Selling and Value What Do All Small Businesses Have in Common?

Selling and Value What Do All Small Businesses Have in Common?

According to the website Internet Retailer, there are upwards of 24 million businesses online, but only about 650,000 of them generate $1,000 or more annually. Not every small business in the world has a website or e-commerce functionality. The world of small business is much bigger than just what’s online. Regardless, the same strategies and principles apply to all small businesses, online or off.|The world of small business is much bigger than just what’s online. Regardless, the same strategies and principles apply to all small businesses, online or off.

Something Different

Warren Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, which is the parent company of numerous insurance, energy, manufacturing, finance, real estate, publishing, and other businesses. A single share of Berkshire stock is currently valued at more than $200,000.

It’s a successful and well-diversified |a well-diversified and successful conglomerate. Yet, when Buffett purchased it in 1964, Berkshire Hathaway was a failing Massachusetts textile mill, known for making the linings for men’s suits. When Buffett purchased it in 1964, Berkshire Hathaway was a failing Massachusetts textile mill, known for making the linings for men’s suits. Buffett maintained that line of business for a few years before moving into other investments and eventually shutting down the textile operation.

Like Berkshire, there are many big companies around today that started out selling one kind of product or service but now do something different.

But there are small businesses too.

Away from Affiliate Marketing

There are many businesses primarily involved in showing people how to make money online. This involved teaching people how to generate traffic and the basic mechanics of getting leads and building a list. Many customers became business affiliates and marketed various products geared toward online success. Others used what they learned to market their own products.Some are just focused on “business education.”

By “business education,” I don’t mean training on how to run an internet marketing business. Rather, it means addressing the challenges that all small businesses– online or off– have in common: how to get more customers, how to increase productivity, or how to hire with confidence, just to name a few.

Final Thought

Small business owners are a much larger audience than affiliate/online marketers. We have the educational and training resources to help anyone start and grow their own business, as well as protect their assets. So, we haven’t quit the affiliate marketing business, but we’ve merely widened our gates to include all small businesses. We have shifted our focus toward education and training products that apply to and will benefit any business owner. Small business owners are a much larger audience than affiliate/online marketers.

Source: Features of a successful business

What Are the Best Ways to Get Likes on a Brand’s New Facebook Page?

What Are the Best Ways to Get Likes on a Brand’s New Facebook Page?

The most effective ways of generating fans are:

1. Contests for Fans
Because many businesses struggle to capture quality fans, it’s difficult to recommend contests. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and it’s one that many businesses fall for and waste resources on.

If you’re using a contest to give away an iPad and your brand isn’t related to Apple, there is a good chance these people are only “liking” your page for the contest itself. If there is a direct link between your product and the prize, you have a better chance to capture not only a large quantity but also high-quality fans. You can run a variety of contests.

Sweepstakes
In sweepstakes, the winners are selected through a random draw. In a contest, on the other hand, the winners are selected either by a jury or audience voting or a combination of both, and the entries are evaluated according to the skill of the submission (e.g. a photo contest).

Why running sweepstakes on Facebook will drive fans?

Friend invites: Users can easily invite their friends to join the sweepstakes.<br />
News feeds and ticker: For every person entering the sweepstakes, more people will potentially see this action through their ticker or news feed.

User Generated Content (UGC) Contest
Entrants must submit their original work (e.g. photo, video, essay, recipe, t-shirt design, etc.) and will undergo a voting system via public, company-wide, or a combination of both, to determine the winner.

Why running an UGC on Facebook will drive fans?

News mini-feeds and feeds: Content is generated when people upload submissions or vote. Users’ video or photo submissions are embedded in their news feeds for more compelling and dynamic reach.
Comments: Public can comment on submissions posting of comments generate news feeds and notifications.
Share button: Users can easily share their favorite submissions with friends.
( Contest Ideas & Descriptions sourced from experience working with Wildfire Interactive).

2. Create a Great Product.
There are tons of small to medium-sized businesses who have generated tons of “likes” on Facebook simply by offering great products. People tend to become so passionate about brands and businesses that they search for them, and the businesses receive “likes” because of it.

3. Utilize Existing Channels.
One of the best ways to generate likes is to utilize your other channels and promote your Facebook page. Thus, it’s important to integrate your Facebook page with your website, blog and, if possible, your store.

4. Advertising Campaigns.
Optimizing online ads with clear calls-to-action and specific targeting is key. Facebook Advertising presents you with a great opportunity to connect with consumers of all walks of life. When developing Facebook Ads, however, it’s important to ensure that you’re targeting your advertisements towards the appropriate audience.

