One of the biggest issues you'll face with any newsletter campaign is growing stale. There's a massive number of people who simply let emails waste away in their inboxes.

According to one study, consumers can spend upwards of five hours a day gawking at their inboxes. Check out the four real-world use cases below. See if you can't get readers to devote a little of their inbox time to you.

1. Managing an International Campaign

Imagine that you're the head of a successful nationwide B2B sales organization. Your firm is now ready to move onto the international stage. One of the most cost-effective ways to market to buyers in other nations is to reach out to them via email marketing.

It costs no more to email someone on the other side of the planet than it does to email your next-door neighbor. This makes email an especially attractive option. Chances are that you have at least some international buyers already signed up for your B2B email newsletter if you're in this kind of position. Should that be the case, you'll want to invest in a piece of email newsletter software. That way, you can divvy up contacts based on their region.

Business owners in one area might have specific needs. Going through the extra step of segmentation can give you the freedom to reach out to them directly. In some cases, you might want to consider hiring an author who is fluent in another language. That way, you can be absolutely certain you're getting content that's tailored to the market you're trying to reach.

Whatever you do, don't even think about running your email messages through automated translation software. While this might seem like a good way to save time and money, the text that comes out of these is often mangled. It could potentially even be offensive. You're much better off sticking to your native language. Alternatively, work with bilingual professionals who understand the local tongue of the places where you're doing business in. Keep in mind that your readers might be in a different time zone. You might want to schedule your email blasts based on their location, not yours.

2. Reaching Out to New B2B Buyers

Before a business starts to really grow, it typically doesn't make any major purchases. Owners will usually only buy increasingly large stocks of goods once they're in a stable financial position. No matter what the current economic climate might look like, there are countless businesses all over the world that reach this point every week. When they do, the managers who run them might not have any idea about how to manage their money.

You can use your email newsletter campaign to reach out to these and other business owners. They may be at a total loss when it comes to buying from B2B organizations. When reaching out, make sure you segment your email list properly. Potential new buyers and those you've never worked with before should be sectioned off into a category of their own. That way, they can receive tailored messages to their unique position.

Don't be afraid to dispense tips or helpful advice. You might even want to share a few pointers as to the best way to find organizations that offer the kind of services yours does. That might seem like this could lead them to shop around. However, many business managers and newly minted purchasing directors may start to trust you as a result and come back to your brand. The more your letters start to sound like they're geared exclusively to marketing, the more chance you won't actually reach anyone.

People who read online B2B email newsletters on a regular basis are very often trying to glean information. They may need an opportunity to buy something useful for their business. They're likely to ignore messages that are too one-sided. Give your customers the freedom to configure their own preferences as well. This should help to improve the image of your newsletter with those who might otherwise not invest the time in reading one.

3. Connecting Readers with Your Company's Values

Social and environmental responsibility have become major issues for many buyers these days. While they're normally seen as something you might associate with consumer buying habits, they have a place in the B2B marketplace as well.

This is especially true if you ship goods to companies that have built marketing campaigns around the idea that they sell only natural, organic, or low-carbon products. It's also something that you want to consider if you're trying to promote a brand that's built around the concept of fair trade or some other value designed to do more than simply build a business. Use your email newsletter to better explain the source of the goods you're selling. Inform readers whether or not your clients could use them to further this kind of campaign.

Approximately 52 percent of U.S. consumers consider personal values when making purchasing decisions. Even purchasing departments are taking note. That makes this a great opportunity to position yourself as a legitimately responsible firm. Some companies are dedicated to volunteerism. You might have seen a few consumer products that feature labels showcasing how much work their staff does pro bono. If issues such as these are important to your company, say so in your email newsletter.

Don't purchase outside email contact lists. Doing so can undermine the idea that you run an ethical firm dedicated to your customers.

4. Offering Deals to Your Regulars

According to some marketing experts, people who receive an email newsletter may spend as little as 26 seconds looking at it. That means you need to offer something fast, right from the beginning, to catch their attention.

Offering deals to select individuals has traditionally been a good way to encourage them to open B2B email newsletter mailings. It's become even more popular as a result of data retention policies. Newsletters are easy to track as well as use, which makes them a great choice for this kind of marketing.

Some forms of data collection are understandably controversial. However, you probably have a pretty good idea of who your best shoppers are. Consider giving them some rewards for sticking with your brand for so long. On the other hand, you might also send out personalized messages to those who haven't bought from you in a while. Encourage them to come back somehow.

Marketing specialists have suggested that potential buyers respond best to new messages. You might be able to grab some market share this way as well. On the other hand, perhaps you're building a firm that's dedicated to privacy. If that's the case, then you'll want to do the exact opposite. Explain to your newsletter readers just how much you care about their right to decide exactly what gets done with their information.

Picking an Angle That Works for Your Company

Depending on the specific type of company you represent, any of the four angles listed above might be right for you.

Spend some time brainstorming. Come up with a list of potential ways you could use a B2B email newsletter to promote your brand. Throw out any that seem too ridiculous. You'll probably have a decent collection at the end you can actually turn into viable messages.

