3 Old-School Marketing Strategies That Still Work

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There has been tremendous growth in digital marketing in recent times with marketers turning to AI to predict consumer behavior.

A number of small and medium businesses have tended to concentrate their marketing efforts on social media, pop-up ads, websites, and email lists. While some of these methods have been effective in attracting valuable customers, others haven’t worked so well.

Many businesses haven’t hesitated in abandoning traditional marketing methods with the belief that they are outdated. Yet, evidence suggests that modern marketing methods are successful only around 20 percent.

That’s why it’s important that small business owners don’t abandon the original marketing strategies that still work to this day. Here are 3 old-school marketing strategies you should still be using.

1. Flyers

If you’re a local business, you may want to lean toward using flyers instead chasing down customers for business on the internet. It’s such a traditional way of marketing, yet it’s effective because it can be less competitive. People are bombarded with ads and offers on the internet which causes them to start to ignore it.

Instead, focus on building relationships in the community and putting up flyers in high-traffic and targeted areas. Be sure to include the details of your product, service, or event and offer or coupon code if you have a website. Putting up flyers is cheap outside of production costs because in most cases, you don’t have to pay for the ad space

2. Word of Mouth Referrals

Word of mouth referrals will always be an effective marketing tool. People want to hear recommendations from other people to help validate the business they are considering giving their money to.

This is why reputation and customer service are so important. When you’re looking for a restaurant or product, you will most likely head online to look for reviews or ask people you know who have tried it before for their recommendation.

In order to maximize your word of mouth referrals to boost your business, consider offering customer or client reviews on your website or encourage people to leave a Google review.

You can also encourage people to refer you to their friends and family or create an affiliate program for people to promote if they like your products and services. A generous gesture would be to send $5 gift cards to people who refer you to others to thank them.

3. Product Demonstrations

Product demos are fun and engaging. Consider setting up a booth at an event or expo to promote your business and hold a mini-workshop and pass out information.

Compare costs and event information to see where you’d get the most ROI. Be sure to choose an event where you know your target audience will be attending. This is a great way to engage with others and be hands on about marketing your business. It’s also more memorable than a Facebook ad or email campaign.

Summary

No matter the advancement in technology, these marketing hacks are expected to remain in use for a long time to come. If you’ve hit a wall with marketing, be sure to try these out and track your results!

Source: B2C

How to Build a Basic WordPress Site in 5 Minutes

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If you want to run a successful business in the 2010s and beyond, you need a website. It doesn’t matter if you are a solo online entrepreneur or run a large network of brick-and-mortar stores, you need an online presence. Many business owners are intimidated by the idea of setting up a website on their own, but it is something you can absolutely handle. If you can read English and write an email, you can build a website. It really is that easy! Follow along with this guide and you’ll have a website up and running in as little as five minutes. Really!

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system, or CMS. It is a free, open source software that you can install on a web hosting server to run your website. It helps you do everything you need to run your website, including the style, text content, and images, from an easy-to-use backend interface. Once you have WordPress up and running, creating a new page or blog post is nearly exact same experience as writing an email. In fact, this blog post you are reading right now was written in the WordPress editor, and WordPress runs the Due.com blog.

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, and runs about 25 percent of all websites on the entire internet. Nearly 16 million sites use WordPress, the most popular CMS for seven years running. The software is maintained by a group of volunteer coders and the company Automattic, which runs the for-profit hosting site WordPress.com. But while WordPress.com is a fair option for many site owners, self-hosted WordPress is the best option for business owners serious about their websites and their data.

Get quality hosting

WordPress can run on nearly any modern computer. If you want to test it out, you can even install and run it locally on your laptop or desktop computer to see how it works and what it looks like. However, installing it on your computer is much more complex than installing it on a web host for a public website. All you need is a few clicks and you can have a website up and running. In this short video, you can see me do the entire process end-to-end at one of my favorite hosting companies.

Your site is only as fast and secure as your hosting, so make sure you pick a quality hosting provider or you may regret it later on. In web hosting, you often get what you pay for. But for a small, new site, my favorite host SiteGround offers plenty of power for your needs.

Install WordPress

There is a manual process for installing WordPress, but the easy way to go is using your hosting company’s installer. In the video above, I walk through the process using Siteground’s installer, but all installers don’t look exactly the same. CPanel and Softalicious, which are some of the most common server management and installer tools you can find, make the process just as simple. Using an installer, you don’t need any technical skills to install and setup a WordPress site. You can do it in a few clicks, and a special software package will create the databases and files that you need automatically.

