How A Themed Promotion Can Boost Your Sales

Any special promotions can help you drive sales, especially those sitting on the fence as to whether or not to buy from you. However, offering seasonal or holiday themed promotions can help even more, as prospects not only immediately understand that it’s a limited time deal for a good reason, but you’ll also hit them up during a peak buying period.

For example, the vast majority of people are probably already buying lots of stuff over Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Black Friday, etc., so you can ride that wave while they already have their credit cards out, while also standing out amongst the crowd of competitors by having something that they perceive as a special deal.  

Similar to other promotions, it’s often best to have these be very limited time deals (even if you bring them back multiple times) so prospects don’t have the opportunity to sit on the fence too long. Three or so days is often the perfect amount of time to offer a special promotional deal, as long as you give them many reminders along the way.  For instance, if you have an email list and are offering a three day special promotional offer, we recommend mailing once on day 1, twice on day 2, and three times on day 3. Using this method will get you a lot of sales on that last day, especially during the last hours when they know there’s no time left!

One observation that we’ve had over the years, which many business owners seem to ignore or be unaware of, is that even “after the holiday” sales can be huge, especially for big holidays when people are often still at home, bored, and looking to buy or do something. We’ve run several webinars and special deals right after Christmas when most marketers in our niche were afraid to schedule anything then, yet that period of time would often get some of the highest amount of sales and webinar attendance. Don’t assume that everyone is out visiting with friends and family. Some (okay … maybe all???) are looking for a break or just aren’t traveling then, so it can be the perfect time to run a special offer or schedule a special event!

During holidays, different seasons, or any other special time of the year, it’s a good idea to create themed promotions with special offers to not only drive extra sales, but to also stand out from the rest of the competition during high sales periods.

For other marketing tricks to help increase your sales, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

What Should Be In A Good Blog Post And Why

It would not be wrong to say that people’s interest in blogging has hit the highest point in recent years. Some people believe that blogs are dying, but more accurate they're evolving. Make no mistake, blogs are here to stay, but they're more competitive than ever. With social media, freelancing, and SEO becoming widely used around the world, the trend of blogging has dramatically increased in recent times. Millions of blogs are being written on a daily basis, but there are some basic tips and techniques which should be implemented in every excellent and engaging blog post you write.

Captivating Title and Headline

Many writers tend to ignore the fact that a good blog post is always about just one idea. There is no need to add numerous ideas and topics in a single blog post because the primary purpose of a post is to discuss and elaborate on one idea. A good title is the one that captures the readers’ attention at the very first glance and briefly describes the content of the post. It should be based on the pattern of an engaging magazine headline or a newsflash that attracts the user and forces them to click the link.

You should take time in crafting a fantastic headline for your post because it will be the first item that any readers see, and if it is not catchy enough for the user, you may lose a potential reader.

An Engaging Opening Paragraph

The importance of the first impression of a user cannot be understated. A large amount of data is available on the web that will support this. With all the content out there, it has become much more challenging to hold readers' attention. No one's going to read for an extended period of time, unless the content is unique and engaging.

An opening paragraph of a blog post is crucial to keep your reader interested in your writing. Blog posts should always start with something interesting like an amazing quote, a thought-provoking question, or a bold statement.

Targeted Audience

A good blog post is the one which targets a specific audience, depending on the topic and relevance of the post. In order to write a good post, you should know who your audience is and what they are searching for. Targeting an audience is vital to make sure your content reaches the right kind of readers who are interested in the category on which the post is written. A post that's targeted is more effective in attracting more traffic to your blog as well as keeping the readers glued.

Many blogs become successful by smartly guessing the demands and interest of their audience; however, it should be done in a professional way. Consider using different tools available on the internet to determine the requests your readers might make. Some of these tools might include Twitter Advanced Search, Keyword Tools. SEMrush, and many others.

Unique and Interesting Content

Excellent blog posts not only manage to capture the reader's attention through engaging headlines and opening sentences but also maintain interest throughout the post. The content of any blog post should be exciting and unique. Make sure the reader isn't bored and reads the the entirety of your content. Any point or opinion discussed in the post should be supported by some evidence or logic to present your thoughts clearly to the readers. High authority, trustworthy links are great when possible. Clear, comprehensive, and unambiguous writing always attracts the readers and keeps them involved.

