Content Marketing: Key Points to Remember

In this fast-phased age, people are consuming increased amount of information from the internet. If you don't want your business to be left behind, you must be quick in creating content that can catch the attention of your target audience.

Once you have already defined your niche, choosing the topics to write about becomes easier. As you do your research, always keep your target audience in mind. Your writing style is another factor to think about. Never write in a way that you are just educating your readers. Rather, write in style that you can walk your readers through the process of learning something important to them.

Try your best to express your thoughts in simpler words and briefer sentences. This way you provide easy-reading materials. Have a list of all the information you have in mind and arrange them according to their importance. Keep a conversational tone that can make your readers feel relaxed. In fact, you can get them hooked by relating stories or adding humor to your content.

You can and might need to write about a topic that has been used many times by different authors. If you fear that it won't be noticed, aim at presenting your content in a different angle - a more interesting or informative one. Be creative and put yourself in the shoes of your readers. Use facts so that people will find you trustworthy.

Cost-Effective Promotional Products: Make Your Brand Known Today

Does business promotion always have to be expensive? Certainly not! You can always promote your brand with affordable marketing materials. Specifically, these are the small items used on a daily basis. They serve as a constant reminder of your products or services to their users. Thus, your brand is habitually refreshed in their memories - talk about subliminal advertising.

Notepads and pens are the most common company giveaways distributed any time of the year. They can be used at home, in the office and in school. Almost everybody needs a handy notepad and pen all the time. Notepads can be designed and cut according to your customers' preferred appearance and sizes. Pens, on the other hand, can be made of different colors, shapes and styles.

Another example of cheap promotional products that can be used in homes, offices and schools are calculators. Whether you want them keychain-like or as big as a pocket book, their mass production won't cost you a fortune. You can print your emblem and business details either in front or at the back of these items.

Travel mugs are also great giveaways for your customers. Nowadays, most people look forward to receiving one as their use has been a trend especially to office workers in the recent years. Stainless or plastic, so long as they are creatively designed, your target market will surely be happy to use and flaunt them wherever they go.

Last in the list are bags. They are the most familiar yet the most functional and in demand of all the promotional items ever produced. Bags could be walking advertisers for your business. Wherever their owners take them, there goes your brand being introduced to more and more people.

Tips on Producing Video Testimonials for Your Business

Video testimonials are one of the latest advertising methods that can entice more customers to your business. It is, in fact, a convincing means to gain the trust of potential clients as they see real people talking about real problems and real solutions. However, not any kind of filmed testimonial will do. As an entrepreneur, you must aim at producing quality ones for your business to bag that promising sales increase.

The process starts from having definite customers who must be willing to talk about your product or service. This will not happen unless you ask them directly. While some benefit from choosing their loyal clients only, some business owners request testimonies from all their customers. This is in line with their objective to learn from the positive and negative reviews of their clients for improvement purposes. If this is a strategy that you want to try, you can select which customer testimonials to record and use for the promotion of your brand.

No one wants to get faked especially when it comes to looking for answers to recurring concerns. Be professional in providing names, company names, job titles, locations and other information that customer interviewees will permit to share. This will provide credibility to your video. Thus, more viewers will get interested.

Give your customers the freedom to talk about any of your products. If there is a specific product that you need to promote, kindly ask them to limit their review to it. Although you must not put words into their mouths, you must give them a guideline on the flow of the entire review. You can instruct them to talk first about themselves, then their concerns and how they came across your product. Make them share in details their situations before they got a hold of your product. Let them share too the positive changes they have enjoyed after their first or two consecutive purchases.

A professional camera and other cutting-edge pieces of equipment are perfect for the production of video testimonials but they are not a requirement. As a starting business owner, you can make use of a decent handheld camera or web camera to get the ball rolling.

While the objective of your filmed testimonials is to encourage viewers to take advantage of your offers, it must not be too pushy and or salesy. This type of approach arrests the interest of people and so they must appear as natural as possible. Let the great qualities of your product be upheld in the entirety of the video. Use simple words that easy to comprehend. Ensure that they carry your sales message direct to the point.

Four Things to Remember When Writing Press Releases

Writing press releases is very important to business website owners. The use of press releases is ideal for getting the attention of popular websites towards your own website.

There are some software that you can use should your skills fail you to write them properly. Paid or unpaid, these software can help you make your announcements more attention-grabbing.

Generally, the two elements that most press releases contain are sensational titles and exceptional copy writing skills. Sensational titles or headlines would definitely get the attention of anyone. Display of copy writing skills in providing helpful information, on the other hand, keeps readers hooked and prodded to respond to any call to action.

