Why Content Is Still King

One common and popular phrase that has stood the test of time is "content is king" why? Because it has remained true despite hundreds of other factors like SEO practices, social media, and many other modern trends influencing online businesses and marketing. SEO experts have begun to adopt the philosophy that content is the most crucial factor of the ranking of any website.

Despite the fact that the importance of content is emphasized in many high places, too many aspiring online entrepreneurs have not fully understood and embraced this idea. Many will miss out on the benefits that great and original content can bring to a page. There are many to consider.

First of all, though, it is essential to be familiar with what content actually is. There is no short answer to this question. Content is everywhere and it's used in everything. In blogs, posts and articles you can find it along with web content like an “about us” page or a page describing products and services, all of which are part of the page's content. Moreover, the posts on social media accounts are also considered content.

Many companies and businesses think that uploading content regularly and in large amounts alone will improve the visibility of their sites, ranking, and ultimately, sales. It may be true to some extent that posting content regularly is essential, but it is also important that the content produced is unique and engaging to visitors.

Good content performs the following functions:

• Helps in branding of the business.
• Improves the search engine result page (SERP) ranking of the website.
• Increases customer engagement and attracts more traffic to the site.
• Generates leads and sales.

Types of Content

As discussed earlier, content is much more than just words on a website. It encompasses all those materials that are shareable and easily readable by the users, which will lead to the expansion of the customer base and better brand building.

Some types of content might include:

Written Content

Articles, press releases, academic reports, papers, and blog posts are all written material. Many modern types of content have emerged in the last few years, but written content is still considered an essential type of content because it is imperative in publishing different material. Moreover, it acts as a lead magnet and possible sales for a business.

Social Media Content

Social media content has the ability to reach a massive number of people anywhere in the world quickly and easily. All Facebook posts, tweets, LinkedIn posts, and Instagram media is considered to be social media content because it is shareable.

Multimedia Content

The reach of multimedia content has increased manifold. It is imperative to share visual content and even videos to keep your audience engaged. Thanks to rapidly growing video contributors on YouTube and Vimeo, the influence of video is growing. Different types of videos like interviews, teaching videos, product reviews, vlogs, reviews, and gaming videos are being uploaded daily and in heavy volume. These trends are increasing the importance of introducing different types of multimedia content, especially engaging videos.

It's important to discuss these types of content because even though the definition of content has evolved due to advances in technology and modern trends, content is still king. Why? Because it is used in and by all different types of business and all across various platforms. As the internet world of business becomes more competitive, it's becoming more important to use content as a way of spreading your message on any platform.

Customer Engagement

It is imperative that companies and entrepreneurs keep their customers updated and engaged in their business. The content should be unique and engaging for your users. Engaging content draws people and allows your brand to build a stronger bond with the customers. Moreover, good content will be able to attract traffic to your website, even if you have not implemented any other advanced strategy. Overall, it will increase your ranking on search engines, and customer engagement will improve.

Content marketing is a vital part of business success. Companies that have excellent content are naturally more attractive to more inbound links and traffic, and hence the chances visitors buying your products or services will also be on the rise.

The Statistical Importance Of Content

Different researchers and their analysis of the data have shown that content marketing is extremely important in customer engagement, expanding the customer base of a business, and running a successful blog. For example,

• Around 70% of the markets claim that excellent content leads to more engagement with the users.
• Social media content has become highly effective in B2C businesses
• According to a survey, 85% of people prefer brands that have entertaining content like personalized stories, solutions, and experiences.
• Many people find new businesses and companies via Twitter and Facebook.
• Video creators on YouTube have become a huge chunk of social media influencers as their content is seen by millions of people all around the globe.
• Overall, great content is necessary for a successful business, and it is much easier and cost-efficient to produce excellent content. Hence, content marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing, and it generates more leads than conventional marketing techniques.

Producing various types of content and implementing content marketing strategies can seem very complicated and intimidating. Fortunately, there are many programs out there that can help. Robot Author simplifies the process of creating engaging content to attracting more users to your sites.

