It’s extraordinary now to think that, as recently as two years ago, holding virtual conferences was a rather niche pursuit for business leaders. However, necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes – and, now, many of these leaders both attend and run virtual events.
This trend has realised a fair few advantages listed in a UC Today article – like the absence of both a commute and having to repeatedly trek across conference centres. However, you should still be careful to follow certain dos and don’ts when delivering a virtual conference.
Decide what you are aiming to achieve with your conference
Maybe you’ve got some news to break to the world, you want to address a specific issue that has long been left lingering or you have spotted an opportunity to generate more revenue. Alternatively, maybe the conference is an annual one usually held in person but you want to digitise it this time.
As a virtual conference isn’t easy to organise, you want to be sure why you are doing it and how it would benefit your audience.
What audience are you eager to attract?
You probably already have a good idea of what the conference’s audience will be if the event will be an internal-only one strictly intended for employees of your company.
Otherwise, though, you should ask yourself a series of questions outlined by UKTN – questions that could help you figure out how to attract the ‘right’ audience. For example, do you want to pique the interest of new customers, and from what age range would you like to draw attendees?
Determine a message or theme for your event
Is there a particular message you would like to be left in attendees’ heads as the conference closes? If so, keeping this message – or what one thing you want the audience to remember from the event – in mind as you organise the conference could help you to keep it streamlined.
If you can’t decide on a specific message, at least give the conference a theme for all of its elements to revolve around, enabling people to discern what to expect.
Organise more than one speaker
Speakers you organise for your virtual conference can include managers or employees of your business or professional, industry-relevant speakers from outside your company.
You could even choose to wrap up the event with an inspiring talk from a motivational speaker, leaving the audience feeling encouraged and energised.
Test your tech before the conference proper
If there’s going to be a technical glitch, you obviously don’t want it to happen during the conference itself. This is why, once you’ve selected all of the tech you will need for the big day, you should arrange a test run to make sure all of the required hardware and software works as it should.
To this end, you should utilise a virtual conference software platform from a reliable provider like ON24, and ask guest speakers to check their own audiovisual equipment if they will be participating from their individual homes.
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Is your business sitting on a secret? Are you hiding your light under a bushel? The answer could very well be yes if you are not using effective marketing to get your message out there. The good news is you can read all about how to ensure your marketing efforts are hard-hitting as possible, in the post below.
Decide on a clear branding message
The first strategy that you need to use if you want your marketing to be as powerful as possible, is deciding on a clear branding message. This means you need a unique value proposition that will ensure customers flock to you instead of your competitors. You also need to convey this message in a consistent style that encompasses fonts, colours, imagery, and even the tone of the text you are using.
Indeed, many businesses choose to publish a scheme or guide to maintain consistency. Yet, to do this, they must first go through the process of defining the parameters listed above.
Of course, some companies choose to do all of this creative branding work themselves. Although many have greater success using a business offering professional branding services that have experience in this area. Indeed, many organizations find the detailed research and analysis that such specialists can offer, invaluable to the process.
The branding message is also always made clearer if you have a clear brand to begin with, so you should spend a lot of time on the brand voice, the name, the logo design and so on. The better that you can do these things, the more likely it is that you are going to have success with the branding message itself – and therefore that your marketing will be much more hard-hitting. The clearer your brand is, the easier it will be for potential customers to relate to it and show an interest. In addition to designing a great logo, you could consider using an Email signature generator as well, which could prove extremely helpful when tackling email marketing as one of your strategies. A great email signature will not only promote your brand, but it will offer your clients yet another chance to get in contact or get back to your website where the sales are made.
Use paid social media
Social media marketing is often appealing because of the low costs involved. After all, it costs nothing to set up a business account, and publish content there. However, if you want your marketing to be as impactful as possible it’s vital that you don’t ignore paid social media marketing.
