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Website design used to be very hard, but that is no longer true.
Years ago, when I first started designing my websites, there weren’t a ton of resources. There were basically two options—learn the basics of website programming languages or hire a designer. The first choice is difficult and time-consuming. The latter is expensive.
After a brief attempt of trying to design everything on my own, I ended up spending top dollar on a designer. It was more than I wanted to spend, but I didn’t really have much choice.
Today, new website owners have more resources at their disposal. It’s possible to design a professional website without hiring a designer or learning how to code.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or just looking for an alternative way to design websites, you’ve come to the right place. I’ll explain how to design a website below in this step-by-step guide.
Wix is my favorite tool for website design. It’s essentially an alternative method to sidestep web design altogether.
As a free website builder, Wix makes it easy for anyone to build and design a website from scratch—no experience, development skills, or design knowledge required.
The reason I love Wix so much is that it’s just so effortless. Even for such a simple tool, the final design always looks professionally made. People will just assume you hired a designer—it’s that good.
That effortlessness extends to important things you don’t want to deal with on your own, like security and reliability.
Wix manages optimization for both on their end, so your site is always protected and their servers are always able to deliver your website to visitors.
Plus, they go the extra mile with automated site data backups that make sure you’re never left starting from scratch should something terrible happen.
Another reason why I recommend Wix so highly is because of its versatility. It can accommodate the design needs of virtually every type of website under the sun.
From simple blogs to portfolio sites, online stores, restaurant websites, small business sites, and more, Wix can do it all. Other website builders on the market just don’t have the same versatility.
Continue below, and I’ll teach you how to design a website for free using Wix.
The first thing you need to do is sign up for Wix. So head over to Wix.com and create an account. This is 100% free to do, and you don’t even have to give your credit card information.
Just click one of the many “Get Started” buttons on the homepage or anywhere else on the site.
Unlike other platforms, the Wix sign-up process can be completed in a matter of seconds. There aren’t any complex form fields to fill out. They just need your email and a password.
You can even bypass typing anything and sign-up with a single click using Google or Facebook.
Once you’re signed up, Wix will automatically walk you through the website design process.
Next, you’ll need to figure out what type of website you want to design. Your answer will have a significant impact on your design choices.
For example, a personal blog and an ecommerce website will have major differences in design choices. A portfolio site used to showcase photography or custom art won’t have the same design as a local restaurant website.
Wix makes this step easy for you. You’ll be prompted to select your website type from a wide range of potential options.
Based on your answer, Wix will automatically present you with applicable templates in that category. For example, if you select “online store,” then the layout will accommodate product pages, product categories and make it easy for you to design a checkout process.
Once you choose a website type, Wix presents you with two options for your design:
The first option is straightforward and is excellent for people who are in a rush. You’ll just answer a few simple questions, and Wix will design a site for you based on your responses. It’s impressive how quickly the process takes.
You’ll have a brand new custom website design in less than a minute. The design comes out beautiful, and aside from customizing the pages with your own content, you’re done.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to stick with the second option—creating a site with the Wix editor. This will give you more freedom and control over every aspect of the design choices.
Rather than trying to design a website with a blank canvas, it’s much easier to start with a template.
Take a few minutes to browse through the different options. What styles do you like? Which templates emulate your brand image? Wix has thousands of templates to choose from. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. But narrow your focus based on your specific type of website.
For this example, I choose a “business” website. But that’s a really broad category. If you look to the left side of the screen, you can narrow your focus further into types of businesses.
Wix has specific templates for consultants, real estate companies, professional services like finance and law, marketing, and so much more. Every website type has different subcategories with templates.
For example, if you select “online store,” then you’ll see templates for clothing, jewelry, electronics, home decor, beauty supplies, sports equipment, and more. If you’re designing a blog website, Wix has templates for personal blogs, travel blogs, fashion blogs, podcasts, etc.
Your template will become the foundation for the rest of your website design. So it’s important to take your time and not rush through this step. You’ll still be able to customize different design elements to your liking, but that’s much easier with the right template.
Website visitors will form an opinion about your website in less than one second of landing on the home page. That’s why the design is so important, and it all starts with the right layout.
Wix templates have already been optimized for a user-friendly design. But you have the freedom and flexibility to make some changes here.
In this example, I’m editing the “Business Consultant” template. Let’s say I wanted to move the positioning of the headline on this homepage. I’d simply click the box in the Wix editor and drag it somewhere else on the page.
Or maybe I want to reposition that “Learn More” call-to-action on the right half of the screen. I can click on it and drag the button anywhere I want.
I encourage you to move a few things around when you’re first getting started. This will introduce you to the Wix editor, so you’re comfortable down the road. If you ultimately don’t want to make any layout changes, you can always revert back to the original design.
Content is a significant component of your site’s design. You can’t completely finalize the design without understanding exactly what materials will be featured on the website.
Gather images, videos, GIFs, logos, slogans, text (copy), and whatever else you want to display on your site.
Let me show you an example to illustrate my point.
I’m still editing that same business consultant template. One of the first things I’d do on this part of the page is swap the image with a picture of myself. But before I do that, I’d also need to think about the corresponding text copy on the screen’s bottom left side.
By default, the template has some blank space here, as I’ve highlighted above. While blank space is an important web design feature, I don’t love how it’s used in this instance.
So these are my options:
Both will achieve my goal of eliminating that empty section of the page. Do you see how one component impacts another? All of this is related to the design, and it’s much easier if you have your content prepared ahead of time.
Start to think about how visitors will perceive your website. Things like the color scheme, fonts, and other design components will directly impact your brand image.
Click the “Theme Manager” on the left side of your Wix editor. This is the button with an “A” and what looks like a raindrop or paint drop.
From here, you can change your site’s theme colors. You’ll also have the ability to edit your default text themes for headers and paragraphs.
In this case, the current color scheme works well for a business consultant. It’s modern and professional. But let’s say you were designing a website for kids. You could have a bit more fun with bright colors and big, bold fonts.
If you added your company logos and other materials back in step #5, you’ll want to make sure that the color scheme flows well with the rest of your content.
Your landing pages will each have unique designs. While they should all follow the same branding principles and theme of your home page, the design choices will have some variations.
To add a page, click the top icon on the left side of your Wix editor. Then click “add page,” as I’ve highlighted below.
New pages will essentially be a blank canvas, except for your header and footer. But rather than starting from scratch, you can “add a strip” to any page based on what content it will contain.
Just click the “+” button on the editor to browse through some options.
Think of this as a mini template. Apply the same principles you used back in step #3 when you first chose your overall site template.
This is just an easier way to design new landing pages. Wix already has so many great options that it’s not worth trying to build your pages from scratch.
Sometimes during the design process, you can start to lose focus on how visitors will engage with your site. But user experience (UX) can’t be overlooked.
There are certain design best practices people expect when they visit a website. For example, they expect the navigation menu to be at the top of the page. They expect the footer to contain contact information. They expect the logo to take them back to the home page.
Let’s look at something simple, like a navigation menu:
In this example, there are only four pages in the menu. You could maybe get away with adding one or two more. But beyond that, it’s too much.
Imagine if this website had 10 or 20 pages in the menu. It would be a disaster. The top of the page would be too cluttered, and visitors would never find what they’re looking for. Overall, that would be a poor design choice.
Think about usability with every design choice you make, from CTA placement to scroll effects, white space, architecture, and everything in between.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel here. Follow web design best practices, and the UX will be fine.
According to Statista, roughly half of all global web traffic comes from mobile devices. So there’s a coin-flip chance that each visitor on your site will be browsing from a smartphone or tablet.
You need to make sure your website design is mobile-friendly. Otherwise, visitors will bounce, and you’ll never get mobile conversions.
Fortunately, Wix makes this process easy for you.
From the editor or previewer page, simply click the mobile icon to switch away from the desktop view of your website.
Wix will automatically optimize your website for mobile. But it’s still a good idea to check everything out for yourself to see if you want to make any changes. If you see something you’d like to change, you can edit your site’s mobile design without changing the desktop version.
Once you’ve finalized the design, it’s time to get your site live on the web.
It’s worth noting that your site doesn’t have to be 100% finished to publish it. You can always go back and add pages at a later time. But once you have a homepage, about page, contact page, and a handful of site elements, get it published so you can start generating some traffic. Just be sure you don’t publish any incomplete pages.
Click the blue “Publish” button at the top right of your Wix dashboard to continue.
