15 Success Tips for First-Time Entrepreneurs

Being a first-time entrepreneur can be challenging and nerve-wracking but also very exciting and rewarding. There is no end to the many financial, legal, staffing, marketing, and customer issues that will come up as you launch your business. A‎nd, unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting advice out there for the aspiring entrepreneur. But here are 15 core tips to help you begin navigating the startup landscape:

1‎. Start a Business You Are Passionate and Knowledgeable About

Startups can be quite a grind, so pick something that excites and motivates you. Avoid businesses or industries that you don’t already know a good deal about, as the steep learning curve may hamper your success.

2. Pick a Business Idea That Has a Big Market Opportunity

Make sure to carefully reseach if there’s a big market for your product or service. Investors will typically only invest in your company if they see a large market opportunity and that the company has the potential to grow into something significant.

3. Raise As Much Startup Funding As You Can

It’s almost always harder and takes longer to raise startup financing than you think. You must ensure you have a cushion for all the product development and marketing expenses you will incur. In an ideal world, you will have sufficient capital for your operations to break even. Don’t worry about diluting your percentage ownership in the company. Developing a great product takes time and money.

Check out these two articles on raising financing from invest‎ors: 28 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching to Investors and 20 Things Entrepreneurs Should Know About Angel Investors.

4. Constantly Monitor Your Finances

You must keep on top of all of your expenses, income and balance sheet. Many startups have failed because the entrepreneur wasn’t able to adjust spending to avoid running out of cash. Maintain a low overhead. Be frugal with expenses and avoid unnecessary costs. Learn to live on a shoestring budget until meaningful revenues start to flow in.

5. Research the Competition

Make sure you are thoroughly researching competitive products or services in the marketplace, and keep on top of new developments and enhancements from your competitors. ‎One way to do this is to set up a Google alert to notify you when any new information about your competitors shows up online.

6. Ask for Advice from Other Entrepreneurs

Advice from other entrepreneurs and business professionals (such as lawyers and accountants) can prove to be invaluable. Consider putting together an advisory board, and don’t be afraid to motivate members by giving them stock options in your company. Read industry newsletters and startup publications like AllBusiness.com and Entrepreneur.com. Find mentors who can give you advice on hiring, product development, marketing and fundraising‎.

7. Develop a Great Elevator Pitch

You should have a succinct and compelling story about what your startup does and what problem it solves. Have this ready for potential customers and investors (although you will need to tailor it to the specific audience)‎. Keep it to 30 seconds or less. Articulate your mission and goals, and why your product or service is compelling and unique. And if an investor is interested, be prepared to follow up with an executive summary about the company or a 12-15 slide PowerPoint “deck” that dives into more detail about the company and the market opportunity.

8. Hire the Right People

Hiring the wrong people is one of the biggest mistakes made by entrepreneurs. You need to bring on employees who have the relevant background and experience. They need to fit into the company culture you are trying to build. They need to be hard-working and flexible, as employees in startups often have to function in multiple roles‎. You must do thorough reference checks on them. Make sure your offer letter says they are “at will” employees and can be terminated at any time. Don’t forget the old quote: “Hire slowly. Fire quickly.”

9. Never Stop Networking

Networking can land you a new investor, a great employee, a new customer, or a great mentor. Attend industry and startup events. LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to help you network, so make sure both you and your company have profiles on LinkedIn and that you are constantly adding new connections. When someone does a Google search on you, your LinkedIn profile will usually show up at the top of the search results, so be sure you’re making a good first impression.

10. Give Great Customer Service

Companies such as Zappos and Virgin America became hugely successful because they focused on providing excellent customer service and support. You want your early customers to give referrals and sing your praises to their friends and colleagues. Thank your customers personally by email. Go the extra mile to show your appreciation.

11. Hire an Experienced Startup Attorney

You need a savvy business lawyer for your company, one who has regularly formed and advised many other entrepreneurs and who specializes in startups. An experienced startup lawyer can help you:

• Incorporate
• Draw up contracts with any co-founders
• Prepare key agreements for the business
• Set up a stock option plan for employees
• Prepare protective offer letters to prospective employees
• Help you negotiate terms with prospective investors
• Limit your potential legal liabilities
• Protect your ideas and inventions (through copyrights, patents and non-disclosure agreements)

Get recommendations from other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Make sure you have a good rapport with the attorney. Meet with several potential attorneys before you make a final decision (those first meetings should be free). And check out 10 Big Legal Mistakes Made by Start-Ups.

12. Get Comfortable with Public Speaking

The ability to communicate effectively can be critical to landing customers, inspiring employees, and pitching to investors to raise capital. Most people are not very good at public speaking and many are even afraid of it. You must work to overcome this fear. Consider working with a public speaking or business coach to practice, get professional feedback and improve. Some of the most recognized entrepreneurs were great public speakers, such as Steve Jobs‎.

