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With the passage of time, consumers have become highly conscious of the marketing strategies being used by businesses all over. Most consumers are able to differentiate between an authentic business and one that is exaggerated and hyped through artificial marketing. As a result, people tend to spend their hard-earned earnings on very particular products and brands. In such a highly competitive business environment, businesses face the difficulty of increasing their sales, or even worse, just to maintain a steady sales income. As a result, the capital of such companies starts dwindling within a few years, and it can lead to the catastrophic failure of their business model. If you want to keep your head above those choppy waters, you need to keep in mind the following five marketing tips. These tips should be adopted by all businesses to drastically improve their sales: 1. Identify The Market And The Problems. Not enough can be said of the great importance in choosing a...

Instead of waiting for leads to come to you, go to them! Many people just build an opt-in page or a squeeze page and wait for leads to sign-up or reach out to them - so instead of waiting for people to find your store and buy from you - actively go out and find prospects. Look for questions that are being asked, which are relevant to what your business provides, on forums, Q&A sites (like Yahoo Answers or Quora) and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Now take a couple of minutes to answer those questions, making sure you provide value first and foremost. This will help you gain extra exposure for your business, help build you up as an authority in your niche, start to build trust between you and possible customers and potentially land you some sales. For example, if you have an SEO service, look for questions on the best ways to optimize websites. Then you could leave an answer such as, “Here are 3 tips I find work well…(insert your tips h...

A membership program is where your customers sign up, either for free or for a fee, to be part of a community or elite club. As an incentive to sign up they often receive special discounts, invites to product launches, early access and other rewards. The benefit to you is that by offering incentives and rewarding customers’ loyalty, you encourage them to keep coming back to you and buying from your business. You also have the benefit of beginning to build a list of clients that you can regularly market to and offer deals to. For example, if you have an online store and sell health food products, you could create a VIP membership program for customers, where one of the main benefits is free shipping. You could also offer special deals, such as a free gift (perhaps a sample of a new product you want to promote) with each purchase over $30. The free shipping encourages people to join your VIP Membership Program, now allowing you to continue to regularly market to them, and the free...

Every business owner has the desire to make as much money as possible, that's kind of the whole point of business. Most of us are continuously searching for new ideas to achieve this goal. Every individual business should evaluate the market trends and customers' requirements before making any specific decision about their business. But there are a few common tricks that can be applied in businesses to make more money. Here are three easy business tricks that can help you in making more money: 1. Establish A Good Brand Contrary to popular belief, there is a huge difference between a business and a brand. Brands are the results of a creative and innovative mind. In establishing an attractive brand, it is helpful in thinking of your brand as a person and thinking about what kind of person would you want it to be. Customers like to form associations with companies that are also good brands. You should answer the following questions while branding your business: • Wha...

Every entrepreneur is well familiar with the importance of marketing in today’s era of extreme competition. Marketing through various channels has become essential to make sure a business is able to thrive in the market. Without a proper marketing strategy, a company will not be able to gain new customers and expand their reach. Are you looking for tips and techniques to create better sales funnel for your business? If so, you are in the right place. What Is A Sales Funnel? A sales funnel is a marketing concept that provides a schematic of the process through which a customer goes through while making a purchase. The term ‘funnel’ is used as an analogy because most of the people who know about a business are its potential customers and represent the top, most significant part of the funnel. This might also be described as your “warm market” and may include those who are on the fence about your brand, or barely even giving it a thought. These people are on top. The people w...

There’s many strategies to increase conversions, but have you tried this one? Try ending your prices with a 7, .95, 5 or .95. Instead of charging $10, for instance, consider charging $9.97. Even though it’s only a few cents less, people seem to think that it sounds cheaper. Even on high priced items the same tricks can work. For instance, you’ve probably never seen a car advertised for $30,000. Instead, you’ll see it advertised for something like $29,995. Amazingly enough, on that last example, some people will walk away thinking that the car is $29,000 in their head (even though they’re smart enough to know that it’s obviously $30,000). In the past many marketers have used 9 or .99 to end the numbers in, but it seems that there’s been a growing trend lately that 7, .97, 5, or .95 seem to stand out even more and appear even less expensive. Crazy stuff, but it can definitely work. And it’s doubtful that you’ll miss those few cents after increasing your conversions....

