Every online business has heard about the term PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising! It is the way brands can expect a favorable ROI. You need to decide whether your company is prepared to opt-in for this advertising. And once you decide on that, there’s yet another essential question that brands need to decipher. It is the about the budget should they fix on for PPC advertising.

Do you resonate with this question? If yes, then your budget estimation will depend on the assumptions and projections. You can take the necessary assistance from a professional service provider.  To know more, you can check out Clicks Geek. Also, you can consider the three factors discussed below, to get your PPC budget correct.

1. Make a competitor analysis

Do you know how much other market players are spending on their PPC ads? Are you aware of the keywords they are targeting? If you want to know this, resort to services like SEMrush and SpyFu. It will help you to get connected to the URL of other market players. This way, you can also assess the Google AdWords activity of additional market players. You can add-on their expected monthly expenditure, ads, and target keywords.

The objective here is to assess at least five market players to get a favorable baseline for the average expenditure. From here you can shortlist three and then two competitors that are bidding on keywords the same as yours. It will help you to decide on the PPC budget.

2. Consider your present marketing plan

Paid advertising is essential when other marketing methods don’t suffice in attaining the revenue goal. Also, the paid ads are helpful is covering up for the SEO limitations. It also helps to make up for other shortcomings in social media marketing as well as email marketing. It can also cover up for the limitations of any marketing form that can cater to generate leads for your online business.

Are you aware of the marketing assets that are presently getting the ideal outcomes? If you want to know this, you can consider the way email, SEO and various other marketing methods perform and offer a compact marketing strategy. For instance, your social media, email marketing, and SEO strategies can garner as much as 75% of the revenue goal. In such a situation, you will know that your PPC should be able to cover the remaining 25% of revenue. Hence, rather than generating about a million revenue, your PPC can concentrate on creating about $250,000 in revenue.

3. Consider your keyword research

You have to ask yourself a fundamental question – Does the keyword that you are bidding record a high search volume? Does it also have a low CPC (Cost Per Click) to attain your business goals within your budget capacity?

Today, you can come across several keyword research tools for this. But one of the best tools to use is Google AdWords, as it is free. Also, Google AdWords is wholly reliable and can offer estimates for the expected CPC and the average monthly searches.

There are many ways to decide about the ideal PPC budget. However, to start with, you can consider these three factors and keep on assessing others if you want to. Do it under the guidance of your SEO service provider to avert mistakes.

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks worldwide, with approximately 1 billion monthly active users. Therefore, marketers should capitalize on Instagram now.

However, a lot of businesses surprisingly struggle with social media as a whole. Out of the 94 percent of B2C marketers that are using Facebook, only 66 percent think that their campaigns are effective.

But the thing is, you need to take necessary steps to kick off your presence on the platform. Whatever action you take, whether it’s hashtagging, posting, and every other element of your digital brand. Everything must be done with a purpose.

In this post, discover the ten ways how you can grow your brand on Instagram.

Define your goals

Instagram is an excellent platform to build your brand awareness, improve your customer loyalty, turn leads into sales, and to craft a better brand image. It also allows you to target different kinds of users through the platform.

When setting up your account, first think what your goal is, as well as the actions you need to take to achieve that goal. Then, talk it out with your team and think about what strategy will help you get closer to your goal.

What specific demographic do you want to engage with, and what does your target audience love seeing online?

Defining your goals is crucial, especially if you want to come up with a content style, as well as execute your brand building tactics.

Identify your target audience

You need to know who your target audience is. If you’re relatively new to Instagram and you’re searching for your target audience. Newsflash: they’re with your competitors.

A straightforward strategy that you can apply is to connect with the followers of your competition, hoping they’ll follow back. Moreover, you can utilize social listening tools to know where the conversations about your brand are happening.

Produce visually-appealing content

Source: Madewell

A human brain processes visual content 60,000x faster than text. No wonder we are dubbed as visual learners.

Meanwhile, Instagram is a highly visual platform, and the quality of your images play a crucial role in building the reputation of your brand.

You can work with a professional photographer while sharing images about your brand or business on the platform. You can also use high-quality stock images from Burst, Pixabay, and Unsplash to publish more compelling posts. Moreover, there are filters on Instagram that makes your photos look trendy.

Look at your competitors’ profiles and study the posts that work best. The standard size of square images on Instagram is 1080px by 1080px.

