If you're a business owner, late payments may be your biggest arch-nemesis, right next to tax season! U.S. credit card debt reached $1.14 trillion in 2023, highlighting the broader financial challenges faced by individuals and businesses alike.

Late or unpaid payments alone add up to almost a trillion dollars each year, and SMEs have no option but to write them off as bad debt.

A survey by Businesswire magazine tells us that businesses in the US frequently experience late payments. A sizable chunk receives payments 20-30 days past the payment due date.

It can be quite annoying and detrimental to your agency's growth.

Agencies work very hard to deliver results for their clients, fighting off many challenges that impede their speed and productivity. They also need to make payments to their team members and freelancers apart from other operational costs.

And when their clients ignore all T&Cs and habitually pay late, it can be extremely disheartening.

The Severe Consequences of Late Payments

Here are some of the serious consequences late payments can have on businesses:

1. Cuts cash flow and makes it difficult for SMEs and agencies to take on new projects due to insufficient working capital.
2. Reduces cash flow and makes it difficult to meet operating expenses.
3. Affects your future relationship with your suppliers and vendors if you don’t pay on time.
4. Affects your credit rating and impacts your ability to obtain future credit facilities.
5. May lead to shutting down your business in the worst-case scenario.

Image Source: Melio

5 Easy-To-Learn Tips to Help You Collect Payments on Time

FreeAgent suggests five tips you can try to get your invoices paid on time. Read these below!

1. Use the Benjamin Franklin Effect

It works on the stimulus-response principle and later on uses classical conditioning to bring about the desired response. Here you'll use induced kindness to condition your client's mind to make them pay on time.

According to the story, Benjamin Franklin successfully befriended a man who despised him by asking him to borrow a book. In line with this approach, one act of kindness induces another one, provided you're able to get them to do the act of kindness in the first place.

What is important here is that you can't achieve the same result if you initiate that act of kindness. So, ask your customer to do a favor for you in the initial stages of your relationship. It will help you forge a strong friendship with them and build trust. It also helps them form an image of you in their mind as someone who is worthy of doing a favor and replicate the same behavior again.

2. Don't Make Them Feel Guilty

People generally don't like to feel guilty and making late payments actually leads to a guilt pang. So when you send emails about invoice reminders, add the phrase, I need your help. It's a recommended practice to appeal to the good senses of your client.

3. Use Your Client's Name and Make Them Feel Special

It is an old tactic that is endorsed by Dale Carnegie in his bestseller How to win friends and influence people.ā  In any language, a person's name is the sweetest word for them, and when you call someone by their name, they feel special. And what better way to get your clients to make payments on time than by making them feel special?

4. Use Swift Reminders From Day One

Invoices might come as a rude interruption, and to avoid this, you can include the payment due date in your communications and emails as a soft reminder from the beginning. It's not considered rude if you clearly set out your payment terms just after you sign the contract. Late payment charges and legal consequences for non-payment should also be highlighted. But your first email should be a bit friendly. Warning for legal consequences can come later. Tools like Invoice Simple make it easier to add these clauses in a soft tone because their templates use a language that's nice yet professional.

Image Source: Regpack

5. Use Nouns More Frequently

Nouns are extremely powerful. Instead of asking someone to participate in an event, tell them to become a participant and reap the rewards. You will likely see a greater turnout. Instead of mentioning late payment, refer to the people as late payers while warning them about the legal consequences.

Other Tips to Get Clients to Always Pay on Time

Here are some valuable tips to make clients always pay on time.

1. Adopt a Recurring Billing Model

In this model, you convert your project-based charges into more predictable and consistent revenue, which looks similar to product-like charging. Most SaaS companies follow this payment model. So, you get paid an upfront fee for the duration of the project. You can use Stripe, Square Payment, G2 Deals, or a similar payment service, and your client's credit card will be charged automatically. There are no delays and no need to send reminders in this system.

2. Implement the Retainer Model

As an agency, you have many options. You can charge an upfront fee and claim the remaining fee through an invoice after the completion of the project. It's quite transparent and doesn't lead to any fuss or trouble later on, as everything is documented and communicated to the relevant people at each step.

However, it doesn't come without its flaws. It can expose you to cash flow issues because of late payments. In that case, you can switch to a retainer model.

In this model, you charge a retainer fee, and you have numerous ways to calculate it. You can divide the project fee by the number of months you'll work on it. For example, if the total fee for the project is $7500 and it's spread over five months, then you'll get a $1500 per month recurring fee.

The prime benefit of this model is that you can avoid late payments as the client is supposed to pay on time to keep the project from collapsing midway. Secondly, it offers a high degree of predictability.

Image Source: Runn

3. Use Deposits as a Guarantee

Clients can pause or abort a project at any time, even without making any investment, because it doesn't affect them at all. You can ensure future payment by using deposits as a guarantee. The step makes a client commit to the project and ensures that they pay for it.

Most agencies don't charge a high deposit because they want to ensure on-time payment.

However, it works given the upfront amount is substantial enough, so a client cannot hold or defer the remaining amount. So, you should collect at least half of the payment upfront to prevent late payments.

Final Words

If you want to ensure guaranteed payments, design your contracts smartly. The contract should mention everything related to payment in clear, concise terms to prevent misunderstandings later on.

As an agency, you can split the entire project fee into a 40% down payment, 40% when you complete half of the project and the remaining 20% after the project gets completed.

Alternatively, you can also sign a one-month, two-month, or three-month term and send the invoice accordingly. Moreover, you should clearly outline the scope of work, due dates, and late payment penalty to prevent any disagreements in the future. So, all prices and payment terms should be included in the contract to ensure long-term success as an agency.

