Tag: audience

To be an innovative entrepreneur, you want to foster creativity in your daily life so that your mind is ready when opportunity arises.

Unusual combinations, sometimes called “remote associations,” are related ideas that may seem unrelated at first glance. They are the essence of creative thinking.

To cultivate creativity, you want to increase your chances of stumbling on an unexpected link. Read more…

Recommended: The 7 Crowdfunding Tips That Are Most Important

Is your B2B content marketing strategy successful? Or do you at times feel like your strategy needs a facelift? How can you boost your content strategy to generate a greater level of success? Here are seven definitive ways that you can fire up your content strategy, and generate palpable results.

Create content around a predetermined purpose

What is your company’s purpose? This is the first and most important question you need to ask yourself before any content is created. Read more…

Recommended: How to Get More Out of Your Social Media Marketing This Year

If you want to reach local customers and keep them coming back to your business, text-message marketing is one of the most effective strategies for doing so. While email marketing messages are opened by a small percentage of recipients, text message ads are typically viewed by almost all recipients.

SMS messaging is also an ideal way for sending coupons that will get noticed and used, at a much lower cost than printing physical coupons. Read more…

Recommended: Think Twice Before Posting on These Social Media Sites

The old saying that we “treasure what we measure” – and vice versa – turns out to be highly relevant in networking.

In a world where the news media regularly reports the latest sports scores, stock market numbers and the weekend’s top-grossing films, wouldn’t you think business networkers would just naturally track how much they’re getting from their efforts?

While systems for following up, staying in touch and tracking results are key to networking success for both men and women, they’re especially vital for women. Read more…

Recommended: How to Get Started with Influencer Marketing Campaigns

It seems like everyone is using crowdfunding to kick off their new business venture, be it a new coffee shop, or electronic gadget. But the usefulness of crowdfunding is still debatable. Is crowdfunding even right for your business?

Here’s some information and and a few tips that will help explain crowdfunding concepts and how you can take advantage of them to fund your business.

What is crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a way of raising money for a new venture by soliciting small donations or investments from many people online. Read more…

Recommended: With So Many Social Networking Sites, Which One Is Right For Your Business?

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

When should you start thinking about outsourcing some of your tasks? As a small business entrepreneur, time is always scarce, and you find that you just can’t do everything yourself the way you would like to. Maybe you’ve thought about outsourcing, but it’s not a simple decision because you need to compare the cost and quality of the person or company that will be working for you.

A simple search for companies using the terms “virtual assistant” and “outsourcing” will reveal a plethora of firms and virtual assistants that offer outsourcing services for everyday business tasks – such as customer service, tech support, bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounting, and even social media marketing. Read more…

Recommended: Email Marketing Tips for Small Business

Here’s a list of buzzwords for you: social, video, and marketing. But if you put them together, they create something that can powerfully engage customers and greatly improve their online experience.

It’s a combination that works very well for online marketing: the grassroots, viral environment of social media; video’s ability to engage; and a strong marketing strategy.

You’re likely well aware of video’s value in bringing your brand and messages to life. Read more…

Recommended: Does Your Marketing Strategy Work For You?

The more you know about repurposing content, the more you realize you have a lot to work with. At the same time, the more you know about anything, the more you realize you have a lot to learn.

Dipping into your archive and giving a fresh take on quality pieces is a great way to extend your ROI, but it’s not effective to take the existing newsletter content and paste it into a blog post – it’s lazy. Read more…

Recommended: Uncommon Ways To Find Investors For Your Startup

Some marketing strategies become less effective and some more effective. As a startup with limited resources, you need to pay especially close attention to what’s current so you can get the most bang for your marketing budget. You already know that you have to setup social media accounts. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Networking Tips That Entrepreneurs Need to Know

Marketing is simple. It can seem mysterious and highly technical: Experts talk at length about the techniques they use. People scream from the rooftops about how you’re doing it wrong. Books upon books and blogs upon blogs make it seem like an immense subject.

It’s not that difficult. You market to people and you get leads in. Read more…

Recommended: How To Keep Your Employees Motivated

At some point in your career, someone has probably talked to you about how to brand yourself, how personal branding is this incredibly important thing that everyone is doing these days, how, if you’ve built a business and are trying to grow, it’s not something you can ignore.

Or is it? Personal branding, just like regular branding, is something that’s often completely out of your control. Read more…

Recommended: How To Make Social Media Marketing Success

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

While some say that email isn’t an effective marketing tool anymore, research shows that it still has the highest ROI of any online marketing tactic.

One reason is that email is still a dominant avenue of communication in business. In fact, 91% check their email daily.
Email subscriptions to websites for updates and information is growing at the fastest rate ever, with 74% of consumers actually preferring to receive commercial communications by email.

Review Your Email Lists For Segmentation Opportunities

A common opportunity we uncover is email list segmentation. Read more…

Recommended: How To Challenge And Beat The Big Boys In Local Sales

Some define a business plan as a formal document that takes a long time to create and isn’t flexible, doesn’t get reviewed and doesn’t get revised. Then they say a business plan isn’t useful.