13. Focus on Building a Great Product or Service—But Don’t Take Forever to Launch

Your product or service has to be at least good, if not great, to start out with. It has to be differentiated in some meaningful and important way from your competitors’ offerings‎. All else follows from this principle. Don’t dawdle on getting your product out to the market, as early customer feedback is one of the best ways to help improve it. As Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn, said: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

14. Just Do It

There is never a perfect time to launch a startup, so follow that famous advice and “just do it.” Take the first step to building your business, even if it’s only part time while you still have a paying job‎.

15. Market and Then Market Some More 

You continually have to be attracting, building, and even educating your market. Make sure your marketing strategy includes the following:

• Build a professional-looking, up-to-date website.
• Learn the fundamentals of SEO (search engine optimization) so that people searching for your products and services might find you near the top of search results.
• Use social media to promote your business (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.).
• Engage in content marketing by writing guest articles for relevant websites.
• Issue press releases for any significant events.

Good luck!

Copyright © 2015 by Richard Harroch. All Rights Reserved. 

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4 Hot Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch in 2016

Few things have had such a profound effect on the way we live, work, play and socialize as mobile devices. From sending emails and texts to incorporating cameras, GPS navigation, menu ordering and entertainment, no one could have predicted that the humble “brick” would evolve to become such an integral part of our digital lifestyle.

But just as devices and technologies change, so too do our marketing methods. 2015 was the first year that mobile traffic exceeded that of desktop users. As marketers, this opens up a whole new field of ideas to try and avenues to pursue in order to reach these customers, create dialogues and forge relationships with them in a way that makes our offer irresistible.

Gone are the days of top-down communications, of intrusive ads and poorly aligned customer outreach campaigns. Today, we have more data than ever, and we’re leveraging it to come up with innovative trends and ideas like these:

Customer-Centric will become Customer-Obsessive

Big Data becomes Meaningful Data in our rush to learn more about our customers.
Image source: Connexia

It sounds like the makings of a horror stalker film, but the fact is, in our race to become more customer-centric, we, as marketers, are already bordering on obsession. We’re finally at the point where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data, and can start using it to create more meaningful interactions.

Mobile is the vehicle that makes this happen. Few other things are as pivotal to sealing the deal as a device that the customer carries with them everywhere. Figuring out how to make that impact is something that companies are still working on, but you can bet it will be the customer, not the corporation, that powers how these decisions are made.

Search Engine Results Will Display More than Pages

You got Apps in my SERPs!

Google already displays videos in search results, but they’ve recently been experimenting with video ads as well. Other search engines, as well as other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, already leverage these types of ads in the form of auto-playing videos and Vines respectively – but at the moment Google is still testing the waters to determine how audiences respond to video-based ads.

Assuming users are receptive of the idea, don’t be surprised to see apps also sharing a place at the SERPs table. Sure, we already have app directories and recommendations, but apps as part of search results will take these directories and stores to a whole new level.

Also, don’t be surprised to see big shifts in mobile search. UI and UX specialists are still learning how we gesture, point, flick and tap on our devices, and with a search interface that’s designed for typing and scrolling, you can see how trying to wrangle a process built for computers into a small screen with taps and flicks just becomes an exercise in frustration. With so much data available, and so many past browsing habits to draw from, coming up with a page full of results is no longer going to cut it. It’s very likely we’ll see fully optimized, fine-tuned mobile search that enlists the help of third party apps to not just recommend a particular product, but find it in the customer’s preferred color, size, location, price range and much more.

Brands will Blur the Lines Between Apps, E-Commerce and Social

Well-known social platforms are taking their awkward first steps into becoming shopping centers.
Image Source: Adweek

2016 will be the year of even greater innovation from apps we already know and recognize. More seamless integration between those apps and their corresponding e-commerce and social outlets will become commonplace. Many social platforms are already tying e-commerce features into their networks. From Instagram’s “Shop Now” to Pinterest’s “Buyable Pins”, today’s hottest platforms are looking for ways to blur the lines between web, social, app and e-commerce.

As you might expect, the rallying cry from marketing has been “people don’t shop on social media!” but as mobile, social and e-commerce become more integrated, the possibilities open up to hit the right combination of buying and browsing buttons to turn that notion around.

Apps Become Reflections of our Lifestyles

Apps will evolve to become more feature-full in an attempt to position themselves as a lifestyle choice rather than a novelty.
Image Source: EATT Magazine

The problem so far with consistent app adoption has been nailed down to one singular issue – bandwidth. With caps on data and insane overage charges, brands really can’t get as creative or forward-thinking as they might like to with restraints like those holding them back. These days, you might have one app for weather, one to track your fitness level and food input, and another to remind you when it’s time to pick up the kids from school.

Expect apps in 2016 to become less about individual features and more about becoming an integral part of your life – a fitness journal that displays the weather before your run and reminds you when it’s time to get the kids. Sound a bit far-fetched? Not to app developers. As long as there are forced restrictions on how much you can download, apps themselves play a pivotal role in position themselves as more of a lifestyle attachment than a usable “thing” that can quickly be uninstalled in favor of the next big thing. There’s only so much bandwidth that will fit in a mobile plan – better make sure your app is making the most of it.