Social media has powerful business benefits, but it can easily overwhelm any marketer. The present social media marketing landscape is riddled with variety and vastness.

As a result, businesses are having a hard time managing different social media channels. Few agencies can keep their channels active. Without a pragmatic plan, inquiries and messages remain unanswered, and you cannot tap the fullest potential of these channels.

You need a cocktail of energy, attention, resources, consistency, expertise, and effort to succeed. It calls for the implementation of robust social media marketing strategies.

Your absence on social media can severely hurt your growth because 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide.

What Is Social Media Management?

You can use social media platforms to achieve many objectives, some of which are as follow -

• Build Relationships With Prospects
• Create Awareness About Your Brand
• Establish Yourself as an Authority in Your Niche
• Nurture Your Brand and Grow It

Efficiently using different social media channels to achieve the above objectives is known as social media management.

Here are the seven tips for digital marketing agencies to effectively use social media for growth -

1. Use Social Listening to Improve Your Marketing

You can drive many benefits using social listening, some of which are as follows.

• Monitor Your Branding
• Develop a Better Content Strategy for Your Brand
• Use Social Listening for Social Selling
• Conduct Competitor Analysis and Learn From It
• Identify Market Trends
• Tap the Most Effective Social Influencers to Promote Your Products

A. Monitor Your Branding

You can monitor your brand name by tracking your brand mentions online. Social listening is also helpful in creating better content. According to Convince and Convert, content marketing is the most effective tactic for 58% of marketing professionals.

B. Develop a Better Content Strategy for Your Brand

But to counter the excessive noise on social media, you need to create highly relevant content for your target audience, and this won't be possible without social listening.

C. Use Social Listening for Social Selling

Social listening is also effective in social selling and is becoming a hot trend globally. People constantly search for recommendations regarding products and services. There are many opportunities you can exploit on social media for selling.

D. Conduct Competitor Analysis

People use social media to discuss your brand and competitors. You will also find people looking for alternatives and inquiring about the features of different products. Social listening also allows you to discover the issues your product or service can solve for people.

Tip: You can use these tools to spy on your competitors.

E. Identify Market Trends

Social conversations allow you to identify market trends and know what people want. If there is a shift in market trends, you can be the first person to get it through social listening and tweak your social media management strategy accordingly. It makes you an agile and highly competitive agency or business.

F. Tap the Most Effective Social Influencers

Social listening will also help you to find the most effective brand ambassadors and social influencers to promote your products and services. Social conversations will reveal which influencers people follow in your niche and why. It will also help you to avoid collaborating with fake influencers that have little or no engagement.

Social Listening Tools You Can Use - You can use many tools for social listening, such as Mention, Brandwatch, and Awario.

2. Tap Social Analytics

Social media analytics is a lighthouse in the vast ocean of marketing. It gives you insightful information about your social posts' performance, audience psychology, hot market trends, and consumer behavior. DashClicks' Analytics App will provide you with a storehouse of information sourced from the analytics section of different social platforms and third-party tools.

Social media analytics also provide crucial insights into audience engagement and referral traffic. These metrics are quite important to succeed on different social platforms. These insights tell you which of your posts are receiving the highest engagement and from where you are getting referral traffic so that you can adopt a minimalistic approach and focus on the most effective channels and strategies.

Tracking your post performance helps you build a solid content strategy and eliminate wasteful practices. Social media analytics also allows you to do competitor analysis. Through competitor analysis, you get to know your competitors' strategies to succeed in this marketplace, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

3. Use a Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar enables you to achieve multiple marketing objectives. It helps you post content according to the different stages of the buyer's journey in the sales funnel. So you have enough content for different stages, such as the awareness stage, consideration stage, and conversion stage.

Promote your blog posts and YouTube channel through social media using a social calendar and also seize the opportunities to utilize events and festivals to promote sales and run marketing campaigns.

Image Source: HootSuite

For example, you can use the first fortnight of February to promote your brand, products, and services on Valentine's week. You can use a social media calendar to create posts to announce contests, promotions, and discounts during the festive season to engage more and more people.

You can also reward your loyal customers on this occasion and use the testimonials and reviews to promote your brand. With a social calendar, it will be possible because you need to publish your posts for the entire Valentine's week, including Rose Day, Propose Day, Chocolate Day, Hug Day, and Valentine's Day.

Announce the contest at the beginning of the fortnight, promote it on your channels, conduct it around the 6th or 7th of February, and build engagement through small contests, rewards, and card samples. Save Valentine's Day for the big announcement of the contest's three winners.

4. Use a Social Media Scheduling Tool

Ideally, businesses use two to three social media channels, which makes managing and scheduling posts manually extremely daunting. Social media scheduling tools such as Buffer, HootSuite, Sprout Social, and Coschedule can ease the burden on your team.

Consistency is the key to success on social media; these tools allow you to be consistent amidst the chaos. Create as many posts as you want according to your content calendar and schedule them to keep your social channels active and prevent missing a post on a crucial day.

Image Source: Yourstory

5. Create a Social Media Strategy

Not every business has the same objective. Some might be interested in brand awareness, while others can be keen on boosting sales and growing their client base. A social media strategy helps you make an action plan to achieve the desired results. But engagement is the key to success in any social strategy you create.

Image Source: HootSuite Blog

You should first boost engagement, and you can easily achieve it if you know what your customers are looking for. Initiate meaningful, relevant, and interesting conversations, be friendly and increase your posts' engagement.

Think about people's needs and desires and put them above yours. Nothing works better on social media than talking about the things people love and crave for. Offer solutions and choose the right metrics and KPIs.

6. Brainstorm What You Need to Share

Social media is not one-way traffic. It gives customers a historical opportunity to interact with brands and sometimes even dictate the terms. The only exceptions are the monopolistic markets.

