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Will Mobile Marketing Mean the Death of Email?

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This is a guest post by Simon Philips.

Do you rely solely on email marketing to promote your business? You may want to rethink this idea, as mobile marketing may become the high-tech, modern way for business owners to increase productivity and product awareness. If you still want to use email marketing, there is nothing wrong with that, but you may also want to supplement your email campaign with mobile marketing.

Types of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing can come in a number of different forms, such as apps, ads featured in browsers, websites and SMS text messaging. The type of marketing you use for your business depends a great deal on the type of business you have and which marketing plan will work best for you.

Mobile vs Email

Even though there is an increasing number of smartphone users, approximately 41% of individuals still use a basic phone. If you rely solely on mobile marketing, you may not reach the majority of those people. On the other hand, if you rely solely on email marketing, you may miss out on those prospective customers who use mobile devices a great deal. For this reason, email and mobile marketing can be very useful in a business. Another fact to keep in mind is that there are approximately 3 billion email users worldwide at the current time, and email is still and will always be a popular way to contact people and notify them of products and services that are available.

When Email Marketing Pays Off

Approximately 83% of shoppers own a cell phone of some type, but the majority of them have stated that mobile advertising does not greatly affect or change how they buy items. If you want to influence consumers in their buying decisions and entice them to buy your products, you may find that email marketing will serve a useful purpose, especially if your products and/or services are sold online.

When Mobile Marketing Can Be Helpful

If your business operates out of a building and is not strictly online, you may find mobile marketing to be useful. About 72% of shoppers use cell phones and smartphones when they are away from home, and out of that number, 63% use them while they are shopping. Mobile marketing could direct more customers your way if you have a mobile-friendly website that features local contact information such as your street address and a phone number. Mobile users in your area who come across your site while they are out may actually decide to pay your business a visit if they are interested in what you have to offer.

So What is the Answer?

When it comes right down to it, there is a place in business for both email and mobile marketing. A smart business owner may want to use a combination of both types of marketing in order to cover all the bases and reach potential customers on every level. Even though mobile marketing is becoming more popular due to additional mobile users, email is here to stay.

Simon Philips is the founder of TouchLogic.co.uk , a mobile marketing company. Simon is a mobile ready website designer and helps small businesses make sure their sites are compatible with mobile devices.

Using Email to Grow Your Blog

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This is a guest post by Reuben Dickison.

It is a Catch-22. Polls consistently find that people choose email as their preferred method of being contacted and updated. The same polls find that the highest source of irritation to online consumers is spam. This brings up the obvious question of –

What is the difference between Email and Spam?

Much like beauty – it is in the eye of the beholder. If it is of interest to the person, even if it is pure direct advertising, it is a welcome email. If the person receiving the email is not interested, it does not matter what the message is – they will consider it spam. This is the biggest factor in deciding how to use email to increase traffic to your blog or website.

When implementing email marketing campaigns more is not better. If you have something genuinely useful to say and it is timely it will probably be well received. It is a reasonable presumption that if a person visited your site, registered, and provided an email address then they have some interest in your site or products. This does not mean they all want a daily update on your site.

The purpose of your email updates or newsletter is very simple but often overlooked. It should be to drive traffic back to your website. I subscribe to one blog that I follow quite closely. I get a newsletter once a week (which is too often for most in my opinion). It contains the complete article of new posts. While I find it interesting it does in fact mean I have not actually visited the website in months as I have no need to. This is drastically reducing the value of any advertising they use to support the blog.

To run an effective email system there are some basic steps.

  1. You need to have email addresses. To collect email addresses you must actively solicit them. A call to action to register and to subscribe to newsletters must be highly visible.
  2. The emails or newsletters sent out must be for the purpose of directing traffic to the website. Highlight the most popular posts and pages in the email with a link to go to the complete post. Use your web analytics to determine the most popular.
  3. The more tailored the message the more effective it will be. If the reader can choose categories they are interested in then their emails should focus on those categories.
  4. It should not look like a cloned email every time. Aside from your logo, change up the look and format frequently to encourage them to actual read it as opposed to opening then immediately moving to trash or spam as “the same as always”.

There are numerous free plugins to use to set up email and newsletter campaigns for either specific or ongoing use. The better ones require more set-up and include an email verification (click here to confirm subscription type email) system.

If you want to grow your website or business through the use of purchased or shared email lists then always use an alternative email account to do the mass unsolicited mailings. This will prevent your primary site email from being tagged as a spammer account by the major email servers.

Hiring professional services sometimes makes sense, particularly if there is an e-commerce portion to your website. Whether it is to simply purchase a list or to conduct a full marketing campaign check to make sure that you have access to the account the emails get sent from. If you purchase 5000 emails in a list and 2000 of them are bounced as undeliverable you need to know that and be able get refunded or new to replace them.