In any case, make sure that the offers you send are genuinely good deals. Offer something that would get you excited if you were in your client's shoes. The human aspect is always the most important, no matter what kind of marketing your B2B firm does.

The post 4 Real-World Use Cases for Your B2B Email Newsletter appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Far too many teams give little to no thought to visual identity until long after a project has begun. By the time someone thinks to bring it up, the last thing any project manager wants to consider is investing more money. Even worse, product development teams sometimes view visual identity as non-essential or irrelevant.

To be clear, your company’s branding and visual identity are extremely important. They help convey what you’re all about to potential customers. This is one of those scenarios where you will need to spend at least some money to make money.

Considering the fact that many people use consumer sentiment to address their client’s needs and desires, you will want to figure out some way to be sure that potential clients have some degree of emotional attachment with your brand. This might not cost anywhere near as much as you’re thinking, however.

Investing in a Startup’s Visual Style

Creating a visual identity for your startup doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Expensive logo designs aren’t necessarily better. You shouldn’t think that you must throw a great deal of money at the problem. Think, quality over quantity. In fact, the price tag isn’t a very good indication of what you’ll be getting when you hire an artist.

Unless you have an artistic background yourself, you’ll want to hire someone, but the cost of logo design isn’t as bad as it might sound. Professional logo design packages start at around $50. This encourages many people to think it would be cheaper to do things themselves, but a freelance graphic designer might only charge around $40.

You might wonder why this sounds so affordable. Like most other things, competition drives the price point. The current growth of the gig economy has gotten to the point where people are no longer able to charge huge amounts of money and attract many customers. Even established professionals are unable to charge as much as they used to.

It’s even possible to find artists who charge less for startup firms as well. If you opt for something like this, make sure you’re not incurring any hidden costs. Independent consultants can charge upwards of $3,000 for (allegedly) "budget" visual identity services for startups.

Legal questions might also come about should you attempt to use certain logo templates. Again, you don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish with copyrighted materials.

Pitfalls Often Increase Visual Branding Costs

When you buy a typeface — a.k.a. "font" — you’re often not really buying it but rather simply purchasing a license to use it with certain restrictions. The same thing goes for those who purchase a logo template. They’re really not buying a logo so much as they’re buying the right to temporarily use what they create with it. Make sure you understand what you're getting for your payment.

This is why some experts have said that small business owners should set aside approximately $5,000 when they want to develop a visual identity. That should be enough to purchase a design you can use without any strings attached. In general, you don’t want to exceed this benchmark as you’ll start to experience diminishing returns as the costs climb.

Mis-branding can be even more costly, especially if you have to spend this kind of money again in the future. You want to be sure that the visual identity you picked out really works for your startup. An online motorcycle rental company might want a hot rod-inspired rebellious image, but this certainly isn’t what you should go for if you hope to also appeal to a more down-to-earth audience.

Normally, missed branding opportunities aren’t quite that dramatic. That being said, there’s always a strong possibility you might miss the mark by going with something that’s outside what your clients expect. One thing to keep in mind when you’re deciding what kind of visual identity to go with is that it will provide a framework for the rest of your content.

Content Is Still King in a Visual World

While you might not associate the word content with the issue of visual distinctiveness, there’s a real connection here. Depending on the type of design language you pick, you’ll end up framing all of your business communication around it. The visual identity you choose for your startup needs to be adaptable to multiple mediums.

This is especially true of any startup firm that’s trying to position itself as a lifestyle brand. Tech companies and subscription box providers could be looked at this way even if you aren’t used to doing so. Consumers have learned to associate concepts with brands. Almost any visual cue is now considered an invitation to enjoy a certain type of lifestyle.

A company that launches a campaign always looks to overall visual identity as the baseline for developing its message. Think of fast-food restaurants. You’ve no doubt noticed that all communications are packaged around a central theme. If that brand releases anything that doesn’t match its established theme, it looks jarring. More often than not, these forays draw an unwanted type of negative attention.

Wade in Slowly When Establishing a Visual Identity

Think carefully about the kind of visual identity your startup is going for. Picking the right one now could save anywhere from $3,000-$5,000. That's the amount you’ll have to pay to redesign everything from scratch later on.

Some small business owners have paid up to $30,000 to develop a brand for their startups. Of course, a price tag like this is outrageous. Nevertheless, it should help drive home the point that rebranding after any kind of mistake can be very expensive. Take the time now to lay out a design you won’t mind sticking with. Make sure you shop around a bit.

By investing a little time now, you can end up saving yourself a lot of money and potential heartache later on when your startup business becomes a real success.

The post Visual Identity for Startups: An Overview of Costs appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Web Design Mistakes Hurting Your SEO

Take a look at these ten big missteps and ask yourself if any of them apply to your site. Chances are that just a few minutes of code revisions can make a big difference in your SEO.

1. Not Linking to an About Us Page

When Google's crawlers follow links, they look for several generic terms that help them aggregate content. At the top of every page, include a pertinent headline and links to an About Us and Contact page. This will help Google crawl through your pages and find the content its bots need to parse everything else that's on your site. 

