NebulaBiz Cash Advance Melbourne Fl: July 2018

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

By David Epstein

When it comes marketing channels, you may think of email marketing, content marketing, or paid search marketing. You probably don’t think of doughnuts. But doughnuts are exactly what Google used to promote its Google Home product line. More generally speaking, Google used a unique event strategy, coupled with robust event software, to achieve its marketing goals.

In this post, we will take a look at leading brands that are implementing event marketing into their overall strategy, with a special focus on the unique tactics—from doughnuts to digital—that make these marketing campaigns so unforgettable.

1. Google: Pop-up doughnut shops

In October 2017, as an initiative to promote the Google Home Mini, the tech giant went the unconventional route of opening up pop-up doughnut shops across the country. Delectable doughnuts were served on large conveyor belts, and every so often, a Google Home Mini was given away instead.

The purpose was to create a memorable experience for consumers, while making a shareable moment for social media. This goes to show that an event marketing campaign does not have to directly reflect the product; it simply must evoke a positive reaction that can be remembered and shared.

Takeaway: There’s always a way to bring your business to the people. Google’s a tech company, not a bakery—yet it found a tasty way of putting the Google brand front and center.

2. HubSpot: INBOUND

With over 20,000 attendees, HubSpot’s INBOUND has grown from a software conference to a global movement. Ideas that are discussed during the event extend far beyond marketing automation, and that’s the very reason it’s become such a successful event. HubSpot was not afraid to create an event which was beyond its scope of software sales because the company knew that an event is most impactful, not when attendees recall what they have learned, but when they remember how they felt.

Takeaway: User conferences offer the perfect opportunity for customers to personally engage with your brand. In addition, an event is only as impactful as it is memorable.

3. YouTube: Fan festival

An event does not have to be a solo act. You can share the spotlight with others in order to leverage each other’s brands and audience reach; YouTube’s FanFest does just that. YouTube invites the most popular stars on its platform to promote their brands, while also bolstering the YouTube name in the process. Working in collaboration is a great way to make an event successful.

Takeaway: Sometimes the best way to highlight your brand is to feature someone else’s. Just like YouTube featured some of the biggest talent to delight its user base, there may be a way for your brand to feature another brand to drive an outcome.

4. Salesforce and Sales Hacker: Partner marketing

For its annual conference, Sales Hacker approached Salesforce, the industry leading sales CRM platform, to co-sponsor their event Sales Machine and the partnership was made. Executing an event alongside other partners is a great way to benefit from one another’s network and resources. When there is a clear vision of the event and alignment between partners, the collaborative opportunities are endless.

Takeaway: You don’t have to be a big brand to find event partners. In this case, Salesforce was approached by Sales Hacker, a much smaller organization. Work with other partners—big and small—to help you spread the word and drive more attendees to your next event.

5. Facebook: Roaring Twenties holiday party

As with all events, theme is a crucial factor for the entire experience. Having a unique theme makes the event more memorable and shareable. Facebook clearly knew this as it put together a dazzling Roaring Twenties themed holiday party that was shared heavily on social media.

Takeaway: Having a unique theme can elevate an event to a spectacle. Whether you are running a holiday party for your employees or an opening for a new store, consider getting thematic.

6. Adobe MAX: Projection mapping

An event should be a visual spectacle. Adobe went with projection mapping (the use of projectors to superimpose images onto objects/walls) to create a memorable setting in which Adobe MAX was taking place. By making this clear visual statement, attendees walked away with a lasting impression of the event.

Takeaway: Event if you are working with much less real estate than Adobe MAX had, projection mapping is possible on a smaller scale and still leaves a lasting impression on attendees.

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7. The Olympics: #PyeongChang2018

Though this is not your typical live event, there are plenty of takeaways from the 2018 Olympics that can be applied to your event marketing plan. Specifically, the Olympics’ use of the event hashtag was a great way to keep viewers engaged throughout the games and made it easy for them to share content. Having a consistent and memorable hashtag is a social media best practice

Takeaway: You don’t need to be an international organization to have an event hashtag. It’s a great way to promote and track conversations about your brand.

8. ToughMudder: Live video event promotion

Giving registrants a sneak peak into what to expect from an event via live video is a great promotional tactic as it helps build anticipation. The ToughMudder challenge has become a world-famous obstacle course, and in order to promote the event, the marketing team puts up live videos of training events. This a great opportunity for people to engage with the content as well as sign up for ToughMudder.

Takeaway: Live video can be a great channel for promoting your event and creating anticipation among those who are already registered to attend.

9. Brightcove: Ongoing content series

As a way to build up excitement for an event, a content series that sheds more light on the event is a great way to keep registrants engaged and keep your event top of mind. In order to promote its annual PLAY conference, Brightcove created a speaker series in which it recorded interviews of the speaker lineup.

Takeaway: Creating serial content leading up to the event is a great way to make sure the event stays top of mind for attendees and potential attendees.

10. Social media marketing world: Event wrap-up video

Just because an event is over doesn’t mean that the momentum has to be. An event wrap-up video serves as multi-purpose content that can be used as a thank-you video to attendees, as well as for promotional use for the following year’s event.

