Any savvy business owner knows that it is not enough to do their best – they also need to see what their competitors are doing. There is a wealth of knowledge to be found in the way other players in…
Have you heard of PR Mary, IT Jake and Paralegal Suzie? They are all buyer personas – prototypes of a specific customer group for a specific product. Buyer personas are needed in marketing in order to have a deep understanding…
Testimonials are, without a doubt, the best form of promotion. They are the digital era version of word of mouth and are incredibly effective in building customer trust. One single positive review from a happy customer is worth hundreds of…
Email is still one of the most powerful marketing tools – and it costs you less than any other type of digital marketing campaign. That being the case, it is surprising that the art of crafting a newsletter is not…
Be honest: have you reached the point when you have performed several tasks in the same order that you feel like a robot? This feeling is common to many other ecommerce business owners. The reason for this is simple: an…
In the digital world, many marketers have started to forget the classic offline strategies. Before you say that they have become obsolete, allow us to explain why we disagree. As much as the online world takes over our daily lives,…
What is evergreen content, first of all? It is the kind of content you can read or watch year after year and it is still relevant. And it keeps ranking in Google searches, bringing new readers to your web page…
Mobile advertising is on the rise, for the simple reason that people are more likely to use their smartphone than any other device for browsing the internet. Mobile ads have, thus, evolved as a species of their own – quite…
E-brochures are the digital version of traditional print brochures. They have appeared alongside other digital marketing materials, but haven’t really caught on. Most of the time, e-brochures are distributed on a physical support (CD) at business fairs and other similar…
Word clouds first became popular on personal blogs and then on company websites. They are geometrical or fancy shapes filled with words occurring most frequently in the respective web page. The words have various font styles and colours, and represent…
Promotions expire, products go out of season or out of production, and landing pages to various special events are no longer relevant. So, what happens to them and to their content? Letting them be is not an option. When people…
We have been discussing content marketing and content creation for some time now, but we haven’t really focused on content sharing so far. However, it is time to approach this issue, because it is an important one. After all, you…
As you already know by now, engagement is the key to customer conversion. People need to be provoked to interact with businesses and enjoy doing it. Marketing communication needs to be a dialogue, on each of your channels – social…
Content marketing continues to rule as the most effective and cost efficient strategy to build and establish your brand name and attract new customers. As you may already know, it takes a lot of time to plan and execute your…
Word of mouth is the best type of promotion. It is the endorsement given by someone who uses your products and gladly recommends them to their family and friends. In terms of trustworthiness, you cannot go higher than that. So,…
Of all the types of content you can create, one of them has the potential to help you build your reputation as an expert in your niche: the white paper. What are white papers? Originating in the corporate world, white…
If you look at the analytics of your website over a period of time, you will identify various types of visitors. There are unique visits which never repeat. There are people who keep coming to your website but never take…
Search engine optimisation represents a set of best practices and actions to be taken on a website to increase its visibility and findability on search engines (most importantly, Google). These best practices and actions are separated into two main categories:…
Your blog is updated frequently and according to your publishing schedule, yet engagement and traffic are on a steady decline. What could be the reason? Your topics are well within the interests of your target audience and your tone of…
Running a business blog is very different from keeping a personal blog, as so many entrepreneurs have found out. Personal blogging is something which you do whenever you feel you have something to share with your readers. A business blog…
eCommerce is the hottest topic of discussion among marketing specialists and business owners. In an increasingly mobile and connected world, people are more and more demanding when it comes to the flexibility and availability of the shopping experience. A few…
One of the most important decisions which will affect the success and popularity of your blog should be made right at the beginning, and it involves the layout. Many independent entrepreneurs and small companies spend little time planning the layout…
One of the best ways of specialising in any field or industry is by analysing what the true professionals are doing – how they work, what inspires them and what types of results they produce. In dissecting successful projects and…
Guest posting is among the most efficient ways for entrepreneurs and specialists to build their reputation as experts, to gain exposure towards a large audience and to attract new customers for their business. When you guest blog, you are not…
In France, whenever the king died and his heir took the crown, people would chant: “The king is dead! Long live the king!” Marketers reacted similarly the day they were finally ready to discard email in favour of social media…
Marketing has become a more personalised experience than ever before. Consumer tastes have changed. Everyone is online, and they’re all far too smart for old tricks and pandering advertising. They want an experience, built right into their social media. Businesses…
Have you noticed an increase of the bounce rate in your website analytics? This is one of the key signs that people have not found your website relevant and left it within the first 10 seconds after landing on it….
