What groups would be natural customers or ambassadors for your businesses? If you sell carpet cleaning, maybe churches, retirement homes, or pizza parlors would like a discount offer.
When they redeem the discount you offered, give them the best service you can possibly provide. You can bet that they will speak highly of you to their friends and business associates.
In years past, the way to reach someone in the media was to send out a press release. Ideally, you’d have your local contacts and send the press release as far and wide as you could. Then, services such as PR Web stepped in and promised being able to reach media contacts all across the globe with one push of a button.
Nowadays, the standard press release gets you nowhere. There are so many of them being sent out all the time that it’s just not effective unless you can pay a lot of money for a very targeted list.
If you’re a local business, it pays to develop a relationship with your local media. For newspapers, start by contacting the editor of the business page. Don’t go in person unexpected! They’re busy, and it is viewed as intrusive to just show up without an appointment.
Send a polite email introducing yourself and your business. Avoid being demanding. Ask if there’s room in her schedule for an in-person meeting. Ask if she’s in need of any sources for business-related local articles.
Remember…you’re a real estate agent, perhaps, or a lawyer or a contractor, but you can still speak to trends in that industry. So even though she might not be planning an article about your business per se, you can still be a source for a big picture article.
When you plan an event at your business, invite your media contact. When you have a news item to promote, send your media contact a short to-the-point update. Be patient. It might take several emails before you get a response. But eventually you will get a response and you can be sure that when your media contact needs someone in your field to be a source, she’ll think of you.
As more and more of our clients are discovering the power of boosting posts on Facebook, the team here is interacting with Facebook’s advertising more and more. We’re learning in detail how it works and what works best. And we’ve figured out that many people are not using the boosting tool to its highest potential.
Turns out, most marketers who are using Facebook paid posts are only showing paid posts to Facebook’s Saved Audiences. They are already there, they are just a button away and are the easiest to create. These audiences are based on what people have told Facebook they are interested in, where they are, and their demographics such as their age. However, these marketers are missing out.
Facebook’s Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences give you even more power. Let’s look at the various Facebook audiences you can target. Even more importantly though, is WHY and HOW you target these people, because the reason that they are segmented is because they are DIFFERENT! They don’t all want, or need, the same message to move them along the Customer Awareness Spectrum.
1. All your past website visitors
This group is composed of people who have previously visited your website. These people are therefore already familiar with your company and were at least interested enough originally to check you out the first time. If you choose this audience, give them a message that reminds them of what you’re all about. Perhaps what has changed, so they are more interested in coming back to interact with your brand again.
To create this audience: Choose the Custom Audience option in the Audience Manager. Then select Website Traffic. You can choose a time frame in which to show the ad to people who have previously visited your site.
In order to do this, you should go ahead and install the Facebook Pixel for your site. That’s like a cookie that allows Facebook to track all of your visitors.
2. People who visited your Pricing page
Here’s a rare one that most people don’t think about. If you have a Pricing page on your website, and someone visits it, then that means they are interested enough to consider whether your price makes sense for them. These are the people who are ripe for a coupon, discount, time sensitive offer, or some other special bonus. There are so many ways that this website tracking can result in fruitful advertising. Whenever a product is back in stock or has been updated or improved, whenever there is a new color available, or whenever there is only a limited number remaining are just some examples of how this targeted advertising works. These people are already familiar with your brand and have already demonstrated an interest in your products.
To create this audience: Choose the Custom Audience option in the Audience Manager. Then select Website Traffic. Select to target “People who visit specific web pages” and type in your Pricing page’s link. You can also include your website’s past visitors in this audience by clicking the box next to that option.
You can use this method to target people who have visited any page on your website, such as your blog, your services page, or any particular product page or landing page on your site. To do this, go to the Audiences tab in your Ad Manager. Click on the blue “Create Audience” button. Then click on “Website Traffic” and follow the instructions to set it up with the specific URL you want to track.
