Tag Archives: Internet marketing strategies

How to Build Your Audience and Make Money

How to Build Your Audience and Make Money Building your web presence can make your business more successful. An online audience provides the potential for new customers. The key to any business with a web presence is targeting audiences who are the most likely to turn into customers. However, having a blog or webpage doesn’t guarantee an audience, and having an audience doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they will then turn into paying customers. Here are five things you should consider if you want to build your online audience and make money from it.

1. You need fresh, interesting content

No matter what you’re business is, online audiences want content that is new, fresh, and engaging. The internet moves quickly; this week’s biggest thing might be a distant memory by next week. Your content can consist of videos, graphics, or written posts, just be sure to update your site frequently and keep the content fresh and interesting.

2. Don’t be afraid of stories

Even if you don’t think of yourself as an author, you can probably think of a way to connect with your audience using a narrative. A good story will get people to share your site on social media and bring audiences back to your site looking for more stories.

There are plenty of ways to add stories to your content especially in blog posts and videos. Maybe your business has an interesting origin story that audiences will find compelling. Maybe your customers have stories to tell about your business. Or maybe your business offers a platform for others to tell stories in a variety of ways. Embracing storytelling can open plenty of potential doorways to new audiences for your business.

3. Interact with your audience

Letting your audience know that there are real people running your website is a great way to help them feel connected to your business. Taking the time to read and respond to comments and post content they enjoy builds a positive connection between your brand and your audience.

Customers often feel alienated and ignored by large corporations. This provides small businesses a great opportunity to show that they want to engage with customers in a way that other businesses don’t. Use social media to your advantage. Facebook makes it easy to engage with your audience in larger groups. Twitter makes it easy to converse with members of your audience one on one. No matter what platform/s you use, the internet helps make it easy to let potential customers know that you are listening to them.

4. Know your audience

Once you’ve established a loyal audience, it’s important to post relevant and engaging content for them. Customers love custom content, and the content you post should be on brand. For example, if you own a coffee shop, it would be strange to suddenly post an article about the history of bicycles. This doesn’t mean you should be repetitive; just make sure your web content is consistent with what your audience has come to expect from your brand.

5. Understand techniques for expanding your audience

You should be taking the time to showcase your content as much as possible. If not, you are missing out on potential customers. Techniques like search engine optimization (SEO) can lead potential customers to your site through Google. Posting and sharing across social media platforms also make it easy to distribute your content. Try getting your brand out there on blogs and podcasts as a cost-efficient form of advertising.

There are plenty of creative ways to advertise on the internet. Learn what works for your business, and use that to spread the word about your brand. Turning your audience into customers takes some doing, but it’s well worth the effort.

How to Make Money With Your Email List

How to Make Money With Your Email List Email marketing is not dead– not even remotely close to dead. In fact, data shows that the impact of email marketing may actually be increasing every year. A record number of new email accounts are still being created every year. The average email user is receiving more emails today than at any other time in the past.

Rather than being used as a form of interpersonal communication, as it was at its onset, it’s now used as a central component of eCommerce transactions. Because your local utility company and your cell phone provider will send you email notifications when a bill is due, and a corresponding receipt once you’ve paid, brands know you’ll eventually check your email. It’s only natural that it’d be used as part of any serious online sales effort.

Obviously, there are two basic steps to any email marketing effort:

  1. Collect email addresses.
  2. Send out a newsletter, or market to your list.

Strategies, best practices, and variations on how to go about accomplishing these two steps will differ from one industry to the next.

Try these four powerful email marketing optimization strategies:

  • Provide value

    If you only send sales emails, be prepared to lose a lot of subscribers. Resulting in a rather dismal conversion rate. Send valuable content, intensely-targeted to your list, and you’ll earn the right to pitch your prospects. They’ll respect you, trust your authority in the space, and will have had enough chances to have considered doing business with you prior to your official ask.

