Archive for the ‘Business Success’ Category

April 22nd, 2024

How to Start a Home Business


by Rahimah Sultan





Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.



A home-based business can offer a quicker startup path, lower startup costs, and more flexibility.

Nevertheless, to succeed you still have to stick to the same startup steps as every other business and there are added considerations due to working from home. Now, on with how to start a home business.


What should you consider before starting a home business?

1. Questions to raise before starting a home-based business

Focus and motivation

Can you stay focused and motivated?

When working from home, you’ll have many distractions—pets, TV shows, household chores, or wanting to take a nap.

Support system

Will you have a support system?

Is there a mentor, family, or someone else you can count on for support—you should have someone to count on when you get stuck. Preferably someone with remote business experience who can relate to your situation.

Goals

What are your goals? What is your vision for the long term? Why do you want to start a business and why from home? Depending on your answers, you may want to rethink starting a remote business.

Suitability of your home for business

You need to establish whether or not your home setup is suitable for running a business. If not, you may have to make changes to create a suitable working area.


Balance work and personal life

Will you be able to maintain a balance between your personal and work life?

If you’re a business owner, this is not guaranteed. This balance can be more difficult for a home-based business, as your office is only a step away.

These questions are geared specifically toward starting a business at home and not for first-time entrepreneurs.


2. Business idea that works remotely


Come up with a business idea that will work remotely. It should solve a problem, have a market demand, and fit your goals. Even if it meets these criteria, it may not work well as a home-based business. Additional things to consider include:


Digitalization: Can your business be operated completely online or with minimum physical interaction?

Independence: Can it be run by you without the need for a large team or physical infrastructure?

Scalability: Can you scale the business without substantial physical infrastructure? 

Supply chain: Does the business require minimal physical inventory or a supply chain you can manage remotely?

Remember to conduct thorough research to check for demand. An idea can look great on paper and meet the requirements of remote functionality, but without demand, it won’t be practical.


3. Business plan

Write a business plan to help you think through every aspect of your home-based business.

In the business plan, you describe the product or service.

Document your research.

Create a financial plan.

Outline marketing and sales efforts.

Provide an overview of your procedures, team, and business structure.

As you’re just starting, pay particular attention to the day-to-day operations, financials, and product/service description.

Operations include the day-to-day outlook and the space you’ll be using.

Financials include start-up costs and how you will scale to make a profit. Can you do this from home or will you need another space?

The product/service description will detail why it can be sold from the comfort of your home and whether there is a competitive advantage for doing so.

Although a detailed business plan is essential, you can start with a one-page plan that can easily be updated.


4. Legal requirements

There are legal requirements for any business and a home-based business is no exception. You have to:

Choose a business structure – https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/launch-your-business/choose-business-structure

Register a business name

Apply for a state and federal tax ID

Get the correct licenses and permits

You’ll need to check on:

A home business permit

Zoning laws

Homeowners Association (HOA) rules

Business insurance; although not a legal requirement, you may need to purchase additional coverage if your home insurance policy does not cover home-based businesses.


5. Costs and finances

Figure out your startup costs and finances. These costs can widely vary depending on the kind of business and your circumstances. For sufficient funds, a detailed budget and forecasting revenue and expenses are essential.

The minimum to account for is:

Home office setup

Utilities

Technology and equipment

Legal expenses

Marketing and advertising

Open a business bank account immediately to separate your personal and business finances to easily track performance and avoid potential legal issues.

6. Workspace

Choose a dedicated space to run your business, an area with minimal distractions, and a way to separate your work and home life. If you have limited space, set strict boundaries for how and when to use this space.

When you have a space in mind, make the necessary adjustments to turn it into a productive work environment. Consider the following:

Bright natural lighting

Creative storage for files and supplies

Prioritize comfort with a good back-supporting chair

Upgrade your equipment with a high-speed internet connection. The rest depends on your business idea.


7. Time management

Manage your time by:

Using project management tools

Setting clear expectations

Set regular breaks

Regularly communicate using tools like Slack or Zoom to stay connected with your team, contractors, or vendors to facilitate collaboration.

Avoid multitasking

Focus on one task at a time to ensure quality work and avoid mistakes.



What are some home-based business ideas?


1.  Freelance Writing and Content Creation

The demand for skilled writers is limitless. Use your writing skills to create engaging, SEO-optimized content that attracts both readers and search engines.

The key to standing out is creating content that not only engages readers but also aligns with SEO best practices. By seamlessly integrating relevant keywords and providing valuable information, freelance writers can elevate their content, ensuring it not only captures the audience’s interest but also ranks favorably on SERPs (search engine results pages).


