11 Free Tools You Should Use for Effective Online Market Research

Now with digital marketing, effective market research is no longer limited to big companies with big budgets. Small and medium-sized companies can also perform extensive market research using free or affordable digital tools.

To help small businesses conduct market research using effective digital tools, here are 11 tools you should use:

1. LinkedIn: Use this professional social networking website to learn about the corporate backgrounds of prospects and find shared connections who might help make an introduction. Search LinkedIn profiles of competing brands and their staff to find connections to important clients and suppliers. You can also find employees who are about to leave their companies – they’re generally very active in updating their profiles or seeking recommendations.


2. Job Posting Sites: See which kind of job postings a company has. You can often figure out their business strategy or plans based on the positions they hire and which locations are hiring.


3. Wayback Machine: This tool shows historical snapshots of websites so you can determine how their brand or marketing strategy has evolved over time.


4. Data.com: Data.com is a crowd-sourced online business directory with information for more than 29 million contacts from over 4 million companies. You can find the contact information for key people you want to connect with by trading with other members.


5. Google Trends: Use Google trends to estimate product demand for a particular market and to assess brand awareness of competitive products or services.


6. Google Alerts: Set up Google Alerts to notify you whenever competitor names or keywords related to your industry come up on social media.


7. SEC Edgar’s Database and SEDAR: This website lets you find financial information and filings for public companies.


8. PRNewswire and PRWeb: Use PRNewswire and PRWeb to go through online press releases for news regarding your customers and competitors. You can even expand the list to do research on their customers and vendors.


9. WhoIS: Use WhoIS to find the contact information of the people behind microsites and content sites. Sometimes you may discover that a review site is actually another form of content marketing performed by a digital agency.


10. Quora: Check what kind of questions a company’s staff have answered or asked – on Q &A site Quora. This is a site where users are required to to register with their real names and user profiles.


11. Slideshare: Find corporate and individual sales presentations that staff members from your competitors have uploaded to share online.

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Author: Ray Wang

Ray Wang is the Marketing Coordinator at View full profile ›

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11 Free Tools You Should Use for Effective Online Market Research

5 Crucial Elements of an Effective Online Lead Generation Strategy

The ultimate objective of any marketing and branding activity is to attract potential customers to your brand and convert them into qualified leads that can be targeted to generate sales.

A survey by Forbes found that more than 500,000 internet-based small businesses and startups pop up every month in the US.

But the majority close down within a few months. Lead generation is one of their biggest challenges.

From available data evidence, you can safely assume that most businesses struggle at meeting this challenge.

Related Article: Simple Steps to Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

From collecting visitor email addresses to social media marketing, there are hundreds of different ways to generate qualified leads for your business. But in this post, I’ll focus on the five key areas that can make any lead generation strategy effective and powerful. In fact, if you look closely, every successful lead generation campaign has these five elements.

Make sure you have them in place.

1. Identify Your Target Buyer and Build the Right Personas

Before anything else, you need to identify exactly who your target customer is and the kind of leads you want to generate. Without understanding the needs, preferences and buying habits of your prospective customers, you can never develop an effective lead generation strategy.

This is why developing buyer personas is so important. A buyer persona is a sample profile of your ideal buyer. When developing a buyer persona, you’d need to list down everything from the average age of your prospective customer, to his annual income, buying habits, preferences and the major reasons why your product provides him value.

You can gather information for developing your buyer persona from

• Your existing sales and marketing stats


• Online forums and groups like LinkedIn and Quora


• Previous customer interactions


• Your own experience and judgement

Create this sample profile and then devise all your strategies around it. The more accurate your buyer persona, the better chances you have of generating the right kind of leads. You can use this free template by HubSpot to create buyer personas.

2. Offer a Memorable User Experience

According to Salesforce, 55 percent of customers are ready to pay more for a better buying experience. On the contrary, it takes a business almost 12 exceptionally good experiences to overcome one bad customer experience.

The verdict is clear, if you want people to land on your website, stay on it and explore your product, you need to provide them a memorable experience. For an online business, user experience majorly depends on the performance and speed of your website, and whether you’re using responsive website design.

A responsive website design adjusts according to the device of your user, and since more than 50 percent user queries generated on Google search now originate from mobile devices, using a mobile ready design is crucial for user experience.

If you’re running an E-commerce website, user experience will also depend on the way you display products, the comprehensiveness of product information, the payment options you offer, the number of redirections involved in the checkout process, and the time it takes to complete the order.

In short, a memorable user experience is created with the right combination of technology, design and your business goals.

3. An Optimized Lead Generation Process

The key to an effective lead generation strategy is to have a well-defined and optimized lead generation process. This means that every step involved in your lead generation process should have a clear objective and should contribute to the overall strategy.

You need to define the steps you want your visitors to go through, the actions you want them to take and the goals you want to achieve from them. For example, you may want them to download a free eBook and sign up to your email list, or you may want them to use a discount coupon on a product, or have a consultation call with you. Whatever it is, it needs to be well-defined.

Bant.io, a B2B lead generation startup, recommends developing a well-researched process that qualifies your leads from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the other, similar to the inbound marketing methodology.

In short, develop clear goals and actions that you want your visitors to complete. This will allow you to segment and target your prospects in a much more effective manner.

