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Nail These 3 Strategies Before You Launch Your Social-Media Campaign

Campaign

In today’s digital era, every business dreams to execute the perfect social media campaign to stay competitive. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or run a small business, the need to launch your social media campaign is becoming inevitable over time.

Some of the biggest businesses of our times are known to create strong social media campaigns. Not only these promotions lead to increased profits, these campaigns allow a business to connect with their consumers, on a human level.

Already, a large part of today’s online content has now moved on to social media. It is natural for businesses to work on creating the best social media campaign that is crafted to bridge the gap between businesses and their consumers.

Why do you need a social-media campaign?

  • Boost awareness
  • Increase loyalty
  • Earn more profits

When you spread awareness and offer solutions to your target audience’s problems, you automatically get a decent number of loyal customers.

Three Strategies you must nail before launching your Social Media Campaign

But before you implement your social-media strategy, here are 3 strategies you must work on to get the most out of your campaign.

1. Set a Goal

If you don’t have a goal, you don’t know what you want to achieve through your campaign. Your goal defines the content and sets the mood for your social media plan. When you put your audience first, you are eventually able to plan and execute a successful campaign on all channels.

Do your homework to know the needs, wants and challenges your audience faces every day. Companies can collect relevant information through surveys or study their consumer behavior to identify the most common problems.

Talk it out with your marketing team. Explain how your products or services aim to change the current scenario. When you clearly define the goals of your campaign, you are able to work on the heart and soul of your brand. This is the ‘one thing’ that sets you apart from your rivals.

Some common goals that today’s aspiring and established companies wish to achieve through a social media campaign include getting more followers, creating interest in a new product and building your mailing list. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a successful social media campaign. Hence, you need to define goals and objectives every time you are launching a new campaign.

There are many other factors that you need to focus on to guarantee true success.

  • Which platforms will work best?
  • What kind of content should I create?
  • Do I need to include a video in my campaign?
  • How do I assess and track results?

Once a business finds clear and precise answers to these questions, it is easier to design and deploy a campaign.

2. Setting a Calendar

Now that you’ve done all the strategic part of launching the promotion, you need to create a schedule or a yearly plan. Your marketing team sets a fixed schedule that also includes important events, product launches and your business accomplishments. A calendar makes it convenient for a company to initiate, assess and implement your campaigns.

There are many benefits of sticking to a fixed schedule. A calendar allows businesses to work on each individual channel. For instance, having separate posting schedules for your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts will let you create personalized content, ahead of time.

While Facebook continues to dominate all other social networks with roughly two billion monthly users, don’t forget to include other mediums such as Pinterest and YouTube. Since video content is going to capture more than 80% of all internet traffic by 2022, it is important that you also include a video strategy to attract more users.

If you are an entrepreneur or a small business owner, it is a great idea to start working on a couple of social media channels before embracing them all. Once you have a respectable fan following on one channel, you can direct your traffic to another medium.

3. Monitor Outcomes

What’s the point of creating or deploying a social media campaign when you fail to track down its progress? The truth is that it is crucial that you utilize analytic tools and metrics to judge the overall performance of your strategy.

If you do not know what tools or methods will give you the best tracking results, make sure you work with the best marketing team to help you gain valuable insights.

One thing to note is that the metrics of a campaign may change with its goal. For instance, if your promotional strategy is aimed at awareness, measure growth and engagement. The metrics also include shares, likes and dislikes.

If your business wants to boost its sales, track click rates, conversion rates and shares.

When you have designed a campaign to increase loyalty, look for sentiments, engagement and influence.

What else should you do?

The secret lies to know your audience for creating the content that clicks with them. For instance, Facebook dominates all mediums as 68% of American users are active on this network. But Facebook works better when a company is targeting older users.

If you are launching a promotion for a younger audience, choose Instagram. If you are uploading videos or tutorials, YouTube continues to beat other streaming networks. Since Google now owns YouTube, uploading your content on your official YouTube channel may also improve your rankings.

Moreover, there are many social media celebrities who can endorse your products or services. Can you imagine the effect it will make on your audience? Identify key influencers in your particular niche. Partner with the most influential personalities in your industry to spread your brand message.

This tip works because the influencer you’re connecting to already has a massive network. This strategy is a hybrid of new and old marketing tactics.

Bottom Line

The implementation part revolves around narrowing in on the daily tasks. Once your marketing team has nailed the 3 strategies, the rest of the work becomes less complicated.

Moreover, it’s not always about the size of your budget, but how you spend your marketing dollars. Sometimes, smaller brands deploy more popular social media campaigns than big brands that spend millions on promotion.

