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10 steps to the perfect business plan for your creative venture

March 7, 2022 No Comments

By Joseph Foley, Contributions from Rob Carney

The perfect business plan is your first step to success in the creative sector.

Writing the perfect business plan is one of the most important first steps to launch your own creative venture, but it can also be one of the most daunting. It’s the first real stage in properly planning your venture, which can help make your dream design business feel a lot more real, but it can also be hard to know where to start. You might even be tempted to skip this step altogether, but would be a mistake.

The perfect business plan provides clarity and direction for your whole enterprise. It can help you raise cash from banks and or other investors, but even if you’re not looking for that, it can help you home in on a gap in the market and work out how your design business will fill it (and turn a profit in the process).

So before you start looking at website wireframes, choosing a logo or shopping around for studio space, it’s time to put pen to paper. Your plan should be focused, readable, and most importantly explain why your business will be a success. In the guide below, we’ll look at the 10 traditional ingredients that any business plan should cover, with pointers on what to include in each. For more tips on setting up your creative venture, see our guide to how to start a design business and how to improve your graphic design skills.

The perfect business plan: what should it include?

There’s no one layout or formula for the perfect business plan, but there are general conventions on what a business plan should include. Exactly how you write it will depend a little on who you’re writing for – for example, if you aim to present it to a bank or other potential investors or just to serve as a guide for yourself and colleagues.

The best business plans are usually fairly brief and keep things simple. They succinctly explain what you want to do, how you will get there and what you need to do to reach that goal. While there are no set rules, we’ll look at the more traditional elements to include in your business plan below.

01. Write an executive summary

An executive summary essentially summarises your design business in a quick, succinct pitch. This is the part that investors or banks will read first so it needs to be concise and to the point; certainly no more than a couple of pages. Above all it needs to explain your business idea.

The executive summary should include your company name and the reason you chose it, your mission statement, details of your product or service, and basic information about your company’s leadership team, employees, and location. You should also make sure you cover what makes your creative business different, who will you sell your services to and a list of short- and long-term goals. For example, where exactly do you see your business in five or so years?

You’ll also want to include details on financial goals and growth plans, especially if you plan to seek investors. Set out the turnover you expect to make and the cash you think you’ll have at the end of the first year; plus where you’ll get money from (grants etc); and how much money you plan to invest yourself.

02. Compose an elevator pitch

An ‘elevator pitch’ is a much briefer summary of your business that serves to sell it to potential investors, or to clients, in few words. It should be possible to read an elevator pitch in under two minutes. The idea is that you could deliver it to any potential investor you might happen to cross in an elevator, but don’t worry if that kind of meeting doesn’t tend to happen to you; the pitch will still prove useful for understanding the real selling point of your future business.

Your elevator pitch should include the name of your business, your mission, what your design business will do, who it will do that for and what makes it different. It should be direct, to the point and free from any kind of jargon or waffle.

03. Describe yourself (and any partners)

A woman working on her business plan on a large desk — (Image credit: Andresr via Getty )

The next section in the perfect business plan should describe the people behind the business – that means you (and your partners if you have any). You should outline your experience and training, why you want to start your creative business and why you will make it a success.

Do the same for every partner in the business and attach well-crafted résumés (see our guide to the perfect résumé for creatives). The aim of this section is to show investors why you have the know-how to make your business successful, and also to allow you and your partners to take stock of your strengths and how you plan to use them.

04. Define your design business’s offering

The next thing to include in the business plan for your design venture is to define the service that you’re going to deliver. This should be more specific than you might first think because unless you’re planning to launch a fully fledged agency, you’re probably not going to be able to cover everything. Are you going to offer graphic design, motion design, web design, mobile, 3D? Are you going to cater to anyone and everyone or will you aim to serve a specific industry or niche?

Remember that any bank or other potential investor will probably know very little about the subject area, so try to describe exactly what the services will entail and what your business’s output will be. Don’t worry if it sounds patronising or overly simplified. You may know what motion graphics means, but will your bank manager? You should also mention here whether you plan to expand into other services in the future. So if you’re starting in graphic design, are you planning to expand to offer full branding services?

05. Describe your clients

The perfect business plan doesn’t only describe who you are and what your business will offer; it also offers a very clear description of your target customer. Where are they based? What needs do they have and how will you fulfil them? Asking these questions can be a good test of just how well you understand the client you’re aiming at and may reveal a need to do more research. Be sure you really understand your target customer and there’s more chance an investor will understand.

You need to describe your typical client and what makes them buy design services, whether you have worked with them before and whether you have any future jobs lined up already. Try to be as detailed as possible. If you’ve already worked for a specific client in some capacity (maybe in a freelance job) explain this here too since this demonstrates an ability to generate business.

06. Do a SWOT analysis

Bricks displaying the components of a SWOT analysis — (Image credit: Andrey Popov via Getty )

Remember that your customers aren’t the only influence on your business. There are also competitors and the state of the economy as a whole. How big is the market you’ll serve? How much is the market expected to grow in the future? Who will be your main competitors now and can you expect more competition in the future? These are some of the questions you’ll need to answer in your market analysis.

You should make a simple SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to define the opportunities and threats in your market and compare them to your business’s strengths and weaknesses. Draw up a list of competing businesses, both big and small. Analyses what they do well and what they do badly, and consider what will make your offering different. Opportunities are external factors that could make your business thrive (is the market changing? are clients demanding a certain kind of work that you do well?). Threats are the same but opposite (if you’re an illustration studio and budgets dry up, what will you do?).

This research will help to define where there are gaps and where you need to focus (once you’ve done this, go back through your sections and make sure your business still seems relevant. Any market research you can do in the field (perhaps talking to past clients and getting their take on the market) can be included here as well).

07. Outline your marketing strategy

How are you going to reach potential customers? Word of mouth? Advertising? Promotional material? Social media? Your own website? This is a question that should ideally be answered after carrying out market research to find out how potential clients find and contract the services you’ll be providing.

Make sure the marketing strategy you define in your business plan outlines the expected costs for all of these things because, with the possible exception of word of mouth, they’re far from free (see finance below).

