Every business has costs to bear, regardless of what industry you’re in. When you start a business, you will have to consider various expenses and allocate your budget accordingly. Developing a strong digital marketing strategy should be a key focus of every startup. Digital marketing has become one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness, expand market reach, and promote products and services online. To help you manage your budget effectively, here are two of the biggest digital marketing costs for startups.
Social media marketing
Social media should form a key part of your digital marketing strategy. Recent statistics show that there are around 3.2 billion social media users around the globe. According to assetdigitalcom.com: “54% of browsers use social media to research products and services before they make a purchase.” Social media has soared in popularity over the years and startups should take advantage of this trend to connect with their intended customers and promote their brand online. One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing is that you can set up an account on social channels and post for free. This makes it an excellent marketing option for startups with a small budget. That being said, you can boost the overall effectiveness of your social media marketing by investing in paid ads or hiring a social media manager. Many startups allocate part of their business budget towards social media marketing and see a good return on their investment. If you want to improve your social media approach but don’t have the capital available, then you could consider taking out a payday loan with Cash Lady. This will enable you to make the necessary improvements to your social media strategy to increase sales and profits.
Website marketing
All modern companies need a website to remain competitive in the digital age. Social media can be a highly effective way to market your business online. However, it will be very difficult to establish your brand and develop trust with your customers without a professional website. Keep in mind that your website will be the main channel where users learn about your brand, products, and services. You must therefore make your company site a top priority and focus on driving traffic and increasing conversions. You can use a combination of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content marketing, and other online tactics to form a successful website marketing strategy. You should avoid being too conservative when it comes to budgeting for your company website. Allocate a decent chunk of your startup budget towards developing, maintaining, and promoting a user-friendly site for your startup.
In a nutshell
Digital marketing is a powerful tool that startups can use to grow their business, build brand awareness, and increase their bottom line. Digital marketing can be more affordable than traditional marketing tactics, although there are likely to be some costs involved. You must consider how you are going to market your business online and allocate a budget towards developing a strong digital marketing strategy.
When it comes to web hosting, you will find that there are thousands of options out there, with hosts all over the world offering their services. Some will be large international companies with data servers in different continents, while others will be small independent web hosts who may be renting the servers that they use for the hosting.
The majority of web hosts will have a number of different options available for their hosting, with the most popular option being shared hosting. Others more advanced options include VPS (virtual private server) hosting or a dedicated server.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is what the majority of people who are getting started with websites and hosting will use. As the name implies, shared hosting is where the resources of a server are shared among hundreds, and potentially thousands, of clients, each with their own portion of resources such as disc space, data transfer, CPU usage and various others.
There are a couple of downsides with shared hosting in that there may be instances when other clients on the server are overusing the resources that they have been allocated, which in turn can affect every other user on the server, but these problems are often quickly resolved by the host when spotted. However, if you are using very cheap $1 a month shared hosting, then you should expect such issues to occur more frequently than you’d like.
Many web hosts like the shared hosting option as it is relatively easy for them to set up a server for this, and they can offer this for a much cheaper price when compared to something such as VPS hosting, which is a much more powerful option. You find some excellent comparisons of shared hosting at the Fortune Lords website, which is packed full of useful information and reviews.
Managing your hosting account
One of the most popular control panel systems for managing shared hosting accounts is cPanel. It is a very powerful system and provides you with everything you will need to effectively use your hosting account.
At first glance, you might sign into your hosting account and see the multitude of different sections and options of cPanel and feel a little nervous about how to use it. However, don’t worry. For most users, you will only ever need to use very few of the options in front of you. In this article, we will take a look at the most important features that you need to know to get your websites up and running.
Add-on Domains
The domains section of cPanel is where you add your domain name to the system. Depending on the hosting package that you signed up for, you might be limited to a single or small number of domains. Other packages will offer you the ability to add unlimited domains to the server, which is the best option if you are someone who has a large number of sites to manage.
To add a new domain to the hosting account, simply click on the “add-on domain” option. You will then need to enter the domain name and set the folder location for where the files for the site will reside. The folder for each domain name you add should be inside another folder which is called “public_html”. Sometimes you may actually need to enter this as well as your folder name when adding a site. Other times it might be set to default to that folder.
File Manager
The file manager option is where you have the ability to manage all of the files on your hosting account. If you click on the “file manager” button, a new window should open in which you will see all of your files. For the website files, you will want to navigate to the “public_html” folder.
You can upload files to your site folders through the file manager, but this must be done one at a time. If you have a multitude of files to upload you should either compress everything into a zip or rar file to upload, and then decompress inside the folder, or to use an FTP program, which connects with the server and allows you to upload multiple files at the same time. If you do want to use an FTP program then FileZilla is an excellent choice. It’s a free download that is very powerful and extremely easy to use.
