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.

Signs You Need To Amp Up Your Marketing Strategy

In this digitally progressing era, businesses & marketers are often on the quest for effective marketing tactics. It is because of the N number of variable factors (ranging from changing customer preferences to poor economic conditions) that affects the prevailing promotional campaigns. Having a good marketing strategy is essential to running a successful business.

Marketers need to understand that there is no such thing as a perfect plan. Regardless of how practical and impactful the brand promotional strategy is, loopholes and risks will undoubtedly be involved. Consequently, they might not avail of the desired results.

Even so, it is pretty challenging to determine whether the existing strategy is a scrap and needs revamping. They need to track different metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of a plan and accordingly modify it.

With that being said, below is the list of signs you need to amp up your marketing strategy.

Your RoI Is Low

It’s always a goal to see concrete results from your advertising strategies, but are you receiving the highest ROI possible?

Everything hinges on figuring out your cost per acquisition (CPA). Simply put, how much does it cost you to bring just one new customer? You may find that some channels work better than others as you monitor the results of your marketing activities.

That’s why your target should be to gain as many consumers or clients as possible at the lowest price point. It is possible only by comparing the outcomes of various channels and campaigns and determining which techniques produce the best results.

So, if you’re not sure you’re maximizing your ROI, it could be time to revamp your marketing strategy.

You Get Zero To No Conversion

As you might already know, launching successful marketing campaigns requires more than just generating traffic.

Even if you have thousands of visitors to your website each week, if they don’t become paying clients or customers, you won’t earn the return on investment you seek.

You need to make sure that your promotion results in conversions rather than just website visitors, whether you manage your own marketing or outsource an agency.

This entails tracking conversions on your website, linking them to the appropriate channel, and calculating ROI for all of your campaigns with analytics tools like Google Analytics.

For instance, many companies invest extensively in blogger outreach services to increase organic website traffic. It promotes brand recognition and attracts conversion-oriented referral traffic.

You Use Post & Pray Approach For Social Media

When it comes to social media marketing, one of the blunders organizations often make is adopting a “post and pray” strategy, in which they create content and hope it generates the desired interaction.

However, brands should post content that, according to the available data, will appeal to their audience.

Each social media site has its own vital metrics or version of analytics. The number of clicks, shares, likes and comments can all be used as followers’ engagement gauges.

In short, you need to improvise the current social media strategy if you are getting a minimal response. An easy trick you can use here is to pay attention to the prevailing social media trends and adapt to them. It will boost brand awareness, enhance goodwill and attract potential customers.

Your Plans Are Last Minute Hassles

It’s common for marketers to put together marketing campaigns at the very moment. However, if this is your go-to tactic, it might be time to try something new.

Building an effective marketing campaign takes time, especially when analyzing the data already available, segmenting your audience, doing A/B tests on your ads, etc. Also, the majority of your advertisements should be planned in advance so that your online marketing flows together.

According to professionals at Outreach Monks, this includes taking the required actions to set up your campaigns, such as performing keyword research, deciding link building and guest blogging plans, and more.

Imagine how much easier it would be to have your campaigns planned out in advance rather than scrambling to put them together at the last minute.

Your Search Engine Ranking Is Low

It goes without saying that consumers use search engines like Google every day to find businesses, services, goods, and information. So, your website is probably losing out on a tone of potential clients if it isn’t ranking well in the search results.

Of course, if you want to thrive on Search engines, you can’t entirely rely on the “publish and pray” strategy (as described above). You need an efficient SEO plan instead.

This entails making your website search engine-friendly, sharing excellent content, using niche-relevant keywords, and gaining high domain backlinks to your website. In addition, these efforts need to be implemented consistently to achieve the desired results.

You Are Not Properly Analyzing The Campaign Performance

A lot of the warning indicators mentioned above include analyzing if your promotional techniques are actually making an impact.

But what if you don’t know how to measure success?

In such a scenario, you might need to change how you approach marketing. Bear in mind that it is insufficient to run a campaign when you only have a rough sense of how many leads or consumers it is bringing in.

With this strategy, you won’t have the data you require to calculate your cost per acquisition or the income you ultimately earn.

As an alternative, make sure analytics are set to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) for your campaigns.

These KPIs should focus on the measures you’ll use to evaluate performance.

Page views, bounce rate, or conversions for SEO

Likes, comments, shares, or clicks for social media
Clicks, CPC, or click-through rate for advertisements

You Are Relying On Single Marketing Channel

You are literally placing all of your eggs in one basket if you only use one marketing channel.

You risk losing out on fresh leads and clients if that route closes. Moreover, if your marketing strategy is scattered, you will not understand how each campaign fits into the overall picture—you may experience marketing gaps.

Therefore, you should aim for a consistent, multichannel marketing plan that connects with potential clients through several touchpoints. In this manner, you have numerous opportunities to draw clients, and your brand value is successfully communicated across all channels.

To Sum It All Up on Your Marketing Strategy

There are numerous reasons a marketing strategy doesn’t work out. In such circumstances, you must identify the possible issues and eliminate them. It will help you build robust brand promotional tactics and accomplish the set objectives.

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How to Plan a Media Ad Campaign

Marketing can sometimes be a difficult endeavor for businesses. With so many different tactics to choose from, it can be difficult to determine which ones will bring the most success. A media ad campaign is an excellent way to go. However, many business owners have started investing in media ad campaigns because of its potential to reach a large audience. These campaigns are commonly used to increase brand awareness, build a customer base, and generate sales.

Successful marketing campaigns need adequate planning to put every aspect needed into place. Lack of adequate planning can lead to large amounts of money being wasted to generate relatively few leads and conversions. To ensure their ad campaigns are done the right way, some brands and agencies opt for the expertise of retail media solution companies. There are a good number of companies that offer this service, but it is worth noting that utilizing a retail media solutions is the best way to guarantee success in this area.

The Importance of Media Ad Campaigns

Media ad campaigns are the lifeblood of any business. Whether you’re a small company or a large multinational, you need to advertise to get your name out there, build your brand, and increase demand for your product or service. However, the fact that you run ads does not necessarily mean you will get the results you want. You need to be strategic about your ad spend and the channels you’re using.

Online advertising is an excellent way to reach a large audience with a single ad, but it is also easy to overspend especially if you fail to plan properly. With traditional advertising, the advertiser can control where their ad appears, how often their ad appears, and what types of ads appear next to their ad. On the other hand, digital marketing gives the advertiser very little control over the websites their ads appear on, how many times in a day the ad is displayed on each platform, and the kinds of advertisements displayed next to their ad. Regardless of the possible pitfalls, there are marketing experts that understand how to optimize marketing campaigns and ensure they deliver their intended results.

If a small business has the capital to invest in a proper advertisement on an online platform such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, they can reach thousands of potential customers for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising methods. This is especially true when a small business partners with a digital marketing agency that specializes in ad campaigns.

The high usage of the internet has made it one of the most powerful tools for marketing a business. Advertising on the internet allows a business to reach millions of potential customers, rather than the limited number that you would reach through traditional methods like radio and TV. This has made it possible for small ecommerce businesses to compete with much larger companies, and to grow rapidly using only a relatively small amount of startup capital.

The key to success in online advertising is to understand how to use the available tools to target the right customers, and to measure which ads are working and which are not so you can improve your strategy. Here are a few steps you should use to plan media ad campaigns.

