Essential Marketing Tips for Your Business (Part 1 by Maurice Ondoy)

Marketing Drives Business

Worldwide, every successful business probably knows a lot about and invests a significant amount of their budget in marketing. For them, it is the driving force of their business, creating a call to action in hopes that potential customers will take the bait. It is as a matter of fact, an aspect that’s taken into consideration above almost everything else. Effective marketing strategies and campaigns are the elements that these successful businesses usually rely on. These strategies and campaigns are composed of multiple cogs to create a well oiled machine which includes covers, sales, public relations, promotions, advancements as well as major deals. These various campaigns are great ways to introduce and penetrate products into your target market. But, the bigger question is, how to boost marketing? Well, search no more, for this article will provide you 5 of the 10 steps. And here they are:

 

1. Understand Your Market

Of course, you would not dare venture into a business when you do not know who your customers are. It is basically the marketing process’ most important stage. Your business will be more effective if your knowledge and information about your customers is accurate. Demographics, consumer behavior, cultural inclination are all factors that you have to look into. This information is vital for business decisions and will in the same manner allow you to create an effective marketing plan.

2. Marketing Environment Observation

Knowing your customers is vital. But what’s more important is to be sensitive to the marketing environment. There are certain shifts that you have to consider. One good example is the global recession which happened years back. That unfortunate event triggered a lot of families to dial down spending, which tended to flourish cheap brands.

3. Tailor Your Products and Services to Fit Customer Needs

Entrepreneurs usually fall into the trap of making the products that they do want to sell, rather than making the product that the customers want. This is not to say that you should immediately abandon your product and completely cave into customer demands, but you should definitely listen to what people are asking for. Taking surveys is one of the best ways to find out what your customers do and do not want in a product or service. Other tools that are beneficial to you as a business with regards to product and service development include simple social listening tools like Hootsuite.

4. Be As Smooth and As Efficient As Possible

Conducting your product or service is as important as conducting your business as a whole. So, make sure that returns are courteously dealt with and product or service delivery is quick. Delight your customers by going above and beyond the call of duty for them. You have to remember, word of mouth is a powerful selling tool.

5. Take Customer Communication and Target Advertising to The Next Level.

Every day, consumers are bombarded with a great number of emails, usually persuading them to buy something from them. These kinds of communication usually turn off customers. Email marketing, honestly, is a great communication tool. However, in order to correctly utilize it, we have to use both emotional and rational arguments to demonstrate what we are selling and why they need it in order for them.

Want more effective marketing tips? Check out for the next article.

10 Tips to Extend Your Social Media Reach

Social media is more and more becoming the objective tool for digital marketing. This is not to say that other forms of digital marketing such as email, SEO, and Pay per click are on the decline. It’s just that never before have so many people be so easy to reach, and that reach really is the topic of today. How do we manage to reach thousands upon thousands of people through social media without knowing who they are. The passive answer is that we rely on people’s internet browsing patterns to inform algorithms to show them ads and products or services that may be of interest to them. But no ones browsing patterns are the same and we can’t just take a back seat and depend on the forces at work to reach people for us. We must become that force and perpetuate our own reach to some degree. The best way to increase reach on social is to treat it like a Google search: through optimization. Timelines, news feeds, streams, etc. are so commonly influenced by algorithms now that SMO should be a focus on every network.

You want to make sure to engage the people already seeing your posts, so they’ll spread to other users. You can do this by:

  1. Focus on the right networks – no use in spending a few hours a week on a platform your target audience doesn’t have accounts on
  2. Optimize your profile – profiles themselves should be optimized for discovery
  3. Stay evergreen – since posts aren’t always shown as soon as they’re posted anymore, create evergreen social content
  4. Post smarter, not more – focus on engagement and quality instead of posting a thousand times per day
  5. Use targeting – some networks let you target your posts to specific segments of your audience, which you can take advantage of to write more relevant and personalized content
  6. Post during slow hours – buck the trends and post when the number of users online is lower, when no other brands want to post
  7. Mix it up – when it comes to post types and formats, post a variety of each
  8. Promote your social presence – cross-promote your social media profiles and content on your website, collateral, and other online channels
  9. Balance promotional and useful – always think of the user before your own goals, and balance talking about your business with other topics
  10. Interact – engage your followers by starting conversations and replying to anyone who talks about you

Lead Magnets and Why They Matter

lead magnet

As I discussed last week, building an email list is dependent on giving people what they want and giving it away for free. If you give something to them that they view as valuable then you create a bond that they will continue to want to take advantage of. These are called lead magnets. They attract and act as a catalyst to conversions.  Initially it might seem daunting when deciding on what exactly you’d like to give away as your lead magnet, but that’s why we’re here to help. Your lead magnet should be something that helps your potential clients with one of the biggest problems you can help them solve. Don’t settle there though because it’s not enough. You need to give away even more for free, without initially requiring contact information, to establish trust, and get people to want to give their contact info for the next level of your wisdom (the actual magnet).

