5 Brazen Ways to Take Your Online Business to the Next Level

So you’ve reached your earnings potential with your online business. You have sustained the highest profit for the past few months, and there’s no stopping you. You have been observing the best practices to optimize your sales and run your business smoothly. What’s the next step to take?

Breaking through the glass ceiling, of course!

There are no bounds to how much success you can achieve with your online business. Whether it’s an affiliate blog or an eCommerce site, there are always ways to do better and generate higher sales than you can imagine.

Below are bold ways through which you can elevate your online business to greater heights.

Conversion Rate Optimization

One of the biggest concerns you should have is your site’s conversion rate. Most of the sales that webmasters get come from transactions on their sales pages. As much as possible, you want all visitors to your money pages to convert. In reality, however, that’s not always the case.

There are lots of factors involved that explain why some visitors don’t convert on your pages. This is where conversion rate optimization or CRO comes in.

Aside from tweaking on-page factors to improve conversion, CRO analyzes user behavior to help you identify pain points on your site pages. These are issues that cause users to abandon their carts or abruptly leave the page.

There are tools you can use to analyze CRO. One of the more popular ones is CrazyEgg, a heat mapping tool that tracks user behavior on your site. The individual behavior can help you determine why some people leave and what you need to do to prevent them from bouncing.

Other tools that you can use are Hotjar and TruConversion.

Using any of these tools will provide you all the data you need to set up a more optimized site for conversion.

For more information about conversion optimization, read this excellent guide on CRO at Qualaroo.

VPS Hosting

When your online business started out, you chose a shared hosting to keep your costs low. While this is a rational choice, you should be aware that you need to provide your website with a premium hosting service to avoid alienating your audience.

The hosting is responsible for sending information to the browsers of visitors so they can view your site on their end. If your site picks up traffic, then the hosting works double time to keep up with the back and forth of data. When the traffic is too much for the hosting to handle, your site will break and go offline.

If this problem keeps recurring, then you need to consider moving to VPS hosting and maintain the momentum of your business.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting proves to be a viable option for online businesses receiving massive traffic. This hosting is a step above shared hosting but a level below dedicated hosting. It is a server found within a bigger server, which is similar to shared hosting.

However, VPS provides server root access and dedicated resources in an isolated environment.

As a result, your site will be able to manage heavier traffic, on top of having better protection and customization.

Influencer Marketing

If you could get help from a person with thousands of social media followers and who attracts millions in monthly site traffic, would you say no?

Through influencer marketing, you can tap into the followers of influencers related to your niche or industry so you can drive more traffic to your website and raise awareness for your business.

Unlike other strategies, influencer marketing is built upon trust. Since there is an established rapport that exists between the influencers and followers, promoting your business through influencers should have a more positive effect on your downline.

Followers will be more receptive to what influencers say because they trust them. This is in complete contrast to ads where you promote your business to strangers or people with whom you do not have an existing relationship.

To join in the fun, you need to sign up as an advertiser so you can connect with publishers from different fields. There are lots of influencer marketing platforms with which you can sign up. Below are the most popular ones:

• Neoreach: Build your network of influencers and run your campaigns so that you have full control over how they will turn out. You can also hire in-house experts to develop the campaigns for you.
• TapInfluence: Get help from influencers to create positive content related to your brand. You can then amplify best-performing content for maximum impact using the platform’s distribution channel.
• Little Bird: Find influencers on Twitter and use the data unearthed by the platform to leverage them to your advantage.

User-generated content

If you already have a vibrant online business community, then it would be advantageous if you could mobilize your members to create content for you.

User-generated content (UGC) comes in the form of testimonials, reviews, submissions, social media posts, and so on. Your customers or entrants will create content that you can use to the benefit of your online business.

One of the many benefits of UGC is that you get to work with your audience members and strengthen your relationship with them. Doing so is crucial, especially if your business is getting bigger and out of hand. Asking your customers for help in developing content allows you to keep in touch with them on a more personal level.

