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Marketing Methods Debunked

Marketing is one of the most important things a business needs to do. Right from the beginning you should be looking for ways to market yourself, and your products. The official definition of marketing is, “The study and management of exchange relationships”. Basically, you’re communicating with your customers products and offers. Without it, you’ll be struggling to get yourself noticed in a very big world. Before you start a marketing campaign, you first need to do some market research. Knowing exactly what your customer wants, and what your competitors are doing can help build your own marketing campaign. This can either be done in house or outsourced. Getting an expert to look into your market for your first campaign might be a little easier than giving it a go yourself, that way your first campaign will be strong and effective. There are a lot of different ways of marketing, some of which can be confusing. This article is going to debunk some of the most effective.

SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. This is one of the most effective methods for getting your website noticed within a search engine’s rankings. It works by increasing traffic to your website, or a particular web page within your site, and in turn boost your overall rankings. Everything is on the web at the minute, so getting your website to the top is so important, hence why SEO should be your number one method of putting yourself or product out there. Like with market research, it may be best to outsource this one yourself. A successful SEO campaign can be hard to do, but SEO can be self taught. The backbone of SEO is link building. So basically, a search engine his little ‘robots’ that’ll crawl through all the websites on a web search. Within a website or webpage there should be a number of links that the robot can follow through the continue its crawl. If you have no links, and the robot can’t crawl your site, you site will be right at the bottom of the rankings. So this is where keyword research and link building come in. The more links that are dotted around the web that link to your website the better. Search engines assume that the bigger and better that your link building profile is, the more interesting your site is. But you can’t just build spammy links on random fake sites. This could face you being penalised. You also can’t build hundreds and hundreds of links at once. Again, you’ll be penalised. The robots aren’t stupid, you need to build your backlink profile up naturally. This is where companies that specialise in building backlinks come in handy. As you start to dabble in the world of SEO and backlinks, you should start to notice a rise in your rankings pretty soon.

Social Media

Again, this is a really big method of marketing, purely because social media is so huge. It is however, not as effective in terms of drawing traffic to your site as link building would be. It is more to showcase yourself to the world much more quickly. Social media is a real time thing, people are constantly tweeting, putting a picture on instagram etc. As soon as you tweet or post something, it’ll instantly start to get noticed. Your business should always have the three main social media pages set up. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you create a business page through Facebook, they have a really good tool called boosts. Basically, if you post something such as a new deal, you’ll be asked if you want to boost the post for a set price. This will then rocket the posts views from maybe hundreds, to in the thousands. The prices are relatively cheap, but it isn’t alway reliable in terms of meeting the right people. If you’re going to utilise Twitter, you need to think of hashtags that are relevant to your business. For example, if you’re selling gift hampers, you could promote a product by using hashtags such as #Gifthampers, #Christmas, #Birthday, and so on. Twitter is huge, and if done right you could be sending a lot of people your way. Make sure you’re always active in terms of tweeting, and try to gain followers as best as you can. Instagram is more for just showcasing what you have to offer, it won’t be as effective in terms of sending people to your website. Use it to show professional pictures of your products, and again you can use the hashtags that instagram has to build a decent following. Make sure you show your products off in the best light, use photo editing software to make them look as professional as possible.

Adwords

This is a service ran purely by Google, and it is effective if used alongside other methods such as link building. If you’ve ever done a Google search, you’ll notice that at the top of the search they’ll be three pages separated from the rest of the search with a little ‘Ad’ sign next to them. These are Adwords. Google uses keywords to determine which website should appear for which search. This is the difference between natural non-paid rankings, and paid rankings. To get your website in the top three, you’ll have to be paying a bit of money. You’ll be competing against other companies to take one of those spots in a particular keyword search. So for example, if you’re running an Adword campaign for the keyword ‘Sports Clothes’, they’ll be a few other companies doing the same, pumping money into this keyword search to try and secure the Adwords spot. It’ll sort of become like a bidding war to stay there. Whoever pays more, wins. It is effective in the sense that your website will get noticed instantly, and it does look more trustworthy. But it can be a really expensive game, and unless you want to constantly be paying a lot of money, it’s only a temporary method. But it will boost sales quickly, even if only for a short period of time.

