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.

There is an abundance of business advice to be had which includes delegating certain tasks so you can focus on your business. Although this is great advice, what if you’re a one-person business and you work from home?

Although you can run a small business on your own, it takes planning and a lot of patience.

Beware of the pitfalls of working from home so you can be successful. Here are four challenges that you need to avoid.



What are some pitfalls you need to avoid?


1. NOT STAYING FOCUSED

It’s difficult to stay focused with distractions from television, family members, and dirty dishes. And, if you’re new to working at home, it’s hard to feel like you’re working, because your home environment doesn’t feel like your work in an outside office.

Solution: If you’re not an expert multi-tasker like some people and you find your productivity is suffering, you should come up with a more formally structured day, as in a traditional office setting where you would not do home chores or run errands during work.

Create a dedicated area as your office, one with a door, if possible. At the very least, a corner just for work so that when you go there your brain signals it’s time to work. If you find yourself stuck from time to time, try a change of environment such as a cafe for an hour or take a walk outside.


2. LOSING BOUNDARIES

Although you should take advantage of the flexibility working from home provides, remember how easily time can be ripped away from your workday. After all, your work is just as real as any traditional office job.

Solution: At a traditional office job, everyone appears to understand your work schedule, and you’re not expected to get everything taken care of in one day. However, when you’re working from home, all those boundaries seem not to apply.

Although you should take advantage of the flexibility working from home provides, remember how easily time can be ripped away from your workday. After all, your work is just as real as any traditional office job.


3. WORKING TOO MUCH

The stereotypical working-from-home in pajamas and easy days is not the reality. When you work from home, you work longer days because there’s no separation between work and home. You don’t have a natural stopping point nor do you drive away from the office, and days get longer because it’s hard to put aside your work.

Solution: As with most jobs, there’s always going to be more to do. You need to regulate yourself and be disciplined and set a boundary between your work and personal life. Although this doesn’t have to be every night, if you’re serious about working from home for the long term, this lifestyle has to be sustainable. You’ll need time away from the computer and the stress of work.


4. FEELING ISOLATED

Not being in a traditional office setting with day-to-day social interaction can bring on feelings of isolation.

Solution: When you’re working from home, you’ll need to create social interactions. You can:

Schedule lunch or breakfast get-togethers

Use social networks such as Facebook or Twitter as your virtual “water cooler” during the day

Use real-time communications like skype, phone calls, or chat instead of email

Get involved with local meetups or networking groups

Spend some time working in shared office spaces



In summary, find a proper work-life balance. Schedule breaks on your calendar and don’t miss them. Note your in and off hours on the calendar and in your chat tools.

Outside of work take time to unwind and spend time with your family. Pursue your hobbies, make plans with friends, and occupy yourself with things that aren’t work-related.

So, beware of the pitfalls of working from home and use these four challenges as a starting point for overcoming pitfalls.

Get Your Business System With Autoresponder Here

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 marketing world moves ever so quickly. Keeping up with these changes isn’t always easy, although it’s vital to stay ahead of them, in order to succeed and maintain a sense of relevance with your audience. It’s no longer enough to create a brand, product, or service and expect it to sell.

In order to start seeing success with your marketing strategies, you need to stop pushing your products on people and instead focus on the needs and desires of your target audience. Instead of focusing on a message for them to buy your product, be more focused on the features your ideal customer is looking for. People want to be approached as individuals. So, focus on building relationships and providing value, then deliver your pitch.

Due to big data and the internet, you’re now able to create hyper-personalized experiences based on what customers do online, thus enabling you to build better long-term relationships with them. This, in turn, leads to more brand loyalty and larger revenue opportunities down the line.



What should you do now?

In the past, effective marketing tactics were about using the right platforms for promotion, targeting specific audiences or demographics by using keywords and hashtags on social media sites and using retargeting campaigns on those sites where possible.

