#benefits of facebook marketplace badges

[needtricks-blog]

Cracking the Code of Facebook Marketplace Badges

Cracking the Code of Facebook Marketplace Badges. Navigating the bustling aisles of Facebook Marketplace can feel like a treasure hunt – exciting, overwhelming, and full of hidden gems waiting to be discovered. But for sellers, standing out from the crowd is key. That’s where Facebook Marketplace badges come in – your secret weapons for attracting buyers and boosting your sales. Continue reading…

[her-culture]

2021 and the Rise of Shopping BIPOC, LGBTQI+, Small, and Womxn-Owned

Now more than ever, a collective way of life has been prioritized: shopping from small businesses, particularly those owned by the marginalized. The reason? A mix of a few things, like that of the coronavirus pandemic putting small businesses in every industry in an increasingly vulnerable spot, the rising importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the collective awareness of how capitalism has contributed to the downfall of so many communities.

When the pandemic hit, a lot of folks were down on their luck financially. They needed whatever avenue of income they could find to help keep them on their feet, which resulted in them opening small businesses selling their art, jewelry, and more. Shopping small and dining locally was also one of the main efforts done by the collective to ensure community staples wouldn’t have to shut down due to the lack of revenue and financial support throughout the pandemic. 

During the height of BLM last summer, one of the ways that folks rallied together to give aid and support to different mutual aid funds, bail funds, and BLM funds was by selling homemade items and giving 100% of the proceeds to these different organizations. With this, there have been threads on Twitter and infographics on Instagram sharing different black-owned small businesses so that folks could directly support the black community.

It’s interesting to see how the rise of social media networks helped pave the way for this, too. Instagram and Facebook both have sections where anyone can sell their products - Facebook marketplace has everything from new and used cars, clothing, furniture, jewelry, and so much more. Instagram (though widely criticised) has updated their formatting so that anyone who uses their platform to sell items gets boosted in ads, and their shopping section is easier to find. Instagram is most accessible for businesses because they don’t charge a service fee like other sites (Etsy, Shopify, etc.) - 100% of the profits goes right back to the shop owner.

Social media sites like TikTok and Twitter have assisted this wave as well. “It costs $0 to retweet my art/business” tweets go viral almost daily, and TikTok itself is filled with trends small businesses love to use to help boost their brand on the algorithm. More recently, brands of all kinds started doing “pack an order with me” TikToks to add a more personalized feel to their business, where consumers get excited to see if their order is one of the ones that gets packaged on the ForYouPage.

Shopping small and from the folks who could use the support most is an incredible way of how community works. It directly supports the dreams and efforts of the folks who put their all into what they make. If it is possible for you, I encourage you to try to shop small and from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and more), and womxn-owned spots instead of larger corporations. Aiding in the journeys of the folks who took a chance on themselves and started their small business could change everything for them - every dollar could unlock a world of chance.

For those who are interested, here’s a list of a few small businesses (organized by business type) that you can check out and support!

Lifestyle:

Nguyen Coffee Supply - This Vietnamese coffee company was founded by Sahra Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese-American who set out to teach about the true quality and production of coffee beans in Vietnam. Partnering with a fourth-generation farmer in Central Valley back in Vietnam, they provide ethically sourced coffee beans to folks worldwide. To purchase Nguyen Coffee or learn more about their efforts, you can shop at https://nguyencoffeesupply.com/ and visit their social media sites @nguyencoffeesupply.

Hungry Bunny - A black, womxn-owned business, this virtual donut shop started in March 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic by Khloe Hines. All products are vegan and cruelty free, not using any dairy, eggs, or yeast! To place orders visit their website https://www.hungrybunnyict.com/ and support their social media @hungrybunny.

Hood Herbalism - A center for learning, this community herbal education project is perfect for BIPOC folks wanting to learn about the benefits of herbalism and how to incorporate it into their lives. Courses range from the basics of herbalism to herbal medicine works for birth support. They offer online courses with payment plans, accommodations, and scholarship funds to support those in need! This project space is intended for BIPOC folks, as herbal schools are predominantly white. To donate to their project or enroll in classes, visit https://hoodherbalism.com/ and follow their social media at @hoodherbalism.

Indigescuela - This BIPOC-led space is dedicated to teaching womxn and folks about intentional healing through the avenues of holistic sexual health, womb health, and traditional healing. Using the knowledge and practices of herbalism, Mexican folk healing, and Mesoamerican medicine, Panquetzani (also the foundress of Indigemama: Ancestral Healing) leads students to finding the healing answers they need to lead as their best selves. The courses range in topics from lifelong self-womb care and womb wellness. To enroll in the online distance courses, head to https://indigescuela.com/ and support their social media at @indigescuela.

Bookstores:

Nā Mea Hawai’i - Meaning all things to do with Hawai’i, Native Books is a space created to share Hawaiian culture through education. If you are based in Hawai’i, or have the opportunity to visit post-pandemic, this is definitely a place to stop by! They support local artisans of all kinds in efforts to uplift their community and all that the Islands have to offer. They have dedicated their space to sharing this knowledge, education, and experiences to all who stop by, virtually and in-person. Shop their website https://www.nativebookshawaii.org/ and follow them @na_mea_hawaii.

Raven Reads - This bookstore is indigenous and womxn-owned, which began as an effort to share history and inspire folks as a result of what residential schools did to the indegnous communities in Canada, where languages and ways of life were washed away over the years. They offer collection boxes for children and adults, where each season a curated box will be sent to you filled with Indegenous works. To shop, support, and learn more, their website is https://ravenreads.org/ and their social media is @raven_reads.

Strong Nations - The online retailer is centered around idigenous literature and art, where their products range from children’s toys to classroom materials and, of course, literature. They are also a publishing house, offering a range of services for those interested. They also offer a wide variety of bundles in different categories! Each item on their shop has a badge on it to signify if it is indegnous art, a Canadian product, or indegnous text. If you are looking for indenous literature or works of different kinds, materials for your classroom, and more, stop by https://www.strongnations.com/ or @strong_nations.

Marcus Books - The first black-owned bookstore in the nation, Marcus Books is filled with history and the desire to educate and make space for black folks and all allies. Their goals of using literature to educate and unite communities has served folks in and around the San Francisco Bay Area (based in Oakland, CA) and nationwide through their online store. They have books for all ages in every genre by an array of black and latinx authors. To support, their website is https://bookshop.org/shop/marcusbooks or visit their social media @marcus.books.

Loving Me Books - A black and womxn-owned shop, Angela Nesbitt created this online bookstore to promote self-love amongst children of all races and backgrounds. Books are available for all age ranges and in a variety of languages! They also sell children’s clothing and accessories. There is a section for adult books, as well! Check out https://www.lovingmebooks.com/ and @lovemebooks for your next book.

Skincare:

Alma Bella - Meaning “beautiful soul” in Spanish, this womxn-owned skincare business is the epitome of self care with a cause. Creator Hannah Bahls, based in Washington state, handmakes this heavenly coco cream and redistributes 100% of the net profit to different BIPOC-led social justice funds. With more products coming soon, they prioritize organic, ethically sourced and traded, and natural ingredients. Each month, she chooses a new organization to give the proceeds to. To learn more about Alma Bella, their product and mission, head over to https://alma-bella.square.site/ or their Instagram @almabellanourish to learn more about how they emphasize self and community care.

HanaHana Beauty - Sustainable, clean beauty that uplifts womxn of color. All products are made with natural ingredients and oils, like fair-trade shea butter. They source their shea butter from the Katariga Women’s Shea Cooperative in Ghana. The black and womxn-owned shop includes body butters, bars, lip balms, and exfoliating cleansers. To buy, head to their site https://hanahanabeauty.com/ and follow at @hanahana_beauty.

BrownSugga Beauty - Black owned, vegan beauty for all skin types. Offering a variety of products from sugar scrubs to oil serums, body butters and soap bars, the New Orleans based online business is your one-stop-shop for healing and maintaining beautiful, healthy skin. Shop now at https://brownsuggabeautycompany.com/ and follow them at @brownsuggabeauty_.

Haípažaža pĥežúta - Meaning “medicine soap” in Lakota, this indegnous-owned skin care from Lakota folks sells soaps and herbal products nationwide. They utilize organic ingredients harvested from the homelands as well as fair-trade ingredients from across the world to create healthy, intentional products. The products range from soaps, shampoos, rubs, perfumes, bath bombs, scrubs, and more. (They even offer refills of some of these products)! To purchase, find them at https://www.haipazazaphezuta.com/ and @haipazaza.

Beauty:

Live Tinted - Founded by Deepica Mutlaya, Live Tinted is a brand dedicated to inclusion and diversity within the beauty industry. They use their platform to highlight multicultural beauty - giving space to voices and stories of those often underrepresented in the industry. Their products range from ethically sourced merchandise, huesticks, and gorgeous illuminators. Take a peek for yourself at https://www.livetinted.com/ and @livetinted on their different social media platforms.

Sahi Cosmetics - This small, family-owned cosmetics company has been taking the beauty industry by storm. Founder Shelly Sahi started Sahi cosmetics as a way to change the beauty standards we have become accustomed to after growing up feeling like her Indian skin wasn’t beautiful enough and always had trouble finding products that matched her complexion. Committed to their clean beauty promise, all of their products are cruelty and paraben free, with vegan friendly ingredients. An array of makeup and innovative products and ideas that will surely leave you obsessed! They also offer some clothing merchandise as well. Check them out at select retailers, their website https://sahicosmetics.com/ and their social media @sahicosmetics.

Queltzin Cosmetics - An indegenous-owned beauty brand specializing in fake lashes, all of their products are named after Aztec gods and goddesses as well as Nahuatl words to honor and educate folks about their indegenous heritage. Aside from lashes and lash tools, they offer some apparel and makeup accessories and tools, as well. Shop at https://queltzincosmetics.com/ and visit them at @queltzincosmetics.

Sweet Street Cosmetics - A Latina/womxn-owned cosmetics company that honors the around-the-way aesthetic. This brand was built by Natalia Durazo and LaLa Romero, who also co-founded the clothing company Bella Doña. their brand honors the beauty strides made by womxn of color and celebrates all the uniqueness and individuality that comes with it. Their products include a highly praised liquid liner, lip duos, eyeshadows, and lashes. Shop now at https://www.sweetstreetcosmetics.com/ and follow them @sweetstreetcosmetics.

Clothing: 

Wasi Clothing - A Quechuan word meaning “hope,” Wasi is a brown-owned Bolivian-American clothing company founded and run completely by Vanessa Acosta. This business is dedicated to ethical and sustainable products and processes, as well as diverse representation in the fashion world. Their products are unique and there truly is something for everyone here, as their shop includes everything from clothing to accessories to accessories and prints! You can shop their website at https://wasiclothing.com/ and follow at @wasiclothing.

OXDX Clothing - Diné owned label, this indegnous brand offers merchandise to represent Native peoples and honor their experiences. Their mission includes preserving culture to art, clothing, creative content and storytelling. Their shop has unique pieces of clothing, art, and stickers. Shop at https://www.oxdxclothing.com/ and support them at @oxdxclothing.

Ginew - That Native-owned denim line honors the founders’ Ojibwe, Oneida, & Mohican heritage through the materials and concepts utilized to create their products. Their shop ranges from denim products (jackets, jeans, etc.) as well as unique jewelry, bandanas, and more. Shop all things Ginew on their website https://ginewusa.com/ and follow at @ginew_usa.

Art: 

Hafandhaf - This Pakistani-born and Detroit raised artist uses her South Asian and Muslim roots to create art that reflexts her experinces and the life around her. She uses her background studying the Quran and Arabic and incorporates it into her work. She offers commissions, as well as prints. Many of her pieces were turned into other merchandise, like clothing, mugs, stickers, and accessories. To shop, visit https://hafandhaf.com/ and follow their social media @hafandhaf.

Adinas Doodles - Kichwa artist Adina Farinango creates Kichwa diasporic art. In hopes to heal and reclaim her Kichwa roots and her identity as an idigenous womxn, her art is a form of resistance. Her one of a kind art is available in prints, stickers, and on totes! Shop https://www.adinafarinango.com/ and follow @adinasdoodles.

Accessories: 

BRWNGRLZ - The Pinay-owned jewelry company specializes in laser cut pieces that represent and honor Pilipinx heritage and brown pride. These unique, astounding pieces are only found at BRWNGRLZ. This space honors the stories of Pilpinx-identify folks while uplifting the voices of BIPOC folks everywhere. To support and shop, visit www.brwngrlz.com/ and follow at @brwngrlz.

Customized by Angelisa - Polynesian-owned customizable shop that does everything from trays to accessories! This shop is perfect for customized gifts and pieces for your space! Angelisa’s shop has rolling and coffee trays, resin jewelry, keychains, tumblers, and music player plaques. To shop and customize your own pieces, head to https://www.etsy.com/shop/customizedbyangelisa/ and @cbangelisa.

Spirituality:

Stari Agency - Run by Yakari Gabriel, Stari Agency is an Afro-Latina business regarding all things astrology. Yakari offers birth chart readings, transit readings, and follow ups. She aims to help you heal and learn more about you as you navigate your life’s journey. To book and learn more about these services, you can visit https://stariagency.com/ and @stariagency.

The Woke Mystix - Podcasters and authors Ellen and Imani create space for folks to find themselves in astrology, spirituality, and divinity. This WOC-owned business co-wrote Astrology SOS: An astrological survival guide to life, which releases on March 2, 2021. To listen to their podcast and learn more about their work, check out https://www.thewokemystix.com/ and @thewokemystix.

Dian Tala Crystals - This Filipinx-womxn owned crystal shop was created in hopes of offering affordable and accessible means of crystals and their healing properties. In efforts to offer exploration into intuition and personal guidance, this shop holds a variety uniquely cut crystals while teaching followers the properties of each. All funds go directly to the owner’s tuition, as well as direct relief funds to their family’s provinces when the recent typhoon hit the Philippines. To shop and support, follow their Instagram shops @diantalacrystals and @diantalasales.

Farial Eliza (she/her) is a twenty-one year old Bay Area native, occupying unceded Chochenyo Ohlone land. She is a writer, poet, creator, storyteller, self-proclaimed healer and educator to the communities she serves.

[lisajamesjenner-blog]

IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL MARKETING

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers

1. DIGITAL MARKETING WITH BUSINESS???

Digital marketing is defined by the use of numerous digital tactics and channels to connect with customers where they spend much of their time: online. From the website it self to a business's online branding as digital advertising and e marketing, online brochures, and beyond -- there's a spectrum of tactics that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing."

The best digital marketers have a clear picture of how each digital marketing campaign supports their overarching goals. And depending on the goals of their marketing strategy, marketers can support a larger campaign through the free and paid channels at their disposal.

A content marketer, for example, can create a series of blog posts that serve to generate leads from a new ebook the business recently created. The company's social media marketer might then help promote these blog posts through paid and organic posts on the business's social media accounts. Perhaps the email marketer creates an email campaign to send those who download the ebook more information on the company. We'll talk more about these specific digital marketers in a minute.