So, do some A/B testing and ask your teams to brainstorm what to post to achieve the best results. Explore the hot topics and make mindmaps to research interesting subtopics. Share case studies and amazing stats that can be an eye-opener for your audiences.

7. Increase Brand Awareness

You can boost your brand on social media, unlike any place else. You can build a community around your business and offer top-notch customer service through channels like Twitter and Facebook. Many market leaders, including the world's leading brands and airlines, use Twitter to provide instant customer support. Instant customer support helps you build a loyal customer base.

Emirates Airlines uses Twitter to market its brand and tourism in the UAE. It promotes its own services, events in Dubai and UAE, and important milestones the emirates achieve.

Final Words

Social media marketing is tremendously powerful because of the increasing popularity of social media channels. You should maintain an active presence on these channels, even if it is Tik Tok. Building strong relationships with your audience using social media is the key to achieving your business objectives, such as increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, and offering customer support.

You might need different tools to achieve your client's business objectives and manage your social media profiles on various channels. If it sounds overwhelming, you can outsource DashClicks' white-label social posts services, TikTok ads services, and Facebook ads, helps your agency scale quickly.

If you want your business to scale exponentially, you may think of setting aside a considerable amount of money and time for its marketing. After all, marketing boosts the visibility of a business and helps it get discovered by its target audience. But, several small businesses are tight on budget and have a little amount of time, restricting their marketing activities. If you own a small business and currently face this predicament, then fret not! We have a list of low-budget and some absolutely free marketing ideas for your business.

From leveraging the potential of social media to hosting a webinar, these simple yet effective marketing ideas prove to be immensely useful. Let's start:

1. Publish Amazing Content

Do you still don't own a blog? Stop everything and take every step to get your blog rolling! As per the latest statistics, 77% of internet users read blogs on a regular basis. Hence, a blog helps you market your business in the best way possible. Begin with composing instructional guides, best practices, and top 10 lists.

2. Team Up With Other Businesses

When you collaborate with other businesses from your industry, your business gains high exposure to an entirely new audience. You can collaborate offline via an exclusive event or online with a webinar to team up with another business.

3. Host an Event or a Class

In case you notice no upcoming speaking opportunities for you to market your business, just go ahead and create your own. All you need to do is host a class or announce an event at your local library or coworking space.

Tip: When you plan the event or class, ensure you print some flyers and put them on different bulletin boards of nearby coffee shops or libraries. To create professional-looking flyers effortlessly, use DesignWiz, a versatile flyer maker that helps you design eye-catching flyers quickly and easily.

4. Apply for Business Awards

It is not uncommon for organizations and industries to have business awards. If you apply for and ultimately win a business award in your industry, it will definitely generate free buzz. Plus, you can display it in the form of a badge on your site. Winning an award in your field means free marketing for your business and a boost in credibility.

5. Repurpose Your Content

If you already have some old content, consider recycling it. For instance, if you have a collection of blog posts on a particular topic, you can breathe new life into it by converting it into an eBook. Similarly, convert a study you conducted into an infographic. All in all, make the most of the work you have already done.

6. Live Stream Workplace Activities

Live stream events with the help of YouTube and Facebook. Here are some ideas on what you can live stream:

• Sneak peek of a new product
• “How it’s made” videos
• Instructional videos
• Live coverage of a local event

7. Start a Podcast

As per the latest statistics, about one-third of Americans listen to podcasts at least once a month. Hence, we strongly recommend that you start a podcast.

Now, you may think starting a podcast is expensive. However, all you require is hosting and a microphone. This initial spend also comes with multiple benefitsāit will help you create awareness, humanize your brand, and showcase your expertise.

Tip: When you start a podcast, ensure you invite other experts and business owners to join in. Doing so helps promote your business to their audiences as well.

8. Answer Queries

Dedicate some time to respond to questions on platforms such as Quora. Also, stay active on different online forums associated with your industry. Being active on Quora and online forums enables you to establish yourself as an authority figure. Moreover, your business also gets discovered by new audiences.

9. Leverage Pinterest and Instagram

Pinterest and Instagram are amazing platforms to tell your brand's story in a visual manner. As per the latest social media statistics, there are over 1 billion active users on Instagram.

The best thing is - it's free. You just need your phone's camera to click photos and know how to make tiny edits to them.

Here are some suggestions on the kinds of photos you can publish on both Pinterest and Instagram:

• Image testimonials
• Behind-the-scenes of your business
• Asking your customers to share images of how they use your service or products

10. Make It Personal

Dedicate some time to appreciate and acknowledge the support of your existing customers. For instance, you can give a shoutout to them in a video or write a personalized handwritten “thank you” note and send it to them. These kinds of gestures will make your customers feel wanted, and they might even do some free marketing for you by recommending your business to others.

11. Give It Away

Don't hesitate to give a free sample of your product or a free trial of your service to people. If they like your product or service, they will definitely consider purchasing more of your offerings.

12. Host Informative Webinars

You can always consider organizing webinars to promote your business and offer useful information to interested customers. If the latest statistics are to be believed, one webinar can get you over 500 leads.

Use webinar platforms such as GoToMeeting and WebEx to broadcast your webinar in seconds! Ensure you promote your webinar via an email newsletter or on social media platforms one to two weeks before the start of the event.

13. Create and Post Helpful Videos

According to the latest video marketing statistics, 66% of people said they prefer watching a short video to know about a service or product.

Videos have the ultimate power to engage people. It may come as a surprise, but 1/3 of online activity is spent viewing videos. Now, you may think you need to hire a professional to create and post videos on YouTube. But this isn't the case. With social media apps like Facebook and Instagram and a personal device, DIY video marketing has become pretty effortless. Try it, and you will know for yourself!