Going forward, business owners will be required to take risks, listen more intently when engaging with customers online, and invest in their branding in order to remain competitive.



What are some changes you need to be ready for?

1.  Know your purpose

Purpose overrules product features. Why are you doing what you’re doing? If you have a big idea or a problem you want to solve, then that is your purpose.


2. Know your customer

 They are at the center of everything. Knowing your customer personas and dividing them into clear segments allows you to specifically target each segment.


3.  Create a personalized and relevant customer experience

As soon as they choose to connect with you, consumers expect a seamless experience from your business. You can do this only if you utilize the power of technology and data. These two things will help you create a personalized and relevant customer experience when existing and prospective customers interact with you.


4.  Be sure marketing remains at the center of your growth strategy

Marketing messages need to be personally relevant and aligned to an individual’s situation and values, as opposed to demographics, such as age and gender.

Marketing begins with knowing your customer segment. Using segmentation and personas can bring deeper insights to media strategies, and creative marketing approaches can be carried through the entire customer experience.


5.  Use digital tools to make interactions more personal

Embrace digital technology. Digital tools allow you to make interactions more personal. You may even be able to deliver personalized products, depending on your product or service.


6.  Get serious about the potential of social media platforms

If your business relies on online sales, getting serious about the potential of social media platforms needs to be at the top of your list.


7.  Use a multichannel strategy

How do you interact with your customers? You may use chatbots, contact emails, and a phone-based contact center. All of your channels are equally important, as they impact the customer’s opinion of you or your organization.


8.  Focus on delivering a mobile strategy

The mobile experience for your customers should be at least as good as a desktop-based website. The key elements of a successful mobile site are simple navigation, clear site-search options, and quick load times.


9.  SEO is more integrated

SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the oldest and most valuable forms of digital marketing. Since algorithms have continuously become smarter and more contextual, your SEO needs to be focused on integration that provides an outstanding and meaningful experience to users, and less on “hacks” and “tricks.”


10. Look for opportunities to partner with influencers in their space

Influencer marketing continues to grow. Since the influencer is endorsing the product, influencer campaigns naturally provide context and relevance.


11. Focus on what really drives your business growth

You need to become more strategic and focus on what really drives your business growth. As automation, AI (artificial intelligence), and machine learning take away a lot of the grunt work of digital marketing, you must become more strategic, as the options in digital marketing continue to grow.


12. Assume Facebook will continue to dominate

Facebook isn’t going anywhere. It has billions of users and the numbers continue to grow every month.


13. Be sure your website is optimized

Websites continue to get faster. Although website traffic is overwhelmingly mobile, most websites still don’t have fully mobile-optimized experiences. Speed will become ever more important.


14. Become more focused

You should become more focused and do fewer things better. With the explosion of digital marketing options, many businesses are spread too thin across too many channels. The smart thing to do is focus on dominating one channel.


The majority of business growth comes from the foundational tools used in digital marketing. It’s easy to become distracted by shiny new digital objects. Although marketers love new trends and want to be on the leading edge of new technologies and platforms, you shouldn’t forget to focus on your foundation. Optimizing your base digital implementation will more than likely provide a better return on investment than experimenting and getting distracted with every new tool.

As you move forward, I hope you keep these 14 marketing trends for the future of your business in mind as you continue to build and grow.


Get Your System With Autoresponder Here

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.

This article was originally posted on 5/10/21.

If you use SEO (search engine optimization) in the right way, it is one of the most effective ways to attract potential customers to your website. If you rank on page one of the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) you will generate organic traffic.

This is where you need SEO.

In this article…

Continue


Your Autoresponder and More

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.

Your business needs a strategic marketing plan in order to remain ahead of your more digitally savvy competitors.

Take steps now to create, streamline, or optimize your marketing strategy and accelerate your results.

Digital and mobile channels are vital for acquiring and retaining customers.


What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. — Wikipedia

Digital marketing is using digital technologies and media to achieve marketing objectives.


