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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Want Tax Cuts

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-tax-cuts/

Why Do Republicans Want Tax Cuts

Treasury Says State Tax Cuts Ok If Separated From Virus Aid

Americans Hate The Idea Of Corporate Tax Cuts So Why Do They Keep Voting Republican?

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Responding to concerns from state officials, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that states can cut taxes without penalty under a new federal pandemic relief law so long as they use their own funds to offset those cuts.

Republican governors, lawmakers and attorneys general have expressed apprehension about a provision in the wide-ranging relief act signed by President Joe Biden that prohibits states from using $195 billion of federal aid to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in net tax revenue. The restriction could apply through 2024.

A treasury spokesperson told The Associated Press that the provision isnt meant as a blanket prohibition on tax cuts. States can still offset tax reductions through other means.

We should not let federal restrictions weigh in on that direction were going as a state, Hutchinson said.

Why Do The Dc Republicans Have Any Credibility

President Biden has introduced his American Jobs Plan which will fund investments in our people and our infrastructure with higher taxes on corporations and individuals who make over $400,000.00 per year. S&P predicts that Bidens infrastructure plan will create 2.3 million jobs by 2024, inject $5.7 trillion into the economy which would be 10 times what was lost during the recession and raise per-capita income by $2,400, Axios reported.

This should come as no surprise to anybody but the sabotage minded D.C. Republicans have come out in opposition to Bidens plan. One of the key talking points from the right is that the proposed tax increases would be job killers. Senator Susan Collins alleged that the proposed 28% corporate tax rate would cause the loss of jobs. Not to be outdone in the pessimism sweepstakes, Senator Tim Scott in the GOP response to President Bidens address to members of Congress last week contended that the plan contains: The biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation.

Now what I find interesting is that the GOP has been erroneously prognosticating that tax increases on the rich would hurt the economy since way back in 1993. Its like Collins and Scott simply cut and pasted GOP talking points from the Clinton and Obama years. Lets take a little trip down memory lane and see how previous D.C. Republican predictions of doom and gloom played out.

Gop Must Stop Believing In Magic

Im not making a plea for larger government just a plea for economic sanity.;If Congress in its all-seeing wisdom wants to spend $700 billion on the military, billions of dollars on farm subsidies;and so on,;it must either raise enough money in taxes to pay for the programs it authorizes or reduce the size of government.;

Instead, although Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate;and the House from 2017 to 2019, they;chose not to make any substantial cuts to government programs that would balance the revenue lost by their;series of massive unfunded tax cuts.

Unquestioning;and unsubstantiated;belief in the magical power of tax cuts isnt a viable economic policy. The;GOP is putting America on an unsustainable path that is disastrous both for;its;fiscal future and for the hopes of people trying to get ahead.;

Steven Strauss;is a lecturer and;visiting professor at;Princeton University’s;Woodrow Wilson School;of Public and International Affairs, an economic development specialist and a member of USA TODAYs Board of Contributors. Follow him Twitter:;

Also Check: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Republicans View 2017 Tax Law The Way Democrats View Obamacare: As A Signature Achievement They Will Fight To Keep

Republicans have taken an aggressive approach to President Bidens plans to finance his roughly $6trillion agenda: Dont mess with their 2017 tax cuts.

Even before Biden formally unveiled his plans, Republicans sent a message that they consider the 2017 law that slashed personal and corporate tax rates as a sacrosanct measure that theyve no intention of gutting.

Sen. Roger Wicker explained this ethos in unusually blunt fashion when he returned to the Capitol on April12 after Biden met with a small bipartisan group of lawmakers involved in infrastructure issues, telling the group he was targeting the very taxes that Republicans slashed four years ago.

Clearly there are parts of his program that are non-starters for Republicans. The pay-for, I view the pay-for as a problem, Wicker told reporters in the Capitol after that meeting. I view the 2017 tax bill as one of my signature achievements in my entire career.

In many ways, Wicker signaled to Biden that Republicans view the 2017 law in the same manner that Democrats regard the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act: a signature achievement of domestic policy that they will defend in every way possible.

The two laws obviously had very different goals and very different results, one trying to provide health insurance for millions of uninsured Americans and the other reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Why Do Republicans Oppose Extending The Payroll Tax Cut

NYT reports that many Republicans are opposed to extending the payroll tax cut proposed by the Obama administration.

The payroll tax cut affects SS and Medicare contributions that employers deduct from their workers paychecks. It would mostly benefit low and middle-income Americans.

Many of the Republicans who oppose extending the tax cut have demanded an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Why do you think Republicans support extending tax cuts for wealthy Americans while opposing the extension of tax cuts for low- and middle-income Americans?

Recommended Reading: Gop Lapel Pin

Gop Lawmakers’ Education Spending Bump Buys Down Property Taxes

Republicans on Thursday also unveiled a plan to increase state support for public schools. The plan increases state money paid to schools, but doesn’t increase the amount of money schools will have to work with, because it simply replaces school funding previously provided;through property taxes with funding from the state.

Under the plan, the state would:

Buy down property taxes that fund schools by increasing;state general school aid funding by $408 million over two years.

Provide $167 million to replace property tax funding sent to charter schools associated with the City of Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and UW-Parkside.

Spend $72 million on buying down property taxes directed to;the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Overall, the plan would cost $647 million over two years.;

The proposed spending plan is a sizable state spending increase;from the education plan approved by the Republican-controlled budget committee last month, which would have spent $1.4 billion less than Evers proposed on K-12 schools. That;Republican plan spurred concerns from the U.S. Department of Education, which said it could mean the state would fall short of federal requirements for Wisconsin to receive $2.3 billion in school aid under the two most recent coronavirus aid packages.;

According to the Legislatures nonpartisan budget office,;the new school funding proposed Thursday would bring Wisconsin into compliance with the federal requirements to receive the aid.;

An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

Recommended Reading: Snopes Trump Republican Dumb

Csb Bancorp Inc Declares Third Quarter Cash Dividend

But together, Biggs said he’s not sure how well it works. “Those people who do save more than $2,400 may take that figure as a cap and reduce their saving, even if they could benefit from the Roth treatment,” he said. “Moreover, if bosses or human resource managers who decide whether a firm sponsors a plan don’t like the cap, they may be less willing to have a 401 for their employees.”

Money For Roads And Schools

Republican On Why You Don’t Deserve Tax Cuts

The bigger question for Democrats and think tanks like Policy Matters Ohio is whether income tax cuts would be better spent on state services.;

The Senate plan would cut $874 million from Ohio’s budget.;

That’s money Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights,;would rather see spent funding public schools, repairing roads, fixing lead pipes and;increasing internet access in underserved communities.;

“Making our middle class stronger is crucial for a robust economic recovery. However, the majoritys proposed tax cuts will not achieve that goal,” Yuko said in a statement. “For almost 20 years, the General Assembly has prioritized income tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, instead of policies that support workers and families.”

Anna Staver is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

Don’t Miss: Republican Presidential Candidates Summary

Democrats Hope To Undo Many Trump Tax Cuts To Fund Biden’s $35 Trillion Budget Plan

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has proposed rolling back much of the 2017 GOP tax cuts to help pay for President Biden’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan.hide caption

toggle caption

Democrats hope to unwind many of the tax cuts Republicans enacted under former President Donald Trump as a way to pay for the majority of the $3.5 trillion spending bill currently under consideration in Congress.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., released details Monday of a plan that includes increasing the top corporate tax rate to 26.5%, up from the current rate of 21%, and restoring the top rate to 39.6% for individuals earning more than $400,000 and married couples earning over $450,000.

The changes are part of the tricky balancing act plaguing Democrats’ efforts to approve the bulk of President Biden’s domestic agenda. Leaders are attempting to prove to skeptics within their own party it is possible to finance a vast expansion of federal spending on everything from housing and health care to financial support for families and climate change all without increasing taxes on everyday Americans.

Republicans Not Biden Are About To Raise Your Taxes

President Trump built in tax increases beginning in 2021, for nearly everyone but those at the very top.

Mr. Stiglitz, a university professor at Columbia, is a Nobel laureate in economics.

The Trump administration has a dirty little secret: Its not just planning to increase taxes on most Americans. The increase has already been signed, sealed and delivered, buried in the pages of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

President Trump and his congressional allies hoodwinked us. The law they passed initiallylowered taxes for most Americans, but it built in automatic, stepped taxincreases every two years that begin in 2021 and that by 2027 would affect nearly everyone but people at the top of the economic hierarchy. All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under thats about 65 percent of taxpayers will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019.

For most, in fact, its a delayed tax increase dressed up as a tax cut. How many times have you heard Trump and his allies mention that? They surmised correctly, so far that if they waited to add the tax increases until after the 2020 election, few of the people most affected were likely to remember who was responsible.

Looking at the analyses of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation at the time the December 2017 tax bill was enacted, we see very clearly how different income groups are affected by the Trump tax plan. And its disturbing.

They must be stopped.

Don’t Miss: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

The Tax Cut Will Pay For Itself

It was an article of faith among Republicans that their tax cut wouldnt just boost economic growth, but would actually generate more revenue than the old, higher tax rates. Not only will this tax plan pay for itself, but it will pay down debt, Mnuchin said. Kevin Hassett, then chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, agreed: You dont really need to have a big growth effect to have Secretary Mnuchin be correct. Former Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, insisted that economic growth would be more than enough to make up for the lower tax rates.

That growth failed to materialize. Unsurprisingly, so have higher tax revenues. Corporate tax receipts plummeted from $240 billion to $140 billion in the first quarter after the tax cut passed, and have stayed at that level ever since.

So what happened to the federal deficit? Republicans lied about the effect of their cut on tax receipts and at the same time they also decided to stop worrying about keeping spending down. As a result, the federal deficit has gone upand thats not even accounting for the COVID-19 stimulus spending. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has heard the same Republican tax arguments for decades and now recognizes them for the fabrications they are.

Who Truly Wants Tax Cuts For Rich

Donald TrumpTexas announces election audit in four counties after Trump demandSchumer sets Monday showdown on debt ceiling-government funding billPennsylvania AG sues to block GOP subpoenas in election probeMORE and Republicans for handing out tax breaks to their wealthy friends and donors. Joe Biden last week at the national convention called Democrats the party for the working class and blue collar Americans. But is that really the case? Let us take a look at the two main tax stimulus proposals in front of Congress.

The plan from Trump would cut the payroll tax over the rest of the year. It would provide 140 million low and middle income Americans a 6 percent tax cut and would lower payroll costs for 30 million small businesses. The typical family with an income of around $60,000 would receive a $1,000 pay raise for the rest of the year. Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiOvernight Energy & Environment Presented by the League of Conservation Voters EPA finalizing rule cutting HFCsDemocrats steamroll toward showdown on House floorPanic begins to creep into Democratic talks on Biden agendaMORE has stated she opposes the idea, even though she supported this when Barack Obama was president. Trump signed an executive order to at least delay the payroll tax for those who make less than $100,000 during the rest of the year.

Stephen Moore is an adviser at Freedom Works and a member of the White House economic recovery task force. Find him on Twitter .

Don’t Miss: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal Obamacare So Much Because It Would Be A Big Tax Cut For The Rich

There are going to be so many tax cuts for the rich, you’re going to get tired of tax cuts for the rich. You’re going to say, Mr. President, please don’t cut taxes for the rich so much, this is getting terrible.

And it will start;when Republicans repeal Obamacare.

This is the Rosetta Stone for understanding why conservatives have acted like subsidized health care was the end of the republic itself. It wasn’t just that it had the word Obama in its name, which, in our polarized age, was enough to ensure that 45 percent of the country would despise it. No, it was that Obamacare was one of the biggest redistributive policies of the last 50 years. The Republican Party, after all, exists for what seems like;the sole purpose of reversing;redistribution.

