Digital Marketing, Analytics and Music

Business growth ideas: Grow your business

Business growth is always a priority

You land a few clients or customers (or more) and realize your service or product has value and potential. What’s the next step? No matter where you are in the process, business growth is always a challenge.

In 2009 I finished grad school. It was the Great Recession and there were zero jobs available. So I started an S-Corp for professional services. My first clients came from networking. My strategy was to connect with government organizations that didn’t have enough resources for a marketing team, and some small businesses that were still operating. I didn’t involve a clever social presence or website. In fact, I still do a terrible job of marketing myself, but that’s another story. I reached out to people and established myself while holding back fears and doubts about my networking skills. (Who doesn’t?)

Furthermore, I quickly learned I couldn’t rely on just one or two clients. As a result, I upped my outreach by launching a website, asking for referrals and spreading the word where I could; at networking events, online and face to face.

Most of all, no matter which tactics you employ, growing the business will most likely always be top of mind. It helps to begin with a goal in mind, a few objectives and a strategy. You will always be asking, “How can I get more clients or customers?

Let’s grow your business

First of all, this blog from a few years back has some great tips. Called 27 Low-Cost Ways To Grow Your Business, it has practical suggestions and a lot of them are the same I recommend to students and clients. If you need some more ideas, visit Marketing Resources and 5 strategies to start and grow a successful business with only $200.

In addition, the SBA is a great resource and here’s an article to get you started: 10 Tips to Help You Build and Grow a Stand-Out Small Business Brand thinking about whether your brand is ready for growth.

Finally, Reddit is another excellent resource – visit some of the subreddits: /r/entrepreneur, /r/growmybusiness and /r/startups

Buena suerte.

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Marketing analytics: You need Neil Patel on your team

Marketing Analytics… and marketing in general

Here’s another recommendation for marketing analytics advice, and digital marketing in general.

Keep in mind that Neil Patel is an aggressive and effective marketer. He knows his way around analytics and digital marketing. You’ll notice a very different marketing approach from Avinash Kaushik when you visit his site. Whereas Mr. Kaushik takes a softer approach, Mr. Patel doesn’t hesitate to start marketing to you immediately. This is not a horrible thing, but you will get marketed to when you visit his site.

Get acquainted with Mr. Patel with a couple of helpful and informative blog posts:

How to Navigate Google Analytics Like a Pro (Way Beyond the Basics)

How to Get Actionable Data from Google Analytics in 10 Minutes

Don’t Lose Money: 5 Analytics Tools to Help You Fix Your Leaky Sales Funnel

Enjoy, and here’s to marketing with better metrics!

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Digital marketing analytics: Avinash Kaushik

Digital marketing analytics on the web:

See how digital marketing analytics can better inform your work. Read Avinash Kaushik. His website/blog Occam’s Razor on analytics is excellent. Be sure to sign up for his newsletter in the lower right hand of his website.

Quotes:

“The interesting thing about averages is that they hide the truth very effectively.”

“Testing is the biggest no-brainer, and the killer of most stupid ideas… Testing is great because you can get the most important person’s opinion: the customer’s.”

“Web is perhaps the cheapest and most effective channel on the planet right now. No matter what you do you can do it cheaper, faster and more efficiently on the web.”

“Remember, a website is not a monolith that’s used by one type of people. Your job is to figure out what are all of the reasons that it exists for and find the best source to measure it.”

“The web is inherently complex, every bit of it… And it changes every day. The tool is not the answer, it’s the people. Buy the tool you want, but remember the 10/90 rule [$10k in software and invest $90k in great staff] and invest accordingly if you want to win.”

“On the web we all do a very poor job of understanding the customer needs and wants and thus their experience on our sites. …I am a fan of measuring Customer Satisfaction (were you satisfied with your experience on our site today), Primary Purpose (why are you here today) and Task Completion Rate (were you able to complete the task today).”

“If you want to have life-altering web site gains, those won’t happen because you have improved one page on your site or a set of single pages in a silo.”

“When you cross-breed a bunch of metrics to produce a hybrid ‘simple number’, the process, by design, hides insights, hinders the ability to understand performance, and almost never allows the management team to identify root-causes.”

“If you are not spending 30% of your time in 2013 with data, you’ll fail to achieve professional success.”

“Spend 95% of your time defining the problem and 5% of the time solving it.”

“We have so much data on the web, we dive into the the data ocean hoping that magically awesome things will follow. They never do.”

If you prefer the book:

Read Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

“I believe that most websites suck because HiPPOs create them. HiPPO is an acronym for the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.”
― Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Finally, for more on Avinash Kaushik and digital marketing analytics on this site:

Analytics? Let’s defer to Avinash Kaushik

Yep, it’s another Kaushik post

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Original Electronic Music: Hold On

Immerse yourself in a warm bath of original electronic music and vocals with a driving beat.

Hope you enjoy the song.

Additionally, if you liked this, you might also enjoy Put it Down

Lyrics:

Hold On

Take a handful of the sand

Throw it out and it comes back

Like the waves of crashing sea

Scattered to the wind like me

Disappear into the night

Only trace in fading light

A small depression in the beach

Dreams that seemed so out of reach

Hold on, hold on

What is going on?

Hold on Hold on

You’re saying it’s all gone

Watching the sun disappear

Feeling like the end is near

Setting sand beneath my feet

Shift and slide into the deep

Only thing I understand

Everything it has to end

But it has to mean something

Or it means nothing to me

Hold on

Hold on, hold on

There’s something that feels wrong

Hold on, hold on

There’s something going on

Hold on, hold on

What is going on

Hold on, hold on

Don’t say that it’s all gone

When you’re looking at the sky

All you see is fading light

Then the wind comes out to play

And the memories fade away

Only thing I understand

Is that everything it ends

But it has to mean something

Or it means nothing to me

Hold on, hold on,

There’s something that feels wrong

Hold on, hold on

There’s something going on

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New music: Satellite

New music – hope you enjoy!

Solid beat with a warm drive, vocals and just a touch of melancholy.

You might also like:

Hold On

SOS

Lyrics:

Alone but not alone with an old friend

Turning pages reading to the end

Reminded of the time that’s slipping by

And memories of things best left unsaid

Still looking up and staring at the sky

The stars are sparkling, singing lullabies

They’re burning through the clouds that have no end

And satellites are slowly drifting in

But the city holds a torch for you tonight

And your promises in time you’ll hold on tight

Were these the years that never said goodbye?

Can’t be the same ones passing through the night

When the loneliness begins to settle in

Remembering the street lights at 3AM

But I’m hoping for the skies to clear tonight

So far below the blinking satellites

And the city lights reflecting in your eyes

As we’re looking out the windows of our lives

But I’m holding out some hope for you tonight

If it comes for you, well promise hold on tight

And the city is a blinking satellite

Never let it go when it seems right

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