11 Nov
Business

7 Tips to Secure Your Small Business Site

You rely on your commercial site to take care of customers and grow your business, but what do you know about cybersecurity? A single hack could reduce your company to ruins and lead to customer distrust. Take steps to secure your site and all the time, money, and energy you invested in your entity.

 

1.) Design a Secure Site

Instead of using free software, let a professional web developer build your commercial site. Use reputable online platforms and reviews to compare costs and delivery times. Ask providers “how much should you charge as a freelance web developer?” Dependable and experienced developers have rates between $15 and $30 an hour, but you may want to spend more, as you cannot skimp on-site security.

 

2.) Train Your Employees

Imagine learning everything about keeping your website secure only to experience a cyberattack because an employee clicked on the wrong email attachment. Establish basic workplace security procedures, so your workers don’t become liabilities. Examples of helpful policies include using strong passwords, protecting customer information, and implementing internet-use guidelines.

 

3.) Back Up Data

Make a habit of backing up essential business data. Experts recommend you not rely on a single backup to store data you cannot do without. Instead, use external hard drives and cloud storage. Keeping hard copy records may seem tedious, but it’s a move that could save your business and your reputation.

 

4.) Use Antivirus Protection Software

You likely already know about antivirus protection software, but it’s a tip worth repeating. All tablets, phones, computers, and other devices with an internet connection could spell doom for your business. Install protective software against spyware, malware, and viruses. More importantly, install updates when they become available.

 

5.) Implement Proper Password Practices

While using strong passwords goes a long way in protecting your commercial site, you can do more. Change your passwords every three months and make sure your employees do the same. You could also require multifactor authentication to tighten cybersecurity further. If any of your vendors access sensitive business or customer data, see if they offer multifactor authentication.

 

6.) Use Payment Cards Carefully

Tread carefully if you use credit cards. For instance, payment processors and banks should implement anti-fraud services. Check to see whether you have security obligations with your payment processor or bank so you honor your agreement. If you must use less-secure programs to conduct business, keep them separate from payment systems. It’s a good idea to have separate computers or devices for using the internet and processing payments.

 

7.) Know What To Do During a Cyberattack

Despite your best efforts, your company may succumb to a cyberattack. How you respond during the attack can either help or hurt your recovery chances. When you first learn of the attack, contain it as much as possible, which could mean taking everything offline. Next, identify the damage, find out which systems suffered from the attack and determine whether you have compromised data. Even after mitigating a breach, stay on the ball. It’s vital that you seal entry points and make sure the hacker didn’t leave a back door for later entry.

Government regulations may require you to inform specific parties of the attack, such as law enforcement and government agencies. You should also let your public relations, legal, and marketing teams know about the attack in case they need to make a public statement or inform your customers.

Don’t let proper online security fall to the wayside. Following a few tips and practices could help you reach your business potential and protect your peace of mind. Let eSEO Space create a secure and functional website and help grow your business. Learn more.

04 Nov
Business

Understanding The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Its Rules

When it comes to running a business, financial security is one of the things that is being constantly looked at. As a service provider, here at eSEOspace, we want to make sure that clients get their money’s worth. Having said that, this has transpired us to comply with the guidelines of the Financial Industry Regulatory  Authority (FINRA) to ensure financial security protection. This means that all the websites that eSEOspace creates are according to the compliance of FINRA and its rules. 

 

What is FINRA?

FINRA is short for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, where it is composed of members from exchange markets and brokerage firms. It is an independent, non-government organization that is designed to oversee and regulate the actions of its members. 

 

What is FINRA’s rule? 

FINRA’s rule serves as a guidance and protection to investors in the ever-changing market. It helps preserve the integrity of the market field and strengthen ties among investors and keep their investments secure.

 

Who is required to register with FINRA?

FINRA registration applies to both firms and individuals alike that are connected to the securities business of the organization. This includes people of the following position: directors, partners, salespersons, branch managers, etc. There is a certain qualification exam to pass as proof of knowledge in the said field.

 

 

How do I get a FINRA license?

Getting a FINRA license would require securities professionals to pass a series of qualifying exams. These tests will gauge one’s competence and ability in the said areas of the business before they become registered. Contact us today to learn more.

desk setup
20 Sep
Business

Apps That Save Small Business Owners Time, Money and Energy

How often do you find yourself trying to wear all the hats in your business? As a small business owner, you’re often your accountant, admin team and marketing department all rolled into one. Oh, and you also have to run the business, too! There are plenty of mobile apps available to help business owners like you free up some time and make life a little easier. eSEOspace recommends the following.

 

An App for Making Your Products Dazzle

When it comes to showing off your products, photographs make all the difference in the world. A poorly-lit and ineffectual image gives a bad impression, and could mean a lost sale.