A quick recap: Obamacare is a kind of three-legged stool. First, it tells insurance companies that they can’t discriminate against sick people anymore; second, it tells people that they have to buy insurance or pay a penalty, so that everyone doesn’t just wait until they’re sick to get covered; and third, it helps people who can’t afford the plans they have to buy be able to. Which is to say that you need to come up with a whole lot of money to make this work money that Obamacare gets by taxing the rich. Indeed, at its most basic level, it raises taxes on the top 1 percent to pay for health insurance for the bottom 40 percent.

Getting tired of tax cuts for the rich yet?

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clarencenicholsonata · 3 years

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How to Run a Selfie Contest: A Step-by-Step Guide for Better Results

Put down your phone for a second.

Drop the pose. Lose the downward angle and the sparkly filter.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably because you're not a 16-year-old girl. And that's okay.

But it doesn't mean you haven't taken a selfie…

We’ve all taken selfies at some point, no matter what age you are or what the reason for your photos may be. Social media users see and post selfies every day. We send them on Whatsapp, share them in our stories, and post them on our profiles. We all participate in selfies online, it’s just something we see everywhere.

So let's start taking advantage of this phenomenon for your business. This article will walk you through how to run a selfie contest online to boost your marketing campaign.

We'll cover…

An introduction to selfie and photo contests, and why your business should run one

Creating selfie contests with the best chance to go viral on social media

Maximizing the spread of your selfie contest through share incentives and optimization tools to obtain more users

Increasing the rate at which your selfie contest entries become customers (so we can actually generate some real-world dollars)

Let's get rolling!

An Introduction to Social Media Selfie Contests

So we know that people take selfies, and that's all well and good. But for our social media strategy, we want to know if people are sharing the selfies they're taking. Our selfie contest isn't going to be a success if people simply take a selfie, we want people to want their selfies to be seen on social media. We want users to comment and share.

Luckily for us, Instagram tracks the number of times someone uses a hashtag for free…

So almost 450 million posts using the hashtag #selfie. Over 25 million using #selfies and more than 9 million just on Sunday. And this is only including the people who used that hashtag when they uploaded their selfie to Instagram.

Industries in which a selfie contest is super straightforward...

Fitness: "Submit your before and after selfies for a chance to win a year's supply of AcmeFitnessBars!"

Fashion: "Use hashtag #AcmeScarves to submit your Fall fashion selfies. You could win…"

Cosmetics: "Prom is just around the corner. Submit a selfie of your makeup and enter to win two tickets to a summer music festival!"

Pets: "Love your pet? Submit a selfie of you both smiling, get your friends to vote for you, and you could win a year's supply of AcmeChow!"

Travel: "Have you ever traveled off the beaten track? Take a selfie and use hashtag #explorenowhere and you could win a…"

Sports: "We want to see a selfie of your team giving its all!" or "Send us a selfie of you shredding up the slopes this winter!"

How to Run a Selfie Contest

Before your business shares details of its selfie contest, you will need to consider a few important ideas. These contests need to have the clear goal of getting you more customers. Yes, the winners will receive a prize at your expense, but the contest should provide more exposure and generate enough leads to make it worthwhile.

Some brands run a contest every month, some do it once-off. Whether you do one each month or not, you will need to make sure the contest boosts your social account.

Your contest can be run on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or anywhere else that may bring you attention. Each entry is a chance to expose your brand to a new audience. This is a great free marketing tactic, and you can easily increase the number of people who follow you.

You should also try to bring real visitors to your website to buy your product. Say a contestant enters through Twitter, use the contest to channel them to your brand website, and entice them to become a customer. More on this later.

Think of clever ideas to make your audience want to become winners. Use striking images, and come up with clear rules. Below are some ideas to consider for your contest.

Creating a Selfie Contest

A selfie contest is a bit more complicated than a simple giveaway or sweepstakes. Because we're talking about the submission of photos, you'll need to ensure your contest page has somewhere that entrants can upload their photos.

Alternatively, you could run a Twitter or Instagram hashtag contest, which automatically populates your campaign page when someone uses your campaign's hashtag when they upload their photo to social media. Either way, there are two rules options for how you choose the winner of your selfie contests:

The Simple Way:

The simple way is to select the photo which you like the most as the winner. People upload or use a campaign-specific hashtag and, at the end of the contest, the winner is the entry you think uses their post in the best way. The rules are simple and decided by your company.

The Awesome Way:

The awesome way to choose a winner is to introduce an element of voting into your selfie contest. With voting, the contest's entrant becomes the winner if their submitted photo gets the most votes from the general public. As a result, entrants are incentivized to share your selfie contest with their friends, asking them to share on social media to increase their chance to win.

And your company can require voters to put their contact information in to vote as well, thereby using the power of your entrant's network to achieve even more results.

Spreading the Word About Your Selfie Contest

By simply running a selfie contest with vote-based rules, your business will have gone a long way in spreading your contest message to new prospective customers. The problem is getting it to a good number of users off the bat. Here are a few top ideas for doing that:

Subscriber Mailout

Unless you create a fan-only promotion, there's no reason you can't tell your current email list about your selfie contest ideas.

You don't need their contact information (as you already have it) but they'll share their submission with their friends. And you'll get their friend's contact information. This is always a good free strategy in marketing.

"Share for Bonus Entry"

This is a really cool feature, which you'll only get if you decide to run your selfie contest with third-party contest software: the "Bonus Entry" click popup.

As soon as someone enters your selfie contest, a click popup appears which prompts them to share the contest and like your Facebook or Instagram pages to get bonus entries and improve their chance of winning the prizes.

You ask people to share or like on social media at the exact moment they enter. This is the moment that they're most interested, most "sold." Increasing their chance of winning is never more desirable, so they're more likely to click the action you want in order to get the prizes.

Advertising

When promoting a contest we exclusively use social media ads, such as Facebook or Instagram. The cost is far more likely to work out than if we venture into the world of display or search ads with Google.

What's the average purchase value of one of your customers? How much do they spend in a lifetime? Let's say it's $40. Will spending $300 on Facebook and Instagram ads be profitable?

Let's say you pay $1.00 per click for your ads. And, with half of the visitors to your selfie contest converting, you're paying $2.00 per new contact.

Now here's the rub: how many of your new contacts can you get to become new customers?

If you spend $300 on ads at $2/lead, you're generating 150 new prospective customers. If a purchase is worth $40, you must convert 7.5 of them to break even.

You'll need a post-contest campaign that is able to convert 5% of those who enter your contest in order to break even on your ad budget.

Advertising Best Practices:

Target by age and gender, and create ad sets that deliver relevant content to those demographics.

Feature the value of your selfie contest prize front and center in copy within the advertisement image.

Use a question in the ad content to hook viewers.

Use a colorful border to get your image to stand out from the social media newsfeed.

You must pay attention to highlighting the prize available

Increasing the Number of Selfie Contest Entrants That Become Customers

Voting on a friend's photo, or submitting one to win a prize, isn't exactly the same as submitting a demo request or buying a product. But it does mean you have someone's contact details, which is essential for marketing your brand to them.

Follow this step-by-step guide to turning cold email contacts into customers with email marketing.

Step 1: Add all your contest entrants into a segment of your contact list. (Wishpond does this automatically, by the way)

Step 2: Send a "Thank you for Entering” email as soon as they submit their information to your selfie contest. Entrants should receive this email first within moments of their entry.

Step 3: As the contest period draws to a close, send another email reminding them to share their submission with their network. This next step can help take your contest to new audiences and further promote your prize.

Step 4: Once the contest has come to an end, send an email notifying entrants that the contest is over, who won, and a contest-exclusive discount (15-20% off a product related to the contest's prize). This will encourage a few of your entrants to convert there and then. This can help all of your contestants feel like winners even though they didn't take the prize.

Step 5: A day before the discount expires, send another email to people who didn't click through on the first. This can get more traffic to your page and increase your contest’s conversion rate.

Step 6: Retain the list of selfie contest entrants to do re-target marketing. You can add them to your email marketing subscriber list to receive product updates, but also keep them as their own segment. Next time you run a promotion on a product related to the prize they wanted to win, send them a personalized email.

Wrapping it Up

There's no getting around the fact that people love taking and sharing selfies, so there's no reason your brand can't tap that trend and drive social engagement and sales from it.

If you have any questions about running your next selfie contest (or any type of contest) don't hesitate to reach out in the comment section below!

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anakinsbugs · 4 years

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SMS Marketing Doesn’t Suck: Here’s How to Use it To Generate Revenue

New Post has been published on https://walrusvideo.com/sms-marketing-doesnt-suck-heres-how-to-use-it-to-generate-revenue/

SMS Marketing Doesn’t Suck: Here’s How to Use it To Generate Revenue

Did you know the average person checks their phone

160 times a day

Which is just one of the reasons SMS marketing no longer sucks.

Forty-six percent of people

say they check their phones before they even get out of bed.

The point is that people keep their phones handy and are always ready to use them to find information or check the latest social media updates.

Plus, open rates for texts vastly surpass email —

98 percent versus just 20 percent for email.

Mobile advertising works, but only if your message makes it to the consumer’s inbox, and only if your ad is mobile-optimized.

It’s the only way to steer clear of the noise and get a positive return on investment.

Most online marketers laugh at the idea of SMS marketing because they think it’s more regulated than email marketing. But that’s a

myth

Watered-down, mobile-targeting tactics are costing you conversions, clients, and revenue.

Meanwhile, SMS marketing is lurking in the background, waiting for you to capitalize on it.

Here’s why (and how) you should revisit SMS marketing to generate revenue.

The Many Advantages of SMS Marketing

Do you think

Instagram

has good engagement numbers?

Wait until you see what text messages get.

SMS Marketing Advantage #1. Texting Has The Best Engagement Rate of Any Marketing Medium

Emails can sit unread for days, phone calls can go unanswered, but text messages are almost always read immediately after they’re sent.

We already talked about the comparatively dismal open rates for email. The average CTR for PPC ads is even worse at

The point is that SMS marketing is underrated and underappreciated.

But nothing great comes without its catch.

It’s neither ethical nor legal to send unsolicited messages with text-message marketing.

You need a written opt-in.

Fortunately, customers have an easy way to opt themselves in — or out — straight from their mobile phones with most text-marketing services.

Using

Attentive’s

patent-pending “two-tap” technology, customers can opt-in to a brand’s text messaging subscriber list seamlessly from their mobile website, social media, or other digital channels.

With one tap, a message will populate in their message inbox. They simply press send on the pre-populated text message to opt-in and receive a welcome message.

Here are some of the advantages of mobile text messaging.

SMS Marketing Advantage #2. It’s Trackable

There are countless texting platforms that allow you to manage your campaign all from your desktop.

Find a solution that will give you access to detailed analytics that lets you track each step in the conversion process, starting with the initial delivery and opening.

SMS Marketing Advantage #3.

You Can Leverage Interactive Content

Mobile messaging makes it possible to get feedback from your recipients quickly via a quick tap on the ‘reply’ button or a click on your link.

You can deliver quick, simple messages that direct subscribers back to your site.

For example,

Chipotle

excels at using mobile messaging to drive sales.

It’s short and sweet. It gets straight to the point with “free chips and guac” if you play their game.

Not a bad deal, right?

Especially since they have queso now, too.

Get creative with your text-marketing campaigns and take a page out of the Chipotle playbook.

SMS Marketing Advantage #4. Immediate Delivery

Overall, mobile marketing is fast. Once you press “send,” your message goes out instantly.

You can set up a campaign and have hundreds of clicks within minutes.

