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How I Turned the Mistakes of My First Start-up into Wins for My Second One

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By Rihards Piks

When I founded my first company, Grafomap, I was an idealist. But, like many freshly baked entrepreneurs, I saw this personalized map poster startup almost as my own child and felt the need to take care of it nearly 24/7.

To further blur the line between my personal and professional life, Grafomap was born out of a friendship with my childhood friend Martins. However, with time, I realized that my company had become my work and my child, hobby, and pastime.

When I started with Supliful last year, I had learned a few painful lessons, and this time I was determined to approach business management with a more balanced and composed mindset. This is a story of how I faced entrepreneur burnout and how this painful experience taught me to become a smarter business leader the second time around.

I didn’t know what burnout was until it hit me — Hard

At Grafomap, my responsibility was all things marketing, but somehow I became involved in sales processes, human resources, accounting, and other areas. So it’s probably not surprising that, after working at full speed for several months, exhaustion and burnout crept up on me. I felt constantly anxious and insecure, having doubts whether the business would stay afloat for another month.

Looking back, I think these were the main factors that caused me to hit the wall:

  • First, micromanaging and trying to become involved in almost every process.
  • Taking all the opportunities that came my way and not filtering the valuable ones from mere time-wasters.
  • Long working hours and not knowing how to separate work from private life.

Two years into developing Grafomap, I felt I had hit rock bottom. The business model was seriously lacking repeat purchases. A constant need to find new sales channels, new ideas, and approaches for attracting customers was tiring and frustrating. A business must find a way to acquire repeat customers for better profitability. The one-and-done model is the way to go insane.

As we were slowly going bankrupt (up to the point of taking personal loans to save the business), we sat down and refocused our priorities and stayed only with a few marketing and sales tactics that had proven to be effective. We managed to grow Grafomap to $1.5M revenue and then decided to sell the business.

After selling my first serious business and taking a little rest, I couldn’t stay idle for long. Then, a new idea came along, and it was linked to food supplements and dropshipping – an industry we had already familiarized ourselves with, thanks to Grafomap.

Me, sending out the very first Supliful order.

What I did differently with my second business

My painful experience with Grafomap and a few other smaller business endeavors before that taught me several valuable lessons about leading a company. Now I am thankful for everything I had done wrong before – as it made me able to start on a better foot with Supliful.

You don’t want to ruin your future. However, I believe that entrepreneurs have very promising ideas that can be destroyed by mismanagement.

Here’s what I did differently with my second serious business

Supliful — Strict prioritizing

When starting your business, the backlog of tasks and plans seems endless and overwhelming. However, I had already learned the hard way the importance of prioritizing and viewing your time as the most valuable resource. Especially when you’re a company owner, you have to evaluate all the steps and responsibilities you take and be 100% sure you’re investing your time in the right things.

To begin with, I prioritized creating a Minimum Viable Product or MVP for Supliful to start attracting customers and test the idea’s success in practice. I got some valuable feedback, and together with Martins working on improving our service to make it more profitable. During this time, I transferred many of my operational tasks to other colleagues, focusing on company goals and other crucial aspects of the business.

Delegating more

From the first months of Supliful, I created a structure for who’s responsible for what. I wasn’t going to repeat the mistake of trying to participate in every aspect of the business. So I managed to transition from being a one-person orchestra to a conductor.

In particular, here’s what I did:

  • I made a list of my priorities and focused on them instead of constantly checking my team’s performance.
  • We hired several great people and trusted them to fulfil their responsibilities.
  • I outsourced professionals to help us with copywriting, influencer marketing, etc.
  • When some processes required my participation, I scheduled weekly or monthly meetings with the respective team to stay in the loop about the most critical operations.

Tailoring marketing tactics to the brand’s buyer persona

During the five years of Grafomap, I was responsible for marketing — and I think there wasn’t a single marketing strategy that I hadn’t tried. From pay-per-click ads to content marketing – you name it, and I tried it, based on the belief that a good marketing strategy is a diversified one.

I ended up in another extreme – my marketing efforts were scattered, and there was an evident lack of focus on what worked best.

With Supliful, I started with a few tactics I believed would be most effective – social ads and influencer marketing. I already knew which tactics work best in different development stages, and I ensured that every marketing effort resonated with our buyer persona.

Today, I make thought-out and data-based decisions, and I’m not afraid to change the approach if I see that my chosen tactic doesn’t bring the expected results.