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8 Silly Ways Small Businesses Waste Their Marketing Budget

Marketing Budget

Irrespective of your business size, your business’ marketing budget is a precious resource. It is your investment, which can help you grow your company’s business and stock value. So you surely want it to give results for the growth of your business.

Large-scale businesses usually have high marketing budgets as compared to small-scale businesses. Small companies normally allocate a small budget for marketing due to their limited resources. It means that if you are a small business owner you do not have the finances to put to waste.

As a small business owner, you need to ask yourself these questions:

“Are you spending your budget on the right tactics?”
“Are you making effective and optimal use of your budget?”
“Is it working for your business?”

To put in simple words, are you wasting away your marketing budget?

Adobe researched how effectively companies spend their marketing budgets. It was not a surprise that most of those companies were not doing a good job.

Do you feel that you also fall in the category of these small businesses that are not spending their marketing budgets the right way?

Then you should continue reading to know the silly ways in which you might be wasting your marketing budget and how to fix them.

Use of social media for building following:

Undoubtedly, social media is a great tool for small businesses to use for their marketing. But most businesses start their marketing on social media without a proper strategy.

Gone are the times when Facebook marketing was free and reach was high. Now you need to invest money and efforts in Facebook marketing thanks to its evolving algorithm. Small businesses need to spend on the paid advertising to make their business ads visible and get their content seen by the target audience.

How to fix this?

The price of Facebook ads is not too high but due to increased competition, it is likely to get higher shortly. This means you may need to spend more money to make your content visible to your followers. Presently, what you can do is use your social media investment to build an email list of your followers. This will allow you to have direct communication with them. Give incentives to your followers for sharing their email addresses.

Expecting instant and high-end results:

Many small businesses begin with a strong ambition, but most of them fail within a few months. The problem lies in their unrealistically high expectations. They want to see results in just a few months following their launch. And when they fail in getting those results, they back out.

How to Fix this?

As a small business owner, you should expect a ramp-up period of two years. If this looks impossible to you, smartly create a marketing strategy to keep your marketing engine fueling and running. Then, create as much influential and informative content as you can afford to create to promote your business.

Inability to understand your target audience:

To grab the attention of your audience, you must understand the behaviors and attitudes of your potential customers. Otherwise, you are just making your marketing budget go down the drain.

A Fix:

KNOW your target audience, their behaviors, and attitudes before you even create a content strategy. Then figure out ways to communicate with them effectively.

Not realizing how you succeeded in attracting your valuable customers:

You can refer to them as your loyal customers or valuable customers who come back to you again and again. You should know what marketing techniques and content brought those invaluable customers to your business. These top 20% of customers may give you nearly half of your business revenue.

Spending a significant portion of your advertising campaign: You can find lots of marketing tactics to give a try. Some of these may perform great, but in most cases, they may not work for you especially when you have a limited budget to give a one-time shot. Small businesses should avoid diving into big-time five-figure spending on marketing campaigns.

What is the Fix?

You need to adopt a test and trial method before investing big. First, invest in $1000 or less. If that particular marketing tactic does not work at an investment of $1000, it is highly likely that it will not work on $1500 or more.

You are not keeping proper track of your marketing investments and efforts:

Many small businesses set up a Google Analytics account, but don’t use it. In case, some are using it they don’t know how to make optimal use of it and get the benefit. Same is the case with Google AdWords for PPC. You may buy the space for ad campaigns, but end up wasting a lot of money without analyzing how those ads performed.

An Easy Fix!

You can easily learn Google Analytics tracking and AdWords through free online courses on Google. Setup conversion tracking for your advertising campaigns in Google analytics. This enables you to effectively see and analyze the activity of your potential customers on your website. If you haven’t done this yet, do it right away!

You are trying to be the jack of all trades:

Small business owners with limited resources often try to manage multiple things alone. You cannot afford to hire a complete marketing staff, but just one or two people for it. You cannot manage the entire marketing strategy all alone.

A simple solution!

Keep your focus on understanding your audience, on which platform you can mostly find them and which marketing tools and content they like.

You are following the same marketing strategy for years:

This is the biggest mistake because the marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, nowadays. While focusing on the above-mentioned things, it is also recommended that you try a few new techniques every year.

The solution:

With the evolution of marketing tactics, you need to evolve as well! Always remain on the lookout for the latest marketing techniques that fit your low budget.

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5 Outside The Box Ideas For Marketing Your Small Business

ideas

Introduction

If you think you cannot market a product with a small budget, then you are mistaken. To run a successful business, whether it is small or big, you need to implement top-notch marketing ideas strategies. So, it is essential to take the time and plan effective ways to market your product or service. Take note not that every marketing technique requires a hefty budget.

Therefore, you can find budget-friendly ways to target an audience. In the light of this, here are five outside of the box marketing ideas for your small business.

