editor, Author at Mediastreet

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What happens if you stop doing SEO?

March 13, 2020 No Comments

By John E Lincoln

The ugly truth is that it’s hard to reverse momentum once a website starts going in the wrong direction.

Often, businesses want to stop and start SEO.

Some feel that taking a break won’t cause any issues.

But when a client suggests taking a break, you can explain the details of what will happen.

If you stop posting content correctly

When you stop publishing content, the following things happen:

You stop targeting new terms consistently. This results in fewer new keyword rankings and new traffic.
You stop creating new pages that can be linked to, and the number of links you earn goes down.
You stop capturing new visitors to add to your remarketing audiences, email list and push notification list.
You stop generating content that can be used to create hub pages, which are master pages that link to all other pages on the topic. These often rank very well.
You stop generating content that gets shared on social media, and thus, generates social media shares and traffic.
You stop encouraging people to return to your website for new posts. This reduces your branded searches, which are an indicator of quality to Google.

Overall, if you stop creating content, it says to Google that your website is no longer as active as it was and thus beginning the process of dying a slow death.

If you don’t watch for technical issues

Those without web experience often don’t understand that from a technical perspective, things often break for no real reason.

I’ve never seen a website that did not have at least a handful of technical SEO issues.

If you don’t monitor the technical aspects of your site, issues such as the following could arise:

You block your website with robots.txt.
You generate duplicate content.
You accidentally push your development site into the index.

You can read more about common technical issues here.

When you don’t monitor these things and fix them consistently, they start to add up. Think of it as a garden – it takes maintenance, or it starts to become overgrown.

It is incredibly important to stay technically correct, especially with new developments such as mobile usability, page speed, AMP and more.

If you don’t, you are sure to have an error at some point that will cost you down the line. Similarly, your tech stack will become so out of date that you can no longer compete in the market.

If you stop refreshing pages

When you refresh a page correctly, traffic will generally increase to that page 10% to 30%, sometimes more.

The reason for this is because Google sees the new text and the value it provides and wants to rank it higher.

Now, there are many ways to go about doing refreshes. Some of those include:

Adding FAQs to the page
Adding links to other articles
Updating facts
Updating dates
Making the text longer
Adding schema
Changing a page template
Etc.

Lately, the most important thing to look for when refreshing a page is whether or not it matches search intent, and if the page in question is better than the #1 ranking page.

My process includes doing a search, categorizing the query based on intent, analyzing the top pages, creating a new strategy for the page we are trying to get ranked, and refreshing as a result of that.

If you stop building new pages

Building new pages are harder for some industries than others.

For example, when I worked with a few firms in the outsources accounting space, the lower funnel terms were minimal. If you compare that to a large e-commerce site like Amazon, its terms are endless.

While that is the case, I believe websites should always be targeting new terms and organizing them by segment. Those segments should be prioritized based on business goals and tracked in a dashboard.

But if you stop building new pages, you’ll lose keyword growth momentum.

I highly recommend creating these pages for SEO, but additionally, these new pages can be excellent landing pages for paid search and paid media, in general.

As a website grows, it’s a great idea to create more landing pages that target specific keywords and audiences. This will improve quality score on the page side and conversion rates all around.

If you stop this process, you’ll lose your competitive advantage. The people who win in the future of the web will be the ones converting traffic for less.

If you stop watching out for bad links

If you stop doing SEO, your backlink profile can get out of control.

Lately, spammy links are worse than ever before.

When you watch your backlinks, you will see the following happen:

People scrape your website content and keep the links in by accident.
You get Google alerts from sites hacked by malware.
Competitors try to do negative SEO on your site.

If you don’t update your disavow file once a month, you are putting your website rankings at risk. Lately, we have been doing it weekly for clients in competitive spaces.

If you stop watching out for stolen content

Go to your top landing page on your website right now.

Copy a block of text about three sentences long.

Put that text in quotes and search for it in Google. What do you see?

I’ll bet some of you will see other websites coming up for that content. Some might have even stolen from your website.

Now, think about the impact that can have if it happens across multiple pages on your site. Honestly, it can be devastating. Many times we find others have wholly duplicated a website, stolen key pages, or taken individual sections of a page.

When this happens, you need to address it.

