emailmarketing While everyone is focusing on building a strong social media presence, others tend to forget about the importance of email.

Your email list plays a big role in your marketing campaign. It can help you build relationships with your target audience, generate buzz about your business and attract new customers. That said, it makes sense to continuously grow your email contacts.

Interested to grow your email list and grow your subscribers? Then you came to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll be sharing with you some effective strategies on how to get more email subscribers. Follow the tips below to get your first 1,000 subscribers.

Place a subscription box on every page of your website

Most website owners think that people would first access the home page before navigating through the site. But that’s not always the case. They may check your products, scroll through the “about us” section or any other page on your site. In order to get people to subscribe to your newsletters, make sure your sign up box is a prominent feature of your website. The more visible it is, the more subscribers you’ll get.

Content is king

You won’t have a hard time getting people to sign up for email updates if you have great content on your site. As a marketer, it is your responsibility to constantly supply your readers with fresh, relevant and informative content.

Offer an incentive

People love receiving free stuff. If you can give them something like a free trial of one of your products, a free ebook with useful information or access to an exclusive video, you’ll make an impact to your target audience. When done correctly, it can help you build a relationship with your audience and grow your email list.

Your offer should be interesting enough to your ideal customers. Find out more about your target audience and know what’s keeping them up until 3:00 am.

Run a contest

Social media contests are one of the most effective ways to get email addresses from folks who want to hear from you. You are free to hold whatever contest and on any social media channel you want. But since majority of the adult population has a Facebook account, you might want to start there. Also, ask people to enter their email address in order to participate.

content  creationContent is the new method of advertising. Over the years, business owners and marketers have realized the importance of utilizing content in their marketing strategy. Because of this, most companies have made a commitment to push content out there to keep feeding the masses with information. Audiences today, however, have wised up. That said, the importance of quality content cannot be stressed enough.

Forget about the dry press release and the hard sell. Rather, provide your audience with good content that they can to share with others.

Here are 3 reasons why high quality content still matters

Helps improve your ranking on search engines

Every user is searching for content in some form or another. Some businesses, however, think that the more content they have, the better their chances are of appearing in Google or other search engines. What they fail to realize is that quality is one of the key ingredients of a successful content marketing.

Google’s primary goal is to provide users the best results possible. Search engines are getting better at sniffing out bad content. Google, for instance, constantly update their algorithms to ensure that top-ranking sites contain high quality and relevant information. Just having something on your site is not necessarily good.

First impressions matter

In this digital age, people first visit your website and read through your content to decide whether you’re a credible business. It is often the first interaction a prospective customer has with your brand. Hence, it is important to take time to make your website as appealing as possible.

If your site is full of bad writing and grammatical errors, users are likely to migrate away from your site. Remember, contents that aren’t well written convey incompetence and laziness. These are two things you certainly don’t want associated with your business.

Attention is getting harder to grab

With professional services firms now churning out more content than ever, there is far more marketplace noise to cut through in order to capture the attention of your target audience. Companies that provide high quality content are those that are succeeding in reaching their audiences and converting their visitors into paying customers.

BIMSReviewsWith today’s savvy buyers, you know how important online reviews are to your business. People would share their experiences and what they have to say about your company. Given that majority of the adult population spend most of their time online and would read reviews before buying stuff, these reviews, whether they are positive or negative, can have a big impact on your business.

Customer feedbacks do not only affect buyer’s decision, it can also help give you an insight as to what customers think of your business; thus, allowing you to make certain changes that would make your products, services and business better. Remember, it’s your customers that pay you, so make sure you listen.

Here are a few simple ways on how to get customers to review your business online.

Just ask

After you’ve delivered a product or a service, try to ask your customers for feedback. It does not necessarily have to be a good review, just an honest review. Don’t be pushy. Rather, let the customer know that you are very much interested to know whether or not they were satisfied of the transaction and that you value their opinion.

Offer incentives

Sometimes, the best way to encourage customers to create reviews is to give them something in return. It doesn’t have to be expensive. If you own a restaurant, you can offer a free dessert on their next visit. You can also offer a free gift or a free trial version to those who will send in a review. The better the incentives are, the more reviews you are likely to receive.

Increase customer satisfaction

Happy customers will be very much willing to share their experience with the masses through the web and social media. This can help scale positive world of mouth and attract potential customers in the process.