What’s more, the apps you choose could very well communicate your values in terms of your lifestyle. Just like Doritos and the Superbowl or Mountain Dew and gamers, the apps you use every day could tell people “I’m proud to be a _______ and that’s why I use (app). The more attuned these apps become to our goals, likes and dislikes in life, the more they’ll find themselves being used likely far beyond what the original developers envisioned.

The Next Big Thing?

2016 is bursting at the seams with mobile potential, and that’s not even counting things like wearable technology and mobile automation systems like Echo, Cortana and Siri. At the end of the next year, we’ll take a look back and see how these trends played out. Did they catch on or fizzle out? Did something new and unexpected take hold of our collective attention? What do you think will be the next big thing? Share your ideas with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

How to Decide Where to Establish Your Business

As a business owner, one of the decision you need to make is where to establish your business. Rules — and costs — associated with establishing a business are determined by state law, so it’s important to understand the implications involved.

Here’s how to decide where to establish your business:

Ease of Starting Your Business

In some states, it’s easy to start a business. My first business was started in Utah. The paperwork was minimal, and the cost was pretty small as well. When I moved to Pennsylvania, I began researching what it would take to transfer my business. The paperwork involved was more extensive, but still manageable. In the end, though, I ended up dissolving the business and starting fresh in Idaho.

So far, Idaho’s requirements have been the easiest of the three. I filled out one form and sent in a small fee. There are reporting requirements starting next year, but those aren’t onerous.

Other states are more difficult to deal with. I’ve heard horror stories about starting a business in California or New York. However, if you live in one of those areas, it might make sense to grit your teeth and do what it takes to make it happen. A good accountant or small business attorney can help you navigate the twists and turns to make it work properly.

Cost of Living

Sometimes, deciding where to establish your business is more a matter of basic cost of living. I know a number of entrepreneurs who, like me, have small businesses that have few employees. A few of them have recently to Tennessee to take advantage of the low cost of living and favorable tax situation.

In my case, moving to Idaho has been a great help. Everything costs much less here. My housing is half what I paid in Pennsylvania — for twice the space. My insurance costs are also lower. New Jersey car insurance is quite expensive, and you might pay a higher home insurance rate in a state like Florida. Here in Idaho, I pay a fraction what I paid in Pennsylvania for everything. I can’t even imagine what it would cost to live in California, New York, New Jersey, or Washington, D.C. From food to utilities to insurance, making a choice based on cost of living can help you get your business off the ground.

Another great thing about a place like Idaho is the fact that it’s got more than you might think. While smaller towns and cities are not as exciting as San Francisco or Boston, the reality is that there are plenty of livable places that aren’t major cities. In fact, Boise, the capital of Idaho is considered exceptionally livable and was recently recognized as a great place for millennials.

When you establish a business, you have the option to go almost anywhere you want. The reality is that starting a business comes with a number of costs. If you live in an area with a high cost of living, you’ll have fewer financial resources to put toward your business. If you can manage to choose where to live, it makes sense to go with a lower cost of living.

Taxes

Finally, don’t forget to consider taxes. One of the biggest reasons that my entrepreneur friends choose Tennessee is due to the low taxes. Idaho has a higher personal income tax than Pennsylvania (which surprised me), but the cost of living is so much lower that it makes up for it.

You should consider the taxes involved, based on your business organization. A “pass-through” business comes with a different tax situation than a c-corporation. When you consider where to establish your business, you also need to consider what makes sense in terms of business organization. Make it a point to research how taxation works for your business in the state you choose.

Business Location vs. Where You Live

Finally, it’s possible in some cases to establish your business in a state where you don’t live. This isn’t an option that’s available, and there are complications that come with it, including how you get your mail if your business is located in a different state. I like to have my business in the same state as me, but I’m also registered as a single-member LLC and my income is passed through. Talk to a knowledgeable professional about your options as you decide the best location for your business.

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Best Practices to Convert Prospects Into Leads

By Tom Harolds

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the fable of “The Pied Piper,” it’s about a town called Hamelin that dealt with a horrible infestation of rats. To rid the town of the vermin, a piper who dressed in bright red clothing played his pipe to lure the rats into the river.

A company that can play the instrument of lead generation is much like the Pied Piper. All that’s required is the know-how to learn. A healthy combination of targeted content, email campaigns, display ads, webinars, social media, and keywords make a beautiful song that consumers will follow. This will lead to a larger audience and increased bottom line.

It’s a Busy, Busy Online World

With everything transforming and becoming digital, the online world is busier than Grand Central Station. To navigate your way, it’s essential to understand how various programs complement each other. An opportunity to convert prospects into leads only exists when you know what to capitalize on.

Because people have more options than ever, you need to create an effective strategy that will lead consumers to your business over another. Enter, lead nurturing, an optimal process that differentiates your company from competitors by following up with consumers until they are ready to buy.