2.  Virtual Assistance Services

Businesses and entrepreneurs often need support with managing administrative tasks. You can position yourself as a vital resource by offering virtual assistance services such as scheduling, handling emails, and other organizational responsibilities.


3.  E-commerce Store for Niche Markets

Set up an e-commerce store and take advantage of the growing trend of niche markets. Find a specific niche with high demand and low competition. To ensure visibility in the search engines optimize your product listings with well-researched keywords. Use a platform like Shopify or Etsy to kick off your online store.

As there’s a current surge in the realm of e-commerce and niche product stores, there’s an opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs can carve out a distinctive space for their products in this market by carefully identifying a niche with high demand and minimal competition.


4.  Online Coaching and Consulting

If you have expertise in a particular field such as fitness, personal development, or business strategy, consider online coaching or consulting. People are willing to pay for valuable insights. Use a well-optimized website to establish your credibility and use SEO strategies to attract clients seeking your knowledge.


5.  Social Media Management

Help clients build and maintain a strong presence across various platforms. Use effective strategies to increase engagement and followers ensuring your clients stand out in the crowded digital landscape. Deliver services that aid clients in establishing and nurturing a strong presence across various platforms. Utilize effective strategies to increase engagement and followers, ensuring your clients stand out amid the digital competition.


6.  Graphic Design Services

If you have graphic design skills, convert your passion into profit by offering design services. A curated portfolio showcasing your work, optimized with relevant keywords, serves a dual purpose. It not only attracts potential clients but also bolsters your website’s SEO, making it more discoverable to those seeking your artistic expertise.


7.  Affiliate Marketing

Use affiliate marketing to monetize your online presence. Promoting products/services and earning a commission for each sale can turn your interests and expertise into a revenue stream. Research carefully a niche that resonates with you, and create engaging content seamlessly integrating affiliate links. This approach not only delivers value to your audience but also enhances your potential for revenue through successful affiliate partnerships.


8. Remote IT Support

Consider offering IT services to businesses and individuals, if you have technical skills. To ensure visibility optimize your website with keywords related to IT services to make it easier for those in need to find and benefit from your expertise.


9.  Online Tutoring Services

As the landscape of education evolves, online Tutoring Services have become a crucial resource. Leverage your expertise in a specific subject to offer online tutoring. Just optimize your website with relevant keywords to attract students seeking assistance. Provide valuable and you can establish yourself as a credible source in the ever-expanding online education niche.


10. Handmade Crafts and Artisanal Products

If you’re creatively inclined, you can turn your passion into a home-based business and fulfill your endeavor. Show your creations through an e-commerce platform. Optimize your product descriptions and website content with keywords to enhance visibility and attract buyers.


There is much more you can learn about how to start a home business. This article is a starting point. By using these steps, you can be well on your way to starting a profitable home-based business.


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April 8th, 2024

Future Developments in Digital Marketing

by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.



The concept of marketing began with the Gutenberg printing press.

Magazines came into being by the 18th century. Soon after came advertisements and billboards, followed by radio and television ads.

Then came digital marketing in the 1990s. The industry rapidly expanded to monumental proportions within two decades.

We were at major crossroads regarding the future of digital marketing in 2018.

Today we think we’re on track then everything takes a sudden turn and we have to figure out future developments in digital marketing.

By 2028 the strategies and practices we apply today will seem very far away.


So what will digital marketing look like in 10 years?


Mobile Content

Mobile will continue to be important.

In a very short period, smartphones have changed the way we communicate and the way we get information. Google searches occur more frequently on mobile devices than on desktops.

Recently, digital marketers have focused on mobile optimization because users won’t click away if a website is compatible with smartphone devices. The longer users stay on websites, the better those sites will rank on search engines. Websites will have more reason to go mobile because of Google’s mobile-first index.

To provide desktop users with the best and most relevant search results, Google has indexed websites as if they were doing so from a desktop.

Websites that aren’t already mobile-compatible are now taking the largest hit and will continue to do so. Although there’s responsive design that’s made it easier to create the same site for both PCs and mobile devices, websites that aren’t already mobile-compatible are now taking the largest hit.

Mobile content will become more of an element. As it’s hard to say exactly how content creation will change over the next few years, SEO keywords may start to turn more toward mobile searching. Long-form content could start to fall by the wayside as mobile content takes precedence. Digital marketers are already gearing their content more towards smartphone audiences.

Voice Search

The concept of voice searching has gained momentum and will continue. Millions use intelligent devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. Our cars and smartphones already permit us to make voice searches on the go.

Video Marketing

Video marketing isn’t going away anytime soon. As people are doing more browsing on mobile devices, they want to interact more with the content they see.

Live video streaming is ramping up and although it might seem it’s reserved for social media, you should still publish video content for websites.

