Category Archives for : Marketing

Many businesses think that having a website is quite enough to mark an online presence. However, they forget that having a website will be worthless until they get it designed to run on smartphones. In addition to it, a nicely-designed website can yield exceptional outcomes for the business.

Believe or not, it’s a bitter reality that in today’s competitive world, companies often overlook the significance of websites. As a result of it, it leads them towards failure, disappointment, and leaves them with no choice but to reinvest in web design and development.

Through this article, I am trying to share my viewpoints with companies and professionals to highlight the reasons why web designs often fail. Knowing them will help you avoid making these mistakes when you design and develop your own website.

1. Unqualified Professionals

To avoid paying extra money, numerous companies, especially start-ups, handover the work of web design and development to professionals that don’t possess enough experience. Consequently, these projects often end up in failure making companies incur the loss of valuable time and money.

I don’t have any doubt about the talent of young minds, but in my opinion, complicated projects should be handed over to some experienced professionals who can deliver value for your money.

2. Lack of Quality Testing

It often seems that a well-designed website doesn’t perform as per expectations. One of the key reasons behind it, is the lack of quality testing. In order to assure the quality of a website, it is advised to test it on all the desired parameters to make it highly productive for a company.

A well-tested website can yield outstanding results and perform exceptionally well for business.

3. Compelling Visitors to Play Guess Game

While planning to develop a new website, companies should focus on the purpose behind it. Clear presentation of goals not only helps designers and developers to create a desired website, but also helps organization to achieve targets.

A poorly designed website with poor presentation of information coerces users to play a guessing game, and that irritates them a lot. As a result, most of the users decide not to give your website another shot.

4. Missing Simplification

Undoubtedly, the Internet today is overburdened with countless fancy websites. But, you can’t deny the fact that simplicity is the king and a key factor that helps companies to get distinction from the crowd.

What attracts customers the most is “simplicity.” Thus, a great website is one that looks simple in design but rich in features so that it can serve its visitors well.

5. Absence of Effective Content

Design attracts visitors, a real fact. But the thing that makes users spend more time or revisit is the content of that site. The content is the soul of a site, and users visit websites in search of required information.

Thus, if your site lacks in feeding desired content to its visitors, then the time has come to review your site. A well-researched content positively influences the minds of users and compels them to take actions that are beneficial to the business.

6. Lack of Timely Updates

Companies often consider that website development is a one-time process, but it is not so. Making necessary and timely updates are equally critical.

If you overlook timely updates, then the online audience will start to lose interest in your website that leads your efforts to end up in total failure. Timely updates include content updating and design upgrading because no one likes to get engaged with old content.

 7. Using Hard Codes

While handling complex projects, developers come across several minor changes and updates. Rather than making it a quick fix with some handy tricks, it is advised to write flexible codes instead of hard codes.

For handling such minor changes and updates, planning plays a crucial role. Thus, developers should properly plan any project before beginning to execute it. Additionally, companies should also describe clear and precise specifications before handing over a project to a professional or an organization.

 8. Lack of Project Management

Nothing could be achieved without proper project management, a fact that we all know. Thus, designers are advised to create a flexible plan to manage a project in an efficient manner. Project management is one of the biggest factors and ignoring its importance often leads projects to end up in failure.

9. Missing Mobile Friendliness

In the era of smartphones, you cannot overlook the fact that a massive number of buyers have shifted towards mobile.

Today, online users prefer to search information through their smartphones. Thus, by realizing and accepting the fact that smartphones have become a new source to target potential buyers, companies should pay attention to getting the site developed in a way that it can be run on a variety of devices.

 Why do you think most web designs fail?

The facts mentioned above show the key points that enterprises and designers can follow to avoid making such mistakes. By keeping these points in mind, you can create a website that yields favorable results and will not fail.

Do you agree with these points? Have you had your very own personal experience with a failed website? Let us know in the comments below.

Abhyudaya Tripathi is a digital marketing expert with over 8 years of precious experience and presently he is an Associate Director at Result First Organization. He is extremely passionate about making information seekers and quest lovers aware about digital marketing. His area of expertise covers everything that comes under the umbrella of digital marketing that is content marketing, search engine optimization, social media optimization, conversion rate optimization, web designing & development, etc.