As I said before, you can design and publish a site with Wix 100% for free. But there’s a catch.
Free Wix users won’t get to customize their domain. All domains include your Wix account name, followed by Wix’s branding, and then your site’s name. As you can see from the example above, the domain here would be:
http://neilpatelsample.wixsite.com/mysite-1
This is not a viable option for any business-related website. It’s okay if you’re just using the site to play around with web design principles. But if you want a legitimate site with real visitors, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium Wix plan.
Now you’ll be able to use a custom domain name, either purchased directly through Wix or from a third-party domain registrar. If you don’t already have a domain, just get it from Wix. It’s easier to manage everything through a single platform.
Website design has really evolved over the years. What was once a major challenge or expensive venture for new site owners can now be accomplished with ease.
Website builders like Wix essentially eliminate the need to design websites from scratch.
Non-technical users and people with zero design experience can choose a template and populate their site with custom content. There’s no need to learn any web programming languages or hire a designer.
Sign up for Wix, follow the step-by-step process listed above, and you’ll have a professionally designed website in a matter of minutes. It’s that simple!
So you’re thinking about getting into house flipping.
That’s understandable, especially since the nationwide median net margin on flips is around $32,371.
How many of these paychecks do you need per year to replace your current income?
That’s one of the benefits of house flipping over most other real estate investment strategies. Instead of providing gradual income like rent, flipping houses quickly generates large chunks of capital.
But don’t go and grab a sledgehammer and put in an offer on a dilapidated house just yet. There are several skills needed to flip houses – much more than being able to pick out color combinations or lay flooring.
While these are excellent skills to have, you also need to consider these questions:
We’ve covered all of these questions as well as house flipping terms in this article so that you can learn what sets successful flippers apart from beginners.
Let’s get into it!
First off, what is house flipping exactly, and what does it entail? In its most traditional sense, flipping involves purchasing a house that needs repairs or updates, making renovations, and then selling it for a profit.
Each of these three stages of the flipping process must be approached thoughtfully in order to maximize profits. A mistake on one of them could eat into your return, or worse, jeopardize your profit completely.
Absolutely not. In fact, most real estate investors don’t have a real estate license.
Think about the three major steps of flipping houses.
While you will not have direct access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) without a real estate license, you can easily team up with an agent in your market to keep you up to date on the newest listings. Also, in a seller’s market, your best bet for finding profitable house flipping deals will be to look outside of the MLS (more on this later).
You definitely don’t need a real estate license to renovate a house. The only license relevant at this step is a general contractor’s license. Many counties require a contractor to pull permits before making significant modifications to a house. To determine what is needed, contact your local building and permit office. Even if they require a contractor’s license to obtain the necessary permits, it is almost always best to hire a contractor and allow them to handle all of the paperwork.
Once you’ve renovated a house and are ready to sell it, you are most likely to get top-dollar by listing it on the MLS. While doing this requires a real estate license, it is not necessary for you to be the one that lists it. Even though you can save thousands of dollars in agent commissions by handling this yourself, you must evaluate what you want to spend your time on. Most house flippers focus on the buying and renovating side and then pair up with a skilled real estate agent to sell their houses once they are remodeled.
There is a common saying in real estate investing, “You make your money when you buy.”
And there is a lot of truth to this saying. It is tough to come back from paying too much for a flip house. Conversely, buying a home with plenty of margin for renovation and profit will make the entire process go much smoother.
But how do you find houses with enough margin to flip?
One of the best ways is foreclosures.
A foreclosure occurs when a homeowner falls behind on their mortgage payments. Once the payments stack up to a certain amount, their lender decides to foreclose and sell the house to recover their money.
Because these sales often involve someone that is motivated to sell the house, whether it be the lender or the homeowner, they can often be purchased at a significant discount.
But to be successful, you must know where to buy a foreclosed home. Here are the three main methods.
The period between when the lender files a Notice of Default on a homeowner behind on payments and when the house is sold at a foreclosure auction is known as pre-foreclosure. This is often the best time for real estate investors to the house because discussions are typically solely between the buyer and seller. The only communication needed with the lender is to request a payoff statement. This will tell you how much it will take to satisfy the loan entirely, and in these cases, it often includes the principal balance, accrued interest from missed payments, and attorney fees from beginning the foreclosure process. Another perk to buying a house in pre-foreclosure is that this is the only time you can buy it without competing with other investors. When it goes to auction, anyone that wants it can come and bid on it.
If the homeowner in foreclosure does not resolve the issue before the auction date, the house will be auctioned off to recoup the money owed to the lender. These auctions typically take place at the county courthouse. Sometimes they are held in a conference room, but they are often held on the courthouse steps. The bidding typically starts around the payoff amount. This is why it is better to buy the house before this point, because it can only be bid up from there. And that almost always happens.
There are three reasons why buying a house at a foreclosure auction is not recommended for a beginner investor.
Sometimes a house goes to a foreclosure auction, but no one is willing to pay what the bank is asking for it. In these cases, the house goes back to the bank, and it becomes what is known as an REO (Real Estate Owned). Banks do not want these properties on their books, so they will often turn around and list them with an agent shortly after the auction. If you are interested in trying to purchase an REO for your flip project, it is best to work with an agent that has experience with these transactions since negotiating with the bank can often be tricky.
There are several skills you must master to become a successful house flipper. Beyond that, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge that is only gained through experience and hard work. Here are the top house flipping tips and tricks that will significantly increase your success rate.
Understanding your market is vital when running a house-flipping business. Are home prices increasing, or are they projected to fall soon? Is it more of a buyer’s or seller’s market? Only data can give you these answers. Here is the most critical information to gather when researching your market:
If your market is like most markets across the nation right now, it is a hot seller’s market, and finding a good deal is extremely difficult. But that doesn’t mean you should give up on your goal of flipping houses. It just means that you need to develop creative ways to locate profitable deals. This usually means finding houses to buy outside the traditional route of going through a buyer’s agent. Here are some ways to find off-market houses to buy:
Many people hear the word “negotiation,” and their heart begins racing. But you’ll be relieved to know that most real estate deals do not involve quite the level of bare-knuckle bargaining that you’re thinking.
Here is the number one secret to negotiating a profitable real estate deal: Help the seller with their problem.
Any successful real estate investor will tell you that in order to strike up a profitable deal, there must be some underlying motivation causing them to need to sell. This could be the condition of the house itself, financial stress, or any other number of life issues.
If you can solve these issues for someone by purchasing their house, it is much more likely that you will be able to get it for a reasonable price, and they will be happy that you were able to help them!
Determining the right price to pay for a flip house has two components: Calculating what it will be worth after renovations and properly estimating the rehab expenses.
The After Repair Value, or ARV, is the estimated price the home will sell for after it is fixed up. It is calculated by figuring out the average price per square foot of nearby, similar homes that have recently sold and multiplying that value by the square footage of the house in consideration.
The ARV and the repair expenses will be the two most significant factors in determining the appropriate purchase price to make your flipping project successful. To correctly estimate the costs to renovate a flip house, you must take special care when viewing it. This takes a very attentive eye. Even though issues aren’t glaringly obvious on your walkthrough, they will begin to show themselves once you start the project. Having a realistic rehab budget upfront will allow you to set the right purchase price and make the entire process go much more smoothly.
Two professionals who can help you estimate repair costs when starting out are a contractor and a home inspector. A contractor will be able to pick out things that need to be fixed and give you an estimate on how much it will all cost. A home inspector will perform a detailed inspection and find issues that are not detectable on a cursory walkthrough. Having these two professionals on your team is vital.
If you plan to complete one or two flip houses per year, you can probably get by doing the bulk of the renovations yourself. However, if you want to do much more than that, you will need to build a solid team of contractors. Even when doing a flip yourself, there will often be times that you must call in a contractor because the project is too complicated or it requires a permit. Here is a list of the most common contractors that you will need:
Although you will undoubtedly make many purchases at the big box stores during your flipping project, you should not solely depend on them for materials. There are likely other stores in your area that offer materials at much lower prices. Some ideas to look for are salvage warehouses and local building supplies. The most critical time to find these discounts is when you make large purchases, such as flooring for a large section of the house or kitchen cabinets. One discount you can often get from the big box stores is on appliances. They often mark down returned appliances significantly. Just be sure that there is nothing major wrong with them before buying them for your flip house.
Although you could try to list the house yourself and save the money typically spent on agent commissions, it is generally not advised. Like with the rehab projects on a flip house, you must determine what is worth your time and what is better to delegate. The time you spend marketing your home and showing it to prospective buyers could be spent generating more deals.
