How To Unban Your Banned Facebook Advertising Account

There is nothing more frustrating than going to run a Facebook ad and seeing it disapproved or banned completely. Even worse is when Facebook deactivates your ads account as a whole. People experience this with their business and personal accounts all the time. It can be devastating, especially if you can't get back online. Still, if your account has been banned from running ads, it may not be the end of the world.

New or Reinstated

The First step you will need to take is to figure out what's going on and with which account. If your Facebook business account has been disabled, you may simply be able to create a new one and try to be careful in the future. If your personal Facebook account has been disabled, however, there may be something going that is much more serious. Creating a new personal Facebook account for ads will probably not be possible since Facebook is usually very meticulous about tracing duplicates.

First Things First, Visit The Ads Manager

Before you do anything, you will want to visit your main marketing control center on Facebook, the Facebook Ads manager for business. Once you're in the Facebook Ads Manager, you should see a yellow bar at the top that indicates your account is no longer active. This box should contain a link that you can click. Once you click, it should guide you through a series of instructions and questions that you guide you through the process of reinstating your account.

Alternatively, you can also go all the way up to the support center, which may be hard to spot at first. It should appear in the top-right corner at a "?" logo. A scroll-down menu will pop out. Navigate to the bottom of the screen where it says you need "more help" and contact customer support.

Check Your Email

If for some reason you're not seeing this yellow bar and the Facebook ads manager isn't working for you, check your email. Check both your spam and your inbox folders to see if Facebook contacted you there. This email, too, should contain a link guiding you through the process.

Go Directly To The Source

If neither of the above options are working for you, you can still appeal directly to Facebook, depending on the nature of your concern. If your Facebook ads account was simply restricted, for example, because it was flagged for suspicious activity, you can visit this linkand follow the steps there to contact Facebook directly. Meanwhile, if your account was disabled completely, you can contact them here.

There is a real possibility that Facebook may have been wrong, or we simply made a simple mistake that Facebook may understand. Simply explain your situation politely and diplomatically, and with as much information and detail as possible. If you word your appeal right, you may get your ads account back in business.

Prevention is The Best Medicine

Having your Facebook ads account disabled for any reason can be disastrous, and a downright business nightmare. It may not be the end of the world, but if you can avoid this ordeal, do so at all costs. Prevention is usually key, and you should consider the following points to stay in business and on top of your Facebook ads game:

-Familiarize yourself with all of Facebook's guidelines and Ad policies, any violations could get you cut off the platform completely, and you don't want that!
-Have a legal expert draft your privacy policy, refund policy, terms & conditions, and custom disclaimers. They are required, well-written ones are a plus
-Landing pages, in most cases should include your business name and contact information
-Optimize user experiences. Don't advertise sites full of pop-ups, broken links, or poorly structured text that provides them with a poor experience
-Don't publish ads that are spammy, clickbaitish, or even borderline offensive
-Always make sure all info is 100% accurate and true in all your content
-Once your account is reinstated (if disabled), try to use a different payment method from the old one in order to avoid an accidental penalty from Facebook, and having to go through this again.

Since you're already doing advertising on Facebook, you should definitely check out this free trial of Automated Ads where you can automate your Facebook advertising as though you have a pro ad manager but without the need of paying a fortune!

Why Your Website Never Ranks Well

In terms of cost-efficiency, the most crucial method for attracting traffic to your website is through organic searches. They allow you to reach people who don't even know about your site initially but are searching for a specific product or service related to your website. The primary factor of the success in organic searches boils down to the ranking of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs).
There are a ton of factors that may contribute to your website may not be ranking well on search engines. Some of these reasons are:

A Slow Website

Millions of search results are available to the user as soon as they enter a keyword into a search engine like Google. With such a massive amount of data available on the Web, it's become challenging to hold users' attention for extended periods of time.

Pages that load faster not only provide excellent user experiences but also play a huge role in SEO ranking. Site speed is an official search ranking algorithm in Google that should be kept in mind during website development and management. If your website is not being ranked well, you must ensure that it can be loaded quickly on any desktop along with mobile devices. Mobile site speed is just as important.

Ambiguous Keywords and Title Tags

Ranking your website will become difficult; it is not clear to search engines what kind of products, services, and solutions you are providing to your users and their concerns. Content must be made clear. Make it easily understandable people, what they are reading. The use of appropriate keywords is a necessity in achieving clarity in your content.
Title tags are a crucial part of website ranking. Tags that start with a critical keywords perform much better than those in which the keyword is placed in different positions. Make sure that the title tags of your website are appropriate and work with the content of your website.

Similarly, many publishers make the mistake of writing an ambiguous descriptions and headings that are not related to the content of the page. As a result, such pages are penalized in the ranking.

Unoptimized Content

Content optimization is essential for the ranking of a website. It includes the optimization of the written content as well as images, audio, and other visuals used on a website. Many people use Google to search visual content, and if your website does not have optimized images, it is unlikely to be ranked high on the SERPs. High-quality images, videos, infographics, and other media content must be used to provide a good signal to Google for more top content ranking.