For example, when you think of a visit to a car dealership, odds are the car salesman will attempt to put you in a new car that day. If you walk away, you’ll get a call the next day to follow up on your experience…then again the next week to tell you about a new model you might like. The car salesman will follow up with you until you’re ready, and because of his persistence, he already has your business.

In essence, that’s what lead nurturing is. Only online, follow ups are done through emails, targeted ads, and newsletters. Determining where your customers are on the buying spectrum allows you to engage them in a meaningful way that will ultimately lead to a decision to work with you when the time is right.

You already have some of the insight you need if you have a blog or social media platform because you can physically see the types of content people engage with. Use this to tap into people’s behavior and patterns, and produce more of what your potential customers want. This will establish trust and build a strong relationship that leads to, well, leads.

Start Your Lead Generation Journey

Because you already have some of the insight you need and the ability to tap into people’s behavior and patterns, you have the advantage of fully understanding the needs of your consumers and building on those relationships. Your relationship begins at the first engagement they make with your brand. From there, it’s all about nurturing that relationship, much how you would tend to a garden. By properly caring for your relationship with consumers, you’ll deepen your intuition of what works and what doesn’t while converting initial consumers into life-long customers.

First, though, it’s important to understand what your consumer is thinking when they first land on your website or brand. Initially they will look for a source of credibility. How reliable are you? What kinds of services do you offer and how well are they performed? Provide details of positive testimonials so you can speak to any concerns before a consumer moves on to another company.

Additionally, they are wondering how your services will benefit them, and if you offer short-term or long-term solutions. Along with that, they will wonder how much they need you, which is where cost often pops up as a potential hindrance. If you’re costly, speak to that by playing up your value and how it’s unlike any other competitor in the space.

If you know what your consumers are asking before they even have a chance to ask themselves, you can beat them to the punch by addressing those concerns. Write about the value of your business and the benefits of working together. Assurance is the best way to quell any concerns and gain trust.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Once a consumer is interested, you have the power to make them stay, or the power to make them leave. How you handle the next level of interaction is up to you, and it’s the place where most companies lose consumers.

The best way to further your relationships with potential clients is lead nurturing, as discussed above. Content is oftentimes the most premier way to deepen those relationships because you can positively and effectively use your words to grab people’s attentions.

Suggested ways are through consistent blog posts, social media updates, and monthly newsletters. This gives your business presence and staying power in a consumer’s mind. You can showcase your brand as an industry thought leader and a true source of industry knowledge.

Create Long-Term Customers

Lead nurturing isn’t about pitching or selling, it’s about becoming a helpful companion that consumers trust. Once you gain a buyer’s trust, you gain their business. And once you gain their business, you gain their future business. The common misconception about lead generation is that it’s cyclical–it’s not a one-off transaction.

About the Author

Post by: Tom Harolds

Tom Harolds is the Media and Advertising Director of BrokerMatch.com, a provider of quality refinance mortgage leads. He works with agents, lenders and brokers to provide the best results out of their leads campaign.

Company: BrokerMatch
Website: www.brokermatch.com

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The Complete Guide to Website Push Notifications for Ecommerce

Website push notifications are clickable messages that are sent by a website to their subscribers’ browsers. They work very similarly to mobile app push notifications (notifications sent by a mobile app that land in your notification tray) except that they work on websites instead of apps and can be accessed on all devices (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc).

In this article, we’re going to take a look at website push notifications in the Ecommerce space. We’re going to discuss why Ecommerce players cannot afford to ignore website push notifications, how they work and how to optimize your push notification campaigns to deliver great results for your online store. Let’s start!

Why use Website Push Notifications

A brief look at the communication channels for Ecommerce

Ecommerce businesses use a variety of ways to grow their traffic i.e. new visitors, as well as engage with their existing traffic i.e. the folks who have already visited your website. These include exploring various communication channels – email, social media, SMS, push notifications (both websites and apps); it also involves employing these channels in different kinds of campaigns to reach and engage users. Let us take a brief look at each of these channels and try to understand where they prove useful.

Email

Email is most commonly used to deliver curated product suggestions, advertise upcoming sales and discount offers, ask for product reviews, recover abandoned carts, deliver transactional information such as order confirmation, tracking details etc.

The main advantage of email marketing is that it has a wide reach – a study by The Radicati Group reveals that there are currently 2.6 billion email users, which means that more than 1 out of 3 people have an email account. Another very important advantage is that an email stays in the inbox, accessible anytime, unlike social media messages and notifications, which are harder to access later (or even impossible). This is particularly useful for delivering important information like order and tracking details.

Where email marketing misses out, however, is the ability to deliver time-sensitive information. According to Zipstripe, the average time for email recipients to view an email message is 6.4 hours. This means that email is not effective for sending time-bound emails, such as coupons with a tight redemption period, or important actionable information such as “Your package is out for delivery”.