Not only that, but juggling all of the queries and offers from potential buyers can be complicated. Mishandling this process could result in you leaving a significant amount of money on the table – much more than you would have paid an agent to sell your house. Finding an agent that knows your market well and is experienced in selling homes will result in a much smoother sales process and more money in your pocket.
To be a successful house flipper, you will need to develop quite a few skills. And don’t worry, they don’t all have to be perfected upfront. It will be more of a process where they improve as you complete more projects. But here are the skills you should be working on.
Most people thinking about getting into house flipping immediately think they need to start watching HGTV shows to get design ideas and find the latest trends, but success in real estate investing is largely due to how you interact with people. If you can’t effectively communicate with a homeowner to diagnose the problems they are facing and present a solution that involves you buying their house, you will be hard-pressed to get started on your house-flipping journey. But if you can refine this skill and learn the right questions to ask, your possibilities as a house flipper are endless.
Once you purchase a house to begin renovating, keeping everything organized is vital. The first step is to lay out a detailed scope of work upfront. This will give you a clear path forward instead of your project evolving as you go. Having a scope of work will also allow you to determine the proper order of your renovations.
Secondly, you must maintain constant communication with your contractors to ensure they are on schedule. Many home improvement projects happen in series, meaning one task can’t begin until another is completed. For example, if your drywall guy is behind and takes an extra week to get to your project, your painter won’t be able to start on time and will have to fit you into the next opening in his schedule.
Lastly, you must keep a watchful eye on materials to ensure you and your contractors have everything needed for the project. Many items may need to be ordered, so it is unwise to wait until something is needed to go to the store and buy it.
Eventually, a house-flipping project comes down to making design decisions based on what is practical, affordable, and will improve the house’s value. It would be difficult to make these decisions and have intelligent conversations with contractors without basic knowledge of how houses are constructed. If you don’t have much experience with home renovation tasks, your best options will be to begin on smaller projects that only require cosmetic updates or partner with someone with more experience with construction.
Even if you decide to hire contractors for the bulk of the renovation tasks on your house, there will likely be some times when it makes the most sense for you to do something yourself. Here are the some of the most common handyman tasks when flipping a house:
House flipping can be a fantastic way to supplement your income or start a new career. However, as you’ve seen in this article, there is more to it than most people think. And these house flipping tips and tricks are just the tip of the iceberg. For more information on how to get started, check out this complete guide to flipping houses written by a professional house flipper. In addition to the topics we’ve covered here, his guide covers more info on funding deals, marketing, running numbers, and selecting appropriate upgrades for your project.
What are your favorite tips and tricks for successfully flipping a house? Let us know in the comments!
Jordan Fulmer is the owner of Momentum Property Solutions, a house buying company in Huntsville, AL. They specialize in buying houses in tough situations and renovating them to either sell or rent. Jordan also runs the SEO side of their business and regularly writes content about real estate investing, home improvement, SEO, and general real estate topics.
The post Complete House Flipping Guide: Practical Tips From A Seasoned Investor appeared first on Credit Suite.
If I told you that you could become a successful YouTuber/vlogger, would you believe me?
YouTube is certainly saturated; 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. There are dozens of million-dollar YouTubers and bloggers creating thousands of hours of video a year.
How could you possibly break through the noise?
Well, I’m here to tell you that video blogging still has huge potential.
Just look at the growth of video ad investment among brands and agencies and where it’s predicted to go:
It might not be as easy as it was several years ago to break onto the vlogging scene, but video is more important than ever to build a successful online marketing strategy.
Why?
First, video remains one of the best and most effective ways for people to get to know you.
When leads see you, their brain develops an impression of you that helps to build trust. You’re not just an anonymous content creator trying to drive your business. You’re a real person.
Second, video is a preferred method people have for gaining information. The stats don’t lie. People spend 2.6 times longer on pages with video than those without.
Third, the cost of good equipment keeps on falling, and the cameras in our phones keep getting better.
Fourth, video has a strong impact on the user experience, and therefore SEO. A video on your site can increase organic traffic by 157%. Check out this infographic:
Finally, video blogging can be lucrative in itself. The top YouTubers and vloggers make between $14 and $22 million dollars a year.
The power of video is undeniable.
All of this brings up the question: how can you become a successful YouTuber?
Below are the steps you need to take to become a successful YouTuber, from starting a vlog and coming up with concepts for a video series to making a quality video and making sure people find your videos.
Many people start by coming up with one idea for one video. That would be like starting a blog with an idea for only one article. As you probably know, that wouldn’t get you very far.
I explain how long content marketing takes in this video:
Video, like any other form of content marketing, needs a long-term strategy defined by a subject, tone of voice, and approach.
Here’s a question to ask yourself:
“What am I trying to convey to my audience?”
Once you know what you’re trying to do, you can define your vlogging content concept:
You have to document your plan to determine if it’s going to be feasible for long enough to achieve your goals.
The reality is people need to see consistency in order to understand why they should subscribe to your channel.
If you are making random, sporadic videos, it’s going to be harder to convince people to follow you.
The content of your video will be what determines your success.
That is, of course, only if you make quality videos.
Video making is a complicated profession. When you see all of the elements that go into shooting a television broadcast or feature film, you will worry you’ll never be able to create anything like that.
The truth is, you probably can’t- and that’s okay.
People who are going to watch your video on your blog are not expecting a Steven Spielberg production.
People understand what vlogging is.
But that doesn’t mean that you should not care about quality. Quality is still super important.
Luckily, the cost of creating quality videos has been steadily dropping and continues to drop. There are more and more types of equipment available that can make your video go from amateur to professional-looking.
You might be tempted to use your iPhone.
And honestly, cameras on smartphones have gotten amazing over the years. You have probably taken some great photos and videos on your phone already.
But smartphone cameras are difficult for serious video blogging for the following reasons:
Selfie videos are best used for things like Instagram Stories.
They can be a part of your video strategy but shouldn’t be the foundation of it.
Cameras range in quality a lot, from basic models that run in the low hundreds to professional gear that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Most DSLR cameras also have video modes, though the options can be just as limited as on smartphones.
If you don’t know, DSLR cameras look like this:
The good news is that if you’re not chasing snow leopards in the wild, you won’t need all of those fancy settings.
What you need is a camera with a good lens that’s can take high-quality video. Not 4K necessarily, but enough quality to be able to work with if you want to add any extras.
You can find refurbished HD digital video cameras like this one for under $200.
Then, mount that camera onto a tripod. Nothing is worse than shaky video.
You could always place your camera on a table or shelf, but tripods are very affordable and give you 100% control of your filming.
Full-size tripods can go for less than $20, so there’s really no excuse not to have one.
You can either get a camera with a mic-in jack to plug in an external microphone (something you can also do when filming with your smartphone), or you can buy a USB microphone and record the sound directly to your computer.
It depends on the type of conditions you’re filming in, but you usually don’t want to capture sound directly from the camera.
Separating the recording between two devices adds the challenge of having to sync up sound and image later.
You can overcome this by creating a clap sound that spikes up your audio visualizer for each syncing, then you line that up with the audio from the video.
I can’t stress the importance of having great sound in your videos. Sound is one of our fundamental senses and it should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Here are a few ways to leverage the power of sound:
Simply put, poorly recorded audio can turn people off and get in the way of you getting your message across.
Lighting videos is an art all unto itself. But it’s surprisingly easy to get a great effect since there are normally only three primary lights in a video setup.
The important thing is to separate yourself or your subject from the background. You can do this with the focus and depth of field, of course. But it really looks professional when there is a difference in lighting as well.
You don’t even need a professional lighting setup.
You can create a fairly decent lighting setup from lamps that you might have around the house.
You can also buy LED board lights that diffuse really well without getting hot — one of the drawbacks of using incandescent bulbs. You can buy versions that you can mount on your camera if you aren’t shooting in a controlled environment.
As a general rule, it’s better to be brighter. The image is clearer since the camera captures more light and therefore more detail.
It’s great to be able to speak off the cuff effortlessly. There are some YouTubers with a natural style that works really well. Take the beauty YouTuber Freddy My Love. Her effortless and natural style has been honed from years of practice.
Chances are, you will need help to deliver content in a clear and structured way.
You could memorize talking points and do a couple of takes. Then you can splice together the best parts.
That’s a longer process, though, than using a teleprompter.