You can then develop an advertisement that will best serve your business’s objectives and goals once you have developed this customer profile. Once the demographics and psychographics are complete, you could upload captivating content that will capture the audience’s attention.

To ensure you’re targeting the right audience, I’d suggest you start by creating a customer profile that highlights not only the demographics but also the psychographics associated with your key audience.

There are different types of ads now available on Facebook, ranging from sponsored stories to simple ads. All of them can generate different results depending on (1) your business, and (2) what you’re looking to accomplish.

That said, if you’re looking to increase your number of likes, you’re most certainly going to run an ad that ties back to this desired approach. You should make sure that the users you target are not currently fans of your brand.

Take note: Generating Facebook fans is easy. Keeping them from leaving is tough.

Source: Social media for brands

The Risks and Rewards of Investing and Diversifying

The Risks and Rewards of Investing and Diversifying

I’m a big believer in devoting all of your efforts into a single major business. My advice is to just focus on one big income stream at first, rather than concentrating on other opportunities. You should only consider diversifying when you’re ready, able and have enough experience.

Diversifying your business is not a simple task. There are risks involved that should be minimized as much as possible. Your attention could be compromised when it has to be focused on different divisions of your business.

Focus on One
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not focusing on their main income stream, or they think they can easily diversify their wealth and investment as soon as their project takes off. Both are very daring approaches to business.

An article in The Economic Times (India) elaborates on this: “Some diversifications turn out to be successful while others don’t. Because diversification comes with its own set of drawbacks and benefits, this is.

It is an enabling tool for companies intending to de-risk their businesses by removing dependency on a single business segment. Since different business segments have varying growth cycles, well-diversified companies are better able to ride out a rough business cycle.”

The Risks of Premature Diversification
If you throw caution to the wind and decide to diversify your business too soon, there a number of problems you might encounter, like:

If your employees– who most likely joined your company to be part of your thriving start-up– begin to question your dedication to the business, they may reconsider the direction you’re taking the company in since you’re no longer giving the same time and creative input as you once did.

Lack of Experience

In order to avoid constant failures, you should try to diversify your business into industries that you’re knowledgeable about. Remember, it can be much more difficult to succeed in diversifying your business when you don’t have the required skills or experience.

Compromising Resources
According to Small Business Chron, “If, through mismanagement, excessive ambition or simple greed, a company’s directors seek to expand in too many directions at once, both new and old sectors of the company may suffer from lack of attention and insufficient resources.” Make sure you do so with caution and always aim to minimize the risks to your company’s resources if you are going to diversify.

Compromising Attention

If you attempt to diversify your business and wealth, it’s likely that you’ll have to dedicate time to making those ventures work. That means you’re most likely taking time away from your current business.

Difficulties in Product Development

Brainstorming new product ideas will require you to sacrifice hours of work, which hinders you from working on high-leverage tasks for your business.

Other Income Stream Opportunities

If you attempt to diversify your business and wealth, it’s likely that you’ll have to dedicate time to making those ventures work. In order to avoid constant failures, you should try to diversify your business into industries that you’re knowledgeable about. Remember, it can be much more difficult to succeed in diversifying your business when you don’t have the required skills or experience.

Don’t ever compromise your productivity, responsibility, creativity and leadership to your current team– they’re the ones that helped you be in the position to succeed and enable you to expand your business ventures.

Conclusion

The main purpose for diversifying your business and assets is to increase your cash flow and grow your wealth. Be sure to do your homework once you’ve become established and have enough capital to invest in other ventures. Research the best industry to diversify into and see how well it performs based on ROIs.

Don’t get sucked into fad opportunities as you’ll risk losing your hard earned money. Invest wisely. The most important thing to focus on is your current business where you get the majority of your income from. The good thing about this is you can invest money without having to put in the time and effort it would otherwise take to make shrewd decisions since 

Source: Benefits of diversifying investments

Color Psychology and What it Has to Do With Branding

Color Psychology and What it Has to Do With Branding

Color is extremely important in branding your business. When someone looks at a logo, the color is the foremost thing that they remember. In fact, according to Color Matters, 80 percent of visual information that we take in is related to color.

Why Color Matters

According to the research that was conducted by the secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo, they found that-

• 92.6% of consumers say that visual factors influenced their purchase decision
• 5.6% said that touching the product had influence on their decision
• 0.9% said that smell had anything to do with their decision

They determined that anywhere between 62% and 90% of purchases are made based on color alone.

Branding Identity

The color that you chose has everything to do with your brand identity. Color increases brand recognition by up to 80%.

Many brands have sets of colors trademarked for protection against other brands in the same market. For instance, Coca-Cola has its iconic red and white scheme protected. Lots of others have single shades of color trademarked too, like John Deere, McDonalds and Starbucks.

