Software Stack Editor

55 Ways To Make Money From Home

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.

Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.

Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.

Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.

Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post 55 Ways To Make Money From Home appeared first on ClickFunnels.

There are many ways that you can make money today. You can make it online, offline and from home. You can make it fast or slow. In your sleep, while traveling, or while you work at a full-time job. Most know that the choices are endless. But it’s easy to feel stuck. Trapped. Overwhelmed. Unsure of where to go or what to do. You see others raking in the cash while you struggle. So the question is this. How can you actually make enough money from home to at least quit your day job?

Thanks to the Internet, we can live and work from anywhere. That’s the beauty of the world today. But human beings are habitual. We’re steeped in our daily routines. We don’t often dissect what others are doing to make money from home because we’re so immersed in our day-to-day lives. But what if things could be different? What if you didn’t have to struggle at a soul-depleting 9-to-5 job anymore? And what if your side hustle could become your main hustle? How would that change things for you?

Look, I’m not saying it’s easy to become a millionaire while working from home. That’s not the case at all. But if you’re looking to make enough money not just to survive but to thrive, especially with all the opportunities that exist online today, you have choices. Lots and lots of choices. So what ways work best? Is this about finding some work-from-home job or can you actually make money from home while working for yourself?

How To Make Money From Home

Working from home and actually making real money requires discipline. And most people lack the discipline to do what it takes to generate an income. It also requires a willingness to try things and fail fast. This isn’t about lingering. It’s about adapting and pivoting. Yes, you can earn money in many different ways. But not all of those ways will pay you enough to buy you back your freedom. After all, most want time-freedom, right? The ability to be your own boss and call your own shots. That’s the dream, isn’t it?

But the threshold here isn’t that high. You can easily make money from home if you put your mind to it. You can launch an online business or provide a service to others without spending a small fortune on inventory or goods. Pick something that you’re passionate about and it won’t feel like work. It won’t feel like an all-day grind or a never-ending hustle when you actually love the thing you’re doing. That’s really what it’s all about. And that’s far more fulfilling than working a job for a boss that you can no longer stand.

Set some goals and put in the work. Launch that small business you’ve always wanted to start or go out there and buy a boring business that already generates an income. The important thing is this. Don’t be afraid to fail and try again. The biggest thing standing in your way is time. Do you have the time to figure out how to make real money in ways you’re not used to doing it? Instead of earning a paycheck while working for a boss who’s often ungrateful for all the work you do, find the time to figure out different ways to generate an income.

1—Sales Funnel Building

The most important single concept you can learn when it comes to making any money at all are sales funnels. These are magical little devices that are designed to help you generate leads and make sales all day and night long on autopilot. You can build sales funnels for your business. Or you can design them and sell them in the funnel marketplace to generate passive income. Either way, sales funnels are the biggest key to making any amount of money from home.

2—YouTube

YouTube is not the easiest way to make money. Most people know that. But it is one of the best ways that you can earn and be your own boss. And you don’t need to show your face to make money from YouTube. Plenty of people make millions of dollars per year from faceless YouTube channels. That doesn’t mean you will. It only means that there is massive potential there. YouTube has some of the best CPMs anywhere out there. But it often requires years of devotion and hard work before it starts producing any real amount of money.

3—Graphic Design

The field of graphic design isn’t dead. Not whatsoever. Companies will always need a graphic designer. Yes, even with the rise of AI. And you can make money as a graphic designer. You could do it while working from anywhere in the world. Pick one area of graphic design and specialize in that. Hunt for clients on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, and freelance websites like Upwork or Freelancer, through email marketing and any other way that you possibly can. And supercharge your results by building a sales funnel to generate leads for your business.

4—Prompt Engineering

Prompt engineering is the way of the future. The workforce in the future will look far different than it does today. That’s because AI will replace most of the labor market. That’s why the future will require different skill sets like prompt engineering. Understanding how to ask AI the right questions is important. The right questions can produce exponentially better results than the wrong questions. It really does boil down to understanding how to talk to machines. For now at least.

5—Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the art of promoting affiliate links to an audience. That’s why to make money as an affiliate you’ll need some kind of an audience somewhere. It could be an email list, a following on social media, a YouTube audience, or anything else. If you don’t have an audience you could always run paid ads. But the way to really succeed as an affiliate is to use a bridge page. Bridge pages connect the affiliate offer to your email list. This way you can continue to market to those prospects and they won’t disappear forever after clicking your links.

6—Online Courses

Online courses allow you to share your knowledge and your wisdom with the world. You can create online courses in just about every area of business or life. If you have a skill, know a second language, can play a musical instrument, or you’re knowledgeable in any other field then consider creating an online course. You can easily make money from home by selling online courses through platforms like Udemy, Teachable and others. You can also build the entire course with this online course builder and do all the marketing yourself. This way, you won’t have to share your income with another platform.

7—Digital Products

Digital products offer a proven way of making money from home. To succeed, create a digital product that solves a pressing problem. And ensure you know the person experiencing that problem. Understand who they are so that you can best solve their problem. Your digital product should provide an effective solution to that problem. When it’s done, create a sales funnel designed to sell your digital product. And create a lead magnet inside of a lead generation funnel to generate leads. The lead magnet should solve part of the problem that the digital product solves.

8—Web Development

If you’re a web developer or have some web development skills, then consider doing this full time from home. You can make a lot of money as a web developer. Especially when you find the right clients. And you can do this from anywhere you live. Many areas of web development can help you earn a respectable income. Things like website development, sales funnel customization, database-driven applications, and more. You can find clients from the typical freelancing sites or you can create a lead generation funnel to hunt for clients.

9—Digital Marketing

One way to make money is to do digital marketing. You can help other companies grow their businesses. You can also help entrepreneurs or individuals looking to start a business or launch a side hustle. Digital marketing can mean many things like managing paid ads, running email campaigns, and much more. If you’re good at digital marketing, you can earn money doing this from home or anywhere around the world. The focus here should be on finding new clients. Create an application funnel with a lead magnet and schedule phone calls with prospects. That’s one of the best ways you can sell high-ticket digital marketing services.

10—Real Estate

You can make money in real estate in many different ways. And you can do it easily from home. The first way is to wholesale real estate. Wholesaling just means that you’re flipping contracts. You find a distressed seller and negotiate a low purchase price. Then, you can assign that contract to a cash buyer for a fee. Typical fees range from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars and up. It all depends on the region and the discount you can get on the purchase price. Other ways are to do fix-and-flips, long-term rentals, and more.

11—Blogging

Blogging is a proven way to make money from home. But it isn’t an easy way. Blogging takes time and patience. It requires discipline to get your content to rank. To succeed as a blogger you must also find ways you can make money from your blog. That could be by posting affiliate links inside of your blogs. It could also be by allowing advertisers to directly sponsor your blog. It could also simply be running Google Adsense ads. You’ll need a substantial audience to make good money. But it’s worth the hustle.

12—Live Streaming

Live streaming has exploded in popularity. And people of all ages are streaming from their computers at home in hopes of building a sizable audience and making money. Live streaming means that you need to be in front of the camera. You also have to be engaging and entertaining. You won’t make money if you’re boring. Can you live stream? What will you talk about? You can use platforms that are rising in popularity such as Kick. You can also stick with platforms that have been around for a long time like Twitch.

13—Social Media

There are many ways that you can make money from social media. The most popular way is to launch a social media marketing agency. That means you’re helping other businesses increase exposure and make sales from social media. If you’re good at social media, then consider doing this. Create a professional-looking profile by spending time on your posts. That’s important to others. To solicit others you must create a hero funnel. A hero funnel is a type of lead generation funnel. Then, add that link to your profile. And use direct messaging and other outreach tools to get clients.

14—Copywriting

Every business needs to write great copy. They must do that to attract and retain customers. If you’re good at writing copy then consider doing copywriting to make money. Depending on your level of skill, you could earn a lot of money as a copywriter. Some get paid exorbitant fees. Others seem to struggle while begging for work. Focus on writing copy that connects on a deeper level. To do that you should use the Pain-Agitation-Solution (PAS) framework. Identify the pain, agitate it, then present a solution.

15—Book Writing

Books will always be in demand. And today, you can easily self-publish a book on any topic. You don’t need a publisher or the approval of a publishing house to do it. All you have to do is write a good book. You can write a non-fiction book about any topic that helps people solve a problem. It can educate and inspire them. And you can publish that book on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). That’s Amazon’s publishing arm for its platform. If you love writing then this is an obvious way to make some money. But it won’t happen fast.

16—Narrate Audiobooks

You can narrate audiobooks on a platform called ACX. ACX feeds into Audible, which is also owned by Amazon. Audible is the repository for most of the world’s audiobooks. But most people don’t know that they can narrate audiobooks for others and get paid doing it. You can take two approaches when doing this. The first is to narrate audiobooks and get paid an hourly rate. They call it a per-finished hour rate. That means you have to do all the narration and editing, and only get paid for the length of the audiobook. The other way is to do a royalty share, which is ideal. But those deals might be harder to find.

17—Email Marketing

One of the best ways you can make money is to do email marketing. To do email marketing you need an email list. If you don’t have an email list then start one today. Right now. Stat. Because the most important asset you can have in business is your email list. Period. Nothing else even comes close. Your email list is your audience. It’s also one of the most intimate forms of communication. You can sell directly to your email list or use your email list to pitch affiliate offers.

18—Auction Management

Auction management involves sites like eBay. You manage auctions for other people who don’t want the hassle of selling their items on eBay. Customers ship items to you and you manage those listings and ensure they get sold. And in return you make a percentage of the purchase price of that product. If you’re familiar with eBay then this is a great way to make money. It requires little to no overhead costs outside of getting the word out that you can help others manage their auctions on sites like eBay.

19—Merchandising

Today, merchandising is a big business. But the beauty is that most people can sell branded products by using popular Print-on-demand services like Printful and Printify. These platforms allow ordinary, everyday people to create merchandise lines. And it requires little to no investment on your part outside of marketing to get the word out. You don’t have to buy expensive machines, warehousing, deal with shipments, or anything else. You simply have to create the designs and sync those designs with a popular ecommerce platform like Shopify or Amazon.

20—Website Testing

Although websites are dying a slow and painful death, companies are still paying others to test their websites. Website testing is a niche that allows ordinary people to make money from home by simply testing out websites and providing feedback. For example, a site like User Testing is used by many companies to gain feedback on their websites and landing pages. If you enjoy testing out sites and providing feedback, you could make a bit of money doing this.

21—Translations

Do you speak a second language? Are you fluent in that language? If so, you could always do translations to make money. Although there are AI systems to do translations, there’s still nothing like a human translation of text. Especially when it’s an important piece of content that needs to be translated. Although AI is catching up, you can still actually earn some money doing translations. You can use a site like Translate.com to get paid doing translations.

22—Online Notary

In the United States, a notary helps witness a signature. This is used in real estate transactions, wills, and other situations where you must verify the person signing the document. And thanks to the Internet, you don’t always have to appear in person. You can actually do online notarizations. You can make money doing this by becoming a mobile notary. Many companies offer certification to notaries but the biggest one is called the National Notary Association (NNA).

23—Freelancing

Many people earn a living as freelancers. You can live and work anywhere in the world and do freelancing. Many sites are devoted to uniting freelancers with people who need work done. Sites like Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and many others can help you do this. If you’re skilled in any professional area, then consider freelancing to make money. Some freelancers make a lot of money. Especially freelancers with in-demand skills like web development, Web3, search engine optimization, and more.

24—Newsletters

You can write newsletters and build an audience of paying newsletter subscribers to make money. This one will require some real work and skill. You must be knowledgeable in your field. And you have to have a great offer if you want to sell paid newsletters. But you can also do free newsletters and use that opportunity to promote existing products or services that you sell. You can also use them to promote affiliate offers and even get other businesses to pay you to advertise in your newsletter. You’ll need a substantial audience to make any serious money but it’s well worth the investment of time.

25—Membership Sites

Membership sites offer recurring revenue month after month. This allows you to make money on autopilot. You’re not struggling to find new customers every month if you don’t want to. And you can build membership sites with zero coding skills or web development know-how using this membership site builder. Come up with an idea or concept where you can drip out high-value content regularly. That’s the basis for a membership site. Design a great lead magnet with a high-converting landing page to ensure your membership site succeeds.

26—Vending Machines

Vending machines provide a great opportunity to make money. That’s because most businesses and areas could use vending machines. They add value to the area by keeping customers happy. For example, hospital waiting rooms are a great location for vending machines. So are schools and other public facilities. But you can place them in many businesses. And most businesses will gladly let you place vending machines in their stores as long as you maintain them. Meaning that you won’t have to pay a commission to place them there.

27—Boring Businesses

Most of the hard work of building a business occurs at the beginning. And after all that work, some business owners just want out. They don’t want to keep operating a business. That’s where you can swoop in and buy some of these businesses. And if you can find so-called boring businesses, you can make a lot of money very quickly. That’s because you’re simply stepping into the business once it’s fully operational. It has customers and employees. It operates day in and day out. These are typically the most common types of businesses that most people overlook. Places like tanning salons, gyms, laundromats, and so on.

28—Website Flipping

You can flip entire websites today for a profit. All you need to do is go to a site like Flippa or Empire Flippers and search for an online business for sale. These businesses have traffic, leads, and sales. They’re fully functioning websites that are making money. All you need to do is purchase the site. Then, increase its traffic and sales to sell it for more. If you have digital marketing skills, then this is perfect for you. It’s an ideal way to make money from anywhere in the world.

29—Host Webinars

Webinars are presentations made online. They can either be live or automated. Webinars are used to sell high-ticket services and premium products such as high-end furniture installations, solar panels, and more. Webinars are used by some of the biggest businesses to increase sales and revenue fast. They offer one of the best methods for helping break false beliefs that hold prospects back from completing a sale. This is important for products and services ranging anywhere from $1,000 to upwards of $100,000. You can learn more about how you can create a profitable webinar here.

30—Product Launches

Product launches allow you to roll out a new product to an existing audience. If you have an audience somewhere they consider doing this. You’ll need an email list. And the way it works is that you start sending out daily emails over the first four days. On the fifth day, you launch your offer and tell people that the cart will be open for a short period. That creates urgency. During the rush to sign up or buy, you inform people that the cart is closing soon. Then, actually close the cart so that it’s an authentic product launch. This helps reinforce trust in you as a business or a marketer.

31—Lead Generation Business

Every business on the face of the earth needs leads to survive. Leads are essential for keeping the lights on because they’re the source of sales. Without leads, you can’t expect to make money in a business. That’s why lead generation businesses are vital. They generate leads that are sold to businesses. For example, Zillow is a lead-generation business. They generate endless leads that can then be sold to real estate agents, mortgage companies, insurance companies, and more. If you’re good at generating leads, consider launching a lead generation business to make money.

32—Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves paid ads to drive traffic to a site. Companies use it to increase their traffic. And you can help companies manage their SEM by managing paid ads. You can do this on a platform like Google Ads by doing search marketing ads, retargeting ads, display ads, video ads and more. You’ll need a great landing page for a lead generation offer that’s proven to convert. Then, it’s just a matter of getting the right eyeballs to reach that page. You can get paid a good amount of money to do this. Especially if you’re very good at it.

33—Gaming

Today, you can make money just by playing video games. It’s literally that easy. You can play video games on many platforms like Twitch and actually make money doing it. All you need to do is build an audience while playing video games on one of these streaming services. You can also do live gaming on platforms like YouTube, Kick, and others.

34—Video Editing

Today, video editing is an important skill to have. Short-form videos have now taken over on many platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat, and more. If you have video editing skills you can use those skills to make some money. Find clients looking for video editing services. You can do that by building out a lead generation funnel and promoting it on social media. Appeal to business owners who don’t have the time to edit short-form videos because they’re busing running their business.

35—Transcribing

You can make money by transcribing audio and video. You can use a site like Rev and many others. Although there are AI transcription tools, human transcription is still the most accurate. And companies are willing to pay for this service. You can transcribe legal proceedings, insurance calls, and more. Although you won’t make a fortune doing this, it’s something you can easily do from home to make a little bit of extra cash.

36—Peer-to-Peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending services are all over the Internet. It allows you to lend out a bit of money to others and make a small interest rate. Platforms like Prosper and Lending Club allow you to determine who your money is loaned out to. Depending on the amount of money you put up for lending, you could make a sizable income from this method. It does take money to make money with peer-to-peer lending. Do your research and assess the risks of lending your money to others through these platforms.