Have a powerful start - Grab your reader's attention with the message that you are going to share. Creatively incorporate your message to your title. Perhaps, you have just found an excellent tool that can solve the concerns of internet marketers. Then, you can place the name of the tool on the title.

Be precise - A press release is just like any news. Thus, it has to be as clear and as trustworthy. All the parts of it must then adhere to a single fact. Never place anything there that displays even a small hint of contradiction - this could ruin your business promotion.

Use layman's terms - This means use of ordinary language that is easily understood by all types of readers. To inform people is the goal of any press release. With that in mind, never use language that could not give your readers even a clue of what you are talking about. If you are reaching out to people in a particular niche, it is best to use terminologies to which they could relate to and better understand what you are offering them. Along with the words that you are going to use, you need to adhere to proper formatting as well.

Make it news worthy - Writing press releases is the same with writing news articles. Although the former have a specific goal when it comes to business promotion, they still need to be supported with hard facts and not mere insights. Additionally, this implies that whatever you include in them are based on current events (or thing that are about to happen) and not historical details.

The Importance of Incorporating Emotions in Your Marketing Campaign

One of my new favorite books that is based on human emotions discusses the use of emotional intelligence which I have written about in previous articles. By making a person know more about their own emotions that person can then predict why other people feel the way they do.

Everything comes from experience. A positive experience will yield a positive feeling. In contrast, a negative experience will yield the negative emotion that they do not want to feel again.

If you think about your past you can see why you enjoy certain activities while you stay away from others. For me I love martial arts. It has instilled a thought process that I follow-on a daily basis. It is something that has grown into a passion. The reason this occurred was because of my first martial art instructor.

Let me give you a small piece of history. I had heart surgery as an infant. This stopped me from many activities like contact sports. I was not able to enjoy the same sports as my friends. By the time I was twelve my mother decided it was time to allow me to do martial arts. She actually closed her eyes and pointed to a name in a phone book. She didn't know how to choose an instructor. When she spoke with the instructor he explained how I could still do martial arts even with my medical problems.

When I started I feel like this was a turning point in my life. It became such a positive emotion that it caused a butterfly effect in my entire life. This can be done when you are working with clients. Give them a good feeling. Give them positive emotion. Give them enough information that they want to feel strongly about what they are about to do.

How do you build positive emotions in people? First find out how to relate to someone. Figure out what makes them tick. Ask questions. The more questions you can ask someone the better you will be able to understand where that person is coming from.

A clear example could be if you ran into a person like me this is what you would find. I love my family. Everything I do is to further my family. Because of this if a person wanted to sell me something they would want to make me understand how it would help my family. Each person has something that they can associate positive feelings toward.

Use these emotions to bring out the most positive influence. This happens in any form of marketing you are in. Think about your product. Now write down all of the different ways it can help people. Now that you have these written down when you speak with a potential client and they hit upon one of your points you can then persuade them why your product can help them in that specific area of their life.

Three Invaluable Steps to Accomplishing Your Mobile Marketing Goals

There are certain concepts that you should follow in order to successfully market to your mobile device audience. If you look around you, it is quite obvious that anyone and everyone uses a mobile device everywhere they go. So, now you have to customize your marketing efforts to fit mobile devices.

One thing that you can count on is the fact that people are not going to stop using their mobile devices (not ever). With that in mind, you need to figure out the best and most effective way to get your message to them on their mobile devices. There are a few different concepts that you should keep in mind and if you follow those concepts, you won't go wrong. In fact, you will actually achieve greater success than ever before.

Be instantaneous: People want what they want when they want it. That generally means that they want it now. When it comes to a mobile device user, the need for instantaneous information (or instant gratification) is even more pressing than it ever was before. The information is truly at the person's fingertips and they are so used to clicking and getting the information that if it doesn't happen that way, they will move onto the next business and person who will have the ability to give it to them quickly. Of course, this can definitely work to your advantage as well. If the mobile device user wants information quickly, you can be the person to supply them with it. Not only are you capable of giving your mobile device users what they want and need but you can get it there at lightening speed as well. You can give your target audience what they need in small, meaningful increments. That is just they way that they like it and expect it to be delivered to them.

