Tag Archives: marketing

How to Rate Your Suppliers and Shippers

Customer Service, Marketing, , ,

A major factor in the health and profitability of your business is your relationship with the suppliers and vendors that are supplying you and your customers with products and services. Nowadays when competition is so intense, and time is critical, it’s more important than ever before to have a handle on the vendors and suppliers who work with you. You absolutely need systems set up that not only help you determine whether or not a particular vendor may be right for you, but also keep your business properly protected. This goes for online businesses as well, especially if you are outsourcing services.

Evaluating your vendors or suppliers from the very beginning!

The best way to go about giving your company the best shot possible at a great vendor/supplier relationship is to be sure to do your work at the beginning. Take the time necessary to adequately vet a possible vendor or supplier, and look for possible red flags. Examples of the questions you need answers to include:

  • How long have you been in business?
  • Who are some of your customers?
  • How many employees?
  • How busy are you?
  • How focused on my company will you be?
  • Who will I be working with?
  • What happens when there’s an emergency?
  • How do I know you’ll come through when I need you?

Put accountability systems in place

This relationship needs to be productive for all concerned. For this reason, it’s essential you put accountability systems into position to ensure everyone is doing their part. Create solid performance parameters that clearly state what is expected, and stick with them. Examine these criteria routinely, and don’t let under-performance issues go undetected. Always make sure you have a quality management system in place. Don’t trust your business to anyone who lets the inmates run the asylum!

Don’t hesitate to move on!

Sometimes it simply doesn’t succeed, and you need to be decisive when it requires changing vendors or suppliers. Don’t allow a bad situation to get even worse; your success depends on it!

Why YouTube is a Smart Move for Your Business

Marketing, ,

YouTube is now the second largest search engine on the planet, and by far the most flexible. You can embed YouTube videos quickly and easily just about anywhere, and multiply your marketing efforts with ease. Moreover, employing YouTube marketing in your business is an incredibly cost-effective way to drive traffic and sales. You’ve heard the stats touting YouTube as the behemoth it is, and the reasons you should use it in your business. Even so, it’s not always clear exactly how to go about that.

Let’s look at 7 ways you can incorporate YouTube into your business quickly and profitably.

  1. Create videos of your products and services – Here’s your opportunity to show your stuff in action. Try to make these videos fun, and not overly technical. Emphasize what benefits they can bring to the buyers.
  2. Drive lots of traffic – Videos can drive LOTS of traffic! Just make sure you properly optimize your YouTube videos, and learn the specifics of what it requires to rank them well. Just so you know, it’s much easier to rank a video compared to a web page. Something to think about.
  3. Create a dedicated YouTube channel for your brand – Making a specific YouTube channel for your business can help in several ways, particularly in Google rankings. YouTube is also a social network, so you would be smart to monitor any comments that pop up on your videos and channel.
  4. Put a face on your business – Letting people meet you and some of your staff via video is a marvelous way to build trust.
  5. Create short videos of valuable tips – Create tip videos that show off your expertise in various areas your audience has an interest in.
  6. Post links to your videos on your social networks – Make sure that you provide links to your videos on your social network sites, as well as in email. This drives traffic to the videos, which in turn feeds the site, ranks higher and grows before your eyes.
  7. Use customer testimonials – A terrific way to showcase both your customers, (who’ll become raving fans!) and provide social proof regarding your products and services.

Attract Visitors with Content Marketing

Marketing, , ,

Attract Visitors with Content Marketing

Did you know that more than 70 percent of consumers prefer getting to know a company via content marketing rather than ads? Still brands spend more on advertising than on content creation, according to ContentPlus. Is this to do with really trusting the content marketing model, or more a reflection of the need to generate traffic and leads more rapidly? The answer: probably some of both. Content marketing is without question the best vehicle for establishing your authority and brand. The thing is it can be a lot of work. Furthermore, it may take considerably longer to find out whether your content is delivering in terms of leads and sales, as opposed to advertising traffic.

Content marketing is an essential part of the success of your business!

