3 Ways to Help Better Position Your Business for Market Success
Finding your business niche is the first step of defining your brand. If you don't understand how to position your business in the market place or know what you're selling and why, then you won't be able to effectively market your business.
It's important to find your business niche so you can:
• Differentiate yourself from your competitors;
• Optimize your website for the right keywords;
• Have a clear message on all marketing materials;
• Develop new ideas or products that appeal to your target market.
Here are 3 ways to make finding your business niche easier:
1. Narrow your focus.
You've heard the saying "Go big or go home?" Not in this case. To stand out from the competition and attract more visitors to your website, you need to be very specific about what you offer.
For example, business may offer a variety of marketing services. However, they wouldn't get very far if we only used the keyword "marketing services" on their website or put that term on their business cards.
Instead, they promote a number of different services on their website, marketing materials and in the real world such as Brand & Marketing Consulting, Website Development and SEO.
Get focused and you'll find your business niche or niches.
2. Define your target market.
You'll hear this again and again in marketing advice: finding the right audience to target is crucial.
Many business owners make the mistake of trying to be everything to everybody, or launch a website filled with content that doesn't speak clearly to the people they want to reach.
Think about who wants what you're selling. Is it entrepreneurs? HR professionals? Stay at home dads? Tech-savvy millennials?
Once you're come up with your target audience, you can narrow down and define your business niche even more. Plus, you'll be able to craft search engine-optimized content that will engage and inform exactly who you want to be buying your products or services.
3. Know the competition.
It's essential to know what kind of competition you're up against when you're defining your business niche. Start with Google.
Search the keywords people might use to find your business. If you see pages and pages of results and a lot of PPC ads (those are the paid ads that appear to the right and sometimes above the organic results), competition is high for that keyword or keywords.
You'll probably want to narrow down your niche even further, or find another niche to target. For example, if your niche is corporate fitness training but there's a lot of competition, brainstorm some other keywords to optimize your site for - maybe in-office corporate training, executive fitness training and corporate weight training.
The trick is to find the balance between low-competition keywords that have a decent search volume. If you're the only one using a specific keyword but nobody is searching for it, you're not going to get the results you want.
Once you have defined your business niche, you'll be able to market your products or services more effectively.
You'll know your focus, target market and competition, which will make differentiating your brand and defining your unique selling proposition (USP) much simpler.
A good brand strategy takes time, and ideally some professional help to ensure you've got everything you need for a clear, concise and compelling brand message.
Susan Friesen, founder of the award-winning web development and digital marketing firm eVision Media, is a Web Specialist, Business & Marketing Consultant, and Social Media Advisor. She works with entrepreneurs who struggle with having the lack of knowledge, skill and support needed to create their online business presence.
If you are new to Social Media and online marketing or find it overwhelming and confusing, my monthly group coaching program, AMPLIFY! Business Academy http://amplifybusinessacademy.com/ is a perfect way for you to incrementally learn the best strategies and tactics to help you grow your business online.
Which of these twelve important habits do you have?
The key millionaire habit you should start today…
It might not sound sexy, but you’ll need to do THIS if you want to advance…
I’ve dedicated my life to understanding everything, the ins and outs of what it takes to actually become a millionaire and one of the most important lessons in your journey is that actions speak louder than words…
With that in mind, here’s a question: what habits and daily actions are ingrained in your everyday life?
And a follow-up: are they helping to move you forward or are they holding you back?
While there’s no exact science to determine how to be a millionaire, I have more millionaire students than anyone, and great financial successes like my students have accomplished is not random, but rather the result of hard work on my part and on the part of my students.
What I’ve found is that there are certain habits that many financially successful people have in common.
Read through this list and ask yourself: how many of these habits do I have? If these aren’t habits yet, how could you incorporate them into your life?
1: Be an Early Riser
You’ve heard the saying that time is money.
You’ve also heard the saying that the early bird gets the worm.
Mash these adages together and you can distill both down to the idea that the earlier you wake up, the more money-making time you can maximize.
There are countless benefits to waking up early.
Me, I like to wake up early so that I can answer emails, consider what will go on during the day and do reading and research for the day ahead.
Basically, I use this time to deal with things that might get in my way throughout the course of the day, so that by the time the market opens, I’m mentally prepared.
2: Know Where Your Money is Going
Do you track your expenses and know where your money is going?
If you do, then keep it up: it’s a key millionaire habit. If you don’t, cultivate this habit immediately.
If you want to get rich, you’ve got to learn how to handle your money now–not later.
Learning financial responsibility will mean that you’ll be able to enjoy the money when you make it, rather than just falling into irresponsible habits with increasingly larger sums.
3: Have Good Time Management
People love to talk about how little time they have.
They don’t have time to go to the gym.