Tip: Here are some videos ideas that help create a connection with your audience:

• Product demos
• Instructional videos
• Interview with industry experts and your staff

Note: In your videos, add a personal message or branding message accordingly. Also, end with a strong CTA (e.g., Place your order today!). Once done, distribute the video in emails, on your website, on YouTube, and on other social media channels.

14. Make Use of Employee's Email Signatures

This is one of the most simple and cost-effective promotion ideas for small and big businesses alike. Inform your team to add a brief sentence with a CTA in their email signatures. Now, whenever they send an email, your potential customers will see a marketing message. Pretty cool, isn't it?

15. Utilize LinkedIn

LinkedIn is often overlooked while searching for marketing ideas for a business. You must utilize LinkedIn in different ways in order to market your business. For instance, enter into dialogue with your connections, contribute to forums, share your offers and blog posts, and share quality content posted by others.

Tip: Encourage your employees to stay active on the platform as well.

16. Create Infographics

One of the best small business promotion ideas, infographics can get you free organic traffic and help increase your search rankings.

If you have engaging data handy, share it in the form of an infographic. An infographic showcases important information visually and attracts a lot of interest and even “backlinks.”

Tip: To translate data into infographics, you can always use tools such as Canva and Infogram.

17. Create a Free Google My Business Account

Particularly for local businesses, a Google Business Profile is a free yet effective marketing strategy. The listing makes your business appear in Google Maps, the Knowledge Panel for branded searches, and the local section of Google Search.

Listen Up: You need to optimize your Google My Business profile for it to appear higher on local results and Google Maps (this means, you need to have verified ownership of it, which can be done via your Google My Business account.)

18. Tag People on Social Media

Tag your loyal customers on social media and reach a new potential audience, increase your following, and get more clients. Also, make it a point to encourage your followers to tag your business in their posts.

19. Use Hashtags

Want to know how to advertise without money? A free marketing idea to expand your reach is to use relevant hashtags in your social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram.

Image Source

Tip: Apart from using trending or broad hashtags, also incorporate more specific hashtags (similar to long-tail keywords). Additionally, make sure to incorporate location-based hashtags if you are a local business.

20. Get Some Snazzy Business Cards

Get some awesome business cards, then give them to everyone you meet. The more individuals know about your business, the better.

21. Attend Networking/Industry Events

Industry conferences and trade shows bring together business minds from every industry. Make it a point to attend these events, as it will help you develop new contacts and learn new marketing strategies for your business. Moreover, these events also have seminars that teach you how to enhance your skills in social media, sales, advertising, etc.

22. Start Small

When it comes to marketing, the thought of a large-scale national campaign comes to mind. However, you can always start small. What we mean to say is - you can take steps to get involved with your community to market your business.

Think about things like - Is there a non-profit or charity where you can volunteer? Can you create bookmarks that promote your business and leave them at your nearest library?

23. Offer to Speak

Look for opportunities to speak in front of an audience to promote your business. Local business groups, libraries, industry conferences, community colleges, and volunteer organizations frequently require speakers.

24. Craft an Impactful Elevator Pitch

For those new to the term, an elevator pitch summarizes what you do in one or two sentences. Create and hone your elevator pitch in a way that you can easily explain what you do to anyone you meet for the first time or when you are networking.

Image Source

Tip: A good elevator pitch should talk about solving a problem and intrigue the listener. Also, when you are at a networking event, make it a point to use your elevator pitch as an icebreaker.

25. Look for Guest Blog Opportunities

You can always think of blogging on other websites to reach new audiences. The best part about doing this is, it is completely free! All you need to do is dedicate some time to research guest blog opportunities and then, eventually write a quality article for the guest blog.

Conclusion

From creating an impactful elevator pitch to repurposing your content, these marketing ideas go a long way in marketing your business. Armed with these ideas, you get to make a considerable amount of impact when it comes to promoting your business to your potential customers.

The bottom line? You don't need a huge budget to get results with your marketing. You can always think outside the box and put in a little creativity to make the most of your limited marketing budget.

Now, it is our turn to ask questions. Do you know some other low-budget marketing ideas? We would love to know your suggestions!

SEO is indeed an excellent strategy to grow your web traffic. However, you must not rely completely on it.

Let us explain this in more detail - think about a scenario where you only depend on SEO for your website traffic and Google introduces a change in its algorithm. As a result of this change, you risk losing potential customers.

To ensure that a change in the Google Algorithm doesn't halt your business, we recommend diversifying your methods of growing website traffic.

A word of caution here! We are in no way saying that you don't have to pay attention to SEO. Every website, regardless of niche, must follow the best SEO practices to make sure it gets indexed and does not get penalized by Google.

In this blog, we are going to discuss the strategies that work as fruitful additions to an already existing SEO plan.

All said and done, let's begin our list of the top strategies to increase website traffic without SEO:

1. Content Marketing

Content Marketing lets you organically advertise your business via high-quality content. Content marketing strategies include infographics, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, downloadable PDFs, blog posts, etc.

For example, Toggl is a time tracking software company that frequently produces insightful blog posts and research data related to work-life, career, and productivity.

This attracts users interested in productivity, time management, and well-being in the workspace. When they check out Toggl's blog, they discover the time tracking app, a productivity tool by the brand. Some of the users convert, increasing web traffic as well as the ROI of the company.

Tip: To know in detail about creating a content marketing strategy, read our start-to-finish guide.

2. Writing Guest Posts

For those who aren't familiar with the term, a guest post is a post you write and publish on another person's website or blog. When you do this, you benefit from their audience and traffic.

