How to Quickly Turn Your Sinking Ship Into a Profitable Business Again

7 Ways To Save Your Sinking Company

1 – Eliminate Preconceived Notions and Become A Blank Slate

“When you’re first looking at a business or getting familiar with a business, you hear a lot from the founders or other coworkers or the news about what they’re problems are, what their issues are or what they need to do. I find that people often will analyze business and provide the answers or the solutions without ever really knowing the business intimately.” If you drown out the noise, the secret to a company’s woes is easier to hear.

2 – Focus On the People

“So many people make the mistake of looking at the software, looking at the hardware, looking at their reports, looking at all of the assets and not the most important asset initially, which is human capital—the human asset. All of those systems, procedures, and protocols are only as good as the people driving them and that is infinitely more important.”

Though common wisdom may show some personnel to be stars and others to be mediocre, Bristol said he’s found such assumptions to be false, pointing to his first rule of approaching an ailing company with an open mind because all of the internal employees and managers have some kind of agenda.

3 – Act Fast But Don’t Act Stupid

When quick changes need to be made to right a suffering company, those changes could be penny-wise and pound foolish. “Axing this process or this vendor or this product or compromising the quality of the product for one that’s inferior will lead to initial cost savings but in the long run could ensure that your business further deteriorates.” In other words, avoid going into panic mode.

4 – Do Not Hide From The Truth

When you’re planning a turnaround mission you have to be realistic about the timeline you give yourself to figure out if your plans are working and the business is indeed turning around. If you’re not realistic about the problems facing the company, your timeline will be off and your new strategy will be flawed. Bristol found himself faced with such miscommunication at Russell & Miller.

5 – Remember, A CEO Should Calm Nerves, Not Amplify Anxiety

Being secretive, evasive and opaque is a good way to turn up the volume on the rumors and whispers employees are already generating. “When the senior team is sneaking in and out of the office or holding secret closed-door meetings or saying one thing to one group and another thing to another—that just increases the acceleration t which the business declines.”

6 – Don’t Be Driven By Pride Or Fear

When things are going wrong, fingers get pointed. Too often CEOs or top managers have too much pride to admit their mistakes and the entire organization suffers for it. Their stubborn nature can be a hole in the bow of a sinking ship. “For me, it’s one of the criteria I use to determine whether I’m going to work with a business or not,” says Bristol. “If I see that the owner or CEO is very belligerent and half the lights are off in his building and he hasn’t drawn a paycheck in a while yet he seems unable or unwilling to truly change, that’s a huge mistake.”

But sometimes inability to change stems from fear, not pride. “It’s easier to dump a CRM or a manufacturing vendor than it is to let go of the person in the office next to them, or upstairs or downstairs, or to hire somebody that is more knowledgeable and experienced than they themselves are.”

7 – Allow People A Chance To Turn Themselves Around For The Good Of The Company (Cut Them Loose If They Don’t)

In a turnaround mission, Bristol says that when he sees a manager or employee behaving in a way that’s not in step with the company’s corporate culture and values, he will take them aside and tell them – in a warm and friendly manner – that their way of thinking cannot continue. “’This is the situation that we’re in, this is how you’ve chosen to respond to this situation and these are the ramifications of your actions’—and then just to hit it home I’ll repeat it: ‘you did this and the end result is this, and it has magnified this problem.’”

Unfortunately, some people have a hard time changing with the tides. “I talked to a VP about making the situation they were in better instead of worse and he was crying,” Bristol said. “He told me he got it. As I was leaving, I was going to shake his hand and he wanted to give me a hug.” But the change Bristol was hoping for in the manager didn’t quite take. “Sure enough, two hours later, the same action,” he remembers. “This company did not have the luxury of time to teach this person how to be an ethical person, how to be a good businessman, how to be part of the team that was going to rebuild the infrastructure, not dismantle it. So I let him go.”

Is Your Company A Sinking Ship? These Tips Could Be Your Lifeboat

If you work at a big company, look for:

• New opportunities are evaluated and shot down based on their impact to the old legacy businesses. (See The Innovator’s Dilemma).
• Managers are paid for making quarterly and annual targets, so they avoid investments that pay off in the future since they detract from their bonus numbers. As the business declines, they simply negotiate lower bonus targets each year.
• You benchmark your performance against your direct, legacy competitors instead of the new disruptive entrants in your market. You think you are doing well vs. your competitors without being aware that you are competing in the equivalents of the Seniors Tour.
• Mediocre employees are not fired since their managers know they can’t recruit better ones anyway.
• When asked “why do you like working here?” your employees talk about the dental plan.
• Your managers roll their eyes when you point out how new technologies like Apple Watches, Twitter, and Amazon Web Services will impact your business. They call them “toys” and say, “our customers will never trust their businesses to those!”
• Your co-workers use Blackberries from 2009. They say, “I already know how to use it, and I don’t need that distracting new stuff.”
• You spend the first week of the quarter talking about long-term strategic planning. You then forget about it and spend the next twelve weeks scrambling to make the quarter.
• Instead of firing bad leaders, you create cross-functional committees to solve the problems those bad leaders created.
• When those problems persist, you disband the committees and bring in consultants to solve the problems the bad leaders (then the committees) created.
• All conversations about new grown end with reluctant middle management saying, “only if you give me more budget!” The budget never comes, and you all go back to what you were doing.
• You integrate acquired companies so quickly that you destroy their businesses and their best people leave.
• Or, instead of integrating the acquired companies, you keep them as independent business units and get no synergies. You integrate them in a hurry a year later during a cost-cutting exercise. The best people leave.
• Your CFO spends 5% of her time talking about innovation and revenue growth and 95% talking about cutting costs. She says, “that’s my role here.”
• The HR department thinks their job is administration, compliance, and keeping employees from suing, not ensuring the company wins in the market by having the best team.
• To pay $9.99 for an Evernote subscription, you need to wait a year for the “Information Technology Steering Committee” to approve Evernote as a vendor.
• You have a Chief Strategy Officer. People say, “I don’t know what he does all day.” He disappears and is not replaced.
• You don’t target the best companies and try to hire their best people. Instead, you put three-page job descriptions on your website and wait for candidates to find them, fill out a form, and apply.

Multicultural business team having a conference– stock image

The post How to Quickly Turn Your Sinking Ship Into a Profitable Business Again appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

source https://tweakyourbiz.com/business/business-plans/business-profitable

How to Use Email Marketing to Boost SEO in 2019

 

What if I told you that you can use email marketing to boost SEO, would you buy the idea? You might be wondering… what is email marketing in SEO?

What is the relationship between email marketing and search engine optimization (SEO)?

Email marketing has no direct impact on SEO because emails are not indexed or ranked by Google.

And because emails are used typically to increase open rates and click-through-rates (CTR), some marketers believe that email marketing has no link to SEO.

But they’re wrong because email marketing is a great resource tool you can use to improve your SEO campaign.

In fact, recent research by Conductor reveals that 51% of web users found a new website through emails, while 54% found a new site via organic search.

 

Interestingly, then, if such a staggering number of people found new websites through emails, that means email marketing is linked to SEO and has the potential to dramatically improve your search engine efforts. How?

Here’s how…

In this article, you will discover the best simple tips to use email marketing to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) effort.

Email high-quality content to your subscribers to boost SEO

In the above section, I made clear that email marketing can improve website engagement, but that can work perfectly well only if you email quality content to your email subscribers.

This means that the email newsletters you send out to your subscribers must engage and resonate with your target market.

It has to address their needs because that’s the primary reason for subscribing to your newsletter.