Reuben Dickison is semi-retired freelance writer and blogger currently living in the United States. He is writing for email marketing services from emailergo.com. He holds degrees in Marketing and Public Administration with past jobs including consumer financial management, general manager of a multi-million dollar retail business, and private business management training and consulting.

Increasing Brand Awareness with Word of Mouth Marketing

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This is a guest post by Amanda Revie

“If you like it, tell your friends” translates into “If you like it, tweet about it” in the age of social media. Word of mouth marketing for brand awareness is all about creating compelling and engaging content that people will want to share with others. A successful strategy for increasing brand awareness often combines different platforms on which to share your content and release it into the world. It is easy, relatively cost free to market your brand through different platforms, but done in the wrong way and it will never work. Planning and strategy are the keys to raising brand awareness.

Constant Updates Don’t Raise Awareness

Spamming is the absolute worst thing you can do. It is easy to think that the more content you post the more likely you will interest someone, but in fact constantly updating is a big turn off for users. It is therefore a huge waste of your time to be on social media and actually driving interest away.

Think quality, not quantity and you will begin to build awareness around a brand that people will want to engage with on social media platforms and share your content with your friends.

However, don’t make the mistake of posting too little. People enjoy fresh content, even if it’s something small. If you don’t update regularly then people will stop checking your site. This is why a content strategy is important, so you know what to post and when. This also means you can do it beforehand and have it automatically post for you if you’re away.

Striking a balance is of the utmost importance.

Variety is the Spice of Life  

If all your updates are promoting you, your products, events or services then the people who receive your updates will become bored and go elsewhere. Raising brand awareness is doing just that- raising awareness of your brand and not necessarily what your brand sells. Let your reputation and your brand identity sell your products. Take Innocent Drinks on Facebook as an example. Most of their posts are in line with their overall personality as a business. They use casual humor about nature, animals, fruit and veg, and bad jokes that they find amusing as posts for their Facebook page. They do occasionally post about their products, but it by no means dominates their page.

Even content that seems completely irrelevant can have a positive effect on your brand awareness. Social media and content marketing company Red Rocket Media, for instance, promoted their ‘best office dog’ competition through their Facebook and Twitter pages. Over the two months of the competition, the reach of their Facebook increased by 4,495 per cent. This demonstrates how even seemingly irrelevant, but engaging and compelling content can increase awareness of the brand behind it.

Going Viral

A viral marketing plan takes a lot of planning and an inspired idea. A video is the type of content most likely to go viral, as it is eye-catching and easy to engage with. If we think that the video is funny, fascinating, or weird then we are more likely to share it instantly with our friends on social media platforms. A viral video is the ultimate in word of mouth marketing.

A video that has gone viral is often short, simple and entertaining. If it’s for a brand or a business, it’s never obvious or advertorial.

Google considers video to be more engaging and ranks it higher than blogs or articles so it will gain more exposure. However, you can’t rely on Google to do the work for you. If you want to make the video go viral, then there are a few things that you can do to help it along. Make sure that the thumbnail image is intriguing and your title will spark interest. You should share your video with your network on all your social media platforms, and ask them to share it. Make sure you share it with the right people too, such as bloggers, writers and sites with millions of visitors. If it’s successful, then people will share it without any obligation to you, thus promoting your business by pure and simple word of mouth.

Content is King

Word of mouth marketing starts with social media and if you do it right it will expand and expand. The things that you post need to be consistent with your brand’s identity but varied enough to retain interest. You also need to make sure that you strike a balance between posting too much and not enough. Above all, the content needs to be engaging. As the saying goes, content is king.

Author  Bio:

Amanda Revie is an online social media marketer and SEO expert at the WebMarketing Group. You can follow them @webmktinggroup on Twitter

Using Social Media to Boost your SEO strategy

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This is a guest post by Charles Hammerman

In this rapidly changing online environment, social media plays a very important part in gaining exposure. News spreads like wildfire throughout the main outlets, and there’s no better way of getting a message across to a large number of new people. It wasn’t long ago that SEO and social media were two pretty different things, but recently they seem to have blended in to one online marketing strategy.

For this reason, utilizing social media is essential for any aspiring business. Nowadays, half of the world’s population is on websites such as Twitter and Facebook, and it hasn’t taken long for the world’s biggest brands to reach out across the globe and gain a whole new customer base. There are countless stories of social media posts from companies going viral.