A teleprompter makes it easier to hit all of the important points without memorizing or awkwardly transitioning between them. You could even write a script to follow verbatim.
But it’s more than a time saver. It drastically improves the way that you interact with your viewers.
Having notes or something written off screen causes you to break eye contact when you’re addressing your audience directly.
According to a study by Cornell University, humans will naturally increase eye contact with people that we admire or like.
Conversely, we tend to break eye contact when talking about embarrassing or uncomfortable subjects.
Viewers will subscribe to YouTubers and vloggers they respect. You can look directly into the eyes of your viewers while still reading your script or bullet points.
A teleprompter might seem complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple.
Teleprompting uses a slanted piece of glass to reflect the words so you can read them.
As long as there is darkness between the glass and the camera lens, the camera won’t pick up the light reflecting from the text on the glass. The camera will only see you.
You, however, will be able to clearly read the text as it scrolls. It looks like this:
You can buy a teleprompting setup and use your iPad or tablet with a teleprompting app.
There are also more advanced models that hook up to pedals for your feet that control how quickly the text scrolls.
If all that sounds like way too much, you can always try to build one yourself with a CD case and your smartphone to see if you like it.
This might sound a bit controversial – and I’m OK with that because I want you to have all of the options available to becoming successful – but people like watching videos with people who are put together.
(This explains why so many movie stars can be bad at acting.)
You don’t need to be Brad Pitt, and you definitely shouldn’t go overboard, but make an effort.
You’ve got an HD camera and a lighting setup. People have never seen you as clearly as right now.
For example, when you light yourself there will almost certainly be shiny parts of your skin. That’s your natural skin oil.
The most common makeup is a powder that absorbs oil so that your skin appears smooth without reflecting too much light.
Try testing your lighting setup and seeing where your skin is a bit too shiny.
Just to be clear, this goes for men as much as women.
Then, apply a powder if needed. Your video (and you) will look a whole lot more professional.
Making videos is like any other skill. You will get better at it the more you do it.
Video editing makes your life a lot easier by making it easier to cut between the best takes to more rapidly built your content.
Video editing software is easy to find — and use. iMovie comes on all macs and is available as an app on iOS.
The drag-and-drop interface makes it a snap to use.
If you are ever wondering how to do something, like shorten a transition or overlay an image, there are tons of tutorials on YouTube.
The bottom line is that you should be creating a lot of content. The majority of it you might not even use. But you get better and better each time you try something new.
And you should be careful to avoid oversharing. Instead, you should focus on a more qualitative approach.
Even if you think you did something great the first time through, force yourself to try it again.
You never know when you’re going to stumble onto something great.
OK, you’ve got the keys to actually making your videos to execute your strategy, now comes the hard part.
When you make a video, you are in control of everything.
You decide how much you can invest time and money into creating your video. You decide who you work with and what you want the outcome to be.
Then, you decide when you put it online.
You don’t decide when other people watch it.
You can only try to grab their attention.
Getting people to watch your video can be difficult, but there are many steps that you can take to maximize your potential audience and get more people to click play.
The first thing that many people will see is the thumbnail on the player before they start the video.
In fact, this is the piece of communication that reaches all the people that come across your video but don’t play it.
That digital real estate is your little promo box and can drive engagement. Take the time to make it great.
Here are two examples from Gary Vaynerchuk. He varies the style of the thumbnail from a photo collage with the title in a fun YouTube-style:
To a more elegant and serious tone when his subject matter is more inspirational:
There’s one thing you will always see in the thumbnail though: the title.
It’s crucial real estate that you can entirely personalize to get people to click.
You will have to abide by the brand values and guidelines, but you should create something custom to make sure you are putting your best foot forward.
To add a thumbnail to your video, click on the video in your video manager.
Then, in the middle of the screen next to the player, you will see a few images that come from your video that you can select as your thumbnail.
Click on upload image to add your own custom image. The best size is 1280 x 720 pixels. A 16:9 ratio works best since that’s the format of the layout.
Remember, though, that you have to keep your thumbnail under 2 MB.
I’m not just talking about Google search here.
YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine by itself. All of those searches are powering an insane amount of views.
To optimize for search, you need to work on your descriptions. YouTube can’t crawl through your videos like Googlebot crawls through your website.
You need to lend a helping hand to get YouTube SEO right. Here are a couple of things you can do:
There are also a few of the advanced settings that are helpful to turn on. These features are mostly located under the “Tags” box as seen in the image above.
If your video is focused on a local area, you should add a localization to the video.
Then, you want to drive as many views as possible so you should make sure that the two options are enabled: allow embedding and notify subscribers.
This way people can share your video on their websites, and you can benefit from their traffic to drive views.
And wouldn’t it be silly if your subscribers didn’t know you had a new video? It’s checked on by default but just double-check.
Anyone who has watched your video to its completion is probably very interested in what you have to say. That is the best time of all to catch them.
YouTube developed end screens to keep people’s attention at the end of your video.
20 seconds before the end of your video, and/or for a bit afterward, you can present related or featured videos to your viewers.
To do that, go to your YouTube Studio account and click on Content (the red box with a “play” icon on the left-hand side). This will open your videos. Select the video you want to add an end screen to. The video will open along with data boxes. On the right-hand side, there is an “end screen” box.
The end screen adds extra time to the end of your video where you can do two key things: promote your other videos and get people to subscribe to your channel.
Click on the Add element button.
You’ll see a dropdown menu with a few different options. All of them are great for driving traffic.
YouTube provides three options for promoting your other videos and playlists that are pretty great.
You can choose to feature your most recently uploaded videos, or you can choose a specific video that you want to promote.
Or you can let YouTube do the work and automatically recommend videos from your channel that would be the most relevant for each viewer.
You could even link out to other people’s videos if you want.
When you add a video, it will display the thumbnail plus the title and the duration of the video:
You can reposition and resize the video.
You can add up to four elements to expose people to as many of your videos as possible.
If you want to create a successful vlog, you need to increase your subscribers.
Views come and go.
Subscribers are more than people that happened to see your video.
They are people who were so happy with that video that they want to see more. They are anticipating that you will give them something great again.
What’s more, media outlets and brands looking to partner with YouTubers will use subscribers as their key metric when evaluating opportunities.
The most important is adding the subscribe action. When you do you will see your channel’s avatar in a round circle.
You can position this button wherever you want on the screen.
You can also use the end screen we discussed above to increase subscribers.
Don’t forget to add a link to subscribe to your website, email signature, and Instagram bio. It’s not just enough to add the YouTube link. You should tell people something clear like “Subscribe to see more videos.”
Live video is the new wild west in digital marketing. It represents a lot of opportunities. It’s much easier to be featured on the Live home page than the regular YouTube homepage.
I’ve written all about how you go live on YouTube and why it’s important.
Live also gives you the opportunity to interact directly with people while they watch you.
You can instantaneously respond to people’s questions that come up in the chat. This creates a real-time relationship.
Start by choosing a platform. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and many other platforms host videos. Then you’ll want to decide on the content you want to share and start researching your audience.
It varies by industry and how successful you are at reaching your audience. Most channels only pay a few cents per thousand views. However, you can use your vlog to promote other products or services.
No. You can start a vlog with a webcam or even a smartphone. There are also free and affordable editing tools.
Vlogging can be part of your overall content marketing strategy or you can use video content to push subscribers to paid products or services. People watch videos to learn and be entertained, so make sure to offer value if you want to use a vlog to market your business.
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Video blogging is becoming more and more important for content marketing.
And there’s no time like right now to get started in video marketing.
Organize your thoughts, sit down, and create a concept for a video series.
Like all content marketing, your video needs to give the viewer something of value, whether that be informative or educational or entertainment.
Then, make that video with the highest quality that your time and budget allows.
If it’s helpful, read some books about cinematography. I recommend Gustavo Mercado’s The Filmmaker’s Eye. You can skim through to get the basics about things like shot composition.
Finally, whatever you do, don’t forget to get your video in front of people.
You could make the best video the world has ever seen, but that won’t make you a successful YouTuber.
What are your experiences with YouTube and vlogging?
New York and San Francisco have proof of vaccination rules coming for indoor restaurants and bars, and some venues are going to great pains to enforce them.
The post Dispatches from a Pandemic: Meet the vaccine bouncers: ‘If our options are a complete lockdown or asking people to flash their card — I prefer the flashing of the card’ appeared first on WE TEACH MONEY LIFE SELF DEFENSE WITH FINANCIAL GOALS IN MIND.