That’s sort of like saying getting regular exercise isn’t good for you because some people overdo it and end up with joint damage.

It would be better to advocate a type of business planning that could be called lean business planning. Read more…

Recommended: Using Hashtags in Social Media Marketing

Triggered or targeted emails can be a great way to deliver the right content at the right time to the right people. A sincere thank you, a courteous confirmation, or a concerned abandoned cart message that automatically follows a specific behavior someone took on your website can be the difference between a very happy customer and losing a contact altogether.

As long as the automated email is relevant, timely, and provides value to the recipient, triggered emails can be used to save marketers a tremendous amount of time and, more importantly, better engage your contact database. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Reasons Why Time Is The Business Owner’s Most Scarce Resource

Are you sick and tired of the same old content marketing tricks that just don’t seem to increase your traffic?

Today’s audiences are tired of the “same old, same old”, so the time is right to be innovative, take a few risks, and implement some all-new tactics into your strategy.

If you’re risk averse, never fear – while these tips may be unusual, they’ve been proven:

1. Read more…

Recommended: 12 Proven Content Marketing Tricks to Maximize Traffic

You’ve heard it many times: reuse, reduce, recycle. Did you know that this piece of advice doesn’t just apply to aluminum cans and plastic water bottles?

You can repurpose your influencer marketing content to increase its value to your campaign. Think of it like a neighborhood recycling program: You’re preventing waste while putting resources back into the community – or, in this case, your company.

1. Read more…

Recommended: Traditional Marketing And Content Marketing: Can They Co-Exist?

What is content marketing? Content marketing is a method of providing information of value that convinces an audience you are a trusted expert on your topic of mutual interest, and puts you top-of-mind when it is time they make a purchase decision. The model fits every industry you can think of, including yours.

Content marketing helps in generating more leads, sales, and business. Read more…

Recommended: 10 Ways To Motivate Yourself To Do The Impossible

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Sure, you can lay out a proposed path to success in a business plan presentation template, but the road will be full of surprises. More important than attempting to forecast is knowing how to adapt and be flexible.

For exactly that reason, many top investors and incubators are shifting their views on written business plans. Read more…

Recommended: Is Twitter A Good Marketing Tool For You?

Content marketing has become one of the most popular digital marketing strategies, with 88% of B2B marketers now using it in some form.

But it costs significant time and/or money. What if you don’t have those dollars to invest? What if you’re just starting out, or what if you’re already investing the bulk of your marketing budget in other strategies?

Though not ideal, it’s actually possible to start a content marketing campaign with no money whatsoever. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Steps to Crowdfunding Success

As a business owner or startup entrepreneur, you are responsible for building an effective team and enabling your employees to do their best work. To do that well, you need to have perspective, which is the ability to create a point-of-view based on imagining yourself in another’s shoes.

Awareness about ourselves and others is difficult to gain. Read more…

Recommended: Lead Generation: 19 Tips For Better Results

Everyone’s abuzz about content marketing these days, and for good reason. While advertising isn’t dead, the digital age has spawned a brave new era for today’s marketer. “Selling” doesn’t work like it used to. But informing, educating, and even doing a little entertaining, does.

That’s content marketing: Providing information of value that convinces an audience you are a trusted expert on your topic of mutual interest, and puts you top-of-mind when it is time they make a purchase decision. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Reasons Why You May Not Need To Write A Business Plan After All

Wouldn’t you like to have a celebrity recommend your product or service? This type of endorsement has been known to boost businesses and sales. But dealing with influencers, such as celebrities, can be tricky because they tend to get thousands of free sample products in the mail from businesses hoping to get their attention. Read more…

Recommended: How To Avoid Summer Slowdowns, And Keep Growing Your Business

Is your business on Facebook?

Do you need to convince your boss-or a client-that Facebook is a worthy marketing investment?

And speaking of social media advertising, don’t forget online marketing sites. You can visit 40billion.com which is a fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and crowdfunders. Read more…

Recommended: Avoid These Four Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

How can you maximize the benefits of attending professional networking events as an entrepreneur or business owner?

1. Have an agenda.

Not all networking events are created equal. It behooves you to research the best of the bunch in your area and decide which might be best for your overall start-up goals. Read more…

Recommended: Boost Summer Sales With These 4 Tips

Virgin Atlantic is a small airline with a big personality. This is how it lures customers from the big guys.

You may think Virgin Atlantic is a huge airline worldwide, but they’re not. Maybe they’re the No. 2 airline in the UK, but they don’t even hold a candle to United, American or Delta here in the U.S. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Effective Video Marketing Content Ideas

Do you want to learn how to present yourself and your business on LinkedIn?

Are you looking for a resource to guide your LinkedIn marketing efforts?

Whether you’re using LinkedIn as an individual or as a brand, the following tips will help you develop a LinkedIn marketing plan and find prospects and leads.