Generating repeat purchases

One of the main stumbling blocks that prevented Grafomap from success in the long term was the lack of repeat purchases. While people really enjoyed our custom-made posters, they rarely needed more than one to hang on their walls.

61% of businesses say that the majority of their revenue comes from repeat buyers. When even the customers who loved your product don’t come back to get more of it, you’ve got a problem because you’ll have to be constantly chasing new customers.

Therefore with Supliful, we decided to focus on developing our repeat purchase strategy early on. As a result, we came up with ideas for generating repeat sales for Supliful’s supplements and our subscription model.

The university of mistake correction

Thanks to the ups and downs in my career as an entrepreneur, I’ve understood that learning from your mistakes is a craft in itself. It can be equally necessary as a university degree — at least to serial entrepreneurs like myself.

When something goes wrong, be sure to find, study, and learn — the reason behind the failure and proudly correct your mistakes. As long as you don’t give up, you don’t have to fear failure. Even though you always give your best, you’ll find that mistakes are a natural part of the business management process.

Feature Image Credit: Provided by the Author

By Rihards Piks

Sourced from readwrite

 

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5 Digital Marketing Trends to Know for the Decade

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The things we thought we knew about the digital landscape have proven to be the tip of the iceberg.

The past two years have shown a major increase in the amount of money allocated to digital marketing and communications, which has created challenges for senior-level marketers who have not been able to keep up with the changing times. The speed at which new techniques in digital advertising, social media marketing and SEO are growing and changing is faster than it has ever been.

People who have worked in marketing and communications for twenty years or more need to check their skills and knowledge. Don’t let practices you learned a decade ago become a weakness as you fight to be heard in an electronic community nearing four billion users.

Marketing in 2010

Remember MySpace? Friendster? These were just a couple of social platforms that were “out” by 2010. Facebook and Twitter were on the rise and YouTube was creating video game stars. Google AdWords was being used by some, but the world of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising was still developing.

In 2010, we advised our clients to set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts if they felt comfortable doing so. Some individually branded businesses and people in the arts were not comfortable “putting themselves out there” in a giant global picture book or communicating in 140 characters or less.

Just posting regularly was considered effective on social platforms. Facebook was a couple of times a week and Twitter was three to five times a week. What a difference ten years make.

When 2020 took an unpredictable turn, I decided it was an opportunity to find out what is current in digital marketing by enrolling in a master’s program in business school. Here are some things I’ve learned about how digital has affected marketing in the 2020s.

Job roles and teams in a digital world

1. Roles have changed so that there are more demands on marketing departments to share some of their work with the public relations teams and vice versa. When I was working in a corporate environment, there was a clear division between marketing, public relations and design. Separate these key components today and it is difficult to get anything accomplished.

2. Digital marketing and design thinking have created opportunities for businesses to conduct strategy meetings and prepare plans for launching new products more thoughtfully. Now, it should be a standard practice to have representatives from all departments in a room. Bring your post-its in multiple colours to keep track of all the great ideas your diverse team will conceive.

3. It takes a village to launch a product. When I started, most marketing departments had designers, copywriters, ad planners and researchers. A digital marketing team needs writers for long-form content and copywriters. You need a search engine marketing person, web designers (who understand search engine optimization), analysts to pull data from the social media and web platforms, researchers, PR people to manage messaging and the brand, content schedulers, real-time social monitors who engage in real time, designers and producers who can edit video and audio.

Consistent planning and rapid growth

4. Decide on a plan and stick to it until you have a chance to see how it is working. Too often, I see digital marketers shift tactics and direction because a client or manager expresses concern or has a new idea. Without a plan and some data about the progress to review, digital marketing is like playing whack-a-mole.

5. Growth is great if it is sustainable. There are new businesses that take off quickly and generate nice profits in the first five years. This is especially true in a marketing environment where word-of-mouth takes place in seconds. However, if you do not have a marketing plan for the long term, you will not continue to do well. As fast as you might grow, there are a dozen other products right behind you that are researching and planning their attack.

There is much to know about digital marketing and not a lot of time to learn. It is an exciting time in the field of marketing and communications, but continued learning is key to being effective.

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Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Claire McKinney has been working in PR for 25 years. She has appeared on Today and CSPAN as an expert on publishing, and she travels to speak to audiences about digital and traditional PR. She is an entrepreneur and author, and she will receive an M.S. in digital marketing in May 2022.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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A Definitive Guide to Creating Your Automated Email Marketing Workflow

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By Grace Lau

In a world of ecommerce and distanced online marketing, it’s essential to retain as much contact with your customers as possible. Going into cold calling or having your customer queries on call waiting is not enough.