 

Apps for Social Media and Marketing

As much as you might wish it would, your business won’t advertise itself. Maintaining a social media presence and putting together a solid marketing strategy can be a full-time job in itself.

Mailchimp is an email marketing tool that allows you to write and send targeted emails to customers. Use it to easily let people know about any offers you have on or notify customers when something is back in stock.

OptinMonster points out that all of the main social media platforms also have easy-to-use apps. Being able to access them from your phone can help you to manage your accounts while on the go.

 

Apps for Bookkeeping, Accounting and Payroll

Keeping your accounts compliant and up to date can be a long and laborious task, especially where it’s not your specialty. As your business grows, it will be important for you to have a system in place to help you stay organized in the easiest way possible.

Using a system like QuickBooks Enterprise will help you to keep track of sales, invoices, stock and more — and ERP: efficient enterprise resource planning can be the hot ticket. The software is robust enough to make sure you have everything you need while also being really user-friendly. You will have comprehensive oversight of your accounts at your fingertips, as well as the ability to make tailored reports and integrate with a wide range of other software so you truly provide for the needs of your growing business.

If you employ staff or use freelancers, you will also need a payroll system. QuickBooks has all the payroll services you will need and fully integrates with your other QuickBooks products. You can make unlimited payments to staff with next day, or even same day, deposits. Employees can also view their pay stubs and see what vacation day balances they have available.

Wave is another app that is designed with freelancers and small businesses in mind. The intention behind Wave was to encourage small business owners to feel empowered to manage their finances and to not be afraid of it.

 

Apps for Project Management

Keeping yourself organized when you have multiple projects on the go at once is tricky. This is where having a good system for project management is essential. With Basecamp, you can assign projects to both yourself and your employees while keeping track of them on the dashboard in the app. You can assign projects a due date and add any comments where you need to.

 

Trello is similar to Basecamp in that you can assign tasks to people and manage them with cards on a dashboard. Trello also automates a number of tasks to help save you time. For example, add recurring tasks that need to be completed on a weekly or monthly basis.

 

Apps for Video and Messaging

When running a business, you need to be able to contact your employees in real-time, especially when you need something urgently. According to Sherweb, Microsoft Teams offers a suite of services, including videoconferencing and instant messaging. As it is powered by Microsoft, it is also easy to share and access applications like Word and PowerPoint within the app.

Slack is another app that can be used for free in helping you to maintain communication with your employees. Use it to send instant direct messages and for larger group conversations. It can also be used to message people outside the company and is therefore good for building customer relationships.

 

To Conclude

While you may be responsible for holding different roles within your small business, make the process so much easier on yourself by using some of the above apps. They can help you with your day-to-day operations and also in scaling and growing the business, too.

 

[Image via Unsplash]

 

 

An illustration of business success, progressing from “idea” to “planning”, “strategy”, and “success”.
12 Aug
Business

How to Choose the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Business

A white wooden chess piece facing black ones.In today’s thriving digital marketing landscape, there’s an array of marketing strategies, plans, and tactics to consider. More so than ever before, different strategies employ different tactics to help businesses reach their desired outcomes. However, it’s this wealth of choices that may leave you undecided – marketing decision fatigue, in a sense. With that in mind, then, let us use this article to lay down some fundamental questions. Going through them will help you choose the best marketing strategy for your business and its unique goals and needs.

 

 

Marketing strategy vs. marketing plan vs. marketing tactics

But first, let us briefly untangle and distinguish those 3 terms. They frequently see somewhat interchangeable use, which, while convenient, rarely helps in a practical sense.

In brief, these terms do relate, but each refers to a specific aspect of the marketing process:

  • A marketing strategy defines a business’s goals, and juxtaposes objectives with resources. It pinpoints the tactics it will use, and sets the foundation for a marketing plan.
  • A marketing plan, then, puts the strategy’s theory into practice. It maps out the exact tactics it will use, in adherence with the established overall strategy.
  • Finally, marketing tactics are specific, individual tactics a business takes up to achieve its goals. Those can range from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay Per Click (PPC) ads and anything in-between. Moreover, they may expand to on-page practices such as Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Landing Page Optimization (LPO), and so forth.

Using those definitions should help clarify that your exact tactics should always adhere to your strategy and plan. Put simply, you cannot have a solid plan without a sound strategy, or pick tactics that don’t explicitly serve both.

 

How to choose the best marketing strategy for your business

An illustration of business success, progressing from “idea” to “planning”, “strategy”, and “success”.

Now we may delve into the fundamentals of building your marketing strategy. To do so, we will pose a series of questions for you to answer, leading you to optimal choices.