Social Media

Social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram) work better than email marketing when it comes to delivering short-time offers and discounts since people spend more time on social media websites than on any other online activity. So, what’s the problem? It’s the problem of engagement – only 0.07% of your Facebook audience interacts with your posts and the figure is 0.03% for Twitter. What this means is that social media is not very effective for messages designed to achieve a specific purpose in a specific time, since so few of your audience will actually react to that message. Instead, social media is better employed as a means to establish your brand and build a relationship with your audience.

SMS

SMS is effective if you want your user to read your message very quickly – 90% of SMS messages are read within the first 3 minutes. This makes it useful for communicating important business-information like “Your cab is arriving” or “Your item will be delivered today”.

SMS should not be used for information that the user will need to access later, such as receipts. SMS messages are difficult to search later on. Another disadvantage of SMS messages is that they can only contain a maximum of 160 characters, which drastically limits the kind of communications you can have through SMS.

Push Notifications (Mobile apps)

Push notifications is the default way by which mobile apps communicate. It scores over email for promotional content in that it delivers messages in real-time and it has also reported higher response rates compared to email (Open rates for push notifications are 50 percent higher than for email, and click rates are up to twice as high, according to this survey).

It is tempting to think of app push notifications and SMS as the same but they have crucial differences – the opt-in/opt-out options in app push notifications give the user greater control over what kind of messages he/she wants to receive. SMS on the other hand, often comes unsolicited and it is harder for the user to disable. Because of this, SMS is often perceived to be a lower messaging medium.

Where does Website Push Notifications fit into the picture

Website push notifications fit into a very unique spot in this entire spectrum. It differs from mobile app push notifications in that while app push notifications are limited to mobile devices and tablets, website push notifications also covers desktops. Desktop usage still accounts for 42% of total internet time. Web push notifications deliver the power of real-time push notifications to this 42% of internet users.

Another point which makes website push notifications very important for Ecommerce is the cost factor. Building a quality app is an expensive affair and sometimes the ROI can be difficult to justify. In fact, for small and medium sized companies, mobile websites may reach more people than mobile apps do. This makes website push notifications more critical since it gives businesses the ability to send push notifications without investing in an app.

All in all, it can be seen that website push notifications is an important channel for Ecommerce since it gives websites the power of instant communication via websites and that too on all devices, be it desktop mobile or tablet.

How do Website Push Notifications work

By default, whenever you install a mobile app, you give the app the permission to send you push notifications on your device. Websites, however, have to explicitly take permission from their users to send them push messages. This is how website push notifications work:

1. The first step is getting opt-in from visitors. As soon as someone arrives on a website, an opt-in box is triggered. If the visitor clicks on “Allow”, he/she is added to your subscriber list.

Opt-in modal box
2. As soon as a ‘visitor’ becomes a ‘subscriber’, you can send them push notifications from your website. The title message and the text message are customizable within certain character limits and a URL has to be specified. These notifications will arrive in real-time even if the browser is not open at that point of time. Clicking on the notification will take the subscriber to the URL specified.

How the notifications look

Optimizing Push Notifications

Now that we’ve established the importance of push notifications and how they work, it’s time to take a look into how to optimize your push notifications to drive more sales from your existing subscribers. This section is divided into the following subsections – writing great push notification copy, when to send a push notification, how frequently should you send push notifications, using segmentation to send personalized notifications and, lastly, what metrics to track.

Copywriting for Push Notifications

Since push notifications impose character limits on the title as well as the message, the copywriting becomes that much more important since you have to squeeze your message into a small package while still retaining its effectiveness.

Whenever you are writing the title and message text for a push notification, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the purpose of the copy is to get subscribers to click. For that, your copy needs to, above all, provide some value to the subscriber. People will only click on the notification if they find it valuable.

Here are a few tips you can follow:

• Be clear in what you are saying – Your subscribers have busy schedules and do not have time for vague messages. Do not test their patience by making them think. A clear message will have a greater click rate by the very virtue of the fact that it is action-oriented. In a fight between “Have you read Jeffrey Archer’s latest?” and “Jeffrey Archer’s latest novel available for purchase”, I’ll always go for the latter because it is clearer in its message as opposed to the former.
• Be crisp in your copy – Different platforms have different character limits for push notifications but all of them fall in the range of 40-120 characters. Thus, it is very important for you to be very concise in what you are saying. This often means that you need to identify the one most important value proposition of your message and let that shine through in the notification copy.
• Use scarcity to create urgency – According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, we are more motivated by the idea of potential loss than of potential gain. That is, if we find that an opportunity is closing, we want it that much more. This is also known as FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
  You can use this psychological principle when you write your push notification copy. For example, if you have a sale coming up for your online store, try sending a push notification that says something like, “Flash Sale! 12 hours only”.
• Use Social Proof – IBM’s marketing slogan in the 80s, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”, is one of the most powerful marketing phrase ever created. This is one of the most powerful examples of social proof, where the company used the tendency of people to go along the established route.
  In push notifications, social proof can be used to increase click rate. For example, you can write something like, “4000 marketers have already registered for this event” if you want people to register for an event or “This post has more than 1000 Twitter shares” if you want subscribers to click through to a blog post.
  Keep in mind, though, that this is not the 80s and internet users have access to all the information they need on their fingertips. Thus, it is important to not go overboard with claims and only write stuff that is credible.

