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.
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.
Online marketing is an essential strategy for any business.
The internet allows all businesses to reach new customers who would otherwise be impossible to contact. Online marketing can be a very effective tool, but it’s important to measure your results, so you know what works and what doesn’t.
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.
You can use Wix or Squarespace but the problem is they don’t have SEO reach more than 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.
With such a high volume of people on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, advertisers are shifting their focus from traditional marketing channels to focus on social media.
Let’s talk about the 5 ways that are used to increase your sales.
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.
You can promote your products or services and customers can send you their feedback instantly, which means that you don’t have to wait to find out whether your campaign succeeded or not.
Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social networks in the world. If you manage to get a lot of likes, followers, and comments on your pages, then it will be easier for you to sell more products or services.
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.
Create a compelling video of your product or service. Upload the video on Youtube and use an effective title that will intrigue viewers. Write down a list of keywords related to your business.
Pro Tip: Make your ad video’s first 3 seconds compelling and attractive. That’s where you can grab your targeted audience to watch your full ad. If your ad video is good enough it will bring traffic to your website.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing can help you build relationships with your customers and provide valuable information that they want to receive.
It is a great way to build a community around your brand, and it helps to increase sales.
It keeps you in front of your customers and allows you to have conversations with them that help you learn more about what they need and want from your business.
But, How do you get E-mail subscribers?
That’s the important question that may come into your mind. At the start of this story, I have told you about adding a signup feature to your website. That’s where your answer is.
Whenever someone registers or signup to your website, you will receive his/her e-mail address. In short, he/she subscribes to your business email marketing.
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.
There are so many businesses we all came to know from YouTubers. For example:
Skillshare
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.
If your product or service makes their life easy they will definitely make a purchase.
Try to develop trust between your brand and your customers.
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.
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:
Awareness (made aware of your brand)
Consideration (considering your solution)
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.”
Let’s take a closer look:
Branding
Being memorable, or staying top of mind, can be achieved using humour, talking smack at your competition, or using viral content on social media. But my favourite method involves using CTV, or call to value, creating content with the purpose of educating. Becoming an authority in your space. As Reed says, “Strive to create different content. Our strategy wasn’t to create a better sales blog, it was to create a different sales blog by including research from our proprietary database.”
Sales
After educating your audience, your prospects are in the consideration stage. Then, content should move towards call to action (CTA): content with the purpose of selling — triggering a click — moving closer to desire or away from pain through strong copy. Reed says, “As buyers move from awareness to consideration, I begin introducing our solution. Then, as buyers move towards decision, that’s where I rely heavily on customer stories and social proof. Content is more focused on how our clients specifically use Gong to solve various challenges.
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:
Use storytelling in your marketing: Customer-focused stories win. Describe how your product or service empowered a business with a solution that yielded results.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
(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
(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
(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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