Rewrite the content on your site.
Ask the other site to take it down.
File a DMCA on them if needed.
Consider sending them a cease and desist.
Sometimes, you can contact the hosting company and ask them to remove the site.

Regardless, if you stop watching for stolen content, it could have an extremely negative effect on your business and rankings. This is something you need to catch right away.

Bottom line: Why you should not stop doing SEO

Obviously, you’re not going to stop doing SEO. We all know it is an amazing asset to improve search ranking and help your business grow. The work you do to create and update content along with the technical issues that are easily solved if they’re on your radar, all improve your bottom line. But you also need to ensure you are compliant with privacy regulations if you wish to remain on top.

The ugly truth is that it’s hard to reverse momentum once a website starts going in the wrong direction. I am a firm believer that all things online should be scaled as the business grows, SEO included.

By John E Lincoln

Sourced from searchengineland.com

In Uncategorized

Video: Marketers discuss challenges around technology, scaling-up and more

March 13, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from DIGIDAY

For brand marketers, the still-new year brings new opportunities and new priorities alike. Changes in platforms and measurement are keeping some execs on their toes, while others remain restless over ROI and attribution.

At the Digiday Brand Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, we asked five prominent marketers about what’s keeping them up at night. Their concerns ranged, but one thing remained consistent: these marketers are ready to tackle these worries head-on.

Here are some highlights:

Rachel Finley, content & community strategist at Hero Cosmetics, is kept awake by concerns about scale, particularly with influencer marketing. It’s one thing to maintain personal relationships and a level of intimacy with a set number of people — but what happens when that number goes from 100 to 1,000?
Antonia Hock, global head of the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, wants to see a world in which business leaders better understand their power. She discusses people at brands and companies that simply punch in and punch out, and says that’s a waste of human energy.
Ben Conniff, co-founder and CMO of Luke’s Lobster, names communication as his chief concern. He says he wants to ensure that all of his teams are moving toward the same goal — a constant challenge for a business that’s growing in multiple verticals.
David Zane, managing director, marketing, NASCAR, stays up thinking about emerging platforms. He says the goalposts are always moving, and so it’s up to marketers to stay ahead and determine what constitutes success.
Erica Chan, strategy and operations, North America B2B at Alibaba Group, says her team operates like a startup: that means worrying about prioritization and ROI. Being able to attribute cause and effect is difficult — and figuring out how to make that case compellingly is what keeps her up at night.

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

3 Simple Digital Marketing Strategies to Transform Your Business

March 13, 2020 No Comments

By AJ Cassata.

A great product isn’t enough to create a successful business – what turns a business into an empire requires an excellent product combined with exceptional marketing.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier now more than ever to get a brand or startup in front of target customers.

With all of the free distribution tools like social media platforms, the playing field is equal now! You don’t need significant media connections or large upfront investment to advertise your brand like you would 40 years ago.

Although marketing & communicating with potential customers has never been easier, most businesses still struggle with this. They never seem to get the traction they want online, while some companies see amazing results from online marketing efforts.

What makes a difference is having the right strategy & approach.

The tools to help your business grow are out there, but you need to know how to use them. You need to understand how these platforms work and how to make them work for your business – and if you don’t, hire someone who does!

Digital marketing strategy development can be a bit overwhelming due to the abundance of options you have. Sometimes it seems like a new social media platform or revolutionary software pops up every day!

For the past five years, I’ve been helping other entrepreneurs scale their business, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t across dozens of industries. I’ve created & managed campaigns on tons of different platforms & social media channels. Through all of my experimentation, I’ve learned a lot.

In hopes of simplifying digital marketing while giving some actionable steps you can execute on, I want to layout 3 strategies that work across the board in any industry. These strategies will work regardless of if you’re a brand new startup or a 7-8 figure company.

The 3 Strategies That Work Across The Board

Google Ads
Facebook Advertising
Automation In The Sales Process

To help you understand how these strategies work in a real-world setting, I’ll walk you through how we applied them for one of our clients, a naturopathic medicine clinic in Arizona.

We helped the clinic max out its sales capacity. After implementing the three strategies just mentioned and nothing else, the clinic became so busy to the point where the soonest patients could book an appointment was three weeks. That’s an excellent problem to have, isn’t it?