Create a Presence for Yourself

Make sure your LinkedIn account is secure. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Affordable Ways to Market Your Business Around Town

Here’s something that you should immediately put into action on your website. This concept is so simple, yet most of the time extremely overlooked: With every single transaction, you should be controlling where your customer goes next.

So many people miss out on this golden opportunity for additional profit. Read more…

Recommended: The Unexpected Pros And Cons of Business Competitions

You’ve poured your heart and soul, your time, your money and more into your business, so it simply must succeed… Right? While that’s nice to say, it’s not always true. The more you’re able to realize that success can come and go, the better positioned you’ll be to take advantage of other, more promising opportunities.

Here’s how to know when to give up:

1) Are you the only one who still believes in your business?

Sometimes the smartest people can have a blind spot when it comes to their own vision. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Growth Hacks to Turbocharge Your Small Business

Most brands have a “pretty decent” email marketing program, but could it be better? Take a look at these 11 things to try and improve your engagement.

1. Take a hard look at your preference strategy.

There are three tips on capturing preferences: ask them, observe them and group them (into categories). Read more…

Recommended: 13 Marketing Tips When Using Social Networks

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Retargeting Ads. You’ve seen them. But, do you know what they are and how they benefit your business?

Unfamiliar with the difference between retargeting and remarketing? They’re the same thing. Google uses the term “remarketing” while Facebook tends to use the term “retargeting”.

Smart marketers and business owners use Ad Retargeting to:

. Bring back landing page visitors who don’t convert

. Re-engage with abandoned shopping cart prospects

. Upsell products to highly targeted, interested customers

. Increase brand awareness.

A highly optimized, targeted, conversion-centric landing page averages an 8-10% conversion rate. Read more…

Recommended: Is Google Threat to Social-Media Marketing?

Auto parts is one of the fastest growing ecommerce sectors.

Clearly, there’s demand for aftermarket car parts and accessories. But how can an auto parts store increase their sales to reach more customers who want what they’ve got?

Here’s 6 steps to increase your online auto store revenue.

1. Read more…

Recommended: Small Business Blogging – 5 Easy Tips

Creating a social media marketing strategy is a sin qua non for every social media marketing professional in order to have an effective social media campaign. Social media marketing should be merged with your traditional marketing plan. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Steps To Close Up Shop When It’s Time To Call It Quits

At some point in your career, someone has probably talked to you about how to brand yourself, how personal branding is this incredibly important thing that everyone is doing these days, how, if you’ve built a business and are trying to grow, it’s not something you can ignore.

Or is it? Personal branding, just like regular branding, is something that’s often completely out of your control. Read more…

Recommended: How To Deal With Setbacks

What is Crowdfunding?

Over the past 10 years, crowdfunding has emerged as a popular tool for individuals to raise financing for business ventures.

Entrepreneurs typically raise small amounts of money from a large number of backers, or “the crowd,” usually via the Internet. Backers receive some sort of reward or, less commonly, an equity- or royalty-based financial return. Read more…

Recommended: 3 SEO Tips For Small Business Success

Brand ambassadors are better advertisers than even the most strategized and marketed advertising plans specifically made for your business by agencies. Brand ambassadors are 70% more likely to be seen as a good source of information by people around them.

In fact, when you think about the fact that 80% of all consumer purchases include word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendation during the whole buying phase, businesses would realize that brand advocacy is a necessity and would even be the best investment to get into because of its very promising ROI (return of investment).

Studies show that a 12% increase in brand advocacy, on average, generates a 2X increase in revenue growth rate plus boosts market share.

The question is – how does a business turn their customers into brand ambassadors?

Brand Ambassadors Have the Voice.
This is common sense but a brand advocate has a voice on both sides – the product or service (operations) and the consumer. Read more…

Recommended: Cheap Ways To Get Exposure, Stay Profitable.

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Content marketing is becoming increasingly popular with each passing year. Businesses see the benefits that competitors are enjoying from publishing highly valuable content, and are looking for ways to do the same themselves. Churning out great ideas is often more difficult than anticipated, and companies that enter content marketing for the first time often have some unrealistic expectations for the type of results it will provide as well as how quickly those results will come.

There is a lot of information out there that can help businesses to set realistic expectations for themselves when they first start content marketing. Read more…

Recommended: How To Promote Your Business Between Thanksgiving And Christmas

Resilient business owners have learned to apply three lessons that help them lead their companies successfully despite inevitable setbacks. Here they are:

1) Monitor your time, and stick to a schedule.

2) Focus on what’s most important.

3) Don’t give up. Read more…

Recommended: Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Is Still Very Effective

The challenge of capturing the ROI of social media is almost as old as the Internet itself. The reason boils down to basic consumer behavior. For one, shoppers engage with brands at multiple touch points, across a range of devices. And new digital technologies are lowering the barrier for startups to enter the market.