These brands try to associate themselves with their color at a fundamental level. To achieve that sort of recognition, brands have to peg their signature color to nearly everything—marketing, packaging, uniforms, store decor and more.

So when you hear one of these brands’ names, it should be easy to think of its color. What about your brand color or imaging?

Can you be identified over anyone else ? This is what all marketers and personal brands should strive for. To create a USP (Unstoppable Sexy Positioning) for your brand that your customers recognize throughout your whole sales process.

Increase Engagement

Ads that have color are read up to 42% more than the same content in black and white. It also can improve the ability for your audience to read and comprehend your content. Taking learning styles into account when building ads is highly important. If you have written something or presented it in a way that they cannot understand, you are wasting your time.

Color Psychology

Take a peep below at the psychology of color when developing your brand.

Red- Energy, Passion, and Boldness

Orange- Health, Wealth, and Youthfulness

Yellow- Joy, Energy, and Warmth

Green- Growth, Balance and Well Being

Blue- Peace, Confidence, and Serenity

Purple- Royalty, Luxury, and Success

What Colors and Styles You Wear Is Part Of Your Branding

During the first Media and the City event, we brought in Brian Cook. He’s a stylist with many prestigious clients. He gave us many tips about what to wear on camera to represent our brands well. Colors had a lot to do with his suggestions.

Brian estimates that it takes 1/10 of a second for a person to assess your competence and trustworthiness. The colors and styles you are wearing is a big part of your message whether you realize it or not.

Implementing color psychology into your wardrobe is an important part of your branding strategy. This is important to think about when you are creating promotional materials and videos.

Color is one part of your branding strategy. If you are interested in learning more about becoming fully branded from start to finish, be sure to check out the Freedom-preneur Academy.

Source: Colors Marketing Strategy

You Are a Brand- It’s Time to Share Your Personal Brand With Others

You Are a Brand- It’s Time to Share Your Personal Brand With Others

What is a perfect example of a brand? You, my friend, are a brand.

An artist. A photographer. Life coach. Presentation expert. Alternative energy entrepreneur. Website developer. Skin care clinician.

This is not a trend. This is social media, publishing, marketing, sales, work, play, passion and everything you read about all rolled into one.

1. Define your audience.

Tell yourself this: The focus of your blog—and all of your content—must be your readers. What do they need? What are their pains? How can you help them?

Of course, doing guesswork is possible, but chances are, you’ll run the risk of being wrong. One ideal way to removing the guesswork is to conduct a survey. You can ask a few specific questions to uncover demographic and psychographic information.

From the results of your survey, you’ll be able to profile your audience and work toward developing a more focused content with a higher probability of connecting with your readers.

2. Create a clear value proposition.

What is the unique thing that you can offer to your audience? Are they going to get something from investing their time in your content? What resources do you offer? Do you offer resources to help people work smarter? Leadership insights? These are just some examples of questions you should be asking yourself before proceeding.

What you need to do is to create a succinct and simple answer and you have your value proposition. However, you may have to experiment with your value proposition and revise it from time to time.

What will serve as the framework for all your efforts is your clear value proposition .

3. Write a compelling brand slogan.

Always be aware of the level of noise in media today and then recognize how critical it will be to make a strong impression quickly.

A great way to address this challenge is to put your value proposition into a slogan.

Here are some good examples:

• Lifehacker’s slogan is “Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done.”
• Social Media Examiner claims to be “Your guide to the social media jungle.”
• Ramit Sethi promises, “I will teach you to be rich.”
• Feldman Creative promises to “Turn on the power of online marketing.”

Now, how can you summarize your brand promise in a concise slogan?

4. Show yourself.

Of course, the best thing you should remember is that people want to connect with people, not merely brands.

One way is presenting a great photo of yourself which helps establish credibility and build trust. It also helps you connect via social media.

You can do this by simply getting a great headshot that captures the real, authentic you. You can invest in a professional photo shoot or if you prefer not to part with the money, hit up a friend with a quality camera and a command of portrait photography.

Always go into the session with a plan. You have to tell the photographer the impression that you aim to create, the you you’re looking to capture.

After reviewing the photos, pick one headshot to use on your website and across all your social media networks.

• Working at your computer
• Analyzing your client’s data
• Coaching one-on-one
• Facilitating a small group meeting
• Recording a podcast
• Shooting a video
• Speaking before a large crowd
• Autographing your book at an event
• For the photo that will serve you best is simply you looking into the lens smiling, looking friendly and approachable—with no distractions.

5. Establish a look.

Any brand that is memorable, your personal brand included, should present itself consistently. Using a variety of logos, colors, and fonts will confuse your audience.