The post Dispatches from a Pandemic: Meet the vaccine bouncers: ‘If our options are a complete lockdown or asking people to flash their card — I prefer the flashing of the card’ appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
Is outbound marketing right for your business?
How do you decide which strategies are going to help you grow your brand?
If you’ve got questions about outbound, then you’ve come to the right place.
Outbound marketing is where you (the business) initiate conversations with your customers to attract them to your brand. For example, TV commercials, cold calls, paid ads, and direct mail are all examples of outbound.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is when your customer initiates a conversation with you. For example, they visit your website, read an ebook, or download a white paper.
The goal for outbound marketing is to actively build authentic relationships through engagement, targeted communications, and putting your company in the right place at the right time.
There’s no denying that inbound marketing has grown in popularity in recent years (and with good reason, as it produces tremendous results.) However, outbound still takes up 90 percent of marketing budgets due to the high cost per outreach.
To improve your ROI in outbound, you need to allocate your budget to the methods that work for your brand. Below, we’ll cover some strategies to try, but first, let’s talk about its relevancy.
Every business owner loves to cut costs. When you, as a consumer, immediately delete a sales promotion email from your inbox without looking at it, you might wonder why that business would continually persist with an outbound strategy.
The likelihood is, they’ve built a huge mailing list and their promotions go to every single email address—paying no heed as to whether each customer is directly their target audience or not.
Why? They’ve invested in building a mailing list, and outbound marketing is still an extremely useful tool. It’s amazingly good at driving brand awareness (as long as your emails aren’t repetitive enough that a customer ends up hating you), maintaining brand relevance, and introducing products to new audiences. It helps you be at the forefront of your customer’s mind, for recommendations, word of mouth marketing, and lead generation.
Inbound marketing is great, and especially for smaller and low-budget businesses, but if customers don’t know your products exist in the first place, they can’t search for something they aren’t aware of.
Outbound marketing guarantees you reach people. You won’t be shouting into the void. Blogs are great for SEO and hoping Google’s Algorithm will take pity on you, but when you pay for a TV ad in a half-time break of a popular show: you know it’s going to be seen.
It can be expensive, but, when done correctly, it still provides a good ROI and is still relevant today as a complement to inbound marketing.
Most marketing success comes through a combination of different strategies. Whether it’s inbound or outbound, there are lots of different ways to reach your target audience, and often it will take lots of different strategies to achieve your goals.
Here are seven outbound sales strategies you can use to boost your marketing.
Email seems to have been around a long time now, but it’s still bringing in an incredible ROI for marketers.
We’re all accustomed to receiving newsletters from websites, but we tend to forget about an important part of outbound strategy: cold email.
Cold emails are unsolicited emails you send out to prospects. You’re initiating the interaction, so it firmly fits in with the principles of outbound marketing.
“Everybody hates receiving unsolicited emails, spam is the worst.”
Well, what if your cold emails didn’t feel like unsolicited emails? What if they were highly personalized, respected your customer’s time, and actually offered value to them beyond a product that can fix “all of life’s problems?”
Outbound marketing doesn’t have to be pushy, impersonal, sales-based spam. It can have all the creativity of inbound marketing. Using your understanding of your target audience, you can craft cold emails that get responses and create leads.
Here are some things you will want to concentrate on with your cold emails:
Small details make a big difference, for example, 30 percent of people open an email based on the subject line, so make sure you’re optimizing every aspect of your outbound marketing.
First, I recommend “cutting edge technology” with emails, and now I’m telling you to send people letters through the mail?
Well, yes!
So much of our lives might have moved online, but we still exist away from the internet and we still receive mail. As it turns out, we still enjoy seeing something in the mailbox with our names on it, and this is an effective way of using outbound marketing.
This scientific study found brand recall is 70 percent higher among participants exposed to direct mail than an online ad. It may not have the fancy analytics, and you may not be able to put a GIF on it, but it’s certainly a good way to gain traction for your brand, and can still be relevant to your ethos, voice, and how you want to present yourself.
Just take a look at KitKat’s amusing example:
Estimates for the average ROI from direct mail vary a lot, and, like with most outbound marketing, it’s all about how good your campaign is.
With direct mail, it’s important to:
It might not seem like it fits with the digital age, but direct mail is still a useful outbound strategy.
Paid search ads can be seen as a cross between inbound and outbound marketing. While the targeted user has likely actively searched for information related to your products, you’re still artificially placing your brand in front of them in a way more reminiscent of outbound marketing.
Search ads are great for immediate success.
With SEO, you write an article and watch as the search engines gradually start to rank it. When it does start to bring in traffic, it’s an amazing tool because you’re not paying for clicks, but it takes time and there’s no guarantee of success.
When you invest in paid search ads, you give your brand an immediate presence in the SERPs, almost guaranteeing you traffic. Of course, you will be paying for each click which means the most important thing with search ads is optimization.
Not only do your ads have to be on-point, but so do your landing pages (here’s how I make sure my landing pages are converting).
Clearly set out what you’re trying to achieve with your paid ads and make sure everything is streamlined toward driving action from your customers. Small issues such as a clunky checkout page can hurt your conversion rate and make a big difference to your ROI on your search ads.
The average conversion rate for search ads on the Google network is 4.4 percent, but the hard work you put in might see you push well beyond this.
Here’s my “Guide to Google Ads” to help you out.
Billions of people are on social media every day. The average daily usage of social media is two hours and 25 minutes.
In marketing, we talk a lot about reaching your customers where they’re hanging out, and the data shows this is overwhelmingly on social media. If you’re not running social media ads, then you’re missing out.
Social media is becoming more and more “pay to play,” increasingly making it an outbound tool. Paid social media is:
The average organic post reaches just five percent of your followers, so you need a huge following to make a difference with organic social media. Paid ads on the other hand allow you to immediately reach a highly targeted audience.
One of the most powerful aspects of advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn is targeting. These companies have an incredible amount of data on their users and you can use this to be extremely targeted, serving your ads to the people they’re going to have the most impact on.
Marketing may have shifted focus from the physical world to the digital one, but that certainly doesn’t mean getting out and meeting people is a dead art. One of the best ways to get your brand in front of a targeted audience is by attending a trade show.
This can represent a large upfront cost (on average it costs $100-$150 per square foot of floor space), but the exposure and new connections you make can be well worth it.
Maintaining brand relevance is something that takes constant commitment, and having a stand at a major trade show is one of the ways you can do this. Just think of any major trade show, and you’ll expect the biggest brands to be there. For example, what would an international farming show be without John Deere?
It may seem like these companies are so big it doesn’t matter whether they attend a trade show, but they recognize that to remain relevant you’ve got to be visible.
When planning for a tradeshow, make sure you’re setting goals and managing your budget appropriately.
Outbound doesn’t always have the best reputation and cold calls certainly fit this picture. Despite this, the inescapable reality is cold calling works for many businesses.
Sales and marketing are still about reaching new audiences and starting conversations and that’s exactly what cold calling allows you to do. Of course, there are good and bad ways of doing this, and you need to consider your approach carefully.
Again, it’s easy to look at cold calling and think it’s all about numbers. Sure, outbound relies on volume, but the most important aspect is still quality, in this case, the quality of the conversations you can have.
This is why there’s a push away from scripted sales pitches towards approaches like SPIN selling where the focus is on helping the customer to solve their problems (if you’ve read my inbound marketing articles then you know this is something I talk about all the time).
If you’re thinking about using cold calling as part of your outbound strategy then keep these important points in mind:
Online marketing has transformed the way businesses advertise, but traditional advertising is far from dead.
There are lots of online places you can advertise your business and continue to grow your brand. TV and radio ads may require a bigger investment than other forms. like PPC but they still bring in big results.
The average American might spend more than two hours a day on social media, but traditional TV consumption is even higher among the older generations:
Consumption of traditional media might be changing but it’s still there—and therefore it’s still a big opportunity for marketers. Make sure you understand your target demographics and are showcasing your brand with creative messaging and you can still see an excellent return on your investment.
Outbound relies on the business initiating the interaction whereas inbound marketing relies on the customer searching for your brand.
Social media can be both inbound and outbound. Paid social media ads would be classed as outbound, whereas organic reach is inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is often effective because it’s immediate. You’re not waiting for people to find you, you’re putting your brand in front of people and initiating interactions.
No, it is very much alive. Many businesses still use outbound to achieve a good return on their investment.