On average, our online marketing campaigns had resulted in an additional 60-80 new client consultations per month for a Stem Cell Therapy service that’s worth $6000-8000 in revenue to the clinic – and that’s just upfront revenue, that’s not including the life-time value of the client.

Digital marketing can also do more for a business than make money – aside from helping to skyrocket sales of this business, we also lowered costs and helped to streamline operations & patient communications.

Our digital marketing campaigns had become such a stable source of new client acquisition that the clinic was able to stop spending on TV & radio advertising, which saved about $5000 a month in advertising expenses.

Like many companies, the clinic also had an inefficient & unorganized sales process, which cost the staff and the business owner extra time & expense.

By introducing automation to the business & its operations, we were able to organize their client communication process, reduce the work-load for the front-office staff, and alleviate pressure on the whole team. As a result, they could focus more on taking care of the patients, and less time on follow-up and scheduling.

So, let’s dive into these strategies so you can replicate the same success into your business!

Google Pay Per Click Ads

Placing ads on Google is extremely useful, as you can get in front of users with a high intent to purchase your product/service.

You pay to advertise on certain search-terms & phrases that your target customer enters into Google – this means that you get in front of the people that are already searching for the solution your business provides.

This is the low-hanging fruit, and where you should start. When my agency is onboarding a new client, nine times out of 10, we begin by rolling out campaigns on Google. The prospects you’ll find from Google ads are the farthest down the buyers’ journey and the closest to making a decision.

These people are already aware of the problem they have and the solution they need.

In the medical clinic’s case, we bid on terms like “Stem Cell Therapy In Scottsdale.”

Somebody who’s performing that search already knows what Stem Cell Therapy is, and they are likely familiar with what it costs, and they are just looking for the best provider.

A big part of marketing is about being in the right place at the right time, and that’s exactly what Google can do for you.

The beautiful thing about Google Ads is that you only pay when someone clicks – so your marketing dollars are only being spent towards people that are interested in your service or product.

However, you have to watch your costs to remain profitable. Before we were hired, the clinic ran campaigns on Google and was paying about $5 for each click. After we audited the account and performed optimizations, we were able to get the Cost-Per-Click down to between $1.50-$2.00, roughly a 70% decrease in cost!

A few tweaks to your campaigns can make a huge difference, which is why you must know what you are doing before you put your credit card in and start launching ads.

Facebook Pay Per Click Ads

With over 3 billion active users, Facebook is an excellent option for just about any business. Similar to Google, due to the sheer size, you’ll be sure that your target market is on Facebook.

Coming from a marketer’s perspective, I can say that Facebook has the most advanced advertising platform & AI, and when you learn the ins and outs of the ads manager, you can make magic happen to your business.

The benefit of Facebook is the hyper-targeting. Great marketing requires substantial targeting. Think about this – you wouldn’t be able to sell meat to a vegetarian, no matter how good your meat is. Getting your ads placed in front of the right people is arguably an essential part of any marketing campaign.

With Facebook, you can create your hyper-specific audience and hone in on your ideal customer. Facebook allows you to select parameters of who you want to see your ads. For example, you can choose based on demographics like income, age, gender, location, and psychographics like interests & personality.

For our medical clinic client, we were promoting a very niche service – Stem Cell Therapy & Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy. The doctor we worked with did not want us to promote everything his clinic offers; he wanted us to help promote those two services so that he could stand out in his local market as a specialist in those areas.

We were able to run particular ad campaigns to different market segments to promote Stem Cell Therapy, such as athletes, golfers, 60+-year-old men & women, even people who are considering getting a knee replacement. Regenerative Medicine is expensive as well, and to prevent people that couldn’t afford the service from booking consultations, we limited the ads to only show to people in the top 25% of income based on zip codes. This level of targeting just isn’t available with other forms of advertising!

Automation In The Sales Process

Facebook & Google are excellent platforms that help to drive traffic & leads for your business or startup, no matter the industry. However, gaining attention is just the first step! Once you have campaigns running & generating leads, now you have to convert those leads into customers! Leads don’t grow a business, sales do.