Once you are setup, you can login by default at yoursite.com/wp-admin. You can change that login URL with a plugin or some manual steps in the WordPress code, but in most cases that is not necessary outside of the biggest and most targeted sites by hackers. After you finish building your site, you should go to the menu to add a new plugin and install a plugin called Wordfence. Wordfence gives your site additional security to keep your site a little more hacker-resistant. There is a paid version, but the free version is sufficient for a new site’s needs.

Login and build your site

Now your site is live, but it probably looks just like millions of other sites using a default WordPress theme. In the various menus on the left side of your dashboard, you can update your theme and make all sorts of changes to your site. With self-hosted WordPress, your options are unlimited. You can create a store, a membership section, a blog, or much more. There are tons of free resources to learn about building and running a WordPress site. Some of the best include WP Beginner and the WordPress Codex, or just search in Google for whatever it is you are trying to figure out and there is bound to be a free guide on the topic.

Now you are off and running and can build your site. It should represent what your brand and business are all about. Make it easy to navigate, easy to understand, and easy to send you payments. If you do those things, you are serving your customers and online visitors well, and are destined for good things online. Of course, building your site is only a small piece of the puzzle of building traffic and business online, but you can’t do that until you have a website. Once you are done with this guide, you can mark step one complete.

Source: B2C

5 Trends in Dropshipping E-Commerce in 2018

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The e-commerce world is getting more competitive. In this anticipation, entrepreneurs must find a business model that doesn’t require high startup capital, convenient to manage, and flexible in product sourcing.

Today, almost 33 percent of e-commerce retailers use this model. In 2018, we can expect to see more than half of online retailers adopting dropshipping business model, which would literally revolutionize how e-commerce works.

Dropshipping is one of the most convenient ways to start an e-commerce business. For instance, Wayfair and Blinds.com are two of major retailers generating billions and millions in revenue every year. Zappos and Amazon had adopted this model in the past as well.

How does it actually work? After the store owner receives a notification that an order has been placed on the site, the product is then purchased by the store owner (with wholesale price) from the wholesaler.

With this business model, an entrepreneur can focus solely on marketing and customer service efforts, because he or she doesn’t need to worry about sourcing, stocking, and warehousing products, nor fulfilling and shipping orders. All those will be taken care by the partnering wholesalers.

Thus, setting up the startup requires minimal or, even, zero capital. You can literally try out selling products by signing up to free trials to e-commerce platforms, like the one offered by Shopify, which allow you to experiment risk free.

The following are 5 trends in 2018 dropshipping trends.

1. Social shopping

Considering its low barrier to entry, dropshipping e-commerce stores market their products with “impulse buying” strategy. This way, customers buy stuff without doing any price comparison beforehand, which can be bad for a dropshipping business. Instagram marketing and Snapchat marketing are among proven ways to approach social selling.

2. Using Facebook Messenger chatbot

It’s easier than ever before to communicate with customers and leads through a platform that they use the most: Facebook Messenger (FM) chatbots. With various free and affordable chatbot writer apps, you can easily create chatbot scripts that suit every single need of your business, ranging from customer service, content delivery, FAQs, to order tracking and more.

3. Products to sell

With dropshipping, you’re free to experiment on which products to sell in the long run. You can start with a more general e-commerce store and learn from the purchasing data to find the most widely sought-after products. Finding the most suitable products to sell might take a while, but as long as you’ve found your niche, such as from Amazon’s best-selling products, you have a good head start.

4. Niche market targeting

Targeting a product niche can be based on your passion. For instance, if you love women’s fashion, go for it. The thing is, “women’s fashion” is such a huge category. There are formal, casual, lingerie, petite sizes, plus sizes, and more. Choose a niche and stick with it.

5. Sourcing products directly from the app

With a store is based on the popular Shopify platform, use a dropshipping app like Oberlo. It comes with built-in product sourcing directly from wholesalers in China, which allows you to choose, pick, and publish the product specs and images directly from the dashboard, without having to go to AliExpress or Alibaba’s sites.

In conclusion, a dropshipping store doesn’t require any startup capital and it provides an avenue to experiment with multiple niches and product categories until the store owner finds the best one that generates the most revenue.

Getting into the game early would help with enjoying the first mover advantage’s benefits, like higher market share, branding opportunities, and earning customer trust early on.

Source: B2C

I’m a Small Business. Should I Still Be Using Leaflets & Flyers?