Online marketing is more complex than what it used to be a few years back. More and more companies are starting to use the Internet as a powerful marketing weapon, and customers are overwhelmed by tons of different ads each time they set foot online. Marketers are changing their focus on videos, as text and images just won’t cut it anymore.

As a startup, it is very important that you create a solid marketing plan. I will go as far as to say that your success will depend on the marketing approach you choose to follow. In this article, I’ll try to make it as clear as possible why video marketing is the most effective way to build a reputation online and stand out from the crowd.

Why Video Marketing?

In times when the customer’s attention span is very low, videos are the ideal medium to provide engaging and informative content in a short amount of time. Because of this, videos have a higher conversion rate than text. This is the main reason why online video is revolutionizing content marketing and the way companies communicate with their customers.

You all know the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, do you know how many words a one-minute video is worth? According to Dr. James McQuivey, it’s worth 1.8 million words!

In 2016, videos will account for 55% of the total consumer Internet traffic – which means video views will jump so high that it would be inevitable to start using them as part of your marketing activities. A few months back, Facebook announced that 8 billion videos are displayed each day on the platform. Just imagine the video outreach potential, if we add websites like YouTube (which boasts 1.9 billion monthly visitors), Twitter and Instagram to the equation.

5 Video Marketing Tips for Startups

As a startup owner, you can’t possibly have the resources to compete with large companies with even larger budgets for online marketing. But let’s get clear on something; you don’t need expensive equipment and a team of professionals to create a good video. Be original and use your creativity – you’ll do just fine. Below, I present some great tips on how to make the best of your videos.

1. Set the budget and define goals

The first step is to define how much you’re prepared to spend on the video. Ask yourself these questions:

• What type of message are you trying to send to your potential customers?
• What should the video achieve? (i.e. higher conversion, brand awareness, customer loyalty, etc.)
• How fast are you expecting to achieve your goals?

2. Create a video with a great story

With your goals and budget in mind, you’ll need to hire someone to shoot and edit the video. This may sound tricky if you’re on a tight budget – but trust me, you’ll find the right fit for the job. Video creating and editing isn’t as tricky as it was a couple of years ago. You can:

• Check out freelance platforms like Upwork and Fiverr.
• Visit platforms that exclusively offer video editing services like Valoso.

In both cases, you’ll be able to work with professionals of your choice, and create a great video for a pretty reasonable price. Once you hire someone, here are a few good practices that you need to keep an eye on:

• Develop a story that shows value
• Always keep your videos short and informative
• Consider making interactive videos
• Add call to action at the end

3. Decide where you’ll post the video

Now that you have the video, it’s very important that you share it on as many platforms as you can to reach more organic views. Among others, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Vine are some of the websites that could bring you a lot of traffic. This means that if you’re satisfied with the results, you don’t have to spend money on advertising.

Note that running a video marketing campaign can be very beneficial for your business. Facebook and Google are one of the most reliable video advertising platforms. The benefits are;

• Control over who sees your videos
• Insights on customer behavior
• More relevant traffic
• Tracking data
• Insights on demographics

4. Optimize the video for search engines

Even though you may use paid advertising, a big portion of video traffic will come from organic search. To make sure that your video reaches the right people and provides best results, you’ll need to make it appealing, not just to the viewers, but also to search engines.

Here are a few tips on how to optimize your video;

• Develop an SEO strategy for your videos and come up with keywords
• Use your keyword in the title and the description of the video – this is a must!
• Always add tags
• Make sure you add stuff like contact info, links to social media and link to your website in the video description box.

5. Closely monitor performance and analyse the results

You’ll need to be actively involved in your marketing activities and analyse the results from your campaigns – regardless of whether you’re focusing more on organic search or paid ads. The stats from your performance reports will help you understand your customers better and make the right business decisions.

Author Bio

Stefan is a technology writer and WordPress developer. He is a graduate, with a degree in Business Informatics (BI). Stefan enjoys writing about technology, online marketing and SEO. Big supporter of open-source, and GNU Linux enthusiast. You can find him at Valoso, a freelance video service.

