Results for: content marketing

Technologies that Helping Businesses Generate More Sales

Steven on November 20, 2019

The marketplace is swamped with high-tech tools that claim to make life easier for salespeople who are constantly on the move. However, with so many options, it can be a little overwhelming trying to pinpoint the best solutions for your selling style. Which tools work best?

You might have heard of mobile, analytics, social, and cloud tech. Not only does technology help streamline business operations, but it also helps with sales and marketing. New technology can give you a strategic presence across a variety of platforms. These technologies give top salespeople the advantage over other professionals and should be made a top priority in the coming year. Here are just a few ways technology will boost sales in 2019 and make you a more productive salesperson.

Say Hello to Social Networking

Those salespeople who do not capitalize on the connectivity of social media are way behind the times. Social networks like Plaxo and LinkedIn were specifically created for business-minded professionals just like you. Not only do these sites give expert salespeople an outlet to connect with their peers, but they also allow open communication with consumers, potential customers, and other businesses. These platforms help spread the word about your unique solutions and make your brand more personalized. If you are looking to put your network to good use, expand your list of contacts and create opportunities, then leverage social media.

Qualifying Prospects

In addition to networking on social media, tech tools will help salespeople get the qualified leads they need. Resources like Lead411 and NetProspex can provide sales with company addresses, business email lists, and phone numbers. Some of the best B2B lead generators are a great solution for all professional salespeople in providing qualified, You new and targeted prospects.

Prioritizing and Leveraging New Information

As you might guess, there is no shortage of information out there. Most people spend their days tweeting, emailing, posting and sharing—possibly even over-sharing. Most days it seems like a cacophony of howler monkeys barraging you with information. With just a few tech resources you can prioritize this information and easily find the information most relevant to you and your selling style. Evernote, Scoop-it, and Flipboard can help you organize and engage more effectively with your feeds. Not only are the layouts organized and user-friendly but also accessible across computers, phones, and tablets. You can easily stay abreast of updates and get results based on your queries. You can receive alerts if certain prospects, clients or other businesses are in the news.

Lighten Up

In the field, it is difficult to lug around a heavy laptop. Modern technology now has a solution that will lighten your load while traveling. The tablet is the way to go. Smartphone efficiency is crucial for making deals, reaching out and staying in touch. It is necessary to access emails, check websites and use software applications on the go. Some ultra-mobile tablets include Apple iPad Air, Dell Venue 11 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. These best-of-the-best tablets are easy to use, carry around and prove to be just as powerful as those overweight PCs.

Forecast Remains Cloudy

Another must-have tool for 2019 is a fast and secure cloud system. With cloud solutions, you can work as a cohesive team, collaborate with customers, develop new and profitable relationships, and support more effective work-flow processes. They are fast and reliable, easily used by new employees and veterans. Sales Cloud, Box, and Okta give team members easy access to applications, documents, and systems anywhere and on any device.

Old-School Resource with New Technology

Still one of the best resources for many sales professionals is good old-fashioned, person-to-person communication. However, those who suggest “just calling” prospects will be ridiculed. This is no joke. Sometimes, a live conversation is the most effective method for hitting up prospective buyers. The most affordable connectivity options include Skype and ooVoo, allowing salespeople to video chat, instant messages and make Internet calls anytime for FREE. These sites and apps work on computers, tablets, and mobiles, and provide a whole new way of staying in touch.

Author: Usman Raza is the co-founder of Christian Marketing Experts LLC, a marketing consultant at SeedX Inc and working with various brands online. He is devoted to helping small businesses bridge success gaps by providing in-depth, actionable advice on digital marketing, SEO, and small business growth. Follow him on Twitter @usmanintrotech.

Digital Branding

Expanding Company Awareness Beyond Logos: How Flyers, Stationery, and Pop-ups Can Boost Your Business

Steven on November 17, 2019

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Almost all businesses perpetually look for ways to increase their brand awareness. The most common and traditional way to get people to know about you is word of mouth marketing. With the entry of social networking sites, this form of marketing has gained a great deal of popularity.

Even though this form of marketing is beneficial, it can only be used to promote your existing services. What should you do if you are launching a new range of products, or if you are organizing a special event? For this – and even for traditional marketing – you should always employ more than one method for creating brand awareness among the people. Let’s have a look at what other marketing methods you can rely on for reaching out to more people.

Use Flyers for Marketing

A flyer is typically distributed among people by a company representative. Beside street distribution, there are other ways as well to distribute the flyers including newspaper insert, instore distribution, and door-to-door mail drop.

The best thing about a flyer is that it allows you to get creative. A well-designed flyer with a killer copy will attract the attention of a large number of people. Also, you can insert discount coupons or vouchers in the flyer as a form of incentive for your customers, getting them to visit your business.

An internet user sees an ad on a website and forgets about it in a day or two, but since flyers are tangible items they will remain in sight of your prospective customers who are more likely to act on them. Flyers are a tried and tested way of marketing and can help you substantially in reaching out to more people and drawing them in to your business. Designing a flyer is now no more time consuming as you can design one within a minutes with an online flyer maker tool.

Don’t Ignore Pop-Ups

Suppose you are running an online store exclusively or you don’t have enough funds to open another branch. You can always set up a pop-up store for additional revenue. Unlike traditional stores, pop-ups are easy to manage and don’t require big monetary investments.