08. Define your USP

Once you’ve carried out a SWOT analysis, including analysis of your competitors, you’re ready to define your USP, or unique selling point. This is incredibly important to include this in your business plan. It sums up in a nutshell why a client choose your business over another creative business? So what will you do better?

A USP is usually summed up in a single sentence; two at the most. This can be a challenge but the shorter the better since that will make it easier to focus on delivering it.

09. Forecast your budgets

A woman sits in front of a computer and looks over her financial forecast — (Image credit: 10’000 Hours via Getty )

Now it’s time to explain how you’ll actually make money. Consider details such as how long you spend on projects and how you’ll charge for this. If you’ll have an hourly rate that state what that will be. You also need to say how you’ll get paid (almost certainly on invoice).

You’ll also need to define your costs here. This will be of great interest to any potential investors, so pay great attention to it. You’ll need to outline both one-off costs such as the equipment you’ll need to set up to regular outgoings such as staff, rent (explain where you’ll be working from), software subscriptions, bills and insurance.

Calculate your total costs per month and other costs of running the business and define How much income you will need each month to realistically survive as a business, and how much you aim to make. A cash-flow forecast shows how much money will enter and leave your design business and will help identify whether you’re going to be able to make things work financially. This can be a sobering moment.

Be pessimistic and realistic. Don’t assume you will be working flat out at your maximum rate from the start because it’s unlikely that you’ll achieve that. It’s better to underestimate how you’ll perform and overachieve than the other way around. In this section, you also need to outline any financial needs you have for potential investors. In this case, outline the length of time your request will cover and give a detailed description of how you’ll use the funds.

10. Make a backup plan

Finally, what if things don’t work out. We’ve stressed the importance of taking the time to make the perfect business plan, but a plan is a plan and something things turn out differently. This is why it’s important that you also have a back-up plan.

If things aren’t working out, what will you change in the short or long term in order to turn things around. If you aren’t making money, do you plans ready for what you could do to make the business more profitable? Could you sacrifice international clients/pitches for local ones? Could you employ freelancers as and when they are needed instead of hiring a junior designer full-time? Could you downsize your planned studio space or switch to a coworking space (See our guide to the world’s coolest coworking spaces for inspiration).

There’s a lot to think about when writing a business plan for a creative business, but with careful consideration, it can help you prepare for the undertaking ahead and keep you focused no matter what challenges you face. If you’re passionate about making your business a success, writing your plan will be the first step on that path.

Feature Image Credit: Nora Carol Photography via Getty

By Joseph Foley

Joseph is a regular freelance journalist at Creative Bloq. He also works as a writer and translator, as well as a project manager at a design agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he spends his nights dancing tango and drinking malbec. His interests include graphic design and social media.

Contributions from Rob Carney

Sourced from Creative BLOQ

In News

5 Tips To Improve Your Online Content Strategy

March 7, 2022 No Comments

By John Hall

Content has been king for a long time, and that’s not likely to change. In today’s digital-first environment, business owners must be dynamic content creators along with being powerhouses in their fields.

If you’re wracking your brain when it comes to revamping your content strategy, don’t waste precious time lamenting. Instead, consider adding these five facets to your online content strategy to make your efforts valuable to your customers and your bottom line.

1. Create Content Your Readers Will Share Organically

No matter what business goals you hope to achieve with it, your content has to provide value. If your content aims to benefit you more than your audience, potential customers will see right through it, and you’ll obliterate any chance of earning their trust. So eschew self-promotion and focus your efforts on answering your visitors’ questions and addressing their pain points.

Offer solutions to common problems in a clear, engaging way. Research top-shared social media topics on sites like BuzzSumo to see what categories are performing well. Focus on popular topics that your organization can truly speak to, increasing your relevance, reach and expertise. Make sharing easy by providing social sharing links throughout your content.

2. Develop Content That Educates

Content ranks high when it’s relevant and useful. When users search for answers, they’re looking for content that helps them resolve an issue or learn something new. To draw traffic and earn business, make sure that your content delivers on its promise. Research similar high-ranking articles and reverse-engineer your content to be better than what’s out there today.

Avoid clickbait-style promises that fall short on their delivery. Instead, lean into real business problems and offer sage advice that educates readers on how they can overcome their challenges. When your content is helpful, it stands a better chance of being used as a reference by others.

3. Incorporate High-Ranking Content Components

Copy length matters. If you’re hoping to top the SERPs, you need to pay attention to your word count. Currently, content that runs to 2,500 words ranks highest on major search engines. But it’s not just about having a lot of verbiage. You need to tell your audience things they need and want to know in a form that’s easy to consume.

Creating content that is valuable, not just lengthy, is the point here. Keep users engaged by writing sentences of 20 words or fewer. Structure your piece to deliver high-impact content first, in the event your reader bows out after one screen. Yet provide the necessary level of useful detail, in an easily navigable way, to engage those who want to dig deeper. Your time-on-site metrics will soar — and hopefully your conversion rate will follow.

4. Use Guest Posting to Earn Third-Party Validation

Your company website isn’t the only place where you should publish content. You’re already creating valuable content on your blog, so distributing that knowledge via other sites and trusted media platforms is a no-brainer. You’ll attract and build an audience while establishing trust by providing high-quality information.

Reach out to relevant sites and blogs in your industry and create a relationship that provides value to both sides. Partnering with authoritative websites and other high-ranking content sources will lend credibility to your content. It’s all well and good to declare your own expertise, but getting a trusted outlet’s seal of approval will validate your claims.

Become familiar with the content submission guidelines at various sites to ensure you have the right fit. Then link to your content hub in guest posts you place on other sites. Cultivate relationships where needed to increase the likelihood of prime content placement and promotion.

5. Recycle Existing Content to Increase Your Reach

You’ve dedicated hours of research, writing and editing to create the perfect blog post. But is that the end of the road? If you’re a strategic content creator, it isn’t.

Popular creators like Gary Vaynerchuk have long preached the value of “content arbitrage.” Using this approach, you do the work once and revise it for every platform and format you can imagine. So refashion your content for other mediums to increase your impact. Once you’ve got your copy, use it to create videos, lists, social media posts, podcasts and more.