Over the last few years, Twitter has skyrocketed in popularity as one of the most adored social media platforms, and quite rightly so. From the first tweet way back in March 2006 to 500 million tweets per day as of now, the growth is phenomenal, and so are its impacts, for individuals as well as businesses.

Such remarkable growth also means unimaginable business potential. So, if somehow you haven’t been able to grab your share from the world of Twitter until now, here is your chance to do it now to make the hay while sun shines!

Twitter login page might be the rocket fuel capable of thrusting your business way above all the boundaries and limits you have set up in your mind for it. And here I am with 11 Reasons Why Twitter Login is Essential for Your Business Growth, making sure you are able reap the benefits Twitter has to offer for businesses.

1/ Make your first impression count: Pay attention to your Twitter profile

With as little as 3 seconds that people take in deciding whether or not to take interest in you after coming across your profile, it becomes imperative that your first impression counts on Twitter. And this can be done by making sure that you are appropriate, thorough, tactful and attractive in completing your profile.

This will earn you recognition, respect and attention from visitors, treating your profile as something serious, increasing the probability of more relevant traffic and more business opportunities coming your way.

2/ Get a good image

If you want yourself in there, get a close-up head shot or you might want to have your business logo instead. This image will introduce you to the world on Twitter, whether on the profile page or with any comments you make. If it’s your face, make sure the image is clear and well-lit, most preferably with your face right in the center (though that is not a necessity).

As far as logos are concerned, avoid too wordy ones, because they will look messy due to smaller size. The image formats allowed include jpg, PNG or gif and the size limit for images is up to 700 KB.

3/ Introduce your website or blog link

This is of utmost importance if you want to earn people’s trust on Twitter. People will approach you with much more confidence, deeming you as an authentic entity.

4/ Be careful in following people

This is right, you need to maximize followers, but you ought to be careful in doing that. Search out well before following the people you choose to connect with, depending upon your preferences. They might be among people you know, organisations you deem necessary to stay in contact with, clients, field experts in your niche, journalists or from countless other domains.

You also need to follow back those who follow you (only if you like to), which serves as the key to stabilize and expand your network on Twitter. Expanding your presence serves as one of the prime functions here on Twitter (or any other social medium for that matter!).

5/ Learn the language before you speak; pick your keywords

Before you really get going in a bid to let the world know you are on Twitter, make sure you learn and use the right language comprised of the right words …… the keywords. And the best way to do that is none other than resorting to Google AdWords: Keyword Planner.

Remember, Twitter login page is just the gateway to this ever expanding arena of the virtual world laden with infinite business possibilities for you. You need to exalt in your finesse to make your presence felt around here, which is through communicating effectively.

One thing that you need to keep in mind is that diverting a river is easier than digging a well, i.e. tapping into the already existing traffic flow is much more feasible than generating some from scratch.

6/ Don’t forget to get acquainted with #hashtags

You can’t really get the grasp of Twitter without Hashtags. These serve as a tool to add more search-ability to the words you choose to speak through on Twitter. With the help of hashtags, you can tap into the domain of a Twitter-wide conversation. Creating a hashtag is as simple as placing # before the word you want searched around.

Just as it is with all other things, too many cooks can ruin the recipe for you; make sure you contain yourself to adding no more than two hashtags per tweet. Obviously, you are trying to get attention from an increased number of people, but not to irk them with you do instead of gaining their approval!

7/ Tweet: this is why you are here

Remember, tweeting is what led you here in the first place, so create some great content related to your business niche, informative as well as entertaining, and tweet it like you are here to tweet! Industry news catches instant attention, especially if there is some that you can break about.

Try to stay ahead of your peers and write about latest researches and breakthroughs in your industry. In addition to regurgitation, also add your point of view to make recognition for yourself, but it should be worth it, factually as well as aesthetically.