While including other href links is of course important, Google's algorithm may not follow these with the same gusto that it does when looking for basic pages.

Web developers have hotly debated the right way to format hyperlinks, but it doesn't seem to matter as much as it used to. Google is more interested in the name than the href formatting code.

2. Neglecting to Purge Old WordPress Plugins

Google, Bing and Yandex all rate sites down if they take too long to resolve in a virtual machine they use to test sites. If your landing page doesn't meet basic web page speed requirements, then it's a fair bet that it will start to slip in the rankings. WordPress is supposed to be lightweight, but even sysadmins who rely on this platform might find that it takes more than 500ms to load a page with good hardware. 

One of the biggest reasons this web design mistake occurs is either an over-reliance on plugins or neglecting to get rid of old ones that are no longer used. Head over to the WordPress admin panel and ask yourself if you really need all the ones listed. 

If you see any names that you didn't install yourself, then you want to purge these as well unless they were part of a dependency package.

This same wisdom applies to those who manage their back-end development with a framework like Rails or Node.js because plugins in these environments can be just as deleterious to performance.

3. Encouraging Redirects

People used to say that encouraging an end user's browser to redirect them to another page was a good way to update links, but it's very easy to get carried away with this practice. It's a common web design mistake to encourage browser redirection. However, try to do your best to limit the number of times this happens when loading a page. Search engine bots can get stuck in a loop if they're not able to keep track of the number of redirections.

4. Hosting Bloated Image Files

Compressed image file formats exist for a reason. Huge uncompressed TIFF pictures look gorgeous, but they take forever to load. Since TIFF and other related file structures normally require a helper application to resolve in a user's browser, Google treats these as third-party downloads anyway.

Compress pictures and PDF files to reduce loading times and therefore improve search rankings. You can use lossless compression algorithms, like those employed by some versions of WebP, if you need to ensure unfettered data integrity. Now, there is certainty that around 9 out of 10 client browsers can load these pictures, so you're not sacrificing usability.

5. Deleting Your Sitemap

People don't talk about sitemaps nearly as much today as they used to. So, though you might feel like deleting that little XML chart that seems pointless, that's a huge mistake. This is because a sitemap can add links that major search engines will follow without considering them spam. Since developers essentially write sitemaps in discrete HTML or XML, they can also be important for accessibility reasons. Google sometimes considers these in the rankings of sites for those who perform certain types of public services.

6. Relying Solely on Dynamic HTML Pages

Considering that we generate so much content on the fly, it can be tempting to make almost every page dynamic. This is how web giants like YouTube essentially work, so it can seem a little unfair that this hurts web rankings. However, most people aren't running something the size of YouTube, so it's important to make sure that at least your major landing pages are all rendered in basic HTML and CSS.

7. Generating URLs Dynamically

While there is a place for dynamic URL generation, a majority of your pages shouldn't rely on it. Give your pages discrete names that make sense if at all possible. Most of the popular frameworks do allow this, so there's no real reason not to.

8. Designing Exclusively for Desktop Devices

Desktop sites take a long time to load on mobile devices, so they're inconvenient for mobile users. Search engines take mobile performance into consideration when ranking sites. Even if you do get to rank, then the probability of a bounce grows by 123 percent if it takes between 1-10 seconds to resolve a page. Use a mobile processing tool and physical hardware to check how your site loads on mobile devices.

9. Designing Exclusively for Mobile Devices

The flip side of this is true, since mobile pages don't rank well when people search for keywords from a desktop or laptop computer. 

Responsive web design that senses the type of device being used and the overall resolution of the user's screen is of vital importance, especially for those attempting to launch multi-channel campaigns that are geared toward users of several different platforms.

10. Having No Way to Resolve 404 Errors

Search engines hopefully shouldn't run into a resource not found error, but if they do, you need some way to point them back to your site. Make sure that you provide at least something creative that provides links to your homepage and other important areas. 

Eventually, external links might fail and search engines following these could end up running into your site's 404 page. If you took the time to link back to your homepage, then search engines will be able to discover something meaningful even from this failure condition. On top of that, there's a good chance that a user following one of these malformed external links will click one of your other ones and provide your site with some additional traffic.

The post 10 Big Web Design Mistakes That Hurt Your SEO Prospects appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Needless to say, that kind of sudden halt to operations could deal a death blow to all kinds of small businesses. Those without adequate resources to ride out the crisis will be hard-pressed to find ways to remain viable. Those that do have the financial wherewithal to get through it face the challenge of forecasting what kind of market will greet them when they reopen their doors.

For them, there should be just one major priority while they wait: marketing. It's the one activity that can continue while the world-at-large sits in quarantine. It's also the surest way that businesses can make sure to emerge from the crisis in a reasonably strong position, ready to pick up where they left off. To help businesses in that very predicament, here are the three best methods for businesses to continue (or upgrade) their marketing efforts during the coronavirus quarantine.

Increase Content Marketing

For the vast majority of today's businesses, content marketing has become a go-to staple for growing their brands and driving interest in their products. The whole idea is to provide potential customers with useful, interesting digital content that will help them to identify with the company and hopefully build a lasting relationship with them. That's the reason why an astounding 70% of marketers now report actively investing in a content strategy.