While it can be difficult and time-consuming, if you wish to develop your brand into a long-term success, you have to sell out to making content marketing a significant piece of your online marketing. But how do you make it work for you? With all the new content arriving daily, what can you do to make yours stick out from the herd?

5 Tips for effective content marketing

  1. Give them what they want and need! – Find out what your site readers want to read, and provide it.  You can do this by asking them directly, or using things like your Google Analytics account for clues as to your best performing pages.
  2. Create substantive content – Google search results are dominated by longer, more meaty content. This kind of content is also apt to be shared much more often.
  3. Attempt to answer questions with your content – A surefire way to please your readership is as simple as answering their questions. Here’s how one pool company did it. By making it your mission to be helpful, you can become the go-to source for them.
  4. Employ Google – Making use of the Google authorship feature, as well as the other advantages of Google will help your pages with not just search rankings and traffic, but authority as well.
  5. Encourage sharing – Sharing your content is a terrific source of backlinks and website traffic. All of us want more of those. Another reason to share is because now social signals are integral to Google’s search ranking algorithm.

Getting smart right now about content marketing could minimize the need to have to buy that traffic down the road. Something to think about!

5 Ways to Implement Mobile Marketing in Your Small Business

Marketing, ,

The day has passed when it was correct to think that mobile marketing was simply the next big thing. It’s not just here; it’s growing daily. A survey by the Web.com group tells us that 69 percent of small business owners stated that mobile marketing would be important to their small business in the next five years; however, the majority of them had not even started. The same statistics show that 84 percent of those that had a mobile marketing solution reported an increase as a result. It’s clear that we’ve run out of excuses for not employing mobile marketing in our small businesses.

5 Tips on how to implement mobile marketing in your small business

  • Make certain your website and social media are mobile ready! – Take the time required to ensure that your site and major social media pages are mobile ready. There are some significant items that determine whether or not your pages render well on a mobile device, such as font size, spacing and images files. Have these looked at, so you don’t lose your mobile visitors!
  • Claim and optimize your local listings – Make sure that your local listings, such as on Google local, Yelp, FourSquare or other local directories are current when it comes to contact information, directions, and any promotions you’d like to feature.
  • Have you optimized your email for mobile? – eConsultancy reports that 41 percent of email is now viewed on a smartphone or tablet, and of that number, a full 63 percent close or delete emails that aren’t mobile optimized. Make sure you use an email optimized layout, preferably one-column, and a font size of no larger than a 14 for small-screen readers.
  • Use Google Analytics – If you are just guessing about whether or not mobile is working for you, you’re gonna be wasting a lot of time and money. Get hard data you can use with the help of Google Analytics. You will find a mountain of data available, but you can simplify by segmenting smartphone and tablet visitors and analyzing their on-page behavior, enabling you to see how your campaigns are doing.
  • Offer great deals – All of us love a great deal, and there’s no one who is more active in this arena than the mobile user. The best part is that they are very frequently right down the street from you, and ready to buy. Providing awesome offers and coupons might just cause them to pay a visit they otherwise wouldn’t have!

How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Mobile Devices

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Since huge numbers of people are making Facebook a frequent daily stop, and more than 50 percent of them are using a mobile device for it, perhaps it’s wise for us to take a look at how our Facebook business page is being shown to the public. If you require more coaxing, now some 79% of smartphone users use their phones to go shopping, with 74% making a purchase as a result. Since Facebook creates a mobilized version of your Facebook page, you might have thought that’s all there was to it. Would that were so! Let’s take a peek at some things you should be aware of.

Look at how your Facebook Page is rendered on a mobile device

Facebook creates a summarized version of your web page that is served to the public via their mobile devices. It’s important that you take a moment and discover how this looks. The first part of your Facebook page that is rendered is your Timeline, although, and this is important: not all of it. That’s why you’ll need to make sure you have a “pinned” post, so that it will be featured first and most prominently. After this is the Recommendations and Check-Ins section, and then photos, and lastly, your most recent post.

