Why Isn’t My New Business Making Any Money?

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Setting up a Business|Why Isn't My New Business Making Any Money?When you finally take the plunge to escape the rat race and set up your own business, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself. You have dreams of making lots of money, customers come flooding in and all of your financial worries just melting away. But of course, this isn’t the case most of the time- starting a company is hard work and things probably won’t take off as quickly as you think. Here are some of the reasons why you’re yet to make much (or any) money in your venture.

Be patient

First things first, you might need to just be patient. It can take time to build up a reputation online, for those first customers to start posting reviews and making recommendations. It can take a few weeks for any marketing efforts to show their effects. Try not to panic and give it a little time, as long as you’re sure you’re doing everything else right- you might just need to be patient.

Improve your website

Have you set up a free or cheap website as a way to get your business online but without spending much money? Even if your site looks ok, it’s always going to lack the sleek professionalism that you can only get with an experienced web designer. Customers are picky and have high expectations, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you run. If they think your site looks cheap or amateur, it’s easy for them to assume that rest of your business is run the same way. Your website really is an investment, it’s essential for success and something to consider improving if you’re not making much money.

Better images

Stock images from the internet lack the personalisation that customers will be looking for. You don’t want to look like any other bland business out there, you want to be unique and sand out. This is impossible to achieve when you’re using images that people have seen online hundred times. Invest in good images for your company’s website, this could be things like professional model shots to show clothing or products or photos of your staff on a ‘meet the team’ page for professionalism. Show whatever it is your customer is going to be buying. If you’re a corporate business, photos of your team and office can help give clients that sense of who you are- it makes things feel more personal.

Marketing efforts

If you’re not reaching the right people, it doesn’t matter what your business does or sells- you’ll simply never sell enough to make a profit. Don’t just wait for customers to stumble across you, use a marketing agency or a hire a professional to run things for you since they will have the skills and expertise needed. In many cases, a lack of sales can be fixed by marketing. If you know you’re selling good products or services that people want, it might be a case that you’re just not reaching the people who are likely to buy from you. Marketing can fix that.

5 Simple Steps for Building a Good Reputation Online

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Simple Steps for Building a Good Reputation Online

Having a good reputation online is key to making your business grow and flourish. But knowing where to start can feel overwhelming.

Keep reading to learn the five steps to building and managing your company’s reputation online.

1. Create Your Online Business Card

Think of your webpage as a business card. You want to have a catchy domain name that is unambiguous and short. Focus on the main page, paying attention to the design, and make sure it doesn’t get overcrowded with too much information as this could lose your readers.

You’ll want to make sure your layout is visually interesting and the text is clear with graphics and pictures that match. Any detailed information should go into separate sections.

You’ll want to make sure your contact and about buttons are easy to locate. Highlight your companies greatest achievements in the about section. Have the address of your headquarters, e-mail, telephone number, directions, and map in your contact section.

You should also include a section where clients can put reviews and opinions, which has been shown to boost sales. There are even online reputation management companies that can help you out.

2. A Blog Is Key for a Good Reputation Online

Your website should also have a blog filled with inspiration yet professional content. Blogs are great places to share your company’s values and products while building the image that your business is an expert in your field.

You’ll want to put a lot of effort into your blog, making sure you don’t have any grammatical errors or confusing language. Take your posts up a notch with relevant charts, infographics, and pictures.

3. Be Active on Social Media

Social media helps prospective clients find your business. Having a strong social media presence will help your company’s reputation.

You can inform your clients about new products or articles on your webpage. Make sure your social media posts are all brief, attention-grabbing, and to the point.

4. Reply to Every Request or Opinion

You need to show your potential and current clients that you have an accessible business that treats people respectfully, which means you’ll want to respond to every review or message you receive. If you see a negative comment, respond politely with understanding and avoiding conflict.

Take advantage of any positive comments by proudly sharing them on your social media platforms. This is proof of the quality of your products and or services.

5. Share Your Achievements and Awards

People will trust companies that are award-winning and experienced. Clients are more likely to work with a company that has been recognized over a company that has not. So make sure all your glowing reviews, accomplishments, and awards are easy to see on your website.

Fix Your Online Reputation Today

Now that you know the five steps to build and maintain a good reputation online, start making these changes today. A website that is to the point and easy to find and navigate will help grow your company for years to come.
For more resources of growing your business, check out the rest of our blog.