3. People who abandoned their shopping carts
Isn’t this one of the most frustrating parts of being in ecommerce? You led people to your site, to a particular product, they picked it out, made it to the checkout page, and then didn’t buy. Something kept them from completing the purchase and you don’t necessarily know why. Often it is price related. Or a high cost of shipping. You can create a custom audience based on people who decided not to buy and entice them back with a two-for-one offer, free shipping, or some other deal.
To create this audience: Choose the Custom Audience option in the Audience Manager. Then select Website Traffic. Select to target “People who visit specific web pages but not others” and type in your checkout page link. Exclude people who visit the “thank you” (order completed) page. This means they made it to the cart but did not complete the order.
Facebook allows you to choose the time period for targeting. And again, there is a box to check to include your past website traffic.
4. Previous customers
Using a similar targeting method, you can entice repeat customers by targeting people who actually DID make it to the order completion page. This means they already know about your brand and liked it enough to make a purchase. You can target these people with cross-over products that you think they will like based on their previous purchases.
To create this audience: Choose the Custom Audience option in the Audience Manager. Then select Website Traffic. Select to target “People who visit specific web pages” and type in your “thank you” page’s link.
Facebook allows you to choose the time period for targeting. And again, there is a box to check to include your past website traffic.
5. Lookalike audiences
Many times, I want to target not the people who already like a page I’m working with, but the people who “look like” the people who already like a page I’m working with. This means the people you’re targeting will be of similar age and with similar interests to people who already DO like your page, but these new people that will be targeted DON’t like your page. Unless you are specifically trying to reach people who already like and engage with your page, this audience makes the most sense for people who are trying to reach new audiences. Because they are targeting people who are similar to people who have already found you.
To create this audience: Go to the Audiences tab in your Ad Manager. Choose the Create Audience option in the Audience Manager. If you’re making a Lookalike Audience from a Custom Audience, you must be the creator of that Custom Audience. Choose Lookalike Audience. Choose your source, which can be a previously created custom audience, your pixel data, or people who like your Page. You can target by location and how many people who want to reach. When the data looks good to you, click Create Audience.
Facebook reminds users of their Advertising Center that it can take some time for changes like this to appear in your account. This is not an option that you should do as a last minute when you want to get an ad out right that minute. It can also be confusing to use Facebook’s ad platform, and they frequently change how it’s laid out and where information is, so don’t be discouraged!
I hope these Facebook advertising tips were helpful for you. Let us know if you tried creating any of these custom audiences and noticed an improved ROI. We always welcome hearing how our suggestions work for people who try them. We know they work for us, so we hope they work for you too.
What? Email marketing and a healthy and growing email list has long been seen as the holy grail of marketing. Email is still important. I’m definitely not denying the importance of keeping in touch with people that way. But I’m here to tell you unsubscribes aren’t something to stress over.
Your own expectations for your growing email list can make any unsubscribe–especially if it’s from someone you know–feel as bad as a romantic breakup. Marketers, and myself included, have told people to closely monitor your email unsubscribes to see if the message you’re producing is reaching people the way you hope it will. I still recommend paying attention to your statistics. But at some point you will realize that you can’t make everyone happy. And trying to make everyone happy and avoid those unsubscribes will bring you down.
You might even consider removing inactive subscribers yourself. If someone hasn’t, say, opened any of your emails for the last 4 months, you can remove them. In the “olden days” many businesses sent out print catalogs. They welcomed having their recipients call to cancel their catalogs, because it meant that they were no longer paying mailing costs to send a catalog to someone who didn’t want it.
Email marketing is so much more cost-effective than that. It may be tempting to think that you’re better off keeping anyone on the list. Not so. Trim the deadwood. Make room for people who really want to hear your message. And email those people. If you are constantly re-evaluating your content and adjusting your messages to try to reach the people who unsubscribe or don’t open your emails, you’re not focusing on the people who really do want your messages.
