Month: January 2023

Digital marketing is becoming more and more competitive.

According to Census Bureau’s data, almost 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2021, which is a 53% increase from 2019.

Hit by global lockdowns and deprived of most traditional means of attracting customers, most of those businesses turned to the Internet in an effort to build traffic and sales.

This resulted in a higher than ever digital marketing competition.

How can a small business compete with that?

How can you generate sales from your small business website in this competitive environment? 

Here are some solid ways to do that.

1. Formulate a Plan

Successful planners often make successful entrepreneurs, laying out detailed (yet actionable) goals every step of the way. The fact of the matter is that if you have numbers you want to hit, you’ll be much more likely to have them in mind and aim to reach them constantly. 

Write them down and keep them somewhere so you can continually reference them throughout the year.

Create a Sales Plan

A sales plan is designed to outline your goals, tactics, audience, and potential hurdles. After laying out a sales plan, you’ll come away with concrete, measurable goals, including revenue targets and deadlines for hitting each metric. 

You’ll also spend time identifying your target audience, which will be crucial for success in marketing. Creating a sales plan is a necessary first step in meeting your overall business goals.

Create a Prospecting Plan

Think of your prospecting strategy as a guidebook for your sales team (even if your sales team is just you). It should cover all of your preferred sales methodologies, as well as information on who to target. 

Ask yourself which form of selling most closely aligns with your business and its goals, from cold-calling to trade shows, to a 100-percent-digital strategy.

2. Market Your Business

Building a good marketing strategy really comes down to two crucial factors: 

• Understanding your audience 
• Getting your product or service in front of your target audience. 

Anything you can do to gather information on your target demographic and then to effectively, affordably market to them will get you ahead in marketing.

Leverage 360-Degree Digital Marketing

Depending on the type of business you operate, you can probably get away with a fully digital marketing strategy. Focus on the most affordable methods first, such as building out your social media  and local business profiles. 

Social media is the best option for connecting with current, and future, customers. Consider pay-per-click and performance-based marketing options, such as affiliate marketing. This will help you get your product or service in front of a bigger audience for a much lower up-front spend.

Become A Certified E-Commerce Marketing Master

The Industry’s Most…

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From $5 logo designs to websites like Canva to artificial intelligence is there still a future in graphic design?

Is Artificial Intelligence Taking Over the Design Industry? 

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing the landscape of the design industry as we know it. Many creatives believe that it’s just the beginning of the end for designers, and that mindset of resistance to this technology will leave you in the dust if you are slow to adapt. 

For over a decade stock websites have been giving creatives a shortcut to the creative process, eliminating hours and hours of creating basic design elements like photos, videos, and illustrations from scratch.

Yet you never hear anyone talking about how stock websites are ruining the design industry, so why is that? 

The truth many of us hate to admit is that time is the most valuable thing that we possess as human beings; it’s a finite and limited resource that we can’t create more of.

Here’s a great example: Imagine if you had to create every font, photo, or illustration from scratch- would you charge your client more money and would the quality of your design improve?

The answer is clearly no, based on the fact that millions of dollars are being generated by creatives just in the stock graphics niche alone. So, why should AI be any different? 

I’m not here to debate the morals and ethics of AI- I want to talk about facts and how we can use AI as a tool to streamline the design process, save ourselves time, and give our clients the best end result possible.

The people that adopt this technology first and use it properly will become “pioneers” in the design industry, using a technology that will only continue to grow and evolve in good and bad ways whether we like it or not. 

Those of you who stay rooted in your limiting beliefs about AI being bad for the design industry will stay exactly where you are now or even worse, move backwards.

Like the famous quote by William S. Burroughs says “When you stop growing you start dying.” I’m not saying that it’s not going to be uncomfortable but change never is and you either adapt and evolve or you resist and regress. 

Breaking the Time Barrier 

When I started my career as a rookie graphic designer in 2005 we did not have stock graphics like we have access to now.

In fact, the only thing we did have was clip art and it was terrible! I was designing on MS paint because there was no way I was going to be able to afford an iMac. Everything I designed was from scratch and my idea of stock images was Google…

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