#we never planned to implement anything without extensive conversation with the community

[faithfulnews]

A Letter Regarding COVID-19

To friends and intercessors in our praying community and our international family of affection,

Here at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, we are not only closely watching developments around COVID-19, we are responding aggressively in full compliance with directives from local and national officials. We are receiving daily briefings and giving multiple hours daily to extensive conversations among our senior leaders. We are quickly coordinating and cascading wise, reasonable precautions among our staff and wider community. We do this because we want to be good stewards and citizens, obey the law, and also care for the most vulnerable in our midst affected by the coronavirus, the elderly. Rest assured, though the escalating nature of containment efforts and government updates remains fluid, we are working to assure the well-being of our staff, interns, students, Forerunner Church family, greater Kansas City community and you, our extended global prayer community.

______________________________ IHOPKC LEADERSHIP CORONAVIRUS Q&A: Live Streamed Thursday, March 19 at 9am CT Watch on YouTube ______________________________

Our commitment before the Lord is for the “fire on the altar” to never go out (Leviticus 6:13). In 1999, we began 24/7 prayer with worship, and in the grace of God, it shall continue until the Lord returns. This is not only a sober corporate mandate; it is a deeply personal assignment which our staff holds dear in their hearts. If I could frame this in a military context when various circumstances shift the complexion of a battle, wise leadership does not automatically retreat; they reconfigure and reassess. In America, we have not had to face a pandemic scenario in the last decade, and even then, lifestyles were different. So we are rapidly adapting and realizing the kindness of God to give us a trial run to develop better systems and more flexibility for the days ahead. Don’t mistake me, we view the coronavirus as a real threat, but we know from Scripture that these sorts of scenarios will definitely increase in intensity as the Day of the Lord draws near.

We will continue to minister to the Lord and pray for the nations as we face this pandemic together. Personally, I am unafraid, and our community is filled with faith. We believe days of glory lie ahead for the people of God in the midst of increasing turbulence and darkness among the nations. Nevertheless, we must balance multiple tensions: (1) our heavenly mandate for 24/7 prayer with worship; (2) social responsibility in a time of public fear and government restrictions; and (3) care for our community, especially those most vulnerable. Bearing all of this in mind, we are implementing creative and practical solutions to keep the prayer room and the webstream going without interruption while maintaining all social distancing and event limitations currently required by our city, county, and national governments. We want to do our part to help “flatten the curve.” (If you are unfamiliar with that term, please see the attached graphics I’ve included at the bottom of this letter.)

We know many individuals and praying communities around the world utilize our webstream daily—and we will maintain that availability to you, regardless of the situation. Our amazing behind-the-scenes operations and media teams along with the companies we partner with will keep us connected together, even if we have to switch to remote control with minimal onsite staff. If anything, we look to increase our communication with weekly briefings. Stay tuned for more on this. In particular, make plans to join a panel discussion with me and key leaders this coming Thursday, March 19 at 9am Central Standard Time. Go to IHOPKC Leadership Flash Update to us with live chat. Follow the links to your platform of choice.

We believe we are meant to be part of the solution spiritually, naturally, legally, and relationally. To that end, the IHOPKC leadership team has made the following adjustments to comply with all mandated restrictions issued by Kansas City and Jackson County governments:

**UPDATE** We have already had to tighten some of these policies from their original draft just 36 hrs ago. Some of these are quite stringent, but we ask for your patience and understanding as we all adapt to highly fluid developments and escalating government mandates.

As of 6pm March 17 IHOPKC is closed to the public however we will continue prayer and worship. Please join us online. You can subscribe and stream from our YouTube channel or our website.

Statement Regarding City Regulations (COVID-19) March 17, 2020

In response to COVID-19, and in compliance with federal recommendations and local mandates issued for the sake of public safety, IHOPKC is closing public access to all of our properties and public spaces as of 6 pm today, March 17. This includes the Prayer Room, IHOPU, Forerunner Church and Children’s Equipping Center facilities. This will remain in effect until further notice.

As an organization, we are fully engaged with our city and nation to bring this pandemic to an end. Being resolved to fulfill our community and civic responsibility, we are also continuing our operation as a business entity with legal standing. To that end, IHOPKC organizational employees/staff will continue to work as part of their employment requirements. This is congruent with city exemptions and policies for essential personnel to continue serving the operations of their local business.”

