4 Must-Know Strategies To Market Your Remote Business

Remote businesses are ones that let employees work from wherever they see fit. This can be from a home office, a coffee shop, or even a shared coworking space.

The benefit of this style of business is that you can employ people from all over the world, widening the talent pool at your disposal. You also save a fortune as 100% remote businesses won’t have headquarters or offices.

As a consequence, the way you market a remote business can be different from how you market a traditional one. You’re certainly not focusing on driving foot traffic to a particular site, so what is the aim of the game?

Naturally, most of your work will be done via the internet. Remote businesses are almost 100% online, so that the primary focus will be generating online leads. The key way to do this is by driving web traffic to your website.

This is where you make sales, or leads can submit inquiries. With that in mind, here are some strategies to help you do just that, along with other tips and ideas that remote businesses should focus on when marketing themselves to an audience.

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Create the Ground Rules for Your Brand

Branding forms a core aspect of marketing as it influences everything that you do. Every business needs a brand image, which is how you wish to be seen by the wider world.

Do you want to put yourself out there as consummate professionals?

Are you trying to make people think that your business is really modern and laid back?

Your image is entirely up to you, but the key thing that matters is that it stays consistent across all of your marketing channels.

Moreover, with a remote business, you have the challenge of numerous employees working for you and interacting with customers in many different places. Thus, you need to ensure that all of your remote staff align with the brand image and interact in ways that reinforce this.

To do that, you need to create the ground rules for your brand. This means telling everyone how your brand should interact with others, the tone of voice you use, the type of content you create, and so on.

All of this helps you solidify a brand image that stays consistent, no matter which one of your remote employees is interacting with consumers.

Make Traditional Marketing More Measurable

Traditional marketing encompasses things like direct mail, print advertising, etc. Some of these techniques are null and void when you have a remote business. For example, things like door-to-door sales are absolutely pointless.

However, you can take some of the best traditional methods and add a digital twist to them, making them more measurable.

Look at direct mail, for example. A whopping 70% of consumers say direct mail is more personal than online interactions, with an open rate of up to 90%.

You could argue that the chances of someone viewing your direct mail are greater than them viewing an email – largely because letterboxes don’t have filtration systems that can mark your emails as promotional or spam.

Nevertheless, direct mail seems pointless for a remote business. You send some advertising material in the mail, but what do you gain from it? You have no headquarters to direct people to, so how is this impactful? The trick is to use direct mail printing and marketing services that let you implement QR codes or links on your content.

Therefore, you can measure how many people visit your site via these links. It directs traffic to your website, and you have a clear way of measuring the campaign’s success.

Put Most of Your Focus on the Digital Approach

While traditional methods can be tweaked to become more effective, digital marketing is really the saving grace for remote businesses. If your entire company is based online, the best way to promote it is through digital mediums.

Clearly, you’re looking at SEO and other search engine marketing methods here. Search engines are still the number one way for consumers to find businesses online. Most people’s first interactions with a company are through search engines.

As such, a firm focus of your marketing strategy should be on creating as strong a search engine presence as possible. You want to be seen on the first pages for all searches relating to your business. Whether this is done organically or through paid search, it doesn’t matter!

Social media is another powerful digital marketing tool to utilize. Growing a large social presence is crucial if you want your remote business to thrive. At the same time, social media represents one of the best places for online advertising. 83% of marketers used it in 2020, ranking it second behind search engine marketing in terms of success.

Loads of people scroll through social media every day, and you can create ads that target your key audience. So, the adverts are relevant to them, seamlessly blend in with their scrolling, and can catch their eye. Thus, more clicks are had, and more traffic is diverted to your site.

Build an Aura of Professionalism

One of the drawbacks of remote businesses is that you can sometimes struggle to seem professional in comparison to other brands. This is because you obviously have no headquarters, so consumers might worry about doing business with you.

In reality, this can easily be addressed by building an aura of professionalism. This starts with a great website and strong social media presence, but it also includes things like a virtual address.

Here, you can give the illusion of an office headquarters in a central business district in any city you like. It instantly makes you seem more authentic and professional, building trust with the consumer. When trust exists, the chances of conversions increases.