Essential Tips To Boost Your Crowdfunding Strategy

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Crowdfunding|Essential Tips To Boost Your Crowdfunding StrategyMore and more new entrepreneurs are looking for alternative funding strategies to gather their starting capital. Indeed, money-lending institutions can make it difficult for new businesses to apply for a commercial loan. Startups, especially, have a hard time convincing banks that their innovative idea is going to be profitable.

However, it is in the nature of banking systems to support businesses that can provide solid sales forecast. If you are looking for an angel investor to take a chance on your new business model or your new product, you need to focus your attention on creative platforms that allow you to interact directly with your audience. Indeed, a crowdfunding platform can act as a market research strategy, as you can measure the appeal of your idea through the monetary backing you receive. However, platforms such as Kickstarter or Fundable are busy. Attracting the attention of potential investors can be tricky without a dedicated funding strategy.

Build an SEO-friendly presence to boost your campaign

You can create a landing page and regular updates on your crowdfunding platform of choice. However, your crowdfunding presence is likely to get noticed only by people who are already actively looking to invest in a project. You need to reachout to a broad audience group to maximize your chances. As a result, you need to create a digital presence, including social media profiles and a website, to introduce your idea. Using tracking methods to follow your web visitors, you can not only identify performing search terms – or keywords – but also redirect them effectively to your crowdfunding page. It’s a good idea to work closely with a marketing agency that can assist you in defining relevant data and maintaining consistency when reaching out to your audience.

Personalize your gifts

In a banking or financial environment, investors agree to backup your business against the shares or repayment with interest. On a crowdfunding platform, backers don’t expect a financial reward. However, many agree to invest in your business against a gift. It’s not uncommon for startups to provide a free sample top their most generous investors. Backers who invested a smaller amount are happy to accept a merch gift in exchange for their support. To keep your cost within budget, you can offer a branded t-shirt, using a vinyl laser cutter to transfer the design, for instance. You can use the Boss laser cutter review page for guidance. A laser cutting machine is a fantastic alternative to personalize a small number of items, which makes it ideal if you don’t have enough backers for a large scale t-shirt order!

Show your face

Only 33% of crowdfunding campaigns succeed without a video. However, campaigns that successfully introduced video marketing achieved 66% successful funding according to Drop Studio. If you’re going to appeal to your audience’s generosity, you need to build a trustworthy and engaging relationship. Videos are not only useful to present your business ideas, but you can also use them as part of your marketing campaign on YouTube. Indeed, you can tie them to an advertising strategy to reach out to users within your relevant demographics.

While crowdfunding is the preferred funding approach for small businesses, it remains a challenging environment for new entrepreneurs. You need to build a presence that not only stands out from the crowd, but that can also encourage potential investors to back your business. That’s precisely why it’s essential to focus on your marketing approach, not only in terms of visibility but also merchandising.

What To Look For When Choosing An SEO Company

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |SEO|What To Look For When Choosing An SEO CompanyBusinesses have every right to be nervous when it comes to SEO. Times are changing, and Google is really mixing things up a bit. That’s why the attendance numbers at SEO events all across the world are massively increasing. People in the industry are having to get used to a new way of doing things. Mobile platforms are being preferred over desktop websites. Websites without videos are being put further down the list. On top of this, there is worry that Google will be making itself a competitor in search results. In other words, content that is approved by Google will be given higher precedence than that which is not. This might be speculation, but it’s certainly something that is on the radar of many SEO specialists. So, what should you as a business owner look for when choosing a company to work within this area?

What is your need?

Before you start to look for an SEO company that can suit your needs, pinpoint what your need is. Do you desire content that would fit your YouTube channel? Maybe you would like SEO that is purely focussed on specific content. Perhaps you’re just about to launch a product and you would like superbly written content that explains what the product will do, what it’s made out of, what the research was behind it and more. On the other hand, you may want more backlinks, better and more powerful keywords, raising your rankings in Google, outreach to news reporting entities to get the word out there etc. What is your aim and what do you need to achieve it? These two questions must be answered before you can begin your search.

