How to Promote Your WordPress eCommerce Site

Once you’ve set up your WordPress ecommerce site, then you have to start promoting. But, before you start, make sure your website is optimized for conversions.

If you are using Shopify or WooCommerce, key features are already built-in. They are both already Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant. That means they use “https” to keep your credit card information safe.

They both also have SEO optimization functionality, but you do have to actually use it. Once you have your site ready to go, then start promoting. Where do you start?

Social Media

The potential to reach an enormous market of buyers for your online business by using social media is huge. There are a ton of social media sites, so don’t spend too much time having a small presence on all the available sites – unless you have a large staff helping you.

If you want to, you can complete a profile with links to your website on some of the less popular social media sites to get more exposure. But pay attention to which networks send the most traffic to your site and of course, generate the most conversions.

It is better to focus your attention on the main social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. Choose one as your primary and use the others to send people to your site and where you are most active.

Be sure to fill out your profiles on social media sites with links to your website and short bios. Also, take the time to upload your logo. Then you can start posting links and publishing content to attract your target audience.

Paid Advertising

Although paid advertising obviously costs money, it can be very effective. If you can achieve and maintain a high conversion rate, your costs will be more than paid for by getting more customers.

Facebook ads can provide a good resource for your website. It has strict guidelines and rules, in addition to changing frequently, so be sure to stay on top of the latest trends on the Facebook advertising platform.

You can also use pay-per-click advertising. This allows you to pay only when someone clicks a link directly to your site.

Once a potential customer comes to your store, it is your responsibility to convert them to buyers. Be sure you have a well-designed user experience and conversion process, so you can see positive results and get more sales.

Video Marketing

Using video in your marketing enables you to take advantage of a powerful opportunity to boost conversions and sales, improve ROI, build trust, engage your audience and encourage social shares. There are many different types of videos you can create.

If you are selling a physical product, you can create a video demonstrating how your product works.

It is relatively easy, and inexpensive, to record live video footage and to demonstrate a physical product in use.

Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Most people ask their friends and family about their experiences with something they are considering purchasing. Remember, people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust, so if they don’t know your business, they will look to get recommendations from people who do.

Getting testimonials and recommendations about your business goes a long way in helping build trust with your target market.

You can and should share these on social media.

Pay attention to your customer service. How you respond to customer service issues online is a good way to enhance your brand and increase sales.

Email Marketing

People often purchase products or services during their return visits to a store. The best way to get these return visits is by growing your email subscriber list.

You will want to apply email best practices to get the best open and click-through rates.

There are many ways to take advantage of email marketing to boost your sales. For instance, you can send out emails about a new product launch.

You can also build and improve your relationships with current customers by periodically sending out emails relevant and of interest to your customers.

Blogging

Many small business owners do not have the budget to spend on advertising but they still need and want to promote their business.

Blogging provides an effective, low-cost method to drive traffic to your website.

You can create blog posts about the actual product or service you are selling or to announce soon-to-be-released products or services.

Milestones, events or other company news are also excellent blog topic ideas.

You can also make use of the power of video and create video blogs, also known as vlogs. If you are comfortable in front of a video camera, using this technique adds that personal touch to your potential customers.

Don’t forget, just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. You have to market and promote your ecommerce site to increase your sales.

Important Features of an Email Verification Service

One of the best ways to promote a business on a digital platform is through email marketing. This form of marketing enables you to connect with your clients directly, but as with any other method, there are some disadvantages associated with email marketing as well. There are times when you send out an email, only to find out that it wasn’t delivered. If this happens frequently i.e. the bounce rate is very high, it can have an impact on your reputation and can also get you blacklisted by ISPs. Why does this happen? This typically happens when a business’s contact database becomes obsolete.

There is a possibility that your clients changed email addresses, switched jobs or may have unsubscribed from a mailing list. This is where an email verification service can be immensely helpful as it can ensure the deliverability of the email addresses you have accumulated. Here are some important features of an email verification service:

  • Efficiency

It is not possible to confirm the validity of an email address with a single look. However, email verification service is basically a software that takes only a few seconds to determine an email address’s validity and can give you accurate results. A good email verification service automatically deletes all duplicate and irrelevant email addresses.

  • Notifications

A high-quality email verification service is programmed to send timely notifications of any changes and also provides you with delivery reports. This aids you in ensuring that your emails are delivered to the right address. In addition, it is a great way of reducing the number of expired emails and this can help the business in developing a great reputation.

