Category: Grow a Home Business

    Nine Types of Online Marketing

    If you want to be successful with marketing online, there are many different types of marketing that are important to understand. Each type of marketing requires specialized knowledge and understanding to ensure that it is effective. Below is an overview of the various types of online marketing that you need to know about.

    1. Search Engine Optimization – Often abbreviated as SEO, this type of marketing covers two types of SEO. First, there is on-page SEO which concerns optimizing each page of your website, social media profiles, blog sites, and so forth with the right terms, navigation, keywords, headlines and so forth. The other type is off-page SEO, which concerns itself with these same things off the pages you control. For example, guest blogging, forum commenting, and anything above board that you can do to get authoritative links back to your website and other online real estate are important for SEO.

    2. Pay-Per-Click Marketing – This is really an advertising concept but for these purposes we’re including it here. Often abbreviated PPC, this consists of any ads that you purchase that charges you for each click that a potential customer makes on the advertisement. The ad brings the lead to your sales page, or a landing page.

    3. Email Marketing – One of the most lucrative of all types of online marketing, email marketing is performed by using email marketing software like AWeber.com, or MailChimp.com. The software helps you follow the law when it comes to email marketing. Plus, you should also read the laws in your country regarding email marketing.

    4. Social Media Marketing – Any marketing completed on social media networks that brings members, likes and connections into your product funnel is social media marketing. Social media marketing works best when you’re committed to engaging with your audience.

    5. Networking Marketing – In some ways network marketing and social media marketing go hand-in-hand, but in this case we’ll separate them out to include local networking and more professional social professional networks online such as membership organizations and more buttoned-up social media like LinkedIn.

    6. Community and Relationship-Building Marketing – Thanks to forums, message boards, social media groups and more, you can now build an entire online community which enables you to get closer to them and build relationships with them. Relationships are very important when it comes to online marketing.

    7. Location Marketing – Today, you should also consider marketing in your local location but you don’t even have to book a flight to market in many locations using the right search terms and focused content. If your audience is located in a specific place, you can focus all your marketing online and offline to that location.

    8. Affiliate Marketing – This is a wonderful way to get a legion of fans doing a lot of your marketing for you. An affiliate signs up to use your tools to market your products and/or services to their audience, and for each completed sale they get a percentage. You’ll need affiliate software for this like aMember.com, JVZoo.com, or 1ShoppingCart.com.

    9. Content Marketing – This type of marketing consists of all forms of content such as videos, blogs, white papers, articles, eBooks, eCourses, email series… Anything that consist of content in all its forms is content marketing.

    Online marketing is a form of marketing that you do online, but sometimes it can carry off into offline if you meet up with people in person that you first met online. Online marketing is all-encompassing and very effective to helping the smallest to the largest businesses get more customers and increase their bottom line.

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    Are You Missing Out on Mobile Revenue?

    As mobile continues to outshine PCs in the content delivery market, it’s important to be aware that if you’re not ready for mobile, you’re missing out on the potential revenue that mobile can bring. Being ready for mobile can mean many different things but the first thing is to build responsive online real estate. The next thing is to determine how to monetize mobile for your niche.

    1. Understand What Mobile Means – Any “on the go” devices constitutes mobile. It’s important to realize the difference between “optimized for” or “accessible to” mobile. You don’t need to be optimized for mobile to be available and usable on mobile devices. You just need to be accessible for mobile. Think of mobile as simply a new tool to view your content and offerings, not a whole new environment.

    2. Make Your Content Mobile Ready – If you use a responsive design, you’ll be able to easily be viewable and usable on mobile devices. Ensure that any additional plugins, apps, and shops you add are also usable on mobile devices. If they’re not, find a different one because you’ll literally miss out on over half of your audience.

    3. Release Your Own App – To earn money via mobile, one great way is to release your own mobile app that you charge for, offer a subscription to, use as a way to promote affiliate products, or for your audience to make in-app purchases to earn revenue. You don’t even need to know how to code. You can use PLR (private label) apps and rebrand them as your own.

    4. Offer Mobile Checkout – If a shopping cart doesn’t allow for mobile purchasing, most shoppers will not go back to your site. In fact, they’ll likely complain about it all over social media too. To avoid this problem, ensure that people have the same experience on mobile that they have on their PC.

    5. Increase Social Media Activity – The truth is, most mobile users spend an enormous amount of time using social media such as Facebook and Twitter. If you want to encourage mobile use of your blog, promote a lot more on social media. When mobile users see your promotions and click through to your mobile-friendly options, they’ll be pleased.