The next step that people often forget is that you need a way to know if and when leads are interacting with your content so that can follow up at the right time. This is the basic function of CRMs and email marketing platforms like Constant Contact. This is the key to acquiring conversations that matter. The details of the content will vary depending on what your industry might be, but make sure you have this designed to get you not just the lead, but the conversation as well. That all being said, here is a basic list of things you can provide as lead magnets.

1. An eBook

2. A Discount

3. A Trial Offer

4. A Free Tool

5. A Useful Guide

6. A Checklist

7. Free Shipping

8. A Quiz or Test Assessment

9.  A Webinar or Video Training

10. A Free Consultation

 

Growing your Email List in 2016

A while ago I wrote lengthy list of all of the ways you can grow your email list. As is always the case in marketing though, things change and practices are updated. That being said, I’ve decided to revamp that list and bring you the updated version of how to build your email list in 2016.

Here are the two fundamental rules for giving your list the boost it needs:

  1. Make signing up irresistible by offering something that your readers really need AND want.
  2. The ABC rule of email marketing = always be collecting.

1. Making it irresistible 

You need to know 2 things to make signing up a necessity. First, you need to know what your readers really want. There might be a difference between what your readers want and what you know they need. Start with giving them what they want, because this way you won’t need to do the additional convincing, and then later on you can deliver what they really need.

To give them what they want, generate a lead collector or lead magnetf in the form a freebie packed with valuable info that you’ll send them in exchange for an email address. This is an absolute must if you want to grow your email list. It’s the rocket that drives signups through the roof. You can separate these things into two groups, primary lead magnets, and content upgrades.

A primary lead magnet lives at the top of your front page. It’s always there, and it is something that’s related to the overall theme of your site. It should be able to motivate someone who wandered onto your page and doesn’t really know your brand or what you write about. A good example of a primary lead magnet is an ebook or a report in one of your main areas of expertise.

A content upgrade is a freebie that is specific to a blog post, and offers additional resource on the topic of the blog post. A good example is a checklist version of the post, a workbook, or a video tutorial on the subject of the post. Because a reader has already invested time in reading your blog post, they are more likely to take one additional step to get even more on the topic, so content upgrades are amazing for growing your email list.

There are so many ways to execute a lead magnet that this topic requires another post that will come later this week.

The second thing you need to know to make signing up irresistible is a little bit of psychology, particularly how FOMO (fear of missing out) works. Throughout your blog / website, consistently make it clear that your email subscribers receive something exclusive, something you never share on your site. You either get itif you’re on the list or you don’t at all. People will immediately feel like they’re missing out, and wouldn’t want to miss the next value-packed email like that.

2. ABC = Always Be Collecting

If you want to grow your email list, you have to always be collecting! There is a plethora of ways and places where you can collect email addresses which was the main focus of the previous list, but for the sake of this post I’ll be mainly focussing on how to collect them specifically from your website.

YOUR WEBSITE

Before we begin, one note: you might think pop-up windows are annoying, but the statistics show that they convert really, really well, given they are done right. So try them out and use efficient A/B testing to find your optimal conversion driver.

Here are ideas for how you can collect email addresses on your website:

Top of your website / ribbon

This is the primary real estate of your website, so put it to good use. You can have a slim bar across the website with smart call to action, or a full-fledged feature box with the image of the freebie you’re offering in addition to smart copy.

Exit behavior pop-ups

A box (with or without the image of a freebie) that will pop-up when readers navigate their mouse towards the top of the window.

Unobtrusive slide-in forms

A little box in the corner of the screen that slides up upon a certain behavior (for example, when the reader is 60% done with the post). Such pop-up doesn’t interfere with readers’ experience as much, and still reminds them that they can get more if they subscribe.

Content upgrades

Content upgrade is packaged information that’s complementary to the blog post, which readers can only get if they sign up. This is genius, because if a reader already invested time in reading your post, they are so much more likely to want to get that additional info (content upgrade). Just make sure it’s an essential addition to your blog post, so that readers can’t resist it.

About Page

About page is another valuable area of your website, so take the opportunity to utilize it for driving leads and converting readers into subscribers.

What to Include in Your Monthly Email Newsletter

newsletter

Monthly email newsletters are a common theme of any business. They keep your consumers up to date with the ongoing practices of your practice and help establish one on one relationships that people find valuable. Thee kinds of things are important because it shows that you are investing in them just as they are investing in you and your brand. But how do you create an effective newsletter that keeps people intrigued and wanting to continue their relationship with you? This is a common question that we hear every day and that we encourage businesses to ask themselves. Keeping an email newsletter interesting and effective requires that the content be top grade. Below I’ll expand further upon what that means.