This is an example of why social media is so important, and why it should not be discounted from a company’s SEO strategy. In fact, more and more companies have now begun to make use of social media in order to bring about an increase in the number of followers, and visibility that their pages get. If you browse Twitter, you’ll find famous companies have their own accounts which provide live updates of what’s happening with the business, and what’s new. This is the kind of thing you should incorporate.

Getting it Right

If you are looking to use social media to your own advantage and boost your SEO strategy, it is important for you to make sure that you follow this few steps.

  • Firstly, it is important for you to create a plan of what you are going to do during your social media campaign. Gaining popularity on a social media website is not necessarily difficult, but making sure that you maintain the level is what’s really important. This is where some companies may fail.
  • It is important for you to make sure that you create accounts on all of the major social media websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, and create an identity for you and your brand. Whatever you share on one of your pages should also be done so on the other pages, which helps in creating a unified identity for your business.
  • The most important thing that you must keep in mind during your social media campaigns is to always treat your visitors well. The real point of social media is to interact with the people, to talk to them and gauge their reactions and opinion. It would be a poor decision to ignore what your users are saying. Try to interact with your readers and viewers as much as possible.
  • The final thing to make sure you get right is the content itself. It’s all very well posting regular updates, but if you don’t have anything good to say, then nothing is going to get shared, which means that you won’t boost your online presence at all. Be as interesting as possible, and capitalize on breaking news that’s relevant you your industry or niche.

Charles Hammerman is an international SEO and social media marketing specialist based in the UK.

Cost-Effective Ways to Market Your Online Business Offline

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A lot of people these days are so focused on marketing their businesses online that they tend to neglect the offline part. Sure, promoting online is much easier, gives us wider reach and most of the time, is cheaper as well. However, this doesn’t mean doing offline promotions is not worth it.

In this blog post, I will list down some cost effective ways to market your online business offline. These offline marketing techniques should just complement your current online strategies and should still allow you to reach more people without spending too much money.

1. Giveaway items

There’s already plenty to choose from here however you don’t really need to spend too much.  A simple BIC stic pen with your web address in it can easily promote your website. And these pens don’t cost too much at all so you are literally getting more bang for your buck already.

You can also give away more expensive items like T-Shirts, mugs, mouse pads, even a discount coupon for what your business is offering. The key here is to gauge people’s interest and make them curious enough about your business that they would check out your website no matter what.

2.Flyers and brochures

There’s a reason why so many businesses are still doing this and its due to it being still effective. Here you just need to have flyers and brochures made and those simply need to have information about your business what it is all about. You can even go into as specific as listing down the different products or services that you’re selling and the corresponding prices for each of them. You can also combine this with the first method which should entice people more since you’re giving away something.

The key here is targeting the location carefully. If your business provides services that are related to university students, then it totally makes sense to give flyers near the universities. Or if you’re someone who’s providing freelance services, then go to places where small business are located. Overall, you want to target as many qualified prospects as possible so it’s not entirely about the quantity.

3.  Yourself and your resources as a marketing vehicle.

Are you traveling daily to places that are crowded? Or do you drive for more than an hour a day? If yes, then you can make use of yourself in promoting your business.

For example, if you’re commuting and riding trains, you can wear a shirt or anything that mentions your business. That can easily be seen by hundreds, if not thousands of people per day. If you have a car on the other hand, you can put out signs or even have decals on it and make it look like as if it’s a moving billboard.  This will reach a lot of people especially during rush hours.

Those are just two examples and as I said, the sky is the limit here. Why not take a look of what you have and start from there?

4. Sponsor events and competitions

If you want to take your offline marketing efforts to the next level, then you must consider taking part into events and competitions as a sponsor.  With events, you can easily make use of all the three things that I just discussed. The good thing with sponsoring events is that you are given some good exposure as well since the MC’s mention the sponsors frequently throughout the event. A lot of times (and depending on the sponsorship package that you would avail) they also give you time to talk and promote your business. And this is best time to not just tell participants about your business, but also give good valuable information that would make them interested enough to learn more about you.

Sponsoring events is the most expensive among all however if done right, it can easily yield better and quicker results. Just make sure to plan carefully here as the risk is definitely much higher. Don’t forget to consider the audience of the event too. If the target age of your business is 40 years old and above, then it might not be wise for you to sponsor a university event.

Offline marketing can be as powerful and cost-effective as online marketing if done correctly. Its important here to do your homework first, plan things carefully and then execute that plan to perfection. Then simply just rinse and repeat.

Do you have any other cost-effective offline marketing techniques that you want to share? Feel free to let me know through the comment form.

Foretelling the Future? You Don’t Need ESP

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This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

On the surface, it seems like product launches consist of three steps: think up the product, make the product, and launch it to the public. The truth is that there is a lot more work that goes into it than that, which involves anticipating the future, foretelling how a product will be received on the market. It’s not so mystical as say hiring a psychic to predict market fluctuations, although there are companies that actually do this. Realistic foretelling of the future involves thinking and acting precisely. Here are some of the things that you need to do if you want to set your product up to succeed.