Quality Long-form Content

Although the future of digital marketing appears to have no room for long-form content, digital marketers will be solving the secrets to voice and mobile search as well as producing videos.

People still want meaningful accurate information. The way they’re able to find it might be changing so digital marketers will have to adapt to those changes.

There will be all the more reason to create better and stronger blog articles, web page content, e-mails, etc., as anytime a consumer tries to find long-form content it’s nevertheless an opportunity to market to them.

Digital Marketing Tools and AI

These kinds of tools can measure link quality and help websites filter out broken links. They’re already more advanced and becoming more so.  In 5-10 years from now, they’ll likely be even better at focusing on quality links.

In the future digital marketing tools may also be able to tell us more about our audiences. Then digital marketers will be able to improve SEO metrics and tactics.

Marketers will be better able to analyze their audiences and that will not only increase productivity but also improve user experience. Chatbots and custom product recommendations are growing big in e-commerce.

In short, long-form content does have a place in the future of digital marketing, and research tools and AI will improve the way we engage with customers online.

Social Media

As social media consumption is ever-evolving, the kinds of content you need to draw users will keep changing.

People seem to look at videos much longer than static pieces of content on social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, and are more willing to make a purchase once they’ve seen videos of products in action.

The power of visual content will continue to grow over the next several years. Therefore, as a modern-day marketer, it’s important that you continuously restructure your digital marketing plan to keep it adaptable to the content consumption changes ahead.

Another major prediction is that reaching your followers on Facebook organically will be nearly impossible.

According to Facebook, there is so much content published on this platform each day it’s becoming a lot choosier about what it places on users’ feeds. This social media giant is all about making sure any content that appears on a user’s feed is as relevant to them as possible.

It’s obvious that Facebook is increasingly becoming a paid advertising and marketing platform and you’ll see this even more.

Dark social, which is traffic on the Web that you can’t track through a Web analytics program, will rise. For example, it’s essentially the private sharing that takes place when people share a link to content through a mobile messaging app. Research shows that the majority of content shared online comes from dark social.

To make the most of dark social, you should include “share” buttons on the social media platforms you use. If your buttons are highly visible, your content may be shared more.

Pinterest has been shifting its focus away from offering inspiration to promoting action.

Many businesses view LinkedIn’s video ads as an effective and compelling way to reach their audiences.

It’s predicted that YouTube will remain a huge digital marketing player in the near future and will be used for generating leads.

As people are becoming more concerned about who has access to their data, social media platforms are tightening up their data sharing policies. So, persona-based marketers are now dealing with how to get around that. Although social media advertising isn’t dying, from here on out there will be more restrictions on how companies get user data.

As platforms seek to improve consumer privacy, one of the largest changes will be to how we track advertising through third-party cookies. However, this doesn’t mean that first-party cookies won’t still be applied to track interactions with your site, so no need to panic.

To stay updated on the latest changes from Google you can use their Privacy Sandbox News.

It explains the latest changes are that from January 4, 2024, they will begin testing a new feature that limits cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third-party cookies by default. (Tracking Protection). They’ll roll this out to 1% of Chrome users globally, a key milestone in their Privacy Sandbox initiative to phase out third-party cookies for everyone in the second half of 2024.


How do you succeed in today’s digital marketing world?


To stand out in the marketing field, you should do more than simply broadcasting as most people do. Most people are broadcasting on channels. If you don’t take the time to search and discover new information and respond to users with these tools, all you’re doing is advertising like you would in a newspaper. You absolutely must engage with your audience and learn from them.

You must understand the time and money it takes to use various marketing channels.

Do the research needed to learn where your target customers spend time and consume content.

Before launching a marketing strategy establish a buyer persona. Use buyer priorities for developing and researching an appropriate keyword strategy. This will help you with choosing proper social media marketing channels.

The cost to acquire new clients and prospects is rising so it’s in your best interest to improve all actions your clients perform and have automated follow-ups of their interactions with you.

You should take a totally different approach with the people who have visited your website, and were maybe going to purchase your product, than you would with those who have never displayed interest in your offering.

Using retargeting techniques, you can show your messages in the right order and at the proper time and get more bang for your buck long-term.

It’s more important than ever before to stay on top of industry changes and trends as they will change how you relate to your audience.

It’s very difficult to predict the future developments in digital marketing long-term, but keeping your eye on current trends will help you avoid being caught off guard later.


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March 25th, 2024

Blogging Trends You Should Not Ignore


by Rahimah Sultan







Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.


While blogging’s basic foundation is still the same (write and publish) some changes do occur that may be short-lived trends or they may become permanent. In order to remain competitive you need to stay abreast of the latest blogging trends and keep up to date with content marketing approaches. To keep you up to date on what’s going on now, this post…


Read article here


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February 26th, 2024

Current Email Marketing Changes


by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.