Examples include paid search ads, social media ads, cold email, cold calls, trade shows, and tv/radio/print ads.
Outbound marketing is something that’s still relevant today. It’s a great complement for your inbound marketing and an excellent way to grow your brand.
Marketing is a competitive field, and sometimes you can’t rely on people coming to you, instead, you’ve got to put your name out there and guarantee you’re getting exposure. In these cases, cold emails, search ads, social media ads, trade shows, cold calls, and traditional media ads can make a huge difference.
The most important thing to remember is that many of the same principles of inbound marketing still apply to outbound. You still need to understand your target audience, and you’ve got to be able to provide value and help solve people’s pain points.
If you can successfully do this, then outbound marketing can be an important part of your strategy.
What’s your favorite outbound marketing strategy?
The post A Complete Guide to Outbound Marketing appeared first on #1 SEO FOR SMALL BUSINESSES.
The post A Complete Guide to Outbound Marketing appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
Is outbound marketing right for your business?
How do you decide which strategies are going to help you grow your brand?
If you’ve got questions about outbound, then you’ve come to the right place.
Outbound marketing is where you (the business) initiate conversations with your customers to attract them to your brand. For example, TV commercials, cold calls, paid ads, and direct mail are all examples of outbound.
Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is when your customer initiates a conversation with you. For example, they visit your website, read an ebook, or download a white paper.
The goal for outbound marketing is to actively build authentic relationships through engagement, targeted communications, and putting your company in the right place at the right time.
There’s no denying that inbound marketing has grown in popularity in recent years (and with good reason, as it produces tremendous results.) However, outbound still takes up 90 percent of marketing budgets due to the high cost per outreach.
To improve your ROI in outbound, you need to allocate your budget to the methods that work for your brand. Below, we’ll cover some strategies to try, but first, let’s talk about its relevancy.
Every business owner loves to cut costs. When you, as a consumer, immediately delete a sales promotion email from your inbox without looking at it, you might wonder why that business would continually persist with an outbound strategy.
The likelihood is, they’ve built a huge mailing list and their promotions go to every single email address—paying no heed as to whether each customer is directly their target audience or not.
Why? They’ve invested in building a mailing list, and outbound marketing is still an extremely useful tool. It’s amazingly good at driving brand awareness (as long as your emails aren’t repetitive enough that a customer ends up hating you), maintaining brand relevance, and introducing products to new audiences. It helps you be at the forefront of your customer’s mind, for recommendations, word of mouth marketing, and lead generation.
Inbound marketing is great, and especially for smaller and low-budget businesses, but if customers don’t know your products exist in the first place, they can’t search for something they aren’t aware of.
Outbound marketing guarantees you reach people. You won’t be shouting into the void. Blogs are great for SEO and hoping Google’s Algorithm will take pity on you, but when you pay for a TV ad in a half-time break of a popular show: you know it’s going to be seen.
It can be expensive, but, when done correctly, it still provides a good ROI and is still relevant today as a complement to inbound marketing.
Most marketing success comes through a combination of different strategies. Whether it’s inbound or outbound, there are lots of different ways to reach your target audience, and often it will take lots of different strategies to achieve your goals.
Here are seven outbound sales strategies you can use to boost your marketing.
Email seems to have been around a long time now, but it’s still bringing in an incredible ROI for marketers.
We’re all accustomed to receiving newsletters from websites, but we tend to forget about an important part of outbound strategy: cold email.
Cold emails are unsolicited emails you send out to prospects. You’re initiating the interaction, so it firmly fits in with the principles of outbound marketing.
“Everybody hates receiving unsolicited emails, spam is the worst.”
Well, what if your cold emails didn’t feel like unsolicited emails? What if they were highly personalized, respected your customer’s time, and actually offered value to them beyond a product that can fix “all of life’s problems?”
Outbound marketing doesn’t have to be pushy, impersonal, sales-based spam. It can have all the creativity of inbound marketing. Using your understanding of your target audience, you can craft cold emails that get responses and create leads.
Here are some things you will want to concentrate on with your cold emails:
Small details make a big difference, for example, 30 percent of people open an email based on the subject line, so make sure you’re optimizing every aspect of your outbound marketing.
First, I recommend “cutting edge technology” with emails, and now I’m telling you to send people letters through the mail?
Well, yes!
So much of our lives might have moved online, but we still exist away from the internet and we still receive mail. As it turns out, we still enjoy seeing something in the mailbox with our names on it, and this is an effective way of using outbound marketing.
This scientific study found brand recall is 70 percent higher among participants exposed to direct mail than an online ad. It may not have the fancy analytics, and you may not be able to put a GIF on it, but it’s certainly a good way to gain traction for your brand, and can still be relevant to your ethos, voice, and how you want to present yourself.
Just take a look at KitKat’s amusing example:
Estimates for the average ROI from direct mail vary a lot, and, like with most outbound marketing, it’s all about how good your campaign is.
With direct mail, it’s important to:
It might not seem like it fits with the digital age, but direct mail is still a useful outbound strategy.
Paid search ads can be seen as a cross between inbound and outbound marketing. While the targeted user has likely actively searched for information related to your products, you’re still artificially placing your brand in front of them in a way more reminiscent of outbound marketing.
Search ads are great for immediate success.
With SEO, you write an article and watch as the search engines gradually start to rank it. When it does start to bring in traffic, it’s an amazing tool because you’re not paying for clicks, but it takes time and there’s no guarantee of success.
When you invest in paid search ads, you give your brand an immediate presence in the SERPs, almost guaranteeing you traffic. Of course, you will be paying for each click which means the most important thing with search ads is optimization.
Not only do your ads have to be on-point, but so do your landing pages (here’s how I make sure my landing pages are converting).
Clearly set out what you’re trying to achieve with your paid ads and make sure everything is streamlined toward driving action from your customers. Small issues such as a clunky checkout page can hurt your conversion rate and make a big difference to your ROI on your search ads.
The average conversion rate for search ads on the Google network is 4.4 percent, but the hard work you put in might see you push well beyond this.
Here’s my “Guide to Google Ads” to help you out.
Billions of people are on social media every day. The average daily usage of social media is two hours and 25 minutes.
In marketing, we talk a lot about reaching your customers where they’re hanging out, and the data shows this is overwhelmingly on social media. If you’re not running social media ads, then you’re missing out.
Social media is becoming more and more “pay to play,” increasingly making it an outbound tool. Paid social media is:
The average organic post reaches just five percent of your followers, so you need a huge following to make a difference with organic social media. Paid ads on the other hand allow you to immediately reach a highly targeted audience.
One of the most powerful aspects of advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn is targeting. These companies have an incredible amount of data on their users and you can use this to be extremely targeted, serving your ads to the people they’re going to have the most impact on.
Marketing may have shifted focus from the physical world to the digital one, but that certainly doesn’t mean getting out and meeting people is a dead art. One of the best ways to get your brand in front of a targeted audience is by attending a trade show.
This can represent a large upfront cost (on average it costs $100-$150 per square foot of floor space), but the exposure and new connections you make can be well worth it.
Maintaining brand relevance is something that takes constant commitment, and having a stand at a major trade show is one of the ways you can do this. Just think of any major trade show, and you’ll expect the biggest brands to be there. For example, what would an international farming show be without John Deere?
It may seem like these companies are so big it doesn’t matter whether they attend a trade show, but they recognize that to remain relevant you’ve got to be visible.
When planning for a tradeshow, make sure you’re setting goals and managing your budget appropriately.
Outbound doesn’t always have the best reputation and cold calls certainly fit this picture. Despite this, the inescapable reality is cold calling works for many businesses.
Sales and marketing are still about reaching new audiences and starting conversations and that’s exactly what cold calling allows you to do. Of course, there are good and bad ways of doing this, and you need to consider your approach carefully.
Again, it’s easy to look at cold calling and think it’s all about numbers. Sure, outbound relies on volume, but the most important aspect is still quality, in this case, the quality of the conversations you can have.
This is why there’s a push away from scripted sales pitches towards approaches like SPIN selling where the focus is on helping the customer to solve their problems (if you’ve read my inbound marketing articles then you know this is something I talk about all the time).
If you’re thinking about using cold calling as part of your outbound strategy then keep these important points in mind:
Online marketing has transformed the way businesses advertise, but traditional advertising is far from dead.
There are lots of online places you can advertise your business and continue to grow your brand. TV and radio ads may require a bigger investment than other forms. like PPC but they still bring in big results.