Indeed, now other platforms have followed facebook’s example, being seen on social media largely depends on paying for posts. Additionally, be sure that you time the publication of your social media posts and paid promotions as well if you want them to be as effective as possible in reaching the right people.
Pay attention to UX
To be successful your marketing message needs to match up with the experience that you are offering your customers. This means if you want to get them to trust and have faith in your product, the experience you offer them, particularly online, is highly important.
To that end, investing in great UX is money well spent, as it will help maximize customers’ experience, whenever they have contact with you. Additionally, by making sure your UX is the best it can be you will remove any potential hurdles to the purchase process, ensuring you maximize sales.
Show authenticity
Today’s consumers are savvy to the processes they are a part of. They know that the content you release is designed to further your goals as a business. With that in mind, too much sales content can leave your customers with a bad taste in their mouths.
Instead, the focus should be on authenticity. That means less cheesy advert and more honest discussion about the use, features, and benefits of your product. Humanizing your marketing can also work wonders here – so consider using real people from your workforce instead of trained actors and offer content with a sense of rawness like live video.
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On the surface, running a sales-generating dropshipping business seems like a straightforward process.
Customers order and pay for your product, you pay the supplier after receiving the consumers’ payments, and the supplier handles the inventory and ships the items to the buyers.
Easy peasy, right?
Well, not quite.
With thousands of other dropshippers in the market, you’ll need the right strategies, the best dropshipping tools, and a can-do attitude for your business to beat competitors and gain massive profits.
In this guide, we’ll look at five tried and tested tips to generate sales for your dropshipping business.
1. Find the right dropshipping company for your business
A dropshipping solution or company can manage your order fulfillment logistics seamlessly.
Find ones that match your unique business needs and help you operate efficiently to ultimately grow your sales.
For instance, ecommerce solution Oberlo lets you source products from various suppliers available on AliExpress (among other platforms) and add them to your Shopify store.
You can choose the product you want to sell and import all the items’ listing information, such as the price, description, and images, in a few clicks. After importing, you can edit the product listing accordingly.
With this feature, adding products and fulfilling orders becomes efficient, allowing you to focus more on selling and increasing your profits.
Additionally, Oberlo syncs with your Shopify store, so your inventory automatically updates when your supplier changes your products’ available stocks.
For more tips on choosing a dropshipping solution, check out Neil Patel’s best dropshipping companies review.
Also, it helps to check if the dropshipping solution you want to use integrates with reliable and the best ecommerce platforms for your small business. That way, building, running, and streamlining your dropshipping business becomes so much easier.
2. Display customer ratings and reviews
Most new customers are normally skeptical of buying from you at first, especially if 15 other dropshippers sell the same items you do.
An excellent approach to build trust with your potential customers is by displaying customer testimonials, reviews, and ratings on your product pages.
Customer reviews can work like personal recommendations and show your prospects your previous customers’ positive experiences with your products, enticing shoppers to purchase.
Place a “Write a Review” section and rating option on your product pages to encourage customers to leave reviews about your products.
Display testimonials from satisfied customers on your homepage to help showcase your products’ quality and reliability.
AliExpress lets you import customer product reviews from the ecommerce platform directly to your store using the AliDropship plugin.
The plugin lets you import reviews for all products, a specific category, or for several categories at a time.
Posting positive customer reviews can increase your dropshipping business’ credibility and boost customer confidence in your products, leading to more sales.
3. Run social media ads
Know which social media platforms your target customers use and run social media ads. This helps you optimize your ad campaigns and advertising only to people who are most likely to buy your products.
Here are a few social media advertising tips:
Identify your objectives. Know your social media advertising goals to help you find the right social network to advertise and shape your ad campaign strategies.
For instance, if you’re selling jewelry to increase sales, run Facebook ads, and use the platform’s Life Events ad targeting parameter to target newly engaged users or those in new relationships.
Test your ads. Perform split tests on several ads to help you determine which ones give you the best returns on investment before casting a wider net.