Your audience members may prefer certain methods of communication over others. By providing different formats optimized for each segment, you can improve your reach and your authority. Remember to leverage each content component, including video and social media captions, providing links wherever possible to improve page rank. Encourage your leaders to share your content through their channels and use it as a resource as they conduct business.

Treat Content Strategy as a Key Component of Your Business Strategy

Your business strategy and content strategy should work hand in hand. Make a practice of strategizing your content plans for each month by developing an editorial calendar. This calendar will guide your content production and distribution, which should align with relevant product launches and promotions. Using this approach, your team can create and distribute content that gets maximum results for your business.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By John Hall

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

John Hall is the co-founder and president of Calendar, a scheduling and time management app. He’s also the strategic adviser for Relevance, a company that helps brands differentiate themselves and lead their industry online. You can book him as a keynote speaker here and you can check out his best-selling book “Top of Mind.” Sign up for Calendar here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Where to Learn SEO: The Best SEO Blogs

March 4, 2022 No Comments

By AJ Condez

The best SEO blogs provide the latest trends and insights in the world of digital marketing. They offer SEO tutorials where you can learn the best practices and tools to boost your technical skills and knowledge.

The topic of search engine optimization is varied and complex, so it’s important to read reliable blogs written by industry experts. SEO is continuously changing, it’s best to stay updated so you don’t fall behind the curve. Follow this guide to find out where to learn SEO and which blogs to follow to keep your SEO skill up to date.

How to Stay Informed About SEO Updates

When you’re just starting out in SEO, a great way to learn about updates is to find dependable sources and blogs and bookmark them to your web browser. You can also curate your feeds on social media and follow SEO experts or a digital marketing agency that provides free information to stay informed about important SEO updates.

Furthermore, you can use a site like Feedly, an application that aggregates reliable and informative sites and places them inside a highly optimized newsfeed. It’s a powerful application that lets you catalogue streams of information on your topics of interest while filtering out irrelevant information.

Success Lessons From the Top SEO Blogs

Success doesn’t come overnight, it takes time and a great plan to ensure you get the success that you want to see. These lessons provide a succinct explanation of key topics in SEO that you should know about.

Content is King

Content is the backbone of every great digital marketing strategy. Whether it’s in the form of video, audio, or written form, content is always teeming in the digital realm. Great and insightful content is one of the secret ingredients in developing your reach in SEO.

If you can create content that’s beneficial, informative, and interactive to your audience, not only will Google reward your content, but your audience will as well through shares and comments. Content is still the name of the game. Anyone who creates engaging content, whether it be to entertain or inform, has the upper hand in building their SEO.

Get a Niche

Your SEO strategy development will be easier if you find a niche. Specialization helps in optimizing your content to cater to a specific audience. This will allow you to cluster and segregate necessary keywords to fill your content with.

Finding a niche will also allow you to build brand authority and customer trust over your chosen topic. By positioning yourself to serve a target market, it makes your SEO efforts simpler by providing a clear-cut picture of what your intended audience wants to learn about.

Digital Marketing is Not Just SEO

SEO is an important factor in digital marketing but it’s not the only thing that makes up your digital marketing efforts. There are different factors like quality of content, user experience, and market reach that need to be taken into consideration.

A seamless user interface that boosts the overall experience of a website can benefit your SEO. Interactive content that engages your users and provides useful information can boost your SEO endeavours. Look beyond SEO for your digital marketing strategies, and understand that it’s not the only thing that’s going to bring in engagement and organic search traffic.

Best of the Blogosphere: Top Blogs About SEO

Ahrefs
Neil Patel’s Blog
Yoast SEO
Backlinko
The Moz Blog
Search Engine Journal
Content Marketing Institute
Marie Haynes Consulting
Practical Ecommerce
Gotch SEO

Best SEO Blogs: Where to Find SEO Support and SEO Tutorials

This essential reading list of SEO blogs targets key topics like domain authority, organic search traffic, and SEO ranking. These are some of the favourite SEO blogs by digital marketing readers.

Ahrefs Blog

Great for: SEO Strategies, Organic Search Traffic, and Online Tools
Posts Per Month: 12 articles

The Ahrefs blog is an SEO and online marketing blog operated by digital marketing professionals. The blog offers an extensive reading list on organic search traffic, search engine optimization, and digital marketing efforts like affiliate marketing.

Neil Patel

Great for: Content Strategies, SEO Insights, and Digital Marketing Industry News
Posts Per Month: 24 articles

Neil Patel is an SEO professional and an expert in the digital marketing industry. His articles on topics that tackle online marketing offer actionable content and act as a fantastic resource for your journey. The blog is an authoritative guide to the latest SEO topics and updates on a regular basis.

Yoast SEO Blog

Great for: SEO Resources, Content Creation, and Current SEO Trends
Posts Per Month: 4 articles

The Yoast SEO blog is perfect for people who want to start their journey in SEO. It has a dedicated section for the basics of SEO to begin your path towards becoming an SEO expert. The blog teaches you how to increase organic traffic and optimize content creation.

The Backlinko Blog

Great for: Online Marketing, Content Marketing Strategies, and Search Engine Marketing
Posts Per Month: 3 articles

The Backlinko blog offers comprehensive guides to search engine optimization strategies. Created by Brian Dean, Backlinko gives updated blog posts about SEO topics, search rankings, and deep insights to maximize your SEO knowledge.

The Moz Blog

Great for: SEO Industry Insight, SEO Trends, and SEO News
Posts Per Month: 4 articles

The Moz Blog offers how-to guides in optimizing your content and becoming an SEO master. It’s an amazing SEO blog that caters to advanced topics like domain authority, user search intent, and organic search traffic. Moreover, the posts are written by industry experts that are brought up to date on a constant basis.

Search Engine Journal

Great for: Google Search Optimization, Content SEO, and Search Marketing Industry Insight
Posts Per Month: 72 articles

Search Engine Journal provides in-depth guides to SEO insights and organic search traffic. This amazing blog offers a wide variety of articles that tackle different aspects of SEO, mainly SEO ranking, domain rating, and improved content creation. These topics help drive up organic traffic to websites.

