Strong-to-severe storms will be possible for parts of the Ohio Valley on Tuesday, including Indiana and Ohio, where primary voting is taking place. Heavy rain will bring the risk of flash flooding over the next few days for the Plains and the Mississippi Valley.
ESPN reveals its first ever top 10 WNBA players for the upcoming fantasy women’s basketball game, coming in time for the 2022 WNBA season.
The post Fantasy basketball top 10 WNBA players for the 2022 season appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
Close | Multiple Positions | 100% Remote | Americas & Europe
At Close, we’re building the sales communication platform of the future. With our roots as the very first sales CRM to include built-in calling, we’re leading the industry toward eliminating manual processes and helping companies to close more deals (faster). Since our founding in 2013, we’ve grown to become a profitable, 100% globally distributed team of ~50 high-performing, happy people that are dedicated to building a product our customers love.
Product Manager (Americas): https://jobs.lever.co/close.io/21dca90f-06a3-4050-81a0-9659d…
Software Engineer – Backend/Python (Americas & Europe): https://jobs.lever.co/close.io/592193bf-8a9c-43cf-86a1-faeb7…
Senior Frontend Engineer – React (Americas & Europe): https://jobs.lever.co/close.io/10a1e32b-1a59-48dc-b8f4-e6f0d…
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.
If you create content, you need a content calendar. I know—not an earth-shattering revelation! What about a calendar specifically for your paid content? Should it be part of your regular editorial calendar? A separate calendar? Do you even need a paid content calendar? The answer to the first two questions is: How you structure your … Continue reading Why You May Need a Content Calendar For Paid Campaigns
When you browse the internet, do you ever stop to wonder what’s happening in the background? If the answer’s no, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most marketers, even great ones, don’t give the “tech stuff” much thought. How a website performs is just something for IT specialists to worry about, right?
No, unfortunately.
If your website’s slow or clunky, it directly affects the user experience. In fact, 40 percent of people won’t hang around if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load. With this in mind, it’s crucial you know how to fix a sluggish website and streamline your page loading times before you lose leads.
Where do you start? Well, one way is to make fewer HTTP requests for your website.
Although an HTTP request sounds like a really technical term best reserved for engineers and IT pros, don’t panic. It’s something any good marketer can understand. Now, let’s take a deep dive into how these requests work and how you can use this knowledge to boost your website’s performance.
Before we get started, it’s crucial you’re clear on what HTTP requests actually are.
HTTP stands for “HyperText Transfer Protocol.” Think of HTTP as the language browsers and web servers use to talk to each other. We (thankfully) don’t need to cover all the intricacies of web code to understand how HTTP affects load time, but here’s a breakdown of the key steps marketers need to know.
When someone wants to visit your website, their browser sends a “request” to your server. This is known as an HTTP request. Your server acknowledges the response and kicks into gear, ready to display the webpage.
Here’s where it gets a little tricky, though. The browser can’t display the page right away. It needs copies of the various different files, such as plug-ins and images, to load the page properly.
How does the browser get these files? By making multiple HTTP requests. If the browser doesn’t make these requests, the page components won’t load.
Depending on how many components your page has, these requests can really add up, which is a problem. Here’s why.
There are two simple reasons why every website should aim to reduce the HTTP requests associated with it.
Firstly, let’s start with page load time. The more HTTP requests your site receives, the longer it takes for the requested page to load. For example, a page with 20 HTTP requests will load faster than a page with 70 requests.
The issue? People don’t want to hang around waiting on a website loading.
In short, with much competition out there, you’ll lose leads if your website takes too long to load or it doesn’t load properly at all.
Next, let’s think about what impact these lost leads have on your metrics.
According to Google, bounce rate increases by 32 percent when loading time slows from 1-3 seconds, and to make matters worse, poor loading time affects your SEO ranking. Delays in page loading time can cut page views by 11 percent, which tells Google your page isn’t offering value.
Think about it this way: If your website doesn’t impress visitors, they won’t shop with you. They won’t recommend you to their friends. In time, this leads to a lower search ranking, less visitors, and reduced conversion rates overall.
What can we take from all this? Well, too many HTTP requests directly affect your key metrics and your marketability online.
OK, we’re clear on how HTTP requests work and why you need less of them. How do you identify these excess requests, though? By doing two things: identifying how many requests you’re dealing with, and grading your website performance.
You can’t eliminate HTTP requests until you know how many your website receives. Luckily, there are tools available to help you identify the number.