SMS Marketing Advantage #5. Add a Personal Touch

Sending a text message via your mobile device gives you an informal opportunity to personalize the message.

For example,

the Banana Republic

often sends text messages that include words like “friends” and “your.”

Using words like “you” and “I” is one of my favorite techniques for driving engagement.

The Banana Republic also does an excellent job of tapping into local events that are relevant to the recipient.

See? The opportunities with SMS are endless.

You can personalize your message, direct users to fun games where they can win coupons, and track every step of the conversion process.

Here’s how it works.

The Basic Components of SMS Marketing

The two basic components of a typical SMS-marketing campaign are the keyword and the shortcode. Here’s an example:

Text “POPCORN” to 555555 for our weekly list of flavors!

“POPCORN” is the keyword that gets placed in the body of the message.

“555555” is the shortcode that gets put in the recipient box.

When a customer sends that message, they’re “opting in” to your campaign. It’s as easy as that.

From there you can do a few different things.

Go ahead and send them a single, automated response to follow up and let them know what to expect next. Or you can just add them to a list that will send additional texts over time.

There are other ways to get customers to opt-in. Let them check a box on an order form or

submit their phone numbers online

Numbers received this last way have to be confirmed, however, since a customer could always enter a number incorrectly.

So before you add them to a campaign, you’ll have to confirm their participation with another message.

For example, you could send. “Text ‘YES’ to receive weekly coupons.”

Once they’ve opted in, customers can also respond to your messages with sub-keywords.

For example, sending the phrase “Hours” could trigger an automated text to send business hours, and “Stop” could remove the subscriber from the list.

Allowing customers to use sub-keywords gives them a way to interact with your business. It also enables them to opt-out of your campaign if they wish to stop receiving messages.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can tap into creative ideas — like Chipotle’s game, which we covered earlier.

SMS Marketing Strategies to Try

Mobile texting tactics are diverse.

However, they should be pretty familiar if you’ve already run

social promotions and contests

For example, you can send coupons, drive traffic, or engage people through fun, simple games.

Here are some of the best potential uses for SMS marketing.

SMS Marketing Tip #1. Coupons and Exclusive Deals

Start by creating uniquely-generated coupon codes to prevent non-subscribers from taking advantage of your deal.

That way, people have to subscribe to save.

Check out this example from

Redbox

Redbox also takes advantage of “add to wallet.”

It’s giving you a simple one-click option to hook up your phone’s payment system with its offer.

Plus, the subscriber gets an extra incentive for taking this additional step. Customers don’t have to take an extra step to pay when they want to rent movies.

SMS Marketing Tip #2. Use Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns

are automated messages sent based on specific factors, such as how long someone has been a customer.

Think of this as just another form of

marketing automation

You can create triggers or tailored responses depending on each individual’s status.

In the context of coupons, for example, you could send a 5 percent off coupon right after the subscriber signs up, a 10 percent coupon after three weeks, and a 20 percent off coupon after two months.

The longer they stick around, the bigger the potential bonus. So you’re incentivizing the action you want.

Best of all, you can schedule these to run automatically.

One will be sent as soon as a customer signs up or opts in. That way, you don’t need to keep sending individual messages.

SMS Marketing Tip #3. Poll Your Customers

Polls let your customers text different keywords to cast a vote.

With most services, you can

run polls

to collect responses over a period of time and graph the responses from your online dashboard.

These are relatively simple when you think about it.

However, they offer an interesting content piece.

You can use the results internally to improve your operations.

Or you can reuse the results in both blog and social content to leverage your unique, proprietary information.

The people who left an answer will also be more eager to find out what the eventual results were and even help you share them.

SMS Marketing Tip #4. Run a Sweepstakes Contest

You can have customers sign themselves up for sweepstakes by texting a particular keyword.

Once again, this is a standard promotion tactic.

You can select some winners from everyone who opts in. Or you can also give away a smaller prize to every person who texts your keyword.

You can even use it as an opportunity for cross-promotions.

Sterling Vineyards and Uber did that to give away free rides to Sterling’s customer base.

SMS Marketing Tip #5. Send Photos and Videos

In addition to actual text SMS messaging, you can also send photos and videos.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you wanted to send an eBook preview or another image-style CTA.

Check out this example I created to see what’s possible with just a few minutes worth of work.

Want to create this type of marketing message? I’ll show you how a bit later in this piece.

Use Facebook to Grow Your SMS List

Instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, use multiple channels to segment subscribers.

SMS and

Facebook Ads

are excellent on their own. But they can be even better when you use them together.

I recommend checking out Facebook’s

lead ads

to integrate with your SMS campaigns.

Lead ads are great for collecting data and information to build up a large subscriber base.

Here’s how to get started.

Head to the Facebook Ads Manager and create a new ad, selecting lead generation as your objective.

After you’ve set your target audience, budget, and placements, head down to the lead form option to set up your ad and collect phone numbers.

Here’s what the finished product should look like.

Now you get a multi-step form that doesn’t bombard the user with an instant information grab.

Instead, it uses multiple steps to warm them up to your offer.

Pretty cool, right?

Here’s what the second step of the form looks like.

Once you’ve configured your settings, you’ve got a simple way to collect phone numbers immediately.

That means you’re almost ready to start getting your first SMS campaign off the ground.

How to Automate SMS Marketing

Since we’re into the idea of working smarter and not harder, I suggest automating the SMSM marketing process.

Let’s face it: Marketing automation saves precious time you can spend

growing your business.

For example, you don’t have to manually export and import lead data. Instead, you can use a tool like

Zapier

to quickly build out an automated process.

Zapier connects with just about every marketing software you can think of, including MailChimp, Gmail, Facebook Ads, Slack, and many of the biggest CRMs on the market.

So if you get a few people submitting phone numbers in your Facebook lead ads, you can send them directly to your CRM, your messaging platform, and even various SMS marketing platforms. All at the same time!

Here’s a few of the texting apps they work with, or you can

search here.

Let’s dive straight in, shall we?

First, select Facebook Lead Ads from the workflow ideas list.

Next, select it as your trigger.

So whenever a lead fills out your lead capture form, it will trigger the following action that you want to set.

I’ll show you how to set that up in one second. But it could be anything from sending that lead form information to your CRM to connecting it to your SMS marketing software.

Now, let’s select this action once you’ve connected your Facebook account to Zapier’s workflow.

The action determines what happens with the data from your lead forms.

For example, you can instantly add a new lead to your SMS app of choice. Then you can even automate the first message that will go out to them after they’re added.

All of this automation saves you countless hours of manually transferring data and information.

Conclusion

Let’s be honest: SMS marketing can be kinda spammy.

It has evolved a lot over the past few years, though.

People are attached to their phones more than ever, and SMS marketing allows you to get direct access to your customers.

If you can get them to opt-in, they’re never going to miss an update or offer from your company ever again.

Especially if your SMS are

personalized for the recipient!

Find an SMS app

and start sending coupons, polling your customers, running sweepstakes, sending photos, and driving sales. The options are limitless.

Get creative with your text offers and

watch your ROI grow fast.

Have you received any SMS marketing messages that you just had to respond to?

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stephanlujan4-blog · 4 years

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5 Methods To Build Your Email List

Ezine publishers and web site proprietors frequently go to post directories to find content to publish in their ezine or on their website. If an ezine publisher with a GSA verified list of ten,000 subscribers publishes your article you'll get a ton of subscribers to be a part of your list. Link bait is distinctive and fascinating content that other sites will normally want to link to. The great reward is that you do not have to ask or beg for the links but just set the bait and allow it do its work. If you want to get Mitsubishi Raider Insurance coverage, you can get guidance from a trustworthy monetary advisor. Following all, there are so numerous vehicle insurance businesses and agencies that your mind can just get boggled. That is why you should look at various guidelines and determine what would suit you the best. The leader in way of life television, Scripps Community and HGTV launched the FrontDoor to assist purchasers to discover the very best home to contact a home. There are more than 1.5 million homes GSA Search Engine Ranker verified List at the FrontDoor. By the title itself, you can really believe in them. With consumer-pleasant web webpages, they give you a "real globe" attitude in buying the right home and selling a reliable house. The brand new digital camera app for Android four. gadgets allows you to take nonetheless photos while you are recording video clips. All you need to do is faucet the display and the picture is saved to the gadget's photograph gallery on its GSA Search Engine Ranker verified List own. What's even better is that all the snaps are taken in complete resolution. Second, what's next once the article is written? You make sure that you have created it correctly (operate spell verify, checked your grammar) - after all you are a expert aren't you? - and then you post GSA verified list it to one or much more posts directories. Google has a fantastic tool, called Webmaster tools. It doesn't cost you something and will give you great feedback as to which webpages Google's spiders had difficulty crawling. Also you can post a sitemap to Google which also helps the search engine spiders navigate your website GSA verified list . So, why are articles GSA verified list essential? Every event that your article is found by the search engines means an additional event when your link back again is also found. Each 1 of these assists to increase your site's profile. In impact, every link is a 'vote' for your site in the recognition stakes. The much more 'votes' the greater your website will be raised. GSA verified list OK, the initial factor you require to do is offer people some thing they can't refuse. This will of course rely on the subject of your publication. For example: if you have a fishing publication on "how to capture big fish" you could give absent a totally free e-guide describing how to capture large fish. Signing up for email or website provides for things like free luxury vacations, free High Definition Television's, totally free present playing cards, computer systems, sweepstakes, cash making provides, and so on can rapidly get your email inbox stuffed up. Not only can you get a lot of spam from these "free" provides, you can also begin obtaining a great deal of spam email from other spam lists when the owner of this list sells your name to other spammers. Another very essential region of search engine optimization is known as "anchor text optimization". Using the right phrases on your links will help boost the relevance of your pages and these it references. Because a textual content link generally follows some descriptive text about what the consumer can anticipate to find, it's a great candidate for optimization. Steer clear of using non descriptive phrases like "click here" for linking. There is absolutely nothing incorrect with this, functionally talking, however you're dropping out on an chance to increase web page relevance. why not location a key phrase of the ensuing page in the anchor textual content. If you want to get Mitsubishi Raider Insurance coverage, you can get advice from a trusted monetary advisor. Following all, there are so many car insurance coverage companies and agencies that your thoughts can just get boggled. That is why you must look at various guidelines and determine what would fit you the very best. Aside from setting Firefox to distinct all cookies and temp files each time I shut down, I also operate a totally free program known as crap cleaner which I have discovered the very best for getting rid of cookies temp files and more. I operate It at the end of everyday and I usually close hearth fox following logging out of eBay to erase all cookies before I do any other browsing. This way eBay can't monitor your actions. Think me this is essential if you don't want eBay monitoring your browsing habits. This story illustrates the problems you might have when you think about changing a specific GSA verified list behavior or perception you may have. On 1 hand it's easy. On the other hand it's difficult to alter those habits of your thinking. What restricting routines of thoughts/belief do you endure from? Are you prepared to confront them for your personal very best curiosity and self-development?

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facebookfacepalmed · 4 years

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12 Things To Forget

Well, a few disagreements here, as usual.

1. The past is not only open to interpretation, it’s constantly being reinterpreted. Not only by historians studying our collective history, but by individuals contemplating their own. Some old people are always waxing nostalgic about the “good old days” when remembering times that, at the time, they found stressful and not all that pleasant.

2. Opinions DO define your reality.

3. Everyone’s journey may be different, but most parts of it are similar to everyone else’s journey, and no part of it is truly unique. If this wasn’t true, we wouldn’t be able to understand each other.

4. Things do NOT always get better with time. Ask a terminal cancer patient, or a parent who has lost a child.

5. I have no idea what this means.

6. Overthinking CAN lead to sadness. It can also lead to breakthroughs and epiphanies.

7. Happiness is also found without. If happiness was entirely found within, we could all live surrounded by filth, crime, and misery and still be happy? I don’t think so. If happiness is found within, why change anything or try to improve the world?