With all this in mind, everyone on your email list is not the same. Each person who subscribes is at a different point in the “journey” to purchasing your products and services. (Learn more about that here: “The 6 Levels in the Customer Awareness Spectrum) Treat them differently. Mail services are robust enough now that you can easily send a separate message to the people who haven’t bought in six months, or bought yesterday. If you want to try a softer approach before you manually remove someone, you might try a separate re-engagement tactic just for those unresponsive emails. Do that, and don’t sweat the unsubscribes.
No one else can tell your story.
Anyone can conceivably open a business. But YOU opened YOUR business.
Anyone can collect products from manufacturers and assemble them for sale on a website.
Anyone can hang up a shingle and start offering some kind of service. But YOU did it your way.
Why? Why did you care enough about those products, or that business niche, to start that business? Tell us why you cared so much. Let us get to know your thoughts and motivations behind starting your business. Tell us what makes YOUR business different. Even if you’re offering the same services that several other businesses are offering.
You can introduce yourself, get personal and share your motivations in a few different ways. First, make your story a big part of your website. Tell your story on your About page. Link to the causes you support. If you undertake any advertising you can work in your motivation to your advertisements.
Need some inspiration? Check out the “Our Vodka” page on Tito’s Handmade Vodka. He puts himself into every ad. At this point, he’s identifiable as a person. And even though we all know that Tito’s Handmade Vodka is a huge and successful company, what’s the one thing most people relate to when they think about this company? Tito himself. It’s personal. And his story isn’t just quickly told in one or two paragraphs…his story continues all the way down the page, scroll after scroll, with photos and the growth of the company at every stage. He even tells us how much credit card debt he racked up ($88,000 in case you’re wondering where your debt stands in comparison.)
Make a big deal out of why you do what you do. Introduce yourself. Get personal. Share your motivations. Telling us why you do what you do and why we should care is a better way to build bridges and get us interested in your products than simply selling to us.
It’s December. This month we typically attend more parties and get-togethers than usual. Even if they are not “business-focused” events, you can still benefit from talking about your work. Here’s how to get the most out of networking at these events.
I honestly told people, “I’m not sure what kind of job I’ll get, but I have a lot of writing experience and am looking for all types of work right now.” Once people learned I had writing experience, I got many comments. People said they needed help with their website, or they wanted help writing press releases. That led to a lot of work. You can do the same. Tell people honestly what experience you have and what you’re trying to do.
For many writers the worst part of writing is at the very beginning. They have to sit down to a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen and make something happen. However, people who write frequently have tools and techniques to get unstuck, because it happens to everyone. All writers will have trouble with writer’s block at some point in their lives. It doesn’t matter whether they are trying to write a blog post, a white paper or an essay. Here are a few strategies that can help you never get writer’s block again.
There are many possible reasons for writer’s block. When you know you have to get something done, that debilitating feeling of fear and frustration just seems to make things worse. Fortunately there are as many ways to deal with writer’s block as there are causes. Let us know in the comments if you have a strategy that works for you.
As a person who writes for a living, there are definitely times when I don’t feel like writing an article even though I have to. If I have the luxury of time, I will simply not work on it until some idea occurs to me to get started. I know my mental wheels are always turning in the background. If I can wait until I have a little seed of inspiration, it flows from there. So generally, if you’re feeling stressed about writing something, take a break from it or ask someone else to take it off your plate for a while.
Whether you’re a pen-and-paper person (like I am) or an app person, find a way to make it convenient to jot down the slightest idea that occurs to you. Sometimes just a single word in a notebook or text message to yourself can help you recall the thought you had. Without documenting our sometimes fleeting ideas they can be gone forever.
Maybe you have a great point you want to make but aren’t sure how to start. Write down your main statement that you want to be the “take-away” from your blog post or article and work backwards. Or show it to someone and ask them what information you would need to give them to have them reach the same conclusion you did.
This is tried and true advice because it works. Clear your mind and change your location. Get some fresh air and resolve not to think about your problem for a few minute. Don’t think about it at all.
More tried and true advice. Writing is like any skill that you may be struggling to learn, like playing an instrument or learning how to be a better baker. It gets easier and better with practice.