Use a simplistic approach: Sometimes, the simplest approach is the approach that works the most effectively. Since your target audience members are coming to you because they need information that is valuable to them, you have a responsibility to give it to them in a form that works for them and that works conveniently with their mobile devices. It is possible that you may have a website that is optimized for mobile devices in addition to your regular website. If you need to do that and you see positive results for your business with your interactions with your mobile device users, it will have been well worth it. Your approach should be simple and straightforward. You will start to see how well it works for your business.

Make the relevance clear: It is critical to your success that you share content that is appropriate, clear, and concise. Sharing content that seems to come straight out of left field really won't do you any good. People on the other end need to be able to relate to what you are sharing and to understand that you have the ability to solve their problems. That needs to be your first priority. You must always keep in mind the marketing principle, "What's In It For Me?" (WIIFM). In other words, no matter how wonderful you and your business are, if you are not able to solve the other person's problems, you won't get anywhere at all with them.
Conclusion

You must consider marketing for your mobile device users in this day and age and you must make them one of your top priorities. Whatever content you share with them, they will be able to see and use immediately, which is a huge plus. Since their devices are always with them, they will get what they need from you very quickly. However, to give you a word of caution, it is important not to inundate them with two much information. You must make it comfortable and easy for them to receive and absorb your information. Mobile device users represent a large percentage of your target audience and if you are loyal to them, they will be loyal to you.

Quick Insights on Generating Leads for Your Bussiness' Growth

Leads are an essential growth component of every business. A constant stream of leads is one element of many that creates sustainability within a small business. Leads can come from many places. A business owner should have at least three different places that generate lead flow. One of the first places I like to see leads come from is your website. The site should be optimized and search engine friendly. Positioning your website to be on the first page of Google will produce qualified prospects who want what you sell. The only thing the prospect will need is more information to make a buying decision.

Advertising is another way a business owner can generate a lead. Understanding how to leverage the strategic side of marketing can help achieve phenomenal results. Too many business owners are quick to say direct mail, social media, radio or TV doesn't work. It was not the medium (tactical side of marketing) that failed you; it was what you said and how you said it (the strategic side) that failed you. Once the business owner understands how to effectively convey the value they provide, generating a lead is a breeze.

Prospecting is the act of generating leads without advertising. Prospecting could involve calling a target list or foot canvassing in a specific area. Do you have marketing materials? Prospects need time to make an informed decision at the speed their brain can process information. You telling them everything during a sales visit will not always be enough. A marketing piece (leave behind) that can support the prospects decision-making process will move them along the sales process and ultimately compel them to buy.

Having sales collateral allows your information to be shared with someone the prospect knows who may need your product or service right now. Where I see small business owners over look an opportunity in their marketing material is their business card. Offer more than just your contact and website info. Provide a link on your business card that leads to a video or free report that can educate and move a prospect along the sales process.

When you don't have a lot of money to spend on creating leads, networking is an excellent solution to create new opportunities to obtain new business. Attend networking events and engage contacts strategically. Your goal is to connect with the people in the room who have relationships with referral partners who are already doing business with your potential clients. Please do not attend these events looking to sell to the people in the room. Go with the goal of getting connected to your target. The power words here are strategic alliance. Please don't be selfish, once someone has offered to introduce you to someone in their network, be sure to ask them, "How can I help you?"

Achieve a Successful Product Launch with These Tips

A product launch that nobody knows about is not good for your business. Therefore, it must be carefully planned.  You will need the help of your employees, other professionals and service providers for it to be successful.

Here are five steps that are essential to staging a grand product launch.

Create a calendar. A calendar of events will allow you to promote your product launch creatively and extensively. It will also allow you to reach the right audience at the right time.

Contact a group of publicists. Members of the press and bloggers can help a lot in your publicity campaign. Contact them at least a month before the main event.

Incorporate mystery. Tease people’s curiosity by inviting a mystery guest to your product launch. It would be best to invite a celebrity because people love hanging out with someone famous. Additionally, set up an enticing offer or reward for a limited number of people who buy your product even before its formal introduction to the public.

Organise a soft launch. A soft launch is like a final run-through before the big day. Invite your family, friends and business partners. Make sure that all your employees are present too. A soft launch can reveal any flaws in your preparations or anything you may have overlooked during the planning stage.

Prepare an impressive venue. It is not enough to have an organized and themed venue. Make sure that your venue is at pace with the trends in promotional marketing. For example, consider setting up a media wall instead of a traditional backdrop. You can use two or more media walls as advertising banners and as background for a photo opp (photo opportunity) after the product launch proper. If you want to know about the other uses of a media wall, read the detailed infographic below from SK Displays.

