Harnessing Time: Using Countdown Clocks for Event Marketing

Looking to make your event truly memorable? Consider incorporating a countdown clock for websites. They’re an effective way to generate excitement and anticipation among attendees. By including them in your event promotions, you’ll capture people’s attention and encourage greater engagement. This, in turn, can result in improved turnout and overall outcomes for your event.

Why Use Countdown Clocks?

The moment we come across a countdown clock, it naturally captures our attention. Watching the numbers count down creates a sense of curiosity, making us wonder about the occasion. This innate inquisitiveness becomes an advantage for marketers. When potential attendees see the dwindling seconds and minutes, they are drawn into the details of the event, eager to uncover the mystery behind the ticking timer.

However, the appeal of a countdown doesn’t stop there. With each passing day, hour, and minute, excitement grows exponentially. Attendees and potential participants find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of anticipation. They contemplate the activities, surprises, and all the possible experiences that await at the event. This mounting enthusiasm is tangible and infectious, enhancing the allure of the event.

The countdown clock, although often underestimated, is actually a tool in the field of event marketing. It has the ability to grab people’s attention, generate excitement, and motivate them to take action, all of which are essential for a successful turnout at an event.

The Psychological Appeal of Countdown Clocks

Countdown clocks tap into emotions that humans experience, particularly related to anticipation. As these clocks continuously mark the passage of time, they ignite our curiosity and excitement, drawing us closer to the significant moment they represent. Three fundamental psychological principles underlie this captivating appeal:

Scarcity Principle. As each second disappears, the upcoming event takes on an air of exclusivity, making it appear rare and, therefore, more desirable.
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). With each tick of the clock, a sense of anxiety intensifies about missing out on a valuable opportunity, prompting people to take swift action.
Goal Orientation. It keeps us focused on the event’s importance. Every glance at the diminishing time serves as a reminder, ensuring that we prioritize and don’t let this event fade into the background amidst our busy lives.

Collectively, these factors contribute to countdown clocks being a tool in marketing efforts.

Incorporating Countdown Clocks in Event Marketing

Integrating your events landing page with a countdown clock can have multiple benefits. Not only does it provide immediate visibility of the event’s proximity to visitors, but it also creates a sense of urgency that encourages them to take action. It can encompass registering for the event, purchasing tickets, or exploring event details, and placing it strategically can effectively convert casual website visitors into participants.

Incorporating countdown clocks into event emails serves two purposes. Firstly, it serves as a reminder of the upcoming event, nudging recipients to keep it on their radar. Secondly, it creates a sense of importance and urgency, motivating them to prepare for the event or secure their attendance by completing registrations.

Using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook can be instrumental in capturing attention and sustaining interest in your event. Regularly update your audience about the dwindling time until the event generates excitement and maintains engagement. Additionally, integrating the countdown with content such as polls about expectations for the event, quizzes related to its theme, or hashtags promoting discussions about the upcoming occasion can further enhance audience participation.

Best Practices for Effective Countdowns

Timing is crucial when it comes to choosing the duration for your countdown. It should be determined by the nature and size of your event. For high-stakes events like conferences or major product launches, a longer lead time can help build momentum and give potential attendees more time to plan. On the other hand, local events such as community fairs or pop-up shops might benefit from a shorter countdown that creates buzz within a shorter time frame.

Today, audiences engage with brands across multiple platforms; thus, consistency is key. This not only maintains a sense of urgency but also ensures a cohesive brand experience. Consistent countdowns eliminate confusion. Ensure that no matter where your audience sees the event promotion, they receive the same clear message.

To make your countdown more impactful, include relevant details alongside the clock itself. Highlighting the date ensures that nobody misses out due to forgetfulness. Providing venue information helps with logistics planning. Additionally, showcasing attractions or speakers can be an enticing factor that helps potential attendees make their decision to participate.

Digital consumers expect more than passive content consumption; they crave interaction, sharing, and discussions. Adding engaging features like “share” buttons empowers your audience to spread the word about your event. Offering teasers, sneak peeks or behind-the-scenes glimpses can ignite curiosity. Encourage conversations, thereby solidifying your event’s presence in the public’s mind.

Personalization is key to marketing success; tailor-made countdown experiences can significantly impact. Using user data, you can create countdowns that enhance individual engagement. For instance, sending a customized email countdown to registrants that not only counts down the time but also reminds them of workshops they’ve signed up for or networking opportunities available can create a more personal and immersive user experience.

Conclusion

Using countdown clocks as a marketing strategy is a way to engage audiences during events. These clocks tap into our emotions like anticipation, the fear of missing out, and the appeal of limited availability. The ticking seconds act as a reminder, building excitement and creating a sense of urgency. For marketers, these clocks are not just elements; they are powerful tools that can greatly enhance campaigns.

However, their effectiveness is maximized when used thoughtfully. It is important to align their presence and design with the nature of the event, the preferences of the target audience, and the overall marketing objectives. This ensures an impactful message that resonates with attendees and drives event success.

Guide to Business Success and How Business Succeed

Guide to Business Success and How Businesses Succeed

Every entrepreneur wants to create a successful and profitable business; this is a basic and obvious statement. But what does not seem too obvious to most small business owners is how to run a successful small business. To succeed in business today, you need to be flexible and have good planning and organizational skills. Many people start a business thinking that they’ll turn on their computers or open their doors and start making money, only to find that making money in a business doesn’t just happen as such. In this article, we’d look at business success – what business success is all about, how businesses succeed, and some key tips you can apply to your business to achieve business success. So, keep reading.

Business Success Definition

A successful business makes efficient and effective use of resources like human capital, money, inventory, plant, and equipment. A successful business is a living, breathing organism that contributes to everyone’s wealth and quality of life. It is crucial to remember that business success is never a certainty or a final goal. It is a journey that never ends since any one of the factors that could have an impact on a business’s success could alter at any time.

Business Success Dimensions

Personal: For entrepreneurs, the process of creation – starting with an idea and producing something that lasts – provides immense gratification. Seeing your family name on the corporation gives you a sense of ownership. Successfully confronting problems and, as a result, discovering abilities and strengths you didn’t know you possessed are undoubtedly parts of personal success in business.

Financial: Successful businesses provide a significant return on investment for the shareholders who put their money into the endeavor. The company’s founders, who are typically also stockholders, can produce riches for their families and future stability while simultaneously living a more wealthy lifestyle. They define success as being able to offer a better life for their children than they had for themselves when they were younger.

Social: Business success is also measured by the benefit they provide to society. Some of the products and services they provide have explicit social purposes, such as helping the environment or offering educational opportunities for children. Others are really dedicated to philanthropic giving and becoming good corporate citizens.

Longevity: With the number of organizations that fail or start off strong only to falter in the competitive marketplace a few years later, the capacity to sustain success in the tumultuous, ever-changing business environment is another measure of corporate success.

Customer Satisfaction: Many of the goods and services we use every day were established to assist clients in solving an issue. Seeing that your goods have made a major difference in the lives of your consumers is one of the driving elements that keeps company owners working persistently to build even better solutions. Praise from delighted clients creates a sense of success that is as significant to some company owners as the financial gains they get.

Employee Satisfaction: Business owners can be able to assess whether the satisfaction of their employees is their topmost concern by assessing how hard their workers work and how dedicated each member of their team is to the goals of the business. This component of business success is measured by how many employees stay with the company for five, ten, or more years – sometimes their whole career.

How Businesses Succeed

Certain key attributes make a business successful and can be synthesized into a stepwise process of how businesses succeed.

1. Pursuing a defined mission

The purpose of a small business is critical to the operation of all areas of the organization. It assists the entrepreneurs in growing the firm with a large aim in mind. It offers employees something to strive for and provides them a feeling of purpose. It also informs clients about the company’s values and fosters personal relationships.

Your goal is more than just a flag proclaiming your support for something. Your company should operate by its goal.

2. Pursuing long-term goals

Successful businesses have both short- and long-term goals. Long-term goals are vital, whether they be investments in new technology that will not be available for several years or aiming for a particular level of growth in the next decade. Instead of bouncing from tiny success to small success, a long-term aim integrates those modest victories into a larger image.

3. Focusing on customers

The most successful businesses prioritize customer care and the customer experience. The first stage is to develop items and services that clients desire. However, concentrating on customers extends beyond your products. Customers are fed up with dealing with businesses via phone menus and automated chat bots. They are looking for a human connection. A consumer wants to know that their company is appreciated and that you will endeavor to address their difficulties. A few negative client experiences may have a significant influence on how well-liked a company is.