More importantly, your conversion rate will improve. Since 70% of customers rely on peer recommendations for making purchasing decisions, user testimonials result in a 29% higher conversion rate compared to campaigns and websites that don’t boast UGC.

As far as tools are concerned, Yotpo is one of the more popular ones out there. It allows you to leverage UGC as part of your content marketing strategy. By gathering authentic customer reviews using Yotpo, you can increase engagement and sales of your online business.

An up-and-comer in the field of UGC marketing is StoryBox. This platform lets you gather different types of content from users that you can feature on various pages on your site. From StoryBox, you can monitor the progress of your campaign using different metrics to measure its effectiveness.

5. Automate your marketing

You’ve built your online business virtually brick by brick. While the fruits have been plentiful, the process is arduous. To maintain the level of success you are at, you need to find a way to take the load of menial tasks from your shoulders so you can focus on

5 Brazen Ways to Take Your Online Business to the Next Level

5 Ways To Improve Your Email Open Rates

Email marketing is a proven way to register better business growth. However, you only achieve actual conversions rates when you opt for the right ways of marketing, which ensure that the email recipients do open your emails.

While getting funding for business might be easy, running one successfully requires continuous efforts and monitoring. Email marketing is a boon for both small and large businesses, as it offers ample gains with low amounts of investment.

But you only achieve better ROI (Return on Investment) when the email recipient (or your prospective customer) actually opens your email and reads its content. Below are some strategies that will ensure that your customers open the majority of your emails.

Make Impressive Headlines

Not all emails are able to grab the attention of the recipients because they do not all have impressive and attractive subject lines. The concept of impressive headlines applies to other media as well.

You will find that in newspapers and magazines only impressive headlines can get the right/adequate attention, and such headlines also register more sales. In order to have the best and most appealing subject lines for your emails, see that your headlines have the following qualities:

• Capable of evoking humor
• Concise and clear
• Have the least number of characters
• Personalized and delivers the content in a specific way
• Have numbers and/or lists
• Amazing, attractive, or even mysterious

Ensure That Your Emails Can Be Scanned Easily

Users like those emails that they can easily scan. Scanning helps repel viruses and other dangers involved in email. Here are some traits that make an email easy to scan:

• Keep the content precise and short
• Use the subheads
• Include links
• Present all content in bold and make it colorful
• Use bullets or numbers
• Adopt a conversational tone

Never Forget to Include the CTA

CTA or Call-to-Action is a great way to motivate your customer to buy your offering. The calls should be logical, compelling, and should be in contrast to the other text (in colors and/or fonts) so that your readers can easily know where to get your product/service.

Note: Do not include more than one CTA, as your message should not seem overly desperate and needy. Including more than one will also confuse customers as to which action you want them to take.

Carry Forward Your Brand’s Image

The recipients of emails are suspicious of emails that come from unknown sources because there is the chance of a virus, among other threats. See to it that your email has your brand logo, as well as fonts or color schemes that inspire trust in the internet users. While genuine emails speak for themselves, it is better that you take this consideration seriously.

Keep Resending Emails Until You Get the Response You Desire

In order to boost email open rates, keep sending your emails again and again. Know which of your emails have been opened, and persevere in order to get the desired results through the other emails. The more times you send an email to a web user, the more likely it is that he or she will open the email and then opt for your service/product.

Of course, don’t just send the emails again with the same subject line. Change the headline and see which one works best. This way you’ll not only improve open rates for your emails but you’ll also know what gets your customers to respond.

One consideration you should make is the number of emails you actually send each day. For example, what if someone is on lots of mailing lists and everyone decides to send emails on a Thursday? Over a period of time, the open rates for Thursday will drop as people’s attention spans drop because they are receiving too many emails.

17.7% of emails were sent on a Tuesday, with only 8.8% on both Saturday and Sunday. We want our emails to stand out, and they simply will not on days that someone’s email inbox is clogged up!

