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How Marketing Impacts the Efficiency of Your Business

Efficiency in business refers to how long it takes to finish a given task. People often say that marketing is the most valuable resource in the industry. That is the ability of a business to identify its customers and fulfill their needs. Time is the most valuable and limited resource, and a proper content marketing strategy depends on the way every business day is spent in meeting business goals. As a businessman, I would be particularly interested in looking at how to use Gemba in my warehouse, to keep myself updated on the marketing process. Business efficiency and marketing go hand in hand, and some things can be done in marketing to improve efficiency. Marketing and advertising are inseparable but should be handled carefully as a poor advertisement can lead to low business efficiency.

Digital marketing and advertising

The rapid growth of digital media has led to new ways and opportunities for marketing and advertising, fueled by technology and development of devices. Digital technologies are becoming important, and when used to complement traditional marketing methods, they offer more business efficiency. With emails, social media, internet and smartphones, this is an area worth looking into.

Use of Social media in marketing and advertising

New digital channels and tools are continually emerging and shifting. There have been dramatic changes in how customers learn about and buy products and services. Online marketers need to understand the impact of social media marketing as more and more customers continue using such platforms to look for commodities and services.

For instance, 40% of American online shoppers use smartphones for in-store shopping, while 71% of customers rely on social media feedback and recommendations regarding a particular brand. Consumer reviews about a product or service are one of the most trusted means by shoppers than other marketing promotional efforts.

When using social media, target your customers carefully, being sensitive to gender, interests, geography, and age. Social media advertising and marketing should be time and date conscious, looking out at the opportune time. Have a way to grow the social signal where social media community can share, like, recommend, and talk about your business.

Marketing using video

Video use is increasingly becoming popular in marketing as it is a pleasant and cost-effective way to reach out to customers. A behind the scenes clip that is shareable sends a strong message on a company’s ethos and mission. Powerful messages can be communicated through video quickly and efficiently, including fun and animated videos, in creating brands trust and awareness.

Using email marketing list

As one of the most important online marketing strategy, this list of leads and customers allows you to contact them directly regarding your service or products. As the business aims at growing the list, it is essential to know why people unsubscribe from email lists. Maintaining these customers includes giving them required answers, adding value with specials, time-sensitive deals, and exclusive content. Subscribers are affected by delivery times, subject lines, and headlines, and care should be taken on email list marketing communications. This can be improved by an automated platform that organizes and monitors business campaigns, conversion, leads and open rates. Such a platform can enhance efficiency if it can automatically email customers and leads. Customized emails to individual leads that are well timed to make a purchase can be a big plus.

Online content editorial calendar

An editorial calendar should have specific details on the proposed content like headline, keywords, target audience and topic. It should have content for email campaigns, blogs, and social media. To come up with original material that can be used to increase business efficiency, research, content promotion, optimizing for SEO, writing and tracking content effectiveness is essential. Optimizing the editorial calendar will help marketing automation in restructuring each process where one can tell when something is happening, and get notified when a product is due. The optimizing gives you an overview of areas that are doing well and those that need improvement.

 

5 Tips for Honing the Right Pitch for Business Insurance

It’s hard to sell. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a novice just starting out in the world of insurance, we can agree on that point. Insurance can be expensive, and has virtually not material characteristics to it. What you are selling is promises, ideas, and trust. And you have to be good at it to sell it, particularly to businesses, which pay significantly more for any kind of insurance than individuals do. Here are five tips to help you sharpen your pitch.

 

Invest in Yourself

You need to look and sound confident about what you’re selling. Not only that, you should match what you’re selling. That may sound odd, but what this means is that there’s a difference between a $500 per year insurance policy and a $5000 per year policy, and the businesses interested in either will expect a certain appearance. You might be able to get away with nice jeans and a collared shirt with the company interested in the $500 insurance policy. But the company looking at the $5000 insurance policy isn’t going to take you seriously if you show up in that same outfit. Look the part of what you’re selling. Confidence comes from the outside in.

 

Keep the Language Simple

Your policy pitch should be as simple as possible. Don’t try to impress your clients with jargon; they want and need to understand the benefits of the policy as it will apply to them and their employees—in their language. A lot of insurance agents think that jarhon equals knowledge in the eyes of the buyer, but that’s not the case. If the buyer doesn’t understand what you’re selling, why they need it, and how they can use it, they’ll walk away.

 

Add Life to It

Insurance isn’t like land or a car; make your potential clients picture what they’re buying in their minds. Create scenarios and show your potential clients through their imaginations how different insurance policies will affect them in these scenarios. You know that not every policy is created equal. Help your clients grasp that idea too, as that will will help them choose the right policy. They’ll also understand the satisfaction they’ll get from having a policy to protect them, their employees, and their business.