This landscape is creating a fragmented data picture –
information often lives in silos between teams. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Ways To Get Your Employees To Share Their Honest Opinions

After you’ve surrounded yourself with the best talent you can find, creating an environment that stifles open communication can render that investment useless.

Perhaps your employees are afraid to give you honest answers about your business or feel like they need to agree with every idea you have, even the obviously bad ideas. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ideas for a Customized Marketing Strategy to Reach the Right Audience

Auto parts is one of the fastest growing ecommerce sectors.

Clearly, there’s demand for aftermarket car parts and accessories. But how can an auto parts store increase their sales to reach more customers who want what they’ve got?

Here’s 6 steps to increase your online auto store revenue.

1. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways Influencers Can Boost Your Brand

Have you ever heard the expression, “Content is king?” While content comes in many forms, engaging content is scarce these days. The fact is, you have only a few seconds to capture the interest of your website visitors or potential customers. There is simply too much competition for attention to expect that people will invest too much of their time in trying to decipher bad content. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways Influencers Can Boost Your Brand

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

In case you hadn’t noticed, the hashtag has pretty much taken over social media.

With sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram all using this format to organize content, it should be clear that this once forgotten character on the keyboard has finally made the big time.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who just don’t seem to understand the new trend. Read more…

Recommended: 12 Proven Content Marketing Tricks to Maximize Traffic

The old saying that we “treasure what we measure” – and vice versa – turns out to be highly relevant in networking.

In a world where the news media regularly reports the latest sports scores, stock market numbers and the weekend’s top-grossing films, wouldn’t you think business networkers would just naturally track how much they’re getting from their efforts?

While systems for following up, staying in touch and tracking results are key to networking success for both men and women, they’re especially vital for women. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Reasons To Work For A Startup First

How can you maximize the benefits of attending professional networking events as an entrepreneur or business owner?

1. Have an agenda.

Not all networking events are created equal. It behooves you to research the best of the bunch in your area and decide which might be best for your overall start-up goals. Read more…

Recommended: Avoid These Four Social Media Marketing Mistakes

Need more leads? Of course, you do!

A well-optimized landing page is one of the most effective methods of generating authentic leads for your business. It drives traffic to your website, develops familiarity with your visitors and can gain you warm leads.

But what marketing campaigns increase traffic to your page and drive conversions? What value exchange does your business need to increase leads?

And for year around affordable marketing, don’t forget online marketing sites. Read more…

Recommended: Is Crowdfunding Right For Your Small Business?

Many people accept that a slowdown in sales is a fact of business life during the summer. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and as a business owner you need to get out of that frame of mind.

A summer slowdown may be something many people want because they expect this to be a season for vacations when the living is easy. Read more…

Recommended: How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert Quickly

Need more leads? Of course, you do!

A well-optimized landing page is one of the most effective methods of generating authentic leads for your business. It drives traffic to your website, develops familiarity with your visitors and can gain you warm leads.

But what marketing campaigns increase traffic to your page and drive conversions? What value exchange does your business need to increase leads?

And for year around affordable marketing, don’t forget online marketing sites. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ideas for Marketing Your Business Brand Effectively

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Wouldn’t you like to have a celebrity recommend your product or service? This type of endorsement has been known to boost businesses and sales. But dealing with influencers, such as celebrities, can be tricky because they tend to get thousands of free sample products in the mail from businesses hoping to get their attention. Read more…

Recommended: How To Plan For An Early Retirement Now

Are you stressing out about changes in search engine algorithms and new social media platforms to learn? Search engine optimization (also known as SEO) is in constant flux, which means that your business’ online marketing strategies need to be revamped frequently. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways To Keep Your Website From Getting Hacked

Creating a social media marketing strategy is a sin qua non for every social media marketing professional in order to have an effective social media campaign. Social media marketing should be merged with your traditional marketing plan. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ideas for a Customized Marketing Strategy to Reach the Right Audience

Word-of-mouth advertising is 10 times more effective than a traditional ad. Contrary to popular belief, less than 10 percent of those sought-after personal recommendations happen online.

In addition to word of mouth marketing, don’t forget online marketing sites. You can visit 40billion.com which is a fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and crowdfunders. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Growth Hacks to Turbocharge Your Small Business

This ‘P’ is for Promotion and Publicity. Not to be confused with Marketing. Marketing deals with how you express your essence, your identity. Promotion deals with how you convey your marketing message to your target audience, and Publicity is what you get when people notice your offer and talk about it. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Who Take Vacations Are More Successful

This post on how to raise money successfully using simple crowdfunding steps answers common questions for startup entrepreneurs and small businesses thinking about using crowdfunding to raise funding.

I have been in the crowdfunding space since 2008, after experiencing first-hand one of the biggest problems plaguing new businesses: There was a $40 billion gap in funding every year! That year, I founded one of the first crowdfunding platforms for U.S. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Ways to Create Content that Attracts Audiences and Customers

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Although Twitter started off as a consumer application, businesses have realized in recent years that Twitter’s effectiveness makes it perfect for marketing. People these days have short attention spans and sending out your message, known as a tweet, in a quick sentence or two can get the idea out there before potential customers have time to lose interest. Read more…

Recommended: Secrets Of Virgin Atlantic’s Marketing Success

Are you sick and tired of the same old content marketing tricks that just don’t seem to increase your traffic?