Find a theme that suits your brand

Source: Starbucks

It’s essential that you find your focus or theme on the platform. Many brands make the mistake of not having a theme. All they do is to publish quotes and material that doesn’t have jive with the rest of their posts.

Don’t try to wear too many hats. Otherwise, you’ll leave your followers confused. People want to know who you are, so be authentic. Let your unique personality shine through.

So, find a theme that suits your personality well. See if it fits your brand, then sticks with it.  Over time, people will associate that with you, and your photos will be recognizable.

Some people think that having a theme means that all of your pictures will look the same. It isn’t. It’s all about focusing on the story and colors. It’s up to you if you want your theme to be full of colors, bright, or dark.

Use appropriate hashtags

If you want to get noticed on Instagram, using hashtags is a great option. Hashtags are used by the platform to categorize your content.

For the greatest impact, the ideal is 11-15 hashtags per post (but the maximum is 30).

You can check hashtagify.me for ideas. Just input one hashtag, and the tool will generate other similar, popular hashtags.

Another straightforward trick is to watch how your competitors and the successful influencers in your niche are using hashtags. You can consider adopting those tags in your current strategy as well.

Utilize geotagging

Source: Airbnb

Geotagging is when you tag your location in the post that you publish. It’s the same as checking in.

On the platform, there are three types of geotagging:

• Stories
• Posts
• Hashtags

Putting your location on your posts makes it more convenient for users to find you. It also helps your post show up more in searches.

Simply Measured reveals that posts that have a location tagged in it have 79% more engagement than those that don’t have any.

Create Instagram stories

Instagram stories are videos and photos on the platform that disappear after 24 hours.

They’re an excellent way to share moments that you don’t want to show up in your profile permanently.

They’re a great way to show fun, and behind-the-scenes moments to create relationships.

So, it’s time to get creative! Do a doodle, place stickers, and place captions on pictures. Doing so helps your audience understand your personality.

Note that Stories are only available in the platform’s mobile app, and appear right on top of your feed. Moreover, the explore tab aids users to search for Stories from other people.

Organize contests and giveaways

Source: Benefit Cosmetics

Hosting contests and giveaways are an effective strategy to broaden your reach and win you over more followers.

Both big brands and small startups are using Instagram contests and giveaways to grow their following, reach more people, and create a buzz with their new products.

Here are the primary reasons why you need to consider this type of promotion:

• To build your Instagram following over time
• To encourage social sharing on a particular post on Instagram

But for this to become possible, you first need to think of something that your audience would want to win.

Do you think that a product of yours or a gift card would be better? What is it exactly that they want? Figure that out and think of ways how they can get it.

Also, keep in mind that Instagram has their policies when it comes to hosting contests and giveaways. Take a few minutes to read and learn the rules.

Work with relevant influencers

Work with influencers in your niche when you’re promoting your business on Instagram.

Look for relevant influencers in your industry that have a steady following. Then, get in touch with them and see if they’re willing to do a shout out for your brand in the profile.

Measure, track, and analyze

Finally, analyze your marketing activity on Instagram to know what kind of content are doing well with your audience. That will make your future content more engaging and relevant.

You can utilize tools like Iconosquare and Sprout Social to track your results. Also, you can look online for data-driven tips on how you can improve your e-commerce conversion rates.

Through these tools, you’ll know what times will your posts perform best, your follower analysis, engagement rates, and so on.

Over to You

When it comes to bringing your brand on Instagram, things can get tricky, especially if you’ve started on the wrong foot. But by taking all of these tips into consideration, you’ll be able to leverage your Instagram account, letting you thrive in the platform, and achieve success in the long run.

Year after year, marketing is becoming more and more challenging. When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, this year is posing many new challenges too, which the marketers should learn to tackle effectively.

Unlike olden times, the general search itself may not be enough for any business, irrespective of the industry, to survive in the highly competitive digital market. This points to the fact that it is a perfect time for the marketers to think of revisiting their PPC plans to enhance their performance. PPC is also becoming synonymous to search engine best practice for the online marketing campaigners.

Apart from the opportunities to make use of the dependable and time-tested PPC best practices, there are also opportunities to implement your innovative ideas too to make it more efficient. In fact, all those time-tested SEO strategies as both generic and paid were also the result of trial and error experimentations by the digital marketing experts of different times.

Let’s further explore some such strategies you can try out in case of PPC.