Pop-up stores can also be seasonal. For example, you can set up your stall in a mall or any other shopping area close to a festive season to increase sales.

Importance of Stationery Marketing

No one can deny the importance of business stationery for creating a long-lasting impression among your clients. Always use high-quality premium paper or other relevant material in all your correspondences.

Customized notebooks and pens are also popular business stationery items. You have to be careful about the color theme and the design of your stationery. Make sure that everything is consistent with the tone of your business. Such premium products basically show the effort you put into your brand – something which makes a huge difference in how people view your business and what it stands for.

Wrapping It Up

The different marketing methods make it easier for your brand to create a stronger image among both potential and existing customers. By trying these offline marketing methods, you can easily increase your revenue by reaching out to more people.

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Legal Branding Local Branding

10 Tips To Accelerate The Growth Of Your Business

Steven on November 13, 2019

Building traffic to your site is a necessary part of doing business that can be achieved by accomplishing one task at a time. Very rarely does a website become an instant hit and go from no visitors to 50k overnight.

Take advantage of traffic in the organic listings with a ranking on the first page of search results. 70-80% of people focus on organic listings because they believe they are more inclined to find credible information than the paid listings.

In fact, organic traffic represents a 5.66% more times the opportunity than a paid advertisement.

Push your site to the top of the SERP’s by incorporating the following tips and strategies that will give your website more ranking ability to drive more traffic.

Perform regular maintenance
Make your site faster
Improve mobile-friendliness
Assign your keywords
Establish search intent
Link to and from internal pages
Use alternate forms of media
Optimize for SERP features
Improve your credibility
Build an audience

Perform regular maintenance

Establish a regular routine for when you run a site audit to avoid any errors that may contribute to a drop in ranking. As time goes on, every website will begin to generate errors-especially if there is content being added regularly. Errors could be anything from indexing issues to duplicate content.

An SEO consultant will run a site audit before the start of an SEO campaign. This keeps the data on the new project accurate and relevant. Eliminate any errors that arise before the campaign starts so there is no interference with how the page is being ranked.

Here are a couple of tools you can use to create a report on the errors your site is generating:

Make your site faster

Page speed is an on-going battle and should be a regular item on your to-do list. There is always something you can do to make your site faster. Google has openly stated that page speed is a ranking factor they use so staying below the industry average (three seconds) is one way to give your website a competitive edge.

Run a page speed test on any of the following sites to get a score on the speed of your site and the details for what exactly is slowing your site down. You can use any one of the following tools:

There might be items in your report that are complicated to fix however there are changes you will be able to make to improve the speed of your site.

For example, the size of images is a major issue that slows down a lot of sites. Using a tool of your choice you can replace your images with smaller versions to speed up how fast they load.

Here a few tools to use:

For the other items on your report, you may see things like inline and minify CSS and JavaScript. These may present more problems if you’re not savvy in speaking those languages. There are plugins and CDN (content delivery network) solutions that can help to do most of the heavy lifting for those issues. We recommend checking out a handpicked collection of the best resources to learn Javascript.

Try using W3 Cache plugin, as it’s the most widely used for many of the issues that slow down the load time (minifies HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) This plugin can also be integrated with your CDN.

Cloudflare is a popular choice in CDN’s and they offer a free version that is effective in improving your page speed, security, and overall website performance.

Improve mobile-friendliness

Canonical tested one million websites for mobile-friendliness and found that 24% of the website failed the test. This statistic shows the opportunity to outperform competitors in mobile-friendliness.

Image source: https://canonicalized.com/mobile-friendly-study/

Although 99% of websites made today are made for mobile devices, there are sometimes structural elements that should be addressed to make your site mobile-friendly. Test your site out on Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to get a score for the mobile-friendliness of your website.

There may be small adjustments to make that would improve the user experience and make your site more competitive.

Common issues on responsive sites include buttons being too close together or script running too close to the edges of the screen. Issues like these are small adjustments for your developer and will contribute to your competitiveness.

Assign your keywords

Every piece of content that is created for a website should start with extensive keyword research. This is to determine the best target keyword to optimize for as well as the keyword cluster to include on your page.

If two or more pages are optimized for the same keyword, it leads to keyword cannibalization. This will restrict rankings when search engines see two or more pages competing with each other.

Optimize your pages for a target keyword that includes the keyword synonyms associated with your topic. Make sure each page is optimized for a different keyword cluster in order to give it the most competitive edge.

Establish search intent

Semantic search has forced the need for deeper levels of research in order for a website to appear in a top-ranked position. Search engines are ranking pages that can best answer a query based on the content they’ve provided.

Your content must be able to satisfy the user who searches your keyword. If the content on your page leads a user to bounce from your site and continue looking elsewhere they obviously were not satisfied with what you’re providing.

The ability to satisfy search intent is a major ranking criterion that is measured through the content provided and the engagement statistics it generates. Dwell time, click-through rate and bounce rate are all measures of how much a user liked what your site offered.

Get to the source of search intent by finding exactly what users typing in your keyword want to read about. You may be offering the product they ultimately will buy but finding what content they engage in reading about your product will boost the interest people have in your content.

Search forums and social media groups to see the pressing issues and problems people face so you can write about the solutions to those problems in your content.