This helps you optimize your social media advertising efforts and ensure you’re spending your budget on ad campaigns that have high chances of enticing your audiences to buy.
Design your ads for mobile. Ensure your social ad images and content adapt to different display sizes so mobile users can see your offers and promotions easily.
Failing to do so means missing out on engaging thousands of social media users on mobile and losing boatloads of sales opportunities.
While running social media cans can be relatively easy, keeping track of your campaigns on top of your other marketing efforts can be a lot of work.
One solution is to create an app to improve your internal workflows so you don’t spread yourself too thinly and wear yourself out.
Building your own app, such as a simple client portal, ensures you get the tailor fit solution that matches your exact needs.
Also, when creating your app using Azure DevOps, back up your codes and data with Backrightup.
The flexible service can automate running your backups and restoring your Azure DevOps instance, saving you time and effort from doing it manually — which can be tedious and laborious.
Doing so ensures your codes, instances, repositories, and other critical app data is secure and intact in case of server errors and malware that cause data loss.
4. Leverage videos
Using videos is one of the best ways to engage your potential customers and stand out from your competitors.
After all, videos allow you to showcase your products’ benefits and features and inform customers how to use your products properly through creative and fun content.
Explainer videos. Use videos to highlight your products’ features and value. This helps you showcase your product’s benefits and makes it more interesting for shoppers to learn about your products.
Video ads. Evoke emotions through video advertisements. Video ads can require more time and effort to make, but these are excellent for telling stories, sharing scenarios that shoppers can resonate with, and presenting your products as the solution to customer pain points.
Video demonstrations. Create videos demonstrating the proper ways of using your products.
Your product’s technical aspects can be challenging to convey with words alone, making videos great for showing customers how to assemble a small piece of furniture or attach a certain accessory.
Video demos also help stir anticipation and excitement among your customers since they can get a glimpse of your product and get a good idea of its dimensions and functions, so they know what to expect.
Leverage videos to engage your potential customers better, build trust, and even add value to your products, and in turn, skyrocket your sales.
5. Work with a reliable supplier
Because your supplier manages product inventory and ships the items directly to your customers, you don’t get to see the actual product’s quality.
Find reliable suppliers that provide high-quality products, efficient shipping processes, and easy order tracking (among others) by following these tips.
Consider going through the order process yourself to ensure the product’s quality is up to the standards you expect to provide your customers.
This also allows you to test out factors, such as the ease of ordering, shipping period, and the returns process.
It also helps to use a dependable product data management software for ecommerce to stay on top of your inventory, catalogs, and other product information. This allows you to identify gaps and address issues in your product management and streamline working with your suppliers.
Scour online reviews and forums to see what other dropshippers and customers have to say about a specific vendor. This can help you find which suppliers to steer clear of and which ones to trust.
Check if the ecommerce platform provides a way to verify sellers. For instance, product finder and research tool Jungle Scout offers a database of global suppliers on Amazon.
The tool can help you source your products and validate known sellers on Amazon by checking their confirmed shipments and customer volumes.
You’ll also see the supplier’s top customers and resellers. This information can give you a good idea of the seller’s reliability.
Additionally, your suppliers’ policies should align with your dropshipping business’ to ensure you handle customer issues and returns efficiently, leading to happy customers.
Ready to boost your dropshipping sales?
It can take some elbow grease and grit to generate tons of sales for your dropshipping business, but the tips in this guide are excellent starting points to success.
Know the tools and strategies that work best for your dropshipping business, and you’ll be selling products like hotcakes and growing your profits in no time.
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Marketing is everywhere in modern life, and understanding it is crucial to entrepreneurial success. Everything you purchase has been advertised to you through strategic marketing, from the food you eat, to the furniture in your home, to your car, to the software you use daily!
When you start a business and are trying to find the right marketing strategy to take it to the next level, it can be difficult to know where to begin. There’s so much saturation online these days when it comes to marketing advice, how do you know who to trust?