How Giving Away Something of Value Can Help You Monetize Your Back End

Everybody loves a freebie! What do you currently sell, that is of value, that you could offer for free? And how can you monetize the back end of that? This works especially well if you can offer something that other businesses would normally charge for.

For example, if you have a corporate cleaning business, you could offer your first clean free, and follow up with your customer to see if they were happy with your service and would like you to continue. This is a great way to get new clients to try your service, as you’re taking all the risk out of it for them and, if you do a great job, chances are they’ll want to keep you on. The principle of reciprocity comes into play here too - you’ve given something of value to them and chances are they’ll feel the urge to do the same back.

A twist on this model is our “free plus shipping & handling” funnels, where we offer something for free on the front-end as long as the customer covers a small s&h fee (usually under $5). As long as they think the value is $20+, they’ll consider this a steal and be inclined to jump on it, even if they normally wouldn’t buy it right then and there. However, a necessity with this model is to make sure that you have a great set of upsells and a good backend to really monetize it. We typically have a continuity offer (like a membership or something along those lines), a low to medium priced offer, and ideally a high-end offer in the upsell path. The real money is made in the upsell path, as it’s hard to make a lot off a free plus s&h offer. As an added bonus with this model, you also get a lot of quality buyer leads (worth far more than non-buyer leads), without often having to pay a lot in advertising costs to acquire them. This allows you to market more offers to them in the future and make even more money off these buyer leads.

Think about something you can give away, that has value, and then look at how you can monetize the back end. Whether it is a sample of your service or a physical product, this works especially well if it something that other people usually charge for.

For more insights on how to create a sales funnel that maximizes your profit potential, check out this tool here: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer

How To Create A Better Funnel For Your Business?

Every entrepreneur is well familiar with the importance of marketing in today’s era of extreme competition. Marketing through various channels has become essential to make sure a business is able to thrive in the market. Without a proper marketing strategy, a company will not be able to gain new customers and expand their reach.

Are you looking for tips and techniques to create better sales funnel for your business? If so, you are in the right place.

What Is A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a marketing concept that provides a schematic of the process through which a customer goes through while making a purchase. The term ‘funnel’ is used as an analogy because most of the people who know about a business are its potential customers and represent the top, most significant part of the funnel. This might also be described as your “warm market” and may include those who are on the fence about your brand, or barely even giving it a thought. These people are on top. The people who can be described as committed customers are likely much fewer than those who are simply familiar with your brand. They represent the bottom part of the funnel.

The following are the five essential steps in constructing an excellent sales funnel for your business:

1. An Attractive Landing Page

The landing page of your company’s website is the first and best chance of impressing your potential customers. It should reflect the best qualities of your business and convince the customers to utilize your products and services. An excellent landing page is the one that will encourage the readers to sign-up for updates or notifications from your website. In this way, you can establish a regular and continuous interaction with your potential customers, allowing you to work them into different parts your funnel.

2. Give Front-End Offers

An enticing front-end offer should be made clear and visible on the front page of your website. The offers should be adapted to the market’s requirements, consumers mindset, and modern marketing trends. This strategy is often called the "pre-selling" as at this stage of the funnel; you are convincing your potential customers to buy your products or services.

3. Add Back-End Offers (Upselling)

An option of expanding the shopping cart should be provided to the customers at the back end. It means that the customers who have just bought or are about to buy a product or service from your business should be given the option of upgrading their order. For instance, you can create a unique offer that will provide even more benefits to the customers at an affordable cost. The strategy of upselling is often used in the funnels to enhance sales.

4. Downselling

The option of downselling is the opposite of the upselling strategy. The technique is essential in the selling funnel as it facilitates the customers' experience with your business. Many companies make the mistake of thinking downselling to be a failure of the business or as a negative step.

However, it is important to make sure people with strict budget constraints can utilize your services efficiently. The budget of your customers can keep changing due to many reasons, so your business should be considerate towards your customers by providing cheaper and reasonable offers, including the option of downselling.

5. Steady Marketing

The last important strategy of designing an efficient sales funnel is to keep your marketing steady. It is essential to follow up with your latest customers, take feedback from them, and make sure they are happy with your products and services.