Develop a Loyalty Program

Loyalty program ideas are simple. They create interest based on top of a brand’s value. So, if you love buying a particular brand, and if you’re offered something extra, such as 30% on your next purchase, you will most likely take advantage of the opportunity. Hence, announcing 50% flat off, coupons or different consumer-friendly offers can provide the limelight to your business that it needs. Moreover, consumers love going to the same brand if it sells high-quality products. One of the best ways to develop a loyalty program is to provide better quality so that consumers come back for more. As a small business owner, you need to retain existing consumers along with attracting new customers. This step is crucial to growing your small business further. When you reward your existing consumers, they will likely return and purchase more.

Plus, if a customer returns to your store more often, it will increase sales, brand image, and brand loyalty at the same time. Therefore, opt for customer loyalty programs as they work as a marketing tool as well. If your existing and satisfied customers recommend your brand, it will help you reach a wide market, influence your customer base, and of course benefit your startup in an excellent way.

Promote Customer Engagement

Sometimes a simple tactic like talking to your customer casually can feel engaging to them. You might ask; ‘would you like to see more items in this range?’ A positive response to this is an open invitation to talk to them, ask for their feedback, their thoughts, and how you could probably make things better for them. You can also use social media to boost your customer engagement. Social media profiles allow you to interact with a wider audience in a short time.

You can always use social media profiles to ask for suggestion and answer queries using direct messaging. Moreover, asking your customers to review your official page on Facebook is another quick way to give your small business a boost.

Moreover, when launching a product go live on your Instagram and Facebook profiles and keep your audience engaged. When you stay active and interactive on public profiles, it will let people know about your business ideas. Apart from this, using social media in the right way can benefit your business in numerous ways. For instance, you can engage the audience by starting a selfie campaign, which also encourages them to share or post more. You should customize hashtags and encourage the audience to use them in their post along with tagging. This is also an effective way to target a new audience.

Personalized Incentive

Customers love to be treated well, and this is for those customers that have value. For example, one valuable customer might be a regular one at your outlet, and another might buy bulk items from you periodically. Both types of customers could be justified recipients of personalized gifts from your brand. You can add complimentary items or products in their orders. It will show that you value and cherish your regular customers. Moreover, organizing a giveaway is another fun way to treat your consumers, especially if they are outside the country. You can arrange a giveaway in partnership with another small business to reach new people.

Host a Webinar

Hosting a webinar shows your expertise in your niche. Engaging experts in this webinar will show how connected you are. Also, the more people you successfully invite as participants will also demonstrate how much people already follow you and trust your expertise. Moreover, a webinar can do wonders for your business. According to a survey, 58% of marketers prefer to use webinars for promotion. Many successful marketing strategists even think that marketing on a webinar is great to reach a wider audience.

Data from different surveys have revealed that up to 40% people become qualified leads after attending a webinar as it provides the information they need. In fact, webinars retain 30-40% more attention so there is a chance that attendees will make a purchase.

Elevate content distribution        

Content production and distribution go hand-in-hand, and your content is only as good as your distribution mechanism. Leveraging major social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube is crucial. This technique is ideal to share valuable, relevant, and constant content on your social media.

It helps in two ways that are significant for any small business. First, it helps attract or target your audience. Second, it will help them turn into potential leads. Make sure your content provides information and resonates with the audience.

You should use blogs and social media posts to distribute your message. Also, the content you share should not be the typical advertisement that forces people to make a purchase. It should speak to them on personal level so they trust you and your brand.

Concluding Lines

Marketing a small business may seem a hassle at the beginning. But, if you opt for outside the box marketing strategies, you will get the desired outcome even on a shoe-string budget. For marketing, you only need to develop and leverage top-notch social media platforms and keep them updated. Other strategies like casual interaction are a smart way to identify your shortcomings and work on them to take your small business a step ahead. If you or are planning to launch a small business, try these ideas and make a difference.

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Niche Business Marketing – How to Do It

Niche

Starting up a business is an easy job to do, but making it successful is challenging, especially when you’re competing against several business rivals. In that case, targeting a niche market is perhaps the most successful idea you can work on.

To succeed in your business, you first need to determine the market and identify the customers you’re going to target. This is what all the businessmen do. Usually, they target a large group of people with various demographics.

However, a niche market is a defined group of people that have ‘particular’ needs. By keeping in view those specific needs, you operate your business to render the products or services that meet their demands. You deal in those special products or services which mainstream businesses have overlooked.

For instance, many shoe brands provide a vast variety of shoes. But, if your business deals in providing shoes for people with plantar fasciitis, you are targeting a niche; a specific segment of the market. This is what a niche market is.

Coming to the niche business marketing, it is specializing in one area of business while targeting a specific segment of the market.