1. What are your goals?

As highlighted above, no two businesses need to follow the exact same strategy. Rather, your unique goals, resources, circumstances, and timetables will determine the optimal route for you. Thus, the very first step should be to establish S.M.A.R.T. goals – namely:

  • Set specific goals; pinpoint exact desired percentages, phrase them in unambiguous terms, and so forth.
  • Ensure you can measure your efforts’ success; identify specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track your progress.
  • Set goals that are achievable; consider your budget, market position, and so forth.
  • Keep your goals realistic; keep your current framework of operations in mind.
  • Time-bound. Set specific deadlines for your goals; this will help you gauge your strategies’ success regarding time.

Simply examining your goals under this lens should help steer your strategy in the right direction. Moreover, it will be of immense help in the steps to follow.

2. Who are your audiences, and what do they need?

With your goals in hand, you may now identify your audiences. Understandably, to choose the best marketing strategy for your business, this step is crucial. For the sake of simplicity, you will need to answer 3 key questions here:

  • Who are your audiences?
  • What do they need?
  • How can you best reach them and address their needs?

These questions do relate, of course, but require different approaches. First, to pinpoint your audiences, you may begin by using such tools as:

  • Google Analytics
  • Social media audience insights
  • Website analytics tools such as heat maps

Then, you may use analytics to inform customer segmentation and deduce their exact needs. Customer segmentation will typically split customers into actionable groups based on such factors as:

  • Demographics
  • Psychographics
  • Behavioral
  • Needs-based
  • Value-based

Finally, the two fronts will converge to determine your audiences’ needs and the optimal way to reach them. Consider, for example, social media platform demographics; different races, genders, and age groups dominate different platforms. Thus, your choice of platform, your copy, and your overall marketing approach will need to adhere to your findings.

3. Who are your competitors?

Next, you should identify who your competitors are. This step is equally crucial, as it ties into your S.M.A.R.T. goals as regards “Achievable” and “Realistic” goals. Moreover, competitor insights also fuel S.W.O.T. analyses; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

In this regard, consider such questions as the following:

  • Do you have local competitors? Local businesses will typically need to focus on Local SEO, and thus, Google My Business (GMB) and Google Maps marketing.
  • Who are your digital competitors? Not all digital competitors may belong to your specific field. For example, as regards SEO, professionals of other fields may be targeting similar keywords as you.
  • What can you learn from your competitors? Your competitors’ successes and failures may offer invaluable, actionable insights for your strategy to benefit from.

Fortunately, there are multiple ways to acquire such insights to help you choose the best marketing strategy. From simple Google searches to marketing agencies’ services, options abound. Examples of tools to get you started as regards SEO would include:

  • Google AdWords Keyword Planner
  • SEMrush
  • WooRank
  • Ahrefs
  • SpyFu

What’s more, many such tools will also typically offer other SEO benefits for your website as well.

4. How will you measure the success of your marketing strategy?

Finally, returning to the “Measurable” component of S.M.A.R.T. goals, you will need to pinpoint your digital strategies’ appropriate KPIs. The metrics you should pay attention to will vary depending on your exact tactics but will typically include:

  • Website metrics
  • External KPIs, such as social media metrics
  • Campaign-specific cost and conversion metrics

To address these in order, then, website metrics should typically include:

  • Website traffic; how much overall traffic are you getting?
  • Traffic by source and type; where is your traffic coming from? How much of your traffic is organic, paid, referral, and so forth?
  • Sessions; how many unique sessions do you get per day? What’s the average session duration?
  • Pages; how many views do individual pages get? Which are your most and least visited pages?
  • Exits and bounce rates; where do visitors typically exit your website from? How many visitors bounce, and where can you attribute this to?

Then, as regards external KPIs, you may consider the following:

  • Impressions; how many people see your ads for any given campaign?
  • Social reach and engagement; as regards social media campaigns specifically, how many people see your content? More importantly, how many engage with it, leading them down your sales funnel?
  • Email open rates; as regards email campaigns, how many people open your emails? Can your aforementioned insights augment your open rates?

Finally, you may consider such invaluable cost and conversion metrics, regardless of your tactics, like:

  • Click-Through Rate (CTR); how many of your impressions lead to actual clicks?
  • Cost Per Click (CTC); how much does each click cost you?
  • Cost Per Conversion (CPC); given your conversion rates, how much does each successful conversion cost you?
  • Cost Per Acquisition (CPA); how much does the overall acquisition of a new customer cost you?
  • Return On Investment (ROI); given all of the above, how much is your strategy’s overall ROI?

Evidently, then, the importance of “Measurable” goals cannot be overstated. Only if your goals are clearly defined and readily measurable can you effectively pinpoint, analyze, and use such metrics. Fortunately, between marketing tools, platforms, and agencies, there is a vast array of options in this regard as well.

 

Conclusion

To summarize, it’s far from easy to choose the best marketing strategy for your business. The process takes due diligence, planning, and research. First, you will need to establish your exact, unique, specific goals. Then, you will need to identify and analyze both your audiences and competitors, settling on seemingly optimal tactics for both. Finally, you will need to consistently gauge the success of your chosen strategies, and adjust them accordingly over time. Hopefully, this article should help you through the process as you make this crucial choice.