We now live in a digital age.

Most things we do have a digital equivalent. Instead of magazines, we read websites, instead of Rolodex and address books we have mobile phone apps, and instead of letters, we use email.

However, the real, printed world is still out there, and although it seems everyone searches for information online these days, there are certain times when a physical item such as a leaflet will help more than a web page.

In fact, there’s good science behind using print rather than digital.

It seems that when we look at text on paper, we tend to take it in more than when we read it on a screen, even using e-book readers such as Kindles.

Although much of the research is based on reading books and long pieces of text, it does suggest that we’re just not wired for reading digitally. That’s not to say we can’t do it (we obviously can, or you wouldn’t be reading this now), but if there’s more effort involved, could that put people off?

Reading aside though, there are other reasons why printed matter works better than digital, and why in some cases, it could be one of the best ways to advertise your business.

Your business is mostly off-line

Yes, you should all have websites. Everyone should have a website because if someone is trying to find you, whatever it is you do, they’re going to search online for you.

Recently I was in the middle of Birmingham, which is a pretty large city with restaurants and bars spread over a wide area. Someone suggested we go get a meal, but nobody had heard of the restaurant mentioned. So, I Googled it and was helpfully given directions and an estimate of how long it will take to get there.

If that restaurant hadn’t got a website, their details wouldn’t be known, and they’d have lost a customer.

It’s that simple, websites really are essential these days.

But, their product is not on-line.

It was an Indian restaurant, but it’s the same with coffee shops, cake shops, and cafes. They can’t sell their products on-line (they don’t do delivery, although granted some do.) OK, maybe they can sell t-shirts with their logos on (in a brazen demonstration of their own brand-worth), but they can’t post a flat white with sugar.

Their products are very physical, and they appeal to people at a certain time, usually when they’re thirsty or hungry.

So how do you reach customers?

You may have seen the annoying practice of putting leaflets under windscreen wipers on car parks. Annoying, but effective.

But you don’t have to be so overt with your practices.

I noticed that in a coffee shop I recently went to, they had leaflets on the bar for people to take away. It had a 10% off your next coffee voucher on it.

This is a great way to get your message out and have people do the work for you. In fact, it’s something many businesses already do.

It’s much like social sharing, but it’s off-line and doesn’t require a wi-fi connection.

In a busy city centre, it can work especially well. By giving your regular customers a bunch of leaflets with a discount on them to give to their colleagues, you’re potentially attracting new clients.

Like networking, your reputation is based on your clients’ reputation. As long as they’re liked (OK, that’s a risk!), then you’ll get a good review which can bring more people in.

But, you don’t have to do it this way, there are companies out there who specialize in leaflet distribution and will do it all for you.

Your business is ‘traditional’

There’s a hardware store in a town in Wales I visit that doesn’t have a website.

They don’t have a computer.

They have an old till, much like Arkwright’s in Open All Hours, that clunks when it’s used.

All of their advertising is done via posters and leaflets. They create leaflets which they give out at various events during the year.

The school has them, the library has them, and the churches have them. They’re everywhere.

Everyone knows where he is.

If you need a screwdriver, you go there. If you need a new aerial, you go there. Fuse blown? You know where to go.

The web and all it’s digital goodness might work for him, but it’s unlikely to make a huge difference. He’s got word of mouth and printed matter on his side.

You’re just starting out

Some marketing companies will tell you that the only way to be found is on-line and that the first thing you need to do is invest 60% of your startup money in a website.

There’s a huge problem with that, and it’s simply that people aren’t going to find your website straight away.

Google’s search results have ten results on the front page, and you really need to be on that front page for your most profitable search term for it to matter.

And you can bet that you’re not the only company with a new website. I bet there are hundreds. Thousands, probably.

So what do you do?

You go print.

You can get banners, cards, and leaflets printed for a fraction of the cost of a website, and you can put them exactly where you want them.

It can be the quickest way to get the word out about your new product, your events or your services.

In fact, Paul Serellis of Eazy-Print says that he’s seen a huge increase in the number of startup companies ordering print matter. It seems the digital world hasn’t won every battle.

But it’s not everything…

Marketing is a holistic process involving many challenges, multiple channels and ability to change.

Yes, the digital world has exploded on to the scene in ways many thought impossible, and it’s certainly disrupted the market, but those who said this would herald the end of print based marketing have been proven wrong.

E-books haven’t taken over from printed books, in fact, look at how the experts got that wrong.

