Tag: Steps

5 Steps to Get a Business Credit Card, Bad Credit or Not

If you have bad personal credit, you may find yourself struggling to get a business credit card. The key to getting a business credit card, bad credit or not, is business credit. 

You Can Get a Business Credit Card, Bad Credit Not Being an Issue

You’re likely aware business credit is a good thing.  You know you need it to help you fund your business.  But do you know how it helps you specifically get credit cards, even if you have bad personal credit? Furthermore, do you know how to get it? 

How Do You Get Business Credit? 

Business credit doesn’t just happen like personal credit does.  You have to work to build business credit intentionally. While not hard, it is a process, and a time consuming one at that. The sooner you start the better, especially if you need a business credit card, bad credit being an issue. 

Business Credit Card Bad Credit: Separation is Key

First thing’s first. You have to establish your business as an entity separate from yourself the owner. This means not using your own name or address. That doesn’t mean you have to get a separate phone line, or even a separate location.  

You do need separate contact information however.  You can get a business phone number pretty easily that will work over the internet instead of phone lines.  In addition, the phone number will forward to any phone you want it too so you can simply use your personal cell phone or landline if you want.  Whenever someone calls your business number it will ring straight to you. 

You can use a virtual office for a business address. This is a business that offers a physical address for a fee, and sometimes they even offer mail service and live receptionist services.  In addition, there are some that offer meeting spaces for those times you may need to meet a client or customer in person. 

Learn more here and start building business credit with your company’s EIN, not your SSN. 

Business Credit Card Bad Credit: EIN not SSN

The next thing you need to do is get an EIN for your business.  This is an identifying number for your business that works in a way similar to how your SSN works for you personally.  Some business owners used their SSN for their business. This is what a lot of sole proprietorships and partnerships do.  However, it really doesn’t look professional to lenders, and it can cause your personal and business credit to get all mixed up.   You can get one for free from the IRS.

This step is vital.  When you apply for a business credit card, bad credit can get in the way mainly because your SSN signals a look at your personal credit.  If you use your EIN instead of your SSN, the lender will only be seeing the credit attached to your business. 

Business Credit Card Bad Credit: Incorporation is Not Optional

Incorporating your business as an LLC, S-corp, or corporation is necessary for separation of business from the owner, and many other things. .  It lends credence to your business as one that is legitimate. It also offers some protection from liability. 

Which option you choose does not matter as much for these purposes as it does for your budget and needs for liability protection.  The best thing to do is talk to your attorney or a tax professional.  

Business Credit Card Bad Credit: Separate Bank Account

You have to open a separate, dedicated business bank account.  There are a few reasons for this.  First it helps solidify the separation between yourself and your business.  Also, it will help you keep track of business finances. This is important for tax purposes. 

There’s more to it however.  There are several types of funding you cannot get without a business bank account.  Many lenders and credit cards want to see one with a minimum average balance.  In addition, you cannot get a merchant account without a business account at a bank. That means, you cannot take credit card payments.  Studies show consumers tend to spend more when they can pay by credit card.

Learn more here and start building business credit with your company’s EIN, not your SSN. 

Business Credit Card Bad Credit: Starter Vendors

Now, once you have these things in place,  you need to get accounts that will report your payments to the business credit agencies. It sounds easy enough, but the catch is, you have to find vendors that will extend credit without you first having credit. 

We call these vendors starter vendors.  They will extend net terms on invoices with little requirement. They don’t check credit. Typically, they require a certain number of days in business, a minimum average balance in a business bank account, minimum annual revenue, or some combination of these things. 

Extending the credit isn’t enough however.  There are some that do this, but there are far fewer that will actually report those payments.  You need vendors to report payments to the business credit reporting agencies, thus building your business credit score. 

The Snowball Effect

Of course you are wondering what any of this has to do with applying for a business credit card, bad credit being in the way. Here’s how.  Once you have several of these starter vendor accounts reporting, your score will be strong enough to support store credit. 

A business store account is usually issued for that specific store or website specifically.  Their limits are usually on the lower side as well.  However, after you get a few of them and use them responsibly. Your score will grow even strong. These are cards from places like Home Depot, Staples, or Best Buy. 

Then, you should qualify for fleet credit. These are cards from places like Shell that are used specifically for gasoline and automotive repair and maintenance.  

After a few of those are reporting your consistent, on-time payments, you should have a strong business credit score and be able to apply for standard business credit cards that are not limited by where you use them or what you use them to buy. By using your EIN and not your SSN, you can get a business credit card, bad credit on your personal credit report and all. It’s all a big snowball effect. 

business credit card bad credit Credit Suite

Learn more here and start building business credit with your company’s EIN, not your SSN. 

In the Interim

In the meantime, you can give your business credit building efforts a kickstart with a card like the Brex card for startups.  It  is one of the few true options if you are looking for a business credit card, back credit not being an issue.  Even a FICO as low as 300 may qualify.  There is no annual fee, and you can apply with your EIN rather than your SSN.  There is no personal guarantee requirement. 

The only catch is, not all industries qualify, and some industries require more paperwork than others.

You could also try getting accounts that you already have a relationship with to report to the business credit reporting agencies. This could be vendors you work with already. Maybe ask them if they will consider net terms and reporting payments. If you already make your payments consistently on time, they may be willing to do so without a credit check. 

You could also consider asking utilities that you already pay regularly to report your payments.  They may say no. They don’t have to do it. But they might, and if they do it can only help your business credit grow faster. 

A credit line hybrid can be another great option to help speed things along. You have to have a 680 or better personal credit score, but you can take on a credit partner if you don’t meet that. The account still reports to your business credit, so you can keep building your score. And, you can get up to $150,000 unsecured financing for your business. 

An Expert Can Help You Through the Steps 

It sounds easy enough to do all of this on your own.  However,  there are some steps that are easier than others. Specifically, it can be very difficult to find starter vendors that will report to your business credit. For this and other difficult steps, it can be very helpful to have a business credit expert help you out. It’s definitely worth considering. 