Takeaway: A lot goes on at your event. Take advantage of all of those brilliant moments by recording them and repurposing them for future event promotion.

Key takeaways

Some of the key takeaways to keep in mind are:

1. An event can be about meeting your audience where they are.There’s always a way to bring business to the people.

2. Create wonderfully memorable experiences that create customer satisfaction with events for customers.

3. Experiment with events that aren’t explicitly about your business offering to give your audience something unexpected.

4. A well-structured theme can turn an ordinary event into a stunning spectacle. Don’t be afraid to be bold.

5. Remember that an event is a content goldmine. Gather as much video, testimonials, and content as possible throughout the event for multipurpose use.

About the Author

Post by: David Epstein

David Epstein works at Bizzabo, the world’s #1 rated event software. Bizzabo is a fast-growing SaaS company that’s raised nearly $30M in funding. Customers like Vice, USAA, GitHub, and WeWork use Bizzabo to plan professional events. David leads Bizzabo’s customer acquisition strategy, and manages a team of six professionals across two offices. Prior to joining Bizzabo, David was a management consultant at Kantar Consulting. There, he worked exclusively with Fortune 100 companies to develop marketing strategies and to reorganize 100+ person marketing teams.

Company: Bizzabo
Website: www.bizzabo.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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5 Ways to Help Your Brand Make a Great First Impression

With more than a billion websites on the internet, it’s going to take a lot for your brand to stand out from the crowd. At the same time, even if someone does visit your site, it’s likely they will only spend a few seconds scrolling through your content before moving onto the next site. This doesn’t leave very much time to make a great first impression or to brand your site or service.

In this post, we are going to highlight some of the best ways to take advantage of the short amount of time we all have to create a better blog, brand, and business on the internet today.

1. Create a name, logo, and identity for your brand

Before doing any type of marketing or branding for your business, you are going to want to have a logo. This is something every successful business and brand in the world has today. Just take a look at names like Nike, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Target. Some of these logos are so well-known, people know what they are without having to see the company name.

When it comes to creating a logo for your brand, you can go a few different directions—creating your own logo, hiring a designer, or using the some of the best tools the internet has to offer. Since most new businesses are working on a budget, I would recommend going with one of the many free logo making tools out there to see if they can get the job done for you. If not, see what you can create, and then pass them along to a professional designer to refine them.

In addition to creating a logo design and identity for your brand, you may still be trying to decide on the right name. If that’s the case, you can refer to any of these name generators to get the job done. From brand names, domains, products, and more, there are plenty of free logo and name generators to take advantage of, which will save you a lot of money in the process.

2. Make the most of social media

As we all know, social media works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With the number of people accessible through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram in the billions, it’s important to make sure your brand is working for you as well.

Here are a few simple steps to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, even when you aren’t actually working:

Secure your brand name as your social profile username or URL.
Update your social profile photo with your brand logo.
Create a custom background on Twitter and Facebook.
Set up and schedule social updates on your brand.

Also, just creating a social presence and uploading generic content isn’t enough—you also need to be interesting and engaging in the process. You can see some good examples of how this is being done by Neil Patel through his massive online social followings.

By following these tips and making sure your social profiles match your brand image, it will be much easier for your audience to find you and get more familiar with what you have to offer.

3. Take advantage of a customized email signature

While many brands and businesses are focused solely on their websites and online marketing, they might be missing out on one source of exposure that gets thousands of one-on-one impressions daily: This resource is your email!

Take a moment to think about how many emails you receive and send out per day. At the same time, are you effectively branding these emails in the best way possible?

A few years back, I made the change to include a custom email signature within my emails, which include my name, a profile picture, links to my social profiles, and also my latest blog post, and the results have been amazing. It’s a great way to not only make a first impression, but to also show you are a real person and not just a random business or brand.

You can follow these simple steps to get started with a custom email signature of your own.

4. Become the authority within your niche market

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the internet is more saturated than ever before. With so many websites and blogs creating new content daily, it’s almost impossible to rank at the top of Google and reach new audiences daily.

One method that continues to work extremely well for getting your name and expertise out in front of new audiences, is guest blogging and article contribution. This article you are reading right now is a perfect example of this method in action.

To get the most of out of your expertise and writing time, find other authority sites and blogs within your niche that are looking for guest bloggers or experts willing to contribute content. Once you build a relationship with these sites and submit content, be sure to promote what you’ve written. Not only will you be reaching a whole new audience through the site you’re getting exposure on, you are helping the site owner increase their own reach as well—both ultimately helping with the continual reach and branding of yourself and your business.

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5. Give video and audio a try

Another area where way too many businesses and brands are focusing on is text content. As we continue to see more users access the internet through their mobile devices, and rely on social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to consume content, shouldn’t businesses and brands be doing the same?

We aren’t recommending you give up writing website or blog content; we are simply offering the suggestion to expand into different areas and convert your existing content in the process. These new areas of content creation that are performing extremely well are video and audio.

It’s a no-brainer that YouTube continues to grow in size daily, and the power of gaining new subscribers through the platform is priceless. With audio, it’s all about podcasting. Not just creating your own content or even a show, but also the power of getting interviewed or profiled with other shows as well. Think guest blogging, but with audio.