There you go; some simple strategies to market your remote business. It’s all about generating traffic to your website, as this is where all of your money will be made. You’ve got no physical location to worry about, so your entire budget can be dedicated to online traffic!

Marketing vs. Advertising: Understanding The Differences

Jessica Lauren Vine

All businesses will develop a strategy that helps them promote their business and find new customers. A core part of this strategy will revolve around how you market your company. What tactics will you use, who are you targeting, and so on? Advertising also plays a significant role, but there’s often a lot of confusion surrounding both of these. Some people believe that advertising and marketing are the same things, but they aren’t.

As someone that’s looking to promote their business, you need to understand what both of these terms mean and how they differ.

Understanding Marketing

Marketing is the process of looking at your company and figuring out how best to promote it to your desired audience. It involves identifying the target customer, creating customer personas, then building a strategy that’s meant to meet the needs of the customer.

From here, you will start to implement different marketing tactics to reach your target audience and grow your brand image. Marketing encompasses many different things and has many types. Some of the most well-known are:

Social media marketing
Digital marketing
Global marketing
Relationship marketing

Brand development is also part of a marketing strategy as you figure out how you want your brand to be perceived, which influences all of your marketing material.

Understanding Advertising

By contrast, advertising is where you pay to promote your business. You’ve got lots of different forms of advertising to consider:

Print advertising
Billboard advertising
TV advertising
Online advertising
PPC advertising
Mobile advertising

The list goes on, but all of these things have one thing in common: you create an advert for the desired platform, then pay to have it presented. The aim is to grab the attention of your audience, reeling them in and making them interested in what you’re promoting.

With this in mind, we can say that advertising is actually a form of outbound marketing. This is because the whole aim is to push your message and brand out there as far as you can, trying to grab people’s attention.

How Do Advertising & Marketing Differ?

After understanding the basics of both, how can we say that marketing and advertising differ from one another?

Primarily, the key difference is that advertising is part of marketing, while marketing can stand on its own. In theory, you can run an entire marketing campaign without paying for any advertising. It can all be done inbound using things like SEO, social media, etc. However, you couldn’t really run an advertising campaign without marketing. Why? Because you need marketing to help you identify your target audience and how best to reach them. This information helps you develop a suitable advert and figure out the best place to broadcast it.

In conclusion, marketing and advertising are two different things. Marketing is the act of planning and identifying how to promote your business to the right audience, developing the most effective strategy. Advertising might form part of this strategy, but it’s all to do with paying to promote adverts for your business. The two can exist separately, but they work best when used together.

Preparing for Permanent Success: Key Strategies To Keep in Mind

Jessica Lauren Vine

Successful businesses are those that invest in the future. This is because successful companies always have a plan for what will happen tomorrow, and they know how to prepare for it. This blog post will talk about four key strategies you can use to make your business more successful today and tomorrow.

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Always Foresee the Future of Your Business

According to Dee Agarwal, one of the most important things to do when planning for success is always thinking about the future and what’s next.

This is the first step to making a plan. The future is unpredictable, and it’s essential to keep that in mind when preparing for any changes that may occur to be ready to adapt.

When thinking about long-term success, it’s also important to consider how future generations may shape the economy. This includes millennial consumers living through financial downturns from student loan debt and older baby boomers looking at changing their spending habits.

Maintain Good Relationships With Customers and Colleagues

It is important to centre your customers by maintaining good relationships with them and your colleagues. People will support you if they like you, so try your best in every situation!

Be sure to respond when people contact you or talk to them directly about any issues.

If there are conflicts between employees, do not ignore them but bring them up for discussion immediately. It could be a chance for both parties and the company to grow together through mutual understanding and respect!

Always Have the Right Workforce on Hand

Your team is one of the most important assets you have, and it can make or break your company. It’s critical to ensure that all of your employees are happy with their jobs—and as such, they’ll perform well at work. If your staff isn’t motivated to do a good job each day, you won’t see results, lowering productivity. You will also lose valuable workers if people don’t feel like this is somewhere where they belong long-term.

The most critical factor to ensuring success has a constantly growing workforce like you and your business model. This means hiring passionate people about what they do and making sure there’s room for them to grow in the company.

