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5 Dirty Secrets About Online Business Today

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Everything you think you know about making money online is probably wrong.

Most of my students aren’t complete online business newbies. Many of them have tried at least some kind of online business at some point. Some of them are trying to juggle several of them when they come to me, and they are usually very excited to tell me about it.

I admire their enthusiasm, but if they come to me looking to me for validation of what they are already doing, they usually come away disappointed. The idea they breathlessly share with me often times was old news five years ago.

If I try to point that out to them, as gently as possible, they sometimes don’t take it well. They have invested a lot of hope and excitement into their entrepreneurial endeavour. Hearing that they have been spinning their wheels ranges from dispiriting to offensive.

I don’t blame them. There’s a lot of noise out there. Not to contribute to it unnecessarily, but someone needs to cut through the hype and tell some hard truths. The online business environment has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Yes, you can still succeed, but only if you are present and accept the business environment as it is, not what it was.

On that note, here are five dirty secrets about today’s online business environment that must inform every opportunity you consider.    

2. Competition is for chumps

Most entrepreneurs think they need to “beat the competition,” “differentiate themselves from the competition” or “spend more to acquire a customer than the competition.” The dirty secret is: If you even have competition, you’re fighting a losing battle. Most market battles are zero-sum games. One guy wins 99% of the business, and everyone else fights over the remaining 1%. This is why I advise students to niche down. With a specific-enough niche, you don’t have any competition. You’re out there cleaning up and can name your own price.

For example, there are a million agencies saying, “We help businesses get more leads.” But what about, “We help plumbing and heating companies get more leads?” Better.

“I help plumbing and heating companies in Pennsylvania get more leads.” Even better.

“I help plumbing and heating companies in Pennsylvania get more install jobs.” Now you’re talking.

3. Value trumps fame

Americans live in a fame-saturated culture. No wonder entrepreneurs think they have to be famous to sell anything. If you Google-search how to sell a book, start a blog or launch a YouTube channel, most of the listicles you discover will say something like: Step 1, Get Famous.

So you have entrepreneurs trying to get famous — on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok or whatever is the flavour of the month. They figure once they’re famous, the selling will take care of itself.

But the cult of fame is falling apart. The emperor has no clothes and people are starting to see it. Is there a better example than Fyre Fest? The now-incarcerated founder cloaked the event in celebrity but didn’t bother to bring the value.

People get the fame equation backward. Fame is like catching lightning in a bottle; it’s nearly impossible to consciously make it happen. Most people who do make it happen discover that it’s a double-edged sword. Ask anyone who has ever been mobbed by paparazzi at a grocery store.

But you can focus on delivering value. That is very much in your control. Maybe you will go viral, maybe you won’t. But by delivering value, you will at least build a cult following — and a cult following can make you very, very prosperous.

4. Focus trumps diversification

I can’t hate on my students who are trying to juggle 10 businesses when they come to me, because I was the same way. I can’t even fault the strategy — I kept throwing things at the wall until something stuck.

But once I found the business with the most potential, I pulled the plug on everything else I was doing and focused like a laser on scaling it. That’s what made the difference. Finding the idea was maybe 10% of the battle. What really made the difference was quitting everything else I was doing.

“Multiple streams of income” is a cliché that gets misunderstood, and “diversification” is for people who have no idea how to invest their 401k. If you want to create a great product and bring value to the marketplace, you have to pick a thing and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

Whatever stage in the journey you are in, that’s the goal — to hone in on the one thing. With focus, the idea is almost an afterthought. With enough focus, you can make almost anything work.

5. Most businesses can’t scale

If you want to succeed in online business, don’t start anything you can’t scale. Anything that depends on unique human contributions — including your own — is hard to scale.

I’m guilty of this too. My agency can’t be fully automated or outsourced. I have to have a team, and I can’t just have one person for each job. I try to have two people for each job, minimum. That way, if someone quits, I’m not screwed.

Of course, this runs up payroll costs. What saves me is the fact that our invoice volume is scalable, even if the client volume isn’t. Assuming we do the job well, we can easily scale invoices from $10,000 to $100,000 and beyond. We can afford that payroll.