Some are better than others

Some SEO companies will be better than others, for the type of strategies you want. For example, some SEO companies may only be able to produce written content. Articles, blog posts and product descriptions etc. Other SEO companies may be better at producing videos and creating trending campaigns on social media. There are lots of SEO companies that have their own specialist area of expertise. It’s vital then that you discover which companies are better for you. It’s also vital that you choose an SEO company that knows it must stick to fair play practices. Google can dish out penalties if you try to cheat the system, which will end up hurting your campaign as the sort of punishment handed out will hamper the SEO company you have hired. Thus, playing it safe and relying on great strategy rather than any so-called ‘dark arts’ of SEO should be one of your requirements.

Speaking for itself

Quality should and must speak for itself. Consistently well-written and interesting content will keep customers coming back. Content is just as important as keywords, keyphrases and website standards such as video and mobile versions.

Look for an SEO company that lives and breathes the industry. Preferably, one that is truly adaptable and modern, able to create video content as well as excellent blog articles.

How e-commerce Helps Build your Brand

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |E-Commerce |How e-commerce Helps Build your BrandBranding! A word with which everyone is familiar but do not understand its profundity. It requires a lot of effort from the business to propose the idea of branding. The outcome of successful branding is the growth of the product or service, triggered by a strategic marketing plan of the product. The main idea behind keeping your brand consistent is, however, a promise of quality which customers expect from you.

Association of the customer is the measurement of the loyalty of the customers with your product. Despite your best branding efforts, the customer must ultimately decide to continue with the product or not. You absolutely can understand with the customers’ behavior that what your customers’ expectations are and how far your product is to meet with the customers’ expectations, also known as ecommerce fulfilment.

How digital media promote business in the contemporary world

To grab on customers’ minds, marketing tactics have a peculiar position. In order to meet customers’ expectations digital, and traditional media has tremendously blasted to support the businesses. However, this decade can see the importance of digital media in advertisement and development of the product. There is nothing left in your marketing, which e-channels do not support. From promotion to selling and from launching to customers’ feedback, all the work is done using an e-commerce platform.

The advancement of the e-platform of marketing took place because the customers have switched from the real world to the virtual world. It means they have started using virtual channels to talk with their faraway relatives using their androids. You have got it! Yes, it is social media that connects people from distant places. Thus, businesses have also transformed their promotions to the social media network.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

An important aspect of digital marketing is Social Media Marketing (SMM). SMM has been formulated observing trends of the people towards social media. When companies find their target audience on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn, they begin promoting their products on social media platforms.

Knowing the concern of the businesses, the social media channels have also extended their features for the advertisers. They have provided different online pages for the companies who can promote the launch or innovation of the products. Most common features of the social media embrace

  • Promotional campaigns give consistency in the campaign of the brand, which is very important for brand recognition.
  • Customers can give their feedback on social media platforms about the product. It not only helps in the promotion of the products but also complies with the enhancement of features of the product.
  • Users get aware of the features of the product. They can easily check for the positive or negative reviews about your product.
  • Your company receives feedback using the social media channel, either it is positive or negative. Loyal customers of the company give positive and negative feedback both for the product. Positive reviews enhance sales of the brand, and negative feedback provides the opportunity to the business to improve the brand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The world has seen the advancement of digital platforms from the end of the last century. The e-commerce channels are updating as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. have enhanced their features, which are renowned search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), thus, has become another essential tool for the digital advertisement and brand development of the brands.

SEO is the ranking of a company’s product, which appears instantly in any search engine when a consumer searches for a product. SEO enhances the ranking of the company. This is the reason that companies maintain their online presence and provide benefits of reaching to the customers directly. Apart from it, SEO is maintained by the corporations to increase the website ranking so that consumer will see their brand as they search for it.

If a business wants to appear on the first page of the search engine, it should be maintaining an SEO friendly page of the company. It is very difficult to achieve high rankings on Google, Bing or Yahoo – but if the business idea is unique, then your brand visibility will increase. For instance, Amazon is a pioneer of online shopping therefore, whenever customers search to buy something online, Amazon appears on the top.

Appearing on the top search enhances your visibility to the customers. Thus, your brand gets sustained in the marketplace as you reach to more users. If your business provides online delivery of the product, your brand becomes more convenient because customers want doorstep delivery. So, it is also helpful in your brand development to give the convenience of shopping to your consumers.