  • Reliable

One of the most notable features of a good email verification service is its reliability. When a business’s email list is growing rapidly, it needs the service to verify the addresses are reliable and they want one that can give quick and accurate results simultaneously. The use of a reliable service can also raise the business’s performance as the emails are delivered to the target audience and provide the desired results.

  • Affordable

A great email verification service is easy to install and also quite affordable. There are a number of such services available today and they offer various packages to their clientele. But, the pricing can vary, depending on the number of addresses they can verify. Monthly packages are typically a good choice for every business as they reduce the hassle of paying on a daily basis.

  • Burden

Ability to handle a huge list of email addresses without any impact on the accuracy of results is another prominent feature of an email verification service. A good one should be able to handle your growing email list competently and should not make any mistakes that can have a negative impact on your business’s reputation.

If you are searching for an email verification service, you can look for the features outlined above to make the right decision for your business needs.

Email verifier platforms let you save money. For this, choose yearly subscription plan which nearly always goes with discounts.

Tips To Effective Blogging For Your Business Website

Blogging has become a popular trend for being an excellent source of making money. Many businesses set up their blogs aiming to get a higher number of target audience while some people fail to utilize the benefit of marketing techniques for their blog posts. Those who have their blog pages can understand how marketing can strengthen their business and boost the sales.

Blogging is a special kind of SEO techniques. With numerous blogging techniques, you can have a large number of audiences on your website making it a success. The more people enter your website and read your blog posts, the more it will help you achieve your target. You can use professional help and buy blog posts to attract more readers.

The most important aspect is to pick good software when setting up your blog.  While Blogger and WordPress are some of the most common blogging software, some blogs may need exclusively customized software built with a scratch. This way you can design various functions of user accounts so it can suit your business’s requirements.

There are lots of effective ways to optimize your blog and improve its ranking on most search engines. You can also learn the techniques to achieve good backlinks. But SEO is going to work only if you have successfully set up an optimized blog.

Below are 5 of the most effective techniques that will help you optimize your blog in a more effective way.

  1. Learn to Drive Audience to Your Blog

Having a large amount of audience to your blog will ensure its success. A useful way to make your blog stand out is to learn how you can optimize it for different search engines. Use an SEO plug-in like SEOPressor to identify the areas needed to be taken care for higher ranking and optimization of your blog.

  1. Optimize Blog Name

A website name takes few seconds to get a prospect’s attention. So, make sure you choose a domain name for your blog that contains the main keywords of your business. It must be easy to spell and tell the prospect what your blog is about.

  1. Regularly Update Your Blog

Make sure to update your blog at least 3 times a week in order to keep your readers engaged in your blog.

  1. Link Building

Link building is very crucial to make money through blogging. Many successful bloggers exchange links with those bloggers who are involved in the same niche as theirs. This is a smart way to help increase your blog ranking based on the quantity and quality of links back to your blog.

  1. Be Original

Nobody wants to read the same material over and over. So, give your readers something new and informative. Express yourself through your writing.

Below are additional tips to get a successful blogging exposure for your business.

  • Visit other blogs and be an active participant in different forums within your niche.
  • Do not host a different domain because this will affect marketing, search engine ranking, backlinks, and audience’s attention.
  • Make sure to have a clearer idea of your business in the beginning as it can be very difficult to change at a later stage.
  • Do not add unnecessary links to your blogs.
  • Share contents with feeds on social media.
  • Offer something special through your blog in order to make it a premier one.
  • Make a research before creating a new title.
  • Proofread and make necessary changes before publishing.
  • Add the readers’ comment option after you have some steady audience on your blog.
  • Tag your blog content perfectly.
  • Additionally, use article marketing and comment on other blogs as it will help you create backlinks and raise your ranking.

iPhone’s Market Share Slips due to Late Launch of iPhone X

On Tuesday, a research firm disclosed data, which showed that the market share for Apple Inc.’s iPhones had been pulled down in some key regions due to the unavailability of the iPhone X in the three months ended October. In contrast, higher sales had been recorded by phones running on Google’s Android operating system. The sales of Apple’s iOS operating system are used for measuring the market share of the company in the market and the data showed that it had been 40.9 percent a year ago in the United States. However, in this quarter, it had declined to 32.9 percent.

Sales of the smartphone operating system were analyzed for the quarter ended in October not just in the US, but also in other areas. The data accumulated shows that iOS market share also slipped in some key European markets and Japan whereas Android was able to gain more share in these markets. This problem occurred for Apple mostly because its 10th anniversary edition of its iconic device, the iPhone X was launched in November rather than on September 22nd, when the company introduced its iPhone 8. The delay of longer than a month made it inevitable for Apple to see a decline in its market share as lots of people chose to wait for the new device rather than buying an iPhone 8.