Whatever you do, begin with the end in mind. Even if you’re doing the work in person now, make a plan to automate, outsource and take unique human input out of the equation when the time is right. That’s the only way to go big online.

I want all of my students to prosper in online business — to fire their job, discover financial freedom and build the lifestyle they always envisioned.
But the first step for many of them is to wipe the slate clean of misguided and outdated ideas, leaving them tabula rasa. Then they can accept the online business ecosystem as it is. Spilling the beans on this dirty secret will hopefully help you do the same.

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Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Dylan Ogline is an entrepreneur, investor and author. He is known as a pervader of work and lifestyle optimizations. He is founder of digital marketing agency Ogline Digital. A student of Stoicism, he enjoys playing hockey, reading and traveling the world.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Top Three Digital Marketing Strategies To Master When Starting An Online Business

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By Jeanette Dorazio

If you’re a new entrepreneur who’s thinking about starting an online business, your timing couldn’t be better.

Consumers are spending more time and money online, with an estimated 2.14 billion digital buyers in 2021, according to Statista. Plus, the costs associated with getting an online business up and running are relatively low, and thanks to an abundance of software as a service (SaaS) options and platforms, creating a professional online presence doesn’t require the same technical knowledge it used to.

That being said, it’s not as if you can just publish a website and expect customers to begin lining up at your digital storefront. You need to lay the foundation in order to build your credibility and make your business easy for people to discover.

What steps do you need to take when you’re starting an online business? Here are the top three strategies you should employ right from the beginning.

Optimize for SEO.

It’s no secret that the number one place consumers find businesses is Google, which is why you have to take steps to ensure your content conforms to SEO best practices. Even if you have no experience optimizing websites for search engines, there are a few simple things you can do to boost your online rankings.

First and foremost, focus on delivering value. Google’s goal is to rank the best content at the top of its searches, so if you create something that’s truly better than everything else, then you’re already 75% of the way there. Great content is also more likely to be shared by your readers.

Next, focus on the right keywords. Do some research to learn what your audience is searching for and create educational content that addresses their most common queries.

Finally, you’ll need to consider the more technical side of things, including page load speed, mobile optimization, and URL structuring. One way to do this is to consider using a website builder that’s been designed with SEO in mind.

Get on (the right) social media channels.

One mistake I see many new entrepreneurs make is thinking they need to be everywhere. They jump on every new social media platform they discover, even if it doesn’t necessarily line up with their target audience.

Sure, TikTok is surging in popularity, but its user base is primarily between 18 and 24 years old. If you’re a B2B business whose ideal customer is between 46 and 55 years old, it probably doesn’t make sense for you to post there.

When it comes to social media, your best strategy is to focus on two to three platforms that you know your ideal customers are frequenting. Not only does this ensure you get the right eyes on your content, but it also means you won’t spread yourself too thin.

This is why you need a plan before you post your first tweet or story. Do your research to determine which channels your audience spends its time on. Then, start developing content that you know your audience will love.

Start an email list.

Once people start discovering your business, you need a way for them to enter your sales funnel. Most consumers aren’t ready to buy right away. They need a chance to learn more about you and your products before they decide to hand over their payment details.

When it comes to nurturing your leads, I believe nothing works better than email marketing.

Email might seem like old technology compared to all of the new ways we have to communicate these days, but it’s still as relevant as ever. In fact, email marketing generates an average ROI of 4,200%. That means for every $1 you invest in it, you can expect to make $42 back.

There are a few different ways to grow your email list, but the most tried and true method is with a lead magnet. Create something of value (an ebook, a mini-course, or a checklist are great examples) and give it away for free in exchange for an email address.

Ideally, your lead magnet is related to your product or service. That way, you know every email you collect is a qualified lead. From there, you can start sending them educational content until they’re ready to become a customer.

In the digital age, everyone can be an entrepreneur.