Related Article: Two Sides of Content: Lead Generation vs. Demand Generation

4. Data Driven Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just a buzzword used by fancy marketers. It’s a proven methodology to convert even complex information into easily understandable content that people can consume and, as a result, learn more about your product.

Research shows that more than 51 percent marketers use content marketing for lead generation and brand awareness.

However, making well-researched data a part of your content marketing mix can really help you stand out, even if you’re in an industry that’s not known for content marketing. This data-driven blog post on private vs. public college ROI, or this article on adopting law as a profession are great examples of how well-researched content can simplify information that is otherwise difficult to understand.

An even better approach is to mix up visual content like infographics with conventional blog posts. Infographics are packed with data and make even dry subjects interesting and easy to understand. This eye-catching and data-rich infographic by a black mold removal company is a great example. They’ve combined text content with stunning visuals to create content that stands out and gets noticed.

The same approach can be replicated when generating leads for your business, whether you’re offering services or products on an E-commerce site. A prime example is how Shopify, one of the leading E-commerce apps in the world, is using blog content to generate leads and customers. In fact, the Shopify blog has become one of the top E-commerce thought leadership platforms.

5. Targeted Social Media Marketing

The role of social media in online lead generation is constantly evolving. While Facebook is still clearly the leader when it comes to sales and lead generated from social media, other platforms like Pinterest and LinkedIn have also become a great source of qualified leads for businesses.

But Facebook ads in particular are a great way to zoom in on your target buyer personas and generate qualified leads for your business. The audience targeting features of Facebook ads make it a much more viable option as compared to other paid ad networks.

E-commerce businesses in particular have found a lot of success in driving traffic to their online stores and converting first time visitors into subscribers and leads. Intelligent use of these ads can really skyrocket your lead generation process.

Related Article: 6 Hacks to Turn Your Blog Into a Lead Generation Machine

Wrapping Up

Generating qualified leads for your business requires you to understand the needs of your prospective customers. You need to have a process in place through which your visitors can consume information, learn about your product and approach you for more information. The accuracy of your leads will depend primarily on how well you can perform the steps I’ve discussed in this post. There are many different ways to generate leads, but these five elements will be a part of most successful lead generation strategies.

5 Crucial Elements of an Effective Online Lead Generation Strategy

What's More Effective for eCommerce - Email or SMS Marketing?

Many years ago there were many retail and tech experts writing articles on how the brick-and-mortar shops are going to be hit and effected by the introduction of the internet and ecommerce – oh how they were right.

Recently we have seen many retail and tech experts writing about the shift from desktop to mobile (including us here) and how it will affect ecommerce and retail marketing – oh how they are being proved right.

Mobile-first means that you start the design and thought process for mobile first.

In business mobile-first is not exactly a new terminology. Google has been calling themselves a mobile-first company for several years now; however, it is not just businesses that are mobile-first now, the majority of people are too.

This is because our device preference to carry out many activities such as checking email, shopping, banking and looking at social media, has changed from the desktop to the smartphone.

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The old ecommerce marketing plan would have looked something like this…

• Get a website


• Put web address on everything we produce and anywhere we can


• Create loads of Google ad campaigns


• Send loads of email campaigns every other day

So has the mobile-first revolution changed this ecommerce marketing plan? Have we seen the end of the ecommerce marketing email?

Well the first 3 stages are still pretty much in full swing however the email campaign stage is under threat, as the recent email stat figures from Experian Marketing Services do not make good reading for the marketing channel.

If you are a retailer then this is probably no surprise to you, as I am sure you have probably seen your engagement and response rates through email fall over the last few years.

Many brands and businesses in the ecommerce and retail world have turned their attention, like their consumers, to the mobile. SMS marketing has proved a big hit not only for retailers and ecommerce sites but their customers too – producing some amazing responses for retailers.

Mobile marketing shouldn’t scare you, it should excite you – and if you are new to the mobile marketing world, here are 5 tips on writing a successful marketing message.

However remember this 3 things and your mobile marketing adventure should be a fruitful one…

Make it personal. Make it relevant. Make it on time.

Original Post: Text Marketer

Author: Jake Jeffries

I am the Head of Design & Marketing at View full profile ›

What"s More Effective for eCommerce - Email or SMS Marketing?

The Most Effective Hyperlocal Marketing Strategy

I’ve had several discussions recently about Facebook and its effectiveness as a marketing tool for local businesses. It reminded me of this blog from Forrester Research that described strategies for local marketers now that Facebook was killing organic reach. One suggestion was to “add social relationship tools to your own site.” This is a great idea, but it doesn’t scale well for hyperlocal businesses – after all, how likely is it that you have a product or service that will generate a consistent and loyal following that will engage every day like they seem to do on Facebook?

However, there very likely is a place locally where daily engagement occurs and where social relationship tools could make a very big impact on their ability to more deeply engage and provide discovery tools for local businesses – the hyperlocal digital publisher. These sites have a loyal and demographically desirable reader base for local businesses. They also have great local authority with search engines. Here’s three reasons why these sites should be an important part of your hyperlocal engagement strategy:

1. There’s no better way to reach a higher percentage of people that you want to touch – If you recall from last week, we talked about ways to touch your current and potential customers more often. If your customer base is made up of people in your own community, there is no more focused place than hyperlocal destinations. But you have to do more than just advertise on those sites! Again, an ad is great but it’s just a single “touch”, and the likelihood of that one touch making an impact is very low by itself. But that one touch in addition to active engagement on the hyperlocal site dramatically increases your chances of being noticed.