1. Review the latest features in ever-changing Google Ads

This year also, Google comes with a lot of new features, for which the marketers need to set their deadlines. The latest change is all about introducing a handful of exclusive and user-friendly features only for those who have upgraded to this new experience. Let’s check.

• Promotion extensions: you can showcase your products or services with a percentage or flat price discount. You can add this to the account down to the level of specified ad groups.

This can be greatly advantageous to the advertisers with a limited budget for PPC to use the ad copy or site links for promotions. These promotion extensions may smartly stand out like a coupon.

• Bid adjustment for calls: setting some bid adjustments for specific ads can easily enable those ads to be served better and more often. You may check the ad impressions as well as call impressions to check if it is necessary to use this setting for more effectiveness.
• Outstream the video campaigns: the mobile-focused video ads seem to perform the best outside the Google and YouTube on the partner apps and sites.

2. Try and test the new platforms

This is another important point for Google Ads pay per click marketers to listen up and practice. It is worthwhile to test various new paid channels to see their effectiveness. You may not know which could work best for you. In terms of paid campaigns, there is no problem I’m going beyond just Google and Facebook. These can always complete your Google PPC also. Some such advertising platforms to try are:

• LinkedIn: This professional networking platform is appropriate to target the professional and business circle clients.
• Pinterest: Consumer goods, services, fashion can be best advertised on this platform. Products for youngsters and female-focused service marketers identify this as an apt platform to explore.
• SnapChat: This is another younger targeted platform, which is ideal to focus on the audience between 15 to 35. You can plan for video ass, lenses, filters; the app also installs on this platform.

3. Mobile first

For the last several years, we have seen how the usage of mobile devices increased to such a large extent. The time now is a do or die situation for business marketers. If not done by now, it’s a high time to customize your brand’s mobile-first ad experience.

In fact, this goes far beyond PPC best practice, but so important that you shouldn’t avoid it. In the case of PPC ads, you are simply wasting your marketing budget and moreover losing significant opportunities on ignoring the mobile-first approach. Whichever target market and demographics you focus, mobile first is inevitable.

There are reassuring statistics based on market studies that about 58 percent of the PPC conversions are now coming through mobile phones. Most importantly, these are coming with the lowest cost per conversion.

If not tried yet, you can analyze this at each campaign level to determine whether you have to adjust the bids based on the devices too along with another criterion. You may first try a 10 percent increment or decrement to identify how these changes impact at the bottom line to devise your strategies.

4. Test the features

As we have seen above, there are many features you may consider in 2019 in terms of Google paid ads as like promotion extensions and upstream video campaigns, etc. Another such feature outside Google, which can give an impact is Bing Ads. This is now one of the first Artificial Intelligence enabled approach h to online marketing campaigns, which can give an extra push to your search campaigns.

The AI algorithm can analyze billion of audience-centric signals from the online searches and make of these in relevant in-market lists and hit the target audience with the right offering at the right time to make it a sale.

5. Integrating audience with the search

From the beginning of it to now, we were restricted to just keywords in the search engines. However, now we can so layer on the target audience too to refine the keyword campaigns.

Here, what we mean by the audience are those users who get grouped based on their interest or online behavior. We have seen such an example at Bing Ads audiences. Similarly, there are some opportunities to check in Google Ads too to explore in 2019.

• More specific demographics: Apart from age, gender, and other basics, you may also check out the marital status, parental status, education, home-ownership, income, etc.
• Custom intent: you can get proper in-market behavior and custom intent by analyzing the searches and online behaviors to get buying cues.

Along with these, it is also advisable for the PPC managers to learn some scripting also to automate the repetitive tasks in their Google Ads campaigns to make those more effective. It may be initially a bit overwhelming to learn the scripting basics, but you can practice it a little bit with some use cases and online resources to slowly gain expertise. Overall, there is a good lot to cover up in 2019 to make your digital marketing campaigns smoothly sail and succeed.

Even though big data projects are a normal part of doing business in the modern world, many organizations are still struggling with applying and implementing their big data strategies. According to the Gartner survey from 2016, the majority of businesses are stuck in the first stage of their data initiatives. Also, there are fewer organizations that plan to invest, mostly because they are not sure how to use the data, or they think about it as a separate effort. Let’s see at first what big data is and what its characteristics are, and afterward, the essential ways and steps to collect the best data.