2 . PAY PER CLICK :  

P.P.C is a method of driving traffic to your website by paying a publisher every time your ad is clicked. One of the most common types of P.P.C is GOOGLE ADS which allows you to pay for top slots on Google's search engine results pages at a price "per click" of the links you place. Other channels where you can use PPC include:

·Paid ads on Facebook: Here, users can pay to customize a video, image post, or slideshow, which Facebook will publish to the news feeds of people who match your business's audience.

·Twitter Ads campaigns: Here, users can pay to place a series of posts or profile badges to the news feeds of a specific audience, all dedicated to

·Accomplish a specific goal for your business. This goal can be website traffic, more Twitter followers, tweet engagement, or even app downloads.

·Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.            

3. DOES IT WORK FOR ALL BUSINESS?

Digital marketing can work for any business in any industry. Regardless of what your company sells, digital marketing still involves building out buyer personas to identify your audience's needs, and creating valuable online content. However, that's not to say all businesses should implement a digital marketing strategy  in the same way.

B2B Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-business (B2B), your digital marketing efforts are likely to be centered around online lead generation, with the end goal being for someone to speak to a salesperson. For that reason, the role of your marketing strategy is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.

Beyond your website, you'll probably choose to focus your efforts on business-focused channels like LinkedIn where your demographic is spending their time online.

B2C Digital Marketing

If your company is business-to-consumer (B2C), depending on the price point of your products, it's likely that the goal of your digital marketing efforts is to attract people to your website and have them become customers without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.

For that reason, you're probably less likely to focus on ‘leads' in their traditional sense, and more likely to focus on building an accelerated buyer's journey, from the moment someone lands on your website, to the moment that they make a purchase. This will often mean your product features in your content higher up in the marketing funnel than it might for a B2B business, and you might need to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).

For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest can often be more valuable than business-focused platforms LinkedIn.

·e Twitter followers, tweet engagement, or even app downloads.

·Sponsored Messages on LinkedIn: Here, users can pay to send messages directly to specific LinkedIn users based on their industry and background.

4. ROLE OF DIGITAL MARKETING IN A COMPANY

Unlike most offline marketing efforts, digital marketing allows marketers to see accurate results in real time. If you've ever put an advert in a newspaper, you'll know how difficult it is to estimate how many people actually flipped to that page and paid attention to your ad. There's no surefire way to know if that ad was responsible for any sales at all.

On the other hand, with digital marketing, you can measure the ROI of pretty much any aspect of your marketing effort.

Website Traffic              

With digital marketing, you can see the exact number of people who have viewed your website's homepage in real time by using digital marketing analytics, available in marketing platforms like HubSpot.

You can also see how many pages they visited, what device they were using, and where they came from, amongst other digital analytics marketing.

This intelligence helps you to prioritize which marketing channels to spend more or less time on, based on the number of people those channels are driving to your website. For example, if only 10% of your traffic is coming from organic search, you know that you probably need to spend some time on SEO to increase that percentage.

With offline marketing, it's very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people's behavior before they've reached the final stage in their buyer's journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel

5. BENEFITS of digital marketing  for business

The group of potential customers that are found online is a much larger group of people than you are likely to be able to attract locally. Using digital marketing, you can reach an enormous audience in a way that is both cost-effective and measurable.

Other benefits of online marketing include:      

   The ability to reach a global marketplace

·         You can save money and reach more customers for less money than traditional marketing methods

·         Get to know your audience and allow them to know you personally which can help to create brand loyalty.

·         You can track responses to your marketing efforts immediately and exactly what they are looking for.

6. STRATEGY FOR DIGITAL MARKETING

A digital marketing strategy is an important part of the overall marketing strategies of a business. This is true whether or not a company is doing business online. It is also true for a small, medium or large size company but especially true for a small company. Small business marketing for a local company can include many offline local advertising methods but needs to include a healthy portion of digital marketing strategies to be successful and maximize sales  in today's economy

. A small business that is doing most or all of its business online needs to embrace a digital marketing strategy that helps it be seen by online users.

There are five main areas of online marketing that are of interest to a small business. Some of them are more important to local, offline businesses, while others are more effective with online businesses. Many businesses engage in all five areas of small business marketing  on the Internet

7. Tactics

It may come as no surprise that the marketplace has become increasingly more digital as technology continues to evolve. The benefits of digital marketing are becoming more prevalent every day. More and more consumers are researching and buying products online. According to Forbes, 82% of consumers conduct research online. And, Tech Crunch reports that 79% of people shop online. More and more small businesses are implementing digital marketing tactics to effectively reach and engage their target consumers online. In fact, U.S. digital marketing spend will rise to about $332 billion by 2021. Digital marketing tactics has proven to be the most cost-effective way to reach potential customer.One of the most important benefits of digital marketing is that it is the most cost-effective ways  to market your business. When it comes to traditional marketing, it’s very difficult for small businesses with limited budgets to compete with larger businesses for ad space.

8. EARNINGS

You can also set aside some money for digital marketing search engine optimization and pay-per click advertising to improve search marketing by prospective customers and business clients. Having only a website doesn’t guarantee that the target customers will find it. As a result, your site must be built with specific keywords and phrases, meta data, page content and linking strategies to enable access to top search rankings.

A lot of keywords and phrases compete for top search rankings, so supplementing your organic search engine optimization efforts with pay-per-click advertising will be helpful. Although establishing pay-per-click advertising campaigns can be discouraging, through a little time, effort and direction it can be achieved in-house, or for a little fee via an outside digital marketing agencyrdable digital marketing tactics, small businesses can get more for their marketing spend line.

 #business

#digital

#eduvogue

[networkhandlers01]

Facebook Marketplace for Business Long Island | Network Handlers

What is Facebook Marketplace for business?

Facebook Marketplace for business is a place to discover, sell, and buy items. This marketplace allows companies to sell their products alongside regular Facebook users. All purchases happen through Facebook Messenger, allowing companies to connect one-on-one with buyers.

 Grow your Business with the Facebook Marketplace for Business

Leverage social media marketing opportunities and Facebook marketplace to boost your sales today. Our intelligently designed Facebook marketing services works to scale your business and help take your business to the next level. Network Handlers experienced digital marketing experts can help you sell more online.

Facebook Marketplace for Business – How it works

Are you trying to grasp how the Facebook marketplace can be an option for generating more leads for your business? Well, what can be better than an online platform with more than 800 million users globally per month? Facebook marketplace allows sellers to showcase their brand products and attract potential customers.

Though previously available as only a peer-to-peer marketplace, Facebook has expanded its features and has grown into a merchant selling platform.

You can sell a wide variety of products on the Facebook marketplace and generate leads for your business today. Avail of the countless marketing opportunities the business world is offering.

5 benefits of Facebook Marketplace for businesses

.1.       You reach interested buyers

2.       You provide all the information a shopper needs without leaving Facebook

3.       You pay nothing to list products

4.       You get one-on-one connections with your audience

5.       You get mobile-friendly listings

6.       You get brand exposure

Leverage Facebook Marketplace for Business

Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with approximately 2.8 billion monthly active users. When this much large audience is spending time on Facebook, why not take the opportunity and reach out to the prospects with your brand.

Launched in 2016, Facebook marketplace served as an online shopping platform with easy access to brands online. Having grabbed the attention of a great many users, this marketplace has only been growing ever since.

Facebook Marketplace holds tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs and brands.

No need to make special accounts on Facebook- you can get your products selling with your Business account. Once Facebook approves your listing, you are ready to sell online and scale your business.

Just fill out the following: Category, what you’re selling, price, location, description, and up to 10 images of the product. And there you go!

Face book provides business with two badges and "Very responsive badge’ and “Community-recommended badge." With them, you earn the trust of the consumers.

Advertise your store items on the marketplace and feature new or refurbished items from your Facebook Page shop on the marketplace with no fee

No listing charges with easy and efficient access to the marketplace. People get to see your products and services, helping drive more customers.

Allows customers to purchase without leaving Facebook

Let digital marketing experts at Network Handlers help you achieve your sales goals and scale your enterprise today.

You have the target, and we have got the expertise. Let’s start working on your business goals to generate leads and sales for you.

Our experts at Network Handlers know your digital marketing demands and have the expertise to convert every challenge into an opportunity. Our digital marketing experts helping you achieve bigger than yesterday.

Services We Provide to Boost your Facebook Marketing Business

Industry’s top-notch digital marketing experts are here to realize your imagination. We get the journey from brand to consumer covered for you in less time and with a better approach. Services we provide at Network Handlers include Facebook Marketplace Management, Goal tracking, Social Media Marketing Services, Lead Optimization, Influencer Marketing, Facebook Advertising Agency, Facebook Marketplace Design Services, and much more.

We have acknowledged the power of social media and invest our energies into enhancing your business’s online presence. We craft high yielding solutions for you to overcome any challenge and be the industry leader. With our professional assistance and guidance, businesses keep scaling. Contact us to grow your business and boost your sales today.

Network Handlers provides the best Facebook Marketplace for Business Long Island Services. Grow your Business with the Facebook Marketplace for Business. Small or medium-sized businesses, even established brands, can avail of Facebook marketing with the Facebook marketplace and efficiently scale their enterprises. You are guaranteed to see excellent results with this online merchant selling platform.

[sillkkmoney]

4 Strategies to make money on Instagram to become Instagram Entrepreneur

Do you want to understand the way to make money on Instagram and start your Instagram entrepreneur journey? There are several ways of one.

Creators go where the cash flows. And with money flowing in abundance from funds from competing creators, Instagram is doing its part to introduce new sources of income to the platform.

With a growing number of creators moving from sponsored content to audience monetization, Instagram's diversified approach can add meaning and money.

Can you make money on Instagram?

Yes. Helping creators make a living on the platform is one of Instagram's top priorities, especially as competition from TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube increases.

"Our goal is to be the simplest platform for creators such as you to earn a living," said Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook and Instagram, at the company's first Creator Week in June 2021.

Strategy 1: Partner with a brand

Instagram is creating a marketplace to assist brands and creators find one another. In the meantime, eligible creators can continue to use monetization tools in the Brand Collabs Manager, work with an influencer agency, or communicate with relevant brands.

Brand Collabs Manager is out there to Instagram creators within the US who have:

Active Business or Creator accounts

10,000+ followers

 More than 100 hours of original video watch time or 1,000 combined interactions (likes and comments) in the last 60 days.

No history of content violations

Look for brands that align with your interests, values, and purchasing history. A growing number of brands are also actively recruiting rising influencers for ambassador programs. Do your research. If you think you would be a good fit with a brand, it may be worth applying, especially if it leads to a long-term partnership.

Strategy 2: Take Advantage of Affiliate Links

Affiliate marketing allows influencers to earn commissions on the sales they inspire. How does it work? Trackable links and promo codes shared in Instagram posts, stories, or bios allow brands to track influencer referrals. The commission can range from 10% to 20%, depending on whether the partnership involves a pay-per-click or cost-per-acquisition model.

This year, Instagram will begin testing a native affiliate tool with creators in the United States and a group of brands including Benefit, Kopari, MAC, Pat McGrath Labs, and Sephora. This tool will allow creators to find, share and earn commissions on products available on Instagram Checkout.

Strategy 3: Make money with your content

Creators who have built an audience with content that offers entertainment or informational value have more and more ways to make money on Instagram. Options like private content, subscriptions, and even an NFT marketplace will soon be available in the app. For now, these are the main ways to collect Instagram content.

IGTV Ads

In May 2020, Instagram began sharing revenue on 15-second ads played on its IGTV videos. This approach takes a page out of the YouTube playbook, where rev share created the professional video star.

For creators publishing long-form video content, this could turn out to be a notable revenue stream.

Instagram Live Badges

Creators streaming Instagram Live videos can get "tips" from viewers in the form of heart badges. When a user purchases a badge, a heart icon appears next to her name in live chat. Badges cost between $0.99 and $4.99, capped at $250 per viewer per session.

In addition to badges, Instagram is starting to reward creators for hitting specific Instagram Live milestones, including live streaks and partnering with different accounts. Similar benefits may also be available to Reel creators soon.

Link in bio

Tipping through platforms like Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi, and Patreon has become a fairly common practice on Instagram. If you think that your followers would be willing to support your work, direct them to a relevant link in your bio or Instagram Stories.

Not an expert to make content for posting? Why not get it done for some reasonable price – click here

Strategy 4: Sell your products or services 

From photo filters to merch and runway-ready product lines, many creators do double duty on Instagram as entrepreneurs.

In the past, those looking to sell their products or services on the app could either go the link-in-bio route or open a separate business account for their brand. 

Soon, creators will also be able to open Instagram Shops from their personal/creator accounts and will have access to product launch tools, among other features. Instagram plans to make the creator stores available to eligible U.S. creators by the end of the year.

Pro-Tip

All the above strategies of making money on Instagram are pointless if you do not have an above-average Instagram profile with a fair amount of follower base. You have to put in the work to start growing day by day. The most important factor to grow on Instagram and is to be active and engaged in the community.

·       Start Posting Regularly

If you post on regular basis Instagram considers your profile as alive, and it will always give an organic boost to you rather than a dead profile. For posting regular content you need to create or design new content regularly. You can use a beginner-friendly designing tool called Canva. If no time or expertise, I have an awesome website on which you can get your Instagram Content designed.

·       Follow other people in your niche

The best way to do this is to find top Instagram profiles in your niche and start following people who engage with their content i.e people who like and comment on their recent posts.

·       Like and comment on other people posts

You need to be out there liking and commenting on huge profiles, similar size profiles, and also on people’s posts who follow those profiles in your niche.

·       View stories

This is a very unique and undiscovered way that a lot of people are unaware of. Viewing someone’s story adds your profile to their viewing list and when people check their views, they are most likely to check out the unknown profile who has viewed the story. This will add up in your profile visits and also triggers the Instagram algorithm.

Every point mentioned above needs a pretty decent amount of work and also requires time and heart to put in to see results. But what if I told you this all-engagement process can be automated. Yes, you heard me right this process of being engaged and growing on Instagram can be done on autopilot by using an online tool called Nitreo. You just need to create content and post it which in fact, can also be automated as said above in 1st bullet point of the pro-tip.

Signing up for Nitreo is super simple and can be done by following simple steps. In the process, you need to set up your account by adding relevant hashtags, similar Instagram accounts, and locations anchoring to your niche.

Once done, you can start relaxing and Nitreo will do all the engagement for you. It starts engaging with Instagram users that are most likely to follow you. 

It follows relevant accounts, likes comments, and views profiles and stories on your behalf – which leads to getting you more followers in the process.

Here are some alternatives – Instazood, Ektora, Social sensei, Viral race, Stormlikes

Start your journey of becoming an Instagram entrepreneur/influencer and make some Instagram money.

[2findnow]

Top Free Advertising Sites That Can Boost Your Local Marketing

Getting popular in the local marketplace is possible with one prudent strategic move – geo-target to reach local mass audience. 

