5 Incredible Reasons You Need to Market on Pinterest

Pinterest may not be as popular as Facebook or Instagram, but it still has a lot of potential for any company that wishes to get their brand name out there. Pinterest is an incredibly unique platform that can boost your marketing efforts like never before. Here are 5 facts compiled from all over the internet that will convince you to market on Pinterest.

Pinterest is incredibly popular

Pinterest’s popularity has been steadily increasing and it now represents a nearly unstoppable force that eclipses other social media websites. Data from Pew Research Center found that, in 2016, 26% of U.S. adults use Pinterest which puts it behind Facebook (68%) and Instagram (28%), but ahead of LinkedIn (25%) and Twitter (21%).

Pinterest claims that it has 150 million monthly active users with 70 million of them from the U.S. and 80 million of them from outside the U.S.

Pinterest is great for sales

A Shopify study found that people who are referred through products via Pinterest are 10% more likely to make purchases compared to those referred from Facebook or Twitter. Furthermore, the average Pinterest order is $80, which is higher than that of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and several other websites. However, Rich Relevance placed the average order value per session even higher at a whopping $199.16, which easily triumphs over the average orders of $92.27 from Facebook and the measly $58.02 from Twitter.

Additionally, a study from BlogHer found that 53% of BlogHer readers and 47% of U.S. consumers have bought an item based on a recommendation from Pinterest.

Pinterest users have a lot of money to spend

Why are Pinterest orders so high? Perhaps it’s because many people who use the social media app have very high incomes.

The average Pinterest user is 40 years old and half of them make at least $50K a year. Ten percent of households that use Pinterest make over $125K a year. Clearly, there is a lot of incentive for marketers who want to appeal to potential buyers.

People use Pinterest to decide what to buy

If there’s anything that would convince you to sell on Pinterest, it would have to be these statistics:

• 96% of active pinners use the site to gather information and conduct research.
• 93% of active pinners use the app to plan purchases.
• 87% of active pinners have bought something because of Pinterest.
• 72% of active pinners use Pinterest to decide what to purchase offline.
• 39% of active pinners use it to find out information about new products.

A study from Millward Brown Digital found that active pinners said that Pinterest helps them decide what to buy in these categories:

• 79% – Food and Ingredients
• 60% – Home Décor
• 53% – Clothing and Accessories
• 51% – Hair and Beauty
• 47% – Health and Fitness

What does all this mean? People use Pinterest because they are looking for something to buy. It’s like a social media version of a shopping network.

Pinterest is great for marketing towards women

A surprising 81% of pinners are women and the average female user will make 158 pins. Data from the Pew Research Centre found that only 15% of U.S. adult men use Pinterest compared to the 38% of adult U.S. women that use the platform.

Pinterest might be one of the few social media platforms where women dominate making it ideal for beauty and fashion brands. Instagram is also very popular among women, which may suggest that image-based content marketing is great for appealing for a female audience.

Furthermore, data from BlogHer found that 81% of women trust information they read on Pinterest compared to the mere 73% of women that trust Twitter and 67% of women that trust Facebook.

Pinterest is one of the most exciting platforms to reach new audience members and drive sales. Get started by creating a Pinterest account, tracking metrics, and watch the sales roll in. And, if you’d like more access to invaluable online marketing strategies, check out my done-for-you system.

Amazing tool to take payments online without a website

Stuck on how you can take payment for your products? Check out this short video from Owen Video and discover an amazing tool that allows you to easily take online payment.

Repeat Business: How to Get Them to Buy Over and Over Again

Who are the best customers to have?  Ones that come back repeatedly, of course.  Todd Falcone explains here how to get your customers to buy time and time again.

Don't Believe Those Reports You're Hearing About the Death of Social-Media Marketing

It's getting harder to get anybody's attention. That's why you can't afford to stop trying

Is social media marketing really dead? That’s one question business owners, marketers and leaders are currently struggling to answer. According to recent reports, social media platforms are losing their momentum, with the likes of Snapchat losing subscribers and Twitter losing the conversation appeal. This, in turn, is affecting the impact social media marketing has on business.

In a study of B2B buyers, only 19 percent of those surveyed said that social media played an important role in their discovery process. This report, among others from industry influencers, has sparked a new concern about the future of social media in business. But don’t be alarmed.