Content Marketing Institute

Great for: Content Writing, SEO Tools, and Organic Search Traffic Updates
Posts Per Month: 16 articles

» MORE: Where to Learn Data Science: The Best Data Science Blogs

The Content Marketing Institute blog curates its information to give you the best insights on search engine optimization, domain authority, organic search traffic. The blog posts offer regular updates on the latest news and relevant information on SEO and content writing.

Marie Haynes Consulting

Great for: Google Search News, Organic Search Traffic, and Domain Authority
Posts Per Month: 1 article

Marie Haynes is an international SEO consultant that specializes in SEO services such as actionable insights in domain authority and in-depth articles in Google algorithm updates. The blog focuses mainly on Google to offer informative articles on organic traffic, search engine optimization, and advanced user experience.

Practical Ecommerce

Great for: Online Marketing, SEO News, and SEO Ranking
Posts Per Month: 32 articles

Practical Ecommerce offers SEO solutions using a competitive research tool like Google Analytics to boost organic search traffic for businesses. Its blog showcases regular updates on domain authority, ecommerce metrics, and niche categories like Amazon SEO.

Gotch SEO

Great for: Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and SEO News
Posts Per Month: 4 articles

Founded by Nathan Gotch, Gotch SEO specializes in complicated topics like SEO ranking and domain authority. Furthermore, it also tackles various SEO tools to enhance your skills and expertise in the digital marketing industry.

Where to Learn SEO

SEO resources and training can be learned through various online courses, both free and paid. Online learning platforms like Coursera and Udemy offer paid SEO courses that provide extensive training and information. You can also go to sites like HubSpot and ClickMinded for free SEO crash courses at your disposal.

There are also YouTube channels dedicated to SEO and digital marketing. Ahrefs and Neil Patel both have videos that give great insight into the topic. Moreover, there are also SEO podcasts for you to listen to like the Search Engine Journal Show or Voices of Search. There are different learning approaches to SEO, you just have to look for them in the right places.

Can You Learn SEO in a Coding Bootcamp?

Yes, there are numerous SEO bootcamps for you to enrol in. If you want to become an SEO specialist, then you can enrol in a boot camp to jumpstart your career and expand your understanding of SEO.

Bootcamps are training programs that teach extensive knowledge to students in a short amount of time. They are a great way to learn because they give students hands-on projects to build their own SEO portfolios and develop their SEO network.

SEO Support

Below are the best online forums for diving into the online SEO community. They have tons of users and active threads for you to read on a daily basis. If you want to read on a topic like domain authority, then you can do so in one of these forums.

Google Webmaster Help Community

This is the one-stop source for any questions related to Google products or services. The site is a very active forum with new threads coming in on a daily basis. It offers four categories for you to choose from.

Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking – Questions about SEO and algorithms inspecting overall website content for rankings on Google.
Security, Malware, and Hacked Sites – Inquiries on website safety measures, protective actions, and troubleshooting externally caused problems.
Structured Data – Queries on Google Analytics and how to properly optimize content for maximum search engine reach.
Google Search Console – Discussions on possible methods and tools in increasing a website’s Google Search performance.

Warrior Forum

Warrior Forum is a digital marketing forum that tackles everything and anything about online and virtual advertising. It has multiple categories for you to choose from, a beginner’s section, ecommerce, social media marketing, copywriting, and a whole lot more.

The Moz Community

The Moz Community is an online forum that engages in online marketing and Moz-related products. It provides the latest discussions and questions about SEO and offers tons of categories to choose from, like keyword research, affiliate marketing, and conversion rate optimization.

What Should You Do Next to Advance Your SEO Knowledge?

The most logical step for you is to dedicate time to study and see if you want to learn more about SEO. On the other hand, if you want to fully commit to becoming an SEO specialist, you can enrol in an online SEO course. Furthermore, understand that building knowledge about SEO takes time and consistency. Start with the fundamentals of SEO and slowly increase the depth and complexity of the SEO topics you want to study.

Best SEO Blogs FAQ

Why is SEO important?

SEO is important because there are millions of people who use search engines in their daily lives. In turn, businesses and organizations have to use the search engine algorithm to make it works in their favour.

They use keywords to drive organic search traffic and establish domain authority. Moreover, when companies create engaging and relevant content, search engines will rank the website higher in the results feed. These SEO efforts improve a company’s brand visibility and market reach.

Are SEO jobs in demand?

Yes, SEO jobs are in demand. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, market research analysts are expected to grow in demand by about 22 percent between 2020 and 2030. The median wage is around $65,810 and there are about 740,900 job openings for this position.

What do SEO specialists do?

SEO specialists optimize and create content, improve landing pages and conversion rates, perform keyword research, and audit websites. These responsibilities involve a high level of knowledge in SEO and digital marketing.

Are SEO courses worth it?

Yes, SEO courses are worth it. You don’t necessarily have to spend money in learning SEO, there are free resources and blogs for you to try before committing to a paid SEO course. Check the reviews of paid SEO courses to ensure that they’re worth your hard-earned money.

By AJ Condez

AJ, from Manila, Philippines, started writing for Career Karma in December 2021. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Accountancy from AMA Computer College. Previously, AJ worked as a content manager for New Wave Media, handling WordPress websites, publishing SEO-friendly content, and supervising teams of writers and editors. He has also ghost-written content for SEO sites and his personal website. In his free time, AJ enjoys reading and journaling.

Sourced from Career Karma

In News

Shoppable Advertising And Marketplace Enablement: The Must-Have Tech Tools Of Today

March 4, 2022 No Comments

By Yuni Sameshima

In the last two years, consumers widely adopted online shopping behaviors. This pushed brands and retailers to embrace new or previously underutilized tech like online ordering and delivery, mobile apps and retargeting methods. It also led to the explosion of retail media networks, as retailers sought to capitalize on the increase in online traffic. Excited by the promise of a second revenue stream and expanding their e-commerce businesses, even small and medium-sized retailers began developing their own retail media arms.

The problem is that these tech innovations and retail media programs, which are highly focused on the on-site experience, may not be enough on their own to truly match evolving online preferences. Shoppers have grown increasingly comfortable online, now seeking highly convenient, personalized and seamless shopping experiences.