Haven’t you ever wondered if it would be possible to send emails en masse to your customers without sending them manually? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to do it automatically?

Well, that’s where an automated email marketing workflow can change your life.

What is an Automated Email Marketing Workflow?

It’s a wordy phrase, but essentially what it means is using the implementation of RPA to send out automated marketing emails in response to specifications that your customer meets. So, for example, if they sign up to your mailing list, they might get a “Thanks for signing up! Here’s what’s next…” email.

Some more examples are:

  • “Some tips to get started.”
  • “We’d love your feedback on….”
  • “Thank you for your order!”
  • “Your order has been shipped.”

Do you see the pattern? In every case, the customer completes an action, such as making a purchase or creating an account, and a corresponding email is sent.

As you can imagine, this is extremely useful for brands that operate predominantly on online platforms. Our world is so fast-paced that holding your buyer’s attention, or getting them to make a repeat purchase, can be really difficult. However, Investing in custom SEO services (accelerateagency.ai) or a solid automated email marketing workflow can go a long way towards improving your customer retention rate.

This article is a step-by-step guide to making the best campaign you possibly can, so read on to find out how.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

1. Decide Your Goals

The first step to planning your campaign is deciding what you want to get out of it. But, more importantly, what are your customers going to get out of it?

Do you want them to:

  • …buy something?
  • …learn something?
  • …read something?
  • …fill out a form?
  • …sign up for something?

Once you decide what you’re trying to get the customer to do, working out what actions need to be taken will be much easier.

Now might be the time to break out one of those project planning tools that everyone goes on about. Remember, that for a campaign as big and complex as this, planning is absolutely crucial, and will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

2. Criteria and Actions

These are the two most essential steps to building the foundations of your automated email marketing workflow campaign. Think of it like this: criteria are at the customers’ end, and the action is at your end of the communication flow.

For example, a criterion could be the customer clicks “confirm” on a newsletter sign-up page. The met criterion would trigger a corresponding personalized action, such as a confirmation email being sent to the customer’s contact.

This is where using a CCaaS platform can really come in handy. This collects data regarding your customer base, letting you know which tasks and actions are completed most often on your website. Which pages are the most popular? What is the most travelled path on your website? How long do customers stay on each page? CCaaS platforms are your best friend when it comes to answering these questions.

Answering these queries gives you a great head start in constructing a set of standards for your workflows. You can tailor your approach and target those areas most often by learning where customers are landing and what they do most frequently. This will increase your customer engagement and drive sales and conversions.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

3. Frequency

Congratulations, you’ve done the tricky part. Now you get to make the fun decisions, like how often you’re going to send the emails and what they’ll look like.

Are you going to make sure the customer gets an email every time they complete an on-site action? This might not be the best idea, especially if they’re a frequent user of your site.

Too many emails in a short period of time will get annoying and cause customers to unsubscribe, or even stop buying from you altogether. Not to mention that those emails could end up in the spam folder, and nobody will get to see all your hard work at all.

Instead, consider designing your criteria to be met every other time they complete an action, or once per week, per month, and so forth. This way, your customers won’t be bombarded with several emails a day yelling at them to complete steps they have no interest in completing. Goodness knows there’s enough of that on the internet already.

4. Designing Your Emails

Here’s where you can flex those graphic design skills. It’s essential to make sure your emails are visually attractive and functional; otherwise, a scenario like the one described above could happen.

Luckily, there’s a whole host of campaign templates out there to help you with your design. Here, we also have some simple tips to ensure your emails are the prettiest ones out there.

Colours

Make sure to incorporate the colour scheme that you use for your website into your promotional emails. That way, customers will immediately recognize them as yours before they even read them.

Don’t Crowd It

If someone is receiving a workflow email, chances are they already know who you are and what you do. So don’t waste valuable space, including a bio of you or your company – get straight to the point and tell them what they need to know.

Fonts

It sounds obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how much of a difference a good font can make. Ensure the typeset you use for your campaign is readable, a good size, and accessible. Don’t forget, people with learning differences are just as likely to receive emails as everyone else – in this case, selecting a sans serif font such as Arial is advised as it appears less cluttered.

