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Showing posts from March, 2021

Why Protecting Your Digital Data Is Crucial for Business Success

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Why Protecting Your Digital Data Is Crucial for Business Success Companies rely on employee data to calculate salaries, benefits, days off, and to identify promotion candidates. They use client data to develop marketing strategies, personalize their content, simplify the sales funnel, and more. Large or small, multimillion or barely making ends meet, every business should be devoted to following the best data security practices. After all, digital data is at the heart of virtually every company, and it needs to be protected. Data can be used to increase revenues, but they can also be the cause of financial and legal problems. Data breaches are quite common and can be caused by various factors – human error, poor choice of a web hosting provider, cyberattacks, vulnerabilities in your website’s design, to name but a few. So, it’s essential to protect data on all fronts if you want your business to thrive. Better Legal Compliance (GDPR) GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, was des

How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs with SEO

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How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs with SEO Passive and active SEO can bring in customers honestly - and on the cheap. Here's how. SEO (search engine optimization) helps drive organic traffic to your website. You can convert that traffic into paying customers without shelling out a fortune on ads if you attract the right people. If you’ve recently acquired a business that has never taken SEO seriously, you’re potentially sitting on a gold mine.  However, rising to the top of SERPs (search engine results pages) is a challenge when you have thousands of other businesses competing for the same spot. To beat them and stand a chance of reducing your acquisition costs, you need to understand your target market and the search engines themselves. Only then can you devise a strategy that turns you into a customer magnet. But first, what is SEO, really? SEO is ostensibly about optimizing your digital presence so it appears at or near the top of SERPs. In reality, it’s about understandi

Turn A Negative Into A Positive: Managing Negative Online Reviews

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Turn A Negative Into A Positive: Managing Negative Online Reviews Online reviews represent a significant part of a business ‘reputation management online. Managing them can be tricky, and opinions shared by the public online require constant attention, but paying attention to them and handling them in the right way is definitely something that is worth your time. It’s worth noting that both positive and negative comments about your business can work to be an advantage or a disadvantage to your brand, depending on how you deal with them. However, in this article, we will focus on negative online reviews and how to manage them most effectively. You Can’t Stop Negative Reviews Google’s retail industry director John McAteer once said: “No one trusts all positive reviews”. Everybody knows that no product can be perfect. In fact, the absence of negative comments about a business online can appear, or nothing but glowing praise can appear as something that has been staged, making customers su

5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Small Business Makes

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5 Social Media Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Small Business Makes Sometimes it seems that as well as running a successful small business, entrepreneurs are also now expected to be digital marketing experts, savvy in the means and methods of attracting and engaging an audience through social media. The truth isn’t quite as harsh as described above, but when you do launch a brand on social media, being clued up enough to avoid the most commonly made and damaging mistakes is crucial. Let’s look at five of the biggest social media marketing blunders, and how to circumvent them.  Generating consistent growth on social media takes a combination of time, patience, and a smart strategy.  1. Start Small and Grow Gradually So, launching out of the gate with a big budget advertising campaign might end in disaster, especially if your audience targeting is off the mark. Take time to cultivate an audience first, and if you do want to boost the reach of social media content with paid ads, start wit

Five Ways To Supercharge Your Marketing In 2021

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Five Ways To Supercharge Your Marketing The pandemic has resulted in ups and downs aplenty for Australian businesses, as well as considerable uncertainty about what the future holds. As the country’s economic recovery gathers pace, relevant, personalised marketing can help organisations reconnect with customers and boost sales and profitability. Here are five ways to supercharge your marketing efforts in 2021. Make customer retention a priority Historically, marketers have concentrated their efforts on winning new business – turning prospects into customers. As a result, the focus has been on understanding where those customers are coming from and the activation events that trigger them to open their wallets. That’s still important but so is hanging onto buyers for the long haul, not letting them slip away after a single sale. Doing so requires extending your view of the customer journey – analysing buyers’ online behaviour, getting a feel for what other products and services they’re i

How to Enhance Your Hospitality Business' Marketing Plan

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How to Enhance Your Hospitality Business' Marketing Plan Whether you're a small business owner who has had substantial experience in the hospitality industry, or if you’re still starting and are still in the planning phase, you should understand the value of having a well-defined marketing plan. It outlines your entire marketing strategy for the coming month, quarter, or year. A well-thought-out marketing campaign starts with a marketing plan. Without one, you're left to rely on luck and uncertainty, which can prove disastrous especially if you’re tight on the budget.  Your marketing plan should answer questions such as "Where and how exactly are you spending your marketing budget?” and “Is it being spent productively?". It will help you to grow your business swiftly than you would without it. What's in A Plan There is no fixed template for a marketing plan but it should at least contain the following essential elements: your business' marketing and advert

