With the digital age marketing has changed dramatically. Not only are there dozens if not hundreds of new platforms for people to express their opinions, share their ideas or just simply have fun, but the way we think about using that media has changed as well.

Marketing at it’s core has always been about convincing, for lack or a better word, people to buy what you have to offer. Now, if a friend comes up to you and says, “Wow I just tried this new fruit punch and it was amazing.” Chances are you would be more likely to try it yourself vs seeing an ad on TV trying to “convince” you to try this new wonderful brand of fruit punch.

That’s the beauty of influence marketing vs the old outdated model of commercial marketing we grew up with.

The internet has changed everything. In particular the way we think about, interact with and buy new products. Influencer marketing however flawed or misused it has become revolves around the simply concept of trust. Whether that trust has been manipulated or shaped is another matter.

Traditionally brands would defer to expert ad agencies in creating their print or video based advertising. But these days they can tap into a whole new world of influential marketing based on the trusted opinion of a “celebrity”. This celebrity doesn’t have to be the old school movie, athlete or music celebrity either – the internet has created tens of thousands of new celebrities that will happily show off your goods in exchange for free products, commissions cuts or just straight up financial transactions.

When done right, companies must do their research into the best candidate to represent their company or their products. However with the ease of the internet and dedicated websites specifically for influencer marketing the search has become a bit easier.

Now the only problem is to determine how effective a given influencer will be for your brand. That is a tougher metric to gauge. The number of followers isn’t always the best metric to determine the success of a campaign.

Engagement rates differ depending on the platform, the niche and even the influencer.

But when brands find the right match with their audience demographic the power of influencer marketing can be extremely beneficial for brand growth, trust and revenue.

Typically brands create a product first then find a way to market it to their customer base. But with the introduction of influencer marketing it opens a whole new world of product creation. Now it’s possible to create products based on what the raving fans ask of the influencer. Product design just changed from traditional R&D to customer centric launches.

Take for example the extremely popular Nike Air Jordan sneakers. Without the influence of Michael Jordan it would be just another pair of shoes. Instead it became an iconic sub brand all of it’s own. Even long after it’s muse left the game of basketball.

That’s the power of influencer marketing.

There are different types of marketing approach that can make a business successful. Offline marketing is the traditional method of business promotion and it involves legwork, and relies on direct interaction with the possible clients. On the other hand, online marketing involves action in the virtual space. It utilizes the internet as its means of communication. And most processes happen online. Listed below are some examples of these marketing types.

Personal Contact

This is the most personal approach for a business. It involves talking with clients in person, and can create a strong personal link. Expression and gestures can act as the gauge for assessment. Achieving a higher level of trust and sense of loyalty is also possible.

Use of Paper

This type uses printed publicity materials to boost a business’s visibility. A glimpse of these posted materials can spark interest in possible clients. It can also increase the chance of discovery for a business. Flyers, brochures, and pamphlets are its usual examples, and busy places are the ideal locations.

Cold Calling

This type involves talking with clients over the phone. It offers a more urgent form of connection between individuals. It can provide a sustained conversation between relevant parties, and produce fast result. However, this can only work with the correct person present, and the right timing.

Use of Websites

Business websites can act as the extension of a brick-and-mortar office, that’s accessible anytime from anywhere. It can provide a steady and fast way of information dissemination. It can also reduce the cost of production for printed materials. Because the information posted is accessible anywhere, everyone is a potential client.

Moreover, it can allow an easy method for customer service and generation of feedback. Tracking of online views and purchases is also possible. And to ensure the success and function of a business website, it needs regular backups and other maintenance. This is a prerequisite for the longevity of this online platform. It can prevent the loss of important data and ensure file restoration in case of server failure or viruses. The best it can offer is the peace of mind that online content is safe and protected. It can also save files in times of data corruption or other technical difficulties.

Online Business Placement

This type uses online advertising platforms. It allows the display of business advertisement on the internet. Promotion and business placement are possible by paying, or by teaming up with other individuals and advertisers.

Social Media promotion

Social media platforms are not only limited to personal use. They’re also an instrument that can amplify a business through different networks. This type of promotion is a good start for an emerging business. The users of these platforms are possible clients, if the correct form of engagement is carried out.

These mentioned techniques are the best ways to market a business. These approaches can provide an engaging and convenient way of connecting with clients.

Many of today’s successful companies use a combination of offline and online marketing strategies.

