4 Costless Inbound Marketing Ideas You Should Try in 2018
Are you just getting started with inbound marketing? Have you been doing inbound marketing for sometimes now? How long do you think it should take one before they start seeing results? If you are getting started with inbound marketing, you will definitely find it very challenging. Many marketers wonder how much it could cost to regularly generate content, improve social media outreach and all aspects of inbound marketing.
The good news is that there are countless ways you can increase your inbound marketing activities without having to break the bank. In other words, the basics are not out of your reach. From writing your own content to utilizing thousands of available website tools to help you reach your potential customers, here are 10 no-cost inbound marketing ideas you can try.
- Create high quality free content
Publishing high quality content remains the key to successful inbound marketing. If you want to attract customers to your website, you must publish high quality, valuable content. Content can be in the form of blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, white papers or tweets, among others.
At the very least, dedicate a few minutes of your time to create well-written content that is relevant and useful to your audience. of course if you are unable to produce the content yourself, you can contract a marketing agency or freelance content producers to help you publish the right content that will not only be right for the search engines but also one that your users will love.
- Create a loyalty program
You can develop a simple strategic partnership with your prospects through loyalty programs. A good example is B2B referral software known as Advocate Hub. This software allows users to build a loyalty program so that the firm can trigger customer enthusiasm and boost referrals of qualified leads.
Loyalty programs are done by incentivizing partners, customers and employees so that they become brand ambassadors of your target audience. Incentives can range from discounts to reward for content created such as guest posts and online reviews and testimonials.
- Use social media networks
Social media networks have become the cornerstone of inbound marketing, thanks to their global outreach. Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Google++ can be used to promote and share content, products as well as special offers. Social media also allows you to not only interact with your customers, but also create brand loyalty.
Remember to keep track of your social media interactions both on your website and on your social media profiles/fan page.
- Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is the process of ensuring that your prospects are ready to buy before directing them to your sales team. Sometimes your sales department can waste valuable time and resources on leads that are not qualified. Here are some tips on how to ensure successful lead nurturing:
- Ensure the timing is right: do not rush your prospects such that you start bombarding them with your sales emails soon after they hit the subscribe button or like your page. It is important to take your time to bring them closer to wanting to open their wallets
- Constantly and consistently refine your messaging: know the kind of information your prospect wants to hear based on the data you have collected. By ensuring that you keep giving them the right and relevant information, you will be building rapport and trust with your customers.
- What do you want to give them? State what you want to provide them and what they stand to gain from your offer.
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Marketing Buzzwords You Should Know
Many marketers think of marketing buzzwords as some over-used, obnoxious industry jargon that means absolutely nothing. But maybe it is time we go back to the basics. Maybe it is time we re-educate ourselves on the true meaning of some marketing terms. So what are the marketing buzzwords we should be focusing on this year?
• Pragmatic TV marketing
It is a fact that most customers don’t wait to watch a TV episode when it first airs on TV, thanks to streaming servers that make it possible to watch shows on-demand at any time that is convenient to the viewers. For instance, if you miss marketing to people who watch “The legend of the Seeker” on ABC, you can still market to those who decide to watch it online on Hulu. Smart marketers are now using the guerrilla approach to reach customers on TV, YouTube, and other streaming channels. Companies Like Media Design Group uses that approach to design individual customer profiles using available data. This is what makes it possible for these kinds of businesses to reach millions of customers through personalized ads systems wherever they are.
• Local Search Marketing
Local search marketing refers to the process of optimizing your content for local search. In other words, you can target the local market by optimizing your digital properties to generate traffic from very specific locations/countries/towns/regions. Thus, it is safe to say Local search marketing is the foundational digital marketing strategy for local businesses. Your local customers can find you based on the information they get from search engines.
• Analytics
Analytics is a fancy word for analysis of data. Whoever you are running some marketing campaigns, it is important to look at the data, analyze it, and make conclusions.
Simply put, analytics is the marketing dashboard to help you track your numbers and find out what areas need improvement.
• Conversions
When a customer takes action such as making a subscription, opting into your marketing list, downloading, purchasing, or sharing your content, we say the customer has converted. Conversions can thus be viewed as some sort of interactions between the customer and your business.
• Influencer marketing
It has been found that nearly 84% of marketers have lined up at least one influencer campaign in the coming year. Influencer marketing involves the process of using influential members of society to market your products and services. For instance, you can find influential users on Social Media who can help deliver your marketing messages. Influential users can significantly influence consumers to trust your brand.