These experiences often require a flattening of the buyer journey, where shoppers can get their shopping inspiration in the same place that they complete their purchase. Historically, retailers have followed a funnel model, nudging shoppers from the awareness stage to the consideration stage and, eventually, to the decision stage. Now, we’re experiencing a collapse of that funnel, where a buyer may become both aware of a product and interested in purchasing it in the same place.

Retailers and brands, therefore, need to pair their owned-channel strategies with off-site opportunities. Take Instagram, for example. Its marketplace feature allows shoppers to purchase products directly in the app from a post in their feed. The consumer never has to visit the retailer’s site, and they get to make a purchase in an environment they already know and like. This is shoppability at work.

Beyond social media, though, brands and retailers have struggled to make other off-platform environments shoppable. In other words, they haven’t widely adopted contextual commerce tech, which allows consumers to shop in any context on any site. Considering there are over 1.8 billion websites, that’s a massive missed opportunity. The evolution of consumer preferences suggests that brands need to be leveraging these off-platform sites to win.

Every industry has its own version of high-intent moments. In the CPG space, we see recipes as those high-intent opportunities, which also makes them the perfect off-platform investment. The shopper goes to the site for meal inspiration but may exit with a cart of groceries if the right shoppability tech is available. This eliminates several steps in the buyer’s journey, increasing convenience for shoppers and leading to higher returns for brands.

This, of course, sounds simpler than it is. Adding or transitioning to an off-platform, contextual commerce tech approach can be challenging, especially if your marketing dollars are wrapped up in other initiatives. You’ll need buy-in from your team and a clear vision as to what your contextual commerce strategy will look like. This requires that you identify the off-platform content most relevant to your business and most likely to drive engagement.

With the right content and the right tech, brand awareness and purchase intent can not only come from in-store and on-site experiences but from anywhere businesses want to offer their products. The more places a brand lives, the more likely it is to reach new and lapsed shoppers. This piece is key. Retail media programs are highly effective at bolstering owned channels and fostering brand loyalty, but they don’t offer the same opportunity to reach entirely new audiences. Paired together, on-site and off-site technologies help reach a larger audience, delight buyers and eventually convert them into brand loyalists.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Yuni Sameshima

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

CEO and co-founder of Chicory, a leading contextual commerce platform for CPG and grocery brands. Read Yuni Sameshima’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Why Wasting Time Is Good for Design

March 4, 2022 No Comments

By Aaron Rasmussen

Wasting your time may be an example of exaptation, where traits evolved to serve one function end up serving another.

When I was 17, I read about the first natural language A.I., named SHRDLU, created by Terry Winograd way back in 1968. The user could talk to it about various shapes in a block world and it could respond and manipulate the world with impressive comprehension.

What struck me was how SHRDLU died. Operating systems back then were updated frequently and were rather bespoke. Each update caused a type of bit rot in existing programs, making various functions inaccessible. Every year or two, someone would try to have a conversation with SHRDLU, and it would error out earlier and earlier, becoming more and more aphasic and finally mute.

I found the slow death of this A.I. tragic, dramatic, and gripping. I tried to resurrect its code, and like so many others, I failed. There was no point to any of this. It was only a curiosity for me — some might call it a waste of time.

But what I’ve found over and over is that the things you waste your time on lead to your best designs. This random inspiration and diverse interests approach to innovation and design is a repeatable technique, and I’m certainly not the first to say so. Nobel prize winners are about three times as likely as the general public to have an artistic avocation. It may also explain why the concept of a liberal arts education has endured for nearly two millennia.

Humboldt incorporated subjective emotional experience into his scientific works thanks to conversations with his friend Goethe. Elon Musk’s use of Iain M. Banks’s ship naming conventions is evidence of some wasted, or possibly well-spent, time reading the Culture series. Newton was a poet. Galileo was a painter. Before Oprah launched one of the most successful book clubs ever, there was Oprah’s love of reading.

Turn Wasted Time Into a Resource

With the modern non-stop pressure to produce and the inundation of “productivity hacks,” I can be as hard on myself as anyone for wasting time. In order to turn a waste of time into a valuable design resource, you need to be analytical about your consumption, but only after the fact. That’s how you extract utility in the future. In Book 2 of The Analects, Confucius said, “Learning without thought is pointless; thought without learning is dangerous.”

Firstly: Enjoy. Go toward what interests you. Don’t judge yourself. Give yourself permission to abandon a book halfway through and start three more simultaneously. Spend an hour trying to take a photo of a bumblebee and fail entirely. Watch reality TV and watch the ads too. Learn to weld without having a welding project in mind. Eat a croissant.

Secondly: Be retrospectively analytical. You are always learning, even if you don’t notice at the time. Take a moment to think about how you’ve chosen to spend your time and what you learned. Maybe you learned how a novel holds (or doesn’t hold) your attention, how a new language-invariant interaction from a video game crosses cultural barriers, or lessons in teamwork from whirligig beetles. This analysis sometimes happens years after the experience, or you may revisit the same experience several times at different intervals and draw other lessons from it.

Finally: Always create. You will go through production and consumption cycles. But you can go through consumption cycles with no guilt if you know you will have a production cycle in the future. Without the confidence that you will create, you will always fear being only a consumer, a critic, or a viewer. With the confidence that you have created and will create, you can waste your time delightfully and without compunction.

In the End, Wasting Time Can Lead to Your Success

Wasting your time may be an example of exaptation, where traits evolved to serve one function end up serving another. In 2010, I sketched out a documentary series that was ultimately my inspiration for MasterClass. I wrote a list of possible instructors, and in looking back on that list, I see Annie Leibovitz, Hans Zimmer, and James Cameron, all instructors who now have their own MasterClass. I also found J.D. Salinger, Steve Jobs, Trent Reznor, and, strangely, Terry Winograd.

After working with my co-founder, David Rogier, and our team to build and shape the concept into MasterClass, I took a year off, travelled to 28 different countries, and became interested in for-credit education. The space seemed crowded and hard to break into, but in pondering why SHRDLU was so good at natural language responses, compared to, let’s say, Siri, I realized how valuable a highly-constrained universe is for teaching. And introductory topics are well-constrained universes. This was the kick I needed to get out and start Outlier.org.

