Archive for Marketing Tools
Tools Of A Marketer; ‘It Could Be You’
Posted by: | CommentsA good marketer is someone who has the insight and the foresight to recognize those marketing tools which would best suit their marketing campaign – someone who throws caution to the wind and follows their own natural, finely-tuned marketing senses. At the end of the day, this comes down to confidence – and having the guts to follow your own instincts can often make or break your career, which is why it’s so scary. Half the battle is keeping up to date with the latest marketing tools to hit the marketing shelf, so what does your average marketing shelf consist of and what tools are available for use. 
The marketing tools come in so many shapes and sizes, but we’re focusing on two different categories – online marketing and offline marketing. To give you an insight into what tools are available in both we’ve explored them below.
Offline Marketing Tools
It’s amazing how many businesses are overlooking the traditional offline marketing methods which are at their disposal. Many have opted to favour the digital marketing methods because of their novelty and newness, but this isn’t always the best thing to do. Does digital marketing appeal direct to your target audience, or in reality would offline marketing technique better suit your target audience? Offline marketing techniques are great for building a close, personal relationship with your prospects and will often rely on your ability to communicate and the quality of service you offer.
– Networking Events
– Meetings
– Leaflets
– Brochures
– TV Commercials
– Telemarketing/Lead Generation
– Appointment Making
– Sponsorship
– Advertisements
– Newsletters
– Word of Mouth
– Direct Mail
These some of the most popular offline marketing tools which you could utilise, and while it’s good to identify what would best promote your business, you need to establish a clear plan of action which outlines how you will use them, what investment your business will place into each sector and how you will measure results. Success is different depending on what business area you operate in – talking to experts and looking for key industry metrics will help in the search for ROI.
Online Marketing Tools
Digital marketing has become very popular with many marketers, and why not? Nearly everyone uses a computer or mobile phone and therefore you are able to communicate directly with your target market with minimum fuss and cost; which is why they are so appealing;
– SEO
– PPC
– Content Marketing
– Social Media
– Email Marketing
– Advertisements
– PR
– Newsletters
These are the marketing weapons which you have at your fingertips; however it’s essential you establish a thorough marketing strategy prior to choosing your marketing tools. This should give you an understanding of how your target audience perceives your businesses and what channels would best appeal to them.
Now you know what tools are on the shelf, all that is left is to pick the right tools.
How To Manage Your Mail In An E-Commerce Business
Posted by: | CommentsA proper way of organizing mail in an e-Commerce business should be done from the start. If you don’t have a good system in place, you will experience a lot of problems when your business booms. Here are a few ways to manage your mail.
Franking machine
First of all, you need a franking machine to be able to process all your mails in the shortest time possible. Sorting and processing your packages by hand poses a high risk for errors. With a franking machine, you get the correct weight and postage for every single one of your packages. You don’t have to pay for extra charges for over or underpayment. You will also eliminate your trips to the post office as you can top up your credits in the convenience of your office. A franking machine can be rented or purchased so you don’t have to worry about the costs. There is a wide range of franking machine models for home, small and big businesses available. What’s more, you get huge discounts if you frank your mail.
Branch or Warehouse
Next, find out where your customers are. If they are on the other side of the country, you might as well open a branch or a warehouse there. The closer you are to them, the better services you can give. You can give them cheaper shipping rates and faster delivery times. There is also a lower chance for your product to get damaged in transit because of the short distance it travels. Your customers will thank you for this service.
If you can’t afford a warehouse, use a fulfilment service that has its own warehouse. They can store your products for you, prepare them for shipping and deliver them to your customers.
Returns and Exchanges
Have a solid system in place for returns and exchanges. These are factors that affect a customer’s decision to buy. If you have excellent returns and exchange policies, there is a high probability that your customers will buy because there is less risk on their part. They can order 2 sizes to see which one fits and return the other one that doesn’t. Be sure to pack a returns/exchange form together with their orders and a return address label. This way, you can be sure that your items arrive safely and on time to your warehouse. Your staff won’t also have any problems updating your system because all the information that they need is already in that form. Your customers will also be happy that they can receive their credits faster.