In reality, social media isn’t dead. In fact, it’s not dying anytime soon. It is very much alive and remains an effective tool for marketing your products and services. This is why 78 percent of companies have dedicated entire teams to social media and others have reported more than a 700 percent increase in social media sales from their efforts on social media.

If you are thinking of boycotting social media in your marketing efforts, think again.

1. When used right, social media helps reach a wider audience.

It’s undeniable the way we use social media today isn’t the way we used it a few years ago. Due to the fast advancement of technology, more people are now online, and the amount of information available is enormous. Users, bombarded with a never-ending flow of information on different social platforms, can only read a fraction of it.

As a business owner, you have a challenge to reach your audience in the midst of all this information. To succeed, you need to:

• Know where your readers like to hang out
• Understand the type of content they like
• Strategically plan your content based on that information

It’s the only way you can guarantee readership and an increase in customer base. That’s why a company like TED, known for its TED Talks, is winning on social media. The company has managed to leverage its content by turning those long videos into short, easily shareable viral videos. They found their winning formula because they understood what their users were looking for.

2. It is only a promotional channel, not the end game.

To understand why you shouldn’t give up on social media, you need to understand how it works today. Some time ago, a business could easily go on social media to sell its products and services directly to consumers. Today, the landscape has changed.

People no longer appreciate direct sales on social media. They want to be enticed with interesting information or videos before they decide whether or not to buy what you’re selling. That’s why an informational blog post will be shared more times than an advertisement. By posting easily shareable content like videos, images or posts, you will:

• Achieve better online visibility
• Improve your credibility as an expert 
• Increase your customer base

3. Social media provides insights and helps convert leads into customers.

Through the data you are able to gather on different social media platforms, you can better understand the demographics of your followers, their preferences and their thoughts on your brand. This information can help you generate targeted content that will lead to improved readership, an expanded follower base and increased service inquiries -- all of which are good for business.

In addition to providing valuable insights, social media is a great tool for converting leads to customers. When you respond to their concerns or make them feel special in some way, they regard your company as more desirable. They also become more loyal to the brand and are more likely to recommend your products or services to friends.

Through personalized customer service and regular interaction on social media, your business can gain new customers and retain existing ones very easily.

4. Social media helps increase website traffic.

In today’s digital era, the importance of website traffic cannot be overstated. More traffic to your website means more subscribers and more potential customers. You can later convert these subscribers into buyers, increasing sales.

While website traffic can come from different sources, including organic search and links from other websites, social media is a great component of it. When you post clickable content, people share it among their circles, and the cycle can be endless.

At a time when more people are online at one particular time, you can expect increased website traffic from increased social media presence.

Conclusion.

The reality is social media isn’t dead. I’s just changing and requires businesses to adjust accordingly. You have a shorter time than before to reach your audience, communicate your intention and draw them to whatever service you provide.

According to research, only 16 percent of your Facebook followers are able to see your company posts organically. And on Twitter, only 10 percent of your followers can see your tweet when it’s posted. To reach the right users, you need to make sure your content can be found. You can achieve that by sharing the right content at the right time and on the right platform.

The other reality is you cannot beat your competition without social media. Nearly 75 percent of companies using social selling report an increase in sales in 12 months. You do need social media in your business, and so do your users.

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294864

Why You Need To Get Into The Mind Of Your Audience

If you’re looking to drive sales through increased traffic to your website and grow your business, the key determinants of this are your site visitors, your audience. The only way to truly see your marketing efforts pay off is to identify the clients most likely to engage your business, and produce a conversion for your product or service. To get hold of this information, there are a lot of software and programs available to help you collect this valuable data.

Many entrepreneurs spend generously on marketing campaigns to yield good conversion rates for their businesses. Garnering information based on the habits of your potential clients is a solid way to determine if many of your strategies are viable. Using software that can both gather and analyze your data will save you much time, instead of having to do it manually, and will provide you with well needed direction for the implementation of future strategies.

Once you have the data in hand, it’s time to get to work. These programs will provide you with basic information such as gender, age, and location. While these are good metrics to have, they really don’t tell you much, so a more sophisticated program which gives more substantial information relating to their educational background, their social media and general internet habits, and even where they live, gives a more complete picture of your ideal client-the one who will convert for you.

