacted by travel routes and other factors that may limit your markets or may mean that you set up a different physical and legal structure for your company. Keep a watchful eye on impacts of international trade agreements and Mutual Recognition Agreements which will have a major impact on the shape of the future cannabis industry.

Digital Branding

Why Social Media Marketers Should Rely Less on Facebook

Steven on December 4, 2019

Social media marketing is a must these days. No longer is social media a simple website or application on the Internet for connecting with people in different parts of the world, no matter the timezone. But rather, social media has taken over digital marketing these days. In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways on how to promote and sell a brand’s product or service. JSMM is a social media marketing agency that specializes in a lot of digital marketing tactics, so they can pretty much attest to how social media helps accelerate a brand’s interaction and engagement with users, as well as its online visibility.

One of the most popular social media platforms today is Facebook. Facebook is arguably the most powerful and most used social networking site ever to exist. With Facebook, you can connect with your family and friends, collaborate with colleagues, and meet new people. You may even buy Facebook likes and comments to achieve rapid success. That’s why a lot of companies globally use this platform as one of their primary channels to market, promote, and sell. More than that, it also helps in establishing a stronger online presence.

However, some experts may not agree with Facebook being an effective and efficient tool in social media marketing. In fact, social media marketers are even advised to rely less on Facebook. Curious? Here’s why:

Ads Are Getting Too Costly

Startup businesses that rely on social media marketing in today’s digital era can attest to this. Lately, Facebook ads are starting to get costly, with little to no improvement in their overall performance. While this is not an easy feat for small businesses, larger and established companies can better provide a budget for this. That is, of course, if you’re willing to splurge on Facebook ads. Might I suggest you do your research first and plan ahead so you can allocate finances and budget, and, be able to pay for this commitment in the long run.

Consumes So Much Time

While there are automated Facebook services available to do the job for you, these programs and software can’t do everything still. At the end of the day, you have to rely on yourself, your team, and your skills to be able to respond to most of your customer concerns, queries, and feedback. On top of that, you also have to check-in on your analytics, analyze reports, and such for you to be able to improve in delivering and optimizing your content.

In turn, if you fail to manage your reputation on Facebook, then your supposed social media marketing strategy could potentially hurt you in the end.

Insufficient Privacy

These past years, Facebook has had issues regarding privacy, and it is, in fact, one of the major concerns of most Facebook users – whether personal account holders or companies. Although Facebook has now simplified its privacy settings, it’s still safe that you stay out of this platform if you’re trying to build your brand’s name. One incident of getting hacked, and you permanently damage your business’ reputation. Now, you wouldn’t want that. So, since the stakes are high, you might as well opt for other social networking platforms where you can secure your brand like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.

Slowly Losing A Hold On Its Marketing

Long gone are the days of Facebook skyrocketing in the field of social media marketing. Today, more and more marketers shift from Facebook to other social networking platforms simply because Facebook has lost its charm in marketing. Originally designed to be an interactive platform where people could share information, Facebook has gone downhill by losing control of who posts such circulating information and what exactly is included in these posts.

Of course, as a marketer, you intend to uphold and protect the image and reputation of your brand. However, today, it has become so easy for random users to post malicious content on your wall – a few of which may possibly come from competitors, and that’s the sad reality of it.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, a lot of social media platforms like Facebook are provided for marketers all over the world. However, before fully immersing your social media marketing strategies on these platforms, make sure you’ve done enough research so as to avoid spending on platforms that wouldn’t and couldn’t bring your business any good. Social media marketing plays an important role in your business, and, in fact, takes up a huge chunk of your budget and overall performance. The least you can do is integrate your company with tools and platforms that do not deliver as what they have promised.

Digital Branding

LinkedIn Branding and Sales Tips For Beginners

Steven on November 28, 2019

Today, most businesses are on LinkedIn, probably including your company. But with your current efforts, are you even generating leads and converting it into sales?

Your personal brand’s website is essential in creating connections. To establish yourself as an expert in the field, you must have great content. LinkedIn is a great platform to establish your brand, share valuable content, and convert leads into sales.

Indeed, lead generation is an essential part of the business. If you wish to gather paying customers, then you must have a good stream of leads. However, doing it on LinkedIn is not always easy. It demands skills, effort, and time.