• User-generated content marketing
Smart marketers also understand the power of user-generated marketing. User-generated content is normally content that is generated by the users, and in most cases, it is not solicited or paid for by the company. Many consumers have come to trust user-generated content because it comes from other users who might share vital experiences. In other words, user-generated content seems more authentic because it is not coming from marketing experts. Another advantage of user-generated content is that there are no risks involved in terms of cost if it doesn’t produce the desired results. Mjrvisuals company has its own thoughts, engage your business marketing through video content with video production and design when you need it.
• Referral marketing
Did you know that people are four times more likely to make a purchase if a friend recommends the product or service? Referral marketing can also be called word-of-mouth marketing and utilizes the power of personal recommendations to build trust and bring in new businesses. The key to having referral marketing work is by having loyal customers who are willing to act as your brand ambassador.
Why Online Marketing is Essential for Your Business
Online Marketing is Essential for Your Business
Are you thinking that the business world has become so competitive that it has almost reached the limit of competition? The bad news is that it is not about to. You are still going to witness more rival business set-ups opening operations and more websites designed to sell the product you are selling being created. Just imagine that whatever line of business you are; whatever industry you are in, there are thousands, sometimes millions of others offering the same product as you are. What do you think will make a customer to choose you over others offering the same services or products? In this century, it is suicidal for any business owner not to have an online presence. It is part of the strategies of remaining relevant and being competitive, as well as attracting new customers, globally.
Why Being Online Matters
It doesn't matter whether you have been in business for the last five decades or you are just starting out. The internet has actually leveled the playing ground for both the big boys and the small fish; in other words, when a customer is looking for a product online, it doesn't matter who is selling the product. What matters is whether the customer is able to find your site and can trust you. Essentially, those businesses which are not yet online are in for a big trouble because sooner than later, they will be out of business if at all they aren't already.
You need to get noticed through Search Engine Optimization
If you are online, the biggest headache is getting noticed. You cannot afford to be ignored if you want to make a fortune online. As they say, creating a website is the easiest part-the hardest part is pushing your site as far up the search engines as possible. Remember, for very niche, there are millions of other individuals, and businesses who are scrambling to get noticed in the search engines.
That is why you need a professional marketing company to help you reach your potential customers. Search Engine Optimization companies are doing a wonderful job to assist businesses undercut competition by pushing their sites up the search engines. Otherwise, if you just create a site and sit back and relax, you are not going to see substantial number of unique page views from your site. Does this explain why many people who created blogs and website with anticipation of carrying home a fat AdSense check are left disappointed?
Optimizing your site isn't a simple-one-day-event as some optimists think. It requires skills, dedication, professionalism and patience for you to succeed at it. Therefore, it is important that you get a professional SEO company to pull your site out of the murk and make it recognizable in the local or global search engines. It is time to let a SEO expert company perform search engine optimization for you as you concentrate on your core business.
Of course there are many other marketing strategies you can apply to grab the attention of the potential customers such as social media, email marketing, pay per click marketing, among others. For optimum results, you ought to apply all the available marketing strategies, depending on where your target customer base is located.
The Marketer’s Creed: 3 Qualities of Great Marketers
Marketing is the engine of any business. Whether you are a small business owner or the Chief Marketing officer of a big corporation, you need to have the right mix of traits to stay successful. The foundation of responsibility is no doubt the most important component of any success in business. In this article, I am going to talk about some touch points around this necessary quality in your life in order to help you achieve your business goals.
- Get motivated
The renowned author and speaker Zig Ziglar said that motivation, just like taking a bath, doesn’t last. One should constantly recharge their batteries of motivation to stay motivated. That is why it is recommended that you stay motivated on a daily basis.
The only way to keep your momentum is to stay motivated. This is like a muscle that needs to be exercised daily if you want to stay on top of your game. Of course there are days you wake up and feel like you would rather stay in bed and abscond your obligations. So many people give in to the temptation and end up wasting a lot of time.
One way to build motivation is to form daily rituals where you perform certain set of actions, every day, which get you ‘in the zone’. If you establish a routine that puts you in the path to maximum productivity early in the day, your body and mind will learn that it is time to get going.
For instance, if you are a runner, you may choose to wake up, put on your shoes and start running every time you wake up from bed. In the office, the ritual could be visualization, meditation before going for a meeting or making a sales presentation.
Our bodies and minds are like engines, they must be kept in optimum working conditions to function correctly. The engine must first be fired before it can start working. Get yourself motivated first thing before you start doing what you planned.