Today’s audiences are tired of the “same old, same old”, so the time is right to be innovative, take a few risks, and implement some all-new tactics into your strategy.

If you’re risk averse, never fear – while these tips may be unusual, they’ve been proven:

1. Read more…

Recommended: Leading With Perspective

Content marketing online is continually changing and evolving. If you’re behind the content marketing curve, now’s the time to get caught up – here are 10 content marketing trends that are relevant today.

1. Social Media Content is King

Social media marketing is the most popular content promotion tactic by a mile. Read more…

Recommended: Small Business Blogging – 5 Easy Tips

These days, the desire for speed, easy access and convenience are a priority with consumers of almost every generation. Technology is impacting every aspect of our daily lives, shifting how we gather information and research and affecting our purchasing choices and habits. We want access to information from our smartphones and we want technology integrated into our shopping experience. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Key Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Retargeting Ads. You’ve seen them. But, do you know what they are and how they benefit your business?

Unfamiliar with the difference between retargeting and remarketing? They’re the same thing. Google uses the term “remarketing” while Facebook tends to use the term “retargeting”.

Smart marketers and business owners use Ad Retargeting to:

. Bring back landing page visitors who don’t convert

. Re-engage with abandoned shopping cart prospects

. Upsell products to highly targeted, interested customers

. Increase brand awareness.

A highly optimized, targeted, conversion-centric landing page averages an 8-10% conversion rate. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Social Marketing Fails to Avoid

Read more…

Recommended: 5 Ways to Start a Business Part-Time While Holding a Day Job Full-Time

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

You want your employees to perform at their best, but there’s a fine line between being a tough manager with high expectations and being an unreasonable asshole. Here are 3 tips to ensure that you’re on the right side of the line and don’t lose your best workers:

1) Give your employees a reason to give a crap. Read more…

Recommended: Selection Of A Good Marketing Manager – 6 Must Have Qualities

With Facebook declining in popularity among younger users, more and more businesses are turning to Instagram to reach younger demographics.If you plan to adopt a similar strategy, you’ll want to take a look at the following Instagram marketing tips and tricks for getting the most out of your presence on the site.

Fill Out Your “Bio” Section

Before you pass “Go” and collect $200, be sure to fill out the “Bio” section of your Instagram profile. Read more…

Recommended: 22 Things Advertising People Learn to live with

Equity crowdfunding is the process whereby everyday people (the “crowd”) invest in an early-stage company, which is not listed on a stock market, in exchange for shares in that company. These shareholders have partial ownership of the company and stand to profit if the company does well.

For the first time, the JOBS act is allowing unsophisticated investors to purchase your stock. Read more…

Recommended: Improve Your Mobile Advertising Campaign: 10 Tips

Do you speak English or do you speak “marketing” jargon? Online attention spans are short and competition intense, so clear language is essential to make your social media marketing perform and incite interest in your business.

As in all relationships, people connect with straightforward and honest communications. Read more…

Recommended: Can Social Media Marketing Be Outsourced?

Crowdfunding is a collective cooperation of people who network and pool their money and resources together, usually via the Internet.

It seems like everyone is using crowdfunding to kick off their new business venture, be it a new coffee shop, or gadget. With the tough economic climate, crowdfunding has become a popular and alternative method of raising finance for a business, projects or ideas and has become popularized online by sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe.

Now anyone with a computer or mobile device and an internet connection can research, review and become an investor in a business with a push of a button. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Key Steps to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

PRO: Free money to get your business started.

If you win, you could be awarded over $100,000 in cash and/or prizes that you can use to build, hire, and get your startup off the ground. In most cases, there are no strings attached and you don’t have to give up a percentage share of your business equity. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ideas for a Customized Marketing Strategy to Reach the Right Audience

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

You’re an aspiring entrepreneur, so why are you working for an entrepreneur? Is working at another startup a route to nowhere or a good career move? It just might pay to work at someone else’s startup before starting your own. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Startups can take a chance on talent.

Getting a first job is key to launching your career as an entrepreneur. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Social Marketing Fails to Avoid

Are you willing to pay so your posts reach more eyes? Perhaps you should be.

One of the newest 40Billion features, called Promoted Posts, allows businesses to pay from $20 to $300 so that more visitors and contacts see their posts on computers and mobile devices.

Using a regular whiteboard post on 40Billion.com can be effective for ramping up engagement, but with Promoted Posts, 40Billion is taking the idea one step further.

The problem is that many regular posts go unseen, and only a small percentage of a user’s contacts see a given post; though it varies depending on how engaged your contacts are. Read more…

Recommended: 5 Crowdfunding Steps Proven To Raise Money on GoFundMe

At some point in your career, someone has probably talked to you about how to brand yourself, how personal branding is this incredibly important thing that everyone is doing these days, how, if you’ve built a business and are trying to grow, it’s not something you can ignore.