Thus, in this article, you will learn tips on how to generate sales leads on LinkedIn.

1. Optimize your LinkedIn Profile

To optimize your page, polish it to make it as engaging as possible. Make it visually pleasing to make the content optimized during searches. Here are some steps on how to do it:

Make Your Profile SEO Friendly – When you are filling out the information on LinkedIn, it should be SEO friendly. This can increase traffic, return on investment (ROI), and brand awareness. Furthermore, you can compete with other business rivals and grow your business.

Do this by conducting proper research to come up with keywords to optimize your profile. Check what are the keywords your clients are searching for and incorporate it into your page. Proper keywords can provide you with direction, new topics, and wise use of your time.

Fill Up All The Information – Fill up all the information in your profile completely. Research says you will more likely to receive inquiries if your page has all the information needed by the customers.
Create A Vanity URL – A vanity URL, or branded link, refers to a descriptive and easily recognizable URL. It is a long URL that is converted to a short link to redirect from one location to another. It is different from short URLs of Goo.gl because it does not include the brand name of the person who created the link. It works by giving the audience a clear indication of the owner of the link.

A vanity URL can increase brand awareness and improve your LinkedIn SEO. You can establish trust with your clients since people can easily recognize and remember your page URL.

30-Second Commercial – Create a 30-second video commercial that answers the question “What do you do in your business?” and “What are the services that you provide?” Make sure that you include the text in your profile. This is a video pitch.
Showcase Your Projects – You have the chance to post the URL of your portfolio on your LinkedIn profile. Seize this opportunity. With projects, you can highlight your past work. You can demonstrate your talents and let clients understand the services you offer.

As soon as your profile is done, don’t abandon it. Continue nurturing your page. To be a constant figure in the feeds of your clients, update your page regularly.

Spend a minute each day to post an update for your LinkedIn network. Every time you post an update, your profile will be displayed on the feed of your connections. Make sure to add value to every post you make. See to it that everything is inviting and practical. Write articles, or share your business presentations. Finally, always take note of your goals.

2. Write Effective Connection Requests

Building your network is important to get the word out about your brand. When you reach out to people, you have reasons in your mind to justify why you want to connect with them. To connect with people, check their profile first. Look for something interesting and make sure to mention it in your personal message.

For connection requests, the limit is 300 characters only. Make sure that you use this space wisely. Be straight to the point while also being genuine.

3. Engage With Clients And Partners

Encourage your contacts from other social media networks to connect to your LinkedIn profile, too. Thereafter, find opportunities on how to generate sales leads on LinkedIn from their connections.

Try manual searches to invite potential clients to visit your page. Join social media groups and be active in answering their questions. Post links to direct your contacts to your page.

Remember, give the prospects what they want and need. At the end of the day, they are interested in building professional relationships. Thus, make sure that you avoid shallow marketing. Focus on professional engagement instead.

You can achieve this by planning and conducting research. Be as detailed as possible to come up with a viable niche. Then, tailor your message to create a lasting impact.

4. Write Recommendations For Your Contacts

Write and post recommendations for your prospects and key contacts. After this contact approves your testimonial, it will appear on their LinkedIn profile. With this, they are more likely to return the favor. This can be a recommendation or referral, which would reflect positively on your brand.

Conclusion

It is possible to start generating leads on LinkedIn. But achieving hundreds of leads will not happen in one day. Learn to optimize your profile, connect with key people, and post content regularly. You will need to be creative on your posts to be noticed by prospects. If you are willing to exert time and effort, you will get leads in no time and win the hearts of your audience.

Legal Branding Personal Branding

Importance of ID Badges in Company Branding

Steven on November 28, 2019

The use of ID badges in all companies regardless of how big, small, or what they do is highly recommended. Any company that is not using them is missing an opportunity to take its brand to higher marketing levels. These badges have a significant impact in brand creation and promotion. Beginners have a better opportunity to compete with big brands if their employees and visitors are wearing branded ID badges.

Preparing the Right ID Badge for Branding

It all starts by preparing the ID badge that your business deserves. The procedure requires innovative minds and a reputable design and printing expert.

The journey starts with the preparation of the company logo. The company theme colors should be maintained, but they should be vibrant and clear. A visible logo that strikes a balance between size and visibility is perfect.

