One of the best ways to sell more books and get more public speaking gigs is to become an authority in your niche. Easier said than done, right.
I’m not here to tell you it’s easy, but I will tell you that it’s not rocket science. These 5 techniques I describe below, combined with a little confidence, consistency, and patience, are all you need to become one of the go to authorities for your target audience.
When it comes to digital marketing in general and content marketing specifically, there is only one question that ultimately matters…
How many new customers can you acquire as a result of your efforts?
If acquiring new customers is NOT your top priority, then you can stop reading this right now and I can show you a golden toilet to flush your money down instead.
To set the record straight on the hyperbolic title of this post, I’ll immediately disclose that this is in response to a hyperbolic article written on Forbes.com by Steve Olenski.
Steve titled his article, The Catastrophic Social Media Content Marketing Mistake Marketers Are Making. This title was purely link bait, as the point made by Steve in the post was not only less than catastrophic, it was dead wrong.
His thesis is that using social media for lead generation and using it for direct sales is the same thing. Steve believes you should only use social media for branding and relationship building, and lead generation has nothing to do with either one. Only someone from another planet would base an article in Forbes using that as their thesis. Please, let me explain.
This is the #1 question I get from business owners: Can social media increase sales? Short answer – Yes.
Long answer – If you want to increase sales using social media, you must think beyond the share.
Let me explain in detail and provide you some specific actionable advice.
I did an informal social media survey to find out how the typical marketer would respond to the question how to market an event and found out something very telling…
Marketing an event is very hard unless you are an expert in influencer marketing.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way any longer and I will show you why by evaluating three event marketing techniques.
When it comes to paid advertising on the internet, the first thought any website owner typically has is to get a Google Adwords campaign up and running.
Google Adwords is slick and fun to use. The ability to pay for keywords and show up at the top of search results is super valuable. However, the reality is that this value cannot and will not be harnessed by most businesses. Surprise! Surprise! Google Adwords will probably not work for you.
The digital landscape for marketers is changing fast. As a result of social and mobile going mainstream, the last three years has ushered in an era that dovetails with two bigger marketing trends:
1) Increased spending in overall marketing budgets, up 6% from 2012 to 2013 (Gartner) and
2) A sharp shift to digital over traditional marketing with a more than doubling of the number of firms spending over 50% of their marketing budget on digital in 2013 ( 23% vs. only 11% in 2012, Accenture).
It’s common to advise SMBs trying to figure out how to increase sales to tell them to use one of the social media platforms. I was sitting in on a “how to increase sales” webinar just last week that was pitching Pinterest as the platform to increase sales.
I thought to myself: “the logic is there, but is it really true?” Unfortunately, yes for some, no for most. Which can be said for almost all social media sites. However, there is one platform that flips this: no for some, yes for most and that is what we’re going to discuss today.
Full disclosure, I really don’t like squeeze page marketing. As a matter of fact, I despise squeeze page marketing. Microsite marketing is a much better option for honest businesses who want to build long term credibility with customers.
A few days ago while I was doing my daily check-in on LinkedIn, I came across a gem of an article that may change. your. life. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit. However, if you are trying to sell your products and services using social media, this article I found provides at least what you would call a game changing insight.