Each of these methods of content creation are extremely effective for brand building and showing off your expertise. Gone are the days when one should focus on starting their own brand and relying just on SEO and traditional traffic sources to grow their business. Leverage platforms and audiences that are already built, and put in the time and effort to make sure your message and services are being seen by the right people.

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6 Tips for Brainstorming Brilliant Blog Topics

While most business owners know the value of consistently posting content on their blogs, many struggle with deciding on what topics to write about. In fact, not knowing what to write about is one of the top challenges most businesses face with blogging.

I understand that predicament completely. I, too, have struggled to brainstorm blog post topics. Fortunately, I’ve discovered ways to find inspiration and ideas when my brain isn’t forthcoming with viable subjects on its own.

It’s my pleasure to share these ways with you in hopes they’ll help you get past instances of writer’s block:

1. Keep an open mind—always!

Rather than force the brainstorming process into a structured think session, I find it more effective to consciously stay open to ideas 24/7. Whether I’m talking with a client, picking up a few essentials at the grocery store, sitting on a plane headed to a conference, or working out, without fail an idea will pop into my head unexpectedly. If you keep your mind open to this kind of unanticipated creativity, you’ll discover that it will happen for you, too.

My advice: Carry a notebook or use an app on your phone to capture your ideas immediately. I can’t stress the word immediately enough! As a busy business owner, you have a gazillion things on your mind. If you don’t write down your thoughts as they happen, you risk forgetting them.

2. Tap insight from your team

Who said you have to go it alone? Your employees have firsthand knowledge of what your customers’ interests and concerns are. They have a pulse on what topics will resonate with your overall (or specific segments of) your audience.

I’ve always found that when I consult my team members, I’m able to generate fresh ideas for content that will address customer needs I wasn’t yet aware of.

3. Use tools

Just typing in a word or phrase into Google’s search bar can birth topic ideas. Enter a term and then look at the suggestions Google displays directly underneath it.

For example, here’s what I see when I enter “brainstorm blog topics”:

You might also find topic generators like Portent’s Content Idea Generator or Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator helpful for coming up with fresh ways to approach subject matter.

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4. Get customer input

Who better to tell you what your customers want to read than the very people who are doing business with you? Although you might be thinking it’s difficult to solicit ideas from customers, I’ve found it takes minimal effort. Two simple ways to collect their thoughts are:

After you or one of your team members speaks to a customer via email, on the phone, or in person, ask them if there are any particular topics they would like to learn more about.
Ask the question in a social media post and invite followers to either leave a comment or send a message with their requests.

5. Connect the dots

Keep your eyes and ears open for connections between your industry and persons, places, and things that are trending or part of pop culture. Some creative elements that might spark topic ideas include:

Movie and TV sitcom quotes (Who doesn’t love a reference to The Office?)
Movie and TV characters
Song lyrics
Celebrity faux pas
TV commercials
Books

By bringing something personally familiar to readers into your blog posts, you can spark their interest and keep them engaged with your content.

6. Flesh out ideas from your FAQs

If you have a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” on your website, it can be a virtual treasure trove from which to mine relevant blog topic ideas. By doing a deep dive into the subjects covered in your FAQs, you can give your audience valuable knowledge and also potentially improve your SEO results from the focus keywords you use in your content.

Don’t sweat it . . .

The next time you experience a mental block when trying to formulate topics for your blog posts, I encourage you to relax and not overthink the challenge. The more frustrated you allow yourself to become, the harder it will be to brainstorm effectively.

Besides, with the tips and tools I’ve shared in this post, you can see you have no reason to sweat the ideation process. You have plenty of places from which to draw ideas and inspiration as you embark on developing topics that will appeal to your readers.

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Monday, July 30, 2018

4 Sales Lessons From the Mall Massage Therapist

Last weekend I went to the local shopping mall with my family. Along with the usual food court and kids’ play area and places to buy jeans, this mall has recently started offering massage services. There is a small area where a team of massage therapists are offering chair massages, right in the middle of the mall concourse, for as little as $20 for 15 minutes. It’s a nice way to get some relaxation and relief of muscle soreness during a day out.

Perhaps you’ve also noticed these types of massage services at your local mall. Massage therapists are excellent salespeople, and no matter what you sell, we can all learn a few sales lessons from them:

1. Go where your customers are

You might not think of a mall concourse as a glamorous destination to do sales work, but it’s true—malls are part of America’s public square and part of how we express ourselves as consumers. And every day at the mall represents opportunity for massage professionals to make some money. They are located right in the middle of prime foot traffic, and thousands of people pass by their massage chairs each day. Massage therapists make the most of their location because everyone who walks by is a potential customer.

In the same way, as a salesperson or business owner, you need to reevaluate how to get in front of your customers in the most direct and relevant way. Do you need more sales leads, more foot traffic for your store, or do you need to try to branch out and meet your customers at new trade shows or conferences?

2. Be persistent

The massage therapists at my local mall are a bit persistent, bordering on aggressive, in the way they reach out to people. They offer massages to almost every single person who walks by—not necessarily in a pushy or uncomfortable way, but they are proactive and are not shy about “making the ask.” They have a limited time to catch people’s attention and offer their services, and they take advantage of it.