You should utilize both sides of the ID badge when you want to brand your company. While the main face of these promotional badges should have the name of the employee and logo, the backside can have less important information like a bar code to access the doors. This will leave the front face for the logo and perhaps the company slogan.

Many people ignore the ID badge strap, but this is another opportunity to promote your brand. Although it should not be too wide, medium-width straps can also be printed with the company name and logo for more promotion.

The last consideration to make is to ensure that the ID badge is durable. Both the design and the material used play a significant role in this. Thus, working closely with reputable experts will be a benefit to this project.

Why ID Badges are Important in a Company

As mentioned, the primary goal is to increase brand recognition. Yes, any visitor or person who interacts with your employees will note your newly designed logo, slogan, message, or any other information. They can remember the name of the company once they see it on the badge. But this badge goes way beyond this.

Improves employee confidence – A good ID badge displays the identity and sometimes the title of the employee. As they work, they feel that they are an important part of the company. Therefore, they will serve the company with a high level of confidence. This creates an excellent brand ambassador in the long run.
Better customer relations – Both customers and employees relate well when there is an identity. Many customers feel better when they know the name of the employee who is serving them. Because the badge increases employee confidence, the level of customer satisfaction increases as well.

Conclusion

All companies should have an ID badge for all employees. They are an excellent brand promotional tool that serves many other purposes as well. As seen from the above insights, it is easy to create a useful ID badge design if you use reputable designers. When the project is completed, you will definitely enjoy the fruits that will come forth.

Digital Branding

Google Autocomplete for Reputation Management and Other Activities

Steven on November 27, 2019

Autocomplete is a Google feature that expedites your search process by throwing in some automated suggestions based on popular trends. Surveys tell you that this single component helps reduce more than 200 years of daily writing efforts. Ever since late 2004, this algorithm has been available for desktop, and then it became an integral part of mobile devices too. The main reason behind its widespread adoption is ease and convenience. Typing on mobile phones is comparatively tougher. Hence, it came as a welcome tool.

However, you may wonder how to autocomplete can predict user behavior. An answer to this is that it collects information from different sources of Google searches, results, content, comments, reviews, and so on. Anything that gets more attention from people populates this space. Now, from this, one thing is clear you cannot limit its utility in terms of reducing writing efforts. If used smartly, you can benefit from it in many areas of digital marketing campaigns.

Online reputation management (ORM)

You can benefit from autocomplete in the field of online reputation management big time. When someone searches for your business or your name, he comes across autofill suggestions before your website. If it contains any negative terms about it, users can easily get influenced. So you cannot afford to ignore it. You have to be on the qui vive regarding anything that is partly or wholly negative about your business and make attempts to balance the predictions. For that, you have to detect areas where your image is highlighted in the negative light, interact with customers, and create positive feedback for yourself.

Since social signals enjoy considerable search engine attention, you can emphasize your content, engagement, and messages there. Use and optimize positive keywords on your website and other accounts. Plus, try to establish higher positive connections so that you can gain positive reviews, ratings, and focus.

Keyword suggestions

Doing keyword analysis, which is an inherent part of all SEO techniques, is not an easy job. You have to spot the relevant keywords and the ideas that go well with them while doing search engine promotions. Although you cannot depend on Autocomplete thoroughly for this, you can start from here for content development. For best results, you can use it along with Google keyword planner and other third-party tools. It can prove hugely useful in predicting CPC, competition, and other things.

Besides, if you intend to fill the content gap with long-tail keywords, then again, it can come in handy for you.

Customer behavior

Search patterns can reveal what your users are searching for online. They speak of their intention. If you can go deep down their intent, you can optimize your pages, messages, layout, and photos accordingly. For that, you may have to search many websites and their content also to have a fair idea of people’s expectations. When you do this, autocomplete gives a peek into strong long-tail keywords as well as user intent. You can target them through your content for different stages of the buyer’s journey and benefit.

If you want to exploit this feature for long-term benefit for ORM and SEO purposes, contact a reliable NYC based digital agency, such as RMG Digital Solutions, for assistance. The experts can guide you properly.

Digital Branding

How to Maximize Your Email Response Rate?

Steven on November 26, 2019

Almost everybody today has an email account, which lets them get messages.