Poor Quantity and Quality of Inbound Links

Generally, a large number of links from other websites to your pages will ensure a high ranking of your website. The quality of the links also matters in this regard, so the links should originate from authority websites.
Irregular Publishing

It is not enough to just publish an optimized post on your website every week or so. Instead, the publishing should be regular and consistent to boost website rankings.

It has been shown that many websites are don't rank well because of irregular publications. Usually, SEO ranking experts suggest uploading at least two to three high-quality posts per week. Regular updates from your website help in engaging your audience, and the traffic will increase too.

The latest content on your sites makes it clear to search engines that you are still active on the website and working on it to make the content fresh and relevant. Moreover, the material should be adapted according to the circumstances of the publication time. In other words, stay up to date. This way, you're most likely to rank very high on search engines. Why? Because your page will provide relevant content about what's going on NOW.

SEO Practices are not being followed

SEO is one of the hottest topics in website management today. Many courses, books, blogs, and guides are available on the internet about the best practices of SEO. Having an SSL certification on your website, using suitable title tags, uploading relevant content, writing engaging meta descriptions, and implementing on-page SEO practices are some of the many latest SEO trends that increase the ranking of your website.

The focus of strong SEO is how content of your website will stand out in the search engines to ensure its ranking improves. If you've had trouble ranking your website, you probably haven't implemented good SEO practices.
If you have a website that's not seeing the ranks you desire consider programs like Web Fire. You'll be able to root out issues with your website and substantially improve its rankings in a fraction of the time and cost it would entail if you tried to go without.

How to create a better Facebook Ad?

An attractive and engaging Facebook ad is the result of a combination of effective strategies. No advertisement can be declared to be perfect as some ads work better than others due to various reasons. The competition in the Facebook ad market is becoming intense. More and more people are realizing the power of this social media giant and hope to utilize the platform to advertise their products and services.

Laser-focused targeting and creativity in Facebook ad creation are some of the essential techniques in creating a great Facebook ad. However, here are some of the other important strategies from which can be adopted to create a better Facebook ad:

Target a specific Audience

The first step in the creation of an ad is to keep in mind the audience for which you are writing the ad. The audience varies from business to business and the primary purpose of your ad.

A tempting thing to do is create a general ad and target millions of people through a single ad. However, this method is like shooting a gun in the air, and probably won't be pretty for your ROI. A better way to attract people is to create a specific Facebook ad in your niche and focus on a smaller number of people that fit your target customer criteria. An ad that's targeted is more likely to engage people because it will be tailored specifically to that audience.

While creating an ad, you must make sure to answer two fundamental questions: "who will be seeing this ad?" and "What is the message of this ad?"

There is no definite number of people that should be targeted through a Facebook ad. The number itself is highly dependent on your type of ad, kind of organization, the type of the audience, and the scale of your customer base. After selecting the target audience, write an ad that speaks directly to the audience. Make sure that the message of the ad resonates with the readers.

Create Multiple Ads and Test Them

Even after spending hours in creating a Facebook ad, it can fall flat. Hence, you should always create different versions of every ad and test them with your target audience to get an idea of which one works the best.

It is essential to follow the formal structure of the Facebook ad, which has three levels – campaign, ad sets, and ads. The process is started by selecting the aim of your ad and naming the campaign. In the ad set level, the target audience is selected, along with the budget and a few other options. Finally, the ad is designed in ads level.

Facebook allows ads published to upload up to six pictures for each ad. Once the ad is posted, these images are automatically rotated by Facebook. It means that Facebook will show all variations of your ad, and the ad, which is resonating the most with the readers, will ultimately be shown more. Thus, creating different versions of an ad and testing them is important to expand your customer base.

Advertise Discounts and Offers

Many people don't even try some new products because they have a fear of wasting their money, which is proved by the psychological concept call loss aversion – people are more fearful of losing things than gaining. To overcome this barrier, you should offer free products, offers like "Buy One Get One Free," discounted products, and free delivery. If you can afford it, you should conduct weekly or monthly free giveaways as well because, in recent times, they have become a vital strategy in cultivating a loyal customer base. These tactics will ensure that the customers are attracted to your ad and more likely to contact you if the offer is enticing for them.

Make sure your ad stands out

There are hundreds of thousands of ads running on Facebook on a daily basis. It has become very difficult to capture the attention of the users. Therefore, it is important to design your ad uniquely and outstandingly to make sure the user clicks on it and not just scroll it down like any other ordinary ad.

The overall design, style, and images used in the ad are very important in captivating the users’ attention. If you use a bright and right image according to the content of your ad, it is more likely to be clicked on by the user.

Use Call-to-Actions (CTA) feature

Along with being an attractive ad, your advertisement should make it easy for people to contact you and your company. Facebook offers a clickable CTA button through which the audience of your ad can call you or message you directly. This feature should be added appropriately in a good ad to facilitate the users in getting in touch with you.