I might have called reading about an early A.I. and getting emotional over it a waste of time, but looking back, it’s hard to think there isn’t value that it provided in my most recent companies. Your interest and development of a trait like skill in music may end up serving another function, like writing dialogue the way Aaron Sorkin does, like music. For all you know, your waste of time will turn into your next big creation.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Aaron Rasmussen

Founder and CEO, Outlier.org@AaronIRasmussen

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How To Use Colour To Improve Your Conversion Rate

March 3, 2022 No Comments

By Jon Clark

Wait, isn’t colour on a website just used for aesthetics? No. Colour is used for so much more than the attractiveness of a website.

Research shows that colour is crucial in shaping customers’ perceptions of a brand. That’s why some of the most successful companies put in a lot of effort to find the right colours to represent their brand. It keeps its branding consistent everywhere, especially in its communication channels.

So, how exactly can you use colour for conversion optimization on your site and increase sales? Let’s take a closer look.

Pick The Right Colours To Convey Brand Personality

Colours help shape a brand’s perception. One study even showed that colours evoke and elevate people’s emotions. What’s more, most people closely associate memories and experiences with specific colors. So, choosing the right colours will ensure your brand remains at the forefront of your customers’ minds.

Take, for example, someone who grows up in a happy family home with orange walls, whose favourite restaurant has orange chairs, and who’s won every soccer game in an orange jersey. Because of these memories, this person will associate joy and success with the colour orange.

You want people to connect a colour or a combination of tones to your brand. Picking the right shades can improve your brand’s perception.

Be careful when selecting colours for an international brand, though. A colour that one audience thinks of in a positive light could be perceived negatively in another due to cultural differences. Carefully examine the perceptions your colour choices have in different cultures, so you don’t adversely affect your conversion rates.

Categorize Products By Different Colours

Think of how easy it is to find a page on a file binder with coloured tabs. That’s how easy it’ll be for your potential customers when you use colour to categorize different product pages. Furthermore, it makes your website look more organized and user-friendly.

When picking the best colours for product pages, make sure they align with the website’s overall colour theme because doing so will reinforce your brand’s perception.

Pro tip: Use colours that reflect your products’ personalities for the product pages.

Make Your Call To Action Pop More With Bright Colours

The CTA represents the last part of the conversion funnel just before web visitors become leads for your sales team. If a visitor can’t locate the CTA button, all your marketing efforts will go to waste because they won’t do what you intended them to do once they got to your site.

For example, if your “Buy Now” button blends in with the website background colour, then a web visitor may not find it during the checkout process. This will force them to click away to find a site where the entire process is more seamless, lowering your e-commerce conversion rate. To avoid this, make sure your CTA buttons are bright enough so your website visitors don’t miss them.

Best Colours For CTA Buttons

One study showed that red CTA buttons increase your conversion rate more than green ones. However, not all businesses go by this study. Companies like Spotify and Evernote, for example, still have high conversion rates with green CTA buttons.

You should choose a colour that works well for your brand. Some of the best colours you can use for CTAs are blue, yellow, orange and black.

Make The Colour Of Your CTAs More Pronounced

Once you find the right colour for your CTAs, check their effect against the background colour. Are they contrasting or do they blend in? If the CTAs have a contrasting colour to the background, they’ll pop out more, which is precisely what you’re aiming for.

Contrast can either be high or low. High-contrast colours (complementary) tend to pop out more, while low-contrast colours (analogous) are subtle yet still eye-catching. The more the CTA draws attention to itself, the more likely the customer is to click on it and the higher the chances of increasing your conversion rate.

However, the best colour contrasts won’t matter if your customers don’t like the colour combinations. You need to conduct an A/B test to find out which colour combinations they prefer to increase your average conversion rate.

Boost Your Conversion Rate Optimization To Reach Your Conversion Goals

Colour is often overlooked by most businesses when trying to boost a website’s conversion rate, but if you choose the right colours to represent your brand, you’ll see a correlated boost in your conversion rates.

Over and above choosing the correct colours for your overall website and even product pages, make sure potential buyers can’t miss your CTA buttons because all your marketing boils down to this.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Jon Clark,

Managing partner at Moving Traffic Media, a New York digital agency offering SEO, PPC and Amazon marketing services.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Twitter to label all state-affiliated Russia media

March 3, 2022 No Comments

By Samuel Benson

The latest steps come as Russian disinformation spreads.

Twitter will begin labelling content from Russian state-affiliated media websites, the company announced Monday, amid a flood of Russian-backed disinformation related to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The company began labelling and de-amplifying official Russian media accounts in 2020, Twitter said. The additional action announced on Monday applies to individual Twitter accounts that share links from those state-affiliated sites.

“Since the invasion, we’ve seen more than 45,000 Tweets a day from individuals on Twitter sharing these links — meaning that now the overwhelming majority of content from state-affiliated media is coming from individuals sharing this content, rather than accounts we’ve been labelling for years as state-affiliated media,” Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby told POLITICO in an email.

Twitter maintains a continually updated list of media organizations belonging to the Russian Federation and 20 other countries, and the new label will automatically apply to any tweeted URLs from a designated state-affiliated media website.

The social media company also announced it will continue to de-amplify articles from these websites by barring the URLs from the platform’s top search function. Twitter also will not “recommend” tweets that include articles from the sites.

The move comes after Russia used “false flag” operations to justify its invasion of Ukraine, including false information disseminated through social media to portray Ukraine as the aggressor. Last week, reports from state-affiliated Russian media falsely reported a Ukrainian civilian genocide, a claim that went “unchecked and unchallenged.” Similar Russian-backed falsehoods compiled millions of likes, comments and shares on Twitter and Facebook, a POLITICO review showed.

Twitter blocked advertisements from all accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik in 2017. In 2019, the company banned all state-backed media advertising and political advertising.

Feature Image Credit: The company began labelling and de-amplifying official Russian media accounts in 2020, Twitter said. | Matt Rourke/AP photo, file

By Samuel Benson

Sourced from POLITICO

In News

4 Critical Marketing Techniques You Need to Know When Building Your Brand Online

March 3, 2022 No Comments

By Derick Quinanola

Thinking of new ways to promote your business? Looking to find an efficient marketing strategy to increase sales or brand awareness?