Define the media ad campaign goal

Having a discussion with your team members on the end goal of the ad campaign is important. It should be defined whether you want to sell a product, raise awareness for a cause, promote an event, and so on. Once everyone understands what you are trying to achieve, there is a higher chance of the campaign being successful.

Determine the promotion method you want to use

If you will be advertising on different social media platforms, determine the kind of posts you would put out on each platform. For Instagram, you can opt for short videos regardless of the campaign goal. Posting videos are effective in passing messages across to your target audience. Meanwhile, platforms like Twitter and Facebook would require banner images with catchy captions. Regardless, try to make your social media posts as interactive as possible to boost engagements.

Make a content calendar for your media ad campaign

It is important to create a schedule on a calendar that will dictate the days of week and times of the day that you will put out your social media posts. The content calendar should also specify the copy to be used for the posts. For this, it would help to work with a copywriter to develop the messages. Additionally, content calendars help to set and keep track of marketing milestones to make progress measurement easier.

Develop the visual contents to be posted

After planning the content calendar and the kind of posts you want to put out, you have to create the visual content. You could delegate a graphic designer the task of developing engaging images, or make them yourself using a platform like Canva. Canva is easy to use and lets you add text to images. You can also get influencers or members of your team to make short videos for you to post.

Schedule the posts of your media ad campaign

Now that the copies, images, videos and content calendar are ready, it is time to schedule the posts. There are social media scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite that allow marketing managers to schedule posts to be posted at specific times of the day.

Monitor, analyze and adjust

As these posts are being released to the public, monitor them and gauge the feedback. Respond to comments if need be. The level of engagement is a good indication of how well the campaign is doing, therefore, it would help if you use this insight to make appropriate adjustments to your marketing strategy.

Endnote on Your Media Ad Campaign

Brands, agencies and businesses need sound marketing strategies to promote their products, services, events, and so on. Some go for the safety and expertise of media solution companies, while others do it in-house. Regardless, as long as the aforementioned steps are followed, the chances of having a successful media ad campaign is high.

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4 Elements Of Efficient B2B Ecommerce Customer Experience

The customer journey is the driving force behind any customer experience. It should be the backbone of not only marketing, but every department in the company. Each customer touchpoint should be carefully molded to ensure that the customer is surprised and delighted at every stage. The company as a whole, should be deeply entrenched in the customer journey.

But, how do you get the process right from start to finish and ensure that the customer not only converts, but returns as a loyal, paying client? We took a look at what B2B companies are doing globally and how they have optimized their customer experience.

Automate as Much as Possible

Automation is a great way of ensuring that all of your processes are done efficiently, swiftly and with as little human error as possible. There are tons of automation tools out there for you to make use of. And you can automate almost every aspect of your business. From eInvoicing to procurement, supply chain, HR, and many aspects of marketing, there are hundreds of online tools and platforms for you to choose from.

What is more, most of them are incredibly affordable and easy to use. They mostly work on a subscription basis, and there is usually a variety to choose from to suit your unique business needs. So, if you need, for example, custom invoices to automatically be sent to your clients, you can opt for a solution that not only fits your budget but your brand.

Remember, the customer journey is pulled through to every aspect of your business and dealings with clients, and this includes finance and invoicing, so make it as streamlined as possible.

Make Customer Service a Company Wide Effort

Customer service should not be a siloed effort. It should not just be client-facing staff that are trained on effective and quality customer service. It should rather be pulled through to every part of the company. Make sure that each staff member from each department is sent on some kind of training to ensure that your customer journey is streamlined.

Now, you might think that this is slightly unnecessary for, say, the guys in the dev department who are working on your site. But consider for a moment what your first point of contact usually is with a client. It is usually through your website. So, not only do they have to consider the full UX design of the site, they need to optimize each point that they would be in contact with your brand.

Take, for example, chatbots which usually appear on most landing pages of your site. It is up to the development team to create interactive, helpful, and efficient points of contact that your clients can effectively use. So, training your developers on customer service and its intricacies of it can ensure that these small elements are carefully designed to optimize the customer experience.

Heighten Communication With your Clients

While we are on the topic of chatbots, when was the last time you audited your contact points? The fact of the matter is that every single client prefers different forms of communication and contact. While some prefer phone calls and direct contact with a person, others prefer getting questions and troubleshooting done with instant messaging.

Make sure you are offering your clients a variety of ways to engage with you about a wide variety of issues. From social media, to chatbots on landing pages for real-time query solving, and access to an account manager, the more you can offer, the more streamlined the customer journey. customer experience

Keep communication transparent and honest at all times. Allow them to choose what communication they receive from you and provide them with regular opportunities to provide you with feedback. Remember, the more feedback you get from your clients, the more you can streamline your services and offerings.

Test, Measure, Monitor and Track Everything

How do you know what you are succeeding at without the right data and metrics? If you are not receiving feedback from your clients, how do you know if the products or services are what they want? Or how would you know what they need for continued patronage?

The rule of thumb is to measure everything. From the traffic going to your site, how it behaves and where it drops off and converts, to the success of your social media campaigns. Gather metrics from various sources to be able to understand which campaigns were successful, what your clients responded well to, and what was a flop.

Google Analytics allows you to track the traffic on your site and understand how it behaves. Your social platforms and mailing tools provide you with relevant metrics too about the success of your campaigns. But there are a plethora of other tools that allow you to track everything.

The Bottom Line

Customer service is a company-wide initiative. Train up your entire staff complement regularly and make sure that you have the right information coming to you at all times. The customer journey is your answer to great customer experience.

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5 Tips For Finding The Best Digital Marketing Agency

As its name implies, a digital marketing agency can help you out with your digital marketing needs. Those campaigns can be classified into two: inbound marketing and outbound marketing. For the former, the digital marketing agency focuses on tactics like Search Engine Optimization, web design, and social media marketing. For the latter, your chosen agency will work on email marketing, as an example.

With the comprehensive role a digital marketing agency plays for your business’ success, it’s easy to see how there’s no skimping on this choice. You have to choose the best to implement your digital marketing campaigns and you should be ready with your budget to maximize everything. If not, the agency may not do so much for you to actually elevate and improve your marketing efforts.

It’s a great idea to look for preferred and reliable digital marketing agencies online and check out this recommended site to determine if they’re the one you’re looking for to suit your marketing needs.

This article helps you out with some of the best tips to help you find the best digital marketing agency for your brand.

1. Determine What Your Company Needs

Digital marketing agencies come with their respective strengths and weaknesses. The only way for one to be considered as the best is for you to weigh what they can offer versus what you need from them. Otherwise, if the digital marketing agency you hire can’t address your needs, then you’re never going to be satisfied with what they can offer you.

To make this ascertainment, you can start by answering the following questions:

What is it that you want to accomplish with digital marketing?
What services do you regularly need from a digital marketing agency?

Spending time answering these questions can increase the likelihood of finding a digital marketing agency which can turn out to be the best match for your business.

2. Ask About The Services They Offer

Once you’ve determined what your company’s marketing needs are, you can then proceed with asking the digital marketing agency about what their services are. This can help you compare the services of one agency to another. It’s important, for you to have a well-founded comparison of what services are included in the price you’re paying for, and what aren’t.

Generally, some of the services offered by a good digital marketing agency include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This refers to that branch of digital marketing which is needed to get your website to rank higher in search page results. This is very important, given the numerous websites which are all over the internet today. You can only put your website a few steps ahead of the competition when your website makes it to the top results, therefore also increasing traffic to your site.
Facebook advertising. As its name implies, this refers to advertising on Facebook, usually through paid or sponsored ads.
Content marketing. This refers to the creation of various types of content, so the proper keywords can be incorporated to help make your content rank higher.