Once More With Feeling! Making Emotions A Key Part Of Your Marketing

When you are marketing your business, an impression needs to be made right off the bat. Ultimately, standing out from your peers is key; this will bolster your brand, your identity, and will beat your competitors. To do this, it’s almost a very simple formula; you trigger the emotions of the right audience at the right time. So how do you do this?

Giving Your Customers Meaning

You need to provide a sense of meaning for your customers when it comes to marketing a specific product if your customers are unhappy, whether this is because they don’t have a specific product in their life or not, you can attempt to provide a way to avoid pain. The notion of the psychology of pain is something that lots of marketers talk about. And while fulfilling a need or filling a hole in your customer’s life is something that you can do by showing how your product fulfills these needs, it is important for you to be genuine in this respect. If your marketing is, in essence, untrue, this is not particularly moral. You have a moral responsibility to uphold too!

The Importance Of Resources And Platforms

Platforms in the marketplace, such as online stores, are a valuable resource to get your product out on a mass scale. And for entrepreneurs like Issa Asad, Amazon is one such platform that is a great way to present products and to stimulate your customer’s emotions. Instagram marketing is another one where you can reach a lot of people quickly. But it’s also important to make the most of the resources at your disposal, such as marketing agencies, but you can also use your own wealth of knowledge, and also research into these platforms like Amazon, and see where certain products are going wrong, and why they are not travelling as far as they should.

The Importance (And Power) Of Value

The thing about marketing a product is that it’s not just an item that delivers a specific need, it actually fulfills an emotion. A great example are modern smartphone advertisements, these phones are not just a way to contact someone, but they are now a way to capture your children’s first steps, capture vacations with friends, and can span generations, in addition to the handy little features on the phone itself! But the emotion is the key to getting a product to fly.

Communicating With A Purpose

With so many different marketing campaigns, it’s much harder now to keep your customers attention. Their attention span will go to the cheapest competitor, and so this is why you need to push emotions with your marketing, this is going to be the thing that will resonate. The cliché, of course, when people buy an item from a store, is that it’s not about what they bought, it was how they felt when they bought it. This is a key to establishing relationships with your customers, so if you can work hard at the emotional aspects, this will have a lot of benefits for you, not just in terms of the marketing, but in terms of the business.

Emotion is the vital thing when marketing products now, so instead of that flashy poster, think about stimulating your customer’s emotions. This will prove beneficial in every aspect of your business.

Why is it Important to Give away Promotional Gifts?

In today’s crowded business market, companies, no matter big or small, are competing more than ever before when it comes to delivering their messages. As businesses keep on launching different types of advertising and marketing companies to attract customers, it becomes tough for one message to stand out from the rest.

Also, the rise in the cost of marketing a new product or service makes it necessary for a company to come up with an effective strategy to promote its business. Therefore, companies make use of corporate branding to bring out their message effectively and efficiently. There are a number of good options available throughout the city when it comes to branded merchandise stores.

Why are promotional gifts useful marketing tools?

Unlike a traditional advertisement, promotional company products are hard to miss. A tote bag featuring your logo will grab more attention than a newspaper ad, and it can be used on a day-to-day basis
Flyers have become less efficient means of marketing as most of the times; they are either ignored or thrown away. But it is not true in the case of promotional products, for example, t-shirts or stress balls, as they are more like gifts than advertisements
Billboards, radio spots, newspaper advertisements and television commercials are excellent, but they are not exactly genuine. Promotional gifts are not only more creative but also more tangible to customers
Any experienced marketer can tell you about the high costs of traditional marketing methods. Promotional gifts are easily available in a diverse range of shapes and sizes, such that there is something for every budget, although if it is just a key chain

How are promotional gifts used regarding marketing?

Promo gifts rapidly spread the word about your business. People love gifts and samples, and clients are likely to tell their friends about the personalized products you distributed with your friendly slogan
Employees deserve rewards for their hard work and dedication, and high-ticket promotional gifts can improve morale and reinforce loyalty
Sending follow-up emails to clients is always smart, but giving a high-quality promotional gift is even better. For example, sending a gift like a table calendar after a big sale can bring you some repeat business
A lot of firms print coupons on promotional pens or provide t-shirts that entitle customers to avail discounts. There is no limit to what all you can do if you get creative with your promo items
By making use of your custom merchandise as prizes, you will give winners what they want and expose your brand at the same time

How to distribute your promotional products?

