Tuesday, August 20, 2019

My Blogger Tricks

My Blogger Tricks

Link to My Blogger Tricks

How to Successfully Advertise Your Web Development Business on a Budget?

Posted: 19 Aug 2019 10:51 AM PDT

A web development business can be an excellent adventure for young entrepreneurs. The possibilities for clients are truly endless since a professional website is pretty much a requirement for any successful brand. How do you advertise such a business in a world full of them? We've put together this handy list of tips on how to successfully advertise your web development business on a budget, so you can maximize the cost-effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

1. Figure out What You Can Afford

The first thing you need to do when making any financial decision is to figure out what you can actually afford as a company. Marketing can be costly depending on your methods, so it's important that you have a good idea of what level of financial strain the business can support before attempting to venture into marketing/advertisements.

Take a close look at your monthly budget. What do you spend on advertising already? How much wiggle room do you have as far as cash flow? Once you've identified your spending limits, you'll be able to make a more informed choice on which method of advertising will work best for your business. You can also hire a financial advisor to assist with this if you're not great at crunching numbers. You can find the best financial advisor in Florida on Carefulcents.com.

You'll certainly want to allocate a large percentage of your profits to creating more business through advertising, but you also don't want to bankrupt yourself doing it. Don't make any advertising decisions until you're certain of what you can afford, and how you'll recover the costs associated with it.

Be familiar with the kinds of tools you use as well, and how much their monthly costs affect your budget. If you're using wireframe tools, compare brands (like Axure vs Sketch) to ensure you're getting the best deal. Once you minimize costs in other areas, you'll have more to spend on advertising.

2. Choose the Right Advertising

The next step is to figure out what kind of advertising you want to invest in. Whether it be television or radio ads, Facebook ads, or ads on other websites, you'll want to research the type of advertising that will work for you before you make a decision.

A web development company will likely have much better luck advertising via online platforms than via radio or newspaper ads. If you build websites for specific niches or industries, you'll want to advertise where these businesses frequent. Finding the right people to advertise to will increase the chances of you creating interest and even a follow-up from the reader/listener.

The type of advertising you choose will have a major impact on the cost of your ad as well. Television ads are usually the most expensive, while simple Facebook ad campaigns can cost as little as a few dollars per week. If you're just starting out, and don't have much extra capital to work with, you might want to try simple ads to begin with. When you start generating more business, and therefore money, you can branch out to more effective means of advertising.

3. Always Ask for Feedback/Testimonials From Clients

Some of the best and most cost-effective advertising you can get is testimonials/reviews from previous or current clients. Most people who are shopping for a service will want to see reviews to ensure that the business is legitimate and has been utilized by others in the past, with good results.

Customer testimonials can tell a potential customer so much about your business and the way you interact with your customers. A good testimonial can often be the difference between a potential customer contacting you and navigating away from your page.

Don't be afraid to ask customers to leave a review on your website or Facebook/social media pages if they're happy with your work. This will help solidify your reputation for quality and customer service and advertise your business as the best at what you do. Without a reputation to stand behind, your advertising efforts won't be nearly as effective.

4. Create More Focused Marketing Campaigns

When you're advertising on a budget, or marketing in general, the best practice is to identify your target audience and only advertise to them. This controls the amount you spend on advertising campaigns since you won't be "blanket-advertising", or just advertising to anyone and everyone.

You'll have specific demographics that will respond to your ads; these are your target audience. Do you build websites for the construction industry? You'll want to advertise to construction companies. Do you develop sites specifically for e-commerce? You'll want to advertise to e-commerce stores.

The more focused your advertising is, the more cost-effective it will be, and the higher your returns on the investment will be. It's simple; if you want to sell an industry-specific item, you don't market to someone outside of that particular industry. Find your target audience, focus your marketing, and you'll be on your way to creating effective ad campaigns.

5. Don't Forget About Social Media

Social media is the ultimate marketing platform for up and coming and established businesses alike. The ability to reach millions of people all over the world instantaneously isn't found anywhere else. As a business on a budget, you're only working against yourself if you're not utilizing social media in your marketing efforts.