The average American might spend more than two hours a day on social media, but traditional TV consumption is even higher among the older generations:
Consumption of traditional media might be changing but it’s still there—and therefore it’s still a big opportunity for marketers. Make sure you understand your target demographics and are showcasing your brand with creative messaging and you can still see an excellent return on your investment.
Outbound relies on the business initiating the interaction whereas inbound marketing relies on the customer searching for your brand.
Social media can be both inbound and outbound. Paid social media ads would be classed as outbound, whereas organic reach is inbound marketing.
Outbound marketing is often effective because it’s immediate. You’re not waiting for people to find you, you’re putting your brand in front of people and initiating interactions.
No, it is very much alive. Many businesses still use outbound to achieve a good return on their investment.
Examples include paid search ads, social media ads, cold email, cold calls, trade shows, and tv/radio/print ads.
Outbound marketing is something that’s still relevant today. It’s a great complement for your inbound marketing and an excellent way to grow your brand.
Marketing is a competitive field, and sometimes you can’t rely on people coming to you, instead, you’ve got to put your name out there and guarantee you’re getting exposure. In these cases, cold emails, search ads, social media ads, trade shows, cold calls, and traditional media ads can make a huge difference.
The most important thing to remember is that many of the same principles of inbound marketing still apply to outbound. You still need to understand your target audience, and you’ve got to be able to provide value and help solve people’s pain points.
If you can successfully do this, then outbound marketing can be an important part of your strategy.
What’s your favorite outbound marketing strategy?
If you’re looking to get into video marketing, there’s no better channel than YouTube. They’re the second most visited website on the entire internet, with over 2 billion users, have virtually no competitors, and consumers are increasingly spending more time watching more online videos.
With this flood of consumer attention, it’s no wonder companies are putting more of their ad dollars into digital video advertising.
The good news is you don’t need to flood thousands of dollars in YouTube advertising. If you create a good channel that constantly puts out quality content that people want, you’ll get the attention and eyeballs you need to drive customer acquisition through YouTube.
Here’s how to do just that.
This blog post won’t get into the weeds of how to upload a profile picture, cover image, or the steps to upload a video. YouTube already has those steps. It’s easy, and you don’t need any instructions from me.
I’m going to use this first part of the guide to talk about why you need a great channel layout.
The first step to YouTube marketing is to have a great channel layout. When people come to your channel, they need to know what you’re about and what types of videos you have.
Here’s how my channel looks:
My value proposition and color scheme are simple and match my website. The CTA says how often I publish new videos. My trailer is like an extension of the value prop.
People want to learn SEO and social media marketing from me. So, I’ve created a ton of videos on those topics and organized them into different sections:
This organization makes it easy for people to get an idea of what types of content I publish. If you have a lot of videos, I’d recommend you do the same.
Consistently updating your channel with content will keep your channel feed active, increase your presence on YouTube, and help you build an audience.
You should aim for a minimum of one video per week, but the right amount of content depends on your audience, your goals, and your content.
One simple way to create a steady stream of content is to produce shorter versions of long-form content. Build a theme around a topic and then post bite-size versions of the theme on a weekly basis. This will keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
This is one area you cannot ignore. Titles are very important in YouTube. No matter how great your video content, it won’t matter if you can’t get anyone to actually click on your video in the first place.
There’s a few different tactics I see marketers and creators on YouTube using.
The first one is the sports gossip outlet TMZ Sports. They’re not marketers, but they know how to get attention, and that’s important for marketers. Let’s see if you can find a trend in their titles:
Business Insider follows a similar formula. Let’s see some examples from their YouTube channel:
What TMZ Sports and Business Insider essentially do is write half a sentence and leaves it as a “….”. This means that if you want to find who said what or what the kids should, you’ll have to click on the video to find out.
None of these titles are mistakes. They are intentionally written this way to get you to click.
Is it clickbaiting?
A little bit. But you shouldn’t completely avoid clickbait, because some of it works.
Here’s how to do it yourself.
YouTube’s title character limit is 100, but right around 50-55 characters is where they start to cut off the text on the desktop. This is where you write your cliffhanger. Look what TMZ Sports does when they write their titles.
If I had a video about my SEO hacks, I may write a title like this:
Search Engine Optimization | These four SEO hacks will skyrocket your traffic
The part in italics is what will show as the title on YouTube. You see that I leave a cliffhanger that will make people want to click. I also put in the keywords search engine optimization and SEO in there to make it clear what the video is about.
I’d then put the Google logo in the thumbnail to catch the eye and make sure people know it’s about Google SEO.
Keywords are the other important aspect of YouTube SEO. You need to make sure you put those keywords in your title so it attracts the right audience. Keywords like social media marketing, search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, ROI, and blogging are all keywords you’ll find me using. If you know your niche, you’ll know what keywords you need to use.
Now that we have the title, let’s move onto the visual title – the thumbnail.
Don’t skip this part. Choosing your YouTube thumbnail is just as, if not more, important than crafting a great title.
Let’s first go through a couple of the goofy hacks marketers use on their thumbnails.
Marketers are increasingly using red arrows and circles in their YouTube thumbnails and their social graph images. Here’s what I mean:
There is clearly no need for a red arrow here. So why do they add it? Because it draws eyeballs and clicks.
I’ve used this tactic as well.
You may want to give it a shot and see if it increases your views!
Here’s another hack that marketers like to use: putting your logo on the thumbnail. That way, even if no one clicks your video, you’re still drawing awareness and spreading your brand.
CNN puts its logo on every thumbnail:
Look how big that logo is. Does it need to be that big? Of course not, but it spreads the CNN brand, even to people who won’t click and watch the video.
I do the same thing, but instead of a logo, I use my face and include my brand colors.
I don’t need to put my face on this thumbnail, but it helps my fans recognize me. And if people aren’t familiar with me, they’ll see the title of this video and wonder who the heck that guy is and may click and video and be introduced.
Just remember that viewers shouldn’t feel like they’ve been tricked into viewing your video. Your thumbnail needs to accurately represent the content of your video.
To increase your reach on YouTube, make it a priority to identify and reach out to other similar channels to cross-promote or collaborate in a mutually beneficial manner.
This doesn’t mean that you need a huge following on YouTube already. You can use your email list, social following, or even embed videos on your website to drive traffic.
We’ve covered how to get people to click on your videos and cross-promoting. Now let’s go on to another facet of marketing on YouTube, which covers optimizing your videos for YouTube search.
YouTube is the second most popular search engine, and with 30,000 hours of video uploaded every minute, you have your fair share of competitors.
Here’s how to put your best foot forward to get near the top of YouTube’s search results (without having to pay for it):
YouTube has a great section detailing how marketers and creators can write great descriptions. I’d recommend you take a look at that if you need a full guide.
The part that I want to emphasize is the importance of using keywords early in your description. Here are the keywords I put in one of my videos:
When you know what keywords you’re trying to rank well for, you can put those in the title and description. You can also mention those keywords in the video and put those in your closed captions.
Just never force anything and keyword stuff. It just makes you look spammy and untrustworthy.
Your descriptions should be at least one paragraph. YouTube gives you 5000 characters to write. Don’t be bashful. Use as much of it as you need to.
I use my description as a transcript. But I also put links to my blog and social above the fold. So even if people don’t read the entire description, they still see links to read my blog or get in contact with my social:
Write descriptions with keywords. Make it easy for people to find more information about you.
Ever remembered a great line from a TV show, typed it into Google or YouTube, and found the exact clip on YouTube?
If that great line wasn’t in the title or the description, then you found that because the search engines used the captions to find the video.
That alone should convince you that you need to have captions available for your videos.
You can use the automatic captioning. You can take those and edit them, or add your own.
The key to optimizing your tags is to place your important terms first. Use quotes for keyword phrases such as “video production” and provide a blend of common and long-tail keywords.
You want to provide enough tags to thoroughly and accurately describe your video. Think about what your potential viewer may be searching for on YouTube.
When watching a video on YouTube, how often near the end of the video do you hear the phrase, “If you liked this video please give it a thumbs up or make a comment”.
That’s because more likes and comments signal to YouTube that the video is getting audience engagement. People are talking about it and rating it. It struck a chord with them.
As a result, YouTube will rank it higher in their search results.
Another thing that will get a higher ranking is a large number of people subscribing to your channel, and most good YouTube creators and marketers know this. That’s why they ask you to subscribe.
I could write an entire article on getting more YouTube subscriptions. And fortunately, I have. Take a look if you want more subscribers.