4. Retaining employee talent

Good managers help a successful business maintain good personnel on the payroll. Another approach is to create a purpose with strong core principles in which workers may believe. The most successful businesses identify and seek to retain their top employees. That entails more than just good compensation and a few perks.

Offering additional training opportunities and other incentives such as telecommuting days are common approaches for businesses to retain their finest employees. Another example is benefit packages that provide flexible sick and vacation day options. Finally, employees must be aware that chances for advancement, such as moving up the ladder or laterally within the business, exist. You won’t lose someone to a similar position at another firm this way.

5. Employing a great management team

Successful businesses, large and small, require effective management, from the top down to foremen and shift supervisors. Quality leaders provide communication, a natural business culture, and clear goals and objectives to their staff. Criticism is constructive, and employees feel appreciated while also knowing where they need to improve. A good leader embodies the corporate culture, follows norms and rules and serves as an example to workers. Finally, successful leaders make their staff feel appreciated.

Being a bad leader isn’t just about making poor decisions for the company. In fact, a bad leader can make good financial or marketing decisions, yet lead a team of miserable employees. From failing to empathize with an employee who struggles to communicate in an unclear or frustrating manner, bad leaders inspire employees to quit or switch departments left and right.

In picking out leaders at your business, it is important to have an expert who whispers advice and coaches you on what suitable steps you can take.

Do you need the services of a small business coach for your business? Then click here to book a free call with one of our small business coaches now.

6. Keeping detailed financial records

Financial records are an important part of how businesses succeed. Businesses must have a clear understanding of how much money they make and spend. Keeping track of money allows organizations to identify beneficial tendencies as well as potential financial hazards. Businesses that understand their finances might choose to invest, seek innovations, or pay for new equipment or suppliers. It is also how firms determine when they need to hire extra employees.

7. Continuous innovation

People will imitate you if you make a high-quality product. That’s why the most successful businesses are always inventing, whether it’s improving on existing items or creating totally new ones.

Improving a product, finding a means to give a reduced price, or inventing new ways to express gratitude to clients are all examples of effective innovations. Never give up on amazing ideas.

15 Keys to Business Success

1. Provide a Great Product or Service

While marketing is important for building excitement and increasing visitors to your brand, it can only get you so far. Once the consumers arrive, the items or services must be good enough to meet or exceed their expectations. This is how you develop a lifelong repeat consumer who will aid the business by spreading the word.

Making consumers become brand ambassadors is one of the most successful and cost-effective strategies to get a small business noticed. However, this can only happen if the service is of high quality and, most all, delivers an amazing solution to a real problem that fits a market demand. Many entrepreneurs have created mind-blowing and unique goods that fail, while others with a simple idea dominate the market – Why? Perhaps the first group became so focused on the end product that they forgot to resolve an issue, whereas the second group solved a common problem to which many potential buyers can connect.

2. Focus on Customer Service

A NewVoiceMedia research found that 51% of customers won’t do business with a company again following a negative service encounter. Additional research also shows that it usually takes numerous happy customers to make up for one unhappy one.

Make providing excellent customer service a top priority since devoted consumers are much simpler to sell to. To make sure that your small business is offering a service that is superior to that of your rivals, evaluate your existing customer service and implement the necessary modifications. You could need to spend money on employee training, change your return policy, or make simple adjustments like immediately answering consumer voicemails or emails.

3. Expand Your Marketing Efforts

You must use effective marketing to boost your sales, but doing so doesn’t have to be expensive. There are several low-cost alternatives to sell your goods and services, such as:

Advertising your business on your vehicle with a vehicle wrap
Cold calling (yes it can still work)
Creating and using a promotion kit
Developing business partnerships and doing cross-promotion with complementary businesses
Giving free workshops or classes related to your products or services
Involving the newspapers in your grand openings, moves, or charity events
Joining professional organizations
Sending out promotions with your invoices

4. Do Your Research

Business is never simply business; it must be extremely personal as well. This is not to say that entrepreneurs should throw caution to the wind and launch firms based simply on their own opinions. For example, you may believe that walking a cat on a leash is a terrific idea, but will a cat leash business be successful? Gut instincts are useful, but they are not the same as information. It is derived from data, which is derived through study. How large is the prospective consumer base, and what qualities do these people have? To effectively target customer profiles, it is vital to understand what drives and motivates them. One of the most important factors to small company success is research.

The competitive assessment is another important part of the research. To establish a brand that meets the demands of the market, you must first comprehend the playing field. Here are some questions to think about asking:

Are there any companies that may be considered competitors?
What can you learn from your rivals?
Is there one that sticks out as a leader in the industry?
If so, how did they rise to the top?
What were the secrets to their small company’s success?
Have they made any errors that you might have avoided?

5. Update Your Business Plan

One of the key factors for business success is to regularly update your business plan.

Before establishing your business, you did create a business plan, correct? For several reasons, including determining the viability of your business idea and obtaining a loan or equity funding, a business plan is essential for startups.

It’s not too late to make one if you haven’t already. Successful, well-established companies revise their business plans every year to assess their successes (or lack thereof) and choose new objectives or paths.

The income statement, the cash flow forecast, and the balance sheet, which is all included in the business plan’s financial section, provide an overview of your company’s financial health. From there, you may decide how to increase sales, decrease losses, or reduce costs to make your company more lucrative. You require a strategy to achieve your goals if you want your company to be more successful.

6. Keep Things Organized

This point cannot be overstated. Access to information quickly and effectively will make a huge impact in the everyday operations of a small business, whether it is through a real file cabinet or an ordered digital folder structure in your computer. It is strongly advised to retain individual folders for each part of the business that are suitably labeled and structured in a way that makes sense to you and is intuitive enough for everyone in the firm to access as needed. Backups of digital information are very critical, particularly when it comes to financial data. It is critical to keep them in a secure location to avoid potentially catastrophic circumstances later on.

7. Detailed Record Keeping

Proper bookkeeping allows you to understand the financial health of your company and what may become an issue in the future. It might be the difference between becoming a success story for a small business or not. At the same time, it can help to envision future forecasts and aid in company planning. You must grasp how much money the company makes and how much it sells. While many entrepreneurs consider hiring an accountant to perform their taxes as needed, understanding your statistics entails much more. You must be able to make changes to your business every quarter to ensure that you stay on pace to meet your annual goals.

It pays to clean up your records when it comes to excellent tax record keeping. Here are three other ways that accurate records might benefit a small business owner:

Identify income sources: Using the books, you should be able to distinguish between business and non-business revenues and taxable and nontaxable income.

Maintain a record of deductible expenses: everything should be noted as it happens to prevent leaving anything out when completing tax returns.

Support items listed on tax forms: If the IRS requests extra explanation on the items reported on the tax returns, a comprehensive collection of precise and thorough documents will be crucial to speeding the inspection.

8. Keep Focus & Have Patience

Here’s another amazing small company success tip: to help you stay to a plan and avoid distractions, make a “to-do list” every night before going to bed and attack it first thing in the morning. However, it is critical to create a realistic to-do list in order to avoid setting yourself up for failure.

Maintaining focus on a specific objective is critical to achieving business success. The overarching aim must be determined, and smaller milestones must be established along the route.

That being said, it is equally critical to be resilient, not just in the face of everyday problems, but also in the face of overall company success expectations. Most successful firms do not emerge quickly; it may take years for a company to reach its full potential and become a small business success story.

9. Be Prepared to Make Tough Decisions

Every business owner must make sacrifices for the betterment of the company. However, there may come a time when the most difficult decision you must make is to set your ego aside. Pride may be fatal to a business, and not all decisions will always reflect your values and ideals. And, while a small business owner should have substantial personal and emotional stakes in the company, these should not be the driving force behind every daily decision. You should realize when you need assistance and acknowledge that there are individuals who may know more about some parts of the business than you do.

It is OK to seek assistance as a business owner. You must be willing to leave your ego at the door and listen to what others have to say, especially if it comes from your consumer or business coach. It is difficult to approach a problem with humility and an open mind, but it is the greatest way to make smart business decisions.

10. Keep Your Overhead to a Minimum

One of the keys to small company success is cash. Most business owners recognize the importance of capital liquidity as the first line of defense against any unanticipated issue. However, not all small firms can maintain a substantial enough reserve to sustain unexpected income losses or expenditure spikes.