But, how does this improve your SEO campaign?

I will tell you…

Before you start sending out emails, make sure you add enough inbound links to your email content to make it easier for email recipients to click over to your blog to read your articles.

However, there are two ways to do this;

1. Refer to a complementary blog content in your email messages using inbound links.
2. Create content digests with URLs that will lead subscribers to relevant blog posts on your website.

Ideally, if your email content is not interesting (quality content), no one will click through to your site, instead, they will delete your email and move on.

That’s why your email material must be quality content.

Use email marketing to improve link building

Although email has no direct impact on SEO, it influences and improves link building.

A high volume of domains linking to your blog or website will improve your domain authority, and email marketing can help you achieve that.

Your email newsletter is the tool you need to encourage recipients to link back to your website.

For example, when you send out an email newsletter about your latest blog post, ask recipients to click through and link to your posts.

This step is important because acquiring quality inbound links is an essential Google ranking factor that will greatly improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and Google rankings.

It is common knowledge that people always refer to interesting articles – blog posts that are filled with statistical data and case-study blog content to back up their point.

So here’s what to do…

• Create a well-researched article.
• Add links to your post.
• Make the post easy to link to.
• Send out email newsletters and encourage backlinks from your email recipients.

You will be surprised at its effectiveness.

Use emails to increase website engagement

In a study conducted by digital marketing power-house, Neil Patel, he found that 41% of his blog comments were written by email recipients.

This shows that email recipients are more likely to engage with your blog content, which is an element of Google ranking factor and good for SEO because it helps to reduce bounce rate.

Thus…

Encourage engagement to your site by responding to emails from your subscribers. When responding to their emails, ask them to click through to your site. It helps to improve conversion and boost traffic.

That way, you open a communication link between you and your email subscribers.

Here’s the scenario…

Your email recipients receive your emails, they click through to your site and read your latest blog post. Then, they leave a comment on the blog and click your internal links to read even more.

What do you think is happening here? They’re staying longer on your website, reducing bounce rate and increasing user dwell time.

 

That is what Google loves the most. It will help to boost your search rankings and website performance.

This effectively means that a higher bounce rate is bad for your SEO campaigns.

Use email marketing to boost content visibility

Yes! With your emails, you can easily use email marketing to boost SEO by promoting your content to your subscribers and improve the visibility of your blog posts.

When you improved content visibility, your website traffic will increase as well, enhancing the overall performance of your site on search engine.

Here is a simple step to follow…

Send out weekly newsletters to your email subscribers that outline or summarize some of your best blog content.

I will not recommend sending daily newsletters as some might find it spammy and irritating.

This step will without fail boost your blog content visibility, drive more website traffic, and get you quality inbound links.

Email marketing makes website visitors return to your site

Did you know? When you send out email newsletters, it tells your site visitors to return and read your latest blog post.

In other words, your email is a tool that brings returning visitor to your site. And why would they come back?

Simple…

Because they’re satisfied with what you’re offering them. If they weren’t satisfied with your content, certainly, they will not return to your site.

In fact, Cyrus Shepard wrote an article on the Moz blog where he noted that “user satisfaction is a Google ranking factor.”

Hence, your target market keeps coming back to your site because they’re satisfied with your content. They find your content unique and useful.

This is a wakeup call for you to make sure you produce quality always. Do not compromise quality over quantity!

So, focus on providing value both on blog content and email newsletter. Make your readers satisfaction your priority.

But you may ask…

How can you improve user satisfaction?

Please, read this article to learn simple steps that will help you improve website visitor satisfaction.

Write appealing email subject lines

Why should you write an appealing email subject line? Because on average, email recipients receive hundreds of emails per day.

It’s not funny being bombarded with tons of emails every day, which has resulted in less email opens.

Although they may seem insignificant, the quality of your subject line can make or break your email marketing campaign. Why?

Because they are the first impressions (positive or negative) your email recipients have if you.

So, to make sure your emails get opened,  craft incredibly appealing email subject lines that will grab your subscribers attention and make them click.

In fact, recent research shows that 75% of email recipients check their emails on smartphones.

So then…

How can you write compelling email subject lines that will stand out and move email subscribers to open your emails?

Follow these simple tips:

• Craft shorter email subject lines – Because 75% of users are accessing their emails on mobile devices, a longer email subject line will get cut off – making it impossible for users to understand the content. This might result in them deleting your emails. But shorter subject lines would be easier to scan and read.
• Make your preheader more engaging and compelling – A preheader or preview text is not a subject line, but it works similar to an email subject line because it appears next to the subject line. It gives email recipients a glimpse of what is in it for them. Many email clients will show your preheader/preview text next to your subject line. See screenshot… For example, here is a sample screenshot of a preview text alongside a subject line on Gmail.
• Personalize your email – Personalizing your subject line is important because it evokes emotions and increases click-through-rates  (CTR). Thus, use recipients name.

Increase your social signals

The 200 Google ranking factors do not include social media activities, but research on 23 million social media activities reveals that the top four Google ranking positions are those with the most Google+ and Facebook activity.

It goes to show that social signals are essential for search engine optimization (SEO). Thus, use email marketing to increase social signals.

Here’s how…When you create and publish new blog content, send email newsletters to subscribers in your list and ask them to share the link of your new post.

Another way to make it a lot easier for your subscribers to help increase social signals is to add social media share buttons in your email messages.

That way, email recipients will increasingly share your blog content across social media site and boost your SEO efforts.

Conclusion

Here we have amazing tips to integrate email marketing into your SEO effort and increase search rankings. Although there are many ways to boost your marketing effort, emails are a great digital marketing asset you must not ignore.

You will succeed in your email campaigns only if you have the right strategy. So apply these tips and text your own strategy to find out how you’re progressing.

Your buyer persona is at different stages, not their buying journey, which means that what works for Allen might not work for Jason.

Therefore, test, test, test!

Discussing documents– stock image

The post How to Use Email Marketing to Boost SEO in 2019 appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

source https://tweakyourbiz.com/technology/marketing-boost

How to Quickly Brand Your Emails to Match Your Site

In all aspects of your business marketing, it’s vital that you maintain single, coherent brand identity.

Whether it’s your social media platforms or your paid ads, creating a brand identity is crucial to building customer rapport and trust. This is particularly important when it comes to your email marketing.

Email is an essential part of your marketing strategy, and it’s important that it matches your website branding, both visually and in your copy. You need to send out emails that leave a positive trail behind them, not ones that get trapped in spam filters and impact your email subscriber list. That is not a good look for your brand.

Read on for top tips on how to brand your emails in line with your website quickly, easily and professionally.

Recommended reading: 5 Effective Email Marketing Tips to Grow Your Business

Always include a visible working logo

First and foremost, you need to ensure your logo is clearly visible.

As a unique identifier of your business, your logo is perhaps the most important aspect of your brand. As such, it needs to be placed at the top of your email, making it the first thing your customers see when they open it.

But it’s not just about placement. Take care beforehand to ensure your logo works in your email template. Remember that design interfaces for your print, web, and other marketing channels will vary. Email templates tend to use HTML, so it’s possible you can import it in the same format as you use on your website.

You might also want to consider using your logo as a text overlay on your images too. This can help claim images for your own, tying them into your brand and creating visual synchronicity across all of your content.

Keep to a consistent color theme in all of your emails

Along with your logo, the color might be one of the most important components of your branding.

A combination of certain colors can evoke a brand without ever mentioning their name. If you saw the famous Golden Arches of McDonald’s in blue and green instead of red and yellow, it would naturally take you a moment to realize what you’re looking at!