All of these strategies will be useful to you in designing a perfect Facebook ad. Many advertising agencies and professional programs also offer their services in ad designing to make sure your ad stands out on Facebook and attract the target audience. Once you get your ads up and running, choose a Facebook Ad management system like Automated Ads to manage and optimize your ads.

How Outsourcing An Offer That You Sell Can Make More Money For Your Business

There’s only so much time in the day, and although it can be a great idea to add extra services that you sell and fulfill yourself, it’s not always practical. This is why it can be a great idea to look for other services or offers that you can sell yourself but easily outsource to others to do with little to no work on your part.

For instance, you might be a web designer that often gets requests to create and add videos to your clients’ sites, but it might either be very time consuming or nearly impossible for you to create nice looking videos to sell as a service even if you could get hundreds to thousands of dollars per sale for them.

Instead of just passing on that easy money, why not look for others online who already offer those services, reach out to them, markup their prices (or make them more “done for you” to increase the value and prices you can charge) and get permission to use their testimonials, social proof, examples, sales pages, etc. as your own (or that you can modify) to sell to your own clients. This can be a great way of making extra money at huge margins.

For instance, there’s often places online like Fiverr.com, Craigslist.com, Freelancer.com, etc., that have tons of workers for almost anything you can think of. In some cases, you can find workers who can make nice looking videos for $25 to $50 (less in some cases) and you could turn around and sell that service for hundreds to even thousands of dollars.

We’ve done that with a variety of services ranging from social media management to video creation, and it’s easy money without any work or extra hassles on our part. And it’s a win-win, because our prospects really wanted those offers and would’ve likely bought something similar at some point, so why not have them buy from us?

Adding a couple of these services of your own can be super easy, add almost no work to your plate, but make you a fortune almost completely hands free!

So be on the lookout for other services or offers that you can sell that you’re able to outsource to others for pennies on the dollar. This can add some easy money to your sales funnels without adding extra work for you to do.

For more great marketing and sales tips to increase your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

Using Trust To Build Your Business: What You Need To Know To Use Referrals To Your Advantage

Have you ever tried a product or service based on the word of a friend, colleague or family member? Many of us have, because we trust that person and are more likely to take their recommendation over someone we don’t know. This is the power of referrals. Ask your current customers if they have friends, family, or people they know that they think would love your service, then contact those people on behalf of them, offering your services/products. This is a great way to get access to potential new customers, while also having a warm introduction – you’re not cold-calling (or emailing!) them, as you’re essentially being introduced by their trusted friend/family member (your current client).

For example, say you have an ecommerce business where you sell natural beauty products. You could email out to your customers, asking them if they know anyone that would love your products as much as they do.  If so, ask them to pass on the email address of those people and explain you’ll not only offer their friend a free sample of your most popular product, but that they too will receive a bonus 15% off their next purchase online as a thank-you. When you email the new lead with your free sample offer, mention that their friend thought they’d like your products, which is why you’re emailing and would love to offer them this free sample as a gift.

So put the power of referrals to work for you and piggy-back on the trust that your customers have already built with their friends and family. Ask your customers if they know people they think would love your product/service, and if they’d be willing to pass their contact info on to you. Contact those people on their behalf and make them a special offer!

Are you after other great ways to reach new leads? Check out a demo of this software, which can help you find new leads already interested in your niche, and grab a special deal!  Web Fire

Five Marketing Tips To Drastically Improve Your Sales

With the passage of time, consumers have become highly conscious of the marketing strategies being used by businesses all over. Most consumers are able to differentiate between an authentic business and one that is exaggerated and hyped through artificial marketing. As a result, people tend to spend their hard-earned earnings on very particular products and brands.

In such a highly competitive business environment, businesses face the difficulty of increasing their sales, or even worse, just to maintain a steady sales income. As a result, the capital of such companies starts dwindling within a few years, and it can lead to the catastrophic failure of their business model.

If you want to keep your head above those choppy waters, you need to keep in mind the following five marketing tips.
These tips should be adopted by all businesses to drastically improve their sales:

1. Identify The Market And The Problems.

Not enough can be said of the great importance in choosing an appropriate market for the kind of business you run. After you've established your business, it's important to find out the problems your desired customers are facing in that particular market. Then you need to analyze those market problems in detail. Then you need to figure out exactly how your business solves that problem and sell that solution. Your business should emphasize developing modern, durable, and unique solutions to customers’ issues.

It should go without saying that the products and the services offered by your business must possess the highest of quality. However, offering premium quality is not enough. It absolutely must stand out from the crowd to really make the customer fall in love with your business.

2. Develop A Unique Selling Proposition

Your business must have some unique selling proposition (USP) to make it stand out from your competition. If you keep offering the same services and products as your competitors in the market, your business will have fewer chances of surviving in the fierce business conditions. You should research your competitive businesses and offer more advantages to your customers to keep them hooked to your company’s services.

Moreover, with the launch of different businesses on a daily basis, it has become difficult to establish a loyal customer base. A steady and continuous form of communication with your customers is important to keep your business and new products fresh in their minds. You should take feedback from your customers and adapt your workings and services according to their requirements.