Since audience reach is a big deal, it’s likely that your marketing budget may be quite sizeable. The results of your audience information search will help you to see if you need to pump money into other areas of marketing or if the methods you’re currently using will suffice, or can be utilized in more effective ways.

The money you’ve spent on marketing and advertising is an investment in your business, for which you’d like to see returns. This targeted information will help you to figure out when and where your most likely clients shop and browse, then, you can use directed advertising to appeal to them on those platforms. When you’re clear about your brand and what you want it to say to potential clients, leveraging this along with the information you were previously armed with, will help you reach them in a most effective way and will yield the conversion you seek for your business.

It’s more than likely that you conduct business online as well and have seen pop up ads and other forms of advertising which make you wonder how these sites are able to determine your interests. This is because many of these sites use the same strategies with you, that you’d like to use with your clients, to increase your own profitability. It must be very clear now how this approach makes a lot of sense.

There’s no miraculous way to generate greater website traffic which converts to sales. Using structured and proven approaches which generate meaningful information, like this one, really is a logical way of gauging how to position yourself from a marketing perspective, thus putting you in a prime position to engage with your target audience.

Naturally, you’d love greater insight as to where you can get a hold of a host of internet marketing tips and strategies to increase your conversion rate and grow your business. There’s a tried and proven way for you to do so. Why not check out this done-for-you system, to find out how you can use various methods and find different resources to help you achieve your growth goals for your business?

How to Market Your eBook to Boost Web Traffic

So, you’ve written an eBook and are excited about the prospects of boosting your website traffic and sales. But, what do you do when no one seems to be interested in purchasing your eBook? You need to ensure you’re doing everything you can to properly market your new eBook.

You don’t want your hard work to go to waste. The longer your eBook goes without any purchases, the less effective it will be. Before you upload your eBook to Amazon or begin self-distributing it, make sure you know how to market your eBook.

Create Landing Pages for Your eBook

Create targeted landing pages to entice visitors to want to purchase your eBook. These landing pages should target a specific demographic, which is why you should create more than one. Focus on a demographic and write as if you’re writing directly to your target audience.

Towards the bottom of your landing pages, you should include a call to action that links to an opt-in form. Start building an email list. As the release date for your eBook approaches, you can send your subscribers email updates.

Start Blogging About Your eBook

Along with landing pages, you should use blog posts to help promote your eBook. This is similar to using a landing page to help with marketing. Except, instead of creating website copy, you’re creating an article discussing a topic related to your eBook.

Readers that enjoy your reading and the information that you provide may be interested in learning more about your eBook.

Before you’ve released your eBook, include an opt-in form at the end of your blog posts. After the release of your eBook, link to the location where they can purchase or download your eBook.

Offer Your eBook for Free for a Limited Time

After releasing your eBook, consider giving it away for several days, as part of a promotion. This should provide you with a handful of downloads. These early readers are more likely to leave positive reviews, as they received the eBook for free.

With a handful of good reviews, you’re on the path towards an increasing interest in your eBook. If you decide to release your book through Amazon, you’ll be able to set up a period where your eBook is available for free.

Create a PPC Campaign for Your eBook

Once you’ve released your eBook, use a PPC campaign to help attract more readers. PPC campaigns provide a cost effective solution for marketing your eBook.

Google owns about 67% of the PPC market. But, they’re not your only option for paid advertising. You could also advertise on Facebook or promote your tweets on Twitter.

Add Positive Reviews to Your Landing Pages

Once you start getting positive reviews coming in, include several excerpts on your landing pages. This is similar to adding testimonials to a landing page. It shows visitors that you have something of value.

You should also look for any other beneficial details to include on your landing page. For example, if you happen to make it onto one of the bestseller lists, make sure that you mention this on your landing page. If you have sold thousands of copies, then mention the popularity of your eBooks.

Marketing an eBook is similar to marketing any other product or service. You need to develop your strategy before you release your product or service.

Creating an eBook is an effective way to reach more customers. Use these tips to market your eBook. Get the most out of your eBook and start establishing yourself as a voice of authority in your market. For additional online marketing tips and a lead generation system, be sure to check out my done-for-you system.