2. It’s your most effective “Citation” strategy – We’ve also blogged about the importance of keeping your Name/Address/Phone (NAP) info consistent on directory sites. It makes sense that the most local sites to you should be ones where you have this NAP info displayed, doesn’t it? Being listed on a national directory is important too, but how many people using that national directory are interested in your specific community? An up-to-date listing on a directory that is focused on your local community will certainly be more impactful. It’s shocking to me how many people have incorrect NAP information surfaced on hyperlocal sites. This should be Step 1 in your citation effort (actually, Step 2, right after you get listed on Google My Business).


3. You have more influence – I hear many stories of small businesses that complain that they can’t get anybody from Google, Yahoo, Yelp or other global sites to return their calls or emails. It’s frustrating getting them to remove spammy reviews or to fix problems with your listings, especially if there are duplicates! But your local publisher is somebody you know, a physical presence you can speak with and influence. The biggest value of hyperlocal is the intimacy and personal attention – it’s what separates the small business owner from the big box retailer, and it’s what separates the hyperlocal publisher from the national directories and platforms.

Hyperlocal publishers give you the ability to be a “big fish in a small pond.” Facebook and other social platforms are certainly powerful and there’s a lot of great reasons to use them as a part of your marketing effort. But remember this analogy the next time you think about focusing solely on Facebook:

• A Facebook organic post is like screaming out your post in the middle of a sold out Mets game at Citi Field (yes, it would have to be a day when Matt Harvey is pitching )


• A Facebook boosted post is like having somebody grab all the people at that Mets game who fit the demographic you want to reach sitting in your section of the ball park. You are still screaming and they are still distracted, but at least the people who can hear you are the people you want to reach


• Engagement on a hyperlocal site is like being at a local baseball game in your town with 50 other folks, where you could (if you want) scream out to all of them, OR speak one on one with each of them before the game is over.

The most effective small business owners know that targeting is one of the most important marketing strategies. Anything that can get the attention of a highly qualified group of potential customers should be a top priority, and doing it on a public forum where everybody can see is even better. Your hyperlocal publisher gives you the best of both these worlds. Even Facebook doesn’t give you a forum where everyone can see you – only those in your “network.” There is no single perfect platform to reach everyone you want, but one of your best options is your hyperlocal publisher. They have the highest percentage of potential customers right there, waiting to hear from you. You will find them to be the most effective hyperlocal marketing strategy!

Author: Scott Barnett

Scott is a serial entrepreneur with 25+ years experience in Software Development, Product Management, Sales and Marketing. Scott excels at working with customers to find unique and long lasting solutions for their business using technology. Scott is currently Founder of Bizyhood, a startup focused on Customer Engagement and Marketing… View full profile ›

The Most Effective Hyperlocal Marketing Strategy

Which Form of Digital Advertising is the Most Effective?

Digital advertising has been blacklisted.

Everyone is so fixated on content marketing, and organic search that even uttering the words ‘let’s pay for some traffic’ have become awkwardly pushed to the side.

But don’t be fooled.

Even the most successful ‘content marketers’ are still using digital advertising tactics to get their content found. They might just not tell you about it – because it contradicts their methodology.

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We can’t forget how effective ads can be for getting our products and services found – but we need to be aware of how the landscape is changing.

The state of digital advertising

Digital ad revenue continues to grow year on year.

The big trend you need to know about?

Mobile is taking over.

(Not quite taking over, but it’s growing rapidly)

Ok you get it; content marketing alone might not be enough and mobile is becoming more and more important if you want to advertise online.

But where do you start? How do you know what is the best platform for your business?

The most effective form of digital advertising is contextual – it depends on who you are trying to reach and how you want to get there.

Let’s run through the options, then give a quick breakdown of who benefits most from each.

Social Media

It’s a rare thing to find a company without a social media division these days, even if that “division” is just some hapless intern working for experience.

From restaurants to airlines to celebrities – if there’s a brand, there’s a Twitter handle to match.

When it comes to advertising on social media, everything is pretty new. The way we advertise on these platforms is continually changing, because no one really knows what works.

Advertisers aren’t quite sure yet (although some will claim they are). The consumers are confused with these new ads popping up on their social streams. And the platforms themselves (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) are still balancing user experience with maximising revenue.

Social ads generally follow Pay-Per-Click or Pay-Per-Impression models, making them relatively easy to budget for – because you pay for what you get.

Now for a closer look at Facebook and Twitter as advertising platforms.

Facebook

This social network is perhaps the most progressed with its digital advertising platform.

Facebook ads are similar to Google PPC campaigns, where you can bid for clicks or impressions on different keywords, then display ads on Facebook’s right vertical bar.

More recently Facebook introduced news feed ad spots if you have an active Facebook page. These are proving a much better ROI than the right side bar.