Link to and from internal pages

Using internal links will enhance the optimization of your pages and spread link equity to give your pages more authority.

Use keyword anchor text links to signal what the page is about and lead users to related content that they will find helpful or interesting.

Signal the importance of a page to your site can be emphasized by the number of links pointing to it from other pages within your site. Create the hierarchy of pages within your site by linking to the most important pages the most times.

Use alternate forms of media

Increased competition and a growing awareness of SEO has placed even more emphasis on producing original content that stands out from the competition. Use alternate forms of media to make your content stand out and rank higher in the search results.

People retain 65% of the information from articles with images as opposed to 10% without images. Videos are shared 12X more on social media than links and text posts combined. Podcasts are also taking off with more Americans listening more frequently (up 32% on a monthly basis) than ever before.

Use as many variations of media when it comes to differentiating your content from your competition. Use what your competitors are using AND what they’re not using to outperform their pages in every way possible.

Optimize for SERP features

For the first time ever, in 2019 Google searches have produced more than 50% zero-click searches. That means that more than half of the searches that are made on Google end up on a Google property with no click at all made to any websites.

The emergence of featured snippets, local packs, knowledge cards are all sucking away the clicks that can be made to any organic listings. If you aren’t optimized for the SERP feature that appears for your keyword, you’re losing out on targeted traffic.

One of the highest converting sources of traffic is from localized searches. 46% of all searches have local intent making local SEO a lucrative addition to driving traffic to your site.

Improve your credibility

Backlinks are still one of the largest ranking factors search engines use to determine the credibility and authority of your website. Ahrefs studied almost a billion pages and concluded that more backlinks equals a higher ranking.

Choose from a variety of methods to build links to your page. The more links you build the more authority your page receives. Get your links from credible sites within the same niche. Keep in mind that websites with higher DA will have a bigger impact on your ranking and improve your site’s authority.

Build an audience

One of the best ways to instantly get eyes on your content is to post to your social media network. If you don’t have one it’s never too late to build one.

Social signals are a ranking factor so it definitely helps to have people sharing your page, however, the real value is in the traffic that flows to your page. Increased traffic brings more potential for new clients and a higher likelihood of your page being linked to by another website.

Continue to stay active in the social media site that is best suited to your industry. If you are producing good content, your audience will build over time and become an incredible asset for traffic generation.

Conclusion

These strategies are among the most influential ranking signals that contribute to pushing your site up in the rankings. Accomplishing each strategy effectively will move the needle and get your site to the first page of results, generate more traffic and fuel the growth of your company.

Christian Carere is an SEO consultant and the owner of Digital Ducats Inc. Christian specializes in SEO services custom-designed to improve traffic and lead generation.

Digital Branding

6 Creative Ways To Market Your Business in 2020

Steven on November 13, 2019

As we head into 2020, it seems like the competition has never been tougher for businesses. With the business world becoming an ever more global market place, companies need to compete against those offering products and services not just down the road, but literally on the other side of the world.

In this context, effectively marketing your business has never been more important. In order to truly stand out from the competition, you need to do something different. 2020 is the year to truly get creative with your marketing! By moving away from the same tactics used by everyone else, you will attract more clients, build your customer base, and the sky will be the limit in terms of growing your business.

Here are 6 creative ways to market your business and take it to the next level in 2020.

1. Partner or sponsor other organizations

Sponsoring another organization or service is a technique that businesses have been doing for a very long time. However in today’s modern world where many modern forms of advertising are no longer effective, or at least less effective than they used to be, having your brand plastered in the eye of many consumers is a great way to reach them. The key here is to be creative in who you partner with – try to find sponsorship opportunities that are on-brand, very visible and a little left-of-center! Sponsorship opportunities could be for brands and products which are around year-round, or for specific events. This is also not a tactic that is limited to the big brands – smaller businesses can get in on sponsorship too, albeit on a smaller scale. Coca Cola may sponsor the Olympics, while an SME may choose to sponsor a local community event! Maid Marines (they’re maid service in NYC), utilizes this strategy to build their online presence, and put them in front of more potential clients.

2. Exhibit at Trade Shows

Trade shows are a great way to market your business. This rather traditional form of marketing can be somewhat overlooked in the context of today’s digital marketing. However, trade shows remain big business and continue to draw thousands of people to each event, of which there are many. Thus shows are a great way to reach new audiences, along with building your brand. They give you the opportunity to engage with potential customers in an in-depth way, allowing them to test products, ask questions and therefore be more likely to buy your product or service. Having an attractive display booth is essential for attracting attention and drawing visitors to your stand. Talk to a specialist like Fret Free Productions in London to get a booth which will make the most of your presence at each trade show.

3. Hold social media contests

Just about every business understands the importance of social media marketing these days. With 70% of the US population, for example, on social media, this is clearly an area that businesses cannot ignore. Over 90% of US businesses use social media, but many are still using the same tired old strategies and boring posts. One great way to engage with your followers and generate some buzz at the same time is through social media contests. There are a variety of ways to do this – picture contests, hashtag contests, caption contests, invite a friend, and so on. All the better if you can hold your contest across multiple social media platforms.

