Grow Your Business Online

If you haven't tried Facebook ads already and you know a lot of people who have, you probably don't want to. They're uncharted waters, and many before you have failed. At least once or twice, sometimes even from business professionals, you've probably heard plain and simple that Facebook ads don't work. Everyone who tries just loses their money with minimal results. First, let's dispel that myth. Not everyone fails on Facebook marketing. It is a highly effective platform, but only if you succeed in utilizing it's tools properly. 1. They Don't Test Their Audiences Audience testing is going to be the very first step you use to build on your Facebook ad campaign success. The target audience you choose through Facebook will vary based on your industry and business type, and who you're trying to reach with your product. Facebook provides many factors to consider when selecting an audience for your first ad: -Demographics-Based on demographic fac...

Everybody loves a freebie! What do you currently sell, that is of value, that you could offer for free? And how can you monetize the back end of that? This works especially well if you can offer something that other businesses would normally charge for. For example, if you have a corporate cleaning business, you could offer your first clean free, and follow up with your customer to see if they were happy with your service and would like you to continue. This is a great way to get new clients to try your service, as you’re taking all the risk out of it for them and, if you do a great job, chances are they’ll want to keep you on. The principle of reciprocity comes into play here too - you’ve given something of value to them and chances are they’ll feel the urge to do the same back. A twist on this model is our “free plus shipping & handling” funnels, where we offer something for free on the front-end as long as the customer covers a small s&h fee (usually un...

In terms of cost-efficiency, the most crucial method for attracting traffic to your website is through organic searches. They allow you to reach people who don't even know about your site initially but are searching for a specific product or service related to your website. The primary factor of the success in organic searches boils down to the ranking of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs). There are a ton of factors that may contribute to your website may not be ranking well on search engines. Some of these reasons are: A Slow Website Millions of search results are available to the user as soon as they enter a keyword into a search engine like Google. With such a massive amount of data available on the Web, it's become challenging to hold users' attention for extended periods of time. Pages that load faster not only provide excellent user experiences but also play a huge role in SEO ranking. Site speed is an official search ranking algorithm in...

Looking for a way to capitalize on the value each customer is worth to you? An easy way to do this is by offering different upsells. Upselling is offering a complimentary or upgraded version of a product/service that a customer is currently purchasing. One of the most well known upsells can be heard when you head into your local fast food joint: “Would you like fries with that?” Even not so great upsells can add a quick 33% or more to your revenue stream.  Some really good upsells or funnels can even double your initial sales or more! An upsell is a great way to increase the total value of a sale. For example, if you run a dance school, and each class is $15, you could provide a number of upsells. You could offer 3 different upsells, of varying amounts: Upsell 1 - 4 week course for $50 Upsell 2 - Gold Membership where for $120 a month you can attend as many classes as you like. Upsell 3 - Pro dance package for $200 a month, which allows you to attend unlimite...

Sometimes it’s hard to see the benefit of something we haven’t seen in action or tried first. Offering a free trial period, or a demonstration of your product, can be a great way to alleviate a potential customer’s fears and make them confident the product will work for them. Also, once someone has tried something free they often feel obliged to reciprocate by purchasing from you - it’s the principle of reciprocity in action. For example, if you have a software product, offer a free 30 day trial, so customers can see how it works, use it and see the results they get from it. You’ll get customers who may have sat on the fence or not purchased previously all of a sudden be ready to buy because they can get a chance to experience how great the product can actually be for them. There’s one tip we’ve learned over the years that can greatly increase your retention rate here (or essentially how many stay on past the trial period), and that’s to offer a free trial, but re...

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now. For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop u...

To take advantage of this marketing strategy, look at how you can bundle your service or products together to create a package deal. This can be a great way to move more products and services and add value to your customers. Customers feel they are getting a great deal, as they are paying less than if they bought each item separately, and you get the benefit of a higher dollar sale per transaction. Bundling can also help you move slow-moving products and give you an upsell to offer to customers that may have been looking at purchasing an individual item. For example, if you own a travel agency, offer a package deal where accommodation, flights, several meals and an attraction are all included. For another example, if you own a beauty salon, offer a pampering package, where a hair styling, manicure and massage are offered together. While a customer may have been considering purchasing one or two of these items, if you offer a great deal, they might be persuaded to purchase th...

There’s only so much time in the day, and although it can be a great idea to add extra services that you sell and fulfill yourself, it’s not always practical. This is why it can be a great idea to look for other services or offers that you can sell yourself but easily outsource to others to do with little to no work on your part. For instance, you might be a web designer that often gets requests to create and add videos to your clients’ sites, but it might either be very time consuming or nearly impossible for you to create nice looking videos to sell as a service even if you could get hundreds to thousands of dollars per sale for them. Instead of just passing on that easy money, why not look for others online who already offer those services, reach out to them, markup their prices (or make them more “done for you” to increase the value and prices you can charge) and get permission to use their testimonials, social proof, examples, sales pages, etc. as your own (o...

