by Ahmed Muzammil | Aug 7, 2017 | Business, Marketing |
The customers you have now are giving money to someone else for something else.
There is something your customers aren’t buying from you.
What they buy would make sense for them to have because it makes the experience of what you sold to them even better.
Even if you don’t make or own something that your customer is buying, this is something you could make money from.
^^ this is a paraphrased wisdom from Dan Kennedy
When you look at real-world examples, you can see that toysrus “a toy store” carries kids diapers and mom’s breast pumps. Why? Their customers are parents…
Although they come there with their kids – they could buy other things that they would need. Thus it makes sense for toysrus to sell.
A couple of years back, I noticed Tom And Stefanie – a kids clothing store carrying kitchen utensils.
Although from the outside it doesn’t make sense for a clothing store to carry kitchen utensils, Think from the angle that it’s mostly moms who go to buy clothes for their kids.
This is called cross promoting or cross-selling. A different version from up selling.
When it comes to online business, think about your audience what they are buying outside of your arena?
What software do they buy, what subscriptions do they get, what other product would add value to what you are selling your customer?
You could then do one of the following two things:
-> Become an affiliate of that product/software and promote to your peeps
-> Negotiate on a mutual partnership – where you agree to promote their product/service to your audience and they agree to promote your product/service to their audience.
This can instantly boost your revenue without spending loads of time and money.
If it’s highly lucrative then you could consider to make your own version of the same product and add it to your product line.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Aug 7, 2017 | Business, Marketing |
Warning: Unethical marketing ahead
- They introduced free flow drinks for $2
- They have introduced combo meals on all the outlets. Now the outlets are offering $2 discount the next time they buy a meal if they bought the drink.
Essentially the coke is free!
Now, this is what a layman notices…
Here’s the marketing mind in it:
- Until this goes on, people will buy coke combo for getting the free $2 voucher next time
- This can go for more than a month’s time
- After a month, the people who were buying coke are going to continue buying coke coz of the sugar and caffeine-induced addiction.
- Coke just made more than 500 lifetime customers!
Lesson! Don’t think about instant profits. Think about lifetime customer value. They lost money in the front end. But they made a killing in the backend.
The only thing that makes this case unethical is because it is going to hurt their customer’s health by a ton! Well played Coke!
by Ahmed Muzammil | Aug 7, 2017 | Business, Marketing, Startup |
The 5Ws to build a successful consulting business. This should get you until making 6 figures in income from your business.
You don’t need to be the greatest consultant!
You don’t need to be the greatest coach!
You don’t need to be a great writer!
You don’t need to be a great sales person!
You don’t need to be the greatest marketer!
You don’t need the next biggest tool out there in the market.
You don’t need to have a WEBSITE or a FUNNEL!
Nobody is born with all those skills, tools, and talent. You will learn those along the way.
What you need is clarity on what you want to do and why you want to do it. You just need to sit down and do the work that DELIVERS VALUE to others.
Good Enough is the new greatness! Coz most people don’t even create anything as they are perfectionists and end up not making anything.
DELIVERING VALUE could be just taking part in conversations on online forums, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or any other platform. Sharing content, tools that help people.
What’s important is that you know the answers to the following questions to have the clarity necessary to do business:
- Do you have a reason WHY you are in business?
- Do you know WHAT is the problem you want to solve?
- Do you know WHO you want to solve the problem for?
- Do you know WHERE they hang out?
- Do you have a product/service that you are going to solve the problem WITH?
That’s it! That’s it!!! That’s all you need to be in the consulting business. Whether you are ONLINE or OFFLINE.
Here’s mine:
- WHY – Because I want to provide better for my family. Because I want to be happy and love what I do. Because I want to contribute better to the world and the people. Because I want to go to Jannah (heaven in Islam). Because I want to leave a legacy for my children and community.
- WHAT – Help people maximise their productivity, effectiveness, happiness, and fulfilment in their lives, business, and contribution. Help them become financially free, and contribute back to the society.