To that end, select and stick to a consistent color scheme throughout your branding. If you’re struggling to find the exact color that matches your website, there are ways to find it. Use a digital color matching tool such as Color Cop (for PCs) or Digital Color Meter (for Macs) and find the exact same shade to keep your color scheme consistent throughout your emails.

And your emails don’t need to be that colorful — they just need to be in keeping with the color harmony of your brand. Consider the palette that you want to use and that would best serve your brand. Will bright, vivid colors suit your product or service? Or perhaps darker, understated tones would look better instead?

Once you’ve identified your palette, stick to it and ensure that the rest of your company does too. Create a set list of acceptable color combinations and make it publicly accessible to your team, with strict guidelines.

Sync up any buttons & CTAs with your website

Maintaining a degree of visual synchronicity between your emails and website is important, and this rule applies to your call-to-action and link buttons as well. Sticking to the same color or style for each creates a seamless brand experience for your customer.

Check out the similarities between Uber’s email and web buttons below:

 

 

The font, shape, and arrow icon all tie into the Uber brand, linking the emails in with the brand nicely. And while the color changes, it is still recognizably Uber.

Depending on how you’re building your website, you might be able to import your web buttons straight into your emails using their HTML code. This will help maintain visual coherence without you having to spend time and effort digitally creating a new CTA button.

Pick a font or two and commit to them

Your font is like the wallpaper in your house: you see it every day, but only really notice it if it changes.

A change of font can be jarring for your customers, and they’ll definitely notice it. As with most aspects of your email branding, keeping it consistent is vital. Stick to a branded font that your audience will immediately associate with your business, and use no more than two fonts throughout your marketing.

To keep yours consistent, use an online font foundry to find a typeface that works with the rest of your branding.

Your choice should reflect your brand’s ethos as well. Are you a sleek, modern business at the forefront of your industry, or a traditional, family-run business that embodies true family values? Find a typeface that embodies your brand and then sticks to it.

Ideally, you would choose two different fonts for your brand: one for your headers, and one for your subheaders and body text. Your header font should be the most striking, bold and expressive to catch your reader’s’ attention.

The body typeface needs to be easily readable, and it’s generally accepted that the best type of font for online is a sans serif. This means there are no extra embellishments on the tips of each letter, like Arial. Bear this in mind when you’re choosing a typeface to use across your web and email channels.

Remember that the layout is just as important

The layout of your email forms the foundation upon which everything else is built. It needs to maintain an overarching consistency throughout your campaign, speaking the same visual language in each one.

However, this still lets you differentiate each email whilst maintaining your branding. An example can be seen in the below email from Nike:

 

You can see straight away that Nike employ the same visual language in their emails: a monochromatic header bar with link buttons to their store, and their iconic tick logo front and center.

They also include a large central image, featuring a new product image each time. By sticking to the same general layout and color scheme, Nike creates a recognizable visual language.

We can see it also reflects the layout of their online store too:

 

From the color scheme to the header layout, Nike retains brand coherence throughout. This creates a seamless experience as their customers click through from their emails to their site.

The way you build your website will inform the way you design your emails. Ensure the hard features like headers and sidebars remain consistent and stick to the same color scheme for each. Use a good newsletter template that everyone in your business can easily access and create coherent guidelines for using it.

This will help your team stick to a consistent email layout throughout your campaigns, sticking to your business’s brand voice in each.

Think thematically with your images

Consistency is the name of the game in branding, but it gets a little more complex when it comes to images. Naturally, your images will differ throughout your email marketing campaigns, as you can’t use the same picture more than once.

Consequently, you need to focus on a wide range of features that gives your images the idea of consistency. This includes lighting, content, framing, and so on.

Check out the examples below from Delta Air Lines:

 

 

Both feature wide-framed, professional shots of luxurious airplanes and satisfied passengers. Their layout in relation to other photos is also similar, and it creates a visual likeness that reinforces Delta’s branding.

This one is particularly important but tricky to get right. Your customers are perceptive, and they will notice if your image style deviates from what they expect from you. Create a checklist for the criteria that your images should meet, focusing on qualities such as:

• Content: write up a set list of acceptable image subjects that relate to your business. This will ensure your images cover the same or similar content throughout
• Colors: your photos should follow the same color styles throughout. For example, you might stick to light pastel colors alone, or muted, darker colors — but never both
• Angles: you might find your product lends itself to flatly photography, so they will feature heavily in your images. It’s fine to deviate from this occasionally of course, but using a consistent angle will also go towards maintaining brand uniformity across your website and emails

If you follow these guidelines, you’ll easily be able to brand images in your emails to match your site.

Create the conversational and candid copy

Rather than looking at your brand’s email campaigns as mere missives or formal statements, look at them instead as conversations with your customers.

Consumers know when they’re being talked at instead of talked to, so write your copy in a voice that is informal and direct. You don’t need to deviate from the brand voice you use on your website — simply write conversationally and candidly.

This is where your brand really comes alive, so speak with sincerity and integrity. Your emails are where you can be most honest with your customers, from your privileged position in their inbox.

Always check to ensure that your email copy matches that of your website before sending.

Imagine talking to a friend casually one day, only to find the next time that they spoke with a completely different accent and vocabulary. The same principle applies to your web and email copy.

As noted earlier, your customers are very perceptive and will detect a change in brand voice across channels. They’ll find it jarring, and it’ll detract from your brand image. Always double-check, and get a second pair of eyes wherever possible.

Matching your email branding with that of your website is vital for creating a coherent and unified brand across your channels.

But it doesn’t need to be a hassle. It’s quick and easy to match your emails to your website, simply by remaining consistent throughout. Follow our practical advice for quick branding fixes.

The woman working on a laptop with Branding– stock image

The post How to Quickly Brand Your Emails to Match Your Site appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

source https://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/marketing-email

Marketing Your Small Business: 4 Refreshing Promotion Ideas

If you think that your small business’s promotion strategies need an update, look to the reasons that people have for supporting small businesses over their larger counterparts. Individuals looking for companies with genuine interests in their customers and the communities they serve will often choose to support small businesses.

Your promotion strategies should work to confirm customers’ inclinations that small businesses care more about their supporters. They want a business that provides superior customer service, interacts with its customers outside of business transactions, invests itself in the community, and rewards regular customers.

Whether your small business already exemplifies those qualities or is working to incorporate them, you need brand promotion techniques that show your customers that you’re there for them. Luckily, you have the Internet on your side to make communicating with vast numbers of current and potential customers faster and easier than ever.

Even in the age of Internet-based promotions, however, you shouldn’t abandon perennially successful strategies built on face-to-face interactions with your consumers and the community that you share. We’ll explore promotion strategies online and off so that you can reach your customers effectively wherever they are.

Let’s begin with a way to promote the small business that you can put into practice whenever and wherever you have the opportunity to speak or write about your history and your mission. As you form your next promotion strategy, your first step should be finding a way to tell your business’s story.

1. Tell the story of your business.

One of the primary reasons that people choose to patronize small businesses is that they want to support the goals or missions of individuals like themselves. From this perspective, supporting a large business benefits a corporation headquartered far away. Supporting a small business, however, benefits people from the customers’ community.

Small businesses have a promotional advantage in that their images are often closely associated with real people: their founders, their owners, and their employees. As you work to tell your business’s story, make individuals the face of your business.

People want to support a business that has their best interests at heart in terms of quality, value, customer service, and personal engagement. Show them that you care with a captivating story, which may also reveal that your business and your customers share certain experiences or are committed to similar causes.

