Effective and low-cost marketing tips every marketer should consider
Many marketers have found themselves in a situation where they are spending a lot of money in advertising and marketing but end up wasting their money. According to Forbes, almost 50% of advertising is wasted. That is a lot of money, considering the fact that companies spend billions of dollars to gain customers. So how do you ensure that your marketing efforts are strategic, practical, and low-cost? Here are some tips you need to consider.
Know your market
It is imperative to have a clear understanding of your market if you are to succeed in online marketing. Before you even start spending on marketing, you need to figure out your market. That invariably entails knowing your product very well. Once you know your product and how it can help solve your clients’ needs, it will be easier to identify your target market. Once you can identify your target audience, it easy to design a winning marketing strategy without even having to hire an expensive marketing agency.
Your advertising decisions should be based on research
No one goes into the battlefield without designing a winning plan. The case is no different when it comes to marketing and advertising. It is essential to come up with a well-researched and well-thought-out marketing plan.
The plan you come up with will help you to determine the best and most effective marketing channels to reach your audiences.
Things like demographics, bounce rate, conversion rate, acquisition, and audience should be familiar to you. It is important to know how each marketing channel will contribute to your overall growth if you want to make a difference and reap big from your efforts.
Networking
Did you know that networking is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use without the need to break the bank? Join a local business community and be an active participant. If they like your brand, they will tell their friends, colleagues, and relatives without even your knowledge.
People are your greatest assets. Do not underrate what they can do for you.
Content marketing
One of the most effective forms of marketing is content marketing. It is not only cheap but a very effective way of building relationships among people who are genuinely interested in your products. Serious marketers and small business owners have a blog. When writing your blog (or using video and/or podcast) try to offer genuine information to your audience.
It shouldn’t always be about advertising your product because you don’t want to come across a salesman who is only interested in selling his/her products.
Leverage social networks
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all popular networks that you can take advantage of to market your products and services. They can be a great source of traffic if you share interesting stuff.
By creating and sharing great content, you will grow your audience. However, it would be best if you were patient as it can take years before you build a strong following.
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.
Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Common mistakes while choosing a web host
Are you in the process of searching for the appropriate web host for your website? Here are some of the common mistakes that you should be aware of.
- Going for the cheapest web hosting plan
The cheapest hosting plan is not always the best because it has some drawbacks, which may be limiting to one’s business. What people should actually be aware of is that when someone offers a cheap plan, there is something they take back and that they may not offer everything else that others get at a higher cost. In other words, it is not likely that you will receive the same level of service as those who pay more because if it was possible to receive the same level of service, everyone in the planet would go for the cheapest web hosting providers. This then makes sense why we have coupon hosting for those who are involved in reseller hosting.
However, it does not necessarily mean that the most expensive hosting plans are always the best options. But it definitely means that the less you pay, the less services and features you get. When you choose a cheap web hosting, expect to experience many downtimes and poor server infrastructure and this may translate to poor quality customer service.
- Looking out for freebies
It is obviously advantageous to look for freebies, especially if you are a first timer. However, it is important to note that looking for the maximum number of freebies in one web host can make you lose focus and ultimately make the right web hosting decision. Most web hosting companies give away freebies to attract customers, but is upon you to look careful what the catch is. Some of the freebies are as good as they seem but they end up luring you to make a buying decision which could prove expensive in the long run. Therefore, ensure that the most important factors are right with host before you look at what freebies they are offering. Some of the factors to look at include: server speed and up time, great customer support, reasonable price and domain name registration policy (let us look at this next).
- Free domain
Many web masters get attracted with the offer of a free domain name. But it is advisable to look beyond this domain name trick because it can inconvenience you in future should you decide to move to a better host. What happens is that while some companies offer free domain services, they ensure that the domain name is registered under their company and not under your name. what this means is that you may not be able to take it with you when you move. However, the good news is that domain names are not expensive and it is possible to get one at a very cheap price and make it your own. So before going for a free domain name, find out whether you will own the domain name or it will be registered with that company.
Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
More Difficulties for Businesses to Reach Followers on Instagram
Did you know that Instagram is about to change in a massive way? Instagram has announced that they will be ditching the traditional reverse chronological feed for new algorithm-based personalized feeds.
Posts will no longer appear in a chronological order and instead, followers will see posts based on what they are interested in and their relationship with the person posting, similar to what Facebook does.
This means that Instagram is likely to place videos and photos it thinks you will most want to see from people you are following on top of your feeds, disregarding the time those pictures and videos were posted. For instance, if your friend posted a photo of her new pet 8 hours ago while you were in a meeting, Instagram might make that photo the first thing you see when you open the app. This will be based on your history of interactions with the friend.
Announcing the changes on March 5th via its blog, Instagram said its growing popularity triggered the move. Most users miss on average 70% of their feeds, and this has made it harder for people to keep up with all the content people share on a minute-by-minute basis. This has meant that people keep seeing images they don't care about most of the time.
Speaking to the New York Times, Instagram co-founder, Kevin Systrom, said the new changes will ensure that the 30% of what you care is what is give priority. However, Systrom was quick to point out that the changes will not be abrupt. The Instagram community will wake up one morning and find a different Instagram. Instagram users should expect to see the changes in the coming months.
Not everyone is happy though
Marketing experts claim that these changes are a precursor to what they call Instagram’s content monetization strategy’. You know that Facebook owns Instagram, and this is exactly what Facebook did in 2009 before it began to monetize. In essence, they are trying to limit organic reach, and many brands fear they will have to pay for what was once free to get noticed.
Currently, a post to say 50,000 followers reaches 50,000 feeds. But with the new algorithm, things will be more difficult. That means the number of followers you have will be of little consequence; instead, what will be more important is the level of engagement your content generates.
As a result, more than 190,000 people have signed a change.org appeal to maintain the status quo. With many of those opposed to the new algorithm-based feeds being small business owners, they fear they will no longer be able to reach their followers. It is very unlikely that Instagram will reverse its decision. Similar opposition reactions of “Change Facebook back to normal!!” was witnessed when Facebook changed its algorithm. Twitter also recently faced similar resistance when it tried to move to algorithm based feeds.
Therefore, brands should start bracing themselves up for the new model instead of hoping that the proposed changes will flop. Apart from increasing their Instagram marketing budget, brands should find ways of creating a more engaging content. Simply put, customer acquisition via Instagram is about to get expensive.
With millennial changes such as Instagram personalized feeds, Mjrvisuals can help you increase your reach out of that content in your website through our expertise. We run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Why You Need a Quality Business Website
It is no longer debatable whether you need a website for your business or not. In order to remain competitive and relevant to the modern way of doing business, you need to have a business website to promote your goods and services.
It is, therefore, not a question of whether you need a website or not, but the quality of website you need. This is an age where everything is online. In fact, when people want certain information, the first place they go to is the Internet. That means if you want to compete effectively you need to have a website that ranks high in the search engines.
It doesn't matter what type of business you do. It does not matter whether you are selling services or tangible goods. It doesn't matter where you are located. What matters is the fact that you are online and competing with other business; both small and big corporations. Whatever the case, business websites create a big difference if they are of quality types.
What is a Quality Website?
A quality website is a website that is not just appealing from its overall look, but one that also contains quality content. Actually, quality, SEO friendly and relevant content comes first in the rankings of the features of a good site. Search engines like Google have designed algorithms that have the capability to sift spam sites from quality sites; therefore, if your website has low quality content, then it will suffer greatly in search engine rankings. Remember visitors who come to your site are only interested in relevant, accurate, and updated information, and if they can't find that in your site, they will quickly navigate away to another website or blog which has the information they are looking for.
Avoid high bounce rates
There is nothing as bad as having high bounce rates from your website because it affects your search engine rankings, as well as denying you the opportunity to profit from the potential customer. If other webmasters find out that you have quality content, chances are that they will link to your site. This can be a big boost to your site performance because search engines greatly value inbound links (the number of links that link to your site). Simply put, content is the king.