The medical clinic we worked with, like most businesses, had a sales process that needed much improvement. Lots of leads were coming in, but the clinic didn’t have enough staff to follow up with new inquires and leads consistently.

So, we implemented two new technologies into the business to solve this problem – email follow up, & an online scheduling system.

Before this client had hired my agency, he was having his front office staff call any leads that came in, to schedule appointments. We decided to eliminate this step – when it comes to your sales process, the more steps you have, the more opportunities there are for your leads to drop-off and lose contact.

We found that most of the leads the clinic was paying to generate, were never even getting in contact to schedule a consultation. The front office staff was too busy to follow up with every single lead coming in, which means the business was wasting money on all of the leads that didn’t convert.

To fix this, we created a funnel that directed all of the incoming leads to an online scheduling system, where the prospects could directly book an appointment with the doctor, instead of waiting for the front office to call and schedule them.

Not only did this take a load off of the staff and help the lead conversion flow, but it also made for better customer experience.

We also implemented automated email follow up, which would email the leads every day for three days after signing up for a consultation, to remind them to schedule online, and remind them to show up on time for their appointment.

As you can see, digital marketing can help your business with more than the front-end process of getting awareness, traffic, & leads. These technologies available to us can help convert your leads into customers, make your entire sales process more efficient, free up-staff time, and improve your customer experience.

In conclusion, digital marketing can seem a little daunting with all of the different strategies we hear experts preach, and with all of the different platforms, it’s hard to know where to even begin. So – keep it simple! For getting traffic, stick to the big two – Google & Facebook. From there, use tools like email marketing, SMS marketing & automated scheduling to help convert the leads into customers!

By automating the marketing and sales process, you free up time to focus on other essential and high-level tasks that your business depends on, such as business development, strategic partnerships & developing your team.

By AJ Cassata

Sourced from TechDay

In News

How to Determine Your Team’s Marketing Objectives

March 12, 2020 No Comments

By DP Taylor.

Clear and actionable marketing objectives are vital for an organization seeking to improve their sales. This guide will help you understand how to craft a strategy with effective marketing goals.

One of the chief principles of marketing is that you have to understand your target market. But even if you understand your niche, it won’t do much good if you don’t have an effective marketing campaign — and you can’t put one together without first defining your marketing objectives.

But doing so can be intimidating because it requires a fundamental review of your company’s mission and your resources to figure out what are the clear, actionable steps you should be making to market your brand. This is especially important for small business marketing when the company doesn’t already have a strong foothold in the market.

Once you’ve done that, you will find your integrated marketing efforts will be far more effective.

There are a few things to understand about marketing objectives before you get started.

Overview: What is a marketing objective?

A marketing objective is a goal that an organization sets to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace and build a brand.

While there are many types of marketing strategies and varied approaches to creating a marketing plan, a marketing objective in general focuses on laying out a clearly articulated accomplishment that an organization could achieve, such as brand recognition in 10% of target customers or 250 qualified leads per month.

What to consider when determining marketing objectives

While ultimately your marketing objectives are up to you and will be highly dependent on your business, there are four things you must consider when choosing your marketing objectives.

Have a strong company vision in place

To lay out good objectives, you first need a comprehensive company vision that lays out what you’re trying to accomplish as an organization.

Determine what your niche is as a business, and then figure out what you’d have to do to communicate that message to your target audience.

For example, GoPro has successfully built a customer base from young, active customers by putting together an ad campaign spanning many marketing channels that focuses on daring and adventurous feats by people using their equipment. Some of their marketing objectives could be to sponsor a certain number of extreme sports competitions around the globe, or to make deals with X number of social media influencers.

Track the data

Business metrics are vital to your marketing team’s success. You should be able to identify how many leads you are creating, how many influencers you’ve signed up to promote your product, and any other metric that is important to determining whether you met that marketing objective.

Use email marketing software, social media software, or CMS software to track your team’s activities.

In the GoPro example, they likely track views of their many YouTube videos or mentions on social media.

Make objectives specific

A lot of organizations make the mistake of not properly defining objectives. They leave those objectives, like “become more relevant in the IT security sphere” when they should create a more specific, numbers-based goal of “get 20% more leads in the next quarter.”