You Must Know Your Target Niche Market Inside Out

Determining your niche market is crucial for operating your business. It not only helps you to set and expand your marketing budget but also give you a clear insight into where to advertise. Further, it makes you stand out above your competitors.

For selecting a niche, you need to think about what you are best at. So, you will have enough knowledge regarding the product or service you will be dealing in. To make it clearer, let’s take some ideas you can work on to run your niche business.

Today, many people demand diet foods such as gluten-free, low-calorie, organic or vegans. However, they rarely find it in eateries. If they find their diet food online, they prefer to buy it online rather than preparing it at home. This is because it is more convenient for them.

Similarly, certain people hardly get their size in apparel stores.  Therefore, offering plus-sized and petite clothing to these potential customers will not be a bad idea for your niche business.

Niche Marketing

Before getting down to the nitty-gritty of niche marketing, let’s talk about some businesses dealing in niche markets. Lefty’s, based in San Francisco, is a store that sells school stationery, gardening tools, kitchen goods and a lot more. What’s the best part? All their products are specialized for left-handers! Furthermore, they also offer customized gifts for the lefties in your life.

Furthermore, Vermont Wooden Toys are known to offer their specialty; handcrafted toys. Based in the Green Mountain State, the business is owned by a proprietor Ron Voake. People buy his products because of certain values- dedication, love, and craftsmanship. They place their orders on the website or over phone calls.

In the same way, you need to practice several marketing strategies to make the best use of your business.  Take a look for a few niche business marketing tips here.

User-Generated Content

The era when company ads would persuade people to buy a product is long gone. Today, they usually look for experiences. They go online and search for user-generated content before purchasing a particular product.

User-generated content works in two ways; advertises your brand for free, and increases your credibility. And what’s more? It brings new customers to you. To have a better understanding, you can study previous success stories of other brands that implemented the UGC strategy.

Advertising Platforms You Need To Leverage

As niche marketing isn’t regular marketing, you need to pinpoint specific platforms for advertising your product. Promoting your niche business on social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter isn’t a bad idea. However, the thing is these platforms are already over-populated with other business rivals hence leading to high-competition.

In that case, you can limit your promotion and brand visibility to specific demographics on these platforms to reach out to your targeted customers. No matter what tactic you choose, make sure to reach your niche market cost-effectively.

Partnering With Other Services

To reach out your business goals, develop a kind of service that not only offers a great product to your customers but also give them a fantastic experience. You can do this by providing additional services such as product delivery.

However, niche businesses are small, and therefore it can be costly for you to offer extra services to your customers. For this, you can team up with other service providers to cater to your customers in a better way.

Marketing Offline

It is crucial to determine your customers’ preferences and priorities to run your business. Well, you are required to market your product offline for two reasons. First, your targeted segment may not be tech-savvy enough to leverage internet access. Second, your customers might want to make their orders offline, depending on your product nature.

Furthermore, there are many ideas to market your product offline while adopting cost-effective methods. For instance, you can distribute your brand’s promotional materials such as business cards, coupons or pamphlets in any local events. This will boost the physical connection between potential customers and your brand.

Leveraging Influencers

To operate a niche business, you must first figure out your customers’ niche interests. Once you are done with it, look for the Instagram influencers who appeal your target segment and have a large number of followers. Approach them. Send a few of your products for free and ask for a shoutout in return. This won’t only help you in increasing your audience but also builds trust about your brand.

Segmented Marketing

Well, targeting a specific segment of the market for your niche business isn’t enough. You’ll have to gather and evaluate data on their demographics, values, and interests. Then, you further segment it and approach each group within your targeted niche. In this way, you’re able to engage with your niche market. Doing so will help you to maximize your business.

Conclusion

As compared to other businesses that target a wide audience with unspecific interests, a niche business focuses on the particular needs of a determined group of people. However, if you want your business to be flourished, you need to identify your niche market first.

While focusing on your specific customers, there are plenty of strategies you can adopt to achieve your business goals. By implementing the tactics mentioned above, you’ll be able to maintain your budgets and maximize your business.

In addition to that, you can also employ other strategies or new ways to promote your business. No matter what strategies you’re working in with, the main thing you have to keep in focus is your customers’ interests. It will surely help you adopt the right tactics for your business, increase profits and raise brand awareness.

 

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How Micro-influencers can Enhance Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Influencers

You do not need a million followers to become influential when it comes to promoting your business or brand. The concept of micro-influencers seems to have grown in popularity in the past few years. Micro-influencer marketing is gradually turning the idea that a marketer has to be well- known in order to have influence or make a lasting impression.

But what does the term micro-influencer refers to and how does it help entrepreneurs in their bending moments or in improving their marketing strategy?

