Strategy Archives - Page 3 of 3 - BOLLYWOOD SURKHIYAN

Marketing Strategy Plan: Key Ingredients Of A SWOT Analysis

In every marketing strategy plan, the first step in determining your current position in the market is through a comprehensive SWOT analysis. This helps you identify and improve your Strengths and Weakness while focusing on the external Opportunities and Threats that may positively or negatively affect your company.

1. Strengths

In a SWOT analysis, Strengths are considered part of the internal factors favorable to your marketing strategy plan. This basically covers areas regarding your competencies, assets, income generation, and other intangibles like customer support and positive public image and reputation, good admin – employees relationship, and camaraderie in the work place. When you define your strengths, it must reflect the present situation and have a clear plan on how you will be able to maintain and nurture it so these factors will always be the driving force of your company.

2. Weaknesses

Weaknesses can be derived both from internal and external factors. These are usually the areas in your operation that may have a negative impact on your marketing strategy plan. The purpose of creating a list of your weaknesses is so you can adjust your strategies to include improvements in these areas. Among the common weaknesses of companies are where your operation is losing money, lack of experience, skills, and or resources among others. Weaknesses can also account for a bad reputation, significant decline in the levels of trust among consumers, or simply due to the absence of any strength.

3. Opportunities

Opportunities are basically external factors that offer potential benefits for your business. When creating a marketing strategy plan, having a good grasp of the opportunities is highly beneficial. This enables you to take advantage of various factors that may have positive effects on your endeavors such as the current economic condition, cultural climate, market volume, economic demand, etc. When you know your opportunities, you can also see the actual needs of your target market that are not being met. In essence, these opportunities are actually your future strengths and must be prioritized.

4. Threats

Although threats are usually viewed as an external condition that may impede your marketing strategy plans, they can also be viewed internally. Threats can be an unstable economic condition, cultural differences, unfriendly social conditions, significant changes in political stability, new industry regulations and legislation, and the current position of your competitor. Internally, threats are often found in the workplace such as the unstable admin – employee relationship and other related conditions. As opposed to Opportunities, Threats in essence are your company’s future weaknesses and must be addressed as soon as possible.

With the help of a SWOT analysis, you can analyze your business internally against your various resources, financial standing, support, etc. When you look at various external factors, you can examine various areas of the economy, political stability, industrial regulations, demographic, social, competitions, and technology that may have a direct impact on your business.

4 Essential SEO Strategy Elements for Service-Based Businesses

Unique Elements Required for a Service-based Business to Rank Properly in the Search Engines.

While big multinational companies employ SEO strategies to gain clients and customers from all over the world, a small business who deals only with customers in its geographic region only wants local leads.

This article looks at what you must have in your SEO strategy if you’re one of those smaller businesses and you’re trying to gain visibility with clients local to you.

1. Your website

Look at your website and see if you can tell where your business is located and who it services.

Your target area should be prevalently noted in the Home page copy, your contact page, as well as in the footer. You can even incorporate it into your business name or URL.

The idea is of course to make sure that when someone gets to your website looking for what you provide, they are also affirmed you service their area.

Put these terms in your META data too. It makes a difference in reaching local customers doing specific searches for your city or business service area. Additionally, when you create individual pages for each service you provide, work the locations serviced into the headlines and copy.

2. Google My Business

If you haven’t already done so you should create a Gmail account for yourself, so you can easily log into all of Google’s apps and products.

Google My Business is one such tool available for free that gets your business pinned on Google Maps and if Google sees the right signals you’ll show up high in the local rank results too. The local rank results are those results you’ll see when Google has understood your search query to be location specific.

Try typing ‘plumbers near me’ into Google and you’ll likely see a few ads and some localized listings before you see the organic search results. This could be 1 – 3 ads or 3 or 4 local listings depending on how competitive the market is.

Those local listings are valuable to your business and by creating and verifying your business with Google you’ll have at least initiated the steps it takes to get listed in those local listings.

Once you have the account, fill in everything you can. Provide photos and use your service and locality keywords in the description and anywhere else you see a sincere opportunity.

3. Local Citations

Local citations are when your business is listed in local directories. You’ll likely only ever need to do this once and it’s very easy.

Just look up your location with the word ‘directories’ after. There are some obvious ones like Yelp but you may find some niche directories for your locality as well as your service too.

Don’t ever pay for these as those paid directories will have already been flagged by Google when it reviews their site. Paying for links or citations will always harm your ranking efforts.

4. Reviews

When it comes to local customers, reviews are golden. They’re testimonials that other potential clients can trust. Requesting these from previous customers is totally fine; however, falsifying them is not.

Don’t have them log into their Gmail account from your computer to leave a review or Google will see that your reviews all come from the same IP address and the reviews then won’t help your rank.