 

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How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

According to Smart Insights, 45 percent of companies don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy; 17 percent of companies have a digital marketing strategy in place, but it’s separate from their marketing plan.  This means 62 percent of companies are unprepared.  They don’t have the strategy, tactics, or tools they need to market their …

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How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

According to Smart Insights, 45 percent of companies don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy; 17 percent of companies have a digital marketing strategy in place, but it’s separate from their marketing plan. 

This means 62 percent of companies are unprepared. 

They don’t have the strategy, tactics, or tools they need to market their business well. The bad news is that marketers waste 37 to 95 percent of their marketing budget. This is really common, but it doesn’t have to be; if you have the right digital marketing strategy in place, growing your business is easier. 

If you’re feeling unprepared, don’t worry. 

Today we’re going to cover the important ins and outs of creating a winning digital marketing strategy. 

Why You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy

Your digital marketing strategy gives your company direction. With a plan in place, you’ll have the details you need to help your company grow consistently. Your digital strategy document should: 

  1. Define your short and long term goals
  2. Show you who your customers are
  3. Show you where you can find them 
  4. Outline what you need to attract your customer’s attention
  5. Offer a step-by-step plan to attract and hold customer attention
  6. Show you how to analyze and improve marketing performance

Why go to all the trouble? 

Is it worth the time to create a strategy document? CoSchedule’s State of Marketing Strategy Report found winning marketers: 

  • Document their digital marketing strategy. Marketers who document are 538 percent more likely to achieve success than those who don’t.
  • Document their marketing processes. Those that do are 466 percent more likely to achieve success consistently over time than those who don’t.
  • Winning marketers set goals. Goal setters are 429 percent more likely to report success than those who don’t; 81 percent of these marketers achieve their goals; 10 percent of organized marketers always achieve their goals.
  • Winning marketers study their audience. These marketers are 242 percent more likely to conduct audience research four times a year. Almost 60 percent of the elite marketers featured in their study conduct audience research once or more per month.

It seems too good to be true, but it’s actually the reality.

The more time you spend thinking about your goals, getting to know your audience and planning how you’ll approach your digital marketing, the more likely you are to achieve success. 

What Should Be Included In Your Digital Marketing Strategy

I’ve already given you a sneak peek, did you catch it? 

To be successful, your digital marketing strategy should focus on four specific areas. 

  1. Setting goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs)
  2. Understanding and defining your audience 
  3. Creating and implementing your digital marketing strategy
  4. Auditing and improving your marketing campaigns 

You’ll want to break each of these areas down in enough detail so you (and your team) can work with each of these areas properly. With each of these areas, you should have a pretty clear idea about: 

  • The information, tools, and resources you’ll need to create a plan
  • Who will be responsible for creating your plan
  • Who will be responsible for implementing your plan
  • The KPIs and metrics you’ll use to measure the success (or failure) of your plan
  • The tools and resources you’ll need to implement and improve campaign performance

Each of these points needs to be defined clearly for the four steps areas above. 

Let’s take a closer look at these four areas and break things down a bit more clearly. 

1. Setting Goals, Objectives, and KPIs

This step is all about deciding what you want.. 

Planning your marketing strategy begins with setting quantitative and qualitative goals;  you’ll also want to set KPIs. These goals are sort of like the railroad tracks that keep your digital marketing strategy on the right track. 

What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative goals?

G2 has a really helpful way of defining these, so I’m going to paraphrase their definition here. 

Quantitative goals can be counted, measured, or displayed using numbers. Goals like increasing monthly recurring revenue by 15 percent or boosting your conversion rate by 3 percent are good examples of quantitative goals.  Qualitative goals are abstract, descriptive, or conceptual — these goals are usually tied to the question “why.” Goals like increasing customer trust or improving brand reputation are examples of qualitative goals. They’re difficult to measure but just as important. 

You’ll want to make sure that your goals are: 

  • Challenging, realistic, and attainable
  • Tied to your company’s mission, vision, and values
  • Concise — 2-3 main goals 3-5 supporting goals
  • Specific, clear, and timely
  • Broken down into smaller, step-by-step milestones 

Your goals are important, but they’re difficult to achieve if you don’t have a step-by-step plan to follow. That’s where milestones come in; milestones are tactical. They’re great because you can use them to move towards your goals quickly. 

What about KPIs? 

Scoro has a list of 136 KPIs you can use to jumpstart your planning. I’ve listed a few of the more common examples you can use below.

  • Unique visitors per day/month
  • Pages per visit
  • New leads per day/month  
  • Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
  • Conversion rates
  • Churn/attrition rate
  • Cost per conversion
  • Conversion rate per keyword
  • ROI per content
  • Click-through-rate on paid advertising

Focus is really important. 

It’ll be tough to focus on lots of metrics at once. Instead, you’ll want to focus your attention on a small number of really meaningful KPIs and metrics. 

Which ones are meaningful? 

They’re the KPIs that have the biggest impact on your company, the ones that generate consistent returns or a large amount of cash for your company. You’re looking for the 20 percent of KPIs and metrics that produce 80 percent of your results. 

That’s a pretty easy place to start. 

If you’re not sure which KPIs you should focus on, start with the common KPIs and metrics that have a direct impact on your business. These are typically metrics that focus on traffic, conversions, and optimization. 

2. Understanding and Defining Your Audience

You know what your goals and objectives are. Now you need to figure the same things out for your customer. This step requires some upfront research, but the success (or failure) of your digital marketing strategy starts here. 

Think about it. 

If you find the right customers, the people are excited to buy your product, then selling is a whole lot easier. It’s especially easier if you can understand what they want and how you can go about selling to them. So to do that, you’ll need information on your customer’s demographics and psychographics. 

What are you trying to figure out? 

