Free Advertising: Does It Exist & How To Do It

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Free Advertising|Free Advertising: Does It Exist & How To Do ItIf something is free, that means you haven’t paid for it. So, are there ways to advertise your business without spending a penny? Technically, there are. However, there are also ways to achieve ‘free’ advertising in another sense.

You see, advertising usually works as such: you pay to get your adverts placed somewhere – this can be online, on TV, in a newspaper, on a billboard, etc. There is another type of free advertising where you do spend some money, but the actual advertising of your business is done for free. Effectively, this is done by using your customers to advertise your business for you.

With that in mind, here are some ways to take advantage of free advertising:

Social media comments

Social media replies and comments are easy ways to advertise your business. All you have to do is pick viral tweets or celebrity/influencer accounts and comment on their posts. Comment normal things – don’t actively advertise your business or post links! It’s completely free to do, and you have a huge chance of multiple users clicking your name when they see you’re a brand. As a result, this might drive traffic to your site.

Who knows, you may even get lucky and see one of the influencers contact you asking for free stuff. So, you can start influencer marketing as well!

Social media giveaways

Another tactic that takes advantage of the power of social media. This is one of those things that you do spend money on, but the advertising is free. Host a giveaway on social media where you give free products or money to one person. As part of the giveaway, everyone has to share the post, add it to their story, like it, follow you, and tag a friend.

Simple requirements, but it means that your post is getting shared around loads. Thus, it’s free exposure and advertising for your brand. A small upfront cost leads to excellent advertising benefits.

Free gifts

Handing out free gifts to consumers and customers will also help you advertise for free. Give people things like custom stickers, bags, coffee cups, lanyards, etc. All of these products are branded, meaning your customers will literally be walking advertisements for you.

Make the free gifts as functional as possible to encourage your customers to use them. They’ll go about their daily life advertising your business to everyone that sees them. It is such a smart and effective way of spreading brand awareness as far as the eye can see.

There you have it; free advertising does exist and it is really effective. You can see from the final two ideas how the act of advertising your business is free. You spend money on the giveaway or the free gifts, but after that the advertising and promotion you receive come with no costs at all. Ideas like these are really helpful for emerging businesses with small marketing budgets. You can’t afford to keep paying for online ads or massive TV adverts. So, you need to think of sneaky ways to expose your business for free.

4 Innovative Ways to Generate More Hot Leads Online

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Generate Leads|4 Innovative Ways to Generate More Hot Leads OnlineAre you looking for more leads? If so, you’re not alone. A successful business needs a steady flow of leads to stay afloat. Today’s blog post will discuss four innovative ways to generate more leads online. These methods are proven to work, and they are sure to help you increase your business’ growth! Let’s get started.

1. Create a strong social media presence.

Social media is one of the most powerful tools that you can use to generate leads. By creating and maintaining a strong social media presence, you will be able to reach a larger audience and attract more leads. Make sure to post engaging content regularly and respond to any questions or comments that you receive.

If you’re not sure where to start, try creating a profile on each of the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and start sharing exciting content with your followers. You can also join relevant online communities and participate in discussions. By doing this, you will be able to build relationships with potential leads and introduce them to your business.

2. Use targeted ads.

Targeted ads are a great way to reach leads who are already interested in what you have to offer. By targeting your ads specifically to your target audience, you can ensure that the right people will see them. Additionally, you can use retargeting ads to reach leads who have already shown an interest in your business but haven’t yet taken the next step.

When creating targeted ads, it’s essential to focus on quality over quantity. It’s better to spend a little more money on fewer, well-targeted ads than to bombard potential leads with a bunch of generic ads.

3. Consider email marketing.

Using direct mail marketing can be a great way to generate leads, especially if you have an extensive database of potential customers. By sending out regular emails, you can stay top of mind and make it easy for leads to get in touch with you when they’re ready to buy.

When creating your email marketing campaign, include a solid call to action and clear instructions on how recipients can opt-out if they’re not interested. Additionally, make sure that your emails are mobile-friendly, as more and more people are checking their email on their smartphones.

4. Use lead magnets.

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer potential leads in exchange for their contact information. You can entice leads to give you their email address or phone number by providing something valuable. Once you have this information, you can follow up with them and continue the sales process. Some popular lead magnets include e-books, white papers, and free trials. Whatever you choose to offer, make sure that it is relevant to your target audience and provides real value.