There are plenty of other things you can do as well but those 4 points are staples in any local SEO strategy and if you’re a service-based business you’ll need them in order to get the right traffic.

Of course, if you’re looking to really dominate the rank results and ensure you’ve got a solid strategy you’re going to want to hire someone providing professional search engine optimization. They can take things further as well as actively maintain the efforts needed to let Google know you provide what you do, where you do it, while you spend your time actually providing your service!

Digital Marketing Strategy

With new Search Engine Guidelines and Rules, 2013 poses a great opportunity for businesses to strengthen their online presence dramatically. Since July 2013, the old SEO rules do not apply in the same way. Now is your best time to commit to a digital marketing plan that will work for your business. With Google allowing its Hummingbird to spread its wings, companies using good marketing tactics will reap the rewards in time. Below is a list of key factors for all companies to integrate into their online list of things to do. You should also keep a list of sites, emails and passwords used for everything you do. Trust me, when you get to a certain level, you will be glad to have the list. You should also keep track of results for each aspect of marketing. Something simple to be able to check for improvements on a monthly basis, and check on your return on time invested.

1. Onsite Optimisation & Keyword Research

Make sure your website is well designed. A nice mix of headers, text and images are required to comply with SEO thinking. Aim for about 300 words in the copy of the text, make sure headings are tagged as H1, and all images are named correctly. This will all help the search engines associate your site with what people are searching for. With access to the code of your site, create a site map, create accounts for both Google and Bing webmaster tools and submit your site to both directories with the sitemap.

Then focus on how your site appears in search engines. Use a Digital SWOT analysis of your business, and focus on relevant Keyword Generation, Meta Tag creation, Title Tag Creation and Home Page Re-invention to maximise your visibility for your potential customers.

This first step will improve your results instantly. You will see a great return on the investment within a couple of short months.

2. Offsite Optimisation, Links & Backlinks

Offsite works are an equally important part of a strong digital marketing campaign. The focus of offsite optimisation is to have the internet point and look at you. Aim to connect your website to high ranking existing websites. Google Rank of 5 or above and High Alexa traffic ranks are what to look for. Avoid sites that have more ads on the pages than content.

Social Media Basics: Include in your plan to create business profile pages on the 5 most visited social sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. Each business page should have links to your website, and links from your website to these pages in return. Each page should be set up with content about your business, text and images, contact details and opening hours. You should also invest time in relevant pages/links/circles etc to get you going with followers and supporters.

Social Media Extras: In addition to the top 5 sites, you can also choose extra social media sites to be a part of, which will really set you apart from the competition. The best of the rest: includes Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Foursquare, Squidoo and Instagram.

Depending on the level of involvement with social media, you may need professional assistance keeping on top of them all. Ideally, each social media avenue needs 45 minutes to 1 hour per week, to update with fresh content, and to network out across the platforms, getting new followers, likes and links.

Backlink Strategy: It is important these days to focus on quality, rather than quantity when it comes to backlinks. Depending on your business, different links will work for some and not for others. An important start is to get listed will local directories and also focus on your competitors links. Search for ‘free online directories’ in Google, and a list of website submission directories should appear to you. Take some time to fill them in and submit. Bear in mind, some take longer than others to be processed, so keep a list of what has been accepted and what is still being processed. Some directories offer paid features. These can be good features, but make sure to do some homework and use the best value option for an appropriate return on investment. I have come across cases where 1 directory in particular gives free website business links, and offers minimal paid services to promote your social media, and a full package including a homepage with SEO features on their sites for less money in a year than it costs to rent a domain and hosting package combined. It also helps you by association to use their existing ranking to your benefit for your keywords. You can go even further and also seek out like minded businesses, suppliers, agents, users etc that your business deals with on a daily basis, and start a dialogue to each promote each other’s websites through a backlink. In this case, there is strength in numbers, and a credible link will serve you both well.

3. Video:

The next best way to promote your business is to create a video to highlight your products and offerings. The availability and popularity of sites like YouTube and Vimeo make it a must have to be involved in. Get a 2 -3 minute video created on your behalf, load it to YouTube and embed it into your site is the best place to start. While publishing videos may not directly earn money, clever businesses use video marketing as a tactic to improve consumer engagement, click-through, and traffic. They also help to bring in search traffic since the major search engines started ranking videos in their results pages. Including video in emails increases open rates by 5.6% and click-through-rates by 96.38% when compared to standard email marketing. Videos have a 50 times better chance of ranking within the first page Google for their respective keywords. They also increase traffic for businesses when they are shared. There is always opportunity to go viral.