Email Accounts
Once you have your website up and running, you will most likely want to create an email account for the site. Simply click the “email accounts” option, where you will be able to see any existing email accounts, as well as the ability to create a new one.
Simply click on the “new” button to create a new email account. Enter the name for your email, such as info, hello or anything else. Then select which domain name you want the email for. If you have multiple domains added to the hosting account, you simply use the drop down menu to select the one you want.
Then you enter your password – which should be a combination of numbers, letters and capital and lowercase. There is a password generator option that you can use to create an automatic password for you which will be secure. If you want to set up your email account in a program such as Outlook on your computer, then you can click for the email settings details, which will list all the information including the mail servers.
Alternatively, you could use the web based mail that cPanel provides, and log directly into the server to check or send any emails.
You can also set up any forwarders, so that copies of emails can be sent to additional emails, or even create autoresponders, which will automatically send a message any time an email is received.
Some closing thoughts
Hosting your own websites needn’t be something to be troubled or anxious about. There are just a few things you need to be aware of with your hosting package. There are lots of advanced features that you probably won’t ever need, so don’t panic when you open cPanel for the first time and see so many different sections and options.
As mentioned earlier, cPanel is the complete hosting management system, and provides a huge range of features that many power users may need, but for the average user, they probably won’t ever need to click on over 80% of the options on the screen. Of course, if you do have questions or need help, then get in contact with your host. They will be in the best position to assist you and take care of any problems you are facing.
Creating a healthy work environment requires getting to know the people in the office extremely well so that it’s easy to recognize what they like and dislike. Building a healthy environment also means creating the best environment for productivity, and that requires a business to work in an environment that caters to both physical and mental well-being. Luckily, promoting a healthier work environment generally takes very little effort, but the impact it has on productivity levels is significant. Here’s what you need to know.
Prioritize Personal Space
People generally get uncomfortable when they have other people sitting less than a meter away from them. Hearing and seeing their every single move can be rather distracting as well. Cramped up offices generally tend to be much less productive due to the constant feeling of discomfort that employees experience. Offices that prioritize giving their employees some valuable space so that they don’t constantly feel intruded are always healthier and more productive. Spreading out the desks instead of having them cramped up next to each other can help make the workplace a little healthier.
Get To Know One Another
Employees usually feel a lot less comfortable when discussing their ideas with colleagues and superiors who barely know them. Changing that fact by simply asking more questions about their lives, hobbies, likes, and dislikes can make an employee feel a lot more comfortable in participating. Opening up a meeting by asking a few employees about what they regularly do during their free time will help them feel more confident in their work environment.
Incentivize Success
It’s difficult for employees to find any motivation to work harder without having a clear goal in mind. Clarifying what employees can achieve by working hard to create a competitive workplace that exudes a sense of purpose. Failing to incentivize a workplace creates a dull, unproductive environment that no employee wants to be a part of. Distinguishing goals for every employee is necessary to keep them interested and engaged in their position in the workplace.
Encourage & Challenge New Ideas
Having a workplace that’s open to new ideas helps make the environment feel a lot friendlier for the employees, as they’ll feel like their input is useful and desired. Challenging these ideas is a delicate process that needs to occur constructively; otherwise, it will just feel demoralizing. Challenging ideas in the right way also helps refine any concepts that need a little bit of work, while it simultaneously helps employees to think more critically the next time they give an idea.
Offer facilities
When a business helps its employees adopt a healthier lifestyle, it greatly improves their mental health and their attitude towards the workplace. A business can do this by either offering discounts to local gyms, or even offering facilities in the office that help get healthier. Offering facilities like a standing desk can make a huge difference in the life of a 9-5 employee, and if you visit this site, you’ll see that even regular desks can be converted into standing desks with the help of some simple accessories. Standing desks help improve blood circulation greatly and if any of your employees suffer from heart-related issues, they’ll be very grateful to have a standing desk. Providing employees with the tools to achieve a healthier lifestyle is guaranteed to reward a business for its efforts through higher productivity levels in the workplace.
Sprinkle Some Greenery Around
Filling empty corners of an office with some plants tends to have a calming effect on the workforce. Having just the right amount of plants will also improve the air quality of the office without making it feel like a jungle. Plants also light up the office with their color as they seem to pop out and create a more elegant look, which in turn makes the people in the office feel like they’re in a more sophisticated space.