You can consider using the following examples of digital technologies and media options for your marketing campaigns:

Search engine marketing
Social media marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC)
Paid social
Online advertorial
Affiliate marketing
Organic search (SEO)
Organic social
Guest blogging
Co-branding
Backlinks
Sponsorship
Influencer outreach


You need a digital marketing strategy in order to avoid these common problems that arise when you don’t have one.


What are these problems?

1. Not having a clear goal of what you want to achieve online

You need a clear strategic goal for what you want to accomplish in terms of acquiring new customers and building better relationships with your current ones, and you need clear objectives in order to reach those goals.

2. Understanding your online marketplace

It’s important to research your online audience. The dynamics of using digital marketing will be different from long-established avenues which have different types of customer profile and behavior and marketing communications options.

3. Staying updated on the latest trends and innovations

In order to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to devote enough resources to digital to stay  up to date with the latest trends and advances in your sector.

4. No strong value proposition

A value proposition introduces your brand to consumers by showing what you stand for and why you deserve their business. It should be persuasive and help turn a prospect into a paying customer.

5. Not knowing your online customers well

Know the sentiment of visitors and what they think. Use other forms of website feedback tools to help create a more customer-centered website and brand rather than Google Analytics and such, which only show volumes of visits and not the sentiments of visitors or what they think.

6. You’re disintegrated

You need an integrated marketing strategy. Digital media work best when combined with traditional media channels.

7. Avoid duplication

If you have a larger company, don’t waste your money and time by way of duplication. Don’t misuse your funds by having different segments of the marketing organization buying different tools and using other agencies for completing similar online marketing assignments.

Invest in a marketing strategy, that works for everyone, to plan, manage and optimize your digital channels and platforms.

Internet marketing using a digital marketing strategy can accelerate your results and increase your ROI.

Although these 7 reasons for a digital marketing strategy are not the only problems that may be encountered, you should keep them in mind when setting up your marketing campaigns.


Your Web Hosting Essentials

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.

If you’re just now thinking of doing business on the internet, the best thing you can do is consider what platform you’re going to use. You have to start somewhere.

Even if you’re doing affiliate marketing, which does not require a website, eventually you’ll probably want to step up your efforts to make money online and have your own “place” on the internet to which you can direct people to buy your products, services, and the products of companies you’re promoting.

Having your own website is ideal. It’s a place to which you can direct anyone and do business.


So, where do you start with blogging?


You should immediately start building your list of possible contacts and build relationships with them.

You can do this with a blog and email marketing.

There are a few things you should do before you start blogging.

Read more…


Start Building Your List.

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.

What is a lead magnet?

“Subscribe to our newsletter” no longer works as a list-building approach. Consumers are so weary of increasing the amount of email they receive.

No one wants an inbox full of spam or irrelevant offers.

A lead magnet requires your site visitors to give you information, such as an email address for access. It can be some content such as a whitepaper, ebook, or a newsletter.

This content drives awareness and also gives information that helps a prospective customer engage and take an interest in your product or service. This might be a free product sample, demo, trial subscription, or some product/service-related incentive.

Now, no one easily gives up their email. Your lead magnet should offer the reader value in exchange for opting in to receive messages from you in the future.

Your lead magnet is used to build a list of prospective customers.


What’s contained in good lead magnets?

The highest-converting and best lead magnets have certain things in common:

They’re relevant

Your offer must resonate with your intended audience.

Your objective is high quality leads not a high volume of low-quality ones. You don’t want to waste time following up low-quality leads.

Make sure your lead magnet serves a useful purpose with your segmented/targeted audience.


They have perceived value

The best lead magnets offer insider knowledge, a quicker way of doing something, expert insight, or an innovative and unique solution to a problem.

If it can be Googled, you’re not going to get a sign up.


They serve your business purposes

Keep the promise you made when you asked people for their email. Use your lead magnet to offer only what you can actually deliver.