There was a huge difference in sales numbers of the flagship iPhone 7 launched in 2017 as compared to those of the non-flagship iPhone 8 launched this year. The open-source platform belonging to Google, Android, is currently leading the market of mobile operating systems and is used by a large number of smartphone makers. In the quarter ended in October, Android’s share in the United States market increased to 66.2 percent from 58 percent in the same quarter a year ago. Android also increased its market share in some other countries including Britain, Japan and Germany.

Nevertheless, a bright spot for Apple Inc. was urban China as the iPhone maker saw its iOS market share rise by nearly 0.5 percent and reached 17.4 percent. As far as Android is concerned, it saw its share fall slightly in the Chinese market as it came down to 82.3 percent. While this could come as disappointing news for Apple, there is a good chance the company will be able to regain its market share in the holiday quarter as its iPhone X has hit the shelves.

The smartphone has seen a very strong demand and received positive reviews from users and critics alike. Despite the high price tag of $999, people are seen going to sell iPhone 7 and iPhone 8, and upgrading to the iPhone X rapidly, especially those who had decided to wait for the device instead of investing in the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 8 Plus. The rise in the iOS market share can be expected in the holiday quarter not just in the United States, but also other markets where Apple may have seen experienced a slow-down in its growth or a decline in market share.

Top 3 Reasons Programmatic Advertising Should Be in Your Budget This Coming Year

The upcoming year could be the time when your company finally breaks out and becomes a true industry leader. One of the resources that can make that happen is the practical use of programmatic advertising. While you’ve heard the term, do you know what this approach can accomplish? Here are three examples of what this advertising strategy can do to take your business to a brand new level.

Excellent Targeting Tool

One of the most important keys to online marketing success is knowing where your customers are most likely to go. That means being aware of which social media sites they tend to frequent as well as what they tend to search for online. While you may not be aware of all the places they go, you can learn more thanks to how programmatic advertising works.

This approach allows you to measure results in real time. It’s possible to quickly determine that people interested in what you sell tend to migrate to a certain social media site, that they love to watch videos, and that they tend to share specific interests with others who buy your products. That information allows you to develop a more targeted approach to reaching consumers and enjoying a greater response to your ads.

Works Great for Mobile Advertising Too

Did you know that the number of consumers who rely heavily on making a purchase via smartphones continues to grow? While laptops, desktop computers, and tablets are not going away, the need to invest in advertising geared for a mobile device is crucial. Make sure your ads will display easily on smartphone screens and that they include elements that attract the consumers who are likely to buy your products.

You’ll find that programmatic marketing works just as well with mobile advertising as it does with general Internet-based advertising. Along with deploying ads that display properly on those smaller screens, a programmatic advertising approach helps identify the mobile sites best suited for reaching your target audience. The fact that so much of the process is automated and does not require constant manual intervention makes it an even better choice for your business advertising.

A Cost and Time Efficient Approach to Advertising

Ask any advertising professional about what it takes to mount a successful campaign and you will hear quite a bit about ad design, consumer demographics, and ad placement. Programmatic advertising does wonders for making sure the ads are placed strategically. As long as you come up with advertising that captures the eyes of your target audience and gives them a reason to watch your video, there is a better chance they will click to your site and place an order. Thanks to the way that you can set up the marketing, there is a constant flow of information that can be used to set parameters for cost and location. That allows you to quickly switch your ads from sites that don’t produce results and direct them to sites where your audience is more likely to be found. The real-time information and automated changes to ad placement will save a lot of time and money.

Before this year is over, contact a professional and learn more about what the right AcuityAds programmatic marketing platform can do for your business. While this year was good, implementing this approach will make next year even better.

Top Holiday Marketing Landing Pages

An out of date landing page is never a good idea if people land on it and it looks out of date, that’s going to raise some red flags and they may have a harder time trusting your offer.

That doesn’t necessarily mean modern design styles work better, you’ll have to test and see what works best, but we’re not talking about the design itself anyways.

For example, if your landing page has a reference to an iPhone 5 and we’re already at 8 and beyond, or something else that clearly “dates” it to a period of time that has passed, people will wonder if your offer is even still active.

