Opportunities for marketing have drastically changed in the past few years due to the emergence of the internet and advancement in technology. Not only is native marketing taking over traditional advertising, but direct selling and network selling is taking over traditional salesforces (consider the rise of brands such as doTERRA or Cutco). If you are involved in direct selling of any kind, don't think that you can't utilize the power of online marketing too. By using a personalized marketing strategy on your own website and tapping into the power of social media sites, you can increase brand awareness and produce more leads or sales.

Use a Professional Website Design
While the internet is a great place for marketing, you don't want to just use a cookie-cutter template to market your business and products. You must distinguish yourself from the thousands of other people in your industry. All too often, direct sellers will just use the marketing tools that are provided by their parent company. It's much better to utilize a professional website design and build your own brand. By adding that extra amount of flair and personality to your marketing, it sets you apart from all the other sellers in your niche. You can become an authority figure who people respect when you have a site that's been created with a professional website design.

Social Media Pages Work
Social media sites are one of the most popular destinations on the web. By starting a Facebook Page that profiles your brand, you have a chance to connect with other individuals who may be interested in your business or the products that you sell. You can send your social media Page visitors directly to your website so that they can learn more about your brand and what you have to offer. By having a professional website design on your site that uses the same colors used on your promotional page, it helps strengthen your brand awareness. People love to share videos and images with their friends. If you create value and post it on your Page, it's likely to be shared.
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Success With Tweets
By utilizing Twitter, you can quickly inform followers about contests, events or discounts. It's also an excellent platform for network marketers, which is all about gaining more people. Market your events and use the chat session feature to start a discussion with anyone who is curious about your business. Use the Search bar, to look for other people who are tweeting about your company and products. When you discover a positive comment, use that as a testimonial and add it to your Favorites list.

As you can see, having your own branded website and a combination of marketing that includes social media sites, you can increase your brand awareness, which will help boost leads and sales.

The goal of your website is to increase engagement with potential customers and individuals who are already familiar with your brand. How your website is designed will play a key role in impacting business sales. To ensure that your site is fully optimized to provide positive interactions with visitors, it's best to incorporate these 5 guidelines into your website design strategy:

1. Colors and Appearance
The colors that are used on your website should be appropriate for your industry. As an example, green is often a color that's used on financial websites as it provokes a look that is financial. It can be associated with the color of United States currency and is one of the cooler colors. Also, you will see the color blue on these type of sites. A feeling of trust is associated with this color and that's important for an audience when financial information is being discussed.

2. Satisfaction and Consistency
When a user visits your site and sees a visually appealing design, it predisposes them to automatically be satisfied with the services or products that you sell. Their mindset will be more approving and positive. As an example, imagine a large brand like Samsung. They offer product lines such as Samsung appliances, smart TVs, cameras, computers and PCs. Within all of these product lines, there is a strong relationship and brand identity.

When marketing is conducted, the personality and attitude of the brand is projected. This taps into the subconscious mind of a customer. It just feels better to purchase from a brand when you respect them and have loyalty to their products. This can be projected with the design of your website.

3. Loading Speed
Another factor that should be considered in your design is the speed at which your content appears in the browser. Faster loading times equal user satisfaction, and it will also increase your chances of being ranked higher in the search engine results pages as Google factors this element into their algorithm.

4. Mobile Responsive Design
Each year, the number of smartphone users on the internet is rising. Individuals have switched from personal computers to smaller devices. This interaction requires you to make sure that your website can be seen on all types of devices -- personal computers, tablets and mobile phones. To ensure that your website correctly appears in the browser for each device, you must use a responsive design that automatically changes the size and position of the content on your website. If you don't have a responsive design and a potential customer lands on your website with their smartphone, you will lose a potential sale if they have to scroll all over the place to navigate your content.

5. Placing Your Call To Action Elements
You can increase your conversions by placing prominent call to action elements on each page of your website. By simply telling your visitors to "click on a button" or "read more," you are provoking a response. This entices your audience to perform an action that will take them one step closer to completing a sale. When a call to is used at the end of an article or above the fold on the main page, it attracts attention and increases engagement.​

​Content marketing has a ton of benefits for your business and can really augment a decent marketing strategy. The practice can increase the online and real-world visibility of your brand, enable you to hone closer and deeper relationships with your customers, and increase customer loyalty among the customers that you already have under your belt. But along with written articles and words, what other kinds of content should your business be using? 

• ​Benefits of Content Marketing 

Content marketing enables you to establish yourself or your business as an authority online and someone that fans, clients, or customers can go to for instant, comprehensive solutions. In terms of the raw numbers, content marketing is a great way to boost organic traffic to your website and buoy your social media performance. 