  • The size of your market: You’ll want to figure out some important details about your market —is it new or established, niche or mainstream, broad or specialized. You’ll want to figure out who the major and minor players are, market expectations, areas you can disrupt, and the financial upside in your specific market. 
  • Who your customers are:  Are you targeting new moms, weekend warriors who are active on the weekends? You should have a basic idea of the customer you’re targeting. Are you focusing your attention on a specific niche, i.e., affluent travelers, price-conscious fashion aficionados? Use previous sales, competitor research, and market research sources like Ubersuggest and Google Trends to find the answer. 
  • Where they spend their time: Your customers have specific hangouts. Web developers spend their time on sites like ArsTechnica, Reddit, SitePoint, etc. New moms spend their time on sites like Babble, CafeMom, or Bundoo. If you know where your customers like to spend their time, you have a pretty good idea of the channels to target and the content to use. 
  • What they consume: This overlaps a little bit with where they spend their time. When there is an overlap, you’ll want to break the differences down even further. For example, your customers may spend a lot of time on Reddit, but this doesn’t tell you what they’re consuming on Reddit. Reddit is where they spend their time; the subreddit r/RobinHood is what they consume. See the difference? One tells you about their specific interests and desires; the other focuses on location. 
  • Why they buy: Your customers don’t buy for the same reasons. Sources like online reviews are a great way to get really helpful, in-depth feedback on why customers buy from customers themselves. You can also use tools like surveys or polls to attract responses. You’re not looking for an individual answer; you’re looking for trends. 
  • Where and how they buy: Do customers price shop offline, in your store, then order online from Amazon? Maybe your customers prefer a one-time purchase over recurring payment options? If you understand when and how your customers buy, you’ll be able to adjust your marketing around their expectations. Maybe that means persuading customers to do something different or stick with market expectations. 
  • What they need to buy: Online reviews are a helpful tool here as well. If you’re a new business, you can start with competitor reviews. Go through your competitor reviews, then make a list of the concerns brought up in each review. Look for customer objections, technology issues, complaints, reputation issues, any problem that customers felt were deal breakers. If you have reviews of your own, you can do the same thing there. 

Remember the research I shared earlier? 

Elite marketers study their audience, conducting audience research once or more per month. This step is important because it gives you the instructions you need to create a winning digital marketing strategy. Audience research shows you how to persuade your customers. 

This isn’t rocket science. 

But it requires more effort than most companies are willing to give. 

Here’s why. 

Most companies assume they already know their customers. They believe they know what their customers want and the best ways to approach them. 

They may be right. 

But the data they have on their customers changes often. Consistent research is the only way to stay on top of what your customers actually want. At this point, you’re ready for step three. 

3. Creating and implementing your digital marketing strategy

If you’ve done your homework, you should have the building blocks you need to create a well defined digital marketing strategy. You should be able to identify the marketing channels that will work best for your business. There are lots of digital marketing channels you can choose from. 

You can focus on: 

  • Content marketing
  • SEO
  • PPC
  • Display advertising
  • Email 
  • Online video
  • TV commercials
  • Mobile ads
  • Channel partnerships
  • Events 
  • Social media advertising 
  • Podcasts and radio advertising
  • Print advertising

In fact, there are more than 51 different marketing channels you can use to promote your business. Which one are you supposed to use? 

There are a few ways you can approach this. 

  1. Investing in the channels your customers use (e.g., search, social media) 
  2. Investing in the channels that give you independence and control (e.g., email, partnerships)
  3. Investing in the channels that are most common/popular (e.g., SEO, PPC, Social media) 

Start by testing the channels where there’s more overlap. 

If your customers use popular channels like Google search or Facebook, those are great places to start. If you’re looking for a channel that gives you maximum control and works well with other channels (i.e., email), you can start there. 

Don’t forget to test. 

Testing shows you what works. The tools you use for testing tend to be consistent with the channel (e.g., email comes with analytics. Google offers Google Analytics, etc.). Typically, you can branch out once you’ve identified the marketing channels that perform best for your business. 

You’re looking for stability. 

You want to get two to three channels working well before you decide to add more. Once you’ve identified your channels, use the data you’ve collected in step two to create the kind of marketing content that fits well with the customers you’ve identified.

Your content should: 

  • Attract their attention
  • Be fascinating 
  • Discuss a problem or challenge
  • Offer a solution to the problem or challenge you’ve just identified

Here’s another important detail. The research you’ve done should help you create a strong value proposition that answers the “why me?” question. Your value proposition is basically a promise. It’s the most important part of your marketing copy. 

It gives your customers a persuasive reason to do business with you. 

Your value proposition sets you apart from the competition. It gives your business an unfair advantage, and it gives you the opening you need to attract more customers, increase customer loyalty, command higher prices,  and beat your competitors. 

Here’s a detailed breakdown if you need help creating your own value proposition. 

If you’ve followed the steps I’ve mentioned above, you should have the information you need to create amazing content that draws customers in. 

4. Auditing and improving your marketing campaigns 

If you can’t measure your marketing, you can’t improve them. Part of the reason marketers waste 37 to 95 percent of their marketing budget is the lack of measurement.  Forrester’s research stated that between 60 – 73 percent of a company’s analytics data goes unused. 

Companies don’t know how to work with their data. 

  • They don’t know which problems to fix
  • They don’t know what they have 
  • They can’t see the value of their data
  • They don’t know how to evaluate or analyze their data
  • Their data isn’t available to analysts who can use it 
  • There’s too much data to go through and not enough people or time to use it

The other three steps aren’t all that helpful if you can’t see your marketing results. If you’re going to create a successful digital marketing strategy, you’ll need a plan that helps you to capture, report, and analyze the data. 

You’ll need analysts who can use your data to solve problems. 

That’s part of the problem. 

Most companies don’t have the people or processes in place to handle this. This is why it’s so important for businesses to get help. It’s too much for most companies to handle on their own — small, medium, and large companies all struggle with these issues. 

If this is the case for your organization, it may be a good idea to get help from an agency. 

You should be able to plan, implement, and optimize your digital marketing strategy.  If you can’t, it’s a good idea to get help with all or part of the process. 