 

Speak Less, Listen More

To be blunt, you have two ears and one mouth. You need to step back every once in awhile and listen to the concerns of your potential clients. Stop trying to pitch to them and just listen to what they need. This will give you an opportunity to answer their questions and share your knowledge in the field. Only by knowing their worries can you tailor your pitch so the policy is a solution to their concerns.

 

Identify Buying Signals

As you get more experienced selling insurance policies, you start to pick up nonverbal cues that indicate the buyer’s’ interest. Learn to identify that intuitive language. If you don’t know that certain body language means the buyer is put-off by your words, you could lose a sale. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot just because you don’t know body language.

 

Conclusion

Sharpening your sales pitch (or even creating one, if you’re just starting out) doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Use these five tips to up your game and sell more. Be flexible and coachable, and success will be right around the corner.

 

References
http://www.insurancesplash.com/blog/insurance-sales-tips-for-new-insurance-agents/
http://weisblattlaw.com/commercial-lease/
https://www.agencynation.com/highly-effective-insurance-agents/

How to Protect Your Intellectual Property

Are you starting a business? Creating an invention? Spearheading a marketing campaign? If so, you need to protect your intellectual property. Intellectual property is defined as any creative idea, expression or knowledge that may have commercial value. You can safeguard your intellectual property using patent laws, copyrights, and trademarks.

Copyrights

A copyright protects any of your original work or any content authorship whether unpublished or published. For example, using copyright laws can be exponentially helpful if you are an internet business marketer. Rich content is a powerful internet marketing tool, but plagiarism is a growing problem in the digital era. You can protect your content, which is intellectual property, using copyright laws.

Patents

Patents protect inventions and variations on existing inventions. If you receive a patent for intellectual property, it protects you from anyone trying to make and sell an identical or even similar product. There are three types of patents:

  1. Utility Patents. These patents protect any invention that is mechanical, technical, or chemical in nature. These are particularly difficult to get approved.
  2. Plant Patents. If you have created or discovered and asexually reproduced a new variety of plant, this patent protects that invention. For example, many of the fruits and vegetables you see at the grocery store have plant patents.
  3. Design Patents. This patent protects the appearance of an invention. This does not apply to the invention’s function, however.

Trademarks

A trademark protects the name(s) of your intellectual property. The goal of trademarks is to help consumers distinguish between competitors. One you use a certain mark or identifying characteristic for your intellectual property, it is automatically assumed as your trademark. You can use the TM symbol identifying your intellectual property as a trademark without filing any paperwork with federal, state or local governments.

Protecting Intellectual Property in Other Countries

Trademarks or patents do not protect your intellectual property in other countries. To enforce your intellectual property rights in another country, you must determine if you have the rights in that country to the property. Therefore, you must register your property with the country where you are seeking protection. However, there are international treaties that do not require you to register your copyrights in every country. Keep in mind that if you registered your copyright in the U.S. there is no treaty with some countries.

If you need a detailed explanation of how to protect your intellectual property, the U.S. Department of Commerce of Intellectual Property Rights can assist you in building a strategy to protect your property. The agency can also help you develop a strategy to protect your property in other countries.

7 SEO Strategies for Dummies

If you’re scared of the word “SEO” and you don’t fully grasp its meaning, this article will shed some light on the easiest steps you can take to conquer it. Search Engine Optimization might seem like a daunting task, but once you grasp the essentials, you will be on your way to rank higher in Google than ever.

 

Google uses an algorithm to rank your site by sending “spiders” to “crawl” and verify more than one hundred factors. This is done in order to see if your site is valuable and worth displaying on the first page of search results. The long list of factors or indicators includes user traffic, backlinks, fresh content, domain age and much more.

 

Search Engine Optimization makes sure the “crawlers” are content with what they find on your site. While this vast field is ever-changing, there are some constant strategies that should be known by anyone who attempts to understand and master Search Engine Optimization. Without further ado, here are the 7 most important SEO strategies for dummies.

 

1. Domain & Hosting Are Essential

 

The first thing to keep in mind is that it’s crucial to have your own domain and hosting. Unfortunately, free blog set-ups like those offered by WordPress.com* or Blogspot won’t help you rank higher in SERPs. On the contrary, it might weigh you down, pushing your content on the third, fourth page of Google results. Which is not what you’re after!

*Note the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We develop most of our sites using the self-hosted WordPress.org platform.

 

There are a few hypotheses that try to answer the question of why is having your own domain and hosting essential. The most plausible explanation is that if you were very serious about your site, you would invest in a domain and host it yourself. Google sees this as a trustworthy factor. As a result, they only want to send their users to sites that are considered reliable and serious.

 

The best thing a new website owner can do is to acquire a domain and setup hosting from the very beginning. This way, you make sure you start on the right footing and you don’t have to worry about migrating all your data (content, photos, audio files) later down the road when you overgrow WordPress.com or Blogspot free hosting plans.