• Social Media 

A social media presence is a must-have item for businesses looking to squeeze the most out of their content marketing. You can hire a social media manager to handle all of this for your company. You can also choose to get in their yourself, answer customers' questions as they come up, disseminate your blog content, and post positive user reviews on the most popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This kind of social content establishes you and your business as someone with a real, vocal presence.

• How-to Guides and Whitepapers 

These two things go hand-in-hand since they both can be incorporated in your content strategy to position your company as a professional, reputable, and knowledgeable source of information. How-to guides are also immediately useful to your audience since they show them how to use your products and services. Whitepapers, on the other hand, can give current and potential customers a quick rundown on industry news. 

• Relevant Blog Content 

Your blog should form the cornerstone of your content marketing strategy. In your blog, you should be addressing customers' current concerns and sparking their interest with industry trends and new product offerings right around the corner. A website design company can help you understand how a blog works, and how you can incorporate a blog page onto your existing website. 

• Videos and Reviews 

You can post positive customer reviews, as well as explanation videos on your core website to help customers move towards a buying decision. Both frame your brand as an authority. Videos are also great visuals into how your company operates as a whole.
 
To be truly effective, your content marketing needs to encompass social media, search engines, and PR. You should also be couching your content marketing within a larger inbound marketing campaign designed to create leads and boost your inbound traffic. Content strategy is another important facet to all of this. So, what more can you do?

Brand marketing plays a huge role in the success of your business. How much are you investing in it? If you don’t have the necessary funds to put toward your marketing efforts, that doesn’t mean you need to watch it fall to the wayside. Here are a few ways in which you can cut back in other areas of your business so you have more money to put towards marketing.

Hire Experts
How many employees do you have? How many of those employees had previous work experience relevant to your industry? Depending on your business, that number could range from very few to almost all of them. If you have fewer skilled employees, you’ve probably spent a lot of time on training, but you’re not just spending time—you’re spending money.

Try to entice more experts to come work for you. Whether you’re looking for people with a Bachelors in Marketing or an MBA, that expertise will pay off. According to WGU, 98% of employers are satisfied with their employees with higher education (and therefore more expertise). Think about those superior results and what it will take for people like that to work for you. With the right perks, they’ll come, and once they’re there, your employees will be able to tackle more of the workload with fewer people.

Go Digital
Whether you are intrigued by modern technology or you've been fighting against it for years, now is the time to consider converting. Moving your company information and files to the cloud can save you money because you no longer need to allocate as much of your budget toward printing materials. You might even express surprise at the amount of money paper and ink cost you each month.

Evaluate the Break Room
The ability to provide your employees with snacks and drinks is great, and doing so can help boost the morale of your employees. If you’re struggling to allocate funds to important tasks like brand marketing, you might have to cut back on some of the snacks and treats or the frequency of them. Maybe instead of restocking the break room every week, you restock it twice a month. Make an announcement in advance so employees know things might get a little sparse towards the middle and end of the month.

Advertise Online
While some traditional forms of advertising are still advisable, especially if the members of your target audience seek to consume material in this way, advertising online helps you to save money. For example, when you use free social media accounts, you are getting to advertise without spending a penny.

On top of that, you get to save even more money in the budget for printed items, and you don't have to worry about spending gas to drive around town to hang up flyers. You may also discover that advertising online takes less time than advertising in traditional methods. When you can save time, you also generally save money.

Develop Your Own Workshops and Seminars
The thought of bringing your team members to an outside location for a seminar or paying for everyone to attend a conference sounds like a way to build the skills of your employees. However, these methods of company improvement also cost significant sums of money. Instead of allocating funds toward travel, take the time to develop your own workshops and seminars.

You don't even have to rent out a space when your business building is large enough. With a creative mind, you can develop activities and instructional guides to bring the same information to your employees without spending all of that money. You may even ask employees to contribute ideas for the workshops.
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When you are look at your budget and realize you don't have enough money to increase your brand marketing efforts, you may need to cut back in other areas. These decisions can be difficult to make, especially when they directly affect your employees. In the long term, however, these moves can be for the benefit of your team.

(daily)

1. Buffer for simple & easy social media scheduling and analytics

2. Pocket for saving the great content I find

(weekly)

3. Nuzzel for email digests of popular articles on social media

4. Feedly for discovering new stories to share

5. Pablo for creating engaging images

6. SumAll for weekly email reports

(regularly)

7. BuzzSumo for influencer research and headline ideas

8. Followerwonk for Twitter stats & analysis

9. SocialRank for follower insights

10. Canva for creating graphics

So many amazing tools that people have built to make social media sharing that much easier, faster, and smoother! 

What are your favorites?