If your business is banking on old forms of marketing – print, broadcast, word of mouth – you won’t maximize the potential of your business, no matter how good you claim your products and services are.

In reality, for every successful business, using different online marketing techniques is what sets them apart from the rest of the competition.

What are online marketing techniques?

Online marketing techniques are forms of marketing and advertising that utilize the power of the internet to promote your brand to audiences across different platforms.

Does your start-up have any chance when going toe-to-toe against more reputable brands?

Of course, it does!

The good news is, when it comes to online marketing, it’s never too late to get in on the action. Social media platforms and search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, making online marketing an ever-changing field that can either help give your business an edge or push you further down the hole.

With so many different online marketing techniques available, how will you know which will work best for your business?

To help you get started, here are four online marketing techniques you can use for your business to sustain success in the long run.

1. Social media marketing

Social media marketing is an avenue where your business can gain visibility beyond your local area and connect directly with customers anywhere. Your business doesn’t even have to venture into all the different social media channels to reap positive outcomes.

These days, everybody expects a business to be active on at least one social media platform. A GlobalWebIndex survey found that over 54% of customers use social media to research a brand before making a purchase or recommendation.

Now, before you dive in and create a business page, remember that social media marketing is more than just posting any old content.

We know how tempting this can be, considering that creating a business page won’t cost you a penny.

So, where do you start? Like in all business strategies, the probability of success would be greater if you have a plan. A plan gives you a guide on what you need to do, provides you a measuring stick to gauge the success of your social media goals, and layout alternatives ahead in time just in case plan A fails to live up to expectations.

When thinking of a social media plan, make sure to include the following:

Set goals that align with the S.M.A.R.T. goals framework
Perform competitive research
Create a social media calendar
Conduct a social media audit (only for those with existing social media accounts)
Don’t settle on mediocre visual content
Mix up your visual content

* If you’re having difficulty finding a social media platform to promote your business online, your best bet would be to go on Facebook. This won’t always guarantee success, but this social media giant has everything you’ll need starting with their free tools and over 2.89 billion active monthly users.

2. Content marketing

This form of marketing takes on different forms. As per the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating valuable, relevant, and consistent content geared to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – ultimately to drive profitable customer actions.

When it comes to content marketing, always remember that it’s a long-term process. It gives you a chance to indirectly promote your brand by providing educational content to your potential customers, becoming an industry leader in your niche, and helping you rise in search results.

At first glance, you might think content marketing is all about writing informative blogs, but what we know is that people consume content differently.

To give you an idea, here are different ways (aside from blog writing) that you can use to help you get started on your content marketing strategies:

How-to videos and tutorials
Live broadcasts
Infographics
Podcasts
Host webinars
Photoblog

3. Email marketing

What better way to build trust with your customers than through email marketing? This method of online marketing is effective for both start-ups and reputable brands as you get to interact with your audience directly.

Think of it this way, how often do users change their personal emails or even virtual mailboxes for that matter? Presumably not that often, making a customer’s email a valuable piece of information to acquire.

The biggest disadvantage when it comes to email marketing is trying to find a way to increase your email list and the timing of when you send your emails. Some of the methods to increase your email list include using lead magnets, incentives, or cold-calling.

For the timing of your emails, the frequency varies depending on the niche and goals of a business, but in terms of recipient preference, the sweet spot for over 61% of users is receiving at least one promotional email in a month.

Once you grow your email list, make sure to create personalized and segmented emails.

Personalized emails can range from adding the customer’s name to pointing out some of their recent activity on your site. This will make your customers feel more connected and appreciated by your brand, resulting in an immediate increase in trust and customer retention.

Chances are, your customers don’t see eye-to-eye with you on every topic. If you email them irrelevant content, this will lead to lower conversion rates, or even worse, an unsubscribing customer.

This is where segmented emails come in handy. When you segment your email lists in groups, it makes it easier for you to tailor content that’s sure to keep them wanting more.

Take this, for example: say your business sells clothing for men and women. If sales are lower on one end, say the male side, sending coupons or limited offers of male apparel to your female audience wouldn’t generate much revenue and could be, at times, annoying for them to receive.

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is an organic online marketing strategy businesses use to gain traffic to their site with the main goal of trying to consistently land on page one of a search result.

Similar to content marketing, SEO takes time before you can reap its benefits. With different businesses looking to outrank your landing pages for a particular keyword, fine-tuning your SEO efforts become an everyday task, even with the help of some of the best SEO tools. This, in turn, makes some businesses hesitant to invest any time and resources towards it.

But once you can land on page one, the amount of visibility and revenue your business makes is immeasurable. The following data can support its claims:

Web searchers are 8.5x more likely to click an organic listing than a paid ad.
90% of respondents in an Oberlo survey said they were likely to click on the first page of a search result.
SEO drives more than 1000% more traffic than organic social media

In general, SEO strategies can be subdivided into four parts:

Keyword research
On-page SEO
Off-page SEO
Technical SEO

“Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.” – Warren Bennis

By Derick Quinanola

Guest author: Derick Quinanola is a writer and digital marketer who is passionate about helping businesses maximize their virtual presence through engaging social media campaigns and dynamic content marketing to capture the attention of diverse audiences. He is based in the Philippines but has a global mindset and continues to find innovative methods to help businesses thrive in an increasingly digitized economy.

Sourced from JeffBullas.com

In News

The Professional’s Guide to SEO: Advanced SEO Strategy Sneak Preview

March 3, 2022 No Comments

By: Felicia Crawford

If you know Moz, you know the Beginner’s Guide to SEO. It’s the resource marketers the world over have used to learn SEO and get a taste for its potential and power. And while we offer a delectable buffet of guides in our content smörgåsbord, there hasn’t been one comprehensive resource to serve as a follow-up for those who’ve mastered the beginner level. That’s why we’ve developed the Professional’s Guide to SEO: a guide that will help folks take the next step, preparing them with all the baseline knowledge they need to practice SEO in a professional capacity.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing chapters and/or chapter excerpts here on the blog, with the full guide releasing at the end. Yes, we want to whet your appetite, but we’d also love to hear your feedback — if there’s something you know in your heart of hearts we should cover, get at us on Twitter (@moz) and let us know!