4. Mobile Sites And Apps:

Typically, most websites are made between 900 & 1000 pixels wide. No surprise, but they are designed to be viewed on computer screens. Smartphone’s usually want to view sites around the 350 pixels area. If you don’t have a responsive design to accommodate the screen size the site is being viewed on, it will look awful, and the viewer will move on. Test your site by clicking here. An App or a Mobile site are a fantastic way of getting your existing website to this generation of how the internet is seen – the mobile phone. Apps are very cool, but can be expensive to produce. The app marketplace is growing, and creating involves a full re contenting of your existing website. Apps vary in size, cost and function. A mobile version of your site and mobile technology such as SMS and QR Codes can reach the same market. Using directory sites, your mobile site will be found easy and be more usable for the end user, your client. Using the same code as your website, a single mobile website can reach users across many different types of mobile devices, whereas native apps require a separate version to be developed for each type of device. Mobile website URLs are easily integrated within other mobile technologies.

5. Fresh Quality Content and Blogging:

Write, write and write. Increasingly, search engines place a lot of faith in any new movement they can track. Creating and adding fresh content to your existing site qualifies as this. When the bots and spiders visit your site, if there is new content to report, the search engines will take this as a positive. If you run a site as a blog, of course with new posts you are adding fresh content. It is assumed that the content and quality of the blogs is in your own hands. Remember to write both original and quality material. Do not copy and paste someone else’s work just for the sake of having something new to publish. That undermines the legitimate process. If you like what someone else has done, like it and give them a public share and credibility. If you cannot write enough fresh material, you can seek out guest authors, who will gladly write for you in exchange for credit. If you run a business site, and have no interest in inserting a blog for content, a few points to look out for on your site are simple things to correct. Make sure you have a copyright someone where on the home page. Make sure the dates and years are correct. New customers are more likely to use business websites when it is clear that the sites are being maintained and have the current years listed in their copyright. Get into the habit of checking your own website frequently, searching for any aspects of the content that could be updated. At the very least, integrate a Facebook or twitter sharable links and an email link if possible. This will help you get your content shared across the web without you having to do it. Other visitors will do it for you if they like what they see.

Article Linkbaiting Strategy – Deceptive Social Media Marketing In Action?

It is a fact that some people tend to misuse good opportunities in any field of human endeavor. On the subconscious level, the name “linkbaiting” may sound sneaky to some people or connote the use of “deceptive” tactics to quicky get web traffic to a marketing blog site, etc.. But then, it’s all a play on words or semantics because if you look at this definition in its purest form (the big picture), the objective is to provide long-term quality content to a niche audience.

I’ve brought up this issue because some Web users have this perceived image of “someone with a fishing rod and a fish bait at the end of a hook” trying to force-feed (or catch) and arm-twist

another person into accepting rehashed information or something for the purpose of getting backlinks. I’ve seen sentiments similar to these expressed on the Web and that’s why some so-called linkbait pieces never see the light of day or the originators of the linkbaits get banned (for real or perceived infractions) from forums or Web 2.0/Digg-style social media story submission sites!

Here in this article are just some of the red hot strategies or laser-guided tips you can easily use to enhance – and ensure that your linkbait article piece does not insult the sensibilities

of your discerning readers and potential readers, but takes you to the next business level. So, let’s get started, Right Here – Right Now! 🙂

Article Linkbaiting Strategy #1: “Strike Force Content” – Longer-Term Outlook!

The primary theme of your article(s) should not be dependent on time or become stale in 1, 2 or 3 months – but should serve as main reference guides for many years down the road for the

existing and future readers of your Web sites, blogs or other related blogs that have linked to your article(s). The longer-term outlook here has to project a powerful effect!

My use of the term “Strike Force” simply refers to the “delivery system” for breaking down industry jargons or techie language in order to simplify topical issues for beginner and intermediate

online niche marketers – and also give experienced online entrepreneurs new perspectives on industry-related issues.

So, the linkbait piece will subsequently spur appreciative readers from a targeted niche audience to visit your Web sites and/or blogs to build up a relationship – leading to sales of

front-end and back-end products and services. This also has the ability of ensuring a buzz situation or rapid spread of your unique articles or content in the blogosphere, on the Internet and in offline publications. Like Michel Fortin will say “Narrow your focus to broaden your sales.”

Article Linkbaiting Strategy #2: Article Titles Or Headlines

The title or main headline is the first thing your reading audience will come across, and you have to deliver your messages in simple but effective ways. You have to ensure that your copywriting skills are well-honed with reference to the AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action) formula. Use trigger words or positive action words such as “New,” “Free,” “authentic,” “discount,” “unleashed” – and much more, to gain attention!

Your title has to progressively match the first few sentences of the introductory section of your article, otherwise the reader could get confused as a result of the short attention span that is encountered especially among Web surfers or the online reading audience if there’s a deviation from the real topic to off topic issues.