3. Effective Social Media Marketing

As often stated in all marketing strategies, social media has become a an integral part of marketing for any kind of business. It is now considered to be the best tool of advertisement for companies because you can target specific markets, areas, and people via an active social media marketing campaign. Moreover, you can get better advertising for a fraction of the cost compared to other marketing techniques and advertising platforms.

Through social media platforms, you can form good relations with your potential and existing customers and keep them updated about your business and any new products. Social media can also be used to answer any queries of your customers quickly and get good reviews from your customers. Authentic and live comments from other customers will encourage the audience of your social media pages to avail your products or services, leading to drastic improvement in sales.

Other advantages of social media include:

• It provides various channels for your business to sell your products. Many social media pages now provide you with the option of selling directly from your Facebook page to facilitate your social media consumers and increase sales.
• It is extremely cost-efficient to run a social media page and keep customers engaged and updated.
• Customer retention is improved via social media by keeping customers engaged and informed

4. Select An Appropriate Price

Selecting the right price for a product or a service can more difficult than expected for many. However, it is necessary to remember that the price you set should be affordable by your targeted customers. Market and audience research (https://marketingland.com/research-audience-90118) and targeting play a huge role in this case.

You can research your competitors (https://www.intechnic.com/blog/top-ten-tools-to-research-your-competition-on-the-web/) and analyze the reasons behind the prices set by them. Try to set the price with minimum profits during the first few months of the business until it has found its footing in the Market. After you have established a loyal customer base, you can revise the charges appropriately according to market conditions.

5. Customer Retention

Targeting new customers should not be the only focus of the companies as retaining an old customer is also important to establish a loyal customer base and increase the sales quickly. There are many ways to target customer retention, for instance by connecting with your customers on social media or through blogging and email up to dates to keep them informed on updates and special offers. Many companies also retain customers by creating rewards programs that provide your most loyal customers with exclusive deals, and rewards them with special offers and discounts for shopping at your store.

If you want to read more about marketing tips, check out the 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years! for a detailed explanation of the marketing strategies.

How To Make Money Using Social Media

It takes a while to understand that social media sites are developed for more than just entertainment and de-escalation of boredom. You can make money through social media without selling anything. These platforms are, believe it or not, perfectly designed to be used as money-making machines. It may take you a little time and a lot of effort to get recognized by other social media users. You'll need to build an image and audience on social media. You'll need to build an audience and engage in an effective social media content strategy. Over time, as your audience grows and you accumulate more and followers a number of new income opportunities may open up to you, and you'll never have to create a store or start your own business if you don't want to. Once you have a substantial audience, here are some ways you can make money with your popular social media account:

1: Brand Promotion:

Some of the most effective marketing is done through ads and promotions online, but not all of it is pay per click advertising. Many companies will turn to famous and popular celebrities to promote or endorse their products. If you become a social media influencer companies may reach out to you for brand promotion deals. Companies know this is a great way, especially to reach a targeted audience.

Example: Look at Tecno Mobile who launched a Tik Tok campaign to reach out to teen users, which comprise about 90% of the website's audience.

2: Shout-outs:

Shout-outs, especially among young people and millennials, are becoming one of the most common social media promotion tactics. You find someone who is a highly influential social media personality with an audience that fits your target market and you get them to give a shout-out to their audience about your page or business. Not only can you gain new customers this way, but also followers and viewers for your other pages online. If you become influential enough on social media, other influencers and companies may reach out to you for a paid shout-out.

3: Selling Arts And Crafts On Social Media:

Millions, maybe even billions of social media users all over the world have a love for the arts. Who doesn't love seeing the creativity of another person in action through arts, crafts, and other special talents. Showing your creativity and talents in action and putting them on display is a great way to build a solid social media following if you do it right. In addition to getting the influence though, it also opens up the door to money-making opportunities. Many artists are already selling on Instagram, and Facebook is starting to break into E-Commerce as well. If you have talents and hobbies you're good at and passionate about, you may be able to turn it into a social media business.

Keeping Followers Engaged With Content

Building a following and keeping a following on social media follow somewhat similar strategies, in they evolve the constant creation of content. You need content that is original, unique, and will keep relevant users engaged, and it has to be constant. Keeping up with all the content you need to keep your following strong can be demanding, but it's very much worth it, and made easier by user-friendly software like News Poster to help get you started with relevant content rolling on your page.

How Contests Can Be A Great Source of New Targeted Leads

Contests can be a great way to grab more leads or prospects, get feedback or testimonials from existing customers, encourage participation or attendance on webinars, and more. And, it’s not like you have to give away a car or something crazy expensive. In fact, often times cheaper giveaways will help increase your conversions even more (perhaps because they think they’ll have a better chance of winning?).

For instance, you can run an ad where you’re advertising a contest for a free drone that you’re selling. Anyone who enters you know is probably a potential prospect, as they’re interested in the drone that you sell. When you do that, you can immediately advertise a special deal you have on them in case they don’t win (and offer to refund if they do) and want to get it right away. The benefit here is that you can get dirt cheap clicks and leads when advertising this way (on places like Facebook), all while building up a very targeted list (we’ve built up some big mailing lists and businesses this way at a fraction of the cost of what our competitors pay for ads).