First up, we’re sharing a portion of our chapter on advanced SEO strategy. Brought to you by the inimitable Kavi Kardos, Moz alumni and SEO Manager at Automox, this chapter looks at getting started with a next-step strategy, tactics to implement, and resources for levelling up.

Bon appétit!

Advanced SEO Strategy

Getting started: SEO priorities & plausibility

In the beginning stages, it’s easy to audit a site and come up with long lists of pie-in-the-sky ideas for content, link building, technical, and so on. Most sites, especially those that have never been handled by an advanced SEO, need a lot of work, and the new strategist arriving on the scene often gets pulled in several directions by various teams seeking their expertise.

Prioritization of the tasks you’ll undertake and the tactics you’ll employ is a vital first step in developing an advanced SEO strategy. And it’s important to work on this step thoughtfully — ask questions, be realistic, and involve as many stakeholders as you’re able to meet with. A misstep in the prioritization stage can throw off your schedule for the whole quarter and cause important tasks to fall through the cracks.

Try a SWOT analysis

It may feel old-fashioned, but the classic SWOT analysis (identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a great way to frame your initial site audit because it will familiarize you with both the website itself and the competitive landscape in which it lives. As you explore both, jot down your thoughts in a Google Doc that you can return to whenever you discover something new.

Strengths: What is already working well? What high-value terms does the site already rank for? What high-authority sites already link to you? Does the site already score well in page speed and performance tests or avoid other common technical snafus?
Weaknesses: What is the site lacking? Is it difficult to navigate? Are its sitemaps and robots.txt file messy? Is the organization lacking insight because it doesn’t make use of basic reporting tools like Google Analytics? Does it have a lackluster content strategy?
Opportunities: What’s on the horizon that could be capitalized on as part of your strategy? Is there a highly valuable asset that’s already been created and is now begging for distribution? Is a tough competitor lagging behind in a certain content area?
Threats: What’s on the horizon that could be harmful to your search visibility? Is there an up-and-coming competitor with an obvious wealth of SEO resources? Is there a platform migration looming? Is the site likely to fall victim to the next algorithm update?

Being conscious of the site’s current standings, both in the SERPs and in terms of its overall health, will help you prioritize tactics based on urgency. The most dire threats should usually be addressed first, while minor weaknesses can often be moved to your “nice to have” list.

Assess the organization’s search maturity

Regardless of how urgent the need is or how simple a task seems to you, the difficulty of getting your SEO recommendations implemented will vary from organization to organization. The plausibility of executing your strategy depends largely on the organization’s search maturity, or how fully they understand and integrate SEO at all levels of the business.

The concept of search maturity was developed by Heather Physioc of VMLY&R, and her guidance on diagnosing where your organization falls along the maturity spectrum is an absolute must-read at this stage in the strategic planning process. Not only does using this model help you solidify your recommendations; it also makes it more likely that those recommendations will see the light of day because it allows you to communicate with stakeholders on their level.

How much buy-in can you expect from your department, your direct manager or client contact, and the rest of the larger team all the way up to the C-suite? If SEO has been socialized across the organization and is already a part of the company culture, you can probably expect your recommendations to be met with excitement. If not, you may experience some pushback when asking for necessary resources. At an agency, you’ll be dealing with the confines of existing SEO packages as well as the amount of time you’re expected to spend on each client each month. As an in-house SEO, you may have more autonomy but must often answer to more stakeholders and navigate more red tape.

How difficult will it be to get recommended changes implemented? If the content team has an existing calendar that tends to be jam-packed, new assets may not get slotted in as quickly as you’d like. If the web devs are slammed, working back-end fixes into their sprint cycle can be challenging.

What resources will be available for SEO? Resources come in many forms, and the most scarce of them tend to be headcount and tools. Are there writers on staff who are capable of creating best-in-class content? Does the marketing team have dedicated developers, or are the folks with access to the site’s code in a totally separate department? What tool subscriptions already exist, and how much budget is available to add to your tool kit?

Create an impact vs. effort matrix

Once you know which areas of the site need the most help the fastest, it’s time to make a list of recommended tactics and further prioritize that list by likely impact weighed against required effort, based on what you learned in the previous step.

Create a matrix like the one above, perhaps in a meeting with relevant stakeholders. The likely impact of a tactic could be small, medium, or large, and the same scale will apply to the level of effort required to complete it. Plot each planned tactic into its own cell. Your list of tactics for the quarter, the year, or whatever time frame is dictated by your organization can include granular tasks as well as larger-scale projects — just make sure you’ve broken down any bigger ideas into pieces that make sense within the plot.

Taking urgency into account, tackle the tactics that will have the highest impact and require the lowest effort first. You may also want to set in motion some more demanding, high-impact tactics at kick-off if they can be chipped away at simultaneously. Low-impact, high-effort tactics can often be re-evaluated.

By: Felicia Crawford

I’m Felicia, and I’m the Moz content marketing manager. True fact: Neil Diamond tweeted at me once. It’s framed on my desk.

Sourced form MOZ

In News

Facebook blocks Russian state media from advertising on the platform

March 2, 2022 No Comments

By Emma Roth

State-led media outlets are barred from content monetization

Facebook is blocking state-run Russian media outlets from advertising and monetizing content on the platform amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine (via Reuters).

“We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy announced on Twitter. “These changes have already begun rolling out and will continue into the weekend.” He also noted that Facebook will continue to add labels to “additional Russian state media,” an initiative the platform started for all state-controlled media outlets in 2020.

Facebook has since established a Special Operations Center to help the network monitor and respond to the developing conflict. It also rolled out a “one-click tool” in Ukraine that lets users lock their profiles, preventing anyone but friends from viewing their posts, photos, and Stories — Facebook launched the same feature during the crisis in Afghanistan last August.

Russia already partially blocked access to Facebook in the country, with the Russian government claiming the platform “restricted” four accounts associated with Russian media outlets. The country’s tech and communications regulator ordered the social network to stop fact-checking and labeling content from state-owned media, but Facebook refused to comply.

“We are closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and will keep sharing steps we’re taking to protect people on our platform,” Gleicher added.

By Emma Roth

Sourced from The Verge