When to send Push Notifications

Website Push Notifications, by their very nature, require an instant response on the part of the receiver. This makes timing all the more important. A classic mistake when sending push notifications is not take into account the time zone your subscribers are located in. To fix this, you need to have a clear understanding of how your subscribers are spread around the globe and be very particular that each time zone receives the message at an appropriate time. It’s definitely more complicated than sending out a notification in a single batch, but that’s the kind of effort that is required in this highly-personalized environment. For example, you don’t want to end up this notification when the stars are twinkling, do you?

A wrong time to send this notification

Another thing that you need to consider is that different kinds of notifications work at different times of the day. If you are sending a promotional message, you want your users to be in a restful state of mind so that they have the mental bandwidth to check out your offer. Choosing to send something funny and light-hearted? Go for the afternoon, when people are feeling bored in the office and want something to crack them up.

How Frequently to Send

Probably the most important thing to consider as you scale up your push notification campaigns is the frequency of your messages. Since push notifications is a high-engagement communication channel, you need to be really careful not to inundate your subscribers with more notifications that they can handle.

Since website push notifications is a fairly new technology, there is no data out there on optimal frequency. At this stage, you need to carefully monitor your click rates, time on page, bounce rate and opt-outs after every push notification to find out which frequency works best for your audience.

Using Segmentation to Send Personalized Notifications

As Ecommerce marketers, personalized messages are nothing new for us. We all know that they work. However, it is doubly critical to not follow the spray-and-pray approach when it comes to website push notifications, simply because opting-out is so easy and there is no way for you to get those unsubscribers back, unless they change their settings. For example, this guy is totally opting-out after receiving this notification.

A poorly personalized push notification

Ecommerce players, therefore, need to categorize their subscribers into different buckets that are as narrowly defined as possible. One way of doing this is to ask subscribers for preferences at the time of opting-in. Another very effective way is to go for behavioral segmentation i.e. putting subscribers into different segments based on their on-page activities like type of pages viewed, number of views of a particular page etc. For example, if I’ve been checking out books in the spy thriller genre lately, the store should mark me as someone who’s interested in the genre and send me a notification whenever something new is published in that category.

What Metrics to Track

The most immediate metric that comes to mind when thinking website push notifications is click rate. This is how many people clicked on the notification as a percentage of the number of people to whom that notification was delivered.

However, just focusing on this one metric can lead your analysis astray. Instead, you should strongly focus on the business goals you deem most important, which in this case would be sales (primary goal) and visits to checkout page, add to cart (secondary goals). Tag your notification links with the proper UTM parameters and then sift through the data in Google Analytics and other analytics tools you are using to find out how many people arriving on your website via push notifications are actually performing the above actions. This is the only way that you will be able to determine whether website push notifications are working for you or not.

That’s it! This covers almost everything you need to know as you start with website push notifications for your online store. Just remember – keep listening to what your audience is trying to say and keep iterating on the basis of that!

About the Author: Anand Kansal works at PushCrew, a tool that enables websites to send push notifications on desktops, mobiles and tablets. He tweets about push notifications and online marketing in general at @PushCrewHQ.

Planning to Go International? Tips for Setting Up a UK Business Presence

Even if your physical location is outside the UK and you do not have the ability to open an actual shop or fulfillment center in that part of the world, you can still develop a business presence internationally by following a few simple tips. This can be very advantageous for many reasons, including the fact that it will enable you to capture a much larger base of customers.

It might seem simple to merely design a single website around an international audience, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Even Amazon has established dedicated websites for a variety of countries around the world. This makes it easier for them to connect with buyers in each area.

Competing on an international stage for website attention is far more difficult than focusing on individual addresses within two or more countries. Localized SEO is becoming increasingly important, so it makes good business sense to have multiple addresses linked to your company. Before you can begin, you need to know what steps to take.

1. Acquire a Physical Address for Your UK Business Presence

This might seem impossible, but it is actually very easy. Simply turn to a UK mail forwarding service to receive a physical address in this portion of the world. This will give you an address to use to establish a business presence with Google and other local online business directories.

As an added bonus, you can purchase items from China and other countries, and have them sent to your UK address. From there, the mail forwarding company can ship them to Amazon on your company’s behalf, where they will become eligible for Fulfillment by Amazon. In most cases, there will not be a significant delay as mail forwarding can be completed within two to four business days.

2. Arrange a Forwarded UK-based Toll Free Number

Phone numbers in the UK are quite different than U.S.-based phone numbers and calling internationally requires a country code. Many potential customers will not be familiar with how to dial internationally or may be concerned about toll charges.