However, online marketing is a costly affair with so many lucrative scopes of promotion. As a result, businesses experience budget crunch as the search engine and social media ads eat up most of the allotted cost. 

On the contrary, free classified ads posting sites help you to make the most out of any budget. Find here some of the top names that offer free advertising and local promotion. 

Best Free Classified Advertising Websites 

Classified advertising happened to be an unconventional way of business promotion, but an analysis says that almost 50% of the internet users rely on free classified submission sites in India since 2009. 

The count is only shooting up! That’s because classified websites not only allow selling beyond direct marketing efforts but also drives traffic back to your physical business location and onto your company website. 

Plus, today’s classified ad sites are great assets for entrepreneurs with various needs, like you. They enable – 

Listing services and products Finding contractors, employees, and freelancers Selling outdated inventory and equipment These benefits make it essential for you to be well-acquainted with the names of the best classified ads posting sites.  

Locanto

Among the traditional classified websites, Locanto is a popular one. It is a Germany-based advertising site, and available in 60 different countries worldwide (including India). 

Locanto allows you to connect with real estate brokers, car manufacturers and sellers, job seekers, and several sell services. Companies from different industry niches post in this website with the aim of promoting their products and services, but Locanto is especially beneficial for businesses with a huge community presence. It is because this platform has prominent categories for leisure activities, selling event tickets, community-based services, etc. which boost your local marketing efforts. 

A few cities may require Locanto premium account, but it is free in maximum cities. After posting, the advertisements remain live for 60 days.  

Craigslist 

Ranked in the top 30 most visited websites in the U.S., Craigslist is impressively a celebrated classified ad site today. It has a huge collection of diversified categories, ranging from beauty and automotive services to paring spots and computer parts. 

To manage ad submissions and reduce the count of pending posts, Craigslist currently allows one posting per geographical area in every 48 hours. Product ad submission is typically free in this platform, but only a $5 fee is charged on posting vehicles and furniture ads. Similarly, service ads also entail a minimal fee, but there’s a guarantee that your ad will stay live for full 30 days. 

Although mostly beneficial, there’s a minor downside to it. Craigslist has a seedy reputation as many high-profile people have used it in the past for illegal activities. However, it won’t affect your business as long as your ads are not spam. 

2FindNow 

Business promotion in the local market has particularly become more convenient with 2FindNow. Among the best classified ads posting sites in India, it is certainly one. Besides local promotion, it’s possible to promote your stuffs in the national market through this platform. 

Vendors love to promote their products and services by 2FindNow because of its availability in multiple cities across the nation. It offers real insight of the national market along with local market intelligence that makes it easier for the digital marketers to gain a competitive edge.  

You can find diversity in its categories. There’s a range of ad posting categories in this website, namely kids, fashion, travel, property, services, personals, jobs, matrimony, etc. Posting is also a breeze here. The best thing is that it enables geo-targeting for maximum exposure. 

Oodle 

Perhaps one of the largest networks of free classified ad posting sites of today, Oodle connects users to hundreds of local listings from ForRent.com, eBay, newspapers, and others on a single platform. 

Currently, it caters across seven countries and has approx 15 million active monthly users. Before Facebook Marketplace, Oodle was the one to empower social media’s traditional marketplace features. 

It is particularly essential to connect your Facebook account with Oodle while using to avoid fraudulent activities. Once you do so, you’re open to posting free ads under different categories like Vehicles, Community, Merchandise, Rentals, etc. 

You can also upgrade to premium membership from free account, and then, you can add backlinks to your website. It immensely boosts your digital traffic.  

Facebook 

Facebook doesn’t fit in the list of free advertising website, but the features of its Marketplace mimic the best classified ad sites. Today, nearly 800 million people use Facebook Marketplace every month. The platform is considered an effective place for selling real estate properties, cars, retail products, furniture, etc. No matter whether you want to sell outdated motor parts to brand new jewelry, Facebook helps to do business and make money in either of the two ways – 

Selling as a user – Facebook allows you to make direct listings of brand new and used products in the Marketplace from your personal accounts. In that case, you are selling as a user. As you start selling, you can target locals in your area. Facebook gifts badges if you are very responsive as a seller and get great reviews from your customers. 

Selling as a business – You can set up a virtual shop with physical products on Facebook business page. The eligible items will then start showing up in the ‘Stores’ tab of the Facebook Marketplace. To become a trusted seller, you must collect customer feedbacks through Podium Reviews for your connected Facebook page. 

Neither of the Facebook Marketplace and business page is a great place to list services. However, you can still use it to find new contractors and employees. 

Enhance Your Marketing Strategy With Free Advertising 

Online classified advertising is one of the best SEO practices in today’s date. With competition being so high, you must quickly incorporate free ad posting idea in your marketing strategy. It has proved to enhance local business listing, driving more traffic to your website. That’s a smart way to make money!

[blogjmary12]

5 Superb Practices For Building An Epic Customer Appreciation Software

So, you’ve been recommended to gather a consumer appreciation approach from the bottom up, or had been tasked to reinvigorate failing software. Permits set the context first via debunking the parable that building client appreciation software isn’t about spending a number of coins on top elegance offers; it’s approximately investing time and focusing hobby on your clients in  Creative Digital Marketing Agency in Cairns. So earlier than you help yourself to that fourth cup of espresso, be conscious that you may keep yourself a few treasured time brainstorming inside the boardroom thru speedy expertise about those five super practices for building that epic purchaser appreciation software utility.

Begin with a plan

First subjects first – determine what you’d want to accumulate through building a client fulfillment utility. Is it and workout in logo reputation? Do you want to growth your purchaser reference library or generate a case take a look at? With a easy intention in thoughts, you’ll be capable of assemble a robust business employer case and set up a price variety and timeline for the undertaking. Further, having a in reality defined plan will make you higher prepared to recruit precise stakeholders to the mission or rope-in an internal champion to assist promote this tool’s success.

Speak to the specialists

Search for the period of the company for extremely good insights and perspectives on what makes your customers specific. From customer success in your income crew, you’ll possibly reap high-quality nominations or necessities for award winners relying on how they’ve collaborated with customers inside the past. Thru jogging on tremendous areas of the monetary business organisation, you’ll grow to be extra familiar together with your clients and probably even analyze a few factor new about your personal product! Past this task, a extra comprehensive records of your client person will make you a more effective marketer conventional.

Pleasure on shipping

Don’t in fact re purpose the organisation giveaways you buy in bulk for trade shows and. Format a prize bundle entirely for humans of the purchaser appreciation software. On the identical time as your branded present is precise, beneficial, or custom designed, it’s lots less possibly to emerge as in the trash or a garage sale. For the 1e hero utility, we opted to ship our customers personalized trophies, certificate, and a hand-signed letter from our ceo outlining their accomplishments. We moreover blanketed a card inviting our heroes to percent their accomplishments on social media. Seasoned tip: searching out a price variety first-class, speedy printing organisation to deliver undertaking deliverables? It only took me a couple of minutes to format a moo mini card for our programs.

Publicize this device

Spark off your Digital Marketing Companies in Cairns channels to unfold the word. Write a blog pronouncing the program or celebrating your remarkable clients. Proportion a hero’s story in a applicable webcast, and supply your clients shout outs on social media! At 1e, we often publish commercial business enterprise business corporation updates to our linkedin internet net web page celebrating the accomplishments of our client hero recipients. It’s a small gesture that they’ll make certain to apprehend. We've were given were given were given furthermore created an dependable certification badge on linkedin that heroes can add to their profiles. Further, a few marketing and automation machine like can seize social media profiles or twitter handles. Leverage that statistics and supply your clients a grin with one hundred forty characters or masses plenty less.

Listen and take a look at

Examine up together with your award winners to make sure the secure transport of their award bundle. Use this opportunity to the touch base collectively together along with your clients. On the same time as you’ve were given their interest, why no longer ask inside the event that they've a achievement tale approximately your product they’d want to percentage or if they may be capable of refer any ability new customers that could benefit from your services? Customer appreciation want to be relevant and personalized, fun and honest. Create a machine that’s smooth to copy and customer appreciation may additionally have an extended lasting place in your Digital Marketing Agencies in Cairns technique. You’ll need to replicate your customer reputation gadget each year, quarterly, or month-to-month to hold a regular cadence. Plus, you’ll make stronger relationships with customers who can offer referrals or function logo advocates inside the marketplace vicinity.

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[oupacademic]

What Everyone Needs to Know Q&A: What kind of mobile phone do you have? What name brands are emblazoned across your t-shirts or jeans? In an age where we have an abundance of choices in the marketplace, we want to know…

Why is branding so important to consumers?

Brands become part of our identity. They help us define who we are to ourselves as well as those around us. What we wear, the phone we carry, the car we drive are all identifiers that tell others who we are. Marketers talk about this as “brands as badges.” So you may think one thing about someone with a can of Budweiser in their hand, but have a completely different perception of that person if you replaced that Bud can with a bottle of Heineken. This is all due to branding. The same idea applies to cars, clothes, and cosmetics.

And, because brands have become so much a part of who we are, we expect them to be embedded with the values that we hold dear. It is a rare advertisement that will tell you the attributes (the physical aspects of a product) and benefits (what the product will do, such as get your clothes whiter) without also telling you how buying the product is somehow related to making the world a better place.

Branding is so much a part of our environment that per­sonal branding— turning ourselves into brands— has become the norm. Personal branding is driven by a number of factors. First, the increasingly freelance job market requires that labor­ers be able to distinguish themselves. Second, social media are driven by influencers— people who influence others to buy. Getting more followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook is the currency of the day, and the way to drive those numbers is through self- promotion. Finally, just like the Marlboro Man, people relate to people more than products, so brands connected to people drive interest.

[Page 19-21, Advertising: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Mara Einstein]

Image: Times Square by skeeze. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

[streamsupport]

Before you quit your job to stream games for a living, you’ll need a viable business model.

Streaming video games online for money seems like a no brainer for some, but doing it for a living can be rather complicated. After hearing many horror stories of streamers who quit their jobs and then couldn’t pay bills or rent, I decided to write an article about the streamer business model and the risks involved. This article is focused on Twitch. While YouTube Gaming and Beam have potential, they currently do not have the gamer viewer base of Twitch. It’s hard enough to do this as a living without adding risk of low viewer base into the equation.

1. What is a Twitch Partner?

Becoming a member of the Twitch Partner Program is a key component of the streaming business model.

It unlocks:

• Share of the ad revenue generated from all broadcasts on channel.

• Monthly subscription revenue from viewers.

• Stores for selling custom apparel.

• Tips and cheering revenue from viewers via Bits.

• …and more but those are the major revenue implications.

There is an application process for becoming a partner with the following guidelines.

2. What’s Your Unique Value Proposition?

Streaming video games has quickly become a crowded space. It’s already difficult to stand out by randomly playing video games for viewers.

Streamers need to define a “niche” to build upon.

• Are you funny or skilled… or both?

• Some viewers will care more about skill and want to learn versus others who want to be entertained and don’t care that much about skill.

• Ideally streamers can be both skilled and funny.

Questions to ask before going all-in on streaming:

• What types of games do you enjoy playing?

• What types of games are you skilled at playing?

• What games are already oversaturated with streamers?

• Do you want to skew toward being entertaining or informative?

• What is your schedule for streaming each week?

3. How Do Streamers Engage Customers?

Streamers deliver their value through the Twitch Platform channel, which supports multiple screens.

Streamers need to think about how to get, grow and keep viewers. Having 100–200 viewers consistently is a great start, but that number needs to grow if the goal is to pay rent, bills and food with the profits.

Engaging viewers on the stream through Twitch Chat is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

Streamers now have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other social media channels for getting and growing their viewer base.

Creating and growing these additional relationships takes time, effort and money. Follow a few of the popular Twitch Streamers and do some research on what links they provide on their streamer page.

4. How Do Streamers Make Money?

Streamers do not simply sit back and watch the cash roll in. This is a huge misconception that is overshadowed by the passion for gaming. Generating revenue is rather complicated and aspects of it evolve as Twitch and other services change over time.

• Ads — Streamers Ad Revenue is calculated flat-rate CPM basis. While this won’t be the major revenue source, it can add up with stream duration over the course of time. The problem is that many viewers use ad-blockers, and do not count towards CPM.

• Subscriptions — Viewers subscribe for $5/month but depending on the streamer’s contract, Twitch reportedly takes 50% of that $5 (or $2.50). There are ways to negotiate the streamer % up over time to a higher share of the subscription revenue, but since Twitch doesn’t allow these contracts to be public, it is a black box on how this actually occurs. Twitch will soon allow higher subscription amounts above $5/month, but that structure is still in beta.

• Donations — Donations can be a major part of the streamers revenue. Viewers can donate $ through services like PayPal directly to the streamer. The streamer can set minimum donation amounts as well. This can get tricky over time however because people can request their donation back from PayPal, which we’ll cover next in the Cost Structure section. Twitch has introduced Cheers, which are powered by a micro-currency called Bits to allow viewers to contribute smaller amounts of to the streamer more frequently. A streamer receives $0.01 per Bit so the larger the number of Bits, the more $ for the streamer

• Merch or Apparel Sales — Twitch partners with Teespring so that streamers can design and sell apparel in the official Twitch store. Twitch takes $2.50 of each transaction and there is a base cost to manufacturing the t-shirts. This will likely not be a significant revenue source right away without a large volume of sales over time.

5. What Do Streamers Need And What Will It Cost?

Streaming requires activities and resources which will result in the streamer incurring costs. These costs can vary based on the style and content but there are some commonalities. Ideally costs are less than the revenue, however many streamers do not model this out early on and are surprised when they lose money.

• Hardware — Streamers need desktop or laptop to play games and usually another to live stream video to the internet. Depending on the system requirements of the game, this can add up quickly. Most mid-range gaming computers cost an upwards of $2000. Many streamers have a green screen setup with a camera and lights so that they can do more with graphic presentation of the stream. They also need decent gear like headphones and mic so that viewers can interact with them.

• Software — Video Streaming requires a high end internet connection and some software to have a professional looking stream setup. Twitch has a helpful guide here to get you started and there are Twitch Startups popping up every few weeks it seems. Most are geared towards providing streamers more insights into their viewer behavior.

• Production — In addition to streaming, viewers expect perks for donating money and subscribing. Custom badges and emoticons are all the rage and show super-fan status among viewers. These take some graphic design skill and money to create unique perks.

Taxes & Fees — Streamers need to be prepared to pay taxes and fees associated with streaming. The biggest elephant in the room at the moment is the dreaded PayPal Chargeback. Viewers can contribute donations through PayPal and streamers reaction may be to withdrawal the money right away and spend it. However PayPal allows viewers to reverse the donation, which if approved, will put the PayPal account in a negative balance. There are a few tips to help mitigate this but neither are bullet proof. First off do not touch the PayPal donations within the first 90 days, no matter how tempting it may be. Second include a disclaimer on the streamer page about donations that makes it clear there are no services in return for the donation. After all, it’s called a “donation” for a reason. Unfortunately the terms and services for payment systems still allow this headache for streamers. Streamers can create partnerships where the costs incurred are driven down significantly. Streamers partner with outside companies that bring activities and resources so the entire burden is no longer on the streamer.