8. Positive thoughts only lead to positive things when, like happiness, they are connected in some way to reality and/or directed towards things that are good. Evil people having positive thoughts do evil things.

9. Smiles are contagious, most of the time. But they aren’t always appropriate. Getting everybody smiling at a funeral misses the point. Sadness is a human emotion that is just as valid as joy, and someone who is not smiling might be more grateful for either sympathy or privacy more than they will be for some clown unaware of their personal situation trying to cheer them up. Mind your business, some times. Learn to read the room.

10. Kindness can have consequences, costs, and repercussions. There are people out there who will take advantage of kindness, and cause personal or financial harm to the unwary person who was only being kind. That being said, kindness still reflects well on the person being kind, just as civility reflects well on the person being civil. But don’t give the world a blank check.

11. You fail when you fail, and you can fail without quitting. You can also win by quitting, when what you are trying to accomplish is wrong or impossible. They only give out one gold medal for any event at the Olympics, one crown at the Miss America Pageant, and one check to the winner of the Irish Sweepstakes. It’s true that you can’t win if you quit before the race is over, but at some point, the race is over. Also, some tasks are worth quitting. Take Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the hill, only to have it fall to the bottom again, over and over. He’d be better off walking away, if the Gods would allow it, don’t you think? You could call it quitting, but you could also call it winning. Not every task can be completed. Not every task SHOULD be completed. Not every goal you come up with is possible, or even desirable, for a person to achieve. Hitler’s goal was to exterminate the Jews. Would you tell him to keep at it, so as not to be labeled a quitter?

12. What goes around comes around, sometimes. But reward and effort are only somewhat connected. People literally get away with murder. There are currently 250,000 unsolved cases in the United States as of 2019, with around 6,000 being added every year. And Donald Trump is president. Whether he gets voted out in 2020, or never gets voted out because he declares himself President for Life and Moscow Mitch, Bankrupt Barr, and Putrid Putin back his play, or conversely he gets tossed in jail and forced to forfeit all of the money he’s conned people out of for all these years for his countless crimes and offenses, do you really think he will receive any punishment equal to the harm he has caused? If you don’t like that example, consider Hitler. Does one bullet in the head balance out millions killed in concentration camps, and millions more killed in the war?

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wesleybates · 4 years

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How To Find The Best Content For Your Company Facebook Page

Whether you are a marketer who is in charge of running a company Facebook Page for a small startup or a large multinational corporation, one thing is pretty much the same: you can almost be sure that you will find your target audience on Facebook.

How can we be so certain? Well, the fact that Facebook has over 2.23 billion people that log in every month is reason enough. However, while your target audience is surely out there, reaching them is easier said than done, because not only do you have to keep an eye on things such as trends and algorithm changes, but you also need to pay attention to the quality of the content you post on your company page.

Now, coming up with useful and engaging content your target audience will appreciate is an art in itself.

For instance, while link posts have a wider reach, images and video and produce better engagement, with over 13% of those reached interacting with it. Then there is knowing the lifestyle, habits, pain points, and demographics of your followers.

In order to make the most out of your company Facebook Page, take a look at the following tips and tricks.

1. Follow Relevant Industry Blogs

Finding inspiration on industry-specific blogs is one of the best things you can for your company Facebook Page from a marketing standpoint. First, you will be able to find content that is both useful to your target audience and relevant to what your company is doing.

Second, those blogs are usually updated on a regular basis with all the latest developments and news, which means that you will never miss out on anything important, and neither will your followers.

For starters, subscribing to 10-20 top blogs will be more than enough, and you can choose to keep an eye on their latest posts via email, or you can opt to follow them using a cloud reader feed, such as Feedly or DiggReader, which can help you organize your reading material more efficiently.

2. Make Use of Customer Feedback

According to Mark Morton, who is a marketer for Edugeeksclub, customer feedback is not only a great way to connect with your audience and improve your customer service and the quality of your products, but it can also serve as a valuable source of inspiration.

This involves reading about what your audience is talking about in the comment section on your Facebook Page, as well as their posts, checking your email on regular basis, and monitoring all the mentions your company has received on Twitter.

Create posts around user comments and questions and address them directly and concisely. Not only will you be able to solve some of their issues and pain points, but you will also build a better relationship with them, since they will feel as if their voice is being heard.

3. Choose Profile and Cover Images Which Are Recognizable

Make sure that your cover image and profile picture are recognizable. As far as your profile picture is concerned, it will not only be displayed on your profile, but it will also be visible inside Facebook Search, and right next to each post and comment you make on Facebook.

That is plenty of exposure, so make sure to go with something your followers are familiar with, such as your company logo, or even your personal photo, if you are a freelancer.

Your cover image should be high-quality since it takes up most of your Facebook Page.In the case of both, you should make sure to follow Facebook’s official guidelines, since they are more than likely to change the requirements for optimal photo dimensions from time to time. Right now, it’s 170×170 pixels for profile images (128×128 on mobile), and 820×312 for cover images (640×360 for mobile).

4. Get Inspired by Your Competitors

Getting inspired by your competition without copying them and then doing it better than them is the best-case scenario. How should you go about it? As in the case of industry blogs, you should make a list of 5-20 of your top competitors and then check their Facebook Pages frequently.

Now, you can simply mimic what they are doing by posting similar content, or you can perform deeper analysis and see what makes their posts so engaging, and then do something different.

For instance, if your competitors are posting high-quality pictures of their product, you can improve upon that and post a picture featuring several of your products, and then invite your followers to interact by asking a specific question.

5. Look Up Relevant Hashtags

While hashtags are primarily associated with other social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest, you can use them on Facebook as well to discover new content ideas.

However, it is still a better idea to go on Pinterest, for instance, and then create Pinterest Board which will feature all of your favorite hashtag searches. That way, whenever you are low on new content ideas, you can look up that particular board.

If you simply want to share the content you have found on Pinterest, that is fine too, just make sure to include the original source, which will make it easier for your followers to share it.

6. Hold Contests and Promotions

Contests, sweepstakes, and promotions are among the best tools you can use to boost user engagement on your Facebook Page.

In order to organize a contest, you will need a third-party app that is compliant with Facebook guidelines, and that’s pretty much it, the rest is up to you. Even if you don’t have a huge budget for prizes, you can still invite your followers to contribute with their votes, essays, photos, or video content, depending on the type of contest, and then give away some of your products or a subscription to your services.

That way, you will end up with plenty of user-generated content. But, if your goal is the improve engagement, you will have to run contests on a more regular basis.

If you are looking to learn more about creating an online content strategy for your brand, Gary Vaynerchuk shared the following PowerPoint presentation on his website. The aim of him and his team was created to help empower and potentially completely shift the way that you think about producing and distributing content online for your brand on his website:

Producing high-quality content on a regular basis is always a challenge, even if we are talking about content for your company Facebook Page. However, as you can see, there are plenty of resources at your disposal that will make your job as a marketer just a little bit easier. We hope that the shared in this article have been helpful. Good luck!

Web Development Company Denver, CO loves bringing new value to brands with new software and applications, as well as constantly creating beautiful sites and content. We value working with companies who share our passion and understanding that web development can change the way consumers and brands interact.

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holytheoristtastemaker · 4 years

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If you want to run a successful business, you need to invest time and resources in marketing. A good marketing strategy would help you get your products or services in front of your target audience, increase sales, and reach your business goals.

However, traditional forms of marketing like television, billboard advertisements, radio, and newspapers can be very expensive. This might not be an issue if you are a huge enterprise with an entire marketing department with millions of dollars budgeted for marketing. But what happens if you are a small business with little or no marketing budget? How can you effectively market your product or service without breaking the bank? Does this mean that you have to pause all your marketing efforts until you can raise money?

In this article, we would see 8 ways you can promote your business without a marketing budget.

1. Start A Blog

Running a business blog is a free marketing tactic to help your business become more visible online and also reach a much larger audience. Research has shown that companies with blogs have an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that do not blog.

To increase sales for your business, you would need leads. You can quickly get these leads by placing a ton of paid ads to drive new prospects to your business. But this method is quite expensive and the leads stop coming in after you have run out of cash.

So, how can you get new leads without spending money? In two words: blogging and search engines.

Every time you write a new blog post, it is one more indexed page on your website, which means it’s one more opportunity for you to show up on search engines and drive more visitors to your website. Your intended customers are using search engines like Google to search for businesses they would work with. The more blog content you publish on your website, the higher your chances of these customers locating you.

The moment traffic starts coming into your site from search engines, you have the opportunity to convert these traffic into leads. Every new blog post you write is an avenue to generate new leads.

All you need to do is to add a call-to-action button to every blog post. This call to action is basically any content asset that would be valuable enough to visitors of your blog that they would be willing to exchange their information. If you sell software, you can offer a free demo as a content asset. If 10 visitors sign up for your free demo and 2 of them eventually sign up for a paid version, that is two new customers and you didn’t spend even a dime on ads.

2. Create Marketing Videos

If you aren’t using videos as part of your marketing strategy, then you’re missing out on a ton of opportunities to promote your business. The popularity of video as a content marketing format has grown in the past few years. In fact, a report from HubSpot research showed that 50% of customers want to see more videos from brands than any other form of content.

The best part about the video is that it can be used by any business regardless of size, team, or budget. Gone are the days where you need an expensive 4k camera before you can make high-quality marketing videos. All you need is a quality smartphone and you can start making videos immediately. In fact, most customers would prefer low-quality videos that feel “authentic” than high-quality videos that feel “inauthentic”.

Before you start filming your video, you need to decide on the kind of video you want to make. They are several marketing video types you can implement into your strategy. Here is a short explanation of some of them:

Demo videos: A demo video is used to showcase to the customer how your product works. It can be a video of the unboxing of a physical product or a tour on how your software works.

Brand videos: Brand videos are used to create awareness for your business and attract customers. You typically showcase your brand’s vision, mission, products, or services in this video type.

Event videos: Do you have a conference or product launch coming soon? You can use an event video to create awareness for the event. It can be in the form of a highlight reel that shows the attendees what they would gain from attending the event.

Instructional videos: These videos are great for teaching your audience. They can be in the form of educational or how-to videos that show your audience how to use your business solutions better.

Testimonial videos: Customers want to know that a product or service they are about to invest in would solve their specific problem. The best way to show them that your product is valuable is by creating customer testimonial videos where your loyal customers describe how your company helped them solve the challenges they were facing.

Live videos: You can use live videos to show your customers a special behind the scenes view of your company. Almost all social media platforms now offer live video capabilities so you can directly connect with customers on their favorite social media channels.

3. Post on Quora

Quora is a very powerful platform that can help you reach a wider brand audience. It is one of the most effective marketing channels you can use in promoting your business or service.

The platform receives more than 300 million visitors monthly. So if you are looking to increase brand awareness, confirm your authority in your niche, and develop your thought leadership presence, you should check out Quora.

What is Quora?

Quora is an international question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered, followed, and edited by Internet users, either factually or in the form of opinions.

Why do you need a Quora marketing strategy?

Here are some reasons you should be interested in marketing on Quora:

The platform has over 300 million monthly visitors so it is a great channel for increasing your business reach. It is also one of the best user-generated content (UGC) platforms in the world.

Improved search visibility: Your content on Quora is also searchable via Google. What this means is that you can also drive traffic and leads to the site through Google even if the content was written on Quora.

Several high profile writers use the platform to reach their audience. Even former President Obama answers questions on Quora. You can use Quora to build your reputation as a thought leader in your industry.