They don’t have time to attend networking functions.
They don’t have time to study and learn how the stock market works.
They don’t have time to succeed!
These are limits that people put on themselves.
Watch a little less TV and take your focus away from Facebook for a while.
You’ll be amazed at how the time will open up for you to advance in business.
4: Save Responsibly
Longtime millionaires aren’t out there blowing every penny that they make.
They know that to continue advancing in their career, they need to save money.
Saving money might not sound sexy -- in fact, it might sound downright boring. But, the benefits that can come your way from saving are anything but boring.
Saving money means that you can improve your position in the market.
It also means that you can invest in a greater variety of stocks.
Over time, if you’re being responsible, this means that you will start making more and more money as you go. The bar will be raised, so to speak.
Additionally, on a practical level, saving also ensures that if you do have a business deal that doesn’t go as planned, you have a safety net.
5: Know What’s Going on in the World
It’s alarmingly easy to live a fishbowl existence.
Resist that temptation.
Make concerted efforts to know what is going on in the world.
The best way to do this? Be a voracious reader.
Read magazines, the paper, anything that you can get your hands on.
Know what is going on in your backyard and in the world at large. Not only can the news help inform your investments and keep you inspired, but it also keeps you current.
You will be better able to interact and network with others when you have an idea of what is going on in the world.
6: Keep Up on Your Education
A common habit among millionaires? Lifelong learning.
Just because someone has made a bunch of money doesn’t mean that they don’t have a thing or two (or ten) to learn.
To all my students, I keep on learning and growing right along with you.
Maintaining and increasing your level of knowledge is a millionaire habit that will serve you in business and in your personal life.
7: Revisit Your Goals Frequently
It’s extremely important to make goals.
But, simply making them isn’t enough.
To transform your goal-making into millionaire material, you need to revisit these goals frequently.
How frequently is up to you, but let me give you an example.
Say that you set an initial goal of making $50,000, so that you could pay off your student loan debt and that you reached that goal four months into your trading career.
Awesome!
But, at the same time, it’s time to adjust your goals, making them bigger and better, so that you still have something to work toward.
Goals are part of what keep us going and keep motivating us.
Revisit yours often, so that they remain a manageable “carrot” dangling in front of you.
8: Believe in Your Success
Don’t dream it; be it.
If you don’t believe that you are worthy and deserving of success, then any that comes your way will be pure luck.
By shifting your mindset to a place where you believe success is not only possible, but within your reach, you will be taking a huge step toward it.
This transforms success from a faraway dream to an attainable goal and allows you to set specific milestones to get where you want to go.
9: Connect with Others
Technically, you could become a millionaire alone.
But, quite frankly, it’s going to be a longer — and lengthier — journey without a little help from some friends.
First and foremost, seek out a great mentor.
Your mentor, who is further along in their career than you, can help guide you and help you through growing pains. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of a mentor!
Networking with peers is also invaluable.
Not only does it give you a sounding board with people who can totally understand, but it also creates relationships with people who can help raise you up (and vice versa).
Connecting with others, whether they are at your level, above your level or even below it (for now), has a huge impact on your career trajectory.
10: Evaluate What is Going Well (and What’s Not)
Millionaires aren’t characterized by being self-destructive.
They’re not running around in circles, agonizing about what they could have done differently.
However, they are imbued with a healthy amount of self reflection.
Millionaires are able to constructively look at the past and see how it can inform the future.
Things not going well with some investments?
Look at why and how you could change that going forward.
At the same time, if certain things are going well, they have the ability to look at that and try to take it push it even further forward.
11: Test Your Limits Constantly
A millionaire isn’t one to rest on his or her laurels. Never content to let the last accomplishment define them, millionaires are (in a good way) addicted to the game.
They constantly want to challenge their limits, so that they can go further and do more good.
What is your relationship with risk and trying new things?
If it is not so good, then it might be time to work on that.
Becoming more comfortable with risk and testing your limits is vital if you want to attain true financial success.
12: Give Back to Others
Maybe, right now, you’re coming from a place of scarcity.
If so, the idea of giving back might seem ludicrous.
But, trust me, the more you make, the more you should give.
Just like millionaires save quite a bit of what they make, they also give plenty. This is a habit that you can get into now.
Even if you don’t have money (yet), there are ways in which you can give back.
You can act as a mentor to someone less fortunate than you.
You can donate your time or a service as a volunteer.
Giving back actually makes the world (and your trading base) steadier and healthier.
Giving back is not just what is right, but something that can contribute to your bottom line in the long run.
Your habits are a huge part of what defines you.
So, by choosing to cultivate habits which millionaires share, you are taking a proactive step to joining that “tribe.” Making a concerted effort to make these millionaire habits yours will have a huge effect on your success and money-making potential!