Email advertising is using the email’s application to send advertising messages to the audience.

Email is among the easiest, cheapest, the quickest, and most ways. Email advertising provides all the flexibility of sending any message, make it a picture, a video to you. Among the benefits of marketing is reported that it permits you to send your message if this is a significant facet for you personally.

When you send out an email like in blogger outreaching procedure, it’s generally to receive a reaction in return in the customers or possible clients, ordinarily.

What is a Response rate in Email Marketing?

A response rate is the number of answers or answers. Response rates are significant since they ease sales and production, finally earnings for the businesses. They supply confirmation that marketing is delivering the estimated or required yield on investment or not.

Response rates also inform you which readers are faithful, providing you with a means to move.

Some of the top tips to improve your email response speed are:

Boost subject line

The line is the thing in an email a receiver would read. The rates, which are, the amount of all emails opened per 100, would be increased by Enhancing your subject line. The firms have a tendency to concentrate more on the content of not the subject line and their email. If your subject line isn’t attracting, the people who the email is sent by you to, may not open it!

With, shouldn’t be a formality, it has to be private. One thing that’s performed and that is the easiest thing which could be done would be to bring the name of the company. Avoid asking questions. This raises the prices that are open, a notch up.

And the most significant issue is that the subject line should not be overly long. Anything might lead to a dip at the reaction prices to be particular.

Quality articles

The standard of articles that you write is significant in the email, but also from a post that you send to possible clients or clients. The higher the quality of the material, the more probable it is the clients (or potential clients ) will undergo the email and browse the proposal you need to offer you. The quality increases the reaction prices and helps to understand the material.

Personalization

The email that you send out has to be as private as you can. Personalization provides a sense to the readers the email was crafted for them with a person in the business.

Because it’s from the templates, the email shouldn’t be copied. There are odds of this reader moving through the content. They discard it mid-way and would stop reading. The private or exceptional that you seem, inflow, and the more probable it are, you will find a reaction resulting in eventual lead creation of earnings.

Also, remember that the email ought to be crisp and short and to the point. That the readers may eliminate interest, Should you beat around the bush. It’s ideal to be as brief as you can, to create the most as the attention folks of these people is short nowadays.

Format of this email

This facet of an email is the one that is ignored or not paid attention to. Precisely the same time that it needs to be private, and the email that you send should have a look and should provide the picture of a real person crafting it out. It could be a waste of time to devote a few hours without going through it, but the readers discarding it. To avert this scenario formatting the is needed.

To possess the perfect formatting, remove the font you might have used. Attempt to maintain the material tidy, not utilizing flashy colors or font types. Organize the substance in amounts and bullets to get ordered content and better.

Also, add your touch, which includes your signature and name along with the essential information that can come in helpful for calling you to the existing or prospective customers.

Legal Branding

5 Factors Affecting the Success of Your Small Business

Steven on November 25, 2019

Being a business owner sure does sound nice. Not only that you get to be your own boss but there’s also a potentially unlimited income that we all dream of. Contrary to what many people believe, there’s much more to running a business than coming up with a good product idea. There are many factors that contribute to how successful your small business will be and being aware of them is a huge plus. With that said, let’s take a look at five factors affecting the success of your small business.

Goals

Ask any entrepreneur out there and they’ll tell you that setting business goals is a must when running an organization. It’s just that without a list of clearly-defined goals, you and your team members simply won’t know what to strive for in your operations. Not to mention that by not setting goals, you actually make it more difficult for you and your employees to stay motivated. If you don’t have one already, make sure you come up with a list of realistic goals for your business and revisit it every now and then.

Marketing

Another thing no business can survive without is marketing. Obviously, your goal is to attract as many customers as you can and maximize your profit. In order to do this, you first have to know more about your customers and develop the right marketing strategy for your business. Luckily, small businesses can now promote their products without breaking the bank. Valid product schema markup significantly helps products get found online. For example, you can set up social media pages for your business and use them to interact with people on the web. Plus, there are traditional marketing channels such as radio commercials and promotional products.

Finances

There’s no need to say that money is the most important thing in any business. If your company isn’t making money, there’s no point in operating. Dealing with business finances isn’t easy and it’ll probably take you some time to get a hang of it. Just have in mind that keeping your personal and business finances is recommended as it makes doing your taxes much easier. Another smart thing for business owners to do is invest things earnings in things such as forex. Connect with experts at Ever Forex and you’ll be able to make just enough to help your business move forward.