Also worth bearing in mind is that non-native English speakers may also be on your mailing list, so keep your language clear and engaging while not overly complicated.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

5. It’s Time for a Meeting

So, you’ve done the math and drawn up your designs – what now? Well, here is where it would be beneficial to video call your team, so they can look at your plan and see what can be improved. A fresh pair of eyes can do a whole lot more for progressing your campaign than looking at it over and over again yourself.

You can also use cloud PBX services to make sure that people in every department can be contacted, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you find the best conference call service for you.

Some things to consider during this meeting:

  • Does the campaign appeal to every member of your team? For example, different age groups, gender, or interests?
  • Is there enough information in your email? Too much? Is the goal clear?
  • Does everyone agree on the appearance of the email? If not, why not? Is it personal taste, or has there been a mistake somewhere?

Collaborating in this way can take your campaign to the next level.

6. Test

Now things are getting serious. Your workflow ideas have passed the board meeting, and now it’s time to test. But what should you be looking out for?

First, you’ll need to decide on a testing method. You can either do this internally or by using free email marketing providers. Whichever you choose, there are some things you should bear in mind:

  • Does the frequency feel right? Should you send them more often? Less often?
  • What feedback are you getting from your test subjects? Listen to them and adjust accordingly.
  • Keep track of your analytics. For example, how many people complete the actions laid out in the email? How many people are converting because of them?

Of course, you can never really know what your workflows will be able to do for your business until you push it out into the real world. Luckily, that’s the next step.

Image Credit: Unsplash; Thank you.

7. Go Live

This is it. The campaign is finally ready to be launched. There’s nothing more to this step other than to watch and wait, which can be nerve-wracking but also highly gratifying. It’s always a bit scary when something you’ve worked hard on goes out into the world. But remember: the work doesn’t stop here.

Monitor your campaign closely, especially during its first few weeks. Is everyone who’s supposed to be receiving the emails receiving them? Are customers doing what you need them to do? How are these marketing workflows influencing your statistics? Tracking this would also help reduce churn rate.

8. Enjoy The Results

You’ve done it. Pat yourself on the back. All your hard work has paid off, and all your loyal customers are enjoying receiving well-thought-out, professional emails.

If all has gone to plan, your automated email marketing workflow will be increasing your engagement and conversion rates. By reminding customers of current deals, member benefits, and sign-up perks, you can be sure that customers will remember your brand and return to you again and again.

And Then They Clicked “Open”

Your campaign will need regular updating to ensure that your customers are kept abreast of all new offers and information coming their way, but that’s where having an RPA system implemented can be so helpful – you already programmed it to do all that stuff for you. You can even add sales process automation to make things easier for your sales team.

Ultimately, these sorts of marketing workflows are all about informing people, letting them know what’s on, inviting them to receive better deals and customer perks, and giving them an all-around great experience. Good luck!

Feature Image Credit: MockupEditor-com; Pexels

By Grace Lau

Director of Growth Content

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.

Sourced from readwrite

 

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The Importance of Lead Generation and Marketing Agencies

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Discover why lead generation and marketing agencies play such an important role online.

Online marketing is one of the most difficult, but also one of the most crucial aspects of running a successful business in the modern age. No matter what business model you have in place, or the industry you are working within, everyone needs people to actually know you exist as a business. And more often than not, this simple introduction is being done through the internet on a daily basis.

With all of this in mind, just having a business online isn’t enough. It’s also crucial to have a simple understanding of how online marketing works, why sites rank in Google and how one can use lead generation and online marketing agencies to simply get more done.

Luckily in the modern age, anyone now has the ability to use the most powerful tool in the world of marketing — which is the internet. In this article, we will be covering some of the most basic, yet important steps that everyone should learn and follow when coming up with their own guide for online marketing — no matter if you are a newbie, veteran or start-up investor.

man, smartphone, mobile

Lead Generation in the World of Unlimited Prospects

Something everyone needs to be aware of when starting out is lead generation. This is when someone is interested in you as a business so they decide to leave their information so that you or a sales team can then follow up on them to try and get them as a customer, this is called a lead.

Leads are incredibly important as you need them to simply grow your customer base and grow as a business.

One of the most powerful ways you can work on generating more leads is through search engine optimization (SEO), this is when you or an expert ‘ranks’ your website so that it appears higher up on the commonly used search engine results that people use. This will increase online traffic and the more people that visit your site the better.

You could also pay to be ranked higher through sponsored links, while this is technically easier the downside is that consumers might be less trusting of a website that has paid to be higher up on search results.

You might also want to try an email outreach approach too. Email outreach was one of the original tactics’ companies would use at the beginning of the internet and companies still use it to this day so that tells you something about how effective it is.