Partnering with Twitch is a must because streamers need to unlock the perks of being a Twitch Partner.

Energy Drink companies are an ideal target because some of the games people play feature their products. It’s no surprise that gamers are their target audience. Energy Drink companies can provide perks which streamers can give away in contests.

Gaming companies (both hardware and software) are great partners because they may provide a gaming system and accessories for both the streamers and for giveaway contests.

Speaking of partnerships and brands, this is where streamers can unlock even more revenue.

6. How Do Streamers Integrate Brands?

Brands love streamers, although they are still trying to find their way on how to engage with them. Streamers on the other hand need to do more than wait for brands to come to them.

I’ve illustrated brands in green below:

Streamers have to uphold an image that will not damage the brand. The value proposition to the brand is slightly different than the value proposition to the gamers. Brands care much more about appearance and expanding their sales channels.

• There are a few brand / streamer marketplaces now that connect both sides such as Ader and PowerSpike.

• Brands unlock new revenue streams with sponsorships and affiliate programs for streamers. This is especially helpful if streamers want to use this platform as a foundation to jump other gamer communities and events.

• When including brands into the equation, the streamer business model expands from a straight B2C play, and into B2B.

• Companies like Razer are already jumping on this opportunity and streamers can benefit from it.

7. Making The Model Your Own

I’ve detailed out the high level commonalities and risks of the streamer business model and while helpful, becoming aware of this complexity is only the first step.

Next you’ll need to put numbers behind each of these pieces and apply them to your unique situation.

Make it your own and good luck!

[williamroy1]

Phrase-of-mouth has been weaponized. What’s your patron enjoy method?

I lately sat down with customer service professional ed bodensiek, founder and ceo of cravety, for this q&a:

as the top of logo and communications for healthcare giant pick out clinical, ed bodensiek found out a critical hyperlink between popularity management and the real reviews that sufferers, referral assets, or even employees were having with the organisation. Ed led a move-practical crew to greater deliberately control corporate lifestyle and design reviews, seeing the paintings as a “2. 0” version of the way to create absolutely proper logo. From there, ed moved into the criminal discipline, becoming the primary leader revel in workplace at any foremost u. S. Law firm. Jeff davis latest sat down with ed to get a higher sense for cx and what it could deliver for customers. How do you outline client revel in? Purchaser enjoy remains a brand new area, and there are various definitions. I’m keen on simplicity, so the definition i exploit is that this one: cx is the sum total of each interplay human beings have with your organisation. Viewed this manner, you fast see why communicators need to think about cx as subsequent-era branding.

 In the end, if communicators and our cousins in advertising and marketing are imagined to shape popularity, create buzz and call for, a cx commercial enterprise method is needed. You also want to broaden this as fast as possible, before your competition get too much of a head start. Isn’t cx surely customer support and communications? This is a top notch query. It’s additionally one of the first questions i hear when introducing the idea, and i apprehend why. Within the 1. 0 global of comms and branding, it’s all we knew. In that world, press releases and messaging and ad campaigns are in one bucket, and customer service are in some other, or worse, lumped into some customer support branch. To be clean, the concept of incredible customer service will constantly be valued, but that feature surely belongs to every body. A cx approach is an over-arching try and align the whole thing around your client. That means aligning your humans, manner, product, vicinity and your public persona. It’s about operationalizing emotion in very intentional approaches. It cuts far deeper than simply customer support, and requires people to kick down a few doorways to conventional silos. It’s “out of doors-in” questioning on an epic scale. Cx was a enterprise approach to set yourself apart. I assume you may still try this, but that’s additionally 2. 0 – in which you best recognition on how you present yourself externally. If you’re going to create an organizational subculture to very deliberately layout around patron desires, you want to also cognizance on worker experience, or ex. And a few of the fastest-growing and smartest corporations, cx is now morphing right into a three. Zero model – where cx is combining with ex. And communications and branding is right in the thick of it, collectively with new allies in hr, operations, and it. It’s an amazing convergence. Are you able to proportion any examples of ways a cx application has labored for agencies? There are powerful case research across many verticals. When you consider zappos or chewie’s, or trader joe’s or southwest or the disney or the ritz-carlton, you have a few apparent examples. What i suppose is exciting is what’s happening in the b2b space, as leaders in different verticals recognise that human beings crave the identical matters there too. People have new expectancies for how they're dealt with, beyond a transaction, and past simply wonderful customer service. They need their desires anticipated. They want empathy. They want businesses that are designed for people in each way. I have a look at the select scientific manner, for instance, a cx and ex method that helped propel a company from $2. 6b in 2011 to extra than $5b in five years. We attracted some of the maximum prestigious educational medicine manufacturers within the nation to create joint ventures with us, a key approach that led to stratospheric growth, and in a surprisingly competitive and controlled marketplace too. It become a combination of things: select medical had sound financials, however you can discover that someplace else. What set them apart become a tradition of putting personnel and sufferers on the middle of operations, and making enterprise decisions around that. We noticed the equal component in law. At miles & stockbridge, we knew corporate clients may want to locate extremely good lawyers anywhere. Every regulation company says the identical thing: we’re the great, or the oldest, or supply the best consequences. Clients ought to care much less. Out of doors-in wondering for a higher client enjoy meant creating a voice of the consumer software then making use of those classes, from top to bottom. From ip legal professionals to litigators, we practiced lively listening, mindfulness, and deploying some distance more discretionary effort. We adventure mapped sub-trips, consisting of the new customer journey, or the vacationer adventure, to simply suppose via what it turned into like to experience us as a brand new client, or to visit the firm’s offices. Clients ended up telling us they felt like rock stars. It did a ways more for us than any ad marketing campaign ought to have performed, though of route we covered that too. 

Read Also:- 5 Google Display Network mistakes you need to avoid in marketing  

The difference become we formed the emblem across the patron revel in, now not the opposite manner around. You spot similar modifications at some stage in professional services corporations, but additionally in surprising places like museums and universities. I just spoke on the leader enjoy officer alternate in chicago and couldn't agree with how the sphere continues to grow. For instance, bank of america had its head of design present to our group, and i found out they've a hundred and fifty design thinkers onboard. At their size, it will take awhile, however they may be re-imagining their approaches and systems and virtual presence — using cx. I used to stay in colorado, and i'm able to tell you how successful vail accommodations has been with this. There’s a notable book too that captures some of this transformation, referred to as “might you do that for your mother?” at vail accommodations, they consciousness on delivering what they called epic stories. Whilst interacting with visitors, personnel are banned from using phrases which include “that’s our policy,” or “that’s not my activity.” instead, they are empowered to do something it takes to supply an epic revel in. Elevate stalled for too lengthy? Experience loose to offer loose passes. See a mother with children looking especially worn-out and hungry? Offer them a free lunch, or a trip in your snowmobile. They have fun this human-centric conduct with epic enjoy pins too, a badge of honor of their subculture. Nowadays i live in maryland, or even my nation government right here has a cx strategy. They see it as a way to emerge as extra aggressive with different states, as groups will need to relocate to maryland. And talk about greater tiers of engagement with employees! They robotically celebrate extremely good experiences introduced to citizens and assume very deliberately about how all of that needs to align with its systems and information. One exchange tale that’s nonetheless unfolding is comcast. Yes, comcast. For years, they had a less-than-stellar recognition that no quantity of pr or marketing or social media campaigns may want to without a doubt change. Why now not? Because of weaponized phrase-of-mouth, the vintage comcast experience turned into recognized to sometimes be terrible for human beings. Growing the customer support “branch” or launching a brand new communications marketing campaign was no longer the solution, as a minimum, now not in that order or in that way. Alternatively, they invested in cx and ex training and packages, with the c-suite now taking expanded calls from its call centers once according to quarter, or riding along experts in trucks to client houses. Imagine the ceo or cfo of comcast showing up at your house! Now believe them getting much more intentional about the instances they target to expose up, where they value it slow greater than theirs. Believe strolling into an xfinity store to go back something, anticipated it to be tough or to stumble upon an upsell you don’t really need, handiest to be amazed via how swish and easy the enterprise made it for you. Of their case, they have one hundred forty,000 employees so it’s going to take time to show things around, however they're on their manner due to cx and ex. Years into it, comcast is one of the most effective companies of their space to keep or grow its purchaser base, in a subject that’s bleeding customers due to a great deal disruption. What are the benefits of imposing a cx application? I’ll give up the interview with how i begin my workshops: by using reminding people of the electricity of emotion. It’s the unmarried maximum powerful pressure shaping what people determine to buy, what they may sell, and even wherein they’ll decide to paintings. From yelp to facebook to linkedin to glassdoor and beyond, it’s the total emblem enjoy humans have visible and felt you’re your corporations that topics maximum. The benefits are overwhelming. Designed and hooked up effectively, a cx program, coupled with ex, offers you  Digital Marketing Agencies in San Diego a competitive differentiator. As it’s move-useful in nature, it demands tradition trade – so that you benefit from a extra engaged group of workers, and of course, a ways, a ways, higher critiques. You only get one reputation. It’s why i am now speakme approximately hx, or human enjoy. I think this is the three. 0 model, wherein we not think about creating a consumer revel in around our brand. That’s essentially horrific approach  Digital Marketing Company in Austin within the new experience economy. Instead we create our brand across the client enjoy. There’s a struggle on for talent and for clients, and designing for the human experience is the way to win it.

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Ecommerce Product Releases: May 16, 2019

Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-May from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on subscription platforms, help desk ticketing, inventory management, selling on Amazon, and selling on Instagram.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.

Ecommerce Product Releases

Magento Commerce adds features for small and mid-market businesses. At its Imagine 2019 conference this week, Adobe announced updates to Magento Commerce, the commerce platform in Adobe Experience Cloud. With “Amazon Sales Channels” and “Google Shopping Ads Channels,” merchants can target new audiences. With “PageBuilder,” merchants can easily update the content on their websites. And merchants are now able to tap the broader capabilities of Adobe Analytics, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud in Adobe Experience Cloud through the Adobe Experience Platform connector.

Adobe Experience Platform

Adobe collaborates with Amazon to accelerate growth for third-party merchants. Adobe has announced Magento Commerce branded stores for Amazon sellers, a new offering available through Magento, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, which runs on Amazon Web Services. The service is designed to give sellers a seamless way to grow their business and manage their online presence across Amazon and the sellers’ own storefront, including the native integration of Amazon merchant tools such as Amazon Pay and Fulfillment by Amazon.

Bank of America Merchant Services and Recurly team up to help merchants boost subscription revenue. Bank of America Merchant Services and Recurly, a subscription management platform, are teaming up to help merchants generate revenue from subscribers and better measure subscriber engagement and customer loyalty. Businesses that use Bank of America Merchant Services’ payments processing and Recurly’s subscription management platform can benefit from accepting payments on a global scale, increased flexibility with a variety of customer subscription plans and billing options, management of the full subscriber lifecycle from acquisition through retention, and in-depth analytics and insights.

LiveChat launches HelpDesk, an online ticketing system. LiveChat, a player in the online business communication space, has launched HelpDesk, an application that enables companies to simplify customer service via email. The HelpDesk solution enables customers to leave a message for a company by using dedicated email addresses. Team members can also create a ticket if a customer’s query came from other communication channels, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or a phone call. All inquiries are collected as tickets and assigned with the appropriate statuses and categories within the application.

HelpDesk

Instagram lets creators and influencers sell items directly. People can now shop looks from creators without leaving Instagram. With the ability to tag products in their posts, creators can make it easy for people to shop on the spot. Businesses must be part of the checkout beta for creators to tag their products. Both creators and the brands they tag will receive shared insights within Instagram so they can better understand the performance of shopping posts. Instagram is testing the shop the look function with a small group of creators.

Profitero launches analytics service for Amazon brand sellers. Profitero has launched AMZ Maximizer, an analytics service for Amazon sales. AMZ Maximizer provides brands with granular, daily-updated traffic and conversion estimates for all their products. It also allows brands to correlate their traffic, conversion, and sales performance with changes in search ranking, pricing, out-of-stock rates, content, and reviews — leading to better optimization, according to Profitero.

LimeLight launches Mastercard compliance tool to protect ecommerce sellers and subscribers. LimeLight, an ecommerce engine for subscription businesses, has launched a new tool to help online merchants operate within Mastercard’s new continuity rules. Mastercard’s new rules are designed to protect against unfair “negative option billing,” where consumers are not fully aware of what they are agreeing to when signing up for a free or discounted trial and are automatically billed full price when the trial period ends. Subscription-based businesses accepting payment through Mastercard must now adopt a host of new procedures to ensure transparency and billing consent.

LimeLight

Vend and BigCommerce partner for independent retailers. Vend, a retail management software company, has announced a new partnership with ecommerce platform BigCommerce, giving independent retailers greater choice about how they run their business. Key benefits to retailers of this new partnership include opening new sales channels through social media and online marketplaces, greater insight into what’s selling best and where, quick identification of sales trends, and centralized operations for managing sales, customers, and inventory while physical and online stores update in real-time.

Facebook launches the Facebook Developer Community Forum. Facebook has announced the launch of its Developer Community Forum for developers to ask and answer questions relating to apps and app development on Facebook. Facebook hopes to foster and encourage a community where people can utilize their acquired expertise and support one another to overcome mutual challenges. To recognize developer contributions, the platform will have a points and badging system.

Amazon launches “Build Your Business with Amazon” website. To support small-to-midsize businesses, content creators, and developers, Amazon has created a new “Build Your Business with Amazon” website to provide information on how to achieve success with help from Amazon.

Build Your Business with Amazon

Source link

[joelhroy]

Making the Next Evolutionary Step for Our Group and the Commercial Roofing Industry

We have big news to share today and once again thank all those who have been part of making our nationwide support network such a huge success over the years.

At the 2016 National Convention in Branson, we introduced a number of key changes that raised the standards for ourselves and the industry at large. Everyone involved in fine-tuning the new structure was amazed at how much better things became and were equally impressed by how well accepted it was for a smooth transition. We have such an amazing group of contractors who really care about each other and where we’re headed as a nationwide team.

Today, we take another step further to better focus on what has been most beneficial to the network, while also adding new benefits by introducing a totally new brand: Top Roof Contractors.

On the first of April, we’ll finally be ready to launch everything after having many conversations with both new and original members to ensure maximum benefit across the board. Special thanks to Sam, Jonathan, Will, Andy, Adib, and John!

The first change to notice is that the terms “Endorsed” and “Supported” are going to be retired. Instead, we have “Leader” and “Member.” It’s a simple change where Endorsed Members will be called Leaders, and Supported Contractors will be called Members; but it’s important because of what these new terms mean.

As part of the changes, contractors in the group will need to sign new agreements. The old agreements will terminate in 30 days in order to fully implement all changes and improvements group-wide.