The best lead magnets don’t offer to solve an entire problem, but enough of it that the person recognizes that you are the authority (or your product is the answer) and can take them the rest of the way.


Your lead magnet can include:

1) Cheat sheets

2) Checklists

3) Swipe files

4) Buyer’s guides or ebooks

5) Email courses

6) A recording of a talk you gave

7) Step-by-step blueprints

8) A whitepaper, a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue. It helps your readers understand a complex issue and the steps they need to take to resolve it. Whitepapers are useful in B2B marketing, where clients often have a longer sales cycle and need a lot more information to make a purchasing decision.

9) Webinars

10) Editable templates for simplifying tasks.

11) Product samples or trials

12) Training videos

13) Quizzes, surveys, and polls


This list is not all-inclusive. There are more to be used, as well as any that you can imagine.

Your lead magnet is the first step in building a relationship of know, like, and trust with prospective customers, and in building your list.

The best lead magnets benefit both you and your customers. Your goal is not to trick or force a prospect to give up their email.

For a win-win situation, find an offer and format that helps your business goals and the needs of your target customers.


Hosting and more

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.

One of the most effective ways to attract potential customers to your website is using SEO correctly. By ranking on the top page of the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) you generate organic traffic.

You want to increase your online visibility. If you have a strong internet presence, it helps consumers find and learn about you and ultimately purchase from you. As you search for online marketing tips, you’ll find advice about blogging for SEO, creating landing pages, and more. The bottom line is “there’s one vital part to digital marketing that can make or break these tactics and strategies: keywords.”

Keywords relate heavily to digital marketing because that’s how potential customers do searches like on Google, by typing in a particular word or phrase.

Keywords need to be something users will search for, relevant to your brand, and terms that can be seamlessly integrated into all your online content.

Once you know which keywords to focus on… Continue here


Your Web Hosting Essentials

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.

What is creativity?

This is in the dictionary:  1: the quality of being creative   2: the ability to create

A Google check shows this: the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

These are just for starters. Of course, you can find many more definitions and even come up with some of your own.

Anyone can be creative. Creativity is not something that is bestowed upon a few seemingly extraordinary people.

Research shows, that once you get beyond the average I.Q. of about 100, intelligence and creativity are not at all related.

You still have the potential for great creativity when writing copy.



Why Are Some People, Seemingly, More Creative Than Others?

Seemingly is the operative word here.

You may not be striving to write a book. But, when it comes to writing copy for your online business endeavors, you’re trying to get prospective clients’ attention and to get them to take a specific action for a particular purpose.

It’s a matter of immediacy, a sense of urgency. 

You want to come up with different ways to get prospects attention and to engage them. It may be time for another blog article and you need new ideas.

In these situations creative thinking is crucial.

You may have tried what someone else has advised that didn’t seem to work for you, or you may have some mental blocks.

Imani Campbell of The Sage Neuroscience Center states “A mental block is your brain reaching a barrier in accessing creativity, motivation, or productivity.”



So, What to Do?

This inability to clearly think or process information can be caused by many things.

If you really care about the outcome of something, you can become very anxious. For instance, that article you need to write looms like a giant question mark. What ifs begin to creep into your thoughts – what if it’s not good enough, long enough, clever enough, etc.

Whoops! Here we go with the blockage.

People learn bad habits that are mental blocks to creative thinking. These seven things may be holding you back:


1. Using different types of thinking simultaneously

Creating is generating new ideas, picturing, looking forward, considering possibilities.

Evaluating is analyzing, judging, picking apart ideas, and categorizing them as good and bad, helpful or not.

You need to separate the two. Set down your ideas first, then go back and evaluate their worth.


2. Following advice without question

There are many gurus who tell you their success secrets. It’s fine to listen, but following advice without question could lead to stifled creativity. Many have found success doing what others said wouldn’t work.


3. Fear of failure

No one likes making mistakes or failing. However, trying too hard to avoid failure sets you up for avoiding success.