Facebook even has a useful ad tool, where you can create focused ads or a specific length of time. You'll be charged by the number of people you want to reach and the length of the ad, so you can easily adhere to a budget and still reach plenty of people with your ad campaigns.

The Bottom Line

Essentially, there are plenty of options for businesses on a budget to market their services and still reach the audience they're hoping to interact with. Utilize social media, focus your marketing efforts, and figure out exactly how much advertising you can afford for a more efficient and effective advertising experience.

How to Get the Best ROI from Your Social Media Strategy

Posted: 19 Aug 2019 10:39 AM PDT

Get the Best ROI from Your Social Media
Social media has greatly impacted society and business as a whole. According to Pew Research, around 72% of Americans use social media in some way. Many use social media sites to share information, to connect with friends, and to engage with news content. With a growing number of people flocking to social media, it's no surprise that businesses morphed their marketing strategies.
It's safe to say that social media is the future of marketing.

With a successful social media strategy, you can better connect with consumers, increase brand awareness, generate a growing number of leads, and even increase your website traffic. This all leads to more sales and more income.
Here's what you need to know about getting the best ROI from your social media strategy.

Create a Strategy for Each Platform

Each social media platform that your business has a presence on requires a specific strategy. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others all have their own best practices and nuances for boosting brand awareness and customer engagement. The steps you take for getting likes on Instagram will be very different from how you increase engagement on Facebook.

While you may not need to use every social media platform available today, you'll at least want to know why you're using each platform and which target audience you're looking to reach. It's also important to know what types of content work best on each platform. No matter which social media sites you choose to use, what's most important is to always provide quality content. You can be an active member of every social media site, but if your content is boring or not reliable, you won't achieve your ROI expectations.

Know Your Audience

How well you know your audience will make or break your social media campaign. Social media marketing is all about engaging and connecting with your followers. In order to turn a profit using social media marketing, you need to really know your audience. This includes having a clear idea of what topics most interest your audience, what challenges they face, and what content they prefer.
Without knowing your audience, your entire social media campaign is a shot in the dark. So how can you better understand the wants and needs of your followers?
There are all sorts of ways to better know and understand your social circle. Options include:
  • Responding to comments on posts and blog articles
  • Replying to questions posted on social media
  • Looking at demographics
  • Collecting feedback
Once you have a good idea for your target audience is, and what they want and need, you're in a much better position to best serve their needs. Getting to know your audience also shows that you care. This is a huge perk when retaining and attracting new customers.

Relevant But Unique Content

As you get to know your target audience, you'll have a good idea of which topics they most enjoy reading about. You can pinpoint the hottest topics in your industry by using Google Analytics. You can also search through past social media posts and blogs to see which ones spurred the most engagement.

Knowing which content most interests your social networks helps to ensure that your content doesn't get lost in the crowd.

Post Consistently...

In order to maximize your marketing potential on any social media site, you have to post consistently. Posting a few times a day is ideal for getting the most views. When determining how often you should post on a social media site, you'll want to understand many factors, such as how content posts (i.e. chronologically), the underlying algorithm, and any other factors. How often and when you post greatly depends on the social media platform. Often times you'll find that you have to tread the fine line between posting enough and posting too much.

Facebook is an ideal example. Many studies have found that one Facebook post each day produces optimal results. In fact, a study conducted by Hubspot found that businesses that posted more than once a day experienced a 50% drop in engagement for each post. On the other hand, if your business has an active Twitter page, you'll want to tweet between 3 to 30 times each day.

…And At the Right Time

Timing also plays a role in the success of your social media marketing campaign. You won't get much engagement if you post a new blog or an Instagram photo when most of your followers are asleep. Research when your target audience is most active on social media, and then focus on posting during those times in order to optimize engagement. For example, the most liked videos on YouTube are often posted on Thursdays and Fridays between 12 pm and 3 pm (based on your audience's time zone). This is because these times are when the largest number of users are actively searching for new video content to watch.

Conclusion

A social media strategy can be a huge success, especially if it's properly planned and is designed to meet your target audience's needs. Be sure to follow these tips and tricks so that you can get the best ROI from social media marketing now and long into the future.

Sunday, July 28, 2019

My Blogger Tricks

My Blogger Tricks

Link to My Blogger Tricks

How to Fund Your Business Start-Up?