This strategy demands only one thing - your time. Dedicate a certain amount of your time in finding the correct website for guest posting, pitching the website-blog owner, thinking about guest post ideas, and then curating the blog. Alternatively, you can look for guest posting services to make things easier for you.

Image Source

After your guest post gets published, you get the chance to drive traffic back to your own website via your website URL. The link is added within the byline, which is posted after the end of the article.

3. Email Marketing

In 2020, 78% of marketers stated that email holds importance in overall company success.

Email marketing is a direct way of reaching your potential customers. Regarded as the perfect means for creating long-term relationships, it allows you to ask for feedback, post questions, and introduce soft sales in an easy manner.

Considered one of the best ways to increase web traffic, email marketing is a strategy you must surely try. A few tips for effective email marketing to grow website traffic includes:

• Post-behind-the-scenes content and share stories
• Make it convenient to read and share your post. Include links to your social media channels, recent blog posts, and sales page in all your emails.

4. Using Reddit

Reddit is another way to increase your website traffic without SEO, and that, too, for free!

In case you don't know, Reddit is more like a discussion forum. To grow web traffic via Reddit, you first need to take out time to engage with SubReddits. We say this because you may feel the urge to simply head to Reddit and post your links to a few SubReddits. But we recommend against it.

Redditors do not like self-promotions that much. Therefore we suggest that you engage with SubReddits and offer value in the form of comments and upvotes. Then, after you create some engagement, you can go ahead and promote some of your brand's stuff (without being pushy, ofcourse!).

Image Source

5. Social Media Marketing

According to the latest social media statistics, there are 4.59 billion social media users, meaning one thing - you should promote your business on social media.

An effective social media campaign can increase traffic to your website and raise brand awareness. Before executing the campaign, make sure you plan well. Remember to use the right channels for your business. Also, keep these key points in mind:

• To quickly broadcast an update, use Twitter. To gain more followers for your brand on Twitter, follow some tweeters from the same industry.
• If you want to get traffic by sharing images, use Instagram and Pinterest. Remember to keep your posts interesting so that users are prompted to click your link and share it.
• If you think posting on professional networks like LinkedIn will benefit you, ensure you regularly post on them. This will help drive traffic to your website and help establish your credibility in the industry. One way to amplify your reach on LinkedIn is to use an intuitive social employee advocacy platform. This powerful tool allows your employees to discover, filter, recommend, and share pre-approved company content to their personal social profiles.

6. Providing Amazing Customer Service & Asking For Review

Even when you ramp up your social media marketing efforts to grow web traffic, it can all go to waste due to one thing - poor customer service.

How to Provide Excellent Customer Service?

When users complain on social media platforms, ensure you offer a polite and prompt response. It will help build respect for your brand. If users send a complaint through email, offer the best possible service so that they purchase more products/services in the future.

Image Source

All in all, a few basic tips to keep in mind include:

• Reply in a prompt manner
• Provide as many suggestions for customer issues as you can
• Apologize if you make a mistake and provide refunds/coupons

If you consistently offer great customer service, you can also approach users to review your business.

Platforms such as Yelp and Trustpilot are well-suited for building positive reviews. A lot of users visit these websites before they decide to make a purchase. Hence having a good profile can increase your reputation.

7. Getting Interviewed

To try out this strategy, you first need to search for a podcast interview website as per your niche. Once you find one, pitch them for an interview. When you get interviewed, you grow traffic to your website and get recognized in your industry. It is also a great way to establish authority.

8. Influencer Marketing

Influencers are mainly social media users with a huge number of active followers, who trust and care about what the influencer endorses, shares, and recommends.

With influencer marketing, you promote your business via word of mouth with an influencer's help. With the support of an influencer, your brand gains exposure to their audience and their audience's network at the same time. As a result of this, more referral traffic comes your way.

Listen Up: As per the latest stats, 80% of consumers have bought something because an influencer recommended it. Hence, you can always get in touch with an influencer to promote your website.

9. Video Marketing

We all can agree on one point - videos are both visual and auditory. This makes video content more memorable than text. According to the latest stats, video content is 1200% more successful than other types of content.

Consider video marketing to increase traffic to your website. Upload videos on Vimeo and Youtube. You can also think about adding videos to your web content. 66% of people state they'd choose to see a short video to know about a service or product. These videos can help website visitors make a purchase decision. You can increase your website's conversion if you add videos to your product pages.

Image Source

10. Try Paid Ads

Content marketing is advantageous, but you may have to spend a lot on it, particularly if you have to pay established writers to produce well-researched, original posts. Most of these projects can even take months to deliver results - a timeline that a lot of brands may not find practical.

If you want quick results with a budget you can control, we recommend you consider paid ads.

Paid ads can instantly lead to hundreds of clicks to your website.

Today, getting your ads noticed by the right people has become so much easier. For instance, Facebook gives multiple targeting options and customer personas to help your business get noticed by your target customers without spending a lot on mass advertising.

Image Source

You can even advertise on lesser-known platforms such as Reddit if you know that your potential customers hang out there.

Conclusion

From writing guest posts to using reddit, we have discussed a range of options you can try to increase your website traffic without SEO. If you want a point to begin, we recommend that you work on improving your social media strategies. It creates brand awareness, helps connect with more users, and drives organic traffic at a relatively faster rate.

All in all, with these practical tips, you will have multiple traffic sources, and you will no longer be left stranded by changes in the Google algorithm. Make sure you track and scale the traffic sources you are using to bring individuals to your site.

These tips hold the power to transform the way you attract customers. Which ones are you thinking of using first?

According to Statista, a total of 4.59 billion people use social media. Users tend to spend 2 hours and 25 minutes daily (on average) on social media platforms.