Marketing Agencies to the Rescue

It can be incredibly useful to hire a marketing team to help promote your business. Luckily there are thousands of marketing agencies out there so you will be able to take your time in deciding which agency will be best suited to help you grow your business.

Bets practice when deciding on a marketing team is to run through lists of the best teams that fit with your budget while breaking down the list till you have a few that you like. You would then ask them important questions such as “how will you help grow my business?” to determine the best agency for you.

When you are just starting out global marketing might not be the best way to start due to the size of your company so it’s typically best to start with local marketing. Once you have grown that loyal local customer base you can then think about expanding your marketing globally.

Conclusion  

Generating leads through marketing is incredibly important to growing as a business; you need to encourage people to pay for your products or services. Creating online articles/ blog posts relevant to you and your business will also help with customers trusting you enough to part with their hard-earned money.  Generating leads and marketing is not an easy task that should be looked at lightly and will take hard work but if you persevere then I’m sure you will be able to grow your business.

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Sourced from Influencive

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5 Ways To Increase Your Sales With Online Marketing

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By Hammad Hassan

Online marketing is an essential strategy for any business.

How to get started in online marketing?

To get started with online marketing. there are so many tasks that you have to complete before marketing your business.

Letting someone spend their precious money isn’t easy! Make sure you offer them the best deal ever.

Step 1. Start a website

The first step is to start your own website. A website is the foundation of any online business and so you should not neglect it. If you do not have one, create it immediately. The best way to get started is through WordPress.

Step 2. List Your Products

The second step is to list your products or services. It means that your website should be fully operated and if anyone visits your website he/she gets the idea of what your business is about, and what services you are providing.

Step 3. Start Blog

Blog? Yes. You should post blogs on your website in order to explain everything about your business and services. It makes transparency for the customer, and it builds trust.

Step 4. FAQs

When someone visits your website he/she may get a lot of questions about your product or services. In order to give the answers, your website must have FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section.

Step 5. Registration

Make sure that if someone visits your website, he must signup in order to take advantage of your products or services. It’s important to keep your customers for a long time.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is more than just a platform for sharing updates and photos. It’s the place where the majority of consumers spend most of their time online.

1. Facebook/Instagram Marketing

Today the most common way of marketing is through social networks. This type of advertising allows firms to build and maintain relationships with their customers.

2. YouTube Marketing

Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world. If you want to tap into this audience, you need to create youtube ads. Creating a youtube ad is simple and easy if you know how to do it.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing can help you build relationships with your customers and provide valuable information that they want to receive.

4. Sponsor The Creators

The best way to market your business on social media is to sponsor YouTubers. These creators have the skill to sell anyone’s brand. Their audience trusts them and whenever they recommend your services or products, there are high chances of high sales. But make sure you are providing the best quality.

  • Squarespace
  • StoryBlocks
  • Envato Elements

5. Give Free Trials

People are afraid of losing money on garbage. In order to attract them, you need to provide free trials so that these people try your product or service without the fear of losing money.

Feature Image Credit: Jodie Cook on Unsplash

By Hammad Hassan

Sourced from Medium

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The power of tech giants has made them as influential as nations. Here’s how they’re sanctioning Russia

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The world’s five leading tech companies – Google (now Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (now Meta), Amazon and Microsoft – have taken steps to impose significant and (mainly) voluntary sanctions on Russia, in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

But the decisions didn’t come unprompted. Ukraine has lobbied the major tech companies in the same way it sought assistance from the European Union, NATO and the US government.

Facing the largest military action in Europe since the second world war, Ukraine appealed directly to big tech companies as though they were nation states. It’s a reminder that in today’s world, these giants are major players on the geopolitical stage.

So what impact could the tech-related sanctions have?

The Big 5’s response

Google’s response to the crisis has come in two parts. The first has been finance-related. The company has limited the use of Google Pay in Russia for customers or merchants that use a sanctioned bank.

It has also stopped selling online advertising in Russia across its services, and has removed the ability for Russian state media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik to monetise content on YouTube (which is owned by Google). RT and Sputnik have also been blocked in Europe.

Foxtel has removed RT in Australia, but it’s still available on YouTube, with ads in the livestream. That means RT can earn direct revenue from advertising in Australia, but no advertising revenue from YouTube. Google Search and Maps both remain available in Russia.

Apple has gone several steps further than Google. The company has suspended all product sales in Russia, and Apple Pay and other services have been limited. It has also blocked RT and Sputnik from the Apple App Store everywhere outside of Russia.