Therefore, I would recommend testing a variety of different times and days to make sure you find the optimum time for your mailing list. Also remember that the optimum time might eventually change.

There are some other steps you can take that will further boost your open rates, including asking people to add your email address to their address books. If they do so, your email delivery rates will definitely improve.

Conclusion

Boosting email open rates is a skill you can master through time and testing. You can certainly learn all kinds of tactics, but each email list “owner” has different customers who respond to different copy. Follow the best practices, test a little, and you’ll be on your way to increasing your open rates soon enough.

The post 5 Ways To Improve Your Email Open Rates appeared first on Growmap.

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5 Ways To Improve Your Email Open Rates

Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level

We live in an exciting day and age, and it’s now possible to reach a large audience at the click of a mouse. A growing number of people are choosing to express their thoughts, ideas, and opinions online, and the number of blogs in the world from 2006 to 2011 was estimated to be at around an impressive 173 million.

If you’re just now getting on board the blogging train, you’ll be surprised to see just how easily you can get started. In just minutes, you can have your platform up and ready using sites like WordPress, and you can soon be on your way to sharing your valuable thoughts with people across the world. No matter at what point in the process you find yourself in the establishment of a successful blog, there are three tips to take your efforts to another level.

1. Ensure You’re Well Rested

It can be easy to overlook the vast importance of sleep. While diet and exercise are obvious in the maintenance of our overall health, it can be easy to see fighting sleep deprivation as a challenge you must tough out on a busy day. However, lack of sleep causes more problems than you may realize that can directly impact not only the frequency of your blog posts but also on the quality of the content you’re providing your readers and/or viewers.. Just a few negative side effects of sleep deprivation include:

• Inability to focus well for extended periods of time
• Irritability
• Inability to take advantage of your full imaginative potential

If you’re one of the many who tosses and turns all night thinking about things like your next blog post when you know you have to wake up early the next morning, there is a solution. Consider the purchase of a mattress topper. This option gives you the feel of a new mattress at a fraction of the cost. Some products even have features such as cooling functions to help promote and facilitate a restful night’s sleep.

2. Get Out and Meet New People

The Internet exists because people want and need to interact with one another. Whether the interaction be personal or business in nature, the Internet has allowed us to easily find like-minded individuals with whom they can share thoughts and enthusiasm on any topic. This is what led to the rise and popularity of blogs. Here, you can reach out to so many people, and chance encounters that can lead to further opportunities are more likely to present themselves when you take time to meet new people. Whether this be online or in real life, networking can help open up new doors and keep you in-the-know on your blogging topic

3. Use Motivation Tools Regularly

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you very well may have reached a certain point when the idea of a platform open for all to see completely regulated by you begins to lose its luster. In fact, many bloggers begin to find the maintenance and regular updates on their sites becomes more of a job than anything else.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest keys to success in the blogosphere is to provide fresh content on a regular basis. All too often, enthusiastic bloggers lose their fire and begin to abandon their blogging efforts. You can increase your chances of success by acknowledging this fact and utilizing tools to help keep you motivated. Just a few ideas you should consider implementing include:

• Create a vision board to be hung where you’ll see it frequently. Include on it various goals you plan to achieve along with images depicting what the goal means to you.
• Switch up your game plan. For example, if you notice you’re not getting the traffic you would like, try a Youtube channel to supplement the blog and contribute to each regularly.
• Don’t be afraid to take a break. Life happens, and your audience will understand if you have to take a day off. However, if you can let them know in advance, that’s appreciated.

Sharing Your Thoughts With the World

Successful blogging requires time, attention, and consistency. Whether you’re trying to get the word out about a product or service you have to offer or just want to raise awareness, this can be a great way to grow an impressive following. However, you must understand that there are thousands of people out there with the same goal in mind. In order to keep up with the competition and achieve the organic search results you need to continue to grow, these three tips will set you up on the path to success.