37—Handmade Products

You can sell handmade products on sites like Etsy or Handmade and make some extra side cash. You can even make this your primary source of income and build it into a big business. If you enjoy crafting handmade products then this is perfect for you. You’ll need to find a good source of customers for your store, which is what most people find challenging. If you’re active on social media, you can use it to showcase how much time and effort you put into your products. And it can be used to drive sales.

38—Take Online Surveys

Online surveys will not make you rich. But you can take online surveys from anywhere in the world. You can even do it on your lunch break, before work, or after work. It doesn’t take a large investment of time. But it is one quick and easy way to make a little bit of money. You can use websites like Inbox Dollars and Swag Bucks to take online surveys. These two offer the most potential for earning with surveys out of all the other sites out there.

39—Flip Sneakers

You can flip sneakers for a profit. Apps like StockX and GOAT allow you to buy and sell sneakers quickly. You’ll get exposure to a wide audience by using apps like this. You can also find sneakers for sale in department stores and resell them. You can also be the first in line for releases that have low inventory, then sell those on StockX.

40—Sell Used Clothing

You can sell your used clothing on sites like ThredUp and PoshMark. If you have a lot of clothes sitting around your house that you want to get rid of then consider doing this. You can also hit the thrift stores and find great deals to resell online. If you find vintage scores, you can also try to sell those on sites like eBay and OfferUp.

41—Invest In REITs

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) allow you to earn money passively through an investment vehicle that’s tied to the real estate market. Your investment is into a company that usually has cash-producing assets in real estate. These could be residential properties, commercial buildings, or industrial flex space. Two types of REITs exist. The first is a Mortgage REIT. And the second is an Equity REIT.

42—Create Apps

Even if you don’t know how to code, you can build apps for companies. These no-code apps are simple and straightforward to build on many platforms that offer this service. Sites like Glide and Bubble allow you to build no-code apps. They might not have all the features you want, but they offer a templated approach to creating these apps.

43—Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a high-level skill you can use to make money from home in many ways. You can either use SEO to rank content on the internet. That content should be designed to sell something. It could be a piece of content that promotes a product or a service. And it can also be content that promotes an affiliate program. You can also make money in SEO by starting an SEO company to help other companies rank their content on search engines. However, SEO is not easy. And most companies approach it the wrong way by using shady tactics and shortcuts to rank. Learn how to do it the right way and you’ll succeed over time.

44—ATM Business

ATMs are everywhere you turn. But not every business has an ATM that needs one. And ATMs will pay you a transaction fee for every time someone uses them to withdraw cash. This transaction fee is small but it adds up over time. You can approach different businesses and ask them to place an ATM in their store. Some will want rent. Others will allow you to place an ATM there simply because it adds more value to their business.

45—Do Voiceovers

If you have a good voice, you can make money doing voiceovers. Many companies are constantly hiring individuals to help them with voiceovers in many applications. This is not just about doing voice acting for movies, shows, or commercials. You can actually get gigs doing voiceovers for promotional videos, YouTube, pre-rolls, and more. You can use sites like Upwork and Fiverr to find clients.

46—Vacation Rental Management

You can manage vacation rentals and make money without ever leaving your home. Vacation rental management involves helping property owners secure guests for their vacation properties. They can be homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments anywhere in the world. Most owners don’t want to deal with the hassle of managing vacation rentals. That’s where you come in. You can use existing vacation rental sites to help find guests. You can also find local staff in the area of the property to clean the property and provide help when the guests need it.

47—Create Music

You can create songs and melodies online that you offer to others for a profit. You can license music on many of the popular music platforms. For example, sites like Epidemic Sound and others allow you to offer your music on their site to creators. Creators can use these songs for many applications. They can be used in YouTube videos, promo reels, as part of an intro to a commercial, and so on. If you enjoy making music then you should consider doing this.

48—Snapchat

You can make money on an app like Snapchat in many different ways. The first is if you have over 50,000 followers. You can monetize your views in the Snap Stars Program. You can also help other companies grow their Snapchat following. Plus, you can promote products and services on Snapchat or even run affiliate offers. You must do this with tact or risk getting banned. However, Snapchat appeals to a wide, younger demographic. So you must keep that in mind when trying to push certain products or services on the platform.

49—Fortnite Maps

Some creators are making a lot of money from home by building Fortnite maps. Fortnite is a popular game played by millions of people from around the world. Fortnite has something called the Creator Economy, which has payouts. If your maps are being used by a lot of players, it could generate thousands of dollars per month in income.

50—Launch Podcast

Podcasts are very popular these days. You can use podcasts to grow a business in any niche, promote other brands, and build authority in a niche. Podcasts where you share stories and events from your life can also build a strong bond with your audience. It creates rapport because it’s an intimate platform where people are listening directly to you and what you have to say. You can also use podcasts to push affiliate offers, sell digital products, promote online courses, and more.

51—Rent Your Driveway

Most people don’t know this but you can actually rent out your driveway to others. This allows you to make money from home with your home (no pun intended). If you live in a busy area or you have a parking spot in a garage in the middle of a downtown metropolis, you can earn money doing this. Apps like JustPark and even Spacer allow you to make money doing this. It helps if you live near a city center, beach, airport, arena or other busy area.

52—Car Rentals

You can rent out your car on popular apps like Turo to make a bit of extra cash. Turo allows you to turn your vehicle into a cash-producing asset. Some owners on Turo purchase multiple vehicles, each making them some extra income each month. Turo does take work and there is some headache involved in dealing with renters, late returns, tickets, and damages. However, it is well worth the time invested. This is especially useful if you have an extra vehicle that’s getting little usage.

53—Amazon FBA

Amazon FBA has been one of the most popular ways to make money online for some time now. Long ago, the Amazing Selling Machine was an online program that catapulted the notion of selling on Amazon into the stratosphere. Most of the products you see sold on Amazon are actually sold by third-party sellers. They sell everything under the sun. You can supplements, fitness equipment, kitchen products, and more. You’ll need to find a good manufacturer and figure out all the logistics. Amazon takes a healthy cut of the profits. But there is just so much buyer demand on Amazon that it’s hard to compete with a platform like that for online sales.

54—Sell Used Electronics

You can sell your used electronics such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops for quick cash. You can use platforms like Swappa and also Gazelle to sell them fast. And if you can find cheap electronics for sale at thrift shops, garage sales, and estate sales, you can turn around and flip them for a profit by using these platforms.

55—Flip Cars

If you have some extra cash that allows you to invest in cars, you can always flip cars. You can find distressed sellers looking to sell you their vehicle at a reduced rate. You can then clean up that vehicle, then turn around and sell it for a profit. Used vehicles can be found in many places online and offline. Learn the art of negotiation and move quickly when you spot a good deal.

Thanks for reading 55 Ways To Make Money From Home which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

YouTube AdSense: How to Earn Money from Your Videos

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

YouTube AdSense: How to Earn Money from Your Videos

Learn how to set up your YouTube Adsense account and tips to boost your earnings.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

How to Use a SERP Preview Tool for Better Snippets

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

How to Use a SERP Preview Tool for Better Snippets

Learn how SERP preview tools can help improve your content‘s visibility. Includes best practices and tips.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

What Is Sentiment Analysis Marketing? Tips, Tools, and Techniques

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

What Is Sentiment Analysis Marketing? Tips, Tools, and Techniques

Learn the basics of sentiment analysis in marketing. Get started with actionable tips and helpful tools.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Inbound sales vs. outbound Sales: Key differences

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Capsule CRM simplifies customer relationship management, streamlines sales processes, and saves time. Features include contact management, customisable sales pipelines, email integration, analytics, and workflow automation. It doesn't provide full email marketing functionality but it does allow you to connect to other tools.

You might have heard about inbound sales and outbound sales. A business that wants to run an efficient sales strategy should know what both methods bring.

Some brands succeed with inbound sales. Others find outbound sales is a better fit for them. A mix of the two is a worthwhile consideration.

Using real-life examples to explain inbound and outbound sales as a concept should help to bring this topic to life.

Examples of inbound sales

Inbound sales occur when the customer approaches the business without direct contact from the sales team. For instance, word of mouth or an ad they hear on the radio drives a potential buyer to enter the awareness stage.

An inbound sales process and marketing involves creating promotional material and distribution across different channels.

1. Selling from content marketing

Imagine potential customers thinking about a trip to Japan. They discovered a blog that produces regular content covering different things tourists can do in Japan.

The content is so good that the person who discovered the blog becomes a regular reader. This is where their buyer’s journey begins.

Over time, the prospect saves enough money and can finally afford to travel to Japan. The blogger offers exclusive travel deals because they collaborate with a travel agency.

Blog readers become active buyers because all the time spent consuming content leads them to decide how to plan their trip.

2. Selling from Google Ads

Search engine adverts are the most straightforward example of inbound sales. You enter a keyword looking for goods or services, such as local flower delivery shops or cafeterias. Google or another search engine shows results to choose from, both organic and paid for. Paid adverts tend to be at the top of the page.

The sales process starts with the search and finishes with a conversion after clicking on an ad and getting redirected to a landing page where you can purchase the goods or services.

3. Selling from referral

Referrals could be an online conversation where two people discuss the best video games they’ve played this year. If you are into video games, you could use the discussion as a reference and buy these video games yourself.

Another example is custom print-on-demand merchandise. You meet friends wearing a cool T-shirt and ask them where you could get one for yourself.

In a sense, the friends become sales reps, explaining where they got the merch. Except they didn’t have to bother with a sales pitch. You, as a customer, took the initiative and asked them.

Many brands use social media to create marketing materials like static image ads or videos. Relevant content gets discovered by new customers. The target audience then enters a consideration stage, looking at the ads.

If they like what they see, they will become interested prospects and start their buying journey. This way, the marketing activity by the marketing team on social media translates into inbound sales.

Examples of outbound sales

Outbound selling requires direct involvement from a sales rep to offer a product or service directly to a lead. Outbound leads don’t usually express interest in a good or service, so attracting potential customers can be tricky.

To seek qualified leads, sales reps utilize cold calling, traditional sales methods, email marketing, social media, and other outbound sales tactics.

It’s all about convincing potential buyers to become interested. Passive buyers might not even know about their current pain points, but a good sales rep can persuade a potential customer by playing their cards right.

Selling on social media doesn’t start and end with an inbound sales strategy. Outbound marketing strategies also revolve around LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

Sales reps reach out to business owners or regular people for an initial contact. If the prospect is interested, the next step is to arrange a call or a meeting in person to discuss the details and close the deal.

2. Cold outreach

Cold outreach via emails or phone calls is quite popular. Let’s say that a sales rep from a company that builds custom gaming computers has a list of qualified leads—a demographic that is into gaming and prefers PCs over consoles.

The outbound sales process continues with a call or an email inquiring about a lead’s interest in upgrading their current gaming computer. The sales representative delivers a pitch and either fails or succeeds.

3. Live events

Live events, such as trade shows, are a bit of a mix as far as inbound sales and outbound sales go. From one perspective, it is up to the business to showcase its goods or services and present them in a way to attract potential customers.

On the other hand, people who visit these trade shows can be considered inbound leads. After all, they are interested enough to come. Still, it’s mostly up to the sales professionals to do their magic and establish a sales relationship that leads to sales opportunities and conversions.

4. Door-to-door sales

As far as outbound sales strategies go, door-to-door is a rather outdated concept. Sales representatives don’t really qualify leads. They just go from one door to another, hoping that their sales methodology brings results.

Advantages and disadvantages of inbound sales and outbound sales

Here are the lists of the advantages and disadvantages of inbound sales and outbound sales.

Inbound sales advantages

1. Smooth sales funnel

The inbound sales funnel is less complicated because leads reach out to the business rather than the other way around. Every prospect is already a potential customer. An inbound salesperson has to push the prospect in the right direction.

2. Brand awareness increase

Inbound sales marketing encourages word of mouth in real life and various online platforms. Solid results lead to raising brand awareness, which can help with generating leads even further.

3. Reach to modern buyers

Modern buyers have a tendency to look for solutions themselves. Inbound marketing allows them to look up problems online and get redirected to a landing page that offers a way to solve a problem.

Outbound marketing methods like cold calling or door-to-door sales are not considered particularly efficient nowadays, so it’s a clear area where inbound sales have an edge.

Inbound sales disadvantages

1. Time investment

Time investment, particularly for small businesses, poses a challenge when crafting inbound marketing strategies. Differentiating personas, identifying their challenges and thinking of ways to present your brand’s values are not as easy as one might think.

2. Dealing with content overflow

Content overflow is another example of a problem that inbound marketers have to consider. The internet is saturated with all kinds of content, so crafting something unique may be a noticeable obstacle. Even more so when you have to stick to a content schedule and publish something on a regular basis.

3. Resources for sales and marketing teams

Inbound sales involves both sales and marketing teams. There might be instances when the two clash due to poor alignment. Finding success is more or less impossible if the two teams cannot coexist.

Outbound sales advantages

1. Quick ROI

Many businesses consider return on investment a crucial metric. Outbound sales professionals can quickly get a lead and close it, which brings a significant ROI.

2. Direct control for the sales team

Sales reps are in direct control. They decide how to do the job and don’t have to rely on a marketing team that produces materials.

3. Direct interaction with prospects

Direct interaction with prospects is another solid advantage. It’s easier to determine a course of action when you talk to a prospect in person or on the phone, for example. Being in control puts the sales rep in charge.

Outbound sales disadvantages

1. Prospects might get annoyed

Plenty of prospects find outbound sales annoying. They don’t want to receive phone calls or see sales reps at their door. There’s no telling how angry a prospect might get since the sales reps don’t know potential customers in person.

2. Tricky to scale

Scaling is tricky because outbound marketing requires a sheer number of direct interactions with potential leads. Businesses that struggle to find a decent budget are bound to bottleneck sooner rather than later.

3. Biases in feedback

Feedback management helps brands evaluate whether the currently implemented strategies bring value or not.

For outbound sales representatives, they operate independently for the most part. Hence, they might be biased in how they view their work. Feedback from outbound sales reps isn’t always genuine.

Similarities and differences between inbound sales and outbound sales

Understanding the similarities and differences between inbound sales and outbound sales ought to help decide which of the two you should use.

1. Target audience

As far as the target audience goes, both inbound sales and outbound sales aim to target ideal customers.

The difference comes in the context of accessibility. Inbound sales have much more reach because marketers create the material for a wider audience.

Meanwhile, outbound sales strategies involve targeting specific individuals, which takes more time and preparation.

2. Business size

Both inbound sales and outbound sales are fine for businesses of any size. It comes down to preference and business types.

For example, B2C brands usually sell commoditized or lower-priced products or services, so they target a wide audience and use inbound sales.

Alternatively, B2B companies operate in long business cycles with smaller target audiences. They tend to ignore inbound sales methodology and focus on a narrower targeted demographic.

3. Potential to scale

As one would assume, inbound sales and outbound sales both offer the potential for a business to scale.

In the case of inbound sales, it grows with the business itself. Inbound salespeople and marketers don’t necessarily have to write ten more social media copies if there are more customers buying via social media. That one copy every week will do just fine if its quality remains solid.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about outbound sales. Unlike inbound sales, outbound marketing requires direct impact from the sales reps to generate leads and nurture customers.

Reaching higher quality leads can become tricky with insufficient resources too, since you must dedicate them to scaling sales teams and other aspects.

Having said that, there are tools like Capsule that make customer management easier. Leaving the customer relationship management part in the hands of automation tools is a solid piece of advice. Capsule keeps you focussed on what you need to do and measures it, enabling businesses to make more informed business decisions.

Wrapping up

To sum everything up, inbound sales and outbound sales have a lot to offer to small or large businesses. The approaches bring advantages and disadvantages.

Picking one of the two is a sound option, but mixing both methods is a decent alternative. Ultimately, it comes down to a brand’s goals and budget.

If Capsule CRM is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

What is Smart Bidding? Everything You Need to Know

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

What is Smart Bidding? Everything You Need to Know

Learn all about Google Smart Bidding, setting it up, and how to help it deliver the best ad results.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

The Top 25 Digital Marketing Courses of 2024

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

The Top 25 Digital Marketing Courses of 2024

Strengthen your skillset with one of our favorite digital marketing courses in 2024.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

SEO Traffic: What It Is & 6 Ways to Increase It in 2024

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Semrush is a power-packed toolkit for digital marketing. Covers SEO, digital ads, market research, content, and social media. Keyword intel, real-time data, and 500+ integrations.

SEO Traffic: What It Is & 6 Ways to Increase It in 2024

SEO traffic is the number of visitors that come to your website from a search engine‘s organic results.

If Semrush is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

The 14 Best Copywriting Tools For 2024

Software Stack Editor · March 22, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.

Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.

Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.

Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.

Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post The 14 Best Copywriting Tools For 2024 appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Want to take your copy to the next level in 2024?

Here are the 14 best copywriting tools that can help you with that:

Table of Contents:

#1. Ahrefs
#2. AnswerThePublic
#3. BuzzSumo
#4. Hemingway Editor
#5. Clearscope
#6. Grammarly Premium
#7. Headline Hacks
#8. Sharethrough Headline Analyzer
#9. Copyscape
#10. Hootsuite
#11. Meta Ad Library
#12. Really Good Emails
#13. Copywriting Examples
#14. Notion
Want to get ALL of Your Ads, Emails, and Sales Pages Written WITHOUT Having to Hire an Expensive Copywriter?

#1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools out there.

This software is widely considered to be the industry standard among online marketers who specialize in search engine optimization.

Features

Here are some of the Ahrefs’ most noteworthy features:

Site audit feature that you can use to scan your website for potential SEO problems.
Keyword explorer feature that you can use to discover promising keywords.
Content explorer feature that you can use to research content ideas and find link building opportunities.
Site Explorer feature that you can use to research your competitors, learn about their strengths and weaknesses, and understand their SEO strategy.
Rank tracker feature that you can use to monitor your ranking progress for your target keywords.
Dashboard that you can use to get a high-level overview of the performance of all your SEO projects.

Pricing

Ahrefs has four pricing plans:

Lite plan at $99/month that provides essential data for small businesses and hobby projects.
Standard plan at $199/month that is perfect for freelance marketers.
Advanced plan at $399/month that provides more data and tools for in-house marketing teams.
Enterprise plan that starts at $999/month that is custom and ideal for marketing agencies and large companies.

You can get 2 months for free if you choose to pay annually.

Ahrefs doesn’t seem to have a free trial but you can sign up for its Webmaster Tools to get free limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit features.

Best For: Search Engine Optimization

We highly recommend investing in Ahrefs if you are serious about search engine optimization. It’s arguably the best SEO tool on the market!

#2. AnswerThePublic

AnswerThePublic is a search listening tool that can help you understand what is important to your dream customers.

Features

Here are some of the AnswerThePublic’s most noteworthy features:

Free keyword research tool that you can use to see what questions people are typing into Google, Bing, YouTube, and Amazon search engines.
Search listening feature that you can use to monitor specific keywords.
Data comparison feature that you can use to see how Google searches around a particular topic have changed over time.
Data visualization feature that you can use to export data and present it to other people in a way that is easy for them to understand.

Pricing

AnswerThePublic has three pricing plans:

Individual plan at $9/month that is best suited for entrepreneurs, consultants and small businesses. You can also pay a one-time $99 fee for lifetime access.
Pro plan at $99/month that is best suited for marketing agencies and in-house marketing teams that need to monitor specific business search terms. You can also pay a one-time $990 fee for lifetime access.
Expert plan at $199/month that is best suited for in-house marketing teams that need to monitor their brand’s reputation. You can also pay a one-time $1990/month fee for lifetime access.

AnswerThePublic offers a 7-day free trial.

Best For: Search Listening

AnswerThePublic can be a valuable customer research tool to add to your arsenal because popular search terms provide insight into the psychology of people who use them.

As the company explains on their website, sometimes people search for mundane stuff like “How do I remove paper jam” but other times their searches reveal their gut-wrenching fears and secret hankerings.

This app gives you access to all that data!

#3. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool that can help you come up with content ideas that resonate with your dream customers.

Features

Here are some of the BuzzSumo’s most noteworthy features:

Content discovery feature that you can use to browse topics, trends, and forums. This can help you generate content ideas.
Content research features that you can use to access insights from a huge data set of billions of articles and social media posts.
Influencer research feature that you can use to look beyond vanity metrics and find people who have engaged audiences, genuine authority and real influence.
Online monitoring feature that you can use to track brand mentions, keep an eye on your competitors, and stay up to date with the latest developments in your industry.

Pricing

BuzzSumo has four pricing plans:

Content Creation plan at $199/month that is best suited for freelance marketers and marketing agencies.
PR and Comms plan at $299/month that is best suited for marketing agencies that need to do media outreach and monitor media coverage.
Suite plan at $499 that is best suited for large companies with in-house marketing teams.
Enterprise plan at $999/month that provides access to everything that BuzzSumo has to offer.

You can save 20% if you choose to pay annually.

BuzzSumo offers a 30-day free trial.

BuzzSumo can be helpful to copywriters who want to capitalize on the latest trends in their industries.

#4. Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor is an editing tool designed to help writers improve the readability of their content.

Features

Here are some of the Hemingway Editor’s most noteworthy features:

Readability score feature that shows you the grade level of your content.
Style feature that highlights potential stylistic issues such as adverb and passive voice use, complicated phrases, hard-to-read sentences, and so on.
Rewriting with AI feature where AI rewrites your text for you to make it more readable.

Pricing

Hemingway Editor has three pricing plans:

Individual 5K plan at $10/month that includes 5,000 AI sentences per month.
Individual 10k plan at $15/month that includes 10,000 AI sentences per month.
Team 10k plan at $15/month that includes 10,000 AI sentences per month and allows you to manage licenses for your team on a single bill.

There’s also a free 14-day trial with up to 200 sentence corrections.

Best For: Improving Readability

Hemingway Editor can help you improve the readability of your copy so that big words and complex sentences won’t get in the way of conversions.

#5. Clearscope

Clearscope is a content optimization tool designed to help writers optimize SEO content.

Features

Here are some of the Clearscope’s most noteworthy features:

Content score where your content gets graded on a scale from A++ to F-. This makes it easy to understand how your content compares to the content that is currently ranking for your target keyword.
Word count information that shows you the word count of your content and the typical word count of the content that is currently ranking for your target keyword.
Readability score that shows you the grade level of your content and the typical grade level of the content that is currently ranking for your target keyword.
Semantic keyword scores show you how many times you have mentioned related keywords in your content and how many times the same related keywords are typically mentioned in the content that is currently ranking for your target keyword.

Pricing

Clearscope has three pricing plans:

Essentials plan at $199/month that is best suited for freelancers and solopreneurs.
Business plan at $599/month that is best suited for marketing agencies and in-house content teams.
Enterprise plan with custom pricing that is best suited for large companies.

There doesn’t seem to be a free trial.

However, the billing is monthly and there’s no minimum contract so you can cancel your Clearscope subscription at any time.

Best For: Optimizing Content for Search Engines

Clearscope can help you increase the likelihood of ranking for your target keyword.

#6. Grammarly Premium

Grammarly is a popular proofreading app.

Features

Here are some of the Grammarly’s most noteworthy features:

Proofreading feature that you can use to check your spelling, grammar, and style.
Tone feature that describes the tone of your content and provides suggestions on how to adjust it if the current tone doesn’t match what you have in mind for that piece.
Writing suggestions feature where you get tips on how to improve your content.
AI writing partner feature where you can ask AI to rewrite your content.
Plagiarism detection feature that can help you catch accidental plagiarism where a fragment of the text that you wrote matches a fragment of some other text that has already been published online.

Pricing

Grammarly has three pricing plans:

Free plan that is best suited for writers who only need basic proofreading features.
Premium plan at $12.50/month (billed annually) that is best suited for writers who need to write in a specific tone.
Business plan at $15/member/month (billed annually) that is best suited for content teams that must ensure that all content is written in their brand’s tone and complies with its style guide.

There doesn’t seem to be a free trial but you can sign up for a free plan if you want to check out the app’s core functionality.

Best For: Proofreading

Grammarly is widely considered to be one of the essential tools of the trade by professional writers. It’s arguably the best proofreading app out there!

#7. Headline Hacks

“Headline Hacks” is a free cheat sheet that features proven headline formulas that are based on the headlines used by some of the most popular media outlets in the world.

Best For: Writing Headlines

“Headline Hacks” is an excellent resource for beginner copywriters who want to learn how to write better headlines. Master these formulas first, then start improvising to create your own style!

#8. Sharethrough Headline Analyzer

Sharethrough Headline Analyzer is a free tool designed to help you optimize your headlines.

Its headline quality score is based on a complex linguistic algorithm that takes into account more than 300 variables.

You also get an engagement score and an impression score. Interestingly, these scores can be deflexive, meaning that what increases one score may decrease the other.

The app also highlights the strengths of your headline and provides suggestions on how to make it better.

Best For: Optimizing Headlines

Sharethrough Headline Analyzer is arguably the best headline optimization tool out there. We recommend running your headlines through it to see how you can improve them.

#9. Copyscape

Copyscape is a plagiarism detection tool suite.

Products

Copyscape has three core products:

Free Text Comparison Tool

You can use this free comparison tool to compare two articles or two web pages and see if there’s any duplicate text and if so what’s the duplicate text percentage.

Copyscape Premium

You can use this tool to compare texts against web content to see if there’s duplicate text.

If Copyscape detects duplicate text online it will show you the websites where it’s featured and what percentage of the text you provided is duplicated on each website.

Copysentry

Copysentry is a plagiarism protection tool that enables you to monitor the web for plagiarized content.

You can set daily or weekly web scans and get email notifications when new copies of your content appear. If you need to look up old instances of plagiarism, you can access historical data.

If you are dealing with more than one case of plagiarism, the software makes it easy to keep track of all ongoing cases and your responses to them.

There’s also a feature that allows you to whitelist specific websites so that Copysentry would ignore them.

This can be helpful if you have given permission to someone to republish your content and don’t want to get notifications every time they do so.

Pricing

Copyscape Premium costs $0.03 per search for up to 200 words and then an additional $0.01 per extra 100 words.

This app follows a pre-paid pay-as-you-go model where you need to put money in your account in advance and then the cost of each search you run gets deducted from your account balance.

There’s a helpful feature where you need to manually approve searches that cost more than your price-per-search limit (e.g. more than $0.20).

This ensures that you always know how much a search will cost before running it.

Copysentry Standard (weekly protection) costs $4.95/month for up to 10 pages and then $0.25 for each additional page.

Meanwhile, Copysentry Professional (daily protection) costs $19.95/month for up to 10 pages and then $1/month for each additional page.

Best For: Detecting Plagiarism

Copyscape can help you avoid accidentally plagiarising other people’s content.

Moreover, it can also help you avoid accidentally plagiarising yourself, which can become an issue if you have been publishing content on the same topics for a long time.

This is important because Google doesn’t like duplicate content and having it on your website can make it more difficult for you to rank for your target keywords.

#10. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media marketing platform that has everything you need to build, manage, and grow a social media following.

Features

Here are some of the Hootsuite’s most noteworthy features:

OwlyWriter AI feature that you can use to generate social media captions, get content ideas, and increase your reach by recreating your top-performing posts without using duplicate text.
Social media content timing feature that can help you figure out the best time to post based on your own historical data.
Social media scheduling feature that you can use to plan, schedule, and publish content for all your platforms from a single dashboard.
Social media engagement features that you can use to boost various engagement metrics.
Social media analytics feature that you can use to see your social media metrics for all your platforms in one place.
Social media inbox management feature that you can use to respond to comments, messages, and customer support inquiries.
Social listening features that you can use to find out what people are saying about you, learn about the latest industry trends, and keep an eye on your competition.

Pricing

Hootsuite has three pricing plans:

Professional plan at $99/month (billed annually) that is best suited for influencers, content creators, and freelance marketers.
Team plan at $249/month (billed annually) that is best suited for marketing agencies and in-house marketing teams.
Enterprise plan with custom pricing that is best suited for large companies.

Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial but if you skip it you will get a 20% discount on your chosen plan.

Hootsuite can help you understand what content resonates with your audience, enable you to produce that type of content consistently, and provide you with the tools you need to maximize its impact in terms of reach and engagement.

#11. Meta Ad Library

Meta’s official Ad Libary is an ad search engine that allows you to search:

Ads that are currently running on Meta’s properties including Facebook and Instagram.
Ads that have run anywhere within the European Union in the past twelve months.
Ads related to social issues, politics, or elections that have run in the past seven years.

You can set the location, choose the ad category, and then use either the name of the advertiser or a specific keyword to search ads.

Search results will show you all relevant ads that are currently running on Meta’s properties, which platforms they are running on, and how many other ads are using the same creative and text, plus some additional information.

Best For: Ad Copywriting Inspiration

Got stuck writing ad copy?

Meta’s Ad Libary can be a great place to get some ad copywriting inspiration!

#12. Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails is a free database of over 10,000 marketing emails.

These emails are organized in these easy-to-browse categories:

Behavioral. This category includes abandoned cart emails, engagement and re-engagement emails, customer appreciation emails, and more.
Enhancement. This category includes interactive emails, countdown emails, video and GIF emails, and more.
Inaugural. This category includes activation emails, welcome emails, onboarding emails, and more.
Industry. This category includes a wide variety of industries from pet supplies to marketing to real estate.
Miscellaneous. This category includes confirmation and verification emails, deactivation and renewal emails, cancellation emails, and more.
Promotional. This category includes product launch emails, sales emails, winback emails, and more.
Punctual. This category includes alert emails, reminder emails, apology emails, and more.
Seasonal. This category includes Halloween emails, Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails, Christmas and New Year emails, and more.

There’s also a paid app that you can use to create an email library, organize those emails into collections, and share them with your team and clients.

This app comes with a 14-day free trial and costs $9/month.

Best For: Email Copywriting Inspiration

Really Good Emails is a great tool for email copywriters.

Whenever you have to write a marketing email and need some inspiration, you can use its database to look up similar emails.

You can also browse it to see how popular brands are approaching email marketing, study their emails, and learn from them.

#13. Copywriting Examples

Marketing Examples is a collection of various marketing examples with short commentary from the site’s founder Harry Dry. There’s also a weekly newsletter.

Meanwhile, Copywriting Examples is its sister project that features copywriting examples. It’s just screenshots without commentary.

You can sort these copywriting examples by:

Type. This category includes a header, story, features, social proof, lead magnet, and ad copy examples.
Style. This category includes simple, creative, rhetorical, contrast-driven, conversational, and outcomes-based copy examples.
Audience. This category allows you to choose between B2B and B2C copy examples.

This sorting feature can be really helpful if you are struggling with something specific and need inspiration.

Say, if you can’t come up with a compelling headline + subheadline combination for your offer, you can go to Copywriting Examples, sort by type “Header” and browse the header copy examples.

Best For: Copywriting Inspiration

Both Marketing Examples and Copywriting Examples are great for copywriting inspiration!

#14. Notion

Notion started out as note-taking software and then evolved into a collaboration platform for teams.

However, it has stayed true to its note-taking roots and remains one of the most popular note-taking apps out there.

Notion can work well for pretty much anything that requires taking notes: jotting down random ideas, organizing your recipe collection, plotting your seven-volume epic fantasy series, you name it.

Moreover, if you are only interested in the note-taking functionality of this app and don’t need the team collaboration features, you can sign up for the free plan that was designed specifically for that use case.

Best For: Creating Your Swipe File

A swipe file is a collection of copywriting examples that copywriters use for inspiration.

The previously mentioned tools Headline Hacks, Really Good Emails, and Copywriting Examples are public swipe files.

Public swipe files like that are great but every copywriter should also build their own swipe file that is tailored to their needs.

Notion is a great app for this!

Want to get ALL of Your Ads, Emails, and Sales Pages Written WITHOUT Having to Hire an Expensive Copywriter?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson took our company from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade. You know what he credits his success to?

Not software. Not funnels. Not marketing. Copywriting!

“Copywriting is what made me rich…

It has more impact on how much money you make with your company than anything else.”

Entrepreneurs love to obsess about ad targeting, funnel structures, and conversion rate optimization. But guess what?

The #1 reason why sales funnels don’t convert is COPY.

This means that if you want your sales funnel to convert…

You either need to hire a world-class copywriter to write copy for you which can be extremely expensive.

You need to become a world-class copywriter yourself which will take you at least a decade.

BUT WAIT!

What if there was a third option?

Funnel Scripts is a software developed by our friend and colleague Jim Edwards who is a world-class copywriter and the author of the best-selling book “Copywriting Secrets”.

With this app, you can get your ads, emails, and sales pages written for you in as little as 10 minutes.

All you need to do is fill out a questionnaire about your business, choose the type of copy that you want and it will generate it for you. Sounds crazy but it’s true!

If you want to learn more about this revolutionary software, you can watch this free web class where Russell and Jim explain everything and demonstrate exactly how it works:

Watch “Funnel Scripts: The Case AGAINST Copywriters” Now

P.S. This web class is completely FREE. So what are you waiting for? 🧐

Thanks for reading The 14 Best Copywriting Tools For 2024 which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Tips from leading agencies on creating localized websites

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

When a website is localized — it allows you to reach untapped audiences — and subsequently, expand and grow your business.