A decent rule of thumb is to not increase the company’s overhead above what its cash reserves can support. It is far simpler to expand the firm as cash liquidity improves, rather than being forced to reduce later because the business couldn’t afford its overhead expenditures in an emergency.

11. Know the Operational Needs

You must understand everything about your company, and this knowledge should not be restricted to figures. It is critical to understand what the organization needs to function efficiently. Employees, equipment, supplies, and everything else required are all included. However, there is also the intangible factor to consider. Efficient operations and inventory management may have a significant impact on operating expenses. Researching best practices in a certain market and testing to see what works best for the firm (by trial & error) may be a time-consuming and laborious task. However, it will increase the profitability and performance of your company.

12. Build Your Online Presence

Your small business has to have an online presence since it is very quick and simple to create a professional-looking website. According to statistics from the E-commerce Wiki, 88 percent of shoppers now do their shopping research online before going to the store.

Many small businesses only need a basic website that outlines who you are, what you do, and how to get in touch with you. Your website should at the very least include:

A summary of what you do—your products and services
Testimonials from customers
Your address, including a Google Maps link
Your business name
Your contact information
Your logo
Your mission, e.g. “We make the best pizza in town…”

Social media may also be a terrific tool for marketing your company, depending on your target demographic. For the majority of businesses today, creating an online presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram isn’t really optional for some businesses these days.

13. Hire the Right People and Treat Them Well

This is one of those areas that may come under making difficult decisions, but the organization must have A+ team players. All small business success stories have one thing in common: they understand that the people they recruit are critical to their company’s success. Every employee at a small firm, more than in a huge corporation, must be trusted to perform his or her daily tasks with as little monitoring as possible. To reduce overhead costs to a minimum, the structure must be as lean as feasible. As a result, no small business can afford to squander a job by recruiting the wrong person. The converse case, however, is true. No small business can afford to lose a top-notch employee. So, create a team and treat them nicely. Listen to them and assist them in growing.

14. Always Look to Improve

To achieve business success, stay away from becoming complacent and innovation-blind. It’s time to start searching for methods to improve once things get going well and the company finds its rhythm. Perhaps it involves adding a new item, developing a special taste, automating a manual step in the process, or opening during more hours. Whatever it is, keep in mind that there is always an opportunity for development in any company. To prevent becoming stagnant, you must remain active. Innovation is crucial to your success as a small firm.

15. Build Word of Mouth for Your Business

Word of mouth is more crucial than ever, whether you run your business in a small town or a big city. Building a solid reputation is essential to the success of your business because the majority of customers use the internet to research businesses before choosing where to purchase.

How can you spread good word of mouth? By offering excellent, professional service, establishing and maintaining a solid local (and online) reputation, and obtaining recognition by supporting and sponsoring neighborhood groups and charities. This all adds up towards lasting business success.

So, there you have it. We trust you found this article helpful.

Do you need help taking action on all this information? Then book a free call with one of our small business coaches today. Click here to schedule a business breakthrough session now.

business marketing business plan business succeed business success customer satisfaction keys to business success market your business small business owners

20 Marketers Share Their Best Automation That Every Business Owner Should Use

Gaurav Sharma, Attrock

The automation that my team and I use in our day-to-day work is sending automated personalized emails at scare. While personalization improves the ROI of email marketing, automation scales things up and helps me run bulk email campaigns.

I think if you can invest only in one type of marketing automation, go with automated personalized emails. These are cost-effective and can deliver great results, not to mention they save a lot of time and effort.

I use automated email campaigns both for my own business and for my clients. I have run several successful email outreach campaigns that delivered exceptional results and you can do the same.

So, invest in email marketing automation for your business and see the results first-hand.

Roxana Motoc,SocialBee

Every business owner should use a social media management tool automation. As an entrepreneur, you don’t want to spend time scheduling content daily and switching between platforms just to remain active.

The best way to have a sharp presence across multiple networks, with the least amount of work, is by using a platform like SocialBee. You can create, schedule, share, and analyze content for all your account from one place.

More than that, by using a social media posting tool you can:

🎨 Use the Canva integration to design your posts right inside SocialBee.

📦 Structure your content in categories to obtain a solid & balanced mix.

📄 Connect the RSS Feed of any blog to import content automatically.

✍️ Customize the posts for each social media network individually.

🔄 Recycle evergreen posts or expire time-sensitive content easily.

📈 Track your links’ performance with over 5+ URL Shorteners integrations.

Helga Moreno, andcards

Here is a couple of my favorite automation that are particularly useful for every businesses. First, there is email automation. There are many email tools available in the market that allow you to automate your email sequences and send personalized emails to your contacts based on their interactions with your website and other engagement data. This can be a great way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects and nurture them through the sales funnel.

Another type of marketing automation that can be very helpful is lead capture automation. Lead capture forms allow you to automatically capture leads from your website and track their information in your CRM. This can be a great way to quickly build up your contact database and start nurturing leads down the sales funnel.

Katrina Dalao, Referral Rock

As a content marketer, one of our big initiatives is keeping our articles up-to-date and relevant for our readers. As big Airtable fans here at Referral Rock, and our team has created an auto-filled template that shows us all of our top articles that need optimizations. Anyone in our team can check this table on a regular basis and see what articles need to be checked for recency and relevance.

Natalya Bucuy, LiveHelpNow

Live Chatbot is one of the best tools a business can use to serve its customers.

Simple questions, like ones regarding business operation hours, store locations, or just a simple initial greeting of the customer on a website – are the tasks chatbots can and even should handle. Answering these questions over and over again not only overwhelms customer service agents but also takes up valuable business resources. Allowing chatbots to handle these inquiries will free up time for human customer service agents to answer more complex questions. Chatbots can direct inquiries to the right department, saving agents and customers time.

Chatbots can also serve as trailblazers for new or small businesses that do not have many staff members or don’t know what type of inquiries their customers would normally have. In this case, chatbots can screen all inquiries and give the business owners ideas of what to expect when it comes to customer communications.

Hope Dorman, Kajabi

My top automation that I use in my niche of content marketing is Semrush reports. I have an automated report from Semrush that comes to my email weekly that shares the top organic search positions for our domain. I appreciate their other reports that compile the key takeaway information with the top pages by organic search, a chat with the number of ranking keywords, top subdomains and the traffic breakdown, a competitive position map, and more. These automatically generated reports provide a helpful update on how our various search engine optimization metrics are performing.

Reporting takes a lot of time. Being able to automatically generate a report with charts and graphs without having to manually recreate them or update them in Google Sheets or Excel can save a lot of time while still providing the important information company stakeholders need.

Paul Posea, Superside

People are spending way too much time sharing on social media channels (especially not the main ones) by doing it individually. Social media posting automation can be a huge time saver if you were planning to cover multiple platforms.

One example of how I’m using an automated process for this is by having a WordPress plugin that automatically shares my posts when I post them on the blog. Even more so, you can set up an automated email to go out when a new blog post is published.

Speaking of email, automatic customer segmentation is a must for every business that has an email list (and every business should have one). I suggest segmenting people on a few very specific categories, but not too many depending on what kind of articles and pages they visit on the site or what level of product awareness they are at.

Even more so, setting up an automated way to clean up your email list is a must if you want to get consistently high CTR in your email campaigns. For that, I recommend doing an automatic cleanup of people who haven’t opened your emails in the past 3 months (or however long you think is too long).

Tara Malone, Mirasee

If you’re brand new to marketing automation, taking on a complex automated marketing campaign can seem daunting. To avoid overwhelm, I recommend starting small and selecting some simple activities that could benefit from automation. This might involve setting up a welcome email sequence for new subscribers, or a thank you message that gets triggered when someone opts into your email list. Once you feel comfortable with setting up simple automated sequences, you can gradually begin to implement automation in more complex marketing campaigns. It’s also important to track the results of your marketing automation campaigns so you can see which types of campaigns work well with your audience and which ones don’t. This is powerful knowledge that you can use to create more effective campaigns that truly resonate with your audience.

Arlen Robinson, OSI Affiliate Software

Email is a valuable tool for any business. It earns businesses an average of $35 for every dollar spent. Email is like a direct line to your customers, and it builds your brand. Therefore to maximize profits it is essential that a business automate the email marketing process.

The first email that you should automate is the initial welcome email that you send a prospect after they engage with your brand in any way. When a new customer signs up, send an automatic welcome email. It’s the first chance to show them that you care. Explain how you can help them and what they should do next.