These are just a few of the many ways to generate more leads online. By implementing these strategies, you will be well to increase your business’ growth. If you need help getting started, feel free to contact us today!

6 Proven Content Strategies that Hook Millennials and Gen Zers (and Tools for the Job)

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Content Strategies|6 Proven Content Strategies that Hook Millennials and Gen Zers (and Tools for the Job)It’s official: Millennials and Gen Zers are all grown up.

Millennials, in particular, now hold the most buying power in the modern world. Gen Zers, which have striking similarities with Millennials, are slowly but surely catching up.

Long story short, it’s time for your business to build your content marketing strategy around these audiences.

Here are six proven content marketing strategies that will help you get their attention:

1. Use short-form videos

Short-form videos can fill the younger generation’s appetite for quick entertainment and information.

That’s why platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are all the rage—garnering billions of monthly viewers.

TikTok, in particular, is loaded with tools that can help brands reach their target audience and establish their authority.

Here’s a quick rundown of its features:

  • Business integration: TikTok now lets brands showcase their website and business category on their profiles. In addition, they’re set to benefit from other features that TikTok will include in future updates.
  • Built-in analytics: To optimize your TikTok strategy, the platform comes with built-in audience analytics. This covers content engagement, audience growth, demographics, and follower activity.
  • Creator and business learning resources: Not sure how to convert your brand’s messaging into short-form videos? TikTok offers a library of learning resources along with tons of video examples for inspiration.
  • Comprehensive video editing: TikTok’s very own video editor is packed with features like video effects, voiceovers, text overlays, and filters. Thanks to its popularity, there are also dozens of cost-effective TikTok tools to spice up your videos so you get more TikTok views after you publish.

Automating short-form video scheduling with Vista Social

It’s also worth noting that TikTok is equipped with its own post scheduling tool, which is accessible using a desktop browser. But if you want to promote short-form videos on YouTube or Instagram, you need a third-party post scheduling tool.

Vista Social, for example, is a comprehensive social media management platform. Apart from building an automated posting schedule, it can help you measure social media analytics, manage online reviews, monitor for brand mentions, and more.

2. Invest in influencer marketing

Looking for strategies to win your target audience’s trust? You should consider getting into influencer marketing.

Here’s the thing: influencer marketing and Millennials go hand in hand. In fact, 82% of Millennial and Gen Z social media shoppers trust influencers when making purchase decisions.

It doesn’t matter if you want to steal the young audience’s attention on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. There will always be influencers who can give your brand’s credibility and authoritativeness a much-needed boost.

The good news is, you don’t need a sizeable budget to work with influencers.

Micro-influencers, for instance, can promote your brand for only up to $500 per post on Instagram. That should be enough to put your company in front of around 50,000 followers.

Vetting influencers with the Upfluence Chrome extension

Upfluence is a well-known influencer marketing platform that can help you through every step—from influencer discovery to payments. Your business can invest in their services to streamline the entire influencer marketing process.

Alternatively, you can take the DIY route using the official Upfluence Chrome extension. This works by revealing crucial metrics whenever you visit an influencer’s profile, like audience engagement and suggested price per post.

3. Get employees involved

Millennials and Gen Zers respond positively to relatable and authentic content experiences. And that’s exactly what you can give them through an employee advocacy campaign.

In employee advocacy, your workforce becomes your core brand ambassadors. All you have to do is encourage them to post social media content with your brand front and center.

Some ideas include posting about a company event, live streaming team-building activities, or uploading “behind-the-scenes” photos. You can also launch full-blown employee takeovers of your brand’s official social media channels.

Accelerating employee advocacy with Nectar

Nectar is one of the best employee recognition platforms that can help foster a positive work culture. It empowers companies with features like point-based rewards, employee recognition, and brand alignment challenges.

Elevating employee recognition through Nectar works perfectly for employee advocacy. Not only does it provide employees with activities to post about, it also allows companies to incentivize their duties as brand ambassadors.

4. Align value propositions with a cause

It’s no secret that Millennials and Gen Z are huge supporters of causes that involve global issues. This includes diversity, inclusiveness, and environmental awareness.
That’s why more and more brands are launching marketing initiatives that align with these causes.

While there’s no right way to do this, it should be achievable by any brand that’s creative and resourceful enough. The only unmissable step is getting everyone in your organization aboard your initiative.