If you own a business and want to quickly scale your business by reaching out to your potential customers, you must definitely turn your attention to social media advertising. For those who are not aware, social media advertising enables businesses to run paid advertisements on social networks. It is a digital marketing strategy involving spending money to promote content on social media platforms to reach people interested in your business and get them to explore it.

One of the significant benefits of a paid advertising campaign on social media is that it gives your exposure in front of a much larger audience as compared to the people who are currently following you.

We understand it may seem daunting when you decide to opt for social media advertising. Therefore, in this blog, you will get to know the different types of social media ads and how to use them in the most optimum way to attain results that pay off for your business, all while maximizing the amount you spend.

But first, let's understand which social media network to choose to place your ads on.

Which Social Media is Best for Advertising?

Every major social network provides advertising options. But you don't necessarily have to use each one of them. To choose the right social networks to place your ads on, check where your target audience hangs out the most and where they are the most engaged, concentrated, and accessible. Also, see which social media platforms perform well organically for your business. All of this information will help you determine your choice for your social ad campaigns.

Now that you know which social media platform will be the best for your business, it’s time to know the ad types of various social media networks as the first part of our social media advertising 101.

I. Facebook Ads

Facebook ads help you attain the following campaign objectives:

• Awareness: Expand reach or develop brand awareness.

• Consideration: Increase engagement, send traffic to your website, encourage video views or app installs, motivate individuals to communicate with you on Facebook Messenger, or generate leads.

• Conversion: Increase leads or purchases through your app or site or send foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar store.

According to the latest statistics, 1.9 billion daily users access Facebook. From teens to their parents to seniors, all actively use this popular social media platform. Given the precise targeting options offered for such a massive pool of users, Facebook is an apt platform for social media advertising. You can use different types of Facebook ads, such as:

1. Image Ads

Creating an image ad is an effortless process with just a few clicks. All you need to do is boost an existing post featuring an image from your Facebook Page, and you are all set!

Image Source

2. Video Ads

Video ads can run in Stories and the News Feed. They also appear as in-stream ads in Facebook videos of a longer length.

Tip: Use these types of ads to showcase a product in action.

3. Poll Ads

A poll ad is a mobile-only Facebook ad format that incorporates a two-option poll to a video or image ad. You can embed different links for the two poll choices.

4. Carousel Ads

A Facebook carousel ad allows you to put up to 10 videos or images to advertise your service or product.

5. Slideshow Ads

A slideshow ad is an ad that generates a compelling video from still images, video clips, and text. In case you are not ready to give video ads a try but want to move beyond static images, you can consider opting for slideshow ads. You can easily create slideshow ads in minutes using AI slideshow maker.

6. Messenger Ads

Messenger ads are the ads you find in the Messenger app (in the chats tab in between conversations).

7. AR Ads

These ads use features such as animation and filters to let individuals interact with your business.

8. Stories Ads

Ā Facebook stories ads are full-screen vertical video format (mobile-only).

9. Dynamic Ads

Here's an example to understand this type of Facebook ad. Suppose a person visited a product page or added a product to their shopping cart on your website. However, they didn't complete the purchase. This is where dynamic ads can prove to be highly useful. You can use dynamic ads to create retargeting ads specific to the product and show it in that person's Facebook feed.

10. Lead Ads

Lead ads are mobile-only ads that make it easy for Facebook users to provide you with their contact information without typing a lot.

Image Source

11. Instant Experience Ads

Instant Experience ads are full-screen ad formats that load 15 times faster than compared to a mobile site outside of Facebook.

12. Collection Ads

Applicable only to mobile devices, collection ads let you showcase five videos or images customers can click to purchase a service or a product.

Listen Up: Own a small business? Learn more about Facebook advertising for small businesses.

II. Instagram Ads

Owned by Facebook, Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users.

67% of individuals aged between 18 and 29 use Instagram.

When you talk about Instagram ads, they support the same categories of campaign objectives we discussed about Facebook ads, i.e., Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

Let's take a closer look at the different types of Instagram ads:

1. Photo Ads

Photo ads feature a photo, description, and a call-to-action.

2. Video Ads

Video ads help provide a closer look at your offerings in a much more engaging way. You can create long or short format videos as per your requirement.

3. Carousel Ads

This ad possesses a series of videos or images users can easily swipe through. Use these ads to display a collection of related products.

4. Collection Ads

Collection ads look the same as a traditional Instagram post. The only difference is a little shopping bag at the bottom-left corner, which, when clicked, redirects you to the products showcased in the post.

Image Source

5. Shopping Ads

These ads are somewhat similar to collection ads. When you tap on the image displayed in it, a link shows up, which takes you to the page where you can purchase the item.

6. Explore Ads

These ads appear in the Explore tab, an area of Instagram where users can access fresh content and discover new accounts, all tailored according to their Instagram usage habits. These ads can be both videos and images.

7. Story Ads

A story ad is a full-screen-sized video or image that you choose. It also has a swipe-up call-to-action directing the user to your website or profile.‍

Tip: Get a good professional photo editing app for amazing photos to build an awesome social media presence or to promote your business through social media.

8. IGTV Ads

IGTV ads are video ads that play when people watch an IGTV video from their feed.

9. Reels Ads

These are the ads shown in between Instagram Reels and can be up to 30 seconds.

Image Source

Tip: Use Lightroom Instagram Presets to get the desired effect on your shots, that too, in a minimum amount of time.

III. LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is a platform that is far more business-oriented as compared to the other social networks discussed in this post. It provides targeting options based on job title, seniority, and other professional qualifications.

Let's understand the LinkedIn ad types in detail:

1. Sponsored Content

Also called Native ads, these show up on your audience's feed (both on desktop and mobile). When you advertise with Sponsored Content, you can opt for single image ads, carousel ads, or video ads.