Improve your services and people will start talking about your business. Remember, it would be impossible for you to get good reviews unless you have happy customers to write them.

Customer survey

Customer surveys are a great way to get feedbacks. This allows you to get customers to answer specific questions and find out what they really think about your services.

bimspicIt’s not easy to get people to visit your site. Once you’ve hooked your audience, you want them to stay a little longer in your site and do something. That something could be sharing your content, providing information, downloading something, adding products to their shopping cart or purchase your products. Unfortunately, most people will not know what to do unless you give them clear instructions.

This week, we’ll be sharing with you some tips on how to create a clear and effective call-to-action. Here are a few.

Offer a free trial or download

Sometimes, you may have to sweeten the deal to encourage people to complete a call-to-action. One of the best ways to capture the attention of people is to offer them something of value, and give it to them for free. Offer a free e-book or a free trial. People will thank you for it.

Size matters

Size does play a huge part in getting your call-to-action button noticed. Make sure it’s big enough that online users won’t miss them, but not too big that it looks like a monstrosity. Remember, your call-to-action needs to be sized sensibly. You should also consider the position of your call-to-action on the page.

Be direct

Keep your call-to-action short and simple to ensure that majority of visitors will click-through on the action you ask them to. If you want people to leave their email address, then tell it to them straight. Make sure people will understand it at just a glance. Don’t get all whimsical and critic.

Add a sense of urgency

If you have reduced the price of your products, let visitors know that the offer is only good for a limited time. If they do not purchase within the specified period of time, then it will result in a missed opportunity. Add a sense of urgency and include words such as today, immediately or now.

leadtrickstips

Every marketer’s goal is to generate new leads that will eventually turn into paying customers. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of marketers admit that their lead generation efforts are ineffective. In fact, studies suggest that about 80% of visitors who add items to their cart do not buy, and 70% of them will never return.

These lead generation tips will help improve your marketing campaign and hopefully attract more people to your business.

Keep building relationships

The best way to keep your sales pipeline well stocked is to keep building relationships with potential leads. Send them a link to a news article about an industry trend, share some helpful tips or offer some business intelligence.  These may seem like small things, but these little things may help keep you at the top of your prospect’s mind.

Blog consistently

You probably know that blogging is effective for generating leads? So how come it took you an entire month to write a new blog? If you are serious about increasing your web traffic, then try to write blogs as often as you can.

Persistence is key

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that people will visit their website with a just a few clicks of a button. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

Block out an hour or two of your day and dedicate this time for lead generation activities only. That means no checking of emails, texting or playing games. Pick up the phone and talk to your prospects. It doesn’t matter if they have turned you down before, just keep trying. Remember, persistence is what sets successful marketers apart from the unsuccessful ones.

Call-to-action

Visitors need clear instructions on what to do when they arrive on your website. Do you want a subscription to your channel or page? Their contact information? A site visit? Then let them know. Sometimes, all you need to do is ask.

ViralBlog_3.8

A viral blog post is a type of post that takes off because everyone wants to share and is talking about it. It goes around the internet like a fast-moving fire.

With the explosion of social media, almost everyone is looking for ways to grab the attention of millions and millions of people. Because let’s face it, it feels great to know that a lot of people appreciate what you have created.

In today’s competitive online world, bloggers from all over the world all seem to be asking the same question – What is the secret to writing a viral blog post? While there is no secret formula in creating a viral blog post, there are some things you can do to help you reach that goal. Here are a few.

Create attention-grabbing headline

While quality content is important, you also need to take time in crafting a catchy headline. Remember, this will be the first thing people are going to see so it should be treated with much more consideration. You need to pique the public’s interest or they won’t be interested in reading the article.

Contents that evoke emotions become viral

Readers are drawn to blog posts that make them feel something. Try to capture the emotion of the reader. If it doesn’t excite or thrill you, then it probably won’t excite your readers too.

Useful content gets shared

A lot of people go online to gather information and learn more about a certain topic. If you want your post to go viral, make sure it has tons of useful information. Read a lot, gather lots of resources and know your topic well. Don’t skimp on research.

Make sure it’s visually interesting

There is more to a blog post than just heading and content. If you want to get the numbers rolling, then you need to incorporate photos in your blog post.