Quora also offers insights into your audience. You can use the platform to answer the questions your customers have concerning your brand and also offer up solutions to difficulties they encounter when using your product; making it ideal for customer service management.

How to get the most out of Quora marketing:

1. Create a brilliant bio: Regardless of the social media channel, a brilliant bio is essential. What makes Quora unique is that you cannot create profiles for a brand unless in special cases. You would have to create a profile for the individual in your organization that would be answering the questions.

Make sure that you fill out the interest, “About Me”, employment and credential sections of your bio. A complete bio would help people find you faster on Quora. Don’t forget to add an eye-catching profile picture to your bio. Your bio should give off the vibe that there is a real person behind the account; customers would connect with you faster that way.

2. Look for questions that fit your industry/business to answer: The point of Quora is to attract customers to your business. You need to answer questions that you know your target audience is searching for. A good way to do this is by answering questions on a problem that your product/services solve.

3. Find question threads with the highest upvotes: Quora uses the upvote point system to show the most popular questions and answers on the platform. Question threads with tons of upvotes usually have a lot of views. If you offer good answers to these questions, you can have thousands of views fast.

4. Run a Giveaway Contest

Running a giveaway is one of the best ways to promote your business without a marketing budget. It is a quick way to create brand awareness and also connect with your customers.

When done correctly, it would cost you close to nothing. This is especially true when you use social media to run the giveaway contest.

The first step to every giveaway contest is determining the kind of promotion you want to run. There are three main types of promotions you can run:

Contests

Sweepstakes

Lottery

Contests

In a contest, the participants would be required to have a skill or make some kind of effort before they can win the prize. The winners are chosen either through voting or by judges.

Some of the most popular contests are video, photo, or essays.

A good example is this Facebook contest by Eggo held in two parts. The first part is a recipe contest where participants submitted their best recipe for waffles. The second part is fans voting for their favorite recipe. The winner receives $5000.

Note: You don’t have to offer money as your prize. You can give the winner a 10% discount off the price of a product you are selling. If you run an ecommerce business you can offer coupons or free shipping as the prize.

Sweepstakes

In sweepstakes, winners are chosen randomly. It requires no skill or any effort on the part of the customer. The winners are selected by chance.

Pro Tip: Of the two, regular contests are the most effective in promoting your business. When customers know that their efforts are what increases their chances of winning, they become more engaged. The more people that participate in the contest, the wider your brand’s reach.

5. Start An Affiliate Program

63% of businesses say that their biggest challenge is generating leads and traffic. One method of generating leads to your business is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing involves an affiliate signing up to an affiliate program set up by the advertiser to sell and promote their product on a commission-based model. The affiliate would promote the advertiser’s product or service using a unique link, which sends traffic to the advertiser’s website. If the lead sent to the website purchases a product, a commission is paid to the affiliate.

In the context of this article, you would be the one creating an affiliate program that affiliates can sign up for. Starting an affiliate program can be thought of as a way of expanding your marketing team by hiring people who are paid only after successful sales are made.

The best part of an affiliate program is that you are not losing any money. You only pay the affiliate a commission after they have made a successful sale.

Setting up an affiliate program is also very easy. They are several sales tools you can use in launching and scaling your affiliate program in a couple of hours. But, before you go ahead and launch your affiliate program, make sure you carry out research. Analyze what your competitors are doing before starting out.

Understanding the competitive environment informs your decisions on how you will launch the program as well as your commissions, commercial arrangements, and targets.

6. Submit Press Releases

Press releases can be an effective form of marketing, especially for small businesses. If used correctly, press releases are an efficient way to promote your brand and create goodwill in the local marketplace without paying a dime.

For example, when Green Rivers Adventures was about to launch The Gorge, a high-speed zip line, they issued a press release announcing the launch and a number of publications including The Associated Press and Costco Connection, which reached up to 8 million people picked up the story. As a result of this huge press, the company had a sold-out year before its official launch.

You should note that there are right and wrong ways to create and distribute press releases.

Unless you are a well-known brand like Apple, nobody cares about your company or product. Your press releases should not be in the form of a pitch. Journalists or the media are not interested in promoting you or your business so that you can just sell your products (unless you are paying them to do so).

A strong press release would involve sharing expert advice or opinions on a topic relevant to the journalist and their readers. This is some things you can put in your press release:

An interesting solution to a popular consumer problem

Offer a controversial opinion on a popular topic

Bring attention to your business when you receive an award. This works best for local press releases.

Piggyback off the news by offering an opinion or information relative to the topic at hand.

You can use online press release services like PRWeb, Business Wire, and PR Newswire to get started.

7. Setup G2 Crowd & Capterra

Setting up G2 Crowd is free and very easy to do. You can set up a profile for your business in minutes and have the opportunity to be seen by millions.

G2 is a peer-to-peer review site headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It was launched in May 2012 with a focus on aggregating user reviews for business software. The platform compares the best business software and services based on user ratings and social data.

Your future customers are researching their next purchase on G2. So if you sell software, you can reach more customers by claiming your G2 profile.

Capterra is similar to G2 Crowd. It is an online marketplace vendor serving as an intermediary between buyers and sellers within the software industry. The company assists consumers with selecting the best software for their needs.

Both of these services are available internationally so you can reach a very wide audience by setting up your profile. To increase your ratings, ask your users to add a review of your product on G2 Crowd/Capterra.

8. Start a Podcast or Get Featured In One

Podcasts are a great way to promote your product and services. There is a huge number of people listening to podcasts daily. In fact, the proportion of Americans listening to podcasts has increased in the past few years. According to musicoomph, 22% of Americans (approximately 103 million) listen to podcasts, weekly people.

You should take advantage of this trend and start your own podcast show. The best part is that there are a lot of quality free podcast hosting services that you can use to get started. All you need is great content and a good microphone and you are good to go.

The key to running a successful podcast is creating engaging content that delivers value to your listeners. When done well, a podcast can be very beneficial to your brand. For example, given the audio nature of podcasts, listeners tend to hang on to every word, making it excellent for advertisers trying to make their brand known.

Just like with your business blog, create podcasts that are niche based and targeted to a specific audience. When you create content that resonates with your audience, you would receive a high level of engagement.

Another way to boost your podcast is by interviewing other experts. This would bring variety to your show and you also get exposed to their audience that may not have known about your podcasts.

If you don’t want the workload of starting your own podcast, you can get featured in other podcasts in your industry. Reach out to other podcasts hosts and offer to be interviewed in their show. You can use targeted email outreach to connect with these hosts. When you eventually get invited, be sure to deliver immense value to their audience.

Conclusion

It is very possible to market your products or services and create brand awareness without spending a lot of money. With the strategies mentioned in this article, you can promote your business without a marketing budget.

With a little commitment and creativity on your part, you can start generating tons of leads fast.

Which of the tips in this article would you start using first? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

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growinstablog · 4 years

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Instagram Contest Guide: How To Make Your Campaign A Success

As you build your social media marketing strategy on Instagram, don’t overlook the potential of Instagram contests. Not only are Instagram contests a fantastic way to quickly grow brand awareness and increase your reach, they’re also an extremely effective tool for generating engagement.

We discovered in an original study that accounts that held Instagram contests grow their followers 70% faster.

This guide will show you how to create and run a successful Instagram contest, plus some tips and tricks for getting lasting results from the interest you’ve generated.

Developing Your Contest

When it comes to Instagram contests, planning is everything. A half-baked contest can do more than just fizzle, it can make your marketing seem incompetent. That’s never a good thing. Thankfully, the biggest mistakes are also the easiest to avoid with just a little prep work.

What are you looking for?

What result do you want to see from your contest? Is the end goal just to grow your number of followers, or are you trying to building buzz (in the form of shares and likes) around a new product? With the end goal in mind, it’s much easier to build an effective contest.Click to Tweet The more precise you can be with these goals (like a 30% growth in new follows, for instance), the better. It’s also a good idea to take note of any relevant Instagram metrics, so you can compare them with the post-contest numbers.

Once you decide on your objectives, you can choose the type of contest you would like to run.

Types of Instagram Contests

There are two broad categories for these kinds of Instagram promotions: Contests and Sweepstakes. Contest winners are chosen for subjective reasons, like taking the best photo or creating the funniest hashtag. Sweepstakes winners, on the other hand, are chosen at random.

Instagram contests can take several forms, and each one will result in a specific kind of result. The contest you go with should always match your specific campaign and marketing goals.

“Like-To-Win”, “Follow-to-Win”, or “Comment-to-Win” Sweepstakes

While these are technically three different type of contests, the basis behind all three is the same – the winners interact with the brand on Instagram. The winner is generally decided at random, either by arbitrarily picking them from the list of likes, comments, or follows, or by using a random number generator. In the example below, The Shoe Closet, a shoe boutique from Wichita Falls, TX, put up a simple like-to-win campaign that chose one of the first 20 likers as their winner:

This is a great option for a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment kind of contest, requiring nothing more to set up than an image and some text explaining how to enter. The downside is these kinds of contests have a very low barrier to entry, and rarely generate any lasting effects beyond a brief spike in engagement.

Hashtag-Driven Content Contests

This contest works by asking users to share a video or photo tagged with a contest-specific hashtag. By following the hashtag, it’s possible to see all of this user-generated content in a single stream, creating the impression of an entire community driven by their connection with the brand. Contest winners can be decided randomly, chosen by the brand team, or even “voted on” by the Instagram community by highest number of likes.

There are many benefits to this kind of contest, and one of the biggest is that everyone who participates is also advertising the hashtag, as well as the brand, to their followers. This means that every entry is essentially a piece of grassroots advertising. An excellent example of a hashtag contest is Madewell’s #everydaymadewell campaign. To enter this campaign, users must take a picture of their Madewell products and hashtag #everydaymadewell and Madewell will pick one winner every day for the month of September. This already popular hashtag has resulted in thousands of beautiful user generated image:

The big downside to this approach is that it can create a relatively high barrier to entry depending on the contest guidelines. Another slight concern is that the hashtag can be hijacked by trolls, or even by competitors, so use this one mindfully.

Pick A Prize Worth Fighting For

For the participants, contests are all about the prizes. For a contest with a low entry barrier, something as simple as getting recognition from the brand for contributing a great photo might be enough to drive participation. For high-quality user-generated content, however, you’ll need something more substantial. This often takes the form of winning brand-related products. Gift certificates, free trips, and cold, hard cash are also great motivators.

Check out other contests, and the competition

It’s always a good idea to see what the most effective Instagram contests are, and what kinds of user-generated content contests are generating big results. You should also take the time to check out what kinds of contests your competition is running, and what kind of results they’re getting. Iconosquare has a constantly-updated list of Instagram contests, so you can quickly see what campaigns are running at a given time:

While not all of the campaigns will be related to – or in competition with – your contest, discovering new campaigns can provide some serious inspiration.

Does the contest make sense for your target market?

This is an extremely important question to ask. Always build your contests to be as engaging as possible to the target audience. An outdoor hiking brand probably won’t have much success with a contest themed around photos of makeup tips, video game screenshots or images of urban nightlife, for instance. Images of glorious sunsets, casual campfire parties or wildlife in action, however, speak directly to their audience – and will be Instagram gold.

Create attention-grabbing contest images

Instagram is an image-focused social network, and the more compelling the visuals, the better the response you’ll get. Branding that image with the contest title is also a great idea. For example, Mt. Brave Wines created an Instagram image for their #GearRequired contest that both explains the contest they’re running and includes beautiful visuals:

Keep the title short, catchy and memorable, and place it prominently within the contest images.

Write short, informative text

Be as concise and informative as possible in the text that accompanies your image. Make sure to include the basic rules and any relevant hashtags. If you need to provide more complex rules or additional information, use a service like Bit.ly to create a short, easily remembered, custom URL.