Benefits from *Choice Roof Contractors*      

Both Members and Leaders:

Badges that display your affiliation with the group (Leader or Member depending on level of association)

Group support and networking with fellow members and leaders

Private access to the Facebook group

Presentations, photos, flyers and other marketing material

In-depth knowledge and training

Affiliation with our nationwide reputation

Sales & marketing guidance

Leaders only:

Contractor leads to build your Conklin business (i.e. residual, scalable income from roofs installed by those being supported – rewarding contractors for the strong businesses they help create)

Ability to start conversations with those who have requested information on the group in the past

No additional cost to be part of Top Roof Contractors if 3-day training completed (otherwise there is a separate membership fee)

Personalized webpage to help with explaining what our group is all about to other contractors (see example: https://www.choiceroofcontractors.com/members/rufus-hostetler/)

Personalized marketing material for growing your Conklin business shipped free as often as needed

Of course, there are many more than we can list, but these are the main benefits.

Benefits from *Top Roof Contractors*

Marketing discounts on 15 different items from Top Roof Marketing (many will save hundreds of dollars a year)

Added credibility for higher closing rates with the Top Roof Contractors badge (logo files and window decal provided free)

Roofing estimate leads at steeply discounted prices

Staff will help with the estimate leads by calling them first and being involved in the conversation

Sell roofing opportunities to each other (we want to make sure you can profit from opportunities you aren’t able to pursue yourself)

Sell products/equipment/services to fellow Top Roof Contractors

Personalized flyer explaining how your company meets or exceeds membership qualifications of Top Roof Contractors

Connections to insurance specialists who understand commercial roofing, as well as others who are coming on board

What’s New

Cost reduction

The membership fees for Leaders (previously known as Endorsed Members) has been reduced by more than half!  This is made possible by transferring the building owner requests for estimates to Top Roof Contractors.

What’s being transferred to Top Roof Contractors

Commercial roofing estimate requests have caused misunderstandings for contractors who are not yet part of the group. We have never been a lead generation service, but understand why our website can give this impression. When a building owner requests an estimate in the future, it will now be routed through Top Roof Contractors.

Contractor Sponsorship Opportunities for Everyone

The only requirement to be an eligible Leader in Choice Roof Contractor Group is to create a Conklin account with an existing group member. Even if you have limited roofing experience (or none at all), the contractors you bring in will have full support from others who can step in with their knowledge.

New Tools

Andrew and Max are working on an app for Choice Roof Contractors, Jonathan and Chris are working on a marketplace for Top Roof Contractors, and many new things will be coming down the line as well.

In summary, Choice Roof Contractor Group will mainly focus on building everyone’s Conklin business, while Top Roof Contractors will take on other aspects to reduce confusion of our group’s core focus and introduce new benefits that are now possible by having a 2nd independent brand.

What’s the Same

No fee for those who simply want great support (they only need to create a Conklin account with an existing group member to benefit from the amazing platform built over the last 5+ years: https://www.choiceroofcontractors.com/the-first-five-years/).

We’re still requiring 3 commercial roofing references and insurance verification to be eligible for leads (but there is an added screening process to add further respect for all Top Roof Contractors).

Choice Roof Contractor Group Members (previously known as supported contractors) will still get assistance from the entire group, private access to the Facebook group, presentations and photos, in-depth knowledge and training, affiliation with our nationwide reputation, approval to use a member version of our logo, and sales & marketing guidance.

Choice Roof Contractor Group Leaders (previously known as Endorsed Members) will still get personalized flyer, personalized business cards for sponsoring, contractor leads, and personal page on the ChoiceRoofContractors.com website; plus all the benefits listed above that Members enjoy.

What’s going away

We have contemplated retiring the Lifetime Service Guarantee for quite sometime because it has hardly been used by endorsed members, plus many building owners seem to have a hard time understanding how it’s different from a warranty and none of us ever want a building owner to feel misled when working with our group. If you were issued a lifetime service guarantee paper, please email lifetime@choiceroofgroup.com with a scanned copy and the program will be honored in original form.

We look forward to integrating all the new benefits on April 1st, and are very excited to see all the great things to come! 

[jeannejcooper76]

35 eCommerce Growth Hacks

Hi, and welcome to the March 2019 blog post here on AidanBooth.com!

This month I’m sharing 35 eCommerce Growth Hacks, and content comes courtesy of Online Marketing Classroom (OMC), the membership program Steve and I run (which Steve started way back in 2008).

OMC is built around six core pillars:

In addition to updating our members with new content and strategies every month, we also provide exclusive access to custom in-house tools, special discounts, and are involved every day in the OMC community.

We’re incredibly proud of what OMC has become over the past 11 years. To find out more, go here: https://onlinemarketingclassroom.com

Now, on to this month’s content!

The content today is aimed at helping eCommerce stores perform better. We’ve got 35 different tactics for you to consider, and implementing even just a few of them could result in huge gains for your business, or be the difference between success and failure.

The tactics below add to one another, and the synergy helps your business scale in a way not possible with just a single marketing method. This is about taking an asset you already have and turning it into something much more valuable (and profitable).

With that in mind, let’s jump right in…

1. Encourage User Generated Content

86% of millennials report User Generated Content indicates brand quality. Before making a purchase, 68% of users age 18 – 24 take the social media presence of the brand into consideration. ComScore reports the ROI as very high, with brand engagement rising by 28% when user-generated content is combined with brand marketing.

User Generated Content is as it sounds; any sort of content that’s created by users (customers/fans/etc). This may be photos, videos, blog posts, social media posts and so on. The important thing is that it’s created about the brand by someone other than the brand. It’s a 3rd party endorsement.

How to get it?

The best way is by incentivizing customers with some type of reward, such as cash, gift cards, products or simply exposure on your Brand’s website, fan page or in the newsletter.

Run a contest where customers post pictures of themselves using the product to their social media pages with a specific hashtag you specify. Winners can be drawn randomly or chosen by other users.

Sometimes you don’t even have to offer an incentive, you can just ask. Yoga brand Lululemon ran a campaign with hashtag #thesweatlife, asking customers to post pictures of themselves “getting their sweat on”. 7,000 photos were collected in only a couple of months, and the page they created at #sweatlife got 40,000+ visits.

2. Launch Stores on Multiple Platforms (eBay & Facebook)

Once your primary eCommerce store is up and running, you can expand fairly easily by using your existing images and product copy to set up shop on other marketplace platforms such as eBay and Facebook. As of this writing there are 168 million active buyers on eBay and Facebook marketplace is used by 800 million people monthly.

Selling on these platforms doesn’t require you to send inventory to their warehouse. You only need to put a few additional logistics in place to handle fulfillment, making this a fast method to bring massive revenue growth.

These plugins and resources will help:

Shopify eBay Plugin

Woocommerce eBay Plugin

BigCommerce eBay Plugin

Shopify Facebook – Accepting applications for integration HERE

BigCommerce Facebook Marketplace plugin

3. Tap Into The Massive Reddit Community

Reddit users are notorious for hating marketers… which is actually good news.

Every so often a business owner “cracks the code” to gaining trust in the Reddit community and is rewarded with the “blue ocean” that exists there (very little to no competition, but lots of opportunity).

Reddit is the 7th highest trafficked site on the internet. There are 234 million unique users, and it gets 8 billion page views a month. This is a community that rewards you with intense loyalty and lots of sales when you tap into it properly.

The key is to take the time and effort to establish yourself as a trusted community member first. You gain “karma points” on your profile as you contribute value and get upvotes. With enough upvotes, and some emotional intelligence, you can then make useful recommendations that get people over to your website.

That does not mean you suddenly switch from helpful community member into hype-filled marketer. Reddit users hate clickbait and anything that sounds scammy. To get results, be completely genuine and recommend products in the same way you would as if speaking to a personal friend in real life.

4. Incentivize Shoppers with Rewards Programs

Credit card companies have known for quite some time the power of rewards to get cardholders spending as much as possible. Other industries are starting to see the benefits of incorporating this as well, and several apps have been created to execute this on eCommerce shopping platforms.

Shoppers will often buy just to get a reward, and this works to your favor not just on initial purchases but for gaining repeat business as well. People don’t want to “lose” points they’ve already earned, so when conflicted between two similar stores, they’ll usually choose the one they have points at already.

As for incentives, the tried and true “punch card” method where each purchase brings them closer to the reward is just as effective as ever.

Another option is to offer cash rewards (ie $10 cash back for every $100 spent) or points good toward store credit or gift cards.

There are many apps on the marketplace that make it easy to set up Rewards programs for customers.

Below are the highest rated apps for:

Shopify

BigCommerce

5. Automate Social Posting

Why is it that some businesses get huge traction and sales from social media and others don’t, even when they’re in the same industry?

A survey conducted with social media users found that consistency is a major component of what causes a person to follow a brand or not. Frequency is also important. The more often you’re in front of your target demographic, the more memorable and trusted your brand is.

The problem is it takes time to come up with content and post it every day. It’s difficult to maintain when you have so many other daily tasks.

That’s why it’s best to batch your social media content creation and get it all set up in advance so that it’s automatically posting on a regular schedule.

Social media automation tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite are useful to schedule all the content in advance.

6. Customize Website for International Shoppers

If you’re able to ship internationally, your conversions will get a major boost from having a version of your website specifically for users of that country.

This is obviously even more important if they speak a different language. Rather than using a browser extension to translate the site and trying to figure out if the item they want really does ship to their location, users immediately feel confident they can purchase from you.

You can use a translation service like Gengo for the text on your website, or post a translation job on Upwork.

Then implement a tool on your website that detects users’ location and automatically displays the correct version:

For Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/geolocation-redirect

For BigCommerce: https://geotargetly.com/geo-redirect

You’ll want to display prices in the local currency as well, which can be done with an app:

Shopify & BigCommerce Multi-Currency

7. Grow Profits Over Time From Continuous Split Testing

An A/B test, also called a split test, is showing 50% of your website visitors one version of a webpage and the other 50% an alternate version where something has been changed, then measuring to see which has a higher conversion rate.

The aim of an A/B test is to bring you more revenue from the same amount of traffic, by increasing the conversion rate of your product pages, checkout process and other assets in the sales funnel. Doing this can open opportunities to acquire customers you previously weren’t able to because the cost was prohibitive. Or, it can simply increase your profit margin.

Although you will build your website with the goal of optimizing it for a high conversion rate off the bat, there are some things you can’t be sure are producing the highest conversion rate possible until you test it. For some businesses, they’re surprised at the winning variable in a split test because all the “experts” told them a different format was better.

Not only that, but the online world is constantly evolving. What worked well a few years (or even a few months) ago may be a conversion-killer now. If you’re continually testing, you’ll gain the edge over competitors who aren’t willing to invest the time.

You’ll get the most benefit from split testing:

The offer

Headline text

The call-to-action

Buttons – the shape, color, size

Images

Videos

Testimonials

Bullets and other body copy

Other social proof elements such as certificates, security badges, partner logos, etc.

The navigation options – sometimes having no or few navigational elements increases conversion by keeping people focused on the offer, other times sales go up when visitors have easy access to review other pages on the website before purchasing.

The checkout process – many sales are lost during checkout, so it’s wise to put a lot of focus on optimizing here.

8. Create a Personality For Your Company

Although it’s always been true that consumers connect better with people than faceless corporations, it’s more important today than ever before. Whether or not a company seems genuine and authentic was recently found to be one of the major decision factors when purchasing.

This doesn’t necessarily mean your brand has to have an actual person as a brand representative for customers to connect with. That is one option, but it can be as simple as just making sure your brand itself has a personality.

Brand personality is expressed through the language you use in headlines, body copy, emails and social media content. It’s also expressed through colors, images, logos and so on.

For this reason, having a deep understanding of who your demographic is pays off in a big way. When a customer can relate to the personality traits they feel a brand has, it creates emotional connection and rapport.

9. Welcome Controversial Topics to Generate Discussion

Controversy brings a lot of attention, and attention brings a lot of sales.

There are risks to taking a stand on controversial topics of course, but if you know your audience well and are willing to lose a small percentage of followers, with the added benefit of higher loyalty from those remaining, then it can be well worth it.

Understanding your audience is crucial if you’re going to attempt this. You obviously wouldn’t build a following of animal lovers and then announce support of hunting. However, you can take a stand on important issues within the community, such as being against a particular pet behavior training method, bringing attention as well as loyalty from those with a similar view.

You can also tap into trending controversial topics using a playful method that’s not necessarily polarizing.

As long as you are brave enough, you can attract attention just by being a bit cheeky. Such as, in the middle of a heated political campaign, posting that both candidates would be in a better mood if they had used your company’s travel pillow on their flight. It may be cheesy, and you’ll likely get some snarky responses, but you won’t be complaining about the high open rates, shares, comments and sales that result.

10. Remind Shoppers of Wishlist Items via Email

Shoppers have a tendency to add items to their wishlist and then completely forget about them. Since keeping in touch with customers and subscribers often is important for top of mind awareness anyway, you have the dual benefit of having a reason to follow up that simultaneously is a sales oriented email.

If you use Shopify, there’s an app that automatically sends follow-up emails reminding shoppers of Wishlist items:

https://apps.shopify.com/wishlist-followup

11. Proactively Collect Product Reviews

Customers rarely leave product reviews on their own without a reminder. The exception is when they’re unhappy! That means you need to be proactive about gathering positive reviews, as they have a significant effect on sales. BrightLocal found that 85% of shoppers trust internet reviews as they would a personal recommendation.

To gather reviews, the most effective methods are by:

Including a product insert in the package that asks customers to leave a review, and include the URL where they can post it.

Sending an email reminder. Yotpo is a good app for automating this. A few weeks after a purchase, Yotpo automatically sends an email to customers asking them to rate/review. It even allows customers to write the review in an email response, which it then posts to the correct product listing.

Yotpo for Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/yotpo-social-reviews Yotpo for BigCommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/yotpo-social-reviews

Consider the timing of your review reminders as far as how long it takes to process and deliver the product, and how much time the customer needs in order to use it and see results. You don’t want to ask someone for a review before they’ve even received or used the product.

12. Guest Post for Exposure

Guest posting is known as a popular method for gathering links that help your website rank in the search engines. However, if you connect with popular bloggers in your niche who have high engagement from their followers, you’ll see immediate traffic and sales from your guest posts.

Guestpost.com is a good place to connect with influencers. It helps you find websites in your niche that accept guest posts, keep track of where you’ve submitted posts, and includes email templates for cold  outreach to websites you’d like to be published on. It also provides tools for analyzing the stats of a website so you aren’t wasting time creating content for sites with low readership.

13. Use Live Chat to Close Sales

When a shopper can’t find an immediate answer to their questions, they often become frustrated and with alternative websites being only a few clicks away, it’s easy to lose potential customers to a competitor who has what they need.

79% of customers prefer live chat support over other channels because it’s the fastest option.

Adding live chat to your website makes shoppers feel like they’re in a ‘real’ store, able to get their questions answered by shop assistants.