There are fewer barriers to entry for entrepreneurs than ever before. If you have a winning idea and master the strategies discussed here, there’s nothing stopping you from finding success — no matter what your background might be.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Jeanette Dorazio

Jeanette is the CEO of Leadpages, a no-code website & landing page builder that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their business online. Read Jeanette Dorazio’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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3 Growing Niches That Digital Nomads Can Leverage in the Next Decade

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About two years ago, my wife Anika and I decided to give up our jobs as stewardess and hotel concierge in order to pursue our dreams of living as digital nomads. Since we left the corporate world, we have ventured into various models of online business, from ecommerce to lead generation and coaching, all while traveling to more than 85 countries around the world. Today, we help individuals who are tired of working 9-to-5 jobs become successful online and start their own digital nomad fairy tales.

Since the start of 2020, remote working has become a key element in the fight against the ongoing health crisis. And although traveling might still come with a few hurdles during the next 12 months, it appears that many businesses have changed their attitudes toward working from home. This provides an excellent opportunity for those who are looking to break the mould and work through their computers and smartphones instead of a tight and noisy city office.

If you are thinking about packing on some new skills that don’t demand your physical presence at an office, here are three exciting niches that are not only likely to grow in the next decade, but that are also perfect for remote work.

1. Data-driven marketing

Analysts believe that global B2C ecommerce sales will reach and estimated $4.5 trillion by 2021. In such a fast-growing industry, the need for digital media marketing experts is omnipresent. However, in this day and age, everyone and his mother is calling him or herself an online marketer. Knowing the basics about marketing just doesn’t do the deed anymore. To cut through the noise of tens of thousands of self-proclaimed marketing geniuses, we advise focusing on a bit more complex yet highly efficient marketing strategy: data-driven marketing.

Today, data-driven marketing is a key priority for marketing executives. According to recent reports, 40 percent of companies are seeking to increase their data-driven marketing spending, and 64 percent of marketing executives say that data-driven strategies are essential in today’s economy. While it may sound confusing at first, data-driven marketing is actually not that hard to execute. Did you ever run a social media or search engine ad and later optimized it based on the results that you were getting? This is essentially a very comprehensive form of data-driven marketing.

Thanks to the incredible value of reliable data these days, almost every bit of software tracks user behavior and collects information that might be highly valuable for your marketing decisions. To become a data-driven marketing specialist, you need to learn how to generate useful data, how to extract it and, most important, how to use this data to your advantage.

As you might have noticed, data-driven marketing requires a distinct set of marketing skills, including social media marketing and search engine marketing, which are very effective for gathering data, as well as content marketing and traditional advertising, which are great for using the data to improve marketing results. Nevertheless, as only a few are willing to go this extra mile, becoming a data-driven marketer allows you to position yourself as a valuable team member no matter where you currently are in the world.

2. High-quality content production

Before the introduction of the web 2.0, distributing one’s own ideas and opinions on a large scale was usually reserved for a limited number of people, mostly in the media industry. However, with the rise of user-generated content and social networks, this has changed quite dramatically. Today, almost everyone can upload original content, whether it is in the form of small posts, blog articles, images or videos, at an infinite number of virtual places and at any time.

If you can monetize your content, you can actually make quite a good living off of it. But monetization doesn’t mean merely pushing out tweets for the sake of content. This won’t make anybody rich — well, at least in most cases. Considering that hundreds of millions of human beings are uploading billions of content pieces every day, the key to success is quality.

User-generated content can play a significant role in marketing. According to research conducted by Bright Local, 92 percent of people rely on user-generated content when making a buying decision. In addition, as marketing software behemoth Stackla recently reported, about 57 percent of consumers believe that only a minority of brands create authentic content. The demand for influencers from not only major platforms such YouTube as Instagram but also from native channels like blogs and podcasts is expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

The beauty of a content production business is that you can choose from a variety of methods to produce, distribute and promote your content along a broad range of potential topics and niches. Immense possibilities for scaling your operation exist. It may take some time to get the ball rolling, so start by putting out content that supports an existing business or your personal brand. This will allow you to prepare your journey as a profitable content producer ahead of time.