 

2. Relevant Links Must Be Natural

 

When another website owner or blogger likes your content and decides to link back to it, they create a backlink. Backlinks are like an endorsement: they make you look trustworthy in Google’s eyes and ultimately help your content rank higher.

 

While you can always buy backlinks, this is frowned upon by Google and other search engines. Be careful about the strategy you employ and the firm you hire. Not all backlinks are equal and investing in some from a dodgy domain won’t help you from an SEO point of view. On the contrary: you can get penalized and even banned. Getting a backlink from an old domain with great authority (such as .gov or .edu) can be priceless! These weigh heavily in Google’s eyes and will instantly elevate your ranking. A backlink from a domain with less authority is not worth as much, but it’s still a positive signal for Google.

 

While reputable, white-hat link building strategies exist, the best way to achieve high-quality backlinks is by producing helpful, relevant content and then writing guest posts for the best blogs and websites in your niche.

 

3. Problems Can Be Solved with Original Content

 

An important aspect to keep in mind is that Google’s biggest objective is to serve users with updated, relevant and useful results. As a consequence, the best strategy you can adopt for SEO is to create a lot of relevant and useful content to solve users’ problems. Solving problems means you will get a lot of shares on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This sends good signals to Google, who sees your content as helpful and you get to rank higher in the search results.

 

When you’re creating original content you have to take into account more than just text. You should also think about useful pictures to accompany and backup your pages and blog posts. Videos are also extremely helpful since they have the ability to bring in traffic from YouTube and increase your mobile conversions. Use a mix of these to create richer, helpful content, and Google will pick up on it.

 

4. An Optimized Theme Is Key

 

You can split Search Engine Optimization into two big sections: off-site optimization includes backlinks and social media; on-site optimization includes things like your theme.

 

An updated, optimized theme will show Google that your website is trustworthy. Additionally, it makes the content you share on the internet easier to find. Since Google gives an advantage to websites that are built for smartphone users, make sure your site is mobile responsive.

 

You want to pick a cleanly coded theme and pay attention to how fast your site loads. The loading time is another indicator Google takes into account when it ranks your website. Your theme should load quickly so as not to drive users away. Using cache plugins will help you speed things up.

 

Last but not least, check there are no broken links on your site. Your navigation should work as smooth as possible in order to ensure the best user experience.

 

Here at Awesurance, we generally build out completely custom themes for our clients based on the specific needs of their website. This gives our clients complete control over the look and feel of their website. Perhaps most importantly (in the eyes of Google), building completely custom or heavily customized themes allows us to minimize bloat and allow the end user to load pages faster.

 

What is bloat? Wordpress.org themes made for a general audience often try to include many features that many people would find useful. The problem is, these features are often loaded even if they aren’t needed or used by your website. This can slow down your website performance, increase load times for your users, and result in a lower ranking by Google and other search engines.

 

When it comes to both Wordpress Themes and Suits, we recommend a custom-tailored solution vs. a cheaper ‘off-the-shelf’ solution. We promise, you will thank us later!

5. Social Media Profiles Shouldn’t Be Ignored

 

This is a newer Search Optimization Strategy that shouldn’t be overlooked. Google is paying close attention to all of your social media profiles in order to determine your site’s and your articles’ relevance and authority. This includes profiles like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

 

The simple explanation is that if you acquire hundreds of tweets, there’s a pretty big chance your content is useful and it deserves to rank well. The simplest way to receive dozens of tweets is to establish a big and loyal following and focus on delivering killer content. This way, they will be happy to promote it for you.

 

6. SEOmoz Is the Best Study Resource and You Must Use It

 

Even if you are a beginner, don’t let fancy terminology discourage you from reading everything on the topic. The best place to check out is MOZ. Their content is rich in ideas and tips that will give you the much-needed insight you need to thrive in your niche.

 

Make sure to check in every week or so to stay up to date on the latest news and read about tactics and trends. Knowledge is power, and this applies to the Search Optimization Engine field as well. Since this is a dynamic, ever-changing domain, you have to stay on top of your game and ahead of the competition if you want to grow your business.

 

7. Leave Comments on other Websites & Blog Posts

 

You can create backlinks when you leave comments on other websites & blogs. Not only does this increase exposure and brings in more traffic, it can also be the foundation of new relationships. This type of networking can further be transformed into guest posts and even more backlinks. It’s best you always comment with your real name. This way, you establish an authority figure in the comment section and maintain a constant presence throughout the internet.

 

Additionally, you can also take a peek at what your competition is doing and check where they are getting backlinks from. You will discover some of them are from comments left on blogs that rank very high in SERPs and you can follow their example.