4. Create shareable content

Another way to get ahead of the social media game and stand out from the competition is by creating something truly shareable. This could be an awesome infographic, and inspiring, funny or useful video, or something completely different. This most important thing is that it is something that your audience feels compelled to share with their friends and family. This means that as your content gets shared, it will reach hundreds if not thousands of people, and have much greater reach than if it stayed simply in your own established audience. You do need to make sure that your content is branded (for example that your logo and preferably website are on your infographics) so that people learn who you are!

5. Media outreach

In the age of digital marketing, PR is far from dead – quite the opposite in fact! Now you have double the opportunity to get into the media, through traditional PR to physical publications and digital PR to online ones! A strong PR strategy can be highly effective in promoting your brand, building trust with your audience and ultimately generating more sales. The important thing here is contacts: build a network of contacts in relevant publications, and then offer them something interesting or valuable to publish! Maid Marines (they’re maid service in NYC), utilizes this strategy to build their online presence, and put them in front of more potential clients.

6. Teach your expertise

Marketing in 2020 will be all about value: it is important to offer something of value to your prospects, in order to capture their attention. What better way to give value then to share your knowledge in your particular area of expertise? There are many ways to do this, such as free blogs or guides, e-books, videos, podcasts, and in-person speaking events. From there, you can build a relationship with your prospects while showing your expertise, and they will be begging to hire you or buy your product.

Legal Branding Local Branding Personal Branding

7 Tips for Becoming a Successful Brand Manager

Steven on November 11, 2019

A career in marketing is one of the most lucrative ideas that an aspiring professional should have in the business world. Why? Well, because there are more enterprises out there than ever before and even one-person startups often need consultation services from renowned brand managers. Still, how does one become a brand manager or, even more importantly, how does one become successful and gains renown in this field? Well, here are the top seven tips for becoming a successful brand manager.

1. Get some formal education

The first thing you need to do in order to be taken seriously in this field or even get a chance is to get some form of formal education. At the very least, you need a Bachelor’s degree in a field that’s relevant to branding or marketing. So, business, administration, or science are your safest bets. Science is particularly effective, seeing as how an efficient brand manager spends so much time analyzing and interpreting harvested data. Also, make sure that the university that you go to has all the right reputation and accreditation. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

2. Develop a necessary skillset

As always, a degree can only get you so far. In order to really make it in the field, you need to possess the right skillset. When it comes to being a brand manager, you need to have great analytical skills and attention to detail. Also, you need to possess a thirst for knowledge and self-improvement, seeing as how trends evolve and new emerge on a daily basis. Then, you need to know how to do the right budgeting and be resourceful with the budget you have. Lastly, you need to be creative and possess the right team working (even leadership) skills. With all of this under your belt, you just can’t fail.

3. Get some experience in the field

The next thing you need to understand is that no one has ever started as a brand manager. Before that, you need some experience in the field, in the form of an entry-level job or at least an internship at the esteemed branding agency. Then, you need a letter of recommendation (or a couple of them) as well as a professional portfolio. Any major project that you’ve collaborated on needs to be listed. Even more importantly, you need to understand that you’re not really doing this for the portfolio. You’re doing it for experience, so try to learn something from each of these projects.

4. Get tech-savvy

Due to the fact that you’ll mostly work in a digital environment (via collaboration tool) and employ services of those from the same branch, it’s incredibly important that you get tech-savvy as quickly as possible. Your smartphone is your office and the more specialized tools you get to use, the greater your efficiency will be. Even your payments need to become smarter, which is why you might want to apply for a payroll card. With so many freelancers and telecommuters on your retainer, managing all of their wages becomes so much easier this way.

5. Focus on networking

One of the most important things in the field of brand management is definitely networking. Why? Well, because you can’t manage a brand on your own. You need content writers, web designers, analyst specialists, social media managers, and more. Even if you do some of these things (for smaller projects) on your own, you still may need someone to ask for advice when going gets tough. In other words, start mingling with professionals from your industry.

6. Keep growing as a professional

The field of branding, marketing, and brand management in general, is the one that evolves quite rapidly. This means that you’ll have to follow journals, do independent research, and keep attending seminars, trade shows, and keep taking courses on new trends. Also, regardless of how long you spend in the field, you can always use it with a bit of mentoring from someone a tad more seasoned than you. This is why networking is so important and should never be neglected. Furthermore, every single one of these courses and seminars that you get crossed off your checklist should be listed on your resume and included in your portfolio.

7. Build a personal brand

Previously, we’ve talked about a formal education, experience in the field, and seminars that you need to attend in order to grow as a professional. Well, wrapping all of this up in a unique nice-looking package can be even more important. What you need to bear in mind is the fact that building a personal brand takes time and patience. First of all, you need to make your own website, start a blog (this is paramount), and start producing some niche-relevant content. This establishes you as an authority within the field. You can also leverage your social media influence by being active on your social media profiles. Needless to say, LinkedIn always takes precedence.

Conclusion

In the end, one of the things you need to consider is actually talking to a brand manager and inquiring about their experience in the field. Ask them to tell you the truth about what it’s like, seeing as how it’s not an easy career path to tread upon. Only when you’re 100 percent certain should you proceed with some of these steps.

Digital Branding

How to Personalize User Experiences to Retain Customers

Steven on November 8, 2019

As soon as we’ve transitioned into the predominant use of digital channels to buy and connect with businesses, we’ve sacrificed a certain level of intimate and personal interaction with the brand in question. To overcome this modern-day obstacle and adapt their business for better personalization, brands now utilize a slew of methods that ensure that customers can engage with them more effectively. Thankfully, there are many online and offline ways to cross that gap in brand-customer interactions that actually use personalization at the heart of their strategy.