Conclusion

Almost half of companies don’t have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy in place. A smaller segment of respondents haven’t connected their strategy and their marketing. Most companies are unprepared; they’re not ready to handle the requirements that come with creating their digital marketing strategy. 

If you’re feeling unprepared, don’t worry; use the information we’ve discussed as a guide. If you’re aware of the ins and outs of planning, you can create a winning digital marketing strategy in four easy steps.  

The post How to Develop a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy in 4 Easy Steps appeared first on Neil Patel.

8 Steps to Gain Authority Backlinks; A Detailed Guide

Introduction You won’t believe this, but, according to Impact Bound, up to 55.24% of all websites on the internet didn’t have a single backlink as of December 2019. That’s over 750 million sites, given that there are about 1.5 billion active websites at the moment. Hopefully, you’re not part of the 55.24%, because you’d be …

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9 Steps to Creating a Landing Page That Reads Your Prospects’ Minds

So you’ve decided to create a landing page to promote your new product or service.

But how do you know if your landing page will convince your readers to convert?

There are a number of things you can do to ensure your readers are enticed by your landing page and want to know more information.

In this post, we’re going to figure out exactly what you need to do to produce a mind-reading landing page. But first, let’s start with the basics.

What is a landing page?

Before you create a landing page, you need to understand exactly what it is.

A landing page is a dedicated web page, often called a squeeze or splash page. The objective is to collect your visitor’s data through a lead capture form.

You might use a landing page to give away a free e-book, webinar, or course in exchange for your audience signing up for your email list.

Or maybe you collect emails before launching your new website.

The best part about a landing page is that it’s only one page.

It’s one page you need to optimize.

Why, then, do so many people make mistakes with their landing pages?

And why do so many people struggle to convert their customers?

A well-crafted landing page will enable you to target a specific audience, create a compelling message, and increase conversions.

But what goes into creating an effective one?

What makes some landing pages successful and some fall flat on their face?

It all comes down to whether you know your audience or not.

Those who know their audience will be able to create the right messaging, hold their audience’s attention, and come up with a mind-reading landing page.

But just how do you do that?

Let’s find out.

1. Create a persona

It all begins with creating your ideal persona. When you know who you’re targeting, you will be better equipped to create a landing page that resonates with them.

Your personas should be your ideal target audience. After all, if the right people aren’t visiting your landing page, you will never convert in the first place.

Your personas should include demographic information like where they live, their ages, and their genders.

But they should go further than that.

If you want to create a mind-reading landing page, you need to know what inspires your ideal personas and what they hope to achieve.

You must find out their opinions and how they feel towards specific ideas.

When you do this, you’ll able to position your offer to them so that it’s irresistible.

Buffer uses personas to connect with their target customers.

Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 13.57.16

Using the information they’ve put together here, they will have a greater understanding of how to create their landing page.

You want to increase your chance of conversion, so don’t try to make your landing page appeal to absolutely everyone.

Instead, use the data in your personas to produce highly-targeted landing pages that speak to a specific group of people.

You only have a few moments to grab your visitor’s attention. And in those short few moments, they’ll decide whether or not they want to convert.

2. Present the offer

The reason landing pages are so effective is that they isolate the action.

There shouldn’t be a menu or other links on the landing page. It should all guide the visitor toward completing the action you want them to take.

Distracting them with multiple options is a surefire way to confuse them. Your conversion rate will suffer.

Do not give your visitors a choice. Make it clear what you want them to do.

The only option they should have is to convert or not to convert, like in this example from Geico: Screen Shot 2017 09 15 at 16.12.02

The clear landing page means that whoever lands on the page only has one option. Enter their zip code or not.

But just making the chosen action clear isn’t enough to ensure that your visitors convert.

You need to create an offer that resonates with them enough to take the action.

Think about it. A landing page that asks its users to sign up for the newsletter in exchange for nothing isn’t going to convert very well.

Why?

Because there’s no incentive. Why should your visitor do anything for you without getting something in return?

And no, your newsletter alone is not enough of an incentive.

But creating a compelling offer doesn’t have to be a complicated task. You just need to provide your audience something they actually want.

Autopilot knows their readers would be interested in growing revenue with Instapage, so a replay of the webinar would be beneficial to them.

Screen Shot 2017 09 15 at 16.13.29

This is a good example of a strong offer.

If you already have a landing page that you’re looking to improve, ask yourself whether or not as a visitor you would take the desired action.

If the answer is no, then there are changes you need to make.

If you’re struggling to create an offer, but you know you want to build your email list with a landing page, then look at your most popular piece of content.

We can see here that the most popular piece of content on my blog is [enter content].

If you were to offer this content as a downloadable PDF or checklist, people would be likely to give you their email address in exchange.

Why?

Because you already know it performs well. You have proof there’s a need for it.

Here, the hard work is done for you. Find a popular piece of content, find a way to repackage it as a downloadable piece, and offer it to your audience.

But what if your landing page isn’t for an e-book, checklist, or downloadable PDF?

Think about other ways you can provide value to your audience.

3. Write the headline

Once you’ve got your offer down, you need to start working on the headline. The headline must be captivating.

It’s usually the first thing your visitor will see, so you need to perfect it.

The headline is often the deciding factor of whether or not a visitor will convert. And you only have one real opportunity to make it work.

Your headline should be driven by the benefits. You need to outline exactly what will happen to the visitor once they take your desired action.

Capital One makes use of both a heading a subheading to get their point across:

Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 14.10.15

They know people who are interested in their service are going to want to have their business in order, so they position their offer in that sequence.

Salesforce has a clear headline and message:

Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 14.01.23

This headline is great because it grabs the audience’s attention. They’re immediately drawn to it. Visitors automatically know what will happen if they fill in the form on the right.

Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers says if you’re struggling to find the right words, then look at the language your audience uses.

Why is this effective?

Because if you use your audience’s own language in your headline, it will resonate better with them.

After the headline, you’re likely going to use a subheading.

This is another opportunity to mention the benefits. It’s for people who were compelled by the headline but need some more convincing.

It gives you another chance to keep their attention and draw them closer to your call to action.