Go for the right combination, comprising of short-form content like the tweets, and long-form content like blog posts. You can also share facts, figures, statistics and insights by retweeting others’ contribution to capture your target audience’s attention within the confines of 140 characters. You can try to contain your tweets to 100 characters, so that there is enough room for relevant links and hashtags, which will increase the probability of retweeting of your content. Twitter lists can help you greatly in curating relevant content.

8/ Make an impact with great headlines containing keywords

This is one sure-fire way to make an impact on your target audience because your headlines hook the audiences to your content and inspire them to retweet it. If you are not able to gain a prompt response from your audience, your chances of performing well are hampered significantly in a fast-paced environment like the one that exists around in Twitter.

I am sharing some proven and effective headline formulas here:

• Lists: Research reveals that headlines carrying numbers in them perform well consistently. Example: 14 Tips to Get the Best of Twitter.
• How to: Titles adorned with “How to” phrase are also able to draw significant attention from viewers, according to research. So, produce “How to” titles to grab attention from your target audience.
• Include keywords: Similarly, tweets containing keywords of your niche are likely to perform well.

9/ Tweet alternately based on time of day as well as day of week

With Twitter enjoying a massive global engagement, many experts suggest tweeting alternately based on time of the day as well as day of the week. This ensures that different segments and groups of people from your target audience can conveniently reach out to what you want to share with them. This varied engagement level of audience on your Twitter account depends upon many factors including your industry and other trends.

There are some great applications like the Buffer (one of my personal favourites) that can help you to schedule your tweets. To determine the best engagement time of your target audience, you better analyse them; for example, in Buffer it can be done using Buffer’s Analytics tab and then schedule your tweets for optimal times and days during the week. And make sure not to overlook weekends; with so much happening on Twitter every single second, ruling out weekends can mean losing potential customers, which is the last thing you would ever want.

10/ Integrate

Integrating to other social media elements is one of the best things you could do to reap the maximum benefits of this great medium. This will enable you to present your Twitter audience with a highly dynamic user experience. You better not confine this integration only across different social platform, but this integration should be at the content level as well, i.e. adding images and videos.  You can add to the user convenience of your Twitter target audience by sharing your Twitter content by choosing to repost your tweets on other most popular networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

11/ Keep an eye on it     

With so much effort involved, you better keep an eye on where all of this is leading you to; whether you are making any real progress around here or not. And you can do this by using tools like Peerindex.com, Wefollow.com, Kred.com and Klout.com. If you are not aware of the direction and impact of your efforts, the probability of getting them wasted becomes quite higher and this is certainly no one would want after putting in so much time and sweat.

Conclusion

It’s never too late, so give these ‘11 Reasons Why Twitter Login is Essential for Your Business Growth’ a go, and enjoy playing with Twitter to get increased business sales much quicker than you had ever imagined. Let’s become an inspiration to others, while enjoying your business success.

Bio

Adnan Afzal, co-founder of Technorian and always love to share valuable content with his influencers. He enjoys writing about start-ups, ecommerce, blog traffic and social media as well.

It’s no secret that human beings are visually oriented, so we respond to images more than words most of the time. In this day and age of our consciousness being dominated by the Internet, innovative use of images is very important in capturing an audience and making sure that they get the value we want them to have through that power.

In combining informative content with visuals, the infographic became one of the best ways to convey information as it makes whatever statistics needed more digestible and comprehensible. Even those who may not be that good with figuring out facts and figures can understand them through the use of infographics. It’s the epitome of showing and not just telling.

The Advantages of Infographics

Infographics are also quite shareable and linkable, making them perfect for social media. When people see infographics on Facebook and Twitter, they can get it right there instead of having to read through paragraphs on a long article. If you’re a startup or a small business who is trying to make a mark with content, then infographic software are a great tool for doing just that.

Due to them being great for social media and linking, they can do wonders for your SEO. People who are doing research and stumble upon your infographics can link credit to your website, making you more of an authority and boosting your visibility online. Also, just by having tons of people share your infographics, you already get so much exposure. If the facts and figures presented by your infographics are that compelling, they will indeed be shared.

Having said that you need to encourage sharing and linking by adding embed codes etc. Since you have already created the info-graphic you can go that extra mile and start marketing your info-graphic as well. Check out this great article about how to make your infographic go viral.