Making Genuine, Long-Lasting Connections with Your Customers: A Primer

One of the hardest parts of running your own online marketing business is making genuine connections with your customers. Once you can build trust, you can develop a list of loyal customers who will buy from you again and again.

You can outsource your list building by hiring an inexpensive telemarketing service or by hiring a virtual assistant at one of the freelance hiring websites, such as ODesk, Guru or Elance.

Here you can find lots of skilled, talented people who are willing to do the grunt work of finding leads for you organically for very little money. The best part is you can set a budget for the job you want done and then let prospective contractors bid on the job.

Then you can simply hire the person, give them the parameters of the job you want done, set a deadline and let them go to work. Usually, the freelance hiring site will take care of all the administrative tasks for you, like supervising their work and making sure you get what you paid for.

Where to Buy Leads Safely

If you are going to buy leads, just about the only safe places to buy lists from are reputable solo ad providers.

Buying solo ads is the best way to get around the risks associated with buying lists. That’s because when you buy a list form solo ad from a provider, you already know that the people on that list want to hear about the types of offer you are promoting.

They already know the provider and have agreed to receive their emails, so they aren’t going to mark your emails as spam, in all likelihood. They also probably aren’t going to delete your email out of hand.

Benefits of Ad Swaps

Ad swaps are another legitimate way to accomplish the same objective that you are attempting to achieve with buying lists … namely, getting your sales message in front of an entirely new group of prospective customers who are open to the types of products you are promoting.

Except with solo ad and ad swaps you don’t have to worry about the dark downside that comes with buying lists.

Think about it. Let’s say you have purchased products from an Internet marketer in the past and look forward to receiving emails from that person because they consistently provide you with things you can use … either free information you can use or offers that are of interest to you.

That marketer sells a solo ad to another marketer, so you get an email from them that says, “Hey, check out this internet marketer. They have great products and offers and I highly recommend them.”

The email comes with a link to your squeeze page or an opt-in box right there on the email. Either way, you probably are going to opt-in to that marketer and be open to receiving emails from them. You probably are going to pay attention to their offer and, hopefully, act on it and get something of value.

Contrast that with getting an email from that very same marketer who has purchased our email address from a list clearinghouse. It could be exactly the same offer that you received via the solo ad route … same subject line, same text, same everything.

But in all likelihood you are going to delete that message without reading it simply because it was unsolicited.

Getting People to Trust You

People aren’t going to open your unsolicited emails because there’s just too much risk with computer viruses and other malware these days to open emails from people you don’t know. The last thing anybody wants is for their hard drive to crash.

So instead of buying lists from companies you don’t know, the better option is to buy solo ads from people you trust and who can put you in touch directly with the types of customers who already are going to be open to buying the types of products you are promoting.

Building genuine loyalty bonds with your customers is essential to your long-term success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Common Internet Marketing Mistakes You Probably Already Have Made

Internet marketers tend to be highly predictable. They often make the same mistakes over and over again, especially when they are starting out. How many of these mistakes sound familiar to you?

Don’t Push It

The first mistake most newbie affiliate marketers make is to try to market your products to people who don’t want them. This is why it is important to use “permission lists” only. Permission lists are groups of email addresses of people who have given you their permission … either explicitly or implicitly … for you to send emails promoting your products.

Examples of explicit permission would include lists compiled of people who respond affirmatively to your inquiry, “Can we send you more information about promotions and special offers for our products?” Implicit permission examples would include people who enter their email address on your squeeze page.

When you purchase an email list from somebody else, for example, you are paying for a list of indifferent customers.

If the list is big enough … such as thousands or tens of thousands of addresses … sending promotional emails to everybody on the list probably will result in a very small percentage of responses, possible 1 to 2 percent.

But the cost of reaching that small percentage of potential customers is alienating everybody else on this list by sending them emails they don’t want and can’t use. You risk being considered a “spammer” and dramatically decrease their willingness to consider any product you offer in the future.

Plus, as we have seen, it can get you banned by the big email providers and perhaps even prosecuted and fined for violating the law.

‘Social Media? It’s a Fad!’