Of course, these methods increase customer acquisition as well, but their primary purpose is to inspire customers to stay loyal to your brand. They have the potential to become your finest brand advocates, to increase your customer acquisition over time, and to boost your reputation online as well as offline, all as a result of proper personalization tactics. Without further ado, here are a few ways to personalize each experience your customers have with your brand and reap the many rewards this approach brings to modern businesses.

On-site customization options

We live in an era when being true to yourself is encouraged all around, and that authenticity is partly achieved by how we make our purchasing decisions. One by one, brands are beginning to allow and encourage a greater level of customization for their products and services, thus effectively allowing their customers to create the brand as they go. For example, you should consider letting your customers add their initials to the product of their choosing, choose color combinations, or add a design detail they love.

Even for brands that sell technology such as laptops, it’s more than possible to let customers build their own ideal product – for a price, of course. The ability alone is often more than enough to inspire greater loyalty since customers then feel that they have the freedom to create their experience as they please, which is the best way to encourage and empower authenticity.

Utilize data to your advantage

On one hand, it may seem that relying on a slew of impersonal tools that collect information about your customers is anything but personal. On the other, this data is precisely what will give you the insights you need to refine your online presence so as to appeal to each and every individual customer that comes to your online store or subscribes to your newsletter. Data is at the forefront of better market segmentation, and it’s up to you to make use of all the information you gather.

Luckily for growth-oriented brands, modern digital tools also have the ability to filter all of that collected data and create actionable reports that allow you to act rather than waste time analyzing. This seemingly impersonal approach reduces human error as well as bias and gives you access to the kind of data that can elevate your brand’s standing in the online community. This will let you create customer profiles, envision ideal customer journeys, and change how you interact with each customer in time.

Give your efforts a personal touch

Personalization should not end with your data collection or your on-site efforts. In fact, even when the purchase is completed, you should go above and beyond to let your customers know that you pay attention to their needs. For instance, a simple way to achieve that would be to send them a personalized thank-you note.

You can rely on fast printing services to create such thank-you notes and other printable materials quickly that will impress your customers with every purchase. You can attach a note that encourages them to leave a review on Google and that gives them a personalized discount code for their next purchase, thus inspiring them to come back to your store. Alternatively, printing out flyers that focus on products each particular customer likes is another way to promote your brand in a subtle way as an extension of your efforts to increase engagement.

Enable social media support

FAQ pages and chatbots are both valid channels for qualifying leads that provide ample information for each and every site visitor. They help shorten the customer journey by giving them directions as to how and where they can find the products they want and give them guidelines on how to use them. However, a growing number of customers now want a more personal support experience, preferably through social media platforms.

There’s a double benefit to this strategy. First, you get a chance to humanize your brand and adjust your voice to each individual customer that uses these channels to communicate with you. Secondly, that is a perfect research opportunity for you to ask them a few questions or even to complete a survey so that you can get more in-depth insights into their perception of your brand. Both of these perks allow you to improve your personalization over time and to always provide relevant content for each customer on social media.

Your customers interact with various brands every day. In order for your particular experience to stand out and earn their loyalty, you need to give it that personal touch that resonates with their needs. Use these tips to infuse every customer contact with personalization that delivers results, and you’ll allow your brand to gain the traction it needs to grow its customer base and to inspire loyalty at the same time.

Digital Branding

How to Quickly Convert Customers Need Into Sales

Steven on October 29, 2019

In the competitive marketplace, instantly converting customers’ needs into sales is key to the success of any business. Clearly, customers are the crucial factor to determine your business’ longevity and progress. Hence it is undeniable that high product and service quality is always prioritized to win customers’ hearts and then capitalize on your sales. Yes, we may know that strategy like the back of your hand; however, it is not easy to quickly drive customers’ initial thought from “I need to get a gift” to the ultimate decision to purchase that gift. It is not only a matter of time but also competitiveness.

In fact, customers demand varied differently, and the fiercest business rivals are trying to stay ahead of you by offering many attractive promotions, innovation, etc. to get as many customers as possible. Now, the game is at your hand! If you are finding a solution to Convert Customers Need to Your Sales or in other words increase conversion rate with ease, we are all about! Let’s see what we have for you.

I. Identifying Customer Needs

1. The importance of understanding customers needs

No matter how excellent your product is, the simple truth is that no one will purchase it if they do not believe they need it. You can not successfully persuade anyone that they want or need to buy unless you clearly know what it is your customers really want. Therefore, understanding customer needs is at the center of every successful business. Once you can acquire this knowledge, it is at your hand to persuade customers that buying from you is in their best interests.

When customers buy your product, not your competitors, they need a reason that we call Unique Sales Proposition (USP). Your business or your market changes leads to the shift of USP, and you can use different USPs for different types of customers. For example, a flower shop could offer a free same-day delivery service for customers within a local area – a compelling USP for customers who need fast delivery.

The more you know about what your clients are looking for, the more effective your sales and marketing strategy will be. It’s worth making an effort to find out: who they are, what they buy, and why they buy it.