This is what they said in 2014:

This is what they are saying now:

That’s quite an error, but it shows that people still want print. They want the physical feel of paper in their hands.

But, e-books are still big.

Websites are big, leaflets are big, it’s all big.

Whatever your business, you simply have to find the method that works for you, but it’s likely it’ll be a little bit of everything.

Source: B2C

Decoding a Subscriber’s Perception of an Email [Infographic]

What’s the most important thing that matters in email marketing? It’s knowing what your subscribers and customers expect from you. But of course, you would not know what that is just by guessing, right? It’s on finding out what subscribers want that you will be able to decide how to develop your business and most importantly plan your marketing strategy.

For an email marketer, knowing subscriber’s perception of email and what they expect aids in writing emails that get opened because you are sharing information that they want to read.

Here are some factors that need to be taken seriously because they matter to the subscriber and hence matter to you, too:

Do I know you?

The from name and address you use for your emails could be the key to the success of your campaign. Your busy subscriber has very little time to decide which emails to open and which not to. If your from name and address is not recognizable, there are chances that your subscriber may not bother to open your email in spite of no intentions of ignoring you. It is thus critical to choose an effective and consistent from name and email address.

Aha! I like that subject line… I should check the email

While 35% recipients open emails based on the subject line alone, personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. These stats only show how important subject lines are for subscribers to make the decision about opening an email. Thus, make sure you spend substantial amount of time crafting an apt yet crisp subject line. And the most important thing, never ever use a misguiding subject line that is no way related to the crux of the campaign.

Is this email relevant to me?

Just like emails are evolving, so are subscribers. They now expect to receive relevant and personalized content. They expect the email copy to be tailor-made to their preferences and likes. And doing so too is not a big deal for email marketers. The best way to understand your subscribers better is to ask them what they prefer. The next best way is to make the most of machine learning. You can now find out what your subscriber prefers or likes by tracking their browsing behavior and purchase history.

I love those amazing images

Phones, tablets, desktops- all have retina screens now. It thus becomes very important for email marketers to use high DPI displays because images not optimized for high DPI screens end up looking blurred and pixelated on retina screens. You don’t want to give a bad experience to your subscribers, do you?

There are some more factors you need to delve deep into in order to understand your subscribers’ perception better and tweak your email strategy accordingly. The Monks make a light-hearted attempt to bring email marketers closer to their subscribers in this awesome infographic: Marketer’s Expectations vs Subscriber’s Perception of an Email. Also, get a free eBook – ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Email Campaign Management’.

Source: B2C

How to Set Up a Structured Influencer Briefing

Influencer marketing campaigns are all about organization, monitoring, and management. A structured briefing ensures that each cooperation partner is kept in the loop regarding essential points such as campaign strategy, deadlines, campaign hashtags, and advertising disclosure. Here’s a list of points that should not be missing from your influencer briefing.

The influencer briefing provides important information regarding the campaign, its objectives, the required content pieces and the allocated budget. Afterwards, the contract supports the briefing from a legal point of view.

A contract can span many campaigns. For example, you could have one contract with an influencer for a longer period of time that covers several different campaigns and provide individual briefings for your cooperation partner for those campaigns.

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Influencer Briefing Checklist

• Header with brand details and campaign title


• Campaign details with target group specifics and campaign message


• Posting guidelines with number of content pieces and hashtags


• Contract amount and timeline

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HEADER

In the header of your briefing, make sure to include details about your company and the cooperation, like your brand’s name and/ or the executive agency, contact person, campaign title, name of your partner, and the timeframe of the campaign.

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CAMPAIGN DETAILS

In this section, provide further details about the campaign to give your cooperation partner a better understanding of the concept and your objectives.

Mention the campaign topic, a short campaign description, the audience you want to reach, the influencer’s tasks, the campaign objectives, the timeframe, the campaign message, and the tonality of the influencer postings.

Add any additional information to clarify the campaign’s message and help the influencer to completely understand the campaign’s objectives and how the campaign will be judged to be successful.

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POSTING GUIDELINES FOR INSTAGRAM POSTS

Continue your influencer briefing by illustrating the posting setup. Keep in mind one of the reasons for you cooperating with the influencer is their creativity and their connection to their followers. Trust that the influencer knows best how to make the postings appealing to the followers and do not limit the influencer’s creative freedom too much. Nonetheless, some directives need to be stated.

Clarify the number of content pieces and amount of feedback allowed on the content. Express which URLs to use and where to place them, as well as which hashtags are mandatory and which can be used additionally. If you have clear ideas about the posting description, state these here, or at least clarify which elements you need the influencer to mention in the text.