Find Time For One-on-One Conversations
A manager needs to know his/her employees well, and there’s no better way to find out who they are other than to simply ask them. Having a conversation with an employee over lunch or inviting them out for dinner can be a great way to find out who they are, rather than who they appear to be on company ground. Doing this positively affects both the manager and the employee as they both end up establishing a bond that helps them mutually trust one another. This also helps a manager provide detailed feedback towards their employees, which guides them towards the right path to take to improve.
Help People Learn
People will inevitably make mistakes at work, and getting scolded over a small mistake doesn’t help as much as helping the person learn from it. Not holding a mistake over an employee and letting them move past it after having learned from it helps create a much healthier workplace. This will also help other employees feel safer and more confident in their ability to make decisions.
Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
Showing some gratitude towards the workforce can greatly improve everyone’s mood in the office, as they’ll feel appreciated. This can be done by treating the team to some coffee, treating them to some of their favorite local food joints, or simply acknowledging their good work and thanking them for their efforts. These little things light a fire in the hearts of the employees, and they help them work harder and feel closer to everyone else in the office.
Ask For Suggestions
There’s no better way to improve a workplace than asking the people working on it for suggestions on how it can improve. Employees that work in an office know that office better than anyone, and they’ll know what it needs to improve. Asking employees to submit their suggestions for the workplace will help them feel valued and heard, which will result in them feeling better about their time at work.
There are many different ways to make a work environment healthier, but it all comes down to the people at the office. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all method of making a workplace environment healthier so tailoring some ideas to fit a specific workplace is a manager’s best shot at implementing some tips and tricks they stumble on to.
When you have a great idea for a side hustle, the one barrier that may come your way is money. Funding a side hustle that is a mere idea may seem like an impossible task, but there are always ways to get the cash that you need.
Before you can get any money for your side hustle, you need to work out what you need for it. What essentials does your new business have? What do you need? You have to get to the nitty gritty of your new venture and you need to plan it out carefully – from what you want to achieve to how much cash you want to make. If you have debts you want to overcome before you start your business, using the Debt to Success System can help you to get things straightened out. Once you have those business goals mapped out, you can move forward and start hunting down the extra cash you need for it to be successful.
With that in mind, here are four great ways to fund that side hustle of yours!
If you are looking to get some support for your business, trying out crowdfunding is a good place to begin! Not only can you fund your products, but you can get some cash behind the business operational costs, too. If you are trying to bring a new product to the table, you could crowdfund for the ability to do this. Online bloggers could crowdfund for new vlogging equipment or for the ownership of their website to publish their writing. You can choose from many different crowdfunding platforms, too, so you can choose to get as much help as you can!
Business Grants
When you work a side hustle from home, you may think that you wouldn’t be eligible for the grants. The thing is, many side hustles are very eligible for a number of grants that are available through local government. You should always check whether your grant is considered to be taxable, too, before you go for it. You are a side hustle, but you are a legitimate business! Remember that!
Microloans
Small businesses like yours can be eligible for microloans if you know where to look. If you don’t get any grants, then it may be worth looking at how you can borrow some cash to get your creative venture going. You can either approach the bank, or you can hit up your family who support you and see whether they can loan you the cash that you need to get going.
Downsize
If you can make some cuts to your personal budget, do it. You can open up some space for your side hustle, and invest back into your business when you downsize, too. Decluttering the house and selling what you don’t need will also help you, so make sure that you have everything listed in the right places.
Your side hustle could be a winner in your life – you just have to know how to start it right!
These are several SEO chrome extensions that can do wonders for your SEO campaigns. With these extensions, you can check your website’s SEO performance, track your ranking, find keywords, and more.
Moreover, most of these SEO chrome extensions are free, they take up less storage, and they’re more practical to use since they’re already in your browser.
To help you figure out which extensions you should install into your Chrome browser, we gathered 10 free (and reliable) SEO chrome extensions for marketers.
1. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest packs a lot of its features into its Chrome extension. It is a freemium SEO tool that marketers love due to the important SEO data it offers to its users, its intuitiveness, and how it’s free (or priced very affordably).
Every time you search on Google, YouTube, or Amazon, you get actionable SEO metrics right from your search results.
For Google, the extension shows each link’s traffic, domain score, backlinks, and social media engagement.
Meanwhile, using the extension on YouTube gives you keyword suggestions, the number of monthly searches, and CPC for your search terms.
Clicking on the ‘View All’ beside your search bar shows more metrics for your search terms such as your SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and more.
On Amazon, the extension shows the number of monthly searches and CPC.
This information is insanely useful for e-commerce stores who want to rank their products on Amazon.
Overall, the Ubersuggest Chrome extension is a handy tool for optimizing your website and checking on your competitors.