For example, HubSpot’s Website Grader give you a free website “health check” so you can instantly see how many requests you’re receiving:
If you use Chrome, you can also use Chrome’s DevTools to identify the number of HTTP requests. Simply right-click the page you want to check, click “Inspect,” then click the “Network” option. The image you’ll see looks something like this:
This page receives 112 requests.
When was the last time you assessed your website’s performance and, most importantly, page loading time? If you can’t remember, now’s a great time to run an audit.
You can try Ubersuggest for this. It’s really simple to use. Simply open Ubersuggest, type in your URL, and click “Site Audit” from the sidebar when the search results finish loading.
Once you’ve clicked “Site Audit,” you’ll see an overview of your website’s speed. It’ll look something like this:
A low score indicates you’re suffering from poor loading times. For example, if your mobile website takes 6 seconds to load, but your desktop site loads in 2 seconds, there’s a problem with your mobile site, and so on.
Don’t worry if you’re unhappy with your page loading times or the number of HTTP requests you’re seeing. Now you know there’s a problem, you can begin streamlining those HTTP requests and ensure your page loads as quickly as possible. Let’s look at how to do just that.
Although every website is unique, we can usually blame excessive HTTP requests on a few common problems. With this in mind, here are eight simple steps you can take right now to reduce the number of requests passing through your website.
Plug-ins are great. They add new functionality to your website and make your web pages more engaging. However, too many plug-ins clutter your page and hold up loading times. While there’s no “right” number of plug-ins, a good rule of thumb is to keep them minimal.
First, identify which plug-ins you use. Do they add value to your website? If the answer’s no, they can go. If it’s a plug-in you only use now and then, you can always reinstall it when it’s required then delete it again.
Not sure how to identify your plug-ins? Reach out to me and see how I can help you better understand your website’s performance.
OK, so you can’t remove every plug-in. However, if you want to make fewer HTTP requests, you can often replace resource-heavy plug-ins with more streamlined options.
For example, maybe you want to add social media buttons to your page. Great. Social media shares can increase engagement and boost your exposure. However, the plug-ins can be resource-intensive.
To streamline your social media plug-ins, use tools like Novashare. This tool won’t slow your page down, but it will help you reduce the HTTP requests generated by your social sharing plug-ins:
Sure, images can improve your website’s visual appeal and boost the user experience. Unless the image helps your reader understand your content in some way, or it’s a highly useful piece of content in its own right like an infographic, it might be worth deleting it.
Remember, every image creates an HTTP request. While those fun GIFs might have visual appeal, they won’t impress your audience if they affect load time.
Audit every individual web page and don’t be afraid to get a little ruthless. If the image doesn’t add value to your content, delete it.
Once you’ve deleted the unnecessary images, you need to optimize the ones you plan on keeping. In this context, “optimizing” doesn’t mean using alt text or keywords, although you should optimize for SEO, too.
Instead, what I mean is compressing each image. Compression preserves the image quality while reducing the overall file size, which improves load time.
If you don’t have access to image editing tools like Adobe, try free tools like Squoosh instead. You can tinker with the image to find the perfect balance between file size (which should be less than 1 MB, ideally) and image quality:
Just like not every image adds value to your content, some videos detract from the user experience and increase the page loading time.
To be honest, this tip’s really simple. Just like you should cull any images or plug-ins you don’t need, limit how many videos you’re playing on any webpage.
How do you know which videos to delete? Well, there’s no rule here. However, if it doesn’t educate your audience or add value in some way, cut it or replace it with a shorter, comparable video.
“Lazy loading” means an image or video won’t load until the user begins scrolling down your webpage. How does this reduce HTTP requests?
Since the media doesn’t load right away, it won’t trigger an HTTP request for the initial page load. It doesn’t affect the user experience either, since users won’t know the difference between a regular or lazy load. All they’ll know is that the images or videos are viewable once they scroll down.
To enable lazy load, try out plug-ins like the aptly-named LazyLoad. The script takes up less than 10 KB of space, so it’s not resource-intensive. Just install the plug-in and it gets to work immediately:
Caching is a great way to reduce HTTP requests.
Essentially, caching means a visitor’s browser stores copies of the scripts it used to display your webpage, rather than delete them all. When the visitor returns, there’s no need to make all those HTTP requests again, because the scripts they need are already stored in the browser unless they clear their cache.
Let me give you some tips for priming your website for content caching.
If a visitor’s browser needs to request or download data from a third party to display a website properly, like YouTube or Google Analytics, it’s called a third-party request. The issue? How long your page takes to load depends on how quickly the third-party server responds.