One of the best things you can do to get people to take action, especially online, is to offer a free plus shipping & handling offer. These offers have an obvious HUGE value because nothing beats free, and by having them pay a small S&H fee, they still see the value in the free product, despite how often times your products’ costs might be completely covered in this S&H fee. For instance, if you go to a site like Aliexpress.com, which specializes in drop-shipping products of all sorts, you can find lots of jewelry, pet toys, gadgets, etc. for under $2 that already include free shipping. Some of these have perceived values of easily $10 to $30 or more. That means that your customers get an awesome deal by thinking they got the bargain of a lifetime, while you also get a steal of a deal by getting a new customer at better than no cost to you (if the product and shipping costs $2, for instance, you’re up $3 in profit just by charging a $5 S&H fee). ...

Business to marketing seems like a foreign language to many people who are trying it for the first time. The consumer markets seems so much plainer and easier, after all, we're dealing with every day people. With businesses we feel we are dealing with some mysterious entity or some divine VIP, a thing whose persona is foreign to everything we knew in the every day human consciousness. The reality that most people miss, and it's a well-kept secret, businesses are people. They are decision makers, executives, highly paid company officers, and even midgrade managers. At the end of the day though, they are people, selling to other businesses is no different than selling to people, except that you have to consider the kind of person you're selling to. Much of this involves trying to get into a person's head. What does a business owner or manager need and/or want? What things will improve their lives, and more importantly, the operations of their business? Answering these...

It would not be wrong to say that people’s interest in blogging has hit the highest point in recent years. Some people believe that blogs are dying, but more accurate they're evolving. Make no mistake, blogs are here to stay, but they're more competitive than ever. With social media, freelancing, and SEO becoming widely used around the world, the trend of blogging has dramatically increased in recent times. Millions of blogs are being written on a daily basis, but there are some basic tips and techniques which should be implemented in every excellent and engaging blog post you write. Captivating Title and Headline Many writers tend to ignore the fact that a good blog post is always about just one idea. There is no need to add numerous ideas and topics in a single blog post because the primary purpose of a post is to discuss and elaborate on one idea. A good title is the one that captures the readers’ attention at the very first glance and briefly describes the content o...

Social proof is a great way to help sell your product. A testimonial from a satisfied customer can sometimes be more effective than you, yourself, talking about your offer. A great way to make your marketing less “salesy” while still being powerful is to include case studies from people who have used your product/services. For example, instead of talking about how people need to buy your SEO service, write up an article, blog post, or Facebook post on how one business went from no rankings to #1 rankings and more sales in under 2 weeks with a handful of easy tweaks... and then talk about the process and what your service did. A handful of readers will naturally want to reach out to you to have you do the same thing for them. This same method can even be used to write blog posts, articles (even ones you can submit to the media), videos, etc. on top of ads you can make. For instance, you could have an article on “how one household decreased their energy costs by 38% with a couple ...

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now. For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop u...

So you’re looking to build a list? This strategy is a great way to build a list of people that are interested in your niche. First, find relevant Facebook groups in your niche, join them, and take the time to see what people are complaining about. What are the common complaints that keep coming up again and again? What product or service could you come up with to provide a solution to these complaints? Once you’ve come up with a solution, sell it or give it away for free to build a list or following. For example, if you run a wedding planning business, join Facebook groups in that niche and see what the common complaints among brides-to-be are. Perhaps they find that it’s very overwhelming, trying to remember everything to organize and knowing when to do what. You could create a timeline checklist, of what to organize when in the countdown to the big day, and offer it free to build a list of potential clients. So join Facebook groups within your niche and see what the most common...

Instead of waiting for leads to come to you, go to them! Many people just build an opt-in page or a squeeze page and wait for leads to sign-up or reach out to them - so instead of waiting for people to find your store and buy from you - actively go out and find prospects. Look for questions that are being asked, which are relevant to what your business provides, on forums, Q&A sites (like Yahoo Answers or Quora) and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Now take a couple of minutes to answer those questions, making sure you provide value first and foremost. This will help you gain extra exposure for your business, help build you up as an authority in your niche, start to build trust between you and possible customers and potentially land you some sales. For example, if you have an SEO service, look for questions on the best ways to optimize websites. Then you could leave an answer such as, “Here are 3 tips I find work well…(insert your tips h...

1: What is Schema? Schema is best described as a type of language and coding system. It helps organize the data and shows more relevant results in search engines for the end user. This system began in 2011 and has widely been supported and used by several search engines like Yandex, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google as an attempt to bring more pin-pointed results to their users. Schema is often referred to as a markup system that is used to optimized websites. Essentially, it paves the way for search engines to interpret information and show the most relevant results. Now, if you think that Schema doesn't apply perfectly to your website, you couldn't be more wrong. Schema can offer a variety of features that you perfectly image and optimize to your advantage. The most surprising thing about schema is that it collects and displays every meager detail about the data you have questions about. For example, if you search for a specific hotel in your area on the Google sea...