There’s no need to sign up to use the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, but if you want access to more features and data, visit Ubersuggest’s website then sign up for either a free or paid account.
2. Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is an SEO Chrome extension that shows related keywords, search volume, and CPC on over 15 websites.
When you install the extension, there’s no need to sign up or pay. However, free users get limited access to its features.
For Google, the extension shows widgets of a trend chart, related keywords, and ‘people also search for’.
Notice that it also gives each page link’s monthly traffic and the number of keywords on the page.
Meanwhile, free users see search insights and a trend chart.
Clicking on the ‘Detailed Breakdown’ redirects you to a list of the top 20 results along with their channel name, views, and more.
On the other hand, paid users can use the extension on other platforms and see more data such as the CPC, and historical search volume, among others.
Regardless, the free extension is already a useful and convenient tool for quick keyword and competitor research.
3. Tag Assistant
Install Google’s Tag Assistant extension to make sure your Google tags work correctly.
Also, use the extension to change your tags and verify immediately if it works.
Just go through any of your web pages and run the extension. After analyzing your page, it identifies the Google tags and indicates any issues found.
Take note that different colors show the status of each tag:
Gray – No code was found.
Green – No issues were found.
Blue – There are suggestions to improve the tag.
Yellow – Minor issues were found.
Red – Critical issues were found.
Keeping your Google tags functioning will help you record the correct analytics to analyze and improve your SEO.
4. Redirect Path
Redirect Path checks for broken links, server errors, redirects, and more. Overall, the extension ensures that technical issues won’t affect your SEO campaigns.
Just click on the extension, and it immediately shows any redirect issues on your web page.
Once you correct these issues, the icons will change to green.
Use the extension if you are creating a new structure, deleting old content, or consolidating pages.
This extension benefits technical SEO specialists as it finds errors that are difficult to spot.
If you don’t pay attention to these issues, you risk dropping your ranking without knowing why.
You can also see information such as content type, language, and more using the extension.
However, take note that using the extension means checking each page manually. The extension doesn’t offer a full-site audit.
5. Hunter
Find email addresses in seconds using this free Chrome extension.
Use this to know who to contact when reaching out for a guest post, link swap, or other link building campaigns.
You no longer have to spend time looking for a webmaster’s email address and sending emails to inactive addresses.
However, before getting those emails, you need to create an account for the extension to work. Hunter only accepts business emails, so be sure to use your professional email.
Once you’re signed up, you can go to any website and find the email addresses you need. Take note that this doesn’t work on LinkedIn.
Nonetheless, this extension makes it quick and easy for you to contact webmasters and build backlinks.
6. Google PageSpeed Insights
If your page takes longer to load, users will leave your page immediately resulting in increased page bounces.
It does not just affect your conversions, but it also influences your ranking.
Add Google PageSpeed Insights to your extensions to quickly check how long it takes to load your page on desktop and mobile.
It gives a page score and also provides suggestions to load your page faster.
Page speed is crucial in mobile as 60% of search queries come from mobile devices.
Fixing these issues is a small yet necessary step to improving your ranking over time.
Always optimize your pages such as using images with smaller file sizes, reducing redirects, and improving server response time, among others.
7. SEO META in 1 CLICK
The SEO META in 1 CLICK extension shows a page’s meta-data and main SEO information.
It provides an overall summary and more details about your headers, images, links, social, and tools.
Look at the summary page to check your meta-title and meta-description. Is your meta-data complete? Does it follow the recommended character limit?
Use this as a guide to ensure that your pages are completely optimized.
Also, use the tool to check on your competitor’s meta-data and see what keywords they are using to rank.
Moreover, check the images tab to see how many images on your page lack an alt text and image title.
After all, alt and title attributes in images also help search engines crawl your page better.
Overall, these little tweaks contribute to improving your SEO and online visibility.
8. Backlink checker by LRT
Despite its name, this tool extension doesn’t deal with backlinks. Rather, it looks for broken, unverified, follow, no-follow, internal, and external links.
Compared to other link checkers, this backlink checker by LRT allows you to stretch the time delay when requesting links to slow down its analysis.
In this way, you prevent false positives caused by Google’s algorithm updates.
Moreover, you can also directly export these links into a CSV or excel file including other information such as anchor text, HTTP status, and more.
Use this link checker to have a quick but comprehensive look at your pages.
9. Grammarly
Technically, Grammarly is not an SEO tool. However, keep in mind that good content plays a role in creating effective SEO campaigns and improving your ranking.
In SEO, good content not only means inserting the right keywords but also ensuring it’s readable and relevant to your target audience.
With Grammarly, you can check for spelling and grammar errors, improve your tone, and optimize your text for readability.