 

References

MOZ

Chris Walker

Ahrefs

Social Media Examiner

How to Use Instagram to Boost Search Rankings

The power of social media can’t be denied. Instagram is one of the most popular platforms, averaging about 700 million active users monthly. With the right engagement, you can use this social media giant to boost your search rankings.

 

How Will It Actually Help in Search Rankings?

As millions of people use Instagram, millions of photos are shared and liked daily. There’s an ocean of potential consumers to attract. Instagram does not allow for easy linking to your website landing pages, so focus on brand recognition and setting yourself apart from others. If you brand correctly on Instagram in a way that matches professional designs on your website, your social media following can still be a significant source of web leads despite the link challenge Instagram has created. Those leads, even if they are not generated through traditional linking, will still have a significant impact on your search rankings – especially if on-site engagement is effective. In this way, Instagram functions a bit like print magazine ads more than typical social SEO. What does powerful branding on Instagram look like in practice? Here are a few actionable ideas:

 

Make Your Pictures Count

You can’t just post anything to your account when you’re trying to stand out of the crowd. Selecting the right photographs means everything. For example, doTERRA’s Instagram makes masterful use of professional images to drive engagement and release product-related news. You want those visiting your page to recognize who you are and what you do. Again, message match is extremely important here. These photographs are not just pretty – they create an emotional tone that is consistent across doTERRA’s web presence.

Optimize images prior to sharing. Make sure they’re clear and well-lit. Also, when you post is as important as to what you post. Become aware of when your followers are most active, especially if they are from different countries and time zones.

 

Don’t Neglect (or Misuse) the Hashtag

A hashtag seems like such a basic tool, but it is one that too many often ignore or abuse. Through using the proper hashtags, your shared photos will show up to the right people. Get knowledgeable about the most popular hashtags. There is an auto-complete feature that shows you some of the most used ones.

At the same time, consider using less competitive tags and even come up with a customized one to personalize your brand. Trying to get your images to stand out against a hashtag that already has 10 million photos can be tough compared to using a tag that maybe has a couple thousand. Going with one that is popular enough yet not overwhelming is a good tactic as well.

Be cautious with how many hashtags you use though. Too little runs the risk of not capturing the right audience, while too much runs the risk of making your description too busy.
If you’re trying to generate your business or brand higher in the search rankings, working Instagram properly is one of the best routes to go on. Through proper engagement, you can capture a wide audience and build awareness in what you want to sell.

How to Improve Your Marketing Techniques on a Budget

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It must be nice to work in marketing for some of the world’s largest companies. The practically unlimited budgets they work under makes it possible for their most creative people to come up with some really great commercials, clever ads, and a unique online presence. However, this is not the way it works for most marketing professionals. Rather, most have to deal with tight budgets and have to stretch them as far as possible.

For those who have to work with some constraints on their talent, you can at least take heart in the fact that such constraints are easier to get over than they once were. The reality is, your company only has to get a little creative in order to make this work. It is not nearly as difficult as some might like you to believe.

Old, But New

One suggestion is to use some old material that already exists either in the market, or your own company, but spice it up a little. Maybe there is some fact about the industry floating around which can be repacked to make a point. You can add some color, graphics, and additional information in order to create a brand-new marketing piece that stands out to people.

Create a Contest

If you want some strong engagement from your fans, why not consider an online contest of some sort? This will promote engagement and bring more people in to view the site and products you have to offer. A contest is not that expensive depending on the prize that you are giving away, and the excitement of said contest can really get people excited about your brand. Offer a free trial or product to gain interest with new customers. You can easily do this through social media without much cost. Frontier, who offer business internet plans in cities around the U.S. says the versatility of marketing online puts many small businesses in a better position locally.

Business Cards

Business cards may seem old hat to some, but they can still stand out as a way to get new business if you do it right. You want to make a card that is not bland and drab like the others. Instead, add a funny slogan, some color, maybe even a picture to the card to make it stand out. People appreciate something that looks like it has some effort put into it. Business cards can still be purchased in bulk for cheap and yet make quite a statement.

Consider a few of these marketing options as something you might want to try. There are plenty of choices out there, but all of these are certainly within the budget of any small business trying to make their way in their industry.

 

Welcome to the New Website

Welcome to the brand new Awesurance.com site!

As you may know, Awesurance is a full service marketing, design, & consulting agency that specializes in helping independent insurance agencies grow their business and thrive.

We built this new site from the ground up to showcase our latest work, launch our new blog, and help with onboarding new clients.

Check back often for new posts about online marketing, the insurance industry, and anything else related to those subjects that we think might be helpful or interesting to those who want to grow their businesses.

We will also be posting examples of new client work that we are proud of under the Portfolio section.

Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or are interested in working with Awesurance and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Click Here to Get in Touch

Cheers!

~From All of Us on the Awesurance Team