3. Field Of Specialization

There are digital marketing agencies that have a field of specialization, while there are also those that are general in nature. If you’re not particular about choosing one with specialization, then you don’t have to be so concerned about the specialty. However, if this is something important to you, then ask the digital marketing agency what they specialize in.

In particular, there are certain areas you may want to pay special attention to, like:

Web Design vs. User Design

When it comes to designing a website, there are agencies that lean more towards the aesthetic, or the website design itself. On the other hand, some digital marketing agencies focus on the user design experience and the functionality of the website to its browsers.

You can have an idea of what the agency’s focus is by looking through their portfolio of past websites made. If you notice that the majority of the websites they’ve made lean towards graphics and other design matters, then you can gauge that web design is their specialty. Finding a reliable Philadelphia web design company can solve all your problems, regarding website design, but also regarding marketing and content creation. On the other hand, agencies that focus on user design take into account key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics.

PPC and Paid Advertising

There are digital marketing agencies that also work as paid advertising consultants. They’re agencies that can help you create a valuable proposition to come up with effective advertisements that are optimized to deliver results.

4. Know Your Budget

Whatever budget you have, stick to it. There’s no reason for you to spend any more than you can afford, given how there are so many digital marketing agencies you can hire. Don’t be pressured to pay for the services of a more expensive digital marketing agency, when you know you can hire cheaper ones, with services that are just as competitive.

The best way to determine which agency could be the best for the budget you have is to compare the services offered, quality of the work done, and the overall reputation versus the price of their services.

Keep an open mind to have that discussion on the table. If you’re able to determine with certainty that your budget may be too narrow, that’s when you can stretch it. But, remember to keep it only within the allowable limits of what you’re comfortable spending.

5. Go Through The Reviews And Testimonials

By the time you go through the agency’s reviews and testimonials section, you should have already narrowed down your options to at least three to five. Be as thorough as you can with reading the reviews, so you can spot any potential red flags.

On top of the testimonials themselves, check the dates of the reviews. If you can find positive reviews that go back three years or more, that’s a tell-tale sign that the agency means business. They’ve been committed to providing quality service to their clients for many years now.

Final Thoughts on A Digital Marketing Agency

Before signing up for a digital marketing agency to hire, it’s important to be able to narrow down your options first. Given the demand for digital marketing, it’s not surprising how there are numerous digital marketing agencies springing left and right. However, you ought to know that not all of those digital marketing agencies are equal, as there are some which are better than the others. To achieve the best results for your business, you have to settle not just for the best, but for an agency that understands and can fulfil your marketing needs. Let the tips above guide you in making that choice.

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10 Free Marketing Strategies to Build Up Your Business

Building a business doesn’t have to be expensive. You don’t always need to spend a fortune on pay-per-click ads or SEO services to get noticed – at least to begin with. Instead, you can use free marketing strategies to get the ball rolling.

In this post, we take a look at some of the tactics that you can use, without the need to hand over any of your precious capital. Check them out below.

1. Set Up Your Google My Business Account

You can think of setting up a Google My Business (GMB) account as having a similar effect to regular SEO activities, without the time and money investment. GMB is essentially free and gives you a leg up on the world’s largest search engine virtually overnight.

You can set up a GMB account using a simple tool provided by Google. Once you prove your address, the search giant will display your business information on Maps when users type in relevant keywords. You can display your telephone number, address, type of services you offer, opening and review rating – all of which encourage people to click through.

2. Attend An Industry Networking Event With Marketing In Mind

Going to conferences can be a great way to drum up interest in your business. Entry fees are often low or non-existent, but the value of contacts you make can be tremendous. For instance, you can learn inexpensive branding strategies to get your business’s message out, or you can partner with other firms to get your goods and services in front of more people. Often, having B2B contacts lets you access better wholesale prices and source the talent you need to thrive.

3. Host A Class To Assist Marketing

In today’s information economy, people want insights. They need professionals – industry authorities – who can guide them towards their goals. Depending on your experience and role, this knowledge-giving professional could be you. You could be the one putting on an event and creating an authoritative brand.

To build interest, you could post information on community bulletin boards in grocery stores, coffee shops, colleges and professional education establishments. You could also partner with local events and become a speaker.

4. Launch A Webinar Series

Webinars are a wonderful tool for promoting your business because they allow you to show your human side. You’re not just a faceless person, hidden behind a wall of website branding and advertisements. Instead, you’re someone who other people can relate to.

Webinars do several things that help you build your business:

Prove to your audience that you understand their needs
Give you time to explain the benefits of your products
Show your human side, building trust
Demonstrate your expertise

What’s more, attracting people to attend a webinar is incredibly cost-effective. Just post details on your social media account or include times and links in your email marketing.

Custom ecommerce web design by agencies integrates webinar features into your website. This way, even if you’re running an online store, you can still offer customers value directly.

5. Write Your Own Press Releases As Part Of Your Marketing

You can go to marketing agencies and ghostwriting services to write press releases for you. But, as you probably already know, you have to pay.

Here’s an idea: write your own. Once you get the hang of press release format, they’re actually quite easy to do. Adopt a neutral tone, talk about your business in the third-person, and include quotes. Choose a newsworthy angle and you’re pretty much ready to go.

Once you complete the copy, submit it to a free press release distribution service. The quality of syndication (the sites the service will publish your press release on), usually aren’t as high as paid services. However, it still gets your message out there, which is always a good thing.

6. Help Others For Free

You’re in business to make money, so the idea of helping others for free seems crazy. However, it can work if you get it right.

You’re not a charity. But if you give away a sample product or a small amount of your time, you can prove your value. Prospects are then much more likely to use you in the future. Just make it clear that it’s a one-off. You won’t be giving up your time out of the kindness of your heart in the future.

7. Create A Free Resource For Your Marketing

Do you know something that other people in your sector don’t? Are you able to produce a resource for your audience that your competitors haven’t yet?

If so, then it’s time to get busy. Creating free resources is a powerful way to attract people to your business and brand. Providing free downloadable tips sheets or ebooks lets you capture email addresses while introducing your audience to what you do.

8. Build A Referral Program

Referral programs aren’t free to run, but they are cheap to set up. The basic idea is to get your customers to spread the good news about your brand for you, so you don’t have to. It’s like outsourcing your marketing department. It works because prospects are much more likely to trust existing customers than they are conventional advertisements.

To build a referral program, you’ll need to offer an incentive to customers who refer leads to you. You might offer a fixed fee – say $100 for every new client they win – or a share of the value of the client, perhaps 5 percent.

9. Initiate A Tweetstorm To Aid Marketing

As a brand, you’re not trying to become a drama queen. There are already enough of those on Twitter. But if you can cook up a tweetstorm, then you can create a lot of buzz.

The best strategy here is to follow news in your niche and then make careful, well-reasoned comments on events as they unfold. If other people in the twitterverse find your contributions interesting, they’ll start following you, increasing your reach.

10. Cozy Up To Influencers In Your Niche

Lastly, you might want to try ingratiating yourself with top influencers and reaching out to bloggers in your niche. Try to get them interested in what you’re doing by offering something unique that their audience will appreciate. It might be that you offer a product purity level unsurpassed in your industry. Or you could be doing something totally new. Just make it exciting and valuable to the influencer.

So, there you have it: our ten free marketing strategies to build your business. Which will you use?

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Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click: What is Better for You?