2. Sponsored Messaging

Previously called Sponsored InMail, it allows you to advertise to users directly in their inbox.

3. Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are the types of LinkedIn ads that are automatically personalized for each of your prospects. Here's an example of a dynamic ad:

Image Source

4. Text Ads

Text ads show up along the right-hand side or the top of a user's LinkedIn feed (on desktops only).

IV. YouTube Ads

YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world. The latest statistics share some interesting insights on YouTube users to help you make an informed decision whether to use it to place your ads or not:

• 81% of individuals aged 15-25 use it
• 71% of individuals aged 26-35 use it
• 67% of individuals aged 36-45 use it
• 66% of individuals aged 46-55 use it
• 58% of people above 56 years of age use it

Over half of YouTube’s users are female.

YouTube ads can help you reach various business goals, such as:

• Get more website traffic
• Increase brand and product consideration
• Develop brand awareness
• Collect leads

The types of YouTube ads include:

1. Skippable In-Stream Ads

These play before or during a video, and the viewer can opt to skip them after the first 5 seconds.

2. Non-skippable YouTube Ads

These are brief ads appearing either at the start, end, or middle of a video. The maximum length of these ads is 15 seconds, and they can't be skipped.

3. Video Discovery Ads

Video discovery YouTube ads appear on the YouTube search results pages, homepage, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.

4. Outstream Ads

These ads aren't available on YouTube. These mobile-only ads appear on apps and websites that run on Google video partners. Outstream ads might run within apps or in-feed content, or in web banners.

5. Bumper Ads

Bumper ads are regarded as the subspecies of non-skippable in-stream ads. You can expect bumper ads to be less than 6 seconds.

6. Masthead Ads

This ad type works great for publicizing a new service or a product. Take a look at this image, and you will understand the positioning of masthead ads and the impact they can make:

Learn more about how to use YouTube Ads to grow your business.

V. TikTok Ads

TikTok is a social networking service that focuses on video. 18% of international internet users aged between 16 and 64 use TikTok (GlobalWebIndex).

TikTok ads enable you to achieve different business goals, such as:

• Increase engagement with creative content and interactivity.
• Connect with a variety of audiences worldwide.
• Encourage sales and app installs.

Now let’s talk about the types of TikTok ads.

In-feed ads are ads you create yourself. Types of in-feed ads are video ads (similar to a commercial), image ads (similar to a billboard), and spark ads (boosting your existing content to reach more users).

Image Source

There are also carousel ads (these run only in TikTok’s News Feed apps) and pangle ads (placed via TikTok’s Audience Network).

Ads formats for managed brands (those who work with a TikTok sales representative) include:

• TopView ads: Video ads that run on full-screen for 5-60 seconds upon opening the app.
• Branded Hashtag Challenge: It is a 3- to 6-day ad campaign format for engagement.
• Branded Effects: Branded filters, stickers, and special effects to get app users to interact with your brand.

VI. Twitter Ads

Twitter is a popular social network on which users post and interact with tweets (messages). The largest age demographic on this platform is 25 to 34-year-olds. Twitter ads can help you reach three objectives: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.

Let’s dive straight into the types of Twitter ads:

1. Promoted Accounts

The suggested accounts that show up beneath the “What’s happening” section and under the “Who to follow” section are promoted accounts. Based on the user interest, your profile gets suggested to the right users.

2. Promoted Trends

Sponsored by advertisers, promoted trends show up in a section called “Trends for you.” Brands can promote a trend for one day with promoted trends.

3. Promoted Tweets

Promoted tweets is an option you can consider for making a crucial status update stand out on the feed of your potential customers.

Image Source

VII. Pinterest Ads

Pinterest is a social site where you can collect as well as share images of anything that intrigues you. As per the latest statistics, six out of 10 Pinterest users are females.

When you talk of Pinterest ads, they help you with various business goals, such as building brand awareness, driving app installs, and driving traffic to your website.

Here’s what you should know about types of Pinterest ads:

1. Promoted Pin

Promoted Pins show up in users’ feeds the same way as a regular Pin would. The only difference between the two is a “promoted” tag.

Image Source

When you run these types of ads, you enhance the exposure of your pin and get discovered by people who may want to purchase from you.

2. Promoted Video Pins

The sole difference between promoted video pins and the other ad options is that the multimedia used is a video. These ads are used to grab the attention of your audience more effectively.

3. Promoted Carousel

Promoted Carousel is one of the Pinterest ad types where you can have more than a single photo (2-5 images).

4. Buyable Pins

Buyable pins allow individuals to shop straight from the pins you post. All the user needs to do is click on the white dots and visit your product listing page.

5. Promoted App Pins

You can use Promoted app pins to promote your business app.

VIII. Snapchat Ads

Snapchat is a sought-after multimedia instant messaging app and service. A lot of young adults are known to use it. When you talk of the different ad types of this platform, they can help you attain several marketing objectives, such as increasing your brand awareness and driving catalog sales or website conversions.

Here's what you should know about the different Snapchat ad types:

1. Single Image or Video

These are full-screen ads where you add an attachment (such as a link to your site) and users swipe up to take action.

2. Story Ads

Story ads help you get in front of your potential customers with a branded title in the Discover feed. Snapchat users can visit your ad and check out a complete collection of snaps (ranging from 3 to 20). With story ads, you can showcase any product launches or a new fashion collection. Users can also swipe up to complete your goal, such as purchasing something on your site.

3. Collection Ads

These ads contain four tappable tiles that allow users to browse and purchase your products.

Image Source

4. Lenses

Snapchat allows you to run interactive, memorable AR ads in its Ads Manager. With the help of Lens Web Builder, you can choose from a variety of animations, 3D objects, and effects to create your personal branded AR lens. After you are done, you can launch it in the form of an ad for Snapchat users to play with as well as share with their pals.