Keep in mind that the people seeing your ads will find them in a social context – so photos and images are a core component of a successful ad campaign.

Who should advertise on Facebook?

Devoted PPC marketers with the willingness to spend a lot of time getting things right.

Keep in mind that the sheer number of users Facebook has, makes it a perfect fit for B2C marketers. But B2B marketers have started to make their presence known because of the extremely targeted information the platform is accruing on all of us.

Facebook ads are easy to launch, and just as easy to edit (especially with the new mobile ad manager).

Marketers are able to make spot fixes on the fly to optimize and correct underperforming ads while boosting budget for winners.

Twitter

These ads are, again, not dissimilar from Facebook advertising when it comes down to brute mechanics.

But they’re a different animal conceptually. Facebook ads are, well, advertising. They’re your chance to put your commercial foot forward.

Twitter ads are not. Paying for prominence here is a way to put what you might normally tweet into a more obvious place.

Ads work in parallel with the personality of your normal, free Twitter feed, and shouldn’t veer off into sales territory.

Who should advertise on Twitter?

Marketers with a solid Twitter strategy, but not enough Twitter traction.

Promoting your posts to the right audience (and yes, Twitter’s ad engine allows considerable targeting) is your way of cutting through the logjam of influencers and expose potential clients to your social voice.

Interstitial

The relative new kid on the block.

Interstitial ads, if you haven’t heard the phrase before, are promotional pages that show up before a visitor makes their way to the content they actually want to see.

On one hand, that basically guarantees visibility. On the other, it’s irritating; interstitial ads are prime targets for adblock software, and many clients avoid them on principle.

As a result, the industry has undergone a mild reformation. They’ve really come into their own on mobile platforms, where they quickly capture attention, leading to soaring success, especially in the case of attention-grabbing video and rich media ads.

Who should advertise with interstitial?

Companies with the budget to make a move on mobile and do it right.

Poorly made mobile ads are just as annoying as their increasingly disliked predecessors; treat them as an opportunity to create original content, then show it to your viewers.

Banner Ads

Maligned, dispensed with, but still darn useful.

Banner ads have caught a load of flak for the slashed CTR’s they’ve seen of late. But while the numbers are daunting, they merely point to a poor average, not a death knell for the humble banner.

They might not pull the engagement that more obtrusive options do, but banner ads remain wonderful for establishing visual branding, and hitting a highly targeted audience.

The ability to pick and choose where an ad shows up allows advertisers to carefully tailor their campaign toward a given site and demographic.

But in order to beat flagging CTR’s, companies do have to evolve. Think about clever examples like Skittles’ interactive, offbeat banners, or powerful, fold-dominating movie posters.

Who should advertise with banner ads?

Established companies with a solid ad budget, and an extremely clear idea of who they want to reach and how.

A defined audience and a superb visual idea can still combine to keep banners relevant.

PPC

The skimpier, but less-expensive cousins to banner ads.

Google’s Pay-Per-Click campaigns have become a massive boon for cash-strapped businesses looking to muscle in on banner space. And at least at the moment, they’ve proven to be effective.

Those stark text boxes may blend in to the background of many sites, but find a convincing enough message, and it’ll still snag a few eyes.

Perhaps the best thing about PPC ads is that they offer a more-or-less predictable ROI, and one that, even if an ad belly-flops spectacularly, won’t drop to levels low enough to seriously hurt most companies.

Design costs for text ads are nil, and the PPC model guarantees that advertisers won’t drop too much of their budget upon launch.

Who should advertise with PPC?

Companies that don’t translate well to visual media.

Whether you simply don’t have a graphic artist on hand, or your services are hard to sum up in a photo, PPC is your best bet for a high-yield campaign.

The best PPC ads are the ones that ditch details, and go for the jugular with competitive prices and calls to action.

Wrapping it up

Alright, we’ll try and end this on a slightly less wishy-washy note.

While all ad formats still have their applications for different companies, changing technology and market trends will result in a few finding even greater success down the road.

We’re particularly talking about mobile. Whether you go banner, video interstitial – whatever. Mobile ads will likely make up a larger and larger percentage of all advertising in the coming years. Evolving tech such as proximity marketing will only exaggerate that effect.

But if you’re attached to a particular form, there’s still good news. The lessons learned from more traditional marketing aren’t about to be completely invalidated. At the end of the day the actual quality of ads will be the single largest determining factor of their success.

Which Form of Digital Advertising is the Most Effective?

68 Effective Affiliate Marketing Ideas To Be A Cash-Rocketing Super Affiliate: Become A Cash-Rocketing Super Affiliate Through This Collection Of ... Strategies For Optimum Business Achievement