Going back to the GoPro example, total views of YouTube videos and mentions on social media is something quantifiable, as opposed to “make lots of quality videos on YouTube” or “get involved in the social media conversation.”

GoPro’s marketing message of adventure is unmistakable the moment you go to their website. Source: GoPro.

How do you set marketing objectives?

Creating a marketing proposal is relatively straightforward, but this is a step that is not to be rushed: you need to involve everyone and craft measurable marketing objectives that fit with your organization’s mission.

Step 1: Review your organizational goals

Every objective, marketing or otherwise, must build toward your overall organizational goals.

Read through your company’s vision and strategy and come up with ideas on what steps you could take that would get you one step closer to realizing the dream that your strategy lays out. If the objective doesn’t move you in that direction, it’s just a distraction and should be discarded.

Tip: If you’re having trouble finding organizational goals, that could be a sign you need to go back a step further and put together a firm and clear vision for the company.

Step 2: Brainstorm with the team

It’s important to not try to do all of this on your own. Set up a meeting with your marketing team to hash these out. They can tell you what is possible and what is not.

Ask everyone to prepare for the meeting by coming up with some of their own objectives, and then go around the room to talk them out and determine what marketing collateral will be necessary to do the job.

Tip: You should also involve your sales team, because they can tell you what kind of output from the marketing team would help them close more deals.

Step 3: Define the objectives

With everyone having weighed in, you should put together an initial list of objectives and then set up a follow-up meeting to go over them. Here you can talk in more granular detail about these objectives, such as whether the time frame is realistic, or whether the right people are assigned to the right tasks.

Tip: Remember, these objectives need to be clear and measurable, nothing vague. Ask yourself, how would I prove that we achieved this objective? If you aren’t able to articulate what success looks like, you need to do more work to define the objective.

Step 4: Create a marketing strategy

Now that you have marketing objectives laid out, it’s time to build a marketing strategy around them. Create a step-by-step process that describes how you will achieve each objective, and in what time frame. It should also identify the stakeholders, and who will be responsible for what.

Tip: Being specific when defining marketing objectives should help you identify clear next steps. Break down the steps as much as possible to create easy actions the team can take to increase the likelihood of achieving the objective.

Step 5: Measure the results and then regroup

Think of the objectives as a cycle rather than a journey to an end goal. Once you’ve completed steps 1-4, you need to measure how you performed on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly, and then get together to talk it through.

What went right? What didn’t? Did we achieve marketing goals? What should we do differently in the next quarter?

Tip: Use software to track important marketing metrics, such as leads and website traffic. Many software options can create detailed reports that can help you spot trends or weaknesses.

Spotify has exploded in popularity by positioning itself as a brand that helps people find new music. Source: Spotify.

Examples of common marketing objectives and KPIs

But what should your objectives look like? Again, that will vary widely based on factors such as your industry, what your overall goals are, and what your target market looks like. However, here are a few common marketing objectives that might help you come up with your own.

Increasing brand recognition

A common goal of marketing campaigns is to increase people’s awareness of your brand. If people don’t know who you are, they will not buy your product or service, so it’s important to know just how many customers in your target market have heard of you.

Improving brand trust/reputation

A corollary to brand recognition is brand trust or reputation. You want customers to not just know who you are, but think of your brand as one they can trust to provide a good experience.

Increasing incoming leads

When it comes to making sales, incoming leads can make or break your organization. It is important for most companies to increase the number of qualified leads coming into their sales funnels.

Increasing website traffic

An increasing percentage of websites these days rely on Internet sales, so increasing website traffic is a common goal for companies hoping to put their products in front of more people. You might focus on digital marketing terms like click-through rate (CTR), cost-per click, and impressions.

Identifying new lead sources

Having all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to marketing is a risky strategy, so it’s important for organizations to identify new sources of qualified leads.

Improving customer service

Customer service is vital to customer retention, and it raises the prospect that those customers will buy other products from you in the future or spread the word about how great you are to other potential customers. As a result, companies often seek to improve their customer service as a marketing strategy.

Defining marketing objectives now will help marketing efforts later

Determining your marketing objectives will help you determine what steps you should be making, such as whether to spend more time on website marketing, account-based marketing, or other types of marketing efforts.