Using Subheadings And Smaller Paragraphs

A well-presentable blog post is essential to make it easily readable for the users. Majority of the people skim through a blog post before deciding to read it, so it is important to format the blog posts properly. It can be done by dividing a post into several headings and subheadings with small paragraphs to clearly indicate the topic of each section.

Using bullet points and numbering can be done to make it easy on the reader’s eyes and keep them engaged throughout the article. Design, style, and format of the blog should be selected appropriately according to the type of blog.

Some the tips in using bullet points are:

• Treat the bullets as small headings to write concise and clear points.
• The bullets should be symmetrically formatted.
• Avoid excessive bullet points

Images

Visual content is the tried and tested method of immediately capturing the user’s attention. Captivating pictures can boost the traffic of your blog quickly and easily. You should take or design your own unique images for the blog. If you can't find or design original images yourself, there are numerous online free resources available to get the photos for your content. Consider programs like Canva, websites like Pexels, Morguefile, and Pixabay for open-sourced, copyright free photos.

SEO Optimization

SEO is an essential part of any kind of online content, including blogs. Organic searches are a huge part of the traffic blogs will see. Your content must follow the SEO best practices and the media used in your website is SEO optimized for higher ranking on the search engine result pages.

Some of the tips of optimizing a blog post are:

• Write an appropriate meta title
• The meta description should be added to clearly describe the post
• Focus keywords should be used
• Images and video should be optimized.
• Using internal links for optimization.

If you need any help in setting up a blog and writing good and captivating blog posts, you should considered Robot Author for further help with streamlining the process of creating great online content for your blog.

How To Optimize Your Content For On-Page SEO

Search engines remain one of the most common tools users are utilizing to find things online, Google of course being the most prominent among them. Search engine optimization is therefore key and making your site visible and getting your content on more eyes. You need traffic to build an audience, and an audience to build conversions. That starts with search engine optimization. There are different types of search engine optimization including off-page and on-page, and the rules vary a little by search engine.

For the sake of this post we will focus on practical ways you can create your written content in a way that optimizes your on-page content for Google.

Choosing Your Keyword

The first step in optimizing any content you write is going to be choosing your “keyword” the keyword is the main word in your text, which you want to stick out to search engines. In other words you want to try and think of a keyword that users searching for what your page has to offer, would type into a search engine. You then must attach that keyword to engaging and relevant content to draw people in.

It's important the keyword is related to the content, makes sense, and provides useful and accurate information, don't use “click-bait” and other deceitful tactics or Google, along with your users, may view you as untrustworthy.

In general, you should try to use “long tail” keywords, or keywords that are written as common phrases or terms people might input into a search engine, that usually consists of four words or more. Before you choose a keyword you'll want to do keyword research. Keyword research involves finding a keyword that is relevant to the content you want to promote, is a popularly used search term, and is easy to rank against the competition. You can use Google keyword research tool or a an automated programs like Web Fire which also tells you how you rank against the competition for your chosen keywords.

Headings, Subheadings, and Plain Text

All of your titles and subtitles should try to include your keyword. Most importantly it should be included in your main heading, and as many subheadings as you can. Your keyword also needs to be incorporated naturally and somewhat frequently (but not too frequently) throughout the body of your main texts. You need to use the keyword as much as you can but essentially without seeming like you're trying to. Because google may penalize you for “keyword” stuffing you don't want to overdo it. In the old days SEO experts used to tell to put the keyword in every paragraph and every sentence that you could, but this is no longer the case.

Many experts recommend a keyword density of 1% or 2% of your entire text bodies, but others say there's really no real rule of thumb.

Images and Alt Text

All content should contain imagery, it makes a post more engaging and for many it just feels more accurate when there's picture in front us to support the text. Relevant images are very important in search engine optimization as well. The “alt text” for instance should be considered. The alt text of in image is simply that let little text caption that pops up whenever you hover your mouse over an imagine.

The alt text of an image plays a role in search engine placement as well and should include the keyword you want to optimize.