Publicize Your Contest

Now that you’ve created the contest, it’s time to publicize it. How do you launch it? Simple. Just post your contest image and text to Instagram.

Launching the contest is the easy part. A truly successful contest requires more than just a little social media traction. Now you need to promote it. Use the following tips to supercharge your contest participation.

Cross-promote your contest

Even if your contest is strictly limited to Instagram, there’s no reason you can’t share it with your Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest followers. If your company blog or website has an appropriate place to advertise the contest, do it! If your brand has a promotion-friendly email list, this is also a great channel to publicize your contest.

Reach out to influencers and the media

A surprising number of influential people and media outlets will be willing to share your contest if it’s relevant to their followers. In fact, many of the biggest influencers, blogs and websites are constantly searching for new content just like this to share. Even something as simple as sending out a short press release about the contest to a few key influencers can result in a massive boost in participation. Who know, you could even get Manny The Frenchie to promote your contest!

Brick-and-mortar promotion

If your brand has a retail location, consider adding in-store promotional materials for the contest. Depending on the scope of the contest and the foot traffic of the store, this can yield a massive gain in contest participants, as well as a boost to overall Instagram followers.

After the Contest

Now that you’ve learned how to launch your Instagram contest, it’s time to talk about ending it. This doesn’t just mean notifying the winners and distributing the prizes, although it’s important to get that part right. It also means squeezing a few extra bits of promotional juice from the attention and interest the contest has generated.

Contact the winner and get their story

This can be as simple as contacting them directly on Instagram, but spending even a few minutes talking with them can yield a ton of great PR information. Getting the winner’s real name, occupation and other key details turn them from just a random Instagram user into something much more compelling: A story. Ask them what it means to win the contest, and how they plan to use the prize.

Once you have their story, you could even create a press release around it. By putting the winner’s story into press release, you now have something new to send to those influencers, bloggers and websites who helped you promote the contest. This can easily result in additional coverage in the form of a follow-up post.

Promote the winner on Instagram

Give the winner a few moments of Instagram fame, tagging them with the contest hashtag and announcing their accomplishment to all of your followers. Schlotzsky’s gave the winner of their Top 66 Sounds of Summer contest:

If they created some content as part of the contest, share that too, and share it across your other platforms. The more attention you lavish on them, the more likely it is that your next contest will see even higher levels of participation.

Thank the other participants

Create a thank-you image and post it to Instagram, making sure to include the contest hashtag in the text. If the contest was a gated-email contest, send out an email thanking everyone who participated.

Track the results

One of the most important parts of the post-contest process is gathering all the data about what worked, and what didn’t. Creating a report about the contest results and lessons learned can only help to make the next contest that much more effective. Include your pre-contest goals, and any analytics gathered before and after the contest.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to get out there and test these Instagram contest tips for yourself!

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https://growinsta.xyz/instagram-contest-guide-how-to-make-your-campaign-a-success/

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clarencenicholsonata · 4 years

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8 Expert Marketing Tools That Increase Leads in 2021

An arsenal of robust marketing tools is going to be essential for business owners to thrive in 2021.

With the changes from this year spilling over to the next few years, companies are going to have to be vigilant about how and where they make their investments.

In this guide I’m going to share eight essential marketing tools that businesses like yourself can use to:

Increase your customer base,

Engage existing customers,

Keep your teams on track, and

Generate more revenue.

Let’s get started.

1. Wishpond

Marketing automation is the way of the future — so much so that it’s become an entire industry by itself that’s expected to be worth USD 6.4 billion by 2024.

And if you’re a busy business owner, your time could be better spent instead of having to constantly execute manual (and repetitive) processes. But even within the world of automation, companies often find themselves having to integrate multiple tools to get a comprehensive automated system in place.

Few tools can bring together the various aspects of marketing, sales, visitor engagement, contests, and landing pages in one place.

That is why an all-in-one marketing platform like Wishpond is fast becoming a handy tool for improving customer reach and satisfaction.

Use their drag and drop builder to design landing pages and drip campaigns, automate specific actions for page visitors, or generate reports on your marketing activities.

With Wishpond’s social media contest tools you can run:

Sweepstakes

Photo contests

Referral campaigns

Voting contests

Instagram hashtag campaigns

And much more. This makes their social promotion tool-set extremely powerful and robust.

Wishpond also has CRM functionality that allows you to manage your leads, track closed deals and in the process, build a knowledge base that includes detailed insights on your customers.

But among all their offerings, Canvas is perhaps my favourite tool in the Wishpond toolset. Canvas as Wishpond touts it, is the easiest landing-page builder on the planet. With intuitive drag-and-drop editing as well as one-click mobile optimization it’s hard to argue with them.

There is a lot that you can do with Wishpond, even on their free version. And with affordable pricing options, Wishpond is an absolute must have for businesses heading into 2021.

2. App Institute

When was the last time you were apart from your phone? More people are using mobile phones to stay connected online than ever before.

As a matter of fact, consumers downloaded ~205 billion apps in 2019, with that number projected to grow to 258 billion downloads by 2022.

What does that mean for you as a business owner? Not having your own mobile app offering is no longer justified. As a lead generation tool, apps can be very useful — but creating them has often been a very challenging and expensive process.

But when you utilize an app creator like App Institute, that task becomes easier — you no longer need to outsource building an app because you can do it with their simple drag-and-drop editor.

With App Institute, you don’t require any coding knowledge to create a comprehensive, efficient, and attractive app — and that is where the incentive lies for you as a business owner.

You enter your website into the editor and it automatically imports your brand colors and fonts for the app.The builder then asks you to choose what kind of app you want to create — for real estate, restaurant takeaways, coffee shops, or an app aimed at supporting a good cause.

Other details such as the menu, navigation, visuals, and functionality can be customized, ensuring you have a distribution-ready app built in a short period of time.

3. Monday

Remote work is set to become a reality for many businesses, even in 2021. And this global pandemic is the reason why.

The way we work when we aren’t in the same office is a completely different experience — and can impact how companies are run. Not being able to stop by someone’s desk for a quick catch up or reminder can make all the difference in how well a project proceeds.

You really can’t expect to run entire projects using Google sheets or by incessantly sending emails to your colleagues. That process is bound to be inefficient and sooner or later will eventually strangle your operations at scale.

To ensure that everyone within an organization is on the same page, you should incorporate project management tools like Monday in your business. As a team collaboration tool, Monday helps to keep everyone involved in a project — no matter where they are located — working in tandem throughout the project lifecycle.

Using the customizable templates, you can assign tasks to team members, set due dates and deadlines, and track progress.

The site also generates regular reports with charts describing what stage the project is at and how your employees are faring.

With an intuitive dashboard and export functionality, Monday offers a better way to manage projects when employees are located far away from each other.

4. Moosend

If there is one aspect of marketing that continues to see massive improvements year over year, it has to be email marketing. People are constantly checking their emails; with regular reminders and strong calls-to-action, emails regularly produce the best ROI for businesses.

But your emails and newsletters still need to be enticing enough for users to actively want to open them and click on the links within — eventually leading to purchases made on your website.

Every brand sends emails to its customers — the overlap is huge, demanding attention from users who can easily become fatigued and refuse to open more emails.

To mitigate this issue, you can use email marketing software like Moosend that not only offers attractive and customizable email templates but helps you automate most cumbersome processes.

With a simple editor, you can create attractive newsletter templates to send to your customers. Moosend also offers A/B testing features to help you identify what works best for your audience (just make sure you have a clear test plan in place!)

Track integrations and use data from Moosend’s analytics to build out unique user profiles. You can also get real-time reports, as well as location and device tracking.

Moosend is more than just an email template supplier — it’s the whole email marketing package for businesses.

5. Paperform

Companies have been slowly seeing the value in creating forms — they’re not only great for getting valuable customer feedback but also as lead generation tools. While a number of email marketing, CRM or webinar tools allow users to create forms, they tend to be barebones in terms of design and functionality.

If you want a site visitor to fill out your form, you need to give it an added element of attractiveness and enticement. And that’s why you need a dedicated form builder.

At the same time, you don’t want to spend too much time making a form, while also ensuring that you cover all the required fields and functionality. And that’s why you need a dedicated form builder like Paperform.

Paperform makes form-making simple and effective with it’s easy-to-use interface and intuitive features. But what makes Paperform unique is that its forms aren’t just a few simple fields for users to fill in — they simulate an entire landing page experience.

These landing forms, as Paperform describes them, can be customized from pre-made templates or built through the intuitive editor. Add your brand colors and fonts and create a landing page-esque form using Paperform to collect customer feedback, capture leads, complete registrations, and manage subscriptions.

6. Tidio

Source

Online users require support from brands instantaneously — and that’s why your response rates need to be quick and efficient.

This need for immediate responses has grown during the current global conditions — and will continue to be a pertinent issue for businesses into 2021. Companies need to adopt customer service models that are timely and accurate, so relying on only a customer service team in the current climate might not give you the same results.

Call centers have long been a major resource for customer service — but this is an expensive proposition for small businesses and not a feasible solution when your teams are confined to their homes.

Beyond your standard help desk software, another option that businesses have begun exploring in the last few years are chatbots. For a long time, chatbots didn’t work the way they were meant to — they regurgitated often-hilarious responses to customer queries and caused more frustration rather than eliminate them.

But that is in the past. With tools like Tidio, you can create chatbots that are efficient, responsive, and not to forget: easy to build. Tidio is another popular no-code tool (like AppInstitute) that allows you to design a chatbot without any coding abilities, or customize a chatbot template to suit your website.

The chatbots that you design can help you accomplish a number of goals — from lead generation to customer service, and everything else in between. You get access to a drag-and-drop editor which you can use to build or customize your chatbot — you can also choose when it is triggered and program it with responses.

If your business caters to an international client base, Tidio offers multiple languages for their chatbots, as well. And the chatbots can be handed over to a live chat assistant once the queries become too complex — till then, your customers and leads are taken care of without input from your staff.

7. Vyper

A changing world means changing the way we market. And in 2021, businesses will have to adopt new ways of reaching their audience. User engagement has become the key driving factor in most marketing efforts this year, and that is set to continue into the next few years.

But how do you create content that is engaging for your audience? You start by using gamification methods and tools to your advantage.

Gamification can be best exemplified in contests — and using a giveaway app like Vyper will be one of the best ways to create exciting and engaging online competitions.

Vyper specializes in making giveaways and referral contests easy. And they’ve got the credentials to prove it. Their website showcases successful case studies with Foundr, Birch + Fog, and Coconut Bowls, for whom they generated page views, email signups as well as valuable social interactions.

Need help with your next contest?

Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you to create high converting social media contests today.

The tool’s modern visual designer allows users to brand their campaigns and modify attractive templates to create potentially viral content. If you’re a new business, a giveaway tool like Vyper will make building your audience an effortless process.

8. Venngage

We are living in a time where meaningful content needs to be created consistently to engage both current customers as well as attracting new audiences.

Gone are the days where you could simply write a blog, or share a text-heavy post on social media — you need to give your words additional context and heft with the help of powerful visuals.

Users process visuals faster and more comprehensively so if you want your content to stand out, incorporating strong imagery can make all the difference in your marketing efforts. But it isn’t always possible for businesses to create visually-arresting images consistently.

Not only do you have to buy expensive design tools but you also need to hire a freelance designer. Both of which can become quite expensive for a few hours of work a week.

With 1000s of templates to choose from, an easy-to-use editor that allows you to customize and design infographics, reports, proposals or even something as complex as visualizing data, Venngage can be your go-to tool of choice.

You can also create content upgrades by creating presentations, brochures, white papers, and ebooks for generating leads from your website and blog content.