Other salespeople can learn from this. Are you reluctant to make cold calls? Are you struggling to put a proposal together for that big new client? Find inspiration in the persistent sales energy of hard-working mall masseurs.

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3. Be concise and relevant

Mall massage therapists make their sales pitches quickly and concisely: “Would you care for a massage today?” or “How would you like to relax with a massage?” Just walking past the massage area, seeing the other people enjoying some massage care…it is kind of tempting to just say yes and spend a few dollars on some relaxation and self-care. You know what they’re selling, you see why it matters, and you know why it’s relevant to your circumstances.

In a way, this is one area where mall massage therapy is “easier” to sell than other products—if you’ve been dragging your kids through the mall for two hours, and your feet are tired and your back is sore, it’s easy to see the relevance of the value proposition of a mall massage. But other businesses can learn from this, too! Think carefully about how to craft a concise and relevant sales pitch that catches your prospective customers at a moment when they are ready to buy, or most likely to be interested.

4. Go for relationships, not transactions

The mall massage business may seem like a tough way to make a living, and I suppose it can be, but ideally, these mall massage therapists are not just selling one-off massages that people decide to spontaneously buy as an impulse purchase. Hopefully they are all building up longer-lasting business with repeat clients who will keep coming back. Even in the competitive world of mall kiosks, it’s still possible to build longer-term business relationships.

It’s the same way for any business. Sure, it’s fun to chase after new business and persuade people to become new customers, but ideally, the best way to build a profitable business and a successful career as a salesperson is to build strong, enduring relationships—not just one-off transactions.

One of the fun things about working in sales is that you can see inspiration almost everywhere. Every single person who’s in the sales business, who has to make things happen everyday, who has to find customers and build relationships with customers, is a possible role model—whether it’s a high-tech B2B sales rep or a humble massage therapist at a mall. Keep people coming back to you. Earn their trust. Demonstrate exceptional service. Give people a great experience of working with you and buying from you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to the mall to get a massage!

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10 Creative Event Marketing Tactics You Can Learn From the World’s Biggest Brands

By David Epstein

1. Google: Pop-up doughnut shops

Takeaway: There’s always a way to bring your business to the people. Google’s a tech company, not a bakery—yet it found a tasty way of putting the Google brand front and center.

2. HubSpot: INBOUND

Takeaway: User conferences offer the perfect opportunity for customers to personally engage with your brand. In addition, an event is only as impactful as it is memorable.

3. YouTube: Fan festival

4. Salesforce and Sales Hacker: Partner marketing

5. Facebook: Roaring Twenties holiday party

Takeaway: Having a unique theme can elevate an event to a spectacle. Whether you are running a holiday party for your employees or an opening for a new store, consider getting thematic.

6. Adobe MAX: Projection mapping

Takeaway: Event if you are working with much less real estate than Adobe MAX had, projection mapping is possible on a smaller scale and still leaves a lasting impression on attendees.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

7. The Olympics: #PyeongChang2018

Takeaway: You don’t need to be an international organization to have an event hashtag. It’s a great way to promote and track conversations about your brand.

8. ToughMudder: Live video event promotion

Takeaway: Live video can be a great channel for promoting your event and creating anticipation among those who are already registered to attend.

9. Brightcove: Ongoing content series

Takeaway: Creating serial content leading up to the event is a great way to make sure the event stays top of mind for attendees and potential attendees.

10. Social media marketing world: Event wrap-up video

Takeaway: A lot goes on at your event. Take advantage of all of those brilliant moments by recording them and repurposing them for future event promotion.

Key takeaways

Some of the key takeaways to keep in mind are:

1. An event can be about meeting your audience where they are.There’s always a way to bring business to the people.

2. Create wonderfully memorable experiences that create customer satisfaction with events for customers.

3. Experiment with events that aren’t explicitly about your business offering to give your audience something unexpected.

4. A well-structured theme can turn an ordinary event into a stunning spectacle. Don’t be afraid to be bold.

5. Remember that an event is a content goldmine. Gather as much video, testimonials, and content as possible throughout the event for multipurpose use.

About the Author

Post by: David Epstein

Company: Bizzabo
Website: www.bizzabo.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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8 Ways Marketing Automation Makes Your Business an Efficiency Powerhouse

Marketing automation is here, and has made its way into every business and every industry. Using an automation system can help make mundane tasks more manageable and increases your business’s efficiency in the process. No longer will you be a slave to social media or email blasts, as marketing automation can create those posts in advance and develop those drip campaigns that keep customers coming back.

To help you identify ways that automation can make your business more efficient and save you time with your marketing, we asked members from YEC Next this question:

How have you employed some level of automation to improve the efficiency of your marketing?