And localization doesn’t just mean translation. Like we outlined in our guide to effective website localization — effective localization is all about creating a site that fosters meaningful and authentic connections with a target audience in each locale.

We talked to Jack Redley and Arnau Ros from Macu Studio and Scott Ruigrok from Agency Leroy to hear their top tips and pieces of advice for creating localized sites — from start to finish.

Here’s what they had to say.

Deeply understand your target market

When building localized sites, it’s vital to deeply understand each regional market and the target personas attached to each market.

According to Jack Redley of Barcelona-based Macu Studio, the first question you need to ask when it comes to understanding yours or your client’s market fit is, “Who are the 10 most valuable customers in each region?” By doing so, you will be able to clearly work out who benefits and values the most in each region — and be able to craft clear personas from that.

If you’re speaking directly to consumers and are a B2C company, Jack recommends identifying key factors like age, gender, income level, education, and marital status. For each different customer, you also want to ask questions around their behavior like: “What do they value?” “What are their interests?” and “What is their personality like?”

If your business is B2B — key things to understand here are the responsibilities of your target customer, the scope of their role, their focus areas, how they measure success, and pain points.

Perhaps most importantly, you also want to identify the specifics about this region or locale that these customers reside in. Taking deeper looks into the cultural nuances, a region’s history, and practices — is key to truly understanding the background of your target customer’s behaviors, desires, and needs.

With all of this information, Jack says that you’re not only able to foster “more precise and emotionally resonant marketing strategies,” but you’re also able to “segment audiences in a more structured manner and narrow down target groups based on quantifiable characteristics.”

Now, you can craft your different personas for each region. Jack’s number one recommendation for crafting personas is to “keep it real and relatable.” He notes: “Ideally your personas should be so well-understood that it feels like you know them personally.. and you do, because they’re based on your real customers.”

“At the end of the day, connecting with your global audience through localization is about understanding and appreciating their unique stories and perspectives,” Jack concludes.

Engage audiences with truly tailored localized experiences

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again — it’s easy to perceive a localized site as just a translated site — but it’s so much more than that. Jack perhaps puts it best: “Localizing goes beyond language; it involves acknowledging and respecting cultural subtleties and preferences.”

From the images you use, to the content of your site, and everything in between, every content or design choice will have a different meaning and perception to a locale or region.

The wrong choice can often end up alienating an entire target audience group. The right choice — by contrast — can increase site engagement, create a loyal customer base, and drive conversion rates.

Jack explained to us that your site content and design is vital when localizing a site and reaching regional audiences. For him and his team, they try to meet the audience where they’re at before presenting them with the information they want them to consume, or the action they want them to perform.

Maximize global traffic with international SEO

“Search engines like Google favor content that aligns with the searcher’s language and cultural context,” says Jack.”When a site is properly localized, including its metadata and SEO strategies, it is more likely to rank higher in search results in different regions.”

Google and other search engines want to provide searchers with the most relevant information to them. For example, providing a Japanese searcher with an English site and American cultural references can be alienating, and so much can get lost in translation.

And this is supported by the stats. When surveyed, a CSA research study found that 76% of consumers prefer purchasing products with information in their own language. So, naturally Google’s algorithm — and that of other search engines like it — factor in the location of the searchers a huge reason for showing one result in search over another.

According to Jack: “improved search engine ranking drives more traffic to the website from international audiences seeking information or products in their native language.” He continues: “By catering to a wider range of linguistic groups, businesses expand their reach and potential customer base, ultimately increasing their global presence and website traffic.”

For the Macu Studio team, a solution that made it easy for them to localize sites and rank highly in search results was key when finding the right one to go with.

For them, they found it in Webflow: “We’re excited to start implementing Webflow’s localization solution for our clients because its out-of-the-box SEO features let you maximize visibility in your target locales,” said Arnau Ros. “From customizable sub-directories and URLs, to metadata translations and auto-generated sitemaps with HREF lang tags, the native solution makes it easy for search engines like Google to crawl site pages and understand how various locale pages are related to one another.”

If you’re building for a client, set them up for success post-launch

When you’re building for a client — they are the sole owners of the site. Sure you might be the one who created it, but once your work is complete, you want the process of maintaining and updating their brand new site to be all up to them.

With localized sites, having clear handoffs and empowering your clients to be able to manage minor, iterative changes to the design or content on their own is particularly important. Because a localized site essentially is additional new sites on top of the original website — there’s a lot more to manage — and you don’t want to have your client rely on you for everything.

What’s worked best for Scott Ruigrok from Finland-based Agency Leroy has been setting up projects at the very beginning that fosters a clear handover procedure.

Scott and his team make sure that there’s clear ownership by their client from the jump. “We always start off with helping them set up their own account [in Webflow],” Scott says. This way, they’re able to ensure that the finished site is solely under the client’s control and domain.

In addition, when you’re prototyping and building the localized sites, Scott explained that it’s also important to maintain a collaborative relationship between you, your team, and your client. Giving them the ability to see and react first-hand to the site building process allows them to understand its inner workings and be able to fully own the decisions and changes that are made.

On top of all of this, Scott also emphasizes the importance of empowering your clients through resources, and throughout the building process recommends creating screen recordings, or hopping onto live video calls to help create meaningful guidance for your clients for their localized site.

“I create videos on everything from how to edit static page content, how to swap out an asset, to how to navigate the CMS or how to show or hide CMS items for certain locales, to switching between locales …the list goes on and on.”

Even though these videos may take extra work — Scott has found that giving Agency Leroy’s clients the ability to own straightforward updates and iterative changes to their localized sites has been incredibly valuable in the long run.

“[It usually just takes] three or four or five screen recordings of how to perform specific actions with all of the steps,” he says. “After that, they’re able to make iterative changes and inputs all on their own.”

Webflow Localization: the better way to build a localized site

Webflow Localization is an end-to-end solution that empowers users to design and build brand-differentiating, localized, sites — directly in the Designer.

From customizing images and alt text to specific locales, to out-of-the-box SEO features that make your site stand out, to collaboration tools and more — Webflow Localization allows you to extend the power of Webflow’s visual development platform to create digital experiences that resonate with audiences anywhere in the world.

To learn more, and get started click here.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Turning a Hobby Into a Business in 9 Easy Steps (2024)

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

For as long as you can remember, you’ve been building wooden birdhouses or sewing tote bags or hand-pouring candles from scratch—simply because the act of making brings you joy.

But over time, you’ve become somewhat of an expert at your craft, prompting friends and family to demand, “Take my money!” Maybe you’ve even dabbled in selling, either through a local marketplace or online selling site, or to friends for cash.

It’s probably time to ask yourself: Could this hobby become a business? There are several benefits to turning your passion into an honest-to-goodness brand—and factors to consider before taking the leap.

Ahead, learn the differences between hobbies and businesses, the legal and financial implications of making the switch, and the steps you can take to turn a hobby into a business today. Plus, get expert advice from hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs running thriving businesses.

Hobby vs. business: What’s the difference?

Shelves of spools of thread in many colors — *Patrick Chin*

In some cases, a hobby and a business can be one and the same. Your hobby is the thing you engage in after work hours and in your spare time, but you also may exchange the results of those hobbies for cash.

In the eyes of the government, that hobby income is real income that you may need to claim. The true difference between a hobby and a business comes down to tax law. The laws vary from country to country and depend on many factors. For example, in the US, the IRS looks at the intention to turn a profit and history of profit. If you have profited from your hobby in at least three of five consecutive years, the IRS will see this as intentional and, therefore, qualify your activity as a business.

While claiming income may seem like a hassle, the benefits to upgrading your hobby to a business can balance the negatives. Business owners can claim expenses like material costs, a portion of utilities (for home-based businesses), or other specific expenses applicable to the particular business—hobbyists cannot.

Once you make the distinction that your hobby is now a venture, tracking and organizing your business finances will set you up for success at tax time.

🛑 Note: This information is general and not intended to replace the advice of a tax professional. It’s important to check with the revenue agency in your country or consult an accountant or lawyer before you launch your business and when you file taxes.

Which hobbies make great businesses?

A YouTube page for YouTube chef Wil Yeung — A cooking hobby can become a successful creator business. Wil Yeung turned his love of cooking into a popular YouTube channel, online cooking class, and cookbook. *Yeung Man Cooking*

There are some fairly common hobbies you can monetize—selling finished handmade goods, like knit wool mittens at a craft market, for example. Many entrepreneurs start this way. But there are other types of hobbies that have a marketable angle. A few examples include:

Musicians can sell music samples or teach guitar classes.
Gamers can join the creator economy and build a business around streaming.
Gardeners can grow seeds into plants to sell or harvest fruit to make jams and pies to supply local restaurants.
Dancers can set up summer camps to teach kids the art of movement.
Bakers can sell cookies, baking kits, or virtual baking lessons online.
Home décor DIYers can grow social media accounts with helpful content and eventually earn money through partnerships, affiliate links, and sponsored posts.

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Turning a hobby into a business in 9 steps

Conduct market research
Determine your business model
Develop your brand
Consider funding options
Streamline your processes and workspace
Set up an online store
Launch and market your brand
Create boundaries
Set yourself up to scale

Now that you’ve either determined that you are in fact an accidental entrepreneur or you want to become one, let’s make it official. Here’s how to turn a hobby into a business in nine easy steps.

1. Conduct market research

“Everyone has this million-dollar idea,” says entrepreneur and YouTube chef Wil Yeung, “But not everyone has a million-dollar execution.” Pulling off great execution starts with doing the groundwork. To turn a hobby into a business, there are a few questions to ask yourself about your motivations and the viability of your idea.

The best way to validate your business idea is by conducting market research. This includes a number of steps such as evaluating your competition, researching your target customer, looking at market and consumer trends, and understanding your unique selling proposition.

Answering a few questions about your audience and competitors will tell you if there’s space for your product or service in the market. Can you offer something your competition can’t? Is there an underserved market that your specific brand can target? What trends in your industry indicate that it’s the right time to launch?

2. Determine your business model

What kind of business can you run, based on the nature of your craft? Determine if you will run your business from home or if you will run it solo or with a business partner, and if you need to outsource or hire for any part of the process. Will you sell finished goods or services? Do you plan to sell online or in person? Or maybe some mix of the above?

Writing a business plan will not only answer these questions, but will also help determine factors like required funding and path to profitability. If you choose to seek outside funding, a business plan helps frame your pitch to investors.

3. Develop your brand

Color, fonts, tone of voice, image aesthetic, and packaging design are all components of branding. These come together to tell a story, like in this example from Omsom. Omsom

Say you’ve been dabbling in jewelry design, maybe gifting or selling your pieces to friends. As you transition that hobby to a business, your work should be anchored to a brand. A brand defines everything around your product or service, including what you stand for, your brand voice, visual guidelines, and your brand story.

A strong brand will inform your website, branding assets like logo design, social media content, and product packaging. Even if you’re selling a product in a crowded market, branding can set you apart from the competition if you can tell a compelling story that resonates with your target audience.

That story can also attract press attention. “If you are not dedicating time and energy to storytelling, then the media doesn’t have a story to tell,” Omsom founder Vanessa Pham says.

4. Consider funding options

If your business is born from a hobby, you likely already own much of the equipment required to produce your product. However, in order to transition, you may need to upgrade machinery, buy supplies in bulk, or even transition rooms in your home to dedicated workspaces.

For example, if you’re a fitness buff looking to parlay your love of movement into virtual classes, consider that you’ll have upfront expenses for lighting and camera equipment. Also consider other costs like website hosting, accounting software, and online advertising.

In some cases you may need to apply for a loan, small business grant, or capital offer, start a crowdfunding campaign, dip into your savings, or seek other types of funding.

Hobby businesses, however, are usually conducive to a bootstrapping method—or funding the business on your own by investing profits back into it. Even if you start a business with no money, as you grow your sales, you can use those profits to slowly upgrade equipment or invest in marketing.

5. Streamline your processes and workspace

Kerin Rose Gold sits in her studio making products — Kerin Rose Gold bedazzled a pair of sunglasses for herself—and caught the attention of some famous names. Since launching A-Morir, she has upgraded to a dedicated studio and workspace. *A-Morir*

Tinkering with furniture making in your garage is one thing, but is the space set up in the most efficient way to transition to a woodworking business? You’ll be spending more hours in the space than you did as a hobbyist.

Consider ergonomics (a better chair, anti-fatigue mats), the flow of your workspace (how things are arranged for efficiency), and whether or not your space and processes meet legal requirements for ventilation and safety.

When Melissa Butler started making lipstick in her kitchen, she was still working on Wall Street full time. When she left the financial industry and made a real go of her small business, she realized her kitchen lab was no longer sustainable. The Lip Bar operations moved to a factory, allowing Melissa to scale and follow beauty industry regulations.

6. Set up an online store

Homepage for magnolia bakery — Your website needs to make a great first impression. Attractive and optimized homepage design is important for new brands to convert visitors to customers. *Magnolia Bakery*

Many hobbies can translate into a business that sells goods and services online. Setting up an online store on a platform like Shopify is a great way to launch your business without a lot of upfront cost. Once you’ve done that, consider other sales channels to expand your reach.

The right sales channels can help you reach the right audiences, even if your marketing budget is low. If you make handmade goods, set up your own website so you have ownership over your brand and email list, but also try selling on a marketplace like Etsy, where handmade buyers can discover you.

If you’re a hobbyist online creator, like a comedian, or you sell virtual class subscriptions for DIY home renovations, consider channels where your personality can shine. TikTok has been a springboard for several influencers-turned-brands—and you can sell on TikTok with Shopify’s integration.

💡 Tip: Start with our guide on how to start a business and follow step-by-step instructions to create an online store for your new brand.

7. Launch and market your brand

It’s time to launch! If you’ve been at your hobby for many years and have had support from family and friends, start with these loyal fans to help promote your new brand through word-of-mouth marketing. Treat these folks as your first customers and nurture the relationship as such.

Set up social media accounts and a Coming Soon page in advance of your official launch to generate buzz and grow your email list and followers. There are several organic marketing ideas for creative small business owners with even smaller budgets.

Market your business with Shopify’s customer marketing tools

Shopify has everything you need to capture more leads, send email campaigns, automate key marketing moments, segment your customers, and analyze your results. Plus, it’s all free for your first 10,000 emails sent per month.

Discover Shopify’s customer marketing tools

8. Create boundaries

Hobbies often integrate seamlessly with life—knitting in front of the TV, gaming in your bedroom—but if you’re considering upgrading to a business, those spaces may no longer work for you. Separating your work spaces from your life spaces will help you create boundaries and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

9. Set yourself up to scale

Embrace optimism and blue-sky thinking: your hobby-turned business could catch on, leaving you scrambling to meet demand. That’s the dream! Don’t get caught by surprise and risk annoying your new fan base with slow customer service and sold out products.

Consider how you will scale at each sales milestone. And, get help early, even if it just means outsourcing your least favorite tasks to a VA or part-time employee so you can focus on the big picture.

As you develop your own hobby business, look ahead two, five, and 10 years—can your business scale sustainably, and what will you require for it to do so?

Questions to ask before starting a hobby business

Maresa Smith

Before you take the necessary steps to turn your hobby into a business, there are a few key questions to ask yourself to understand if the move is right for you.

Does your hobby have the potential to become a viable business?

Your hobby may be close to your heart, but are there others who share your love of this craft? Validating your product idea through research will help you determine if there’s demand for what you’re offering and if you are bringing value to the market. This is also where you ask yourself if your hobby is sustainable as a business—is it something you can scale? A business plan can answer many of these questions for you.

Are you in it for love, money, or both?

A common pitfall for those who turn their hobbies into businesses is that the thing that once brought distraction from work and stress can suddenly become work and stress. When your craft is a hobby, you only answer to yourself. Expectations from customers, vendors, and retail partners can add pressure. Is your hobby something you will still enjoy if it becomes your full-time gig?

Your business doesn’t necessarily need to scale exponentially, however. If you’re in it for the love of your craft, a business can serve as a way to pay for itself or generate a little extra spending money.

Will your hobby become a side hustle or a full-time business?

It’s possible to keep your business small, running it on the side while you still work. Consider whether this is enough or if you plan to scale your hobby into a full-time business. It may also become your early retirement plan as you transition to an income source that’s more flexible with fewer hours.