Posted: 27 Jul 2019 12:26 PM PDT

startup funding
It is a very challenging job to find financing in any economic climate. It doesn't matter whether it is a start-up fund or capital to expand your money to hold on through the tough times, securing funds is not easy, given our current state of affairs. To help you with all these financing problems, here are few financing techniques and useful pieces of information you should remember to be able to fund your startup.


Few ways in which one can fund their start-up business:

1. Factoring should be considered:

This is the most important thing that should be considered. A company sells its receivables to get cash up-front and that too at a discount rate. It is very frequently used by companies with poor credit or by businesses such as apparel manufacturers that have to fill orders, but it is a too expensive method to raise funds as the company selling the receivables generally pays the fees which eventually is a percentage of a total amount.
Here is an example that if one pays 2% fee to get funds 30 days in advance, then it is equivalent to an annual interest rate of about 24%, and that is a big reason why a business goes down and the reputation becomes worse over the years.

2. One should get a Bank Loan:

Although the rules of the bank lending standards have got much stricter, there are still many banks that give additional funds for small businesses. The loan is definitely one of the most efficient ways to fund a start-up business.
Even the credit score plays a very vital role in applying for a loan, but that doesn't matter because some businesses having a bad credit score can still get qualified for a loan. One can always take a loan from lenders, like the ones reviewed here: https://letmebank.com/no-credit-check-personal-loans/. Check them and choose the best loan facilitators.

3. Using a Credit Card for raising funds:

It is an utter risky job to use a credit card to fund your business because if you fall behind on your payment, then there is a high chance that the credit score gets whacked, and on the other hand, if one pays just the minimum each month, a hole will also be created where one can never get out of, but responsible use can ensure that one gets out of the occasional jam and even extend the accounts payable period to increase the cash flow.

4. Crowdfunding:

This practice can be an absolutely fun and effective way to raise money for a relatively low cost yet creative project. For example, if you set a goal for the amount of money one likes to raise over a period of time, then all of that person's friends and family will use the internet to pledge money.

5. Accelerator or Incubator:

Accelerators and Incubators have sprung all across the country. These comprise of two parts, namely one being the communal workspace and another is for the mentorship development centers. While partnering with some amazing people, young businesses can get a great start here.
It has some downsides as they are mainly focused on heavy tech businesses. Thus, one needs to struggle hard to find that perfect one for their company.

Conclusion:

These are a few basic ways in which one can fund their start-up and fulfill their dreams of starting their own business. It doesn't only give them the motivation but also enough enthusiasm to move forward with their business.

4 Dropshipping Tips to Skyrocket Your Ecommerce Sales

Posted: 27 Jul 2019 11:50 AM PDT

4 Dropshipping Tips to Skyrocket Your Ecommerce Sales
Running a dropshipping business offers some advantages that other business models do not have.
With dropshipping, you don't need to worry about your product inventory, fulfillment, and managing returns (among other things).

For the most part, you only need to focus on finding products and marketing/selling them.
If you want to know how to take your dropshipping sales to the high heavens, then check out these five dropshipping tips to skyrocket your ecommerce sales. 

1. Automate Your Business Processes

Automating your processes allows you more freedom to work on other aspects of your dropshipping business.
Not only that, but it also helps streamline your business, making it a lot less painless for you to run your ecommerce store.
With ecommerce solutions like Oberlo, integrating products to your ecommerce store from suppliers can be easier and quicker with its automation features.
When browsing in Oberlo for products that you can sell, all you need to do is click on the "Add to Import List" button on the products that you want. product details
The product information, along with its marketing materials, will then be imported to your Shopify store. 
You can also use the Oberlo Google Chrome extension to import products from the Aliexpress website by clicking on the import icon.
import list
Once the product details are added to your import list, you have the option to edit the information such as the descriptions, variants, and images on the import list page or your Shopify store.
These automation features can streamline your product integration process, which, in turn, can help you sell, scale, and grow your dropshipping business easier and faster.
Aside from these features, Oberlo gives its users its unyielding support by sharing a comprehensive guide on dropshipping that can answer their users' burning questions about the business model.