Promote Your Exhibition with These Four Easy Steps

So you're having an exhibition. Do you know how many people are expected to turn up? Do you know how to persuade people to take part of your exhibition? Check out these four ways that will help promote your event.

1. Social media - Social media is a highly valuable tool for any artist. Once you've got exhibition dates confirmed, make sure you announce this across all of your social media channels. Create an event and invite people to it. Don't overdo it though - if people see you constantly posting about an event, they'll get sick of reading about it and will be put off. Make sure your posts contain enough relevant information to attract people to the event and make sure you mention any freebies or special offers on at the event. At the exhibition itself, have your phone / laptop / iPad or whatever with you and make sure you regularly post about it. Take photos and upload them with comments on how well the day is going. Let your followers know if your day's going well. Get connected with others you meet and make sure they know you're actively on social media.

2. Personal invites - Even though it's still a good idea to announce your exhibition across your social media channels, people love receiving personal invites. It's something that people just don't do that often anymore, so people get excited when they receive one. Draw up a list of contacts, friends and family and get your personal invites written out. To save both time and money, it's a good idea to keep your list reasonably short. Send your invites to the people who you really want to turn up at your exhibition. A personal invite can be more persuasive than an email that's composed and sent to loads of people at the same time. You should send your invites out a good few weeks before your exhibition to give people plenty of notice.

3. Email - It's still a good idea to send an email announcing your exhibition, as well as using social media and personal invitations because you can reach lots of people very quickly. You might have a lot more email contacts than people who you can send invites to, so make use of these contacts and send them emails inviting them to your exhibition. Make your email concise, informal and friendly. Keep to the point, but remember to include all of the key details. A good idea is to ask people to reply to you saying whether they'll be coming or not. Include some photos so people can be reminded of you and your work and can get a taste of what the exhibition's going to be about.

4. Text - If you've used the above three methods, you should probably keep texting for reminding people about your exhibition. Compose a short, friendly text letting people know your exhibition's coming up and remember to send at a time when everyone's going to be awake - if people are woken up in the middle of the night by their phone going off, they're probably not going to take that much notice of your text. Use your phone to keep in touch with people on the day of your exhibition. Fire off another text on the day and have your phone with you so you can reply to any queries or arrange any special appointments with people.

Business Directories 101: Top Three Factor to Consider When Enlisting Your Business

There are many benefits that come with listing your business on the business directories. One of the benefits is that you get to increase your sales. Research studies have shown that over 70% of people search online before buying a given product or service. This means that when your name shows up in the search results you have high chances of getting calls from customers thus increasing your sales.

Listing your business also shows that you are a legit and reputable company. Since many business directories have to certify that the information you give is true, many people tend to trust you thus you have more customers.

Business directories are usually divided into different categories and all you need to do is to list your business in the category that is ideal for your business. The categorization aids in ensuring that you reach your target customers.

The final advantage is that by listing your business you let people know about your business and what you do. To make it easy for people to understand what you do, you should ensure that you post your name, address, photos and a brief review of your occupation. If possible, you should also post a video.

For ideal results when listing your business you should consider a number of factors:

Quality sites: For your business to be visible to many people you should list it on a high quality directory. Before you list your business you should do some background checks and find the domain authority of the directory. If your business targets a given group of people, you should list your business on a site that is specific to your target market.

Consistency: Although, duplicate content is highly discouraged online, you should always ensure that you post the same information across all the web directories. This prevents people from thinking that you are talking about different businesses. It also prevents people from feeling that you don't know what you are talking about.

Spam: While you should submit your content to many directories in order to reach many people, you should avoid being spammy. This calls for you to avoid submitting your content to hundreds of directories at the same time.

Must-Know Information About Creating Copy for Mobile Marketing

People are constantly checking their email accounts and social media accounts. This becomes easy because they carry their own smartphones, tablets, and e-readers everywhere. People are constantly checking their email accounts and social media accounts. This becomes easy because they carry their own smartphones, tablets, and e-readers everywhere. This an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs to reach all their potential clients 24/7. In line with this, entrepreneurs must make copy for mobile marketing that will engage and compel readers to buy.

Visual Contents are Indispensable

Mobile users prefer consuming information in the form of visuals than text. Make sure that your business is on top of this trend. Post infographics in your website. Infographics allow users to read through your content and get all the important information in a jiffy. In fact, users even use neatly published infographics as  wallpapers in their mobile gadgets.