Try to keep a back-up idea in your pocket so when those days do come along, you’re not stressed about it. Ask an employee to come up with some ideas to write out so you have a couple to pick from if things really get tough.
The best way to make someone think that you are informed is to be informed. Read up on industry news and cultivate your opinions about the developments. Engage others who are interested in the industry and you can have some very enlightening discussions that can lead to ideas for your own content.
You’re out to dinner and your friend wants to leave a smaller tip than you. Why? This could inspire a blog post about perceived value. You’re at a baseball game and someone is critical of the other team’s player. Why? This could inspire a post about marketing and loyalty. You’re brushing your teeth and you start thinking about that song on the radio or that commercial you saw. Why? This could inspire a post about how to be memorable, understanding your target audience, or making your point in only 30 seconds.
If you’ve been in business for a while, or blogging for more than a few months, there’s a good chance that the industry has undergone some dramatic changes since you first got started. Look back at some of your older articles, blog posts, paid online advertisements, or whatever you’ve done, and see what you can find that may have changed.
If your selling point from 2 years ago is no longer relevant, don’t just delete that blog post. Acknowledge it, own it, and describe what has changed in the world. If you’re a florist, for instance, you might have a post about the top 10 flowers to give for birthdays. You might then take each of those 10 flowers and turn them into 10 separate blog posts talking about why you sell them, what colors they are available in, how they are used in bouquets or corsages, and what flowers they work well with. Remember, your content does not have to be long.
Hiring a content producer does not have to be a last resort. The decision to hire a content producer, such as Limelight Department, could be the best decision you make. If you really don’t enjoy writing and aren’t interested in doing it, hire someone! Some people love to write. Hard to believe, I know!
If you have ideas for content you want and no time to do it, let a professional take it off your plate. You spend your time thinking about how you can get more customers, and content producers spend their time thinking about what else they can write about. There’s no reason or rule that every business owner has to create their own content. Professional services exist to be problem solvers just for people like you who need them. You’ll never get writer’s block again because you won’t have to worry about whether you have an idea ready in time to publish or not!
Blogging can be a good way to achieve a number of goals for your business, but without a significant number of subscribers paying attention to your blog, achieving these goals is a lot more difficult. It can also be difficult to attract more blog subscribers! 1,000 subscribers means you have achieved critical mass. It’s enough to prove your blog’s success and also provide enough traction to keep it growing and improving.
How do you go from 1 subscriber to 1,000? This article provides constructive strategies to help you achieve that number. It also outlines questions to ask yourself to clarify what type of audience you are trying to attract to your blog and why.
You cannot build an audience of 1,000 if you don’t know who you want that audience to be. If you’re starting a juice cart, the target audience will likely be very different from the target audience of a meatball sandwich cart. Where do people who love juice shop? What blogs do they read? What social media outlets do they use? It has been said that good marketing offers solutions to problems that people may not have even known they had. think about how you will solve the problems for your audience and find them where they are.
Evaluate your blog from the perspective of someone who has never seen it before. In fact, consider asking someone who has never seen it before to go over everything. What does a first-time visitor to your blog see first? Do your blog title and tag lines instantly communicate what your blog is about? Do your theme and colors reflect your brand identity?
Pay attention to navigation. If a reader clicks the search bar the results should immediately take them to something that matches what they were searching for. If nothing matches, consider implementing a “suggested” item. If a reader clicks on an article, it should be easy for them to get back to the main page, or continue on to another article.
The visitors to your blog must be convinced that your blog is worth their time. Put your qualifications and testimonials up front. Your About Page should be thorough and personal. Link to places where you have guest posted, or to others who have been mentors to you along the way. Show off your client list.
Once you have identified your target audience, go after them with an offer they can’t refuse. Offer a freebie, or solve a problem. Maybe a BOGO coupon for your juice cart, or a free download of juice cocktails.
Have a plan and only publish top-notch content. We’ve written before about how a blog post does not have to be the typical three paragraphs and a photo. If photography is your place to shine, tie your Instagram account to your website (you may need a custom plug-in to do this), but then every time you post a beautiful photo it will be right there on your blog. Add more text to describe the photo on your blog when you’re in between customers.