Whether you’re an experienced marketer or just getting started, these email marketing trends will help you create relevant, engaging, content for now and the future.

As we move forward, trends will redefine how we connect with our audience, measure success, and create our email marketing strategies.

We’re now venturing into the realms of heightened engagement, smarter analytics, and more intuitive user interactions.


Do the latest email marketing trends matter?

Yes. Here are some reasons why email marketing trends matter.

1. Consumer habits and preferences continually evolve with the changing digital landscape. What interested them in the past may not resonate this year.

2. The digital space constantly fluctuates with new technologies appearing quickly. Keeping up-to-date on the latest trends means using new tools and techniques (such as AI and interactive design) to substantially enhance the performance of your email campaigns.

3. Differentiation is key in a crowded digital market. If you adopt the latest trends, you can capture your subscribers’ attention and stand out in their inboxes, capture their attention, and stay ahead of competitors who might be slower to incorporate new methods.

4. The fundamental goal of any marketing plan is to effectively engage customers and drive a strong return on investment. The latest trends in email marketing often offer new ways to increase engagement, enhance personalization, and, ultimately, increase the ROI of your campaigns.

5. With directives like GDPR and changing email standards, staying updated with the latest trends also means ensuring compliance and adhering to best practices.



What are the hottest email marketing trends?


Moving forward, the email marketing landscape is in position for some groundbreaking shifts. These changes are about deep, impactful transformations that respond to the evolving digital environment.

There will be trends that will redefine how we craft our email marketing strategies, connect with our audience, and measure success. There’ll be an exploration of innovations that go beyond the traditional, venturing into areas of heightened engagement, smarter analytics, and more intuitive user interactions.

Email authentication is finally advancing from a best practice to a requirement, especially for high-volume senders. Enforcement is beginning now, signaling a significant shift in the industry’s approach to email authentication.


The following are the new requirements:

1. Authentication

1. Senders must set up SPF (Sender Policy Framework), a layer of protection in email infrastructure, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), which allows the receiver to check that an email that claimed to have come from a specific domain was actually authorized by the owner of that domain. These protocols are essential for authenticating your emails and proving they’re sent from a legitimate source??.

2. Along with SPF and DKIM, a DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance policy is mandatory. It enables email senders to specify how to handle emails authenticated using SPF or DKIM. Then, these senders can opt to send those emails to the junk folder or block them altogether. This policy doesn’t need to be enforced at the beginning. However, achieving DMARC enforcement is still a best practice for safeguarding against domain spoofing and abuse??.

Only the main points are touched on here, due to the complicated nature of these protocols.

3. The domain in the sender’s “From” header must align with either the SPF or DKIM domain, ensuring uniformity and consistency in the sender’s identity??.

4. It’s essential to maintain valid forward and reverse DNS (Domain Name System) which are also known as PTR records. These records contribute to the legitimacy and traceability of the sending domains and IPs. Domain Name System (DNS) translates a domain name into an IP address to find the owner’s site.

5. Enabling a visible and accessible one-click unsubscribe option is essential for subscription-based messages. This practice augments user experience and aligns with Gmail’s requirements for sustaining low spam rates??.

6. Keep spam rates low, below 0.3%. This metric reflects the sender’s reputation and the effectiveness of their email practices??.


The industry is increasingly focused on security and authenticity. Compliance with these guidelines is crucial for ensuring high deliverability and preserving a good sender reputation. Although these new requirements are from major email service providers like Google and Yahoo, you can expect other inbox providers to announce similar regulations.



2. Generative AI

In the current email marketing changes, Expanded Generative AI is a major leap forward in email marketing technology. It allows marketers to create more effective, personalized email campaigns while saving time and resources. This enhanced AI technology goes beyond basic automation and enables the creation of highly personalized, dynamic content at scale.

AI can generate powerful email content personalized to individual preferences based on user data and past interactions.

Generative AI greatly reduces the time and effort needed to create varied and engaging email campaigns.

Although you might think that AI-generated content may not be very engaging, it has the potential to be the most engaging. As a marketer, you are limited in the personalization and segmentation of your marketing campaigns. The same restrictions don’t apply to Generative AI.



3. Interactive email experiences

With the current email marketing changes, you’ll see emails changing from static messages into dynamic, engaging experiences. There’ll be more embedded widgets and features incorporating elements like surveys, polls, and quizzes directly within the email.

Rich media integration using videos, gifs, and other things to make emails more visually appealing and engaging.

There’ll be real-time content updates based on user actions or external factors, like stock levels or weather conditions.

You’ll see game-like elements incorporated like spin-to-win features and scratch cards, plus, interactive CTA (call-to-action buttons) that animate, change color, or expand upon hover or click, providing immediate feedback to the user.