3. Virtual jobs

Thanks to the rapid spread of COVID-19 regulations among workplaces, 2020 has sparked an immense number of new virtual jobs, many of which are expected to remain virtual even after the conclusion of the health crisis. This still relatively novel form of employment does not require any physical presence in an office or even a certain country and is thus perfect for digital nomads both with and without prior work experience.

Besides rising health concerns, another key reason for the substantial increase of virtual employees is the fact that they cost businesses significantly less than in-house job positions, since virtual jobs require less office space, fewer extras and often lower salaries or hourly rates. The opportunities for virtual jobs are plentiful and varied.

As more businesses start to recognize the benefits of remote work, both regular employees and freelancers may have many more opportunities to fulfil their dreams of becoming digital nomads.

Feature Image Credit: Natalie_magic | Getty Images 

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Can You Start an Online Business with No Money? Yes, You Can! (Here’s How)

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By Lilian Chifley, 

Starting an online business is just like preparing a dish. If you follow a proven recipe, the dish will be delicious. It does not matter who is doing the cooking. With an online business, all you have to do is follow the five steps outlined above. This system works until proven otherwise and it will not fail you.

Starting a Business

Starting a business is every person’s dream. The excitement you get when you think of becoming your own boss is propelling you to start your business. But then, there are several obstacles that are keeping you from doing it. Among this is the lack of capital or money to run the business.

Before you start a business, there are several areas you need to analyze. Your business has to be perfect on paper before you start actually working on it. A business, just like the mind can be the biggest asset or liability you have. You need to plan. Creating a business plan is important as it will enhance your clarity and take you through all the important aspects of your business. When it comes to an online business, planning is everything.

Whether you have money or not, your plan will hugely determine the success or failure of your business. When you plan, always use strategies that have been proven to work. Do not be the one reinventing the wheel. Learn from the mistakes that others have made in the past.

Will you launch the business alone or will you have a partner? It is important to consider finding a potential partner to help you start your business. If you are a lone wolf it will be better if you just do it alone. If you want to have a partner, go for someone who is as ambitious as you are. Just like employees on ResumesPlanet, Essayassistant.org, essaymama.com, or even freeessaywriters.net your goal should be to take the business to the next level.

Ensure that you have common goals. Get to know what your partner will expect in the end. A perfect partner can greatly improve your chances of success. And the relationship will always get better.

So you already have a business idea in mind, but you just don’t have the cash you need to start it up. Guess what, you are not alone! Most people across the globe find themselves in such a situation at one point in their lives. But they do it anyway. As the saying goes, there is always an excuse but never a good reason.

Today, I am going to share with you five detailed steps that every successful entrepreneur with an online business followed to reach where they are today. Most of them started with no money, followers or even email lists. They just followed these five steps.

The Broke Entrepreneur

It is important for me to share a short story about an entrepreneur from Singapore who wanted to start an online business but he did not have money. Just a year ago, Tommy started his online business that dealt with educating entrepreneurs with online businesses.

Today he has more than eight thousand people who attend his online conferences. Before he started his online business, he was a co-founder of two different companies in Singapore. And they both failed. He was totally broken.

So when he started his online business, he had very little money for marketing and other essential business expenses. He had to come up with a way to start and grow the business without money, employees, fame or following. Majority of people find themselves stuck in this position. They have mortgages to pay, bank loans, children’s education; the list is endless.

A great thing about an online business is that you get to save a lot of money as compared to the traditional business which requires you to pay office rent, part-time and full-time employees, equipment, insurance, and furniture. Similar to writers on top essay writing services, like cheap essay service or essayhave review, it is possible for you to start your online business with no money if you follow the five steps below.

1. Get to Understand What Your Business Will Be About

What are you interested in? This is the first question you need to answer to discover what you are good at. Are you experienced in marketing? Sales? Software development? Maybe e-commerce? Most successful entrepreneurs earn a living from what they love to do.

