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Welcome to the Entrepreneurs Newsletter If you're a business owner that wants to stay up to date but doesn't have the time to search and sort through articles. This newsletter is for you.
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Introduction
This week in the Entrepreneurs Newsletter
As business owners and entrepreneurs we're always working on some aspect of our business.
This week I'm taking a closer look at what factors go into planning brand strategies for marketing campaigns.
The holidays are quickly approaching and with the hit that so many businesses have taken the last year plus. It is an opportunity to get back on track and make up for lost revenue.
Making planning and marketing strategies for Q3 & Q4 crucial for business owners and marketers. The winners will have a well throughout strategy in place that leaves room for the last-minute additions. Those that struggle will be winging it.
Operate with strategy and purpose to get the results that you need for your business.
For those that like to skim for relevant articles of interest. Here is a list of what you can expect to see.
- Google announces new deals sections, promotional tools, and expanded reporting ahead of the holiday shopping season
- 19 Tried-and-True Lead Magnet Ideas and Examples [+ Step-by-Step]
- The Best & Worst Words to Use in Your Website Call to Action Buttons
- How to Calculate Market Share and Find New Growth Avenues
- The Real Story on MarTech: 10 steps to making better vendor selection choices
- Instagram wants to be TikTok, which wants to be YouTube, which wants to be TV
- Your Cheat Sheet to Google's 200 (Known) Ranking Factors
- Long-Tail SEO Strategy: Why & How to Target High-Intent Keywords
- Search Engine Land’s Guide to Bing SEO
- WordPress 5.8 Released With Nearly 300 New Features & Fixes
Featured in this week's "Questions Business Owners Are Asking".
How to prepare for a marketing campaign to promote a business
If you have questions or struggles that you'd like to see covered. Simply reply to the email and submit. I'll do my best to address them.
Questions Business Owner Are Asking
How to prepare for a marketing campaign to promote a business
This week in Questions Business Owners Are Asking.
We’re knocking on the door of August. This is a time where I am having or already had a conversation about Fall marketing strategies and campaigns. I’m covering this question because I want to make sure it’s something that you’re looking at and planning for too.
Advertising Tips
Google announces new deals sections, promotional tools and expanded reporting ahead of the holiday shopping season
As retailers prepare for the holiday shopping season, Google is launching new sections in its search results to showcase deals, rolling out tools to highlight promotions, and expanding reporting capabilities in Google Merchant Center,
The new “Deals related to your search” section shows discounted or competitively priced products from retailers across the web. This section is live now and can be found in the Shopping tab.
Why I Care: if you're an online store and this is going to be a competitive edge that gets you in front of more of your target audience.
As a digital marketer, I'm already working with my clients on their Fall and Holiday marketing strategies. Ensuring that we are looking at the options available to them advertising-wise and what makes sense.
Getting your product images into the display searches and with "Deals related to your search" is a great way to promote holiday sales and discounts to drive up sales. In addition to building up brand recognition.
Brand Building Strategies
19 Tried-and-True Lead Magnet Ideas and Examples [+ Step-by-Step]
Every piece of content you put out is a potential lead magnet. Here are 19 lead magnets you can create today and the steps to build your conversion path.
Why I care: Lead magnets are a great way of identifying prospects and helping to qualify leads for businesses of any size. Since I focus on small to mid-size businesses I use it as a way to build subscriber lists and leads. Leads that they can convert into customers that they didn't have to pay to secure.
When operating on a budget. This is a way of continuing to build up your brand credibility and generate leads without digging into your savings. Take it a step further and take the information that you learn from who is clicking to learn more about your lead magnets and apply that to your customer persona. Helping you to identify your target audience.
Helpful Tips
The Best & Worst Words to Use in Your Website Call to Action Buttons [Infographic]
Learn more about call-to-action buttons. Their importance and why the wording matters as well as the placement. Increase your clicks and get more engagement with a more strategic approach to your offers.
Why I care: When it comes to converting leads on your website call-to-action buttons placement and wording matter. While experienced marketers have done their A/B testing to know what works and what doesn't for industries and markets. The average business owner asking a web designer to build their website does not.
I'm sharing this article to cut down on that learning curve and make it something that you can make more of an educated decision on. Let's get you away from "click here" to something that stands out and gets you more engagement.
How to Calculate Market Share and Find New Growth Avenues
if you have an online business, there are other ways to calculate market share without involving expensive and often lagging third-party analytics.
This article will walk you through all the essentials of market share assessment and highlight some of the top market share growth tactics.
Why I care: You'll hear me mentioning things like Share of voice. That is another term for market share. How much of that pie is your slice is another way to put it.
The better that you understand your market and the market share available. The easier it is for you to identity and plan for how you can compete in it. What is available and what's not.