The next most important email that you should automate is the abandoned cart email. Last year, close to 70% of online shopping carts were abandoned. That’s a lot of money left on the table. To avoid this, your brand should send automatic emails to shoppers who abandon their carts. These messages can remind them that they left something behind, and encourage them to come back and complete the purchase.

The final most important email that you should automate is a Birthday or anniversary email.

You can trigger emails based on the date of the subscriber’s birthday or when the subscriber first signed up. Send a special offer to thank them for their loyalty. These emails typically have a high click-through rate because when you reference someone’s birthday or anniversary date it will catch their eye and intrigue them to see what the email is all about.

Whichever automated email you decide to use, can easily be set up from virtually any email marketing software provider such as Mailchimp, Active Campaign, or virtually any solution that you can find these days.

Kalo Yankulov, Encharge

Apart from the typical email marketing campaigns and email follow-ups, business owners that sell B2B should look into automating their lead qualification process.

If you are not familiar, lead qualification is the process of evaluating potential customers based on their probability of converting. The goal is to minimize time with leads that are not a good fit for your business or whose buying temperature is too low and focus your efforts on hot leads.

You don’t need a fancy enterprise tool to do this. You can use a marketing automation platform like Encharge to qualify and segment your leads based on their form responses, actions on the website, and other data like country, location, etc. This process can be automated by building a flow that automatically scores good fit customers. For instance, if a lead indicates that their budget is over $10,000, you can increase their lead score by 10. Once they reach a lead score threshold, good fit customers can be automatically added as contacts or deals in your CRM. That way, you can follow up and allocate your sales efforts to the right people.

Miruna Dragomir, Planable

Digital marketers are spoilt for choice when it comes to automation tools. My team and I use at least 15 tools on a daily basis. My top pick has to be content marketing automation which involves content creation and social media. Social media creation, planning, collaboration and scheduling has to happen in the same place for us. Since that software is also our business, we use it at all times. It’s important for us to nurture collaboration and have the peace of mind that every social media post looks pixel-perfect when it goes live. And we want to do that as efficiently as possible. We’ve sworn off spreadsheets, email threads, and Google Drive images for social media management. We’d rather keep those for what they were intended: analytics and reporting.

Besides social media, we automate project management as much as possible. We use Notion for company wiki, OKRs, and project planning — Sunsama for task management, and we integrate the two. That’s one of our core principles when it comes to automation: integrate and connect the software that we use. No copy-pasting. Ever.

Jonathan Aufray, Growth Hackers

Email marketing is known as the digital marketing channel with the highest ROI. Pretty much anyone in business check their emails on a daily basis so why don’t you leverage this by sending automated regular emails to your prospects and leads? As soon as you have email subscribers, you need to prepare a sequence of emails that will be sent automatically. Don’t be too salesy though. Provide value first by giving them tips, industry trends, insightful content, etc. Once you’ve provided enough free content, it’s find to send a commercial/transactional email.

Rakesh Kumar Sharma, Scalefusion MDM

Onboarding Processes for New Customers:

Most businesses perform routine tasks in onboarding each new customer, so since these tasks are repetitive, it makes them easy to automate!

By automating your small business onboarding process, you will be able to:

Enhance the buying experience for your customers.
Second, make it possible for new customers to sign up for your product or service.
Lastly, you can spend more time engaging, educating, and delighting new buyers.

Tips for Automating Your New Customer Onboarding Experience:

Create a pre-built campaign template.
Handle the transactional stuff automatically.
Use tags to segment your customers.
Use different email accounts to send emails.

Customer onboarding automation is crucial to building a successful business<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>.

Chris Makara, Bulkly

For me, all business owners should be using social media automation in their business. While there are quite a few benefits of using this type of automation in their workflows, perhaps the biggest is the time that you save once it is implemented. Without social media automation, business owners waste quite a bit of time sourcing, creating and scheduling status updates across various social media platforms. This can easily add up to several hours each and every week.

However, there are many business owners who are now automating this entire process with automation tools like Bulkly. By leveraging a tool like this, it allows them win back their time so that they can focus on more important things – like running their business.

Oksana Chyketa, Newoldstamp

When it comes to email marketing, I believe that the entire process has to be automated. And at the same time, it’s impossible to venture into email marketing without considering personalization. Personalization includes collecting data on prospects, creating their profiles, and then segmenting lists to send more relevant messages to different subscriber groups. Thus, even when using an email template, the emails won’t look as robotic, when some personalization principles have been incorporated.

When it comes to personalizing my messages, I use Personalization Tags extensively – name, subject line, website name, link, etc., depending on the outreach campaign I work on. We use the Snov.io tool to automate this process.

And of course, adding an email signature to all of my emails is a must-have. Email signatures give this personal touch to the emails and influence the first impression a prospect gets about our company. With Newoldstamp I can automate this part as well – my email signature always looks professional and what’s more, I can track the impressions and clicks in the built-in analytics.

Santiago Safdie, InvGate

Hubspot is our main source of automation, and the reason behind that is that it allows us to automate not only marketing but also sales.

We use it to automate blog post publications, email nurturing campaigns, workflows, customer service surveys, and even social media and ads.

It’s a great one-stop-shop that allows the whole team to have a clear view of the work pipeline, statistics, and performance of each area. Plus, it makes analysis and reporting simpler for me.

Mark Ankucic, Sked Social

Clearbit data capture to slack – gives you a crystal clear look into what businesses are hitting your website.

Mykola Haichenko, Visme

For outreach specialists like me, email automation is the cornerstone of everyday work.

If I had to send each email manually, I’d miss all the deadlines imaginable. But tools like Respona let me automate the entire sending process and do it without compromising on the quality.

They leave no trace of automated mass outreach.

With a few clicks, I can personalize each email in my bulk campaigns by adding the recipient’s name, organization, post title, pretty much anything. In the end, an email feels like it was sent to one person, not hundreds.

But while it’s possible to automate the technical part, there’s still one thing that remains unautomatable – the message you’re going to convey.

Let’s take follow-ups as an example.

You can’t insert a generic portion of text like “just bumping this to the top of your inbox,” hit “Send,” and expect lots of replies. You’ll need to be more creative than that.

Try to find your prospects’ common pain point and put emphasis on it a follow-up.

What works for me is mentioning that their competitors have already done what I ask them for. By ignoring or rejecting my pitch, they’ll basically lose to their competitors on my playing field. Such a delicate hint helps me increase my response rates by around 30%.

The bottom line is email automation works with a thought-out message only, not on its own.

Tenny Jesse, Pearl Lemon

Chatbots are the primary point of contact on all of our websites; when we are not available to chat (rare, as we are available 24/7), or if we are moving the conversation forward, we ask for visitor emails and add them to our email marketing funnels, which educates users about marketing tips, trends, and services we offer, creating value for the visitors and growing our email lists to market our SaaS products and warm up leads.

We use Zapier to connect Drift, Google Sheet, Clearout, and Lemlist – whenever an email is collected or a new lead is created on Drift, the automation triggers and sends emails to a Google Sheet, where Clearout validates the emails and sends safe to send emails to an email marketing funnel.

Samir Sampat, Smith.ai

Setting up marketing automation helps your business optimize its brand presence across every channel your customers engage in, allowing your sales team to focus its efforts where there’s the most likelihood of conversion.

In general, B2B marketing automation will follow the same general structure:

Step 1: Build a list of potential customers to target.

Step 2: Execute an automated campaign.

Step 3: Measure how your potential customers react to the campaign.

Step 4: Group your customers by their reactions.

Step 5: Send qualified leads directly to sales and route warm leads to a nurturing cycle.

Step 6: Monitor performance and redirect warm leads to sales as soon as they become qualified leads.

B2B marketing automation is usually done through software, but outsourcing some or all of your sales cycle is also a great strategy to eliminate repetitive tasks so your sales team can focus on closing deals.

9 B2B marketing automation strategies to implement today

If you’re wondering where to start when it comes to B2B marketing automation, these nine strategies make great first steps.

Page-based triggers

Identify key behaviors leads engage in before making a automation purchase. Maybe that’s visiting your pricing page, signing up for gated content, or interacting with your live chat feature. Whenever a prospect engages in that behavior, automate a follow-up so you can start nurturing that lead right away.

Educational content for new clients

If every onboarding process is generally the same, automation sending educational content to clients after they sign up for your service. Craft this content based on FAQ your customer service team usually fields. Depending on the preferences of your clients, send this information immediately after sign-up, or use an email drip campaign to avoid overwhelming them.