In fact, while most of us have seen a significant revolution going in favor of online marketing, offline marketing remained alive and well, and is still an effective tool for building brand awareness. Billboard commercials, magazine ads, branded giveaways (e.g. shirts, pens) – you’ll still come across these things nowadays.

The only problem with offline marketing is that it can be unpredictable and sometimes immeasurable. Various approaches range widely in terms of costs (from absolutely free to thousands of dollars) and the amount of effort that you’ll have to put in – from cold calling, to hosting events, to being out in the streets for material distribution. Furthermore, it can really be hard to tell how much of an audience your efforts have reached.

This is where online marketing comes into play.

Alongside technological advancement, the marketing industry has grown considerably in terms of approach and strategy. People went from window-shopping, to browsing products and services on the Internet. Thus, if you have a business, it makes sense to build a strong online presence.

Why You Should Have a Business Website

Having your own website is vital, not just for online visibility and providing information, but also for giving your target audience the impression that you’re a legitimate business.

With more and more consumers searching the Internet for products and services that they need, and with other companies realizing this and putting up their own business websites, you don’t want to get left behind.

The good news is that having a professional-looking website may be easier to accomplish than you might think.

Once you have an idea of how you want your website to represent your business, you can start creating one. For this, you may want to consider getting a paid hosting service to help you set up and maintain a professional-looking site.

Next, choose a domain name (YourBusinessName.com) and a platform, and then add your content and design. Voila! A new website for your business.

Seeking a Professional for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

If you’re new to online marketing, or if you haven’t heard about it before, SEO (search engine optimization) is a strategy used in online marketing that affects a website’s visibility in search engines. Simply put, it aims to place your business website on the first page of the search results when someone searches for a product or service that you offer.

That being said, aside from having a website which is dedicated to promoting and expanding your business, you also need to consider boosting your site’s ranking in the search engines. This could, however, be somewhat difficult to accomplish if you don’t have the necessary knowledge.

Promoting your products or services on your site is easy once everything’s set up, but promoting your business website might be something that you’ll want to entrust to an SEO professional’s expertise.

An SEO expert does a lot of things that a business owner might not be prepared to spend a lot of time on, like analyzing and reviewing websites, looking into traffic trends, and studying keyword optimization – not to mention that the latter is also likely to be not as skilled.

Yes, search engine optimization can be learned, but good SEO takes time, and lots of knowledge and skills.

In general, businesses do better by utilizing both offline and online marketing strategies for promotion, lead generation, and boosting sales. Online marketing, in particular, needs to be well-executed in order for your business website to appear professional, gain more traffic, and thus become more effective.

There’s no doubt in the fact that the concept of sign spinners to advertise your business actually works and gets a great return on your investment. But, getting maximum benefits is all about clever campaigning, and to make that happen, here are 5 tips for a better utilization of sign spinners to increase traffic.

Go For The Right Words

Making sign spinners run a successful campaign depends on the words that are printed on the signs to a great extent. You must make sure that your sign explains what’s your brand, what has it got to offer, as well as how will people benefit from your business. It’s a great idea to include an attractive slogan or a tagline that tells drivers and passerby the reason why they must consider stopping by your business. Incorporate messages that actually make the crowd take a moment out to visit you.

Find Energetic Sign Spinners

Running an effective advertisement campaign is much more than mere holding the sign. Your signs must be showcased in an active fashion. You must have witnessed sign spinners across a street and the incredible energy they have. Make sure you find a spinner who is having a great time at work and can grab attention of the masses to your business. It might call for the use of artistic expression, or even out-of-the-box skills like dancing or acrobatics at times.

Ensure Maximum Visibility

Catching attention is not the only important factor, as it’s a must to make sure your sign stays visible most of the time. Drivers don’t have more than a few seconds to go through a sign, so it must be held in a manner that enables every driver catch a good glimpse of it. Also, the arrow must point at your property all the time.

Target Impulse Consumers

Grab those on-the-go customers from your competitors. For instance, a sign spinner standing in front of a food outlet during lunch time is likely to get new customers walking in on impulse. Although, large buys, such as automobiles and motors, are usually not impulse purchases, sign spinners can always make customers already shopping for a bigger purchase to pull into your store and choose for your offers.

Promote To a Specific Market

It’s important to choose a bunch of people to target. For example, a travel company will extract maximum benefit with weekend promotions or holiday season campaigns, whereas weekday mornings are best to target the crowd if you provide mid-day lunch services.