1. Automate sales and marketing tasks

Working smarter, not harder, can make a huge difference in your business. Keep an eye out for tasks that you do over and over that are similar each time. With marketing automation tools like HubSpot or Active Campaign, you can automate a lot of marketing and sales tasks—all you need to do is think things through. Even if there are some differences, marketing automation can still work; you just need to build a little logic into your automations. —Zack Hanebrink, HookLead

2. Practice what you preach

Being the co-founder of a social media marketing agency, I strive to practice what I preach and implement similar strategies for our internal marketing efforts as we do for our clients. One tool we use to help with automation is called Sprout Social. This helps with scheduling social media content, and I highly recommend it. —Stephanie Cartin, Socialfly

3. Automate the right channels to gain traction

Most methods of reaching customers have a way to automate portions of their marketing, such as self-serve tools or specialized marketing agencies. The key is to not focus on channels that don’t have strong returns, since even if you do automate things, you will still need to put in the time to measure results and tweak your formula. We prefer tools like MailChimp, Close.io’s CRM, Hootsuite, and Revealbot. —Paul Davidescu, Tangoo

4. Use project management tools to organize your automation tasks

I use a project management tool called Swipes, which integrates with Gmail and automatically collects all my tasks in one place. With many things going at once, it helps me stay focused on what is timely, and allows me to share with others what is a priority, so we can continue working on marketing to make the business grow. I also use IFTTT.com to replicate posts and save even more time. —Jessica Baker, Aligned Signs

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5. Leverage artificial intelligence to automate content curation

With so much content being produced daily, it should be tailored to your target audience to directly reach your customers. Artificial intelligence (AI) can filter through masses of data in ways that simply aren’t feasible manually. As a result, we believe AI-led content curation is the future for business marketers. —Tom Chalmers, Legend Times Group

6. Plan ahead and learn the curve

There are ways to automate everything, which saves a lot of valuable time. Time savers include automation in social media posts with tools, such as Buffer or Hootsuite, setting up email auto-replies that integrate with a CRM and/or email marketing platform and/or e-commerce site to trigger activity, pre-planning email marketing and drip campaigns, integrating the Response Assistant on your Facebook business page, pre-posting blogs and articles. —Angela Delmedico, Elev8 Consulting Group

7. Automate to double your sales efforts

For my company, with a very small sales and marketing staff, we heavily rely upon marketing automation to drive our business development efforts. We have built our entire sales process into our automation system. This allows key individuals to be notified and critical tasks to be assigned at the proper point in the sales cycle. —Frank Bravata, Cyber Brigade

8. Automate qualification and booking

To save time on having calls with prospects who won’t be a good fit, you should first educate them via automated email sequences on what you do, your philosophy and values, and ballpark pricing. You can also implement an application process that segments based on their answers, and only if they qualify are they are sent a link to book a call in your calendar. —Todd Giannattasio, Tresnic Media

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How to Set Up an Effective Remarketing Campaign

By Adam Witty

Remarketing is a powerful online advertisement strategy, targeting the consumers who already showed interest in your product. Instead of seeing online ads that are completely irrelevant to them—which used to be a lot!—they see you.

Innovations in technology have completely transformed how we, as business leaders, can market our services, making it easier than ever to reach your ideal audience. This contrasts starkly with the overbroad marketing efforts of yesteryear (Sorry, Don Draper).

With remarketing, you can target those who were on the brink of converting (becoming a paying customer), but stopped just short. This not only allows you to re-engage lost visitors, but increase brand awareness. So, how do you do it?

Smart cookies

Remarketing hinges on a little thing called “cookies”—not of the chocolate chip variety! First, let’s explain what a cookie is. An internet cookie is a simple text file that is stored in the web visitor’s device when they enter your website. This text file contains information about their behavior on your site.

Cookies tell marketers:

What pages the consumer visited
What products and services they looked at
How many pages the consumer looked at
How long they stayed on the site

To set up cookies for remarketing, you add a small piece of JavaScript to your website’s code. This will “drop a cookie” every time you get a new web visitor. (It won’t affect their web experience in any way). After your web visitor has been “cookied” and proceeds to visit other websites (or use social media), your remarketing ad service provider will display an your ad on these other web locales.

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This ad might be personalized in some way to the particular visitor seeing it. The way it’s “personalized” depends on how that user behaved when visiting on your site. Let’s see remarketing in action:

Lola visits Target.com. She puts a lamp, a bedspread, and a blouse she loves in her shopping cart. She doesn’t purchase any of them, closes the tab, and forgets about it. Lola is prime for a remarketing campaign, if Target has such a campaign in place.

Lola is reading a gossip news site a couple nights later—in the margins, she sees the same lamp, bedspread, and blouse she’d selected in a banner ad for Target. All Target has done is present Lola with the same items she already liked, putting them back in her line of sight.

It’s a simple truth: Consumers usually don’t make a purchase or dial a phone number their first time visiting a website. But now, they’ve shown some degree of interest in your product. That’s more than you can say for Joe Schmoe, who has never visited your website, has no use for your product, and should in no way account for any of your ad spend. When you zero-in on your “lost visitors” and court them until they convert, this is one of the smartest possible uses of your marketing budget.

Remarketing: a smart strategy

I’ll be frank—remarketing can feel a little weird to consumers. When you’re wearing the hat of consumer, you may find it odd, too. It certainly raises a few eyebrows, with consumers wondering, “How do they know I looked at that product? Why am I seeing it again now?” But once you put on the hat of business owner and marketer, you understand why companies employ this strategy.