Starting a business that deals with something you do not love will just lead to failure. In Tommy’s case, he had over seven years’ experience in marketing and four years’ experience in running his businesses. He loves anything related to marketing and being a successful entrepreneur. And so he created an online educational business for entrepreneurs.

2. Going Niche

After figuring out what you love doing, it is now the ideal time to start thinking about niche. So, let’s say you love teaching people how to attract and retain more clients. In your mind, you may be having the thought that every person who is in the business of providing service wants to have more clients and therefore you should be targeting everyone who may be interested in the service you provide such as a lawyer, coach and teacher right? Absolutely not!

A major mistake that most entrepreneurs make is targeting a very broad market. Do not join the herd! Go for a niche market instead. Just as a writer from AssignmentMasters understands who he or she is writing for, you should understand clearly the small group of people that you will be targeting.

So, instead of teaching everyone how to attract and retain clients, you can be more specific by teaching for example female trainers in New York, how to get and retain more clients.

Since you have a clear idea who your target is, you can now focus your time and energy on discovering where your target is located and how they can grow their businesses exponentially. You can now start creating content that specifically targets this small group of interest. Later, when your business has grown bigger, you can broaden your target audience. But for now, focus on a small group.

3. Choosing Your Products

Any online business falls under two categories namely online services and informative or digital products.

Online Services

An online service simply involves you providing a type of service or doing a job for your clients. It could be providing software development services or social media marketing. In our example, it could be providing a specific service to help fitness coaches attract and retain clients. Many online businesses which offer online services succeed because of the determination of the entrepreneur.

Digital Products

You can think of digital products as things such as e-books, online memberships, videos and online courses. There are those digital products that are quite easy to create such as videos, audio files and e-books and there are those that are more complicated and may require a huge amount of money especially if you do not have an idea on how to code or use WordPress.

So if you are going to teach other people how to attract and retain clients, you can write an e-book about attracting fitness clients or you can teach an online course about it. You can write the whole book in Google Docs or Microsoft Word and then design the cover with Canva.

Starting an online course is quite easier than you think. What you have to do is record videos and prepare a few notes. You also need a good camera and microphone. The camera does not need to be professional. You can start by using your phone camera. You can also watch videos on YouTube on how to prepare and sell your online courses easily.

4. Making People Aware that Your Business Exists

After creating your digital product or defining your service, it is now time to move to another crucial section: Marketing. Your marketing strategies will determine your success or failure. It is important to ensure that every strategy you use has been well thought about and has proven to work in the past. Marketing is very expensive. Have you noticed how big organizations spend a lot of money on marketing?

And just because you have completed your online course or e-book does not automatically mean that people will start buying from you or paying for the services you offer. You need to take some time to make your target market aware that your business exists. You also need to make them trust you.

When it comes to your marketing strategy, the first thing you need to find out is which medium will reach your target market best. Are you going to use a website? YouTube channel? Facebook? Instagram? LinkedIn?

Choose a marketing channel that your target market loves to visit on a regular basis. Do not waste time marketing your business on Instagram if your target market does not exist there. Most entrepreneurs reach their target audiences easily using YouTube because any person can find all the answers he or she wants. Most people also visit YouTube for entertainment.

YouTube is currently the second largest search engine in the world. Why should you not use it to market your business? It is cheap, easily accessible and easy to use.

5. Give Your Target Audience Free Useful Content

After figuring out which medium you will be using to reach your target market, you will need to create free content that your audience can read or watch. There are some people who never give free content to their target market because they are afraid no one will actually buy their products or services. But is this true?

Take a moment and remember the last time you were surfing and you came across something interesting such as a book or an audio recording. You tried to get a summary or something related to the product for you to review but the site only insisted that you buy. No free content. Would you go ahead and buy such a product? Personally, no! Who wants to spend money on something he or she is not really familiar with?

Take another scenario. You are surfing the web and you come across a book that interests you. When you try to get a short summary, you are given a free e-book, a short video for you to watch and the summary you had requested. Would you go ahead and buy the book? Personally, I would purchase it because I now understand what I am buying and what I expect to see in the book.