4. Minimalistic designs

Layouts will be cleaner, color schemes will be simplified, and minimal text with easy-to-read fonts will be used for succinctness and clarity. The focus will be on content and faster load times.



5. Mobile focus

With the current email marketing changes, designing emails with a mobile focus is a must, since the majority of emails being opened are on mobile devices. Although we know this, it still seems that mobile design is an afterthought. That might be because we’re often designing and planning email campaigns from a desktop.



6. BIMI adoption

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is an email authentication protocol that allows brands to display their logo next to their email in the inbox, thus, enhancing brand visibility and trust. Although it’s relatively new, you’ve probably seen a few well-known brands using this in the inbox.



7. New metrics focus



Marketers and senders will start looking at metrics beyond open rates, and businesses will use other key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the value and performance of their email campaigns like:

Engagement over time
Email influence on the customer journey
Subscribe lifetime value
Conversion rate, and
List growth rate


These current email marketing changes emphasize the continuous advancement of email marketing.


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February 12th, 2024

Developing Your Digital Marketing Strategy

by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.




As a marketer, considering the creation of the best marketing strategy, you need to have a clear understanding of your business, product, and demographics before choosing one that will be effective for your needs.

To grow your online visibility, you need a plan for using different channels to do so. In this plan, you should consider factors such as your target audience, strengths and weaknesses, and your competitors.

To help you decide which marketing channels to use or test, check data from across your business, your target audience, and how you want to communicate your message or brand.

We’re NOT talking tactics here, but actual strategy. Tactics are what you use to implement your strategy.



What is a marketing strategy?


When developing your digital marketing strategy, there are a few key elements to consider.


1. Understand Your Customer

Your digital marketing strategy will not be successful unless you have a clear understanding of who is buying your product, why they’re buying it, and where they buy it.


1. Create a profile of your audience using data and demographics

2. Speak your customers’ language

3. Understand what their pain points are and how to switch on emotions

4. To help customize content and predict buying patterns, create buyer personas

5. Be culturally aware

6. Consider influencer partnerships

7. Focus on results and action-oriented experience rather than your product

8. Use automation tools to segment and target


2. Review

Creating an effective strategy requires auditing and assessing. You need to know the digital marketing channels and assets you currently have and use.

So conduct a complete channel and content audit and include everything on a spreadsheet for a full picture of your marketing activities across owned, earned, and paid media.

Then link each part to your goals. If your main goal is to drive revenue, look at each channel and asset (you may only want to look at top performers if you have a lot of content) and map it to revenue.

By doing this, you’ll get a better understanding of what is currently driving revenue and what isn’t. You can then put more effort into what’s successful explore new content pieces or channels for any further effect.

3. Focus on the End Result

In marketing and product development, there’s usually more emphasis on product and revenue than on the products’ purpose.

What really matters is to whom you’re marketing and why. When you demonstrate what the product does, people will remember why they need it in the first place.

4. Review and Improve

When developing your digital marketing strategy, you must include KPIs (key performance indicators that fit with your crucial business goals.

Have a plan in place to understand your goals and objectives and monitor the metrics to get insights about the KPIs that matter. To do this:

~ Forget about vanity metrics(numbers that aren’t crucial to long-term success like Facebook likes

~ Use KPIs to measure success, but don’t have them set in stone

~ Set up continuous intervals for understanding, analyzing, measuring, and reporting

~ Know how to isolate critical metrics if it seems like something is not working


What are the most effective digital marketing strategies?


The digital marketing strategies you’ll use depend on your needs and goals – to grow leads or build brand awareness.

Any strategy you use should align with your brand and message. Here are a few that are proven to get results and help you build online visibility and generate leads.

Content Marketing

Offer valuable content and use digital channels to promote it. An example is tying an Instagram post to a specific offer using a landing page. This could be done by promoting an E-book that is relevant to your audience which contains a form to get a visitors’ details.

When using content marketing, don’t stick to just one content type. You can use a blog, create videos, create a valuable E-book, or host a webinar using in-house staff or experts to drive leads and engagement.

Social Media Marketing

You can reach and influence 4.6 billion people across the globe with social media marketing. And depending on the network, you can target specific age groups and locations. While you can use social media for brand, product, or service promotion, it can also be used in developing a community. This will allow you to have meaningful engagement with prospects or customers and create brand advocates that will promote your brand without being asked. Each channel requires its own strategy and metrics.

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an important digital marketing strategy for making your brand, product, or service more visible online.

The goal of SEO is to optimize your content – a homepage, landing page or blog – so it gets found easily by existing and prospective customers. It not only helps to drive traffic but improves user experience and helps boost your authority.

