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Your Value Proposition

For those of you who don’t know, a value proposition should be the X factor that sets your business apart from others just like it, giving your customers a reason to shop with you. It is the mission statement of your marketing campaign. Maybe you pride yourself on exceptional customer service or perhaps you sponsor a local shelter. Whatever your business may be, it is integral to find a value proposition that will stand as a platform for your marketing success.

Developing a strong value proposition for your business is easy, but it should be treated with care. Put some effort into deciding what your value proposition should be. Look at your company from every angle and choose something that will give you a unique quality within your industry.

After you have decided what your value prop is going to be, spend a little time writing it into a concise and fluid plan. Take time to do like most writers do – edit, re-edit and then edit some more. This could be the strategy that your internet marketing adapts for the next few years. It needs to be thoughtful, honest and striking. Having a well-shaped value prop will not only increase your brand image and customer loyalty, it will give the best chance at maximizing any marketing efforts from there on out.

Diversify Your Income

Many online retailers have specific industry and target audiences that they work with. While it is important to establish yourself within a niche that is going to support you, there are also ways to diversify yourself from this and grow your profits accordingly. This can be done simply by exploring coincidental merchandise or services that your customers are probably already buying. The goal is to get them buying these extras from you. Here are three quick tips to diversifying your site to increase sales:

  1. Do some research on your clientele. Find out what they like and what they are already doing with that extra disposable income that they aren’t spending with you. If you sold plants, you’d sell gardening tools too, wouldn’t you? This is more than that, however. What if you developed a class in which you teach new gardeners the best practices for planting and growing? Products that you sell online don’t just have to be tangible goods. Knowledge is a hot commodity.
  2. Think outside the box. Maybe classes aren’t something that your business does now and isn’t something that is going to make you a household name, but if you made an extra few hundred dollars a month by sharing your knowledge, wouldn’t that help with the mortgage? Be creative in when it comes to boosting your income. Think about what your customers would pay for, or what you would pay for if you were shopping for a specific item. If you had just bought a new pair of binoculars for bird watching, wouldn’t it be great if there was a tour of your local parks on the best spots for bird watching to get you started?
  3. Don’t be afraid to fail. This experiment in online retail is going to take you a few times to get right. You may not see the increase you are hoping for in the first few months, but don’t let that discourage you. Understand that it takes time to get the traffic you want and in turn see the sales that you are hoping for. By diversifying yourself to encompass a customer’s needs, you are already going to be a step ahead of the competition. Think of yourself as a streamlined part of your customer’s experience. A one stop for not just only product but knowledge and community.

Father’s Day: Opportunity for Online Growth

Get your business ready for  Father’s Day spending.

With over 70 million dads in America, there are plenty of reasons to boost your site this Father’s Day and offer promotions that your customers won’t be able to resist. It is projected this year that more families will be spending money on Father’s Day as it has taken a hit these past few years during the economic recession. For those of you who are not the best at creating specials or haven’t given thought to a sales campaign for this Father’s Day, here are five fun ways to get your customer’s involved this Father’s Day:

  1. Have people upload pictures of themselves with their dads to your Facebook or Twitter page to get a discount at your online store. Customers will be interacting with your social media pages and shopping your retail site.
  2. Bundle a few different packages on your eCommerce site to make shopping easy. Give a discount when customers buy the bundle and give them great, fun names. You could have one with a firearm, ammo and a holster and call it the “For When your Daughter Starts Dating” package.
  3. Do a free giveaway with a gift card purchase. Find an item that is overstocked and use it as a purchase with purchase when anyone gets a gift card for dad. More importantly, most of the time people will find something more expensive than their gift card and your sales will be even higher.
  4. Create a new look for the special, giving customers a fresh outlook on your site. This can be done by uploading new pictures to your homepage or creating a new banner. Through image association, you can train your customers to know when there is a sale and build a sense of urgency – they need to buy now because there is a sale.
  5. Pair up with another local business, maybe a restaurant or a movie theater, and build a package that could be “Dad’s Night Out.” This is something that sites like Groupon and Living Social will be doing, so you can get ahead of the curve by doing a local event or even partnering with a similar website.

Websites for Beginners: Planting the Seed

Lately, we’ve been blogging about subjects that are for businesses that already have developed a website and a web presence, but today we want to reach out to those who may not have a website for their business and are looking for tips on how to get started. Realistically, if you want to be successful in this day and age, you need to have a website. This is common knowledge for a lot of people, but there are those who may not be tech savvy and don’t understand the vital importance of having a strong web presence.

The internet is daunting to people who haven’t been immersed in it since they were in grade school. It has this dark side that people assume is scary and full of spam and a lot of times it can intimidate people. While there is a lot of time and effort that goes into developing software and websites, and there are certainly measures that need to be taken to make your website safe, don’t shy away from the idea if you are interested in starting a website for your business. Here are three quick tips to getting started on a website for your business:

  1. Think about what you need your website to do for you. Are you looking to sell products on your site or do you just need an information page? What different sections and pages do you want on your site? Some people prefer to have different pages with information about the business; others have testimonials or pages about specific services. These are all things you need to keep in mind when you start developing a plan for your new website.
  2. Think about the content that will be on your site. Who is going to be writing the content for your site? Are you going to do it yourself or hire a professional? Do you want to put pictures on your site? If your answer is yes, you should plan out what you want to put on the site, how often you’ll be updating that content, etc. It’s vital to keep your website current so make sure you have a plan of attack that you can fall back on when scheduling content updates. What sales do you want to run? Are you going to promote special events?
  3. Dedicate the time necessary to run the site. If you are serious about having an eCommerce site, it is vital to set aside the time you are going to need in order to update the site and monitor your orders. Once the shell of your site is built, you have to add to it. Look at a website as a virtual garden. It needs some sun, water and Scott’s Turf Builder every now and then. Rabbits (spam) will try to eat your vegetables. You need to protect your website from the dangers while maintaining relevant content. If you don’t have time to do all of this and more, don’t worry! That is what companies like us are for.