People are curious. They want to get to know you better before investing their time and money on your products or services. If you fail to give them free useful information, your product or service is dead!

My friend Tommy gives away two free sessions on average for every online conference he runs. He gives away videos, articles and interviews as free content and in return, he gets to build the awareness of his brand, trust and personally connect with his audience.

You do not need to spend your money on creating content. You can use your phone, so long as its camera is in good working condition, a mic and video or movie software. Most phones have these software nowadays.

You also do not need to spend your money shooting pictures for your Instagram or writing articles on your blog. Other types of free useful content include free e-books, guides, workbooks, email, worksheets and infographics.

Does Creating a Website or Paid Ads Cost Money?

You have definitely heard that creating websites cost a lot money, right? Or Paid Ads like those we come across on Facebook. Thanks to advancement in technology, we have several options to choose from. If you currently have no money to start your online business, all you need to do is invest more time in it and work harder.

You can create your website for free using WordPress. So if you do not know how to create a website using WordPress, you should be ready to invest your time to learn how to use it. As the saying goes, there is no thing such as something for nothing in this world. Take your time and watch YouTube videos. Get to learn how to create your website using WordPress so that you do not have to spend your hard earned cash paying a website developer or designer.

You should always keep in mind that simplicity is key to success. It is better to create a website with few pages. The website should be so simple that it can be used by a seven-year-old child. Spending a lot of time creating a very attractive and complicated website will lead to disaster. Before making it too fancy, get several clients first. If you desire something that is easier to create than a website, go for a landing page.

If you have a digital product that you want to sell, you can look for platforms that do not charge monthly fees. With the internet, you can find anything you want. If you have online courses, you can host and sell them on platforms such as Teachable. FetchApp is also great platform for your e-book.

Do not start using paid ads at the moment. There are very many ways in which you can promote your service or digital product at no cost. Don’t think of using paid ads now because you have no money. As an entrepreneur, you only use what you have right now. Focus on free but effective marketing strategies now.

ConclusionSo there you have the five simple steps to start your online business with no cash. It all starts with you thinking about what you enjoy doing and what you are good at. Secondly, you think of a small group of people who will be interested in buying from you, that is your target market. Thirdly, you choose what you are going to sell, either a service, digital product or both.

Fourth, you decide which marketing channel you will use to reach your target market easily. And fifth, you create free useful content which you will give away. Remember, when you stop giving away free useful content, your business starts to die at that very moment. Your customers want to know who you are and what they are buying. If you refuse to share with them what you have, they will also refuse giving you their money.

Get to understand what works and what does not work for you and your business. You can only do this by practicing what you learn. Do not waste your time on strategies that you find them difficult to understand. There is always an alternative way to making something happen.

You will definitely reach a point where you will feel like giving up. Maybe your customers will not buy your products or services as fast as you anticipated or you might find it difficult working on a job while creating your business. Do not give up. Do what you can every day to the best of your abilities. Be patient. As an entrepreneur, you will definitely need to be patient most of the time to reap the rewards. As the saying goes, patience pays.

Starting an online business is just like preparing a dish. If you follow a proven recipe, the dish will be delicious. It does not matter who is doing the cooking. With an online business, all you have to do is follow the five steps outlined above. This system works until proven otherwise and it will not fail you.

By Lilian Chifley

Business Adviser, Professional Content Writer, Lilian Chifley is an IT specialist, teacher, and blogger from Sydney. She loves to talk about artificial intelligence and modern education.

Sourced from Thrive Global

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5 Key components to building a successful brand and business online

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By Chanakya K.

In today’s business-savvy world, it has become vital for ventures and brands to set themselves apart from their competition. Businesses nowadays face a daunting task of presenting themselves in the virtual world in such a way that they attract more customers. Creating brand awareness and doing so in a way that it not only attracts customers but also builds a pool of prospective clients is the crux of running a business online.

There are many key components to building a stable and attractive brand image to run your business. In this blog, we will go through the 5 major components that will help your venture skyrocket its brand image and utilize the potential of online marketing to its fullest.