The extension also allows you to show definitions and synonyms, and choose from American, British, Canadian, or Australian English.
Moreover, the extension works on Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Docs, WordPress, and other text fields which means you can always write good copies at all times.
Use Grammarly to proofread your content and check your meta-data. It’s important that search engines correctly read your descriptions, so it should be free of spelling errors.
10. SERPTrends
SERPTrends is a lightweight SEO Chrome extension that helps track page rankings in search results.
The first time you use the tool, it will not show any dynamics yet.
When you search again on the next day, it will show if the pages ranked up or down in the search results.
Use SERPTrends to monitor your page’s position on specific keywords.
Unlike other extensions on this list, this one is fairly simple and doesn’t give much information.
However, it lets you know that something might be wrong with a page if its position went down. That’s enough reason to scan the page for problems.
The tool is very helpful if you want to maintain your position within the first page of specific search terms.
The extension is available on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Make your SEO fast and easy.
Track your ranking, check on your competitors, and analyze metrics easily — without leaving your browser.
Use these SEO Chrome extensions now to make your life easier and run successful SEO campaigns.
There are several marketing techniques at your disposal, but you might find it challenging when you have to decide on the right one to use when launching your business. Most business people prefer pay per click advertisements to other forms of adverts since the method is associated with several benefits. The strategy will enable you to keep track of your ad campaign; you get to re-target your customers; it’s a cheaper means of advertising, and you get faster results than other forms of advertisement. By embracing the pay per click marketing strategy, you get a chance to advance your business. Here are techniques that you can employ to grow your business with every click.
1. Avoid Excessive Spending
With a pay per click ad campaign, you should be in control of your expenditure. You might feel the urge to overspend on ad campaigns, but take a moment and analyze the results and data. The analysis enables you to identify ads that work, and later on, you can make changes in your budget. Successful people in business who have embraced PPC carefully target and experiment on potential clients, and they often use the keyword search to capture potential clients. You will always get great results for your budget and avoid overspending on PPC ad campaigns.
2. Have a Strong Online Presence
Pay per click will enable you to have a robust online presence in marketing channels such as blog posts and social media platforms. You should consider working on your Search engine optimization techniques to improve your Google rank, and as a result, you should appear more than once when clients search the keywords.
The same applies to social media platforms; you should have a strong brand presence, and you can achieve this by running an effective advert campaign. Running an effective PPC ad campaign can be challenging, and marketing experts at https://www.digitallogic.co/ppc-management/ would advise hiring a PPC management service provider who will get you the performance you’ve always wanted. It would help if you also considered using re-targeting as a means of building a robust online presence, which you can employ along with the PPC ad campaign. Such a strategy would be useful in creating brand awareness when you are on a tight budget.
3. Offer Timely, Relevant and Personalized Content
To increase the potential return on investment on your pay per click adverts, you should consider the journey taken by potential clients when they search for keywords to the content they will get when they land on your blog post or website. To build your business, ensure that the message you post on the website satisfies your clients. Also, consider the gadgets that most clients use and optimize your website such that all clients have access to your content.
4. Develop the Right Keywords
The use of keywords influences the pay per click strategy. However, as a start-up businessman, you might have challenges when identifying the right keywords to use, which will translate to a higher conversion rate. With the right campaign strategy and an experienced team, you will quickly identify the right keywords that potential clients search for. Also, with enough data, you can discover proper ways to convert customers, and you get to run an effective SEO campaign.
5. Settle on Key Performance Indicators
PPC ad campaigns will offer you enough data on market trends that you can use to improve your image or campaign performance. It would help if you decided on a particular key performance indicator that you can use to gauge your performance. As such, you can determine whether you have met expectations or you are performing as expected.
6. Ensure That You Are in The First Pages of Search Engines
Ensure that you lead in all search engine results pages. Such a move will ensure that you generate enough traffic, but it’s important to note that it takes time to get to the first page. As earlier stated, you should consider SEO for your website with professional services SEO.
7. Have an Easy-to-Use Website
Most companies often create websites, and they are successful in attracting potential clients to click their pay per click ads. Clicking won’t be great for business if potential clients fail to purchase your goods or services. Ensure that your website has guidelines on what’s expected from the clients. It would help if you never left clients hanging, and as such, make it easier for potential customers to take the next step.
Businesses have different marketing needs, and as such, your business needs a different marketing approach that will lure potential clients into purchasing your goods or services. It’s always advisable to seek help from a professional PPC service provider who will sort the marketing challenges. Considering that they have the experience, they can advise you on untapped opportunities that are worth investing in, and in the end, your business will reap from every click.