When you properly lay out marketing objectives after spending a sufficient amount of time researching them, you make your marketing more focused and therefore more effective across the board.

That’s why it’s important to schedule time now to, even if it’s just a couple of hours, to get the ball rolling. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll see positive results in your company.

By DP Taylor.

Sourced from the blueprint

In News

13 Mistakes Business Owners Make When Trying To Differentiate Their Company

March 12, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes.

Standing out from the crowd is essential when competing in the business world. However, when trying to differentiate their company, entrepreneurs can sometimes make serious mistakes if they don’t have a clear strategy in place. In trying to make their business or service offerings stand out—especially in a saturated market—leaders can sometimes create the opposite effect, and either not get noticed at all or make their company somewhat unapproachable.

These mistakes can ultimately drive people away from the company instead of turning them into loyal customers. Below, 13 entrepreneurs from Forbes Coaches Council examine some of the worst mistakes that business owners can make when attempting to differentiate their business from the competition, and explore why those methods are so ineffective.

1. Not Niching Down Enough

Owners worry that if they focus too much, they’ll “miss out on an opportunity.” But focusing all marketing and messages on a specific market niche that values your best work allows ideal clients to easily recognize you are the right resource among all options. – Dodie Jacobi, Dodiodo Inc.

2. Targeting The Wrong Audience

Business owners often target the masses, thinking they will easily reach their consumers. This tactic doesn’t allow them to narrow their demographics to their ideal customers who are most likely to buy, nor align key brand messages. This tactic is ineffective and costly. Before designing your campaign, execute a customer segmentation and profile for your products and services and your company brand. – Lori Harris, Harris Whitesell Consulting

3. Not Being Bold Enough

If you’re trying to differentiate yourself, you have to actually differentiate yourself. Too often, businesses who want to differentiate themselves don’t take the steps to take a bold stand to be different. They stay generic and subjective, and simply too vanilla. Staying vanilla doesn’t work for obvious reasons, so give yourself permission to be bold and stand out! – Jon Dwoskin, The Jon Dwoskin Experience

4. Not Being Clear On Their ‘Why’

In a saturated market, what makes you stand out is getting clear on your purpose (knowing your “why”) and being true to it in your messaging, your recruitment, your processes and your branding. This is how you connect emotionally to your target market and create loyalty with your customer base. First know what you’re about, why you’re in business and your message will stand out and make an impact. – Daphna Horowitz, Daphna Horowitz Leadership

5. Making Stuff Up

A common mistake is to claim you have something no one else has. Your competitors likely have all that you have (or will soon) and you look foolish to claim it’s uniquely yours. Instead, differentiate your company by creating a personality for it. Zappos and Toms Shoes are great examples—people connect to the humanity of these companies. Have the tools and be likeable too. – Anita Hodges, Anita Speaks 2U

6. Jumping On Trends

With the internet, we face daily competition from businesses who can look, sound and feel like yours every day. For example, there is a trend toward online, step-by-step coaching that is driven with zero face-to-face meetings. That can work, but we have gone against the grain and made our services more exclusive, highly personalized and relationship-based. We don’t ignore AI, but we pair it and it works. – John M. O’Connor, Career Pro Inc.

7. Trying Something That’s Not Proven

It makes sense that when you are trying to differentiate yourself, you would want to “zig” when everyone else is “zagging.” Being innovative will make you stand out, but you have to test the market and prove that your tactic will work. Putting your time, money and energy into unproven methods can be a costly mistake for your business. – Jenn Scalia, Million Dollar Mommy dba Jenn Scalia

8. Mimicking Others

When business owners say they want to differentiate, I cringe when I see a list they’ve compiled of what others in their industry do. While the knowledge is helpful, some owners try to mimic what others are doing instead of moving into more competitive-free waters. The key to business survival is to maintain the “wow” factor for your customers. This can only be accomplished through originality. – Karan Rhodes, Shockingly Different Leadership

9. Competing On Price

Focus on premium pricing. Without exception, I will always be the most expensive solution in any market. That creates exclusivity and differentiation. If you are a low-priced solution, you are forgettable and nobody is served well. The best clients are the ones who want the best and will pay for it. Ignore the rest. Your pricing is a direct reflection of your personal and business brand. – Mike Koenigs, MikeKoenigs.com