Lead nurturing

B2B marketing automation is perfect for lead nurturing. Share educational information with your leads through a newsletter or other email sequences to showcase your place as a thought leader in the industry.

Lead segmentation

As you gather data about potential leads, automation segment them into different email lists based on the type of activity, their level of engagement, location, and other factors. This time-saving step will allow you to level up your lead nurturing program so each segment is personalized.

Lead qualification

Many marketing automation softwares will qualify leads based on the parameters you set. Each behavior is assigned a point value, and when points reach a certain threshold indicating they are close to making a purchase, you can automatically transfer the lead to a different email list or send their name and contact information to a sales representative for follow-up.

Data collection and maintenance

Studies show marketers spend 16 hours a week on repetitive tasks like exporting, importing, and sorting data from a CRM program into an email service provider. automationthat process so your marketers and salespeople can focus on conversions instead. The easiest way to do this is to ensure all your software partners are compatible.

Form submissions

If you’re new to marketing automation, this is one of the easiest places to start. For any forms you have on your website, automate what happens after the lead completes it. Send it to the right point of contact within the company, and send an email to the lead letting them know when to expect a response. You can even set up your automation to initiate outbound call backs.

Live chat

Seventy-six percent of millennials suffer from phone anxiety, so chatbots have become an increasingly popular way to interact with these clients. In fact, 42% of customers opt to use a chatbot when they need customer service. The chatbot can be automated to direct certain queries to a live chat feature to ensure better customer service.

Social media

Marketing automation services can post content, like content from specific feeds, and even thank followers for following. When done right, your followers won’t even notice some of your feed is automated. You can also outsource your Facebook messages so your salespeople don’t have to deal with cold leads.

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Top Reasons Why Marketing Is Vital In Real Estate Business

Top Reasons Why Marketing is Vital in Improving Your Real Estate Business

Marketing is essential in your real estate business since it is the primary avenue of communication that businesses use to inform clients about the services they offer. The success of your business heavily depends on your ability to connect with the right audience, and that audience should have appropriate channels through which they can access valuable information on your products. Effective marketing will set you apart from your competition since there are many players in this sector. It also helps real estate agents attract more clients and build strong networks of contacts which are vital for that particular field. Check out these top reasons why marketing is vital in improving your real estate business.

Helps You Reach Out to Potential Clients

Marketing helps real estate agents and other people involved in real estate communicate their services to potential clients. When customers are able to access information about your business, they are more likely to contact you. In this digital age, many people use the internet to search for helpful information that can help them make informed decisions. For instance, internet data exchange (IDX) is one of the most effective marketing tools as it allows people to search for properties on approved Multiple Listing Services in any specific area. The exchange of MLS data allows the real estate agents to display listings of their properties.

Potential buyers can get all the information they want from the updated lists on your website. This strategy is effective since it allows the consumers to access all the information they want about properties on your website. It makes the search process much easier when the users can customize their searches to get specific results. For instance, you can narrow your search to a limited area and the type of property you are looking for. This approach simplifies the home search process.

Improves Your Online Presence

If you want to succeed in the real estate business, you should improve your online presence, and you can achieve this with the help of a professionally designed website. A website is inexpensive, and it has the potential of reaching a wide range of people from diverse backgrounds. Web designing is a critical component of the marketing strategy of your business since it represents your brand.

Finding the ideal real estate marketing agency can feel like a daunting task since there are several players in this industry. This is when a professional website comes in handy. You need to create a user-friendly website that can help you create a positive impression about your business to the audience. It is vital to offer top-quality content on real estate agent websites so as to help your business gain more sustainable traction. Many people use mobile devices to access the internet, so you should make sure your site is fully optimized and accessible on different gadgets.

Your website should also have a fast loading speed so it attracts many visitors. Another advantage of marketing is that it improves your online presence. Real estate websites also use content marketing and search engine optimization to drive organic traffic to your site which translates to more sales. You should create and display unique content that is created to add value to buyers.

The main advantage of SEO is that it helps improve the visibility of your site online, especially if it ranks high on different search engine results pages. The SEO strategy utilizes unique keywords that will rank high in SERPs and this will make your site more visible. If your site can attract more visitors, it means your business is likely to experience a boom in sales. It is a good idea to enlist the services of a professional web designer and content creator to drive organic traffic to your website. You can hire an experienced designer to help you in wordpress web design perth. SEO content offers long-term benefits by growing your visibility online. This strategy includes critical elements like lead generation which assists your clients when visiting your website to look for information that can help them make informed decisions.

Promotes Customer Engagement

Today’s real estate markets have changed, and technology plays a critical role in property searches. While people would do physical searches for homes in the past, different forms of technology are used for the very same purpose today. Different forms of marketing strategies promote customer engagement which is good for the success of the real estate business. Enlightened realtors use various types of communication channels like social media to engage with consumers.

Social engagement is a critical component of any business since it helps build trust among clients. When you can engage meaningfully with your target audience, you will be in a better position to understand their needs. This will help you design products and services that can appeal to the interests of many people. When you can interact meaningfully with potential buyers, you will be able to build strong relationships with them.

Many people are attracted by the quality of customer service provided by a specific business. When you engage with your clients, it will show that you are concerned about their interests. Happy customers will refer other people to your company which will help increase your customer base. With social media, you can interact directly with different buyers which will attract them to your services.

Create Brand Awareness

Marketing is crucial for your business since it helps create brand awareness. The real estate sector consists of several players, so you must make an effort to let the clients know who you are. Once they become aware of your brand and its benefits, the clients may develop an interest in your offerings. When people have some knowledge about what your business offers, it will become easier for them to trust it. This will give you a competitive advantage when many people are aware of your real estate business and the type of services you provide.

Marketing plays an essential role in helping improve the visibility of your brand which will help many people find you. Choosing a product or service can be overwhelming, and this is why the customers need valuable information about your brand. When the customers know about your existence, they will refer other people to your business which leads to growth and development.

Marketing also plays an important role in reinforcing your brand among different clients and maximizing your profits. Even though customers may become aware of your brand, you need to remind them why it is the best option compared to other services offered by other real estate agents. To gain a competitive advantage, you should use marketing to prove to clients that your business is customer-oriented and it is concerned about fulfilling the needs of the customers.

Lead Generation

Marketing is vital to your real estate business since it helps you generate leads. The essence of lead generation is to help you attract many potential customers and sellers to your network. Lead generation is a short-term goal, but it can offer long-term benefits. Once you attract the right clients, they are likely to refer others to your business if they are happy about your offerings. Attracting customers to your business can be quite a challenge since the markets consist of several competitors.

You can use the strategy of direct mail to reach out to new people who may not know about your business. Some people could potentially be interested in your services but are simply not aware of your existence. Therefore, you should utilize different strategies to attract potential customers to your company. When you create leads, other people are likely to try your offerings. This will contribute to the growth and development of your venture if you can attract many clients.

Marketing Provides Credibility

Marketing gives your real estate business credibility, especially when it receives positive reviews from different people. Many individuals first read customer reviews to gain insight into what other people say about a product or service before they buy it. If a real estate agent gets positive reviews, you are likely to trust them with your property due to their credibility and high level of trust among the clients. Marketing will help show that you are a trusted person if your real estate business gets glowing reviews from happy clients.

Effective marketing allows the buyers to compare services offered by different companies involved in the real estate business. Apart from reviews, potential buyers may be interested in other factors like your experience in business and other information that shows you are a force to reckon with in this sector. Without a well-documented history of your operations, it can be challenging to convince consumers about your business.

Saves You Time

Your marketing initiatives can go a long way in generating more leads for your business. This means you will not work very hard to find new clients when you already have pointers to your business that can attract new buyers. You will not waste a lot of time trying to get the ideal customer for your property. Once you send positive and relevant information about your brand, potential customers can easily find your business.

Additionally, marketing can save you money if done properly. When you can attract new customers using leads, you can significantly cut down on other expenses like paid advertising, postage, and printing. There are different platforms you can consider for your marketing activities without spending a lot of money. Digital marketing is cost-effective, and there are many strategies that can be employed that are not at all costly. Make sure you choose a channel that is accessible to your target audience if you want your campaign to be effective.

Marketing Educates Prospective Clients

One good thing about marketing is that it educates prospective clients about the products and services you offer. When you design your marketing campaign, make sure it resonates with the needs and interests of the target audience. In your messages, you should convince the clients why you believe your service stands out from the rest.