Don’t forget to make the influencer aware of their responsibility to clearly disclose sponsored posts with the appropriate terms.

If favored, highlight the exclusive naming of your brand in the posting to prevent competitors from being included in the same posting. It might also be advisable to constrain the promotion of competitor brands a week prior to and after the posting promoting your brand. To make your brand stand out, you might want to prevent any other postings in the first five hours after your sponsored post.

Furthermore, state in this section if you want to use the influencer’s pictures for reposts on your brand’s Instagram channel and other social media channels.

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POSTING GUIDELINES FOR INSTAGRAM STORY

If Instagram Stories are part of the cooperation, clarify the number of Stories needed over what timeline and give a brief description of the setup, like which features of the product to focus on.

The contract should specify that the influencer sends you a screenshot of the Stories’ statistics (views) after 24 hours, as these are not available to outside followers. Mention any mandatory URLs as well as your brand’s Instagram account name, which should be linked in the Stories.

Again, state that the disclosure of the sponsored nature of the post is mandatory.

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CONTRACT AMOUNT & TIMELINE

Finally, agree on the contract amount and the timeline of the campaign, keeping deadlines for the influencer briefing confirmation, posting approval dates, and publication dates in mind.

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The contract will support the influencer briefing by making the mentioned points legally binding. Additionally, it should include a confidentiality clause. We would advise consulting a legal adviser for further information and legal support in setting up contracts.

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Published originally on InfluencerDB | Influencer Marketing For Professionals

Source: B2C

A Newbie’s Guide to Startup: Making the First Steps to the Big Business

geralt / Pixabay

We all long and work towards achieving financial freedom. People have different reasons as to why they start a business. It could be that they have a unique idea, need the flexibility in finding a career that grows with you, or a personal investment.

Whatever your reasons, realizing your vision of a successful business is not that simple. You probably had little challenge in producing a professional high school graduate resume. However, a company has many moving parts that you as the owner or partner needs to keep a keen eye on them.

You may also have a business idea that you have been aching to implement but don’t know how to, here is a simple guide to get you started:

• Research

You have a business idea that you would like to make a reality. Before you do so, you need to pass the view through a validation process. For your small business to be successful, it has to fulfill a need, offer a product/ service that the market wants, or solve a problem.

Thorough research will help you determine the viability of your idea. Don’t let emotions cloud your judgment. Even though you may not be thrilled by the outcome, you will have dodged a bullet.

• Choose the appropriate legal structure

There are mainly three options for small businesses regarding its legal system. It includes sole proprietorship, Limited Liability Company (LLC), or a Partnership. Just as you would take responsibility for your resume for high school graduate, so does the same apply in a sole proprietorship.

In a partnership, the partners share the liability of the business. However getting into a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), protects against that. Whereas in an LLC, its owners have limited liability.

Choosing a legal structure will help you to determine taxation, risks, registration with the government, etc. A corporation is also an option, but it is suitable for established businesses.

• Have a business plan

You need a plan to guide your business from the startup stage to establishment and growth phase. A one-page outline will suffice for a company that doesn’t require financial support. However, if you will be seeking financial help from investors or lenders, then, you will have to come up with the long, traditional, business plan.

Use it to describe your product or service. Include details about your competition and pricing model, and not to forget, your marketing and sale strategy.

• Understand your product or service

When looking for a reliable entry level resume high school graduate, you will choose one who understands the service they provide. The same applies to the success of the business. You need to have an in-depth understanding of your products or service.

Familiarize yourself with the components or products needed to make the product. Do you offer competitive prices or what makes it unique? It will help you come up with an effective strategy for marketing your services, communicating with your target audience and understanding your customers.

• Accountancy decisions

To efficiently run a business you need to have a reliable accounting system in place. You may have to hire the services of an accountant. An efficient method will lighten the load in creating and managing a budget, file taxes, set prices, and much more.

Various online tools could help you with this. Xero, for instance, does monthly analysis on your business, keeps track of your business’ finances, and much more at the click of a button.

• Insurance

Getting insurance for your business will protect you from the various risks that are business faces in its daily operation. It could be theft, liability or even fire. Shop around for policies that are fine-tuned for your business needs and risks.

Conclusion

There are numerous aspects of a business that you need to deal with to improve the chances of success of your business. Though the list is not exhaustive, it offers you essential tips on where to start.

Source: B2C