10. Bashing The Competition

Forty years ago, IBM sales training taught me to say “competitor X company is adequate.” There is nothing worse than a company bashing the competition. Say only positive-to-neutral things and focus on your company’s differentiators. Even if a prospect asks for the differences, come back to your key messages about what you do better or similar. Script your team on your killer value proposition. – Dana Manciagli, Job Search Master Class

11. Always Comparing To Others

Though product and services comparison may work, it is a short-sighted approach. Comparison in a crowded market may, in some cases, even be harmful by providing additional exposure for competitors. A more sustainable approach, however, is a combination of providing education and creating a customer-centric organization. These organic differentiations are long-term and not subject to fads. – Kamyar Shah, World Consulting Group

12. Overspending On Marketing

Businesses in a saturated market may feel obligated to spend more in marketing; however, they need to develop an effective marketing strategy and develop a unique sales methodology. They also underpriced their services. Being the cheapest option devalues your services or products. Instead, offer something so valuable that people will pay your price. – Katrina Brittingham, VentureReady LLC

13. Not Researching What The Market Wants

Asking potential and current customers is the first step to breaking through a saturated market. Ask what’s wrong with the current solution providers and find out what consumers really value. Create a solution to the problems and innovate your offerings. It could simply mean educating the customer on your differentiation, or a marketing tweak. Knowledge is power. Use it to be disruptive. – Christine Nielsen, Contrast Coaching & Consulting

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Winston helps you protect your online privacy

March 12, 2020 No Comments

By Julian Horsey.

rotecting your online privacy is becoming a part of everyday life, one system designed to take the hard work out of protecting your home network and family from advertising, intrusive third-party programs, trackers and malware is Winston. The easy to set up plug-n-play hardware filter reclaims your use of the Internet on all connected devices at home, protecting your online privacy from advertisers, governments, hackers and big tech companies.

Earlybird pledges are still available for a limited time via the Indiegogo crowdfunding website where more than 4,000 backers have already helped Winston raise over $1,000,000 in funding. If all goes to plan worldwide shipping of Winston online privacy devices is expected to start during December 2019. Watch the video below to learn more about the features of the Winston hardware specifically designed to protect your online privacy.

“Winston’s founder, Richard Stokes, was in the ad-tech industry for over a decade, most recently as the Global Head of Innovation for the media intelligence division of the world’s largest advertising agency. In that role, he saw the industry move to embrace new technologies that track, mine, and sell private information (imagine every song you like, every relationship, every purchase you make, and every secret you have being stored forever in the cloud). That was the beginning of the omnipresent surveillance state. Rich decided this was not a world that he wanted his children to grow up in. It all came down to one question…if he wasn’t the person to do something about it, then who would?”

To make an earlybird pledge from $186 jump over to the official crowdfunding campaign page by following the link below.

By Julian Horsey.

Sourced from Geeky Gadgets

In News

Three Underutilized But Useful Search Tools

March 11, 2020 No Comments

By Richard Byrne

There are times when our students will conduct a good Google search with carefully selected terms but still not find what they’re looking for. They could go back and search again with other terms or they might try using a different search tool. Sometimes using a different search tool and looking in those results can lead students to the new information that they need. Here are three useful search tools that students often overlook.

Google Books

Google Books is a fantastic tool for students to use to locate books and search within those books. As is demonstrated in this video even if a book isn’t available to download in its entirety, students can still search within the book to determine if the book contains enough references to make it worth their time and effort to buy or borrow a copy of the book.

Your School Library

Most school libraries have access to subscription databases that students can’t access without the assistance of your school librarian. Those databases often contain resources that students won’t find through a Google search.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be a good search tool for high school students. Google Scholar is a great place to find articles from academic journals. Articles from academic journals aren’t the only things that students can search for on Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides search tools for locating court decisions and tools for locating patent filings. In this video I provide an overview of how to create Google Scholar alerts and in this one I demonstrate tracing the evolution of technology with Google Scholar.

Learn more about teaching search strategies.

I have a popular webinar titled Search Strategies Students Need to Know that you can watch on-demand. The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp always includes a section on teaching search strategies. Registration is open now.