You don’t have to be chained to your website 24/7 to implement this though. You can either set specific chat support hours, and/or use an app that allows you to answer questions from your cell phone.

SumoMe shared a live chat trick for gathering more leads while you’re away from the chat. They included an auto-response when not available to answer questions that said:

They found it was a highly effective way to collect email addresses compare to the default of asking the person to submit their inquiry into the chat box along with email address that you’ll respond to during normal support hours. Just the slight change in words significantly improved the number of leads collected.

We’ve analyzed the live chat options available to find those that integrate well with popular eCommerce platforms and are highly rated specifically by eCommerce store owners.

LiveChat provides great value for eCommerce entrepreneurs. They have a ticketing system, goal tracking, and thorough analytics. They integrate with the most popular shopping platforms, including Shopify and BigCommerce.

Tidio is another option, and has recently added several convenient features for Shopify stores such as automatically checking the status of an order, product availability and delivery locations. The satisfaction rate from Shopify users is higher than for BigCommerce, as these features are currently only available for Shopify stores.

Chatra is a good choice if you’re on a budget, as they have a free plan for solo entrepreneurs. The paid version allows for multiple support agents. It integrates with Slack, Google Analytics, and you can reply to support requests with the mobile app available on Android and iOS.

14. Wow Customers With Handwritten Thank You Cards

Sending personalized, handwritten thank you cards to customers is a huge satisfaction and loyalty booster that gets customers not only returning to buy again, but giving you free advertising by spreading the word to friends and family.

Donors Choose, a non-profit collecting donations for public school classroom projects, tried this method and were able to get 38% of donors returning to give a second donation. The donation amount also increased by an average of $41, resulting in an extra $3 million in donations per year.

Luckily you don’t need to write these cards yourself. You can use a service called Thankbot, which automates the writing and sending of (handwritten) cards for you.

15. Recapture Shoppers With Exit Intent Popups

It’s a fact in the online business world that most visitors to your website will leave without making a purchase. Since traffic can be expensive to obtain, you want to do everything possible to get the sale or at least contact info before losing the visitor.

The top priority location to focus on is checkout abandonment. These are not just random browsers you’re losing; they’re buyers. Adding an exit intent pop here with a discount coupon and satisfaction guarantee reminder is fast and easy to put in place, and will immediately start recouping sales for you.

An exit intent popup is triggered when the visitor takes an action that indicates they may close the page, such as rapid mouse movement toward the browser search bar or exit. This isn’t the same as the old school popups that appear ‘after’ a visitor closes the page.

The popular exit-intent popup software options on the market today are:

Bounce Breaker (created by Steve and I)

SumoMe

Bounce Exchange

Gleam

16. Personalize Homepage For a Conversion Boost

Amazon does a great job of personalizing the homepage; they’re a perfect example to model.

Your sales will definitely go up by using personalization that displays items similar to what someone has purchased or viewed previously. Reminding viewers of products they looked at previously but haven’t bought yet will get a certain percentage of visitors finalizing that purchase.

With the tools available today, you don’t need advanced coding skills to do this. You can use Evergage or Bunting to get it done without being tech savvy.

17. Make Use of FOMO to get Shoppers Buying Immediately

The fear of missing out on something is a strong psychological drive that repeatedly has been proven to get people to take an action rather than procrastinate.

The easiest method to create this in your marketing is by using scarcity in your sales funnel and other marketing creatives.

This can be done by displaying remaining inventory (“only 3 left”), executing a deadline where customers no longer get a discount or bonus after the timer runs out, and using social proof apps to show shoppers that other people are looking at the item and they may lose it if others buy it before they do.

Inventory Remaining Shopify app: https://apps.shopify.com/pressure-cooker

Countdown timer Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/powr-countdown-timer

Countdown timer & low stock alert Bigcommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/countdown-cart/

Social proof urgency app for Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/social-proof-urgency

18. Fix Browser Bugs & Incompatibilities

You could be losing many sales simply because your website either doesn’t display the formatting correctly on certain browsers, or has browser bugs.

One way to quickly spot issues is by going to your Google Analytics report at Audience > Technology > Browser & OS report.

Then, look for browsers that are converting at a lower rate than the others. You may see that IE 10 is converting 3% higher than IE 11, and Firefox 63 is converting higher than Firefox 60.

You can then use a tools such as BrowserStack, CrossBrowserTesting or Browserling to view your website in different browsers and see what the problem is.

Prioritize which to fix first based on the amount of missed revenue (usually highest traffic). Assume that the underperforming version would convert the same as the other and use that to estimate. This can also help you see if it’s worth paying a developer to fix the issue (it may take a few months to recoup the investment).

19. Optimize Input Fields on Checkout For Easy Ordering

Shopping is fun… until it’s time to fill out several lengthy forms. The longer a checkout process is, and the more fields a shopper has to enter, the higher likelihood they’ll abandon.

Make checkout quick and easy by minimizing the amount of information required to complete the order.

Also make use of autofill on forms where it’s allowed such as name, email, address, phone number and other fields that don’t pose any security or privacy threat.

20. Make Returns Easy

As much as people love shopping online, the inconvenience of paying return shipping or restocking fees if the product doesn’t meet expectations or isn’t the right fit is a bit nerve wracking. This fear can prevent purchases.

Do whatever you can to at least pay return shipping; it’s good business. If you can avoid restocking fees, that is best as well.

More than 50% of store shoppers will read the return policy before making a purchase, so be sure it’s easily accessible on all pages, as well as understandable and concise.

21. Satisfy Shoppers “Want it Now” Mentality With Fast Shipping

“Retailers should never underestimate the ‘want it now’ mentality. If customers know that they will receive goods quickly when they order, they’ll keep coming back.” Graham Charlton – Clickz Global

We’ve grown accustomed to getting whatever we want, and getting it fast. Slow shipping will deter customers nowadays. The faster you can get the customer their item, the easier you’ll win them over. It may eat into your margins a bit, but it will pay off.

This is possible even if you’re doing dropshipping. You can now find US suppliers on AliExpress, using a new search filter available:

22. Use Shipping Boxes to Promote Your Brand

There are numerous opportunities for your brand to be seen between the time it’s packaged and the time the customer opens it. For instance, sitting on the ground outside the recipient’s house, dorm room, or apartment. Posted on social media because customer’s pets are playing in the empty box. On top of the counter at FedEx waiting for pickup.

With a clever logo, tagline and website URL, this is an excellent free marketing technique that can bring in new customers.

23. Write a Solution-Focused SEO Title to Maximize Traffic

When someone types an inquiry into a search engine, they’re looking for a solution to something. Perhaps they’re just looking for a suit, but that suit is a solution to something they need. Their “problem” is they need to look dressed up for a particular occasion. By turning your headlines into solutions, you’ll get  searchers clicking over to your website instead of competitors:

24. Prove Popularity with Social Proof Apps

Let’s face it… when you see a crowd of people looking at something the natural urge is to look too.

When one restaurant is packed and the other empty, you assume the packed restaurant must be the best and go there.

On the internet you can showcase how popular your website and products are via social proof apps that simulate this experience by popping up a message to website visitors when another visitor subscribes or purchases a product.

Social proof apps such as https://useproof.com/ provide an average conversion lift of 10% and can be set up in 15 minutes or less.

25. Find and Fix Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is extremely common on eCommerce sites, mostly caused by:

Search Filter Combinations

Product Descriptions

Title Tags

You can utilize the free version of Screaming Frog software to identify duplicate content issues on your website.

26. Prevent Chargebacks

Chargebacks are very expensive and can be costing your business a lot of money. Not only do you lose the amount of the original purchase, but you have to pay a fee on top of that.

Most chargebacks happen either because customers don’t recognize the charge on their card, or because their card was stolen and used fraudulently.

Here’s how to combat these issues:

Make sure the name that appears on your customer’s bank statement matches the name of your brand/store. The more irrelevant the name appearing on their statement is to what your store sells, the more likely you’ll get a chargeback.

If you do any recurring billing, remind customers ‘before’ their recurring payment is charged. Remind them what name will appear on their bank statement as well.

Remind customers what name will appear on their bank statement on the order form, ‘and’ in the product receipt.

Provide exceptional customer service always, and solve unhappy customers problems quickly and thoroughly (make sure they’re happy before closing the ticket).

Learn how to spot fraud and review it immediately. If you get a fraud alert because an order came in with a different shipping address or name than the billing information, follow up on it and call the customer to verify if you have any suspicions about it.

27. Have a Professional Customer Support Desk in Place

Nothing makes customers more nervous than a “support system” consisting of a free email address with no ticket # or auto-reply confirming receipt of support inquiries. These little things can really make customers apprehensive and hurt your business.

It’s great to be a startup, but you want your customers to feel comfortable and happy with their shopping experience so you can grow. There are free and low-cost options available such as FreshDesk (Steve and I use this) that help you look professional even when on a budget.

28. Use Multiple Suppliers

Imagine one of your products is extremely popular and bringing you sales every day… then your supplier runs out of stock and you can’t sell anymore!

It’s good to have a backup supplier to keep the sales coming in and avoid stock-outs. Your profit margin may be a bit smaller as you won’t benefit from quantity discounts, but a sale at a lower profit is better than no sale at all (and better than causing frustration to customers who want the item and can’t get it).

It also makes sure YOU stay in business even if your supplier doesn’t.

29. Get in Front of Trends to Catch Big Sales Waves

Trendy products spike in sales quickly and die just as fast… if you aren’t in early, you miss out on the big money. However, doing the work to find the next hot product requires a lot of time and boring manual tasks.

Rather than spending hours researching and trying to figure out the next hot product on your own, you can use a tool like Trendosaur or Terrapeak to quickly spot what’s about to become popular, allowing you to get in before everyone else.

30. Easily Expand Product Line via Dropshipping

Having a vast product selection makes your company appear larger and provides you opportunity to gain additional sales via cross-selling and upselling.

eCommerce giant Amazon implemented dropshipping in 2011, and the dropshipped products made up 34% of sold merchandise that year.

Since sourcing your own product takes quite a bit of time, upfront capital and risk, you can add a selection of new products using the dropshipping method. Once one or more of those start selling a lot, you can then work to manufacture it on your own with the security of knowing in advance that it will sell.

31. Create Limited-Edition Bundles

Introduce true scarcity into your store to create an immediate surge of sales, tapping into FOMO and helping keep the reputation of your brand high by proving that limited really means limited.

Consumers are aware that urgency and advertisements of limited quantities are not always true. By adding limited-edition bundles that actually sell out and disappear, it keeps the rest of your scarcity and urgency elements (that may be on a recurring/resetting timer) effective.

32. Automate Tedious Time-Consuming Tasks

You can save dozens (even hundreds) of hours per month on repetitive tedious tasks by using apps such as Dropified, which allow you to:

Import products from AliExpress and other suppliers (1-Click Import Products to your Shopify, Commerce HQ or WooCommerce store. Directly import from sites AliExpress, AliBaba, eBay, Walmart, Costco, Wish, Etsy, SammyDress and many others.)

Easily create dynamic product descriptions

Edit images within the app

Quickly find suppliers who have e-packet shipping available

Automatically orders all bundled products together at the same time

Gives you access to a list of US product vendors. (For dropshippers selling in the US this helps you get products to your customers faster. The list includes 10,000 products that ship from the US.)

This particular app is unfortunately not available for BigCommerce, however there is a similar service that works on WooCommerce called ShopMaster.

33. Capture Lost Sales With Back in Stock Notifications

Very little annoys customers more than an item being out of stock… and they’ll usually just leave and order it elsewhere.

Luckily you can help combat stock-outs with the multiple suppliers tip offered earlier. However for those cases when you still can’t do anything about it, there is one thing you can do to potentially recapture the sale later. You can send an email to the person as soon as it’s back in stock again.

There’s an app called “Back In Stock”, which collects emails and sends automatic emails with an order button as soon as the item is restocked.

For Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/back-in-stock

For BigCommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/instocknotify/

34. Push Notification + Abandoned Cart

The ultimate abandoned cart recovery tool is the push notification. It’s best to get acceptance for push notifications earlier in the shopping process by offering a coupon or other incentive to turn it on. Then, if they abandon their cart later, you can trigger the notification to appear directly on the desktop or mobile device.

35. Track Everything

Track more than you think you’ll need, because what you measure you can improve. Make improvements everywhere you can and watch your business grow exponentially.

It also helps keep your motivation up. If you can’t see what’s improving, you may have a false sense of not progressing – when you actually are improving. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean you need to monitor all stats every day (or even every week). It’ll feel good to look back after several months though, and see all the areas that have grown.

35 eCommerce Growth Hacks shared from AidanBooth.com

35 eCommerce Growth Hacks shared from Aileen Batts Blog

[aileenmbatts]

35 eCommerce Growth Hacks

Hi, and welcome to the March 2019 blog post here on AidanBooth.com!

This month I’m sharing 35 eCommerce Growth Hacks, and content comes courtesy of Online Marketing Classroom (OMC), the membership program Steve and I run (which Steve started way back in 2008).

OMC is built around six core pillars:

In addition to updating our members with new content and strategies every month, we also provide exclusive access to custom in-house tools, special discounts, and are involved every day in the OMC community.

We’re incredibly proud of what OMC has become over the past 11 years. To find out more, go here: https://onlinemarketingclassroom.com

Now, on to this month’s content!

The content today is aimed at helping eCommerce stores perform better. We’ve got 35 different tactics for you to consider, and implementing even just a few of them could result in huge gains for your business, or be the difference between success and failure.

The tactics below add to one another, and the synergy helps your business scale in a way not possible with just a single marketing method. This is about taking an asset you already have and turning it into something much more valuable (and profitable).

With that in mind, let’s jump right in…

1. Encourage User Generated Content

86% of millennials report User Generated Content indicates brand quality. Before making a purchase, 68% of users age 18 – 24 take the social media presence of the brand into consideration. ComScore reports the ROI as very high, with brand engagement rising by 28% when user-generated content is combined with brand marketing.

User Generated Content is as it sounds; any sort of content that’s created by users (customers/fans/etc). This may be photos, videos, blog posts, social media posts and so on. The important thing is that it’s created about the brand by someone other than the brand. It’s a 3rd party endorsement.

How to get it?

The best way is by incentivizing customers with some type of reward, such as cash, gift cards, products or simply exposure on your Brand’s website, fan page or in the newsletter.

Run a contest where customers post pictures of themselves using the product to their social media pages with a specific hashtag you specify. Winners can be drawn randomly or chosen by other users.

Sometimes you don’t even have to offer an incentive, you can just ask. Yoga brand Lululemon ran a campaign with hashtag #thesweatlife, asking customers to post pictures of themselves “getting their sweat on”. 7,000 photos were collected in only a couple of months, and the page they created at #sweatlife got 40,000+ visits.

2. Launch Stores on Multiple Platforms (eBay & Facebook)

Once your primary eCommerce store is up and running, you can expand fairly easily by using your existing images and product copy to set up shop on other marketplace platforms such as eBay and Facebook. As of this writing there are 168 million active buyers on eBay and Facebook marketplace is used by 800 million people monthly.