When your content is tailored for a specific audience, it will add value to the target audience. You will not waste a lot of time explaining different things about your offerings. It is essential to do some research first before you create your content to ensure it suits the interests of the clients. Many people will trust your brand if you offer objective and factual information about your business.

Gives you Exposure

Marketing is critical in real estate since it gives you the benefits of exposure. An effective marketing strategy begins with a marketing plan that identifies your marketing goals. It also helps clients make informed decisions by providing meaningful information. When buyers can access information like client testimonials, they will feel comfortable dealing with your company. With the right exposure to different people, your business’s overall visibility will increase, thereby instilling trust in potential customers.

Gives you the Freedom to be Creative

Digital marketing allows you to be creative and this is good for your business. For instance, you can offer unique content or explore other possibilities offered by the digital world to make your venture stand out from the rest. Potential customers need engaging content that can compel them to take advantage of your offerings. You can achieve this by offering informative videos that can appeal to the interests of many people. It is essential to enlist the services of a professional graphic designer to help you with marketing content if you want your business to gain a competitive advantage.

Marketing Leads to Client Retention

Client retention is a critical factor in the operations of a real estate business that can lead to its success. When you operate in a competitive environment, it can be overwhelming to attract the ideal customers for your business. Retaining clients can go a long way in helping your business develop. The good thing about retaining happy clients is that they make excellent referrals for your business. This will contribute to increased revenue generation for your company.

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The Best Parking Management and Control Systems for Companies

How does a parking management and control system work?

Long gone are those days when you had to pay some coins to be designated parking space for your vehicle. As the world inches close to complete digitalization, developing parking management software is the need of the hour. It provides the best solutions to problems like the increasing number of vehicles, rapid urbanization, and the growing population.

Parking is one of the essential components of parking that need extra full attention. All vehicles require a specific location where they can be parked. But due to the unavailability of real estate and parking spaces, companies are taking the help of parking administration and control systems for the optimum utilization of parking land.

Parking management refers to the methods and programs used to optimize the usage of parking spaces and resources. As urban areas struggle to allot spaces to vehicles, parking control solutions are in demand. However, maintaining spaces and car parks isn’t easy, and that’s where these methods come into play.

Key components of a parking management and control system

Many companies are coming up with their parking management software. The varied choices one has in the industry make it complicated to choose one method that provides all solutions. To make it easier to choose, you can look out for the following key components that should be in every parking management and control system:

Track traffic: The software should be able to track inbound and outbound traffic in real—time. It should calculate the spaces that have cleared up and the number of cars that have passed in a specific time.
Set unique criteria: The parking management and control system should be able to manage different criteria, such as VIP and disabled categories.
Cover multiple locations: The software will be a hit with vehicle owners if it can manage and cover various areas at once. This could be in the form of car parks in different locations or parking slots in a multi—story car park. In addition, the higher organizational skills the software has, the more people will be compelled to use it.
Develop reports: The critical feature one must look out for in a parking management and control system is that it should be able to translate data into actionable measures. For example, analytics like improving traffic flow or generating more ROI will help you oversee and gain control over all parking systems.
Choice in payment options: You cannot expect people to pay for their parking space in a standardized manner. Therefore, your software should give people the freedom to choose a convenient mode of payment.
Parking permits: Issuing and tracking permits, depending upon the duration and location, influence the parking control system. Visitor passes, staff passes, and other passes should be smoothly issued within this software.

Seven Benefits of a parking management and control system

An efficient parking management and control system benefits the vehicle owners and spaces owners. Here are the following benefits:

Reduces the expenses of governments, businesses, and consumers
Reduces parking management costs
Improves and facilitates hassle—free parking
Improves the safety and security of vehicles in a proper parking management system
Minimizes traffic congestion and accidents
Saves time as the people find parking spaces within a few seconds using a parking management software
Greater accountability and understanding of how car parks are used and monitored

The advantages of using SaaS for parking management

Using a SaaS product for parking management can allow you to:

Sign in to the parking management software from anywhere and real-time access statistics of car parks.
Respond to multiple queries regarding parking at once. Users of the software need to adapt when environmental, legal and other logistical changes happen in the system.

Where can parking management and control systems be used?

The following industries will benefit from the inclusion of an efficient management and control system:

Multi-story car parks with multiple entrances and exits
Businesses/Companies with more than one parking compound on site
Hotels and conference centers
Hospitals, clinics, and medical facilities
Commercial car parks
Airports and train stations
Malls and shopping complexes

The best parking management and control systems around the world

ParkOffice

ParkOffice/Wayleadr is the best parking management software for smart offices. This software optimizes the car park management system, generates employee parking revenue, and reduces carbon footprint. In addition, companies can integrate Wayleadr with their parking hardware and software systems to streamline the parking process.

Wayleadr can be synced with the access control systems in your company. Doing so will ensure that only employees with valid bookings can access the car park. The parking management software can also be synced with sensors and cameras, maximizing usability.

Parkalot

Parkalot is a cloud-based parking control system that allows companies to create and allot parking spaces and make prior reservations. The web application handles all the parking problems of the company and allows other employees to manage their parking spaces online.

Here is how Parkalot solves parking problems:

Your office manager can create a parking lot with a limited number of slots and invite colleagues
Some slots go to the management team and a few others go to people who come from far. These employees should confirm their reservations a day before or by 09:00 am
Out of all the proposed occupiers of the parking spaces, some of them have confirmed their reservations
Now all the other unreserved spaces are available for booking by other employees
Before the day begins, all employees get to see the utilization of parking spaces and can plan their mode of transport accordingly
Parkable

Parkable is a park sharing platform that manages the parking of both tenants and employees. Using Parkable, one can find near parking spots and reserve them well—ahead. Additionally, you can also charge your electric vehicle using this software.

Booking on Parkable is easy, and you can book a slot for as long as you want. All fares you see on the software do not contain any hidden charges. Pay for the space and get receipts directly to your inbox.

Secure Park

Secure Park is a SaaS parking platform that helps companies achieve optimal parking control. Some of the features of Secure Park are visitor management, license plate recognition, access control, and much more. One can rent, lease or book parking spaces online via Secure Park.

Izix Parking Management

Izix provides flexible and streamlined management tools to simplify booking experiences for end—users. It can improve parking efficiency by using advanced insights to manage demand and bring new mobility rules. Izix’s goal is to facilitate a better urban life.

The future of parking management and control systems

Technologically driven parking management and control systems simplify traffic, optimize traffic management and reduce air pollution. Software that optimizes and can solve urbanization, pollution, population, and more vehicles. Therefore, parking management and control systems are much needed today.

By B Naomi Grace

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Social Media Marketing: How to Market on Instagram

Social media is a massive part of our lives, and it’s not going anywhere. If you own a business, social media marketing is an essential factor to being successful. In the past, social media was just there for us to connect with friends and family. Now, it has become an important tool for businesses to promote their products and services while expanding their reach on a global scale. So what are the strategies for promoting your business on Instagram? And what tools can you use to achieve success?

Social media marketing is a strategy for brands to promote themselves on social media. It includes the use of many different channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, Instagram. In recent years, Instagram has gained a lot of traction as a powerful marketing tool. Marketers use it to share photos and engaging videos about their brand, connect with customers and followers, and drive traffic to their websites.

The Elements of Social Media Marketing

There are three essential elements of a social media strategy: creating content, building relationships, and driving traffic. First, you need to create valuable and interesting content that will engage your audience. This could be blog posts, images, videos, or infographics. Once you have created some great content, you need to start building relationships with other users on Instagram. Follow others in your niche, like and comment on their photos, and participate in relevant conversations. Finally, you’ll want to drive traffic back to your website or blog by adding links in your bio and using effective hashtags.

The Advantages of Social Media Marketing

The benefits of Instagram are many. For starters, it has a massive user base with over 2 billion monthly active users. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses to reach new customers and build brand awareness. With the right strategy, you can create a loyal following who will become advocates for your brand.

Instagram marketing is also an affordable advertising option for small businesses since it does not cost much to promote your posts on the platform. You can gain new followers organically by using hashtags and getting involved with other users’ photos.

Additionally, Instagram is visual-centric, which makes it perfect for promoting products and services. Brands can post photos and videos that showcase their products or services in an attractive way.