Looking for new customers? Or a way to make a whole bunch more sales? You’re going to love this strategy then! Think about other business that you could partner with, that you don’t directly compete with, where you could offer value that will make you both a lot of money. Think about the customers a business already has, and whether those same customers would be interested in your own product or service. Now, think of how you can make your offer a win-win for you and the other business. This is a great way to access a whole new database of potential clients for yourself, and give the business you’re partnering with an opportunity to upsell their current clients by offering them your service (for a cut of your fee). For example, if you sell homemade candles, reach out to boutiques to see if they'd be willing to sell your candles (even without them buying them first - just sharing in the sales). Or if you sell a social media management or SEO service, reach out to web design firm...

A membership program is where your customers sign up, either for free or for a fee, to be part of a community or elite club. As an incentive to sign up they often receive special discounts, invites to product launches, early access and other rewards. The benefit to you is that by offering incentives and rewarding customers’ loyalty, you encourage them to keep coming back to you and buying from your business. You also have the benefit of beginning to build a list of clients that you can regularly market to and offer deals to. For example, if you have an online store and sell health food products, you could create a VIP membership program for customers, where one of the main benefits is free shipping. You could also offer special deals, such as a free gift (perhaps a sample of a new product you want to promote) with each purchase over $30. The free shipping encourages people to join your VIP Membership Program, now allowing you to continue to regularly market to them, and the free...

Business is a complex concept that many fail to gasp. A business only emerges to be successful if it is implemented after thorough planning with passion, discipline, and after a great deal of research. Sustaining a business can become extremely difficult after a certain period of time due to budget constraints and poor planning. According to a survey, in the USA alone, 70% of new businesses take a hit within a decade of their conception. A truly successful business is not one that booms and experiences a short and vibrant period of success. A truly successful company is one that enjoys sustainable success that lasts long term and withstands the test of time. Many business owners make the mistake of ignoring critical issues during the first few years, which in turn damages the business operations down the road in later years, and sometimes it's too late for the problem to be fixed. A number of reasons can lead to your business becoming a failure. Some of the common reasons ar...

Sometimes it’s hard to see the benefit of something we haven’t seen in action or tried first. Offering a free trial period, or a demonstration of your product, can be a great way to alleviate a potential customer’s fears and make them confident the product will work for them. Also, once someone has tried something free they often feel obliged to reciprocate by purchasing from you - it’s the principle of reciprocity in action. For example, if you have a software product, offer a free 30 day trial, so customers can see how it works, use it and see the results they get from it. You’ll get customers who may have sat on the fence or not purchased previously all of a sudden be ready to buy because they can get a chance to experience how great the product can actually be for them. There’s one tip we’ve learned over the years that can greatly increase your retention rate here (or essentially how many stay on past the trial period), and that’s to offer a free trial, but re...

How can you improve your marketing and create new products - products that your customers already want? Simple. Ask for feedback from your customers and see what the common themes are. What do your customers like most about your product? How can you focus on that more in your marketing? What do they believe that your product/service currently lacks? Think about how you can use their feedback to create a new/improved service and offer that to your customers. For example, perhaps you have a business that creates websites and the common feedback that your customers give is that they wish you also helped rank their site on search engines. You could create an additional service, where for a monthly fee you help rank their website. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, you could always outsource this part, but white label it as your own service - you still make a profit on the service, but don’t need to do any of the work. You can offer this to your current customers, saying ...

It’s time to check out the competition!! In school it may have been called cheating, but in the business world it’s just good old-fashioned market research! Find out where your competitors are advertising, spy on their sales funnels, and see how you can replicate any of their good ideas that appear to be working well. There are many online tools to find out what ads and keywords your competitors are using. There’s also a couple of basic ways to see what your competitors are up to - follow them on social media and subscribe to their blogs and newsletters. If they have smaller priced items, you may choose to purchase one of their items to see what their purchase process is like, whether they offer upsells, what those are and what their follow up process is to a sale. See what they are doing really well and look for how you can replicate it or adapt it to your business. For example, if you sign up to a competitor’s newsletter, you can see how they nurture a lead and turn it onto a sa...