1. Branding

Branding your business is more than taglines and logos and flashy posters or ads. Finding the purpose of your business and conveying it to the customers is called branding. Creating brand awareness is perhaps one of the most important components of running a successful business.

The more innovative and reachable your branding strategy is, the more people will get acquainted with it. For creating a branding strategy, businesses often rely on a good digital marketing to elevate their brand image. Hence, vetting and engaging with a good digital marketing company that can take care of developing comprehensive strategies for online marketing and coming up with innovative ideas to expand your brand’s reach is imperative for this component.

2. Segregating features and benefits

Contrary to popular belief, highlighting the benefits of your business will attract customers to engage with your business. Features your business has are just attributes, but the benefits your business provides your customers are the real shining star in attracting them. Highlighting benefits will retain your already existing customers. It will also bring in a slew of new customers who would want to reap the benefits of your business. This component plays a key part in digital marketing, and often includes client testimonials and customer reviews.

3. Customer experience

What is a business’ purpose other than catering to their customers’ needs? The focal point of any business is keeping its customers satisfied. A customers’ journey starts with your business as soon as they book an appointment or enter your premises. From that point, until they leave your premises and use your products/services, you must keep in mind to heed to everything the customer is feeling or saying.

Using a Customer Management System is imperative in tracking customers’ activities and takes their feedback, so you can keep them satisfied throughout their engagement. Moreover, this increases customer loyalty and improves your brand image, which makes customer retention easier. This data can be leveraged for digital marketing and attracting new customers.

4. Consistency

Aiming to provide services that are consistently good makes sure that your brand shines brighter than your competitors. If a customer is returning to your establishment, they are not doing so because of your product, but your service. Big brands make it their goal to present their customers with a journey that they will remember every time they use your product.

Leveraging this consistency by highlighting it in your online marketing is the best strategy your business can adapt. An established and good digital marketing company knows how to present customer experience as an asset of your brand to the new audience, which persuades them to engage with your brand and experience your exemplary customer journey themselves.

5 . Promotions and scale

Once your business has built up a loyal customer base, you have to set it up for an upward trajectory if approached in the right way. Using targeted strategies like promotions can help elevate your brand and also attract a multitude of new customers who were engaging with your competitors. You need to make them see that engaging with your brand would be more beneficial for them.

This would also help your business build potential partnerships with various other businesses which will further help in increasing your customer base.

Once this is done, all you have to do is serve these new customers as you did with your loyal customers, and you will attain a colossal mass of promoters of your brand who would vouch for your brand through reviews and testimonials.

Conclusion

Working with an efficient digital marketing company can help you majorly scale up your brand image and business in a lesser time than handling everything yourselves, which leaves many rooms for errors that can affect your brand negatively.

A professional and expert digital marketing company can help you navigate through the digital world and increase your brand awareness by a huge margin. Taking your brand and converting it into a luminary in the marketplace is the sole purpose of your venture’s marketing strategy, and hiring a good digital marketing company like SEMrush where you get all your Marketing toolkit under one platform can take you a long way in the digital world and elevating your brand image to the highest standards.

By Chanakya K.

Sourced from TechGenyz

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6 SEO Strategies That Are Hurting Your Online Business

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You’ve probably heard of link building, but you might not know what it really is or how to do it effectively. Sure, you can go ahead and hire a digital marketing agency, but unless you know the ins and outs, you won’t be successful.

What if they use PBNs?

What if they have a bad linking strategy?

What if they waste all your budget and don’t deliver any results?

It’s important to understand link building practices and how Google can change your website — especially with Google’s recent updates.

While working with clients through my agency, Taco, I come across a few common mistakes website owners make as they build links. And even though there are fantastic guides talking about link building, I see these mistakes over and over again. 

Here are six link building strategies that hurt your SEO efforts and how to fix them.

1. Building links to home page links

It seems logical to send all of your SEO power to your homepage because that’s where you want everyone to start. But, it’s wrong. In fact, it’s probably one of the biggest SEO myths. The homepage shouldn’t be used for your top phrases.