Business relationships

Knowing the right people can do your business a huge favor. There are so many small businesses out there and by connecting with other entrepreneurs, you open up new opportunities for your business. For example, you and another company can start a buddy marketing system where you promote each other’s products for free. One of the best ways to meet the right people is to attend networking events and be on social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

Employees

Chances are you’ve already heard people say that your employees are your most valuable asset. They’re right. Without your staff members, the company wouldn’t be able to operate and you’d be forced to shut down. Some entrepreneurs believe they can do everything themselves but they soon realize that wearing all the hats is just impossible. Bringing in the right people, on the other hand, is quite easy and it allows you to focus all your time and energy on your core operations. Be careful when conducting interviews and do everything that’s in your power to keep your employees happy.

Want to achieve success faster?

If you want to achieve success significantly faster with a small business, consider buying an existing business for sale. This will allow you to trade under an already established and trusted brand name in your local area. You will also get access to the previous business owners’ proven methods of success. This is invaluable, especially if you are a first-time business owner. Suppose you would like to learn more about the types of businesses for sale. In that case, we recommend you visit a trusted directory of business opportunities such as Businessweek, where you can find a wide range of different business opportunities, from small businesses for sale all the way to medium-sized and large businesses for sale.

Over to you

The life of a business owner isn’t as easy as some people would have you believe. Only by keeping a close eye on each of these factors do you get to see your business become relevant in the industry and start competing with large corporations.

Digital Branding SaaS Branding

How to Get on Top of Competitive Analysis for SEO

Steven on November 22, 2019

Competition is an inevitable and extremely healthy aspect of every activity. Without competition, complacency would set in and there would be no incentive to innovate. Because there is competition, all players are forced to keep on trying to do better in every aspect of their business so that they can steal valuable market share and build enduring customer loyalty. According to https://www.forbes.com, performing competitor analysis enables you to keep on improving and also provides you with an effective benchmarking system so that you know if your marketing strategy is paying off or not. For this to happen, a business has to first identify its main competitors, find out why they are getting better search engine ranks, and then decide what strategy to adopt to get ahead of them. Some practical tips on performing competitor analysis effectively:

Find Out Your Principal SEO Competitors

Most business owners will very easily be able to name the main competitors in their industry; however, it is quite likely that they will end up looking confused if you ask them who their main SEO competitors are because the two are not necessarily the same. It is also quite possible that you may have to contend with several SEO competitors who operate outside of your business niche while competing for superior SERP rankings. The main SEO competitors are those online businesses that rank in the first Google search results page for the target keywords or phrases, irrespective of whether they actually compete with you for the same business. If you operate in several niches, it is quite likely that you will have separate and distinct competitor lists with very little overlap. Luckily, the process of identifying your main competitors is as simple as examining the search results page for every important keyword. You can even use a specialized competitor analysis tool to make the process easier.

Evaluate the Strength of Competitors

Even before, you jump into tweaking your on-page SEO or adjusting your link-building strategy, it can be a very good idea to analyze the SEO strength of your competitors. Theoretically, you can outrank any competitor for any keyword in any niche; it may not be practically feasible due to the huge amount of resources required. To avoid wasting your resources, you should use a competitor analysis tool to figure out the total domain strength of your competitors. Thereafter, you can analyze specific factors like domain authority, domain age, and location, search engine indexing, backlink data, catalog listings, the volume of traffic and social signals so that you can try to discover any weakness that you can exploit. It is more productive to concentrate on competitors who rank well for niche keywords but have a lower overall score because outranking SEO for strong competitors can be tough and expensive.

Identify New Keyword Opportunities

Term frequency-inverse document frequency analysis (TF-IDF) is a very handy method for elevating the quality of your existing content with keywords that are being productively used by the competition, according to the CEO of arguably the best SEO Company in Washington. The complicated-sounding expression is a figure derived by the number of times that the keyword appears in the content multiplied by its expected frequency. This method allows you to optimize your web pages better for SEO and also for discovering keywords with low competition that you may have overlooked. By analyzing TF-IDF, you may find out that many of the top-ranking pages that you are competing against have many terms and phrases in common. If you are not already targeting these keywords, you can gain a lot by adding them to your existing content or even building new content to accommodate them to boost semantic search relevance.