Or is it? Personal branding, just like regular branding, is something that’s often completely out of your control. Read more…

Recommended: How To Gain Clients Trust – 5 Tips

What should you do as a small, independent retailer when a major food chain, big-box store or national franchise becomes a direct competitor? All along you’ve been specializing in items that aren’t in the mainstream but sell well, and then some big outfit like Walmart or Amazon decides they’re going to hone in on your action.

When this happens, what can you as a specialty retailer do to remain in business and retain your dominance in any niche market?

Your first reaction might be to lower prices in order to compete with the big stores. Read more…

Recommended: 8 Social Marketing Fails to Avoid

Social media plays a very vital role in the online presence of a business or the brand, and more and more consumers are turning to these outlets to connect with brands they like. Social media is the best way to actively engage with your customers both active and potential, and if done cautiously and correctly, can of great advantage to your business by targeting a specific audience for your brand. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways To Come Up With A Memorable Business Name

Are you a small business owner who feels just wasting your dollars to advertise?

Do you want to know where actually the best places to advertise your small business online?

So, let’s get started.

In addition to sites mentioned blow, don’t forget other online marketing sites. You can visit 40billion.com which is a fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and crowdfunders. Read more…

Recommended: 11 Ways to Write a Compelling Crowdfunding Campaign

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

In the competitive and increasingly saturated B2B market, it’s never been more important for you to have outstanding marketing strategies. Finding a digital marketing agency that specializes in B2B is a great way to boost results, as long as they are right for your company and sector.

How not to do it…and what to do instead

The most dangerous move you can make is choosing the first digital marketing agency that you come across. Read more…

Recommended: Does Your Marketing Strategy Work For You?

The science of content marketing is much bigger than publishing an occasional blog. Custom content has grown into a 43.0billion dollar industry, and even skeptics have to admit that it’s serious business. The best content marketers are wizards who are able to blend writing, multi-media content, PR, social media, and networking into a comprehensive online presence. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Signs That You Should Quit Your Failing Startup Business

The Holy Grail of social media outreach is engagement, which goes beyond broadcasting to interacting with your fans. While some businesses might use 40Billion, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks to drive traffic to their own websites, the more that people are engaging with your posts and sharing your content with their own networks, the more brand loyalty you can build.

While there’s no tried-and-true formula for everyone to maximize engagement all the time, outreach on social media doesn’t have to be like blindly throwing darts at a board. Read more…

Recommended: How To Be More Creative In Business

Even the most perceptive business owners can make a bad hire when they don’t pay attention to the right signs. Here are 3 personality types that can bring down your business and how you can spot them in an interview.

1) The Narcissist.

It’s easy to make the mistake of hiring a narcissist. They are often charismatic and radiate self-confidence. Read more…

Recommended: How To Be More Creative In Business

What do smart entrepreneurs do different to ensure their business stays profitable? They do the simple things right. Simple things really, like finding cheap ways to get exposure, or hearing their customers out, or networking in the right places. Number one marketing tip is don’t just think outside the box, get rid of the box! Be creative. Read more…

Recommended: SEC And Crowdfunding: Things You Need To Know.

This post on how to raise money successfully using simple crowdfunding steps answers common questions for startup entrepreneurs and small businesses thinking about using crowdfunding to raise funding.

I have been in the crowdfunding space since 2008, after experiencing first-hand one of the biggest problems plaguing new businesses: There was a $40 billion gap in funding every year! That year, I founded one of the first crowdfunding platforms for U.S. Read more…

Recommended: How To Promote Your Business Between Thanksgiving And Christmas

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

Location-based mobile marketing promises the sky: high conversion rates, surgical targeting, and rich consumer profiles.

But does it deliver? According to many accounts, it does.
Not surprisingly, retailers, brands, and agencies are scrambling to hone their location-based approaches. These encompass everything from “geo-aware” and “geo-fenced” ad campaigns, to hyper-local efforts keyed to Wi-Fi hotspots, and algorithmic location-based targeting of audience segments like soccer moms, bargain hunters, coffee enthusiasts, etc.

In a report from BI Intelligence on location-mobile marketing, key stats on the location-based services marketplace that indicate it’s supremacy in mobile marketing, explain how the most important techniques (such as geo-aware, geo-fenced, audience-based local-mobile campaigns) work, examine the cornerstones – such as data and audience building – to a successful location-based mobile strategy, look at who has the valuable location-based data, and analyze the six most effective local-mobile marketing tactics. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Growth Hacks to Turbocharge Your Small Business

The benefits of email

Customers like email. According to research, 77% of consumers prefer to receive permission-based marketing communications via email. So, don’t overlook the potential email can bring to your business. If done well it offers some great benefits.