Each of us has its own interest or has a hobby. Some love all kinds of books, music, and movies while others are into sports and traveling. There are also people who love to grow flowers and loves pets. These things help us to relax and forget our everyday problems and troubles and these things are common to people. But not everyone has a hobby that makes money for him/her except if you love your job. Money making hobby could let you treat your family and friends with the extra cash or you can even quit your current job that you almost certainly hate. That is why many of us today go online to start a business; their reasons are either to supplement their income or to gradually replace their offline income from their job. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start in making money online. What is an affiliate program? Affiliate program refers also to associate program, referral program or bounty program. It is the most famous and the best sales and marketing strategy ever used by most of the companies or sellers on the web from small to large-scale companies. This allows “other people or companies” to promote or sell their products or stuff for a commission or other consideration. That “other people or companies” are called “Affiliates” and the owners of the products or services and of the affiliate program are called “Sponsors”. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. The affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or most often sales to the merchant. An affiliate’s advantage is that he can make money in a business where he doesn’t have the upfront costs of creating his own product, and he doesn’t have to worry about e-commerce, bookkeeping, or even customer support for it is the merchant’s responsibility. You’ve probably heard of affiliate programs. Companies use affiliate programs to sell their products. The most common way for making money online with affiliate programs is through posting a link on your website. When a customer clicks on that link and buys the product, you earn a commission. Many affiliates are earning considerable amount of commissions up to more than $10, 000 a month and even hundreds of thousand dollars, through this affiliate scheme depending on your creativity and working habits. Because of this, most of them stopped working as an employee and focus on affiliate marketing at their own time, own pace, own strategy and most importantly, at home with their families without seeing a face of the annoying BOSS! There are many advantages to making money online with affiliate programs. Startup costs are minimal. The only money you spend is to promote the product, whether through a website or other means. You don’t actually sell the product, so you don’t spend time shipping the products or money to buy them at wholesale prices, hoping to sell them later. Another advantage is that you don’t have to worry about unsatisfied customers returning the product to you. Now, for sure you want to be an affiliate marketer with all that benefits an affiliate could get. But, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer? Worry no more! This book will teach you 68 effective affiliate marketing ideas to be a cash-rocketing super affiliate! This book features the following useful contents for optimum business achievement: • Earning Money With Affiliate Programs • Finding Affiliate Programs – Where To Start • How Affiliate Programs Work For You • Things You Need To Have To Succeed In Affiliate Marketing • Creating Multiple Streams Of Affiliate Marketing Income • Do You Make These Affiliate Mistakes • Extreme Payout Affiliate Business Start your venture now! Possess the qualities of a super affiliate and get ready to be rich!!

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68 Effective Affiliate Marketing Ideas To Be A Cash-Rocketing Super Affiliate: Become A Cash-Rocketing Super Affiliate Through This Collection Of ... Strategies For Optimum Business Achievement

6WIM's SEO Expert Chad Lieberman Teaches "Achieving Your Business Dreams with Effective ...

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chad lieberman, chad ian lieberman, top nyc seo expert, ppc expert,

(PRLEAP.COM) March 6, 2015 – “Affiliate marketing takes a bit of effort before you can start witnessing the fruits of your strategies. The first step is to develop a good working plan to increase and maintain your loyal customer base, from where you can reach a wider audience.”

Long-time SEO practitioner, trainer and enthusiast Mr. Chad Lieberman began his address as he spoke during an SEO conference for business owners and webmasters. “Email marketing should be part of such a strategy, which you can accomplish by simply inviting customers and visitors to your websites to subscribe to your mailing list,” Mr. Lieberman continued.

Mr. Lieberman however advised that subscriptions should not be made mandatory as this is puts off customers, and that the form should only include the customer’s name and email address to make it as easy as possible. Further, he discouraged piling subscribers’ mailboxes with emails and advised that sending of emails should be only when necessary.

“To sweeten the deal further, you can tell potential subscribers that they will be notified about the latest promotional offers,” the SEO expert offered, further explaining that mass emailing is now simple owing to the different programs available online to help with the process. “Remember to send an email to thank subscribers once they have subscribed and/or made a purchase.”

Another useful technique he offered was social media marketing and optimization, stating that having an active presence and vibrant following would attract customers to the site. “Use your Twitter account to occasionally inform followers about offers, products and services from other companies, which may increase your loyalty rating with them and earn you free advertising and positive feedback in return,” Chad Ian Lieberman expounded.

Further, Mr. Lieberman[ advised his listeners to have in-depth knowledge of their target market, as well as to stay informed about what their competitors were up to in order to stay one step ahead of them. “You can offer your customers questionnaires as they make purchases, which you can use to build a database of the products and services they prefer.”

In conclusion, he advised business owners to listen to customers’ feedback and incorporate changes where possible in order to have a successful affiliate marketing strategy. “Once you’ve established the business, think about expansion, and affiliate marketing can greatly help with this.”

About 6WSEO

6WSEO was started over 9 years ago, and it boasts a cumulative experience in easy and cost effective search engine marketing services, including search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, online reputation management, linking and PPC management to help businesses of all kinds remain competitive and increase their visibility on the major portals and search engines.

It has developed its services to suit a variety of business needs, with bespoke packages for specials needs of each client. It provides the comprehensive search engine marketing solution, from strategic consultation to in-depth reporting systems in the US, Canada, France, UK and many other countries. Learn more at http://www.6wseo.com

6WIM"s SEO Expert Chad Lieberman Teaches "Achieving Your Business Dreams with Effective ...

Vistaprint Launches “Social Postcards,” New Tool for Easier Facebook Ad Design and Effective ...