Be Ready To Adapt To Change

It is essential to ensure that your company and its content are continually evolving in a constantly shifting industry. It can be hard enough just keeping up with the latest trends in marketing without worrying about how these will affect your writing strategy. However, this is part of being prepared for permanent success — you need to know what changes are coming next to avoid getting left behind.

If you are a freelancer, consultant, or solopreneur, having the ability to adapt and change is essential. Things change quickly, which can be exciting if things go well and scary when it’s not as easy as expected. The more adaptable you become, the better off you will be!

Look Out for Trends and Patterns

Another great way to predict the future is by looking for trends and patterns. Looking out for trends and practices will help your business plan for the future. So many businesses are too focused on the small things that they cannot see what is coming next. By looking out for trends and patterns, you will be able to plan ahead of your competitors so that you can get a leg up on them.

Conclusion

Preparing for permanent success in your business requires you to commit. Committing yourself to the right goals and setting plans is critical if you want your business to last more than one day.

Working With Businesses Across The Globe

Jessica Lauren Vine

There’s never been a better time for businesses that operate across the world, with the internet and global communications being stronger than ever before. No matter the size of a company, it can be possible to make money around the globe, expanding your customer base and making it easier to increase your revenue without having to make drastic changes to your work.

This is easiest for service businesses, but it can also work for those that sell products to customers. But how can you achieve a goal like this? Let’s explore some of the main areas that you need to consider.

Providing Products/Services

One of the most challenging stages of the process you will be going through will be providing the products and services you offer in new countries. For products, you can simply ship your goods internationally, working to cover customs fees and postage with the money you charge your customers.

This can be harder for services, and you will need to make sure that the service you offer can be rendered without having to meet face to face. For digital professionals, this has never been easier, but you still need to work hard to make sure that you are providing a good service.

Taking Payments & Managing Money

Taking payments doesn’t sound like a difficult process, but it can actually be quite frustrating when dealing with people overseas. Services like PayPal aren’t found in every country, and the cost of sending money to different countries can be quite high.

Having a payment gateway in place that can deal with worldwide currencies is a good place to start, but you should also consider the idea of having a more robust option in place. You can transfer money to Pakistan and other countries across the globe, and you can have money sent back to you, too. This is ideal for service providers who don’t want to use card payments.

Communication & Languages

Finally, as the last major issue to consider, it’s time to think about communication with customers and clients in different countries. The language you speak can make a huge difference when you’re trying to work with people in different countries, and you need to make sure that you have a way to translate the messages and emails you receive.

Talking with your voice is usually easier when discussing complex ideas, and tools like Zoom can make this possible, but you will still need to keep language in mind to make sure that you don’t find yourself unable to communicate.

As you can see, working around the world comes with some challenges, but it is still an achievable goal. Many people find that they are able to find success when they put time and effort into something like this, and it can be easy to get what you want out of the work that you do when you take careful steps.

Things to Consider When Running a Virtual Business

Jessica Lauren Vine

Running a business is easier than ever thanks to the internet. Some people can get up and make a few clicks on their laptop, and make more money in those clicks than their parents made in their entire career.

Yes, it is that profitable to make a living online now. But, what if you want a slice of this action? Here are some things to think about before you set up an online business.

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Products or Services?

Having a virtual business means you can offer a product or a service, sometimes both. So what is it you are selling?

If you like the idea of selling products but don’t want to handle anything, dropshipping has become a very popular way to run your own virtual store. However, it is possible to create virtual products and services that people can buy too. It might be an idea to think about the type of products that you will be selling and the best way to do it.

Ask an Expert

If you know nothing about how things work online, setting up a business can be a bit of a baptism of fire. If you know nothing about the virtual world, you may need to ask an expert.

There are many websites that can help you out such as Jerome Clavel and various SEO marketing companies. It might seem strange asking for help straight out of the gate but it can be worth it, in the long run, to help you find your footing.

Tax and Insurance

If you start making money with your business, you need to ensure that you are properly covered. Taxes will need to be filed, even if it is a tiny amount that you are making. Insurance is a good investment to make (and can be classed as a tax-deductible). It is always better to check all of these things out before you make any big changes that could explode your business and profits. The last thing you need is to be stung by some legal matters.