A few ways to help optimize your Facebook Page

  • Keep in mind that you have far less time and space on Mobile to acquire the attention of your visitors. Take pains to use smaller, eye-catching photos, and to not mince words! Be brief and direct in your text and particularly any calls to action.
  • “Pin” a post you want to show up first in your mobile timeline, as this will ensure it does.
  • Log into your Facebook page from a mobile device and see that your important info is not only there but correct. You need people to manage to find you! This can be done using “Facebook Nearby”.
  • One way to improve social word of mouth is to stimulate check-ins from your location. This makes a big difference with Facebook.
  • Engage with your visitors while you are on your mobile device, and this is not just convenient for you, but helps you keep on top of activity on your page easily.

Make Sure Your Emails Get Read in Gmail’s New Promotions Tab

Customer Service, ,

Is Google Trying to Kill Your Email Marketing?

No doubt you’ve seen or heard the pandemonium about Google’s new change to Gmail. In their infinite wisdom they’ve arrived at the conclusion that they could manage your inbox better than you can, and have “helped” you accomplish this by separating your incoming mail into several “tabs”. The first is your Primary tab, where the majority of your important mail (again, in their eyes) comes to roost. Second is the Social tab, where your social media mail is placed, last but not least, a Promotions tab, where things deemed commercial or promotional is tossed. You do, (for now) are able to create custom tabs or revert to the old inbox. But how long will that survive?

So what can you do?

As a reader, your options are to go along with Google’s divvying up of your email, adjust your tabs to your taste, or revert to the old inbox. However, what we’re really interested in here is getting the marketing emails you are mailing past Google’s filters and into the primary inbox of your recipient. Most people won’t spend time to rescue your email from the others that fall into into the Promotions tab, and thus your emails will often probably go unnoticed. In the short time since this has been around, we already have reports of far lower open rates resulting from this. What’s more, Google has decided to create email-like ads that appear at the head of your promotions emails, making it even more difficult for your emails to get noticed. Many marketers are fearful that this trend could spread to other email providers, making it more and more difficult to use email marketing. We’ll see. For now, we need to understand how to use our email to ensure that we stand the best chance possible to skirt Google’s promotions tab in the primary inbox.

Several tips to make sure your emails get read in Gmail

  • Create Serialized emails – keep them coming back for more, no matter which inbox it ends up in.
  • Avoid hypey words in your subject lines. This only helps Google identify it as promotional.
  • Let people know that if they don’t see your emails, look in their promotional tab and move them for easier access.
  • Make them anxious to read your next email by delivering terrific content!

Make Adding Value Your Mission!

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In the past, it was quite often enough to slap up a site and open for business, and you’d most likely do okay. No longer. Competition is keen, and those that don’t understand or know that delivering value is the principal goal of any business online are going to find themselves scrambling to make ends meet. This is especially true in relation to marketing via email or social media. Let’s take a look at why this is so.

Why you need to prize value

The principal reason is it helps your brand stand out in a sea of mediocrity. Monitor conversations online and you’ll see, for the most part, two types: ones that slam a business or product and ones that effuse praise. Everything else is ignored. Making these people talk about both you and your brand in a positive light is your job, and the most effective way to do that is by over-delivering. That can happen in many ways. It could mean delivering unannounced bonuses, sales, appreciation gifts and more. Each of these can delight the customer, who will in turn share their experience as well as return for more!

Why email and social media are special cases

When it comes to marketing using email or social media, slightly different rules apply. You are held to higher standards here. Whereas your website is expected to sell, email and social media are a bit trickier. While both of them are still technically permission-based, neither audience is keen on endless marketing messages, and can revolt by unsubscribing or un-following you. While email has long been a marketing vehicle, increased competition and a social media trained audience demand that you deliver value. This in fact helps, as it builds the know, like and trust factors so essential in creating a lifelong customer. In social media, the secret is to get them intrigued enough in your brand or products that they wish to opt in and go to the next level with you. Once you’ve learned the art of subtle persuasion and managed to get them on your email lists, they’ll be far more open to hear your marketing messages.

Make value your mission! If you do this, regardless of what medium you are working in, you’ll find a far more responsive and loyal crowd!