This is a huge problem because you’re not in control of your page loading time. To take back control, think about lazy loading third-party content like embedded YouTube videos. You could also try hosting scripts for necessary programs like Google Analytics locally rather than externally.
Finally, if a plug-in you use makes its own third-party requests, switch it for another plug-in where possible.
How to Make Fewer HTTP Requests
Figure out which plug-ins are installed and remove those that you don’t use.
Audit the plug-ins you keep and replace them with more efficient ones if they’re available.
Delete images that don’t add value since each one creates an HTTP request.
Compress the images you keep to reduce load time.
Only keep videos that add value to your page.
Use a plug-in that allows images and videos to load once a user scrolls.
To prepare your site for content caching avoid using cookies; use the same URL for content used on different pages; build an image library and re-use them; and audit your site’s ability to be cached.
Try not to include content that pulls from a third party, like YouTube, since your page load time depends on theirs. You should also replace plug-ins that rely on third-party requests.
HTTP requests are essential to displaying a website and giving your audience an engaging experience. However, too many HTTP requests can disrupt your website performance and deter would-be customers from doing business with you.
The good news? With a few simple tweaks, you can ensure browsers make fewer HTTP requests to your website. You can boost page loading time, improve a webpage’s visual appeal, and, ultimately, increase conversions in the long run.
If you’re not sure where to get started with improving your website’s performance, check out my consulting services and we’ll see how I can help.
Have you tried reducing the number of HTTP requests on your website? Which strategies are working for you?
SEEKING FREELANCER: iOS UI designer -> https://www.ralfebert.de/apps/geo-ui-designer/
Article URL: https://jobs.lever.co/cointracker/abb7f14c-5ad4-474a-ad5a-5356969b2121
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23776402
Points: 1
# Comments: 0
It’s been more than a year since I launched the “new”
Ubersuggest.
And over the last 12 months, I have made a lot of progress.
Just as a quick recap: Ubersuggest went from a basic keyword research tool to now containing backlink data, rank tracking, content ideas, site audit reports, and many more features.
If you haven’t played with Ubersuggest in the past few months, give it a try. Type in a URL or a keyword and click around.
The reason I am asking you to give it a try is that I need your help to determine what I should develop next so I can help you improve your traffic and rankings even more.
But before we get into that, let me first tell you what I am releasing in the next few months.
So, let’s break it down by section as I am making a lot of
small changes that should not only improve the data, but also the usability of
the product.
Funny enough, there will be changes to every section of the
tool.
Over the next month, the keyword overview is going to change in which I will start to tell you demographic data. You’ll see what percentage of the searches are done by males or females as well as the average age range of a searcher.
You’ll also see what portion of the clicks for any given keyword go to SEO results, ads, or result in no clicks.
I am also going to break searches down by mobile versus
desktop.
Another big change that is happening, and this one won’t be
visual, is all of the data will become much more accurate.
From traffic estimations for a domain, to even keywords,
you’ll start seeing a more accurate database.
For example, when I look at all of the keywords
neilpatel.com ranks for, a lot of them are junk keywords that don’t drive much
traffic.
Sure, the report still provides value as a lot of the keywords are good and can provide good SEO insights, but with more accurate data it should make your job easier.
Another feature that I am excited about is the new backlink charts.
I’m adding historical link data over time as well as a
snapshot of daily new and lost links.
In addition to that, you’ll start seeing more data on anchor text or link distribution.
A huge problem with Ubersuggest is that you have to continually come back to get value. In the next month or so, you will start seeing email alerts that will tell you what’s happening with your site and what you should fix.
The overall purpose is for you to not have to come to
Ubersuggest to figure out what you need to fix.
The biggest problem with Ubersuggest is people don’t know
what to do with the data or how to improve their rankings.
This will be fixed in the upcoming months.
From an education center and demos to tutorials and more, we are creating a guided path so you can see better gains in your search traffic.
Alright, so now that you know what I am working on, I now need your help to figure out what I should do next.
I have a few options for you, but I am not sure what you
want me to do with the tool.
Sure, I know you want more free features and I will do that,
but what’s going to provide you with the biggest gains?
Here are some options…
I can take Ubersuggest in many different directions. There isn’t really a right or wrong approach and, wherever I take it, I will make sure that the product is still really easy to use.
The question is, what do you want me to focus on first?
That’s all that matters in the grand scheme of things because I am building this for you.
So, if you can, leave a comment below letting me know where you want me to take Ubersuggest. It can be one of the options above, or if you have a better idea, I am open to that as well.
The post I Need Your Help With Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.
Article URL: https://www.workatastartup.com
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21320400
Points: 1
# Comments: 0