There are two primary methods in regards to reeling in more customers: Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click. Several years ago businesses were mainly preoccupied with choosing the right retail points to attract more customers. As the reality has been changing, the principal things to consider when reaching the target audience refer to the online environment. Thus, businesses are willing to make their websites and social media profiles visible to users online.

There are several effective methods to reach out to a great number of customers online. The most popular ones are search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Both these methods are highly efficient but each of them implements different tactics to achieve the desired result.

Businesses use both SEO and PPC in their strategies, either separately or together. However, the particular sphere of business operation and competitive environment predict which of these two techniques would be more efficient for the particular company. This article talks about SEO and PPC, provides a comparison between them, and helps to define which of these methods would be more suitable for your company.

Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

Comparing these two technologies would not be appropriate as there are more differences rather than similarities between them. However, to demonstrate all the positive sides of each method, it is worth having a look at its essentials first.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

This abbreviation stands for search engine optimization – website promotion in the online environment. Most people use search engines such as Google or Bing to find the things they are looking for. To make your website visible to online users, SEO techniques are used.

SEO is a complex term that consists of multiple components that are aimed to improve the overall website ranking. These components could be classified into two main groups depending on the promotional method applied.

The first bunch of techniques is called on-page SEO and refers to on-site optimization. Performing keyword research, creating texts, taking care of technical characteristics of the website belong to this group of methods. You can use a Keyword Research Tool like LongTailPro to find keywords for your business.

Other SEO methods are classified as off-site or off-page optimization. It means that the website promotion is done with the involvement of external sources. For example, link building and guest posting are the most common approaches used in off-page SEO. Owing to guest posting services such as Adsy.com, you may create articles with the description of your company and the link to your website on other blogs to let more people know about your brand.

What is Pay-Per-Click?

Another popular method businesses utilize in their marketing strategies is PPC that stands for pay-per-click advertising. This method is also implemented within search engines but in a totally different way compared to SEO.

PPC also known as paid advertising is the service offered by Google Ads for displaying your announcements over the organic search results. Marketers bid for certain keywords to get a chance for displaying an ad with the link to the website in the SERP top.

Even when the advertisement is displayed once a user enters a corresponding search query, businesses have to pay for it only in case the ad is clicked. The price for the click is determined while marketers place bids on keywords.

The benefits of Search Engine Optimization

Durable effect

When done properly, search engine optimization is supposed to improve the website ranking gradually. Otherwise, a fast leap in the website positions on search results pages might be considered suspicious by Google. Even though the results of SEO is not visible in the first few weeks, it brings long-term effect, which is the greatest benefit for any business.

Local search

Another advantage of SEO is that it could be the right tool for making the website highly visible for local searches. With the help of certain keywords related to the particular place and special SEO techniques, your website would appear high on the results page when a search is done on the corresponding location.

PPC reinforcement

The power of SEO is that it could also strengthen the effect of the paid advertisement efforts. When people see the same website both in the organic and paid search results, they would likely visit it.

Comprehensive analytics

Most SEO tools used for website optimization provide comprehensive data on its performance. That way some applications could depict how the keywords perform, while others show the amount of time that users spend on the web page. All this data helps to make websites better and modernize them constantly. For instance, if you notice that users leave the website quickly, you might consider creating graphic materials for websites or rewriting the text to make it easy to read for people.

The advantages of PPC

Sales boost

The main benefit of paid advertising is its high potential for improving the company’s online sales. When an advertisement is placed at the top of the results page, users see it first. Thus, they would probably click on it and explore the website further. To make sure that a user stays for long on the website, design it properly by considering every minor detail.

Brand awareness

This aspect is interrelated with the first advantage of PPC as it also refers to the high visibility of the website. Users would likely remember your brand and recognize it further when it appears within the paid ad results.

SEO reinforcement

Similar to the SEO impact on PPC, the paid advertisement has a reverse effect as well. Paid ads help to reinforce the SEO effect by attracting other businesses and individual customers who would be interested in linking back to your website. Backlinks are powerful in improving the website’s domain authority and ranking.

What to choose for your business: Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click?

After exploring the main characteristics of search engine optimization and paid advertising, it is possible to decide which method would be more suitable for your company. Even if one of the approaches would be more applicable, it does not exclude the possibility to use another one. Thus, you can use both SEO and PPC but define the proportion of time and budget resources allocated to each of those.

If you are new to the market or have recently created a business website, then the first thing to start with would be SEO. It will help you to strengthen domain authority and lift the website on the search results pages.

In case you have been already using SEO for a while and want to boost sales or promote certain products, then PPC is the right thing to use. By creating paid advertisement you will pay the customers’ attention to the particular thing that corresponds to the keyword search.

When you consider using both PPC and SEO in your marketing campaign, keep in mind that the former is rather costly. It should be preferably used for a limited amount of time to achieve the desired goal. Meanwhile, SEO is the ongoing strategy that ensures the long-term results and requires fewer costs.

Conclusion on Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

If you decide whether PPC or SEO is better for your business website promotion, you should define your business goals first of all. In case you want to have short-term results, then PPC is the right option to choose. In other cases, SEO would be the preferred method for website promotion. Anyway, you can use both methods in your marketing strategy to obtain the best results.

business grow your business key to business success marketing strategy pay-per click SEO small business owners

7 Tools to help improve your digital presence

Seven Tools To Help Improve Your Digital Presence

Having digital presence is a new normal for any business, big or small. If you neglect this crucial thing, you will lose an unaffordable number of your potential local customers because 97% of them are looking for you on the internet. So, preeminently, digital presence is a must-have for any business, but how much does it cost? The cost can sometimes be your precious time that you must invest only in your core business operations, or it can be the hefty fee of a digital marketer other times. What if we tell you that you can cut these costs and improve your digital presence as well? Isn’t it a great deal? For sure, it is. There are tons of tools that can help you with it, but we will familiarize you with the best ones only. With a dizzying number of tools out there, it can be tough to know the best tool for the job. So, this blog takes a look the best seven tools to help improve your digital presence:

Happyscribe
ManyChat
Buffer
BuzzSumo
Creatopy
Hubspot
Writesonic

1. Happyscribe: automatic subtitle generation software

When it comes to positioning your offering in peoples’ minds, video content is of great significance. As important as it is, it must also be well-planned and well-executed; otherwise, it may turn into a mere expense on your business. One such significant part of a video that you must not undermine is video subtitles. As many as 6,500 languages are spoken around the globe, and your potential customer understands hardly any of these other than their native language. So, what is the key takeaway? Should you create a separate video in every language for your potential customers? Fortunately, No, when you have an option to use software for automatic subtitle generation. Subtitles play a vital role when a business wants to communicate with the masses. Not only do they serve this purpose, but they also cut the cost significantly. Imagine finding the needed voice-over artists for each language you want to target; isn’t it a hefty process, both cost-wise and duration-wise? Yes, it is. So, the solution is to have the subtitles for each of these languages and add them into the same video. What’s more beautiful is that you can also cut the cost of subtitle writers by letting Happyscribe, an automatic subtitle generator, handle the job. With Happyscribe’s automatic subtitle generator, you will be able to get subtitles for your videos in minutes. It’s as easy as uploading your video, selecting the languages you need, and clicking “Start.” AI is, undoubtedly, intelligent but still not as intelligent as its creator, humans. Happyscribe, with its automatic subtitle generator, offers 85% accurate results, but if you want to scale it up to 99%, Happyscribe offers a human-made subtitle generation service as well.