What are Micro-influencers?

It might sound bizarre, but micro-influencers are considered ‘everyday people’. The strategy is incorporated to promote specific brands or products on social media. This product can be anything from cosmetics, cleanser to assortments and clothing.

That is to say, if your brand  has been trying its best to leverage influencer marketing with the help of established influencers who have significant number of followers (100,000  fans) on various social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but still struggling to achieve the desired results,  micro-influencer marketing is worth trying.

However, there is no fixed definition of the term micro-influence, but it is explained as someone who’s small, but has a significantly higher following. For example, they have more than 20,000 followers on Twitter, and a few thousand on Instagram and Facebook. That means a micro-influencer makes up a large portion of digital marketers or influencers. It is possible that a micro-influencer has a modest audience, but his influence is certainly great.

The Transition from Social Media Marketing to Micro-Influencer Marketing

In the past two years, the popularity of micro-influencer marketing has grown exponentially. A survey highlighted that approximately 1.5 million people search for ‘influencer marketing’. This was used to be the case for only social media marketing in the past. That doesn’t only indicate how swiftly influencer marketing is replacing other marketing strategies, but also the rise of micro-influencer marketing in the mainstream.

Another apparent reason for this transition is that customers rely on the recommendations and advice of people they trust. Nielsen 2015 Global Trust found in its study that publicity that comes from other people is one of the credible forms of advertising. 80% of the respondents in the study contended that they rely on the recommendations and opinions of their friends and family.

Not only this, two third of the respondents of the study admitted that they trust the information they found in online opinions. Part of the drive toward adopting such strategies is really turning people’s heads and they are accessing micro influencers, depending on their target audiences. Entrepreneurs have started leveraging micro-influencers to improve digital marketing strategies. It has become a reliable way to reach potential customers.

The rise of Micro-Influencers to Rescue Digital Marketing

You must have an idea of how quickly micro-influencer marketing is moving and replacing traditional marketing strategies. While the components of social media marketing and search engine marketing are still performing well, conventional online displays have suffered an inevitable decline in their effectiveness. The two major reasons for that are:

  • People don’t pay much attention to banner ads due to banner blindness. Even if it’s in front of them, they cannot effectively see them.
  • The rise of Adblocker software usage is another reason that has adversely affected display ads. According to a survey, 30% of devices have Adblockers installed on them that removes ads from the screens.

In addition to that, the survey found another digital marketing problem. According to it, most of the social networks lack the quality of controlling ads positions on the platforms. For instance, a high-profile brand, like Coca- Cola, would not be happy to find its YouTube ad positioned next an undesirable video.

With that in mind, it is important for marketers and businesses to know why and how micro-influencers can leverage their digital marketing strategy. If you are a startup and don’t know that, we have you covered here.

How Micro-Influencers Leverage Digital Marketing Strategy?

Micro-influencers – Your Groundswell Approach

There is no denying that micro-influencers use the perfect groundswell approach to influence market when it’s about reaching a large audience. They provide you multiple avenues while channeling digital marketing strategies for exposure and brand awareness.

Besides this, micro-influencers make businesses able to saturate the current market with their product and brand.

Moreover, micro-influencers are aware of the functional significance of repetition, regardless of what kind of marketing you are engaging in.  That is why their campaigns ensure that your brand is exposed to the target audience through different channels and outlets.

Professionals at Content Creation

If your digital marketing strategy emphasizes content creation then micro- influencers are undeniably the Holy Grail! What we mean here is that even if they don’t have the huge following, they can help you produce great content to help you promote your brand.

Whether it is multi-media content, written content or imagery that you are seeking, micro-influencers get this job done keeping everything within your budget. Most importantly, you don’t have to worry about the quality of content.

 Drive Loyal and Highly Engaged customers to Your Brand

There is no doubt that micro-influencers have a loyal and highly-engaged audience. It is growing and mostly made up of people they’ve met who like the content, and who have been following them for a long time; it also includes their family and friends network. On the flip side, most of the macro-influencers have comparatively lower engagement rate.

Target Audience Related to Your Niche

One of the benefits of working with micro-influencers is that they use the right digital strategy to target the audience in your niche. It typically helps businesses align with the audience whose interests and passions match with the product that is manufactured.

It is because influencer marketing is based on the relevance of an influencer to the product, service or brand.  If there is no match, your campaign will not accomplish its goals.

Final Thoughts

All in all, digital consumers have become tech-savvy and smart and micro- influencers focus on the value and power of engagement that is of paramount importance for businesses to grow. The given reasons, in this regard, emphasize the significance of having micro-influencers to enhance your digital marketing strategies.