4 Ways to Leverage an Email List

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4 Ways to Leverage an Email List Email is an efficient marketing channel but its success is all dependent on how well you use your lists. Without a good strategy, your huge email list will go to waste. This article highlights some tips that you can apply to get the most out of your email lists. Give Subscribers Choices To keep your unsubscribe rate low, give your subscribers an option to choose the type of emails they would like to receive from you, as well as the frequency. For some people, getting an email every week may be too much. Give such subscribers biweekly or monthly options and they will stick with you for the long term. Once your subscribers have made their choices, show them respect by following their preferences when sending emails. Don’t Send Too Many Promotional Emails Too many promotional emails can make your company look desperate or too pushy. Thus, limit the number of promotional emails you send to your subscribers. Other types of messages you should be sending to y

Everything You Need to Know About Protecting Your Brand

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Everything You Need to Know About Protecting Your Brand Just a few short years ago, the digital ad industry seemed almost obsessed with the concept of “brand safety.’ However, a few years later, their concerns seem to have shifted, and they are now focused on “Brand Suitability.” Where Is Your Brand Advertising? The term “brand suitability refers to a marketer’s preference for certain types of targeting parameters, and making decisions that are leading them to advertise on sites that are not suitable for their brand. This change in direction was highlighted in a “State of the Industry study, and it brings up a lot of questions. For example, who is ultimately responsible for an ad appearing on a website or blog that is unsuitable for the advertiser? And why has it supplanted safety as an area of concern for advertisers? For one thing, imagine that the sites on which you advertise match the demographics and the location you are looking for, but the sites have content that is, say, the op

7 Ways to Ensure A Strong Business Presence Using Social Media

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7 Ways to Ensure A Strong Business Presence Using Social Media Social media plays a big, vital role in any business strategy these days. Not only has it developed into a standard platform but it has also become an essential channel. By offering the best ways to connect with both your brand's target audience, as well as your current followers, social media opens up avenues for broadening your marketing reach at a much lower cost than traditional media. It’s no surprise that almost every business nowadays has a presence in one or in multiple networking platforms. So, it’s no longer a question of whether you have a presence in social media, but rather if that presence is strong enough to attain your goals.  Social Media’s Business Benefits The best reason that makes social media more appealing for small business owners is its cost-effectiveness. If done correctly and strategically, you can grow your brand with minimal costs, putting you at level with larger companies. Here are 3 benef

The 2 Types of Authority All Businesses Need for Marketing Success

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The 2 Types of Authority All Businesses Need for Marketing Success In business, being the trusted authority in your space is the best way to earn your customers’ trust. Or is it the other way around? Do you become an authority in your space by earning the trust of your customers and clients over time? Authority, clout, credibility — the immediately earned trust of a customer through purely social indicators is one of the most sought after statuses as a brand or a business. To understand how to earn authority and trust, we must understand the two types of authority that matter the most in the 20th century and utilize them for maximum success. The word authority, the way I mean it, is defined as a person or organization having power or control in a particular, typically political or administrative, sphere.  So how do we, as businesses or personal brands earn our share of power in our sphere? How do we become thought leaders and demonstrate thought leadership and credibility? By understan

4 Ways to Transform Your Marketing With Content That Teaches Consumers

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4 Ways to Transform Your Marketing With Content That Teaches Consumers As consumers make informed purchasing decisions in seconds, your messaging needs to be a part of their resources and not just another ad. Long gone are the days where marketing could essentially direct a consumer through a direct message and convert an easy sale. Today's consumer is the most informed buyer that we have ever seen, with multiple resources right at their fingertips. Within seconds, a potential customer can pull up reviews, competitor products, pros and cons, and cost-efficient alternatives. As a result, the marketing teams find themselves in a difficult position in not only catching the buyer's attention, but also making sure that all of their resources are aligned with their message. What is often overlooked, however, is that the consumer wants to be informed and that provides an opportunity for marketing to provide the education. The pharmaceutical industry has mastered this concept by creati