4. Lack of confidence

There’s some level of uncertainty in every creative undertaking. A little self-doubt is natural.

Just have confidence that you can create and effectively carry through with solutions to challenges.

You’re on your way to becoming more confident and more creative when you understand that ideas often seem ridiculous at first, that failure is a learning experience, and nothing is impossible.


5. Discouragement from others

Most people will not see things as you do.

You may be all excited about some new venture you’re considering and they say you need to be sensible or they subtly imply that it won’t work.

Ignore them and once you’re successful, they’ll have to reckon with you.


6. Information overload

Over analyzing and cramming so much information into your brain before actually starting a project can cause you to lose the ability to act. You have to know when to stop collecting information, for that article, and start writing.


7. False limitations

Don’t become trapped by false limitations, self-imposed products of your experience. Be open to new things.

Step outside your comfort zone and explore something unrelated to what you do. Consider how people in those areas do what they do. You may find something that seems impossible today doable in the future.



How do You Regain Creativity?

Now that you know what may be holding you back, there are several things you can do to free your natural creative abilities:


1. Establish routines

Plan your necessary daily activities so you can have free time for creative ideas to show up and proper space to develop them.


2. Rest your mind

Block out the noise in your brain with scheduled time for daydreaming.


3. Move around

To create space for mental clarity you can walk, jog, run, etc. each day.


4. Complete mini projects

For practice in completing goals that require long-term commitment, perform a small task each day so that at the end of the week you’ve finished a project.


5. Take steps that help you achieve your long-term goal

Break down your long-term goal into a list of manageable tasks for each day, and check off one daily no matter how small. Don’t do more.

This is about sticking with a large project, rather than doing a lot of tasks fast and suffering burnout or losing interest.

You want to get into the habit of taking steps that help you achieve your ultimate creative goal.


6. Relax

Do something every day that you love. Spend 10 minutes daily doing just that and focusing on the good feeling you get.

You’re more likely to get new ideas when you feel relaxed.


7. Play around with your thoughts

Don’t always accept thoughts as truth. Think of the opposite as being true. If you’re worried that a situation may not go as planned, see the possibility of it going smoothly. Envision how you want it to go.

Playing around with your thoughts allows more creative solutions to arise.


Remember, creativity is not something that is bestowed upon only a few individuals. People learn bad habits that are mental blocks to creative thinking, and there are ways to regain your creativity.

These are just a few suggestions to increase creativity in your writing.



Your Autoresponder and More

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.

On the web most of the entries in an average comments section are spam. Akismet is a tool that filters out comment spam for you. Comment spam can have a negative impact on your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.


Do blog comments still matter or help in any way?

You might think that, with so many social media platforms available to discuss pieces of content, blog comments no longer matter. That depends on your goals.

Many businesses with a large following see no need for blog comments as social media allows them to interact with more people.

However, if you’re a small business just getting started online and only now taking steps to grow a social media following, having a comments section on your blog can prove to be beneficial to your business.

Top brands often benefit by commenting on blog topics. You may not realize this because you don’t see influencers’ names in the comment sections of popular industry blogs.

That’s because they outsource the task. They hire virtual assistants and other freelance writers to write useful comments on recent blog posts.



How do you write good comments that people will notice?

Blog comments are still powerful, if you write high-quality, genuinely-good comments worth noting. They can still get you noticed by popular bloggers and influencers.


Writing a good comment requires:


#1 Letting People See the real You

Don’t use an animal or a generic faceless silhouette. Show you and all your pearly whites with a smile.

If your message is flagged as spammy, a gravatar gives you an increased chance the blog owner will approve your new comment.



#2 Using Your Real Name

Don’t use a fake name or a nickname that your friends and family use or any other name. And don’t use a fake or inactive email address. That will break the communication avenue between the commenter and author.