The second most common pitfall is ignoring social media. This is actually quite common among established businesses. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn offer some of the best ways to contact specific customer groups.

It also offers the ability to develop strong, interpersonal relationships with potential customers. That’s because these platforms tend to be more personalized and intimate than other more traditional marketing platforms.

For example, assume you have a Facebook page for your business that sells kits for converting your home to solar energy. The only people who are going to “friend” you on Facebook are people who are passionate about renewable energy sources, reducing them home power costs, and saving the environment.

Keeping Connected with Customers

You can nurture these customers by providing links to informative articles on the topic, hosting forums and web chats for people to share their ideas and resources, and even frequently posting pictures and videos about your personal life in order to establish a lasting bond.

Then, when it comes time to promote your specific products, your Facebook friends … or Twitter followers or LinkedIn contacts … will be very open to the idea of purchasing them because they feel as if they have a personal relationship with you.

Social media is often ignored by traditional businesses because they assume it is simply for entertainment purposes, is used primarily by younger people who are less willing to spend money, and takes too much time and attention to properly maintain. All three assumptions are dead wrong.

Facebook and Twitter are now considered one of the most effective ways to reach highly targeted prospective customers.

The average age of Facebook’s users has risen to 34 years old in recent years. And social media sites are simple to set up, fun to maintain, and free to use. Ignoring this growing marketing opportunity is a huge mistake because it is only expected to become more dominant during the coming decade.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Powerful Marketing Techniques For Online Marketers

      Exploring The Best Marketing Techniques To Increase Brand Loyalty

This video gives you an idea about fast, effective but free marketing techniques which will guarantee an increase in brand loyalty from your customers. It touches on video marketing, its different types, as well as blog marketing and how these can help promote any business.

Paid vs Free Traffic The Tell Tale Differences

       What You Need To Know About Paid And Free Traffic

This video gives you an idea about the fast, effective but free marketing techniques which will guarantee an increase in brand loyalty from your customers. It touches on video marketing, its different types, as well as blog marketing and how these can help promote any business.

Conduct Audience Research for Free to Improve Your Marketing

Gaining a better understanding of your target audience can be incredibly beneficial for internet marketing.

It helps you write more effective sales copy, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, blog posts, and find the right content to share on social media. Market research is essential to marketing. But, you don’t have the same budget as a major corporation to conduct extensive research.

Luckily, the internet provides many resources for researching your target audience for free.

Identify Your Target Audience

You first need to know who your target audience is before you can research them. Keep in mind, you may have a variety of demographics that you want to target.

If this is the case, you’ll need to conduct market research for each demographic individually. Also, each of your advertisements and landing pages should be geared toward one key demographic at a time.

Start Following Your Followers

You don’t need to follow every profile that follows you. But, you can start to learn more about your c

Look for followers that are active on social media. You should find people that follow brands and businesses that are in involved in the same niche market.

As you follow these people, you’ll see the types of posts that they share or like. This will give you better insight into the type of information they’re interested in.

Ask Your Target Audience

Of course, the best way to find out what your target audience is interested in is to ask them. There are several ways to ask your target audience about their interests, including:

• Customer surveys
• Social media posts
• Online polls
• Questionnaires

Use these methods to solicit information. You can ask specific questions to learn more about your core audience. Find out what they fear most, what they want from products, what they enjoy doing in their free time, how they spend their time online, and anything else that helps you learn more about them.

Create a Customer Persona

As you learn more about your target audience, you can begin creating a customer persona. This is a detailed set of information about a typical customer.

You should create multiple personas to represent different types of customers. The main criteria to place in this persona includes:

• Age
• Sex
• Location
• Job or profession
• Income level
• Education level
• Hobbies and interests

When you write sales copy or PPC ads, you should use these customer personas.

Open the document where you’ve created your persona and keep it open as you write your copy. Imagine that you’re talking directly to this customer.

Always Ask for Feedback

Feedback is one of the best ways to learn more about how your target audience feels. Ask for their feedback in every email related to a purchase or transaction. This includes confirmations and follow-up emails.

Don’t ignore this feedback. Use it to learn more about the needs of your customers and how you can improve your products or services to better meet their needs.