For example, if you want to show your support for diversity in the workplace, employees will be more than happy to share about it through advocacy.

Getting everyone on the same page with Monday.com

Monday.com is widely recognized as one of the top project management software on the web. It has heaps of features that enable teams to strive towards a single vision, like task management, time tracking, and collaboration tools.

Monday.com makes it easy for brands to share files and guidelines around specific initiatives. This is incredibly useful if you’re launching a collaborative campaign to showcase your support of a particular cause.

5. Modernize your SEO with mobile keywords

The majority of Millennials and Gen Zers use mobile devices to browse the web. Whenever they’re after reliable information, a considerable chunk heads straight to Google using mobile-friendly search terms.

A good example would be question-based keywords, which are on the rise due to the growing popularity of virtual assistants. Rather than typing words using a mobile keyword, users are more inclined to use their device’s dictation features to run searches.

If you want recurring organic traffic, your SEO strategy should keep up with the times. Whether you plan to buy SEO articles or handle SEO in-house, be sure to make room for mobile-friendly keywords.

Find question-based keywords with AnswerThePublic

Over the years, AnswerThePublic has remained the most convenient tool for finding question-based keywords.

All you have to do is head to their site, type in a broad keyword, and watch the tool at work. Within seconds, it will provide you with a web of question-based keyword ideas that can bolster your mobile SEO efforts.

6. Implement performance-focused content tracking

Lastly, no brand can come up with a perfect content marketing strategy overnight.

You can only refer to the known “best practices” to create a foundation for your content marketing. Beyond that, you need to rely on performance tracking to make data-driven decisions to improve your content strategy over time.

Find out what works with Google Analytics

If you want all-around content tracking, it can’t get any better than Google Analytics.

Despite the free price tag, Google Analytics will help any brand analyze multiple layers of their website’s performance. It can reveal your top-performing content, measure scroll depth, assess your problematic “exit” pages, and more.

Conclusion

Millennials and Gen Zers present new challenges for brands that want to stay relevant. Fortunately, they’re not exactly closed books when it comes to their content consumption preferences.

The strategies above should help elevate your content marketing strategy to a level that newer audiences will appreciate. Just remember to experiment with one tactic at a time, find out what sticks, and double down on your efforts.

Ways To Ensure Your Website Helps Your Business Grow

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Ways To Ensure Your Website Helps Your Business Grow

Having a business website is a significant step, especially if you want to beat the stiff competition in whatever industry you run your operations. Nonetheless, just having a website is not enough – you must ensure that it plays a role in helping your business grow. If that feels overwhelming, this article will be a pretty essential tool to help you understand how you can ensure your business website contributes to your entrepreneurial success. That is why it is recommended to follow along with the information explained below to get a clearer glimpse.

Working With Professionals

Modern technology is not stagnant, meaning the experts in that sector keep making significant changes and improvements. You can create a website yourself, but it will not be as good as when you procure professional web design Raleigh NC-based services. Fortunately, web designing contractors have increased over the last few years, considering that the demand for their services has also escalated. Therefore, you have a wide variety to choose from when hiring such a technological expert.

Create Attractive Content

The content you post on your business website determines how high or low the traffic will be. Increasing traffic on your website starts by having excellent and impeccable content on your website to attract visitors to it. An increase in visitors is a sure way to achieve a higher conversion rate. Additionally, if you consistently post great content, you will be enhancing your current clients’ loyalty to your products. Research shows that having great posts, images, and articles on your website boosts people’s trust in whatever goods or services you offer on the market.

Consider Search Engine Optimization

Clients get interested in businesses whose websites appear top on different search engines. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the best ways to ensure your clients and prospects have an easy time finding you online. The convenience of an optimized website is unrivaled, which is what most clients are looking for today. Luckily, there are many contractors to help you with SEO optimization, and most of them will charge you reasonable amounts. That is because competition in the industry has gone up. Once you get such services, your website will appear among the first on Google and other search engines. That means you will get more traffic, and your website will help promote your enterprise.

Embrace Prompt Responsiveness

One of the critical things that clients look for on different websites is how fast they get replies to their questions, comments, reviews, and concerns. Therefore, if you want to keep such individuals attracted to your products, you must be willing to sacrifice your time to ensure you are always online to address any issues.