4. Create the copy

Good copy sells. You know that.  It’s why some companies pay copywriters thousands to put words on a page.

But it’s not as easy as just writing words on a page. They have to mean something to your target customer.

As we mentioned with the headline, if you’re struggling to find words, then utilize the language your prospects use.

Your copy is there as a tool to help you get your point and message across and increase the chance of conversion.

It all begins with finding the sweet spot for the right amount of copy. Write too little and you won’t have enough words to get your point across. But write too much and the page will become overwhelming.

However, just saying “find the sweet spot” doesn’t help you.

In general terms, the amount you write depends on the offer. For things that need a lot of explaining and persuading, you’re going to need more copy.

For things that require the prospect to provide you with more than just their email address, i.e. when they are making a purchase, you are naturally going to need to use additional copy to ensure all the necessary details are there.

When it comes to actually writing your copy, you should mirror your brand’s style.

Keep in mind that it’s not about you. It’s about the customer, so the phrasing you use should be customer-centric and focus on them.

Evernote personalizes their landing page copy by avoiding using words like “we” or “our” and instead opts for words like “your” and “you”:
Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 14.11.57
These words highlight to your prospects that the main reason for this landing page (and your business) is to help them solve their problems.

5. Use visual aids

Like we said, your landing page is only one page, so everything should be there for a reason and have a purpose. The same rule applies to any images or videos you use.

When you’re adding images to your landing page, you should utilize ones that help your visitors visualize their life after they’ve taken your action.

Airbnb is a business that focuses on people. So it makes sense that they should use images of people on their landing page:  Screen Shot 2017 09 15 at 16.23.39

They want their users to feel accomplished and happy if they sign up as an Airbnb host, so they include an image of a woman smiling.

For anyone thinking about signing up for the Airbnb platform, seeing an image like this will encourage them it’s a good idea.

Shopify, an e-commerce platform, uses images to show visitors how their shop could look:

Screen Shot 2017 09 15 at 16.24.15

You can utilize images to guide your audience towards the call to action.

The images make your offer more human.

Your audience cannot touch or hold your product. Your landing page should make use of images to help them visualize it.

6. Include social proof

When creating a mind-reading landing page, understand that one question your audience will have is, “Do I need this?”

This is true for every landing page.

One way to read their minds is to address their question through the concept of social proof.

People are more inclined to take action if they know other people just like them have taken action and benefited from it.

Using social proof on your landing page provides prospects with another layer of trust. They feel like it’s more likely your product/service will actually do what you say it will because they can see what other people thought about it.

For example, check out what Freshdesk does on their landing page:Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 14.16.30

Do you have reviews and testimonials for your product you can use on the landing page?

Visitors get to experience how their life could be different from signing up. And they learn that from other people just like them.

7. Utilize a call to action

Your call to action button is important. It’s perhaps the most important element on the page.

If your audience can’t see your button clearly, they’re not going to know what to do.

Each landing page should have a call to action. The call to action is there to guide your user’s attention.

Let’s talk about your call to action button copy.

Your button copy should be action driven and relate to the offer available.

“Download” copy on the call to action is vague, and the visitor might not even remember what it is they’re downloading.

Take a look at the call to action button on Hired. It stands out as the only red button on the page:

Screen Shot 2017 09 20 at 14.22.19

Alexa uses the “Try 7 days free” copy, which takes the pressure off the visitor. They don’t have to fully commit to using the service, and won’t be charged if they’re not happy with it:

Screen Shot 2017 09 15 at 16.27.59

Both Hired and Alexa use excited copy like “Get started.” Using the word “get” psychologically makes people feel as though they are getting something in return for giving you their details.

8. Measure your results

If you don’t measure the results of your landing page, you have no real way of understanding whether or not it is converting successfully.

Use Google Analytics to measure how many visitors came to your landing page and converted by giving you their data.

When looking at the effectiveness of your landing page, consider your bounce rate.

Your bounce rate is the number of people who landed on your landing page and didn’t convert.

If your bounce rate is low it could mean one of the following things:

You aren’t using the right keywords. Your keywords should be relevant to the audience you want to attract. If not, you will have a bunch of untargeted prospects coming to your site with no interest in what you’re offering.

The design on your landing page is poor. Consider how often the average person spends on your landing page. If it doesn’t follow a logical flow or is too confusing, they’re more than likely going to bounce.

9. Make sure you test

The only way to know if your attempts are working is to run tests.

A/B testing your landing page involves splitting your traffic in half, so half the traffic sees one version of the landing page and the other half sees another.

This way you will be able to make informed decisions about what does and doesn’t work.

You can compare two versions of your landing page and test different elements.

Do you have two headlines you want to use, but you aren’t sure which will work best? Use A/B testing.

Then after you’ve generated enough traffic, you’ll be able to see which led to the highest number of conversions.

With this data, you can continually improve your landing page to ensure it converts the most people.

When testing elements, don’t try and test everything all at once. If you do this, you’ll have no clear idea what you need to change and what you need to keep the same.

Instead, change a few elements at a time and keep the other elements the same as a control variable.

Conclusion

Your landing page has one job, and one job only: To convert.

So why are you not doing everything you can to encourage your visitors to take your desired action?

It all begins with planning.

But the planning begins even before you start thinking about what you will have on your landing page.

If you want it to be successful, you have to read your prospects’ minds.

Essentially, you need to know your customers really well.

Once you know them, you’ll determine what words, images, and reasoning resonate most with them.

And once you start using their own ideas on your landing pages, your conversion rates are going to increase.

But, with everything in marketing, there is no one size fits all.

Follow the best practices listed in this post and develop your understanding of your audience, and you’ll be able to create winning landing pages for all your offers.

What strategies do you use to improve your landing pages?

The post 9 Steps to Creating a Landing Page That Reads Your Prospects’ Minds appeared first on Neil Patel.

3 Simple Steps to Get Your First 10,000 Visitors from Google

Today’s going to be fun.