Direct mail is still one of the most effective marketing mediums as it puts your message directly into customer’s hands. You will need potential client’s names and addresses to pull this off though, as mail sent to current resident always ends up in the round file. Also, it is important to pre-calculate your shipping costs
Trade shows normally have a wide variety of attendees from several career fields. It means there are ample opportunities to market your brand and get new clients. There tends to be a lot of competition at conventions. Hence, you need to work hard to customize a stand-out promotional gift that will attract clients
Conferences are excellent resources to market to others within your industry and meetings give you the chance to meet face-to-face with customers. Providing participants with a personalised gift for attending your seminar will surely give a boost to your brand

These were the importance of giving promotional gifts and how they prove to be beneficial for your brand. Hope you find this article informative and helpful.

How To Get People Offline & Into Your Store

Although many retailers are focusing their attentions on their online sales and their website presence, for many of us our businesses are all in bricks and mortar. Having a retail startup in the digital age comes with its own set of challenges. Whilst online retail is all about getting traffic to the site, physical retail outlets are all about increasing foot traffic into the store.

With the continual rise of online shopping it has never been more important to be looking at unique and creative ways to make our retail stores thrive. So today we are sharing our top tips on how retailer startups can boost foot traffic by using different approaches to garner attention in-store.

USB Chargers

This is a bit of a new development when it comes to the sorts of things that shoppers are looking for. Providing USB outlets within your store is a great new way to keep people in your store for longer than they would usually stay. Have you noticed people gathering around USB portals in train stations and airports? We have such a dependence on our mobiles now that keeping them charged has become really important.

So whilst it might seem like an unnecessary detail just think about all that extra time shoppers will be spending browsing as they wait for their phones to charge. It is a super simple strategy to creating a solution to the age old problem of how to keep shoppers in your store for longer periods of time.

Free Wi-Fi

This again is tapping into our love of mobile phones. With many mobile phone providers no longer offering unlimited data, people are now turning to more and more places and areas that offer free wi-fi. Advertising in your store window that you offer free wi-fi can seriously boost the foot traffic to your store. A recent study revealed that over 60% of shoppers spend more time in-store after they have tapped in wi-fi details. So again this is a simple trick to getting more people inside your store and keeping them there for longer periods of time.

Your Entrance

If your entrance looks shabby and old then you are going to struggle to get people through the door. Think of design features such as aluminum canopies to offer shelter to customers coming in and out, whilst also offering an attractive design feature. Focus on your window displays in order to best show off your products and keep these fresh by changing things around every month or so. You can even ensure you bring in dog lovers, by offering somewhere for people to tie up their dogs with a bowl of water (and even biscuits, if you want to show that you really, really love dogs). You’d be surprised how much custom is lost by customers not being able to find anywhere to tie up their dogs, so use little tricks like this to your advantage.

In-Store Events

All store owners should be looking at ways to promote their company and ways to peak interest in the local community. In-store events and clubs, depending on the type of products you sell, are one of the best ways to do that. Look at your store as a way of being a key member of your community, a company that pulls people together and a company that thrives to connect the local people through the products that you stock.

You can also think about sponsoring and co-hosting local events, again to raise your profile and to have a bigger and more well respected presence in your local community and stronger relationships with your customers.

So, as you can see, it only takes a few simple details and a bit of strategic thinking to get more foot traffic to your store and to increase the profile of your store in your local area. So get thinking about the different ways you can ensure the success and future growth of your retail business.

Shake Up Your Site With A Complete Content Supercharge

When it comes to creating content, you can often find yourself getting a little bit stuck. Whether you’re always running out of ideas, not reaching the traffic levels that you’d hoped, or can’t seem to engage with your audience, you may be in need of a little help. Sometimes, you don’t even know that you’re struggling until you read something like this and think, yes – that’s me! When that’s the case, you may even need to shake things up and go for a complete overhaul. But again, how do you know where to start?