Selling on these platforms doesn’t require you to send inventory to their warehouse. You only need to put a few additional logistics in place to handle fulfillment, making this a fast method to bring massive revenue growth.

These plugins and resources will help:

Shopify eBay Plugin

Woocommerce eBay Plugin

BigCommerce eBay Plugin

Shopify Facebook – Accepting applications for integration HERE

BigCommerce Facebook Marketplace plugin

3. Tap Into The Massive Reddit Community

Reddit users are notorious for hating marketers… which is actually good news.

Every so often a business owner “cracks the code” to gaining trust in the Reddit community and is rewarded with the “blue ocean” that exists there (very little to no competition, but lots of opportunity).

Reddit is the 7th highest trafficked site on the internet. There are 234 million unique users, and it gets 8 billion page views a month. This is a community that rewards you with intense loyalty and lots of sales when you tap into it properly.

The key is to take the time and effort to establish yourself as a trusted community member first. You gain “karma points” on your profile as you contribute value and get upvotes. With enough upvotes, and some emotional intelligence, you can then make useful recommendations that get people over to your website.

That does not mean you suddenly switch from helpful community member into hype-filled marketer. Reddit users hate clickbait and anything that sounds scammy. To get results, be completely genuine and recommend products in the same way you would as if speaking to a personal friend in real life.

4. Incentivize Shoppers with Rewards Programs

Credit card companies have known for quite some time the power of rewards to get cardholders spending as much as possible. Other industries are starting to see the benefits of incorporating this as well, and several apps have been created to execute this on eCommerce shopping platforms.

Shoppers will often buy just to get a reward, and this works to your favor not just on initial purchases but for gaining repeat business as well. People don’t want to “lose” points they’ve already earned, so when conflicted between two similar stores, they’ll usually choose the one they have points at already.

As for incentives, the tried and true “punch card” method where each purchase brings them closer to the reward is just as effective as ever.

Another option is to offer cash rewards (ie $10 cash back for every $100 spent) or points good toward store credit or gift cards.

There are many apps on the marketplace that make it easy to set up Rewards programs for customers.

Below are the highest rated apps for:

Shopify

BigCommerce

5. Automate Social Posting

Why is it that some businesses get huge traction and sales from social media and others don’t, even when they’re in the same industry?

A survey conducted with social media users found that consistency is a major component of what causes a person to follow a brand or not. Frequency is also important. The more often you’re in front of your target demographic, the more memorable and trusted your brand is.

The problem is it takes time to come up with content and post it every day. It’s difficult to maintain when you have so many other daily tasks.

That’s why it’s best to batch your social media content creation and get it all set up in advance so that it’s automatically posting on a regular schedule.

Social media automation tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite are useful to schedule all the content in advance.

6. Customize Website for International Shoppers

If you’re able to ship internationally, your conversions will get a major boost from having a version of your website specifically for users of that country.

This is obviously even more important if they speak a different language. Rather than using a browser extension to translate the site and trying to figure out if the item they want really does ship to their location, users immediately feel confident they can purchase from you.

You can use a translation service like Gengo for the text on your website, or post a translation job on Upwork.

Then implement a tool on your website that detects users’ location and automatically displays the correct version:

For Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/geolocation-redirect

For BigCommerce: https://geotargetly.com/geo-redirect

You’ll want to display prices in the local currency as well, which can be done with an app:

Shopify & BigCommerce Multi-Currency

7. Grow Profits Over Time From Continuous Split Testing

An A/B test, also called a split test, is showing 50% of your website visitors one version of a webpage and the other 50% an alternate version where something has been changed, then measuring to see which has a higher conversion rate.

The aim of an A/B test is to bring you more revenue from the same amount of traffic, by increasing the conversion rate of your product pages, checkout process and other assets in the sales funnel. Doing this can open opportunities to acquire customers you previously weren’t able to because the cost was prohibitive. Or, it can simply increase your profit margin.

Although you will build your website with the goal of optimizing it for a high conversion rate off the bat, there are some things you can’t be sure are producing the highest conversion rate possible until you test it. For some businesses, they’re surprised at the winning variable in a split test because all the “experts” told them a different format was better.

Not only that, but the online world is constantly evolving. What worked well a few years (or even a few months) ago may be a conversion-killer now. If you’re continually testing, you’ll gain the edge over competitors who aren’t willing to invest the time.

You’ll get the most benefit from split testing:

The offer

Headline text

The call-to-action

Buttons – the shape, color, size

Images

Videos

Testimonials

Bullets and other body copy

Other social proof elements such as certificates, security badges, partner logos, etc.

The navigation options – sometimes having no or few navigational elements increases conversion by keeping people focused on the offer, other times sales go up when visitors have easy access to review other pages on the website before purchasing.

The checkout process – many sales are lost during checkout, so it’s wise to put a lot of focus on optimizing here.

8. Create a Personality For Your Company

Although it’s always been true that consumers connect better with people than faceless corporations, it’s more important today than ever before. Whether or not a company seems genuine and authentic was recently found to be one of the major decision factors when purchasing.

This doesn’t necessarily mean your brand has to have an actual person as a brand representative for customers to connect with. That is one option, but it can be as simple as just making sure your brand itself has a personality.

Brand personality is expressed through the language you use in headlines, body copy, emails and social media content. It’s also expressed through colors, images, logos and so on.

For this reason, having a deep understanding of who your demographic is pays off in a big way. When a customer can relate to the personality traits they feel a brand has, it creates emotional connection and rapport.

9. Welcome Controversial Topics to Generate Discussion

Controversy brings a lot of attention, and attention brings a lot of sales.

There are risks to taking a stand on controversial topics of course, but if you know your audience well and are willing to lose a small percentage of followers, with the added benefit of higher loyalty from those remaining, then it can be well worth it.

Understanding your audience is crucial if you’re going to attempt this. You obviously wouldn’t build a following of animal lovers and then announce support of hunting. However, you can take a stand on important issues within the community, such as being against a particular pet behavior training method, bringing attention as well as loyalty from those with a similar view.

You can also tap into trending controversial topics using a playful method that’s not necessarily polarizing.

As long as you are brave enough, you can attract attention just by being a bit cheeky. Such as, in the middle of a heated political campaign, posting that both candidates would be in a better mood if they had used your company’s travel pillow on their flight. It may be cheesy, and you’ll likely get some snarky responses, but you won’t be complaining about the high open rates, shares, comments and sales that result.

10. Remind Shoppers of Wishlist Items via Email

Shoppers have a tendency to add items to their wishlist and then completely forget about them. Since keeping in touch with customers and subscribers often is important for top of mind awareness anyway, you have the dual benefit of having a reason to follow up that simultaneously is a sales oriented email.

If you use Shopify, there’s an app that automatically sends follow-up emails reminding shoppers of Wishlist items:

https://apps.shopify.com/wishlist-followup

11. Proactively Collect Product Reviews

Customers rarely leave product reviews on their own without a reminder. The exception is when they’re unhappy! That means you need to be proactive about gathering positive reviews, as they have a significant effect on sales. BrightLocal found that 85% of shoppers trust internet reviews as they would a personal recommendation.

To gather reviews, the most effective methods are by:

Including a product insert in the package that asks customers to leave a review, and include the URL where they can post it.

Sending an email reminder. Yotpo is a good app for automating this. A few weeks after a purchase, Yotpo automatically sends an email to customers asking them to rate/review. It even allows customers to write the review in an email response, which it then posts to the correct product listing.

Yotpo for Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/yotpo-social-reviews Yotpo for BigCommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/yotpo-social-reviews

Consider the timing of your review reminders as far as how long it takes to process and deliver the product, and how much time the customer needs in order to use it and see results. You don’t want to ask someone for a review before they’ve even received or used the product.

12. Guest Post for Exposure

Guest posting is known as a popular method for gathering links that help your website rank in the search engines. However, if you connect with popular bloggers in your niche who have high engagement from their followers, you’ll see immediate traffic and sales from your guest posts.

Guestpost.com is a good place to connect with influencers. It helps you find websites in your niche that accept guest posts, keep track of where you’ve submitted posts, and includes email templates for cold  outreach to websites you’d like to be published on. It also provides tools for analyzing the stats of a website so you aren’t wasting time creating content for sites with low readership.

13. Use Live Chat to Close Sales

When a shopper can’t find an immediate answer to their questions, they often become frustrated and with alternative websites being only a few clicks away, it’s easy to lose potential customers to a competitor who has what they need.

79% of customers prefer live chat support over other channels because it’s the fastest option.

Adding live chat to your website makes shoppers feel like they’re in a ‘real’ store, able to get their questions answered by shop assistants.

You don’t have to be chained to your website 24/7 to implement this though. You can either set specific chat support hours, and/or use an app that allows you to answer questions from your cell phone.

SumoMe shared a live chat trick for gathering more leads while you’re away from the chat. They included an auto-response when not available to answer questions that said:

They found it was a highly effective way to collect email addresses compare to the default of asking the person to submit their inquiry into the chat box along with email address that you’ll respond to during normal support hours. Just the slight change in words significantly improved the number of leads collected.

We’ve analyzed the live chat options available to find those that integrate well with popular eCommerce platforms and are highly rated specifically by eCommerce store owners.

LiveChat provides great value for eCommerce entrepreneurs. They have a ticketing system, goal tracking, and thorough analytics. They integrate with the most popular shopping platforms, including Shopify and BigCommerce.

Tidio is another option, and has recently added several convenient features for Shopify stores such as automatically checking the status of an order, product availability and delivery locations. The satisfaction rate from Shopify users is higher than for BigCommerce, as these features are currently only available for Shopify stores.

Chatra is a good choice if you’re on a budget, as they have a free plan for solo entrepreneurs. The paid version allows for multiple support agents. It integrates with Slack, Google Analytics, and you can reply to support requests with the mobile app available on Android and iOS.

14. Wow Customers With Handwritten Thank You Cards

Sending personalized, handwritten thank you cards to customers is a huge satisfaction and loyalty booster that gets customers not only returning to buy again, but giving you free advertising by spreading the word to friends and family.

Donors Choose, a non-profit collecting donations for public school classroom projects, tried this method and were able to get 38% of donors returning to give a second donation. The donation amount also increased by an average of $41, resulting in an extra $3 million in donations per year.

Luckily you don’t need to write these cards yourself. You can use a service called Thankbot, which automates the writing and sending of (handwritten) cards for you.

15. Recapture Shoppers With Exit Intent Popups

It’s a fact in the online business world that most visitors to your website will leave without making a purchase. Since traffic can be expensive to obtain, you want to do everything possible to get the sale or at least contact info before losing the visitor.

The top priority location to focus on is checkout abandonment. These are not just random browsers you’re losing; they’re buyers. Adding an exit intent pop here with a discount coupon and satisfaction guarantee reminder is fast and easy to put in place, and will immediately start recouping sales for you.

An exit intent popup is triggered when the visitor takes an action that indicates they may close the page, such as rapid mouse movement toward the browser search bar or exit. This isn’t the same as the old school popups that appear ‘after’ a visitor closes the page.

The popular exit-intent popup software options on the market today are:

Bounce Breaker (created by Steve and I)

SumoMe

Bounce Exchange

Gleam

16. Personalize Homepage For a Conversion Boost

Amazon does a great job of personalizing the homepage; they’re a perfect example to model.

Your sales will definitely go up by using personalization that displays items similar to what someone has purchased or viewed previously. Reminding viewers of products they looked at previously but haven’t bought yet will get a certain percentage of visitors finalizing that purchase.

With the tools available today, you don’t need advanced coding skills to do this. You can use Evergage or Bunting to get it done without being tech savvy.

17. Make Use of FOMO to get Shoppers Buying Immediately

The fear of missing out on something is a strong psychological drive that repeatedly has been proven to get people to take an action rather than procrastinate.

The easiest method to create this in your marketing is by using scarcity in your sales funnel and other marketing creatives.

This can be done by displaying remaining inventory (“only 3 left”), executing a deadline where customers no longer get a discount or bonus after the timer runs out, and using social proof apps to show shoppers that other people are looking at the item and they may lose it if others buy it before they do.

Inventory Remaining Shopify app: https://apps.shopify.com/pressure-cooker

Countdown timer Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/powr-countdown-timer

Countdown timer & low stock alert Bigcommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/countdown-cart/

Social proof urgency app for Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/social-proof-urgency

18. Fix Browser Bugs & Incompatibilities

You could be losing many sales simply because your website either doesn’t display the formatting correctly on certain browsers, or has browser bugs.

One way to quickly spot issues is by going to your Google Analytics report at Audience > Technology > Browser & OS report.

Then, look for browsers that are converting at a lower rate than the others. You may see that IE 10 is converting 3% higher than IE 11, and Firefox 63 is converting higher than Firefox 60.

You can then use a tools such as BrowserStack, CrossBrowserTesting or Browserling to view your website in different browsers and see what the problem is.

Prioritize which to fix first based on the amount of missed revenue (usually highest traffic). Assume that the underperforming version would convert the same as the other and use that to estimate. This can also help you see if it’s worth paying a developer to fix the issue (it may take a few months to recoup the investment).

19. Optimize Input Fields on Checkout For Easy Ordering

Shopping is fun… until it’s time to fill out several lengthy forms. The longer a checkout process is, and the more fields a shopper has to enter, the higher likelihood they’ll abandon.

Make checkout quick and easy by minimizing the amount of information required to complete the order.

Also make use of autofill on forms where it’s allowed such as name, email, address, phone number and other fields that don’t pose any security or privacy threat.

20. Make Returns Easy

As much as people love shopping online, the inconvenience of paying return shipping or restocking fees if the product doesn’t meet expectations or isn’t the right fit is a bit nerve wracking. This fear can prevent purchases.

Do whatever you can to at least pay return shipping; it’s good business. If you can avoid restocking fees, that is best as well.

More than 50% of store shoppers will read the return policy before making a purchase, so be sure it’s easily accessible on all pages, as well as understandable and concise.

21. Satisfy Shoppers “Want it Now” Mentality With Fast Shipping

“Retailers should never underestimate the ‘want it now’ mentality. If customers know that they will receive goods quickly when they order, they’ll keep coming back.” Graham Charlton – Clickz Global

We’ve grown accustomed to getting whatever we want, and getting it fast. Slow shipping will deter customers nowadays. The faster you can get the customer their item, the easier you’ll win them over. It may eat into your margins a bit, but it will pay off.

This is possible even if you’re doing dropshipping. You can now find US suppliers on AliExpress, using a new search filter available:

22. Use Shipping Boxes to Promote Your Brand

There are numerous opportunities for your brand to be seen between the time it’s packaged and the time the customer opens it. For instance, sitting on the ground outside the recipient’s house, dorm room, or apartment. Posted on social media because customer’s pets are playing in the empty box. On top of the counter at FedEx waiting for pickup.

With a clever logo, tagline and website URL, this is an excellent free marketing technique that can bring in new customers.