Running a business website is not a walk in the park. You must be vigilant to ensure you are ahead of your competitors. There are several ways to achieve that, but the ones explained above are the most effective. Therefore, ensure you follow them to the letter if you want to see your website help you grow your enterprise.

The Staples Of a Professional Website

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Professional Website|The Staples Of a Professional WebsiteIt’s easy to get a website up and running. You can do it in about ten minutes. But building a quality website? That’ll take a bit more effort. And if you’re trying to get people to regularly come to your website, then it’s an effort that you’ll have to make. Of course, some people just set up a website for their own use, which gives a lot of freedom: you don’t need to think too hard — if you’re happy, then it’s fine. But things are different when it’s a public-facing website and greatly different if the website is for business purposes. At that point, the quality of the website can be the difference between business success or failure.

To get customers, your site will need to be professional. But thankfully, getting a professional website is not a complete mystery. It’s all about incorporating those digital representations of professionalism into your site. So how can you do this? In this blog, we’ll run through some of the staples. Take them all on board, and you’ll be on your way toward success!

Excellent Design

First impressions count for a lot in most areas of life, including with websites. So what are your visitors seeing when they land on your page? If it’s anything other than a well-designed, clean looking website, then you’ll run the risk of their first impression being slightly less than impressed. As well as the overall design, it’s important to ensure that the look of the website fits in with your company’s branding. Due to the importance of having a website that looks the part, it’s best to work with a web design agency. This will cost more than if you did it yourself, but it’ll be worth the expense.

Photos and Videos

You won’t just rely on the text of your site to wow your visitors. You’ll also need to have photos and videos. But, of course, it’s not as if just any old photos and videos will do. You’ll need to ensure that they’re high-quality. There are plenty of websites that offer license-free photographs, but if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can always turn to paid photographs. If you’re selling items online, you may also consider hiring a photographer to take photos of your products for you.

Limited Number of Pages

Many times, less is more. It’s tempting to add as many pages as possible because it helps to make your website look fuller and bigger. But it’s not the best approach. The best method is to only include content and pages that are genuinely needed. Don’t think that you need to add more pages because your website only has a few. If you’ve said everything that you need to say on those pages, then that’s fine — the added pages won’t only not add anything, they could dilute the message of the pages that you really want your visitors to see.

Easy Navigation

It’s important to think about the overall user experience when they land on your website. If your visitor is struggling to find the pages that they need, then that’s an issue. You should make sure that your visitors find it easy to move around your site.

Regular Updates

People want to know that your website is alive and kicking. It shouldn’t have the appearance of being dead! This is where regular updates can come to your rescue. By this, we don’t mean that you need to change everything all the time. It’s just about showing your visitors that the site is actively being managed. You can do this in a variety of ways. For instance, by hosting a blog, which you update regularly. You can also make small design changes in line with a seasonal event (for example, a Christmas design).

High Security

There’s no way to build a successful online venture without taking privacy seriously. Without it, you’ll find it difficult to gain the trust of your visitors. They need to know that they’re safe when they visit your website. You can do this by working with an IT company to ensure that your security measures are robust and up to date. But you should also go further. If you have a blog, be sure to block spam comments by using a service like Defendium. If you don’t, then you’ll run the risk of your visitors falling victim to a phishing scam — and that’s something that won’t reflect well on your business!

About Us Page

You can go a long way towards gaining your customer’s trust by writing an informative ‘About Us’ page. In this day and age, there’s a greater emphasis on digital trust than ever before. People want to know who they’re buying from, and your informative ‘about us’ page is the best way to convey that information. This doesn’t just give you a chance to show your professionalism. You’ll also be able to share your story, which is one of the best marketing tools you’ll have at your disposal (providing, of course, that you have a good story to share!).

Well-Written Content

Your website could look the part, but the details of the site are pretty key. There are plenty of sites that look the part, but then, when you get into the details, you can see that there’s very little there. For example, the website copy. The writing should be clear and sensical. Without it, your visitors will be more likely to have a negative view of your website and, by extension, your company. If you don’t know how to write persuasive copy, look at outsourcing the job to a professional copywriter. They’ll make sure that your website’s writing sings.

Conclusion

The tips we’ve outlined above won’t ensure that your business is successful. But if you’re running an online business, then you’ll find that it’s impossible to find success without those things. As we’ve seen, none of them are difficult to incorporate into your site. They just require a little bit of time, effort, and thought — easy!