Creating infographics also lets you figure out your brand’s go-to graphic design. You definitely need to have your branding go with your design, so the colors and visual style you incorporate must be consistent with your brand. By doing so, you make your brand a lot more recognizable.

Do’s and Don’ts in Infographics

First of all, you must determine the original source of data by looking at its sources and tracking it back to the original page where it’s cited. That’s then what you put on your infographic as one of your sources. Never under any circumstances neglect citing your sources because plagiarism is a serious breach of conduct and trust.

Also make sure that your data is the most recent available. Using outdated data is poor form, so you have to go the extra mile in determining from what year that data is from. With that in mind, you’d also want to limit the number of sources you’re using since it’s easy to have too many, and they might conflict each other. Pick the most recent ones with high online rankings for best results since you’d want to have sources with considerable authority online.

Don’t put down a user-generated website as your source since that information may not be entirely true. Since pretty much anybody willing enough can change and add to whatever is on that page, it may not be entirely reliable. You may check out the sources and references cited there though and see if they’re indeed authoritative and trusted, and then you may be able to use those sources as your own.

Tell a story with the information and make sure that there are no gaps and hanging questions in it. The worst thing you can do is to have lots of gaps and leave the audience with more questions than answers. Telling a story with it means having a progression from fact to fact that makes sure audiences don’t get lost along the way.

Finally, take the initiative and share your infographic on social media. Don’t wait for your audience to take notice, take it to them as soon as you can. The more visibility you can have, the better chances your infographic can gain an audience. If you can turn it into a press release, then definitely do so. Also, don’t promote only once; do what you can to promote it as long as it’s still relevant to the times.

Websites for Getting Infographics Data and Content From

Sources are not that hard to come by, but it can be confusing as to which ones are the most trustworthy ones. Here are some you can make use of.

The Guardian Data Blog is all about data journalism and visualization that lets you take a look at what goes on behind The Guardian’s journalistic efforts. There’s also a Presenting Data Master Class offered by The Guardian that can help you do better infographics and other data presentations.

The United States Census Bureau is a great source for seemingly obvious reasons. It gives you quick and easy access to facts on people, business, and geography. It also has a Data Visualization Library, which should give you ideas on how to present in your infographic.

The World Health Organization website provides data and analyses for monitoring the global health situation of past and present. You can review the Publications section if you don’t know where to begin.

Data.gov is the US Government’s home for open data. Whatever data you need that involves the US, it should be here.

CIA World Facts is great if you want more in-depth data that you can’t find anywhere else. It also has the added benefit of making you feel like a secret agent, if that’s your kind of jam.

Google Public Data Explorer is powered by the most powerful Internet company in the world, so it’s bound to be full of data that’s mostly up to date.

Google Scholar and Google Consumer are some of the Google-based tools for gathering data from various sources on the Internet. Ask Your Target Market and Mechanical Turk are similar in this regard as well.

Infographic Online Tools

If you’re not a graphic designer, don’t have tools like Photoshop, and/or don’t have the time to carefully craft a design for your infographic, then you may want to get into online tools that can help you make one yourself in no time.

Creately’s online infographic tool comes packed with many features to quickly come up with info-graphics. This include separate libraries for business shapes, people shapes, charts, country maps, world maps, US state maps etc. Check out the blog post about creating infographics online with Creately.

Visualize is an infographic resume generator that can help you chart out your professional qualifications and accomplishments in a simple yet compelling personal visualization.

Google Developers has chart tools that are simple yet powerful, as well as free to use. Not only can you choose from a variety of charts, but you can also configure an extensive set of options to make it suit the look and feel of your website.

Easel.ly is a free online infographic tool with a dozen free templates for you to choose from, with each being easily customizable. You can also access a whole library of elements like arrows, shapes, connector lines, fonts, colors, text styles, sizes, and so on to let you fully customize your infographic.

Piktochart is a lot like Easel.ly that offers three basic themes for free and a subscription plan for those who want to use it more extensively for a longer period of time.