2. How to understand customers need

There are several ways to gain insight into what your customers need from you: focus group, social listening, keyword research.

Focus Group

A focus group is a market research technique in which you collectively interview a small group of people who represent your target audience.

With so much data available through the social network, we may forget that the best way to get to know your customers is to connect with them directly. That open and honest dialogue with your customers helps you develop a profound knowledge of the customer’s response to your business, your product that you provide.

Social Listening

It is the process of tracking and analyzing what the public said about your business on social channels.

According to a recent, over 80% of people seek recommendations before purchasing by consulting on a social network. Therefore, keep up with customers on social listening will help you reveal your customers’ expectations as well as how good you are delivering on those expectations.

Keyword Research

This method can also give you valuable insight into what your customer needs from you, your business, and your product. If you know what your customers are searching for online and more importantly, what they are searching for your product, you can determine what they’re looking for. Once your research is completed, you can channel it into creating a product or service that better aligns with those needs. For an ecommerce business, SEO is one of the vital tools to advance in the marketplace.

customer-need-img-2

II. How to Quickly Convert Customers Need Into Sales

1. Use your understanding about customers to tailor your product

As a customer, there are categories that they can use to evaluate your product: functionality, price, experience, convenience, reliability, design, performance, efficiency, compatibility. Once you know exactly which criteria they are looking for, you can easily create a well-tailored product that customers will love. Follow four key points, and you will be on the way to delight the client in no time.

Have recognition of product alignment
Be flexible
Hone your product to particular niches
Make sure your product relevant

2. Improve customers’ experience

Customer experience is one of the decisive factors for any Ecommerce retailer who seeks to win and retain customers online. You may know these facts (researched by Medallia.com), but they seem to be still unbelievable :

89% of clients stop doing business with a brand after a bad experience
Only 1 in 26 people complain after a bad experience; the rest just leave
It takes 12 positive client experiences to make up for one negative experience
Clients are twice as likely to share bad experiences than talk about good ones
Customers are twice as likely to share bad experiences than talk about good ones
Increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits from 25% to 95%

customer-need-img-3

To truly improve customer experiences, online retail stores need to consider two critical things.

First, you need to think about the long-term strategy you’ll adopt for researching and implementing improvements in the face of business and customer needs. Second, you need to think about the reactive strategy you’ll utilize for responding to customer experience issues in real-time.

So what are the ways to enhance the customer’s experience? The traditional way to improve experiences in online retail is conversion rate optimization. However, conversion optimization is persuasion-centric, not customer-centric.

The more advanced method is through digital experience optimization. When going shopping online, of course, a high-speed loading site is what customers expect. The store owners can take advantage of technological tools to improve their site. It is evident that no online store wants to challenge the customer’s patience when they have to add filters after filters to get the favorite item. To get rid of these problems, you may consider using Layered Navigation Ultimate, which is considered as an adequate layered navigation system with multiple- filter navigation, price slider, AJAX loading technology and shop by brand function for Magento 2 stores.

3. Promote marketing strategy

There are available guidelines online for marketing strategy improvement that we all love to follow, such as abandoned cart emails, upselling, product recommendations, etc. However, it is difficult to cover all these methods within this article, so what we highlight here is content writing, which is considered as the most important part of the marketing field in the world of ecommerce.

Writing content for your e-commerce brand seems like a difficult task, as these types of websites are structured differently than traditional sites. It’s not as much a matter of writing blog posts and landing pages as much as it needs to be engaging and convincing and optimized for search engines. Here are must-have tips for excellent content writing:

Focus on your audience first, Google second
Include customer testimonials
Pay attention to word count
Avoid duplicate content
Let your content sell

III. Final Words

In a nutshell, driving customers to need to sales in a short time has never been easy when you do not develop a deep understanding of your customers and your business in the competitive online marketplace. Your practical application of this post is a great encouragement for us to write more quality content. Thank you for spending time reading.

On the other hand, sometimes it can come to an increasing price, which is not very convenient. This sales training can help you handle that situation.

Author Bio

Daisy is a Mageplaza passionate expert writer about Ecommerce. For many years of working closely with clients seeking solutions on the Ecommerce platform, she tries her best to give readers the most useful advice on online business issues.

Digital Branding Personal Branding

9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know

Steven on October 22, 2019

As far as working from home jobs are concerned, blogging is one of the highest-rated activities or businesses that an individual can run. Blogging does not require a college degree nor does it require years and years of technical training. It does, however, require passion, great grammar command and the willingness and tenacity to work. Many people hear about blogging and think that it is a breeze, an easy way to make money. The truth is, it is very difficult to make money from a blog unless you have what it takes. This means you have to have great content, garner a sizeable and commendable audience, and most of all, have the necessary know-how in effective ways to monetize your blog. Monetizing your blog is the ultimate test when it comes to blogging success. This involves extensive marketing for no matter how monetized your blog is, if it does not get the necessary and right traffic, it will still be useless to you. Getting your blog noticed and standing out from the millions and millions of blogs online today is no easy task, it takes quite a bit of skill. Here are 9 blog promotion tactics by http://socialmarketway.com that every blogger should know.