Hobby to successful business examples

Many entrepreneurs found their start by transforming their passion into a brand. They saw potential in what they already loved to do in their free time as a viable business capable of making enough money to become a success. Here are a few hobbyists who became their own boss.

Mush Studios

The height of the rug tufting trend collided with the COVID-19 pandemic and Jacob Winter was looking for a new hobby. He took to the craft immediately and started sharing his processes and creations online. When audiences took notice, Jacob saw that his newfound passion could become his own business. Jacob launched Mush Studios, selling amorphous rugs to his TikTok fans. In explaining his viral success, he says, “People wanted something they had never seen before in terms of shape and texture.”

Floof

When Hannah Perry became a single mom after a divorce, she needed to find a way to support herself and her family. She had already been experimenting with baking and cotton candy creations when the idea for a rainbow cotton candy cake took hold. The cake went viral online and Hannah realized it could be a real business. She launched Floof, selling her cakes across the country including to celebrity clients.

Prairie Sage Soap

Trisha Trout made soap as a hobby while staying home to raise her children. When her husband passed away unexpectedly, the family needed a new source of income. Trisha turned to her passion as a way to support herself and built Prairie Sage Soap into the thriving business it is today.

Jaswant’s Kitchen

Jaswant Kular raised her daughters on traditional Indian cooking. But when her kids moved out on their own, she realized they struggled to recreate the dishes of their childhood. Jaswant made spice blends to help her daughters more easily cook curries and other traditional dishes. That’s when she discovered demand for the product beyond her own family. Jaswant’s Kitchen is now found online and in grocery stores everywhere.

Craft your career around what you love

There’s nothing more relaxing and satisfying than losing yourself in your favorite pastime. When you know, you know. If you’ve ever wondered how to harness that feeling and turn it into your livelihood, you’re at an exciting crossroad.

As a creator or as someone passionate and skilled at your favorite thing, you already have an important advantage. You have the product, you have the knowhow, you have the drive. What’s stopping you from making the leap from hobby to business?

Hobby to business FAQ

How much money can you make before a hobby becomes a business?

In the eyes of the government, hobby income is real income that you may need to claim. The true difference between a hobby and a business comes down to tax law. The laws vary from country to country and depend on many factors. Check with your local government to find out how much you can earn before you are required to claim it on your taxes.

Do I need to register my hobby as a business?

The short answer is no. In many regions, you can operate a business without a license. But this depends on the industry, too—some industries require specific licenses (say, if you process meat products). Check with the government agency that regulates small businesses to see if your hobby business requires any sort of licensing. Registering your business is usually a good idea either way, as it generally comes with certain protections.

Should I turn my hobby into a small business?

You should turn your hobby into a business if the advantages of doing so outweigh the challenges. Many hobby businesses are easy to convert into businesses that allow you to make money on the side from home. Learn how to turn a hobby into a business and understand the implications before you do. Do your research to see what, if any, modifications you’ll need to make to comply with law and file taxes.

What is the most profitable hobby?

Profitability of your hobby business comes down to having a solid business plan, the right pricing, and an interested market for your product. Any hobby can be profitable, provided you have those elements in place. While high-end custom furniture could fetch high price points, you’ll be selling fewer of these than $8 knit mittens. Invest time in a financial plan to determine how much you need to sell and what retail prices to set in order to turn a profit.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Typeform blog: the data on data

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Typeform is our go-to software if we need to ask a set of structured questions of a group of customers, prospects or leads. In summary, Typeform combines aesthetics, functionality, and flexibility. User-friendly form builder with interactive design, versatile question types, real-time data collection, 500+ integrations, and diverse templates. Ideal for engaging surveys and lead generation.

If Typeform is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Learn the basics of For Loops in flowcharts: A programmer’s guide

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - our team love using Miro as an online workspace for innovation, enabling distributed teams to dream, design, and build together. With a full set of collaboration capabilities, it simplifies cross-functional teamwork, meetings, and workshops. Create concepts, map user stories, and conduct roadmap planning in real-time.

When it comes to building an application that’s scalable and performant, it’s important to remember that humans are fallible — sometimes systems are too complex to keep in one’s head. And that’s okay! To stay organized and ultimately meet modern demand, it’s essential to have documentation that helps you visualize these systems.

We’ve covered how flowcharts can help people plan projects and improve workflows, but they can also come in handy for visualizing coding projects, too. Here’s how.

Almost all programs need to do the same thing over and over again in some form, and developers prefer not to repeat the same instructions multiple times. That’s where flowcharts and their loops are important — serving as a blueprint to help programmers visualize repetitive tasks so they can write more efficient code.

If you’re just getting started with programming, here’s a straightforward guide to flowchart loops.

What exactly is a flowchart loop?

To understand flowchart loops, let’s first briefly discuss looping in software. Looping is a core feature of most programming languages. It allows a developer to perform a task multiple times until some condition is met to stop the loop. To give a simple example, say you’ve just signed up for a SaaS tool, and they want you to confirm your email address. Internally, their system might do something like the following:

Source: https://codeimg.io/

When new users sign up, this function is passed a list of new users; the for loop goes through each new user and sends them a confirmation email. Using a loop in this context prevents repetition in the code.

A flowchart loop is a repeating pattern or sequence of actions represented in a flowchart that is meant to represent code, like the above sample. It uses symbols and arrows to map out certain steps or actions to perform repeatedly until a specific condition is met or a set number of iterations is reached.

For loop vs. while loop: What’s the difference?

There are two different kinds of flowchart loops: a for loop and a while loop. While they both establish criteria for when a loop should end, how they set that criteria is different.

Here’s a simple example: You need to color circles on a big picture. Building a flowchart loop would tell your program to keep coloring circles until you say stop.

A for loop and a while loop set those stopping points differently. How? Well, keep that coloring example in mind, and let’s take a closer look at each type of loop.

Understanding a for loop in a flowchart

You use a for loop when you either know exactly how many times a task should be repeated, or when you want to perform the same task on a list of items.

Let’s say that you know your picture has exactly 10 circles to color. Once the process kicks off, the for loop repeatedly checks how many circles have been colored. If it’s less than 10, the loop continues. But if it’s greater than 10, the loop ends.

Here are a few more terms you’ll encounter as you dig into flowchart loops:

Initialization: The start of the loop
Condition: This is what is tested each time the loop repeats (“Have you colored less than 10 circles?”)
Statement: This is the action that’s taken when the condition isn’t met (“Color another circle”)
Increment/decrement: This increases or decreases the value of the variable (so you move from one colored circle to two). This is optional depending on the programming language.

Here’s what this loop looks like in a flowchart:

Let’s look at a different piece of code, and see how that would be represented in a Miro flowchart for loop.

One of the most famous mathematical sequences is the Fibonacci sequence. The sequence starts with the numbers 0, and 1, and each number after the first two is calculated by adding the previous two numbers. The first few terms are therefore: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on.

Source: https://codeimg.io/

Here’s what this loop looks like in a flowchart:

Understanding a while loop in a flowchart

You use a while loop when you’re not exactly sure how many times you need to repeat a task, but you do know that there’s a specific condition that needs to be true for the loop to continue.

Sticking with our coloring example, you could use a while loop to tell your program to keep coloring circles until you run out of the red crayon.

While the loop runs, it’ll continually check if there’s any red crayon left to color with. If there is, the loop continues. If there isn’t, the loop ends. Here’s a visual:

As we did previously with the for loop, we’ll again write the Fibonacci sequence, but this time using a while loop to show the capabilities of the flowchart while loop.

Source: https://codeimg.io/

Here’s what this loop looks like in a flowchart:

Looping it all together: Using flowchart loops as a blueprint for code

Most developers will tell you that, above all else, they love to open their code editor and start furiously typing away on a new project that has been brewing in their heads. When an idea strikes, it can be instantly translated into a piece of logic that’ll help them, their company or their communities achieve a goal. However, to bring magic to what they’re building, they need to be able to use tools beyond coding to visualize complex systems.

The above examples should give you a basic understanding of how loops work and how for and while loops are different. But keep in mind that, much like any other aspect of coding, flowchart loops can get pretty technical and complex.

Regardless of whether you’re using flowchart loops for something easy (like coloring circles or generating Fibonacci numbers) or something more involved (like adding up items in an online shopping cart), they’re the best way to visualize your code and help you write your program more efficiently as a result.

If Miro is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

DE{CODE} Strikes a Chord, Achieves Record-Setting Attendance

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - we've been using WP Engine in our business for 12 years so that should say it all! WP Engine offers optimized performance, enterprise-grade security, award-winning support, unique WordPress features, scalability, and developer trust. So what makes wp engine hosting different? If you want the best hosting then WP Engine is the answer 🚀🌟

Today marks the end of WP Engine’s fifth annual DE{CODE}, the virtual developer conference. With recorded sessions airing live across two days and three time zones, the conference had more than 4,000 attendees from 86 countries.

More than 45 experts from across WordPress gathered to share their advice and insights on some of the most pressing topics in modern development, from AI and accessibility to payment processing, security, and more.

Read on for an overview of some of the most-attended sessions or head to our YouTube channel to watch all of the sessions now!

Please note that our keynote session featuring former OpenAI Head of Go-to-Market Zack Kass will only be available to rewatch for a limited time on our event platform, so make sure you’re registered and sign in to watch it again before that session expires!

AI and the Future of WordPress Development

In this keynote discussion, presenters explore how AI will impact key areas of development, from accessibility to productivity and beyond.

We’re using AI to enhance what we do best, which is solving real problems for our customers, making things better, faster, cheaper, and more delightful.

Jason Cohen, Founder & CIO, WP Engine

WP Engine Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Jason Cohen joins Product Manager Luke Patterson, Equalize Digital CEO Amber Hinds, Code and Theory Chief Technology Officer David DiCamillo, and CXR General Manager Lucky Gobindram to discuss how developers are harnessing AI to create better, more performant digital experiences.

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The Business of WordPress

The advantages of open-source technology for businesses in any industry are undeniable.

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In this entrepreneurial keynote session, Brainstorm Force CEO & Co-Founder Sujay Pawar; Elementor Head of WordPress Relations Miriam Schwab, and Newsletter Glue Co-founder Lesley Sim share how they’ve harnessed the power of WordPress to accelerate their businesses—and how you can do the same.

Breakout Sessions

Additional DE{CODE} breakout sessions cover everything from eCommerce payments and compliance to headless innovation and beyond!

The following are three of the most-attended sessions from this year’s conference.

Empower Your Development: The Breakthrough Features of WordPress 6.5 Unleashed

The first major WordPress release of 2024 is set to launch on March 26. In this discussion, you can hear directly from the 6.5 Editor Triage Release Team as they unveil and demonstrate new features and functionality.

Now, with the Block Bindings API, you can bind data to an existing block, so the ease with which you can incorporate custom data into core blocks without creating your own will unlock quite a bit.

Nick Diego, Developer Relations Advocate, Automattic

From the Font Library to the latest in the DataViews project, follow along as experts explore what’s new in 6.5 and how these changes can inform even more innovations in future releases.

Mastering Modern Site Creation With the Best Workflows in WordPress

If you want to take on more projects and more clients, you need to streamline your workflow, ironing out all the kinks to ensure your development process is seamless from start to finish.

In this session, experts highlight important tools you can use to develop sites more efficiently, including Local, Advanced Custom Fields, WP Migrate, Frost, WP Engine’s WordPress platform, and more!

How to Fix a Site You Didn’t Build for Optimal Performance

When a client asks you to fix a site you didn’t build, you’re left to wonder what issues are lying in wait beneath that code.

In this session, experts share practical advice on how to turn an underwhelming site into an overwhelming success, including how to identify major problem areas, manage client expectations, and decide on the best course of action.

Keep Learning With DE{CODE}

Special thanks to the sponsors of DE{CODE} 2024 as well as the presenters who joined us; we appreciate the time and effort you took to help make this year’s DE{CODE} our most successful conference yet!

Make sure you register on our event platform to view our keynote featuring Zack Kass, or head to our YouTube channel to watch the recorded sessions now.

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Diving Deep Into Marketing in Construction (My Takeaways)

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

As the pandemic surged in 2020, people stayed home, and demand for home improvement services went through the roof. Construction companies swooped in and launched targeted marketing campaigns.

One example is Brett Landscaping, which sold almost its stock of higher-priced porcelain paving products.

Fast forward to 2024, people are at work. The economic outlook is grim, and interest rates and inflation are high. These factors have led to one outcome: declining interest in construction and home improvements.

Our yearly business recap shows the construction industry saw decreases in customer acquisition metrics. Inbound leads are down by 3.8%, web conversions by 0.65%, and web traffic by 6.84%.

Despite these challenges, now is the best time to double down on your construction company’s marketing efforts. As Warren Buffett famously said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

In this article, I’ll discuss 13 marketing strategies you can use to find and acquire clients for your construction company.

Construction Services Marketing Strategies

Below are 13 marketing strategies you can use to generate leads and clients for your construction company.

1. Create a helpful website that communicates your value.

A few months ago, I stumbled upon a Reddit post about a business owner who wanted to build a construction website. The person said, “I just want to show some pics of work I’ve done as well as a little contact me section.”

Image source

Pictures of work and a “contact me” section alone aren’t enough to make a construction website.

From my experience, sites like this don’t deliver the desired results because they don’t communicate your value effectively. Beyond your portfolio and contact info, your website should show your services, testimonials, and case studies.

Take Turner Construction, for instance. The elegantly designed website provides information about the company, services, projects, etc.

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Besides its design, I like this website because of its performance and fast-loading pages, which let users quickly see the content they want.

Turner Construction also has superb site health.

According to Ubersuggest, it doesn’t have a single SEO issue.

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This means the website is SEO-friendly, uses proper meta tags, has well-formatted URLs, has no broken links, uses image alt text, etc.

Put these qualities of Turner Construction together, and you have a formidable site with great odds of ranking high in search engines.

Takeaway

Websites that work don’t have just pages. They have helpful web pages, social proof, attractive design, persuasive writing, and SEO implementation.

These qualities give leads a memorable user experience and can help bolster your conversion rates.

2. Build awareness with SEO content.

Author of Sticky Branding Jeremy Miller says, “Only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy now.”

The remaining 97% are not in purchase mode or don’t need your solution yet. Instead of considering them lost opportunities, a better strategy is to build brand awareness with SEO content.

Your goal? Educate your audience. Establish authority. Build trust. Win clients who search for information related to your services.

AFT Construction is one brand that milks its SEO content to build brand awareness. For instance, their article on Kerf door jambs ranks #1 for Kerf door jambs on Google.

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But it wasn’t always this way.

According to Semrush, the article took about five months to take off and snag almost everyone who searched for Kerf door jambs.

Besides the organic visitors, this post ranks for 227 keywords.

What’s even more interesting is the $772 traffic cost that AFT saves monthly from this post.

If AFT has 100 other posts like this, they’ll save $77,200 in Google Ads costs. Add the leads that could come from these posts, and it’s easy to see why SEO content is immensely beneficial for construction companies.

Takeaway

A website is worth it only when people know it exists. One of the cheapest ways to give visibility to your site is by publishing SEO content. Remember to identify keywords that relate to your audience’s needs when creating SEO content.

Also, recognize that SEO content takes months to drive results and bring clients to your business.

3. Set up a Google Business Profile.

According to a Bright Local Survey, 98% of consumers use the Internet to find information about local businesses. One popular directory these consumers use is the Google Business Profile.

Creating or claiming your business on Google means you won’t lose revenue from people searching for you locally.

For instance, I searched for commercial construction service companies in New York, and here are the top results:

This result gives me an overview of three companies, including their address, reviews, phone numbers, business hours, and core services. I can decide who to call from this information without visiting their website.

Optimizing your Google Business Profile requires many moving parts, but here’s a snapshot of how to do it:

Create or sign in to your Google Business Profile with your Google Account.
Click “Add Location” and fill out your business information.
Verify your business by mail or phone.
Optimize your profile by adding high-quality photos of your projects and updating your business hours.

Takeaway

A Google Business Profile (GBP) increases the visibility of your business in your locality. It also helps prospects to find your contact info and make a quick call. However, one GBP element you must address is your reviews.

Many customers trust Google reviews, so encourage your clients to leave positive reviews on your GBP profile. Also, respond to both positive and negative reviews.

4. Join local directories.

Your Google Business Profile is one of many local directories like Yelp and Angie’s List. These platforms allow potential customers in your area to discover your construction company.

If I was a Yelp user, I could search for construction services in San Francisco and find several companies. With over 95 reviews and a 4.7-star rating, Prosper Construction Development stands out as a great company to work with.