The opposite is true, too, and you can take advantage of that during the holidays in some huge ways. If someone lands on your website during the holiday season, for example, and they see the holidays acknowledged, they’ll know you’re up to date and it can build massive trust.

We’re going to be taking a look at a few excellent holiday landing pages that you can use for inspiration, along with highlighting what makes them stand out.

Honey

Honey is a browser add-on that has been getting a lot of buzz lately due to clever marketing. Their plug-in is very, very relevant to holiday shopping. As your shopping, Honey finds you coupon codes that can be applies when you check out, to ensure you’re always getting the best discounts on your orders without having to dig through outdated and difficult to use coupon sites, avoiding the frustration of having to try ten different coupons that don’t even work, while being bombarded with pop-ups and other ads.

They have a landing page that shows that someone saved $50 on a pair of Beats headphones, a very popular gift this time of year, and when you scroll down they demonstrate a lot of different gifts that people have saved money on. It’s a very clean and simple landing page that gets the point across for holiday shoppers.

SpendIndie

This is a marketplace offering tons of different products that make excellent gifts, and they take advantage of the holiday season by curating some excellent lists of gifts. From stocking stuffers, specialty foods, last minute gift ideas – it’s all sorted into a convenient category for you to browse.

Unlike Honey, who promote various products in the context of being able to save money on them wherever you buy them from, SpendIndie actually operates a shopping cart on their site so that you can get your gifts right there.

If you have a shop online and aren’t taking advantage of the holidays, at least by mentioning them and curating some lists of gift ideas, you could be really missing out on one of the busiest seasons for shoppers.

AskGamblers

This one is a little different. This is a website where people can rate and review different online casinos, and the site also helps to resolve conflicts between players and online casinos. They have built up a ton of trust in the industry by acting as an advocate for the players, while also working closely with the casinos to resolve any disputes. As such, their recommendations are very trusted and carry a lot of weight.

For the holidays, they’ve put together a list of all of the best offers that casinos currently have, from free plays, to deposit bonuses, and more. It’s like a gift to their readers! Not only that, but it has some fun styling too, to make it more engaging. Notice how the snowflakes fall based on where your mouse cursor is? Did you take a moment to play with that a bit? Those little things can make a difference, if someone stays on the site a bit longer, they’re more likely to find an enticing offer from the list.

How to Become an Influencer in Your Industry With Focused Content Marketing?

Influencer marketing has quickly evolved; more than the quantum of likes and shares, brands are looking for more probing KPIs to evaluate influencers. On the consumer side, there’s increased clamor for more value, unbiased opinions, empowering content, and engagement. Content marketing for influencers should be done right! As an influencer, this is the right time for you to take your content marketing to the next level. Here’s some help.

Managing the Problem of Too Many Platforms

Influencer marketing presents unique challenges in terms of content marketing. Whereas traditional content marketers can get stuck on a couple of platforms and keep on building on the initial traction they get on those platforms, influencers need to do the same for a large number of platforms – social, email, own blog, guest blogs, newsletter, live video, webinars, SMS, podcasts, in-person interactions, and more. How does an influencer manage this? The answer:

  • Using an editorial calendar
  • Repurposing content across media channels
  • Maintaining a consistent voice across platforms
  • Earn Your Audience’s Love By delivering Memorable Content
  • Reach more people on their Smartphones using focussed SMS marketing. You can do this by using a bulk SMS service.

Create Truly Valuable Content

Influencers need to thoroughly realize that their audiences have to willingly engage with their content. To do this, you need to make your ultra valuable. Look at it this way – with every 10% incremental effort in your content, you make it better than 90% of current competing Influencers cresting similar content in your niche. Here are some tips:

  • Create content pieces with a number of takeaways promised in the title
  • Create resources that solve audience problems (example, a list of 50 business directories where startups can create their business pages)
  • Make your content highly structured (ideally, with a linked table of contents)
  • Look to interview experts from a niche and present bite sized takeaways
  • Offer an option to ‘download as PDF’ or ‘send to Kindle’ at the end of the article

Make ‘Moments’ Count

Fads, tends, hype, buzz – influencers need to be at the top of their content game when faced with a moment that promises any of these elements. For every niche business analysis is extremely important. You are not alone in the race, you will surely be competing with other influencers of the same niche. Hence, making your content a part of social conversations on trending topics within your niche, or leading the conversation, is what makes influencers truly influential. Consider these tips:

  • Use Google Trends to check the keywords your audiences are using in their searches. Use these keywords in your content.
  • Trust online conversion channels like Quora to understand the queries that audiences need answered. Use these questions to create a masterful FAQs guide on a topic.
  • Silently follow some of the leading influencers in your niche to track what they’re doing in terms of latest content. This alone can help you eliminate guess work from your content marketing.