Vistaprint, a leading online provider of professional marketing products and services to micro business owners, today announced the launch of “Social Postcards,” an online tool that makes it easy for small businesses to turn their print materials into Facebook^(R) ads, target the right audience, and analyze campaign results. This omnichannel marketing tool enables small businesses to streamline and boost their print and online marketing efforts. Vistaprint and its digital services business, Webs, worked with Facebook to create this small business-focused tool for its customers.

The “2014 Webs Small Business Digital Trends Survey” shows 63 percent of small business owners use digital products as part or all of their marketing strategy, most combining digital and print. As a leading web-to-print destination for micro businesses, Vistaprint answered the demand for an omnichannel platform that integrates print and digital marketing in order to grow the business, increase sales, and build brand awareness across multiple channels.

The survey also shows 65 percent of small businesses are currently using or are willing to pay for Facebook ads. However, most don’t have the tools or resources to design highly impactful and professional-looking social media ads. Facebook research further shows that ads on the platform can drive more in-store revenue, with one-third more people purchasing the products or services, and two-thirds of people increasing their order value. In addition, Facebook is more than twice as accurate as other ad networks in reaching a business’ target audience – enabling marketers to get their ads in front of the right people.

This new tool from Webs simplifies the task of creating and managing Facebook ads. Users who design a postcard on Vistaprint have the option to turn it into a Facebook ad, choose the target audience, publish it, and view the ad campaign’s results – all in one easy-to-use dashboard.

“As a real estate agent, I’m responsible for doing all of my own marketing and have to leave a lasting impression in someone’s mind when they turn to social media for their home-buying needs,” said Emilee Sinclair, broker/agent at Coldwell Banker Sea Cost Advantage. “Having the option to turn the materials I’m already creating on Vistaprint.com into a Facebook ad made it really easy and affordable to reach a large number of potential customers I typically would not be able to reach by myself.”

The new Social Postcards tool features:

• Simple, user-friendly interface


• Step-by-step Facebook ad creation that’s powerful yet simple


• Proprietary technology that enables matching print and online branded content


• Library of ad templates to highlight sales, events, promotions and more


• Extensive library of royalty-free images for ad usage


• Adherence to Facebook’s text guidelines


• Simplified ad targeting based on demographics, interests, connections and more


• Compatibility with Facebook desktop and mobile


• Low one-time fee that enables testing with limited investment


• Ad analytics to help optimize strategy

“Small businesses spend more on social media than any other media category to promote their businesses, and Facebook clearly dominates the market,” said Rick Ducey, managing director of BIA/Kelsey. “There is a significant opportunity in the marketplace for tools that help small businesses automate digital marketing, especially to local audiences. Social media is transforming how small businesses are promoting and growing their businesses and digital ads will be key in achieving results.”

“Vistaprint, along with Webs, is committed to helping business owners succeed, and with this new Social Postcards offering, we are empowering small businesses to combine traditional marketing methods with progressive social media advertising tactics in an affordable and easy-to-use way,” said Scott Bowen, VP and general manager of digital services, Vistaprint. “Online marketing is an untapped resource for many small businesses, and this tool makes it possible for small business owners to level the field against larger competitors, engage their customers in more modern ways, and ultimately grow their business. We are excited to offer this tool and will continue to deliver value to our customers across print and digital.”

For more information or to use Social Postcards, visit: www.vistaprint.com/lpt/social-postcards.aspx.

Survey Methodology:

Webs Small Business Digital Usage Survey is based on a nationally representative sample of 2,292 small business owners of companies with fewer than 10 employees. The anonymous survey was conducted online by Insight By Design between March 10-15, 2014 as part of Vistaprint’s 2014 Digital Usage Study. The poll has a margin of error of approximately +/- 2-7 percent depending on the question.

About Vistaprint

Vistaprint is a global e-commerce brand empowering more than 16 million micro business owners to professionally promote their business with quality printed and digital marketing products at an affordable price. Our world-class online design studio allows customers to easily customize their products including business cards, marketing materials, signage, promotional products, apparel, websites, digital marketing, cards and stationery at www.vistaprint.com. Our patented printing technique allows us to maximize efficiency and consistently deliver quality and value to customers. This innovative process is supported by 25 localized websites serving various global markets; world-class manufacturing facilities around the globe, including North America, Western Europe, Australia and India; and thousands of employees in offices worldwide. Vistaprint is a Cimpress (Nasdaq:CMPR) brand.

Vistaprint and the Vistaprint logo are trademarks of Cimpress N.V. or its subsidiaries. All other brand and product names appearing on this announcement may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

About Webs

Founded in 2001, Webs is the digital services business of Vistaprint. Webs provides an easy-to-use, reliable and cost-effective marketing platform specifically designed for the small business. The Webs platform powers the online marketing of millions of small businesses around the globe with its complete suite of website, social media, email, and other digital identity and marketing products. Webs enables small businesses to launch online, get noticed, engage customers and grow. For more information, please visit www.webs.com.

Facebook(R) is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

Vistaprint Launches “Social Postcards,” New Tool for Easier Facebook Ad Design and Effective ...

75% Of Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) Say Internet Marketing Is Effective

In October-November 2014, we (BrightLocal) conducted our annual SMB Internet Marketing Survey.