You can also use contests as a way to build up your testimonials. Offer to enter customers into a contest when they submit any testimonials or feedback about your product. People love contests, which is why it can be a great way to get them to take action.

So consider using contests to get lots of cheap traffic and leads to check out your offers. Or, alternatively, use contests to encourage testimonials or feedback on your products.

For more help getting targeted leads, check out the WebFire tool here Web Fire.

How to Create Repeat Customers Using Future-Use Coupons

How can you encourage customers to make their second, third, and fourth purchase with you? How can you entice them to keep coming back and buying from you, changing them from a once off customer to a regular? Future-use coupons are one great strategy to employ to incentivize customers to make that next buy.

So how do future-use coupons work? When customers make a purchase, you give them a coupon for a dollar value or percentage off their next purchase. This is called a “future-use” coupon. It encourages your customers to come back and purchase from you again, and keeps you in their mind. You can even make receiving the coupon dependent on spending a certain amount, to encourage customers to spend more per sale.

For example, if you have tennis shop, you could have an offer where if they spend over $100 today they get $25 off their next purchase of $100 or more. Not only does this give an incentive for your customers to spend $100 now, it also gets you an additional $100 sale next time they come in wanting to use their coupon.

So encourage customers to come back to you with “future-use” coupons, where, if they spend a certain amount with you today, they get a percentage or dollar discount next time they make a purchase with you.

Want more great tips on customer retention and turning your clients into repeat purchasers? Check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!

How To Position Your Offer To Increase Sales

In many cases it can be a wise idea to offer multiple similar packages when selling something. However, instead of offering drastically different offerings, which might make your prospects hesitate more due to not being sure which option to get, you can offer similar options where the “value buy” seems like an amazing deal.

For example, let’s say that you’re selling an SEO service to help websites rank better. If your main offer is a done for you package for $997 where you fix up their site and offer some basic consultations for them too, that can normally seem like a lot of money to some people and can make them hesitate more on if they should buy or not. However, you could offer three options where the “basic” package is for $897 and only includes a report where you identify the issues but don’t fix it for them, the “most popular” package is for $997 and includes identifying and fixing all the issues on top of three free consultation calls, and the “elite” package is for $1,997 and includes everything in the most popular package but also includes unlimited consultation calls for a month.

What this does is that almost everyone thinks that the middle, “most popular” package is the best deal. It’s only a little more than the basic package, but it includes a TON of extra value. Whereas the “elite” package is twice the price but only has some extra consultation calls that most people think they’ll never use. All of a sudden people perceive the $997 option as being cheap and a great deal! The other options aren’t meant to necessarily get sales. They’re simply meant to help make your main offer stand out more.

And by literally writing something like Basic Package, Most Popular, and Elite Package next to the options, you can help them differentiate between them even more and gravitate towards the Most Popular one.

You just have to be crystal clear with them (in bold colors and / or graphics) what the best or most popular options are, and really make it seem like it’d be dumb not to go with the offer you want them to take.

This also has the added benefit of making your “most popular” or “best” option seem cheap when it’s only a bit more than your basic package. If you didn’t have your basic package, they might think that your offer is expensive, but when they see it as being only a tinge more than the basic, their mindset changes from “that’s too expensive!” to “that’s only a bit more than this basic offering here … what a deal!”

So consider offering multiple packages like a Basic, Most Popular, and Elite Package where the value of the Most Popular one seems huge in order to make more people gravitate towards it and see it as a crazy good deal.

For more great marketing and positioning tips to increase your sales, check out this book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

The Trick to Keep Your Customers Continuously Purchasing From You: The Benefits of A Loyalty Program

It’s often way more effort and expense to find new customers than to sell again to your current customers. So how can you persuade your current customers to continuously purchase from you? One way is to put in place a loyalty program that keeps them coming back for more.

A loyalty program is a great way to encourage customers to keep purchasing from you, make them feel special and reward and thank them for their continued business. Most loyalty programs involve rewarding customers when they buy regularly from you or have purchased a certain amount from you, whether it’s in free products or discounted future purchases.

For example, think of your local coffee place. Many local coffee shops have a simple punch-card loyalty program, where you purchase 5 coffees and receive your 6th coffee free. The reward, of the free 6th coffee, encourages people to keep coming back to the same coffee place to indulge in their caffeine kick.

Think about how you can encourage and reward your customers for their loyalty. Implement a loyalty program that rewards customers, through free products/services or discounts for future purchases, when they regularly purchase from you.

Want more tips on retaining customers and other money making marketing strategies? Check out this book here 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!

Why Some Businesses Fail?

Business is a complex concept that many fail to gasp. A business only emerges to be successful if it is implemented after thorough planning with passion, discipline, and after a great deal of research. Sustaining a business can become extremely difficult after a certain period of time due to budget constraints and poor planning. According to a survey, in the USA alone, 70% of new businesses take a hit within a decade of their conception.

