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Tips to Get More Email Subscribers

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.

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Tips to Find Your Target Audience on Social Media

Content is king, they say. But even if you create high quality content, it won’t have an impact unless it is pitched to an appropriate audience. With millions of people on social media, it’s not always easy to find and reach your target audience. How can you break through the walls, cut through the noise and use your content to establish a connection with your audience?

Content is king, they say. But even if you create high quality content, it won’t have an impact unless it is pitched to an appropriate audience. With millions of people on social media, it’s not always easy to find and reach your target audience. How can you break through the walls, cut through the noise and use your content to establish a connection with your audience?

In order to achieve success with your social media marketing campaigns, you need to know who your target audience is and where they are.

Start with the demographics

Demographics are the best place to start when identifying your target audience. Are your typical customers young or old? Are they male or female? What type of job does your target market have? Is your product sold in certain areas of the country?

Answer these questions and use these information to give you a deep and clear understanding of who makes up your target market.

Know where your customers spend their time

With the increasing number of social channels, it would be waste of time and effort to build a presence on each one of them. The best thing you can do is to determine where your audience spends most of their time and focus on that social channel. Use the information you have gathered above to help you select the right networks to reach them.

Linkedin is popular among college graduates. Users of this site are between the ages of 30 to 64. Instagram and Pinterest remain popular among female uses, particularly between the ages 18 to 29. Facebook continues to be the biggest social media site. In fact, 58% of the entire adult population are Facebook users. When in doubt, use Facebook.

Identify industry influencers

According to studies, 92% percent of people trust the recommendations of the people they know – family, friend and influencers. No matter how many times you share your content, people won’t pay attention. Well, that’s until someone they trust asks them to actually read it.

Industry influencers have good online reputation and are often considered as experts. People listen to them and even ask them for advice.  Seek out influencers and engage with them. Once you’ve build a relationship with them, you’ll be able to gain more followers.
Tips to find your target market on social media: Content is king, they say. But even if you create high quality content, it won’t have an impact unless it is pitched to an appropriate audience. With millions of people on social media, it’s not always easy to find and reach your target audience. How can you break through the walls, cut through the noise and use your content to establish a connection with your audience? In order to achieve success with your social media marketing campaigns, you need to know who your target audience is and where they are.

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Reasons Why High Quality Content Still Matters

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.

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How to Handle Negative Reviews Online

reviewsBIMS_5.11According to Zendesk, a customer service software program, 88% of buyers rely on the opinion of others when making purchasing decisions. That said, you should always strive to get positive customer reviews. But sometimes, no matter how hard you try; bad reviews happen. There’s no way around it.

Negative reviews are one of the biggest nightmares of entrepreneurs and business owners. Any testimonial from unsatisfied customer can adversely affect your business.

While negative reviews are unavoidable, there are some things you can do to prevent them from ruining the image of your company. Here are some tips on how to handle negative reviews online.

Investigate before taking action

Before you formulate a strategy on how to respond to negative reviews, you should first determine whether or not what the customer said is true.

If you found out that it really happened, we suggest that you acknowledge the person’s input. Then, apologize, present your side of the sorry and then tell the customer how you plan to address the issue. If you found that the statement is incorrect, talk to the commenter privately and provide evidence that proves that the comment is incorrect. Once it’s settled, politely ask the person to delete the comment or review.

Cooler heads prevail

We know that you work so hard to keep your customers happy. That said, it can be quite frustrating to read bad and hurtful things about your business. Your immediate response is to react in the heat of the moment. But if you do, you will only make yourself look bad. The last thing you want is to become known for lashing out at customers.

Before you respond to the criticisms that are being thrown at you, you might want to take breather and formulate a polite response. Customers will gain your respect if you respond to a negative review in pleasant and helpful way.

Stay positive

People are not expecting you to be perfect. We are humans and we are all bound to make mistakes. Just make sure that own up to your mistakes and deal with the negative reviews in a transparent and polite manner.

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Tips to Get More Online Customer Reviews

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.

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New Webinar: Instagram for Business

instagram for business

How to use Instagram for business and apps to make it fun!

Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms right now! It is VERY important to your online branding strategy and here’s why. This photo-sharing app is not only important for retailers, restaurants or travel companies; it is one of the more effective brand-building tool available today for you to use! It works well for every type on business and brand.

In this webinar you will learn how to use Instagram for your business and the following:

  • Increase product sales
  • Increase traffic to your website
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Increase branded hashtag mentions
  • What apps to use to create fancy pictures and much more!

Join Amber Irwin on May 31st 3:30pm MST Sign Up TODAY!

When:
May 31, 2016
Where:
Free Webinar – RSVP for Details

Click to View the Webinar!

 Time:
3:30-4:15pm MST

Register Today

Anyone with a computer and internet connection has the ability to manage a social media account. When done right, businesses can see huge boosts in brand recognition and sales. If managed poorly, social media can be the downfall of your business.

The BIMS Team prides itself on keeping on top of the best practices of digital marketing and Amber is excited to empower you to feel confident in using Instagram for marketing your business!

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4 Ways to Increase Your Visibility on Social Media

BIMS

Implementing a strong, multifaceted online marketing can help increase your company’s visibility. Social media marketing opens up a business’ doors to customers they wouldn’t be able to reach.

Here are a few suggestions to give your page maximum visibility and to ensure your posts are being seen by your fans or followers.

Content is still king

The more engaging and informative your content is, the more interaction you’re going to get. As a result, more people are going to see your posts.

In order to get this right, you must first know your target audience. This way, you can focus on creating contents that would be of value and interest to them.