Social Media Marketing Trends

Nothing stays the same forever, and as Instagram gains new features, marketing trends shift from time to time. The trends for Instagram promotion in 2023 include Stories, Live Videos, and influencer marketing. One of the popular trends is also using emojis or stickers in their captions, so they stand out from all the images people are viewing every day.

Stories are a great way to connect with your followers and share snippets of your day-to-day activities. They disappear after 24 hours, so it’s a more informal way to engage with your audience.

Live videos are also becoming increasingly popular on Instagram. This is a great way to give people an inside look at what you do and connect with them in real time.

Finally, influencer marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach new customers on Instagram. Work with influencers who have a large following in your niche and collaborate on content that promotes your brand or product.

Tools for Instagram Marketing Success

There are a number of great tools that can help you with your Instagram marketing efforts. These include services for producing content, tracking performance, and driving traffic.

Hootsuite is one such tool that allows you to manage all of your social media accounts in one place, schedule posts ahead of time, and measure the success of your campaigns.
Another great tool is SproutSocial, which helps businesses grow their social media presence by providing detailed analytics on who’s following them and what content resonates most with their audience.
LumaFusion is a quick and easy way to create engaging video content for your Instagram followers. With this tool, you can add captions, transitions, music tracks, special effects, and more – all in one place.
Canva is a great way to create attractive visuals for your Instagram posts. With over one million templates and tools available, you can design anything from simple graphics to complex infographics.
Finally, Iconosquare is a powerful management tool specifically designed for Instagram users. It provides insights into who’s liking and commenting on your photos and can even be used to schedule posts ahead of time.

Promotion Ideas for Your Business on Instagram

There are many different ways to promote your business on Instagram. The key is to find the right mix of content and promotion that works for you and your audience. Here are some ideas:

Post photos and videos related to what you sell, such as company events or new products that customers might want to buy; don’t forget about coupons! Burberry shares images from runway shows and behind-the-scenes events with its millions of followers. Rohan uses Instagram Stories to show customers what happens in their warehouse before they ship items out each day.
Showcase customer testimonials in a creative way, with images or video clips. Include their name and country along with each photo so they can receive recognition where it matters most.
Run contests offering free giveaways. Make sure it aligns well with your brand image, though – you do not want people associating your contest with spam.

Some other great promotional opportunities include hosting a contest or giveaway where you encourage your followers to tag friends in order to gain more entries and get yourself some free advertising. You can also run an ad campaign using popular hashtags in order to target specific audiences interested in certain topics.

To generate leads directly from Instagram, consider adding a CTA button to lead generation forms, such as email sign-ups and webinars below your profile picture. And lastly, if you already have a blog set up on WordPress, make sure it’s connected here too! This will allow you to easily share your blog posts on Instagram and attract even more people to your website.

Final Say on Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an essential part of any business’s online strategy. Instagram, in particular, is a great platform to reach new audiences, connect with other businesses and promote your products or services in a creative way. By using the tips and tools above, you’ll be able to create successful Instagram campaigns that will help grow your business and brand. So if you’re not already on Instagram, now is the time to join!

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Ways a Property Manager Can Help with Rentals

Ways a Property Manager Can Help with Hassle-Free Property Rentals

Landlords who hire property managers find that it makes their lives easier. A property manager assumes many responsibilities that a landlord would otherwise have to tackle alone. Being a rental property owner is a high-stress job, demanding a lot of time and commitment from the landlord. Recent events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, have made the rental business more complicated, leaving landlords feeling pressured and uncertain if they want to remain in the industry.

Hiring a professional property manager makes a significant difference for landlords who realize that operating privately is not working for them.

Here are ways that having a property manager helps landlords to profit from their rental homes without additional stress:

Marketing and advertising

According to managers at a Colorado Springs licensed property management company like Evernest, A Cut Above Property Management, or Around the Block Realty, marketing, and advertising rental properties is one of the most vital functions a property manager assumes on the landlord’s behalf. Evernest’s team of professional, licensed agents understands the importance of listing rental properties on platforms that reach the widest possible pool of potential tenants. They pay attention to advertisement content, including wording and photographs, to ensure several candidates apply to rent the home. Evernest has an established presence in Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, and Boulder.

Agents at large property management corporations like Pinnacle Property Management Services and Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC agree that a rental property listing either makes or breaks the transaction. Professional property agents know which platforms to use when advertising a rental home. Their experience also includes drafting advertisements that will attract suitable tenants. They use extensive resources to create marketing tools to get prospective tenants interested.

Tenant selection

Having created advertisements that reach hundreds of potential renters, interested parties apply to rent the home. A property manager knows better than to accept the first person who applies to rent a home. They work with several applicants, allowing for selecting the best possible candidate. Property managers follow stringent processes to screen and vet potential tenants to ensure their suitability. It helps them find ideal tenants who will stay in a rental home long-term, pay their rent, and not incur undue damage repair expenses.

Among the things a property manager does during the screening and vetting process is contacting an applicant’s employer to verify their employment and salary. The agent also speaks to an applicant’s previous landlord to determine how they behaved as tenants at their last residence. An additional step is subjecting the applicant to a credit history check. This stage is critical as it impacts the tenant’s ability to pay the rent and paints a picture of how responsibly they treat debt. Someone who is overindebted or does not pay their debts is a risky proposition as a tenant.

Lease enforcement

A property manager’s core duty is to ensure that landlords and tenants adhere to their responsibilities as stipulated in the rental agreement. Among the tasks they must complete is ensuring that rent is paid on time each month. Many agents insist on scheduled, electronic payments to minimize how much time they spend chasing tenants to get their money. However, that is precisely what they will do if someone fails to pay. Agents are tasked with collecting rent and must do so by any legal means necessary.

A property manager also conducts regular inspections of rental homes on their books. They perform routine checks to ensure that everything is in working order by appointment with the tenant. Their most intensive inspections occur when a tenant assumes occupancy and vacates the premises. This process plays a vital role in determining whether a renter should get their security deposit back.

Repairs and maintenance

A property management company that oversees repairs and maintenance relieves landlords of their most burdensome problem. Most rental owners agree that the rate at which things go wrong on the rented property is alarming. Many fields call at all hours to deal with blocked pipes, leaking roofs, and structure damage. Having a property manager take care of this aspect of being a rental house owner gives landlords room to breathe.

Property agents responsible for repairs and maintenance ensure that everything at the rental is working as it should. They undertake routine maintenance to ensure that minor problems do not become massive, expensive ones later. Property managers work with contractors and providers who deliver outstanding workmanship at cost-effective prices.

Managing tenant relationships

Landlords and tenants often butt heads because they build a personal relationship instead of keeping their interactions professional. This tendency complicates the relationship, leading to much unpleasantness that can be avoided by hiring a property manager.

Property managers serve landlords and tenants, protecting their rights and ensuring they fulfill their obligations as included in their rental agreement. Agents work as a bridge between landlords and tenants, keeping emotions out of the equation. They maintain cordial relationships with both parties, behaving professionally throughout their interactions.

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Shipping Checklist For Your Business On Peak Shipping Times

Don’t make the mistake of neglecting the preparation aspect of any business. Peak shipping season is a great opportunity to gain more profit. Now, you can get organized with our shipping checklist to be in tip-top shape when it rolls around.

With small business shipping, being organized and on top of things is critical at all times. The margins on your business are not usually that big, so you need to ensure you always bring your A game. However, during the peak season, it’s even more essential.

Disappointing customers and annoying suppliers during the busiest periods can easily give your business a negative reputation that could last throughout the quiet periods too. This could be hugely detrimental to your business, and cost you a fortune in sales.

Peak Shipping Times Checklist For Your Business

So, how do you get your business prepared for peak shipping season? Let’s take a look:

1. Set Your Shipping Checklist Guides According To The Season

Whether you’re planning your own stock levels and ordering, or you’re providing shipping guides to customers, you should never have a one-size-fits-all approach. Things will change depending on the time of year and the general volumes of items being shipped. Just like a hotel will have peak and off-peak rates for their rooms, you should have peak and off-peak shipping season guidelines as part of your business processes.

Peak seasons can also vary slightly depending on what industry you’re in and what is being shipped. For example, on the consumer side of things, peak season will be November to December as people gear up for the holiday season. However, the retailers will need to gear up in the months before that, meaning their main shipping season is August through to October.

Over the Christmas period, it’s also a good idea to clearly provide details as to when the last order can be placed so that it will be shipped in time to give as a gift, or use over the holidays. Being open about this up front with your customers will alleviate a lot of heartache and worry. Plus it will provide your customers with a good user experience as they know whether or not their expectations will be met. No one likes not knowing if the gift they ordered will arrive in time!