It’s the nature of content to be interesting, entertaining, informative, educational, or even inspiring. When you find that your site’s content isn’t any of these things, you may need to regroup and get yourself back into a strong position once again. Whether you’re a writer and run a blog, or you’re an entrepreneur with a business site, the process is going to be largely the same. Because content is content; it needs to be engaging regardless of its purpose. So now’s the time to spice up your current content and start to head in an entirely new direction, and here’s how you’re going to do it.

Research

Read Anything & Everything

First of all, you’re really going to want to get your research in. This can often be the most important part of all. Because how are you to know where to improve, if you’re not able to find out what you should be doing. Looking at different content marketing ideas as Forbes.com tells us is just one avenue towards making this happen, but you can also read different marketing and business sites and blogs to find out some great ideas for taking your site to the next level.

See What The Industry Is Up To

But you’re also going to want to take a look at some of the sites in your particular industry too. Whether you have a blog or a business site, you should be looking at what your competitors are doing with their content, as well as other blogs and sites that are in the same niche as you. Here you will be able to see what you’re doing well, as well as where you need to improve, and even get some ideas for going forwards too.

Head To Social

Then, you’ve also got social media to scour too. Because you can often get some really great ideas from different social media platforms. In short, you need to be able to tackle your research from all kinds of different angles, and social media can often provide you with that final piece of the puzzle to pull things together.

Create

Generate Some Ideas

Okay, with your research complete (or enough for now anyway), you’re then going to want to get onto the actual creation side of the overhaul. And the first part of this is all about generating some ideas. Based on your research, your mind should be buzzing with different creative ideas you have for new content, as well as things like design and even features too. So, now, you need to get these ideas down on paper.

Spice Up Your Posts

Then, when it comes to creating some content, you’re going to want to think about making things a little more exciting. There are lots of different ways that you can spice up your content, but you’re definitely going to find that varying your post types can help too. Don’t always stick to long, lengthy posts. Go in with videos and fun imagery, even detailed infographics to make things more exciting too.

Focus On SEO

From here, you should also be sure that you’re putting enough emphasis on your SEO. If you really want your site or blog is sing, it needs to be optimized. But don’t panic, if you know nothing about SEO right now, you can learn all about it. With a few tweaks to the way you approach creating content, you’ll feel like a pro in no time.

Analyze

Analyze The Results

Then, you’re going to want to think about analyzing the results of your new efforts. Because putting content out there isn’t enough. You need to be ensuring that it works and actually engages with your audience. To do this, you need to be checking in with your site analytics on every post to see which are working and why, and which aren’t, and why.

And Your SEO

You should also think about doing this with your SEO. Again, you don’t have to panic. Because there are software services such as Botify.com that were created to specifically help you with this. You need to ensure that your SEO is not only working, but that it’s getting you the results you need, and to do that, you need to start analyzing it.

And, Finally, Your Social Too

The last area that you should look to analyze on a regular basis is your social media. Because if your want your content to be king, social plays an important part in it. Is your content shareable, or popular with your audience? You can use social to find out. So you need to get onto your platforms and look into the analytics to find out what’s working the best.

Optimize

Create New Content Based On The Results

From here, you then need to take all of that analysis that you’ve just done, and come up with some clear conclusions. The results are likely to show you what kinds of content works for you, and what doesn’t do so well. So you’re then going to be able to take this information to continue on creating new content. But this time, you should find that the content is much more of a hit.

Try New Things

As you start to move forwards with your new content, you’re also going to want to ensure that you start to try new things. Because sticking to the same old stuff is just one way to get yourself stuck in a rut again. So, to help you try out new things, you not give A/B or split testing a try? You could find out what ideas work best among your audience, to continue to optimize your content going forwards.

Ask The Audience

At this stage, you should also be asking your audience what they want. It’s easy to think that you should know what they want, but you’re only human – you can’t read minds. To find out what your readers want, you need to ask them. It’s what all successful businesses do. Because if you want your content to work, it has to be what they want.