Every business yearns for two main things to get more customers and more sales. This is why it is important that you incorporate a powerful marketing technique to help you get the results you want. By hiring a street sign holder, you can take your campaigns to the next level by having a professional advertise your business to high-traffic areas that are frequented by your target market. This means, you no longer need to depend on a poster that barely does much work in getting the message out to the public. A sign spinner can do more for you and at a reasonable fee.

What You Get In Return

Sure, you have a well-made sign hanging outside your store, as well as a great website to go along with your marketing campaigns. But did you know that when it comes to immediate results, nothing beats what a street sign holder can do? These professionals put your business out in the open, where your potential customers are. This makes it easier for people to find you, which increases your chances of a higher conversion rate, sales and profits.

Imagine if you are a new restaurant in town, competing against a few established ones. If you come up with a creative and catchy way to market what you are offering, such as what a street sign holder can do, chances are, people will come to your restaurant on an impulse. After all, motorists and pedestrians who are just searching for the best place to eat are likely to check out your store if your marketing style is powerful enough. As long as it works, then this is all that matters for your business.

This is why you see sign spinners hanging around concert events, housing development projects or the mall to show their fancy moves, wow the crowd and send the message across to the audience, at the same time. Such technique works when you are looking for people to make a quick decision and visit your store, with the possibility of making a purchase.

If all of these sound good to you, then hiring the best street sign holder is the best way to go. Not only are you getting a good deal from these professionals who do not charge more than what you can afford, but you can expect returns on your investment over time and this is what counts most.

Got a product to sell? Or perhaps a big event that needs major exposure? Ramp up your marketing campaigns by hiring professional sign twirlers that can get the the word out about your business faster than you can say “now”. In fact, these sign spinners who weave through cramped and busy streets in the metro are known to lure pedestrians and motorists into automotive shops, car dealerships and even concert venues. You can see them waving those catchy arrow signs pointing at restaurants, furniture shops, movie openings and any place that needs foot traffic.

Sign Spinners Bring the Fun and Precious Traffic You Need

These so-called human billboards or sign spinners have a few basic things in mind to make you stop, hear them out, and lead you to the newest business in town, or at least a shop that has not seen any customers for quite a while. They are a combination of so many things that make them genuine professional talents acrobats, actors and a little bit of a clown. What’s more, these people are like Energizer bunnies that can go on and on and on for hours doing what they do best, which is to offer you entertainment while advertising about a business.

Businesses rely on sign spinners to boost visibility in a setting where getting ahead of the competition is a tough battle. With various businesses trying to outrank each other through flashy billboards, flawless websites and what-nots, hiring human billboards to give your marketing campaign a boost is a sensible choice. After all, how can the public resist watching these talented individuals go to great lengths just to get noticed, which eventually results to spreading your message, elevating your brand and possibly getting more customers along the way?

Indeed, sign spinners can give your business premium exposure as these highly skilled performers pull traffic into your promotional campaigns, grand opening or a quarterly sale. This is why it’s not surprising that several companies don’t think twice about paying these professionals over $30 or so just to put their business out there.

Meanwhile, several businesses are reaping instant returns on their investment from hiring the best sign twirlers in town. They are great for customizing their advertising campaigns without breaking the bank. Most importantly, sign spinners allow businesses to spread the word about their store wherever they need to, and at their own preferred time. Without any budget constraints, combined with mobility and versatility that sign spinning offers, it is not a surprise that this marketing technique works.

Getting results from social media is like baking a cake. There are tons of key ingredients needed – and if any are missed out, the end result may prove a big disappointment.

This characterises what I hear day in and day out when talking to recruiting teams dejected by the poor results they're getting from social sites. Of course some of these businesses just don't have a clue how to leverage social media – and that's fine. A quick call can soon fix that. But others are doing a really good job with certain elements of their social media presence – they're just oblivious to the parts they're neglecting.

So having this in mind, I'm going to detail 5 activities that you should be looking to regularly undertake so that your cake isn't lacking any of the key ingredients:

1) Make Your Profiles Truly Valuable

You work in a niche market. You serve certain geographies, sectors, specialisms – and you would like to build your network and brand presence within that niche.

To accomplish this you need to make your profiles a magnet for people in your industry – by consistently finding and sharing content they will really want to devour.

Find and share reports, interviews, data, tips and insights that enrich people's professional lives on a daily basis. And don't stick with just the most obvious sources in your industry. People are far more likely to have seen those already. Uncover hard-to-find or enthusiast niche blogs, reports and interviews whose content is excellent but is much less likely to have been read. This way you turn your profiles into information sources that specialists in your industry feel compelled to follow and willingly choose to interact with and reshare.