Scrutinize On-Page Optimization and Content

The analysis of the on-site SEO of your competitors using any commonly available competitive analysis tool will unearth lots of valuable information that you can work with for boosting your SEO. Factors like the frequency of content publishing, content types, and target keywords can be especially helpful in tweaking your own content management strategy. Among other things, you should focus on things like metadata, title tags, title keywords, length of the title, internal linking strategies, etc. that seem to be the bedrock of their SEO success. By figuring out the things that your competitors are doing especially well, you can adjust your SEO strategies for better performance delivery. Content analysis is also of vital importance; monitor the topics being published, the type of media used to deliver content, word count or length of the videos, the extent of details, etc. as they all are valuable signals that are picked up by Google bots as they crawl websites.

Investigate the Backlink Profiles of the Competitors

The number and quality of the backlinks are very important signals for search engines for page rankings. Accordingly, you should find out where your main competitors are getting their backlinks and what sort of content is attracting the backlinks. Using that insight, you can improve on the quality and relevance of the content of your website so that you become an equally attractive destination for sites with high domain authority. Backlink analysis is best done with a proper competitive analytics tool, as a manual operation is not feasible.

Study the Site Architecture and User Experience

Among the many recent changes Google has made to its algorithm, quite a few have been on focused on a better user experience; these include improved search results, quicker page loading, improved mobile experience, etc. when compared to your competitors, if your website is unresponsive or has a confusing navigation, you should take steps to address the issues immediately. Essential steps include optimizing the sitemap for improved crawl-ability, prioritizing the loading times of pages according to their values, and ensuring search intent is paramount across all pages.

Conclusion

Competitive analysis is not something that you do once and forget about. Remember, your competitors are not asleep and doing everything that they can to rise to the top of search engine page rankings to grab the maximum volume of organic traffic. You need to keep on constantly monitoring them across the most important metrics as well as finding out the impact of Google updates on the performance of your site so that you can stay on top of the situation consistently.

Digital Branding

15 Ways Live Streaming Can Improve Your Business

Steven on November 22, 2019

Live streaming is an innovative solution for businesses that want to leverage the opportunities offered by technology without spending a fortune. Unlike earlier days when live streaming required expensive setups, today both amateurs and huge enterprises do it in the same way. Businesses of all sizes and levels are streaming live videos to conduct live virtual meetings, online training, and seminars, etc.

According to the Interactive advertising bureau, nearly two-thirds of the global online audience has watched live videos of some kind. With live streaming quickly becoming a mainstream thing, its utilization as a marketing tool is inevitable. Today, live streaming is an important asset in the marketing strategies of businesses of all kinds.

To start with, you can use social media streaming on platforms like YouTube Live, Periscope, Facebook Live, or Instagram’s IGTV. Use Blerp if you want to add sound alerts to your stream. You can also move a step ahead and create a live-streaming website of your own to explore unlimited business opportunities. So how to create a live-streaming website?

It’s a systematic process with multiple steps where the first step is to understand the benefits of live streaming and how to use the same for business improvement, which we are going to discuss in this article. Here, we look into 15 ways of how live streaming can improve your business growth.

1. Build trust and transparency

As per the general purchase behavior of online customers, people prefer brands they already trust. Customers tend to associate trust-worthiness with the quality of the services offered. Live streaming can be a great way to build trust among your audience by showing an unscripted side of the brand in a transparent way.

For example, you can live stream to candid moments, behind-the-scenes, and back-end processes to magnify your brand’s transparency to the audience outside your customer base. Moreover, when you share your live videos on social media channels, your posts could earn more shares and positive comments, which further help in establishing yourself as a reliable brand.

2. It is cost-effective

One of the best aspects of using live streaming for marketing is affordability. Before live-streaming came into existence, most brands relied on TV to display their ads, videos, and reports. This, of course, was a costly process. However, today with a high definition camera or a smartphone and an internet connection, businesses can broadcast live videos effortlessly. Additionally, most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube allow live streaming free of cost, though there are some restrictions.