. It’s cost-effective – implementing successful email campaigns doesn’t cost the earth and ROI is generally good. Read more…

Recommended: The Unexpected Benefits of Crowdfunding

As a business owner or startup entrepreneur, you are responsible for building an effective team and enabling your employees to do their best work. To do that well, you need to have perspective, which is the ability to create a point-of-view based on imagining yourself in another’s shoes.

Awareness about ourselves and others is difficult to gain. Read more…

Recommended: Facebook And Marketing: 4 Useful Tips For Success

Google+ is a nice social network that is quite different from Facebook in many ways but it was all the rage when it came out and people were waiting for e-mail invites to join the network. The initial buzz has been over for quite a while, and now it is time to really see if Google+ can overtake Facebook at some point and become a more popular and larger social network.

Are the Numbers Important?

At some point in the future the numbers may take Google+ over Facebook, but numbers are only one part of the equation. Read more…

Recommended: 12 Proven Content Marketing Tricks to Maximize Traffic

As the 32nd most popular website in the world, Tumblr is a big opportunity. But you can’t approach it as you would other marketing strategies.

With 105 million blogs and 49 billion posts, Tumblr, the free blog hosting and social networking site, is the 32nd most popular site in the world. So, if you’re not using Tumblr as part of your marketing efforts, you’re missing a very large boat.

Tumblr isn’t a blog platform like WordPress; it’s a social network that has a blogging platform. Read more…

Recommended: How To Do More With Less – Smarter Content Marketing Strategies

How can you maximize the benefits of attending professional networking events as an entrepreneur or business owner?

1. Have an agenda.

Not all networking events are created equal. It behooves you to research the best of the bunch in your area and decide which might be best for your overall start-up goals. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Habits Of High-Performing Teams

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Most entrepreneurs spend too much time and money on promotions that don’t generate new business. Whether it is local sports sponsorships, newspaper-ad buys or social media, they waste money on marketing strategies that may boost their egos by making them local celebrities, but don’t actually translate into sales.

Entrepreneurs, especially those relying on customers in their local areas, should first focus on networking with other area businesses, major employers, schools, churches and other organizations. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Ways To Promote Your Auto Parts Store Online

Google+ is a nice social network that is quite different from Facebook in many ways but it was all the rage when it came out and people were waiting for e-mail invites to join the network. The initial buzz has been over for quite a while, and now it is time to really see if Google+ can overtake Facebook at some point and become a more popular and larger social network.

Are the Numbers Important?

At some point in the future the numbers may take Google+ over Facebook, but numbers are only one part of the equation. Read more…

Recommended: Popularity of Local Mobile Marketing

At some point in your career, someone has probably talked to you about how to brand yourself, how personal branding is this incredibly important thing that everyone is doing these days, how, if you’ve built a business and are trying to grow, it’s not something you can ignore.

Or is it? Personal branding, just like regular branding, is something that’s often completely out of your control. Read more…

Recommended: Best Online Sites For Small Businesses To Advertise

Here’s something that you should immediately put into action on your website. This concept is so simple, yet most of the time extremely overlooked: With every single transaction, you should be controlling where your customer goes next.

So many people miss out on this golden opportunity for additional profit. Read more…

Recommended: With So Many Social Networking Sites, Which One Is Right For Your Business?

Target marketing is about attracting customers who will buy what you’re selling.

In order to target market effectively, you’ll need to know exactly who purchases your products and exactly how to reach them. And acquiring that kind of knowledge requires some research and planning on your end.

The evolution of target marketing
Target marketing is the most current method of marketing to consumers based on research into their interests, hobbies, and needs, and it didn’t spring from nothing. Read more…

Recommended: 6 Ways To Promote Your Auto Parts Store Online

This ‘P’ is for Promotion and Publicity. Not to be confused with Marketing. Marketing deals with how you express your essence, your identity. Promotion deals with how you convey your marketing message to your target audience, and Publicity is what you get when people notice your offer and talk about it. Read more…

Recommended: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Equity Crowdfunding to Raise Money

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

What do you think in reality Twitter is? It has long been one of the most important social media platforms available on the internet. But what do you feel is the true use of this wonderful website? Over the years, websites, such as Twitter and others are becoming more and more popular. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways To Overcome Fear And Be More Confident

Here’s why your company’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media campaigns aren’t performing as well as they could be.

Over the past five years, social media has become an increasingly important part of many companies‘ marketing strategies. Read more…

Recommended: Top 3 Crowdfunding Tips to Get Funded

Content marketing has become one of the most popular digital marketing strategies, with 88% of B2B marketers now using it in some form.

But it costs significant time and/or money. What if you don’t have those dollars to invest? What if you’re just starting out, or what if you’re already investing the bulk of your marketing budget in other strategies?

Though not ideal, it’s actually possible to start a content marketing campaign with no money whatsoever. Read more…

Recommended: Smart Entrepreneurs Do These 4 Accounting Steps

It’s the entrepreneurial spirit that shapes the economy, but it’s difficult to shape anything if no one knows about your products or services. Here are 3 nuggets of marketing advice to small-business owners who need to get the word out…

1) Target your customer.