- Assume responsibility
If anything is to be, it is up to you. There are no accidents. Responsibility is the hallmark of successful entrepreneurs and is a way of being, not just what you do. When you are truly responsible, you accept the fact that success or failure is in your hands no matter what. Blaming outside forces or people for your failures shows that you are irresponsible.
Great leaders claim responsibility even when things go wrong not just when they are buzzing. Being responsible means not blaming anyone or anything for the things that go wrong. Being responsible means taking an introspection approach and looking at what you could have done differently to produce better results.
You should be aware at all times the impact you are creating around you and the examples you are setting for others. You have the power to create the circumstances you want. No one prevents you from creating the business you desire.
- Accept no excuses
If you are personally accountable to your business or quality of life, you should be honest with yourself; you should face realty and accept no excuses. Acknowledge where you have done mistakes in the past and commit to improving things in the future.
You really need to be honest with yourself about where you are slaking and resolve to honor your commitments. Do not break promises. Every time you break a commitment or a promise to yourself, your self-worth is eroded and eventually, your inner self’s worth is destroyed.
As a serious entrepreneur, you should choose accountability as your minimum standard in everything you do. If you do so, you will find that your business will have more meaning and you will experience more success.
Online Marketing: How to Write Great SEO Articles that Attract Traffic to Your Website
If you are relatively new to the world of Search Engine Optimization, you may have heard the term SEO being thrown around. Writing great SEO articles is not difficult if you understand the basics of SEO. SEO simply stands for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is designed to help people find content easily in the search engines like Google. In other words, a SEO article is any content created with the goal of making it easy for people to find you in the search engines. To write better SEO articles, you must do the following:
- Carry Thorough Keyword Research
Before you start writing, do a comprehensive keyword research. Keywords or phrases are those terms that are likely to be used by the web user to find your content. For instance, if a student wants to look for an example of an essay about hotels to help him/her write their homework, they will most likely type the phrase sample essay about hotel in Google search box. So that becomes your keyword. So if you include that keyword in your article, this student will probably land in your website if you offer professional essay writing services.
- Do Keyword optimization
Simply researching keywords and including them in your article is not enough. You must know where, when and how to use those keywords. Just tossing keywords anyhow isn’t going to work. The keywords must occur naturally throughout the article. They must also be relevant to the content. Therefore, you can not use the keyword sample essay about hotel in an article that talks about Weight Loss for example.
- Organize content
You must organize your content in a logical way so that the reader can easily relate to the content. Remember if they don’t stay in your site long enough, they will navigate away, which is bad for your SEO strategy.
- Promote your content
No matter how great your content is, no one will know about it if you don’t share. Luckily, there is a plethora of ways one can share articles today including social media.
Write about something interesting
If you thought people would instantly stream to your website as soon as you publish your article no matter how bogus it is, you are dead wrong. People want to read about something that is interesting to them; something that solves their problem. You content should have a strategy so that you have clear goals on why you are publishing the article in the first place. Is it to get people to buy from you? Is it to simply inform your readers about some great idea? Do you simply want to educate or entertain your readers?
More importantly, your content should be long enough to count. Don’t be too obsessed about the word count. Rather, be more concerned about the point you are trying to make. Search engines generally give preference to longer articles of at least 600 words. In-depth content has particularly found favors in Google search engine. Therefore, if you can get someone to write you a 2,000 word SEO article, by all means go for it.
Target the right audience
Finally, it is critical to target the right audience and design your content strategy accordingly. If your business targets engineers, you might want to writer more insightful, in-depth content. You may also want to ensure you are accurate with your facts.
Need more help with your SEO articles? Do not hesitate to hire a professional SEO writer to help. Not everyone has time to pen a triumphant SEO article so it makes sense to ask for help if you need one.
Top 10 WordPress Plugins You Must Have
Why WordPress in the First Case?
Did you know that WordPress powers more than 60 million websites online? Generally, WordPress is a content management system that is rocking in the online world. As opposed to the traditional HTML websites that would require a lot of time and money to set up, WordPress has made work much easier for most bloggers and website owners. Perhaps this explains why a whopping 22% new websites launched are powered by WordPress in the USA. Apart from that, WordPress makes it convenient for your to manage your content, it is flexible, and it is SEO friendly.
The Role of Plugins
That being said, you also need cool plugins to go with your WordPress website. Having the right plugins can do a lot of things for you, which includes: improving your SEO and user experience, usability, and various conversions. The following WordPress Plugins are just what you might need. As a matter of fact, these are the plugins that have been given a vote of confidence by the online community; most of them are free.