Besides popular directories, Houzz, HomeAdvisor, and BuildZoom are specific for promoting construction businesses. After listing your business in a directory, you also need to optimize it to rank high in the search.

Here are some tips for doing that:

Submit your business information to many relevant directories.
Keep your listings complete, accurate, and up-to-date. Provide your company name, address, phone number, website, available hours, and services.
Include high-quality photos and videos of your work.
Get positive reviews from your customers.
Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative.
Engage with potential customers on online directories.

Takeaway

Leveraging local directories provides visibility to your business. Like your Google Business Profile, you must build reviews on these directories by providing excellent service. Also, respond to any negative feedback.

5. Be active on social media.

Many brands used to overlook social media. Today, the perception has changed. Founders and CEOs are now in charge of promoting their businesses and generating leads on social media platforms.

Brendan Bechtel, the Chairperson and CEO at Bechtel Corporation, excels at this. He uses his LinkedIn profile to share updates about the company’s projects. The example below has a massive 2,104 reactions, 56 comments, and 35 reposts.

This post can get the company a truckload of brand awareness.

Experience has taught me that the daily creation of fresh content for social media is difficult. For this reason, I’d advise you to repost your CEO‘s or employees’ thoughts on your company page — especially those going viral.

This will help you humanize your brand, build trust, and show expertise. Again, Bechtel Corporation does a great job with this.

Remember to tailor your content to different platforms when posting content on social media.

For instance, LinkedIn is great for sharing industry insights, blog posts, case studies, and testimonials.

Facebook and Instagram work well for showcasing your stunning projects, behind-the-scenes, how-to videos, and community service.

Twitter is great for joining relevant discussions, sharing tips, and engaging with industry professionals.

Takeaway

Social media marketing is all about building a connection with your audience by publishing thoughtful content. CEOs of various companies lead the charge, hoping their employees do the same.

If you’re over a one-person team, a great way to get your team in line is to incentivize them and publish content that drives the collective growth of employees and the company’s revenue.

6. Run Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns.

Getting your company’s website on the coveted Google first page is a game-changer for attracting clients. The catch? SEO takes time to drive results. Remember the article about “Kerf door jambs?”

It took about five months before it became the first result.

I’d advise you to run PPC marketing campaigns like Google Ads to cover this time. This can help you rank at the top of Google’s sponsored search results.

For instance, while the keyword “construction service company” gets 90 searches monthly, its paid difficulty (32) shows it’s highly competitive to rank for. Also, it costs a whopping $9.18 per click.

It makes sense to bid for keywords in your local area to keep your costs low and targeting narrow. This improves your odds of getting a top spot when people search for your services.

For instance, a keyword like “construction service company in Boston” is easy to rank because it has a low search volume and CPC.

Takeaway

Google Ads is an excellent way to increase brand awareness quickly and get ready-to-buy leads for your construction firm. But to get more leads at lower costs, ensure you track, analyze, and optimize your ad campaigns.

7. Leverage email marketing.

Recent stats show email marketing generates $36 for every $1 spent. This makes it a cost-effective channel for developing and nurturing leads until they become paying clients.

Email-only works when you have a quality email list, i.e., a database of people who subscribed to receive communications from your company.

One effective way to build an email list is adding a form on your website — something I’ve noticed most construction websites don’t have. Newsflash: a bare form is not even enough.

To capture leads, you need to incentivize visitors with valuable freebies like an e-book, a guide, or a free consultation in exchange for their contact information.

This prevents you from losing potential customers who might leave without taking action. Here’s an example of an e-book I consider valuable from AFT construction:

Takeaway

Brilliant email marketing campaigns have the potential to transform your construction business. Pay attention to metrics such as open, click, and unsubscribe rates to gauge the success of your campaigns.

Also, while it’s tempting, buying an email list is never a good idea. Your best bet is to take the time to build your mailing list.

8. Ask for referrals from past clients.

Customers you satisfy will happily share their positive experiences and recommend your company to others.

A Nielson study reveals that 88% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over other forms of advertising. Your referral network could also include other businesses.

Below are some referral marketing tips for your construction business:

Appreciate your clients for every referral they send.
Always ask for a referral after completing a project successfully.
Consider offering incentives like a discount on future services or a referral bonus.
Make it easy for your clients to provide referrals by suggesting how they can recommend your construction business.

Takeaway

Referral marketing is a powerful tool for growing your customers. But it can’t work if you don’t ask. As you consistently deliver exceptional service, ask your customers, “Think you might know someone interested in our product/service?”

9. Build social proof.

In the construction industry, showcasing your projects is vital to client acquisition. But beyond the pictures of fancy buildings, future clients want to know if you can deliver on time, on schedule, and within budget.

These are further proof of your expertise, and it’s where social proof shines.

Social proof is a great way to show prospective clients that your company can handle their projects based on stakeholder needs.

One way to build social proof is by creating case studies of successful past projects. Describe the challenges you faced, the solutions you provided, and the positive outcomes.

For example, Hoar Construction has over 20 completed project case studies on its website. They also include before and after images and videos to show the construction process from start to finish.

Other ways to build social proof include displaying positive reviews or testimonials and showing off industry awards and certifications on your website.

Takeaway

Building social proof requires time, patience, and consistent effort. Focus on delivering exceptional service, maintaining positive client relationships, and actively seeking testimonials.

Doing this helps your company attract more clients, stand out from competitors, and establish a strong reputation.

10. Create and promote more video content.

Video marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years. Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing reveals that 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — an all-time high and a significant jump from previous years.

This data shows that creating video content, especially in the construction industry where visuals reign supreme, is an excellent way to increase awareness, engage your audience, and attract new clients.

Examples of video content you can create include:

Video testimonials of happy clients.
Behind the scenes of your staff at work.
Stunning and completed construction projects.
Time-lapse videos to capture an entire construction project.
Video case studies that highlight completed projects, challenges, and solutions.

I love how The Quorum Group uses high-quality videos to promote the company’s projects and employees. Blending innovation and storytelling, their eye-catching videos increase awareness and generate engagement.

For example, the Instagram video below has over 200k likes and 1400 comments.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Quorum Group (@quorumgroup)

Besides getting the attention of potential clients, it shows future employees that Quorum Group may be a great place to work.

Takeaway

Video marketing is a powerful tool for promoting your construction company. It helps you establish brand authority and stand out in this cutthroat industry. But creating video content isn’t enough.

Promote them across different online channels. That’s the optimum way to increase brand awareness, reach a wider audience, and attract potential clients.

11. Join relevant associations and groups.

Associations and groups let you connect with like-minded individuals in the construction industry. This can lead to new partnerships, collaborations, and business opportunities.

You also get exclusive access to industry resources, networking events, and workshops that could be valuable to your company.

Displaying your membership certificates also shows your commitment to professional standards and ethics. You can do this on your website, social media platforms, and marketing materials.

Image Source
Title: Membership certificates in a construction website

Some examples of U.S. construction associations include:

American Institute of Architects (AIA).
American Subcontractors Association (ASA).
National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).
National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC).

Takeaway

Joining associations and groups and getting a membership certificate is half the battle. The other half is gaining visibility, networking opportunities, and referrals. You can do this by contributing to the body’s goals.

Another innovative way is to share your thoughts about the body on social media. How did you join them? Why did you join? What have you learned? What benefits have you gotten? You get my drift, right?

Doing these establishes you as a credible and active participant and makes you visible to notable industry players.

12. Consider influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing isn’t just for those in the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle industry. Construction businesses can also use it to reach a wider audience and generate quality leads.

When selecting influencers, look for those with ultra-specific characteristics: large following, engaged audience, similar audience to yours, and alignment with your brand values.

Partnering with influencers can take various forms, such as sponsored content or social media takeovers to promote your products, services, or projects.

Takeaway

Influencer marketing in the construction industry requires a more targeted approach. To make it work, you must identify influencers genuinely interested in construction-related topics and agree on specific campaign goals.

13. Attend local networking events and trade shows.

Local networking events and trade shows help you connect with potential clients, partners, and industry experts. These events also allow firms to showcase their portfolio, discover industry trends, and stay up-to-date on best practices.

Here are some tips to make the most out of participating in these events:

Join panels or presentations to share your expertise and establish authority as a thought leader in the industry.
Sponsor the event to gain increased visibility and brand exposure.
Use social media to promote your participation and engage with other attendees online.
Network with other industry professionals and potential clients and offer value.
Follow up with individuals you meet at the event and send personalized emails to maintain the relationship.

Some popular construction events in the U.S. include:

National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) International Builders’ Show.
Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) Annual Convention.
World of Concrete.
Greenbuild International Conference & Expo.

Takeaway

Events and trade shows are excellent ways to meet potential new clients.

Attending them also gives you a shot at boosting your brand awareness, getting referrals, networking, and growing your company. Making them a part of your marketing plan will be a plus.

Construction Services Marketing Ideas

The goal of any campaign is to position your company as a reliable and trusted choice for construction-related services. To market your product and services, you can explore four construction services marketing ideas.

Idea 1: Set up a lead generation campaign.

Relying solely on referrals and networking events to get clients won’t cut it. You need a targeted lead generation campaign that brings in a steady source of high-quality leads for your company. This way, your sales pipeline never runs dry.

How to Execute

Identify your target audience and their pain points
Create valuable content such as e-books, guides, whitepapers, or free consultations that address those pain points
Offer this content in exchange for their email address
Set up drip email marketing campaigns to nurture these leads with relevant, engaging content
Promote your lead generation campaign on your website, social media, and paid ads
Track and analyze the performance of your lead gen campaign
Optimize to achieve better results

Idea 2: Host a local event

Organize a local event to display your construction products and services to your targeted audience. It’s also a great way to increase awareness, reach a wider audience, and generate quality leads.

How to Execute

Plan the event logistics, such as choosing a location, date, and venue
Create materials like flyers, social media graphics, and emails to promote the event and attract attendees
Develop an event agenda, including presentations, live demos, and opportunities for attendees to interact or ask questions
Use landing pages to collect contact information from attendees
Follow up with attendees after the event with personalized emails, offering additional information, discounts, or exclusive offers
Nurture leads from the event to stay top-of-mind with potential clients

Idea 3: Partner with businesses in similar industries

Collaborating with businesses in similar sectors helps your company reach new audiences.

For example, you could join forces with an interior design or landscaping company. This way, you can create joint marketing campaigns, co-host events, or offer bundled packages that combine your services with theirs.

This partnership allows you to tap into each other’s customer base and cross-promote your products. It also adds value to your offerings, making them more appealing to potential customers.

How to Execute

Identify businesses in related industries that could complement your services.
Reach out to them and propose a partnership or collaboration
Create joint marketing materials and campaigns that highlight the synergy between your services
Offer special discounts or incentives for customers who use both of your services
Track the campaign’s performance and make adjustments as needed to optimize the results

Idea 4: Engage in community events and sponsorships

What better way to give back to your community than to participate in events or sponsor local initiatives? This helps to increase brand visibility and establish your company as a trusted community partner.

How to Execute

Research and identify community events and initiatives that align with your company’s values
Reach out to organizers or local organizations to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.
Promote events through digital and traditional channels to create more awareness.
Take part in the event and engage with attendees to build connections
Prominently display your brand materials at these events to increase awareness
Collect contact information from potential clients and follow up promptly
Evaluate the success of your sponsorship campaign and optimize for future community engagement

Remember to track and analyze the performance of your marketing campaigns and make adjustments as needed to optimize your results. You can try HubSpot’s marketing automation tool to get started today.

What I Learned: My Overall Assessment of Construction Marketing

Clients are the lifeblood of successful construction businesses.

But to get them, you need a marketing strategy that effectively promotes your construction services. While every tactic may not apply to you, it’s essential to determine the most effective ones for your business.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

How To Start An Online Business And Make Money

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - ClickFunnels was founded by an online marketing legend Russell Brunson and it offers several benefits for online businesses and marketers:

Time and Cost Savings: Efficiently create sales funnels without extensive development efforts.

Maximized Conversions: Test offers, copy, and images to enhance conversions.

Specific Landing Pages: Generate highly targeted landing pages.

Predictable Pipeline: Create consistent, predictable sales paths.

Increased Sales: On average, it boosts sales of lesser products by 15%

The post How To Start An Online Business And Make Money appeared first on ClickFunnels.

You’ve always had a dream. A burning desire. The passion to do something more. To be more. To build a business from the ground up. It’s etched into your brain. Ever since you were a child you could see it clearly in your mind’s eye. You could picture it vividly. Like a lucid memory come to life, you could see yourself as the boss—El Jefe. The head honcho in charge. The mere thought gives you goosebumps. It sends chills running up and down your spine just thinking about life as a successful business owner.

But time plays tricks on us. And that dream of owning a business that you’ve had for ages is fading fast. Today, it feels like a fantasy. Like a distant picture in black and white, it withers away with time. You’ve always wanted to fulfill your dreams to start that business. But something has been holding you back. Something’s standing in your way. The fear of failure will do that to you. It’ll stamp out your dreams and rob you like a thief in the night. And with each passing day, it feels like a little part of you is chipping away. Disintegrating. Shrinking. Dimming like a star losing its luster.

The truth? Many people want to start an online business. But it isn’t that easy. It’s not as straightforward as snapping your fingers and deciding one day that enough is enough. You can’t just get fed up and walk away from a job that’s helping you survive, right? Or can you? But what if you fail? What if you can’t make it? What’ll happen to your house or your car? How will you feed your kids? That thought keeps you up at night. And it holds you back from starting that online business you’ve always wanted to start. But there’s no time like the present moment for a change. To begin. To start anew. The best time is always NOW.

Want To Start An Online Business?

If you want to start an online business you must plan. You must plot. Scheme. Envision. And come up with a strategy to grow that business. Is it easy? Nope. Most people fail. But some make it through to the other side. They succeed. They make that dream of owning an online business a reality. And you can too. You can start an online business in any industry or niche and succeed as long you adhere to a few fundamental principles that govern online marketing success. It’s straightforward. Simple, even. There’s a process you must go through. It takes work and effort. But with the right offer to the right market, you could just smash it out of the proverbial ballpark.

What type of business will you start? Where do you even begin? How do you build this so-called business and set yourself up for success? The truth? Most people fail in business because they’re slow out of the gate. Like a tortoise, they tiptoe forward with unease. But money loves speed. And if you want to succeed, you must focus on the right things. It’s not about perfecting your product or service. Yes, it must be good enough to solve the problem your customers are experiencing. But starting an online business and actually succeeding involves much more than that.

To succeed in business, it’s not just about your product or your service. You could have the best product under the sun. You could have the most unbelievable service known to man. But what happens if no one knows about it? What happens when you don’t spend your time marketing that business? If you fail to gain the right amount of attention from the right people, your business will flop. And attention is the name of the game. You must get attention from the right people. And you must understand how to capture and harness that attention by taking the customer on a journey.

Where Do You Begin?

So where do you start? Let’s say for a moment that you’re ready to launch that online business. It could be a small business, a boring business, a big business, or anything in between. What’s the right move? How do you begin? Do you need capital to launch your business? And how do you actually get people to give you money? You see, most people who start a business go about it the wrong way. They think of an idea then they start obsessing over that idea. They tinker and toil day and night creating a product or a service that represents that idea. But that’s not the right way to approach it.

Instead, think about it this way. What problem can you solve? And who can you solve it for? That’s the real way to start a business. People will pay for results. So if you can solve a real problem that people are experiencing, they will gladly pay you day and night. Now ask yourself this question. What is a problem you can solve? And who’s experiencing that problem? That’s the basis for everything. As long as you can solve that problem and solve it the right way for that person, you’re in business. You don’t need a fancy website or logo to begin. You just need to start solving problems.

I know. I know. It sounds basic, right? Just go out there and solve problems. It can’t be that easy, can it? Well, that’s the basis of it. And if you take that approach, everything else will be easier. Much easier. Start with the problem and the person experiencing that problem. And ensure that the person experiencing that problem has the money to pay you to solve it. Meaning that you shouldn’t start solving problems for broke college students. Solve problems for people who can afford to pay you to solve those problems.

Step 1—What Problems You Can Solve?

Companies and people face problems every single day. They face them in every area of business and life. Your job? Find the right problem you can solve for the right person. And get the attention of the people experiencing that problem. When you’re just starting it means that you have to actually prove that you can solve their problem. To do that you need something called a lead magnet. A lead magnet helps a prospect solve the very problem you claim to solve. And you give it away for free as part of a lead generation funnel.

