3 Tips on Holding an Event to Promote Your Business

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If you want your business to seriously compete with the other players in the field, you need to promote it in the right way. Remember the different forms that promotion can take. For example, your online marketing will constitute part of your promotion efforts, as will any events that you host.

There is no right or wrong way to go about promoting your business; the best moves for your business will depend on exactly what it is, as well as who you are marketing to and competing against. There are, however, a number of things that you can do that will maximise the chances of your promotional event being a success.

Throw the Event You Would Want to Attend

The easiest way of ensuring that you plan the very best event that you can is to make it the kind of event that you would want to attend. It doesn’t mean that everything should match your personal taste, it just means that you should put in as much effort as you would want someone else to put in to an event you were attending.

This thinking should extend beyond the event itself and also include things like invitations sent out beforehand. If you don’t invite people to your event in the right way, the number of respondents who show up at all will be lower.

Make sure that every aspect of your event reflects the care and attention you have put into it. The best way of achieving this is to ensure adequate planning beforehand. It’s no use getting to the day of the event and still not having everything in place. The more organised you are beforehand, the better chance you have of pulling it off without a hitch.

Staff it Properly

There are two components to ensuring that you have the right staff on hand. The first is simply numbers as if your event is understaffed, it will show. Guests at an understaffed event will have a harder time navigating. Even if your event only takes place in a single room, and everything is clearly signposted, you need enough staff members to ensure that food is circulated properly and that any issues can be addressed promptly.

While some businesses choose to staff these events using their own staff, if you want to really push the boat out, and if you want this event to be a roaring success, then you should hire some temp staff externally. Through companies such as Staff Heroes, you’ll be able to find a range of staff that are available to work during the specific date of your event, and then choose each staff member based on their profile.

Promote it Beforehand

Hosting a killer event isn’t going to do much good if no one turns up. And, of course no one is going to turn up to an event they don’t know about (not intentionally anyway). The best way of promoting your event will depend upon a number of factors, namely what the nature of your event is, and who you are hoping to attract to it.

For example, if you are a software company who is hosting an event in the hopes of meeting other programmers and coders, with a view to working with anyone whose skills and interests complement your business’s other work, it would make sense to promote your event in places where coders will see it. By contrast, if your business is one that sells custom clothing, it’s unlikely you’ll be looking to fill a room with programmers. Instead, you should advertise your event with flyers in clothes stores, and any outdoor market clothing stalls near you.

Holding a killer event is an excellent way of raising your business’s, and your own, profile. With the right event, you can achieve almost anything. It is worth investing the necessary time and money to get it right.

6 Ways to Give Your Content Marketing a Boost

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If you’re investing your company’s time and resources into blogging, social media, video content and other forms of content marketing, you will almost certainly need to have some form of strategy. Otherwise, it can feel like you are creating content just for the sake of it. With that in mind, let’s take a look at six ways you can give your content marketing a boost and get the results that your business needs to be a success:

Have a Set Plan in Place

Creating content without a plan will soon see your creative minds getting lost, and you could find yourself stuck for ideas as a result. There needs to consistency across the board, including writing and uploading blog posts on your website that is filled with insights, knowledge and helpful advice for your readers, which are then shared on your social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

These posts should be happening on a regular basis, and many should be planned out in advance, so you keep on message and ensure that you’re not repeating yourself. Your readers/subscribers will soon move elsewhere for their content if you’re not piquing their interest on a regular basis.

The same rules apply to your social media accounts. It’s great to have your fingers in all the social pies, but if you don’t have a plan in place, you’re just going to neglect these valuable and powerful tools and waste your time. Understand each platform, and this includes understanding what content works and when is best to post on each social network. This way you can start devising your content plan accordingly.

Know Your Goals

While it’s great to have a content marketing plan, the best way to boost it towards getting great results, including more newsletter subscribers, social shares, and blog comments, is to know your goals, and then plan and focus your content towards achieving those goals.

If your end goal is to boost the number of book sales, offering your subscribers access to discount codes and advance copies is the kind of content marketing method that will help you achieve this goal. Sit down as a team and talk through your individual goals, before making a wider decision on the content and the marketing methods that are going to help you achieve those goals.

Measure Your Success with Tracking

Whatever your content marketing goals, you need to be tracking them in order to know for sure what methods are having success and which ones need tweaking in order to achieve more success. Tools like Google Analytics will help you keep tabs on your web traffic- including where the traffic is coming from (emails, social media, Google searches, etc.) and which of your posts and/or pages are bringing in the most traffic. If you have product pages on your site, it will also highlight how people find them, and if there are any holes in the navigation of your website that is preventing them from finding them quickly and making a purchase.

Every social media tool will have its own insights feature, which means you will be able to see which posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and co. are getting the most likes, shares and most importantly sales, as a result of following links to your products and services pages.