  • Design your funnels

    Don’t be discouraged if you’ve been lumping your whole list into one category and emailing every subscriber on each campaign. Moving forward, you can begin to sculpt out defined list sub-sections. For example, a ‘previous customer’ segment is a no-brainer. Segmented lists for specific business objectives and for specific marketing campaigns not only allows greater granularity in targeting, but it also gives you a greater ability to experiment.

  • Blog optimization

    If your email marketing efforts are stagnant, you may want to look further up the chain. You might have done a great job converting new site visitors into email subscribers, but have you built any relationship with them prior to their opting-in.

    The answer to this can make the difference between a “who is this emailing me?”-response or an “Oh, these guys have a course?” type of response.

    Work on your blog content, keep it fresh, relevant and useful to your target audience. This practice will improve the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.Click To Tweet

  • The ‘tripwire’ trick

    This is as crafty and slick as it sounds. A tripwire is a very small ask you put directly after an email list subscription in each of your funnels. A tripwire might be $5 or $7 and it has a psychological reason for being used. Studies have shown that people are more likely to purchase from brands they’ve already done business with rather than ones they’ve never bought from.

    Therefore, it makes smart business sense to get a quick, low-cost sale from as great a percentage of your list as possible. As a result,  they experience what it’s like being your customer. Thus eventually make a follow-up purchase.

No matter what tips or email marketing strategies you try, just make sure you don’t write-off email marketing altogether. There is money in your list. All you need to do is grow it and get better at harvesting it’s potential.

Why People Open Emails

Why People Open Emails Though email is a product of the modern digital age, it’s almost old-fashioned compared to social media. And yet, email looks like it will stick around for a long time. According to the Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report by global information services group Experian, 56% of total email opens happened on smartphones or tablets in Q4 2016. This illustrates the fact that email has made the transition from desktop to mobile use.

The same report also states that quarter-to-quarter revenue per email increased from 6 cents in Q3 2016 to 8 cents in Q4 2016. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering emails can be sent out to a whole subscriber list with only one click, a jump in revenue is a per subscriber stat.

For entrepreneurs, this is an opportunity you can’t miss. When you have a subscriber list, you have the ability to reach out to people quickly and easily via email. And if you do it right, your messages will be read.

But what makes people open emails? Several factors are influential here:

Timing

Emails are likely to be read within the first hour of being delivered. In the following hours, the chances are lower. After 24 hours, the odds are no longer in your favor

The day you choose to send an email has a direct impact. If you want to have a higher success rate, pick Tuesdays or Saturdays. Tuesday has an average open rate of 18%, the highest among all weekdays. But among all days of the week, Saturday has the highest open rate at 18.3%. Evenings after 8 pm fare the best, followed by afternoons from 4 pm to 8 pm.

Reputation

Who you are and what your business does plays a key role in your emails getting opened and read. So building an image as a trusted authority in your niche is critical. If your previous emails didn’t offer much, or if your website and social media pages lack substance, people will think your emails follow suit. It takes a while to establish a good reputation, but it’s well worth the effort.

After sender name, the subject line, offer, intro paragraph, and expected length (in that order) influence the chances of getting your email read.

Personalization

Let’s say your name is Alex and your email handle is alex101. You receive 2 emails, one with “Alex, here are great deals for you!” or “alex101, here are some great deals for you!” The chances are that you will regard the second email as spam and send it to trash without even a glance. An email handle used as a greeting is a dead giveaway that the email is auto-generated. Most people suspect that emails are auto-generated, but it helps if it doesn’t look like one.

Most online marketers currently want to focus on social media and other forms of digital marketing, but email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so step up your email game.

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Get the Maximum ROI From Your Email List

Email marketing has the potential to, directly and indirectly, improve your revenue and growth rate. However, you may not be getting the maximum ROI out of your efforts. Use these suggestions to optimize your strategy, find new ways to grow email lists, improve conversions and increase your brand awareness.