  • Recap of Industry News – Your customers are busy running their business and may not be up to date with the latest industry news, so give them a quick rundown of what’s happened in the past month. It shows them you’re in-the-know and up to date with the latest trends, technologies, etc.
  • Case study – If you’ve helped a customer solve a problem of theirs recently, tell the story about it, how you solved it, what tools you used, etc. As long as it contains useful information for your audience (and isn’t just a huge plug for your services), it can be a worthy read that showcases your expertise and how it can help businesses like theirs.
  • Event/Conference Calendar – If your customers are all in the IT industry, then maybe you could include a summary of upcoming events (conferences, awards, etc) that they could potentially attend. This is useful for them, and also shows you’re tuned into the industry.
  • Important Dates – I don’t know a lot about the I.T industry, but are there important dates that people need to know about (I’m thinking like deadlines to submit things to regulatory bodies, or something like that)? If so, include a calendar of those dates to help people remember them.
  • Discounts & promotions – Could you possibly partner up with other companies you have good relationships with to offer exclusive discounts on their products or services to your customers? These discounts and offers can be valuable for your readers, and also help you build stronger relationships with the people whose products you’re offering to your customers.
  • A survey – Depending on how big your email list is, you could ask your audience to complete a survey on the industry and then turn the results and insights from that survey into a blog post or content piece that you can include in a future newsletter.

10 Types of Branding Strategies

brand strategy

Branding Strategies
A branding strategy helps establish a product within the market and to  build a brand that will grow and mature in a saturated marketplace. Making smart branding decisions up front is crucial since a company may  have to live with the decision for a long time. The following are commonly used branding strategies:

Company Name
In this case a strong brand name (or company name) is made the vehicle for a range of products (for example, Mercedes Benz or Black &  Decker) or a range of subsidiary brands (such as Cadbury Dairy Milk or  Cadbury Fingers in the United States).

Individual Branding
Each brand has a separate name, putting it into a de facto competition  against other brands from the same company (for example, Kool-Aid and  Tang are both owned by Kraft Foods). Individual brand names naturally allow greater flexibility by permitting  a variety of different products, of differing quality, to be sold  without confusing the consumer’s perception of what business the company is in or diluting higher quality products.

Attitude Branding and Iconic Brands
This is the choice to represent a larger feeling, which is not  necessarily connected with the product or consumption of the product at  all. Companies that use attitude branding include: Nike, Starbucks, The Body  Shop, and Apple, Inc. Iconic brands are defined as having aspects that  contribute to the consumer’s self-expression and personal identity.
Brands whose value to consumers comes primarily from having identity value are said to be “identity brands. ” Some brands have such a strong identity that they become “iconic brands” such as Apple, Nike, and Harley Davidson.

Derived Brands
Some suppliers of key components may wish to guarantee its own position by promoting that component as a brand in its own right. For example, Intel, positions itself in the PC market with the slogan (and sticker) “Intel Inside. ”

Brand Extension and Brand Dilution
The existing strong brand name can be used as a vehicle for new or modified products. For example, many fashion and designer companies extended brands into fragrances, shoes and accessories, furniture, and hotels. Frequently, the product is no different than what is already on the market, except it has a brand name marking. The risk of over-extension is brand dilution, which is when the brand loses its brand associations with a market segment, product area, or quality, price, or cachet.
Multi-brands Strategy 
Alternatively, in a very saturated market, a supplier can deliberately  launch totally new brands in apparent competition with its own existing  strong brand (and often with identical product characteristics) to soak  up some of the share of the market. The rationale is that having 3 out of 12 brands in such a market will  give a greater overall share than having 1 out of 10. Procter & Gamble is a leading exponent of this philosophy, running  as many as ten detergent brands in the US market. In the hotel business, Marriott uses the name Fairfield Inns for its budget chain.
Cannibalization is a particular problem of a multi-brands strategy  approach, in which the new brand takes business away from an established  one which the organization also owns. This may be acceptable (indeed to be expected) if there is a net gain  overall.
Private Labels
Also called own brands, or store brands, these have become increasingly popular. Where the retailer has a particularly strong identity this “own brand” may be able to  compete against even the strongest brand leaders, and may outperform  those products that are not otherwise strongly branded.
Individual and Organizational Brands
These are types of branding that treat individuals and organizations as the products to be branded. Personal branding treats persons and their careers as brands. Faith branding treats religious figures and organizations as brands.
Crowdsourcing Branding
These are brands that are created by the people for the business, which  is opposite to the traditional method where the business creates a  brand. This type of method minimizes the risk of brand failure, since the  people that might reject the brand in the traditional method are the  ones who are participating in the branding process.