Every entrepreneur is well familiar with the importance of marketing in today’s era of extreme competition. Marketing through various channels has become essential to make sure a business is able to thrive in the market. Without a proper marketing strategy, a company will not be able to gain new customers and expand their reach. Are you looking for tips and techniques to create better sales funnel for your business? If so, you are in the right place. What Is A Sales Funnel? A sales funnel is a marketing concept that provides a schematic of the process through which a customer goes through while making a purchase. The term ‘funnel’ is used as an analogy because most of the people who know about a business are its potential customers and represent the top, most significant part of the funnel. This might also be described as your “warm market” and may include those who are on the fence about your brand, or barely even giving it a thought. These people are on top. The people w...

What is Lead Generation? Over the years, the techniques and strategies of the marketing of business have evolved a lot. Lead generation has become an essential phenomenon in marketing. It is the process of attracting potential customers to your products and services via social media platforms, email updates, and strong word-of-mouth. A lead is considered to be a qualified and hot lead when the consumer is not only attracted to your business but also has a need for your products or services. What is the Importance of Lead Generation? Initially, lead generation is vital in gathering information about the behavior of your potential customers. After compilation and detailed analysis of the collected data, you can devise effective strategies to market your business for the targeted customer base. It is crucial to attracting a large number of people to your websites, so the products and the services offered by your company are promoted among a vast amount of people. Lead ...

You’ve probably bought electronics before and been offered the purchase an additional warranty. Or maybe you’ve purchased furniture before and been offered a white glove service to deliver and setup your new couch. These are all examples of premium support services that can have very large profit margins, so even if only a smaller percentage of customers take you up on them, they can add a lot to your bottom line. Some of these premium support services can be at little to no cost to you. For instance, one business we’ve seen had a warranty offer where you could get free replacement charger cables forever on your phone, if they ever fail, for a small one time extra fee as long as you just cover the small shipping and handling fee. However, these cables have such huge margins anyway that the small S&H fee literally covered the cost of the cables and the shipping. The “warranty” that was sold was essentially 100% pure profit, despite how it would appear to be an ...

Too often business owners try to fight over the scraps. They try to make deals or land sales with anyone and everyone that they can find, regardless of if those deals are barely worth any money to them. It’s amazing what can happen when you try to go for the bigger clients or choose bigger businesses to partner with. Just a single deal can often make for a very good month (or even year!). There’s two main ways of doing this. First, you can target more high-end prospects with higher end offerings. By raising your prices and offering more “done for you” services and products, you can try to target the elite buyers instead of focusing on being the low-priced leader barely scraping by. The second way is to try to focus on big “competitors,” or on other business owners who are far bigger than you in a similar market, but not necessarily competing, and then trying to strike a deal with them to sell or promote your offers (for a big cut). If you make this hands-free, sup...

Selling digital products like e-books or videos (or even services) can be great, as they often carry much higher margins than physical products. However, people often place a much higher value on physical products that they can touch and hold. This doesn’t mean that you have to offer all your products as physical ones - far from it! Instead, you should consider offering a simple physical product like a branded coffee mug, hat, t-shirt, or some other product that makes sense with your offer, as a bonus for those who take action fast. This does two things. First, it makes people take action faster because they know there’s probably a limited quantity of the physical product (vs. a digital one that they realistically know you can have as many as you want). And second, they place a high value on physical products that they can touch. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, you can increase conversions on a $2,000 web service simply by offering a branded coffee mug ...

So how can you charge more for your services? How can you increase your price tag and still have customers lining up to buy from you? One easy way is to change your offer from a simple product/service to a done-for-you offer. What does this mean? Check out this example below. Say, instead of charging $5 to write an article, you instead charge $497 to $997+ to write five articles, create a blog, post the articles up, optimize it for their keywords, and have a custom graphic or two. If you were to outsource a $5 article for $3, the first example only gives you a $2 profit, or if you were to write it yourself, you'd be trading $5 for 30 minutes, at best, of your time ($10 an hour on the higher end if you’re super fast).  However, if you were to offer the second, more premium example, you could outsource the articles for $15, allocate $10 for some custom graphics on Fiverr.com, and put in $25 to $50 to outsource the custom blog with SEO (blogger.com blogs, for instance, can be m...

Every business owner has the desire to make as much money as possible, that's kind of the whole point of business. Most of us are continuously searching for new ideas to achieve this goal. Every individual business should evaluate the market trends and customers' requirements before making any specific decision about their business. But there are a few common tricks that can be applied in businesses to make more money. Here are three easy business tricks that can help you in making more money: 1. Establish A Good Brand Contrary to popular belief, there is a huge difference between a business and a brand. Brands are the results of a creative and innovative mind. In establishing an attractive brand, it is helpful in thinking of your brand as a person and thinking about what kind of person would you want it to be. Customers like to form associations with companies that are also good brands. You should answer the following questions while branding your business: • Wha...

A sense of urgency can be a great motivator, both in encouraging a sale and in life. To use urgency in business, look at offering limited time deals, especially ones that don't last more than a few days tops.  And if you have an e-mail list, mail them a lot more on the final day with reminders to the deadline.  You'll often get most of your sales on the final day! Countdown timers can be another great way to emphasize this.  The idea is similar to furniture stores that seem to always have sales that end on the weekend... even though we all know they'll probably have another sale in a week or two, we're more likely to buy now if we think there's a sale on it now vs. later.  People like to procrastinate, so limited time deals can get them off their butt to take action. For example, if you run a gym, you may run a sale on gym membership, where if they sign up over the next 3 days they receive a discount on the total price, or X amount of personal training s...

