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Distilling Experience Into Advertising for Your Small Business
As a small business owner, how do you create marketing that is potent and persuasive without breaking the bank? From advertisements alone, your target market is exposed to thousands of messages every day. Putting a number to it is difficult. Researchers have said anywhere from 100 to 5000 ads per day. When you think about it, almost everywhere we go, physically or digitally, there is advertising. Corporations have entire departments with seasoned professionals devoted to winning your attention. They employ research and data firms to find out as much about you as possible. Then they spend thousands, even millions on buying ad space in all the places they think you’ll…
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Bill Gates’ Secret to Being Useful From 1996
In 1996 Bill Gates said that content would be the future of the internet. Nearly 20 years later, we can see that he was bang on. In fact, the internet is flooded with content: games, articles, cartoons, videos, memes, podcasts, music, streaming audio and video, and web apps. To the annoyance of many, corporations have begun to catch on to this as well. We get bombarded with content that just doesn’t matter to us. But any smart organization knows that if they are going to provide an attractive user experience, they have to provide content that matters to the user.
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Selling In Tough Times: The Sales Book that Makes Me Want to Sell
Take market share. Serve a specific need. Work hard to beat the competition. Nurture long term relationships. Understand your business cycle. Sell yourself out of a sales slump. I’m sold. As much as I hate being sold to, I love the idea of selling. There’s a frontier attraction to engaging people, fielding objections, turning their skepticism into enthusiasm, and striking up a win for both sides.
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Rhythm In Your Content Marketing Mix: Creating an Engaging Content Strategy
The traditional marketing mix follows the 4 P’s model: price, product, place, and promotion. But marketing within that model requires some finesse. Especially in your content marketing mix. So give your marketing some rhythm.
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Create Advertising People Want to Read; Think Like a News Editor
In advertising, relevance is king. The message of the ad has to matter to your audience. The same goes for news agencies. If the news story isn’t relevant, it won’t get ratings or readers. How news editors pick stories for each issue will teach you a lot about how to develop your next advertising campaign. You can make your advertising sound like “breaking news” or a big announcement, but I’m talking more about how news editors pick stories that their audience wants to read or see. How do you craft advertising that your audience wants to see?
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Small Business Marketing – The Coffee Shop Principle
Whether you like it or not, you don’t have a business without the right attention. Small business marketing fails when trying to grab everyone’s attention all at once. It’s like being in a coffee shop, shouting at everyone to buy your product. It can work if someone there is desperate for what you’re offering. But mostly you’re going to piss people off.
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Inside the Marketing That Powers GoWrench Auto’s Industry Disruption
GoWrench Auto is a Hamilton company that’s disrupting the auto repair industry. They’re expanding to other cities and building an app. Referrals, content and digital marketing power their expansion. Getting your car serviced is like going to the doctors. You need to take time off work or out of your family life to get it done. You’re either sitting in a waiting room for 45 minutes or driving to the shop, getting a shuttle back to work, then getting a shuttle back to the shop, and driving home or back to work. Inconvenient. But that’s how it is.
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Twitter’s influencer pipe dream
Influencers are millennials trying to cash in on their social media followers. Twitter wants you to believe that influencers drive purchase decisions. This social media exec says otherwise.
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What is Facebook Instant Articles?
Have you seen the links on Facebook with the little lightning bolt icon in the top right corner yet? Tap the link and, woosh, the article swoops in from the right. It was quick and you didn’t have to leave the Facebook app. Scrolling is smooth, images, videos and ads fit perfectly, and liking or sharing is only tap away. This is a Facebook Instant Article. Last year Facebook invited a handful of publishers to test Instant Articles. Today (Tuesday, April 12th, 2016) Facebook is opening the platform up to everyone.
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6 Websites That Create an Inspiring Reading Experience
If you’re going to publish content for customers or readers, make reading an inspiring experience. Just like the sales process, you want as little friction as possible when people encounter your content. Providing an enjoyable reading environment makes your message memorable, holds readers to the content longer, promotes sharing, and could even lead to inspired action.