— IHOPKC Executive Leadership Team

Limiting assembly crowd size to 1000 250 50 people**The prayer room is closed to the public**

To compensate, the Global Prayer Room is limited to staff members only. No outside visitors will be allowed at this time while we fully cooperate with containment efforts.

Social distancing in the Global Prayer Room through a reorganized seating layout

Reducing and/or canceling nonessential classes, meetings, and gatherings (more info on this in the coming days)

Any staff member with symptoms or that returns from travel will be required to complete a 14-day home quarantine.

International travelers must cancel travel plans and remain in their countries until further notice.

Providing disinfectant supplies to wipe down personal space when leaving the prayer room and increasing our janitorial service rotations to every four hours.

Above all, we continue to seek the Lord and intercede for the Father’s wisdom and revelation to be released to the Church. He is leading the nations with wisdom, and we trust His leadership. We resist fear, even while walking prudently in these uncertain times. We encourage you to join ongoing conversations on our social media channels to stay up-to-date. Now, more than ever, we appeal to our spiritual family of affection to joining our 24/7 Prayer Room Webstream to pray with us, interceding and agreeing with what God is doing in the midst of these shakings. We stand against the coronavirus, and we ask Heaven to move to stop it. Let us truly become an international house of prayer for all nations as the Lord desires.

Thank you,

Mike Bickle

P.S. More data and links follow below.

For more information, I encourage you to review the following links and graphics, which contain much helpful information.

Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve” — Washington Post

Flattening A Pandemic’s Curve: Why Staying Home Now Can Save Lives (Comparison of Philadelphia and St. Louis in 1918 Swine Flu Pandemic) — NPR

Go to the article

[imapplied]

Battle of the SERP: Combining SEO & PPC Forces to Win

Legend has it there’s a castle deep in the heart of the second page of Google. Guarding a castle is a monster named Bowser. Every so often, Bowser will creep from his home and attack innocent listings on the first page (as well as the occasional princess) to bring them back to his castle never to be seen again… until now!

Are you ready to play Super Marketing Bros?

In today’s game, we’ll learn how you can use SEO and PPC together to maximize your marketing efforts – and rescue those listings from Bowser. Let’s go!

Here we go!

Today, we’ll be working on rescuing Bowser’s latest victims. Super Mario Plumbing is a plumbing company located in the extremely competitive market of Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a family-owned business, currently being run by Mario and Luigi after their father had an unfortunate run in with a carnivorous plant. With their listing, he’s also captured the kingdom’s beloved princess, Peach.

PRESS START: Understanding SEO & PPC

Before we get to rescuing, we need to understand SEO and PPC. So what are they? SEO and PPC both fall in the category of “inbound marketing” strategies. Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that allows prospects to find you, rather than you finding them. PPC and SEO work to ensure you show up when someone searches for your name, product, or service.

What Is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of structuring your site, as well as other areas of the web, to teach search engines what you do and who you are. In return, search engines will show your site to prospects via “organic listings” (listings that are not ads). Though you don’t have to pay for a click, SEO does involve major investments when it comes to time.

What Is PPC?

PPC stands for pay-per-click marketing (also known as SEM, or search engine marketing). PPC is the practice of purchasing a slot on the first page of a search engine, usually via live auction on selected keywords. Unlike SEO, PPC delivers fast results. The second your ads are live, prospects are seeing your business when they search for you.

So Which Marketing Strategy Should I Use?

Trick question!

For the past few years, Super Mario Bros plumbing has been making a common mistake. Mario and Luigi have been working against each other, debating on using PPC or SEO. The first step in rescuing their listing is to realize that both PPC and SEO have strengths and weaknesses that directly complement each other. Let’s dive into combined strategies, and why you should use these channels in concert.

Most Marketing Agencies Will Recommend This “Combined” Game Plan:

Start off with strong and competitive PPC campaigns.

Begin to rank via SEO for the successful PPC keywords.

Back away from PPC, and run off SEO-generated leads.