Encourage Collaboration in Meetings

While it’s great to have access to the best plans, tools, and platforms, what really matters is having the best team around your business, in order to create the best content for all of your channels. Some businesses have set creative teams for these tasks, whereas others believe that content marketing should be a collaborative process that everybody should be a part of, and this is why meetings are so important.

Many businesses have forgotten the power of face-to-face meetings because of the access to technology that makes remote working more affordable and easy. However, there is nothing more creative and rewarding than getting a bunch of people together, getting the whiteboard out and brainstorming ideas as a team. For a great post about the importance of the whiteboard in the office, read more here. You will have more content, more ideas, and a more collaborative environment if you take the time to have regular meetings with your team.

Find the Ideal Home for Each Piece of Content

Ask any social media expert, and they will tell you. It doesn’t matter if you have the great written blog post, the most epic photo or the most informative video content. If it’s in the wrong place, nobody will see it, and it won’t get the results and rewards it deserves.

Knowing where to place your content is essential to reaping the rewards it can bring. For example, Instagram is perfect for photos and short video content, so put your best content in these forms to that account. For blog posts, stats and insights, try Twitter, which is more of a conversational social platform. Facebook is the best place for your more sales-oriented posts, and is great for placing news, discounts and offers because it’s wide reach.

If you’re not sure what to post and where to post it, test your content on different mediums and track the results with Google Analytics. You’ll soon see what works and what doesn’t.

Have Both Free and Premium Content Available

Customers like to feel like they’re being rewarded for their loyalty to businesses, and you can grant this to them via your content marketing by giving them access to plenty of free content, including blog posts and special offers via email. However, to give your content marketing an extra boost, try the addition of premium content.

This could come in a variety of forms, including e-books, paperbacks, podcasts, audiobooks, one-to-one consultations, advance warning of tickets for events you might be running. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you track the success of the premium offers, and get something in return, which in the vast majority of cases, is contact information. These details could be very useful when you have new products and services to offer, and could massively boost your sales as a result.

How to Create a Professional Online Presence For Your Startup Business

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The Internet has made it easier than ever for budding entrepreneurs to start a business, but the nuances of “being online” can be confusing. If you’ve recently launched a startup, the first thing you’ll want to do is create a professional online presence, so people know who you are, what you do and how to reach you. Whether or not you intend to sell your products or services online, it doesn’t matter; you still need a website and some active social media profiles for your business to grow. With this in mind, here’s how to build an online presence for your startup business in five easy steps.

Step One: Do Your Research

Before you start marketing your business online, you need to know who you’re marketing it to. Find out who your target audience is and how they use the Internet, and then you can target your efforts more successfully. You probably already know your business goals (perhaps to turn a profit or fill a gap in the market), but you also need to think about the goals of your customers. What do they want and why are you best placed to provide it?

Step Two: Create a Website

As a startup business, your first investment should be a professional-looking website. There are tools you can use to set this up for free, but if you want to make an impression and stand out in your field, it’s best to consult with a web design agency. Web design can be tricky; as well as layout and branding, you also need to consider security, mobile responsiveness and search engine optimization to help people find and use your website.

Step Three: Get Active on Social Media

To connect with a modern audience, you need to know how to use social media for your business. Refer back to your customer research to decide which platform is most likely to reach your target audience. The key here is consistency: you don’t have to be on every site, but you do need to provide communication and consistency if you want to build trust in your brand.

Step Four: Promote Your Business

Social media provides the perfect platform for promoting your business, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s free or even easy. Paying for ad space and running targeted campaigns is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and build a following. Without investing at least some time or money, you’re unlikely to make much of an impact.

Step Five: Keep Up the Good Work

Now you have a professional online presence, which will attract high-paying clients, help spread the word about your products or services and enable you to build a glowing reputation. The work doesn’t end here, however. Creating a professional website and setting up your social media accounts is just the first step in marketing your startup. You also have to maintain your online presence to keep growing your business.

Signs Your Marketing Campaign Has ast Its Sell by Date

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Online marketing is something that never remains stagnant. The industry constantly moves forward and new trends and approaches are being developed all of the time. If you want to stay at the forefront of your industry, you are going to need to adapt and progress. If your marketing campaign is outdated, it is going to be hurting your business more than you realise, and it will eventually result in your being penalised by Google. With that in mind, read on to discover some of the most evident signs that your marketing campaign is totally outdated.

You are using social media like a machine – Social media is an extremely powerful platform for businesses today. However, it is surprising how many businesses are still failing to use social media effectively. One of the most outdated and damaging approaches is to treat social media like it is a machine. This means that you simply post an endless stream of promotional content. Social media is all about engagement, so if you are not engaging, you may as well not have a social media presence at all. You should use social media to talk to your customers and potential customers about anything relating to your industry. It is also a good customer service platform, enabling you to answer questions.

You are developing your campaign in-house yet you have no expertise – Marketing is not an area whereby corners can be cut. If you do not have the expertise in-house to put together an effective campaign and to maintain it to ensure that it continues to achieve results, then you need to look for the right firm for you.