Create conversations

Business owners and marketers use social media to stay in touch with their customers and clients, as well as to reach potential customers.

Make it a point to communicate with them on a regular basis. Use plain, straightforward language when communicating with your target audience. No corporate speak, no jargons, no acronyms. Speak directly to that person and make your communication personal.

Be on different social networks

Social networks are the perfect channel to improve the visibility of your brand or company. It can also be used to connect with your prospective and current customers. If you want to generate visibility, consider being on different social networks. But if you find it difficult to manage different social media accounts, you might want to concentrate on platforms in which your target audience spends most of their time in.

Partner with other visible brands

A direct partnership is a great way to build your own brand visibility. If you sell coffee makers, consider having a direct partnership, an affiliate partnership or an implied partnership with a coffee manufacturer.

Viral or video marketing

Videos commonly go viral. Living a busy and fast-paced life, most people choose to watch videos instead of reading a long article. Information is easier to consume and they’re easy to share. Because of this, video marketing gives you the ability to reach a large group of people in a short span of time.

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Reasons Why Your Content Marketing is Failing

Flat design vector illustration concept of computer and connected mobile devices with links of transmission information on various data storages and cloud computing service. Isolated on stylish colored background.

So you set up a blog. You were so thrilled at the prospect of sharing your expertise with an eager audience. You started creating valuable content assets and created a few downloadable pieces. You have done everything experts said you should, and yet you’re conversion rate isn’t increasing.

Here are 3 things that might be affecting your content conversion rates.

You’re attracting the wrong type of traffic

If you’re successfully driving people to your blog or website, but your conversions aren’t increasing, you’re probably targeting the wrong people.

Some people assume that an increase in traffic means an increase in conversion rate, but that’s not always the case. While visits, email sign ups and exposures are all great to see, they are not going to make much of a difference to your bottom line. You want conversions. In order to turn traffic into conversion, you need to attract the right kind of traffic.

Your calls to action suck

If conversion is the goal of your content marketing, then you need to create a compelling call-to-action. Most blog posts, however, do not have a call-to-action. Even if your messaging is consistent and you’ve hit the right audience, visitors won’t advance further into their buyer’s journey without a clear call-to-action.

Telling your readers where to click, what they can get in exchange of their email address and how to take advantage of your offer can noticeably increase your conversion rates.

You think SEO is not important

There are lots of great content out there. But the problem is that these contents do not reach their desired audience. Why? It’s because they have taken SEO for granted.

SEO is a vital part of content marketing. This will help your content rank in search engines; thus, bringing it closer to your intended users. All you need is a little bit of keyword search and a few minutes to put proper title tags, meta descriptions, tags etc.

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Tips to Increase Your Email Open Rate

BIMSEmail marketing is considered as an important part of a business’ marketing campaign. It has one of the most effective ways to engage with your prospects and customers. Plus, it provides the highest returns on investments.

Open rates give you an idea as to how your campaign is doing. If the open rate for your email program is better than the average, then good for you. But if your open rates are getting worrisome, you might want to look for ways to improve it.

Here are some easy ways to increase your email open rate.

Create an interesting subject line

Good subject line is the key achieving better open and response rates. Since most people receive several emails in one day, they only need a few seconds to decide whether or not they’re interested to read the email. If your subject line is not interesting enough, people are less likely to read it. Also, make sure that your subject line is short enough that recipients will be able to read it at a glance.

Make it personal

You’ve spent so much time collecting people’s first name and email address, now is the right time to put them to use. Personalization has been proven to drive engagement and convert more leads. It is also a good idea to send your emails from a person or an employee, rather than from the company.

Timing is key

If your campaign has a B2C focus, your audience may have time to check their emails after work or during lunch break. If you are running a B2B campaign, it might be best to send emails early in the morning or in the afternoon. Your goal is to send an email exactly when the recipients are checking their inbox.

Clean up that dusty old email list

Most businesses are so determined to expand their email list that they tend to ignore the open rate. It doesn’t matter if you only have a small mailing list, as long as it is filled with engaged subscribers. It’s a good idea to remove inactive subscribers periodically.

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Dos and Don’ts of Using Hashtags

HashtagYears ago, the pound sign on your phone does not serve any function. Today, however, the pound sign is considered as a vital part of your social media success. In fact, it is considered as such a prominent part of tech culture.

Hashtags help increase the chances of your post being found and track conversations among consumers, and other businesses. When used correctly, hashtags can help you generate more shares and increase awareness of your posts beyond your own follower base. Use them wrong, however, and it will lead you down the path to social media destruction.

Here are some dos and don’ts to consider to help you get on the right track.

Dos

Keep hashtags short

When creating hashtags, be sure to keep them short so they’re easy to type and remember. Long hashtags are difficult to read. Imagine mentally inserting spaces in between all those words. Not fun!

Create your own hashtag

Create a hashtag that is interesting enough that it can help you capture the attention of readers, yet popular enough that it can help you gain followers. Tailoring your hashtags will ensure you reach your ideal audience.

Use them to engage

Hashtags are often used to track what is said about their business and competitors as well. Since social media is about engagement and social interaction, you need to take part of that conversation. Use hashtags to pull users into a conversation with the brand and vice versa.

Don’ts

Overuse them

While there is no doubt that hashtags can increase your visibility, too much of it in a single post will kill your message. Readers tend to avoid posts with too many hashtags. For best results, limit your hashtags to 3 for each post.

Use irrelevant hashtags

Just because the hashtag is trending, it does not necessarily mean you should use it. Never use an unrelated hashtag just to get noticed. There is no bigger social media embarrassment than a wrongly used hashtag.

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