    6. Create Highly Digestible Content – Shorter content that is optimized for mobile will encourage more mobile users to consume your content and answer your calls to action. Content for mobile needs to be a little shorter, more concise, and targeted. This type of content will also work well for PC users, so including a variety of content that works for both is easy.

    7. Use Images Wisely and Creatively – Today, images are very important to bring attention to content. People enjoy reading an infographic with lots of data more than they enjoy reading a boring blog post with the same data. The infographic brings that type of content new life while imparting important information to your audience. Mobile devices have lower resolutions than PCs for these images, though. Keep that in mind as you create the content so that your images are still viewable on mobile. Plus, don’t overload your site with irrelevant images. Choose which ones you use very carefully.

    8. Avoid Using Flash – While Flash has been an important component in many types of content on PCs, the problem is that Flash is not compatible with mobile devices. So, if you have been using Flash on your websites and blogs, you’ll need to use HTML5 instead to ensure compatibility with mobile.

    Mobile is a highly important and rapidly changing. The more popular it becomes, the more important it will be to learn all you can, optimize your websites for mobile, and realize that new tools will be invented in the future for people to access your information. Will you be ready?

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    Social Media Marketing – Are You Controlling It or Is It Controlling You?

    Social media marketing is a good way to get the word out about your business, products and/or services. But, there are times when you have to be cognizant of the fact that social media marketing has the potential to draw you in and become a major time sucker. If you want to ensure that social media is not controlling you, follow these tips.

    * Have a Plan of Action – Don’t do anything without a plan. You need a GPS to get to your destination; you also need a plan to ensure that social media marketing will work well for your business.

    * Create a Social Media Publication Calendar – Plan ahead according to the products and services you want to promote to craft posts and updates that have a purpose. If you have a calendar with pre-written posts, you can easily schedule them to work with your product launches.

    * Avoid Time-Sucking Activities – You know it is simple to get sucked into yet another personality quiz or discussions about that delicious plate of pasta your friend just made, not to mention all the games – but don’t do it. It’s fine to have fun, but do it after your work is complete.

    * Outsource Scheduling – Once you create a publication calendar that matches your promotions you can give the list of updates to someone else to schedule and monitor. However, don’t make that an excuse not to engage personally.

    * Take Time to Comment and Engage – Even if you outsource parts of your social media marketing, be sure to personally comment and engage your followers so that they know you are a real person to trust and know.

    * Do More of What Works – If you do something that works, do more of it and less of what doesn’t. Monitor the metrics of everything that you do so that you are positive about what is working and what is not working.

    * Each Post Needs a Reason for Being – Don’t post something without a purpose. If you don’t know why you are posting it, don’t bother.

    * Don’t Forget Your Call to Action – Everything you do should have a CTA. Whether it is to share, follow, or click, ensure clarity about what you want your audience members to do. If they know what you want them to do, they’re more likely to do it.

    Using social media correctly to market your business is an essential element today in the world of advertising and marketing. Social media marketing can be very effective and inexpensive if you are careful not to waste time and effort on messing around and doing things that have no purpose.

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    Mobile-friendly and Responsive are NOT the Same

    The world of internet viewing has been shifting – first from desktops to more portable laptops. Now the shift is from desktops/laptops to on-the-go functionality from mobile devices. Your visitors and customers are on the move, and your website needs to accommodate that activity.

    Web designers, webmasters, and theme designers have been focused on creating websites that would cross from different computers and screen sizes without hindering the experience. The goal for many years was to have a website that would respond to the device where it was being viewed.

    Screens on mobile devices are larger than they have been, but they still require even more adjustment to make websites easier to use for the viewer. This is one of the reasons that Google released the new algorithm designed to award websites that make mobile viewing a better experience.

    Mobile-Friendly or Responsive

    Responsive designs were crafted to create a pleasant viewing experience. The webpage recognizes the size of the viewing screen and then adjusts to fit that screen. It will also adjust to the orientation of the screen. Responsive makes use of flexible layouts, images, and style sheets. A mobile-friendly website will always be responsive, but all responsive websites are not mobile-friendly.

    Simple responsive sites can feel clunky and require more work for the mobile viewer. Although the information is technically available on a responsive site, it is not easy to access for the mobile user and so would not quality as mobile-friendly.

    Mobile-friendly websites render content in a manner that is convenient to use and read on mobile devices – including smart phones and tablets. Search options, share buttons, and other navigation features are display in a way that requires less scrolling for the mobile users. Mobile-friendly websites were created to optimize the mobile experience and will often include single screen, single column designs, simple navigations, and reduced images or clutter.