Pricing

Automatic subtitles: €0.20/minute
Human-made subtitles: €1.70/minute

2. ManyChat: automatic interactive conversations

In the world of smartphones, social media, and instant messaging, it’s important for a startup to have an effective way to engage with their customers. You can do that with ManyChat. With ManyChat, you can automate interactive conversations with your customers on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Shopify, direct SMS, and more. The more interactive your conversations are, the more loyal customers you will have. ManyChat helps you grow your brand and provide a better customer experience. Through automated conversations, you can provide your customer with a more personalized experience. ManyChat is the leading Chat Marketing Platform globally, with 1 billion conversations powered by the company every year. It’s clear that ManyChat is the best choice for any company looking to grow its customer base. There are so many reasons to love ManyChat. As many as 1 million businesses trust it with their growth. Also, you can enjoy a high CTR rate—130% more than the industry average.

Pricing

Free: $0/month
Pro: $15/month

3. Buffer: social media management tool

Buffer is a social media management tool that will allow you to reach more people with your social media posts. This is accomplished by scheduling posts and allowing you to post while on the go. It’s a great tool to use if you want to reach more people and stay authentic and interactive with your followers. It is great for any startup to measure their social media performance, content, messaging, and more. It’s easy to use, and it takes the guesswork out of social media. With Buffer, you don’t have to worry about handling customer queries, responding to comments, or managing social media. It’s all done seamlessly, so you can focus on what matters most to you.

Pricing

Free: $0/month
Essentials: $5/month per social channel

4. BuzzSumo: a content research tool

BuzzSumo is a tool that helps you find the best content that has performed well, and also helps you find influencers to collaborate with. You can find out what content has worked well in the past, and what content you should be creating. This can help you create content that resonates with your audience. It is a social media intelligence tool that’s perfect for any marketer. It’s great for finding high-performing content to post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. It also helps you track comments and trends in real-time to respond to feedback in a timely manner.

Pricing

Free: $0/month
Pro: $99/month
Plus: $179/month
Large: $299/month

5. Creatopy: ad design automation tool

With Creatopy, you don’t need to worry about hiring someone to make your ads for you. Their automated tool will do it for you, and it won’t be complicated or take up too much of your time. You can also build ads in various sizes and promote them across a wide variety of platforms and devices. Creatopy’s ad designer is perfect for designers, digital marketers, and advertisers looking to make beautiful and engaging ads.

Pricing

Free: $0/month
Create: $17/month
Automate: $35/month
Enterprise: custom pricing

6. Hubspot: CRM tool

Hubspot CRM is an easy-to-use, powerful CRM platform. It has all the tools you need to create the best customer experience. If you’re looking for a CRM that will help you manage your marketing, sales, content, and customer service needs, you should look into Hubspot CRM.

Pricing

Starter: starts at $45/month
Professional: starts at $800/ month
Enterprise: starts at $3,200/month

7. Writesonic: AI copywriting tool

To improve your digital presence, you need to share written content on your social media handles daily. For that, you can either choose a copywriter who will demand high fees or Writesonic that provides similar results at a lower cost. Writesonic can generate high-quality, human-level copy for you in seconds. It knows what your audience likes and how to write copy that resonates with them. You can use this for social media posts, emails, landing pages, and more.

Pricing

Free Trial: $0
Basic: $15/month
Professional: $45/month
Startup: $95/month
Agency: $195/month

Conclusion on Improving Your Digital Presence

We hope you enjoyed our blog post highlighting seven tools that can help improve your digital presence. The more active your digital presence is, the more likely it is that people will find you and the information you have to offer.

Using these seven tools, you will see significant improvement in your digital presence. Thank you for reading this article. We hope it will be a great help for you.

business owners digital presence marketing strategy online sales strategy small business social media

The Case For Multilingual Cross-Border Marketing

Having a good marketing strategy is essential for any business looking to sell their products. For businesses engaged in cross-border commerce, this can mean dealing with audiences that speak in different languages. Having multilingual accessibility is very important.

Language is perhaps the biggest challenge when it comes to cross-border marketing, but paying attention to language is what can make or break a business in a new foreign market. This article will talk about translation as a key strategy for cross-border marketing success, and what things you will need to keep in mind when integrating it into your business’s marketing strategy.

If that interests you, then let’s dive in!

Cross-Border and Global Marketing Strategy

Cross-border marketing refers to the strategy of promoting your products and services to a different market. It’s an important thing to consider if you want to expand your business’s reach.

It’s a concept that’s very closely related to global marketing, and shares the same basic principles. This blog post from leading translation company Tomedes provides a good breakdown of what it is, and the legal, logistical and production challenges that need to be accounted for before you even consider marketing for a foreign audience.

When it comes to cross-border marketing, one of the most important considerations is language. If you’re running a successful domestic business, you may already have a good marketing strategy in place. But if you’re trying to reach out to a new foreign audience, you will be facing a whole new set of challenges, and communicating with this audience is the biggest of these.

Why Multilingual Translation Is Important In Cross-Border and Global Marketing

A lot of research has shown that consumers want to be marketed to them in their own language. CSA Research’s continuously updated “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” is one of the most authoritative studies on the matter, and its most recent iteration found that a staggering 76% of consumers around the world prefer products with information in their own language.

This makes translation essential for any good cross-border and global marketing strategy! Without it, you’re only reaching a quarter of potential customers in any new market that speaks a different language.

What Should You Target For Multilingual Translation?

So how do you integrate translation into your global marketing strategy? There are a number of aspects that you might want to prioritize:

Website

For e-commerce businesses, often the single most important platform to focus on for marketing is the website. This is where customers will go if they want to learn more about a business or buy its products, and if they don’t find it accessible they are likely to leave and take their business elsewhere instead. But if the website is available in a customer’s native language, then they will feel that your product or service does cater to them, and they will be more likely to stay and even make a purchase.

Social Media Platforms

Another major part of any effective marketing campaign is the ability to reach out to consumers on social platforms. Broadly, Facebook dominates the social media landscape, and also has a strong e-commerce ecosystem, so any business will want to carve out a presence there. But aside from Facebook, the preferences differ by country. For example, Instagram is popular in Europe and the Americas, but it’s outpaced by Twitter in parts of the Middle East and Asia. In China, the top social media platform is WeChat. It’s important to not only speak to consumers in their language, but also on the platforms they use most.

Advertising Copy

Ads are an important component of a marketing campaign that you need to seriously consider for translation. After all, ad spend can take up a large part of the marketing budget, so you want to be sure you’re getting the bang for your buck. Advertising to consumers in their native language is the best way to catch their interest.

Customer Support That is Multilingual

A good customer support experience helps build customer loyalty. This is one thing that’s easy to overlook, but is an important thing to consider if you want sustainable success in a foreign market. Having customer support be available in your customers’ native language makes for a better experience and encourages continued patronage to your business. After all, it’s frustrating for a customer to deal with refunds or questions about your product if you don’t speak the same language!

Product Labels and Packaging

Consumers have a lot of options to choose from, and the best way to catch their attention is if your product looks and feels like it was designed for them. You might think there’s some allure in having a foreign or exotic aura, but this is often a novelty and doesn’t translate into long-term interest. Having a product that consumers can feel at home with is in most cases the better and more sustainable strategy.

Other Things To Consider with Multilingual Translation

Invest in high-quality translations. The main point of marketing is to show your business and your products in the best possible light to your customers. Poor translations reflect badly and will make customers less inclined to trust you, no matter how good your product is. Machine translation might seem like a cheap option but its quality can never approach the human touch.