Go social

Other than Google, social media sites command the highest amount of online user traffic today. Facebook is second only to Google. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and the rest are not so far behind. This means that these social media sites are where your audience is to be found on a regular basis. If you want to effectively direct this substantial amount of traffic, then you need to engage with the community in general, the easiest way to do this is through these social media sites. The thing to remember is this, a social media campaign can look a lot like spam. This is mainly because people come here to interact with one another and share ideas. Unless you are actually contributing to the conversation in a meaningful way, simply posting a link to your blog will be considered spamming and this will result in you getting banned. You need to interact with the community. This involves taking an interest in what they are discussing and contributing relevant information which you can then link to or from your blog.

Target a ‘sharing’ audience

This should be part of your strategy. Try as much as you can to make your target audience the sharing type. There is certain demography of people that is more likely to share material online than others. Audiences that include people looking to lose weight, bodybuilders, technologically astute people, and serial shoppers are all examples of audiences that will willingly help spread the word about you and your blog. This is provided the content is relevant and useful.

Guest blog

Once you have found a niche, look for other authoritative sites and blogs within that niche and guest post on them. This involves writing articles, following forum threads and interacting with the site administrator and the audience. Once you have gained their trust and your opinion is valued, you can simply request the site administrator to let you link back to your blog. This way, you will gain their audience and hopefully the people they recommend.

Appeal to the vertical markets

You have to make your blog an authority with relevant content as well as offering solutions to the society at large. This means FAQ pages and several ‘How To’ articles. Feature different industry trends with credible and verifiable statistics. Once this is done, your blog will be regarded as a valuable resource and this will keep people coming back.

Participate in forums and discussions

These are platforms where likeminded people go to hold meaningful discussions. Once you have found your niche, find all the highly-trafficked and relevant forums and actively participate. Give relevant advice and links to actionable and useful information. As part of this advice, you can send them over to your blog. Remember, these are serious people and spamming will NOT be tolerated.

Include your blog in everything about you

This means that you should always mention your blog whenever and wherever your name appears. In your bio, your online resume, your other websites, your email signature, your internet profile, your social media accounts…anything that features you should also feature your blog.

Utilize bookmarking sites

Making use of social bookmarking sites can be a very resourceful way of gaining backlinks. These are ways through which you can widely advertise your blog without paying for it. You can always opt for paid advertising.

Make your content SEO friendly

When it comes to blogging, the number one rule is quality content. In your struggle to churn out high-quality content, make sure that it is SEO friendly. As mentioned earlier, only the various search engines like Google have more traffic than social media sites. This means that the majority of organic traffic can be found in search engine page results. Properly optimizing your blog content gives you an added advantage of getting this organic traffic.

Use web analytics

This is similar to carrying out a survey. Analytics gives you a break down on where most of your traffic comes from, which pages and content they spend more time and what they actually think of your blog. Paying attention to these statistics and tweaking your blog in accordance with the results will go a long way in improving your performance. It is a way of giving the client what he/she wants.

Call to action

Sometimes you just have to be blunt and tell your readers what you want them to do. In every article or comment you make, find a way to include actionable and relevant information that can link back to your site. This way you can simply tell them to click over to your blog for further information. They know what they are getting and you are not being vague about asking them to switch over.

These are 9 Blog Promotion Tactics That Every Blogger Should Know. However, what you need to remember is this, for your blog to succeed, you need to be passionate about what you are writing. Without this passion, you will not be motivated to churn out high-quality content consistently, which is the core of every blog.

Digital Branding

Guest Posting: How To Find The Right Service Provider For Your Business

Steven on October 20, 2019

Guest posting is one of the most rewarding practices for link building and marketing for businesses from every industry. It not only helps with securing high-quality backlinks but also helps with brand building.

Let us understand first how guest posting can help your business:

It helps bring in referral traffic through contextual links
Your mention on reputable blogs and websites improves your brand recognition
You get to generate more revenue through high in-flow of targetted traffic
You can earn the trust of your audience as a genuine content creator

Having known these benefits of guest posting, you may consider it for acquiring backlinks to your website. But, the time and amount of effort required in blogger outreach and securing backlinks from influencers may seem like a daunting task.

Nevertheless, you can hire SEO reseller services to help you with your guest posting exercise.

Here’s how you can find the right fit for your business.

Start your search from Google

Your old friend Google has answers for everything. You can begin your quest to find the best service provider for your guest posting by searching for relevant terms. For example, you can search for, “list of guest posting service providers”, which would bring up a long list of agencies and SEO companies offering guest posting services.

Sort the most reliable ones

The search result would bring up thousands of companies that offer guest posting services. Obviously it gets tough to sort which one is the best out of these. Here’s a secret tip: choose the ones that rank on the first three pages. These service providers certainly understand how links work, that is why they are ranking at the best positions for the most competitive search term.

Alternatively, you also need to understand that the ones with the best reviews are the most reliable ones. Sort for the ones that have the best customer feedback and highest ratings across various business portals. Once again, Google can help you find these reviews.

Understand the benefits they offer

Apart from simply guest posting, you also need to know if your potential service provider can offer you any other benefits. For example, some agencies offer content creation and blogger outreach services as well in combination with guest posting. Having these services along with the primary task, can reduce your efforts and improve the returns for link building through guest posting.

Place your order and relax

Now that you have all the information to choose the best service provider, the last step is to make sure that their services fit in your budget. Once you have identified the service provider that satisfies all your requirements and that too within your budget, it’s time you start working with them.