Product Research

Here is the sad truth: chances are high that someone has had the same idea you’ve had before. This is why, as soon as you start to take your idea seriously, you need to go into research mode. You don’t just need to find out whether the product already exists. You need to look up patents, trademarks, copyrights, etc. It’s important to do this for every product that even remotely resembles yours. This isn’t just for your protection. It’s to help you figure out how to make your product the absolute best product on the market.

Product Testing

You need to test your product before you start marketing it to the public or attempting to launch it for sales revenue. There are a few phases to this.

1. Prototype testing

Make several different models of the product you want to launch. These are called prototypes. Bring people to, for lack of better word, play with your prototypes and then ask them what they think. Track their responses to each prototype, positive and negative. Use their feedback to inform the next round of product prototypes. Repeat this cycle until you’ve got a single product that is free of bugs, glitches or problems.

2. Product Honing

Once you’ve got a prototype that is functional and without major bugs, create a few variations of this finalized prototype and run through the testing process again. You can help yourself with this process if you bring in groups both from your original prototype testing sessions and brand new eyes.

3. Run the Numbers

Trying to pick a price point can be difficult, particularly with markets being as volatile as they are. You need to do more than just a simple Excel sheet projection to figure out how your product is likely to sell given what you know about your market, the current economy, etc. Profit Stars asset liability management team recommends running a variety of different scenarios to help you get the fullest picture of your product’s projected success…which, unless you’re a mathematician is probably something you’ll want to hire a professional to help you do.

Get It Out There

It’s okay to do a soft launch of a product to get an idea of how it will perform within the real world. Soft launches are a great way to get independent feedback and to test market response. You can also use this time to properly market the product for a “real” and “hard” launch on a future date. This is another area where it is helpful to hire professionals. A marketing firm can help you pick a date and make sure that a good amount of buzz and anticipation is built up for your product so that, when it hard launches, it will bring in a large sum of money. Even better, professional marketers will know how to help you sustain the buzz surrounding your product launch long after the launch has actually taken place.

Unfortunately, as far as we know, nobody is able to accurately predict the future, though as stated before, some companies do test the waters with psychics. The real way to foretell the future is to do your research and testing correctly. If you do, there’s no reason to believe that the product you dream up can’t be launched successfully and profitably.

Get With It – Businesses Need to Be More Eco-Friendly

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This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

Becoming Eco-friendly in the business world is more than just a fad. For many entrepreneurs, it is a way of life, and more businesses need to jump in on the cause. Not only will recycling and saving energy increase profit and lower costs, but it will also serve as an inspiration for employees and work associates. It is just as important, if not more so, that businesses participate in making the planet greener, as it is for anyone else.

Going green for a business can be as simple as switching to energy saving light bulbs, or as complicated as converting the entire office or building to some type of sustainable energy source. There are many cost saving ways a business can participate in making the world more Eco-friendly. Here are few of the more popular ones:

1. Go Paperless 

For a long time, industry leaders have been trying to promote the paperless office; it is more efficient, safer and saves money. Use digital memos, calendars, emails and documents to reduce paper waste.

There are actually several business benefits to going digital: employee efficiency increases and it can create a substantial savings on paper, which can amount to as much as $1,800 a year. Additionally, a company that uses less paper also spends less on file storage, printer ink, toner, copy paper and document shredding.

2. Energy Efficiency 

Save money on energy by replacing regular light bulbs with fluorescent. Turn off unneeded lights at night. Adjust computer power settings so they run on “power saver” mode and replace appliances with energy efficient appliances. You can learn more about getting great rates on electricity at www.Electric.com.

3. Start a Recycling Program 

Recycle as many products as you can. Make recycle bins available for employees. If you are a small business consider combining your recycling efforts with those of other businesses in the building. Most businesses and people already recycle so making this a daily business activity shouldn’t be that difficult. Be the change you wish to see.

4. Promote Telecommuting One or Two Days a Week 

By having some employees work part time from home you can promote better energy efficiency. The fewer computers used in the office on certain days, the more you can save business on energy costs.

5. Sustainable Energy 

Sustainable energy is very popular all across the country right now, so you may be able to find inexpensive solar power or wind energy options that will power your installations at least partially. This can save you a lot of money on energy costs, lowering your overhead and increasing your revenue.

If each one of us takes it upon ourselves to make these practical changes in our personal and professional lives, collectively we can go a long way. Don’t get overwhelmed by the forces of disinformation: your planet is depending on you!