Meta has removed access to RT and Sputnik on both Facebook and Instagram (which it owns), and has removed the option for state media to monetise content on any of its platforms. It is also demoting posts that contain links to Russian state-controlled media websites on Facebook.

Amazon has taken the path of supporting cybersecurity efforts in Ukraine and offering logistical support, as announced on Twitter by chief executive Andy Jassy. However, Amazon hasn’t yet taken any action to reduce the revenue it receives from Russia.

Microsoft has also helped on the cybersecurity front. It identified a potential Russian cyber attack in Ukraine on February 24, helping efforts to thwart it. In addition, it has banned all advertisements from RT and Sputnik across its ad network, and blocked access to both channels in the European Union.

(Almost) no chips for Russia

Two of the largest US semiconductor (microchip) manufacturers, Intel and AMD, have ceased supplies to Russia. Although the official US sanctions prohibit the export of “dual use” devices with both military and non-military purposes, Intel and AMD have gone a step further and halted all supplies at this stage.

Perhaps more importantly, the major Taiwanese supplier TMSC has stopped supplies. TMSC makes chips for Russian manufacturers such as the Russian Scientific and Technical Centre Module, Baikal Electronics and Marvel Computer Solutions. There are no alternative semiconductor fabrication plants in Russia.

Samsung Electronics, another major chip manufacturer, also announced on Saturday that it would suspend shipments. Samsung leads mobile phone supplies in Russia and, prior to the suspension on Saturday, would have stood to benefit from Apple’s decision to stop sales in the country.

But not all tech companies have given in to political pressure. South Korean chip fabricator SK Hynix has not yet decided to limit supplies (as of when this article was written).

It seems the South Korean government wants to continue supplying semiconductors to Russia, as it has sought exemptions from the US in respect to actions that could negatively impact its semiconductor industry.

Other consequences

Apart from the more directly imposed restrictions, Some Meta and Google services were also blocked after users subverted them for political messaging. For example, social media users across the globe began using Google reviews of restaurants in Moscow and St Petersburg to send information to Russian citizens.

As a result, new reviews in Russia and Ukraine have now been restricted by Google. That is, Google has acted to avoid delivering potential disinformation from either side.

And both Meta and Google have restricted some of their location-based services in Ukraine to limit potential military use.

What’s the immediate impact?

The actions of Meta and Google, and any loss of ad revenue they previously afforded, will have an immediate but relatively small impact on the Russian state – much smaller than the impact from direct financial sanctions.

And not being able to use Google Pay or Apple Pay is still not as inconvenient for Russian citizens as being unable to use ATMs – many of which have run out of notes.

On the other hand, the loss of access to Apple hardware could have a much more lasting impact on Russian consumers.

The overall effect of the various sanctions will be a slowing down of the Russian economy – especially the digital economy which is reliant on semiconductors. However, this too will have a small immediate impact.

Corporate decisions

There was no legal or regulatory obligation for chip manufacturers and tech companies to limit the export of goods and services to Russia. Instead, the move seems to have been prompted by two key incidents.

First was the very public and direct appeal by Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov to the tech companies, asking them to take action.

Second was the need to meet stakeholders’ expectations. This can be characterised as “corporate social responsibility”, or as social licence.

Both Apple and Google responded to calls for help from members of the Ukrainian government. Google’s philanthropic arm and its employees are directly contributing US$15 million to relief efforts in Ukraine.

While the US sanctions didn’t demand for the tech companies to stop trading with Russia entirely, the signalling from both the US government and Ukrainian officials provided a persuasive context.

It has raised the spectre of multinational tech companies deciding which “side” to support based on a stakeholder perspective, rather than a legislated one. It seems in the end, stakeholder views are still the chief driver of Big Tech’s response to ethical dilemmas.

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Sourced from The Conversation

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How to Create Content for Different Purposes: Branding, Sales, and Retention

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By Tom Gil

Different parts of the sales funnel need different content types. Here’s how to make them.

We often talk about content creation and repurposing it using different channels, like blogs and social media. What isn’t often mentioned is how to create different types of content for different stages of the sales funnel: branding, sales, and retention.