 

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Top Trending Markets For Business Startups

MarketsAs a business startup, it is important to recognize the markets that are up and coming to help extend your business into these niches. It is also helpful for new startups looking for a business venture that will be successful and have some growth potential in the near future.

There are several markets that have emerged as of recently and should be paid attention to as they are trending and increasing in demand for products and services in these categories. Here are some of the top markets making headway in recent months that your business should pay attention to.

Green Living

It isn’t easy being green, but many people are turning toward the trend of living in an environmentally friendly way whether it be through green home design or products and services that help promote a reduced carbon footprint both in and out of the home. As a business startup looking for ways that you can promote environmentally friendly products and services into your business is sure to garner new customers that are hopping on the bandwagon to be a little greener in their everyday life.

From more energy efficient appliances to green kitchen design, there is a myriad of ways that your business startup can follow this trend and cultivate a new base of customers in the process. Plus, angel investors are savvy about what is trending in the market and will take notice if you are a little greener in your efforts or are able to capitalize on green living movement and its customer base.

Health And Wellness

Health and wellness is another niche market that is showing no signs of regress as consumers desire to look their best from head to toe continues to move forward. This market encapsulates everything from energy drinks to wrinkle creams and exercise equipment, that allow consumers to retain their youthful glow, fight disease and illness, and always have the best appearance.

Plus, an aging Baby Boomer generation is particularly focused on finding that fountain of youth you may be able to offer with your business startup. With Baby Boomers controlling, much of the spending that consumers do today and being an underutilized category, targeting your products and services directly to them can help you dip into a market that has a surplus of pocket money to spend on such luxury items.

Health and wellness products and services are also getting a nice boost from rising health care costs as more focus is placed on preventive health and staying healthy through personal care. This is only further complimented by an increase life expectancy for consumers and the need to look good no matter the cost.

Internet Technology Services

As fast as the internet grows, more services geared around helping internet users and website owners will continue to be needed. Products and services that center around the Internet will do well as there is a growing need for search engine optimization, website restructuring, and the ability to keep these sites safe through security protocols.

Add in the desire for online gaming as well as more educational opportunities that are online and you have a recipe for a high market demand that is focused on the internet and its usage. As a business startup, you need to think about how you can play toward this customer base with your products and services and tap into the revenue stream that this market offers new and emerging companies with internet technology service needs.

Mobile E-Commerce

Also, internet-focused is the ability to offer your products and services through mobile devices. Allowing your customers to buy directly from you using their cell phone, iPad or tablet can gain you in the revenue department as you are able to give them what they want immediately.

Having a website that doesn’t work with these devices can cost your customers that become fickle and choose your competitor over your business startup offering. Keep your eye on the ability to offer mobile sales to your consumers as this is the future of online sales as people use the most convenient platform possible to do their shopping now, during the holidays, and into the future.

Markets To Watch

While those are four markets that are heating up as of current, there are some new up and coming niches that are making advancements at an alarming rate. Keep your eye on virtual reality (VR) technologies as VR is becoming more of reality and the ability to integrate this technology into your business startup offering may give your business a leg up into the future.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another area that is getting high praise as well as cloud-based systems that seem to be taking a hold in most every business opportunity. Internet of Things (IoT) is also trending in home products as consumers look to be connected to their dwelling no matter where they reside.

Security also gets a big push as more data breaches occur and consumers become increasingly concerned about fraud protection. Working your business startup into any of these market opportunities may be what you need to add to your revenue stream or reach a new base of customers with your products and services.

If you are looking to secure funding from an angel investor, keep these markets in mind as your private investor is no doubt tuned into these niche potentials as well. This may be the key factor you were missing in your business plan or a turning point for your business startup. In either instance, these are markets to pay attention to and get involved with as there will be plenty of spending on in these areas by consumers now and into the future.

No matter what market you are looking to enter with your business startup, be sure to evaluate the opportunity available to you and how it will affect your potential revenue stream. By always being watchful of new and up-and-coming markets can help you discover a new business avenue and allow to increase your revenue going forward.

 

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Small Businesses Must Understand What Marketing Means

Small Business Marketing

The success of a small business depends greatly on how effectively it markets itself, its products and its services. The real challenge with marketing is that it is one of the broadest concepts that any businessperson and entrepreneur have to deal with. Every business has its specific marketing needs, and yours does too. If you have a business, you must understand marketing in its depths and the many techniques that will help your business grow and expand. A lot of the business owners believe that having a website and doing some seasonal material marketing is enough for them, but they are wrong.

Marketing has completely changed in the modern times with “digital” being the main focus. A conventional approach towards marketing will not help you achieve the goals you have set for your business.