In this post, you’ll learn the five pillars of modern marketing success – no bias, no pitch, just straight-up advice from experts. These are also known as the Five P’s – product, place, price, promotion and people.
By learning these Five P’s and applying them to your business strategy, you’ll have a clear idea of how to proceed with your marketing campaigns in the future.
Let’s get going!
Pillar #1: Product.
Of course, the primary feature of a great marketing strategy is the product. Without an amazing product, the remaining pillars are all holding up a concept that simply won’t be strong enough against your competitors. Even with amazing promotion and prices, a weak product will not stand the test of the modern sales climate.
Whatever your product or service may be, it needs to be watertight. That means that you must invest solidly in the manufacturing, sourcing and researching stages before your final product is ready to hit the shelves. Rushing the product creation stage is a mistake that so many new entrepreneurs make, and it comes back to bite them down the line.
Not only is having a great product important for your customers, it is also important for your company and your team. Having an incredible product that everyone believes in 100% will help rally your troops when times inevitably get tough. Believe in the product with all your heart, and the other pillars of marketing will serve to support this with strength and integrity.
Pillar #2: Place.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the concept of “place” has been, well, displaced. Whether you want your company to be local to your community or an online sensation that ships worldwide, you need to decide on the appropriate place in which to market it. Using the wrong platforms will hit the wrong customers, thereby making you miss out on key opportunities to expand your customer base and build a solid foundation.
When considering where to market your product, it is crucial to think about who you want to market the product towards. If your customer demographic is Gen-Z and Millennials, your product or service needs to be purchasable online, and marketed via social media and email marketing in an extremely effective way. On the other hand, if your product or service is designed to catch the attention of older generations or local people, making it available in a physical store and supporting it with great customer service is a must.
Pillar #3: Price
The price of your product or service is dependent on a huge number of external factors at play. These include:
Inflation or reduction of prices across your industry as a whole.
The coronavirus pandemic’s effect on pricing.
The location in which you are offering these services or products (for example, a massage therapist appointment in a metropolitan city will be priced more highly than one in a more rural area).
The quality of the product you are producing. If you are producing a mass produced product for little money, there should be a low price to reflect it – as opposed to a more elite product that costs more.
The reputation of your business. A new business might not be able to price as highly as similar competitors, because they will need to pull clients away from those competitors with lower pricing.
Pillar #4: Promotion
So you’ve got an awesome product, the right price point and the perfect place to sell it. What’s next? The next stage of your perfect marketing strategy is promotion. In order for people to know your product or service even exists, you need to promote it in the right place, in order to reach your customer demographic easily.
Nowadays, targeted ads and personalized marketing are the way forward. Email and retail SMS marketing are on the rise, as customers are searching for a more personal, unique experience from their retailers. They want the retailer to anticipate their needs and meet them. Getting a one-up on email and SMS marketing is one of the first things you should do as a new business.
Social media marketing is also an essential in this day and age, as we move into an age of social media being the go-to platform for shopping and socialization. Promoting your products using promotion ads, hashtags, giveaways and influencer gifting is a great way to make your business relevant in today’s world.
Pillar #5: People
The people who make up your business are of paramount importance when it comes to creating a successful marketing strategy. Without people who are experienced, hardworking and positive in the workplace, you might find that your brilliant ideas slip through your fingers.
Nobody achieves entrepreneurial success, even if the ideas and concepts come from their own brain. You need a team of dedicated individuals around you who have their finger on the pulse of modern day marketing, in order to achieve the success you dream of. Don’t underestimate how people can make or break your marketing strategy when push comes to shove!
It’s also worth noting how vital high-quality marketing materials are throughout this process. The most fundamental aspect of this is your website; it should be as high-quality as possible. Doing so will ensure customers find your site attractive, which makes them more likely to convert. Working with a web design agency can ensure you accomplish this.
Final thoughts…
The five pillars of modern marketing success are absolutely essential for any entrepreneur to learn. Marketing is becoming more and more intricate and complex, and in order to stay relevant and keep pushing to new heights you need to put huge investments of time, money and energy into your marketing campaigns.