The characteristics of big data

There is no exact number of terabytes and gigabytes which will differ big data from small, or average-sized one. Big data simply requires large storage space and businesses are always forced to find new ways of storing it. Besides, new data is created quickly, and organizations have to respond in real time. Also, data is usually present in different formats – text, images, videos, databases, etc. Therefore, finding ways of collecting and storing it has to be one of the priority goals for (almost) any bigger business.

At first, start with small data

It is highly recommended not to set your data sites too big at the start. At first, develop big data analytic techniques on smaller data. That way, if you see the return of investment on minor data streams, you’ll know that you’re capable of new challenges. It is impossible to get the value of big data instantly; it is a slow and thorough process. Therefore, the best way to see if you are on the right track is to start with minor data streams. Furthermore, small data could also mean that you are focusing only on the highly important stuff for your organization, which will further result in collecting the best data.

Do not hesitate to recruit and cooperate with big data talents and companies

Handling, developing and managing all the data is impossible without the help of professionals and experts. Almost all prominent organizations in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore should head towards cooperating with the data experts. However, that doesn’t only include data engineers skills and scientists (by the way, their services are expensive, but very much worth it). As a big organization, you also have to care about your reputation in various digital platforms and media. Collecting that sort of data is an entirely separate job. Usually, the best way of handling this is to cooperate with other agencies and companies which will take care of your media appearance, social mention monitoring, campaign tracking, etc. That way, you’ll also handle a lot of your marketing efforts.

Data integration, validation, and security

Data comes from many different places – email systems, social media streams, applications, etc. Combining all those bits of data to create reports could be extremely difficult. However, investing in new data technologies and solutions (analytics software, integration technology) might be the best way of resolving this matter.

Data validation can often cause a similar issue. Many organizations are collecting data from different systems, and sometimes, the results from those systems do not match. The process of fixing those results, so that they match, as well as ensuring their accuracy, is called data governance. Solving these issues usually requires a set of policies and procedures and new technology. Investing in data management solutions which simplify data governance is often the best way to go.

Finally, security is also an essential step, especially for those companies with large data storage. Protecting yourself with additional security measures might be a smart idea, even though it’s going to be more expensive. The most popular additional steps are identity and access control, data encryption and segregation.

Implementing data strategies for your company or organization might be the most challenging task of them all. However, starting with small data is usually the best way, not only because you lack experience or money, but to collect only the best data. Afterward, if you seem to handle it with reliable ROI, start thinking bigger. Connect with experts and companies in different fields, and invest in technology which will improve data integration, validation, and security.

At the end of the day, it’s an undeniable fact that every single person on this Earth is here to make money and one way or the other every person comes at that stage of his life when he has to decide on a career or  start a business to the pay the bills and fulfill the other expenses. Speaking of starting a business, look around yourself, and you’ll see that people now prefer to run their own businesses instead of working for a company and getting a fixed salary.

If you are reading this article, then there are high chances that you are in search of some creative business ideas that will work for you. Being in business for yourself is great because this way, you’ll get to be your own boss, you’ll plan the success of your business and l, your salary will depend on how much hard work and effort you are ready to put into your business.

Other than all of this, we are now going to put down some of the best and the most amazing small business ideas that will definitely be a good pick for you especially this year in 2019.

Small Business Ideas That Can Make You Money

1- Blogging

It’s a time taking process, but if you really are good at writing and if you really know how to create the content that people want to read then yes, you will see some measurable results within a short while. You see, blogging is trending on number 1 at the moment and can be a very successful business. You just need a website or a blog of your own and then you need to invest your time and your creative brain!

2- Starting A Watch Brand

This one’s a great idea because right now people are going crazy after watches. Companies like IWC are creating masterpieces that sell at an affordable price, which is what people are loving right now. You can actually do really well in this watch making and selling business because right now it seems like wearing a watch is a popular trend and this means that you can make some massive sales.

3- Online Teaching

It’s the digital world we are living in so why not reap all the benefits you can? Online teaching is trending at the moment and if you really are good at teaching a skill then you shouldn’t wait and start offering your services right now. You can start small in this business and once your audience will grow, you can then increase the rates and get the game strong.

4- Start A Travel Company

There are a lot of travel companies out there, but the number will be enough because people now love to take small trips in groups and this is an opportunity that you can cash for sure. It’s a fun thing to do, especially if you are someone who loves traveling himself then making a business out of your passion can be easy for you. At least you’ll know where to take people and how to make them have the best and the most fun time possible.