    Several major companies designed two websites – one for mobile users and one for desktop/laptop users. This brought along the surge of m. sites. The roll-up to and ultimate release of “mobilegeddon” frowned on this pattern (although Google has said it does not penalize companies that choose to go this route). The goal is to create a website that will know who is watching and from what device and will provide quality and engaging content optimized for that particular device.

    You may want to work with a website design specialist to create the best optimized website for your company. Making the shift from responsive to mobile-friendly can have some unique challenges, but in the end it should not be too difficult. The best thing about “mobilegeddon” is the focus on the user. By creating a website friendlier to mobile users, you will be in a position to better meet the needs of those users (and ultimately convert users to customers).

    The important thing to remember is that your website can be responsive and not be mobile-friendly, but your website cannot be mobile-friendly and not be responsive. Optimize the mobile experience to insure that your website passes the Google mobile-friendly test.

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    Types of Content You Can Send via Your Email List

    Many people get stuck trying to figure out what type of content to send their subscribers via email. But, today there really is no limit to the form in which the email can be sent, so you are less limited by the types. You can send videos, text, beautiful HTML newsletters and more. The types of emails you should be sending via your email list include all of the below but this list is not exhaustive. You should be able to get some ideas, though.

    1. Welcome Emails – You should always send a welcome email to explain to your audience what to expect from being on your email list. Tell them how often they’ll get messages from you, plus what type of messages they’ll get.

    2. Thank You Emails – Whenever someone signs up, or you have a huge response to an offer, send a thank you to the entire list. It will make those who took you up on the offer feel great and make those who didn’t more curious about the offer.

    3. ECourses – An email is a great way to send lessons about how to do something to your audience. You can make a series of emails that give tasks to them on things to do that ultimately leads them to a goal.

    4. Promotional Emails – While you do not want every email you send to be promotional in nature, you do want to promote; that’s how you’re going to earn money. Use the other emails as a way to build up to a promotional email.

    5. Announcements – If you have a new blog post, new video, new eCourse, new anything to offer your audience, or even some personal announcement to make about your life (when relevant), then you should send an announcement to your list.

    6. Newsletters – Having a regular weekly or monthly newsletter is an important component to having a profitable email list. There are many different things you can include in a newsletter, such as a reminder of other emails, blog posts, round-ups of information and so forth. All of these will work very well in a newsletter.

    7. Advice – If someone asks a question in person, in a coaching call, on a message board or email, sometimes you can turn it into a message to send out to your email list. Giving advice to everyone on your list about something will add a lot of value to the list members.

    8. Educational – One of the things you should do for your list members is to educate them on your niche, which is something they’re interested in. Tell them about problems and solutions that would be of interest to them.

    Sending a variety of types of emails via your email list, and in different forms, will keep your audience excited to open each email that you send to them. Pick a few of these types of emails to send to your audience. Test out how each one does in terms of getting opens, click-throughs, and results.

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    Creating Copy for Different Stages of Prospect Awareness

    Anytime you create copy it’s important to consider who your audience is. You’re always going to have new people, middle-of-the-road and advanced users. As you write various types of copy you will need to address the needs of these different levels of users based on their awareness of your products.

    Newbies

    When writing copy for someone who has no idea about you, your products or services, the copy has to educate, inform, engage and inspire. The types of copy you may want to write for a newbie are informative and educational like white papers and how-to articles. You want to tell a story that weaves in your why with your audience’s why, while at the same time educating them. Because remember – it’s all about them.

    Intermediates

    Other people you will have to write copy for within your niche are those who know about you and your products (as well as why they need them) but who haven’t actually purchased from you yet. They’ve done their research, understand their needs and what will solve them, and now are trying to decide who will fill their needs. If you want to be that person they buy from, you’ll need to explain why you are the right one for the job.

    Advanced Users

    Finally, you’ll also need to write copy for those who have already purchased from you. If you want to increase the lifetime income of each customer, this type of copy is very important too. The type of content you will write for these prospects makes assumptions about the knowledge they have about how great your products are, as well as the next thing they will need. It assumes they trust you due to the prior purchase, and it assumes they know their problems and that you have the solutions. You simply need to offer it to them.

    Types of Content

    You can write content in all its forms for any stage of prospect awareness, but the words that you use will be different.

    * Newbies – You’ll need to word everything from a teaching mode without being condescending. A great way is to use testimonials, how-to videos, and educational emails and e-courses to help your newbie prospects learn about the problems they share with others, the solutions that exist and why yours is better.