2) Proactively Get Your Profiles in Front of Your Target Audience

Amongst the most documented causes of business failure is the belief that "if we build it they'll come". The same is true of your recruitment team's social media presence. Just because you've established a great resource for people in your industry doesn't mean everyone's likely to find out about your social media presence and flock to it. No – you have to proactively get your profiles in front of the kinds of people you want to attract to your business (and ultimately hire).

This topic warrants a whole article by itself. But whichever social platforms you intend having a presence on, each and every day you ought to be doing things to ensure that the right people hear of your social media presence. This might be following people, commenting on posts, contributing in groups, participating in tweetchats, running paid sponsorship campaigns… Every time you invest in doing these things your audience grows – building your recruiting team an asset for the future.

3) Make Others Warm To You

Make it part of your routine to find and share other people's content, mentioning them in your updates so they know you're endorsing and praising their work. Find relevant people's updates that you can comment on or re-share, adding your personal insights or compliments to give your presence that personal touch. Like, +1 and favourite updates where appropriate.

Most social media users get no more than one retweet or re-share per day, so just think how much you can stand out in their feeds if yours is the business that gives them the warm glow of feeling appreciated …

4) Build Relationships With Influencers

Loads of recruitment teams I talk to are obsessed by their follower or fan numbers. This, they perceive, is the audience they can reach with their updates – and therefore get their recruiting brand and opportunities in front of.

A key thing to consider is that businesses can easily get a 20x increase in the reach of their messages if industry influencers start to reshare a number of their updates.

For me, influencers are people who have a significant follower base of the types of people your recruiting team wants to be reaching. They're also people whose followers actually interact with them (ie. they've not just bought followers but have a really engaged audience of people who do something about the things they share).

You have to target your influencer efforts though, as not all influencers are of equal value to your business. You see many influencers only ever share their own content and very rarely re-share or retweet others. As a business you could invest a lot of time attempting to cultivate relationships with such influencers, but this is unlikely to ever lead to them sharing your updates with their followers.

So what we're trying to find are those influencers who have a large following, an engaged following … and who have a history of regularly re-sharing other people's updates. I personally like to use Buzzsumo to identify such people. But the key thing on a day to day basis is to be taking little steps to build rapport with the influencers you have identified as being key to your strategy.

5) Engage With Your Audience

As a recruiting team, there are things you 'd like people to be doing that would take them from being a mere follower to someone who is now a prospective hire (or prospective client) for your business.

Engaging with your audience is a great way of cementing that these actions are taken. If people have started re-sharing your updates or commenting on them, hearing back from you is a surefire way to turn that one-off action into more of a habit. But equally important is the fact that engaging extracts the recruiting value from all the other social media efforts you've been making.

Whenever someone engages with your profiles, or a discussion relevant to your business, have a look at their social profile. Do they look like a prospect for your recruiting team? If so, interact with them. Do so conversationally, keep the dialogue going, befriend them. Then when the moment is right, prompt them to think about taking the step you 'd like them to take next.

For each business that step will be different. Maybe you would like them to submit a resume for your team to critique. Maybe you 'd like them to book in a call time with one of your team of recruiters. Maybe you 'd like them to attend your next open day.

The key thing is to ensure that every day you are jumping on the hidden opportunities to turn social media followers into real business results for your recruiting team. Social media, you see, resembles a sales funnel. Each step in the candidate attraction process can be refined and optimised. Eventually you reach the point where you know that every 100 new targeted followers you attract will result in X number of candidate applications in the subsequent months – and then it becomes a lot easier to justify the ongoing investment in your presence.

Concluding Remarks

If you're like most recruitment teams I talk with, you've probably had a lot of "Aha" moments whilst reading this. Things that you can see it makes good sense to be doing, but that to-date you've not been doing or have been inconsistently doing.

A cornerstone of success on social sites is consistency. So get into the habit of doing these 5 things on a regular basis and you'll begin to see the results you're getting from social media inexorably creeping upwards.

All the best.

Contributed by the social media team at www.Social-Hire.com

What if you could press one button and reach 10,000 potential customers at one time. What if you could tap that one button and reach 100,000 potential customers. It sounds as if Im selling you a pipe dream, when all I am telling you about is the reality of bulk SMS messaging for small businesses. Im telling you something that can change the way that you market your business. Im telling you about something that can bring you a ton of money and a ton of new customers to you. Im telling you about something that can help you grow your business in ways that you never believed were possible.