Searching for a story that will work? Go back to your origins. If your business started as a much smaller operation and has experienced growth and expansion over the years, focus on this progress. You can also adapt this narrative to place an individual, like your business’s founder or owner, at the center. Your customers will love learning how your business’s hard work and dedication brought you success.

For an alternate approach that emphasizes your business’s commitment to teamwork, tell a story that highlights your employees and the unique roles they play in keeping your business going. If your customers get to know your business through its employees, they’re likely to feel more personally connected to it and consider it trustworthy.

If you’ve connected your business to a charity, community organization, or another good cause, you’ll want to emphasize this in the story you tell. Let your customers know why the cause you’ve chosen is important to your business. If your business has long been involved with that cause, including the origins of your partnership.

Connecting your business to a cause can attract new customers with shared concerns as well as secure the loyalty of returning customers who admire your business’s commitment.

Next, apply your story to your promotional activities and materials. Aspects of your story may translate well to visuals that could become part of your logo, branding, or incorporated into promotional products that you can customize yourself using an online platform.

Looking for other ways to put your storytelling to promotional use? Include it on your website and social media efforts. Your customers will feel more connected to your business if they’re given the opportunity to learn more about your background and your values.

2. Harness the power of social media.

It’s fairly safe to say that your customers are on social media. We’re not just talking about millennials, though they use these platforms frequently. Almost everyone has a social media account or two set up! Whether you’re new to social media for businesses or looking to expand, you can benefit from increased engagement on social media sites.

Start by meeting your target audience wherever they are. Since each platform has unique features that make it suitable for a particular form of sharing, there’s an advantage to diversifying your social media outreach. While having a presence on all of the popular platforms may sound like the best option, it’s not necessarily the best option for your small business.

If your business is just starting out on social media or you don’t have the time to devote to learning the ins and outs of every site, start by identifying the most important ones for your business. Which platforms do your customers use? What about the customers you’d like to have? Get to know how these sites work and start promoting your brand on them.

Use your chosen platforms effectively. Try a multimedia approach! Pictures can show products in their best light, while videos are great for introducing your team members or sharing new developments in your business. No matter the type of post you’re sharing, keep your storytelling strategies in mind as you develop your social media presence.

Your first goal should be finding your customers on their favorite platforms, but you should also consider which ones work best for your business. Use Facebook for more writing space and the widest audience and Twitter for short, fast interactions with customers and an opportunity for humor that’s worked well for many brands.

Once your social media presence is established, make sure your customers know it! Links to your account should be prominent on your website. If you sell products online, consider adding an option where customers can share that they made a purchase from you on their own social media profiles.

Looking to get more involved on social media? Run a contest for your followers and offer branded promotional products as prizes. They’ll have fun competing over who can share the silliest photo or provide the best caption for your post, and you’ll promote your brand when they wear or use their prizes around their communities!

Your business doesn’t have to limit its use of promotional products to social media contests. Whether your business is just getting to know a new community or has been established for years, you can build loyalty with promotional products that your customers will enjoy receiving.

3. Offer promotional products.

Once you’ve become a brand that your community loves and trusts, especially if you’re an integral part of your hometown, they’ll want to show off their loyalty with quality promotional products that they can wear, carry, display, or use.

Wearable promotional products like t-shirts are tried-and-true favorites, and for good reason: they’re highly customizable, people love to get them, and supporters who wear them in public bring new attention to your business. A custom t-shirt platform like Bonfire can help you design, print, and order a custom shirt that your customers will be happy to receive.

High-quality promotional products show your customers that you care about them and, if you’re distributing them at special occasions, remind them of fun events that your business facilitated. It’s like giving your supporters a gift!

You already know that t-shirts or other promotional products would make good prizes for a social media contest that shows off your business’s fun side and encourages customer interaction. But there are so many more possibilities!

If your business is partnering with a charity or community organization for a local event, consider offering promotional t-shirts to guests. The shirts will remind them of the fun they had any of the good work your business does for the community.

If your small business has loyal customers, they’d likely enjoy receiving a product thanking them for their continued support and strengthening their relationship to your business. They’ll appreciate that you acknowledge their value to your business and will likely continue or increase their support.

Promotional products really shine when loyal supporters wear or display them and others learn about your business when they encounter them. Both of these can happen when you incorporate promotional products into your community involvement.

4. Get involved in your community.

Community involvement brings everything together. Your business can add to its story, develop personal connections with customers, and create an opportunity to distribute promotional products that will get people talking.

There are several ways that your business can support your surrounding community and gain recognition for your brand in the process. Partnering with a charitable cause or a community organization to host an event is a great choice that can attract new customers and form the basis of a recurring collaboration.

Sponsorship is another strategy for building brand recognition that can be easier to plan and recur more regularly than an event. Whether you support a charity, a local organization, or provide individual awards or scholarships, sponsorship makes your business more central to your community.

For small businesses, community engagement is key. Whether community members encounter you at a charity event, a local gathering, or through a supporter displaying your promotional product, you want them to know that your business is committed to their needs.

As you’re refreshing your small business’s promotion strategy, focus on the attributes that make it unique and that tie it to your community. From this start, you can form a memorable story that will make its way through social media, products, and events to new and loyal customers alike.

 Coworking people meeting in conference hall– stock image

The post Marketing Your Small Business: 4 Refreshing Promotion Ideas appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

source https://tweakyourbiz.com/business/marketing-strategy/marketing-ideas

Massive E-Commerce Growth in India

The e-commerce environment in India offers lucrative opportunities for brands willing (and ready) to get involved. In fact, in a race to be the world’s largest economies, India jumped from the 10th position in 2005 to third in 2011. As per the report has drawn by the International Comparison Program (ICP) of the Development Data Group at the World Bank, the U.S. retained its position as the largest economy while countries like Japan and the United Kingdom gave way. It was observed that two-thirds of the world’s economy was contributed by the 12 largest economies in the world, six of which were of middle-income categories. These six middle-income economies included China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico.

India is a productive land that is being eyed by investors from across the globe. As Business India puts forth, the booming industries in the subcontinent include IT Information Technology, Telecom, Healthcare, Infrastructure, and e-Retail. While the rest have been in the race for quite a while now, e-commerce has come out with flying colors despite being new.

Indian e-commerce Industry: A Retrospect

Amid the gloom that most experts and economists see in Indian industries, e-commerce or e-retail is one ray of light that promises to shine brighter by the day. Mumbai-based rating firm, Crisil Ltd. revealed that e-commerce businesses’ revenue could triple in the future three years. The prime reason behind the growth would be the multiplying number of users using the Internet, which is currently 200 million users. The estimated figure by 2015 is 500 million, as per Mc Kinsey & Co.

The financial year of 2013 ended with e-commerce companies’ combined earnings of $2.24 billion. This is however projected to become $8.13 billion by 2015 as per Crisil Research. What has attracted venture capitalists and other investors is the phenomenal annual growth of about 56 percent since 2008?

Some of the industry highlights that mark the prospects include:

•  Jabong, an e-retailing store generated about $100 million from a UK government-backed investing agency.

•   Myntra, another online retail brand, specializing in apparel and accessories, attracted investments worth $50 million.

• Flipkart achieved a sale target of $1 billion well before their planned period.

 

B2C E-Commerce: How Does It Look Like In India?

eMarketer, in its latest forecast, reveals business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce global sales are estimated to reach $1,500 trillion this year which is a jump of 20.1 percent since the previous year. It is believed that in the next two years the Asia Pacific will be leading the e-commerce market with China’s spending becoming the greatest and India and Indonesia following closely.