23. Write a Solution-Focused SEO Title to Maximize Traffic

When someone types an inquiry into a search engine, they’re looking for a solution to something. Perhaps they’re just looking for a suit, but that suit is a solution to something they need. Their “problem” is they need to look dressed up for a particular occasion. By turning your headlines into solutions, you’ll get  searchers clicking over to your website instead of competitors:

24. Prove Popularity with Social Proof Apps

Let’s face it… when you see a crowd of people looking at something the natural urge is to look too.

When one restaurant is packed and the other empty, you assume the packed restaurant must be the best and go there.

On the internet you can showcase how popular your website and products are via social proof apps that simulate this experience by popping up a message to website visitors when another visitor subscribes or purchases a product.

Social proof apps such as https://useproof.com/ provide an average conversion lift of 10% and can be set up in 15 minutes or less.

25. Find and Fix Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is extremely common on eCommerce sites, mostly caused by:

Search Filter Combinations

Product Descriptions

Title Tags

You can utilize the free version of Screaming Frog software to identify duplicate content issues on your website.

26. Prevent Chargebacks

Chargebacks are very expensive and can be costing your business a lot of money. Not only do you lose the amount of the original purchase, but you have to pay a fee on top of that.

Most chargebacks happen either because customers don’t recognize the charge on their card, or because their card was stolen and used fraudulently.

Here’s how to combat these issues:

Make sure the name that appears on your customer’s bank statement matches the name of your brand/store. The more irrelevant the name appearing on their statement is to what your store sells, the more likely you’ll get a chargeback.

If you do any recurring billing, remind customers ‘before’ their recurring payment is charged. Remind them what name will appear on their bank statement as well.

Remind customers what name will appear on their bank statement on the order form, ‘and’ in the product receipt.

Provide exceptional customer service always, and solve unhappy customers problems quickly and thoroughly (make sure they’re happy before closing the ticket).

Learn how to spot fraud and review it immediately. If you get a fraud alert because an order came in with a different shipping address or name than the billing information, follow up on it and call the customer to verify if you have any suspicions about it.

27. Have a Professional Customer Support Desk in Place

Nothing makes customers more nervous than a “support system” consisting of a free email address with no ticket # or auto-reply confirming receipt of support inquiries. These little things can really make customers apprehensive and hurt your business.

It’s great to be a startup, but you want your customers to feel comfortable and happy with their shopping experience so you can grow. There are free and low-cost options available such as FreshDesk (Steve and I use this) that help you look professional even when on a budget.

28. Use Multiple Suppliers

Imagine one of your products is extremely popular and bringing you sales every day… then your supplier runs out of stock and you can’t sell anymore!

It’s good to have a backup supplier to keep the sales coming in and avoid stock-outs. Your profit margin may be a bit smaller as you won’t benefit from quantity discounts, but a sale at a lower profit is better than no sale at all (and better than causing frustration to customers who want the item and can’t get it).

It also makes sure YOU stay in business even if your supplier doesn’t.

29. Get in Front of Trends to Catch Big Sales Waves

Trendy products spike in sales quickly and die just as fast… if you aren’t in early, you miss out on the big money. However, doing the work to find the next hot product requires a lot of time and boring manual tasks.

Rather than spending hours researching and trying to figure out the next hot product on your own, you can use a tool like Trendosaur or Terrapeak to quickly spot what’s about to become popular, allowing you to get in before everyone else.

30. Easily Expand Product Line via Dropshipping

Having a vast product selection makes your company appear larger and provides you opportunity to gain additional sales via cross-selling and upselling.

eCommerce giant Amazon implemented dropshipping in 2011, and the dropshipped products made up 34% of sold merchandise that year.

Since sourcing your own product takes quite a bit of time, upfront capital and risk, you can add a selection of new products using the dropshipping method. Once one or more of those start selling a lot, you can then work to manufacture it on your own with the security of knowing in advance that it will sell.

31. Create Limited-Edition Bundles

Introduce true scarcity into your store to create an immediate surge of sales, tapping into FOMO and helping keep the reputation of your brand high by proving that limited really means limited.

Consumers are aware that urgency and advertisements of limited quantities are not always true. By adding limited-edition bundles that actually sell out and disappear, it keeps the rest of your scarcity and urgency elements (that may be on a recurring/resetting timer) effective.

32. Automate Tedious Time-Consuming Tasks

You can save dozens (even hundreds) of hours per month on repetitive tedious tasks by using apps such as Dropified, which allow you to:

Import products from AliExpress and other suppliers (1-Click Import Products to your Shopify, Commerce HQ or WooCommerce store. Directly import from sites AliExpress, AliBaba, eBay, Walmart, Costco, Wish, Etsy, SammyDress and many others.)

Easily create dynamic product descriptions

Edit images within the app

Quickly find suppliers who have e-packet shipping available

Automatically orders all bundled products together at the same time

Gives you access to a list of US product vendors. (For dropshippers selling in the US this helps you get products to your customers faster. The list includes 10,000 products that ship from the US.)

This particular app is unfortunately not available for BigCommerce, however there is a similar service that works on WooCommerce called ShopMaster.

33. Capture Lost Sales With Back in Stock Notifications

Very little annoys customers more than an item being out of stock… and they’ll usually just leave and order it elsewhere.

Luckily you can help combat stock-outs with the multiple suppliers tip offered earlier. However for those cases when you still can’t do anything about it, there is one thing you can do to potentially recapture the sale later. You can send an email to the person as soon as it’s back in stock again.

There’s an app called “Back In Stock”, which collects emails and sends automatic emails with an order button as soon as the item is restocked.

For Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/back-in-stock

For BigCommerce: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/instocknotify/

34. Push Notification + Abandoned Cart

The ultimate abandoned cart recovery tool is the push notification. It’s best to get acceptance for push notifications earlier in the shopping process by offering a coupon or other incentive to turn it on. Then, if they abandon their cart later, you can trigger the notification to appear directly on the desktop or mobile device.

35. Track Everything

Track more than you think you’ll need, because what you measure you can improve. Make improvements everywhere you can and watch your business grow exponentially.

It also helps keep your motivation up. If you can’t see what’s improving, you may have a false sense of not progressing – when you actually are improving. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean you need to monitor all stats every day (or even every week). It’ll feel good to look back after several months though, and see all the areas that have grown.

35 eCommerce Growth Hacks shared from AidanBooth.com

[digitalmark18-blog]

Social Media Roundup: Facebook's Anti-Bullying Tools, Instagram's Nametags, Twitter Rules Update

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/social-media-roundup-facebooks-anti-bullying-tools-instagrams-nametags-twitter-rules-update/

Social Media Roundup: Facebook's Anti-Bullying Tools, Instagram's Nametags, Twitter Rules Update

A man holding a smartphone showing the icons for a number of social media apps (Photo by S3studio/Getty Images)

“Social Media Roundup” is a weekly roundup of news pertaining to all of your favorite websites and applications used for social networking. Published on Sundays, “Social Media Roundup” will help you stay up-to-date on all the important social media news you need to know.

Facebook

Video Premieres, Live Polls And Top Fans

Facebook has rolled out several new features to build the hype around video releases. The Premieres feature on Facebook can spark conversations and reactions around newly released videos in real-time with a live audience.

Fans will be able to vote on questions with interactive video polls — which is comparable to what you may have seen on Twitch. And the Top Fans feature highlights a creator’s most loyal fans by showing a badge next to their name.

Facebook’s video polls featureFacebook

“Other great ways to engage your fans include Groups, Live and Watch Parties. Tap into the power of Groups for super fans to connect with each other, and you! Go live once a week (or more) to source ideas and feedback and give fans a behind-the-scenes look from your latest shoot. You can also host a Watch Party in a Group. Watch Party is a new-ish feature that allows you and your fans to watch videos together and talk about them in real time to create a deeper sense of community,” said Facebook in an announcement.

New Comment Moderation And Reporting

Facebook has announced a new set of anti-bullying tools where users will be able to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the options menu of posts. This feature is available on desktops and Androids already, but it will not be on iOS until the next few months. And Facebook is going to be testing ways to easily block offensive words from appearing in comments.

“Being the target of unwanted attention can be stressful and some people may not feel comfortable reporting a bully or harasser. In other cases, bullying or harassment happens out of sight from victims,” said Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis in a blog post. “If you see a friend or family member being bullied or harassed, now you can report someone on their behalf via the menu above the post that you are concerned about. Once reported, our Community Operations team will review the post, keep your report anonymous, and determine whether it violates our Community Standards.”

Facebook also said that users will be able to appeal decisions on cases involving bullying and harassment. Back in April, Facebook announced a process for users to request another review of their photos, videos or posts that were taken down for violating Community Standards for nudity, hate speech or graphic violence and this has now been extended to bullying and harassment violations. And if you reported content for bullying or harassment and Facebook does not take it down after an initial review, you can ask for a second review if you think the company made a mistake.

Plus Facebook also partnered with several community organizations like the National Parent Teachers Association in the US to facilitate 200 community events in cities in every state for addressing challenges that families face when it comes to technology usage.

New AI Features In Marketplace

Facebook’s new Marketplace AI featuresFacebook

The Facebook Marketplace feature was first introduced in 2016 for users to buy and sell products locally. Currently, more than one in three users on Facebook in the US use Marketplace every month. In conjunction with the two-year milestone, Facebook also announced new artificial intelligence features for the Marketplace.

“Behind the scenes AI is making Marketplace more efficient and personalized for buyers, as well as helping sellers connect with more potential buyers, faster. AI can automatically improve the quality of photos and translate listings and Messenger conversations,” said Facebook in an announcement.

Facebook also launched new features that use AI for price range suggestions and auto-categorization. And the company is testing camera features that could use AI for recommending products that you might be interested in. So if you take a photo of a product you like, Facebook could show you listings of that same product or a similar one that is available through Marketplace.  

And another way that Facebook is using AI for its Marketplace service is by automatically detecting and removing inappropriate content.

Hackers Did Not Use Stolen Logins

Facebook sent a statement to Reuters that said hackers did not access other sites that uses its single sign-on as part of a cyber attack that the company disclosed last week. Last week, Facebook disclosed a security breach where hackers stole the login codes that allowed them to roughly 50 million accounts.

“We analyzed third-party access during the time of the attack we have identified. That investigation has found no evidence that the attackers accessed any apps using Facebook Login,” said Facebook VP Guy Rosen in the statement.

One of the reasons why a worst-case scenario was presented is due to compliance with the strict General Data Protection Regulation rules imposed by the European Union. The GDPR requires companies to disclose breaches within 72 hours of discovery otherwise face steep penalties.

Instagram

Adam Mosseri Named As Head Of Instagram

Instagram has announced that it has named Adam Mosseri, the Vice President of Product of the photo social network, as the head of the company. The promotion became effective on October 1st.

“Adam began his career as a designer, managed his own design consultancy, and then joined the Facebook design team in 2008. Since he joined, he moved from design into product management, and spent time working on Mobile then News Feed and most recently, we recruited him to Instagram,” said Instagram in an announcement. “In his role leading Instagram, Adam will oversee all functions of the business and will recruit a new executive team including a head of engineering, head of product and head of operations.”

Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger said that they believe Adam will help keep the community front and center. Systrom and Krieger said that they were going to be stepping down from the company on September 24th.

Scannable Nametags And School Communities Test

This past week, Instagram announced a couple of new features, of which one is still being tested. This includes a new nametag, which makes it easier to add friends in person. And Instagram is currently testing a new Instagram school communities feature in the US to help students connect with others from their university.

Facebook’s video polls featureFacebook

The nametag feature is a customizable identification card that allows users to find your Instagram profile when it is scanned via the iOS or Android version of the app. If you use Snapchat, then you may recognize that it is similar to the Snapcode feature.

You can scan the codes by tapping on the three-line menu on the profile. And it can be scanned when other users tap and hold on the code through the Instagram Stories camera or Scan Nametag button on the Nametag to follow you. On your Instagram Nametag, you can add emoji, selfies with filters and colors.

And Instagram is also testing school communities that allow users to showcase your school spirit and connect with students and recent grads from your university in a central place. To join a school community, you can add a line to your profile listing your university, class year, major, sports team, etc. 

Then you and others who have added the same university will be able to click to go to a directory listing all the people who have added that university so you can follow and message them as well. “Messages from people you don’t already follow will go to your pending inbox where you can choose to accept or decline—the same way Instagram Direct works today,” added Instagram in its announcement.

Snap

CEO Evan Spiegel Reportedly Acknowledges Redesign Was Rushed

According to an internal memo leaked to Cheddar, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel acknowledged that the company rushed out the redesign, which ended up solving one problem but created “many others.” Spiegel believed that the redesign should have been tested out more with a smaller community before it was rolled out to everyone. And since the design was not tested out much beforehand, a number of issues started appearing as it was in use.

“The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate. Our redesigned algorithmic Friend Feed made it harder to find the right people to talk to, and moving too quickly meant that we didn’t have time to optimize the Friend Feed for fast performance. We slowed down our product and eroded our core product value,” wrote Spiegel in the memo. “We expected influencers to be upset because we moved their Stories below the ones from our real friends. Influencers went from being at the top of the list on Snapchat to somewhere in the middle. We are willing to accept the trade off for the long-term benefits of putting friends first. Regrettably, we didn’t understand at the time that the biggest problem with our redesign wasn’t the frustration from influencers – it was the frustration from members of our community who felt like it was harder to communicate.”

Twitter

Updates To The Rules

Twitter has announced several new updates across three areas of its election integrity efforts, which include updates to its rules, detection and enforcement and product improvements.

For example, Twitter heard feedback that people think its rules about spam and fake accounts only cover common spam tactics like selling fake goods. So Twitter is updating and expanding its rules to better reflect how it identifies fake accounts and the types of inauthentic activity violate its guidelines.

As a result, Twitter may remove fake accounts engaged in a variety of malicious behaviors such as the use of stock or stolen avatar photos, the use of stolen or copied profile bios and the use of intentionally misleading profile information such as profile locations.

If Twitter is able to reliably attribute an account to an entity known to violate the Twitter Rules, action will be taken on additional accounts associated with it. This is especially the case for accounts that deliberately mimic or are intended to replace accounts previously suspended for violating the rules. And the Twitter Rules prohibit the distribution of hacked material that contains private information or trade secrets.

“We continue to enforce our rules against intentionally misleading election-related content. In August, we removed approximately 50 accounts misrepresenting themselves as members of various state Republican parties. We have also taken action on Tweets sharing media regarding elections and political issues with misleading or incorrect party affiliation information. We continue to partner closely with the RNC, DNC, and state election institutions to improve how we handle these issues,” said Twitter in an announcement. “In August, we removed 770 accounts engaging in coordinated behavior which appeared to originate in Iran. Our investigation into this activity continues, and we will share further updates on our findings with law enforcement, our industry peers, and the public.”

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2018/10/07/social-media-roundup-facebooks-anti-bullying-tools-instagrams-nametags-twitter-rules-update/

[perfectlydeepestexpert-blog]

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