When you give something of value that can solve a person’s problem it creates authority. In their mind, you become an authority. After all, you are. You know how to solve their problem. But you’re probably thinking this is odd, right? If you solve their problem through a lead magnet, they won’t need your help. But that’s not the case. At least not for all of the people. Sure, some of them will disappear. And that’s okay. You still gave them value. But a small percentage of them won’t disappear. Nope. On the contrary. They’ll pay you for implementation. They’ll buy the product or service you’re selling.

Create An “Ask Campaign”

You could be an expert in an industry or niche. But that doesn’t mean you understand all the problems people are struggling with. It might be something you haven’t thought about. I’m not talking about general problems. I’m talking about specific problems your customer is facing. You might not know all of them. And by knowing the problems you can devise products and services designed to tackle those problems. It could be something so obvious that you simply miss it. That’s why you need to create an Ask Campaign.

The Ask Campaign allows you to ask your audience directly what they’re struggling with. The concepts are simple. And it often involves a bribe (an “ask”). You can create an Ask Campaign and send it out via email if you have an email list. You can also run ads to a landing page with your Ask Campaign. And you can create polls or posts on social media and take many other approaches. The point is that you must ask the audience what problems they’re struggling with. This allows you to find out what specific things your audience is struggling with.

Step 2—Identify Your Dream Customer

Beyond the problem is the individual experiencing the problem. Who is the individual experiencing that problem? What do they look like? Sound like? Dress like? Where do they live? How many kids do they have? Where do they hang out during the day? What worries keep them up at night? What are some of their biggest pain points? In other words, who is your “dream customer” exactly? It’s an important distinction. You don’t want to chase the wrong person?

But not every individual is your ideal or “dream” customer. Some aren’t willing to pay to solve problems. Others try to do it themselves first. When you identify your dream customer, you have a clear picture in your mind of who you’re speaking to. And that’s important because it sets the stage for everything else. You’ll want to talk to this person like you speak to an old friend. That’s why you must know who they are inside and out. It’s an important

Step 3—Create Your Offer

When you know the problem and you know the customer, you’re almost there. Those two elements are necessary for creating an online business and actually making money. They’re necessary for creating the offer. But don’t get this twisted because the offer is a crucial component. It must be valuable. Very valuable. The offer must be so valuable that it’s irresistible. If you can create an offer like that, then you have a business.

Keep in mind that your offer isn’t the product or service. The offer comes first because it is the solution to your customer’s problem. How can you create an offer that solves that problem? And how can you do it in a way that delivers tremendous value? That’s the real question. Too many people rush into business without strategizing. This isn’t about taking months or years to create some software platform. It’s not about drafting lengthy business plans. Nope. Not at all.

The foundational success of a business has everything to do with the offer. If your offer cannot solve the problem your customer is facing, then you don’t have a business. You have a job. And you don’t want a job, do you? After all, you’ve worked a job your whole life. Now it’s time to run a real business that solves real problems for real people. That’s how you’re going to make so much money that it makes your head spin. That’s your ticket to success.

Step 4—Generate Leads

To succeed in business you need leads. You need people to sell to. Knowing your customers and their problems is one thing. Creating the offer is another. But you must now get in front of those customers. To do that you need leads. They’re vital. And to generate leads you need to create something of value. We call this a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free offer of some kind. It could be as simple as a free consultation or as intricate as a free trial to a software platform.

The lead magnet must help your customer solve their problem (or part of it). And don’t worry about giving away the so-called farm. When you can prove that you can solve a problem for your customers and deliver real value through a free offer, it creates instant trust and authority. They now view you as a person capable of solving their problem. And people gladly pay for implementation. Sure, some will take the information and run with it. That’s expected to happen. But a small portion will pay you for the implementation of the solution.

Remember that information is free. And it’s everywhere. But organized information is different. People don’t want to be bothered hunting for or scouring for information. They’re busy living their lives. And that’s where you come in. That’s how you make money by solving their problems. Your offer is the solution to the problem they’re struggling with. And as long as you pick the right people with the right problems, you can make a lot of money fast.

Step 5—Build A Sales Funnel

No online business is complete without a sales funnel. If you don’t know what a sales funnel is then read this. You can think of sales funnels almost like websites. Except they’re much different than websites. Websites are old and stodgy. Dead and decomposing. They were useful in the early days of the Internet. But not anymore. Not since things have become hotly competitive. It’s no longer enough to just have a website. You need an actual sales funnel.

Websites lack focus. There’s just too much going on there. Sales funnels are different because they’re laser-focused. They’re designed to take customers down a pre-defined journey. They help solicit the sale because they go far beyond a single interaction. That’s because sales funnels are designed to capture a prospect’s contact details first and foremost. Then, they’re designed to create rapport and build a bond with that prospect. It’s not a single interaction. They’re not just random people lost on a website.

Building a sales funnel isn’t complicated. You can easily build one here without any web development skills or coding knowledge. They’re designed to grow your online business fast. To increase sales and boost revenue. Most importantly, they’re designed to maximize the average amount of money customers spend with you. Sales funnels have things like order bumps, one-time offers, upsells, down-sells, subscriptions, and more. If you don’t have a sales funnel in business, you can’t expect to succeed. Not in today’s market that is.

Step 6—Get Traffic

Once everything is set up you need to get traffic. You can drive traffic in many ways. But the point is to pick one traffic strategy and run with it. You could drive traffic from social media. Paid ads. SEO. Email list swaps. YouTube videos. And more. Most people struggle with traffic for a reason. That’s because it’s hard to get attention today. Attention is awareness and to get people aware of you either takes a lot of hard work or money. Sometimes both.

However, no business is complete without a solid traffic strategy. You must drive traffic to your offers. And you must be able to capture that traffic and convert it into leads. How will you do that? What methods will you use? Will you collaborate with others or do it yourself? Should you hire an agency or try to do it all in-house? Once you find a traffic strategy that works, double down and go all in. Traffic will create leads, which will eventually help you make money.

Step 7—Build Relationships

You can’t expect to start an online business without building relationships with prospects and customers. We do this through email marketing. Use email to share stories, build rapport, and create a bond between you and the prospect. You help them break limiting beliefs holding them back from buying the thing you’re selling. And that’s important. Because the prospect is oftentimes where you were right before you went on the journey of solving the problem that you solved. By sharing those stories, you create a bond.

This isn’t complicated. Stories are at the heart of humans. They’re woven into the fabric of time. And when used the right way those stories can help to scale your online business to the moon. Remember that email is one of the most intimate forms of communication. When we send an email we’re reaching a person directly. It’s not the same as an ad or a social media post. That’s why you must use emails wisely. And don’t be afraid to communicate. After all, the more you get in front of a prospect, the more likely they are to buy what you’re selling.

Thanks for reading How To Start An Online Business And Make Money which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If Click Funnels is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

To franchise or not to franchise: What should a business consider before taking the leap?

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Xero is a cloud-based accounting platform that offers numerous benefits. It simplifies financial management with automated bank feeds, allowing you to save time on data entry. Create, email, and print professional invoices effortlessly. Access your finances in real time via the cloud from any device. Retain records of income, expenses, assets, and liabilities securely online. Whether you’re a small business owner or an accountant, Xero streamlines your financial processes and provides a clear view of your financial health.

Dive into the world of franchising in this Q&A with Lime Licensing’s CEO, Andy Cheetham, as he shares his expertise, insights, and advice for businesses looking to franchise.

How can a business determine if its model is suitable for franchising?

Franchising is all about replication. If your current business can create a clone of itself in another location then it’s likely that your clone could be a franchise, provided it can be profitable of course!

I like to see a business that has gone through its learning curve already, and whilst no business is ever the finished article, a bonafide franchise should be a developed format that has already got most of the wrinkles ironed out of it.

What are the legal considerations businesses need to be aware of when venturing into franchising?

At Lime Licensing Group we concentrate on Intellectual Property first, and get that in the right hands at the outset. Then there’s confidentiality agreements, deposit agreements for franchisees who wish to secure a franchise option, franchise agreements to lay out the terms of engagement, and sometimes other supporting legals from side letters, through to development or master agreements.

What financial factors should businesses evaluate before deciding to franchise?

Businesses that are ready to scale have three options.The first is growing organically, the second is growing through acquisition, and third is scaling through franchising or licensing. A savvy potential franchisor will have considered the relevant capital requirement of each before choosing franchising. Assuming that they then progress as franchisors, what matters above all else is that the franchise owner’s business can be profitable with territorial restrictions in place and the presence of a royalty.

In simple terms, a new franchisor should ask themselves if they could replicate what they are doing in a defined region, and with a discount off their net VAT turnover of at least 10%. If the answer to both of these is yes, then franchising is a possibility. A new franchisor can get a 100% return on investment with the sale of the first franchise, so the business case is extremely viable.

How can a franchisor provide ongoing support to maintain consistency across franchise locations?

Franchisors should inspect what they expect. I am used to seeing franchisors trying to manage everything in-house, but often external suppliers can do just as good a job. Either way, the rules of engagement are set out in each franchisee’s operational manual and then it’s the job of the franchisor to ensure that standards of delivery from franchisee to customer are consistent with the guidelines.

How can businesses tailor their marketing strategies to promote their franchise model?

By keeping the characteristics and core brand message, a new franchisor can focus on how best to convey the business opportunity of joining them. Most owner operator franchise buyers are in a career change, so existing contacts might not be the best place to roll out franchise marketing. At Lime Licensing Group we have around 50 different media channels that can work. It’s always a challenge to determine which media or strategy will generate franchise enquiries, but that’s something we as consultants can help new franchisors with.

How can a business ensure that potential franchisees align with the brand and values?

We never sell franchises over zoom or the telephone alone. Instead we aim to get them into the environment they may be working in and interacting with clients at some level. If you’re a care based business, can you set something up to observe them in a care environment? HQ visits can work well too and we have a number of clients who do psychometric tests to supplement their judgement.

How should businesses conduct market analysis to identify potential franchise locations?

Any good franchisor knows how to assess a new region or criteria for a new outlet, but it’s important that the franchisee ensures a satisfactory commercial environment exists in the proposed area. So they need to find the competition they might encounter. This results in new franchisees being proactive and showing the franchisor they understand that in many cases, due to their proximity to their actual franchise, that they are best placed to find a location or assess local demand for a product or service.

How can technology be leveraged to streamline franchise operations?

Unified technology – both hardware and software is always beneficial. It makes support , implementation, and upgrades easier. Having everyone using the same tech results in consistency whether it’s the CRM, bookkeeping software like Xero, or POS Systems for retail.

Franchising is a strategic leap that requires meticulous planning. Assess your business readiness, establish a robust system, navigate legalities, and prioritise transparent communication with franchisees. Success hinges on adaptability and a commitment to excellence. To find out more about how Xero can help you on your franchising journey, visit our dedicated franchising homepage here.

The post To franchise or not to franchise: What should a business consider before taking the leap? appeared first on Xero Blog.

If Xero is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

6 Ebook Marketing strategies [free or low-cost] + examples and tips

Software Stack Editor · March 21, 2024 ·

If Convertkit is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Fuel Business Growth With This Founder’s Winning YouTube Strategy (2024)

Software Stack Editor · March 20, 2024 ·

In 2010, Mimi Ikonn co-founded Luxy Hair, a line of hair extensions and accessories, and grew the brand’s YouTube channel to reach over three million subscribers. She later sold the multimillion-dollar company and launched Intelligent Change. Again she found success, selling more than two million copies of the company’s Five Minute Journal.

Mimi’s success as a serial entrepreneur can largely be attributed to a YouTube strategy that has allowed her to build communities online. After using YouTube for business for more than a decade, Mimi has perfected her growth formula for creating a successful channel.

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The blueprint for a winning YouTube strategy

Mimi knows firsthand how powerful a YouTube community can be when it comes to building a business. Ahead, she shares six key tips to help you grow your brand on YouTube.

1. Focus on your interests

“It’s never too late to start a YouTube channel, as long as it’s a topic you’re really interested in,” Mimi says. Even if somebody already has a channel like yours, you can differentiate with your own unique perspective and unique experiences.

When it comes to launching and growing a YouTube channel, you’ll want to focus on topics you’re passionate about to avoid burnout. It will also inspire you to keep going, and motivate you when your subscriber growth is slow or stagnant. “It’s about enjoying what you’re doing, because that will resonate with the audience,” Mimi says. If you get bored of the content, your viewers will probably feel the same way.

2. Keep it simple and clear

“If you can simplify your topic, people will watch and engage [more],” Mimi says. For Luxy Hair’s YouTube channel, Mimi documented her own journey as she learned how to use different styling tools and hair accessories. She broke content up into small segments so viewers could replicate the techniques themselves. Incorporating a clear beginning, middle, and end will make it easier for viewers to watch and help you grow your channel over time.

3. Build trust

“Building trust with your audience is extremely important,” Mimi explains. One of the best ways to do this is through a consistent posting schedule. If you can share videos regularly, then people will know when to return to your channel or look out for new content.

Creating authentic content will give your audience the confidence and security they need to subscribe. Having genuine excitement in your videos will highlight your conviction and give viewers faith in your ability to provide value and expertise.

4. Have fun with it

If you’re going to grow on YouTube, you also have to engage on the platform as a user. Choose to grow your channel because you genuinely like YouTube as a social media platform. If you spend all day scrolling on Instagram, chances are you should be trying to grow your business there instead. “If you don’t like the platform it will be difficult to put in long-term, consistent effort,” Mimi explains.

5. Mix up your content (length)

Mimi loves long-form videos because they allow her to go deeper into a topic. But it’s important to experiment with different lengths and formats. “You can repurpose the [long form] content into smaller videos for YouTube Shorts,” Mimi says.

Since the algorithm on YouTube is constantly changing, mix up the length of your videos to connect with different audiences. If you normally post a full 20-minute video to your channel, try slicing it up and sharing shorter versions along with the full-length video. Different content styles will attract different audiences.

6. Learn from other creators

Look out for trends that resonate with you and your industry. “Watch other creators and see what works for them. Don’t copy [them] but do similar things with your own content that you put out,” Mimi says.

It’s OK to learn from other successful channels, but remember to make it your own. Add a personal touch or incorporate an idea you saw used in a different genre or industry to make your content unique.

Establishing a large YouTube channel won’t happen overnight. Mimi’s tips will help you to start cultivating a dedicated audience that will fuel your growth.

Tune in to the full Shopify Masters episode to discover Mimi’s tips for converting subscribers into customers and launching one successful business after another.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Use real-time marketing strategies to foster your business’s growth and agility

Software Stack Editor · March 20, 2024 ·

Our view at Stack - Simplify web development with Webflow, reduce costs, and deliver professional results. No-code, responsive, and SEO-friendly. Explore your creative potential!

Real-time marketing dynamically adapts to your target audience’s immediate feedback, transforming traditional marketing approaches into responsive, interactive experiences.

Traditional marketing often feels like casting messages into the void, relying on assumptions about what might resonate with your audience. It’s a waiting game, as teams cross their fingers hoping that billboards, posters, and advertisements translate into sales or conversions.

With real-time marketing, you’re no longer shouting into the void. Instead, you’re actively listening and responding to your audience’s reactions, turning every marketing effort into a two-way conversation. This shift enhances customer engagement and allows for more effective and agile marketing strategies.

Read on to learn how to create real-time marketing initiatives.

What exactly is real-time marketing?

Real-time marketing is a dynamic inbound marketing strategy that attracts audiences to your brand with tailored content. In contrast to outbound marketing, which broadly disseminates content in hopes of reaching potential customers, real-time customer marketing focuses on responding to your target audience’s immediate needs, encouraging them to actively seek you out.

By monitoring customer responses to brand messaging and marketing materials like blogs, web content, and advertisements and then adapting them in real time, this approach lets you swiftly adapt your strategies on the fly to maximize their effectiveness.

2 real-time marketing examples in action

Famous real-time marketing examples include the ice bucket challenge, Wendy’s witty social media responses, and Peloton’s “And Just Like That” advertisements. Below, we’ll explore two real-time marketing campaign examples to understand their methods and impact.

JetBlue Airways

Living up to their slogan “You above all,” JetBlue Airways brilliantly engages with customers through real-time marketing.

On one occasion, a passenger tweeted about their flight experience on X (formerly known as Twitter), thanking JetBlue for their services. The tweet — “Goodbye, California! Thanks @JetBlue for the #flyfi!” — sparked an interactive exchange and culminated in the passenger humorously expecting a greeting upon landing. Seizing the opportunity, JetBlue’s team welcomed the passenger at the airport with personalized signboards. They also turned the stunt into a viral sensation by posting the updates online, showcasing JetBlue’s commitment to customer engagement and service.