The power to do all of the things that Ive described all due to modern technology. The state of humanity and technology is that we are intertwined. We are always connected and people always have access to the Internet with their mobile devices. We take our mobile phones with us everywhere we go and many of us sleep with them next to us. We always have a tablet in our hands while her watching TV, theres never a moment when we are without a piece of technology that allows us to reach out to the world.

It is this connection between man and technology that has made it possible for us to market our brand to people at any time of the day or night. It means that we can send the same SMS message to 10,000 people at one time and send that message at the perfect time so that they can get it when we need them to have it the most. It means that our brand gets more exposure and it means that we can get the right information to the right people at the right time. SMS marketing allows a small business to have more control than they have ever had before, it allows them to market to the people they need to reach and to ensure that they get the message. If you take a look at other forms of marketing, they mostly rely on people being at the right place at the right time. It doesnt matter if you spent $1 million for TV commercial, $500,000 for radio ad, 50,000 for Billboard all of those old styles of marketing require that the person is at the right place at the right time and that they are in fact, interested in your products.

With SMS marketing a small business does not have to rely on luck, they dont have to rely on the potential customer being at the right place at the right time. The only thing they have to pay attention to is using text messaging at the right time of the day to contact the right people. It is the ultimate power up for any small business to be able to market to people at any time of the day and to get their message to those people at the ideal time. It is important to note that you should acquire permission from people before you send any SMS or they may view your messages as spam.

Do not simply hire individuals, coach them. In multi-level marketing, you’re typically rewarded for binging on more individuals. However if those individuals leave after a couple of brief weeks, you have actually got absolutely nothing to reveal for all that hiring effort. Rather, work as a coach to your employees. Program them the ropes and help them out. They’ll be most likely to remain.

Make certain that the MLM company you are thinking about offers appropriate product training. It is difficult to offer effectively what you do not comprehend, and great multi-level marketing companies cover this with extraordinary training programs and products. They assist you to end up being the specialist that you have to be. If the business does not provide anything, you might be much better off looking somewhere else.

Make certain to ask skilled members of your upline the exact same sorts of concerns you will be asked by clients. For instance, if the product and services you are providing is more pricey than the exact same sort of item provided by other business, find out the explanation for this. It could be your product is composed of higher quality ingredients, having undergone testing, and carry a stronger warranty than others. Understanding this kind of information will help you to supply much better service to your clients.

Statistically, only one from 100 multi-level marketing agents make any cash or succeed. That should certainly speak caution to your decision and to your practices. It ought to give you pause before you recruit certain individuals. If you can tell theyre not going to make it, it better to not even approach them with the offer. Additionally, in the MLM world there are lots of dubious company practices and rip-offs, so beware.

The best choice of MLM opportunities is the one that interests you. If you want the product or service to work for you, then youll be able to explain it to others in a convincing way. The best salesperson is a satisfied customers. Secure customers that want and use the product and from that pool of people, begin to enlist your downline.

Discover as much as you can about various methods to market when doing multi-level marketing. If direct selling is something you stand out at however you are not too computer system savvy, take a little time to find out the various methods a site, social networks and e-mail can excel your item sales and your company.

The more you understand, the higher your probability of success. It is likewise beneficial to have a post to assist you to understand exactly what you have to try to find. Research and study the suggestions once again, so you can be sure you aren’t losing your important time with an MLM loser and just stick with a winner.

Find out the truths of MLM. You might have seen some online marketers might offer items asserting that you can make a great deal of earnings rapidly. Beware of rip-offs like this. Like other ventures, you might not make anything in MLM. Nevertheless, effort, a strong marketing method, and excellent marketing abilities can assist you to see success.

Think about brand-new methods to market your item. There are lots of online marketers out there offering lots of great items. You have actually got to discover a method to break through the mess and be seen (and heard). Brainstorm on innovative methods to display your item both online and in real time. This can make all the difference.

You might have gotten associated with multilevel marketing due to the fact that you wished to make great deals of cash immediately. Regrettably, it truly does not work that way. The reality is, it can take a long time to actually start to see strong earnings with MLM.

Aim to make certain that exactly what you are offering is distinct. It is more difficult to offer something you would not buy yourself and aren’t especially enthusiastic about. Discover something that is truly unique and not that easy to find. Discover something to offer that is both unique and attractive to you.