There are many others like Easel.ly and Piktogram such as Infogr.am, Visual.ly, InFoto Free, Venngage, Dipity, Get About, and more. Explore each one and find out which one is best for you.

About the author: Jay Manangan is a web content writer and a designer of Your Company Formations UK and Co-Founder of Shift Stream Media. His main interest are online marketing, business management, web design and tech. Follow him on Google+ and Twitter.

You have a startup business and are making sufficient profit to continue it without any hiccups. Is that enough? Obviously NO! You will want to bring it to a level where you are running a full-fledged business rather than just “doing what you like.” You will want to become one of the biggest players in the industry.

However, in the run to achieve your goals, you will be faced with many challenges and setbacks. Sleeping, eating, playing, meeting friends, spending time with family will all take a back seat! This phase will probably be the hardest in your entire life as you realize how much you need to learn and struggle more in order to make your startup a success model.

A soothing fact is that all startups are like a chaotic war place in their initial phases.  But as your name grows in the market, you’ll need to don all hats – right from a technician, design specialist, operations and finance expert, to business development and marketing experts, and even office boy. You will have employees on whom you can depend for assistance. But the achievers have their own secrets in becoming what they are.

So if you too are looking to grow your startup in the years to come, simply skim through these seven secrets that even Wikipedia wouldn’t tell you.

 Secret # 1. Prepare an Elaborate Business Plan

A business plan will clarify your business idea and define your goals. It provides a blueprint for running the business and helps you understand where you are, where you want to be and what challenges you will face to get where you want to be.

According to Entrepreneur.com, business plan is an essential tool that helps you understand how your business is put together. Writing out your business plan clearly sets everything at once:  value proposition, marketing strategy, financial plans, staffing plan, your niche market and the purpose of your business.  If you want to be taken seriously by banks and investors, a well-written business plan is a must.

Secret # 2. Professional Graphic Designs Add Value

Though its importance is often underestimated, good designs can bring some significant business benefits. Graphic designs can be used in making your business processes more efficient and can be used to strengthen your marketing approach.

For instance, for a Finance firm, a professional finance logo will share your drive and vision. A user-friendly website will allow you to discover your customers’ needs and preferences. And business icons will help you build awareness about your brand.

It’s entirely on you to decide how you want your potential consumers to perceive your brand. Everything that represents your business must exude your brand message and values. And to give your brand the boost it needs, you’ll have to attract sales. This is where professional graphic designs come to your rescue.

Secret # 3.  Don’t Land Into Legal Troubles

It is advisable to get a little acquainted with legal mumbo jumbo in order to get your business off the ground. Do not forget to get your company registered with your state’s Secretary of State and get the EIN for your company. Don’t worry, it’s free and you can get it easily at IRS.gov.

Registered your company successfully? Now, the next step is to open a business bank account. But remember to distinguish your personal expenses from your business ones. You cannot afford to take risks at any stage till you have achieved your business goal successfully. It is important to invest in a business insurance too. It will work wonders in case of a mishap.

To save yourself from tax headaches, keep 25-30% of your profits so that you can pay taxes at the end of the financial year. It is absolutely alright if you do not understand how to save tax. Forbes magazine appropriately suggests you to hire a CPA and get advice about how to do the tax planning for your business.

Secret # 4. Invest time in Finding Mentors

A good mentor will help you achieve your goals faster. Be it your friend, ex-boss, or a family member; do well to find a mentor who has done what you are trying to fulfill before, successfully. Not only can a mentor offer valuable advice and suggestions, they can also provide access to valuable contacts and resources that you might not have known about. Once you have a mentor, you can use the free, easy-to-use services that connect startups with volunteer mentors in order to build businesses together.

An article in Forbes notes that many young entrepreneurs struggle to succeed because they don’t really have a good mentor to guide them. In fact, a lot of them fail to recognize the true value of having a good mentor, and it’s a shame as mentoring matters the most in the business world.  Always remember a good mentor can bring plenty of changes in your business.