Right now, with people all around the world confined to their homes, the size of the potential global audience for digital content has skyrocketed overnight. Businesses can lean into that by increasing their content marketing efforts to capture a share of that new audience. The current situation can give businesses time to fine-tune and perfect their content strategies and ramp up their content creation by putting idled employees to work sharing their expertise and ideas with the world.

Make Use of Email Marketing Automation

Although it would never be a good time for a business or its employees to have to go through a crisis like this one, there's one recent development that might help businesses turn the situation into a marketing opportunity: marketing email automation. The latest generation of email marketing software (read more here)now offers the ability for businesses to create automated campaigns that can reach a wide audience without the need for labor-intensive oversight.

With the right marketing platform, an idle business can still create targeted, personalized email campaigns to reach customers and potential customers as they wait out the crisis. Doing so can help to keep their brand fresh in the minds of their target market. In the case of eCommerce businesses, it could even drive additional sales to help offset potential losses. In any case, this is a marketing strategy that all businesses should be using, even in the best of times. With automated email marketing platform users reporting that automated and segmented campaigns drive a 760% increase in revenue, few companies can afford not to.

Conduct Customer Outreach

One of the biggest things that the average business struggles with during regular operations is remaining in touch with the needs and desires of their customer base. That's because it's a natural impulse to devote more resources to serving customers during busy times, and not necessarily to listening to what they have to say. With customers staying at home with little to do, now is a perfect opportunity to conduct some customer outreach to reconnect and hear their opinions on how the business is serving their needs.

The best part of embracing customer outreach during a situation like this is that there are countless ways to do it. Businesses can send out surveys via email and social media channels, have employees engage with people in forums related to the business's industry, or even use the old-fashioned method of placing direct calls to customers using the business's customer contact database.

Of course, any business looking to conduct an outreach campaign via phone would have had to have the foresight to get permission to call when they collected customers' information to begin with. Those that haven't would need to take the additional step of checking their contacts against any relevant do-not-call registries first, making the effort more trouble than it would be worth. Still, for companies who can do this, making direct contact to check-in with customers at a time like this can be both instructive for them as well as comforting for the customers themselves. After all, if there's ever going to be a time that the average person might welcome a pleasant phone conversation, it's now.

Emerge Even Stronger

Although these are uncertain times for businesses, carrying out an effective marketing push during this crisis may be the one way to emerge from it stronger than before. Of course, there may be no way to fully offset the potential economic losses that can arise from an economic halt like this one. But any business that hopes to survive is going to have to take whatever steps they can to try and stay in a decent position and stay ready to get back to business at the earliest opportunity.

If nothing else, having the time to pause and evaluate current marketing strategies - and make them more effective - should prove beneficial at the very least. So, despite the uncertainty, business marketing work should continue. In the end, it's likely the only good way to put this idle time to good use.

The post The 3 Best Ways to Continue Marketing During the Coronavirus Quarantine appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Millennials and even younger consumers have been proven time and time again to be willing to spend money on products that show elements of personality. They're more likely to buy things that present a message that resonates with them. Some marketing experts have even suggested that this kind of thinking might be true for nearly all consumers in spite of the fact that it might not always be obvious.

This is precisely why you need to keep this in mind when assembling both written and multimedia content for your company's promotions. If your firm doesn't have a set personality, then everything you write or post will come off like a cold press release. You might be thinking that your brand doesn't really have it's own personality yet. This is fine, but take a look at your current blogs and social accounts at your earliest convenience.

Your commentators might have a lot more to say about how they perceive your company than you imagine.

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Developing a Communication Strategy for a Content-driven World

If you don't know how to effectively communicate your message, then it won't really matter how good it is. Nobody will be able to connect with your brand, and they might not even realize that you were trying to share something with them to begin with. This is especially problematic if you've been sending out email blasts or trying to attract readers to your blog.

Start by taking a look at your company's corporate identity and see what needs to be updated. Remember that what looks neat and professional isn't always right. A company that markets extreme sports equipment online would want to project an edgy and disheveled image. They might purposefully post loads of videos and photos that look underproduced. Firms in this market might even try to get their own customers to develop content for them.

For instance, if they had enough personality they might be able to attract people who share with them their own hang-gliding or BMX photos. Consider designing a narrative to frame the rest of your company's message around. You want to sell people their way of life if at all possible. Think more about what your customer's underlying fears and concerns are. Our example firm was able to target its content marketing tactics because it understood what its customers valued.

Communication is always key, so you might also consider retraining yourself in this art. There are a few ways to do this. Start off by paying close attention to your interactions with customers. Back off a bit and try to understand things from their point of view a bit more. If you're having trouble, then consider researching neuro-linguistics programs or perhaps take a traditional language arts class. This might be able to help you read between the lines when it comes to what your clients have been telling you.

You'll be in a better position than most larger companies once you have this down, but there's no reason you can't look at the way they've geared their content marketing tactics to get a few pointers.