Good mail organization and management is crucial to any e-Commerce business. Remember that you rely heavily on this aspect of your business so invest time and money in it.
Shipping Secrets Of Successful E-Commerce Sites
Posted by: | CommentsThe best e-Commerce businesses share one secret to their success. They give generous shipping policies to their customers while keeping their costs down. Here’s how you can do that.
Form a partnership
If you are just starting up, find a courier that will become your lifelong partner. Negotiate discounts and special perks for bulk shipments. Find one that has excellent customer service. You don’t need a courier with low shipping rates but crappy service. Your customers will suffer in the end.
If you’ve already started and find yourself using 2 couriers or more, try and form a partnership with one of them. Explain to them how you want the relationship to move into a partnership. Choose the one with the best rates combined with good customer service. If you must, show the couriers all your offers so that you can get the best deal. Also, be ready to give them a forecast of your growth so that they can commit to a partnership because they know that they will also benefit from it.
Welcome all returns
If you have a very good returns policy, you will surely encourage customers to buy more. This will eliminate customer doubts such as “what if it does not fit?” or “what if the color is different from the actual?” and other questions that make customers hesitate to click the Purchase Now button.
Make sure to display your returns policy in your shopping page. Include a return slip and address label in every package to make the process easy. Your ultimate goal is to make your customers happy to encourage repeat purchases.
Open a branch near your courier
If you don’t own a warehouse, it would be a good idea to open a branch near your courier. This makes the process quicker and cheaper. If you deliver your items to your courier, you can save a lot on transportation costs. Your items will also arrive in good quality especially the ones that are fragile as the travel time is short.
If you can open a warehouse near your courier and near the bulk of your customers, the better. You eliminate a lot of costs and improve your shipping time. Your courier can also pick up items from you several times a day allowing you to offer special services such as next-day delivery with a late cut-off time. Delays can also be lessened if not eliminated. If your customers send returns, they will be able to receive their credits faster.
Rush deliveries but not returns
Always treat orders as rush deliveries. The faster you can get the items out the door, the better. Offer overnight deliveries but do the opposite with returns. Customers won’t mind ground shipping as long as they receive their credits. If you can arrange a returns program with your courier then do so. For example, your customers can contact your courier and schedule a pickup of the return items when they are at home or when they are in the office. This eliminates missed pickups and delays.
Now that you know the secrets, apply them to your own shipping process and you should be able to see an improvement not only in your shipping but in your sales as well.
Image By: Daniel Broche – CC BY 2.0
3 Best Social Media Campaigns from the Super Bowl
Posted by: | CommentsSuper Bowl ads are the equivalent of the coolest guy getting all the girls. They’re a big deal (or at least they believe they’re a big deal), and they attract people to them. Some of the best Super Bowl ad campaigns this year were a bit surprising with GoDaddy, Volkswagen and Doritos. They’ve gone beyond the call of duty, and in some cases, beyond the call of the necessary. 
A New Metric
GoDaddy’s success in the social media campaign came in at 95%, but many believe the reason for this is because there was a new metric added to the measurement of success. Even so, they still did a great job at getting the attention of the nation, and if you don’t know why – you soon will.
GoDaddy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-1oixpSShs
The day after the Super Bowl, these guys had the highest sales numbers in the company’s whole history, but to be fair, the other advertisers had not released their numbers at the same time GoDaddy did. That’s not to say they didn’t earn their top place in the Super Bowl. They used three major methods to gain that top spot: creativity, content teasing and calls to action. Their ad did a great job of eliciting an emotional response from people, even if it wasn’t a positive one. They received 290,000 tweets about the ad, but most of them were a little offended by the kiss. Did you turn the sound up on that commercial? You can really hear the ‘smack’ in those lips, so turn it down if sloppy, wet kisses offend you.
Doritos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9lYt6GcAxc
This chip giant used social media to get their fans involved. Doritos called out to all amateur film-makers, imploring them to submit their commercials which will be crowned by social media users. A Facebook application was created to streamline this process, allowing people to vote, watch interviews with the directors of the commercials and witness Michael Bay phoning up the finalists (which may be slightly more entertaining than his movies). This campaign was an outright success, and it’s all social media’s fault.