I’m going to make a bet with you that if you follow the 3 steps below, and you really follow them, you can get 10,000 visitors from Google.

I promise it won’t be hard, but it will take time.

And if you follow my steps and don’t get the results, hit me up and I will personally help you with your marketing.

All I ask is you do it for 3 months straight. You may not get to 10,000 visitors from Google in 3 months as some niches are really tiny, but most of you should get there or be well on your way.

Again, if you prove to me that you followed everything below and you don’t achieve the results, you can get in touch and I will personally help you with your marketing for free.

Ready?

Step #1: Finding the right keywords

If you pick the wrong keywords, you’ll find yourself with little to no traffic and, even worse, you’ll find yourself with little to no sales.

So, before we get you on your way to more search traffic,
let’s find you the right keywords.

I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in your
competitor’s domain name.

Now, I want you to click on the “Keywords” navigational
option in the sidebar.

This report will show you all of the keywords that your competition is ranking for.

If you don’t see a list of thousands of keywords, that means you didn’t type in a big enough competitor. And if you don’t know who a big competitor is, just do a Google search for any major term related to your industry. The sites at the top are your major competitors.

I want you to go through the list of keywords and look for all of the keywords that are related to your business and have an SEO Difficulty (SD) score of 40 or less. The higher the number, the harder the keyword is to rank for. The lower the number, the easier it is to rank for.

In addition to an SD score of 40 or lower, I want you to look for keywords that have a volume of 500 or more.

Volume means the number of people that search for the keyword on a monthly basis. The higher the number, the more potential visitors that term will drive once you rank for it.

Next up, I want you to click on “Top Pages” in the
navigation.

This will bring you to a report that looks like this:

This report shows you the most popular pages on your
competitor’s site.

Now, under the Est. Visits (Estimated Visits) column, I want you to click on “view all” for the first few results.

Every time you do that it shows you all of the keywords that
drive traffic to that page.

Just like you did with the keywords report, I want you to look at the keywords that have an SD of 40 or lower and a volume of 500 or more.

The one difference though, is that I want you to check out some of the URLs on the Top Pages report.

Click on over to the site so you can see the type of content they are writing. This is important because it will give you an idea of the types of content that Google likes to rank.

When you create similar pages (I will teach you how to do this shortly), it will allow you to get similar results to your competition over time.

Now that you have a handful of keywords, I want you to expand the list and find other related keywords.

In the navigation menu, click on “Keyword Ideas.”

When you type in one of the keywords you are thinking of going after in this report, it will give you a big list of other similar keywords.

This is important because it will show you all of the
closely related terms.

For example, let’s say you came up with a list of keywords of a handful of keywords, such as:

  1. Dog food
  2. Cat food
  3. Dog bed
  4. How to clean your cat
  5. What do birds eat

You can’t just take all of those keywords and write one article and shove all the keywords in because they aren’t similar to each other. Someone looking for “dog beds” is probably not interested in reading about what birds eat.

So by typing in a keyword into the Keyword Ideas report, it will show you all of the other similar keywords that you can include in a single article.

When you are on the Keyword Ideas report you’ll notice some tabs: Suggestions, Related, Questions, Prepositions, and Comparisons.

I want you to go through each of those tabs. They will show you a different group of similar keywords that you may be able to include in your article (we will go over how to write the article in step 2).

Just take a look at the Questions tab:

You can see the keywords are drastically different than the Related tab:

Again, you’ll want to look for all keywords that have an SD score of 40 or lower. But this report looks for keywords that have a volume above 200.

I know 200 may seem like a small number, but if you find 100
good keywords that all have a volume of 200 or more, that adds up to 20,000
potential visitors per month. Or better yet, 240,000 per year.

Now it’s rare that you are going to get all of those people
to come to your site, but you can get a portion of them. Even 10% would add up…
especially if you did this with a handful of articles.

Your goal should be to have a list of at least 100 keywords that are very similar. You’ll want to do this at least five times. For example, remember that list of five keywords I mentioned above wasn’t too similar to each other…

  1. Dog food
  2. Cat food
  3. Dog bed
  4. How to clean your cat
  5. What do birds eat

You’ll want to make sure that for each main keyword you use the Keyword Ideas report to find another 100 that can accompany each keyword.

Step #2: Write content

At this point, you should have a list of keywords. If your list of keywords isn’t at least 100 keywords per group, go back to step 1 and keep at it.

It’s not that hard to get to 100 similar keywords that you can include in one article. It just takes some time to continually search and find them.

In general, as a rule of thumb, I can find 100 keywords in
less than 8 minutes. It may take you a bit longer than me at first, but once
you get the hang of it, it’ll be easy.

With your newly found keywords, I want you to write an article.

All you have to do is follow this tutorial step-by-step to write your first article.

Or, if you prefer a video tutorial, watch this:

As for your keywords, naturally place them into the article when it makes sense.

What you’ll quickly learn is that you probably won’t be able
to “naturally” include all 100 keywords within your article. And that’s fine.

The last thing you want to do is stuff in keywords because you aren’t writing this article for just search engines, you are writing it for people… and the secondary benefit is that search engines will rank it because it contains the right keywords.

Before you make your article live on your site, I want you
to keep a few things in mind:

  1. Keep your URLs short – Google prefers shorter URLs.
  2. Include your main keyword in your headline – by having your main keyword in your headline, you’ll be more likely to rank higher.
  3. Include your three main keywords in your meta tags – whether it is your title tag or meta description, include at least three main keywords in them. You won’t fit as many in your title tag, and that’s fine, but you should be able to within your meta description tag.

There are a lot of other things you can do to optimize your articles for SEO, but my goal is to keep this simple. Again, if you just follow these three steps, you’ll hit the 10,000-visitor mark.

So, for now, let’s just keep things simple and once you hit
your goal, then you can get into the advanced stuff.

Step #3: Promoting your content

Writing content is only half the battle. Even if you include the right keywords in your article, if you don’t promote, it’s unlikely that it would be read or rank on Google.

So how do you make sure your content is read and ranks well?