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How Big Companies Communicate their Brand's Personality with Content

Larger enterprise-level firms often look so ridiculous that people have taken to ridiculing their marketing efforts online, but a few firms have recently been able to escape this stigma. By dialing in directly with what their customers care about the most, a few firms have been able to shed their big corporate image and present themselves as though they were catering to the needs of individual consumers.

These companies have figured out a secret that really shouldn't be all that secret. Namely, content is still king no matter what. In some cases, companies have been able to sell their customers products and services that they don't really want simply because they understand their base so well. They've been able to use emotionally-driven content to get their customers sold on an idea.

For instance, some people have criticized cars made by Tesla for having features that the environmentally-minded consumers who would traditionally buy electric cars would never want. They care more about performance than anything else, yet Elon Musk's force of personality has extensively built up the brand in spite of this. He's essentially sold a story to his customers, which is vital since building a brand personality can help to engineer a scenario where people want to purchase one of those cars because they feel that in doing so they're sharing in the success that it represents.

Tesla Motors has gotten so good about promoting content that fans have developed their own unofficial Facebook page, which in turn helps to promote the brand. They're not the only ones doing this, either.

Wendy's has been acting like an antagonist on their Twitter feed by posting purposefully toxic content. Most content marketers would cringe at this kind of thing, but the fast food giant has been gaining followers by acting out in ways that their fans find funny and rebellious. These Tweets work because they're both authentic as well as conversational. Being authentic is one of the most important things when it comes to presenting a new identity. Customers will see right through anything that's obviously phony.

Normally, people think of content marketing as a company broadcasting a message out to people, but what customers say back after hearing a message is just as important. Wendy's is presenting them with a snarky personality while still remaining engaged. This could be looked at as something of a subtle way to find out much more about what their customers are really looking out for.

Once you're armed with this information, you should be able to further dial your content into what your customers are looking for.

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Remembering to Stay the Course

As soon as you've found a way to effectively communicate your brand's personality through relevant content, you'll want to stay the course. Too many companies end up experimenting unnecessarily and they then find that they lose whatever it is they had. Don't feel the need to reinvent your company once you have a successful strategy in place.

At the same time, though, don't feel like you need to stay completely static. Aim for a healthy balance of putting out new messages and reinforcing the old. You'll then want to get ready for success because when you finally do strike that balance you'll resonate with your customers and make them want to buy into your brand image.

The post Communicating Your Brand's Personality in Every Promotion appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Most people would think that having a marketing budget costs tens of thousands of dollars. Well, it doesn’t. Let’s say you only have 5000 dollars and you want to get the most out of every dollar spent, but you are not entirely sure how to invest this money. If that’s the case, here are a few things you can do for your business in order to get noticed and generate some buzz in your market:

Market Research

Market research can help you understand your customers, get to know your competition and the people who are willing to pay for your product or service. First of all, you have to figure out where to focus your marketing budget and research is the best way to start. The best part when it comes to research is that it doesn’t cost you anything and it can be crucial in any marketing campaign.

A very important aspect of your research is finding a target audience, meaning that you have to establish what kind of people are most likely to buy the product or the service that you are trying to sell. Get in contact with people and determine which social media platform can be the most effective for your business promotion. This is definitely the best way to build a foundation for your campaign and it costs you nothing but time.

Competition

Another key to success in any business is having a clear understanding of your competition. You can start by using Google Trends and Google Alerts, in order to know what your competition is up to. It doesn't matter if you think that your idea fills a unique gap in the market because you can always find other companies that offer similar products or services as you do.

But be careful, the intensity of the competition will affect the overall potential for success of your business. It is really important to know what you are dealing with. It is one thing if you only have 3 companies as competitors, this way being easier to track everything they’re doing and do it better. But there’s a whole other thing if there are one hundred companies offering similar products as yours, in this situation being harder to keep track of your competition.

This is one of the more important steps of the process and it won't take anything from your marketing budget.

Create a Website

Even if you’re not selling online services or products, which obviously requires a website, having one can represent an online business card, with information about the services that you offer.

According to a 2016 survey from Bright Local, the majority of people accessing a website are looking for the following, in this specific order:

• list of products/services
• opening/closing hours
• phone number
• price list
• physical address
• contact/email form
• map and driving directions 

If you do a little research on small business websites, you will have the surprise of finding out that half of them do not have one. For the early stages of your business, there are some services that can give you a fully functional website and they cost as much as 20$ a month. Then later you can upgrade from a starter website to a service that offers professional design help. Take Wix for example, a platform that takes care of your domain name, hosting and also offers you a website builder. You can also always consider WordPress, which is one of the most popular platforms that people build their websites on.

Blog

Another aspect that you should consider, is to maintain a blog with helpful advice on the services and products that you offer, advice that might interest your customers. You can also post entertaining articles that are meant to keep your customers engaged and help you develop a relationship with them. You can start working on one such project by using WordPress, where you can use their free features and create a basic blog.

On average, if we consider that it costs less than $20 per month to maintain an website, that means that you don’t need more than approximately $250 of your marketing budget for one year. Considering that your marketing campaign is on a budget, you shouldn't pay for web design services; you can just create a basic design by yourself, with the tools made available by the platform that you’re using.