1. All in One SEO Pack: This is exactly what any blogger or website owner would want. All in One SEO Pack has been downloaded over 15,000,000 times. What it does is that it automatically optimizes your blog for the search engines. It also generates Meta Tags automatically. All you need to do is just to download it and install it, and the rest of the things will work themselves out. If you are an advanced user, you are free to fine-tune its features. Another alternative to this plugin is the WordPress SEO by Yoast
- Contact Form 7: you will love Contact Form 7 if there is need for you to manage multiple contact forms. You have the option to customize the contact forms to suit your unique needs. There is a CAPTCHA integration option for you to help you fight spam. Contact Form 7 comes in over 50 languages. If you need to create a fancy Contact Us page, Contact Us Page - Contact People, is the plugin for you. There are actually very few websites whose contact us page is stunningly vibrant.
3. Clicky Web Analytics: You’ve got to love Clicky Web Analytics if you have a lot of Google data you are handling in Google Analytics. Unlike the Google Analytic tool which is so cumbersome, this plugin is so refreshing, and it provides a clean interface for you to view your data even if you are the type of person that likes checking your statistics more than once a day.
- Secure WP: this plugin gives you thorough security check and makes a number of changes in your WordPress installation so as to make it as secure as possible. For instance, it hides your WordPress number version.
5. Buddy Press: BuddyPress lets you build a community from your visitors by enabling users to create profiles, send messages to one another, and interact through chat. It is a kind of creating a social network in a box.
6. Feedweb: Every website owner needs to get feedback from the audience on how they getting on with the content. This plugin will allow you to receive feedback from your visitors on how they are experiencing your services or who they feel you can improve on the content.
7. Members: Members is a plugin that contributes to making WordPress one of the coolest Content management systems for web sites. It extends your control a little further by letting you control the roles of members of your blog. It allows you to create, edit, or delete the roles played by various members. It gives you powers to control permissions of the members as well.
8. Social Gallery Lite: This is a great way for you to boost your social network for your blog. The Social Gallery Lite is your Ultimate Social Lightbox Plugin which is a good substitute to vanilla image lightboxes.
- Tumblr Importer:Tumblr importer helps you to import blog posts from a Tumblr blog. This is the ultimate Tumblr Importer that will maintain the format of the blogs, as well as the backgrounds. It can also import drafts and pages.
- Hotfix: Hotfix will fix common WordPress without having to wait for next WordPress core release. In other words, you’ll fix bugs quickly even if you have not updated your WordPress.
There are actually countless plugins floating in the online sea. The type of plugin you need depends on your specific needs. However, there is no need to install every other plugin you meet as this can slow down your WordPress site.
How to Create a Smashing Brand: 5 ideas to refresh your online branding
Did you know that a strong identity helps your customers to remember you and makes you stand out in the marketplace? However, here is some news for you: branding is more than just shinny logos and a fancy name. Branding essentially involves helping customers to have a sense of belonging and attachment to your products, services, culture and values. If you want to create an unforgettable brand online, it needs to be consistent, recognizable and should appear across all aspects of your online presence. Learn how to create an unforgettable brand using these five tips.
- Are you prepared to spend some money?
When it comes to online branding, you cannot avoid spending some money. If you want to make more money, you have to spend more money. It means you will have to spend in things like social media, Ad Words, and content creation.
- Identify and convey your purpose
In order to create a powerful online brand, you need to create a defining purpose that will act as your compass. Sometimes it is good to go back to the basics. Why are you in this business in the first place? Does your mission and purpose translate into your online presence?
- Keep it real
Sometimes small businesses suffer into oblivion because of their insistence to look ‘big’ and corporate like. The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to. If you want your brand to stand out online, do not hastate to put your personality behind it. People are more receptive to people. For instance, try to include your picture in your company profile. You could also infuse some humor into the content. Authenticity should be your goal regardless of whether you are new in the market. Be passionate and you will attract passionate clients into your online business.
- Revisit your target audience
Do you really know who your target audience is? You need to know who your target audience are and where there are or where you can find them. Therefore, you need to make sure you can consistently target your audience so that your audience find content when they expect it.
- Conduct yourself professionally
Whatever you do, remember that this is business. So you should pay a close attention to how you conduct yourself. Avoid being remembered for the wrong reasons by ensuring you post or publish credible and factual content. Go for quality over quantity. You have probably heard the saying that goes: it is not what you say, but how you say it that is essential when it comes to marketing. Although your personality reflects on your startup at the beginning, the personality of your startup will become an integration of voices that write for your brand.
It is important to keep in mind that what is being said about your brand is very important; therefore, it is important to make sure you listen to your audience.
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