When we sit and think about it, this “combined strategy” really isn’t combined at all! When you keep SEO and PPC separated like this, you are likely losing out on potential opportunities at an overall lower cost. Let’s look at a better combined strategy that leans on the strengths of both marketing strategies.

Level 1: Optimizing Basics to Help Both SEO and PPC

The first step to our combined strategy is to make changes to our existing marketing efforts that will positively impact both SEO and PPC.

Google My Business Optimization

So many marketers make the mistake of neglecting their Google My Business profile! This is a panel that should appear within the first page of Google when you type in your company name and city.

If we think of the entire internet as a virtual world, your Google My Business profile is your virtual storefront. This is what users see before going inside and purchasing something. How is your curb appeal? Does it welcome prospects?

Optimizing this panel is essential for both SEO and PPC. On the SEO side, optimizations build trust within the search engine, and verify your company as legitimate. On the PPC side, the information on you Google My Business profile can pull into marketing efforts via location extensions.

As far as which optimizations to make, I generally recommend doing as many as possible based on what makes sense for your business. For example, a plumber may benefit from a “Book Now” button; however, a candy store may not find this feature as relevant to their business. The most important thing is to have your name, address, and phone number exactly as it appears on your website.

Mobile Speed Optimization

The next combined optimization we’re going to look at is your performance on mobile. Mobile friendliness is both a ranking factor for SEO, as well as a quality score enhancer for PPC. These enhancements are extremely important for businesses who are looking to show up for voice search. 

Level 2:  Using SEO and PPC as a Team

While most people view SEO and PPC as two separate entities, there are ways they go hand in hand. Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of both SEO and PPC, we can develop a combined strategy to improve our online marketing across the board.

Using PPC for SEO Keyword Research

Only 5.7% of all new pages will rank organically within the first year of their existence. Due to the long optimization process that corresponds with this timeline, it is essential to use as much information as possible prior to investing resources on ranking a page. We don’t want Mario and Luigi spending hours on a piece of content to rank for the keyword “Why Mario Loves Peach” if it won’t yield a good conversion metric!

A great way to identify which keywords to focus on is to look at PPC data. 

To do this, simply look at PPC trends:

Consider ad copy that converted well and apply it to your landing page copy.

Test different page structures via split tests on PPC (form fill layouts, CTAs, etc.) and apply your findings to your landing page.

Monitor search volume and interaction rates on specific keywords before optimizing a page for them on SEO.

Monitor the competitiveness on the PPC side of things to get a better feel for what you might be up against. (PPC competitiveness is not always an exact correlation but can be an indicator of a highly competitive SEO market.)

As you continue to make PPC optimizations to test what will work within SEO, you may also find ways to drive down PPC costs!

Increase Time on Site

It’s no secret that the majority of Mushroom Kingdom has a low attention span. While we all want our users to find value in our content, time on site is also a ranking factor for SEO. If you’re having a particularly hard time ranking a piece of content with a low time on site, PPC may be a good way of improving your metrics.

To do this, use existing data:

Go to Analytics and view the average amount of time spent on each page.

Revisit (and, if necessary, revamp) old pages and look for keywords in the content.

If you have enough users accessing your site, generate a list of users who viewed a page with a good time on site and with similar content.

Run ads on PPC to the struggling page. Use retargeting based on the successful page as your audience.

Consider adding the struggling page as a sitelink on your branded campaign.

The idea behind this strategy is to get content in front of the right audience. If we find a list of people who have historically found your content relevant and interesting, they are more likely to spend more time across different pages.

Implement Branding Strategies

If you’re anything like Luigi, you may be wondering, “Why should I run paid ads targeting my own name when I should already have organic listings taking care of those searches for free?” This is a great question. It’s understandable that when someone searches you, they’re already showing a strong intent to convert. So how can you effectively utilize PPC for your branding without spending all of your hard-earned coins?

Break out your branding goals.

Lean on SEO for long-term branding (aspects that are not likely to change over time) and negate related search queries from PPC. Consider SEO for:

Your company name

Your mission statement

Founder information

Location

Lean on PPC for short-term branding (aspects that are likely to change over time) that shows off your company’s personality. If nothing else, run a PPC campaign to bump an additional competitor off the first page for your own name. Consider PPC for:

Press releases

Promotions

Awards

Charity work & community involvement

Seasonal Offers

Negative Press

Now, we hope you haven’t been accused of kidnapping a princess. But if you have some negative press come up (these things happen – we don’t judge), PPC can help with that! You can use paid search as your first line of defense.