Affiliate marketing is a great way to start an online business for very minimal investment. It's ideal for those who don't want to create products and for those who don't have much start up money for their online business.
You can promote a substantial variety of products and services with the affiliate marketing business model. Your job is to promote products created by other companies. When somebody buys from you, the product owner will pay you a commission.
Two of the most popular places to find products to sell as an affiliate marketer are Amazon and ClickBank.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing With Amazon
Amazon is the world's largest retailer, selling both physical and digital products. Their primary marketing method is affiliate marketing. In other words, they get other people, called Amazon Affiliates, to sell their products and services for them.
It's free to become an Amazon affiliate, and you can sell anything on the Amazon website. You start off with a 4% commission rate, which gets more substantial when you sell more products.
4 Stars And Up
As you probably know, Amazon sells a wide range of products. So how do you choose what to sell as an affiliate? As an Amazon affiliate, you can use their search feature to surf the products that you want to promote. Choose your niche, for example, 'dog training'.
Type that search term into the Amazon search engine. On the left-hand side of your search click on the '4 stars & up' filter. Amazon's top rating system score is 5. If a product receives a score of 4 or higher, you can be sure that the customers who purchased those products and left those reviews are very happy. These are the types of products you want to be promoting.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing With ClickBank
ClickBank is a well-known online marketplace where the vast majority of its products are digital information products. As soon as the customer buys a digital product, they can immediately download it to their computer.
ClickBank is free to join and is a widely known, highly regarded company in the online business world. Its online marketplace contains many thousands of affiliate products to promote so you're sure to always find offers that will appeal to your audience. You can earn commissions of 25%, 50% and even 75%.
Gravity Scoring
ClickBank products have what's known as a gravity scoring. This shows the popularity of the product. A gravity rating for the product that you want to promote should be at least 10 or more. If it's more than 100, it means that there are a lot of other affiliates selling the same product.
When you have identified the product that you want to promote, ClickBank will give you a unique URL called a'hoplink'. This is the link that you want your prospects to click and how sales are tracked to you.
Companies are happy to pay commissions to people just like you, in return for selling their products and services. You have the potential to make a great income when you choose the right niche, stay committed, and understand your audience. For a no-nonsense, kick-start guide to getting started, download my free checklist, Affiliate Marketing For Beginners at https://jonallo.com/affiliatechecklist
What Social Media Engagement Achieves For Business
Social media in essence is in relation to engagement through sharing, which for business means targeting your product range, your articles, or your services at engaging a potential customer or client base. Collectively, products, services and articles are known as content, and it is through offering quality content that success through your channels can be achieved.
Social marketing has around 900 million users globally, and covers every topic range you can think of. As well as engaging a potential customer and client base or readership, social media is also relevant to search engine optimization.
Social media is a unique format as it helps you promote your content on to your audience, and in turn it generates traffic via people sharing your content with others, and through SEO. Perhaps more importantly than this, however, social media with its online reviews helps a business build trust, and nearly every brand you can think of uses social media for this reason.
Think of this as: you come across two companies offering the same services; one has 250 Facebook likes, the other 43 - which one would you opt for? So regardless of whether you're an online retailer, an affiliate marketer, offer a service such as tuition, or run a news site, social media can assist you build your business online. Google estimates that by 2015, UK consumers will have purchased £40bn of products and services online.
Popular Social Media Sites And Their Uses
Getting to get grips with the nuances of social media's role in promoting your business can cause more than its fair share connected with headaches. Here is a list of the most popular social media sites and their uses:
Facebook is predominately for sharing. This can be products, articles, or services. In a nutshell, it's for sharing your content with as many people as possible.
Twitter is about sharing news on any subject. Don't let the word news make you feel it not apply for products. New product launches, new stock ready to be sold - Twitter is good for all of this.
Google+ is in part a combination of the two and has become important for search engine optimization if nothing else.
Blogging is a great way to impart news and expertise on your readership, customer and client base, or followers. It offers a good way to attract visitors on your site via search engines.
YouTube is about showcasing videos to a wide audience. It is being utilized by businesses all the time to sell products and services. As YouTube is owned by The search engines, videos tend to feature prominently on search engine results. You can also utilize the YouTube ads to make a secondary income stream.
Pinter est and other bookmarking sites are very good at showcasing visual products. If your business is selling something online, albeit a product or service, ensure you are posting on Pinter est and as many bookmarking sites you could find. Social Media And Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Good positioning on search engines is about unique quality content that is well shared and well linked to from other websites. By sharing your content on social sites, the more chance there is of people liking it on Facebook, re tweeting with Twitter, or sharing the pin on Pinter est. Links are important for good SEO and posting your content on social sites provides a link from the social site to yours, and in every case this can be targeted to a specific web page.