According to one of Bill Cosby’s famous quotes, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Now, he doesn’t mean saying “Please” is the key to failure. Read more…

Recommended: Are You a Micro-Manager? Here Are 3 Ways to Change

Despite the importance of Social Media, Email Marketing is still the most powerful tool to connect with people. Everyone has at least one email account these days, whether it be for business or personal reasons. According to The Radicati Group, more than 34% of the worldwide population uses emails – Which accounts for nearly 2.5 billion people. Read more…

Recommended: 12 Proven Content Marketing Tricks to Maximize Traffic

If at least a third of your receivables are 60-plus days delinquent, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re one of 40 percent of small businesses in that predicament – and your invoices may be partially to blame.

Before you issue your next invoice, be sure all the parts are complete.

1. Seller info:

The source of the invoice should be clear and include your company’s name, address and telephone number. Read more…

Recommended: 3 Ways to Grow Your Small Business Brand on Google

Want to get the word out? Did you know you can broadcast your crowdfunding project or campaign to over 2,500,000 active users on 40Billion, Twitter, Facebook, and Google for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to promote your message, brand, product, service, fundraising campaign, crowdfunding project, or small business to the world.

Are you trying to raise money on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundme? For over 4 years, aspiring crowdfunders and startup entrepreneurs have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers and investors. Read more…

Is your business on Facebook?

Do you need to convince your boss-or a client-that Facebook is a worthy marketing investment?

And speaking of social media advertising, don’t forget online marketing sites. You can visit 40billion.com which is a fastest-growing network of entrepreneurs and crowdfunders. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Mistakes That Hurt Your Crowdfunding Campaign

What should you do as a small, independent retailer when a major food chain, big-box store or national franchise becomes a direct competitor? All along you’ve been specializing in items that aren’t in the mainstream but sell well, and then some big outfit like Walmart or Amazon decides they’re going to hone in on your action.

When this happens, what can you as a specialty retailer do to remain in business and retain your dominance in any niche market?

Your first reaction might be to lower prices in order to compete with the big stores. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Things Entrepreneurs Must Do Before Going on Vacation

The footwear industry has traditionally been a hotbed of memorable advertising, with brands such as Nike and Reebok spending millions to sign athlete-endorsers and hire ad agencies that create spectacular TV campaigns. Eye-tracking technology, facial-expression analysis, and lab experiments help better understand why people choose to view online videos, what narrative techniques keep them watching, and what features prompt them to share videos with friends. Read more…

Recommended: 4 Ways To Overcome Fear And Be More Confident

Are you the owner of a small business looking to increase your customers? How do you build a trusting relationship with your customers? Here is a proven strategy to build and maintain trust in your business, and in turn attract both customers and profits.

There are many different sources of trust, and sometimes people trust for the wrong reasons. Read more…

Recommended: Make Your Small Business Email Marketing Successful – Follow These Steps

Every business owner knows how to wear a lot of hats. When first striking out on your own, you have a hand in finances, marketing, product design, and everything in-between. But as your company grows, you need to empower your employees to feel that same sense of independence.

Autonomy is one of our fundamental human needs – an essential component of a healthy workplace – our need to be driven by personal interest and enjoyment.

Employees that feel empowered are happier, more motivated, more committed to their jobs, and less stressed. Read more…

Recommended: Why Startup Entrepreneurs Need To Be More Like Reporters

Face it… The topic of shutting down your business isn’t something most entrepreneurs want to contemplate, but something most will have to deal with inevitably.

There’s just no skating around the issue that for whatever reasons, sometimes companies must close up shop. Read more…

Recommended: How To Gain Clients Trust – 5 Tips

Want to spread the word about your business? Did you know you can broadcast your product or service to our large audience across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 40Billion for only $20, or as little as $5 a day? Buy a promo ad to broadcast your small business, startup company, product, or service to 2,500,000+ social users on 4 social networks – including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and 40Billion – at once.

For over 4 years, aspiring entrepreneurs and startup companies have used 40Billion for affordable promotion across popular social networks in order to reach more potential customers. Read more…

All marketing managers struggle with one thing. How to set goals for marketing department. It sounds like a simple-enough task, but over time I came to see goal-setting as something of an art; it requires practice, constant refinement, focus and a little bit of playfulness (unless you want to drive yourself crazy).

How do you set goals that are challenging yet still achievable (is there an exact formula for this, like always shoot for x% more than last month)? How many goals should you set–one, three, six? Should you focus on a new goal every week, month, semester, quarter or year? If you’re a small company and you need to achieve quick growth, how do you pick which goal is most important when there are a billion urgent things that need to happen? How do you stay focused on your goals (once you’ve finally decided on them) and not let other stuff get in the way, like tempting partnership opportunities or new tactics you want to try out?

Following six tips will help achieve marketing goals:

1. Read more…

Recommended: Small Business Blogging – 5 Easy Tips