Be sensitive to cultural nuances. It isn’t enough to just translate your content into a different language, it has to speak to your audience in a way that really speaks to them. This means knowing more about linguistic trends and quirks of your audience so that you can better design your marketing to appeal to them on a cultural level.

Outsource the translation work. If you don’t have the resources to do professional translation work, the best option would be to hire a reputable translation agency to handle it instead. This will not only lift the burden from your team so they can continue to do their own work, but will likely also be less of a headache in terms of quality control since you’ll be working with actual language professionals instead.

business owners business plan marketing strategy small business

21 Marketers Share Marketing Strategies For Small Business

21 Marketers Share Marketing Strategies Every Small Business Can Afford

Starting a business requires a lot of work, time and effort. Marketing strategies are essential to a successful business.

After you define your offering and your target audience, you need to find a way to reach them. Marketing is a crucial part of establishing your brand and generating sales leads for your small business.

In this post, we discussed with 21 experienced markets the best marketing strategies that will help you grow your small business both in size and reputation.

Michael Hammelburger, Sales Therapy Sales Coaching

One work: Networking. With many networking meetups starting up again you should do everything you can to join. Meeting with other small business owners is not only a great opportunity to get direct clients, but also a way to be top of mind for them in the future.

Michael Rossman, MachFast

There will always be key digital channels that small business can rely on to drive traffic, the likes of PPC, SEO and Social ads will always be viable. But they may not always be affordable. CPCs having been rising every year, and good SEO is not cheap, and also takes time to build up.

This is where Google My Business (GMB) can come in very handy for small business. If you have a physical store, office or clinic etc you need to set one up.

Setting up a Google My Business profile is free, and will get allow you to potentially rank in the local map pack for localized search terms. Once you have you profile set up you’ll just need to request a pin to verify the location and fill out your profile as much as you can.

Make sure you set the correct categories, add products and services and start regularly posting. You’ll also want to start collecting reviews. All of these will help you rank better in local search results which will be vital in driving local customers and awareness in the early days.

As a top tip, make sure you use a URL with UTM parameters within your profile, you’ll be able to see how much traffic your GMB listing is bringing in and if it’s converting.

Anders Rydholm, PrimeTime Web

At PrimeTime Web, we take a comprehensive approach to marketing. Any small business, even with little or no marketing budget has many options to choose from to build more awareness and stronger relationships with their fans and consumers.

This could include more established channels like social media, content marketing, and on-site SEO. It’s also fairly inexpensive to get into affiliate marketing by building up a Niche authority website in your industry and monetizing with advertising or links that earn referral commissions.

However, in a time where rewards from external platform algorithms are at an all-time low, we would recommend focusing on product marketing, influencer marketing, e-mail marketing, and off-site SEO. Influencer marketing through content creators of audio, video, or written word is something you can build on with your credibility and social network.

Check out SparkToro to see where your audience hangs out and which accounts they follow. It’s one of our favorite influencer marketing tools right now.

Adam Walters, Owner muON Marketing

Because most small businesses are strapped for cash most are seeking a flexible and efficient marketing strategy to go with their lower budgets. While it would be nice to do everything all at once to drive traffic and bring in leads (i.e., pay-per-click ads, paper ads, content creation, SEO, etc), the smartest route to take for any small business owner is to focus on their website.

This means first focusing on creating content that is optimized to rank on page #1 on Google Search. We recommend using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to do this because the value of an article on page #1 will drive more (free) traffic over a longer period of time versus spending money for PPC ads. The extra benefit of having good content on your website is you keep your potential customers from going to a competitor to find an answer.

Feel free to contact us on our website to learn more about SEO or if you would like to see how muON Marketing can help your business succeed. Visit > https://muon.marketing/ 🚀

TL/DR: Write good content using SEO and they will come to your site. Let’s work together!

Quentin Aisbett, Pocket Insights

For the small business, one of the low effort and big impact online strategies is to work on your Google My Business listing. It’s free to manage and doesn’t require an agency to do everything if you have the time.

Customers will find your GMB listing when they search for your business or for relevant services/products within proximity of your business.

There are particular elements to optimizing your GMB listing including:

– Completing the profile

– Choosing the right category

– Adding Questions & Answers

– Publishing weekly Google Posts

– Encouraging customers to upload photos

– Encouraging customers to leave Google reviews

And for those wanting to take the next step with GMB, I would also encourage you to read up on fighting GMB spam. There are a lot of spammy competitors ranking more prominently than you in those local pack (map and results) searches. Unfortunately it’s working for them but you can even the playing field and give your own listing a boost.

Understand what’s against Google guidelines and let Google know about your competitors. For example, do a search for a term you want to rank for with local intent (pest control in Idaho) and click through to ‘view all’ in Google Maps. If you see listings where the business name is stuffing keywords, then ‘suggest an edit’ and go through the process of changing their name.

If it’s appropriate, Google will make the change to comply with their guidelines and your competitor will stop ranking for the spammy terms. Giving you a better chance of ranking.

Nicholas Scalice, GrowthMarketer

The #1 marketing strategy I’d share right now is to create a newsletter. But not just any newsletter, something you’re passionate about and know can bring value to a specific niche. Be focused with your topic, and don’t talk about yourself. Share amazing content, whether it is curated from various sources, or a case study that you write from scratch.

Why are newsletters so great? Well, for one thing, the value of an email subscriber is much higher than the value of a social media follower or a page “like.” Plus, you have multiple opportunities to monetize a newsletter while building awareness for your brand on a weekly or monthly basis.

There are many tools that can help you get started with your own newsletter, such as ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Substack. But more important than the tools you use is the content you share—and how consistently you share it. So, be consistent, add value with each edition, and have fun! Newsletters are back and better than ever.

Justin Herring, YEAH! Local

Small businesses frequently have a limited marketing budget, which can make promoting your company difficult. The good news is that there are a plethora of free (or low-cost) alternatives for you to sell yourself to your clients.

Here are 5 I suggest starting with:

1) Create a Free Google My Business Listing

A Google Business Profile has become one of the most efficient free marketing tactics available, especially for small businesses. The free listing will allow your company to appear on Google Maps, Google Search’s local section, and the right-hand Knowledge Panel for brand queries.

2) Engage in Local SEO

The best thing about Google’s algorithm is that it’s built to deliver the most accurate, high-quality, and relevant results for each given search query. Because it is not necessary to pay to play, the playing field is leveled, allowing local smaller businesses to compete with large corporations for page one real estate. Start by adding location keywords in your page title and descriptions.

3) Create an Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is an excellent approach to attract new visitors and retain ties with existing consumers. Even though email marketing isn’t new, it’s still one of the most reliable ways to get a good return on your marketing dollars. Use MailChimp for a free platform to get started with.

4) Create a Referral Program for Your Customers

For introducing new clients, provide existing customers a free product, a free month of service, or some other very good incentive. Remember that word-of-mouth is quite powerful, and consumers referred by other customers are especially valued, therefore friends informing friends about your business is extremely beneficial.

5) Launch a Facebook Marketing Campaign

Even if you just have a small advertising budget, Facebook ads may be sufficient! Facebook advertising can have a very low cost per click. Just make sure to target your specific city and only the target prospects who you know are interested in your type of business. Start at $5 a day and increase from there.

Kevin Dam, Kevin Dam

I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful Partnerships are! The benefits of your partnerships may last for years if they are properly nurtured and cared for. This might be as simple as a referral program.