Here’s how:

Find a list of keywords your prospects may be searching to locate information on the incident, and then take note. (Is there a common question people are asking you can answer? Is there a solution you can provide?)

From there, write a piece of content answering those questions and providing your solutions, and run a campaign on the keywords.

Include sitelinks in your other ads that continue to allow transparency across your campaigns.

Your ads will appear before other sources, so your prospects can get the whole story from you rather than someone else.

Level 3: Keeping the Princess Safe

As with everything inbound marketing-related, continued optimizations are essential to success. Rescuing listings takes a lot of time and effort, especially when dealing with the SEO side of things. It’s generally a good idea to review strategy at least once a quarter and regularly review your keywords, content, and scheduling to ensure you’re using all resources available across both SEO and PPC to better your marketing.

Congratulations! You rescued the princess – and your listing!

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[pets-beaty]

via How Webs | Information | Technology | Education | Entertainment | SEO | Lifestyle

Comprehensive SEO Strategy for Your Website | How Webs | United States

What is a comprehensive SEO strategy?

In order for your marketing initiatives to be successful, it is essential for your company to identify its unique value proposition. What distinguishes your products and / or services from those of your competitors? Why would a consumer choose to do business with you? What is the main reason why people should buy from you or hire you, in addition to price, years of experience and the services or products you offer?

Comprehensive SEO Strategy and Analyzing for Your Website | How Webs | United States

Once you are clear about your unique value proposition and goals for the future, you are ready to develop a comprehensive SEO strategy that will build brand awareness, boost incremental organic traffic and turn site visitors into customers. This strategy includes:

• Website content is important that supports your unique value proposition ever

• Specific using keywords related to your brand or value proposition

• Website architecture and design that improves search, user and conversion rates

• A plan to develop & distribute original content, valuable content across multiple channels (content calendar)

• A plan for supporting and improving your SEO

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Why should my company have a comprehensive strategy?

Without a comprehensive strategy and plan for supporting and improving SEO, other urgent issues will take precedence, and good intentions with respect to SEO will be out of the question. For example, you can perform a number of keyword analyzes, on-page optimization and blogging, but do not really have time to redesign your website or develop valuable content. While this limited effort is understandable, it deprives you of the opportunity to exploit the full benefits of your website, allowing you to go beyond smart competitors in terms of search, conversion, brand awareness and marketing ROI.

However, implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy can give you a competitive edge. If your website is search and user friendly, if it is the authoritative source for information about your brand, if you develop valuable content related to your brand and if you continue to improve your website and distribute this relevant content, then you are ultimately branded building, turning more site visitors into customers and improving your business results.

Forbes Agency Council is a community for invitations only to executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Am I eligible?

How do we support a profitable, comprehensive SEO strategy?

Working together with a digital agency that has successfully helped companies implement and support high-performing SEO strategies is probably the best way to ensure that your company can reap the full benefits of SEO. However, if such a partnership is not feasible, make sure your internal marketing team has the capacity to identify and leverage your unique value proposition, conduct keyword research based on customer needs, use analytics to improve SEO and compliance. evaluate and improve to a plan to develop and distribute original, useful content.

In companies of all shapes and sizes, I have noticed that sticking to a content development plan is probably the most difficult part of supporting a comprehensive SEO strategy. People have a hard time making constantly authoritative content that is useful to their customers. They usually resort to repeating sales propositions, redesigning the content of their website or paraphrasing a competitor rather than actually creating content that appeals to the emotions and needs of clients for authoritative facts.

I always recommend to tell the stories of your organization and to include enough facts to really make them for customers. People like to hear good stories and your organization probably has a lot to tell (for example, innovative ways customers use your products, successes that your customers have achieved, improvements you've made to your services, and so on). Strategically published on your website, on social media, in press releases, in blog posts, on YouTube, in paid advertising and on other platforms, these stories bring you the valuable inbound links, brand authorization and increased search impact you need to be successful in the highly competitive digital environment today.