Understand the Concept of Marketing Mix

Before you start marketing your business, you have to understand the concept of the marketing mix. Marketing mix consists of price, product, promotion, and place. While many other factors have been added to the mix recently, these four Ps remain the strongest ones to date. If you can understand the concept of the marketing mix, you will ensure allocating strict budgets and still getting the best ROIs from your marketing campaigns. You must bear in mind that spending too much on marketing does not mean you will always be successful.

Your successful marketing strategy has to be a mix of the four Ps. Before you start promoting a product, you must know the product is complete and in an acceptable form. Once the product is complete and you want to promote it, you have to make sure you promote it in the right place. You don’t want to be selling air conditioning units to the people of Siberia. Now, even if you created a great product and are promoting it in the right place, you won’t be able to sell it well if you haven’t priced it right.

You understand at this point that you have to pick every “P” of the marketing mix one by one and see if your strategy touches all of them. An important point to remember here is that the concept of the marketing mix is not limited to the “planning” phase of your marketing efforts. Even when you have executed your marketing plans, you have to keep measuring these four factors. If your efforts are not yielding any profits or positive ROIs, look at the four factors and try to find out which one has not been executed properly. Maybe you are promoting the right product at the right place but to the wrong people.

Base Your Marketing on Data

If you don’t know already, the more relevant and popular term than marketing is data-driven marketing among marketers. It is clear now that marketing without data is less effective and less practical in the modern times. Today, you have dozens of different tools to collect data about your target audience. You use these tools because the data you collect gives you deep insight into your market, what your customers want and what puts them off. In the online world, the process of data collection starts from your website. On your website, the data you can collect include the demographics of your visitors, their recent interests, their path to reach your website, etc.

There are other means of collecting data about your customers. The thing is that you will collect data from many different channels and in many different formats. Being able to view this data in one place and taking effective action on it is what the real challenge is. Companies are now looking for solutions to manage their digital marketing campaigns in one place, regardless of the nature of those campaigns. Data-driven marketing also allows you to create more personalized campaigns that are more effective in persuading your customers to use your products/services.

Look at the Right Numbers

One huge mistake that many small business owners make is focusing on the wrong numbers. You might have a great website, a strong marketing strategy and a lot of data to target your efforts in the right direction, but you can’t get any benefits until you look at the right numbers. Looking at the right numbers means that you measure the success of your marketing efforts by keeping up with the most important KPIs (key performance indicators). For you to measure the KPIs, you must set associate goals and targets with your marketing campaigns.

So, when creating a landing page for your product and get a lot of visitors on that page, it does not mean anything to you unless you are measuring some KPIs. In the case of a landing page, your most important KPIs will be the number of visitors, number of converted visitors and the sources from where the visitors are coming. Now, focusing on the wrong number would mean you are looking only at the number of visitors coming to your landing page every day. The number of visitors is only telling you that your marketing efforts have been successful enough to bring the visitors to the landing page. But how does that benefit you in any way if you don’t earn anything from those customers?

That’s where you have to measure the conversion rate. The conversion rate will tell you how much you are making from the visitors that are coming to your landing page. By focusing on conversion rates, you will put more money towards marketing campaigns that are bringing the most potential traffic, i.e., the traffic that’s converting the most.

Now, no matter how benefiting it is to focus on your conversion rates, it is still only one side of the picture. The right numbers here are your acquisition costs. If you spend on every acquired customer is $100 but you are obtaining a value of only $20 from that customer, this type of marketing is not good for you. You always have to look at positive ROI, i.e., your returns on the investments must always be higher than the amount of money you have invested in a marketing campaign.

Conclusion

So, you know at this point that marketing is a profound concept and you have to understand it in its depths to it successfully. Large companies spend millions of dollars every year on just marketing. They must find some value in this activity to spend that much money towards it. On the other hand, small business owners can often ignore the importance of marketing. They are always focusing on short-term progress and return. If they don’t see any significant results quickly, they stop spending on marketing and start looking for faults and shortcomings of their products/services.

It will pay off in the long-term to start using the right marketing tools right from today. Keep in mind that marketing tools are designed to handle different phases of marketing. While some tools help you market your products and services, others are more analytical. Another category is of tools that help simplify the use of both the types of tools. If you are thinking of starting a business or have set the foundation for a startup already, be sure to give marketing the attention that it deserves.  

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Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing for Business

Social Media

In the last decade, social media grew exponentially from being a digital channel for interacting with others into a powerful digital marketing tool for businesses.

With over 3.5 billion daily active social media users, there’s really no limit to how far you can go with it. Just imagine how many of them can eventually become your customers!

But, as you jump on the bandwagon of Social Media Marketing (SMM), you have to properly plan and assess the impact and effectiveness of SMM for your brand. This is because, just like with most things, there are two sides to the coin of social media marketing.