    * Intermediate – These prospects need to receive reassurance, as well as proof that you have the solution that they seek. They know that they have a problem, they know about all the solutions that exist, so now you have to show them how your solution is the best. You can do this via testimonials and stories that demonstrate your product’s effectiveness.

    * Advanced – This copywriting is all about getting current customers to buy from you again. You can accomplish this by sending them information about new products that you offer. But you can also engage with them about how they use the product they purchased. This will not only remind them of how well made and perfect your product is, it will also instill trust about other products and services.

    Creating copy for people at any stage of awareness takes an understanding of your audience as a whole, as well as your products in general and in particular. You’ll need to be able to create regular content for each stage of awareness, and then be able to break it down clearly for anyone at any stage.

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    How to Identify Your Ideal Customer

    The fact is about 20 percent of all your customers will generate 80 percent of your income. That is because the other 80 percent aren’t totally in line with your ideal customer. There is a way to improve your income exponentially, and that’s by hyper focusing on your ideal customer so that you can attract more ideal customers and fewer who aren’t ideal.

    1. What Benefits Does Your Product or Service Offer? – Make a list of all the benefits that your product or service has. When you are thinking like your customer, you will always think about “what’s in it for me?” Your customer wants to know why they should use that product.

    2. Identify Pain Points That You Can Solve – What sort of pain points does your product or service solve? Does it free up time? Does it end boredom?

    3. Determine Who Needs These Issues Solved – Once you’ve gathered a list of benefits your product offers and pain points that your product solves, you need to figure out who needs those benefits and has those pain points.

    4. Determine Your Customers’ Potential Characteristics – Once you have a list of those who might benefit from your product or service, you can make a list of demographics and other factors that people in that group share.

    5. Determine Your Customers’ Behavior – Find ways to research the list of people you made above so that you can get a better idea of the type of behavior your target audience displays.

    6. What Career Does Your Ideal Customer Have? – Can you determine what type of career your ideal client has from the information you’ve gathered above?

    7. What Price Point Can They Afford? – Once you know what type of career your ideal client has, you can also determine a fair price point for your product or service based on what they can afford to pay and the value of your offering.

    8. Test Your Assumptions – Once you have a fair idea of who your ideal client is, you can test your assumptions by identifying some influencers within your audience and asking them to try your product or service.

    9. Repeat – Take the answers you get from the information above and the test and improve upon your offerings so that you can truly please your ideal customer.

    Using the information learned from all of the above actions, you can truly focus your marketing efforts toward your ideal client. In addition, you can use the information to retain the right customers in order to take advantage of repeat customers and a high level of customer satisfaction.

    Categories: Customer Defined, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    Eight Ways to Use a Book to Market Your Business

    Marketing your business with a book is a great way to prove your knowledge and develop some credibility within your niche. The act of publishing a book sets you up with expert status almost automatically. Of course, the book needs to be good too, but the idea is that the book is not the main product. The book is just a way to market the main product which is you, or your business.

    1. Sell It Inexpensively on Kindle – You can give it away by signing the book up exclusively on Kindle, and then allow it to be given away. Alternatively you can sell it for $2.99 or even more. It’s up to you. If the book is good, and you want to make money off it, it doesn’t exclude you from using the book as a marketing tool. This only works if you also include links and information about your website and other information inside the book.

    2. Collect Leads by Giving It Away – As mentioned above, you can give it away on Kindle. You can also give it away as lead bait or incentive to your customer to sign up for your email list. Still include links in your book because your audience will want to buy what you suggest, and come back to your website if they know where it is.

    3. Use It to Get Speaking Opportunities – A book’s topic is a great platform to get speaking engagements. When you’re a published author, people will want to know what you know, and speaking is a great way to market your business.

    4. Publicity through Authorship – Just becoming a published author carries some clout. And, don’t let anyone tell you that self-publishing is “less than” any other type of publishing. Self-publishing is actually more lucrative today than finding a publisher unless you are already famous and want to outsource some aspects. Publishers will not do much to help someone who is not already known; therefore you may as well self-publish and use the proof of your knowledge (your book) to market your business.

    5. Viral Marketing Campaigns – An eBook can be a great way to “go viral” if you know how to promote it. Use social media, book trailers, and excerpts of the book to market on social media to get the word out about the book and your business at the same time.

    6. Create a Book Trailer Video – A great way to both market your book and your business is to use the book to make a book trailer video to post on YouTube. This video can then be posted on your website and social media networks as a way to promote the book and also your business.

    7. Put Links inside Your EBook – This is the most important thing outside of marketing your eBook. Ensure that you include links inside your eBook because this is how the people who buy or download your eBook (or even if they steal it) will give you business from it.