Tips for developing an SEO strategy

If you work with an SEO company in Los Angeles, you can expect them to handle everything without input from you when developing an SEO strategy. However, do not go to a meeting without knowing anything. It can make things much smoother and help you achieve better results if you have an idea of ​​how SEO works and how to build a strategy before you meet an SEO company.

Comprehensive SEO Strategy and Analyzing for Your Website | How Webs | United States

Content

One of the most important things you need to know is that content on your website is essential. However, you can not only have many images and small blog posts. This does not cut it. You must have quality content. Search engines are smarter nowadays. They want to send their users to useful and interesting websites. You must therefore offer a website that meets these guidelines. You want to make sure that your efforts in the field of content marketing are central.

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User experience

The usability of your website is also important. People expect that they can easily navigate through your site. They do not want broken links, no error message and no confusion. If they can not easily find what they want, they will just leave and they will probably never come back. You also need to recognize the growing number of users coming to your site on your smartphones. This means that you must have a website that is well designed and optimized for mobile users.

Divisibility

This is a newer concept that is brought about by the extreme popularity and use of social media sites. Users now want to easily share content that they find interesting. You have to offer them a way to do this. It's easy to add buttons to your site that let people share on all popular social media sites.

Management

If you work with a SEO company in Los Angeles, you will probably be trained in management. Management is a very important aspect of every online presence. You must manage your website so that you can stay informed of what is happening. The management includes tracking where visitors come from, keeping track of what they are interested in and how they use your site. If you know what visitors are doing, you can make the necessary changes or adjustments that give them the best experience and ensure that they keep returning. In addition, you can monitor your advertising efforts with management. This is important to ensure that your money is well spent and that you do not waste money on marketing efforts that do not work.

If you work with a SEO company in Los Angeles, you should expect that your input is needed. This is why it is useful to know a little more about SEO itself and which things are important in SEO today. By having general knowledge, you will find that it is much easier to manage your campaigns and ensure that everything is handled in the right way, so that you ultimately get the best possible outcome.

Top Free Website SEO Analysis Tools

These free website SEO analyzing tools can improve your site rankings and the performance of search engine optimization (SEO). In this post, I need to provide some free SEO SEO analysis tools for running your site reviews. Most SEO companies in Coimbatore implement these website reviews.

Comprehensive SEO Strategy and Analyzing for Your Website | How Webs | United States

Free Website Seo analysis tools

1.WooRank

WooRank is the best free tool for in-depth site analysis to improve your website. The weaning tools give the full details of your website reviews and your SEO performance. This tool works smartly and  generates a limited number of free reports to your website. The freezing tools provide a few chances to analyze your website reviews.

The report provides the following sections:

• Marketing checklist

• Mobile

• Usability

• Technologies

• SEO

• Social

• Local

• Visitors

2. SEO Audit Tool

The free SEO audit tool reflects the image of your website to what your site does and what your site does not do. With this tool you can enter your website URL and collect a direct automated SEO audit of your site, with an extensive score and help with developing it.

This tool has three main sections:

• Technical problems: canonicalization of domains and XML sitemaps

• Content problems: website keyword and metadata

• External link analysis

3. SEO Site Check Up

The SEO sitecontrole is a free SEO analysis tool for websites that analyzes your site and gives the overall score of your website. This tool also provides the backlinks of your website and monitors your site reports.

This tool provides the following sections:

• Common SEO problems

• Server and security

• Speed ​​optimization

• Mobile usability

• Social media

• Semantic web

4. Hubspot Marketing Grader

With Hubspot's marketer, you can view your site, social media, mobile device responsiveness, blogging and analytics. This tool gives your businesses online marketing strategies and detailed reports.

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The following lists of companies for your online marketing strategies:

Blogging: this sector shows the activities of your blog and buttons for social sharing.

Social Media Channels: this section controls your social media actions such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,

SEO: this field checks your page SEO and off-page SEO activities.

Lead generation: leads and sales of your marketing efforts.

Mobile: this section offers your site mobile friendliness.

5. Site analyzer

The site analyzer is a free website analysis tool that provides five groups of 71 data points. This tool analyzes your site in a few seconds and includes accessibility, design, multimedia, texts and networks. The site analysis tools analyze your website and compare the results of your competitors.