Improve Your Sign-Up Form

Don’t skimp on your user experience. Put yourself in their shoes and go through the sign-up process. Is it clear what information the visitor needs to provide? Eliminate any ambiguity and find technical issues with your email subscription form before anyone uses it. Go short and simple!  Name and email are key and use a pop-up form to get more visibility.

Email Marketing Automation

Manually emailing your list might work when you have a few dozen people, but not when you have hundreds or thousands. Automate your workflow and scale your efforts no matter how many subscribers you have. Drip campaigns, transactional emails, and other triggered events can happen immediately upon subscription.

Give Subscribers a Signup Incentive

Want to give visitors a compelling reason to give you their email address? Put a signup incentive in place. The exact form takes depends on your industry and audience, but discounts for e-commerce shops and ebooks for B2B companies are 2 examples of ways to encourage interested parties to add their name to your list.

Keep It Simple

How much information do you ask from subscribers? For a basic B2C mailing list, stick with a name and email. In general, eliminate as many fields as possible to overcome any signup resistance.

Use Segmentation

Don’t treat your email list like a one-size-fits-all entity. Align your email subscribers with your buyer personas, specific demographics, the form they filled out or other differentiating information. When you have a segmented list, you can customize the messages going out to these users. They get more relevant emails, and you get better opportunities for conversion.

Deliver Value

Are you giving subscribers emails that they look forward to reading? If they’re ignoring your messages or rolling their eyes and sighing whenever you land in their inbox, you’re not going to get much out of your email marketing efforts. Make sure the content you include is relevant, timely, and the value is clear to the subscriber. Ask yourself if you would be happy to receive this type of email in your own inbox.

What’s your key next step from the above to improve your email marketing ROI?

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

Many business owners believe that social media marketing is only about brand awareness or updates to let followers know what’s going on with the business. What they don’t realize is that social media has some serious lead generation power.

To get started generating leads, think about your opt-in freebie or lead magnet. This is something you create and offer to potential customers for free to get them to sign up for your email list. This can be anything from an ebook or white paper or video education series to a free consultation or a discount/free shipping.

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to lure potential customers onto your email list, you can set up your lead captures on social media.

Step 1: Landing Page

Your landing page should include a brief bit of information about the lead magnet, graphic, and a signup form. Plain, and simple. On a lead capture landing page, you don’t want to distract the customer from what they’re there to do: sign up for your email list. You can include a First Name field, but you should only have your Email field required to make signing up quick and easy.

Step 2: Facebook Ads

There are 2 types of Facebook ads you can use for lead generation. The first is the basic lead generation ad that gathers emails directly in Facebook. When your ad is finished running (or every week or so if you have your ad running continuously), go into your lead ads library to download the most recent signups and upload them to your own email marketing platform.

The other option is conversion tracking. You’ll set up a conversion tracking ad that leads to your landing page. You’ll need to insert a pixel on your website’s home page, your landing page, and your thank you page to track conversions.

When setting up your Facebook ads, create a caption that makes your targeted audience want what you’re giving them (in exchange for their email address).

Step 3: Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are interactive tweets that give more info on a link, app, or video. Twitter also has a lead generation card for ads. To get access to the Twitter Cards, you’ll need to create an ad account and run an ad.

Create your lead generation Twitter Card in the same manner, you would create your Facebook ad. Twitter Cards also allow you to collect email addresses directly through Twitter, without the customer navigating to another website. The cool thing about Twitter Cards is that you can promote them, but you can also organically tweet out a lead generation Twitter Card. Pin it to the top of your Twitter profile to increase views. This is a great way to organically collect new leads.

Step 4: Promoted Pins

Design a Pinterest graphic that leads to your landing page. Create a Promoted Pin campaign with the traffic objective, so you pay for clickthroughs. If you don’t have graphic design skills, outsource this project. Pinterest relies heavily on visual aesthetics, so your pin graphic is important.

These are the top 3 ways to capture leads on social media. Want to move potential customers through your sales funnel? Try using these 3 lead capture methods.