By web page I mean a specific solution, service, or article. This also ensures Google indexes the web page. That is to say, it adds it to its database, ensuring it can be found on search engines.
Finding The Best Social Media Sites For Your Business
To find the best social sites suited to your business, think as to what your business is trying to do. If your business sells products or services, then use social sites that showcase pictures and videos to sell the product. YouTube, Pinter est, Delicious and Instagram are all really good for showcasing products.
If you're in the selling game, make videos of your products, take good professional photos and find them on these sites, and ensure you link the pictures and videos directly to the content on your site. If you sell on eBay or an affiliate seller, try to link directly to the product page where a potential customer can buy it. Also, put the products on your Facebook or my space page, Google+ page, and Twitter. For service providers, a slightly different spin on social media promotion is needed as, more often than not, a service provider will sit in the middle of visual social media, and text-based social sites.
This also applies to affiliate marketers. If you can, represent your services that has a picture or icon, and publish the picture or icon on the visual sites. Use videos to showcase your services - if you can get testimonials from clients, well, that's gold dust. Publish regularly on your blog and tweet the articles, together with insights into the industry. This engagement will help build trust with all your existing clients, showcase your skills, and help you to be found by people wishing to become new clients.
Social Media Advertising
If you have the budget for it, Facebook offers advertising on a click-through basis like Google Ad Sense, or it can be used to earn likes. It is often in instances of experimentation. For affiliate marketing revenue streams, click-through will expose the user to your revenue stream, while a like will ensure every time an article or new product is published they'll be informed. It's trial and error and seems to work well for some businesses, but others have lost faith from it.
Saving Time
By now, you have probably guessed that updating social sites, especially if you publish a lot of daily content, is hard work. Larger businesses employ people to keep on top of it, something many start-up business don't have the budget or the time for. It is possible to help automate your social accounts updating using automatic syndication sites.
A Social Media Strategy
Step 1: Create a Facebook Page, Twitter account and Google+ Page For Business
These have their uses regardless of the type of business, and all help considerably with SEO. Ensure you create business pages on Facebook in addition to Google+. This keeps your personal details and indeed social media life hidden from your customers or clients, and it offers better options to promote a business.
Step 2: Identify Social Media Sites That Are The Most Important To Your Business
If your site sells products, make a list of all the online bookmarking and video sites you could find and create accounts. Ensure you use Pinter est and YouTube. If your business is for services, information, or is for an affiliate marketing revenue stream, you want to spread the word in as many ways as possible. Use blogging sites such as Tumble, Blogger and WordPress. org to syndicate your sites and services, and try to create news content if you provide services to show your expertise in your field.
Step 3: Use Social Media Tools Such As 'If This Then That'
'If this then that' or ifttt.com automatically updates your social accounts. This is easy to establish and works by syndicating the information across a host of social sites automatically as soon as one site is updated. This, as you can imagine, saves a lot of time. Be cautions, however, and ensure social sites suited to the business, such as bookmarking sites for online retailers, appear just as you want them to be found.
Automatic syndication has limitations and often links and pictures do not appear as you would like them to. Nonetheless, and especially for syndicating blog posts via an RSS feed, it is a very good time-saver for promoting your business via social media. Not all social media can be syndicated in this way, but the sites that committer syndicates to are well worth creating accounts on to promote your business. The more social media sites you post on, the better.
Step 4: Use #hashtags
Whenever you post your content, ensure you use appropriate #hashtags. This will help users find your content when they search for it. So if I'm selling tyres on eBay, #tyres, #cartyres, #car, #treys is good, and for sports news, #sports news, #football #cricket, and so on is good.
Step 5: Once It Starts
Once your content starts hitting the web 2. 0 world, monitor your accounts for feedback. Concentrate on the sites you've identified as important to your business and respond to questions and comments. When responding, try to be helpful and non-abusive, even if the commentator is not pleasant. Professionalism goes along way.
Step 6: Participation
Twitter and Google+ show trending topics and these include popular subjects people are discussing. It is worth performing the odd Twitter search to see what people are talking about in relation to your business, and making a contribution to the discussion. This is a good way to make connections and hopefully achieve more success.
Step 7: Monitoring Success
Monitoring success has confirmed to be quite difficult for social media. Unlike SEO results, which can be measured on click-through and content engagement, it is not so simple on social sites for a variety of reasons. You may feel if you provide news that 10 comments on one story is a good sign of success, while 100 likes of a product video on YouTube with no obvious link to sales most likely are not immediately obvious as positive.
It is worth remembering, however, that though people may not directly access your main site via social sites, it may prompt them to return later. Always keep in mind that social media is for sharing content, so any like, comment or re tweet is positive.