The five sections of the site analyzer:

Accessibility: this section refers to the details of your website

Design: this section describes how your website implements different elements.

Texts: this section refers to the text-related information of your website.

Multimedia: this section refers to the images of your website (using alt tags in your images)

Networks: this section refers to the internal links of your website.

The web design companies in Coimbatore also prefer the above SEO tools to maintain their online marketing planning. These five tools are the most important division of all your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. These tools are therefore very useful for your site audits and changes in your SEO methods to have your website ranked in search engines.

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Comprehensive SEO Strategy and Analyzing for Your Website | How Webs | United States

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[baby-dollguts-blog]

6 Affordable Ways to Market Your Business on a Tight Budget

Marketing, especially in the hyper-connected digital world, is tough and expensive.

With new technologies, platforms, apps, and services manifesting themselves every week, the marketing world moves at a blistering pace.

Large enterprises have the budget-luxury of experimenting with untested trends and tools. Small businesses and startups, on the other hand, have a meager budget to work with and need to be more frugal.

Instead of being on the cutting edge, small businesses find themselves just outside it, chasing the coat tails of competitors that have the means to test and invest in these tools.

If you and your company are limited by a shoestring budget, it can be difficult to compete, but not impossible. There are cost-effective strategies that can help you remain competitive, even with limited resources.

As an organization, you have to remain particularly tight-fisted and target less-expensive options that promise high returns. With a small budget, accuracy is everything when choosing the tactics to invest in. Discovering new ways to grow your business on a dime is a process that requires a constant eye and a knack for creative thinking, planning, and even a little bit of luck.

If you aren’t known to be frugal and budget conscious, the following six ways to market on a tight budget will get you thinking about where your budget is best spent.

1. Give away free stuff by writing about it

When it comes to content marketing, blogging is one of the most popular types of content for multiple reasons: it’s practical, easy to produce and low-cost.

Written articles and similar content types are also very effective.

Blog posts can easily be shared on social media channels and other relevant sites.

These articles provide relevant and valuable information to the customer. In a marketing landscape that is focused on the customer experience, offering this free value is an excellent way to get people to notice you.

Writing for an industry website or popular print publication yields a lot of potential benefits. Rather than pay the hundreds of dollars it costs to advertise on these platforms, submitting a written article is free. Not only does it provide the same benefits as advertising, but it also helps showcase that your company is very knowledgeable and skilled.

Producing written content is easy if you feel comfortable picking up the pen to write it. After all, no one knows the company and its voice better than you. Even if it has been awhile since you have written anything more than a grocery list, after a few smaller blog posts, you’ll be back in practice of writing.

That said, if you struggle or lack time to blog, it isn’t a lost cause. Hiring a freelance writer is affordable and a good way to ensure that all of your written efforts are done at a high level and with zero errors.

Many of these trained writers are also adept at producing eBooks. These informative guides are longer than your typical blog post and take longer to produce. However, they offer the potential for significant returns. A well-written eBook can help push additional traffic towards your website, capture leads, and allow your brand reputation to grow and prosper.

It’s also easy to link the download of a free eBook as an incentive to signing up for your email-based marketing campaigns or participate in other brand practices.

2. Email (nope, not dead yet)

If you’ve ever heard someone claim that email is a dead or on-its-way-out technology, then hopefully you didn’t ignore your better judgment and listen to them.

The truth is, email is far from the brink of extinction, especially when you consider that it has one of the highest ROI of any marketing channel.

According to MailChimp, the popular email marketing service, the stat line for email marketing is incredibly compelling. While the effectiveness of email can depend on the size of your company and industry, the average stats look something like this:

Open Rate Average: 21.60%

Click Rate Average: 2.69%

Unsubscribe Rate Average: 0.23%

Email can achieve these high rates because it encapsulates messages in a very decodable and deliverable way.

Plus, while not everyone has a Facebook account or even a smartphone, most of us do have an email address. No matter what your demographics are, your target audiences are using and communicating over email.

The steep side of marketing via email is building the lists and gaining customer’s contact information. If you are just starting an email newsletter or are having trouble attracting participation, you can try and incentivize signing up to encourage more customers to do so.