Every entrepreneur is well familiar with the importance of marketing in today’s era of extreme competition. Marketing through various channels has become essential to make sure a business is able to thrive in the market. Without a proper marketing strategy, a company will not be able to gain new customers and expand their reach. Are you looking for tips and techniques to create better sales funnel for your business? If so, you are in the right place. What Is A Sales Funnel? A sales funnel is a marketing concept that provides a schematic of the process through which a customer goes through while making a purchase. The term ‘funnel’ is used as an analogy because most of the people who know about a business are its potential customers and represent the top, most significant part of the funnel. This might also be described as your “warm market” and may include those who are on the fence about your brand, or barely even giving it a thought. These people are on top. The people w...

What is a Ranking in SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is meant for the betterment of web pages to help search engines rank them accordingly. In SEO, ranking indicates the position of a website’s page on what's called the search engine results pages (SERPs). According to Google, the ranking of a website is vital because it helps in showing the relevant search results. It is also essential for the organization of largescale data present on the web and making the information reachable and valuable to people all around the world. The ranking also makes it easier for Google to catalog the pages based on the optimization and quality of the pages. The five most important factors in ranking of a website are: 1. Secure Website The right URL is secure and easily accessible. A secure and accessible URL is probably the most important ranking factor of any website. Google’s bots should be able to access and crawl URLs for the information they need. In other words, websit...

One way to show value and highlight the great price you’re offering your customers is to point out when you are giving a discount or savings, as this lets customers know you’re giving them a great deal and lots of value. A discount also has a psychological effect - we feel we are getting a better deal and are more likely to buy. Seeing that an item is discounted not only is an incentive to buy it now, it can also encourage new users to buy that might otherwise have not considered it. For example, when listing your price, you might write: "$97 --- 50% Off Today!" This makes people feel they are getting a great deal, helps them justify the purchase to themselves and is more likely to push them over the line. If you have several similar offers that are slightly better or more/less expensive than the other, instead of just listing off the benefits of each one next to their price, you can also not only list off the savings, but say “Good Deal,” “Better Deal,”...

In terms of cost-efficiency, the most crucial method for attracting traffic to your website is through organic searches. They allow you to reach people who don't even know about your site initially but are searching for a specific product or service related to your website. The primary factor of the success in organic searches boils down to the ranking of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). There are a ton of factors that may contribute to your website may not be ranking well on search engines. Some of these reasons are: A Slow Website Millions of search results are available to the user as soon as they enter a keyword into a search engine like Google. With such a massive amount of data available on the Web, it's become challenging to hold users' attention for extended periods of time. Pages that load faster not only provide excellent user experiences but also play a huge role in SEO ranking. Site speed is an official search ranking algorithm in...

Businesses of any kind can be quite challenging. There is a lot of saturation and variation in different industrial sectors. It all requires careful research and cautiously formulated strategies. To ensure the success of your business, it is necessary to make your brand stand out from competitors through effective promotion strategies. Here are the crucial steps in marketing your new business: Conduct market research Market research is a crucial component in establishing a marketing strategy for a new business. It includes collecting data about the market in which you are going to establish your business. The data is thoroughly analyzed to determine the needs and requirements of potential customers, prime locations for the business, and the estimation of the budget and pricing of the products and services. Moreover, market research can also include sales predictions, monitoring latest market trends, and studying the business models of your competition to make sure you ad...

How can you price your product in a way that psychologically impacts your customer into believing they’re getting a great deal? When people see the difference, between your normal price and your sales price, it influences their decision to purchase. By having a “normal” price listed it creates the impression that the deal they are getting is awesome. They’re getting all this value at a price that is way less than “normal”. People love to believe they are getting a bargain and by listing both your normal and sale price side by side, it highlights the value they’re getting for their money. For example, when you list your pricing, write it as, "Normally $197 -- Only $97 Today!" You can also come up with reasons to have such discounts listed. These reasons can be mentioned next to the discounted price as well. These could be things like a holiday special, inventory closeout, end of year special pricing, manager’s special, etc.. Any reason works and makes it ...

There is nothing more frustrating than going to run a Facebook ad and seeing it disapproved or banned completely. Even worse is when Facebook deactivates your ads account as a whole. People experience this with their business and personal accounts all the time. It can be devastating, especially if you can't get back online. Still, if your account has been banned from running ads, it may not be the end of the world. New or Reinstated The First step you will need to take is to figure out what's going on and with which account. If your Facebook business account has been disabled, you may simply be able to create a new one and try to be careful in the future. If your personal Facebook account has been disabled, however, there may be something going that is much more serious. Creating a new personal Facebook account for ads will probably not be possible since Facebook is usually very meticulous about tracing duplicates. First Things First, Visit The Ads Manager Before ...