A truly successful business is not one that booms and experiences a short and vibrant period of success. A truly successful company is one that enjoys sustainable success that lasts long term and withstands the test of time. Many business owners make the mistake of ignoring critical issues during the first few years, which in turn damages the business operations down the road in later years, and sometimes it's too late for the problem to be fixed.

A number of reasons can lead to your business becoming a failure. Some of the common reasons are:

1. Weak Leadership

Strong and effective leadership is important in ensuring the success of your business. An ineffective leader ends up micromanaging the employees and will try to control all aspects of the company. Unfortunately a poor leader will fail to understand that for one man, that is simply not possible. As a result, the business environment starts to crumble. A good leader is the one that imparts knowledge to the workers and tries to give specific duties to responsible people. A good leader knows how to delegate so that every aspect of that business gets taken care of quickly and efficiently.

In new businesses there are many different requirements and responsibility for different departments, and this can be difficult to manager at first. Unseasoned leaders are overwhelmed by juggling so many responsibilities and challenges and cave under the stress they can bring. Leaders need to be strong, bold, and unafraid of making quick, but calculated decisions. Good leaders also pay attention to details and are constantly looking for means of improvement. Without good, solid leadership, it doesn't matter how much money a business has or good a product it offers, it will fail.
If you don't plan for the long-haul, your business will fail before it even begins.

2. Lack Of Long-Term Investment

A far-reaching, powerful, long-term vision is essential for a good business. Many businesses make the mistake of getting overexcited during the first few years as soon as they start earning money. As a result they often fail to develop long term strategies for growth, and don't make investments in the future, clinging instead to immediate profits. Such an attitude in business will inevitably lead to poor quality products, stagnant growth and innovation, and customers who will eventually lose business. The customer base will diminish and the business will fail.

3. Lack Of Market Research

Thorough planning and research are needed at the time of launching a business. A primary reason that leads to business failure is that it gets launched without proper research and does not target a specific market. Market research is vital and should be conducted before you even think about starting a business. Even if a business enjoys success for a short period of time, ultimately, it is bound to crash without any kind of research. Without conducting research beforehand, a business might as well be stumbling around blind. How can you expect to succeed in business if you don't know anything about your hopeful customers?

A successful business is defined by the ability to predict the consumer’s requirements and behaviors. With this knowledge they can then deliver products and services that perfectly fit the needs and desires of the needs of the customers they want. You don't necessarily have to have a unique or incredible product. What you do need is to able to offer premium quality to customers who are looking for something from you in particular.

Collecting and analyzing information about market trends and procedures is important in keeping your business ahead of your competitors by offering new products, services, and deals to keep up.

4. Lack Of Customer Retention

Many businesses ignore customer retention strategies because they keep focusing on finding new customers. However, it is counterproductive strategy because old and loyal customers are important not only in increasing the sales of a business, but also popularizing it through good reviews and word-of-mouth. Not only that but old customers are easier, and cheaper to keep, compared to the process of finding new ones.

5. No Expansion Or Personal Growth

Growth does not only mean establishing a business in different locations or expanding operations. It means you also need to keep your business inspiring and innovative. Fresh talent should be welcomed in your business because they bring a lot of modern and fresh ideas to improve your business. Moreover, leaders of a business should also keep attending different seminars and training sessions to make sure they are keeping up with the times and adopting the latest entrepreneurship strategies.

If you want a deep examinations of things that may be holding your business down, you also should considering looking into programs like BizFire's Free Business Analyzer and Growth ToolTOOL, which may provide many valuable insights in a fraction of the time.

How Adding Physical Products As A Bonus, Especially For Your Digital Offers or Services, Can Increase Conversions

Selling digital products like e-books or videos (or even services) can be great, as they often carry much higher margins than physical products. However, people often place a much higher value on physical products that they can touch and hold.

This doesn’t mean that you have to offer all your products as physical ones - far from it! Instead, you should consider offering a simple physical product like a branded coffee mug, hat, t-shirt, or some other product that makes sense with your offer, as a bonus for those who take action fast.

This does two things. First, it makes people take action faster because they know there’s probably a limited quantity of the physical product (vs. a digital one that they realistically know you can have as many as you want). And second, they place a high value on physical products that they can touch.

In fact, as crazy as it sounds, you can increase conversions on a $2,000 web service simply by offering a branded coffee mug or t-shirt as a bonus. Likewise, you can even increase conversions MUCH more on lower priced offerings where you give something away that they perceive to be worth as much or more than what they’re buying. For example, you could sell a newsletter for $19/month and give a free t-shirt away with any new subscriber, and that could in some cases more than double your conversions because they think the value of the shirt is worth more than the $19 they paid (and they’ll often stay for a much longer time, making you a lot more money). We actually included a physical product once as a bonus to a membership offering, which had a perceived value to be more than the first month’s price, and it actually increased our conversions many, many times over to an almost unbelievable amount.