2. Employ Retargeting Techniques

There are elements in your audiences' buyers' journey that could make it challenging for you to convert your first-time website visitors to click your "Buy now" buttons. (e.g., competition, distraction, product price comparison, etc.)
That's why retargeting is important.
Retargeting can be an excellent ecommerce marketing strategy to recapture those who previously visited your ecommerce website without buying or acting on your conversion goal. 
One way of retargeting your visitors is by displaying relevant ads based on their previous interactions with your website on social media, other websites, and more.

A good strategy to recapture your website visitors with ads is to use online tools like Google Adwords to implement a remarketing campaign.
The Google Adwords solution allows you to create a remarketing campaign to recapture your audience when they browse YouTube, Android apps, and websites that are included in Google Adsense or the Google Display Network.
Here are several ways you can use Google Adwords to remarket:   
  • Search Ads. Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA) uses search keywords as a basis for remarketing. For instance, if you are using keywords like "Hotels in Paris," Google will then display your ads to users who search for those keywords.
  • Normal or static remarketing. This allows you to display a banner ad on third-party websites by using cookies to follow your site visitors after they view your web pages. 
  • Email list remarketing (Customer match). This lets you upload information that customers shared with you across various platforms like YouTube and Gmail. 
For instance, when you upload your customers' email list, they can see your ads once they sign in to their Gmail accounts.
Retargeting allows you to recapture your seemingly "lost" audience by reminding them of their initial interest in your products and luring them back to your store to complete their purchase.

3. Improve Customer Service

If you want to succeed in your dropshipping business, then you need to stand out and dominate your competitors.
One way of doing this is by providing excellent customer service.
The kind of customer service you offer can affect your customers' experience with your brand, which makes it essential for you to provide them with a seamless experience.
It can also be a way to understand your dissatisfied customers, the issues they have with your products or services, why they stopped buying from you and help you learn what to improve on to address these concerns.
An excellent strategy to improve your customer service is by using contact forms on your ecommerce website.
With online tools like Jotform, you can create your contact forms from scratch or use the templates that you can embed on your ecommerce website.
The tool offers drag-and-drop features to build and customize your contact forms.
tools to build and customize your forms jotform
You can also modify the form's settings like the language, create conditional logic, integrate third-party apps like PayPal, and even add a "Thank You" page once your customers submit the form.
publish jotform
The tool also offers different options for you to publish your contact form either through direct links, embedding it on your ecommerce site, or through third-party apps and software. 
Contact forms can make it more efficient and easier for your customers to leave you messages without having to look up your contact details and open their email accounts, allowing for seamless customer experience.
Providing excellent customer service can help you retain customers, build your brand's reputation, receive fewer complaints, and establish trust between you and your customers. 
Remember that aside from providing your customers with quality products, their experience buying from you can also affect their decision to purchase again and bring you more sales. 

4. Increase Organic Traffic Through Blogs

A good bit of dropshippers are now relying solely on paid ads, that they forget how crucial it still is to publish helpful content.
By publishing blog posts that address your audiences' pain points and their needs, you become an authority in your niche, making it easier for your audience to trust your brand.
Publishing blog posts is also an excellent strategy to optimize your ecommerce site for the search engines so you can rank for keywords that can bring you targeted traffic.
For example, by using online tools like Wordtracker, you can check out what topics people are searching for.
filter to search
The tool can give you information such as the keywords' average search volume, the number of web pages where the keywords appear on both the backlink text and title tags,   plus the organic competition for the keyword.  
The tool can also show you related keywords which you can add to your keyword search.
Doing this can tell you which keywords people search for, gain insights on what topics you can create your blogs and other content based on the keywords, and determine which keywords to use for your SEO strategy.
Think of it this way.
When your blog posts are keyword optimized, the higher your chances are in ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The better your ranking is, the more qualified traffic you can get from the search engines.
Driving traffic to your blog isn't the only SEO strategy you can use to get more sales, however, it's certainly an effective approach that even seasoned dropshippers take the time to use.

Final Thoughts

There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to succeed in dropshipping.
Depending on the dynamics of your business, your marketing/selling workflow can be as intricate or as simple as it can be.
Even having said that, however, the points above are tried and tested to have worked.
If you are keen on seeing the sales figures of your dropshipping business go up, then take the time to implement the tips now. Cheers!