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Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website

 

Use MailChimp to Get More Leads from Your Website Ask any digital marketer about the key to online success, and they’ll tell you “the secret is in the list”.  Getting traffic to your website is the first step in the process, but turning them into customers is the tricky, important part.

The key is to capture an email address from visitors and use it to keep in touch until your prospect is ready to buy. A great way to keep in touch and in front of potential customers is a weekly email campaign.

MailChimp is a 3rd party email marketing software that lets you do just that.

What Is MailChimp?

MailChimp is a cloud-based email newsletter system that helps you to collect and store emails from your website, and design, send and measure email marketing campaigns. They are free for your first 2,000 email address and 12,000 sends, which means you can get started and try it out without spending a dime. They also have a paid version which has automation processes for drip campaigns.

Gathering Email Addresses

Use MailChimp to gather email addresses by adding  a newsletter subscription form to your site.  Create a free opt-in offer like a downloadable ebook. People “pay” for the free item by entering their email address.

MailChimp is tough on spam. MailChimp has your subscribers double opt-in to your list.This means they’ll sign up on your subscription form and they’ll receive an email with a link to click that confirms their subscription.

Adding an existing email list to MailChimp? The double opt-in doesn’t apply to email address added directly to MailChimp. But, if you haven’t sent an email in a while you may want your first one to confirm their desire to continue receiving your emails.

Create a Campaign

Once you have a list in MailChimp, create an email campaign, include news, deals or interesting articles and send to your customers and prospects. Make sure you include a clear call to action in your email, so your readers know what to do with the information you send.

For convenience, you can schedule more than 1 newsletter at a time. Or to automatically send your blog post to your readers via RSS feed without any effort on your part.

If you pay for your MailChimp account you can send an automatic drip campaign. This is a set number of emails you send for a specific purpose … to move readers through the sales process and convert them to buyers.

Measure Results

One of the best features of MailChimp is their reports and statistics. The detailed reporting features built into the system lets you measure your email open rate, and link clicks to name a few. It tells you if anyone reported you for spam (not good!) and how you are doing based on industry averages.

When you’re starting out with email marketing, MailChimp is an invaluable tool that helps you refine your message and delivery. I’d recommend you spend some time reviewing and analyzing each report you get and adjusting your email marketing plan accordingly!

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5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

Time and again, it’s been proven that email lists are effective marketing tools. A targeted list can get people back on your website, share news, and grow your volunteer and donor base. It’s a way to stay in touch, stay top-of-mind, and build trust. If you’re still wondering how you can start building or grow a non-profit email list, read on!

We’ve got 5 simple, actionable steps you can take to grow your email list!

1. Put a Form on Every Web Page

Make it as simple as possible for people to sign up for your email list. Place your signup forms high on your page, above the fold if possible, and put one on every page. The goal is to make them as easy as possible to find because most visitors won’t search for them.  One great way to do this is with a pop-up box or widget, using a tool like Waftio.

2. Create a Great Offer

Sometimes, just receiving your newsletter is not enough of an incentive. If your subscriptions are falling, creating a free download to entice people to sign up can make all the difference. A report, short e-book or even a free learning series can encourage people to sign up. Figure out what that incentive is and use it!

3. Encourage Sharing

If you’re like most non-profits, you already have a network of volunteers and employees. Ask them to sign up for your newsletter, and share your emails with their network. There’s a reason why networking is such a powerful marketing tool. Even if you have a small group of followers now and each of them shares your message with 10 friends, you could reach hundreds or even thousands of people!

4. Market Your Newsletter Everywhere

Don’t stop at a subscription form on your website. Mention your newsletter on your email signature and letterhead. Share it on your social channels, and advertise it at real world events. The more you talk about your newsletter, the more subscriptions you’ll get.

5. Send Great Newsletters

The final step is also the most important: make sure that once you have all those email addresses, you use them wisely. Send out regular (but not super frequent), interesting and valuable newsletters that your list will look forward too. That will increase their engagement with your cause.