 

 

About the author

James Jacobson is a freelance digital marketer, copywriter, and web developer in the making. As an SEO practitioner, he has collaborated with dozens of local businesses over the years, helping them acquire meaningful traffic.

 

 

 

31 May
Business

Creative Ideas & Branding Tips for your Business

In a tough and competitive market, your startup simply cannot exist for a long time unless customers trust your company. Branding is all about building the trust for your products or services among your target audience. Creating a unique brand that stands out requires you to have creative branding ideas and tips that are special so here’s a list that will set your business apart from the established brands. 

  • Discover your archetype

Psychologist Carl Jung has defined the concept of archetype as defining your brand on recognizable characters from popular fables, folklore, and novels. The world’s most popular brands have used and applied Jungian psychology as a brand strategy to make it easy for their target audience to remember their brand. Creating a notable archetype for your brand can help you create a compelling and immersive story around your brand identity.

  • Make your logo personal and enticing

Your business logo is the face of your company in your target market. Logo is a part of your building exercise and if it is merely a casual drawing, all your branding efforts will go in vain. Not only should your business logo be top-notch but also omnipresent! Don’t be afraid to use your logo absolutely everywhere. The only way to sell a product or service in greater volumes is if your brand has a logo that can be recognized by everyone.

  • Establish your social media positioning and strategy

Social media presence is important for startups and small businesses. Social media sites such as Facebool, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest offer startups a wide range of opportunities to tap into a large pool of potential customers. By creating a social media page, you can have a marketing channel free of charge! Small budgets and fully customized campaigns on social media platforms can help build brand awareness steadily.

  • Curate a personalized concept and content

Customers embrace brands that make them feel important and valued for their unique personalities. When dealing with hundreds of thousands of customers, you need to be creative with your concept and content personalization. Creating a personalized experience for your audience is the key to unlocking more engagement, lead, sales, and trust. Content personalization isn’t just a smart marketing strategy but an emerging norm. Personalization goes hand in hand with social media as with any platform where you’re offering your content. It starts with making sure of optimized images for Facebook before sharing it on Twitter, ensuring the right sizing, and even altering the content when needed.

  • Connect with brand influencers

Among brand influencers, there are those that create content relating to one specific industry. For example, Youtubers and Tiktokers who review cosmetics and make-up products. Selecting the right influencers to approach promoting your brand is also very crucial. It allows you to reverse engineer and offer a piece of content that will be an appealing bargaining chip to them. Try to get creative with locating and connecting with individual influencers and team up so you can get more exposure to a huge number of people and potential new customers. 

  • Start blogging about your business

One of the best branding ideas is to blog about your business as your blogs will project you as an authority in your business and industry. Make sure that your content solves the problems related to the products or services your industry sells. Give an updated and supported information to your readers so that they will find your blogs useful. An example of a best practice is to make sure that your blog design can accommodate a good mix of text and visuals such as images, videos, and infographics whenever required. An interesting and engaging content will attract more potential customers and this will immediately build and gain business trust.

  • Embrace online and email marketing and banner ads

Most businesses usually neglect the significance of a good email campaign or a banner ad. Professional email designs with the proper paragraph payout and images can be used to deliver all the relevant information straight to people’s inboxes. This goes the same with flooding the web with your banner ads that must stand out for its unique use of colors, images, text, call to action buttons, and other features. Another great reason why taking your outreach to online marketing platforms is because of keyword search. You can easily find keywords dedicated to your niche market which can help you build content with more effectiveness, efficiency, and success. Another thing to note is that the variety of your graphic designs such as logos, brochures, business cards, and websites are all important to branding.

  • Pay attention to your packaging

Packaging design for product-based businesses must be the center of attention and a memorable piece of your graphic design work as this is the first thing that will draw the attention of potential customers. If there is a mismatch in the packaging design and concept of the products you make, customers will automatically lose interest. A wrongfully done packaging discourages people from buying the product solely because of a poor presentation. Do not treat your packaging and label lightly as this will massively affect your established branding presence. 

 

As a generally good rule of thumb for life as it is, not just business and brands – authenticity and consistency will get you where you deserve to be. When your brand has consistent imagery, design, messaging and values, it facilitates effective communication. Consistency is what helps your audience choose you over all others. Align your creative branding ideas with your values, your own person, and with who you really want to be. Do what you do best. Adapting to your customers is good but consistency and authenticity gets recognized. Contact us today to learn more.

 

About the Author

JanineJanine is a Social Media Manager based in the Philippines who aspires to consistently develop her skills with content creations by focusing on the important elements of graphic designing and keeping up with current social media design trends. As a writer, words come naturally to her in forms of metaphors and idioms which strikes as a great wordplay with each blurb, blog, or caption.