Links for Trust and Click-Through

For the sake of search engine optimization every post should have links. There's just something about them that make a page more appealing visually, but they also boost your search engine ranking. Every post, if possible, you should include at least two or three linked references to high authority websites to establish trust.

As you develop more content on your page you'll also want to create links to that as well. Try writing your content in a way that may loosely relate to something you've produced before, and include a link to it. Whenever possible try to get at least two or three links on your page to content you've produced before, as long as its loosely similar subject matter to your current post.

Using Optimized Tools

Optimizing content for SEO is anything but easy. Many times the devil is in the details and it's a lot to remember, but you should get the hang of things in time as you learn more and more. Luckily, there is an easier way. You can also create original, already optimized content using automated programs like Robot Author to save you the time and headache.

Understanding the Importance of Schema

1: What is Schema?

Schema is best described as a type of language and coding system. It helps organize the data and shows more relevant results in search engines for the end user. This system began in 2011 and has widely been supported and used by several search engines like Yandex, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google as an attempt to bring more pin-pointed results to their users.

Schema is often referred to as a markup system that is used to optimized websites. Essentially, it paves the way for search engines to interpret information and show the most relevant results.

Now, if you think that Schema doesn't apply perfectly to your website, you couldn't be more wrong. Schema can offer a variety of features that you perfectly image and optimize to your advantage.

The most surprising thing about schema is that it collects and displays every meager detail about the data you have questions about. For example, if you search for a specific hotel in your area on the Google search engine, you'll see every detail, including opening and closing times, availability, amenities, along with other relevent information that the hotel has for its customers on the Google search page.

2: What Is a Schema in Psychology?

The term Schema was coined by a psychologist named Jean Piaget in 1923, which means a plan or a scheme. He defined Schema as a structured knowledge of a person about affairs, entities, places, and people. Schema is more or less a map or blueprint that allows us to learn and gain knowledge more effectively. It helps people gain new knowledge on new subjects with greater ease.

As you build on the knowledge of people, places, entities, and events, things begin to make sense as we build a foundation with something similar to schema. In other words schema is a way to make things easier to learn by continually building on foundational knowledge. Consider your cellphone for instance. You know how to use the smartphone you have now because it follows a similar frame work to older models you had in the best. Once you have the frame work in place it becomes easier to build on that knowledge over time as cellphones became more complicated the new technology was easier to learn.

Schema is learning and the psychology could be best described as the building of knowledge through time and experience. Each experience we have prepares us for the next one, and incorporates more information into your schema.

When setting up your schema for your website you are assisting the end user in obtaining informative results about your website.

3: what’s the importance of Schema?

1: A website's schema clarifies to the search engine what you business is all about. Schema markups used by the websites are more visible and engaging than those without markups. And also makes the page eye-catching and informative with relevant snippets and images.

2: Schema markup assists you in the management of your business brand, when you change your brand name or add contact information like name, phone number, address, etc. it will let the search engines know and update accordingly.

3: If you are using a Schema markup to optimize a website, the search engine will recognize your business and will help the users by providing them the most relevant result for their search.

4: Schema markup optimizes the website and contributes to the rank of a website among top competitors. It also provides additional support to the users, which allows them to decide whether a website has what they want or not.

4: How does Schema affect Search Engine Optimization?

The use of the schema technique for SEO has countless benefits. It is important to use it on a perfectly tailored data structure within the efficiently formulated website that contains unique content. It takes the way your content is indexed and relays it to the end user in a way that is most helpful to them. When carried out the right way, you'll see an increase in traffic and user engagement. Schema markup constitutes a good chance to get your website ranked higher than those of your competitors.

5: WebFire:

So how do you create your own schema? It can be complicated when trying to set it up from scratch, however, you can make setting up a Schema easy! Shawn Casey and Brian Koz are two of the top internet marketers online today. After spending over $100k, they developed the most powerful SEO tool on the web known as Web Fire which is comprised of 22 SEO tools developed to optimize and rank your website. One of these tools walks you through the entire set up of a schema for your website. Take all the guess work out and get started today creating your schema today. Web Fire

How Affiliate Programs Are A Great Way To Bring In More Sales With Less Effort

Want a way to make sales without paying for any ads and with zero risk of losing money in doing so? The obvious answer is a big YES, but very few business owners take advantage of running their own affiliate programs, which can do exactly that!

