Do You Know Where Your Buyers Hang Out Online?

The Internet is a pretty big place, going from a single website in 1991 to more than 1 billion in 2014. At the same time, the number of users online has jumped more than tenfold from 1999 to 2013. If you’re a business owner, the challenge of finding your buyers online in order to deliver the most targeted advertisements directly to them has never been harder!

If you’re currently struggling to match your online activities to your buyers’ Internet habits, give the following three strategies a try:

1. Social-networking sites

According to the Content Marketing Institute, social media and blogs account for 23 percent of all time spent online. So there’s a good chance that, no matter what types of buyers you’re targeting, you can find them on some type of social-networking site.

Of course, the recent flight of teenagers from Facebook demonstrates that not all demographics participate equally on each of these popular sites. If you want to know where your specific buyers are, you need to familiarize yourself with the group-usage statistics associated with each platform.

One of the best sources of this type of information is the Pew Research Internet Project’s “Social Media Update 2013” (the most recent year this information has been made available).

If your target buyer persona is female, you might note that Facebook and Pinterest show promise, as more women than men are active on each site. However, if your buyers tend to be older, getting active on Facebook might be a better choice, as 45 percent of online adults ages 65 and older maintain profiles on the site, while only 9 percent of this group is active on Pinterest.

The Pew study includes demographic data on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn that are worth a look. However, while you should use these statistics as a rough guide, they shouldn’t be the “be all, end all” of your buyer identification efforts. Instead, use these numbers as a jumping-off point to determine where you should begin engaging, but be sure to measure your performance on each site to see when and if you need to change course.

2. Authority blogs

Every industry has authority bloggers, and if you can find the ones that are popular in your niche, you have a number of opportunities to connect with your target buyers -- from submitting guest posts for publication, running display ads, to responding to reader questions in the comments.

You might already know these sites, and if you do, use the techniques listed above to make your presence known. If you don’t, here are a few strategies for finding them:

• Go to alltop.com and search for your industry. Any of the blogs listed might be authority blogs, though you’ll want to qualify them further by checking for recent, consistent publication and active social profiles.
• Go to Topsy and enter your target keywords. Filter your results so that you’re viewing a week’s worth of popular links -- there’s a good chance these have come from authority blogs.
• Find one authority blogger and open his or her Twitter profile. Look for any other sites whose content is being retweeted -- these are likely authority sites as well.

3. Message boards

Message boards might sound like a dated Internet convention on par with webrings and chat rooms. But the modern message board -- think Reddit -- can actually be a hotbed of target-buyer activity.

Here’s how to find these resources:

• Google “[your niche] message board.” It’s a straightforward approach, but it works.
• Find the subreddit that caters to your industry. Not only can this be a good place to share your content, it can reveal a number of other authority blogs or message boards you should target within the other links that are shared.
• Look for public Facebook Groups. The extent to which Facebook has been adopted across groups makes it a good fit for just about every target buyer. Conduct a few searches on Facebook to find the public Groups where your buyers are hanging out and then get active there!

Bear in mind that message boards can be particularly sensitive to activity that’s deemed too self-promotional. Become an active member of the community before you start sharing, and keep your eyes open.

The constant expansion of the Internet means that new hot sites will always be popping up, while former favorites will die out. Use the strategies above to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry's online activity and use this knowledge to your advantage to get your message in front of your target buyers.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239565

Growing Your Million-Dollar Network

As a business coach and consultant, I’m often asked, “How were you able to get major corporations, celebrities, presidential candidates, millionaires, and even billionaires to partner with you and champion your business, products, and services when you were first getting started?” The next question is usually, “Is it possible for me, as an average person, to also build a multi-million-dollar business network?” You bet it is!

Nearly anyone can build a multi-million-dollar business network if you understand two key insights:

• Insight #1. Everyone is accessible if you raise your value to that person or company and approach them with enough “polite persistence.”

• Insight #2. Always focus on what is in it for the person or company that you want to help you. 

Four powerful tips for building your network

1. Target leaders and early adopters to achieve maximum results quickly

People generally fall into certain categories: leaders, early adopters, followers, and then everyone else. If you need assistance, start by targeting the leaders in your niche. Next, move on to the early adopters, and lastly, the followers.

• Visionary leaders and companies who are known for innovation and being on the cutting edge should be your first target. They are more likely to take risks on new ventures and individuals. As key influencers and opinion molders, their endorsements will carry significant weight, which will help your project or venture quickly gain momentum with the media other major players and the general public.

• Early adopters (those individuals who are always the first to try new things) should be your second target. Early adopters typically have large networks. If you can solve their problems, they can give your idea, project, or company a strong push early on. 

• Followers should be targeted last as they need social proof before making decisions. Since they require validation from others before taking action, it will take longer to receive a “yes” from them if you do not already have a significant track record and major endorsements.