This massive growth will be fueled by some reasons like the growing mobile and Internet user base, especially in the emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region, advancing payment and shipping options, ever-increasing mobile-commerce sales and famous international brands pushing into markets. Asia Pacific’s growing strength of sales is primarily attributed to their huge populations which are acknowledging e-commerce and beginning to adopt this new culture rapidly.

The forecasted growth of the Indian e-commerce market for this year alone is 35.9 percent, and as per the Wall Street Journal, the Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow three times to become an $8.13 billion industry.

The Indian Advertising Market: A Key Player in E-Commerce Growth

India’s e-commerce market is on the rise. Statistics reveal that by the end of this year, 44 percent of the Indian households will have access to the Internet. This translates to a bigger market for e-commerce. This change is also going to affect related markets in a big way like the supply, logistics, and advertising. Advertising, in particular, will be playing a huge role in facilitating the e-commerce growth by educating people about brands and assisting them in buying not only through e-stores but also their brick and mortar outlets.

Ad Age, a leading source of news and updates from the advertising community, highlighted a few facts about the global advertising market, where India was stressed to be having a bright future ahead. Here’s a summary of the feed, in the form of a few advertising facts, as per the current market scenario:

* While the Latin America’s growth will sustain as before and Western Europe’s will be modest, Asia-Pacific countries especially China and India are set to grow considerably through 2016.

* Amongst the multiple ad mediums like Newspapers, Magazines, Radio, Internet and Television; the Internet would grow to become the second largest medium of advertising, across the world.

* China is ranking number three in the advertising market and is expected to rise as number one. The Indian subcontinent and Indonesia will closely follow it.

* India will become one of the ten largest ad markets ascending from its current 14th position. It’s expected to grow by 39 percent year ending 2016.

* Spending in technology and personal care is growing the fastest among others making them the most lucrative businesses.

India, traditionally the land of charmers, is now being looked upon as fertile land for investments that can yield high returns. With Fortune 500 names like Walmart, wanting to enter into the subcontinent through e-retail, e-commerce is the next big stepping stone for Indian growth.

What are your takes on the Indian e-commerce industry? Do you think it’s a boon or just another mirage in the desert? Post your thoughts and opinion; we’d love to hear from you too!

AKASH DAYAL is a digital marketing evangelist and frequently writes on various trending topics in SEO, Social Media Marketing and E-Commerce. She is a content expert at e-commerce website development company | website designing company in Delhi | website designing company in Delhi | SEO company in Delhi | SEO company in Delhi | a renowned digital marketing firm headquartered in Delhi and an active contributor to it.

Market size and growth

India’s e-commerce market was worth about $3.9 billion in 2009, it went up to $12.6 billion in 2013. In 2013, the e-retail segment was worth US$2.3 billion. About 79% of India’s e-commerce market is travel related. According to Google India, there were 35 million online shoppers in India in 2014 Q1 and was expected to cross 100 million marks by end of the year 2016.CAGR vis-à-vis a global growth rate of 8–10%. Electronics and Apparel are the biggest categories in terms of sales.

According to a study conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the e-commerce sector is estimated to reach Rs. 211,005 crore by December 2016. The study also stated that online travel accounts for 61% of the e-commerce market.

According to Google India Research, by 2021 India is expected to generate $100 billion online retail revenue out of which $35 billion will be through fashion e-commerce. Online apparel sales are set to grow four times in the coming years.

India’s retail market is estimated at $470 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow to $675 Bn by 2016 and $850 billion by 2020, – estimated CAGR of 10%. According to Forrester, the e-commerce market in India is set to grow the fastest within the Asia-Pacific Region at a CAGR of over 57% between 2012–16.

As per “India Goes Digital”, a report by Avendus Capital, the Indian e-commerce market is estimated at Rs 28,500 Crore ($6.3 billion) for the year 2011. Online travel constitutes a sizable portion (87%) of this market today. Online travel market in India had a growth rate of 22% over the next 4 years and reach Rs 54,800 crore ($12.2 billion) in size by 2015. Indian e-tailing industry is estimated at Rs 3,600 crore (US$800 million) in 2011 and estimated to grow to Rs 53,000 crore ($11.8 billion) in 2015.

Overall e-commerce market had reached Rs 1,07,800 crores (US$24 billion) by the year 2015 with both online travel and e-tailing contributing equally. Another big segment in e-commerce is mobile/DTH recharge with nearly 1 million transactions daily by operator websites.

A new sector in e-commerce is online medicine, selling complementary and alternative medicine or prescription medicine online. There are no dedicated online pharmacy laws in India and it is permissible to sell prescription medicine online with a legitimate license.

Online sales of luxury products like jewelry also increased over the years. Most of the retail brands have also started entering into the market and they expect at least 20% sales through online in next 2–3 years.

Closures

Though the sector has witnessed tremendous growth and is expected to grow, many e-commerce ventures have faced tremendous pressure to ensure cash flows. But it has not worked out for all the e-commerce websites. Many of them like Dhingana, IndiaPlaza.in, eBay-India, Rock.in, Seventy MM amongst others had to close down or change their business models to survive.

Infrastructure

There are many hosting companies working in India, some of which offer SaaS for hosting web stores.

India has got its own version of Cyber Monday known as Great Online Shopping Festival which started in December 2012, when Google India partnered with e-commerce companies including Flipkart, HomeShop18, Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping, and MakeMyTrip. “Cyber Monday” is a term coined in the US for the Monday coming after Black Friday, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. Most recent GOSF Great Online Shopping Festival was held from Dec 10 to 12, 2014.

In early June 2013, Amazon.com launched their Amazon India marketplace without any marketing campaigns. In July 2014, Amazon had said it will invest $2 billion (Rs 12,000 crore) in India to expand the business, after its largest Indian rival, Flipkart announced $1 billion in funding. In June 2016, Amazon agreed to invest another $3 billion to further pressure rivals Flipkart & Snapdeal Amazon has also entered grocery segment with its Kirana now in Bangalore and is also planning to enter in various other cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai and faces stiff competition with Indian startups.A large proportion of traffic towards e-commerce sites is driven by coupon sites.

Close-up woman’s hands holding a credit card– stock image

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source https://tweakyourbiz.com/management/e-commerce-2/e-commerce-growth

Top Mobile App Development Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2019

The year 2018 draws to a close and 2019 looms on the horizon. Will the New Year bring something new and radical or will we be seeing just incremental advances in mobile app development? Here are a few mobile app development trends worth keeping on your radar.

Instant applications and progressive web apps to gain traction

It would not be an understatement to say that mobile users are fed up of installing apps, be disappointed and then trash it. 2019 holds something better for every android user. The concept is nothing new. It is being implemented but instant apps mobile app development could shift gears. Users can heave a sigh of relief. Now they can access apps in browsers and use it without downloading. Progressive apps make it even better. Once launched in the browser you can switch off the internet and they will still work. Progressive web apps are even better in that they will work with slow speed internet and low specced devices.  However, instant apps are better for playing games so both will run on twin tracks. So what will mobile phone users do with all that whopping storage space that new mobiles are being equipped with by their makers? That is another story.

IoTistic mobile app development

It is here and it is growing in numbers. We already have Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home Brand as being symbolic of things to come in the Mobile- IoT combine. The possibilities of sensors driving mobile application development and mobile app developers fine honing IoT integration skills will make it a more connected world, possibly with Orwellian echoes.