Well, first you need to get social shares, and second, you need to get backlinks.

Yes, search engines don’t necessarily rank pages higher when
they get more Facebook shares or tweets, but the more eyeballs that see your
page the more likely you are to get backlinks.

And the more backlinks you get, generally, the higher you will rank.

So here’s how you get social shares…

First, I want you to go to Twitter and search for keywords related
to your article.

As you scroll down, you’ll see thousands of people tweeting about stuff related to your keywords. Some of them will just be general updates but look for the members sharing articles.

And…

Now what I want you to do is click on their profile and see if they mention their contact information or their website. If they mention their email you are good to go. If they mention their website, head to it, and try to find their contact information.

You won’t be able to find everyone’s contact information,
but for the people you do, I want you to send them this email:

Subject: [insert the keyword you searched for on Twitter]

Hey [insert their first name],

I saw that you tweeted out [insert the title of the article they tweeted]. I actually have an article that I recently released on that subject.

But mine covers [talk about what your article covers and how it is unique].

[insert link to your article]

If you like it, feel free to share it.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if you want me to share anything for you on Twitter or any other social network.

What you’ll find is a large percentage of the people will be willing to share your content because they already are sharing related content and, of course, you offered to share their content, which helps out too.

If you send out 30 to 40 emails like this, you’ll start
getting traction on the social web.

Now that you have social shares, it’s time to build backlinks. Instead of giving you tons of link building methods as there are many that work, I am just going to start you off with one that works very well.

I want you to head back to the Keyword Ideas report on
Ubersuggest.

Once you get there, type in some of the keywords that you are trying to go after.

On the right side of the report, you’ll see a list of sites that rank and the number of backlinks that each of the ranking URLs has.

Click on the “Links” number. For each result, it will take you to the Backlinks report, which looks something like this:

This will give you a list of all the sites linking to your
competitor’s article.

I want you to go to each of those URLs, find the site owner’s contact information, and shoot them an email that looks like this:

Subject: [name of their website]

Hey [insert their name],

I noticed something off with your website.

You linked to [insert your competitor that they linked to] on this page [insert the page on their site that they are linking to them from].

Now you may not see anything wrong with that, but the article you linked to isn’t helping out your website readers that much because it doesn’t cover:

[insert a few bullet points on how your article is better and different]

You should check out [insert your article] because it will provide a better experience for your readers.

If you enjoyed it, feel free to link to it.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

PS: If I can ever do anything to help you out, please let me know.

I want you to send out 100 of those emails for each article
you write.

Conclusion

Yes, it takes work to get 10,000 visitors but once you do it you’ll continually generate traffic and, more importantly, sales.

To achieve 10,000 visitors, I want you to do the steps above five times. In other words, you will be writing five pieces of new content following the steps above.

It’s actually not that bad because you can just do 1 a week.
So, within 5 weeks you would have done your job.

So, are you going to accept the challenge? If you do everything and don’t see the results over time, you can hit me up and I’ll help.

The post 3 Simple Steps to Get Your First 10,000 Visitors from Google appeared first on Neil Patel.

Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM

Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM

For the previous 4 months I have actually been extremely public with my Gmail e-mail address, authorizing up for e-newsletters, utilizing it on kinds, as well as sharing it openly on discussion forums, blog sites, and also conversation boards. Daily, I obtain concerning 20 scrap e-mails. I understand that is tiny, however for somebody that is usage to never ever seeing SPAM in their inbox, it’s a rather little bit.

I did this kind of screening, when prior to with Yahoo! Mail, and also I put in the time to remove all my SPAM (from entering into the inbox). I’ll share my key.

You ought to have 3 e-mail addresses; (@. These 3 e-mail addresses need to represent your public (individual) e-mail address, your company e-mail address, and also your spam catcher). Bear in mind the much less you openly utilize your e-mail address, the much less SPAM you’ll have.

If you want to utilize your public or organisation e-mail address, each website you take a trip to, (which you intend or have to share your e-mail address) you need to inspect the website Privacy Policy. The ideal point regarding handling your SPAM is that you can guess just how a person obtained your e-mail address, due to the fact that your quantity of SPAM is down to a minimum as well as you are safely handling your e-mail address. Any kind of area you require to enter your e-mail address and also you really feel cynical regarding utilizing your public or organisation e-mail address after that you ought to enter your spam catcher e-mail.

Your public (individual) e-mail address need to be utilized for public relied on resources, such as: on discussion forums, conversation boards which you regular. Your public e-mail address need to be utilized for sign-up kinds (just websites you desire details from). Your public (individual) e-mail address need to be your most frequently utilized e-mail address for fundamental everyday interaction.

Your company e-mail must NOT be a cost-free e-mail address, it needs to be an e-mail address with your business, your internet site, or your service name (instance: @. If you do not have a organisation, firm, or internet site after that make use of a cost-free e-mail address as well as make this your e-mail address for expert functions, such as placing this e-mail on your return to, and so on. Instance: You should not share this e-mail address with the consumer solution personnel of a business, however you need to share this e-mail address with the CEO of the firm.

Several websites have items, programs, or solutions which you desire, however to sign up or to relocate ahead you need to get in an e-mail address (as well as many of the time the e-mail address should be legitimate as well as verified), for that reason you ought to have a spam catcher e-mail address, for non-trusted resources. Utilizing your spam catcher e-mail address you can quickly sign up at any kind of website while utilizing a legitimate e-mail address, which you can log right into and also verify the credibility of the e-mail addresses.

The only e-mail addresses you are fretted concerning getting spam from is your individual e-mail address as well as organisation e-mail address, the spam catcher e-mail address ought to not be an account you log right into daily, you ought to just log right into your spam catcher e-mail address to validate an e-mail. At this factor you should not get any type of spam right into your company e-mail address account, if you complied with the actions over, however if you do after that make certain you utilize the ‘Report Spam’ attribute so you can obstruct future shipment. In your individual e-mail address account you will most likely get spam messages or undesirable mail, if you do after that make certain you utilize the ‘Report Spam’ attribute each time you get an item of undesirable mail, within a couple of months as well as great e-mail address administration (complying with the actions over) you need to never ever or hardly ever see any type of spam coming right into your inbox.