Develop a look for your personal brand with simply the following:

A professionally designed logo

A pleasing color palette

A limited menu of fonts

Then you can now apply the standards you created to everything—your website, business cards, advertising, etc.

For now, you’re off to a good start….

‪#‎BEUNSTOPPABLEwhileBRANDING‬

Source: How to personally brand you

Create The Hub For Your Business On Facebook

Create The Hub For Your Business On Facebook

Whether you want to sell products, gain subscribers, persuade followers to a point or sway the hearts and minds of readers to your cause- they’ve got to know who you are in the first place. Your ability to encourage any of these actions comes from your brand’s authority. One of the best ways to build that is through the savvy use of social media.

Facebook Competition is Rising

In fact, recent research from Econsultancy shows that 71 percent of brands plan to invest more heavily in social media in the coming year to reach new followers and build brand reputation.

Want to join their ranks and become known in your industry?

Use Social Media!

Facebook is by the far the best platform for promoting brand awareness, as nearly three quarters of Americans adults use the site.

Where to Put Your Social Media Efforts

Each of the social media platforms can be used for different purposes. I’ve found that Facebook is my best bet for reaching my audience. That is not to say that the other platforms are not valuable.

Not sure which social media platform you need to invest your time in? Here’s a few good rules to follow when using a platform to create the hub for your business.

Facebook is a great platform for promoting virtually any brand, due to its very heterogeneous user base.

Instagram is a great option for brands that rely heavily on images, such as clothing companies and retailers. It’s also particularly effective for reaching young adults, Hispanics and African Americans.

Pinterest is an excellent social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewelry or clothing.

Twitter is perfect if you are trying to spread news and articles. It is also a good way to network with other professionals. While you may not get someone through their email, you can tweet at them to start a relationship.

Finally, if you operate a business-to-business company, LinkedIn is a stronger choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers.

Learn the Best Times to Post

There are certain times of the day that you should be posting for each social media platform. If you have an internet business, then it is best to post according to the EST time zone. For those that have brick and mortar businesses, you will want to go with the times that your audience is on.

Here are some suggestions to stick with when it comes to posting for best engagement.

Use the Value, Value, Offer Method

When you post, be sure to use the value, value, offer method. This is where you will post at least two value based posts for every offer based post that you share. If you bombard people with your offers, you will turn them off.

Related post: How to Create Killer That Keeps Giving and Leverage Facebook 

Focus your attention on giving your audience a lot of value. When you have given them value, value, then you have earned the right to share an offer with them.

Source: Become an authority

Successful Online Marketers Eat Frogs

Successful Online Marketers Eat Frogs

Why do we generally decline to eat the frog first thing in the morning, or at any time during the day? It’s because these major tasks usually involve things that are totally foreign to us so we feel there won’t be much satisfaction in the short term.

Frogs Top to Bottom.

People at all levels of businesses– newbies to veterans– have their frogs and we all find ways to avoid them.

What is the one thing you could do right now, today, that would move your business along? What could get you closer to being in business, get you that next client, create future income?

I first heard the saying from Brian Tracy, the personal development expert and sales trainer; in his book Eat That Frog! He uses it as a colorful way to say, “Stop procrastinating.”.

Are You Really Hungry?

” Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”.

He mingled among France’s upper classes, Chamfort supported the French Revolution. His use of the “frog” statement was aimed at his disgust with French high society.

More specifically, “eating the frog,” means tackling the biggest or most important task( s) that will move your business forward.

If you really want to be in business– if you’re really hungry– you’ve got to eat the frogs.

This humorous saying has been credited to 17th century American author Mark Twain (though someone on my staff has pointed out to me that there is no evidence that Twain ever said or wrote it; it’s a translation of a statement documented as having been written by a 17th century French humorist named Nicholas Chamfort, who was quoting an associate known as “Mr. de Lassay”).

How do I stop wasting time and just get on with it?

If you can motivate yourself to take on and complete the things you’ve been putting off– usually, they are big, meaningful things that would move your business forward– you will find yourself actually in business.

For people who are further along and do have an audience, the method is to announce your “frog” in an email, on social media, or both. It’s a good idea to put some cash up as well, to ensure you really do deliver. Declare that the penalty for failing to deliver is some amount of cash that you really can’t afford to lose. Either deliver and reclaim your cash or fail to deliver on time and lose it.

For someone just starting out, who does not yet have a list of customers and leads, you would make yourself accountable to a friend or family member.

Final Thought.

Use self-imposed accountability if motivation is hard to summon. The frog will seem palatable in comparison if you make the deadline short enough and the penalty stiff enough.

Source: Successful Online Marketing Strategies