2. Identify and raise your value to get more people to help you

Most people make the mistake of seeking help with an “I need” or “I want” mentality. Instead, you should focus on the value and benefit that you can create for the people that you want to help you. Take inventory of the skills, assets, and contacts that you bring to the table which can help them. You should not ask or expect “something for nothing.” You will have much greater success when seeking partners if you appeal to their self-interest rather than their sense of obligation or good will. Even if you don’t have upfront cash to compensate people, you can always:

• create an income opportunity for them

• refer business to them

• generate publicity for them

• connect them with influential people in your network

• help support their favorite cause or charity

3. Offer turnkey solutions to avoid resistance

You can significantly increase your income, credibility, and odds for long-term success by offering turnkey solutions. By presenting well thought out, ready-made, and proven solutions that require little to no work on behalf of your mentors, colleagues, joint-venture partners, and customers, you can dramatically increase your buy-in, support, sales, customer retention, and referrals. Profit lies in reducing the amount of work that others must do to receive the benefit that your idea has to offer.

4. Follow up with polite persistence to get a “yes!”

Successful individuals and decision makers in major organizations are very busy people. They have many issues and opportunities competing for their time. So, when approaching these busy individuals, you will often hear “no” initially. Don’t be discouraged. Many people will need to see your marketing message up to nine times before they take action, which is why education-based marketing campaigns are so important and extremely effective.

Ultimately, 80 percent of your success will be the result of your soft skills-;your ability to network and form mentoring relationships, strategic partnerships, joint ventures, and political alliances. Those with limited networks are always the last to know and the last to be helped. Without question, your network is a direct reflection of your net worth. Leverage these four great tips now to expand your relationships and your business and income opportunities.

http://www.inc.com/visa/growing-your-million-dollar-network.html

Ten pros and cons of online advertising

Pros & Cons of Digital Advertising

The digital world has made online advertising an absolute must for many companies. While it is the primary way to get your name out there and attract the billions of dollars that flows through e-commerce and retail stores as a result of online advertising, it’s not without its downfalls. When you’re setting up an online advertising campaign, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of the situation before you invest a significant amount of time, money, and effort into the process.

Pros

1. You have the ability to reach your potential customers at the places they visit online. Online advertising through search engines, social media sites, and popular websites gives you adspace on some of the most trafficked places on the Internet.
2. Ad targeting. While you can simply get impressions on high traffic sites to get as many eyes on your advertising as possible, your marketing results tend to be much better if you do some targeting before you start running the ads. Many sites have extensive data on the type of reader who visits and uses their sites on a day to day basis. Some have ad platforms that allow you to only display your ads to certain user segments, such as the way Facebook handles their advertising. Since a significant amount of demographic and location information is shared by Facebook users, this allows the social networking site to give you a great deal of opportunity for laser focused ads.
3. A wide range of costs. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a massive business, there’s a site that has an advertising cost that meets your needs. Smaller niche sites also have the advantage of attracting your target demographic, so you’re getting high quality traffic without having to pay an exceptionally high price.
4. Responsive testing. In the print and television advertising world, it takes time to change marketing collateral to adjust to errors in the advertising, change marketing tactics, or update the information. Online advertising allows you to quickly change your marketing materials, sometimes even without the direct intervention of the publisher. For example, the Google Adwords backend allows you to make on the fly adjustments of existing advertising so you can see the phrasing or style that works best for you, and what’s falling flat for your company.
5. Easy split testing. Many online advertising platforms allow you to load several versions of a particular ad, as well as how often you want to run a particular ad type, so that you can test several ads at the same time. This makes split testing and other types of online advertising testing easy to accomplish.

Cons

1. Many website visitors are so inundated with online advertising that they experience ad blindness. Their eyes simply skip over the locations that banner advertising and other types of advertising are located, and may have a negative view of sponsored content.
2. Ad blocking. All current versions of popular Internet browsers such as Google Chrome have access to ad blocking extensions. Instead of experiencing banner blindness and not seeing your ads, they completely block the ads from getting to their browser. By default, these extensions block a majority of ad servers and are updated to adjust to new ones on the market as well.
3. Competition. You have a great deal of opportunity on the Internet, but you also have a great deal of competition. You can’t just set up an e-commerce site and expect the money to flow in. If you don’t have any way to set yourself apart from your market, you’re going to be drowning in a saturated market. Your online advertising is likely to be displayed alongside competitors, so it’s important that you have a way to stand out.
4. Distraction. When you’re advertising through a search engine or on a site that has a lot of content curation, your potential customers are getting distracted by dozens of things on the screen at once. The amount of traffic leaks can easily lead your online advertisements to not be as effective as they are.
5. Analytics learning curve. To completely take advantage of online advertising methods, you need to spend a lot of time tracking the data and adjusting your advertising by watching stats tracking and other analytics programs. If you haven’t used this before, there is a learning curve before you understand how all of the stats interact.

http://www.toptensocialmedia.com/social-media-social-buzz/ten-pros-and-cons-of-online-advertising/