Remarketing has proven indispensable in the ad game. It allows for increased user touch points, drives repeat traffic to your site, and increases brand recognition and awareness. In practice, you begin to appreciate just how intricate the process is.

This article only serves as an introduction to the concept, which can be employed on the web, social media, and other platforms. Every remarketing strategy is a little bit different, depending on the nature of your business and what you offer. It can actually be exciting to tailor a remarketing campaign to your business, reviewing the behavior patterns of web visitors to determine who is ripe for retargeting.

If you don’t have a remarketing campaign in place, it’s time to consider one.

About the Author

Post by: Adam Witty

Adam Witty is the founder and CEO of Advantage | ForbesBooks, the authority marketing specialists. Working with business entrepreneurs and professionals to elevate their brands and grow their businesses through publishing, he has built the company into one of the largest business book publishers in America, serving over 1,000 members in 40 U.S. states and 13 countries. Adam is also a sought-after speaker, teacher, and consultant on marketing and business growth techniques for entrepreneurs and authors.

Company: ForbesBooks
Website: www.forbesbooks.com
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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5 Ways to Help Your Brand Make a Great First Impression

In this post, we are going to highlight some of the best ways to take advantage of the short amount of time we all have to create a better blog, brand, and business on the internet today.

1. Create a name, logo, and identity for your brand

2. Make the most of social media

Here are a few simple steps to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, even when you aren’t actually working:

Secure your brand name as your social profile username or URL.
Update your social profile photo with your brand logo.
Create a custom background on Twitter and Facebook.
Set up and schedule social updates on your brand.

By following these tips and making sure your social profiles match your brand image, it will be much easier for your audience to find you and get more familiar with what you have to offer.

3. Take advantage of a customized email signature

Take a moment to think about how many emails you receive and send out per day. At the same time, are you effectively branding these emails in the best way possible?

You can follow these simple steps to get started with a custom email signature of your own.

4. Become the authority within your niche market

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5. Give video and audio a try

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5 Latest Payment Trends Impacting Small Businesses—Are You Keeping Up?

Payment processing has taken several major leaps forward over the past two decades. As the internet has opened up new possibilities for processing payments, as well as new ways to pay for things, businesses have been forced to adapt.

Now, consumers are starting to have higher expectations for SMBs; they’re paying attention to the latest payment trends, and if your business can’t keep up with them, your customers may choose to support one of your competitors over you.

So which of these trends are most important to watch?

1. Mobile payments

Mobile payments are becoming more advanced, but 65% of consumers in the United States still don’t see any benefit in paying with a mobile wallet. In time, the increased convenience and ease of accessibility for this technology may catch on, the way it has in markets like the United Kingdom and Australia, where “tap to pay” terminals are becoming increasingly common.

If you want your business to be on the leading edge, you should be thinking about how to upgrade your capacity for mobile payments—if you haven’t already.

2. Digital currency

Even though just 8% of consumers are currently invested in cryptocurrency, the world is watching the development of Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Being one of the first businesses to accept cryptocurrency as payment could make you seem like a thought leader in your industry, and could win over a crowd of crypto enthusiasts to your brand. Expect to see more brands accepting Bitcoin and altcoins in the near future, and try not to get left behind.

3. In-depth customer rewards

More than 60% of Generation X and millennial consumers say that loyalty programs are important to them. More stores are offering customer rewards and loyalty programs as a result, which adds even more competitive pressure on you to meet or exceed those standards. Offering your own store credit card, or some type of card that can be used alongside payment to support coupons, promotions, and deals in the future is one of the best investments you can make for customer retention.

4. POS user experience

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you also need to think about the point-of-sale (POS) experience for your average customer. Do you have an intuitive device to help guide your customers through the payment process? Is it fast, easy, and straightforward to check out? If not, your customers will be comparing your business to similar businesses with more streamlined POS user experiences.

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5. Fraud (and fraud prevention)

Payment technology is growing more sophisticated, but so is the technology available to cybercriminals and other propagators of fraud. There are many types of payment fraud your business is vulnerable to, including the theft of your customers’ payment information. These types of attacks can rob your business of money directly, hurt your customers, and, if your business is found to be vulnerable, harm your brand’s reputation as well. Accordingly, you’ll need to stay tuned to the latest schemes and weaknesses exploited by cybercriminals, and invest in more secure payment resources as necessary to keep your business protected.

The importance of flexibility

There are a few different reasons why it’s so important to keep up with the latest trends:

Customer convenience. Customers want the most convenient payment experience, which means being able to pay with the currency they prefer as quickly and efficiently as possible. Offering this advantage can boost your customer retention and loyalty significantly.
Competitive differentiation. Adopting new trends relatively early also helps set you apart from your competitors, one of the most important factors for success in a crowded market. Conversely, if you fall too far behind, your competitors will look superior to you, and you may lose even your most loyal customers.
Brand reputation. Depending on the appearance and reputation of the new payment trend, adopting it could make your brand look like a thought leader or a trendsetter. Cryptocurrency, for example, is a popular, exciting topic, and showing off that your business accepts it could make you seem more advanced or more stylish.