Affiliate programs are where you offer others a cut of any sale that they send your way. When this is done online, there’s traditionally special “affiliate links” that they get from you. When they send people through those links that later buy from your site, they’d get credited for and paid a percentage of the sale. You can do a similar concept offline just by letting others refer your prospects directly (and manually crediting them), or even by handing out special “unique” coupon codes to others to hand out to their prospects so you know where they came from. This could be a special coupon that you hand out, with a code or ID on it, so you know where it came from. Regardless, in either case you only pay them after a sale is made, which makes it virtually risk free for you.

If you go the online route, there’s various places you can sign-up to, in order to have your offers on their networks, like Clickbank.com, Amazon.com (which is great to sell on just by itself), CJ.com, etc., as they can instantly let affiliates sign-up for and start promoting your offers. Alternatively, there’s also private affiliate programs/scripts out there that you can get free or for fairly cheap to run your own affiliate program without the need for another network.

Regardless of which route you go, don’t expect to magically get lots of affiliates signing up and promoting your offer without you raising a finger. It can take some work to reach out and recruit these affiliates to get them promoting you. It’s best to reach out to those who you can also help in return first, as well as to make sure that you truly have a great converting offer with good payouts to make your offer attractive to these affiliates.

So consider creating an affiliate program and recruiting affiliates to help promote your offers at little to no risk to you. Make sure that you have attractive offers and payouts, and that you proactively reach out to the best affiliate prospects out there.

Liked this strategy? For more tips to increase your sales, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How To Position Your Offer To Increase Sales

In many cases it can be a wise idea to offer multiple similar packages when selling something. However, instead of offering drastically different offerings, which might make your prospects hesitate more due to not being sure which option to get, you can offer similar options where the “value buy” seems like an amazing deal.

For example, let’s say that you’re selling an SEO service to help websites rank better. If your main offer is a done for you package for $997 where you fix up their site and offer some basic consultations for them too, that can normally seem like a lot of money to some people and can make them hesitate more on if they should buy or not. However, you could offer three options where the “basic” package is for $897 and only includes a report where you identify the issues but don’t fix it for them, the “most popular” package is for $997 and includes identifying and fixing all the issues on top of three free consultation calls, and the “elite” package is for $1,997 and includes everything in the most popular package but also includes unlimited consultation calls for a month.

What this does is that almost everyone thinks that the middle, “most popular” package is the best deal. It’s only a little more than the basic package, but it includes a TON of extra value. Whereas the “elite” package is twice the price but only has some extra consultation calls that most people think they’ll never use. All of a sudden people perceive the $997 option as being cheap and a great deal! The other options aren’t meant to necessarily get sales. They’re simply meant to help make your main offer stand out more.

And by literally writing something like Basic Package, Most Popular, and Elite Package next to the options, you can help them differentiate between them even more and gravitate towards the Most Popular one.

You just have to be crystal clear with them (in bold colors and / or graphics) what the best or most popular options are, and really make it seem like it’d be dumb not to go with the offer you want them to take.

This also has the added benefit of making your “most popular” or “best” option seem cheap when it’s only a bit more than your basic package. If you didn’t have your basic package, they might think that your offer is expensive, but when they see it as being only a tinge more than the basic, their mindset changes from “that’s too expensive!” to “that’s only a bit more than this basic offering here … what a deal!”

So consider offering multiple packages like a Basic, Most Popular, and Elite Package where the value of the Most Popular one seems huge in order to make more people gravitate towards it and see it as a crazy good deal.

For more great marketing and positioning tips to increase your sales, check out this book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How Creating A Sense of Urgency Can Help Improve Sales: Reducing/Offering Free Shipping Within A Certain Time Frame

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now.

For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop up on your website or the first thing your customer sees.

So consider, for a limited time, offering reduced or free shipping on your products. The limited time frame creates a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to purchase now, as opposed to at a later date, and encourages customers who may have been on the fence to make the purchase.

For more tips on boosting sales within your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.