Another step that you can take is to look at your competition. When in doubt, look at the type of content that they use. For example, if you’re creating a paid advertisement, look at your competitor’s paid ads. If you’re creating a press release, look at the press releases for your competition.

Don’t copy what they do. But, you can use what you find to learn from their research.

Audience research is a necessary step in internet marketing. In addition to these tips, you can find even more advice, and a system for gaining conversion-ready internet prospect each month, by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Burying Bad Reviews with Better Reputation Management

Your online reputation can make or break your chances of success. You need to maintain a positive image, whether you’re selling affiliate products or producing your own items.

When a customer leaves a negative review, it can cause potential prospects to reconsider their decision. You could lose sales due to these negative responses, which is why you need to bury them as quickly as possible.

Typically, you can’t make bad reviews go away. Once they’re posted online, they are there to stay.

But, with better reputation management, you can start to bury these reviews and limit their impact on future business.

Dealing with Negative Responses on Social Media

One of the biggest forums for negative feedback is social media. People love to share their experiences on Twitter and Facebook. You should have an email alert to let you know when someone mentions your brand in a post.

When you notice a negative response on social media, you should respond quickly. A fast response can diffuse the situation and this could be one of the few opportunities that you’ve got to actually remove a negative response.

Respond to the person leaving the negative response by sending them a direct message. Send them a message to find out how you can resolve their issue. If corrective action is taken, and they’re happy with the results, then you can publicly comment on their initial comment.

This public comment shows that you’ve resolved the issue, but it doesn’t include any details of the conversation that you’ve had with the customer.

Dealing with Negative Responses on Review Sites

If the negative response was left on a review site, you probably won’t be able to get the review removed. But, you may be able to keep the customer.

As with the previous tip, you’ll want to respond to these reviews as soon as possible. Always respond in a friendly manner and ask how you can solve their problem. You may need to offer a refund or a discount. But, that’s a small step when it comes to your online reputation.

Encourage Satisfied Customers to Leave Positive Reviews

The next step for burying bad reviews is to encourage your happy customers to leave good reviews. When you send an invoice to a customer, it should include a small thank you, along with a reminder for them to leave their feedback online.

You don’t have to directly ask your customers to leave a good review. But, you can encourage them. You can also leave these reminds on your order confirmation page or contact page.

Make a List of Negative Responses

You should also start compiling a list of negative responses to the products or services that you’re trying to sell. Make notes about the most common complaints.

If you start to see similar feedback from multiple customers, then there could be a problem with the items that you’re selling. These notes will help identify the main issues with your products or services.

If you’re responsible for the development of your products or services, you can use this feedback to improve your offerings. By delivering a better product or services, you can gain more positive reviews and comments.

In the end, the best way to overcome negative reviews to get positive reviews. At the same time, you can attempt to keep your customers happy. Respond to their negative comments in a timely manner. And, remember to encourage your satisfied customers to leave their feedback.

Along with these reputation management suggestions, you can find even more marketing tips and ideas, along with a system for generating conversion-ready internet prospects, by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Marketing Techniques to Target a Local Market

Local marketing requires a slightly different approach than traditional marketing. Though, it offers plenty of benefits. Targeting a local market is similar to niche marketing. You’re narrowing your focus to help increase conversion rates.

As an entrepreneur, you could create separate marketing campaigns, each focusing on a different local market. Here are some of the best resources and methods for this purpose:

• Get listed in online directories
• Create promotions for local customers
• Target local customers with paid ads
• Become active in local social media communities
• Create local events and promote on social media

Get Listed in Online Directories

Each region seems to have their own set of online directories. For example, if you want to target customers in San Francisco, you would search for online directories that list San Francisco businesses or businesses that offer special promotions for San Francisco residents.

Getting listed on these sites is the same as getting listed on any other directory site. You’ll generally need to submit the URL of your landing page to the webmaster of the directory site, along with a little background information.

Some online directories offer free listings, while others charge a fee. If you plan on using a directory that charges a fee, make sure it’s worth the cost.

Use online resources to find out how much traffic the directory site receives. They should be receiving thousands of visitors each day and have a positive PageRank.

Create Promotions for Local Customers

Another option is to create promotions for local customers. When you choose a local market, decide on special offers or deals to give exclusively to the local customers. Not only does this help you target a local market, you establish trust with your customers.