Business Address

You might get up in the morning and make those few clicks in your living room in your pj’s, but what is your business address? If you are working from home, there is a good chance that your business address is the same as your home address.

This can be tricky because there is a chance that your home address ends up in a business directory. It is possible to hire a virtual mailbox in order to keep your home and business separate. However, if you are doing really well, you could set up an office somewhere and click your computer from there too.

Setting up a virtual business is a great way to make money if you know what you are doing. And if you don’t know, there is no better time to learn how the internet works. Hopefully, it won’t be long before you can make more money with those early morning clicks than you did last year.

5 Ways To Attract More People To Your Website

Jessica Lauren Vine

Starting your own business can take a lot of time and money to get things going, and a lot of what you’re paying for isn’t even guaranteeing your success. You want to make sure that nothing goes to waste, so when you pay for a website or have one made – you want to ensure that you have effective ways to bring more people to that website.

If your business is strictly online, you’re relying on this to bring in the money and bring in the customers. It’s not easy getting noticed, especially on the internet where you have thousands of competitors with similar ideas. So what can you do to increase the traffic on your site?

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Working on Your Site

The first thing you’ll want to make sure of is the functionality and reliability of your site. If you’re having frequent viewers but your site isn’t functioning correctly, a lot of that traffic is going to be a waste when potential customers give up trying to navigate or use your website.

It’s important that you make sure your site is properly tested before you try to increase the traffic, and you might find that even after testing there are still problems that crop up here and there. That’s why a lot of sites that you visit will have feedback options. Allowing for feedback means that you get to find out about a lot of issues from external users.

Another problem that you might have to tackle is how reliable your site is under a lot of pressure. While it might have stood up to you testing it with multiple users, how will it hold up when there are many more users coming in.

Let’s say you find a way to bring in a consistent but large amount of traffic every day; you want to make sure your website can handle it without things going bad. If your site goes down during peak hours, you could be losing a lot of potential customers – and they may never bother trying your website again. It’s important to make sure that you’re not only testing for problems within how your site works, but you stress test it too.

Link Building

If you’ve never heard of link building, now’s the time to learn. It’s essentially allowing for more possible routes for people to find their way onto your website. There are many ways to do link building, and the most reliable is going to be through a link building service.

It’s about having links to your website being featured on external sites and pages to attract more possible traffic to your own site. Having an increased amount of avenues on different websites is a great way to increase the traffic that you’re getting, and you can use it to pinpoint your target audience by having the links on relevant sites.

Advertising

Advertising is another great way to bring people to your site. Similar to link building, it’s about placing more avenues for people to reach you around different pages on the internet.

Paying platforms or website hosts to run your advertisements or feature your graphics on their websites can help you get your name out, along with a link to your website. Of course, this will only reach people who aren’t using an advertisement blocker, so you have to make sure to consider your target audience with this option.

Use Social Media

Social media has been used to promote businesses for a long time now, and for good reason. It’s not only a great way to put out information about different promotions that you have going on but a great way to bring more attention to your website.

You can have links wherever you want them, and you can promote your products or services as often as you would like without charge. Of course, it’s important that you know how to leverage social media – else you’re going to push your audience away if you’re not great with marketing to them.

Email Marketing

Bringing in new customers is important, but you have to consider the importance of returning customers too. There are great methods out there to encourage your customers to return, and one of the more effective options is through email marketing.

Giving your customers the option to sign up for newsletters and other forms of emails will give you the option to send out periodic emails with different offers to tempt them to come back. It’s a common practice for many businesses and is a great incentive to have customers return to your site.

How to Improve the Impact of Your Social Content

Jessica Lauren Vine

If you’re looking to improve the way in which your business communicates and reaches out to people online, your social content should be at the core of your strategy. So what can you do to ensure the content you pump out for social media is going to give your business the boost it needs and have the right impact? We’re going to discuss exactly that today, so read on now to find out more.

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Get the Timing Right

Getting the timing of your posts on social media right is something you’ll definitely have to work on. The kind of impact they have very much depends on when they’re released and the timing of it all. If you’re not getting your timing right, you’re going to end up with every post and piece of content being overlooked because people won’t even notice it.