DICK’s Sporting Goods

Responding to COVID-19 disruptions, DICK’s Sporting Goods adapted their DICK’s Pro Tips hub to align with evolving customer needs during the early days of the pandemic. As gyms closed, DICK’s closely monitored emerging fitness trends, customer queries, and social media conversations about home workouts. They swiftly incorporated these insights into their content hub to keep it relevant and valuable to customers seeking home fitness solutions. This responsive and proactive approach propelled the DICK’s Pro Tips hub to the first page of Google search results, significantly boosting organic traffic to their site.

5 technical capabilities you need to implement real-time marketing

Real-time information and process adoption across multiple sectors — like navigation and telecommunication apps like Google Maps and Zoom, and ecommerce and social media platforms — have shaped consumer expectations for immediate, responsive interactions. This widespread integration has naturally led to the assumption that real-time marketing should be standard practice for all businesses.

But shifting to real-time marketing strategies can be challenging because marketing decisions often require unilateral approval from key decision-makers. To start, you’ll need the following technical abilities to implement real-time marketing effectively.

1. Unified customer profiles

A unified, detailed customer profile gives you a holistic understanding of each customer’s journey. Such profiles enable real-time targeting strategies that pinpoint and resonate with customer preferences and needs.

Developing this profile involves merging customer data from various sources, including website interactions, purchases, customer service contacts, and social media activity. This integrated database compiles basic demographic data and tracks customer behaviors, preferences, and feedback, forming the foundation for personalized marketing approaches.

For example, an online bookstore might compile data from a customer’s previous purchases, website browsing history, and customer service interactions. This data reveals that the customer prefers science fiction novels and frequently purchases books late at night. The bookstore then uses this profile to send personalized recommendations and special late-night sale alerts to the customer to align with their reading interests and buying habits.

2. Predictive customer modeling

Predictive customer modeling transforms marketing strategies by forecasting customer behaviors from past interactions. This advanced approach allows businesses to optimize their marketing to individual customer preferences and anticipated actions, shifting their efforts from reactive to proactive.

To leverage this method, employ machine learning algorithms and statistical methods to analyze historical customer data. These advanced analytics tools are essential for real-time campaign management because they detect patterns, trends, and correlations that may escape human analysis.

Consider a fitness app company using predictive customer modeling to analyze user workout patterns, app usage frequency, and feedback submitted through the app. By applying machine learning algorithms, the company predicts that one user segment is likely interested in yoga. They tailor their marketing efforts to these users by sending targeted notifications about new yoga-related features and content resonating with their users’ anticipated interests.

3. Real-time customer activity tracking and trigger detection

Real-time customer activity tracking and trigger detection empower you to engage with customers at the optimal moment. These processes help you create timely, relevant content and incentives tailored to customers’ current behaviors, ensuring a personalized experience.

Implementing this strategy involves establishing a robust tracking system using cookies, tags, and real-time monitoring tools to track customer interactions across digital platforms instantly. Following this, the focus shifts to trigger detection. This encompasses outlining predefined events or actions that, when detected, automatically initiate marketing responses.

Consider an online clothing retailer using real-time customer activity tracking to monitor a shopper’s website browsing behavior. The system might note that the customer spends significant time looking at winter coats but leaves the site without purchasing.

Using trigger detection, the retailer automatically sends a personalized email to the customer sometime later, featuring a special 10% discount on winter coats. This timely and relevant response, tailored to the customer’s recent browsing behavior, aims to reengage the customer and encourage a purchase. It enhances the shopping experience and potentially boosts sales.

4. Automated multichannel message delivery

Implementing automation across multiple marketing channels ensures consistency and optimal delivery across your messaging. By adopting this approach, you maintain a unified brand voice across all channels and deliver a uniform experience to all users whether they interact with your website or Instagram account.

To execute this strategy, implement marketing automation platforms like HubSpot and Mailchimp into your workflow. These platforms streamline multichannel communication, including email, social media, and SMS to enable seamless and efficient message flow.

A lifestyle brand might use an automation platform to coordinate its campaign for a new product launch. When the product launches, the platform sends an announcement email, posts on social media channels, and triggers an SMS alert. This coordinated effort ensures that all subscribers and followers receive the information simultaneously, irrespective of their preferred channel, which reinforces the campaign’s message and maximizes its reach.

5. Campaign analysis and enhancement

Immediate campaign data access lets marketers make on-the-spot, data-driven decisions for campaign refinement. These adjustments include fine-tuning targeting parameters, enhancing messaging, and reallocating budget resources. To harness real-time website analytics, integrate tools that instantly monitor key metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and customer engagement.

Previously, real-time marketing technology was often expensive and challenging to integrate into a cohesive system. But modern advancements enable brands to monitor consumer responses to marketing initiatives and adapt their campaigns accordingly. Often, these tools may already be part of your existing workflow.

For example, many businesses already use customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce CRM or Adobe Analytics or enterprise marketing automation systems. These platforms offer real-time analytics, customer insights, and automation capabilities that are all crucial for implementing effective real-time marketing strategies. Their integration allows for a seamless transition between monitoring campaign performance and making necessary adjustments to optimize results.

How real-time marketing fosters growth

Real-time marketing fosters an adaptive environment in which team capabilities and technological skills thrive. Here are some key ways this strategy contributes to growth.

Enables incremental optimizations

When you conduct real-time marketing, you regularly make small-scale adjustments, updates, and optimizations. It’s an approach that focuses on enhancing major campaign initiatives with daily manageable actions rather than trying to compress extensive work into a short period. In doing so, you encourage teams to identify and implement minor yet impactful modifications, like repositioning call-to-action (CTA) boxes or refining the language used.

Take your website, for example. Although it’s often the first asset developed when starting a business, infrequent updates are common. Real-time marketing changes this dynamic by promoting a more consistent, ongoing improvement approach.

At Webflow, we experienced this firsthand with an incremental adjustment concerning overlay opacity. We speculated that a CTA box’s background was too distracting and potentially hindering conversions. By removing this background noise for a subset of viewers and monitoring the response over several days, we observed significant improvements. This minor change produced statistically significant results — and actionable insights on small visual changes we could make to create a better user experience.

An image of two screenshots showing Webflow’s old lightbox CTA with a background overlay on the left and its new lightbox CTA without an overlay on the right. — *The two styles of sign-up modals tested differences in overlay opacity.*

Improves agility

Real-time marketing enhances your brand’s marketing agility and enables businesses of all sizes to respond swiftly to current events and unforeseen challenges. Its flexibility makes it easier for you to release concepts that are still in development because you know you can continuously refine them after launch.

For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, our team at Webflow recognized an opportunity to assist businesses struggling with digital presence. So, we quickly offered Webflow for free for three months. We built a campaign around this initiative and launched it within days, then leveraged the adaptability of real-time marketing to make changes later.

While initially “good enough,” we knew the campaign wasn’t perfect. Post-launch, we evaluated user interactions and identified missing elements. One such addition was linking the campaign to our Webflow Experts program, which enabled small business owners with limited technical expertise to get help from Webflow professionals.

When faced with a pandemic — or any real-life situation where you want and need to be there for your customers — having the flexibility to adapt on the fly is vital. Here’s what this looks like for different organization sizes.

‍Smaller businesses and startups. These businesses can leverage real-time marketing analytics for frequent modifications and A/B testing. Consider an ecommerce clothing company assessing a product video’s impact on their website and social platforms. By showcasing four different video versions to separate visitor segments and monitoring the real-time responses, the company can quickly determine the most effective format.

‍Midsize companies. Midsize firms often experiment with ideas on a smaller scale. At Webflow, we typically trial marketing initiatives with just 10% of our user base. Timeboxing — or allocating a fixed, often short, period for trialing a campaign or strategy — is another approach we use to manage trial duration effectively. This controlled launch strategy optimizes resource allocation for testing more innovative ideas. It also makes gaining stakeholder feedback and approval more feasible because it demonstrates the impact and effectiveness of new initiatives in a measurable, manageable way.

‍Large corporations. Large companies, often with multiple key stakeholders, can adopt similar control methods, such as selective rollouts and timeboxing, to mitigate marketing trial risks. Rapid movement is challenging for these organizations given their size, so using microsites or less trafficked URLs can be more effective. This approach lets them experiment with marketing strategies in a more manageable, lower-risk environment, providing valuable insights before broader implementation.

How B2B marketers can incorporate real-time marketing

To implement real-time marketing strategies effectively, B2B marketers should identify areas with the highest potential impact. Here are a few key questions you might consider:

‍What pages attract the most users? Analyze your website’s most popular pages to understand what content resonates with your audience. Use this insight to focus your real-time marketing efforts on enhancing and promoting content that already draws significant attention. This approach capitalizes on existing user interest to maximize the impact of your real-time strategies.

What queries do visitors have? Actively monitor and respond to user questions in real time to enhance their experience and potentially increase your conversion rate. Prompt responses to inquiries not only address visitors’ immediate needs but also demonstrate your commitment to customer engagement.
Who mentions your brand on social media? If you keep tabs on your brand’s social mentions, you can seize opportunities for positive engagement, just like JetBlue Airways did. Addressing concerns or negative comments promptly also shows your dedication to customer satisfaction and helps mitigate any adverse effects while reinforcing your brand’s transparent communication.

6 steps for getting started with real-time marketing

Embarking on your real-time marketing journey requires a foundation of real-time analytics and a flexible process that responds to that information effectively. Here are six tips to help you start the journey.

1. Create a basic framework

While real-time marketing emphasizes adaptability, establishing a general plan is crucial. This means defining your overall marketing goals, identifying your target audience, and solidifying your key messages. Next, align your content calendar with broader business objectives. This step doesn’t limit spontaneity — rather, it creates a strategic baseline that lets your team quickly react to market changes while aligning your efforts with overarching goals.

For example, a tech company might aim to enhance brand awareness among small business owners. Their content calendar could include planned posts and themes but have the flexibility to incorporate trending topics or respond to industry news. This helps keep their marketing dynamic yet focused.

2. Monitor real-time analytics

To implement real-time marketing, you need real-time data. This means monitoring responses to your marketing initiatives as they happen. Check out these analytics tools to gain insight into your customer’s journey from initial interaction to post-purchase behaviors.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics gives you a comprehensive view of user interactions with your website. It tracks traffic sources, identifies high-performing pages, and provides other valuable data like insights into user demographics and interests. Think of this as your jumping-off point for real-time marketing.

Google Analytics is free, so it’s available to businesses of all sizes. Learn more about how to connect Google Analytics to your site on Webflow University.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a powerful keyword and backlink monitoring tool. If your marketing initiatives involve search engine optimization (SEO), Ahrefs will help you identify keyword opportunities, gauge your domain authority, and understand competitor strategies.

3. Stay ahead of trends

Effective real-time marketing hinges on deeply understanding current trends, ongoing discussions, and customer sentiments. To stay on top of these dynamics, monitor industry news, social media buzz, and emerging topics relevant to your audience, and consider employing social listening platforms like Hootsuite and HubSpot to track conversations about your brand and industry. This awareness lets your team engage in timely discussions, which ensures your marketing initiatives align with prevailing interests and maintain relevance.

For instance, JetBlue Airways’ prompt engagement with a customer’s post on X escalated into a viral thread, leading to nationwide exposure — for free!

4. Prioritize speed

Speed is fundamental to real-time marketing, so act swiftly when spotting opportunities or addressing challenges, formulating responses, and applying changes. Any delay risks missing opportunities or less effective responses.

By leveraging real-time insights from analytics tools, you can adjust content quickly, respond to social media trends on time, and fine-tune your campaigns. This ensures your marketing strategies capture attention and captivate when it matters most.

Consider a software company monitoring industry-related discussions on social media. Upon noticing an emerging trend in remote collaboration challenges, they quickly create and share content offering solutions through their software. By acting promptly, they not only engage with the current conversation but also position their product as a timely solution, capitalizing on the trend to drive engagement and potential leads.

5. Adjust strategies based on data insights

After setting up tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, or Ahrefs, experiment with minor changes and observe user reactions. Real-time marketers typically follow these steps to refine their initiatives:

Understand your baseline. Determine a benchmark for your metrics to provide a clear starting point that lets you accurately measure the impact of your changes. In an SEO campaign, the baseline might include current metrics like page views, organic traffic, and conversion rates. If you alter the design of your CTA buttons and see an increase in conversion rates compared to this baseline, you can attribute this improvement to your recent changes.
Make a hypothesis. Analyzing website performance data — like heatmaps, page speed, and bounce rate, for example — helps you develop theories on why certain assets perform better than others. In the SEO campaign example, if top-converting blogs have more visible CTA buttons, your hypothesis might be that visual prominence drives conversions. This step guides your experimentation and grounds your changes on informed assumptions rather than guesswork.
Implement and test. Test your hypothesis by applying changes to a controlled group of assets first. This lets you observe the real-world effects without risking your entire campaign or marketing initiative. Following the SEO campaign example, you might select a few underperforming blogs and modify their CTA boxes to be brighter and more noticeable. This test marketing approach lets you experiment safely without overhauling successful elements so you can minimize risk while exploring potential improvements.
Draw an informed conclusion. Observe the real-time impact of your changes to validate or refute your hypothesis. This provides concrete evidence of what works and what doesn’t, guiding future marketing strategies. If the new CTA design increases conversions, you can confidently apply these changes more broadly. Conversely, if no changes exist, you gain valuable insights for future hypotheses.

The beauty of real-time marketing is that if something doesn’t work, you can always go back to what you had before or simply stop your testing. So, don’t be afraid to try new things and be curious.

6. Stay engaged after publishing

Real-time marketing thrives on active engagement. After publishing content or implementing changes, stay involved with your audience’s reactions. Regularly monitor comments, track website metrics, and be ready to adjust your strategy as needed. Remember, real-time marketing is a continuous conversation, and actively participating in it enhances your ability to refine your efforts.

For example, you might have a blog post that gains traction and ranks first in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a high-traffic keyword. Suppose this post ends with a link to a related article, driving substantial organic traffic. In response, you might strategically replace the “Read more” link with a CTA for a free trial or demo sign-up to leverage the traffic surge to potentially increase conversions.

Real-time marketing, real-world impact

Real time marketing empowers teams to be more creative, push boundaries, and achieve growth in new ways. And not all of this growth comes from A/B testing. You can also use real time insights to further your impact when a particular asset is performing really well.

Webflow enables you to unlock the power of real-time marketing data and transform your website’s user experience. With Webflow, you can track your site’s performance, visualize user behavior with data visualization, and tailor content to align with current trends and user preferences. Keep your content fresh with instant updates, and swiftly optimize engagement and conversion rates based on real-time insights.

Embrace the dynamic possibilities of real-time marketing with Webflow Enterprise and take your website to the next level.

If Webflow is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Software Stack Editor

How To Make Money From Home

1—Sales Funnel Building

2—YouTube

3—Graphic Design

4—Prompt Engineering

5—Affiliate Marketing

6—Online Courses

7—Digital Products

8—Web Development

9—Digital Marketing

10—Real Estate

11—Blogging

12—Live Streaming

13—Social Media

14—Copywriting

15—Book Writing

16—Narrate Audiobooks

17—Email Marketing

18—Auction Management

19—Merchandising

20—Website Testing

21—Translations

22—Online Notary

23—Freelancing

24—Newsletters

25—Membership Sites

26—Vending Machines

27—Boring Businesses

28—Website Flipping

29—Host Webinars

30—Product Launches

31—Lead Generation Business

32—Search Engine Marketing

33—Gaming

34—Video Editing

35—Transcribing

36—Peer-to-Peer Lending

37—Handmade Products

38—Take Online Surveys

39—Flip Sneakers

40—Sell Used Clothing

41—Invest In REITs

42—Create Apps

43—Search Engine Optimization

44—ATM Business

45—Do Voiceovers

46—Vacation Rental Management

47—Create Music

48—Snapchat

49—Fortnite Maps

50—Launch Podcast

51—Rent Your Driveway

52—Car Rentals

53—Amazon FBA

54—Sell Used Electronics

55—Flip Cars

Examples of inbound sales

1. Selling from content marketing

2. Selling from Google Ads

3. Selling from referral

4. Selling from social media marketing

Examples of outbound sales

1. Social selling

2. Cold outreach

3. Live events

4. Door-to-door sales

Advantages and disadvantages of inbound sales and outbound sales

Inbound sales advantages

1. Smooth sales funnel

2. Brand awareness increase

3. Reach to modern buyers

Inbound sales disadvantages

1. Time investment

2. Dealing with content overflow

3. Resources for sales and marketing teams

Outbound sales advantages

1. Quick ROI

2. Direct control for the sales team

3. Direct interaction with prospects