By Richard Byrne

Sourced from Practical Ed Tech

In News

How to promote your business for online customers

March 11, 2020 No Comments

By LEO GIOSUÈ

E-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries at a global level.

E-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries at a global level. With an increasing number of online companies, reaching customers becomes harder which is why promoting it in a way that stands out from the competition is essential especially when providing to a market where the products of companies are similar.Read

One of the first ways to promote a business to online clients is to create a website. The key is not to create just any website, but one that promotes the best features of your products or services. This is why, for this kind of job, the assistance of specialists is essential.

The creation of the website is just the first step, as there are others to complete in order to reach as many clients as possible. Some of them are listed below.

Mobile website optimization

In a world where the smartphone is equipped to act more and more like a computer, we will soon come to say that desktop computers and even laptops are obsolete as they do not offer the same mobility as phones. This is why having a mobile version of a website will lead to an increased traffic, thus a higher reach to online customers. The creation of a website for mobile devices goes hand in hand with a mobile application, so the two of them should be considered together. Mobile applications also work for those who want to use paid advertising for increasing their online visibility.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO

Having a website, even with a mobile version, is not sufficient to attract online customers. In order to be visible, it needs to appear on the first pages and lines of search engines. For this purpose, they need to be optimized based on the searches of people. The Search Engine Optimization or SEO process can help a company increase its visibility on the Internet.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is the most important channel to reach young audiences. Facebook and Instagram are the two most used social media channels, however, when promoting a business for online clients on these websites, content is what makes the difference. Time, regular posts of high-quality content and attention to the newest trends is what makes a page or account to generate profits and attract clients in the online environment.

The tools available for attracting clients online are quite a few and choosing the right ones is very important. However, through having a website, a business owner can build around to create an identity and later a brand.

By LEO GIOSUÈ

Sourced from The Jerusalem Post

In News

Design your own website with no coding knowledge necessarily using this app

March 11, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from pocketnow.

Get Blueprints Website Builder: Lifetime Subscription today for $39, which is 73% off the original price.

Having a functional website is critical for any small business. Luckily, you don’t need any programming experience to design your very own seamless website. Offering 200+ prototype starter templates and 30+ navigation panels, the Blueprints Website Builder allows you to instantly build web pages.

Blueprints Website Builder is a simple-to-use app with a clean, intuitive visual builder interface. It’s easy to customize to best suit your small business or personal needs. The templates and blocks are based on Bootstrap 4 framework, HTML, and JavaScript, but you don’t need any coding experience to operate. Best of all, Blueprints Website Builder automatically boosts searchability thanks to the built-in SEO.

Once you’ve designed your successful website, export the ready-to-web publishing HTML flat file in literally 1 second. Get Blueprints Website Builder: Lifetime Subscription today for $39, which is 73% off the original price.

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Want your products featured in the Pocketnow Shop? Learn more about how to sell your products online!

Sourced from pocketnow.

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AAIToolkit – Insights from 40 Years of Windmill Lane

March 10, 2020 No Comments

“Kill Your Darlings – And Other Lessons From 40 Years Of Storytelling”

AAI Nuts and Bolts of Advertising seminars form part of the AAI Advertisers’ Toolkit, an initiative to help advertisers and marketers keep up-to-date on important advertising topics and useful marketing questions.
Seminar Details

Windmill Lane has been a creative powerhouse in the media landscape for over 40 years.

From its origins in the urban wasteland of Dublin’s docklands during the savage recession of the 1980s to a glittering rise, Windmill Lane grew to work with a list of who’s who in music, television and film, expanding into London and LA, setting up a TV station, and producing some of the most iconic advertising campaigns created in Ireland and internationally.

In the latest #AAIToolkit event, Creative Director John Kennedy will take you on an entertaining journey through the key lessons Windmill Lane has learned in 40 years of navigating creative chaos. But it’s not been all smooth sailing – and Windmill Lane knows a thing or two about working through disruption without a roadmap.

John will share compelling insights into what makes great creative, how you can’t do good work without authenticity and emotion, and how, while the medium may have changed, crafted storytelling will always be at the heart of what we do.

As the media and consumer landscapes continue to change rapidly, John will also argue that the creative process needs to constantly adapt to mirror those changes.