Media Placement

Placing articles in media can be an important part of making the most of your marketing campaigns. With the right media placements you can draw attention to different marketing campaigns while also building authority and credibility. When your customers see you in the media in a positive way, your brand stays top of mind. If you hire a contractor or close connection to do a couple placements on a tight budget, you will get a couple assets needed to be a part of the other marketing tactics mentioned in this article. 

Social Media

The social media universe can be an overwhelming place for small businesses. First of all, you should concentrate your promotion efforts on one or two platforms. This doesn’t mean you can’t have profiles on multiple social media platforms for your business, but when it comes to spending money, you should really think about which ones will get the best engagement.

You should consider the fact that different social media platforms work better for certain businesses. If you’re promoting a visually-based business, such as art, food or travel, you should concentrate on Instagram or Pinterest. If your promotion should be more informative rather than visual, you can focus on platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Once you figure out which platforms could work the best for your market, you can start promoting your best content with paid ads.

Facebook Ads

One of the best ways of doing that is by using Facebook paid ads. This strategy  for use of your marketing budget offers more than direct sales, also being a great tool that helps you increase awareness and word of mouth advertising. Make sure you understand the difference between Facebook ads and boosted posts. Ads appear directly in users’ News Feeds, right alongside status updates, photos, and videos from their friends, so they are sometimes indistinguishable from regular posts. Boosted posts are a little less complex than Facebook ads. A boosted post is simply a regular Facebook post that you pay to reach a wider audience.

Instagram

The photo based app now boasts more than 500 million monthly active users and commands one of the highest audience engagement rates in social media. Instagram ads are visually-based ads. That means that if you business is more visually-based, you’re in luck, because Instagram gets much more engagement on their posts and ads than Facebook does.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, it isn’t exactly the best place for marketing. Twitter is a viable network for organic engagement, where you don’t have to pay in order to reach your audience. A very common practice is to simply share on Twitter, what you’re actually promoting on other social media platforms.

This whole social media promotion doesn’t have to be expensive. Professionals recommend allocating only 50$ for testing the marketing vehicle and if everything works fine, then you can allocate between 5 and 10$ a day. It is very important to be consistent with your promotion, so customers won’t doubt your legitimacy. That doesn’t mean that you have to promote a post every single day, but even if you do it three times a week, you’re only going to spend $1,000 for social media marketing per year.

Email Marketing

It might sound quite odd, given the fact that we live in the era of amazing tools and ways to promote your business, but plain old email marketing is still one of the best ways to invest your money. In fact, the return on investment that comes from email is more than you would think. It turns out that for every dollar spent on email marketing, business owners can expect to see an average return of roughly thirty-eight dollars. Think about some of the biggest providers for this kind of service, like MailChimp. This platform for example, is meant to help companies find their audience, engage their customers, and build their brand. Some other platforms that offer similar services are: Constant Contact, Emma, Aweber.

One thing that you should really keep in mind is to make sure you optimize your email campaign for different devices, so people will be able to read your emails from their smartphones, tablets or computers. Statistics show that 66% of emails in the US are read on smartphones, so if you don’t optimize your email campaigns to function across multiple devices, you will miss out on new sales and new customers.

With services like MailChimp, you can even start out with no money ( but with limited available features) and afterwards you can start spending not more than $10 per month. That brings your email marketing campaign to a total of $120 per year.

Media Gimmicks

A gimmick is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers. In such a crowded marketplace, gimmicks can attract a lot of attention. Then you can find different strategies, like using limited special promotions, especially for a few days following major holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. You can also think about doing a giveaway (offer one of your own products or services) that can really put a lot of people in touch with your business, given the fact that they have something to gain from it.

A very efficient way to get the attention of the public is by giving some money away. Members of the media and the public are more likely to pay attention to your product or service when they have something to gain from it. There are a lot of ways to invest your marketing budget and create some buzz in your market for as little as $1,000. For example, you can donate to charity or fund some scholarships for some randomly chosen people. A very good alternative would be to hold a contest and give an attractive prize like flying the winner somewhere, or host a dinner party with multiple winners.

Local Advertising

After you covered everything when it comes to the web and especially social media, it’s time to concentrate on the “real world” marketing. One of the best choices for using your marketing budget is to use a recurring ad in a local publication. The keyword is "recurring" and it refers to the fact that advertising something just one time won't work, because you need to find the publication that could work best for your business.

You can do it the old way by using printed ads, or you can be creative and try radio ads or local TV ads. Even though many brands think print media and radio are dead, they can be very effective for small local businesses.

A common practice these days is attending special events or conferences. These conferences and conventions and trade shows related to your business definitely exist, you just have to find them. Being part of this kind of events can really raise awareness for you products and services, especially at a local level. Think about it, a lot of people will directly hear from you what you offer and how you offer it and this way, word-of-mouth advertising will be spread.You can create a more than decent local advertising plan for your small business for as little as $1,500 per year.

Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers are people who have a small following of 1,000-100,000 followers. Compared to a big celebrity, a micro-influencer can drive higher levels of engagement, and help you gain the trust of your target audience. Technology, web and social media are great strategies that can certainly boost your number of customers, but there will never be a more valuable form of marketing than word-of-mouth.

So go on and pick an online influencer! You can easily spot these people; they usually have their phone number and email listed somewhere on their page, so that makes it easy for you to approach them. The first place where you should look for these people is among your own lists of followers, especially on social media. If you are at the very beginning of your business branding and you don’t actually have a following of people, you can find micro-influencers by using relevant hashtags and keywords.

These people have influence over others through social media. Consumers will trust their favorite influencer in the same way they would trust a friend. So if an influencer is promoting a product or a service that you offer, part of his group of online followers can be your next customers.

But there’s another thing you can do, that’s similar. Pick a person from your loyal customers and turn them into your brand advocates. The best brand advocates for your business could be those who really take interest in your services and products, people that usually buy and use what you sell.

The average influencer charges approximately $100 per post, depending on how big is their following. If you promote a post every month, this strategy shouldn’t take more than $1,200 out of your marketing budget in one year.

Create Video Content

In the generation of social media, people are more likely to watch a video than to read your written content. Video content can be very valuable and while it can cost lots of money to get professional videos produced, you can always do it yourself. Some basic equipment and editing software are really all you need to get started. You don't want to overproduce the video or spend too much money on actors or sets. You can create great video content for free if you can use a little bit of software and have some basic knowledge about how to film a video. Just put yourself and your team in front of a camera and try to sell your product or service in the most convincing way. If you're doing it the right way, it can give you a great opening to lots of followers and new customers.

It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, your business will only thrive if consumers are aware of its existence. As a small business owner it can get quite difficult to decide where to spend your money and how to get the best out of that spending, but it is very possible to develop an efficient marketing campaign by spending as little as $5,000.

Conclusion

If we consider that it doesn’t take more than one year to grow your business and put your name on your map, and we add all the numbers, the situation looks like this: $250 for the website, $1,000 for social media, $120 for email marketing, $1,000 for media, $1,500 for local advertising and $1,200 for micro-influencers. That brings us to a total of $5,070, which is almost the exact amount that we have estimated.

The best strategies for landing new customers for your business can include digital, mobile and traditional media and you can get the best of them all for not as much money as you would think. The most important thing that you should keep in mind is that marketing doesn't have to lead you to bankruptcy, given the fact that these simple efforts can rapidly increase your sales and success.

The post Best Way to Spend a $5000 Marketing Budget appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Let’s assume you have a great product, the powerful engine that will drive your success. It's one that fills a need like Stripe did by providing a way to accept payments online or one that inspires a want like the craft beer industry that sold $22 billion worth of brew in 2015.

If that assumption is wrong, then it’s back to the drawing board for you, starting with an article like this one. If it's correct, then here's how to stop spinning your wheels and start making forward progress. 

The focus here is on growing your user base quickly on the kind of budget most startups have – that is, a limited budget that must be invested wisely.

1. Hustle 

“Really,” some of you are saying, “He’s going with that first?” Watch this Gary Vaynerchuk video before telling me this isn’t the starting and sustaining principle that will drive your success. “Every minute that you can apply to your game, you need to,” Gary says. He’s lived it in a string of successful startups and to the tune of $160 million net worth that is growing rapidly.

Vaynerchuk (@garyvee on Twitter) says, “I think that people like to claim that they work hard and smart, but they’re not putting in the work. And they work 9 to 6. It’s just not enough.”

What does hustle look like?

2. Personally Recruit Users, Followers, and Customers 

Stripe has a valuation of $9.2 billion. For years, and to this day when necessary, the Collison brothers physically set up Stripe for anyone they met who wanted the ability to accept online payments. “I’ll send you a link, and you can call me if you have questions” wasn’t an option. “Give me your laptop, we’ll get you started right now,” was/is their M.O.

What that means for you is:

• Download your app or set up an account with your company on anyone’s device that will take it.
• Invite them to follow your business on social media on the spot using their phone, and then hand them a coupon code or a useful, branded promotional product.
• Sell your products and services person-to-person, and do it with enthusiasm because you believe in what you’re offering.
• Invite customers to provide a quick Google or Yelp review on your store’s computer or via their phone while they’re still in your establishment, or on your website immediately following checkout, and reward them for doing so.
• Recruit recruiters by generously doling out referral rewards, affiliate rewards, “like” rewards, and rewards for other word-of-mouth promotion that can be quantified.

Y Combinator’s Paul Graham says that those who resist personal recruitment either suffer from a combination of “shyness and laziness” or “the absolute numbers seem so small at first.”

Gary Vaynerchuk has dispelled the first excuse. Graham tackled the second in the same article by showing that 100 users can grow to 2 million users in two years with 10 percent per week growth, from 100 to 110 to 121 to 133 … to 2,000,000. Most companies won’t experience this level of growth. But some will. Why not yours? Hustle!

We’ve covered the essential attitude needed to get traction and a first action, the type of which will produce success.