Businesses of any kind can be quite challenging. There is a lot of saturation and variation in different industrial sectors. It all requires careful research and cautiously formulated strategies. To ensure the success of your business, it is necessary to make your brand stand out from competitors through effective promotion strategies. Here are the crucial steps in marketing your new business: Conduct market research Market research is a crucial component in establishing a marketing strategy for a new business. It includes collecting data about the market in which you are going to establish your business. The data is thoroughly analyzed to determine the needs and requirements of potential customers, prime locations for the business, and the estimation of the budget and pricing of the products and services. Moreover, market research can also include sales predictions, monitoring latest market trends, and studying the business models of your competition to make sure you ad...

Most businesses tend to practically ignore their prospects and even their best clients. This is a horrible thing to do, as you’d be leaving a ton of money on the table in doing so. One thing that you can do to help remind your prospects and customers about you is to send either an e-mail or a card with something like a thank you note along with an incentive to take some further action (like a discount or a freebie leading into a sales offer of yours). For instance, if you have leads that haven’t bought from you but who’ve expressed an interest of some kind, you can either automatically (via an autoresponder) or manually follow-up with them by writing an e-mail saying how you haven’t seen them in a while, want to thank them for previously reaching out, and then letting them know about either a freebie you’re currently offering, which can lead into a paid offer, or a discount or other incentive/deal that you currently have. This can help revive old, “dead” leads in...

Did you know that some big influencers out there online can literally drive millions of dollars in sales, with a single post on social media, or mention on a big blog? In fact, there’s even billion-dollar businesses that have gotten their start from single big influencers mentioning their products. And, surprisingly enough, it’s easier to do than you might think. Sure, it might be far harder to do a multi-million dollar launch overnight from a big star mentioning you just to be nice, but there’s plenty of well-known influencers that can still drive a ton of sales your way (and you never know when you might get lucky by landing a bigger one). To increase your chances of this, you should take the time to reach out to these big influencers, blogs, news sites, etc., and offer them your products for free in the hopes that they’d be willing to review them. Sometimes you can even pay these influencers to mention your products. And although some of the biggest ...

In many cases it can be a wise idea to offer multiple similar packages when selling something. However, instead of offering drastically different offerings, which might make your prospects hesitate more due to not being sure which option to get, you can offer similar options where the “value buy” seems like an amazing deal. For example, let’s say that you’re selling an SEO service to help websites rank better. If your main offer is a done for you package for $997 where you fix up their site and offer some basic consultations for them too, that can normally seem like a lot of money to some people and can make them hesitate more on if they should buy or not. However, you could offer three options where the “basic” package is for $897 and only includes a report where you identify the issues but don’t fix it for them, the “most popular” package is for $997 and includes identifying and fixing all the issues on top of three free consultation calls, and the “elite” package is for $...

Making huge gains in traffic on your website and social media accounts is excellent, but what matters the most is generating conversions. There is no use in spending a large amount of money on extensive marketing campaigns if no one is buying your product or services or signing up for your website. Many tweaks can drastically improve your sales. 5 of the most important ones are discussed below: 1. Make The Benefits Conspicuous. All of the benefits offered by your products and services should be prominent on your website. The landing page and homepage are important in making these advantages known to potential customers immediately. Some examples of benefits your customers will love and should see might include free delivery, customer support, discounted offers, and giveaways on certain purchases. All the unique selling points of your business should be emphasized to convince the customers about the importance of what you have to offer, front and center on your website. 2....

It’s time to check out the competition!! In school it may have been called cheating, but in the business world it’s just good old-fashioned market research! Find out where your competitors are advertising, spy on their sales funnels, and see how you can replicate any of their good ideas that appear to be working well. There are many online tools to find out what ads and keywords your competitors are using. There’s also a couple of basic ways to see what your competitors are up to - follow them on social media and subscribe to their blogs and newsletters. If they have smaller priced items, you may choose to purchase one of their items to see what their purchase process is like, whether they offer upsells, what those are and what their follow up process is to a sale. See what they are doing really well and look for how you can replicate it or adapt it to your business. For example, if you sign up to a competitor’s newsletter, you can see how they nurture a lead and turn it onto a sa...

Business is a complex concept that many fail to gasp. A business only emerges to be successful if it is implemented after thorough planning with passion, discipline, and after a great deal of research. Sustaining a business can become extremely difficult after a certain period of time due to budget constraints and poor planning. According to a survey, in the USA alone, 70% of new businesses take a hit within a decade of their conception. A truly successful business is not one that booms and experiences a short and vibrant period of success. A truly successful company is one that enjoys sustainable success that lasts long term and withstands the test of time. Many business owners make the mistake of ignoring critical issues during the first few years, which in turn damages the business operations down the road in later years, and sometimes it's too late for the problem to be fixed. A number of reasons can lead to your business becoming a failure. Some of the common reasons ar...