Every end goal can call for a different kind of content. For example, you might need content that’s designed to move people closer to a sale, make you more memorable (branding), or help you maintain clients (retention). Usually, in your marketing funnel, your target audience is within one of these three stages:

  1. Awareness (made aware of your brand)
  2. Consideration (considering your solution)
  3. Decision (moving towards buying from you)

What content the customer needs to consume in each stage differs. But the first hurdle, as Devin Reed, head of content strategy at Gong, notes, is simply making all your marketing messages relevant to the consumer: “When it comes to actually creating engaging content, it needs to be relevant, insightful, and actionable. This is critical if you want to grab — and keep — their attention. Unfortunately, most B2B companies focus on themselves, specifically their product/service, and as a result, their content is boring and fails to influence how their audience thinks or acts.”

Retention

Your end goal shouldn’t be to simply make a sale. Instead, it should be to create loyal, long-term customers. Here are three methods you can implement today for better retention content:

  1. Use storytelling in your marketing: Customer-focused stories win. Describe how your product or service empowered a business with a solution that yielded results.
  2. Publish quality content consistently: Creating a blog is crucial nowadays. Aside from helping you rank higher on search engines, it enables you to build trust with your ideal customers and craft a unique voice for your brand.
  3. Continue to educate your audience: Having a separate section for unique studies and stories (not blogs) is a way to stand out, and is one of the best ways to show up for your audience consistently. Try different mediums, like podcasts, vlogs, guides, and case studies.

Now, let’s focus on a topic that is often ignored. Retention branding.

Are you pleasantly waving customers good-bye when they choose to leave or are you pointing a sword at their backs, making them walk the plank while they gaze at sharks below?

Even after you lost the battle — when a client cancels their membership or unsubscribes — the psychology of user offboarding is paramount. Just like the aftertaste a drink can leave you with, the offboarding experience can make or break your brand’s reputation. An unreasonable layer to a journey’s end can cause friction and leave a bitter taste.

Making it hard for customers to leave your product is unethical, and usually does more harm than good. There is a way to make a person smile even as they’re about to unsubscribe. AppSumo‘s messaging around cancelling a subscription is a good example: The unsubscribe screen says “It looks like you’ve had enough of us (tough but fair).” A small thing like that can take a stressful process and make it more enjoyable. It’s a reminder of what brands should do: let you leave with a smile, remembering them positively.

That’s retention branding. If you still want to leave, at least you left smiling. If you changed your mind, you stayed smiling. You smiled either way, and that matters.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Tom Gil

Certified real estate copywriter & marketing consultant

Sourced from Inc.

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How to Use Third-Party Website Analytics to Inform Your Link Building Strategy

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By Jeff Broth

With the vast array of web analytics tools and troves of data at your disposal, you should be able to highlight a few golden opportunities for link-building that will help build your brand and naturally increase your website’s visibility on search engines.

At this point, it’s pretty much common knowledge that link building is one of the most critical factors affecting your overall SEO performance. If you can manage to acquire backlinks from high authority websites, it will signal to Google and the other search engines that your site is a quality resource, one that is worthy of citation.

However, most digital marketers would agree that link building is one of the hardest tasks they face – and for a good reason. Scouring the internet for high-quality backlinks can be extremely time-consuming, and it’s not always guaranteed to deliver results. On top of this, link building is expensive, which usually prices out most small and even medium-sized businesses from attaining premium backlinks.

According to Siege Media, it often costs brands upwards of $1,000 to gain just one quality link. With these sorts of figures being quoted, it’s important that you do your research to be sure you are finding the best links for your website, the ones that are relevant, trustworthy, and from high domain authority sources.

How third-party analytics can help your link-building strategy

Important!
Companies have more tools and data at their disposal than ever before. This means they can take a far more systematic approach to their digital marketing strategy, which can help increase ROI and get better results.

With the ability to analyze any website and fully break down its web traffic statistics, you can gain valuable insights into your competitor’s strategies. You can also more accurately assess the potential value of any links you are thinking about purchasing.

On that note, let’s take a look at a few ways you can use third-party website analytics to inform your link-building strategy.

Inspect and analyse the sites you are considering acquiring links from

Just as you would research a product or service before you hand over your hard-earned cash, you should take the time to inspect and analyse the websites that you wish to acquire backlinks from. Using web traffic stats, you can peer into the core data of a website, looking at things such as domain authority, global and country rankings, category rankings, as well as the total amount of engagement it gets.

Quick Tip!
In general, you want to acquire links from websites relevant to your own and have topic correspondence. For example, if you sell sports equipment, you should avoid posting on high fashion websites and instead focus on those that share a similar audience to your own.