As mentioned before, an eBook can be a good way to start the foundation of a newsletter list. In this scenario, the customer incentive is the eBook and, to access the incentive, the visitor willingly offers their participation in your email campaign.

The incentives can be low-to-no cost and have a direct impact on bolstering sign up rates.

3. Develop a solid mobile strategy

Mobile is becoming more affordable with the use of app makers that allow business owners to build mobile apps without high development costs.

These mobile solutions provide businesses with a powerful marketing channel. Mobile is hyper-effective because marketing messages are coming straight from the source—the brand itself.

Push notifications are a great way to let your customers know what is going on with your business. These messages can be tailored to specific users to deliver a personal message.

But a mobile app gives you the ability to do more than just communicate with your customers. You can track customer loyalty, build a reservation system, allow product ordering, and build customized features for your business.

These features help you reach your customers in a way no other technology can, and have become much easier to implement thanks to some of the best app makers on the market.

Businesses can create an app that tailors to their specific needs without the need of a development team.

4. Network, the old fashioned way

Your local business community undoubtedly has a number of meetings and events every month. These gatherings present the perfect opportunity to network and expand your reputation as a business owner.

Organizations often forget that aside from being a member of the business community, they are also a member of their local community.

If you have local retail locations, it is even more imperative that you showcase your brand in the local spotlight.

Sponsoring events, participating in town forums and other actions help demonstrate value to the customers in your immediate location. The positive brand reputation you’ll build will expand to include the customers outside of that area as well.

Networking events provide an important chance to promote. You can expand that email newsletter list or get people to try a new product out.

The other potential benefit to attending these meetings is finding business partners. These organizations have similar interests as your business, but don’t share direct competitors. This creates an opportunity to band together and be a part of a multi-business contest or promotion.

As an example, let’s say you own a local bike shop. To help stimulate business you can partner with adventure-focused groups or shops. You can offer discounts to their loyal customers in exchange for sending customers to your shop for equipment. In return, you can promote their business and provide them with employee discounts.

Non-locally, you could find a business partner that is willing to commit to a joint social media contest or something similar.

5. Google (yes, really)

We think of Google immediately as the premier search engine that it is, but Google offers a lot of other tools, beyond just a new verb and an ability to look up anything on the Internet.

G Suite, Google’s business-focused tools and extensions package offer all of the tech company’s most-popular tools (Gmail, Google Drive, Google+, Calendar, etc.), for business use.

This is an easy way to get your business its own email address, improve collaboration, manage tasks, store data and much more. G Suite does cost some money.

If you are really on a tight budget, Google My Business is a free service that delivers an excellent and deliverable means to supply vital information about your business when potential customers search for you. Google My Business puts your hours, contact information, address, menu (when applicable) and more vital, highly searched information all in one place.

This helps people visiting your area find your business before your competitors’ organizations.

6. Join and engage with existing communities

The internet is comprised of many unique communities where people meet and exchange ideas.

These communities can be as small and specific as a “book club for women over 50 living in Pensacola, Florida”, to as large and broad as Reddit or Craigslist.

Target niche groups that are relevant to your brand. Reach out to pre-existing communities of people that have demonstrated an interest in what your brand has to offer, rather than trying to attract them one at a time with more conventional means.

Since these people are not visiting your website yet or following your social media pages, it’s a great opportunity to share your blog content, encourage newsletter signups, and showcase the level of expertise and know-how that your brand brings to the table.

Inserting yourself into these communities and conversations puts your brand on a more approachable and human level.

Again, you are providing value, both in your products and the experience you are offering to consumers.

AirBnB did this flawlessly in their early days, with nearly overnight success. Their so-called “growth hack” leveraged the existing groups on Craigslist that were focused on housing and real estate to find prospects all over the world.

Conclusion

Marketing is never free; it always costs something. Often, this is dollars and cents, but it can also be time, manpower and other resources.

If you are marketing on a small financial budget, you may have to tap into a resource you have an abundance of. For instance, blogging requires no dollar investment to do yourself, but it does require a good chunk of time.

All of the above strategies can be completed with little to no dollar investment and promise good returns. This will allow you to grow your business, compete with firms with larger budgets and, over time, expand your shoestring budget to allow for greater investments.