    8. Promote It on Social Media – Don’t forget to market your business and book on social media using all means available, such as infographics, the book trailer, memes and infographics.

    Using a book to market your business is an excellent idea. It’s something that’s been done long before online marketing. A book can be a great calling card for your business with proof of your expertise.

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    Best Fixes for the Google Mobile-Friendly Changes

    Google makes changes and adjustments to the algorithm that ranks websites all the time. Many website owners grumble that the changes are designed to either make money for the designers or to drive the owners insane.

    While both may feel true, Google makes the changes to create the best experience for the users. The goal for Google is to provide the most relevant search results that provide the best quality content for the one doing the searching.

    The newest changes, that began launching on April 21st, are the attempt of Google to provide the same quality results but specific for mobile device users. Mobile devices became the leading way that people search the internet at the beginning of 2014 (a full two years before most experts predicted that shift would occur). The numbers are sure to continue to rise as mobile devices get smaller, more powerful, and easier to use.

    Google sent out mass scale notifications to alert webmasters if a site was not considered mobile-friendly. You can also use the Google mobile-friendly test from the tools to see if your site makes the cut. If it fails, then you have several things that you can do to fix your site and bring it up to the Google mobile-friendly standards.

    Top Fixes for Google Mobile Standard Fail

    – Upgrade your theme. The skin of your website (the theme) dictates a great deal of what goes on within your website. This includes the mobile-friendly quality of your website. Check to see that your theme is the current release. A simple update of your theme could correct any mobile-friendly issues.

    – Change your theme. Some themes will never make the cut. The designers have stopped upgrading and moved on to other projects or created a similar theme that will meet more up and coming needs of the changing internet world (including the Google mobile-friendly tests). Be certain that your current website is backed up before you begin making any changes to your theme. Also remember that a name of a theme does not mean it is mobile-friendly according to Google standards. You should review the theme before making the move and you still need to run the new website through the Google mobile-friendly test.

    – Add a plugin. You may not be in a financial position to make a big change. You may not want to go through the hassle of a big change at the moment. No matter what your reason, there are plugins and software specifically designed to fix the mobile-friendly issues of a website. Again, be sure you back up your website before installing new plug-ins or other software that can affect the function of your website.

    Google makes changes to make things better, even if it may not feel like it at the time. These recent adjustments to make websites more mobile-friendly have come in the wake of a shift to more mobile device usage. Making the changes necessary to pass the Google mobile-friendly test will be good for your website and your visitors in the end.

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    Social Media Marketing Mistakes

    Social media marketing is an excellent way to increase your following and make more money. However, there are many common mistakes that people make when engaging in social media marketing. If you are making any of these mistakes, don’t worry; it’s never too late to correct your social media marketing and make it better.

    * Not Engaging with Your Followers – When your followers make a comment on something, share or ask a question, don’t wait too long to respond. If you have someone monitoring your social media, have them inform you of ongoing conversations and potential areas of engagement.

    * Not Filling Out Your Profile Completely – Incomplete profiles make your business look either sloppy, or fake. If you want to be taken seriously, fill out a complete profile with a good profile picture, your company logo/banner and information so that you can be contacted outside of the network.

    * Not Focusing on Follower Quality – Some people make the mistake of focusing on the quantity of followers rather than the quality. You want to concern yourself with finding followers who are potential customers.

    * Not Posting Regular, Relevant Updates – If you aren’t active on social media posting things that resonate with your audience, then you’re not going to get any traction. If you plan to be successful with social media marketing it takes perseverance and patience, not one-hit wonders.

    * Not Choosing Your Channels Wisely – You don’t need to be on every single social media channel. Be on the channels that your audience love and that will work out fine.

    * Not Automating Some Actions – There are a lot of things, such as scheduled updates, that you can automate on social media. Be sure to use scheduling when possible as long as it doesn’t make you look robotic.

    * Not Interacting Personally – Every chance you get, it’s important to make spur-of-the-moment updates that are relevant to your business and your goals. This will make you look more real in the eyes of your followers.

    * Not Personalizing Messages for the Channel – Sending out a mass message, using software, to all of your social media networks that you’ve connected with, is a big mistake. Most of the time, you’ll have leads who are on more than one account. If you do this they’ll quickly feel bored or worse, spammed.

    Using social media to market your business is a proven technique to get more customers, make more sales, and increase your bottom line, but only if you avoid these mistakes. Take one at a time and make the improvements needed to get on the right track so that you make your social media marketing profitable for your business.

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