This is an online survey of businesses with 1-50 employees in which we ask them about their attitudes and use of internet marketing, mobile marketing and marketing services. We ran the survey in conjunction with ChamberofCommerce.com, and we received 736 complete survey responses.

Ninety-five (95%) of respondents are located in North America (92% U.S.; 3% Canada), primarily because this is where our marketing of the survey was focused.

The following charts represent some of the key findings of the survey. The full survey results and charts can be viewed on BrightLocal.

Q: How Much Money Do You Allocate To Marketing Your Business Each Month?

Key Findings:

• 70% are spending less than $500 on marketing per month (vs. 73% in 2013)


• 83% are spending less than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 85% in 2013)


• Just 16% are spending more than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 21% in 2013)

There has been little change in the distribution of marketing spend since 2013.  The majority of SMBs continue to spend less than $500/month on all their marketing activities, with only a fraction of this allocated to “internet and mobile” (more on this later).

The levels spent vary between industries and also business sizes. We will release some further data/charts comparing industries, but we have analyzed Company Size vs. Marketing Budget, and there is a clear, if unsurprising, correlation here:

Q: What % Of Your Marketing Budget Is Spent On Internet Or Mobile Marketing?

Key Findings:

• 34% allocate less than 10% of their marketing budget to online channels (vs. 33% in 2013)


• 50% allocate less than 30% of their marketing budget to online channels (vs. 49% in 2013)


• 29% allocate more than 70% of their marketing budget to online channels (vs. 28% in 2013)

It’s clear that some SMBs don’t (or barely) engage in online marketing – one third allot less than 10% of their marketing budget to internet or mobile. Others have thoroughly embraced it as their preferred means for growing their business.

It’s likely that different industries and business sizes invest more in online than others, and we’ll be following up with this analysis shortly. (We haven’t crunched the numbers yet.)

For search agencies/consultants, this demonstrates the importance of targeting and pre-qualifying potential customers before you go after them. By understanding their budget levels and commitment to digital marketing, you can ensure you focus on the highest value leads and niches.

Q: In Next 12 Months, Do You Plan To Increase The Money You Spend On Internet Marketing?

Key Findings:

• 37% plan to increase their internet marketing spend over the next 12 months (vs. 21% in 2014)


• 47% are unsure (vs. 47% in 2013)


• 16% have no plans to increase their internet marketing spend in the next 12 months (vs. 32% in 2013)

Great news for the industry! Confidence is up, and SMBs are looking to increase their spend. Nearly 40% of SMBs are looking to spend more on Internet marketing in 2015 than they did in 2014, and many more are still undecided, so this number will rise.

Q: How Effective Is Internet Marketing At Attracting Customers To Your Business?

Key Findings:

• 32% find internet marketing to be “very effective” at attracting new customers (vs. 27% in 2013)


• 75% believe that internet marketing is ‘effective’ or ‘very effective’ at attracting new customers (vs. 68% in 2013)


• 4% don’t do any internet marketing (vs. 8% in 2013)

More good news for the search industry: SMBs increasingly believe that Internet marketing delivers good returns for them.

This lines up with the findings in the previous chart: great confidence = greater spend

Q: Which Of These Success Metrics (KPIs) Are You Most Concerned With?*

Key Findings:

1. Phone Calls are the most valued success metric — 31%


2. Website Traffic came in second — 20%


3. Search Rankings came in third — 20%

For those who work with SMBs, it’s not surprising to hear that phone calls are such a valuable success metric — the phone ringing means business!

It’s surprising to see that “Walk-in Customers” and “Website Enquiries” are lower down the priority list than Site Traffic and Search Rankings. Some of those surveyed won’t deal in walk-in customers, so this may skew the data point, but I would have expected enough businesses to have this type of customer to put it above phone calls.

We should also consider that this survey is about Internet Marketing,  and tracking walk-in customers back to online marketing activities is tricky, so some SMBs may downplay or dismiss the role that online has in driving physical business.

It’s interesting to see that Search Rankings continue to be regarded so highly (they’re almost becoming a taboo subject in the search world these days). But SMBs still regard them as having significant value and equate high rankings to more sales. So, it appears that Search Ranking reports will be with us for a little while yet!

*Note: We didn’t ask this question in 2013, so we don’t have Y-on-Y comparison data.

Comparing Business Size & Type

As we delve further into the data, we will publish insights comparing Company Size and Company Type. These will be published in due course so please look for the follow up post.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Join us for MarTech: The Marketing Tech Conference to hear from digital marketing and technology leaders responsible for building the marketing technology capability in their organizations. We’ll dig deep into the use of marketing technology to transform customer experience through marketing automation, web experience management, customer data platforms and more. Plus we’ll explore the hottest upcoming opportunities, as marketing cloud platforms and over a 1,000 martech start-ups vie to shape that landscape and define how modern marketing gets done. Lowest rates expire January 17 – register today to save $400!

About The Author

Myles Anderson is Founder & CEO of BrightLocal.com. BrightLocal provide a unique and specialised set of local SEO tools for SEO Agencies, Freelances and & local business owners. See their Local SEO Research Section for the latest research & survey findings about the local search market.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)

Get the latest news in local search marketing each week.