Repeat

Re-Apply New Results

Then you’ll find that you get to the stage where you’re pretty much repeating the above processes. It’s the best way to ensure that your content stays relevant and really gets you the results you want, whether you’re a blog or a business. You should be researching, creating, analyzing, and optimizing over and over to ensure you’re putting out the best of the best.

Trial Trends

But, again, don’t be afraid to try new things. You should be thinking about the different ways to can apply new content marketing trends as sites such as Contentmarketinginstitute.com talk about, as you’re going forwards. Some might not work, but when something does, you’ll be glad you gave it a go.

Adapt To Industry Changes

And finally, you’re going to want to ensure that you move with the times. That’s why the idea of constantly repeating the steps is so important. The world of content is fast-paced, and what works for you now may not work for you in a few months time. So you need to use this repeated process to keep yourself ahead of any industry changes.

Are Daily Deal Sites a Good Idea for Your Business

Daily deal sites are gaining more and more traction with savvy customers looking for the most bang for their buck. With millions of consumers using sites like Groupon and Living Social, many businesses are taking the plunge into the deal-a-day world. While there are many advantages to this marketing tactic, a poorly planned discount can have adverse effects on your business. Take a look at the inherent benefits and disadvantages using a daily deal site can have for your business and determine whether or not this strategy works for your individual aims.

The Benefits

If used correctly, partnering with a daily deal site could mean huge profits for your company, as the advantages can be manipulated to further a company’s inventory movement, customer base, and demographic utilization.

Inventory Movement

If you have slow-moving items or unutilized services, offering them at a discounted price on daily deal sites can see a surge in profits. If your aim is to move product in this way, offer your product on daily deal sites only occasionally for specific reasons. This is especially true for a low-cost or fixed cost expenditure business, as you’ll gain income without putting out more money.

Expanded Customer Base

Groupon enables companies to expand their customer base and direct traffic to their business websites. Take Shari’s Berries, for example. This fruit and dessert company offers their product on Groupon with savings of up to 50 percent—an enticing bargain. About 80 percent of the daily deal clientele are first-time customers, meaning the company will see a higher amount of traffic on berries.com as these new consumers seek to cash in their deal purchases.

Different Demographics

By and large, the daily deal demographics include younger, smarter purchasers. Sixty-eight percent of Groupon users are between the ages of 18 and 34, largely female, and almost 80 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Understanding the faces and wants behind the Groupon interface (and other similar daily deal sites) means better chances of capturing your target audience. If you are seeking to get your product and company name into the hands and minds of younger consumers, then a daily deal site could be the answer.

Bolstering Email Campaigns

Sites like these can help your company bolster email campaign efforts. CanvasPop was able to further their specified business aims through Groupon sales. The photo-to-canvas conversion company chose to capitalize on email captures during their time spent on the deal site. In order to redeem the voucher, customers were required to input their email, an ingenious way to quickly grab consumer information. These recorded email addresses could later be used for designated email campaigns to further encourage customer retention.

The Drawbacks

Choosing to offer your product on a daily deal site isn’t without its risks. Using a website like Groupon or Living Social can have negative consequences on your business aims.

Brand Reputation

If you do choose to offer your product at a discount on one of these sites, you’ll need to be sparing with your promotional efforts and the frequency at which you offer these lowered prices. Price promotions can inadvertently hurt your brand name and identity by associating your products and services with cheap offerings. It can also make these customers price sensitive, leaving them less inclined to pay full price for your other products.

Not Necessarily Profitable

Depending on the site you use, you’ll see a portion of your profits disappear. Groupon keeps 50 percent of the earnings from each deal, meaning you will have to gross margins in excess of 50 percent to make the promotion lucrative.

Low Conversion Rates

Groupon isn’t known for its conversion rates, and many customers that try your product might not be so inclined to return, whether because it was a one-time item purchase they don’t need again, or based on the fact that they refuse to buy your product full price without a coupon. Only an estimated 19 percent of voucher redeemers become repeat visitors.

Devaluing Existing Loyalty

If you are a small business and have built your business upon a foundation of personal relationships with loyal customers, then a Groupon could do you a disservice. When offering a discounted rate to new consumers, you’re devaluing the loyalty that has made you successful in the past.

Apple’s MacBook Air Lineup Is Now Faster and $100 Cheaper

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