If you want to operate as a business with a UK presence, you need to offer a toll-free UK-based phone number to make contacting you fast and easy. Fortunately, there are companies offering UK toll-free numbers which forward calls to your existing business phone line.

3. Host Your New Site in the UK on a UK Domain

There are numerous cues Google uses to know what country a site is targeting. One is to register a .co.uk domain to indicate yours is a website targeted to the UK. Another is to host your site on servers physically located in the UK. You can also indicate the geographic targeting in Google webmaster tools.

Most importantly, your new site should display your new physical address and UK-based toll-free phone number on every page. This is typically added to the footer, but could also be in the header. Most commonly, your phone number and business name are in the header at the top of the page and your business name and full address are in the footer at the bottom of the page.

Here is an example of an international site showing the phone number in the top right above the shopping cart. Note the option to choose the currency in U.S. dollars (USD) or GPB or Euros.

On this site, the business name and address is located in the footer. Click the image above to visit the site and look at the header and footer. If you choose to sell to more than one country from the same website, you need a way to allow buyers to choose their currency or switch between translations. That is typically located near the “view cart” option.

4. Launch a Blog With Local SEO

If you want to attract customers from the UK, you need to reach out to them via localized SEO. Setting up local listings via local directories on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp and the like is a good first step. But you must do more if you truly want to break into a new market. You should also have a blog in the area where your business is physically located so that you can reach out more easily to both sets of potential customers.

If you do not already know how to build a blog, it will be important to take some time to compare your options. Self-hosted WordPress has become the standard for most businesses because it comes with SEO plugins and numerous other add-ons that will make it easier for people to find your blog.

5. Look Into Tax Rules

The laws regarding sales taxes and online sales are constantly changing, so it will be a good idea to speak with an attorney who is familiar with laws in the UK. Most goods and services sold in the UK are subject to a 20% VAT tax.

VAT is a foreign topic to most Americans, so watch this video to better understand how it works:

Even though you will not have a physical location or fulfillment center in the UK, it is possible that any customers who purchase something directly through you that is forwarded from a UK address may be required to pay sales tax.

In most cases, however, you will probably be able to avoid this issue, especially if you have everything forwarded by Fulfillment by Amazon. After all, if Amazon serves as the middle man, the tax laws will be based off of the physical location that the massive e-commerce site uses for the sale.

Virtual phone numbers, addresses, and a mail forwarding service can give you a competitive edge, and you can also use these services for personal reasons. For example, if you want to purchase something from a country that ships to the UK but not to the U.S., you can use your UK based address to acquire the item in question.

With this in mind, a business that makes a lot of purchases from international companies may need a UK forwarding service, even if it is not trying to establish a presence in the UK for SEO purposes.

The post Planning to Go International? Tips for Setting Up a UK Business Presence appeared first on AllBusiness.com

The post Planning to Go International? Tips for Setting Up a UK Business Presence appeared first on AllBusiness.com.

4 Things I’ve Learned from 2,000+ AdWords Audits

In the last 2 years, I’ve audited a lot of AdWords accounts. And, after reviewing thousands of accounts, you start to notice a few trends.

Unfortunately, one of my most consistent observations has been that AdWords is a great way to lose a lot of money.

Now, I’ve used AdWords to grow a client’s company from 25 employees to 250 employees, so I’ll be the first to tell you that AdWords can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool. However, a few common mistakes prevent most companies from realizing their AdWords potential.

So, why do most companies fail at AdWords? The answers are both simple and surprising.

1. Inadequate Tracking

The foundation of any good AdWords campaign is analytics. In fact, according to Hubspot’s State of Inbound report, companies that track their inbound marketing are 17x more likely to see a positive ROI than companies without good analytics in place.

Now, if you’re already effectively using an analytics platform like Google Tag Manager or Kissmetrics, this figure should come as little surprise. After all, you can’t improve if you don’t know whether or not something is working!

The problem is, only about half of AdWords accounts actually have tracking set up for their site and campaigns.

What is this craziness?

Unfortunately, this finding seems to be one that most companies experience with inbound marketing. Referring back to Hubspot’s report, only 53% of companies track their marketing ROI.

I won’t bore you with the math; but, if you run Hubspot’s numbers, the statistics are daunting:

Without good analytics, 97% of AdWords campaigns fail.

Not surprisingly, almost every single account I’ve audited that didn’t have a great analytics solution in place was struggling to turn a profit on Google.

Fixing the Problem

Fortunately, even if your IT expertise is limited, AdWords doesn’t have to be the marketing version of Russian Roulette. With a little bit of time and patience, you can easily set up conversion tracking in AdWords.

Tracking conversions in AdWords is really as simple as placing the right bit of code on the right page on your site. AdWords even generates the code for you, so you really don’t have a good excuse for not setting this level of tracking up for your campaigns.

Why stop there, though? If you’ve got a decent developer, you can implement Google Tag Manager in 15 minutes. Here are some of the basics you should be tracking. Of course, Kissmetrics is also a great way to get at the data you need.