What a business website can do for you
It is quiet unfortunate that there are still some people who underestimate the significance of creating a quality website for their businesses. Some of them think that websites are only meant for news agencies, sports, bloggers, and government agencies, among others. The truth is that so long as you own a brick and mortar shop, you also need to open your business to the global customer base in the form of a website. You can view the website as a virtual shop. One of the best blessings we have had in the 21st century is the Internet. Why? Because it offers a level playing field for everyone, whether you own a small business or you own a multinational company.
Remain Open 24/7
Being open 24/7 is something that is next to impossible with the traditional brick-and-mortal shop. Moreover, it enables you to sell to anyone, anywhere in the world so long as you can cater for shipping arrangement. In addition, having a website legitimates your business, thereby, boosting the confidence of your potential clients. In other words, it makes your look professional. Most importantly, it is the perfect and more convenient platform from which you can offer customer service to your customers.
It is also important to note that websites are no different from the traditional shop fronts. They also need to be marketed and advertised to attract the attention of potential customers. With millions of other websites competing for the attention of a customer, it is easy to fail to get noticed, and even if you get noticed, it is easy to be abandoned by the customer for the next site. Lest you forget, the next competitor is only a click away. Therefore, it calls for a serious marketing campaign, advertising, and search engine optimization strategies to make it. Simply creating a website and leaving it there isn't going to make any difference.
Let Mjrvisuals help you engage that content in your website through our expertise, we run the gambit of visual imagination including video production, digital marketing, video editing, print design, advertising, graphic design, graphic animation, motion graphic and media design. Be part of our portfolio of clients and let us tell your story to the world. Click here to visit our website: mjrvisuals.com/
Ensuring that You Achieve Online Reputation Management
Prudent Online reputation management for your business is very vital for the growth of your business. Your reputation is everything when it comes to growing your business online.
Online reputation management refers to a set of approaches and techniques that are aimed at improving and increasing a particular company’s online reputation. If the online reputation management is handled well, it can make a company successful; otherwise, it can break a company’s chance of further progress and success if it is mismanaged. The thing is that you are not going to leave your brand, business, or personality to chance. Apart from the products, good reputation is what the business really has.
Why Reputation Management is Important
Online Reputation management is very important to individuals and business. Professional reputation is vital, and need to be maintained at all times in order to achieve better results in search engines. The products of good reputation include receiving favorable customer testimonials for your goods and services as well as having high market ratings, compared to your peers. Suppose that your company receives too many negative comments concerning the products you sell, what would be the repercussion? Of course there is no need to go into that, but there is only one thing you will be sure to face-stagnation or decline of your business performance. From the customer perspective, a company what people say about a company is a very significant means of making a purchase decision.
Business entities and individuals should approach their online reputation management from a proactive angle. In other words, they have to actively control how their brand, product and company’s image is painted to the outside world. It involves actively removing negativity by substituting it with positive feedbacks to ensure that the business achieves longevity.
How Can Companies and Individuals Effectively Manage their Online Reputation?
One of the most popular approaches to achieving good reputation is by hiring an online reputation expert, whose work will be to specialize in managing online reputation. This will also include repairing negativity and introducing measures that will ensure that the company’s online reputation is well taken care of. A good example is where you can find a dissatisfied customer or a rogue competitor generating several articles in forums and blogs discrediting your product or services. In such a case, it is the work of the online reputation expert to counter such claims through the most effective means. Figuratively speaking, a good online reputation management involves preventing fires of negativity from being lit, as well as putting off those fires if they have already been lit, through feedback.
Normally, online reputation experts would monitor social sites, forums and blogs to scavenge for any information go around about the company. Generation quality, informative and promotional content is one way of enhancing a reputation of a company. The company should also integrate its website to social sites like Facebook, Linkedln, twitter, and YouTube, among others. A great emphasis should be put on the positive customer testimonials, product reviews and feedback. However, this doesn’t mean that negative feedback from customers should be ignored.
Traditional methods of maintain a company’s reputation or brand can still be utilized. Such methods may include billboards, fliers, mass media, press releases, and promotional campaigns.