You do not have to have a productive presence on every social media platform that’s out there. In fact, that’s not recommended. Pick one and do it well, based on the identity of the people you want to attract. Facebook is an obvious choice, because its paid posting options let you target people in certain demographics and geographic regions.
But beyond that, connect with other leaders in your industry and promote their work. They may respond and promote yours. Build relationships with other leaders in your industry through commenting on their blogs, responding to their tweets, and engaging on their Facebook pages.
Make your content easily shareable by including social media buttons everywhere you can. Posts with images automatically get more attention than those without, so choose good quality stock photos if you’re not taking your own. Work to produce content that people actually want to read.
The deeper your understanding of your target audience, the easier this becomes, as you can know where to find your readers online, know how they interact with other blogs and other online presences, and know what their problems and concerns are and what they need to solve those issues.
Once you know your target audience to the greatest level you can, the type of content that you need to produce becomes more obvious, as do the methods that you can use to promote that content.
One of the best ways to drive traffic to your site is to create content that is easily found, easily shared, and useful or instructional. You can pay for advertisements. But creating this content yourself is the best way to get quality content out there. That’s why you should start a business blog! You control the content. You can publish your content in a variety of ways. Blogging helps your business be found. Keep reading for a list of 10 reasons why you should start a business blog.
1. A blog helps with SEO.
Each new blog post you add essentially adds a new page to your website. Search engines love is fresh content. New content, such as new blog posts, that is also relevant, is almost always placed higher up the search engines than older content.
One way that search engines determine relevancy is by the keywords that the user searches for. Let’s say you’re in the business of selling soccer balls and gear. Someone might search for “regulation soccer balls.” Your blog post explaining regulation soccer balls could be one of the first results to come up. Fill your post with photos of regulation soccer balls that you sell, and link readers right to the shopping cart.
2. It helps position you as the expert in your field.
Writing informative posts about your field helps create the image of you as the expert. Your information and experience becomes more valuable than just anybody else on the web. Your blog is a great place to make a clear connection between your brand and your knowledge.
3. It’s easy.
The hardest part about blogging is coming up with ideas. (We plan more posts about coming up with ideas and get the most mileage out of them!) Once you know what you’re going to write about, the WordPress platform is easy to use. Scheduling platforms and plug-ins help make SEO of your post and social media promotions also easy. Good website development companies (such as Limelight Department!) can help with training you to make sure that you know how to use the technology you have signed up for.
4. A blog offers you a lot of media options, which also helps with SEO (See #1.)
Blogging doesn’t have to mean three paragraphs of text published each day. If you’re more of a video person, record yourself as you walk around your office and post it on YouTube. Take photos and publish them with Instagram. Do your blogging in short bits on Twitter. Use the tools and technology that work for you, because all of them are searchable by search engines and all will get you an audience.
5. It’s free.
A basic WordPress site is free! Customization and some themes cost money, but their cost is fairly small. A hosting fee is a minimal annual expense. Your audience is out there and it doesn’t cost much other than time to meet them where they are.
6. It helps drive traffic to your website.
Each blog post can lead your readers to take some action. That could be downloading your resources, making an appointment, or visiting your website to take advantage of a sale. Lead your visitors to take the action you want with a call to action placed at the end of each post that links back to your website.
7. It helps convert that traffic into leads.
How can a bunch of strangers reading your blog posts translate to sales? Let me answer this question with a question…How is it better to have a bunch of strangers reading your paid AdWords advertisement and then trying to send them to your website?
When people read your blog they are getting a sense of your personality, your authority, and why your products or services are better than anyone else’s. The people reading your blog are already searching or information related to what you have to offer, because otherwise they wouldn’t have found the blog post or taken the time to read it. Traffic to your website from content that is useful and informative is more valuable than anything else you can do. And, other than the time you spend creating the content, it’s free.