If done efficiently, one side promises success, while the other side can be detrimental to your business. While on the one hand, there are businesses who owe a great percentage of their success to social media, there have also been brand disasters, thanks (but, no thanks) to social media. So, in this post, we’ll be discussing some of the Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing to enable you make informed decisions that will set the pace for profitable digital marketing. Let’s Dive in!

The Pros of Social Media Marketing

Business owners and marketers are going gaga over social media these days. Well, you can’t really blame them. Social Media Marketing comes with a lot of perks, and let’s talk about some of these:

Low-Cost Strategy

Compared to other marketing tactics, social media is significantly low cost, and this makes it very appealing. The most popular social media platforms are available to join for free, and all interaction tools are also free.

However, to get the most out of social media, some businesses are investing full time in SMM strategies such as content generation, digital design, page setups, influencers, and maintenance. On average, all these cost between $4000 to $7000 monthly.

But do you know what? This is relatively more cost-effective than the average of 11.1% of revenues spent on traditional marketing. SMM gives you excellent ROI for less financial investment!

Larger Audiences

Do you want to gain traction in your industry? If Yes, then social media is a powerful tool to use in achieving this. And this is one of the main benefits SMM has over traditional marketing.

While traditional media marketing only caters to fixed audiences (TV viewers, magazine readers, etc.), SMM allows you to reach out to a global audience that is unlimited in reach and scope.

Social Media is an open marketplace. With SMM, you are reaching out to a market space filled with both your existing and potential buyers who need a little push from you to decide whether or not to buy from you.

No Demographic Restriction

What’s more, social media marketing is not restricted by demographics such as sex, social status, and age. Current statistics show that 90.4% of millennials, 77.5% Gen-Z, and 48.2 baby boomers are active social media users.

So, you can have a big market for the age group you are targeting for your products and services. It’s even more impressive that SMM can pass your targeted demographic market and pave new channels for leads generation and sales.

Go International

Before we move on to the next advantage, we should also mention that SMM helps businesses that are struggling to get into the international market.

Thanks to the vast worldwide reach of social media, it becomes effortless for you to reach new potentials outside your suburb, city, or country. Facebook, in particular, has over 89% monthly active users who live outside the US. The audience potential of SMM is huge!

Brand Loyalty

It’s one thing to have customers, and it’s another thing to have a group of returning customers who are fans of your brand. This should be your goal, and social media can help you achieve this.

How?

Well, with social media, you can demonstrate your personality to customers and also tell your brand story. It helps you interact with customers, build relationships, show them that you care, and boost your reputation. This will, in turn, foster long-term loyalty.

Reports from Social Media Today show that;

  • Almost 70% of consumers have used social media for customer service-related issues at least once
  • Customers spend 20% to 40% more with companies that respond through social media

Market place Insights

Another plus of listening and engaging with customers in online conversations is that it will help you find out more about their problems, preferences, needs, likes, and dislikes.

These insights are crucial to the success of any business. They give you information on areas to improve turnouts and get ahead of your competitors.

The Cons of Social Media Marketing

For all the advantages of social media, it is not 100% perfect. There are some cons to Marketing that can lead to undesirable impacts on your brand.

Time Consuming

If you’re already into SMM, then you’d agree how much time it consumes. According to industry reports, 64% of digital marketers spend a minimum of 6 hours on Social Media Marketing.

And that’s not even the worse of it. The other 37% spend an average of 11 hours on SMM. Most business owners who want to get tangible results from their SMM efforts find this time-consuming.

Even more frustrating, if your time spent on SMM isn’t done correctly, it will lead to zero results or traffic that don’t convert into leads or sales.

Hard to Measure ROI

It is hard to define the ROI from social network marketing. A recent study indicates that 89% of digital marketers would want to know the exact ROI of their efforts on social network platforms.

Only 37% have a handle on defining the results of their SMM efforts; 35% say they aren’t sure they are correctly measuring ROI; 28% say they don’t know how to measure at all.

What’s more, it can take a long time – months, or even years before your SMM efforts start yielding sales and customer loyalty.

Loss of Control

The worldwide reach of social network means it attracts all kinds of users, including negative and malicious persons. Anything you post online is subject to comments and criticism. Providing a medium for people to publish damaging comments about your brand is literally the stuff of nightmares.

We should also mention that these negative people include scammers, spammers, trolls, hackers, and all other sorts who want to harm your online credibility.

Bottomline

From all the salient points we have discussed above, we can see that marketing really does deliver favorable results for your business.

In fact, consumers expect all brands to have a social network presence – as much as 63% of them. And 90% of social network users communicate with a brand using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

So, it is crucial for you to up your game and remain conscious of sticking to the best practices. This will allow you to get the most out of Social Media Marketing.

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