2. Ship And Store What You Can Early

Shipping during peak season can also bring with it a hefty price tag. The demand for shipping lanes and transportation goes up and those providing these services can increase their rates (and usually do). If you have any products that are not perishable and can be shipped before you hit the peak season, it might be far more cost effective to do so.

Shipping early will come with other implications, especially the cost implication of storage at the receiver’s end. You may need to look into getting a warehouse space, which costs money. However, this could still be less than the increased shipping fees. Do your homework about small business shipping timings and plan accordingly.

3. Stagger Your Shipments Based On Need

What can often hold up a shipment, especially in the busier peak times, is that an entire order can’t be made ready at the same time. This means that one part of your order is sitting waiting and won’t be shipped to you until it is complete.

Instead of placing your regular orders, look critically at what is urgent during the peak period and only order that. You can talk to your suppliers about sending part orders so you don’t completely run out of something.

If you are shipping orders to customers, consider setting up a similar option for part orders. If you speak to regular customers early on about stock issues or potential issues with shipping, you can usually find a way around the concerns together.

4. Be Aware Of The Impact Of Holidays In Regards To Your Shipping Checklist

During the peak holiday season, there are fewer working days. This means that there is a higher demand for items to be shipped, and fewer days in which to make those shipments.

The impact of this could mean a longer time for an item to arrive or a higher price tag attached because the shipping company has to pay employees to work over a holiday. There are strict regulations around this in the trucking industry and other shipping methods so it’s a crucial item to add to your checklist.

5. Change Up Your Shipping Methods

Before demand for couriers and shipping goes up over the peak season, you may want to shop around and see what other options there are. You don’t always have to use the same company or method to send your products to customers or to get items from your suppliers. You should also consider seeing if the companies you use have flexible options.

For example, if you don’t mind the products arriving between 15 and 20 days, rather than arriving within 15 days, you might get a better rate on shipping. This is because the shipping company then has a bit of breathing room to work around the massively varying shipping requests coming in during peak season.

You can also consider creating your own small business shipping delivery methods if it’s possible. Look into the logistics of hiring a driver and a van for the peak season so that you can stay in control of what you deliver to your customers. It doesn’t have to be a permanent solution – just something to help you stay on top of things when they are busy.

6. Insure Your Shipping To Prioritize Your Shipping Checklist

This often seems like an unnecessary extra cost, but it can help your business to survive if a shipment goes missing or is delayed. In peak shipping season, it is far more likely that you will face one of these scenarios and that can do real damage to your ability to make money.

With proper shipping insurance, you can easily make claims and cover any losses that are incurred. This extra peace of mind can help you to thrive through the busy seasons and grow through the quieter periods.

Peak season can make or break your business. If you ensure you are prepared for peak shipping season, you should reap the rewards. Your bottom line will improve and your customer service and satisfaction ratings will too.

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Questions to Ask to Develop Your Brand Identity

Brand identity plays a crucial role in the growth and retention of the customer base. It is defined as the perception of a person about the brand. To launch your product in the market, you must first develop a brand identity. People often think the brand identity and branding are similar; that is not the case in reality.

Branding is actually done to create a strong brand identity among the masses. So you can establish a brand identity after doing effective branding campaigns for your product. Various components constitute to develop a brand identity that includes the visual look of the brand, brand voice, brand values, brand personality, and brand message, most importantly. To create a lasting brand identity, all these components must be present in a product.

Questions to Ask to Develop Your Brand Identity

While developing a brand identity, there are a set of questions that you must ask. Here we shall discuss a few of the questions that must be taken into account.

Who will be your ideal customer?

It is important first to identify the ideal customer for your brand. Determine the customer’s priorities that whether he/she wants an economical cost of the product or their focus is a high-quality product. Identify all the concerns of your ideal customer and then design a brand identity of your product.

Is your brand is solving a problem?

It is a common observation that nobody buys any product without a reason. Mostly people buy certain products to solve their problems. It is recommended to bring any such product that addresses the customer’s need and instantly solves their problems. In this way, your brand will develop a relationship to the customer. Identify the issues of people and build your brand based on these problems. Your brand must offer a solution to the existing issues of people.

What will be the personality of the brand?

Like humans, brands do have a personality that leaves a lasting impact on customers. It is because of the brand personality people are able to perceive the feel of the brand. To create the personality of your brand, you may take help by identifying the personality traits of your own self. Successful brand identity is established when people are able to relate to the brand on a human level. There are various brands in the market that you must have perceived a specific tone and personality about.

Who are your competitors?

Competitors are the best learning medium for any business. It is recommended to analyze your competitors. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of their brand. Take a look at their branding strategy and opt for the ways that are good for your brand. There are all kinds of brands in the market ranging from poor to good to very good. Analyze their strategies in designing the logo, consistency, originality, and other factors across all platforms. Please pick up the good lessons and implement them in your strategy while ignoring the bad points. Do not make the mistakes that your competitors have made in and for that, you have to analyze your competitors thoroughly. In this way you shall be able to establish a strong brand identity that will stand out.

What is the feeling of your customers?

The most important aspect for any band is how their customers feel about the brand. You can analyze the emotions of your customers when they interact with your management team whether remotely or face to face. The way they talk about your brand has a lot to say about your brand identity. By careful analysis of customers’ interaction, you can develop a visual identity of your brand with a unique logo using different fonts and colors.

Is your brand unique?

While establishing a brand identity, it must be kept in mind that your brand must offer something unique that other competitors are not offering in the market. Choose a specific niche and work on that. Even if you have established similar brand that is already in the market, then bring a difference in its characteristic that must be felt by the customers. You can take inspiration from different brands that are working in order to bring uniqueness in your brand.

Has your brand built a trust factor?

It is recommended to conduct the surveys and interviews of your customers asking them the reason to choose your brand and trust it.The reason of trust on your brand will help you in establishing the brand identity. There ca be various reasons including flexibility, transparency, expertise and many more. In this way you shall be able to develop a brand identity that will appeal to the masses. For instance, Rehan Services is a plumbing services company that has built the trust among the masses because of its effective work.

What is your brand story?

There is always a brand story behind every brand. It is your job to glorify that story in the eyes of masses and make your brand a super hero. This story shall be having the reason to develop the brand or your inspiration behind creating the brand.

Author Bio:

Arslan Haider is author of the above blog. He is a Senior SEO Expert at MediaHicon (deals in SEO services). Apart from that, he loves to post blogs with valuable content.

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Conclusion

Guide to Business Success and How Businesses Succeed

Business Success Definition

Business Success Dimensions

How Businesses Succeed

1. Pursuing a defined mission

2. Pursuing long-term goals

3. Focusing on customers

4. Retaining employee talent

5. Employing a great management team

6. Keeping detailed financial records

7. Continuous innovation

15 Keys to Business Success

1. Provide a Great Product or Service

2. Focus on Customer Service

3. Expand Your Marketing Efforts

4. Do Your Research

5. Update Your Business Plan

6. Keep Things Organized

7. Detailed Record Keeping

8. Keep Focus & Have Patience

9. Be Prepared to Make Tough Decisions

10. Keep Your Overhead to a Minimum

11. Know the Operational Needs

12. Build Your Online Presence

13. Hire the Right People and Treat Them Well

14. Always Look to Improve

15. Build Word of Mouth for Your Business

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Natalya Bucuy, LiveHelpNow

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Tara Malone, Mirasee

Arlen Robinson, OSI Affiliate Software

Kalo Yankulov, Encharge

Miruna Dragomir, Planable

Jonathan Aufray, Growth Hackers

Rakesh Kumar Sharma, Scalefusion MDM

Chris Makara, Bulkly

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Santiago Safdie, InvGate

Mark Ankucic, Sked Social

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Tenny Jesse, Pearl Lemon

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Page-based triggers

Educational content for new clients

Lead nurturing

Lead segmentation

Lead qualification

Data collection and maintenance

Form submissions

Live chat

Social media

Top Reasons Why Marketing is Vital in Improving Your Real Estate Business

Helps You Reach Out to Potential Clients

Improves Your Online Presence

Promotes Customer Engagement

Create Brand Awareness

Lead Generation

Marketing Provides Credibility

Saves You Time

Marketing Educates Prospective Clients

Gives you Exposure

Gives you the Freedom to be Creative

Marketing Leads to Client Retention

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