#3 Not Embedding Links in Your Comments

WordPress, Disqus, and other commenting systems view these links as spam. They come across as sales pitches, a cheap attempt to sell something. The blogger will feel no inclination to view it.



#4 Reading the Post Before Commenting

Although it takes time, reading a post thoroughly before commenting is a must. You don’t want your response to be inappropriate or silly.



#5 Not Having a One-Sided Long Conversation

Long-winded blog comments are not better than short ones. They’re just boring.



#6 Not Being a Parrot

Do not repeat what you’ve just read. Your comments need to offer some insight.



More Pointers:

A) Include a friendly greeting using the author’s name, spelled correctly.

B) Offer a compliment about the post, something about why you chose to be on this blog. Be sincere.

C) Do something that makes you appear valuable to the blogger you’re aiming to entice— anything that establishes you as a person worth knowing and helps develop a personal relationship.

D) Let the blogger know you’re interested in a longer-term relationship. Make a promise at the end, like telling the author you’re going to share the post on your favorite social media platform.

Be sure to do what you promise. When you share the post on your favorite social media platform, be sure to tag the blogger — let them know you followed through.

Show some personality. You can craft your comments like you’re writing an email to a friend.



Good comments alone won’t launch you to world domination, although they’re effective and often overlooked, now that so many bloggers think they’re extinct.

Good comments can get influential bloggers’ attention.



So, you can still use blog comments to benefit your online marketing and SEO and get more traffic to your site when utilized properly. However, not every comment will drive traction and credibility for your site and brand.

You cannot use blog commenting to build backlinks.



Hosting and More

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.

What is Link Building?

According to Wikipedia, “Link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks (usually called links) to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results.”



How Important are Links?

Link building for your online marketing is very important.

Before, Google search engines ranked their search results 100% based on the content on a webpage. Things changed with Google’s PageRank Algorithm which looked at how many people linked to a page.

Backlinks still remain the best way of determining the quality of a webpage. That’s why they’re still Google’s go-to ranking indicator.

With more updates Google’s focus is not just on quantity but also linkquality.


Page Authority

The authority of the page linking to you matters most. Links from authoritative pages pass more PageRank to your site. Google doesn’t share PageRank information publicly, although it’s the foundation of their algorithm.


Relevancy

When it comes to links page authority matters as well as relevance.

For example, if you operate a website all about photography and you get a link from an authoritative site about sports, that link won’t really count.

Generally speaking, you want to get links from authority sites that are closely related to your site.


Position

Your link’s position on a page is very important. If it’s embedded in a section of content, you get more notice. Don’t place it in a footer or sidebar where it counts for very little.

You want to place your links in the main body of the page. They should be “editorially placed,” where someone clicks it because they think your site is amazing, not in a profile you created on a random site in which you dropped a link.

These unnatural links can be considered a violation of Google’s guidelines.


Anchor Text

The clickable text section of a link is known as the anchor text. Anchor text needs to be relevant to the topic of the page you’re linking to rather than generic.

Don’t use anchor text excessively as that is considered spammy, just as excessive keyword use (keyword stuffing) is spammy.

A spammy anchor text is a link with an anchor text that has no relationship to the page on which it exists or the page it is linking to.

For natural anchor text links to your website, create beneficial content and the links and anchor text should come naturally.

You don’t want to be penalized.


Guest Posts

Be careful of guest posts. They can be spammy if:

Someone is paid to publish the post
The post contains exact match anchor text
The site exists solely to publish guest posts
The site is unrelated to yours

But, if you publish an awesome guest post on an authoritative, relevant site, that link CAN help your rank.


Nofollow vs. Dofollow

Both types help boost your SEO for search engine rankings because you get lots of clicks from many different sources. For instance, social media.

Nofollow links may not build you as much SEO juice as dofollow links, but they still drive traffic and build your SEO.

After all, your end goal is to drive leads, traffic, conversions, and revenue. SEO just happens to be one of the best ways to accomplish these goals.


Hosting and More