- WHO – I want to help people who want more out of their lives and achieve greatness. People who don’t want to be mediocre. People who hate their current situation and want it to be better. People who want to serve their family better, and contribute back to society.
- WHERE – Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups, Meetups, Seminars, Workshops, Summits.
- WITH – Strategies and Systems, Books, Workshops, Seminars, Webinars, Products, Events, Summits, Services, Coaching, and Consulting.
Think about yours, and comment below…
by Ahmed Muzammil | Jul 22, 2017 | Marketing, Social Media |
Twitter is an effective social network platform which can increase your website’s ranking in search engines. Here’s how you get a decent number of followers on Twitter with these simple steps.
STEP 1: Completely Fill Out Your Profile
The basic step in setting up your Twitter account is to fill out your basic profile details clearly. The basics are:
- Your Name
- Your Photo
- Your Bio
- Your URL and location
- Posting one to 5 tweets
Let your Bio be descriptive sharing information about your business. Put up your website URL and post some good tweets which ensure a good number of favorites and retweets.
An Example Image of a Twitter Profile
STEP 2: Keep Your Profile Engaging, Interesting And Unique
To get more followers, make your Twitter account shine in its own way and transform it to an interesting medium of sharing resources about your business.
Your tweets can be
- Links to related articles on your site
- Links to related articles on other sites
- Small pieces of interesting facts or news
STEP 3: Share Links To Your Profile And Add Follow Button To Your Website
Building up a good number of followers for your account is very important to gain popularity. And this will become successful if you advertise the launch of your account by sharing your twitter profile links with your Facebook friends and give an announcement in your company’s newsletter or e-mail to your subscriber’s list.
Twitter has four different buttons that make your visitors connect with your account.
- Follow
- Share a link
- Hashtag
- Mention
Follow button is the most effective and direct means of getting more followers for your account. You can insert it in a visible place in your website or blog.
Example of Follow button placed in a blog
STEP 4: Find New Followers And Relevant Accounts To Follow
Getting more followers from relevant accounts may be a daunting task for some people. Maintaining a positive follower: following ratio is very important to make your twitter account look credible. It’s good if your followers’ number is greater than your following number.
Some simple tips for getting relevant accounts to follow are as follows.
- Sign up for a free tool like Tweepi or Followerwonk which helps in finding out similar people involved in your field.
- Optimize this list and follow people from a list that you find interested and keep posting interesting tweets that they find interesting to make them follow you back.
STEP 5: Use Right Hashtags And Join A Twitter Chat
Using relevant hashtags will expose your tweets to people outside your network. Twitter chat is a group where users with a specific Hashtag can meet up at a specific time and chat. This new series called #bufferchat can help you share info and get new followers.
STEP 6: Optimize Your ‘Tweet this’ Button To Include Your Username
You can add a personal touch to your tweet by adding a snippet that includes “via @-username” at the end of your tweet, so that your name too gets displayed when someone shares content from your website.
Screenshot showing how to optimize ‘Tweet this’ button
by Ahmed Muzammil | Jul 22, 2017 | Marketing, Social Media |
You can easily get your first 1,000 followers on LinkedIn as it’s basically a business – oriented social networking platform. Let’s see how to get it.
STEP 1: Complete Your Profile Fully
LinkedIn offers great features and options in filling out your profile neatly and completely. The Profile strength icon of LinkedIn serves to be as a sign of indicating how far you’ve been successful in providing full information about your company or business. So, wisely make use of the options and give as much information you could about your business, so that you’ll gain good number of business connections.
You can effectively make use of LinkedIn profile picture, cover photos and other advanced media options available and fill up your profile. Add relevant images describing your field, add portfolio links to your business and don’t forget to upload an apt cover photo. All these will get your business gain good visibility and users tend to know more about your business and stay connected to you.
Different levels of Profile Strength icon on LinkedIn
Sample LinkedIn Profile
STEP 2: Share Your LinkedIn Profile Link With Others via Social Media/Mail
Now that you’ve got a beautiful fully completed professional LinkedIn profile, it’s a must to share with your friends via Facebook and Twitter. Just share your profile link with people so that those interested will look into your profile and get connected to you. The same can be done via email too by sharing the link with your subscriber list.