Your non-profit email list can be a great asset to your organization. If you don’t already make the most of it, we hope these tips will help you. And to help your non-profit be successful with lead generation we’re offering a discount on Waftio. Use the code 50offplans and you’ll receive 50% off either plan for 3 months.

How to Measure Conversions on Your Website With Facebook Ads

How to Measure Conversions on Your Website With Facebook Ads

One of the biggest complaints marketers have about social media is that there’s no way to track conversions or ROI. Other than tracking which social network is sending more traffic to your website, there isn’t a way to track organic social media marketing.
Enter Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising has really changed the game when it comes to targeting your specific audience and tracking how many conversions you get from each ad. In fact, many digital marketing agencies have begun offering Facebook Ad-only services because of how their power.

Because this is still a relatively new development in the scheme of social media (Facebook Advertising has only been a prominent player for a couple of years now), not many business owners know how to use them to their advantage. Learn how to measure conversions with Facebook Ads.

1. Create a Pixel

How to Measure Conversions on Your Website With Facebook Ads

When you open Ads Manager to create a new ad, you have 3 options for your marketing objective: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Click the option under conversion called “Increase conversions to your website”. Create a name for your campaign, then click continue.

The first thing you’ll be asked to do is select a conversion event. Do you want to track how many views you’re getting to a blog post from this ad? Do you want to track new email signups? New purchases or registrations? There are several conversion event options created for you to select from.

The next step is verifying your pixel. When you click Verify Pixel after selecting a conversion event, a box will open with your pixel code. You’ll install the code on your website in between the <head> and </head> codes to get the pixel working and tracking your clickthroughs.

2. Create Your Ad

Create your copy with a clear call to action and include a visually appealing image that doesn’t contain too much text. Make sure you’re targeting the correct audience, but don’t get so specific that Facebook can’t show your ad. Consider how much a new registration, purchase, or lead is worth to you before deciding on your budget.

3. Create a Valuable Landing Page

It doesn’t matter if your ad and targeting are perfect if you’re sending people to a busy or flawed landing page, they’re not going to convert. Make sure your landing page is clean and contains only the information the customer needs to know or do to take action.

You can use third-party service like Tabsite to create a landing page. When capturing leads, ask for the bare minimum–email address. Expecting people to fill out a long form full of required fields is unrealistic, and they’ll leave the page.

How to Measure Conversions on Your Website With Facebook Ads

4. Experiment with Facebook Ads

There are a number of ways to track conversions with Facebook Ads. Does your company do business over the phone more often than online?

Try call tracking from your Facebook Ads. Use a third-party service to generate a phone number that redirects to your business and is only used on Facebook.Then, check your analytics to determine how many times that specific number has been called.

Try video ads to see how those increase conversions.Leave links in the captions of your Live videos. Experiment and see which ads get you the most conversions.

Facebook Ads are changing the digital marketing game in terms of tracking ROI and increasing conversions.

How to Use Social Engagement to Increase Website Traffic

How to Use Social Engagement to Increase Website Traffic

If your company has been resisting social media because of the, well, social part, consider giving it another look.

Social networks can be a simple, yet effective way for new customers to learn more about your business, and for existing customers to build their loyalty. These networks can be places to engage with users in conversations, show off your cool staff and your cooler products and services, get people excited about what you do, and make it easy for them to buy.

Why is it important? Look at the numbers. As of June 2016, Facebook has 1.71 billion monthly active users worldwide, and 1.13 billion daily active users. Twitter has 84 million monthly users and Instagram 200 million. Granted, not all of these users will be interested in your business, but it’s likely that people in your target market will be on one or even all of these networks. And who knows? Given the global nature of the Internet, some unexpected customers in other parts of the world may want what you’re offering.

Companies looking to take their social networking seriously can try these strategies to drive business.