You’ve got to present unique observations – which could even be controversial in nature, give some current or freshly released research data that is not yet in the public domain – and which sheds more light on industry-related issues, and, much more creative ways exist that you can use to create unlimited unique content.

You can read more of my thoughts on the issues raised in Linkbaiting Strategy #2 in a series of articles on Article Marketing – entitled:

Article Marketing Surge Tactics – Top 6 Tips For Writing Persuasive Articles! Parts 1 and 2

Article Linkbaiting Strategy #3: Article Subtitles For Readibility

Subtitles help to focus the attention of your readers. Just like the reference I made in Article Linkbaiting Strategy #2, titles are crucial for drawing your audience into the introductory section of your article. I’ve seen very good articles posted on some blogs, forums, article directories and Web 2.0 or social news sites like Digg with the intention of providing resources for the reading audience. These had no subtitles – just paragraphs. Imagine the endless opportunities you can derive by just simply crafting 5, 6 or more subtitles, and then choosing the best one that will strike a cord with you and your potential readers.

The inference here is that your “strike force content articles” or linkbait piece(s) have to be sincere, while meeting the immediate, near/long-term needs and solutions of your niche market audience. The linkbait content should be the main drivers of a consistent Web site or blog traffic – consisting of unique visitors who will then generate a buzz by linking to your articles from their blogs or Web

sites – and you’ll get more page views per unique visitor on your online business sites as well.

Article Linkbaiting Strategy #4: Images And Online Video Presentations

It is a fact that most people are visual creatures – especially men. But many of us also respond to what we hear and feel! It is based on this well-known fact (based on researches going back to many decades ago), that the use of pictures, images and interactive online multimedia presentations can further enhance the quality of your linkbait article – but the images must tell a story as well. Having a high-resolution digital camera will come in handy here.

You can also get also images from Web sites like Flickr and have your free interactive Web or blog video presentation which is meant to engage all the human senses – to complement your unique linkbait content or articles. These have the added benefit of boosting your SEO strategies along with the profitable, high traffic niche keywords and keyword phrases in your articles.

Just A QUICK Note: Knowing full well that some images you’ll be using will not belong to you, YOU have to make sure that attributions are made or indicate the source(s) of the free photo images you’ll be using on your blogs for instance, since this is the standard global practice – just like published online and offline niche articles/books that have copyrights. I believe you may have also heard or read about well-crafted “Cease and Desist” emails or letters. 🙂

Article Linkbaiting Strategy #5: Call Into Action – Right Now!

It’s a fact that if you don’t tell or let people know what to do NEXT after taking the initiative to digest the unique contents of your articles, then all you’ve done will lead to a pathetic result. It’s just like a man who winks at a stunningly beautiful lady he likes (or loves), engages in a two-way conversation withher (with all the visible body language communication) – then fails to make a follow-up or signify his real intentions to her. This would leave her hanging in the air with regards to his true intentions, until an “alpha male” who easily does the right thing comes along to pull the rug from under his feet! 🙂 What a wasted opportunity this would be for the “winking” man.

That’s the way it is in online business and real-world business situations when readers of your linkbait content do not get a specific call into action in your articles, report summaries or “authors bio sections.” Another savvy online entrepreneur will simply appear on the scene like the “alpha male” in the short story above – and then take action by urging readers to use a plan or idea presented and make it work for themselves! This is a win-win situation ACTION plan!

Closing Thoughts

Whether you call it linkbaiting, pillar article, flagship content or “strike force content delivery system,” all online content publishers and article writers MUST keep in mind the guiding principles – that is the provision of good resources on your blogs and Web sites to ultimately build your credibility and brand in your target marketplace – as opposed to the hit-and-run writer of just one or two crappy articles who’s looking for quick inbound links to a site. This eventually insults the intelligence of the reading audience.

If you are an affiliate and Internet marketer, online publisher of eZines or newsletters, small business blogger, weight loss expert, health and fitness professional, provide information technology training and/or small Internet business consulting services – or belong to fields of human endeavour that require YOU to be in the frontline position of your niche market, then these 5 article linkbaiting strategies will come in handy in providing your readers with great resources – that are also entertaining – while building your reputation, boosting Search Engine position, higher PageRanks, strong backlinks from authoritative sites, creating spontaneous buzz in the online communities, and MUCH MORE. Literally your sales and profits will explode, at a lower cost – in record time.

So, last but not least, YOU have to get set for a renewed surge of linkbaiting energy, Right Here – Right NOW! “Oh… Where’s my hook? Hmm… I think I have to “hook up” with another one.” 🙂

To Your Article Linkbaiting And Niche Online Business Success!

Dekunle