The most crucial thing to take away is that collaboration should be mutually beneficial, so make sure you know what your partner values – it doesn’t have to be new clients for them; it might just be a one-time financial incentive.

I started by thinking about the service providers my clients would engage, either before or after they work with me, and came up with this list:

– web developers

– web hosting companies

– branding and graphics designers

– content writers

– other marketing agencies

What providers do your clients go to for help?

Start making a list of the potential partnerships you can nurture and reach out to people of influence from the service providers that you can provide mutual benefits to.

Another way to find more prospects for your business is to do the following:

Find a “”how-to”” article in your field of expertise and follow the techniques in the article to learn how to do it yourself.
Make a list of email addresses for individuals who have liked, commented on, or shared the post before. Chances are they engaged the post because they’re thinking about doing it for themselves
Record a video of yourself implementing the ‘how-to’ article
Offer to implement the same for someone on the list via email and include your video

The important takeaways from these steps are:

You’re leading with value and not asking for anything
You’re demonstrating you can do what was outlined in the article with video proof
You’re taking the initiative and time to give them value
You’re providing something they’re most likely interested in since they engaged with the how-to article

Best of luck!

Tommy Gallagher, TopMobileBanks

More often, Small Business is servicing a local community. As a result, it has close relationships with partners and clients.

This happens organically, but that doesn’t mean that a small business owner shouldn’t leverage it. Build trust and friendship.

That doesn’t cost much, if anything, but requires changes to the daily business lifestyle.

Become a brand of your small business. Everyone should know you in the community and beyond. Your clients and partners should see that you live your business.

Have active social profiles. Post regularly about your business AND your life.

Visit your place of business often. Communicate there as much as possible.

Run giveaways to your local community.

Build yourself as an expert in the field. Publish expert details of your business. Participate in the trade shows.

Partner up with other small businesses you like and launch cross-promotional campaigns.

Leveraging your business trust and reliability in the customers’ eyes will significantly impact your sales.

Nestor Vazquez, SEO Mexico

It’s difficult to find good business strategies. Many concepts work well for larger businesses, but they don’t produce the same results when utilized in smaller enterprises. This is because it’s difficult to find strategies that can be successfully implemented on a small budget. However, there are strategies every startup or small business can afford!

Start a Blog – One strategy every startup or small business should consider is starting a blog. A blog gives your company the ability to post content on an ongoing basis and establish a voice for your brand.

Keep It Simple – Another affordable strategy any startup or small business should consider utilizing is keeping things simple for customers. As most startups and smaller enterprises are already operating on a limited budget, there’s no reason to make it more difficult for customers to find information on your website.

Let’s face it, most people don’t want to navigate through multiple pages of content when all they need is in front of them. So why not save yourself the trouble and offer up what you have in one simple page?

Eduard Agapie, Sortlist

One of the cheapest marketing strategy for small businesses is social media. You don’t need to invest anything, you just have to share good content, be creative and engage with your audience! Researching and using the right hashtags and the right tone of voice for your business only costs time.

There are many platforms you can grow an audience on like Instagram, Facebook and even Tik Tok is becoming an essential platform for businesses. Building a blog on your website will also be a minimal investment. Researching related topics and publishing content will also costs you next to nothing. Writing a good blog can drive a lot of traffic to your website and make your business known!

Nikola Roza, Nikola Roza- SEO for the Poor and Determined

One marketing strategy that doesn’t cost money and that every small business should be doing is Quora marketing.

Whatever the niche, there are probably hundreds of questions people ask about that niche within Quora.

A smart small business looking for free promotion and marketing would first plow through Quora and record in a spreadsheet every possible question even remotely related to what they’re doing.

Then they’d filter out questions that are too competitive or too outside of their niche.

Finally, with the batch that remains they’d organize those based on competition level and number of views the question has.

Then they’d start plowing through those giving their take on the topic, with a CTA link within each answer pointing to their property.

Pro tip: recently I’ve been playing with Jarvis the AI writer. It’s pretty good for shorter form content , not as good for long form posts.

But, Quora answer are short-form content and Jarvis even has a Quora answer template you can use to streamline Quora post creation.

I recommend it as a time saver, but only in a case if you have several hundred to a 1000+ questions to respond to.

If you have a dozen or so then don’t bother and write them manually.

Jabez Reuben, Thailand Nomads

When it comes to building your small business, you should always consider email marketing. While it may sound like a traditional technique but it still has a massive ROI. Many small businesses ignore this marketing tool as they assume that only big players in the industry can reap benefits from it.

But you use email to improve customer retention and build qualified leads for your business. It gives you an opportunity to reach out to customers and offer your latest products or services easily. You will also be able to learn more about your audience’s likes and dislikes.

The biggest challenge you will face is to develop compelling content to make sure your emails are being clicked. By segregating your customers based on activity or how far down the funnel they are, you can build personalized relationships with customers and nurture them into their first sale or into your loyalty program.

Ricardo Sentosa, Aemorph

There are lots of ways to market your business in 2021 that are very cost effective.

Some include:

Posting on social media such as Instagram or Facebook. Both platforms enable you to reach millions of people with a single post, you just need to make sure you’re connected to and engaging with your target audience.

Another popular one now is Facebook groups! If you do a search for your area of expertise there’s bound to be a group about it on Facebook. By participating in the groups, sharing your expertise and knowledge, you can build trust and allow others to engage with you on what you’re best at doing.

For some others maybe it’s on the rising social platform TikTok. Creating videos that tell an engaging story and getting impressions of you and your brand can help you generate more revenue very quickly and easily!

Garrett Nafzinger, Garrett Digital

The marketing strategy all businesses can afford is working with a marketing agency or professional to build a website that clearly articulates what you do, the pain points you solve, and the things that differentiate your business from the competition.

There are so many companies that don’t pay attention to the value proposition and business differentiators. Doing so will make your business stand out, and it will drive people who visit your website to convert into customers.

Ben Soltana, DigiDux

Small businesses often have a tight marketing budget to work with, which can make promoting your company a challenge. The good news is, there are enough ways for you to market your business. Here some cost effective ways to market your small business.

– Create and optimize a Google My Business account: a GMB profile is one of the most effective free marketing strategies. It allows your business to show up on Google Maps and on the knowledge panel for branded searches.

– Establish a Social Media presence: whether it’s photos on Instagram or blogging on your Facebook page, social media are great to brand your business and create a consumer buzz around your products.

– Join or create a Facebook group: Facebook Groups are underrated. If you choose the right group, the members represent the core of your targeted, engaged audience. To be more specific, potential customers.

– Build an email list: an email list is worth its weight in the gold. Once you have a potential customer’s email address, it’s just a matter of driving some great email marketing flows and campaigns to turn them into customers.

– Guest post on industry blogs: a great way to build backlinks and gain a lot of weight with search algorithms.

– Sign up at HARO as a source: instead of writing the article yourself, you can provide a quote by signing up as a source at HelpAReporterOut.

– Leverage your network: One thing many small business owners forget about is their network. Hitting up your network of friends and family and asking for referrals or testimonials can give you a boost.

Darshan Somashekar, Solitaired

As a strategy for link building, explore the shoulder niches. A shoulder niche pertains to a topic that directly relates to your blog’s core content. All of them revolve around the central message you want to convey to your brand.

They can increase traffic to your website by expanding your content to new audiences. As long as those industries are relevant to your content, you can improve your online presence and authority. Take time to brainstorm for ideas of those related industries.