Secret # 5. Carefully Manage Your Cash Flow

It is not wrong when we say that cash flow is the lifeblood of any company. Any company that wants to avoid being the one that fails in their first year, cash flow management is crucial. Draft a payment policy to gain trust of your consumers. This will also help you get paid in a timely fashion for your services/products. Utilize technology and resources around you to keep the operating costs low.

Entrepreneur.com reveals that it’s absolutely vital to set up a stable flow of cash that is, the cash coming as profit over and above all of your expenses. It puts across an image that you are damn serious about your business and are more than capable to manage a smooth inflow and outflow of your company cash. Remember, at the age of 21, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple computers from his parents’ garage. You can create a buzz around your brand by simply using social media marketing strategies to advertise your products/services and connect with prospects and consumers, without paying through your nose.

Secret # 6.  Find Sources Of Funding Without Wasting a Minute!

Nobody is waiting to throw money at you just because you have an exciting business idea. Raising funds for your startup is indeed one of the greatest challenges for entrepreneurs. Forget big companies, even the banks are usually reluctant of financing startups without a credit history or a comprehensive career history. However, it won’t be a Herculean task to impress the investors for investing in your business with a well-written business plan and good PR skills.

Here’s a little list of some options for entrepreneurs looking to raise funds to get their business off the ground:

• Microcredits
• Crowd funding
• Peer-to-Peer Lending

Entrepreneur.com reveals that the best ways to raise funds for your business is to pull together small amounts in succession rather than trying to get a huge lump of capital when raising money from investors.

Secret # 7.  Your Attire is A Big Deal

Many entrepreneurs spend endless hours and days in working on the net, thinking strategies, crowd sourcing funds. But they forget to work on their visual resume for an overall package.  The way you dress and present yourself (in a professional manner) in front of an investor. Employee or customers makes a huge difference. After all first impression is the last impression. A casual look often give an impression that your comfort is more important to you than your investors, consumers etc.

Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, says that people often judge you basis your looks. Also, spell check and limit the usage of abbreviations and slangs when you are communicating through emails with prospective investors, business partners or affiliates.  If you’re polite, professional and knowledgeable with your words and looks, your mentors, customers and investors are sure to take you seriously and you’re sure to unleash success in your business endeavors.

Conclusion:

So, if you’re thinking of growing your business more, remember that people will not take you seriously until you really put in efforts from your side. So, just remember these 7 secrets and heed them carefully and you’ll surely be able to grow your business and make your investors, affiliates and consumers take your seriously as a visionary, disciplined and successful business owner.

We’ve all seen the motivational stories all over the Internet of businesses that seem like they’ve become overnight successes. However, most big things start from humble beginnings, including the giants that tower over us today.

Before you ever hit big business, you start out as a small business, and it’s where most successful people cut their teeth by being patient, persistent, and hard-working. There are no real shortcuts to success, but below are some growth marketing tips to make the journey a bit smoother.

Of course, the hardest is getting started. But if you already are an owner of a small business, then congratulations for getting off the ground. Now as you learn to fly, here are a few things you need to do in order to gradually elevate. There’s nothing more rewarding than painstakingly reaching the point where you have to learn how to soar.

1. Brand Your Business

This is pretty much the genesis of every successful business’ legacy. Getting a brand that’s unique, marketable, and easily recognizable is what separates the mom-and-pop store from the ones that can grow bigger.

A brand is anything associated with your business that sticks in the minds of customers. A logo, design, name, sound, music, reputation, emotion, faces, voices, or so on.

If you wish to make it yourself, then go ahead. If you have the budget, you can hire a graphic designer to come up with a logo that’s right for you. However you go about it, your brand should represent your business well. If you grow, the brand should grow with the business.

2. Understand Your Metrics

You wouldn’t really know if you’re actually becoming successful if you can’t track your own progress. Metrics and analytics are important to your efforts, even if you’re just starting out. It can also save you from ruin as it can warn you of impending danger and help you come up with solutions to problems. Understanding business metrics is virtually as important as knowing how to read and count; they’re the measure of your progress.

In terms of your online efforts, you’re basically looking at different figures in your metrics. Of course, overall site traffic is your main stat here. However, other stats such as bounce rate and time on site are just as important since they show just how interested people are to your content. Then there’s the reach and impressions that show just how many different people are being reached by what you have, or by your online advertisement.