A few elements of SEO you should consider are:

Keywords
Backlinks
Links
Meta descriptions
Images
and
The key is to use SEO to target the people searching online that are most likely to be interested in what you’re offering.

Paid Advertising

Organic marketing can go a long way to help drive traffic and generate leads, but using a paid channel can help you to be targeted and reach different audiences.

These are only a few of the most effective digital marketing strategies.

So know your business, product, and demographics before developing your digital marketing strategy then choose the most effective one for your needs.


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January 29th, 2024

Want To Be A Solopreneur?

by Rahimah Sultan


Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.







The rise of digital platforms and the gig economy (freelance work and side hustles) have shifted the perspective from one of large teams, extensive resources, and complex structures to one of making running a one-person business realistic and appealing.


How do you get started?


The challenge is navigating many options and determining the business concept that aligns with your skills, passions, and market needs.

You can feel overwhelmed by choices or fear the potential risks of running a business by yourself.

In this article, we explore compelling solopreneur business ideas that cater to different skills and interests, making sure you can find an idea that resonates with your unique goals.

Some favorite one-person business ideas include:

Newsletters: Use platforms like Beehiiv to monetize your passion. Only FYI. No money is exchanged for this link.

Blogging:
Use AI SEO tools to create engaging content.

YouTube:
Blend educational content with ad income and product sales.

UGC (user-generated content):
Excel as a social media influencer.

Service-based ventures:
Jump into fields like consulting or personal training.

Selling Courses:
Share your expertise and make money from online courses.




The starting point, for choosing the right one-person business idea, is matching your passion with a smart business structure.

If you’re looking to leap into the world of online business ideas or are just excited about being your own boss, you have a range of options that are practical, profitable, and perfect for you.


What are some solopreneur business ideas?


Below are some of the best one-person business ideas that can get you started on the exciting journey of running your own business.


1.  Online Dating Consultant

Are you good at giving dating advice and understanding the nuances of relationships? Becoming an Online Dating Consultant could be just the ticket to a profitable one-person business.

In this position, you’re a consultant and trusted confidant helping people find their way around the often-confusing world of online dating.

You can build a loyal customer base, who rely on your expertise to find love and meaningful connections, by offering personalized advice and strategies.

2.  Newsletter Business

Whether you go solo or collaborate with a business partner, starting a Newsletter Business is a terrific way to run your own business.

Using platforms like Passion Froot or Beehiiv‘s native platform can make writing and sending engaging newsletters easy while also opening up avenues to monetize your content. Only FYI. No money is exchanged for this link. This solopreneur business idea is not only about sharing your thoughts but is a strategic move to build an audience and create a steady income stream. You can also increase your earnings by promoting other products within your newsletter.

3.  Freelance Writing

Another smart move, in the area of a one-person business is to start a freelance writing business especially if you’re skilled in content writing and SEO.

This has become more feasible with the introduction of AI writing software like Surfer AI or Writesonic. These tools can help you effectively produce high-quality SEO content, thus allowing you to take on more clients and scale your business.

NOTE: If you choose to use AI-produced content, fact-check it before publishing. Your integrity and reputation are on the line!

With a freelance writing business, you have the flexibility and creative freedom to tap into the growing demand for digital content. It’s an excellent opportunity if you have a way with words and want to leverage your writing skills in a rewarding, self-driven business.

4.  Build AI Software

Since you no longer need a team to set up shop, use Bubble.io and Make.com to help you build your AI app. This is one of the best ways to make money using AI and your ideas.


5.  Graphic Designer



Graphic design is a highly sought-after skill that may be appealing to you if you want to be a solopreneur.

Your skills as a graphic designer are invaluable and can be used online, in local advertising design, and content marketing. You might consider using AI image generators like Canva to simplify your workflow, enhance your designs, and maintain a high standard of professionalism.

6.  Social Media Manager

In this role, you’ll manage your clients’ social media accounts and enhance their social presence. Using AI content generation tools, you can create content that resonates with and engages audiences and that also expands a brand’s message. The role is more about building a community, engaging followers, and strategically driving business growth rather than just posting updates. Your knowledge of social media platforms navigation can substantially impact a business’ online success.


These are just a few of the many options to consider, if you want to be a solopreneur. Others include:

Dog Walking
Pet Sitting
Pet Grooming
Opening a Coffee Shop
Online Course Creator
Funnel Builder
Web Design
Personal Training,
Blogging
and whatever you are passionate about.


Choosing the right one involves balancing what you love and existing market demands. When starting a one-person business, you’ll face opportunities as well as challenges.

The most successful businesses fill a market gap and also resonate with your entrepreneurial skills and interests.

If you want to be a solopreneur, these suggestions will help you get started.