To establish a good relationship with your customers, you can offer a rewards program for your customers. Different packages and offers can be introduced under this program which will keep the customers coming to meet a specific threshold of the program and get rewards from your business. Moreover, you will be able to keep the customers informed about new deals of the business and increase sales.

The five steps listed above are some of the many strategies that can be adopted by the firms to develop a better sales funnel. Other than these steps, every business should evaluate the type of their business and the targeted audience to select appropriate strategies to create a funnel for the business.

If you need help in marketing your business and creating a better sales funnel for your business, you can check out the BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer program to get help in this whole process. It makes your funnel strategies so much easier.

How Contests Can Be A Great Source of New Targeted Leads

Contests can be a great way to grab more leads or prospects, get feedback or testimonials from existing customers, encourage participation or attendance on webinars, and more. And, it’s not like you have to give away a car or something crazy expensive. In fact, often times cheaper giveaways will help increase your conversions even more (perhaps because they think they’ll have a better chance of winning?).

For instance, you can run an ad where you’re advertising a contest for a free drone that you’re selling. Anyone who enters you know is probably a potential prospect, as they’re interested in the drone that you sell. When you do that, you can immediately advertise a special deal you have on them in case they don’t win (and offer to refund if they do) and want to get it right away. The benefit here is that you can get dirt cheap clicks and leads when advertising this way (on places like Facebook), all while building up a very targeted list (we’ve built up some big mailing lists and businesses this way at a fraction of the cost of what our competitors pay for ads).

You can also use contests as a way to build up your testimonials. Offer to enter customers into a contest when they submit any testimonials or feedback about your product. People love contests, which is why it can be a great way to get them to take action.

So consider using contests to get lots of cheap traffic and leads to check out your offers. Or, alternatively, use contests to encourage testimonials or feedback on your products.

For more help getting targeted leads, check out the WebFire tool here Web Fire.

The Trick to Keep Your Customers Continuously Purchasing From You: The Benefits of A Loyalty Program

It’s often way more effort and expense to find new customers than to sell again to your current customers. So how can you persuade your current customers to continuously purchase from you? One way is to put in place a loyalty program that keeps them coming back for more.

A loyalty program is a great way to encourage customers to keep purchasing from you, make them feel special and reward and thank them for their continued business. Most loyalty programs involve rewarding customers when they buy regularly from you or have purchased a certain amount from you, whether it’s in free products or discounted future purchases.

For example, think of your local coffee place. Many local coffee shops have a simple punch-card loyalty program, where you purchase 5 coffees and receive your 6th coffee free. The reward, of the free 6th coffee, encourages people to keep coming back to the same coffee place to indulge in their caffeine kick.

Think about how you can encourage and reward your customers for their loyalty. Implement a loyalty program that rewards customers, through free products/services or discounts for future purchases, when they regularly purchase from you.

Want more tips on retaining customers and other money making marketing strategies? Check out this book here 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!

How To Optimize Your Content For On-Page SEO

Search engines remain one of the most common tools users are utilizing to find things online, Google of course being the most prominent among them. Search engine optimization is therefore key and making your site visible and getting your content on more eyes. You need traffic to build an audience, and an audience to build conversions. That starts with search engine optimization. There are different types of search engine optimization including off-page and on-page, and the rules vary a little by search engine.

For the sake of this post we will focus on practical ways you can create your written content in a way that optimizes your on-page content for Google.

Choosing Your Keyword

The first step in optimizing any content you write is going to be choosing your “keyword” the keyword is the main word in your text, which you want to stick out to search engines. In other words you want to try and think of a keyword that users searching for what your page has to offer, would type into a search engine. You then must attach that keyword to engaging and relevant content to draw people in.

It's important the keyword is related to the content, makes sense, and provides useful and accurate information, don't use “click-bait” and other deceitful tactics or Google, along with your users, may view you as untrustworthy.