Promote User-Generated Content

Getting your community involved in the content you share on social media is often a good idea. You can create contests or share the content that your users are putting out there. If you’re lucky enough to have such an engaged and active community around your brand, that’s something that you’ll definitely want to make the most of going forward. Not doing so would be a major mistake.

Track it Carefully

Being able to track the numbers and the analytics is something that’ll be very important if you’re going to succeed with your social content. Companies like BrandTotal can help you gain access to the tracking and analytics tools you need in order to understand how your content is performing. So be sure to make the most of these resources if you’re not doing so already.

Tell a Story

Telling the story of your brand should certainly be one of the things that you’re focused on when it comes to finding success with your social content. Tell the story of how your business is growing and developing, which might include sharing some behind-the-scenes content. That kind of content can lead to a dose of reality and authenticity that many people are looking for from brands on social media these days.

Make Sure You’re Using the Right Platforms

Using the right social media platforms on which to share your content and devote your time is something you’ll definitely need to think about. Some platforms are better suited to some brands than others. If you’re looking to target a younger crowd, putting all your time and energy into Facebook might not be the best strategy, as it tends to have an older user base on average. That’s something you’ll need to work out yourself.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to improve the impact your social content has. So if this is something that your business has been struggling with for a while now, be sure to make the most of the tips and ideas we’ve discussed here today. They should offer you exactly what you’re looking for.

Giving Your Online Business An Early Days Boost

Jessica Lauren Vine

Starting an online business can be a scary thing. You’re excited to get started, of course! But you’re also apprehensive about your chances of success, and you know there’s a lot of other websites you’re going to come up against.

This is why you need a boost in these early days. You need a chance to take your business to the next level as soon as possible, and to manage that, you’re going to need some tools on your side. Here are some tips for securing the best the online world has to offer to a small business like yours.

Talk to Those You Already Know

One of the best ways to make a sale, especially in the first month of operating, is to talk to those you know in real life. Your friends and family are your first customers, and depending on how many people you’ve told about your business, that could be upwards of 10 sales that help you to generate a profit baseline, as well as a better sense of confidence for how you’ll approach sales in the future.

Outsource Your Marketing

Marketing is something every company has to do. Unless you’ve already got a big, established presence in the online world, no one is going to find you otherwise! But you don’t have to take on such a task alone. There’s plenty of tools, including free ones like Google Analytics, that can help you build a trail that potential customers can follow.

Indeed, you can also try ‘White Label’ marketing, especially if you offer an SEO service yourself. This is where you get a service such as a white label digital marketing agency to refine your strategy and offer tools for you, and then repackage their work as your own. It’s perfect for a company that’s just starting out, and it’ll save you a lot of time and effort that can be better spent in tracking down those leads that’ll really turn you a profit!

Capitalize On Social Media

Social media can be your best friend when it comes to giving your business a boost because it’s such an accessible and wide-reaching platform. Even just on Facebook, which has nearly 3 billion active users in 2021, you can guarantee that at least 3 quarters of this number is always on the lookout for new and interesting content. This gives you the perfect chance to try and fill that gap.

And most social media platforms allow you to really hone in on a niche. Thanks to the use of dedicated pages, hashtags, and groups, you can bring your perfect customer right to your door. Even if you don’t use any of the ad programs these platforms offer, you still have a strong chance of generating organic traffic.

Your online business needs to have a strong start, and these are the ways to make sure of it! Make good use of the above tips to give your new company the boost it needs.

4 Essential Small Business Tools for Starting an Online Business

Jessica Lauren Vine

If you’re thinking of starting an online business, you’ll need a number of tools that will help your new business run smoothly. Many budding internet entrepreneurs often assume that an online business doesn’t require the use of tools like traditional businesses –and to an extent, that’s true.

Unlike traditional businesses that usually require physical equipment, locations, and inventory, an online business may not need all that. However, there are toolsets that are unique to internet businesses and are used by all successful web-based businesses.

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Tax, Legal, and Accounting

Every business relies on its balance sheet to determine if it’s losing money, breaking even, or making profits. As with traditional businesses, the easiest way to do this is by running the numbers. This is usually done using accounting software or by hiring an accountant to do your books.