Let’s pick up the pace.

3. Get Influencers Enthused 

We mentioned recruiting recruiters. Influence marketing is a proven way to do this. “Influencers have a huge impact on the purchase decisions of the public,” says Shane Barker, digital marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies. If you can attract big-name influencers as fans of your product, you will see significant sales growth. But don’t overlook what Barker calls “micro-influencers,” users without the name recognition but with something most celebrity endorsers don’t have – expertise and authority in the niche in which you’re operating.

Because of their position, consumers view their recommendations as authentic. A handful of micro-influencers might have more positive impact on the growth of your business than one top influencer. The bottom line according to Barker is that, “Micro-influencers offer startups and smaller brands a cost-effective alternative to influencer marketing.” Get your products directly to them or make them aware of your products through direct contact via social media, email, or a phone call.

4. Deliver Authoritative and Useful Content 

Having a blog or vlog isn’t enough. Every serious business has one. Using that platform to provide value to your readers or watchers is the key to gaining their trust and winning their business. Educate your readers, and if you can do that in a way that also inspires and delights, many will convert to customers.

Implementing these five content marketing tips will make you a respected authority in your niche.

• Know your industry thoroughly

  . Readers crave knowledge on the topic they’re searching. You cannot pass on what you do not possess. Therefore, study your industry until you have mastered its depth and breadth. Discuss major trends, product types, options, and strategies within your industry. You should demonstrate familiarity with the major brands, especially your competitors and what they offer. Present competing brands in a positive or neutral way – trashing the competition doesn’t sit well with readers/watchers. Discuss the problems your product is designed to solve or the desires it is meant to fulfill, and explain how it does what it is advertised to do. Paint a picture of the need or desire being met by what you offer, and do it in a straightforward, accurate way devoid of hype.

• Give how-to advice related to your industry.

  If you sell cosmetics, produce content on applying makeup to achieve the look you want. Those in fashion should discuss choosing colors perfect for each skin tone. Give basic investment strategies, if that’s your niche. You get the point. Your reader should benefit when on your site, reading your email content or following you on social media.

• Understand SEO or pay someone who does.

  Successfully optimizing the content on your site is a blog post of its own, but it’s sufficient to say that if you don’t have expertise, hire people that know how to draw traffic to your site. Understand when SEO should drive marketing and when other strategies are a better choice, and then utilize both approaches when appropriate.

• Communicate like a pro or hire someone who does.

  Like SEO, this part of the equation must be high in quality whether you are a native speaker of your target audience or not. Poor language skills and bad grammar are red flags signaling you can’t be trusted as an authority. That’s harsh, but that’s how many readers see it. You want your content to sound like it comes either from an intelligent native speaker or a non-native speaker who has mastered the language. That doesn’t mean you talk over people’s heads. The best communicators find a way to express concepts whether simple or complex in a clear, natural and grammatically correct way – or they pay for the services of someone who can. There’s nothing wrong with putting your name to the content you purchase; it’s yours, after all.

• Ask for their business, for a share or a link.

  This is often termed the “call to action”. If you don’t have the courage to ask your readers and/or viewers to buy/try your goods and services, what does that say about your opinion of your products? This doesn’t have to be a hard sell, and it shouldn’t. “You're missing out and your life will be miserable if you don’t buy what we’re selling” won’t get you very far. Something like, “Will you try our products and give us your opinion about them?” is an approach consumers are responsive to when they’re already interested enough in your goods and services to be reading about them.

• We like to include near the end of posts an encouragement to pass along the information, something like, “If these tips have been helpful to you, will you pass along the benefits to your friends and followers?” Of course, social medial share buttons should be right there for them to click. Finally, micro-influencers and macro-influencers might be reading your posts. Ask them to post a link, and be willing to reciprocate. These tips will make your influencer marketing hum.

5. Partner with Complementary Brands 

The bigger your partner, the better, but partnering with another startup is a good start. Feature each other’s products on your website or blog or in your store. Sponsor an event together. Engage in co-branding as Red Bull and GoPro (among many duos) have done. Integrate one another’s apps, as Uber has done with TripAdvisor, Hyatt Hotels, Expensify, and Starbucks. These are a few examples. Be creative, bold, and resourceful in making partnership connections.

6. Make Effective Use of Social Media Channel

Each one is different. This cheat sheet gives you the essentials for success for all major channels.

7. Test Your Efforts for Results 

If you need a marketing company to help with this piece of the puzzle, it might be money well spent. According to Steve Olenski, you should be analyzing:

• Who your visitors are and what their engagement level is with your site
• Sent email opens and conversions
• Social media engagement with your products
• Why customers converted and why former customers unsubscribed or disengaged 

Watch the Vaynerchuk Video Until You Own It

If every post on marketing you read provided one great takeaway that you put into practice, you’d succeed. We just gave you seven.

The first on this list provides the foundation. The rest are the building blocks. Now,do what Walt Disney recommended, “The best way to get started is to stop talking and begin doing.” And hustle!

The post 7 Proven Ways to Get Traction for Your Small Business appeared first on RELEVANCE.