8. Blogging is a long-term strategy.
Other than a paid advertisement, there is very little in the world of online marketing that is done for immediate gratification. It takes time for search engines to “recognize” a site’s authority, and part of the way that happens is by having the search engines visit your site on a regular basis. Sites that are not updated frequently do not get visited by search engines very often. The more you update your site, the more the search engines will visit you. The longer this goes on, the more authority a search engine places on your site, and they will start to return your site higher up in the search results.
Publishing on a blog over a long period of time, on a regular basis, about topics that are keyword appropriate and related to your business is an excellent way to build authority for your site.
9. You’ll get better with practice.
Writing is just like anything else in that it does get easier with practice. If you’re doubting your ability to create ongoing content that people will actually want to read, you can always consider hiring out the service to copywriters. (Limelight Department provides this service on a regular basis for a variety of clients.) Otherwise, keep a notebook or electronic notetaker app with you at all times, and whenever the smallest idea occurs to you, jot it down so it’s not lost. Allow yourself the freedom to write short posts (or tweets) when you don’t feel like it, and trust that the more you practice blog writing the easier it will get.
10. You can gather other useful resources to your own site.
You don’t have to come up with every single new idea on your own. Curate groups of the best resources that are out there on other sites or cool stuff that you find. For instance, if you sell soccer balls, one of your blog posts each week can be a “highlights post” of the soccer games for the past week, or how the soccer stars stats changed at the end of each new game. You can collect news items or tips from others in your niche. (Just make sure you always attribute where you are getting the information from.) Next time someone is looking for
“the best explanation of soccer rules on the web,” for instance, they’ll go to your post first. You can even invite some of those other experts to contribute to your blog as a guest poster.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started with your business or you’ve been in business for 10 years and never blogged before. I can’t think of any industry or business where a blog filled with content of some sort wouldn’t be helpful. So whether you’re a florist or a restaurant or a lawyer, there’s room in the blogosphere for you, so go ahead and start a business blog!
If you’re not sure how to start a business blog with a WordPress site, just get in touch. As we mentioned above, basic themes are free and so are most of the plug-ins. However, customization lets you make your blog just right for you, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help or if you have questions on why to start a business blog and how it might help your particular business.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to build a brand and maintain regular contact with your customers. You’ve grown your email list and are ready to send out emails on a regular basis. Don’t the things in this following list if you want to keep your emails out of the spam folder.
Add email addresses without their permission.
You know that everybody out there wants your emails whether they’ve opted in or not.
Send too many emails.
As soon as people sign up, send them emails multiple times a day, every day. It’s not annoying at all.
Continue to send emails after people have unsubscribed.
Tell people that you got their unsubscribe request but it will take days to process that request, because email management isn’t automated these days and you have to wait for the carrier pigeon to deliver the message to your assistant, who is on top of a mountain in Timbuktu. They’ll believe it and continue to be patient while getting even more emails they don’t want.
Don’t segment your lists.
If you’re a party planner, for instance, send your corporate events clients the same emails you send to your wedding clients. They’ll love that.
Include broken links.
Assuming your emails actually contain information your customers want, don’t check it before it goes out so that the link to get to your featured product is broken. They’ll definitely keep trying to purchase that product and won’t go to another store with links that actually work.
Include grammar mistakes.
People won’t notice or care that you didn’t take the time to proof your work before you expected them to read it.
Send the same email over and over.
Maybe they didn’t see it the first 10 times you sent it. Send it again.
Send out boring content.
If you don’t have anything useful to say, say it anyway.
Use spammy headlines.
$$$ F R E E 4U * SAV3 MONEY NOW * INCREDIBLE DEAL * OPEN ME!!!
Yeah, that will get their attention.
Obviously, we do not recommend doing the things we’ve listed here. Blast out emails to everyone is a bad idea. Emails can help you attract customers, not push them away. Having someone’s email address is a relationship of profound trust. Personalize the email for your audience. Respect that relationship and you’ll keep your email friends on your list and keep your emails out of the spam folder.