Yes, setting up analytics is extra work, but it enables you to learn from your successes and your mistakes.

2. Keyword Drain

Here’s where things start to get really interesting. Looking at the 1,000 or so companies that had conversion tracking in place, I discovered that—on average—all of the conversions in an AdWords account come from just 12% of the account’s keywords.

Yes, you read that right—all of the conversions.

To put it simply, for every 10 keywords you bid on, 9 of them produce nothing! Absolutely nothing! And here’s the kicker – that useless 88% of your keywords eats up 61% of your ad spend.

Why does this happen?

Most companies take a shotgun approach to their keyword strategy. Yes, this sort of approach increases your likelihood of some keyword being on target, but it also means that your ads show up for less relevant searches and produce less relevant clicks that aren’t likely to convert.

Plugging the Drain

To figure out which keywords are draining your budget, open AdWords and—while viewing “All campaigns”—go to the Keywords tab. Open the “Details” drop down menu and click “Search Terms All.”

From there, export the report into an Excel file. Using Excel, you can filter your data to show only search terms with zero conversions. Sum the cost data to see how much you’re spending on search terms that haven’t produced any conversions.

As a rule of thumb, I recommend pulling at least 3-6 months of data to make sure you really have a good picture of which search terms are truly worthless.

Once you’ve identified your budget-sucking keywords, go back into AdWords and eliminate them!

3. Poor Landing Page Strategy

Another problem with the shotgun approach to AdWords is that it makes implementing an effective landing page strategy a daunting task.

Truth be told, nearly 90% of the AdWords accounts I’ve audited had a poor landing page strategy. In fact, 52% of the accounts were pointing their pay-per-click traffic to their homepage. And, of the 48% with a dedicated landing page, less than 15% were conducting landing page tests!

For example, if someone is looking for a new cat and types in “adopt a cat,” they might see the following ad:

Getting clicks—even the right sort of clicks—to your site, isn’t enough to make your campaigns effective. That’s just the beginning. Research conducted at Stanford has shown that a poor initial website experience can eliminate up to 75% of your potential sales; so, if your site doesn’t convert clicks into leads or sales, you’re just giving money to Google.

Making it Better

If you want to make money on AdWords, your customers need to have a consistent and compelling experience from keyword to ad copy to landing page.

To create this experience, you need to get granular. You need to dial in to the search intent of your target audience and then match your keywords, ad copy and landing pages to that intent.

With the shotgun approach to keywords, it’s very hard to create this level of granularity. Sure, dynamic keyword insertion can help; but, for most industries, DKI doesn’t give you the messaging control you need to match your searchers’ intent.

This ad does a good job of matching the searcher’s intent…until it sends them to this landing page.

Sure, the DKI algorithm put “Cat” in the headline, but the pug hero shot creates an immediate cognitive dissonance that leaves the user thinking, “Wait, what?”

On the other hand, setting up your ad groups with 5 (or less) very similar keywords allows you control what searches trigger your ads. Then, write ads that are highly relevant to those specific searches. Carry that relevance through to the landing page and you’ve just created a very powerful customer experience!

See? Much better.

With this technique, we often see a 50% lift to conversion rates on our first tests with new clients. And that’s before we start optimization testing…

4. Lack of Attention

Ultimately, the biggest reason that most AdWords campaigns fail is a lack of attention.

No tracking? Spend enough time in AdWords and a lack of conversion data will make you crazy enough that you’ll do whatever it takes to get analytics in place.

Bidding on the wrong search terms? Add enough negative search terms over time and you’ll eventually narrow your campaigns down to what really works.

Inconsistent customer experience? Test your ad copy and landing pages for long enough and you’ll end up with a really compelling click-to-close advertising cycle.

However, according to Larry Kim, only about 10% of AdWords accounts are optimized even once a week. Based on the accounts I’ve reviewed, 72% of accounts haven’t been touched in over a month!

If you don’t give your account enough attention, you are setting yourself up to fail.

The Fix

So, how often should you be optimizing your account? The best answer is that it depends on your traffic and budget.

For budgets over $10,000/month, you should be at least giving your campaigns a thorough review at least once a week. However, to really get the most out of your account, I recommend reviewing your campaigns at least 3 times per week.

For a new campaign, you need to be even more involved. I typically check up on the account at least 3 times per day.

As a general rule of them, the more time you spend in your AdWords account, the better it will perform. Of course, you don’t have to make major changes 3 times a day or week, but keeping close tabs on your account will give you the insight you need to really get great performance.

Conclusion

While most companies struggle to make AdWords work, most businesses can succeed by fixing a few common mistakes. Whether it’s setting up a great tracking program, eliminating useless keywords, creating a holistic landing page strategy or simply giving the account the attention it deserves, these problems can be overcome with a little extra effort.

If you feel like you’re struggling with one of these common problems, let me know in the comments below. I’d be happy to help.

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.