Short Text is 'In'

There's no way users will enjoy reading a lengthy text  even though it is incorporated in a visually appealing infographic. Mobile users  are generally on the go. They want to pick up information quickly while commuting, working or multi-tasking. So, create concise and powerful content. Otherwise, readers will skip your post and will search for another post that's much easier to read.

Email Marketing is Linked to Mobile Marketing

People are usually signed in their email accounts when browsing the net through their mobile devices. You must take advantage of this for the effective promotion of your business. Create an email campaign that is concise. Include a specific call to action that will tell readers what to do next as quickly as possible. This is consideration of the fact that mobile users are always on the go.

Perfect Mobile Marketing for Your Business Following These Tips

Consumers of today are considered app-savvy. All thanks to the dawn of internet-enabled mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. They can now be updated with the latest discounts and sale whereabouts. If you want  to have an  edge against your competition, learn to communicate effectively to your customers on the go. Here are easy ways to deliver in encouraging customer interaction.

Get your website mobile-ready - You will  miss sales opportunities to your competition if you fail to optimize your site for mobile users. Get a responsive theme for your website as this allows your website to be mobile-friendly. Put the important information about your business in front of your website. This should include your business, phone number, address and directions.

Create engaging and relevant content - Focus on providing compelling content and campaigns. This explains why business websites have blog pages which they update regularly with the purpose of sharing useful niche content to their target customers. 

Let customers make the first move - Customers lose interest when they keep on receiving unwanted and uninvited communications. Customer interest, engagement and loyalty are built on trust. When they trust your business, they will decide to engage and establish a relationship with your brand. Create satisfying experiences for your customers. You can gain their trust and loyalty to your brand through these. 

Encourage customers  to provide quick reviews - Reviews will reveal your customers' thoughts about your product, service and experience with your brand. You can simply ask customers to rate your service from one to five or direct them to Yelp, Google Places, or TripAdvisor where they can provide reviews. 

Why Social Media Is Not Enough in Marketing Your Business

While social media has changed the speed and the way businesses are promoted today, marketing experts agree and explain that it is not the only the tool by which entrepreneurs can market their product and services effectively. Rather, it is one of the integral tools that make up a whole marketing technique. Look at your business from a bigger perspective and see how social media can fit in and provide support to your other marketing techniques.

Social media helps build an emotional connection between businesses and consumers. When people start following your brand's social media accounts, they're trying to get updated about and have a relational connection with your brand. If you're keen about building relationships with your followers, respond to their queries by sending personal messages. However, nothing beats face to face interaction with your customers. Your relationship cannot remain virtual forever. Thus, you should make an effort to meet your followers personally.

Proper participation in social media can be effective in pushing a sale. You can encourage your followers to give your new product or service a try by posting carefully crafted calls-to-action in your account wall. However, closing a sale do not usually happen on social media accounts. The latter can get people interested but not fully convinced to purchase. In addition to your socail media marketing, you must have a follow-up system that will ensure the closing of sale. In certain businesses, this is better done in person and not just online.

Social media is simply a part of developing a brand strategy. Thus, your social media accounts must display cohesiveness. The messages they communicate must all work together to uphold and promote your brand. Your followers in social media don't want being sold to all the time. Primarily, they want to acquire important information

that can help them solve certain issues or problems. Maintain a balance of information and sales messages in all your social media accounts.

How to Deal with Unhappy Clients Effectively

If you run your own business, the worst situation you'd want to experience is having unhappy clients. Presence of unhappy and unsatisfied clients can signal the downfall of your venture. While this can be a very difficult situation to solve, you can turn it into something positive and beneficial with the implementation of the right strategies. Here are some customer service techniques that will help you smooth things over.

Don't act on impulse - So, one of your employees notified you of a customer who is upset. You made a research and found out that all the mishap was caused by the customer and not by your staff. What are you going to do? Take a deep breath. Relax and release the anger or any negative emotion that is brewing inside you. Then, put  yourself in a customer service mode. All these will help you not to act on impulse and to always have the attitude to serve.

Listen actively - Your customer wants to be heard. Use a neutral statement in verifying what exactly happened. This creates a partnership between you and your customer. Refrain from solving the situation right away, to jump to conclusions or to cut your customer's explanation.

Put yourself in their shoes and apologize - Let your customer that you understand where he's coming from. Make sure that your body language also communicates your empathy. Apologise even though you think that the customer is the one who is largely at fault.

Communicate a solution right away - Decide on what you're going to do with your customer's concern with a definite solution in mind. Not presenting a solution will just complicate things. Moreover, it will create a bad impression on your business.