At first, you should place a few orders, just to make sure that you’ve chosen the best service. Having made sure that you can rely on your service provider, you can proceed with placing your link building orders with them.

Having said that, it is important that you always keep in touch with your link building service provider to stay on top of the campaigns that are carried out for you.

Legal Branding Personal Branding

Why Branding Doesn’t Cost as Much as You Think

Steven on October 15, 2019

Branding is one of the most essential components of a successful advertising strategy. While it’s vital to get the word out about the goods and services your business offers, it’s all for nothing if you can’t communicate why customers should work with you. You need to emphasize the special qualities that make your business stand out in a crowded market.

Good branding doesn’t have to be fancy. Like all the essential components of a quality marketing strategy, a little branding goes a long way. There are ways to establish your brand identity even when you don’t have a big budget.

Here are seven ways you can create an effective branding strategy for your company while spending much less than you’d expect.

1. Build Your Identity

Your branding should communicate the core elements of your business’s identity, as well as what services you provide and what industry you work in. You don’t have to hew to industry trends, but your branding should give customers an idea of what your company does with just a glance.

You can start with in-house graphic design if you’re not ready to outsource. Free design and branding tools like Canva or Looka can help you develop logos, graphics and promotional material for your company.

When your business expands and you want to invest more in branding, you’ll also have a good starting point for the designers you work with. Even if not professional, your homemade branding will show others what you consider to be your business’s values and major appeal.

2. Know Your Audience

Market research can take many forms, but it has to get done somehow. Surveys and test ad campaigns are some good ways to gather information.

Once you have a healthy amount of data or a good feeling about your lay of the land, you can start building customer or audience personas. Personas — archetypes of the people you want to sell to — will help you structure your branding strategy by clearly outlining what you think your audience is after.

One example of a persona you might use could be a DIY enthusiast who is after supplies and information. They want knowledge that is reliable, straight-to-the-point and a little rough around the edges. You can then use this simplified version of your audience to inform your branding.

3. Establish Your USP

Your unique selling proposition (USP) is what makes you different from the competition. Identify your USP, then use it to guide your brand voice and demonstrate why customers should choose your company.

“High-quality” and “customer-focused” are phrases that every business wants to use to describe itself. You’ll need to be more specific, and really dig into why your company does what it does.

How many years have you provided top-tier customer service? What kinds of projects have you worked on? How have you overcome challenges? Do you offer something with unique features that no other business can compete with?

Eventually, you may loop back around to describing your business as customer-focused and one that delivers high-quality products. It’s not the best place to start, though. People have heard it before, and they want something a little more substantial.

4. Care About the Consumer

Value your customer’s time. Bad business writing costs smaller companies an average of $420,000 every year. That’s because when you ask customers to slog through marketing-speak without speaking directly to them, they tune out.

There are many different tips and tricks you can use to grab a potential customer’s attention in both branding and writing. However, one of the most effective philosophies to have — which will help make your overall strategy more successful, no matter what you do — is to care about the customer. Treat their time as more valuable than your own. Good branding earns every second it spends in front of a customer’s eyes.

This can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Start with your research, put yourself in your customer’s position and build on your USPs.

5. Be Part of Your Community

You can create better branding by making your business a part of your community. Better local contacts will help you stay on top of the latest developments and also build a network that will help you know what people need. You’ll also be building relationships with local personalities or industry influencers that you can leverage or build into powerful marketing partnerships.

6. Go Big on Visuals

When designing any part of your branding or marketing strategy, you have an opportunity to use visual design to underline and strengthen your message.

Follow the basic visual design principles that professional graphic designers use. These guidelines will help you reduce clutter, strengthen your message and be clearer in your branding. All this will help your marketing do a better job of communicating what your business offers to customers.

7. Remain Consistent

Especially at first, keep your branding consistent. Repetition is how customers become aware of your company. If you are cycling between logos and branding you don’t have faith in, it’s less likely for you to become familiar and recognizable. You should avoid iterating on your strategy too often. Slowing down will help your message stick in customers’ heads and also give yourself a chance to collect data on what works — or doesn’t — in your current branding strategy.

This also means establishing a consistent web presence, like a blog or set of social media accounts. It will communicate to customers your company’s core mission and beliefs, as well as what your business can do for them. Blogs, interestingly enough, are one of the most trusted forms of information on the internet. A professional-looking blog with some informative, relevant content can help you explain how your business stands out from the competition.

There are other practical reasons for being consistent in your online presence. If you haven’t posted in several months, it can leave potential customers with a bad impression of your brand — or worse, lead them to believe you’re no longer in business.

Why Branding Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive

Branding is one of the most important parts of any marketing strategy — and it’s worth the investment. However, good branding doesn’t have to be expensive. A solid plan does not require glossy graphics and fancy web design to work. Instead, good branding is about knowing your audience and communicating with them in a way they’re receptive to.

Any company can benefit from basic design and branding principles. While bringing in a professional agency can be a good idea in the long term, smaller businesses with less to spare for marketing don’t need to wait — branding doesn’t always need a big budget.

For the end, here is the research about brands with strong personalities and how it influences their purchasing decisions.

Source: Adzooma

About the author

Lexie is a branding enthusiast and web designer. She loves checking out local flea markets and taking her Goldendoodle on hikes. Follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner and check out her design blog, Design Roast.