Volkswagen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0xPWAtaa8
Even though some of the opinions on this Volkswagen commercial ranged from ‘insensitive’ to ‘racist’, it got a great response from most people. Overall, the ad was well received and did a fantastic job of spreading the happiness that our Minnesotan-Jamaican actor was trying to spread. It even got itself a parody commercial in YouTube.
It takes some good effort to make it in the Super Bowl when the competition is some of the best in the world for business. But these guys have earned their rights to gloat and their rights to sales.
5 Secrets Behind Viral Video Marketing
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It seems like another video goes viral everyday. Facebook walls, Twitter retweets, Pinterest pins – Viral marketing is changing the game of video marketing. Many people attribute the success of these videos to “luck”, but luck has nothing to do with it. I’ve researched the ins and out of every viral video and compiled a few tips that can drastically improve your success of producing a viral video.
5 Easy Tips for Viral Success
- Keep it short (Depending on the content, under 2 minutes is ideal)
- Get to the point quickly, don’t make the visitors wait for the climax.
- Find compelling music, musical additions drastically improve viral success
- Seed it properly – Post it on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, outreach for help promoting it
- Post it on Monday – Most videos that go viral are posted on Monday afternoons
What is Video Production, and how is it used in Video Marketing?
Video production can be defined as the process of producing a video for commercial purposes like advertisements, movies and music. A video has the potential to convince a message effectively to the viewer. Therefore video production has become a popular topic among business owners in the present world. It does not matter what business you are in, there is going to come a point that you will need to hire a video production company.
Videos are recognized as the fastest growing advertising medium in the current world. Plenty of reasons are available for the business owners to seek the assistance of a video production company. We live in a competitive world and it is a tough task for the businesses to survive the competition. A video can reach the potential customers in an effective way and they will remember the content for a long time. Therefore many companies hire the service of a video production company to get a commercial done. The objective of making a commercial video is to make the target customers responsive of your product as well as services. The video producer can become the translator of the message of your company. The video production company will use their knowledge and experience to create a stunning video for your business.
The video production companies are equipped with all the tools and techniques that can be used to create a good video. The producers will use their creativity to make the video eye-catching as well as informative. Good video production companies normally have a good network and they are aware of where to get your video released. Releasing the video at the right place can create a huge impact on your business.
Video production is not all about advertisements and commercials. Business owners can get their help to prepare training videos. Training videos are normally used to train vendors, associates and management teams. If you use an audio visual medium instead of pen and paper, your employees would understand the mission and objectives of your company in a manner which is more engaging and also easier to retain. The viewers will not get bored during the training session and the sessions can become more productive. You can even get some video presentations done about your business for the purpose of exhibition.
Video production companies offer a wide range of services that are related to videos. A business can use almost all these services to enhance the visibility and develop the overall aspects of the business. The results of video marketing are proven and any business owner can use them without thinking twice. Spending some money on video production can be considered as a great investment done towards the future of your business as well.
Shared Hosting Vs VPS – When To Switch?
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Web hosting is a hot topic if you are going to be starting a website or blog. There are countless companies out there and it can seem nearly impossible to find the right one without paying a small fortune. However, you don’t have to spend a lot of money upfront. In fact, I would encourage that you buy the bare minimum, which is a shared plan.
Shared Hosting
So shared hosting is commonly advertised as unlimited bandwidth, space, and you can use as many resources as you want. However, while a lot of respectable web hosting companies use this tactic to entice buyers to buy their service. There is actually a limit and a good rule of thumb is you should be fine with 200-300 unique visitors a day. This is assuming that you are not running a site with lots of multimedia or videos.
If in doubt and you are thinking of signing up for a web hosting company I would highly suggest that you make a call or contact them live via customer support. They should be able to tell you the actually number of GB’s they will let you use per month for web hosting.
Another factor that can strongly determine your shared usage is how many plugins or widgets you have installed on a WordPress website. It’s safe to say that you don’t want to go plugin or widget happy, seeing how there are lots of cool ones out there. The problem with this is the web hosting provider usually only allows 25 processes on a shared server and lots of plugins will be opening and closing all the time, which could cause errors and require a transfer.
VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is an upgraded version of web hosting. Shared hosting will have thousands of servers on a website, but a VPS will only have a limited number of websites hosted on one server. Therefore, your sites are much more stable and commonly load faster. This isn’t something you typically need if you are just starting out. However, I would like to note that some VPS services are much more limited in what they will let you do.
For instance, Host A might allow you to use 250 GB per month while Host B will allow you to use 500 GB. Personally, I would shop around to make sure you’re getting the you most bang for your buck. Another common thing burstable RAM. This simply means you are allowed 1-2GB of extra traffic during peek times. This can be big when sites go viral or you have updates, sales, ect. Just make sure they can be trusted by doing you research.
When To Switch Shared To VPS Hosting
The age old question when should I switch from shared to VPS is kind of a tricky answer. For instance, your hosting provider might temporally suspend your account and request that you upgrade your plan because you are using to many resources which is causing other sites on that shared server to run slowly. Normally, you will start to see error messages when going to your site which state your site is to busy or you will notice it running very slowly.
But, don’t worry because I have created lots of different sites and tested them to make sure they could support lots of daily web traffic. Like I said earlier 200-300 visits per day should be when you should consider changing to a VPS plan. But, honestly you are throwing away a lot of money that you could use elsewhere if you start with VPS right out of the gate.
Lastly, VPS usually charges you for cPanel or a script to install WordPress on your site. Make sure you read the fine print because while yes they usually give it to your for free with shared, VPS will usually charge you a yearly fee. However, by that time you should be making pretty good money from your site, so you can easily afford the license yearly.
Use The Best Spinner To Create Bios Easily
Posted by: | CommentsYIIKES!! If you found this page from a link somewhere on the web about spinning articles, forget it! Spinning will get you no where and worse!
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Add an AdSense Privacy Policy and Secure Contact Form To Your Site
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have AdSense on your site, you must have a Google approved privacy policy linked to from EACH page that has AdSense ads. Also there are other affiliate and PPC programs that require a privacy policy and/or a contact method on the website.
Whether you use those programs now or not, it’s still a good idea to go ahead and put those pages on your site (who knows….someone may want to buy your site some day; an easy to find and use contact page might make all the difference).
The contact form you use should NOT list your email address in the code (hello spam if it does!). The video describes the free and secure contact form I use.
As for the Privacy page, I demonstrate a super easy way to create a custom privacy page for your site.
Enjoy!
CopyScape: Write Original Content For Your Web Site
Posted by: | CommentsEven though backlinks are becoming more and more important in how search engines rank pages (especially in larger niches), content is still the foundation for solid SEO.
For this site, I write all the content myself. But for my many small affiliate websites and Adsense sites I use different strategies for creating the content. Most of the content for those sites is written by one of my virtual assistants. Depending on the VA, I may provide them with PLR content to rewrite, provide specific articles for rewrites, or simply supply them a list of keywords for articles to write.
I find base articles or content and simply rewrite it into original content. Again, for your main blog or site, you should write the content based solely on your own knowledge and experience. This rewriting strategy is only used for the many different affiliate or AdSense sites you may have.
When you employ this strategy, one of the tools you should use in the process is found at CopyScape.com. CopyScape is a very low cost way for quickly checking yourself or your writers to ensure the new content is original.
Although there is no way to know exactly how closely CopyScape mimics Google’s own process for checking duplicate content, it’s the best tool we currently have.
Although a small bit of duplicate content in an article probably will not hurt anything, I simply tell my VA’s that all articles must pass CopyScape completely; it’s just easier that way.
Note also that there is a threshold which must be reached before CopyScape flags content as duplicate. Therefore, when it finds duplicate articles and you click it’s “compare text” button, you may see many short phrases lists. You may wonder how you could possibly eliminate all those types of phrases. But remember, CopyScape won’t flag those phrases unless there are too many of them. In other words, let’s say it flags 20 phrases in your article. It’s quite possible that if you only fixed half of those, the article would then be considered original.
Here’s the video…..