In general, you should try to use “long tail” keywords, or keywords that are written as common phrases or terms people might input into a search engine, that usually consists of four words or more. Before you choose a keyword you'll want to do keyword research. Keyword research involves finding a keyword that is relevant to the content you want to promote, is a popularly used search term, and is easy to rank against the competition. You can use Google keyword research tool or a an automated programs like Web Fire which also tells you how you rank against the competition for your chosen keywords.

Headings, Subheadings, and Plain Text

All of your titles and subtitles should try to include your keyword. Most importantly it should be included in your main heading, and as many subheadings as you can. Your keyword also needs to be incorporated naturally and somewhat frequently (but not too frequently) throughout the body of your main texts. You need to use the keyword as much as you can but essentially without seeming like you're trying to. Because google may penalize you for “keyword” stuffing you don't want to overdo it. In the old days SEO experts used to tell to put the keyword in every paragraph and every sentence that you could, but this is no longer the case.

Many experts recommend a keyword density of 1% or 2% of your entire text bodies, but others say there's really no real rule of thumb.

Images and Alt Text

All content should contain imagery, it makes a post more engaging and for many it just feels more accurate when there's picture in front us to support the text. Relevant images are very important in search engine optimization as well. The “alt text” for instance should be considered. The alt text of in image is simply that let little text caption that pops up whenever you hover your mouse over an imagine.

The alt text of an image plays a role in search engine placement as well and should include the keyword you want to optimize.

Links for Trust and Click-Through

For the sake of search engine optimization every post should have links. There's just something about them that make a page more appealing visually, but they also boost your search engine ranking. Every post, if possible, you should include at least two or three linked references to high authority websites to establish trust.

As you develop more content on your page you'll also want to create links to that as well. Try writing your content in a way that may loosely relate to something you've produced before, and include a link to it. Whenever possible try to get at least two or three links on your page to content you've produced before, as long as its loosely similar subject matter to your current post.

Using Optimized Tools

Optimizing content for SEO is anything but easy. Many times the devil is in the details and it's a lot to remember, but you should get the hang of things in time as you learn more and more. Luckily, there is an easier way. You can also create original, already optimized content using automated programs like Robot Author to save you the time and headache.

Make It Easy For Customers To Buy: How Offering Free Trials/Demonstrations Can Boost Your Sales

Sometimes it’s hard to see the benefit of something we haven’t seen in action or tried first. Offering a free trial period, or a demonstration of your product, can be a great way to alleviate a potential customer’s fears and make them confident the product will work for them. Also, once someone has tried something free they often feel obliged to reciprocate by purchasing from you - it’s the principle of reciprocity in action.

For example, if you have a software product, offer a free 30 day trial, so customers can see how it works, use it and see the results they get from it. You’ll get customers who may have sat on the fence or not purchased previously all of a sudden be ready to buy because they can get a chance to experience how great the product can actually be for them.

There’s one tip we’ve learned over the years that can greatly increase your retention rate here (or essentially how many stay on past the trial period), and that’s to offer a free trial, but require them to enter their credit card or payment details. Instead of charging them, which can decrease the conversion rates even more, just authorize their credit cards for $1 or so (this is typically where their card temporarily sees a charge for like $1 that never officially goes through – similar to what many gas stations do when you pay at the pump). If you use Paypal, you don’t even have to worry as much about this and can just do a straight trial for X days that automatically charges once the trial ends (Paypal is typically very good at getting money from customers, whereas for credit cards you often have to authorize them to make sure that they’re legit to start with).

You can also use trials as “special offers” whenever you want to run a sale. For instance, if you regularly sell a software tool for $997 / year, you can have a special offer where you do a free trial for 14 or 30 days. This can get a ton of people who’ve been on the fence to jump on this offer, as they know that the only other way for them to try out the software would be to pay $997 upfront.

So make it easy for customers to see the value in your product and purchase from you by offering a free trial or demonstration of your product. You’ll get a chance to make them feel comfortable with your product and see how great it is for them, before having to lay down their hard-earned cash. This in turn leads to more sales, especially from people who may have been skeptical about your product without the chance to try it first.

For more tips on sales and converting leads, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.