The editor also allows you to add your branding to any and every design, so you can easily brand all your visuals with one click.

Attractive visuals are a must if you want to make your brand memorable and increase your engagement on social media sites like Instagram. Using Venngage will make the process of producing quality images, painless and easy.

Conclusion

These eight tools business owners like yourselves collect quality customer feedback, generate new leads, automate cumbersome processes and take your marketing to the next level. Most of the tools mentioned above offer free trials, so I’d recommend trying out each tool for yourself before you purchase them.

Once you do, identify the marketing tools that are worth your hard-earned cash and can help you grow your business. And finally, start using them!

Have you tried any of the above-mentioned tools?

Are there any essential marketing tools I missed? Which marketing tools have you found most useful as a business owner? Drop them in the comments below, I’m always eager to learn.

Author Bio:

Aditya Sheth is a Growth Marketer at Venngage. When he’s not busy brainstorming new marketing ideas or tinkering with Google search, you can find him listening to music, reading non-fiction or traveling. Connect with him on LinkedIn or tweet him @iamadityashth

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element-effect-blog · 5 years

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9 Facebook Live for Business Examples You've Got to See

With video marketing on the rise, coming up with a catchy and attractive video can be a huge challenge for those who lack the time (and money).

But as intimidating as streaming live might be, there is a variety of brand-boosting benefits to using the service that will only make you seem more trustworthy and credible as a company.

One of the most amazing opportunities Facebook Live offers is the ability to engage with your followers. With reactions, comments, and viewer numbers shown in real-time, you can prompt responses by asking and answering questions in your broadcast.

Facebook's newsfeed algorithm also favors Live videos so if you've got an important message to get out, this is likely a better option than a traditional text update.

Still not sure how to get started with Facebook Live?

To help generate some ideas, check out this list of several brands and persons using the platform to create viewer engagement, deliver desirable knowledge, and promote marketing campaigns.

Regardless if your business is large or small, each of these ideas can be utilized and recreated as a variation to fit your business.

Everyone knows Starbucks for their addictive and wide selection of refreshing coffee & tea and delectable treats. Back in September of 2016, Starbucks took to the road to embark on their first live event at Rufus King Park in Jamaica, Queens, NY for National Voter Registration Day.

Broadcasting this event Live had several advantages.

First, it brought attention to Starbucks' involvement in the community and allowed viewers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to make the event learn about its importance and its cause.

The broadcast began with a couple representatives of Starbucks touring the grounds of the park and introduced a variety of people participating and volunteering.

Soon after, their attention turned to a stage where Starbucks chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz and rapper, Common talked about the importance of voting.

Prior to the start of the event, Starbucks representatives encouraged viewers to send in questions to promote engagement. As promised, the reps later interveiwed the two men, which helped encourage viewers to stick around to see if their question was asked and what those responses might be.

2. Martha Stewart

When it comes to cooking or crafts, Martha Stewart is known as a go-to leader. Knowing this, she’s expanded her digital outreach to Facebook Live.

Here, she has streamed various videos showcasing how-to’s, recipes, AMAs, and even some behind the scenes of her daily life, but it’s her tutorial videos that really take the cake.

In the example below, Martha hosts a festive tutorial video in preparation for the holidays, sharing outdoor decorating ideas with special guest Kevin Sharkey to assist her.

One huge win for this video is how the entire tutorial uses products from the Martha Stewart collection that you can find exclusively at the Home Depot.

As the video progresses, Martha consistently reminds viewers about where to get the various products and talks up the features each item offers.

Since, unless you're staring at your phone screen know when people are entering at Facebook Live or how long they're staying, the video occasionally has a small unintrusive banner that appears at the bottom of the screen advertising the Martha Stewart Collection and directs users find it at The Home Depot. This acts as a call-to-action of sorts, giving people the opportunity to convert no matter when they tune in or out.

At the end of the broadcast, Martha and her guest also do a Q&A to keep users engaged and sticking around if they are interested.

3. ASPCA

Back in October of 2016, which happens to be Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, the organization launched their #31DaysOfRescueDogs campaign.

To promote it, some of the volunteers decided to go on a walk with several of their adoptable (and adorable) pitbull puppies around New York City.

With the walkers wearing bright orange shirts, and the dogs in orange handkerchiefs, they were a hard group to miss -- in person or in the video.

Their bright colors helped them to stand out among busy crowds. People they walked by would consistently take photographs and even share their photos and advertise the campaign on social media, ultimately spreading awareness.

During the broadcast, the host of the stream would continuously remind those watching the reason behind the walk and would encourage people to take part in the campaign, generating more donations from the Facebook audience.

If your campaigns that have the ability to utilize assets that may peak bystanders curiosity, taking it to the streets with a Live video may be a worthwhile way to spread your message.

4. Trey Ratcliff

Critiques, like IMPACT's Website Throwdown, offer a fantastic avenue for users to get personal feedback from experts in a variety of fields. While you traditionally see this more in a face-to-face format, Trey Ratcliff, a professional photographer, took critiquing to Facebook Live for a fun, engaging event for his fans.

In the example below, he encourages people to submit photos on his ‘Becoming an Artist' broadcast, on which he would pick a variety of the submissions and review them live on air.

Throughout each critique, he offers tips and tricks to his viewers to better their photography skills. This is a great way to build trust & thought leadership within your community and highlight your knowledge in your area of expertise.

Although he isn’t aggressively advertising his photography business, there's really no need to. Showing his knowledge will convince people to believe he can deliver exceptional work. This will subconsciously lead people to seek his services if they need/want it.

5. Sephora

One of the most common formats people have been using Facebook Live is AMAs (or Ask Me Anythings) with special guests that people might not otherwise be able to interact with.

This technique attracts a large amount of people who wish to take advantage of the once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity. It also helps prolong the amount of user watch time, since users stick around to see if their question is picked.

The format is casual, occasionally the guests will have informative discussions with one another while a participant off screen constantly asks questions as they come in from the live chat feed.

For almost every questions asked, the two make sure to advertise their products as offer solutions to many of the viewers dilemmas. The result is many viewers researching the recommended products online, reading reviews, and purchasing them if they find interest in it.

6. Stephen Amell

We all have a set of shows we binge-watch and obsess over.

In some cases, we idolize an actor in it, the storyline, or both, and the creators and actors of the shows know it. This leaves a huge opportunity for the actors or show creators to connect with their audience to continue to create hype for their series.

Arrowverse actor Stephen Amell does just that. Stephen does a variety of different live videos for his audience ranging from Q&As, behind the scenes peeks at the show, and sweepstakes and promotions.

Below is one of his videos where he has a Q&A for the 100th episode of Arrow and advertises his 'F**k Cancer’ campaign.

Similar to Sephora's Live video example, this gives fans the opportunity to indulge and engage with someone they may not otherwise have the opportunity to. It also ultimately helps the Arrow franchise overall by showing how its main character can be transparent with his fans and interact with them on a much more casual level.

Videos like this also enable Stephen to raise awareness for the F--- Cancer campaign that he holds dear to him, which he discusses in this video and others as well.

7. Mashable

One of the most useful outlets for Facebook Live we have yet to talk about is the concept of a daily show or series. This format enables those using Facebook live to create a consistent following that will continue to digest their content.

One media company that excelled in this format is none other than Mashable with live daily show, 'Mash on This.'

Below, rhe host, Dory Greenberg, describes as “a 10 in 10 rundown of the best the internet has to offer.”

Live videos like this that can deliver a ton of important trending information is a short period of time are fantastic ways to attract users who want to stay up-to-date, but don’t have time to do so.

They also take a minute to answer viewers questions and discuss comments at the end of the video, another useful way to create viewer engagement with the creators.

8. Kohls

In this day and age, more and more people are looking for motivation to stick to their diet and workout plans (especially during colder seasons).

Luckily, Kohl’s understands that struggle and decided to help those looking for encouragement in 2017.

Last week, Kohls teamed up with ‘’ to host a live workout for their campaign. The women behind Tone it Up took to a stage for basically a live workout video.

Now, the timing for a video is key. With the new near just arriving, there's a huge audience of people looking get back into shape after the holidays. Hosting a video to attract those looking for fun and unique workout opportunities at this time was a great way to capitalize on this new year trend.

Need a new workout wardrobe? After watching this video, Kohls hoped that it would be the first thing in your mind. While the video didn’t vocally promote retailer, visiting the website (as of the third week of January) reveals an abundance of sales they are currently having with fitness gear and clothing.

Last, but not least thanks to Facebook Live, you don’t need to produce a complicated, high-quality video to deliver valuable information to your audience.

As long as its informational and offers value to your audience, you'll be able to find some success.

Take this Bloomberg video, our final example. As an industry leader in the stock market, Bloomberg knows its following would be interested in hearing updates on its status and what charts should be focused on.

As mentioned, the video doesn’t take place in a beautiful studio utilizing eye-catching graphics and images, but rather in an office, using a computer monitor to show the charts as needed. The video is kept short at just below 15 minutes, so people can quickly update themselves on their priorities in the market, then go about their day.

Like other examples, Bloomberg also ends with a Q&A to make sure viewers are getting the most information they can during their short broadcast.

Is your business struggling to find value from social media marketing?

In this free guide, learn how to transform your social media marketing efforts from a routine to a critical component in achieving your business goals.

This content was originally published here.

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plivosmsplugin · 6 years

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Wp Plivo Sms Plugin

Text message marketing is a way of reaching customers through the medium of Wp Plivo SMS Plugin. Using a web-based program, you can send bulk texts to subscribing customers or consumers who opt in for the same. You can also set up campaigns where coupons are sent automatically over time, engage customers in polls and questionnaires, or even run a sweepstakes contest.

However, you must be wondering what more can be done with a single medium, right? There's a lot more in store than it seems, continue reading to know. Here are some additional things you can do with SMS Marketing:

Coupons: Send your loyal consumers or customers exclusive deals. Uniquely generated coupon codes that you send across to your consumers prevent non-subscribers from taking advantage of your deal.

Drip campaigns: Automated messages can be sent depending on how long your customers have subscribed for the same. In the context of coupons, for example, you may send a 10% off coupon right after signing up, a 20% coupon after 3 weeks and a 50% off coupon after 2 months of your consumer's subscribing. This runs automatically as soon as a customer signs up, so you don't need to keep sending individual messages.

Poll: By texting different keywords your customers can now cast a vote only with the use of SMS Plugin. Most services let you run polls where you collect responses over a period time and graph them from your online dashboard. Sounds cool, right?

Groups: You can also divide customers into groups depending on which keyword they respond to, how they voted in a poll, based on their area code and more. Segmenting your customers lets you send more targeted promotions and coupons, which is more personal and they will relate to it too.

Send Photos and Videos: Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) Marketing is a fairly new development in which you can send photos and videos to customers. This is especially useful if you want to send a flyer or restaurant menu to a customer.

Location-based Marketing: Send different messages to clients depending on their location. For example: If a customer is around your restaurant, you can send them a text informing them about the dish of the day or discounts available at your restaurant.

Always remember, Customers should be able to opt out at any time. Fortunately most (if not all) text marketing services are setup this way by default. You will, however, have to remind customers the opt out phrase - i.e. "Reply STOP to opt out of messages"

Hi I am Jenny Johns. Working as an freelance technical writer and expert in mobile marketing. In above write up I have mentioned Text message marketing is a way of reaching customers. SMS marketing is better than any other Mode of marketing. Because it gives fast and reliable delivery and high Click Through Rate.

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junker-town · 6 years

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The 10 questions that will define the second half of the NBA season

Who’s winning MVP? Can the Warriors be stopped? Are the Lakers really going to miss the playoffs?