Ultimately, you don’t have to have the latest and greatest payment standards, or be ahead of the curve, to accomplish these goals. Instead, you can keep your business relevant and keep your customers happy just by being flexible—accepting as many payments as possible, upgrading what you can, and remaining open to new possibilities.

Think critically about which new upgrades will be most beneficial to your business and stay agile as payment tech grows even more sophisticated.

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Aeroplan Miles Targeted by Points Thieves: 5 Ways to Keep Your Miles Safe

Flight Deal: Warm Up Your Winter Starting at $246 Round Trip

the trade: The Handbag Hopefuls

Emily Blumenthal mentors a new generation of purse designers.

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Tax Deductions Guide and 20 Popular Breaks for 2018

Oregon First-Time Home Buyer Programs of 2018

Soaring Northwest prices can make purchasing a home in the Beaver State daunting for first-time home buyers. There’s help, though, whether you have your eye on a bungalow in Bend, a farmhouse in Fossil or a pied-a-terre in Portland’s Pearl District. National programs make owning a first home more affordable. And Oregon Housing and Community...

The article Oregon First-Time Home Buyer Programs of 2018 originally appeared on NerdWallet.

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How to Write a Marketing Plan for Your Business

Knowing how to write a marketing plan is key to small business success. That’s because in order for your marketing to succeed, you need to have a plan of attack—also known as a marketing plan.

You may have written a marketing plan as part of your business plan when you started your business. Or you may be getting ready to start a business and are writing a marketing plan now. Perhaps you never created a marketing plan, but have just been marketing by the seat of your pants. If so, it’s time for that to change.

Here are six questions you should answer to write a marketing plan.

1. What is your target market?

Understanding your target market is key to planning how you will market to these customers. If you did market research as part of your business plan, dig into that information and update it if necessary. Some questions you will want to answer include:

Demographics such as age, household income, marital status, employment, and location
Media your target customers consume (i.e., do they read print newspapers or magazines, visit certain blogs or websites, use specific social media channels?)
Emotional motivators—in general, what motivates your target customers to make a purchase? This could include a desire for status, for safety, for excitement, to save money, or many other motivators.

2. How does your business fit into the marketplace?

It’s also important to assess your business’s position in the competitive landscape. Start by describing the products or services you sell, then answer these questions:

What differentiates your business from the competition? What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?
How competitive is the marketplace? Are you one of just a few companies in your area selling these products or services, or are there dozens of them? How about the online competition?
What advantages and disadvantages does your business have in terms of marketing? For example, maybe you’re just getting started and are not well known, so you need to build a lot of brand awareness compared to your competition, who has been around for years (disadvantage). Or perhaps your biggest competitor is suffering from an outdated business brand, which can give you an edge as the up-and-coming new business (advantage).
How are your competitors marketing themselves? What marketing channels and tactics do they rely on? How successful are their marketing activities?

3. What do you want to achieve with your marketing?

Identifying your ideal target customers, your competitive advantages and disadvantages, and what your competitors are doing will help you determine specific goals for your marketing. For example, in the previous example, a business that’s just getting off the ground will have building brand awareness as its primary marketing goal.

Make your goals as specific as possible and as measurable as possible. Some goals might be increasing website traffic, getting more prospects to call your business or fill out a leads form on your website, or increasing the number of prospects who visit your website after seeing your social media posts. Make sure that your goals ultimately serve the cause of increasing your sales.

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4. How much can you spend on your marketing?

Here’s where reality comes into play. You’ll need to find a middle ground between spending too much and spending too little on your marketing efforts. Think of marketing as an investment in your business. If an ad campaign that cost $1,000 pays off in $5,000 of new business, that’s an investment—not an expense.

Of course, as a small business owner, your budget is probably limited. If you’re trying to keep your marketing costs manageable, focus on low- or no-cost ways to spread the word about your business, such as organic search engine optimization, online advertising, public relations, social media, and online reviews.

5. What marketing channels will you use?

Based on your marketing goals and marketing budget, you should be able to identify the best marketing channels to reach your target customers. For example, if your target customers are senior homeowners, direct mail postcards or door hangers could be a good way to reach them. On the other hand, if your target customers are millennial renters, channels such as social media, online review sites, and paid and organic SEO are more likely to work.

Once you’ve determined what marketing channels you will use, get specific about what marketing tactics you will use and when. For example, if you’re going to use paid search advertising, specify how many ads you will place each month and what your budget will be for those ads. If you’re going to send out direct mail pieces, set a date and budget for that as well. As you write a marketing plan, including these details will help ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

6. Is it working?

Marketing isn’t something you can just set and forget. You need to keep tabs on how well each marketing channel, tactic, and campaign that you use works to attract prospective customers. Be sure to track where your customers come from–this will show you which marketing methods are the most effective. And this will help you learn from experience to put the majority of your marketing budget into tactics that you know will work.

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Why Right Now Is the Right Time to Take Charge of Your Career

When I read the title of a recent Wall Street Journal post, “In This Economy, Quitters Are Winning,” frankly, I thought I misinterpreted something. People are quitting jobs, moving on to new positions, and making more money.

Say what? I was totally aware of the fact that the job market was on fire, but our peeps are getting paid 30% more?