Make your blog post visually stunning and beautiful. You might not be able to write the most informative, most interesting blog post, but if you add colourful pictures, you may be able to capture the attention of the crowd.

 

BimsPeople do business with people they trust. If you let your customers interact with a robot that is programmed to promote your products and offerings, do you think they’ll do business with you? Of course not.

People will only be interested in doing business with you if they know that there is a person behind it that they can trust, relate to and connect with. That said, humanizing your brand is a must.

Here are some tips to make your brand’s voice a little more human.

Avoid corporate speak

Sometimes, business owners think that they sound super smart and important if they use business and industry-specific jargons. We hate to break it to you, but people do not want to hear or read sales talk, corporate jargon or overly fluffed up language. Speak in a language that inspires people to connect to you and your brand.

Use words that your customers understand and ditch the corporate mumbo jumbo speak.

Build bridges

A lot of businesses see their social network followers as nothing more than a new batch of potential customers. While we understand that you’re excited to tell the world about your business venture or new products to be launched, there is no need to talk about the same topic every single time.  You’ll have a hard time connecting with your target audience if you think like a corporate engine.

Put a face on your brand

People may not be interested in doing business with you if you post in anonymity and hide behind a corporate logo. Instead, show customers that there’s a real person working behind that corporate logo.

Be honest

Customers can tell when you’re faking it. Don’t try to make your experiences sound more impressive than they truly are. Don’t say you have experience you don’t have. Don’t fudge the numbers on your publicity packet.

 

BIMS_12.29Over the years, I have seen a lot of business owners who have accounts on almost every social networking site. While there’s no harm in maintaining a number of social media accounts, you may notice that you’re not getting the results you want either.

Because it takes time to do social right, it may be best not to be on certain social networks. How do you decide which platforms are best for your needs? Here are some important criteria to consider that will help you determine which channel is right for your business.

Your target audience

Social media activity varies by age, geographic location, profession and more. Once you have identified your target audience, the next step is to determine where they spend most of their time online. What’s the point of maintaining an Instagram or Pinterest account if your target audience are not there? That would be a waste of time and resources.

Your goal

People who have clear, measurable goals are 50% more likely to achieve their desired results as compared to those people without goals. Without a clear idea of what you want to achieve, your program may not reach its full potential.

Attract new customers, increase engagement with current customers, drive website traffic and increased conversions are just some of the possible goals for your social media program.

Your budget

Budget is a major concern for small to medium-sized businesses. That said, you need to be very careful where you spend your marketing budget. For starters, a $100 budget could cover social media scheduling, advertising, graphics or photos, sharing buttons and analytics.

Metrics

In order to determine if you are achieving your goals, you need to follow up on your social media efforts. Constantly analyze your metrics to help you identify which social channel gives you favorable results.

 

BIMS_12.8Instagram is an amazing photo-sharing network and it is gaining popularity day by day. When used correctly, you can use it to promote your brand and business as well.

According to studies, getting more likes on social media makes you happier. Since we want you, our dear readers, to be happy, we thought of sharing with you some tips on how to build a massive following on Instagram. Read on and can create a stronger presence on this social channel.

Get in touch with other users

If you want your images to get more comments and likes, you need to get in touch with other users. Responding to comments and questions is also essential to maintaining your follower base. There’s no point in building a following if you won’t even talk to them. If you stay active, you’ll see a steady stream of new followers.

Use the right hashtags

While posting engaging and interesting photos on Instagram is a must, using the right hashtags also has its advantages.

Hashtags are pretty much a staple of social media. Just like twitter, Instagram users use hashtags on their photos. With the right hashtags, you are more likely to reach your target audience. Plus, users who are searching for specific keywords will find it easier to find your photos.

Timing is everything

It is important to stick to a schedule so that your followers will know when to expect your posts. If you started posting every day, then stick to it.

It is also important to post them at the right time if you want to reach a larger audience. Morning and after work are usually the best time to post photos. People are usually online during this time.

Quality vs. Quantity

No one would be interested to follow someone with non-sense or random posts. If you’re running a restaurant and wanted to get people to actually eat in your restaurant, it’s a good idea to provide people a photo of mouth-watering dishes you offer. Make sure there are no irrelevant or low quality photos in your feed. Edit your account and leave only the best photos.