If you're trying to establish yourself in a market. You'll need to know who you're looking to take some of the sales from and how to differentiate yourself. Without it, you're flying blind and hoping for the best.
The benefits aren't limited to new businesses. Existing businesses can monitor their market share in local markets and beyond to make sure they're not losing ground. You've put in the work to get to the top. Now the goal changes to making sure that you stay there.
Products & Services
10 steps to making better vendor selection choices
Industry surveys over multiple decades have repeatedly shown that more than half of technology projects fail to meet their objectives — or just fail outright.
Choosing the right vendor and technology for your marketing initiatives is one of the most critical decisions you can make in those early stages. The wrong choice won’t necessarily doom a project, but it can make success much more difficult to achieve.
Why I care: There are so many new technologies and solutions being rolled out on a regular basis. It's hard to identify the one that would be right for you. In all honesty, it can be a struggle to identify the difference between them.
Those subtle and in some cases more obvious differences can be the difference between making the most of a window of opportunity and missing it. It is important to find and partner with technologies that match your workflow and process. Rather than trying to fit into theirs. This makes implementing them into your workflow a seamless transition rather than a headache.
When you have a plan and strategy for identifying not just the right tech but how to roll it into what you're doing. You not only increase your chances of success with your projects but save yourself time and money. Efficiency is going to be the difference between you or your competitor getting to market first.
Marketing Strategies
Instagram wants to be TikTok, which wants to be YouTube, which wants to be TV
Attack of the clones: Now that most major social platforms have a TikTok-like feature, each is exploring different ways to use short-form video to further their longer-term goals.
This article is meant to help keep you up-to-date with the competition and how you can benefit from it with your marketing strategy.
Why I care: Content leads to clicks which leads to customers. Identifying what content is getting the customer journey started is important. So is understanding what platforms your target audience is on consistently.
The competition for short-form video relevance is opening the door for marketers and brands to be able to do more on the platforms that their target audience frequents. Creating more ways for you to communicate with them and start the customer journey.
Search Engine Optimization/SEO
Your Cheat Sheet to Google's 200 (Known) Ranking Factors
The reality is Google does a great job of keeping us all guessing on the secret sauce to the ranking system. That said there are known factors that should be taken into consideration when putting together your marketing and brand development strategies.
This article covers 200 (Known) ranking factors. That should be factored into your approach to improving your ranking and reaching your target audience.
Why I care: An educated customer is the best kind of customer. There are so many companies out there offering SEO solutions that are supposed to help you rank better. It is important to know what qualifying questions to ask. This allows you to select a vendor that you trust.
For those businesses that want to tackle SEO on their own. It is that much more important to stay on top of the ranking factors. You'll want to take them into consideration from as early on as brand planning through to your marketing strategies and beyond.
SEO is an ongoing competition to get and maintain the best placement that you can get for your business. Helping you drive in organic traffic and maintain a share of voice in the market/industry.
Long-Tail SEO Strategy: Why & How to Target High-Intent Keywords
Learn the benefits of highly targeted search terms packed with intent. Here's how to find long-tail keywords and use them to your advantage.
Standalone broad keyword strategies belong to the past. In 2021, the combination of Google’s focus on user experience and intent, alongside the rise of conversational search and applications such as voice search, means that long-tail SEO strategies are more crucial than ever.
Why I care: The approach to keyword strategies is changing right before our eyes. As consumers get more educated and smarter with their searches. The keyword strategies have to as well. There are more options these days.
One thing that hasn't changed is the importance of being at the right place at the right time and hopefully with the right solution. Expanding your keyword strategy to include things like voice search and applications that people are using beyond their computers matters. It can get you an edge that your competitors haven't implemented or considered.
S.E.L's Guide to Bing SEO
Bing accounts for 26.5% of all desktop searches in the U.S., according to Comscore (April 2021). With the recent prevalence of working from home, people are spending more time on their desktop computers, which might also mean that more people are now using Bing.
Why I care: While Google may have the lion's share of the searches. Bing is something you can use to win higher ranking positions on with less effort. Don't rule out implementing a strategy for Bing in SEO searches. Use it as a way to build up your brand equity.
WordPress
WordPress 5.8 Released With Nearly 300 New Features & Fixes
WordPress 5.8 is rolling out right now and is available to all publishers. The new release is named after the innovative jazz musician, Art Tatum. It’s a fitting name for this new version of WordPress because it’s full of brand-new features that makes it easier for publishers to innovate and express themselves creatively.
Why I care: Every now and then WordPress rolls out an update that isn't just about fixing bugs. They put a focus on improving the user experience and adding features and improvements that are game-changers.
This update has the potential of being one of those updates. Those of us who perform the updates typically have to sit on them for a while to make sure it's not going to affect a plugin or tool. This update looks to have fewer issues and more solutions to it.
Check it out and see if any of the improvements and new features can help you see more of a return on your investment with your website.