Target Local Customers with Paid Ads

Use paid advertisements to target local customers. Almost every paid advertising channel available includes options for focusing on a specific local market. You can target regions, states, and even cities.

You can even use this solution with some of the other tips. Use the paid local ads to help spread the word about your promotions for local customers or your local events.

Become Active in Local Social Media Communities

Become active in local social media communities. If you take a look through online communities and forums, you’ll find an abundance of local groups. Just make sure that you follow the rules and regulations of the community.

Some communities and groups have restrictions when it comes to self-promotion. If self-promotion is prohibited, you can still use these communities to learn more about the interests and needs of your local market.

Create Local Events and Promote on Social Media

You could also create local events and then promote these events on social media. Facebook provides a simple solution for this method. You can create a Facebook event and then invite your followers to attend.

Even if you don’t use a Facebook event, you can still promote your event through social media. Simply link to your landing page where you discuss your event and share the post on social media. Encourage your followers to share the post with their friends and family.

Targeting a local market isn’t just for local businesses. Entrepreneurs can use these methods the same way that they use niche marketing. In fact, simply think of the local market as another niche that you want to target.

Start using these suggestions to target a local market. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing solutions, along with a method for generating conversion-ready internet marketing prospects each month, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Should You Pay for Leads to Expand Your Customer List?

The common thinking among many Internet marketers is that you are never supposed to buy email lists because the people on that list don’t know you. After all, you don’t know for sure they are open to what you are selling. They may mark you as spam and get you banned from email services.

All those things are true, in general, but there are certain lists that absolutely are worthwhile to buy. So you shouldn’t dismiss buying leads altogether because there is a right way and wrong way to go about it. You just have to be very careful about how you proceed because there are risks.

Most Lists Contain High-Target Customers

You should only buy leads if there is a high probability that they are going to convert. What you don’t want is a list of people that you essentially are going to be cold-calling — via email — because that’s going to be low-converting.

Obviously, the best leads — and the optimal way to reach people — focus primarily on customers who have interacted with you at some point or another, either through your squeeze page or your sales page or your YouTube videos or on social media or what have you.

Those people have already opted-in, so they have in effect given you an implicit permission to contact them. As a result, they are going to be far more likely to open your email and, more importantly, to act on your call to action.

This is a very important point because if people haven’t opted-in to receive your emails, it can be very dangerous for you.

How Much Should You Pay?

Now, you see a lot of companies out there that will sell you thousands of email addresses for $99 and the like. You may be wondering if these are a good option.

It’s a good idea to proceed with caution. If you have done business with the company in the past or the company has been recommended to you by somebody that you trust, then it may be a good idea to consider buying a list from them and trying them out.

Beware of making large scale purchases from companies that you aren’t familiar with because there are a lot of scammers out there on the Web who would be happy to take your money and sell you a list that is filled with either dead addresses or emails they have scraped from other places that aren’t going to do you a lot of good.

Risk vs Reward

Buying lists can be a big expense, so what you have to consider is the value that you are getting for your money. It can be a financial burden and there also are other risks involved.

For example, you can seriously harm your reputation if you buy the wrong list because when you buy a list and contact people who never heard of you before, they can send it to their spam folder.

Whenever they do this, it sends a notification to the email service. If it happens often enough, it can lower your sender score, which can affect your domain’s ability to send emails through that email service in the future — even if they are legitimate emails to people who have asked you to contact them.

Also, if you are marked as spam often enough, every time you send out an email from your website, it may be automatically diverted to the recipient’s spam folder, so they are never going to see it. And that’s a total waste of time and money.

Don’t Get Banned

If enough people mark your unsolicited emails as spam, you will eventually get banned on some of the biggest email providers, such as Yahoo and Gmail.

If that happens, you are going to have to shut down your website and start over with a new one.

That’s not going to put you out of business, but it will delay your efforts to get your business up and running. Plus there will be the additional expense of buying new domains, setting up new pages, re-establishing your autoresponder, not to mention the opportunity costs associated with being offline.

Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to your success. If you’d like to have access to even more powerful marketing tips, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready Internet marketing prospects each month, click here to learn about my done-for-you system.