Wearables

Wearables will be on the rise, further deepening the Orwellian apprehensions and big brother always watching if governments should choose to use wearables tech to keep track of all citizens or employers outfit employees with trackable wearables. Anyway, the brighter side of wearables is that doctors can better monitor patient health and render timely assistance and service providers can know whereabouts of employees and optimize their movements, such as in courier or food delivery.

Cross-platform apps

Google and Apple have always locked horns in the matter of safeguarding their app ecosystem much to the woe of users and enterprises that wish to build and deploy apps. They must build an app for iOS and another for Android or a hybrid one that has its own glitches. Would it not be nice if mobile app developers could come up with one app that works on both platforms? It is good and heartening to know that they are indeed going the cross-platform way. It is not because they have developed a sudden fondness for users. It is the insistence of companies that wish to retain fickle customers who keep jumping ship all the time. Whatever the reason, it is all to the good.

Augmented Reality

It is AR and not VR that is likely to forge ahead in 2019 and beyond given that augmented reality has practical uses. Apple has shown just how serious it is by releasing a new ARKit platform. Google has followed suit with its ARCore. AR makes shopping fun as IKEA has shown but it will many different real-world uses and that is what will spur mobile app developers to give AR a thrust, aided by AI and ML.

AI and ML

Smartphones are supposed to be smart but till now they are just not that smart enough to deserve the label. This could, hopefully, change as mobile app developers with expertise in machine learning and AI finds ways to make apps smarter. A phone, could, for example, since its owner’s mood or even health when it has a measure of AI. If it has that capability, then the phone naturally will have apps that recognize commands and carry out actions or are even smart enough to talk back and advise their owners.

Chatbots get smarter

AI will have a great influence and one area where it will show is in chatbots. We see them as nasty intrusions on websites. Ask them a question and you are likely to find out just how dumb it is. AI infusion into chatbots by capable mobile app developers will make them smarter and well, almost human in responses.

AMP it up

AMP has nothing to do with audio. In the mobile tech world, it means application performance management, integrated into Google search engines in 2016 and well up to speed. It should take off in 2019 to deliver faster and better user experience. Couple that with 5G becoming commonplace and one may expect instantaneous page loads. Let’s hope it is not a pipe dream.

2019 is an exciting time for mobile app developers with capabilities of advanced development incorporating IoT, AI, and ML. This is what companies will want and the right developers will prove immensely useful.

We’re covering the tech-side of mobile app development, as it shapes the way the apps are being built, be it a messaging, travel or shopping app.

Without further ado, let’s get to the 10 trends we found crucial for mobile app development in 2019

1. AR/VR shapes mobile strategies

Augmented reality apps have grown significantly over the recent year, with success of AR apps like Pokemon Go, AR filters enhancing experiences of various social networks, and apps for businesses like the one IKEA created with Apple.

This year, with ARKit on iOS and ARCore on Android, we will see further advancements in this technology. These frameworks allow programmers to use devices’ sensors to map the surroundings and place virtual objects in it. Hence, AR will likely be used more often to showcase and promote products.

A good example of marketing efforts using AR technology is the Welcome to Marwen app, which promoted Robert Zemeckis’ latest film before its release. It uses the abovementioned tools (ARKit and ARCore) to display a movie scene on any surface, so users can investigate it from different angles, learn more about the characters and the movie itself.

2. AI will change the tech

The advancements in AI change the way we interact with mobile apps. Virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant can now help us with gathering information, organize our schedules, book an appointment or optimize our productivity.

The developments in Natural Language Processing and machine learning make virtual assistants more contextually aware, making their responses better and more accurate. At the same time, big companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon invest in solutions based on machine learning to create better conversational interfaces.

We’ve already seen apps that used neural networks and AI to create what other through a simple filter could do. The effect was stunning and we can expect other app developers to experiment with similar solutions. Today, AI becomes more than just a virtual assistant, as it tries to simulate a human friend. The Replika.ai app is a great example of the latter.

3. Security remains developers’ top concern

In 2019 mobile app security remains one of the most important trends.

The general growth of the industry, billions of users, 3rd party SDKs and the vast number of user data being stored by the companies made a security a top concern for mobile app developers.

We’ve already seen a growing trend of encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, mobile browsers protecting users’ privacy and an industry shift towards protecting user data, including Apple’s App Transport Security (ATS) and Google’s efforts to improve app permissions. At the same time, both companies included automatic security updates for their OSes.

We’ll definitely see more improvements in mobile security in 2018, especially in mobile payments, data encryption and privacy protection.

4. On-demand apps will continue to grow

In 2018 users worldwide got used to using on-demand apps. And I don’t only mean the ride-hailing industry precursors like Uber and Lyft. On-demand apps are taking over other types of services like cleaning, delivery, laundry, shopping or making appointments.

The trend will continue to grow as users like the convenience, speed and payment methods offered via the on-demand apps. As they make everyday tasks way easier, we will see more and more industries trying to leverage the gig economy.

5. The growing popularity of mobile payments

Mobile payments and payment gateways are becoming increasingly significant, as the number of users purchasing online grows steadily every year. E-commerce, travel booking services, on-demand applications all depend on mobile transactions.

This increased growth of mobile payments will impact security even more, as brands will have to ensure secured encryption while implementing mobile wallets and payments in their apps.

6.  Mobile cloud computing will continue to rise

According to the IDC, almost half of IT spendings in 2018 were cloud-based. In 2019, we will continue to see growing numbers of tools and services based on the cloud. The growth will include Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, and Platform-as-a-Service.

With mobile cloud computing (MCC) solutions, the idea is to offer rich mobile apps and seamless user experience on a variety of devices. This will benefit companies that want to serve their users on mobile but require more computing power, which could slow down the experience on these devices. A good example is mobile healthcare apps that need to process information to provide a remote diagnostics as part of their services.

7. Accelerated Mobile Pages

Loading speed is still a crucial factor for mobile users.

In order to improve it, Google has introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is an open source project aiming to improve the mobile browsing experience. You can easily recognize AMP-based website searching Google on mobile, as they are marked as such.

Web developers, businesses and publishers will need to consider this solution, as it not only improves the user experience on mobile but is also an SEO factor (AMP websites rank higher in Google).

At the same time, it is cheaper to develop and maintain the AMP than building a native or hybrid mobile application.

 

AMP and PWA comparison. Source: Smashing Magazine

8. Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) have been dubbed the next generation of mobile web apps. They are free from constraints of mobile websites like slow speed and the need for constant Internet connection.

PWAs bring a native-like feel with features including offline and full-screen modes, a home screen launcher, access to the camera and push notifications. Plus, they are faster and consume less data than mobile websites.

Progressive Web Apps don’t require downloading and installation, which is the answer to mobile fragmentation and multiple operating systems.

A good example of a global brand that decided to build a cross-platform Progressive Web App is AliExpress. The owners of this online marketplace noticed that their mobile commerce grows three times faster than e-commerce, and wanted to improve the experience on mobile. Implementing PWA resulted in 104% more users on mobile and an 82% increase in conversion rate on iOS alone.

9. Android Instant Apps

Considering the high number of mobile applications in the app stores, Google realized how daunting it is for the users to download and update new apps every now and then, for different purposes. That’s why the company introduced its Android Instant Apps.

With Android Instant Apps users can download only the most needed parts of the application, accessing the rest of the content instantly through the URL, saving space on the device. Android Instant Apps are being developed simultaneously with Google’s Progressive Web Apps.

Vimeo, a video-streaming platform, used Instant Apps to reduce their Android app weight from 15MB installation package to a 4MB feature module. The app got rid of some libraries and used smaller image caching library. As a result, the app offers a better experience on Android devices, and the company saw a 130% increase in video sessions.