Use this comprehensive guide to get you started if you are an entrepreneur looking to better your marketing skills!
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As the owner or manager of a restaurant, it’s natural that you’re flat out looking at many of your business’s everyday operational components. However, to achieve tremendous growth and turn your restaurant into the powerhouse you hope it to be, it’s vital to market the brand and its wares. One option to consider is influencer marketing.
Many hospitality entrepreneurs haven’t gone down this path yet, but it can be an innovative and often lucrative marketing tactic to test out. It’s time to learn the basics of influencer marketing and how you might utilize it in your venture.
Understanding Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing refers to situations where people, influencers with an extensive profile and the ability to affect how a brand gets viewed, promote and sell products or services. The idea of businesses partnering with well-known names and faces isn’t new, as it’s something that’s been around for decades. However, today’s influencer term relates to those who have a large following on social media and use this audience to market wares online.
Organizations can pay influencers for their voice in different ways. For example, this can be done with monetary payments or with free products, discounts, or other incentives. The benefit for businesses in using influencers is that their followers trust these people. In turn, influencer recommendations and other content get taken seriously, and people are more likely to make a purchase or complete some other call-to-action.
Consumers place much less trust in traditional advertising campaigns now and often don’t pay much attention to it at all. Trusted brand advocates can help cut through the noise, though, as their content is seen, by their followers at least, to come from a place of authority.
Types of Influencer Marketing
If you’re interested in using influencer marketing for your restaurant, it’s crucial to understand the different ways you might go about this. You can work with influencers by making them long-term brand ambassadors who promote your business, dishes, and dining experience on their social media pages, website, and related avenues. This activity is generally done for a set period, and you’ll want to ensure that the influencer you choose can’t plug any of your competitors while they’re an ambassador for your firm.
When you want to see more direct results, where customers make bookings and dining right away with you, consider creating incentives. Influencers can use them for marketing your latest menu items or deals and get consumers to head into your restaurant. Influencers get rewarded for the referrals they send your way.
You could, for instance, have influencers mention a limited-time coupon or discount code consumers don’t want to miss out on. Influencers make money through affiliate links here, earning a percentage or dollar amount every time someone clicks through to your restaurant’s social media page or website or makes a booking online, etc.
Many restaurants also find they achieve solid results from running competitions and giveaways that influencers promote. If you want to get the word out more about your business and engage consumers, consider having an influencer send a special text message to their database via a mobile marketing platform for restaurants or a sponsored blog post online.
You could also have an influencer attend an event at your restaurant or hire them to take over your social media pages for a period to boost traffic to your website and premises. Find influencers you feel are a good fit for your brand and chat with them about ideas they might have for marketing strategies, too.
Tips for Top Results with Influencer Marketing
To get the most out of influencer marketing, refrain from picking people to work with until you’re clear about your business goals and what you want the promotions to achieve. Then, don’t just go with any influencer you can get to respond. Choose the right person or people with high numbers of engaged followers in your specific niche.
Locate influencers who are likely to have a genuine interest in what you offer and how you do it. For instance, a vegan restaurant would search for influencers who already live a vegan lifestyle and possess animal-friendly values. Put together a shortlist of people you’re interested in working with. Then, try to build a relationship with them before contacting them and asking them to get involved with your restaurant.
Authentic connections help you test if the fit is correct and increases the likelihood that people will respond to your approaches. When pitching, look for ways to show how the partnership can add value to the influencer’s life and projects, not just tick boxes for you.
With so much competition these days in the hospitality arena, anything you can do to make your restaurant stand out for the right reasons is helpful. Approach influencer marketing with a clear strategy to boost your chances of success.
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It’s extraordinary now to think that, as recently as two years ago, holding virtual conferences was a rather niche pursuit for business leaders. However, necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes – and, now, many of these leaders both attend and run virtual events.
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