3. Focus Your Time on What’s Working

You wouldn’t want to waste your time and energy on what doesn’t work, right? It’s like what the Pareto Principle states, 80% of success usually comes from 20% of efforts. You need to constantly look for what isn’t working for you and make the decision to scrap it in favor of something that does work for you.

Your metrics can help with detecting what does and what doesn’t work, as well as actually paying attention to what goes on day by day. When you see something that’s under-performing, you do what you can to fix that and then observe it. If it really doesn’t work out, then you’ll have to replace it with something that works better.

4. Build Your Email Database

This is old-school Internet marketing strategy right here, but it still works wonders as long as you know what you’re doing. Having an email database for your marketing efforts can help greatly with growing your business through the Internet.

Email marketing these days seem more personable, so you can incorporate it to give your campaign a bit of an extra boost. Advanced techniques like email autoresponders can send time and action based messages to better engage users.

You can either buy a list, append your current list, or use personalized URLs or other survey techniques to gather additional data. You can also offer a periodic email newsletter that users can register to, which may also help you gather more emails for your list.

5. Experiment with Paid Channels

Once you’ve exhausted your free options, then maybe it’s time to look towards paid channels to augment your inbound marketing efforts. But first, you must ask yourself who your primary buyers are, where those buyers may reside, and what your primary goals are.

You can create campaigns and buy certain keywords in Google Adwords, get targeted engagement with GoChime, spread your content in Taboola and Outbrain, put up sponsored content in LinkedIn, and so on. Do your research and ask around before deciding on giving money to a paid channel and take notes of what results you get.

6. Get Basic SEO Right

SEO is pretty much a standard these days; a fundamental that one must become familiar with in order to harness the power of the Internet as much as possible. There are now plenty of basic SEO guides strewn all over the Internet, waiting for an eager beginner to use that knowledge to propel their early efforts forward.

While SEO is far from the supposed shortcut to search ranking nirvana as it used to be seen as, it’s now an essential part of any online marketing endeavor. Being visible in the Internet is such a big thing nowadays that you need every advantage you can get.

7. Research Competitor Strategies

As the Chinese military leader Sun Tzu said in his magnum opus The Art of War, “You must know your enemy in order to defeat him.” By knowing what your competition is doing, you can either match them or come up with something that can completely trounce them. At the very least, you should know what they’re up to so that you don’t get caught by surprise.

One of the best ways to do this is by using a SWOT analysis. Contrary to popular belief a SWOT is a constantly updates document that help you focus on the important areas of your business and gets and edge over your competitors.

8. Create More Landing Pages

You may think that one landing page is enough, but you’d be wrong. Having more landing pages means being able to reach a wider audience. According to recent studies, you can generate five times more leads by increasing your number of landing pages to 10, so there’s almost no reason why you shouldn’t.

It can also improve your SEO ranking and help you segment more effectively. It turns out that having more landing pages increases your chances of getting what you want for your online efforts rather well.

9. Run a Contest

It’s perhaps one of the most well known marketing strategies in business, but it sure works well as long as you have a big enough audience who gets interested in some sort of a giveaway. When you do come up with one, plan it well, make sure that it’s attainable without being too easy, and hold it within a set period of time.

Also have people spread the word to bring in more participants who’ll also take a look around while partaking in the contest. It’s pretty much the reason why contests and giveaways are always done. They do work when done right.

10. Make Use of FAQ

This is all about being considerate to your audience. Having an FAQ page in your website makes sure that those interested can better understand what you’re all about and what they can get from you, as well as other details in between. It must also evolve over time to include questions and problems that you may encounter over time so that people can better understand in the future.

Any Other Growth Marketing Tips ?

This is not an exhaustive list but if you’re following these growth marketing tips then you’re sure to find some success with your business. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, leave them on the comment section below. Thank you for dropping by.

Vincent Sevilla is a professional graphic and web designer for Websitesetup. He also has a background in online marketing and a big fan of creative design.