You’ll also need to file taxes if your business is in profit. If you can’t do this yourself, have a tax expert or consultant handle that part of your business for you. Some people prefer to hire boutique financial consulting services that can handle all these for a fee.

But they can be pricey, given that they’ll be either hiring accountants or assigning your accounts to their in-house talent. If you have the budget, then it’s easier to just let a financial consultant. If not, figure out the tools you need and do all these yourself.

Project Management

Regardless of your online business model –eCommerce, affiliate marketing, digital agency, or SaaS development– you’ll need a way to manage the tasks required to make each project successful and manage your time.

Even if you’re working alone, you still need a project management platform to help coordinate your tasks, identify major milestones, and give you a birds-eye view of the project status. This is where tools like Basecamp, Trello, Asana, and Teamwork can help.

If you’re working with a team, you’ll find that using a project management platform will make your life a lot easier. These platforms or software help make collaboration easier, can track your project status, and project progress.

Virtual Business Address

An online business offers the benefit of being able to work from anywhere. But still, there’s got to be a way to receive regular mails when necessary. For example, Google requires a physical address to send you their verification code.

Virtual business addresses like the one at physicaladdress.com can serve as your business address. They provide you with a reliable physical and mailbox for a monthly affordable fee. Every mail that comes through these addresses, can be forwarded to your physically or digitally anywhere in the world.

Communication Tools

You cannot work in a vacuum. Even the most hands-off online business model –affiliate marketing– still requires you to communicate with people like affiliate managers, content teams, and product owners.

You need a reliable means of getting and staying in touch with and coordinating everyone who is relevant to your business, including your customers. Some examples of good communication tools include Slack, Google Workspace, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and autoresponders like Aweber or GetResponse.

With these tools, building and running your online business will be way easier than trying to do everything manually.

Find Balance In Your Marketing Strategy To Find Success

Jessica Lauren Vine

There is no single marketing strategy that will fit every business. Any team offering a “one size fits all” solution isn’t likely to take into account the needs and specific circumstances of your business or field. However, a lot of businesses make a mistake by not implementing a little balance in their marketing methods.

We’re talking primarily about the balance between organic marketing and interruptive marketing, but there is also a balance in digital and physical to pay attention to, as well.

The Organic Side of Things

One of the biggest mistakes you can make with online marketing is to neglect the organic approach. This is marketing that is designed to target and draw in customers that are already looking for services like yours. Search engine optimization is the most popular (and effective) form of organic marketing, but content marketing, social media posting (not advertising), and setting up landing pages are all good examples of how to organically draw customers into your conversion funnel, as well.

Both on-page and off-page SEO are crucial, and they’re also much more cost-effective. Though SEO services cost money, it’s often a matter of investing only once and then again when you need a major update to your strategy, rather than paying consistently for ad campaigns.

Getting Interruptive

One lesson you should not take from the above point is that you don’t need any advertising. Advertising is also known as interruptive marketing, which also includes things like pop-ups, exit surveys on sites, and more. It is true that it is more jarring than organic marketing, but that’s because you need to be bold to catch the attention of the customer who is ready to convert, but not actively looking for your business.

Smart interruptive marketing is about working with advertising agencies who know where to put your ads, who to target them, and the best ways to win over those customers. Spending money on throwing out ads with no plan isn’t a good approach, but well-targeted ads can be very cost-efficient, as well as being the most effective method of driving a lot of clicks, conversions, and revenue in a short period of time.

Dangers of Going All-Digital

Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to target the broader market of customers that there is. However, you might be missing out on the power of traditional marketing, as well. Because fewer businesses invest in things like direct mail marketing, there are few brands to compete with, allowing you more of your customer’s direct attention.

If your business is locally based, then you should certainly be using methods like billboards or radio advertisements to target your local customers as well, as they will find it much easier to find you in person than amongst noise online. The balance of both digital and traditional marketing is what drives real success.

To ensure that your business isn’t missing any “easy wins,” it’s important to make sure that you have at least some measure of both organic and interruptive marketing, as well as both digital and traditional marketing. Rare is the business that won’t benefit entirely from one of these four categories.

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