Another example would be if you sold a phone case for $29 and included a free charging cable with that. Since many of those sell for $29 or so themselves, the perceived value of the offer is huge, even though it might only add a dollar or two to your costs (and still give you huge margins).

You can do the same idea for services that you offer. For instance, you could offer a free cell phone clip-on lens with any purchase of a custom web video (justifying it in a way where they could shoot professional looking videos themselves from their phone).

For an offline physical product or service example, you could offer a free towel and sweatband just for trying out a one month gym membership as a trial.

You’d be shocked at how your conversions can jump even for higher priced offerings, and probably more shocked at how much they can help your lower priced offerings.

It’s funny how even a $10 physical freebie can boost sales for a $1,000 product. Likewise, it’s truly amazing to see conversions skyrocket on a lower priced recurring offer by offering something of value that’s perceived to be more than the initial payment (doesn’t mean it has to cost you more, just that the perceived value if they bought it elsewhere would be more).

This marketing trick right here has been responsible for some of our biggest money makers out there, as well as for others that we know. One might say that you could potentially build an entire business off of this tip right here.

So consider adding physical products as bonuses to your offers, as they can tremendously increase conversions for both low and high-priced products and services.

For other great marketing ideas to help you increase your conversions and grow your business, check out his book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How To Create A Better Funnel For Your Business?

Every entrepreneur is well familiar with the importance of marketing in today’s era of extreme competition. Marketing through various channels has become essential to make sure a business is able to thrive in the market. Without a proper marketing strategy, a company will not be able to gain new customers and expand their reach.

Are you looking for tips and techniques to create better sales funnel for your business? If so, you are in the right place.

What Is A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a marketing concept that provides a schematic of the process through which a customer goes through while making a purchase. The term ‘funnel’ is used as an analogy because most of the people who know about a business are its potential customers and represent the top, most significant part of the funnel. This might also be described as your “warm market” and may include those who are on the fence about your brand, or barely even giving it a thought. These people are on top. The people who can be described as committed customers are likely much fewer than those who are simply familiar with your brand. They represent the bottom part of the funnel.

The following are the five essential steps in constructing an excellent sales funnel for your business:

1. An Attractive Landing Page

The landing page of your company’s website is the first and best chance of impressing your potential customers. It should reflect the best qualities of your business and convince the customers to utilize your products and services. An excellent landing page is the one that will encourage the readers to sign-up for updates or notifications from your website. In this way, you can establish a regular and continuous interaction with your potential customers, allowing you to work them into different parts your funnel.

2. Give Front-End Offers

An enticing front-end offer should be made clear and visible on the front page of your website. The offers should be adapted to the market’s requirements, consumers mindset, and modern marketing trends. This strategy is often called the "pre-selling" as at this stage of the funnel; you are convincing your potential customers to buy your products or services.

3. Add Back-End Offers (Upselling)

An option of expanding the shopping cart should be provided to the customers at the back end. It means that the customers who have just bought or are about to buy a product or service from your business should be given the option of upgrading their order. For instance, you can create a unique offer that will provide even more benefits to the customers at an affordable cost. The strategy of upselling is often used in the funnels to enhance sales.

4. Downselling

The option of downselling is the opposite of the upselling strategy. The technique is essential in the selling funnel as it facilitates the customers' experience with your business. Many companies make the mistake of thinking downselling to be a failure of the business or as a negative step.

However, it is important to make sure people with strict budget constraints can utilize your services efficiently. The budget of your customers can keep changing due to many reasons, so your business should be considerate towards your customers by providing cheaper and reasonable offers, including the option of downselling.

5. Steady Marketing

The last important strategy of designing an efficient sales funnel is to keep your marketing steady. It is essential to follow up with your latest customers, take feedback from them, and make sure they are happy with your products and services.

To establish a good relationship with your customers, you can offer a rewards program for your customers. Different packages and offers can be introduced under this program which will keep the customers coming to meet a specific threshold of the program and get rewards from your business. Moreover, you will be able to keep the customers informed about new deals of the business and increase sales.

The five steps listed above are some of the many strategies that can be adopted by the firms to develop a better sales funnel. Other than these steps, every business should evaluate the type of their business and the targeted audience to select appropriate strategies to create a funnel for the business.

If you need help in marketing your business and creating a better sales funnel for your business, you can check out the BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer program to get help in this whole process. It makes your funnel strategies so much easier.

Want to Charge More for Your Services? And Still Have People Lining Up to Buy From You? Here’s How!

So how can you charge more for your services? How can you increase your price tag and still have customers lining up to buy from you? One easy way is to change your offer from a simple product/service to a done-for-you offer. What does this mean? Check out this example below.

Say, instead of charging $5 to write an article, you instead charge $497 to $997+ to write five articles, create a blog, post the articles up, optimize it for their keywords, and have a custom graphic or two. If you were to outsource a $5 article for $3, the first example only gives you a $2 profit, or if you were to write it yourself, you'd be trading $5 for 30 minutes, at best, of your time ($10 an hour on the higher end if you’re super fast).  However, if you were to offer the second, more premium example, you could outsource the articles for $15, allocate $10 for some custom graphics on Fiverr.com, and put in $25 to $50 to outsource the custom blog with SEO (blogger.com blogs, for instance, can be made in a matter of minutes).  That's a raw cost of $50 to $100 for a $400 to $950 profit. Or, if you were to do the work mostly yourself, you'd be talking about maybe 3 to 5 hours of work, easily putting you in the range of earning $100 to $200+ per hour compared to $10 per hour just selling a $5 article.