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January 15th, 2024

Turn Your Visitors Into Leads


by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.


You can use a good lead magnet to help turn visitors into leads. A lead magnet is a marketing method where a brand offers a free resource such as a discount, an e-book, a tool, etc. in exchange for a visitor’s contact information. The main goal of a lead magnet is to start and nurture a relationship with potential customers.

This is one option you can take to turn your visitors into leads.


What makes an effective lead magnet?



Six things that make an effective lead magnet. They are:


Helpful and actionable. A lead magnet addresses a specific problem that your target audience is encountering and provides a practical solution.

Compelling. Present something exceptional and irresistible.

Instantly accessible. Make your resource immediately accessible.

High-quality. Your resource may be one of the first contacts with your brand so make a good impression.

Relevant to your product or service. To ensure you get a more qualified audience and possibly higher conversion rates, make your lead magnet relevant to your product or service.

A Clear conversion path. Normally a lead magnet consists of a landing page with a sign-up form, a thank you page with access to the free resource, and a follow-up message or a sequence of messages.


Here are some lead magnet ideas:

1. Free tools

With this type of lead magnet, you offer potential customers a tool or service for free. This works because these days everyone expects to get something for free online.

You’ll attract visitors by offering to solve a problem for free while increasing your brand awareness. It will allow you to show a sneak peek of your product and offer an upgrade, and put the lead on a nurturing program so you can follow up with that person.

2. Early access waiting lists

An early access/waiting list is a kind of lead magnet you use to collect contact information in exchange for a lead accessing your product before everyone else. This might work for you if you have a product that you want to get exposure for immediately or if you want to launch to a limited number of people before going all out. You can use it to get feedback from that small group of people before the entire internet sees it.

3. Discounts and bonuses

With this lead magnet, you offer visitors a discount or a bonus as an incentive to give you their contact information. This solves two challenges at the same time. It gives people a nudge to shop for your brand while getting a direct marketing channel to people interested in your offer.

4. Free consultation

Free consultation lead magnets gather contact information in exchange for some kind of service or for the opportunity to consult with an expert about a particular matter at no cost. This is an ideal solution for all kinds of agencies and service providers.

This allows you to get in direct contact with your audience and personalize your message, it could lead you to a chance to do something that could lead to further opportunities, and it has the potential to create the reciprocity effect.

5. Courses

This type of lead magnet requires you to create premium educational material to turn your visitors into leads.

Here, you’re giving out a lot so you can ask for more in return. Education never ends for those who are about their profession so a quality free course can get you a “foot in the door” to offer paid courses. You don’t need to create a special course just for lead generation. You can use part of your premium course or repurpose existing content.

6. Ebooks

Since some problems are just too broad to tackle with one blog article, you can use an e-book. Ebooks are irresistible lead magnets because they offer free education on complex, professional topics that you’ll find hard to come by anywhere else.

E-books attract people who are interested in learning more about your niche. These people are likely good candidates for lead nurturing campaigns.

Ebooks are considered premium content. Ebooks and can be a part of a greater content delivery program and can even be made with repurposed content.

This gives you a rare opportunity to get someone’s attention for more than five minutes.

These are just some of the possibilities for using lead magnets.

There are many more that include:

Product trials and samples
Product demos
White papers
Webinars and virtual summits
Reports
Newsletters
and more.


How do you create a lead magnet?


Lead magnets are generally created in the following ways:

1. Find a proven topic. You can use keyword research, competitive research, or look for engaging topics on social media.

2. Choose content type
. The best content type depends on your topic.

3. Create your resource. Check out tools to help with this. For example, if you’re creating a course, use Teachable for the technical part. You only have to come up with content. This is FYI for which I receive no money.

4. Publish your lead magnet. To save a lot of time, use a dedicated tool like ConvertKit which can help you set up sign-up forms on your site and deliver your content. This is FYI for which I receive no money. Some lead magnets do not need a self-hosted landing page.

5. Promote it. Promote your lead magnet in your relevant blog posts, link your high-traffic pages, or share using your email or social media.

6. Follow up. Once you’ve delivered content, follow up with a short message or use a lead nurturing campaign as in an autoresponder.


An effective lead magnet can turn your visitors into leads and can help boost your business. You must decide whether leads are more important or high volumes of organic traffic and potentially more brand awareness.

A solution may be to try and get the best of both worlds by having your lead magnets search engine optimized.


Use this viral mailer that pays

December 4th, 2023

Why You Should Use Marketing Automation for Your Business

by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.



Monotonous marketing work can be made easier with software that automates monotonous marketing tasks. You can automate repetitive undertakings such as social media postings, email marketing, and ad campaigns, as well as for personalization which offers a better customer experience.


What is marketing automation?



