Author: Content Curator

How to Increase Sales by Encouraging Mobile Spending

It’s a common misconception that you need to always focus on customer acquisition to drive sales and increase profits.

I hear this all the time when I’m consulting business owners. You can generate sales in many other ways.

Sometimes, all you need to do is make subtle changes to your existing process. That way, you can improve the experience of your current customers and get them to spend more money.

You should set goals that help you increase the average purchase order and buying frequency.

One of the best ways to do this is by encouraging mobile spending.

Mobile trends are on the rise. In fact, over the past six months, 62% of consumers with a smartphone have completed an online purchase from their mobile devices.

In 2017, mobile commerce held a 34.5% share of total ecommerce sales in the United States. At this growth rate, experts predict this number is to rise to 54% by the year 2021.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to yo… Read More

 

Pros and Cons of Native Advertising: What You Need to Know

Native advertising, like all advertising, has its pros and cons. It’s important to be aware of these factors in order to make the best decisions for your business. For small businesses this is especially important as they rely heavily on advertising to sustain and grow their customer base.

So, let’s take a look at these pros and cons to better understand this type of advertising.

Pros of Native Advertising

1. Improved customer targeting – Native ads generally run where on blogs or sites related to a niche of interest. This therefore means that the people who see and click through the content are better targeted and more likely to find the information helpful.

2. Less expensive – Compared to other forms of more traditional advertising, such as display or banner ads, native advertising is far less expensive. Moreover, it offers a lower barrier to entry so that many different types of businesses can take advantage of this type of advertising.

3. Bypasses ad blind customers – Most consumers today are blind to most traditional advertising. The way that native advertising appears is less intrusive and doesn’t always look like an ad.

4. Enhances content – Having more information similar to what a reader is already reading about is a good way to offer more information and thus provides an opportunity to add value to the content.

5. Increases targeted followers – Since the promotional material is seen only on content that is related to what the visitor is already interested in there is a higher probability that it will result in more targeted readers and followers.

Cons of Native Advertising

1. Can seem deceptive – Many people who use native advertising have headlines that can appear misleading or deceiving. When consumers click through they can feel that they have been taken advantage of and are not happy, thus making it harder for more honest publishers to use native advertising ethically.

2. Seen as unethical – Due to the dishonest headlines as mentioned above, native advertising can seem unethical to some readers.

3. Publishers receive backlash – Often when a publisher allows native ads to appear on their website their traffic goes down, even as their revenue goes up. It’s a catch 22 making it difficult for blog owners to know exactly what to do.

4. Too advertorial – Sometimes people misuse native ads as if they’re like the old-fashioned advertorials that appeared in print magazines. This is not a good use for native advertising.

5. Google may penalize native advertising – It has been found that Google can penalize publishers for including native advertising on their pages. However, Google appears to be changing as their is some evidence that they may be getting involved in this type of advertising as well which hopefully will have a positive impact in the future.

More Information About Native Ads

Link to Google information – http://www.adexchanger.com/native-advertising-2/google-builds-out-native-ad-solutions-as-smaller-players-gain-speed/

The reality is that all forms of advertising come with their share of problems. People are prone to disliking all types of advertising, even when it ends up helping them. After all, how would anyone find out about products that help them without advertising? Your job is to provide excellent material so that your audience can find the solutions they need.

Concluding Thoughts

In order to overcome the stigma of any type of advertising, it’s important for small business owners to be as helpful as possible. This includes avoiding headlines that may be construed as misleading or deceiving. Be clear and straightforward about what you are offering. Provide informative content that is helpful to your audience. If you aim to always under promise and over deliver, your readers will never be disappointed when clicking through your native ads. And most importantly they might just find exactly what they were looking for and in turn become a lifelong customer.

 

 

7 Sure Fire Productivity Hacks for Busy Entrepreneurs

As a busy entrepreneur it can seem impossible to get everything done.

Do you look around you at others and wonder how they get so much done and make it look so easy?

There are some tried and true methods for getting more done each day that you may not have considered as an entrepreneur.

Learn to Delegate

Even if you are an office of one, you can still delegate both work and on the home front.

Hire a virtual assistant to help you with repetitive tasks that aren’t your main money-making ones and that you don’t even like to do.

Is there something you avoid doing but must be done?

Find someone else to do it. It might be dealing with customer service, sharing blog posts and items on social media, or it might be housework.

It’s up to you what you choose to delegate.

Use Your Calendar

Today we have so many useful ways to use a calendar. Using an online calendar that lets you create separate calendars for each portion of your life yet integrate them into one big life calendar (such as Google Calendar), can be a very good way to keep track of your schedule.

You should schedule not only work, but personal time too.

By scheduling work in time increments that you think you need to get a particular task done, you’ll be able to fill your calendar more productively.

For instance, if it takes you 15 minutes to check email in the morning, schedule only 15 minutes for checking email. By micromanaging your calendar, you’ll end up with more time to do everything that matters to you.

Set Milestones and Deadlines

When you do services for others it’s simple to create milestones and deadlines based on your clients’ needs. But, it can seem a little harder when you’re creating milestones and deadlines for yourself.

Even so, it’s an important component to being more productive. Be realistic when determining how long any one project should take you.

Then, work your way back on the calendar to today giving yourself enough time each day to work towards meeting your milestones.

A Little Self-Discipline Goes Very Far

Periodically during the day, double check yourself to ensure that you are doing tasks that are in your calendar.

If you’re not, stop what you’re doing, look at your full calendar and start working on the things on it for today.

Do not allow yourself to do anything else until you’ve done the things on your calendar for today.

Reward Yourself

Just as tasks should be listed in your calendar, so should rewards throughout the day.

Put into your calendar “when I finish xyz I can spend 15 minutes on Facebook.” Set a timer so that you don’t lose track of time.

By keeping track of your time this way, after about a month it will all become second nature to be very productive and not let yourself get sidetracked.

Create Checklists

Do you do something on a regular basis over and over again?

Do you have a new client checklist?

Do you have various task checklists to ensure you don’t miss a step?

Many different professionals have checklists that help them stay on track for any one task. They use it to ensure that nothing was forgotten.

Don’t assume you’ll remember; use a checklist every single time for best results.

Become Mindful

Finally, always stay mindful of the consequences of being disorganized and unproductive.

As an entrepreneur, everything rides on your ability to be able to plan, organize and implement all the tasks and projects you need to do on any given day, week, month, quarter and year.

As you create processes and implement them, you’ll be amazed at how productive you’ll become.