Conclusion

These are some of the small businesses ideas you can look into. So, opt for any of the above-mentioned business and we promise you some great results. It’s just that you will have to be constant with your efforts. Don’t lose hope and remember that it’s a business that you are about to run and it will take some time to show results. You won’t become a billionaire overnight and you’ll have to wait for your success, but a well-thought out business can bring results in time!

This Post Was Submitted By Qurban Shah From http://reviewsdraw.com/

Sending an email can either make your brand or break it. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to design your emails for smooth user experience. A broken email layout is the biggest blasphemy for any marketer as well as the subscriber. The way your subscribers perceive your email determines the level of engagement garnered from the campaigns.

Email marketers face some rendering challenges because of two main reasons:

-Suppression of images

Certain email clients block images by default according to the security settings set by the subscriber. Outlook and Yahoo! automatically reset these settings and turn off the images. Consequently, the subscriber might not be able to understand the purpose of the email, which will hamper the performance of your email campaigns because of the improper rendering.

-Formatting changes

Text alignment, bullets, and font sizes can change according to the email client that the subscriber uses to view the email. Your recipient will not have the leniency to struggle through poorly rendering emails. Most often, such emails will land in the trash bin or even worse get marked as spam.

Here are 10 simple tips on how to overcome rendering challenges in emails.

1. Insert a preview text that aligns well with the subject line and purpose of the email

A preview text elaborates the subject line and lets the subscriber know more about the purpose of the email. Often, marketers face the challenge of limited characters allowed in the subject lines. Preview text helps to overcome this issue.

Here’s an example of how your email will be viewed in case you do not add the preheader text.

2. Add Alt text for all the visual elements

You cannot do away with visual elements in emails. However, it is important to consider the rendering of these elements across the diverse email clients. Many email clients have images turned off by default, owing to which the user might not be able to understand the purpose of the email.

Take a look at the screenshot below.

To make sure that your email does not look like this, always add Alt text to the imagery included in the email. This practice is also crucial when it comes to creating accessible emails.

Here’s an example showing the right usage of Alt text.

3. Avoid using JavaScript

Mostly every email client blocks JavaScript as it can conceal malware and lead to security issues. Consequently, you should not use it in your emails.

4. Choose your fonts wisely

Include the standard web-safe fonts in your emails so that there are no rendering issues.

If you plan to use custom fonts to grab the reader’s attention, it is a must to add fallback fonts with similar height and spacing. The safest bet is to use fonts like Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Palatino, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Times New Roman, and Verdana.

Email clients supporting web fonts are enlisted below.

• Native Android Email client
• Outlook 2000
• Outlook.com app
• AOL Mail
• Apple Mail
• iOS Mail
• Safari browser

5. Inline CSS and tables instead of using CSS Stylesheets

Emails render differently from websites. Many email clients do not support stylesheets which makes it incumbent upon the developer to use tables and inline styles rather than CSS.

6. Use tables rather than divs

While websites are designed using divs, most of the email clients do not support <div> tags. Therefore, emails should be coded using table tags. Moreover, it is easier to create responsive emails with tables.

7. Specify HTML text for CTAs

It is strongly recommended you do not use images for your calls to action. CTAs should be written in HTML text for better rendering. Also, do not have any CTAs in the background images.

8. Standard bullets are more preferable over custom-designed bullets

Use standard bullets instead of custom-designed bullets so that there are no rendering issues. Alternatively, you can make the bulleted list into an image with suitable alt text.

9. It is safe to use <br> instead of “float” and “clear”

Float and CSS properties of CSS can get mixed up in the emails. Therefore, it is better to use HTML code as <br> instead of CSS.

10. Mention the widths and heights in pixels instead of percentages

Some email clients do not look at percentage values as a valid property. If you have to manage large images within the email designs, it is advisable to use pixel sizes as opposed to percentage values.

Wrap up

The foundation of designing a flawless email that renders well across every device and email client is “responsiveness”. Design for “Images Off” so that it overcomes the problem of image suppression.

If you follow these two tips and test your emails before every send, you will surely conquer the obstacle of improper rendering.

Author Bio

Chintan is Head of Operations at InboxArmy LLC. He has been into email marketing domain from last 7 years. Chintan is connected to InboxArmy, a professional email marketing agency that specializes in providing advanced email marketing services from email production to deployment. Chintan’s track record of email marketing success covers building email programs from scratch and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.