You can merely log right into one account, your individual e-mail address or your service e-mail address as well as simply have the e-mail from the various other sent to the account you log right into many. You can additionally send out e-mail from the account under either your individual or service e-mail address. I make use of Gmail Notify and also understand immediately whenever I get brand-new mail from either my public (individual) or organisation e-mail address.

These 3 e-mail addresses must represent your public (individual) e-mail address, your service e-mail address, as well as your spam catcher). Any type of area you require to enter your e-mail address and also you really feel cynical regarding utilizing your public or organisation e-mail address after that you must enter your spam catcher e-mail.

Several websites have items, programs, or solutions which you desire, yet to sign up or to relocate ahead you should get in an e-mail address (as well as many of the time the e-mail address should be legitimate and also validated), consequently you ought to have a spam catcher e-mail address, for non-trusted resources. Utilizing your spam catcher e-mail address you can quickly sign up at any kind of website while making use of a legitimate e-mail address, which you can log right into and also verify the credibility of the e-mail addresses.

The only e-mail addresses you are stressed regarding obtaining spam from is your individual e-mail address and also organisation e-mail address, the spam catcher e-mail address need to not be an account you log right into daily, you need to just log right into your spam catcher e-mail address to verify an e-mail.

The post Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM appeared first on ROI Credit Builders.

Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM

Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM

For the previous 4 months I have actually been extremely public with my Gmail e-mail address, authorizing up for e-newsletters, utilizing it on kinds, as well as sharing it openly on discussion forums, blog sites, and also conversation boards. Daily, I obtain concerning 20 scrap e-mails. I understand that is tiny, however for somebody that is usage to never ever seeing SPAM in their inbox, it’s a rather little bit.

I did this kind of screening, when prior to with Yahoo! Mail, and also I put in the time to remove all my SPAM (from entering into the inbox). I’ll share my key.

You ought to have 3 e-mail addresses; (@. These 3 e-mail addresses need to represent your public (individual) e-mail address, your company e-mail address, and also your spam catcher). Bear in mind the much less you openly utilize your e-mail address, the much less SPAM you’ll have.

If you want to utilize your public or organisation e-mail address, each website you take a trip to, (which you intend or have to share your e-mail address) you need to inspect the website Privacy Policy. The ideal point regarding handling your SPAM is that you can guess just how a person obtained your e-mail address, due to the fact that your quantity of SPAM is down to a minimum as well as you are safely handling your e-mail address. Any kind of area you require to enter your e-mail address and also you really feel cynical regarding utilizing your public or organisation e-mail address after that you ought to enter your spam catcher e-mail.

Your public (individual) e-mail address need to be utilized for public relied on resources, such as: on discussion forums, conversation boards which you regular. Your public e-mail address need to be utilized for sign-up kinds (just websites you desire details from). Your public (individual) e-mail address need to be your most frequently utilized e-mail address for fundamental everyday interaction.

Your company e-mail must NOT be a cost-free e-mail address, it needs to be an e-mail address with your business, your internet site, or your service name (instance: @. If you do not have a organisation, firm, or internet site after that make use of a cost-free e-mail address as well as make this your e-mail address for expert functions, such as placing this e-mail on your return to, and so on. Instance: You should not share this e-mail address with the consumer solution personnel of a business, however you need to share this e-mail address with the CEO of the firm.

Several websites have items, programs, or solutions which you desire, however to sign up or to relocate ahead you need to get in an e-mail address (as well as many of the time the e-mail address should be legitimate as well as verified), for that reason you ought to have a spam catcher e-mail address, for non-trusted resources. Utilizing your spam catcher e-mail address you can quickly sign up at any kind of website while utilizing a legitimate e-mail address, which you can log right into and also verify the credibility of the e-mail addresses.

The only e-mail addresses you are fretted concerning getting spam from is your individual e-mail address as well as organisation e-mail address, the spam catcher e-mail address ought to not be an account you log right into daily, you ought to just log right into your spam catcher e-mail address to validate an e-mail. At this factor you should not get any type of spam right into your company e-mail address account, if you complied with the actions over, however if you do after that make certain you utilize the ‘Report Spam’ attribute so you can obstruct future shipment. In your individual e-mail address account you will most likely get spam messages or undesirable mail, if you do after that make certain you utilize the ‘Report Spam’ attribute each time you get an item of undesirable mail, within a couple of months as well as great e-mail address administration (complying with the actions over) you need to never ever or hardly ever see any type of spam coming right into your inbox.

You can merely log right into one account, your individual e-mail address or your service e-mail address as well as simply have the e-mail from the various other sent to the account you log right into many. You can additionally send out e-mail from the account under either your individual or service e-mail address. I make use of Gmail Notify and also understand immediately whenever I get brand-new mail from either my public (individual) or organisation e-mail address.

These 3 e-mail addresses must represent your public (individual) e-mail address, your service e-mail address, as well as your spam catcher). Any type of area you require to enter your e-mail address and also you really feel cynical regarding utilizing your public or organisation e-mail address after that you must enter your spam catcher e-mail.

Several websites have items, programs, or solutions which you desire, yet to sign up or to relocate ahead you should get in an e-mail address (as well as many of the time the e-mail address should be legitimate and also validated), consequently you ought to have a spam catcher e-mail address, for non-trusted resources. Utilizing your spam catcher e-mail address you can quickly sign up at any kind of website while making use of a legitimate e-mail address, which you can log right into and also verify the credibility of the e-mail addresses.

The only e-mail addresses you are stressed regarding obtaining spam from is your individual e-mail address and also organisation e-mail address, the spam catcher e-mail address need to not be an account you log right into daily, you need to just log right into your spam catcher e-mail address to verify an e-mail.

The post Easy Steps to Defeating SPAM appeared first on ROI Credit Builders.