10. Chatbots will become more common

Chatbots became an integral part of communication apps like Slack, Facebook Messenger or Telegram. Companies like Intercom offer them as a part of their services to help brands interact with their customers 24/7.

And it’s easier than ever to build one’s chatbot using chat builders, ranging from the likes of AWS Lex, which may require some programming knowledge, to more straightforward builders that use existing components.

With multiple integrations and simple and affordable chat builders, we will see more chatbots driving conversations between consumers and brands in 2019.

digital layer effect as business strategy concept– stock image

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source https://tweakyourbiz.com/business/mobile-apps/app-development-trends

Required Prep Before Going on a Business Trip

 

Hotel accommodation and transport arrangements are not the only important things you need to plan while planning to go on a business trip. To make the most of the opportunities to you, you need to be organized and ready to explore every contact and sales lead.

Before you leave home, there are a couple of tasks you need to undertake to ensure your peace of mind and to be sure that you haven’t forgotten something important.

Here is a list of a few things you need to look into before you leave for your trip:

1. Confirm that your IDs are up to date: Before you leave, ensure that your driver’s license and passport are up to date. Making sure that your driver’s license is up to date will save you the trouble of not being able to get a rental car if you need to. If your trip is abroad, make sure that you check the expiration date of your passport well ahead of time, remembering you need at least six months before expiry to enter most countries.
2. Do the necessary research on the city/state/country: You need to learn about the location that you are traveling to. This means you know what to expect when you arrive. It will also ensure you are savvy on basic facts which will come in handy when speaking to an audience. Also, find out the exchange rate of the country you will be visiting and take note of how much money in the local currency you would need to take out when you visit a local ATM upon your arrival.
3. Clean yourself up: Get a good haircut to look smart and presentable.
4. Get enough rest: A well-rested body and mind are your best-negotiating tools. Before leaving for your trip, give yourself a treat and ensure that you go to bed early. Cut back on your caffeine and alcohol intake and exercise the night before your trip. Showing up energetic and enthusiastic will win you the first round towards achieving your goals.
5. Check your phone coverage: Check your phone plan and make sure that your phone will work in the country you’re traveling to and that data won’t cost a fortune.
6. Refill your prescriptions: Make sure that you have enough prescription medication to last through the length of your trip without running out. To be sure that you are on the safe side and are prepared for any contingencies, you should consider taking a copy of your prescription.
7. Get dry cleaning done: Visit your dry cleaner and get the clothes you will need for your business trip cleaned. Make a list of the attire that you will need on your trip to make sure that you do not forget anything while packing, especially if you have specific functions to attend.
8. Get insurance: It’s not rocket science; make sure your employer has arranged adequate travel insurance.
9. Notify your bank and credit card company of your travel: Notify your bank and credit card company of your trip and provide the list of your travel dates and locations to their customer service department. It often happens that many banks and credit card companies will freeze your card is used in unexpected locations.
10. Pack your travel documents: Ensure that you pack all the essential documents that will be needed on your trip. Documents such as passport and driver’s license, reservations, confirmations, and medical insurance information should not be forgotten.
11. Make arrangements for any IT needs: If you will not be going on your trip with an IT person, it is advisable to contact the IT personnel that will be at the venue of the business meeting or conference. This is important if you intend to make a digital presentation or if the event involves a webinar, video conferencing, or any other situation involving technology. It is not advisable to rely on your own technical expertise unless you are an excellent computer wrangler.
12. Verify the travel arrangements: If you will be taking flights, it’s likely that your company or the partnering company will take care of your flight arrangements. Save yourself the trouble of showing up late or being inconvenienced by checking every step of the arrangements made. From cab to the airport, shuttle to the hotel, check every link.
13. Finish existing projects: Try to wrap up any unfinished work or projects before you leave. You don’t want to go on your trip and hold up other people while they wait for you to finish tasks.
14. Back up your files: Do a complete back up of all documents and files which you might need during the business meeting/conference.
15. Make sure your Visa has room for travel: Make sure you have enough funds in multiple accounts in case one of your cards is not working upon your arrival. It wouldn’t be a good thing to run short of funds during your trip.

16. Make travel and accommodation arrangements. Car rentals, airline tickets, train reservations, and hotel rooms don’t get any cheaper the longer you wait, and they don’t become more available. When you’re planning the dates of a business trip, either nationally or internationally, consider religious and local holidays because businesses and restaurants could be closed.

17. Put together an itinerary. In this itinerary, list flight information; ground-transportation information; the hotel name, address, telephone number, and reservation number; meeting times and places — with telephone numbers, if possible; hostnames, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses; meal arrangements; and scheduled entertainment.

18. Make sure someone knows your trip plan. Give a copy of your itinerary to your assistant or an employee, and give another copy to a friend or relative. If something goes wrong, and you don’t arrive back when you say you will, someone will be able to initiate a search with accurate information about you.

19. Get your documents in order. No matter where you go, take identification that allows you to drive. If you are a frequent overseas traveler, consider getting an international driver’s license; it’s quick and easy to obtain from the U.S. Department of State. If you’re traveling out of the country, double-check the expiration date on your passport. For passport info, turn to the U.S. Postal Service.

20. Have the right currency on a business trip. If you’re taking a business trip overseas, be sure to stop in at your bank ahead of time and get enough currency from your destination country to pay for small expenses before you get a chance to go to a hotel’s or bank’s exchange window. Also, ask your bank or host whether your ATM card is going to work for getting your destination currency at the hotel where you’ll be staying or at a nearby bank.

21. Pack only what you need. Leave everything else at home. You have to take your laptop, cell phone, reports, contracts, brochures, clothes, and shaving kit or cosmetic bag. Don’t forget your medication and your lens prescriptions if you wear glasses or contact lenses. Take a credit card with an open balance and cash if you’ll be in a rural area. You may also want to bring traveler’s checks

 walking by business district– stock image

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source https://tweakyourbiz.com/business/inspiration/business-trip

How Coupons and Discounts Rapidly Boost Your Store Sales

The online marketplace is highly competitive. You need to develop strategies to attract customers to your site, to not only view but make purchases. Irrespective of your business niche, there are other firms offering the same product only with different branding. Customers browsing on the internet on available products will come across all these options and they have to make a choice. While branding and ingredients are considerations in making a choice, the price is a priority for many online shoppers. Most people will automatically go for an affordable product before checking on components and comparing quality.

Coupons and discounts have the same effect, they relate to a price. Consumers get attracted to offers on prices. It might seem a simple strategy and too common but it never goes out of fashion. Consumers will always be attracted to discounts and promotions. If you can, give away free products to attract more consumers.

If you look at it in the short term, it seems the loss of profit. It might not make financial sense at the beginning; however, the increase in sales will surpass the price difference hence profits in the end.

Here are tips on how to boost your store sales with discounts and coupons.

Holiday offers

Take note of holidays and special events in society. The number of cultural events depends on your location. Whether you are offering online shopping or not, you should research on what your target audience finds interesting, the celebration days. Focus your coupon publications on these days. Be sure to set a flat rate on discounts to help in building up profits easily through the season.

Holiday offers not only to build up sales and profits for your business but also increase your brand recognition. The fact that most people are buying because of the offers, popularity about the product and the brand spreads. Discounts and coupons have incredible rewards.

First time shopping coupon

The first impression of your website has an impact on subsequent sales. Offering a discount for customers shopping from your store for the first time attars more people and solidifies relationships. After a first time offer, a customer is unlikely to go to another retailer. It creates an illusion of better deals to come. Your business also seems considerate.