  • Start blogging

    Part of the reason that some companies are intimidated by the idea of social networking is the fear that they always have to come up with interesting things to say. A smarter solution is first to focus on creating and maintaining a company blog. Doing this will accomplish two things: it will give you all sorts of fresh things to talk about on social media and drive people to your site. It will also provide fresh content for people who visit your page. What you don’t want is to have a site that never changes. Newcomers may like visiting once, but you won’t get the return visits you need.

  • Make it easy to interact

    Design your posts to get people talking, whether it’s a current blog post, your thoughts, a photo, or someone else’s post you are sharing. You can throw out a question or a theme and encourage people to respond. Each platform has its own version of “I like this,” such as a thumb’s up, heart or star. But what’s even better is when people share your post. This extends your reach and draws in more people who may not have seen your initial post.

  • Make every path connect

    Include links to your site in every social media post as a call to action. Drive site visitors to your social media. Push your site and social media all in any other communications, such as email newsletters, direct mail, texts, or other marketing materials. This global approach is a good way to get noticed, even if someone isn’t part of one network.

  • Make it mobile friendly

    Desktops and laptops are still used; more people are visiting sites and social media through their mobile devices. When planning your social strategy to drive sales, make sure everything looks good and functions on common mobile devices.

  • Consider “promoting” posts

    Major networks encourage businesses to pay to have their social activity be seen by more users. Posts can also be targeted to appear more in front of certain demographic groups of likely customers (men/women, certain age groups or locations.)

Implementing these keys can help a business drive social traffic to their website.  Combined with a lead capture strategy on the website, this is a strong form of marketing known as social lead generation.  The key is engaging and growing your audience on social and then moving that community over to your website.

How about you?  Are you using social media for lead generation?

5 Ways to Get the Most Submissions on Your Survey

5 Ways to Get the Most Submissions on Your Survey
What do business owners use surveys for? They’re a great indicator of what your customers think of your business, your product/service, and how well you’re running your operation. It helps you get the pulse from the people that matter most. We’ve got 5 tips to get the most submissions on your survey.

Trying to figure out where your business could improve? Is your growth stagnate and want to know what your customer base wants to see from you next? Consider sending out an online customer survey to get direct feedback from your people quickly and easily.

Putting together a survey that asks all of the questions you want the answers to, sending it to your email list and promoting it on your website and social media platforms is fairly straightforward.

How do you get people to fill out your survey and send in their responses?

1. Create your survey online.

A whopping 9 out of 10 people prefer to fill out survey forms online.  You could get a 90% better return rate simply by moving things online rather than via the postal service.

2. Offer an incentive.

It’s simply a fact of life; people always want to know, “What’s in it for me?” The results of this survey are extremely important to your business. Offer an incentive (such as a small freebie or a discount) to take the survey. If you make it a discount, it’s worth it for your customers, but also generates you a profit.

3. Keep it short and sweet.

Most email signup forms consist of one submission: email address. That’s because the more blanks there are to fill out, the less likely someone is going to fill it out. Even if the only extra blank is for a name.

Keep your survey short and to the point. Ask exactly what you need to know and nothing more. Create checkboxes or buttons to make it easy for people to take the survey.  Users fill out more when it is quick and easy to answer versus requiring them to write responses.

4. Create clear questions.

You don’t want there to be any room for error or confusion in your survey responses. If need be, run your survey by someone who doesn’t know your business to make sure that every question makes sense and can’t be misinterpreted. An unclear question could lead to unreliable data, so don’t risk it.

5. Test different survey methods.

The best way to get the most submissions on your survey is by sending a few surveys. Not to the same people, of course. You don’t want to bombard your audience.

For example, you could create an online form to send to your email list. You could also create a feedback box on your website. Or personally, reach out to any clients that you’ve worked with or are working with now.

The best way to guarantee you get the most bang for your buck, or in this case, get the most submission on your survey, is to keep things simple, easy, and beneficial to your customer base. Unless they’re loyal customers, no one is going to spend too much time filling your survey. Think about the customer, and what they have time for.

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