This is the last part of this blog post, but you should treat it as the most important part of YouTube marketing.
If you’re relatively unknown, then the first few seconds of a video are absolutely crucial to get exactly right. They “hook” the viewer in so they want to watch your entire video.
I’m sure you’ve all seen some ads from Tai Lopez. But have you actually watched them to truly understand what makes him such a great creator?
This was one of Tai’s ads:
When creating an ad, you have five seconds to hook the viewer in so they watch more of your video. You see what Tai Lopez does? The background is him standing in a mansion, and the first thing he says is that he’s going to give you a tour of his mansion.
Then he introduces himself. To keep you watching, he gives you a video tour of the mansion while he talks about himself and what he offers. This is great marketing that few people have done.
Who would want to click “Skip Ad” on this video?
Can you imagine if he was sitting at a desk with a white wall as his background giving the same talk? No one would watch it.
Your videos should work the same way. Even if they aren’t ads, you should treat it them as such. Hook the viewer in with visuals and a few great opening lines. Then keep them entertained. Watch what I do in this video:
My hook comes in with high energy naming companies I’ve ghost-written for. The rest of my intro (which is only 15 seconds) outlines what the video is about and why you can benefit by watching the rest of my presentation.
The key to a successful marketing campaign, even on YouTube, is creating clear and concise calls to action. Depending on the message, you can use the beginning, middle, or end of a video to direct the actions of your viewers.
Having too many prompts can cause confusion, so keep your CTAs minimal and simple. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to perform an action.
Here are a few important actions to use on your videos:
Want to grow your business with YouTube? Here’s a complete guide to building a successful YouTube channel to market your business.
Use branded images, a video trailer, and organize videos by topics.
Aim for a minimum of one video per week, but the right amount of content depends on your audience, your goals, and your content.
Write a cliffhanger, but make sure to include key terms.
Use arrows and circles to draw attention to your video and consider including a logo to stand out.
Make it a priority to identify and reach out to other similar channels to cross-promote or collaborate in a mutually beneficial manner.
Use your title and description to target important key terms and increase your visibility.
Ever remembered a great line from a TV show, typed it into Google or YouTube, and found the exact clip on YouTube? If that great line wasn’t in the title or the description, then you found that because the search engines used the captions to find the video.
The key to optimizing your tags is to place your important terms first. Use quotes for keyword phrases such as “video production” and provide a blend of common and long-tail keywords.
More likes and comments signals to YouTube that the video is getting audience engagement, and YouTube will rank it higher in their search results.
The first few seconds of a video are absolutely crucial to get exactly right. They “hook” the viewer in so that they want to watch your entire video.
Having too many prompts can cause confusion, so keep your CTAs minimal and simple. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to perform an action.
Congratulations, you made it all the way through this massive guide. Now you are set to become the next YouTube star! Or, at the very least, build a relationship with your target audience through this massively popular platform.
Apply the principles outlined here and grow your presence on YouTube. Remember, it may not work on the first try, but continuing to produce high-quality content on YouTube can deliver amazing results.
Success on YouTube comes with time and practice, so get out there and start shooting your video!
What YouTube marketing techniques have you learned?
If you need to buy commercial real estate, it is probably best to do with business credit rather than a personal loan. Of course, if you can buy real estate with any loan at all, that’s even better. But how would you do that? How do you go about using business credit to buy real estate? What is business credit exactly? These are all questions that you need answered.
To put it simply, business credit is credit you get based on the creditworthiness, or fundability, of your business, no you the owner.
Find out why so many companies use our proven methods to get business loans.
So, what are the options for funding real estate? There are a few! If you are using business credit to buy real estate, you can do a commercial loan or hard money loan. If you want to try to reduce the amount of debt you have to take on, you can try crowdfunding a well. You may get all you need, but you may need to combine funding methods.
Crowdfunding real estate is not all that different from crowdfunding anything else. You use a crowdfunding platform, and others on the platform can donate, or invest, in your cause as they see fit. It began the JOBS Act of 2012. Small businesses gained relief from a lot of requirements in place by the SEC. These requirements held many businesses back.
Though similar to crowdfunding for small businesses, crowdfunding real estate investing isn’t exactly the same. Most of those that list on real estate crowdfunding sites are commercial real estate businesses. They are seeking funding for their endeavors. Anyone can invest in commercial real estate. This is similar to investing in the stock market. Then they can enjoy the returns without actually buying an entire piece of commercial property.
As a result, commercial real estate investors can raise equity and avoid a loan. At the same time, individuals can enjoy the benefits of commercial real estate investing for as little as $500.
First, you can raise funds without debt. This is the same reason crowdfunding is a popular way to fund a small business startup. It isn’t free money. There are fees and profit sharing involved. It is often substantially cheaper than borrowing the funds, however.
If you struggle with bad credit, hard money loans are an option. The loans are asset-based. They can fund any real estate investment. They are based on the property value. This means, there is no need for background checks or credit scores. Some lenders even offer hard money loans based on the after-repair value of a building.
Since it’s based on the real estate value , a borrower with poor credit can get these loans. Hard money loans are fast, sometimes even within 24 hours of application.
Interest rates can be very high, some even up to as much three times that of banks. Terms can be very short, like 6 – 18 months, versus a standard 30-year mortgage.
Plus, a hard money lender wants you to have some money in the project as well. Typically at least 10% of your own money is required. That way, the lender knows their interests are protected because you don’t want to lose your money. Hard money loans are usually not subject to consumer lending regulations.
Commercial real estate is income-producing property that is solely for business purposes, not residential. Examples include retail malls, professional offices such as for medical professionals, office buildings and complexes, and auto dealerships. Financing, including the purchase, development, and construction of these properties, often comes from commercial real estate loans. These are mortgages secured by liens on the commercial property.
Commercial real estate loans are often made to business entities. These include developers, corporations, limited partnerships, and funds and trusts. These entities are sometimes formed for the specific purpose of owning commercial real estate.
Find out why so many companies use our proven methods to get business loans.
However, such a business entity may not have a financial track record or any credit rating. In that case the lender may require the principals or owners of the entity to guarantee the loan.
The owner then puts their property on the line. In case of loan default, the lender can recover from them.
If the lender does not require this type of guarantee, and the property is the only means of recovery in the event of loan default, this debt is a non-recourse loan. It means the lender has no recourse against anyone or anything other than the property.
Using business credit to buy real estate usually means shorter loan terms. Usually, they range from less than 5 years to 20 years rather than the typical 30 year residential mortgage. The amortization period is often longer than the term of the loan.
Amortization is an accounting technique. Its use is to periodically lower the book value of a loan or intangible asset over a set period of time.
For example, a lender might make a commercial loan for a term of eight years, with an amortization period of 30 years. Then, the borrower would make payments for eight years, of an amount based on the loan being paid off over 30 years.
Then one final balloon payment of the entire remaining balance on the loan is due at the 8 year mark.
The length of the loan term and the amortization period affect the rate the lender charges. Depending on the credit strength of the borrower, these terms may be negotiable. However, general, the longer the loan repayment schedule, the higher the interest rate.
These options are all viable, but some work better than others. It can be hard to determine what will work best for you.
Credit Suite has commercial real estate financing that you should check out. It ranges from $100,000 – $10,000,000. This financing can be used for refinancing a property, even if you are doing a cash-out refinance. The maximum LTV 70% and loan-to-values range from 55 – 65%, depending on the purpose of the loan. Renovations get loan-to-value of up to 60%. Credit Suite has funding programs available including:
Credit Suite offers financing for various, and even unique, property types. You can get funding for offices, industrial offices, industrial facilities, light manufacturing buildings, self-storage facilities, mixed use properties, commercial condos, auto dealerships, light auto services, day cares, assisted living facilities, entertainment venues, multi-family properties, retail warehouses, and more.
Find out why so many companies use our proven methods to get business loans.
If you plan on using business credit to buy real estate, you can do so even if your personal credit score isn’t great. However, you may get better terms and interest rates if you have a strong business credit score also. A business credit expert can help you evaluate your fundability and guide you as you navigate the process of increasing fundability and building a strong business credit score.
The post A Complete Guide To Using Business Credit to Buy Real Estate appeared first on Credit Suite.
Like most social media platforms, Twitter is one of the best places to find and engage your target audience. It’s a fast-paced platform you can use to achieve many business goals such as lead generation, brand awareness, and even driving sales, among others. However, because Tweets are limited in length, and the platform is one …
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