Choosing shoulder niches will allow you to earn backlinks from authority sources and other bloggers. In your niche, you are constantly competing with other sites. Your website will receive more backlinks if your content deviates even slightly from that of your competitors.

This strategy increases your content’s visibility in search engines because high-quality, relevant backlinks are a ranking factor of search engine algorithms. This neat SEO hack will allow you to grow your website’s traffic more.

Simon Woodcock, Man With A Camera Photography

Starting my photography business with very little spare cash meant I had to be resourceful when looking for ways of getting my brand name in front of potential clients.

I started by immersing myself in learning more about SEO and how I could get Google to look upon my website favorably. One of the best areas for gaining immediate traction in the Google search results is by utilizing your Google My Business listing. I recommend that all new businesses create one and flesh it out with as much information as possible. If you have premises that customers can visit, make sure you add photos of the exterior and interior as well as any photos of your product or service in action.

Encouraging clients to post their photos and reviews also helps enormously. Responding to all reviews, both positive and negative, looks great to potential customers and shows that, as a business owner, you care.

Don’t forget to post updates on the business listing regularly with useful content, special offers or recent events and upcoming occasions. Where possible illustrate these with a photo so they stand out when potential customers are browsing. Creating a library of useful images for these regular postings is a great idea and you’ll find plenty of local small business photographers offering one-off and regular social media packages where they photograph your business and then supply a large batch of relevant images that can be used anytime. Don’t underestimate the value of quality photography! It’s often what will set a business apart from their competitors.

With plenty of trial and error and a large amount of patience when using my learned SEO techniques both on the website and the Google My Business listing I have seen a strong local presence develop and have cemented the website in the top 2 organic search results for some very popular search terms. Don’t be daunted by SEO and don’t try to learn it all at once – learn one thing a week and you’ll be surprised how quickly this valuable information starts to build.

Aaron Hughes, Boost Suite

The most cost-effective marketing strategy that every small business can afford is to build on your existing relationships with past customers.

Past customers have already demonstrated that they trust you and have a need for your product or service so reaching out again is a simple and cheap way to boost your sales.

When you reach out, the first thing you need to ask is about their experience with your company. Was their purchasing experience simple and easy or were there unnecessary barriers? Has your product been reliable and has it lived up to your promises or could it be improved in some way? Have they benefitted from your customer support or could you do more to help them utilize your product or service?

Now comes the marketing part: if they’ve received value from your product, ask them if they anticipate needing more of your product or service in the future. If they do, set a reminder to reach out a little before when they’ll need it to see if you can help them. They already trust you enough to pay for your product or service so if your product or service has lived up to your promises, this should be an easy sale.

Also ask them if they know anyone else who might need your product or service and if they could introduce you. A warm introduction from an exiting customer who has used your product will side-step the necessity to build trust with this new customer as you are leveraging the trust that already exists in their relationship.

The cost of this process (your time) can be even further reduced by using some automated tools to streamline this process. There are systems that can set automatic reminders to follow up with clients and even email autoresponders that will follow up with past clients without you needing to pick up the phone.

Building this into your standard customer follow up processes will boost your sales and conversion rate significantly with very little cost.

James Lee, Monetized Future

I know that sometimes it can be difficult to justify spending additional money on marketing for your small business.

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to generate traffic, leads, and sales for a small business is through SEO marketing channels.

Local brick-and-mortar businesses and eCommerce stores alike can benefit from spending time and money building an SEO campaign.

Contrary to popular belief, most businesses do not have an SEO-optimized website, so just investing the minimum effort in an SEO campaign can really produce some quick wins!

If you have no idea where to start when it comes to SEO, there are plenty of resources online that can help you understand the basics. From there you need to evaluate what your direct competition is doing.

What this means is to find businesses that are ranking for the keywords most likely to bring you new customers, and reverse engineer their efforts, applying them to your own site.

Shaurya Jain, Attention Always

Use LinkedIn

One super low-cost marketing idea that’s working for me right now is LinkedIn. The organic reach on the platform is mind blowing.

LinkedIn is a powerful social media site that doesn’t get the attention it deserves because so few people know how powerful it can be. Most people inflate their network connections and sleep on it. Use the platform to create discussions with your connections, share full/part of your blog posts, share your offers, contribute to groups and above all share other people’s content. The thing is this—each piece of content you share lives on your network’s feed for days and sometimes weeks. Know what that does? It gets engagement.

LinkedIn is a good platform to educate your potential audience. This helps you build your brand while earning trust while improving your reputation. Encourage your employees to be active on the platform as well. And it’s not just B2B businesses that can benefit. If used creatively, the platform is a boon for B2C businesses as well.

This LinkedIn strategy is free and doesn’t require a lot of time or resources from your end. Despite that, you get to maximize your reach and build on your success.

key to business success marketing strategy sales coach small business

Why Use Countdown Clocks?

The Psychological Appeal of Countdown Clocks

Incorporating Countdown Clocks in Event Marketing

Best Practices for Effective Countdowns

Conclusion

To Sum It All Up on Your Marketing Strategy

The Importance of Media Ad Campaigns

Define the media ad campaign goal

Determine the promotion method you want to use

Make a content calendar for your media ad campaign

Develop the visual contents to be posted

Schedule the posts of your media ad campaign

Monitor, analyze and adjust

Endnote on Your Media Ad Campaign

Automate as Much as Possible

Make Customer Service a Company Wide Effort

Heighten Communication With your Clients

Test, Measure, Monitor and Track Everything

The Bottom Line

1. Determine What Your Company Needs

Final Thoughts on A Digital Marketing Agency

1. Set Up Your Google My Business Account

2. Attend An Industry Networking Event With Marketing In Mind

3. Host A Class To Assist Marketing

4. Launch A Webinar Series

5. Write Your Own Press Releases As Part Of Your Marketing

6. Help Others For Free

7. Create A Free Resource For Your Marketing

8. Build A Referral Program

9. Initiate A Tweetstorm To Aid Marketing

10. Cozy Up To Influencers In Your Niche

Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

What is Search Engine Optimization?

What is Pay-Per-Click?

The benefits of Search Engine Optimization

Durable effect

Local search

PPC reinforcement

Comprehensive analytics

The advantages of PPC

Sales boost

Brand awareness

SEO reinforcement

What to choose for your business: Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click?

Conclusion on Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click

Seven Tools To Help Improve Your Digital Presence

1. Happyscribe: automatic subtitle generation software

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2. ManyChat: automatic interactive conversations

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3. Buffer: social media management tool

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4. BuzzSumo: a content research tool

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5. Creatopy: ad design automation tool

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6. Hubspot: CRM tool

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7. Writesonic: AI copywriting tool

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Conclusion on Improving Your Digital Presence

The Case For Multilingual Cross-Border Marketing

Cross-Border and Global Marketing Strategy

Why Multilingual Translation Is Important In Cross-Border and Global Marketing

What Should You Target For Multilingual Translation?

Website

Social Media Platforms

Advertising Copy

Customer Support That is Multilingual

Product Labels and Packaging

Other Things To Consider with Multilingual Translation

21 Marketers Share Marketing Strategies Every Small Business Can Afford

Michael Hammelburger, Sales Therapy Sales Coaching

Michael Rossman, MachFast

Anders Rydholm, PrimeTime Web

Adam Walters, Owner muON Marketing

Quentin Aisbett, Pocket Insights

Nicholas Scalice, GrowthMarketer

Justin Herring, YEAH! Local

Kevin Dam, Kevin Dam