Building reputation for a company and confidence in its products or services has never been easy. However, in the present economy, with so many companies and products in each industry and niche, it is harder than ever to create proper…
One of the creative ways in which you can promote your business and products is by partnering with influential bloggers. These are people with a huge daily readership, and who have built a good reputation for great storytelling and authority…
Brands are like people: they are born, go through the difficult stages of the early days and growing process, and then they mature. Some of them die out before they can become established. Others develop and expand internationally, becoming instantly…
The family that does business together, stays together. At least, that is what the theory says. In real life, starting a business together with your family members can lead to ruptures, long-term recriminations and rifts which take generations to mend….
If you feel like expanding your reach through paid promotion on other social media platforms after Facebook, then Twitter is the next best thing for your business. The lively platform promoting direct and to-the-point communication through 140-character messages is extremely…
Small businesses have to think big on a small budget – and this is one big challenge to face, especially when it comes to marketing. Competing with larger companies is largely unfeasible, but even competition from similar-sized businesses is difficult….
How many times did you have to postpone something for tomorrow because you did not manage to complete it on time? How many of your tasks are postponed from one day to another, until you realise that they are overdue?…
Customer service is at the heart of every business which wants to build customer loyalty and retain them for a long time. It does not matter if you are the CEO of a large corporation or a small business owner,…
Hard-selling marketing strategies are less and less effective, and businesses themselves acknowledge the fact that it is preferable to nurture leads through the complete sales funnel and then retain them as loyal customers and brand ambassadors. Selling is a complex…
Entrepreneurship is all about being that special apple which wants to be out of the basket and expand their horizons beyond the accepted confinements. An entrepreneur is not happy with a nice safe job and a nice monthly income. Entrepreneurs…
Content curation is a fairly new concept among marketers and social media specialists. It means finding interesting content within your area of interest, finding a good context within your marketing strategy to share it to your audience, and then sharing…
Social media reputation is just as important as your market share and financial position. In the internet age, both private consumers and corporate clients rely on the social media and their friends’ recommendations to evaluate businesses and products. A negative…
One of the creative ways in which you can increase your reach and create awareness for your business is through guest blogging. This means that you have to find a popular blog (or multiple) and have an article written by…
Delegating is both a challenge and a liberating move. It is a challenge for entrepreneurs who believe in doing everything themselves and having control over everything going on in their business. It is liberating once they realise that they should…
Let’s be honest: we are all prone to fall victim to procrastination. Or we get sidetracked from work by a new email, or a link to an article we saw on our Facebook timeline. It is easy to say to…
There is a saying in the English language: keeping up with the Joneses. This means striving to keep the same high living standard as your neighbours and not lagging behind with the fashion sense. It’s the soft definition of snobbery,…
The coming of the New Year is an occasion of making plans and resolutions, and hoping for a better life, both on a personal and a professional level. It is like a new writing book with blank pages which you…
Every business on this planet started out as a small business. They started out being run by visionary entrepreneurs who believed in their skills, and in the products and services they developed. As they started growing, the entrepreneurs discovered, tested…
What does your regular day of work look like? Full of tasks from yesterday and more tasks piling up? Do you feel swamped with too many things to do and too little time? This is a vicious cycle which can…
Running your social media marketing is an ongoing and time-consuming task, so many small business owners believe that the right solution is to hire a social media team to take care of this issue. It seems like the natural thing…
If you want to grow a successful business you have to set your mind for success. That is the theory and – guess what – it is true even in practice. What makes entrepreneurs different from other people is the…
Return on investment (or ROI) is the most effective tool for measuring the success of your advertising and marketing activities. It has a very simple formula of calculation. You divide the incomes you obtained from a campaign by the amount…
Content is king in the marketing world. And it’s not just an activity you do for a few weeks or a few months, but continually. Yes, this means that you are supposed to come up with fresh, original content all…