75% Of Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) Say Internet Marketing Is Effective

Most Effective way to Manage our Affiliate Program

Most Effective way to Manage our Affiliate Program

Article Views923

GroundReport | Author: Jignesh Prajapati
Filed Under: News, World | Posted: 01/05/2015 at 2:01PM
Comments | Region: Alabama | United States

How Affiliate marketing work

An affiliate program stands for increase traffic and sales through a large diversity of traffic sources. Affiliate marketing has been around for over 10 years and really only started as a way of compensating business related traffic sent through different types of websites. It has evolved steadily with various affiliate networks and crawled platforms on a wide channel in the retail industry.

So what should you do as a merchant or advertiser looking to get into affiliate marketing? First, you need to launch a major network so you can access an existing affiliate marketing database and web publishers.

Here I Share some significant concepts and strategies to increase and run a winning affiliate program:

Recruiting Affiliates – This is a major question mark in terms of methodology and efficiency. Recruiting affiliates is really easy if you know how. You must do a lot of pro-active directions, contact the Web sites, and contact with known members, making it very tastefully and offers an advantage to work with your company, otherwise it just becomes the one of thousands of companies competing for your time, that’s why it is important to differentiate itself from its competitors by highlighting the benefits for affiliate marketers. Another way to recruit members is advertised Search. You can advertise on Google and Bing / Yahoo on the keywords “affiliate program”. You can also advertise on forums and in places where frequent affiliates recruit affiliates or your affiliate registration page, or directly to an affiliate of its registration page. You can advertise on Facebook for those interested in affiliate marketing. Exposing your website customers for your affiliate program can also be an effective strategy to push referral partners, but often recommend a referral program to the right customer for this purpose.

Affiliate Payout Levels – affiliate payment levels have got to be watched frequently, you should seek to pay as much as you can to the right types of affiliates to profit for your affiliate / publishers. You should also look to throw in some sort of incentives and say, “if you make 50 sales this month or even 10 sales this month, we’ll give you a $ 100 bonus,” or we will give you an iPad or an iPod or Pay now. pay as much as you can first, and then you can book a couple of percentage points for those who can produce serious amounts of volume. There are many different types of members, so be sure to pay according to the value they deliver for your business. For example, many companies appreciate subsidiaries that generate new customers through regular customer production. Some important members companies that have websites and relevant blogs, unlike many coupon sites. But you can never bring all members of a given type, all must be evaluated and measured individually.

Managing Affiliates – This is one of my favorite quotes: “The administration is” If the launch of an affiliate program or performance marketing channel and has no intensive management of competent members behind him. most likely will not gain ground, unless you’re a large Fortune 500 retailer that has never done before affiliate marketing then you could grow their own subsidiaries coupons. But if not, a lot of raves about and lots of love to grow properly you need. you have very proactive affiliate management rather than both grow and manage our top affiliates. Whomever handles your affiliate management, or is working with your affiliate partners, needs to follow a very detailed strategy and take it extremely seriously.

Do not be cheap with its affiliates and partners – this is one of the biggest mistakes companies make. They simply do not have outweigh the members pretty well and I kind of look like another marketing channel and say, “I really do not need much because payment is only my affiliate program … I do not know what to do. “Bad attitude! you should really see it as a real sales force for your company, its” feet on the street “as he was online and you need to do is very lucrative for those who work with you and send traffic.

Affiliate and Partner Management – personalization works best when managing affiliate marketers. Typically, personalized affiliate management always works better than a mass approach, but you have to have experienced people in order leverage personalized affiliate management properly. Most companies and agencies use a mass approach and aren’t helpful or friendly enough to their affiliates, which doesn’t build the relationship properly. Make sure to have proactive, friendly affiliate managers in place to work with your affiliates, or it won’t come close to reaching your expectations. Affiliate newsletters are also really important, as they are the primary method of communicating with your affiliates, however most companies fail miserably at this task. A really good agency (like mine) sends gorgeous looking affiliate newsletters that are highly engaging and friendly, with a great subject line (another aspect that affiliate managers do poorly in general).

Affiliate Network Choice – This is a common problem in the performance marketing because the more you spread your offer or your advertiser account several networks, most management must be to another. You should also make sure that the order is not accredited to more than one network source. So really, you can have problems when they branch out a little wider with additional networks. I recommend usually maximize network and then possibly try a couple of other people when you want to add more volume if additional partners can be collected. Or launching an internal program and recruit directly to your in-house program via the contact website and advertising research and Facebook to build subsidiaries there.

Spending money on your affiliate channel – most companies are very cheap when it comes to investing in their affiliate channel. First, they do not know how to effectively spend the money to develop the channel or have tried in the past and failed miserably.

There are several ways you can spend money to grow your affiliate channel, including: hiring a competent, paid emails recruitment by affiliate networks, advertising on Google and Bing / Yahoo , advertising on Facebook, the forums affiliate advertising, and conduct exploration site. These are all ways to spend money to grow your affiliate channel and can be measured very effectively, you just have to know how. Another very effective way to meet the affiliate is to participate in the Affiliate Summit, which is the main affiliate marketing conference in the world. They make shows in New York and Las Vegas each year, be sure to check it is a great learning experience and networking.

From: Jignesh Prajapati

Filed Under:News, World

This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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Most Effective way to Manage our Affiliate Program