So, see what you can add to your offer, or bundle it with, to make it a more premium offer. Or, look at how you can make your offer more “done-for-you.” and price your offer respectively. The kicker is that more people like to buy a premium offer than a basic offer, as it's more appealing and more "done-for-you" than just an item that they'd have to do all the rest of the work on themselves.  And less people offer premium services/offers, so you're competing against less.

This doesn’t just apply to services either, as the same can be done for almost any kind of product out there. For instance, instead of just selling a book on how to lose weight, you could also sell a product or program that gives them daily exercises either through e-mail, a mobile app, software, etc.. So instead of someone just reading how to lose weight, you can make it more easy and “done for you” by literally giving them a way where they simply have to follow the daily tip. Or instead of selling a 50¢ apple at a gas station, one could sell a pre-sliced apple with caramel dipping sauce ready to go for $4+ (even though the raw cost is only a tinge more than the standard apple).

One great example we’ve done is instead of selling a course on how to rank on search engines and get traffic, which would be a challenge to sell even in the $25 to $50 range, we created software that helps do a lot of those tasks for people. And instead of having a challenge of selling a course for $25 to $50, we can charge $997 / year to $2,997 / year much more easily. We’re able to do that because it’s more “done for you” and involves far less time for the end user.

A similar example outside of software was with a real estate investing instructor that we know of who at one point sold several courses on how to invest in real estate. Most of these courses originally were on the lower end of the price point, but she was able to turn those “books” into “webinar trainings” and online courses and charge closer to $997 on up, but she didn’t stop there. She was able to partner with one of us to create software that helped do what she was teaching and sold it for around $4,000 a pop. But she still didn’t stop there. She then took all her teachings and tools and basically made an offer that would be as hands free as possible for the user. That was accomplished by setting up an offer where you’d be able to purchase a $25,000 package where you’d get on a bus with others, tour dozens and dozens of homes in a day that they already did the math on and knew were awesome deals, and then be able to make offers on the spot with bankers, agents, mortgage brokers, etc. all right there with you in one place. Granted, this wasn’t for the average mom and pop investor, but for some big investors, including overseas ones looking to take advantage of the U.S. market at the time, this was an opportunity to jump into it as hands free as possible. And they were willing to pay for it.

An interesting twist on making any offer more premium or done for you is that it doesn’t have to always start with your own product or service! You can find existing service providers or products out there, see how you can make them better / more “done for you,” and then try to either form a partnership with them or just use the outsourced provider to fulfill the work for a service. A few simple tweaks to their package / offer and sales pitch can turn a $5 offer into a $500 or even a $5,000 one without even having the need to make your own offer from scratch!

Now start looking at how you can apply this to your business. How can you make your offer a premium or “done-for-you” offer by adding more things to your service or bundling your products together to give more value? This then allows you to increase your prices substantially, your premium pricing reflecting your premium product.

Now you have ideas for a premium product, need help getting leads to sell this to? For help with how to get leads to promote your product or service to, check out this cool tool: Domain Lead Pro.

How to Access A Whole New Set of Leads By Partnering With Other Businesses

Looking for new customers? Or a way to make a whole bunch more sales? You’re going to love this strategy then! Think about other business that you could partner with, that you don’t directly compete with, where you could offer value that will make you both a lot of money. Think about the customers a business already has, and whether those same customers would be interested in your own product or service. Now, think of how you can make your offer a win-win for you and the other business. This is a great way to access a whole new database of potential clients for yourself, and give the business you’re partnering with an opportunity to upsell their current clients by offering them your service (for a cut of your fee).

For example, if you sell homemade candles, reach out to boutiques to see if they'd be willing to sell your candles (even without them buying them first - just sharing in the sales). Or if you sell a social media management or SEO service, reach out to web design firms that might not offer your services to their clients, but offer them a good chunk of the sales PLUS offer to do all the work, support, etc. for their customers AND let them market it as their own (a win-win for both).  Or if you're a programmer or have a tool of your own, reach out to market leaders in your industry who might be able to sell a lot of your product and let them white label it (sell it as their own) for a good cut of the profits while you just maintain it and do support for it. One good deal here can be more than a full-time living or a good little business all by itself.

We’ve started six and seven figure businesses by making such deals, and it all starts with just reaching out when you know both sides can benefit.

So have a look for other businesses that you don’t directly compete with that you could partner with. Then look at how them selling your product can be a win-win, whether it’s a share in sales, fulfilling a need their clients have but they don’t offer (and allowing them to market the service as their own) or white labeling your product for their clients.

To find businesses to partner with, check out our business lead tool here: Macroleads