The post Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level appeared first on Blogtrepreneur — For Busy Entrepreneurs.

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Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level

7 Ways Pinterest Can Help You Build Qualified Leads

In the past several years, Pinterest has become one of the most influential and popular social media websites on the Internet.

That influence has certainly gotten the attention of marketers, who are exploring new ways to use Pinterest for commercial purposes.

Pinterest is a social network that lets users share, curate, and discover visual images and videos on their own or other “pinboards.” Users can create pinboards based on their own interests or according to a common theme, such as a product niche or an area of expertise.

Pinterest members can upload images from their computers. They can also pin content they find online using the Pinterest “bookmarklet,” the “Pin It” button, or simply a URL.

As an online entrepreneur, you also can exploit the unique benefits Pinterest has to offer in order to build your list of qualified leads.

Here are seven fast and simple ways to do so.

Create Your Own High-Value Pinboard

Build your sphere of influence by creating a follower base, which is the key to your long-term sustainability. Create a pinboard related to your product niche and then include high-value content. This content should be information other Pinterest users interested in your topic will find compelling.

New followers will be able to find your pins. But unlike on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, there is no way for Pinterest users to “follow” you once they find a piece of content they like. Instead, they can follow a specific board you post. Then they will receive an automated notification anytime you post anything new on that board.

That means you can create a strategy to increase followers of multiple boards devoted to a wide variety of niches.

Use Other Channels to Promote Your Pinterest Boards

One of the fastest and easiest ways to draw attention to your niche-specific Pinterest pinboard is to promote it through multiple channels. For example, you can add the Pinterest Follow button to your website. You can also promote your presence on Pinterest on your other social media accounts, including your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ pages.

You can even write about your Pinterest pages on your blog. Then invite your readers to follow a link within your content directly to your pinboard.

Be the Best Within Your Niche

One of the best aspects of Pinterest is that you can devote your pinboards to very specific niches. This ability makes it easier to make the best boards on a specific topic.

When you strive to have the best pinboard within your specific niche, you can increase your chances of attracting your ideal followers. These people are highly-targeted users who are passionate about the types of products and services you offer. You can even create resourceful boards based on the keywords you already use in the SEO strategies you employ on other platforms.

Promote Other People’s Pinterest Pages

In most businesses, promoting the competitor is generally a bad idea. But on Pinterest, doing so can actually pay off.

Start following other Pinterest users who are devoted to your niche. Then make an effort to like and comment on their pins. When people sees you interacting with their content, they are more likely to check out your content and follow your Pinterest page.

Then you can get all the benefit of their followers each time you post something those influencers find so interesting that they re-pin it to their pages.

Use the Content You Already Have

Don’t make your first step looking around for new content or creating your own original images and videos. Instead, start by posting content you already have and have used elsewhere. There might be little to no crossover between the people who follow your Pinterest page and those who follow you on social media, read your blog, or regularly visit your web page.

Showcase your existing content on your Twitter page to attract new and unique visitors to your other platforms. That way you can get more mileage out of the time and effort you’ve already put into other marketing programs.

Host a Contest

Hold a contest in which you ask users to create pinboards on their own accounts to demonstrate what they love about your products, business, brand or services. Then ask them to send you links to their pinboards so you can award the best one a prize!

Or you can re-pin those boards to your own Pinterest page and ask your page’s followers to vote on the boards and select the winner.

Put the “Pin-It” Button Everywhere You Can

Why reinvent the wheel? Pinterest already has a perfectly fine widget that you can use—namely, the “Pin-It Button.” You can post this button on your website, blog, and anywhere else that lets you post social media sharing buttons. This makes it easy for visitors to your other accounts to share your visual content or images on their own Pinterest pages.

Pinterest offers many opportunities to expose your brand to new audiences.

The post 7 Ways Pinterest Can Help You Build Qualified Leads appeared first on Growmap.

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7 Ways Pinterest Can Help You Build Qualified Leads