STEP 3: Create a LinkedIn Follow Button On Your Website
LinkedIn provides three choices of Follow buttons that you can embed in your website. You can select whichever is applicable for your site and get it done.
Three types of LinkedIn Follow buttons
A Sample Blog with LinkedIn Share Button
STEP 4: Invite Your Colleagues To Join LinkedIn And Fill Up Their Profile
This is a good handy idea to help you get a handful of followers for your company profile page on LinkedIn. When you invite your employees, they add you as the current employer on their LinkedIn profile. This automatically takes your company’s profile and logo to appear on their profile, thus giving enough visibility for more people to view it.
STEP 5: Send Genuine Connection Requests, And Accept All Requests
Sending and accepting requests on LinkedIn play a major role in getting more number of followers on your professional network. Always send genuine connection requests by drafting a customized message for the person with whom you’re attempting to get connected. This increases the chances of your request getting accepted. This option of adding personal note in a connection request on LinkedIn is one of the greatest opportunities you can make use of in increasing your followers.
On the other hand, while accepting connection requests, be non – selective. This simply means accepting all requests as your goal should be to have more than 500 connections on your profile. This will make people endorse you for skills and share your profile, thus increasing your chances of being visible on the professional network.
Sample Genuine Connection Request
by Ahmed Muzammil | Jul 22, 2017 | Marketing, Social Media |
Instagram enables you to capture photos and videos online and share it on various social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Here are some steps which describe how to get your first 1000 followers on Instagram.
STEP 1: Complete Filling Up Your Instagram Profile
Instagram users tend to follow you once after viewing your profile first. So its important to fill up your profile to the fullest including name, profile picture, short description and a link to your business website.
Since your profile header displays seven of your most shared images, it’s essential that you post atleast seven to ten photos before you begin sharing and promoting your profile. Let the images be good and professional revealing what’s in your business.
Sample Instagram Business Profile
STEP 2: Link Your Instagram And Facebook Accounts
Put up a connection between your Instagram account and Facebook account, so that it will help all your friends find you on Instagram.
STEP 3: Frame & Implement an Efficient Commenting Plan For Your Photos
Have a general look on to Instagram accounts and you’ll find that there are more likes than comments for a photo. So, to gain wide visibility, you should figure out ways for implementing an efficient commenting strategy.
- Leave comments quickly and easily by typing from a computer.
- Comment on recently posted photos.
- Comment with relevant hashtags.
- Comment on photos with fewer comments so that people can find your comment visible.
STEP 4: Start Liking a Large Number Of Photos
A simple way to gain followers is to start randomly liking thousands and thousands of images on Instagram. You’ll then gain atleast hundreds of followers for your account each day.
STEP 5: Search For The Perfect Hashtags
Research into what most business owners similar to yours are tagging. Get to know the latest trends and hot topics of the industry and discover the perfect hashtags for your business.
STEP 6: Put Up a Hashtagged Feed Of Instagram Posts On Your Website
Your website visitors can come across your Instagram badges and immediately follow you if your business interests them. Therefore, its best to have your Instagram feed inserted on to your website. There are five different sizes of Instagram badges to place on your website.
Screenshot showing how to insert Instagram badge onto your website
Sample Website with Instagram Feed
STEP 7: Tag People
When you tag relevant people in your photos, you’ll automatically get them following you back. Also, they may start mentioning you in their posts too.
STEP 8: Share Your Instagram Profile Links Through Social Media & Mails
Spread your business by sharing your Instagram profile link in Facebook, Twitter etc for your friends to follow. Also, send mails to your mail list sharing your link.
STEP 9: Make Use Of Geotagging Option For Your Pictures And Your Shop
Instagram’s photo map feature is an extra gift for those having your own shop. Take pictures and geo-tag them with the location so that people can know you more. To enable this feature, connect your Instagram via Foursquare.