I know you’re asking right now, “But then how do I target the key phrases I want to rank for?”

You should build out content-rich subpages in your site to target those phrases, then build backlinks to those pages. By following this method, you will have links going to many pages on your site, not just your home page. This is a much more natural way to build links to your website.

Related: Why You Want ‘Backlinks’ to Your Website

2. Too much keyword anchor text

As I mentioned in the previous section, your homepage is not the place to target all of your important key phrases. Use it instead for building the brand and creating trust with the search engines.

So, when you are building links to your home page, the majority of the anchors should come from your brand or some form of your URL.

Most SEO strategies want to build links that have their important phrases as the anchor, but according to the research done by SEOJet, only 3 percent of your links should have an exact match as an anchor text.

This principle of building branded links also applies to subpages, if you want your link profile to look really natural, you need to have some anchor texts that have no key phrase at all, some links with the URL as the anchor, and some with your brand as the anchor.

This is how other website owners would link to you naturally. It is unreasonable to think that anyone who ever linked to you because they loved your site would use your main key phrase as the anchor. So, you can’t do it either.

3. Not enough nofollow links

There is a misconception about nofollow links and whether or not you should get any as you build links for your site. If you look at it from a real-world perspective, the nofollow attribute was created so we as website owners could let Google know that certain links were advertisements and they shouldn’t be counted in the SEO algorithm.

In other words, Google expects that real businesses will have nofollow links because real businesses advertise. So, how do you expect Google to recognize you as a real business if you aren’t getting any nofollow links through advertising?

This is further supported by the fact that on average over 30 percent of links pointing to top-ranked websites are nofollow links. It is good to get nofollow links.

Related: How to Promote a Website Through Link Building in 10 Easy Ways

4. Not enough high-content pages

If you want people to link to your website naturally, then you should create amazing content ever written so people will link to it.

In fact, in order to build a lot of links to a page, you need good, in-depth content. If you’re not doing that then getting a lot of links pointing to a page of yours will not look natural.

Google would never believe that a post with 500 words would naturally get 100 links pointing to it. But, the ultimate guide on a certain topic with 5000+ words could bring in hundreds of links naturally. That is where you need to focus your content marketing efforts.

5. Bad blogger outreach practices

One of the best ways to get links from high-authority websites is to write a guest blog post for them. There are a ton of blogs that will accept your guest post, but the reality is most guest posts never get approved.

This happens for two reasons.

Your pitch email is a template that could apply to any blog in the world or your writing isn’t good enough. When you pitch a potential blog, don’t think of it as a one-time thing but as if you are building a relationship with a colleague. Reach out to your new business colleague and talk to them about their site and their needs.

Then pitch your guest article that helps solve those needs. After that, make sure you write an amazing article. If writing isn’t your greatest talent, then find someone who is a stellar writer and get them to help you.

If you are looking for a good outreach email to copy, check out this one in SEMRush.

Related: 5 Strategies for Better ‘Link Building’ and Improving Your SEO

6. No link building plan

This is the most common mistake almost all marketers make. They think that if they create amazing content, either people will naturally link to you (good luck with that to anyone who doesn’t already have a following) or you just need to go build links to that page and it will rank.

That is a vague SEO strategy. You might as well say, “Just go do stuff and you will rank.”

For some reason, people don’t treat links as they should — like money. Links are money. Links help you get on page one of Google search results. Page one equals money.

With your own personal money, you create a budget (read: plan) and then tell your money what to do. So, if you treat links like money, then you will have a plan in place and can tell your links what to do. You will plan out which anchor texts you need to get and how many so that you can keep a natural link profile. Using this SEO tactic, you will be able to get better SEO results with fewer links.

You would be surprised how much of an impact these things can have on your rankings, so give yourself a leg up on your competition by fixing these link building miscues.

Image credit: annebaek | Getty Images

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Chirag Kulkarni is a serial entrepreneur and advisor. He is the CEO of Insightfully, which is using AI to discover what employees skills and passions are to reallocate human capital within the enterprise. He has also spoken at Accenture, In…

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