Make sure you check out the primary countries where the website acquires its traffic from. Usually, you should only aim for websites that share the same audience as your own (or at least similar), which extends to national and regional demographics.

Keep an eye on your competitors and explore their links

Using the same web traffic analysis tools, we can spy on our rivals and explore their link-building strategies. Understanding where they get their backlinks from and who their top referrers are will give you a better idea of the areas where you need to focus on next.

If it is working for your rivals, that means that it will likely work for you too.

If you can, get a comprehensive breakdown of competitor referral traffic, including the percentage of referral traffic won categories for referrals. This should give you some domains to target for your strategy and highlight opportunities for acquiring backlinks of your own.

Look at your top referral sources

Now that you’ve researched your competitors, it’s time to turn your attention inwards by taking a look at your web traffic data. One of the easiest ways to get new links is by checking out the websites that already link to your content.

If you find that one or more websites with high domain authority have already linked to your website, it means that they likely find your content valuable, relevant, and worthy of sharing. Don’t let this opportunity go to waste.

If possible, try to create similar content and then pitch it directly to the same publications. Mention that you notice they have already linked to your content and that you would be interested in establishing a link-building partnership that is beneficial to both parties. This warm introduction has a much better chance of bearing fruit than any random outreach campaign ever would.

Check your outbound links

Finally, why not reach out to the websites you are actively linking to already? Check the websites that are in your top external referrals (destination sites), and consider reaching out to them with a link-building proposition.

Quick Tip!
In many ways, this should be angled as a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” scenario, but the success of this proposition will all depend on how successful and authoritative your site already is.

Nevertheless, it’s well worth reaching out to these websites as it gives you a warm lead when contacting the editors, and there is also a strong chance that the website will be relevant and have topic correspondence.

Quality over quantity

The overarching goal here is to find high-quality links that will help boost the credibility and authoritativeness of your website. The days of going out and securing any old link you can get your hands on are gone. In fact, the latter approach will often do more harm than good to your SEO performance.

While high-quality backlinks will take a long time to build, the results will be far worth the effort. And with the vast array of web analytics tools and the vast troves of data at your disposal, you should be able to highlight a few golden opportunities that will help build your brand and naturally increase your website’s visibility on search engines.

By Jeff Broth

Sourced from Quick and Dirty Tips

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Best Social Content Scheduling Tools

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By Faith Walls

Social media management is an essential part of operating a business. This is no small undertaking, as your digital reputation is critical to increasing your clientele. The effort needed to consistently generate quality content is the reason many business owners employ virtual assistants and content creators. Developing and scheduling social media content takes a significant amount of time and energy. However, with the right tools at hand, you and your team can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that your brand content calendar is in good hands.

We are sharing our thoughts on several of the best social content scheduling tools on the market today. These digital platforms are designed to lighten the load when it comes to building your business’s social media presence. Take a look at just a few of the social media scheduling tools available and exactly what they each can do for you and your business.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is poised as an effective and widely used corporate tool. It is designed to be used within a team setting and allows for multiple users and individual approval for posts. This platform supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest scheduling and community management. Enjoy the ease of scheduling your content on each individual social media platform while keeping it visible on the same calendar. Additionally, the Linkin.bio feature allows you to add a URL to your Instagram content while scheduling.

Airtable

If you are looking for an intricate content planning and organization system, Airtable is just what you need. Airtable serves as a spreadsheet-database hybrid for developing and distributing relational databases. This in-depth software may just send Excel packing with its accessible interface, bright colours, and easy-to-collab design. While Airtable’s primary purpose is content storage, it also offers a fully automated social media planner. This feature allows users to build social media calendars that queue content to be scheduled and posted at a certain time for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Buffer

Buffer is a popular social media scheduling tool that is user-friendly and chock full of handy features, including WordPress, RSS Readers, and Chrome plug-ins. You can also share content on your web browsers of choice, such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. With its easy to comprehend analytics, Buffer makes it easy to test and track new content campaigns. You and your team can cross-post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram while adjusting the caption for each individual platform.

Later

Later is an excellent asset for content research, including hashtags and keyword suggestions. The platform supports Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but is most viable for Instagram posting, with its visual orientation. The platform provides a mock-up of scheduled Instagram posts to give you an idea of how your final content will look on your business feed. Later includes the Linkin.bio tool to help direct traffic from Instagram posts to URLs. Users can also take advantage of Later’s content library for evergreen storage. Save your content for future posting in the easily accessible image bank.

By Faith Walls

Sourced from HEY Socal

 

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