3. Encourage user engagement

With live streaming, it is easy for businesses to get feedback from their viewers through comments, likes, and the number of shares. Facebook says that people comment 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than normal videos. Live streaming is an excellent way to engage your online audience. It generates buzz that excites viewers. Chats and live commenting are significant to engagement and besides that, you can also create polls to keep your viewers engaged and get real-time feedback.

4. Facilitates real-time interaction

Live streaming offers a unique advantage to be real and genuine with your audience and followers. Being a real-time tool, live streaming helps in establishing a genuine real-time connection with your audience effortlessly.

5. Sharing a live stream is easy

Another unique thing about live streaming is that, even after a live stream ends, it is easy to save a video to your social media channels and use it as a video-on-demand. It helps in bringing-in repeated exposure to your audience. For example, if you are broadcasting live via Facebook Live, the video shows up when a user’s friend reacts to it or leave a comment on a live stream. Once the live stream is posted to Facebook page, it again shows up in the feed so that people who have missed it can view it again and share it with other people.

6. The possibilities to experiment are endless

Unlike other digital platforms, live streaming offers a lot of opportunities for businesses to experiment. You can try out new production styles for live videos to see what works best for your audience. Try testing raw video and highly produced live videos to see what your audience responds to the most.

7. To recruit employees and interns

Yes, you heard it right. When technological advancements are at peak, why not use them the right way to capitalize? You can use live streaming to take your hiring process to the next level. For example, Grubhub used Snapchat to enhance the interest of the audience in their internship program and lock down a summer intern. It posted a slideshow in snapchat stories to explain how interns could apply for the post.

8. Collaborating with a popular event

One of the best ways to gain more exposure in live streaming channels is by coordinating with a popular event where most people tune.

For example, Taco bell gained more exposure on snapchat when it uploaded a snap story movie in coordination with MTV movie awards gaining a huge reach and improving brand awareness.

9. Show off the real process

Broadcast live sessions to show your followers how your business works. Generally, your audience gets to see either the final product or services you offer. They never get a chance to understand what exactly goes in the back-end or the processes involved in the whole game.

For example, Nasa hosts live videos on google hangouts especially for audiences who are interested in aerospace research and who like to learn more about the organization.

10. Run a contest

Another way of using the power of live streaming to promote your business is to run a contest through your live videos. You can run the entire contest through a live session by interacting with the audience and allowing them to participate via comments or a link that you provide in the video description.

11. Show off skills

Live streaming can be a great way to show off your skills. It can be anything like broadcasting a USP of your business to show that you are really good at what you do. For example, Tastemade hosts food show series on Facebook live and showcase their skills to gain social traffic and to engage their fans. This works well to gain exposure and make people coming back to your brand.

12. Get your fans to laugh

Live streaming needs not always be about the technical aspects of your business. You can also go live just to entertain your audience. Occasionally, try doing different types of videos doing something humorous to create tons of social and website traffic. Use a professional live streaming software to create a great looking broadcast with advanced features to impress your audience.

13. Make product announcements

Showing the unique moments like product announcements and related news, you can build excitement among your target audience about your brand. Make them a part of your new venture to improve the chance of them converting to your customers. For instant Chevrolet live-streamed the CES 2016 event where it introduced its Bolt EV model. In this way, the brand could reach out to both audiences who were a part of the event and who weren’t physically present.

14. Broadcast interview sessions

Do live sessions to interview important people who are connected with your business or with anyone whom your target audience can relate to. Broadcasting live interview sessions generate interest among your target audience as they get to know the otherwise-not-known side of your business. For example, Benefit cosmetics went live with their chief Beauty Ambassadors Annie & Maggie Ford Danielson which fostered pretty good engagement.

15. Go behind the scenes

Host behind the scenes live sessions to show your audience about the things normally they won’t get to experience. It can be anything like showing the backstage of an event, the making scenes of a product or something that is out of your business activities as well. Offering anything out of the box will keep your audience interested and engaged.

In conclusion

Live streaming is an excellent way to reach out and connect with your audience by facilitating real-time conversations. Launching a live streaming platform also holds potential in this technological environment. You can start a live streaming business and let other businesses use your platform to connect with their audiences. Learning how to start a live streaming business is a profitable idea in 2019. Now is the real-time to leverage the power and potential of live streaming to grow your business or start a new business aligned with it.