Marketing automation is not about selling, but nurturing.  Automation software is designed to help you order and carry out your marketing tasks in a more efficient and streamlined manner.

For a marketer that means carrying out a marketing automation system will just make you more effective. Your job won’t become irrelevant as, with manufacturing processes. It will free up some of your time, will not compromise the authenticity of content you’re producing, and help you reach your goals faster.

The ultimate goal of your marketing is to generate more income. To do this, you need to drive traffic to your website, convert that traffic into leads, and turn those leads into customers.


How do you use marketing automation?


Today, thousands of marketers send blast emails, over and over, to their entire list of customers and prospects, hoping the message resonates with some of them at least and gets them to make a purchase. There’s no way to tell if this works.

The reality of the situation is this:

1. You’re wasting your time and money marketing to someone who may not be interested in what you have to offer.

2. You could be annoying your contacts and causing them to bow out leaving you with no way to market to them in the future.


That doesn’t seem to be an effective marketing program, to me. With marketing automation, you can nurture your leads through the entire buying process and deliver highly targeted, personalized messages that speak to their specific barriers to purchasing.


Here’s an example of what a basic automated email workflow could look like:

Step 1. Send an email invitation for a download of your latest ebook to a targeted list of contacts

Step 2. Send a thank you note to all the people who downloaded the offer

Step 3. A few days later, send a follow-up email to the list of people who downloaded your ebook and offer them a case study relating to that topic

Step 4. After someone downloads that case study, you or your sales team will get a notification so you can follow up with that person. This person is now much more qualified and is likely farther down the buying process.


Now, putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes, receiving information from a company about their products/services, wouldn’t you rather get emails like the ones above over blasts you can tell they’re sending to thousands of other people? This feels personalized and tailored to you and how you’re interacting with that person or company. You’d be more likely to trust them and ultimately, more likely to buy.

There you are! You’re driving revenue for your company with an automated system.


The foundation of marketing automation is to provide you, as a marketer, the ability to target your contacts and send them content that is based on their behavior. They’re getting the information they need when they want it and you’re making their buyer decision easier. As a result, your conversion rates (and revenue) will increase.

Now that you know what marketing automation is, don’t just automate your current process without revisiting your goals.

Don’t let marketing automation lead you to execute strategies that you know don’t make sense for your customers or prospects. Don’t stop listening to what your customers need or are asking us for.


Here are some do’s and don’ts



Now that you know what marketing automation is, here are a few tips as you think about implementing a new platform into your process.

DO integrate marketing automation with your inbound marketing strategy (inbound is about delivering valuable content that aligns with your customer’s needs and interests.) This shouldn’t change when you start using marketing automation. It should enhance communication, as you can provide the content they need at the exact time that they need it.

DON’T blast or broadcast general messages that will just be deleted or end up marked as spam because they’re irrelevant.

DO send highly-targeted and specific content to a narrower audience.


Provide content that people are looking for. If someone has downloaded a piece of content and really loved what they read, the next email should be related and delve deeper into that topic,  as opposed to something completely different.

DON’T forget about your customers

Don’t become so focused on generating income that you forget your current customers; the people who already have an affinity for what you are offering and most likely want to buy more.

DO set up customer engagement campaigns to please your current customers and keep them coming back for more.


Nurture your current relationships by sending segmented, customer-only content, that will educate and encourage them to continue to come back to you for thought leadership and expertise.

Now, let’s wrap it all up.

Marketing automation is all about nurturing not selling. Avoid the hard-sell approach in favor of content that is personalized, relevant, and that aligns with what our customers and prospects are looking for. The process is made easier by implementing marketing automation software. We can quickly map the entire process back to our marketing goals.

Marketing automation helps streamline your process and gives you greater insights into what your visitors and leads are doing. You can quickly find what content they’re downloading, how they are responding to your emails, and how they’re moving through the sales funnel. You can monitor each step of the way, monitor and measure how the marketing automation system you have in place is performing, and find where you might need to make tweaks to get better results.

So, explore your options and find a platform that gives you flexibility, and a proven track record to help you reach your marketing goals, and discover why you should use marketing automation for your business.


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November 20th, 2023

Review: Beginner Blogger Mistakes (Part 2)


by Rahimah Sultan





Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.




The last post was a review of Beginner Blogger Mistakes (Part 1). This covers the remaining mistakes to avoid which include tying specific posts to the larger picture, writing style, relying on the conceptual, plagiarism, etc.



You can read it here:




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November 6th, 2023

Beginner Blogger Mistakes



by Rahimah Sultan






Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.



When people actually try to blog, they find out that it’s not so easy. There are those who think bloggers just sit at home all day on the internet writing.

There are some common mistakes most beginners make that can be avoided.


Read More Here



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