Here’s a brief history of things that demanded our attention during the first half of the NBA season:

Kevin Durant arguing with Draymond Green.

James Harden’s vengeance tour.

The Lakers with LeBron James.

The Lakers without LeBron James.

The Anthony Davis sweepstakes.

The rise of Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets.

The joy of Giannis Antetokounmpo playing Bud Ball in Milwaukee.

Luka Doncic Mania running wild in Dallas.

The consistently inconsistent Celtics.

The consistently consistent Pacers.

The Jimmy Butler standoff, which led to the Jimmy Butler trade and the fallout from the Jimmy Butler trade.

Kawhi Leonard’s seamless transition to Toronto.

The MVP candidacy of Paul George, combined with the non-MVP season of Russell Westbrook.

The Spurs being dead and then very much not dead.

The Blazers being very much alive.

The Clippers embracing grit and grind.

The super-fun and super-fast Kings.

The Marshon/Dillon Brooks mixup.

The Wizards in all their tortured glory.

The very brief return of Nick Young.

That’s … a lot. It’s also a very incomplete list of the storylines that spun through the 24/7 media cycle so far this season.

So what’s in store for the second half? All of the above, plus the trade deadline, playoff jockeying, and a Most Valuable Player race that is just taking shape.

1. So who’s winning MVP?

Right up until mid-December, the discussion belonged to Giannis Antetokounmpo. There were other contenders for sure, but the conversation inevitably found its way back to Milwaukee, where Antetokounmpo has taken several long strides toward superstardom.

The numbers are outrageous: 26.6 points, 12.6 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 58 percent field goal shooting. More importantly, Giannis’ Bucks have ascended from a middle-of-the-pack Eastern Conference playoff team to one of the league’s very best. It’s the oldest MVP narrative in the book, and it’s the way my hypothetical vote would go at midseason.

This was an easier case to make before James Harden went Code Red on the rest of the league. Harden has averaged better than 40 points a game since Dec. 13, in addition to dishing out almost 10 assists and gobbling up more than seven rebounds per contest. He’s impossible to guard and even harder to officiate. In short, Harden is the most complete offensive player in the world right now.

Harden has the second-oldest MVP narrative in the book: that of the lone star keeping his undermanned team afloat and defying all odds. Without Chris Paul and Eric Gordon, the Beard has led a Rocket revival. As if his challenge couldn’t get even more absurd, Harden will now have to do it without center Clint Capela, who will be out 4-6 weeks with a thumb injury.

So, it’s a two-person contest at the halfway point, but don’t discount late charges from oh, a dozen other players. From Anthony Davis to Paul George, with Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid in between Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Kawhi Leonard, there will be no shortage of contenders.

That’s an awful lot of superstar talent playing at an elite level at one time. It’s also the biggest reason why the NBA in in such a healthy place during a period of one-team dominance. Save for that one notable super-team in Oakland, the star power is spread throughout the league in an era where offensive ability is at a premium.

Here are my picks for the other award races at the midway point.

Coach of the Year: Mike Budenholzer with numerous others chasing.

Defensive Player: Paul George for now, but way too early to make a clear assessment.

Rookie of the Year: Luka Doncic in a landslide, but watch the development of DeAndre Ayton and Jaren Jackson Jr. anyway.

Sixth Man: Domantas Sabonis narrowly over Montrezl Harrell.

Most Improved: Pascal Siakam, along with De’Aaron Fox and John Collins.

2. Are we ready for a world in which Game 1 of the NBA Finals is held in either Milwaukee or Toronto?

It says something about our perceptions of both clubs that while they have clearly been the class of the conference, they are far from prohibitive favorites. The Raptors have all that negative playoff history, while the Bucks don’t have any positive moments of recent vintage.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two decades since Milwaukee got within a seventh game of reaching the Finals, but that 2001 run was the last time the Bucks advanced past the first round. (Shoutout to Ray Allen, Sam Cassell, Big Dog Robinson, the other Ervin Johnson, and George Karl.)

That has nothing to do with this current Bucks squad, but it does speak to a lack of postseason experience among its core members. There’s also the notion that Mike Budenholzer’s teams are better equipped for the regular season than the postseason, a theory that will be put to the test this spring.

As for the Raptors, Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green have given this team a new energy, while Pascal Siakam and Serge Ibaka bring new dimensions to their age-old playoff dilemmas. As always, however, it comes down to Kyle Lowry. If the NBA’s most endearing grump stays fresh for the spring, then maybe, just maybe, the NBA Finals will begin in Canada.

As an aside, could Kawhi really leave if that happens?

3. What are the Celtics?

Despite their latest struggles with identity — now it’s the defense that’s gone missing — there are many people in the league who still feel like the C’s are the favorites to come out the East. I remain unconvinced, and that was before their latest three-game losing streak brought their weird vibes into the open.

Minor injuries have been an issue — not having Aron Baynes is a big deal — but lots of teams go through injuries and find ways to prosper. The Celtics have overcome those ailments, sometimes. Other times, not so much. They’ve had winning streaks interrupted by frustrating losing skids and seem to lack resolve when things get hard.

That’s bad, but there’s more. They’ve blown teams out of the building on occasion and also developed a maddening habit of kicking away games on the road. They’ve had team meetings to clear the air and still get caught arguing with each other during games. On and on it goes.

This will be framed as a referendum on Kyrie Irving’s leadership abilities. Even if it was deserved, calling out young players in the same manner he was called out in Cleveland was a curious move. Until they learn how to play for one another every night, they will remain polarizing. The question for Danny Ainge is whether it’s worth shaking things up with a deadline deal. He’s resisted, so far.

So much of their fate ultimately relies on Al Horford being healthy and energized for the playoffs.

4. Who are the Sixers?

Since adding Jimmy Butler and inserting J.J. Redick and Wilson Chandler into the starting lineup, Philly’s starting five is a monster, outscoring opponents by more than 14 points per 100 possessions. It may be an unwieldy monster at times, but it’s still a mighty beast.

Now imagine how good they could be if their chemistry comes together.

Sussing out team dynamics is always a dangerous game, but the circumstantial evidence points to three stars vying for elements of control. That’s alright in January. It might even be healthy in the long run to let Butler slowly develop a working relationship with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, who are still working out the kinks with one another.

The pessimistic take is that Butler will destroy the team from within, which he’s done in his two previous stops, and then take his game somewhere else in the offseason.

Come May, the Sixers need to have a clearer view of how they intend to win games.

Given their star power, and the personalities involved, the Sixers are the conference’s wild card. Of note: Like last season, when they picked up Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli, they have room to be a player on the buyout market. Those moves surged Philadelphia into the No. 3 seed when they were previously closer to .500. The Sixers are a developing situation.

5. Are the Pacers legit?

Sure, in that Indiana is a good basketball team that plays defense consistently and doesn’t beat itself. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the league who thinks the Pacers have a ceiling beyond being a very good basketball team, but they have people’s respect.

Teams don’t get enough praise for improving organically, and there might be more to this club than meets the eye. Going 7-4 without Victor Oladipo showed that they’re more than the Vic Show, and Oladipo still hasn’t played his best basketball yet. Myles Turner has quietly begun to come into his own on the defensive end and Domantas Sabonis is a handful.

If they can avoid the 4-5 matchup of death, the Pacers have a viable chance at making some noise this postseason. Credit to them for improving. That’s supposed to be the whole point of this league.

6. Is the race for the East’s lower seeds actually compelling?

While not the logjam in the West, there are still six teams vying for three playoff spots. If nothing else, their desire to stay in the race will play a part in the evolving trade market prior to the Feb. 7 deadline.

Of the six, Miami has the most pedigree. Charlotte has the biggest star in Kemba Walker, who is also about to be a free agent. Detroit has two stars in Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond and really should be better than it is. Brooklyn is feisty, Orlando is hanging around, and Washington’s recent play behind Bradley Beal is damn near inspiring.

Half those teams will make the playoffs, while the other half will have top-10 picks. All of them will have decisions to make soon about how hard they want to push or pull back. Each of those decisions will impact a trade market that has yet to take shape. The trade deadline has been a dud in recent years, but it only takes one pivotal move to start a chain reaction.

7. How much do the Warriors need DeMarcus Cousins?

This is really another way of asking if the Dubs are actually in some sort of trouble. The working assumption all season is that as long as all of their core four are healthy, then the Warriors will roll to another championship. To put it another way: the Warriors were never supposed to actually need DeMarcus Cousins to win a championship.

Semantics, perhaps, but Boogie’s return this week from an Achilles injury comes at a good time for the Warriors, who are getting into one of their periodic grooves. Assuming his body will allow him to play meaningful minutes, Cousins is a top-notch passer from the high post in addition to being a reliable catch-and-shoot 3-point threat and a 10-rebound banger on the boards. Even in limited doses, all of those skills will benefit the Warriors tremendously.

Steve Kerr plans to start Cousins, so it will be fascinating to see how he blends with Golden State’s other stars, especially on the defensive end. Transition defense has never been is strong suit, but it hasn’t exactly been a team strength this season either.

At the very least, Boogie’s return should keep things interesting for the Warriors as they prepare for their real season in April.

8. Who’s the second best team in the West?

On paper and in the standings, it’s the Nuggets, who have depth and defense around a developing superstar in Nikola Jokic. The offense added even more firepower when the invaluable Will Barton returned from injury last week. If their defense holds up (which hasn’t happened of late), the only thing holding Denver back is a lack of postseason experience. There will be no gimmes in the West come playoff time.

The team with the second-most starpower is probably Oklahoma City. The Thunder have the league’s best defense and an MVP candidate in Paul George, but as always, 3-point shooting is a major issue.

It might still be Houston if Chris Paul can recapture his form. Harden is playing out of his mind, but we’ve seen how the one-man show wears down in the spring.

It could be San Antonio. The NBA’s luddites live in the mid-range, but come to play with size and a revamped defense. They won’t go easy. Neither will the Clippers, who play hard and come at you in waves. Both are effective regular season tactics. The Blazers are always the right matchup away from a playoff run, or a wrong one from a short stay.

Utah? Did someone say Utah? (I think it might really be Utah.)

9. Will the Lakers miss the playoffs?

For a brief period of time toward the end of the 2018 calendar year, it looked like the Lakers had something cooking. Thanks to the addition of Tyson Chandler, their defense was locking into place right when LeBron James was making his MVP case.

Then Bron got hurt, and the young Laker supporting cast looks like it might be years away.

It’s still hard to imagine a playoffs without LeBron involved, and assuming he does get back before the All-Star break, there’s every reason to believe the Lakers will also get back on track. Still, a number of deserving teams in the West will be home early this spring, and the Lakers have already lost their cushion.

The real question all along is whether they’re building something with their young core or if this current iteration is just a transition phase to a future filled with free agent superstar teammates for LeBron. It’s hard to see a playoff run changing that calculus.

10. What of the decent West teams that get left out?

No matter how this turns out, Dallas and Sacramento are fine. Both have better days ahead of them. Even if they sneak into the postseason, Memphis and Minnesota need to do some soul searching.

The big issue that affects everything this summer is whether Anthony Davis yearns to leave New Orleans if the Pelicans come up short. Teams have been waiting years for that fantasy to become a reality, but the Pels won’t let him go without a fight. New Orleans has traditionally been a second-half team and will be among those willing to make a deal at the deadline.

As with the bottom half of the East bracket, the line between playoff contender and lottery participant is a thin one. However fleeting, there are still 25 teams with playoff hopes remaining. The ones that blink will be the most active at the deadline.

No doubt between now and April there will be dozens of other absurdities to occupy our time. The NBA lives to generate storylines and even in its most predictable state, this whole season has felt like a giant question mark. We’re all waiting for whatever happens next. Resolution is less than six months away.

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