I have to be candid with you. I am absolutely loving this news. The tide is turning and I could not feel happier. I routinely meet with job hunters to talk about the possibilities of bailing out of their current roles, in addition to crafting high-impact, compelling resumes to help them with the next steps in their career.

Is this for real?

Everyone can feel an uptick in the market, but is this the real deal? It appears to be so. With the unemployment rate at only 3.8%, job hunters are landing well-paid positions left and right. In fact, when I met with Laura Kasper of Monarch Staffing, one of the largest women-owned staffing firms in Philadelphia, she pronounced, “Mindy, there are more resources going into finding more qualified people. It’s incredible!” She looked at me eyeball to eyeball and remarked that even senior citizens are now being recruited.

In truth, even job hunters who are not exceptionally strong in interviewing and have somewhat fragmented job histories are securing jobs. The Wall Street Journal is reporting job hunters who are making lateral moves or landing higher-level roles are even earning 30% more dough.

Much of the career dissatisfaction I hear about from my clients stems from money. Other issues center on nonexistent advancement, incompetent supervisors, pathetic leadership, sudden elimination of divisions, and toxic cultures that breed behind closed doors of an organization. You’d be surprised at the number of people who have up and bailed after giving their boss a piece of their mind.

But, let’s not digress. Money isn’t everything, right? What you highly value in the workplace ultimately determines much of your happiness. Taking the time to identify your most important career needs is step one; the other main consideration is learning what skills you want to use—not just the ones you are good at.

This is incredibly important because there are many job hunters who want to make a change, but don’t know which path makes sense. Ultimately, the market outlook for any given occupation and industry will play an even larger role in your decision making.

Tips to remember

1. Don’t get cocky with this newfound data about the job market. Make sure your resume and LinkedIn profile are persuasive, complementary marketing documents. Optimize your resume and LinkedIn profile with key words and competencies gleaned from relevant job postings. If you’re having trouble figuring this out, you can always go to TagCrowd.com and create a cloud of keywords lifted from your posting.

You may also want to consider making an investment to hire a professional resume and LinkedIn profile writer. Many times, this is the ticket for many job hunters who simply can’t get to the interview table.

2. Complete your LinkedIn profile. Fill out every single section—100%. The main reason is it will ensure you will pop up in search results. Back in the day, recruiters spent just 10 seconds deciding whether your resume was of merit; today, it has fallen to a measly 6.5 seconds. So, you can imagine how important that first impression is when hiring managers and recruiters click on your LinkedIn profile and see that it’s not complete. Research shows if you have a fully built-out profile, you are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities. It’s worth your time and effort!

3. Don’t ignore LinkedIn recommendations and groups. You can maximize your networking potential on LinkedIn by adding recommendations to your profile page as well as joining LinkedIn groups and contacting other group members. Lindsey Pollak, a global spokesperson for LinkedIn, refers to the platform as “an online resume on steroids” and belonging to groups and having recommendations will ratchet up your LinkedIn profile even more. To get more recommendations, reach out to former supervisors and peers and let them know how much you appreciate having worked with (or for them). Click here for more information on how to obtain recommendations.

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Are you learning from past experiences?

Whether you have been terminated due to lack of performance or a result of a reduction in force, or you simply quit your job because you couldn’t take the toxicity of the environment any longer, know that good times are ahead. One of the most important concepts to reflect on is the learning.

Ask yourself if you have gained any newfound knowledge about yourself. Are you suited to manage employee productivity? If you’re not, then don’t apply for those kinds of roles. You and I both know that people are often thrown into managerial roles and have no business being there.

Sometimes there’s a terrible fit with culture, work style, and the actual responsibilities of a job. I learned that a long time ago and, regrettably, the hard way. If it’s not your own company, and it’s not a life or death matter, you need to step back and dial it down.

What I mean here is that we need to understand the “costs” involved when we overwork ourselves, spending 11-hour days running the 50-yard dash all day long. These are all things to consider as we move forward. Also worth mentioning is if you push too much, you can get fired for not integrating well.

With all that said, I want to share one of my favorite success prescriptions—The Ultimate Success Formula by Tony Robbins can help you decide whether you are ready to take a chance, if you are still wondering if there is a way out:

1. Know what you want. What is most important is to have clarity. Why? Clarity is power. It gives you the reason to fight. It gives you your target to drive toward.

2.Take action. It’s not enough to know what you want—you need to take decisive and strategic action. How many times do you hear someone say that they need to lose weight, get a new job, or stop drinking too much? Until you take action, it’s all just meaningless words taking you absolutely nowhere—fast.

3. Notice what’s working and what’s NOT working. Indeed, you can take action, but if your actions are not moving you toward your goal, notice why. Dig deep. Don’t hold back. You CAN achieve success if you really want it.

4. Change your approach until you get what you want. Finally, this piece is key. If you’re not getting what you want, change your methodology until you do get what you want. Use your creativity and imagination to find an alternative way of pursuing your dreams and goals. With persistence, you can get there.

Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to take charge of your life to get what you want? Do you know what you want? What changes do you need to make? Finally, I want to ask you, “If not now, when?”

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