The discount can be as a low as 4%, the fact that it is a discount it is attractive. You have an upper hand over your competitors when you implement coupons on first time shopping.

Abandoned cart discounts

It is common for shoppers to abandon items on a cart. Maybe they got distracted while shopping or experienced technical difficulty, which disrupted the shopping process. Some shoppers get intimidated by prices or get disinterested in the process. It might be your website that experienced problems, which prompted them to abandon the cart. It is your responsibility to ensure the shoppers come back to the abandoned cart and finalize on their purchase.

To get them back, offer a discount. Depending on agreed policies on customer relations, you can promote your discount by sending them emails or text messages to remind them of the abandoned cart. Discounts will automatically attract customers back to their abandoned carts.

Reward loyal customers

Offer discounts to consistent buyers. Introduce customer loyalty cards or simple coupons to bulk purchases. Consumers will be attracted to discounts and strive to purchase more. Whether it is purchasing in bulk or frequenting your store for sales, it is a benefit to your business. Frequenting your store or bulk purchases not only increase your popularity in the market but also boost your sales. Of course, the results will be realized after several weeks or months depending on how you implement this strategy.

You can inform consumers of the coupons for loyalty by sending emails or messages. Happy customers will always come back. You will also achieve close and long-term relationships.

Regular discounts

Find a way of engaging your customers at given intervals with goodies. Discounts can be in form of additional items, or gifts on certain purchase limits. It can be quarterly or monthly; the goal should be to boost sales. Consumers should be aware of an upcoming offer; it should be definite. Also, you should stick to your promise; if it is the last weekend of every month, strive to deliver every month. Be sure to offer a flat rate to maintain a revenue level. Do not exceed your capabilities and make losses, flat rate coupons result in profits.

Conclusion

Online business has opportunities as well as numerous risks and challenges. You have to keep on updating your services to be relevant in the market and make profits. Research on your target audience and find out what attracts them. Irrespective of your existing marketing strategies, consider including coupons to rapidly boost your store sales.

Your online marketplace needs attractions to build up enough customer interest and convince them to buy products from you. There are different types of strategies to generate curiosity among your customers. Offering coupons and discounts might seem too simple, but still, it is one of the most effective strategies out there.

When you are shopping online, the market is competitive and your intuition always tells you to go for the most affordable one. When a customer searches for a product, he will find a lot of similar products on the web. Even the same product can come at different prices, packages, and incentives. This is your scope to stand out from the rest of the sellers and make the customers choose you over others. You may think that by giving away discounts, coupons or free products you are losing a share of your profit. But you are not.

In today’s article, we shall discuss the benefits of coupons in case of online stores and how they can increase sales.

Keep a regular discount to fulfill your sales goal

Every successful businessman has a specific and attainable sales goal. You may also have such goals, which can be achieved with the aid of implementing strategies involving discounts.

You can provide different types of discounts using coupons. For example, you can offer clearance coupon several times a year. This types of coupons give a solid and flat discount on products or product types. Besides that, you can offer weekly and even monthly discounts. 

consultant shaking hands with the customer– stock image

The post How Coupons and Discounts Rapidly Boost Your Store Sales appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

source https://tweakyourbiz.com/business/customer/sales-discounts

10 Tips to Create Voice-Search Friendly Content

Google and Bing already agree that a big number of queries in their search happen through voice search. The search engines can now process natural language making it possible for users to speak words and syntax in normal conversations with their devices without using specific keywords and get information.

Given that many people utilize mobile devices to access the internet, the number of voice search is expected to rise further. Adweek reports that by 2019 the United States alone will have more than 67 million devices that are voice assisted.

Because of the expected changes, site owners must adjust how they think and implement techniques that can help voice searchers to find content easily. If you are tech savvy, then you might already understand the benefits of voice search in your strategy.

Here are tips you need to embrace and benefit from voice search:

Think About FAQ

How people find information using voice is different from how they do it through text. If you frequent Google search, you might already be aware of this fact. Those who receive phone calls from customers will notice that they use specific keywords in their speech. It is this pattern you should take note of and frame your questions around. Then provide answers to these queries.

After gathering frequently asked questions, you can create an FAQ page. The top queries you should consider are those that people are asking about your company and products. Make sure your answers are concise and accurate. Afterward, you can create an informational page where you can elaborately answer individual questions.

The Content Needs to be Mobile-Friendly

 

Primarily people do voice search on mobile devices. This trend means you need to ensure all your content is mobile-friendly. Make an effort by using testing tools to confirm if the website meets mobile-friendly standards. Through the tests, tweak where necessary to optimize your content for mobile use.

In situations where you are not using tools, consider the following basis tactics to improve the page layout in mobile devices.

• Leave a lot of white space
• Be brief
• Use optimized images
• Short paragraphs

Drop the Pushy Marketing Language

 

It is natural for a marketer to want to sell their products. However, in voice search, you will need to drop your pushy messages. Instead, focus on presenting value by putting yourself in the shoe of the customer. When you meet the needs of the consumer, your content will optimize the content for search organically. Remember customers do not speak to their appliances to look for marketing language. Provide them services first.

Simplicity Conquers

Keep-it-simple is a language you must master if you want to reach many people – whether through text or talk. Unless they are looking for the definition of a word, no one will use complex terms or phrases during a voice search. Avoid the jargon. Take advantage of every simple statement instead of intricate words to carry the point home.

Give Value All the Time

Strong voice search use will maximize on value delivery and be entertaining as well. Embracing these two will make your brand stand out from the rest. So it is not just about creating content to appear during voice search, but also ensuring that what you are providing is truly helpful to your audience. Again, this value needs to be unique to be successful in your field.

Optimize for Local SEO

Research indicates that voice search is three times likely to be local. In response to this, companies should ensure their profile information is up to date because search engines will consider questions like, “where can I find a dentist in Miami?”

If you are a dentist in the location of the searcher, this would require you to have precise locations on your profile, opening hours, and have optimized content. Keywords like “dentist in Miami”, “best dentist” or more specific words like “root canal in Miami” can help clients to find your business quickly.

Try and get questions your prospective audience might use and provide particular answers to them.

Be Conscious of Context

While people are shifting towards voice search, there are topics they would rather search while alone rather than in public. Queries entailing words such as “near me” or “nearby” often come from people who are in public and find texting to be inconvenient. So you will need to create topics that are fine to say out loud in public around such keywords.

Be Conversational

With online voice search, audiences always ask questions. So, create your questions and content around like when who, how, what among others. The answers must be conversational in nature. Don’t let your responses stop the conversation. Keep it going by providing the closest possible query they might ask.

Follow Accessibility Guidelines Seriously

Your audience will need various channels to access information on your site. There are accessibility standards set by search engines like Google that you can use. Accessibility guidelines will require you to make your content easy for the bots to index to make it possible for your potential visitors to find you and read your content.

Target Featured Snippets

Asking Google a question through text sometimes avails the answer directly on the search page. When you target featured snippets and ask the same question through voice search, Google will recognize your website in the answer they give on this page.

To feature in the snippets, use analytics to get keywords, look into the “also asked questions”, and use the most common keywords such as best, price, recipe and the rest to create your content.

You should know that voice search will continuously grow as long as people acquire mobile devices. If you intend to take advantage of the rising numbers, you ought to optimize your website, particularly for mobile. The secret is to ensure you remain competitive and relevant according to the rapid shifts in technology.

There’s no better time to incorporate voice search into your content marketing strategy than RIGHT NOW!

 binary code on mobile phone 3D renderi– stock image

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