User Generated Content

Social media influences must be prepared to be approached. An indicator of your content’s success is to have people reaching out to you with comments and queries. This naturally makes user generated content a key element of the content marketing mix for an influencer. Here are some ways you can do so:

  • Social media contests and giveaways are the best method of generating focused and positive user generated content.
  • Focus on Facebook for getting user generated videos, and on Twitter and Instagram for user generated photo content.
  • Wisely choose a campaign specific hashtag to keep all user generated content under control, and to be able to analyze results afterwards.

Note: User generated content will invariably bring in a lot of spam; to combat user generated spam, use tactics such as CAPTCHA in registration and submission forms, IP tracking, moderator approval, etc.

Bonus Tip: Collaborations

Influencer ecosystem values the idea of giving, sharing, and collaborating. 90% of the times, your content will need to be non promotional and super valuable for your readers. Collaborations with other influencers can help you quickly and inexpensively scale up your followership. To do so, look for collaborators with more presence on a social platform where your impact hasn’t yet peaked. You can use Influence.co, for instance, to conduct influencer research to find out and follow up with the most well suited potential collaborators.

Concluding Remarks

For an influencer, content marketing is more complicated and important than any business brand. Content makes your brand value as an influencer. Use the tips presented in this guide to improve your content marketing.

How to create a good business website

Every business nowadays must be represented online – it has become a market standard.  The internet is a global marketplace for any sphere of professional activity, and a huge number of purchases, orders and deals are made online every day. You can ignore phones, mails, and other communication channels, but it is impossible to run a company without a website. Moreover, the value of the website has been growing from year to year.

The online market is constantly evolving. The ability to access the internet from mobile phones and tablets has caused a real shift in the evolution of ecommerce, and nowadays we are online everywhere, regardless of our location and activities. Each service and enterprise, even the smallest local firm, for example, a beauty salon or café must have a site, not to mention large enterprises and international business sharks. And that’s that.

Over the last few years the part of all mobile internet users has grown to 50%, and the mobile traffic share continues to grow.Continue reading →

Why you should choose Captaincash

Employees try to budget their income ensuring that they can sustain themselves with their salaries, but at times things may not go as expected. You may find that you are having a problem that needs to be addressed in the middle of the month. Since it is an emergency applying for a bank loan may not be the best option because of the time it will take for your money to be processed. So where do you turn to? Today if you want to apply for quick cash, you should not worry. You can seek the help of Captaincash and apply online today.

Continue reading →

How To Use Content Marketing Effectively in The Digital Age

For many, the prospect of using digital marketing as their main form of advertising is a daunting concept. Although a recent phenomenon, the growth in online marketing methods has increased dramatically in the past few years, and will only continue to do so.

We have put together a few tips on how you can get your business moving more towards digital, and how it can help to improve the overall performance of your business using online content

  1. Compelling content is vital for online marketing. Your content will have the attention of your readers for no longer than 5 seconds, before they decide to move on to the next article on their Facebook newsfeed. No content is unique, you are in competition with every piece of writing out there so you must ensure yours is well written, engaging, informative and short and relevant to what you want to achieve. Not only does this count for blogs, but every update on your social media channels will need to follow this too. Your company needs a strong voice to stand out from the crowds.
  2. Timing is key to gaining the most views and responses to your online content as possible. Conducting research into when your target audience are more likely to be engaging in social posts and reading blogs is useful in ensuring you gain the most out of the content you create, and the maximum number of potential customers available will see your posts.
  3. Engage with your customers online, react and respond to their comments and questions to show you are active. Don’t forget to share their content as well on platforms such as twitter, and to react and comment on their posts- it’s a two-way process in building up a relationship with customers. Use events and news to inspire your content, and to encourage.

Finally, you need to be committed. You must be posting and engaging in social media every day, and uploading blog posts to your website at least once a week, with plenty of keywords linking back to your website to help build your reputation of being a trustworthy, knowledgeable company with a sophisticated online marketing strategy.

It can be tricky to manage all of the different online advertising platforms available, especially for smaller businesses who perhaps lack the funding or staff available to take charge and manage the amount of content and the quality of production. SeeLocal is a local online advertising platform that allows businesses of any size to manage multiple online advertising providers through one easy to use platform, with the focus on targeting local customers.