You spin articles you have found online and put them on your own blog – Spinning should never be used – ever! It produces quality of a terrible content. It is obvious that the content has been duplicated, and it is obvious it has been spun, or it looks like someone with no grasp of the English language has written it. Not only is this bad for your brand image, but it will really hurt your search engine ranking, as spinning is heavily frowned on by Google. If you do not have the capacity to produce original, engaging, and impressive content in-house, you need to hire a B2C or B2B content marketing firm to do it for you. All posts need to be scheduled on a consistent basis. They need to be unique, they need to inform the reader, and they need to show you as an expert in the field. Spun content does not achieve this.

You are promoting, not providing – This is a big one! A lot of businesses are guilty of offering a flashy and amazing marketing campaign, yet they have nothing to back it up with. Let’s get this straight your product or service is your best marketing tool. Once you have aced this and you deliver an exceptional customer experience, you can then enhance upon it with innovative approaches to marketing. However, you cannot get the marketing right but the value all wrong.

You are still serving spam – Yes, 15 years ago if you sent someone an email that said the words “you have got mail” or something along those lines, most people would have opened it. However, times have changed. More mail ends up in the trash than it does being read. This is why you need to update your approach to email marketing if you are to have any success from it. Plus, not only is spam unsuccessful it is incredibly annoying, and it won’t do you any favours in the eyes of your consumer base. They will probably unsubscribe from your newsletters altogether, and they may look for a business that is less intrusive to purchase from.

So there you have it: some of the signs that your marketing campaign is in desperate need of an upgrade. If you have noticed one or several of the warning signs that have been mentioned there is no need to panic, but you do need to make some changes otherwise your business is at risk of being left behind the competition. Follow the advice that has been provided and you will be able to notice a difference to the success of your marketing efforts.

Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses

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Many small businesses are increasingly focusing on the web when it comes to making their brand a success. It’s easy to see why when you take a look at the extreme success of various online businesses and take into account that almost every high street retailer also has a website which allows them to operate online in tandem with their brick and mortar store. Setting up a website gives you an edge. It allows customers to order goods from you from the comfort of their own home. This is the ultimate form of convenience, especially if you offer next day delivery options. A webstore also allows you to operate round the clock. You no longer have to work with strict opening and closing times, as you can leave an online store unmanned and operating twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Then you can open up your brand to a worldwide market of consumers with the simple addition of international shipping options! However, your brand’s online presence has the potential to reach so much further than a website alone. You can also incorporate other forms of media into your business strategies in order to make profit. For now, let’s focus on social media. Here are just a few of the benefits that it can bring to your venture.

Facebook

Facebook is perhaps the most popular form of social media. It has approximately 2.2 billion users active every single month. So, this may well be the best place to start if brand exposure is what you’re looking for. When setting up a profile for your business on social media, make sure to establish that you are a business at the start of the page setup. This will give you access to more appropriate profile editing options that can benefit you as a brand. Perhaps the main benefit of Facebook (besides exposure) is that you can add certain details to your page’s profile which help customers to receive the best possible customer service that you can provide. Your profile can detail your store’s physical location (including address and postcode) so that customers can make their way to your brick and mortar store without hassle. You can also add a contact number and contact email address so that they can contact you easily. Then there’s the instant messenger option that you can activate. This means that customers can easily contact you, you will receive a notification, and you can respond to them as quickly as possible. You can then use your feed to give customers updates and put out announcements, such as sales, new lines, and special events.

Instagram

Another extremely popular form of social media is Instagram. This app specialises in the visual, which is particularly beneficial for online companies who only have visual representations of their goods to sell to their customers until they receive the real deal in the post after purchase. For the strongest Instagram presence possible, you need plenty of followers. The more followers you have, the more likes you will have on your posts. If consumers see that other consumers like something, it becomes increasingly desirable and they’re likely to want to purchase the goods that everyone else likes. However, cultivating these followers and likes is a little difficult to start with when you haven’t yet established a presence. Perhaps the best way to get started is to buy likes on Instagram. This will give your brand a presence, which will in turn generate more attention and more legitimate followers and likes.

Twitter

While Twitter isn’t necessarily automatically associated with brands, it’s an online powerhouse that you should engage with regardless. Twitter’s main benefit for companies is convenient communication. Tweets are capped at 140 characters, so it can be used for short and sweet exchanges with your customers and potential customers. More complex and lengthy conversations can be taken to the inbox feature. It can also be used for short announcements and updates for your followers. However, you can also take a controversial approach which brings mass attention to your brand. Just take a look at Denny’s twitter feed. Their comedic tweets have resulted in the fast food chain amassing 479,000 followers.

If you haven’t started engaging with social media on a professional level yet, it’s about time that you get around to it. After all, some of the most accessed apps have the potential to bring a ridiculous number of potential customers your way and also allow you the resources to keep in touch with them and make further sales!