5. Filters

Filters let brands participate in millions of snaps sent between friends every day. When Snapchat users take a snap in the location you select beforehand, they are able to view your filter and use it to tell when, why, and where they took the snap.

Image Source

6. Commercials

Commercials are the ads that Snapchat users cannot skip for 6 seconds and can be up to 3 minutes long.

Social Media Advertising Tips

Some social media advertising tips can always come in handy when you are trying to get the most out of your ad budget. Let's begin:

1. Know the Goals You Want to Achieve

Start by reviewing the business objectives a social media ad can help you achieve. You can't attain your goals when you don't even know what they are in the first place. Precisely knowing your business objectives ensures you are selecting the correct social media platform to advertise on. It also helps you choose the suitable advertising solution in the social media platform you choose.

2. Know Your Target Audience

Before you decide to advertise on social media, ensure you have thoroughly understood and learned about your target audience. In this blog, we have discussed the different types of audiences that hang out on popular social media networks. Keeping this information in mind, you can develop audience personas to know which audience segments to concentrate on.

3. Design Your Ads Keeping Mobile in Mind

As per the latest statistics, about 99% of social media users access apps or websites via mobile. So, we can say that social media ads reach a lot of eyeballs on mobile.

Do you know what this means? You must put those images in your ads which your potential customers can easily view on a pocket-size device (except when you want to go for desktop placement).

4. Test Your Ads to Know What Works Best

Do you know the advantage of using social ads? You get feedback in an instant!

You can know how effective a sponsored post is performing and that too in minutes. You are even presented with an advanced analytics report.

Test multiple ads with tiny audiences and use the best one in your primary campaign.

5. Measure Results and Report on Them

Measuring results holds critical importance because it will let you know what worked out and what didn't. You can then make the improvements accordingly if any. The social media giants, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, provide analytics to let you measure and analyze the results of ads.

Social Media Advertising Cost

Now, you may wonder how much do paid social media advertisements cost? The answer is: It varies based on your business and your ads.

When you talk of social media advertising, a lot of networks require a minimum daily budget. This rate differs from platform to platform, with some basing their required budget on the bid type, such as clicks, impressions, views, or likes.

Here's the lowest possible ad spend spread across famous social media networks:

A. Average CPC for Social Media Ads

With social media advertising, your business can use different bidding options, such as CPV (cost-per-view) and CPL (cost-per-like). A universal bidding option you should also know of is CPC (cost-per-click).

See the table below to know about the average CPC for the social media networks in your ad campaign:

B. Average CPM for Social Media

Leading social media networks also offer CPM or cost-per-thousand impressions as a bidding option.

Here's a breakdown of the social media advertising costs by CPM:

Conclusion

Now that you know what social media advertising is, the different types of social media ads, social media advertising tips, and how much do social media ads cost, you are more informed to get the most out of your ad budget.

Hope this social media advertising 101 helps you achieve real business results when you use different types of social media ads.

When sales and marketing get in sync, magic happens. The combination is an elixir for organizations willing to perform better. But how do sales and marketing find a more cohesive path to deliver the business results you want? And, how to forge a stronger partnership between sales and marketing teams?

Businesses have been asking this question for many years now.

Aligned teams can dramatically improve your sales and revenue. Working in sync drives growth increases sales, and allows different teams to work better, together.

Still, teams struggle to work in harmony. Do you know the reason?

The bottlenecks often include office politics and distributed workforces. So, here we will discuss how to forge a better sales and marketing alignment for the best business results.

Why Do You Need Sales and Marketing Alignment?

With endless choices in front of them, the modern customer is already struggling with information overload. Brands also push personal services and numerous product lines to meet people's needs. But, it actually overwhelms a customer.

Together, all these things make a purchase decision much more difficult. Trust factors also play a significant role here as customers can't trust every other brand brandishing the USPs of their products. According to a study, 81% of customers admitted that numerous options and too much information make a purchase decision difficult.

One significant benefit of working with aligned teams is that they help consumers navigate the complex emotional process of making purchase decisions. The marketing department shares these inputs with the sales teams so that they can refine their communication accordingly.

Now, let's discuss their roles.

The Role of a Sales Team

The sales team is directly responsible for converting leads into customers. They build and manage relationships and also work on retention. If the need arises, they also resolve customer issues. Since sales is a multi-stage activity, the salespeople must keep an eye on the entire customer journey and adapt their communication accordingly. That's the reason sales is so crucial for businesses. They are the lifeline of any organization.

Image Source

However, a blind focus on sales may backfire, and you may end up ruining your prospects and clients in the long run.

The Role of a Marketing Team

Enter marketing. Marketing takes care of the parts sales often overlooks, e.g., creating awareness, educating about the product, ensuring the quality of leads, and crafting enticing messages.

The customers need to be made aware of your product, and marketing people know precisely what they need to hear. Their job is to craft thoughtful marketing messages to push the prospects down the sales funnel. Without a marketing strategy, you won't have a target audience and, ultimately, no sales.

Image Source

So, why do you need to align the two teams?

Reasons Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Crucial

According to a study, nearly 75% of leads never reach the conversion stage when the sales and marketing teams aren't aligned.

This statistic indicates how wasteful misaligned sales can be. Aligned teams achieved a 34% increase in new business revenue. So, even though the ultimate objective of both teams appears to be the same, their playing fields are entirely different.

The marketing team aggressively generates leads, and the sales team leaves no stone unturned to convert those leads. But sadly, both the teams work independently and hence fail to achieve their common objectives.

Here are five significant reasons why aligned teams are so crucial for the growth of your business.

1. Helps Create a Single Customer Journey

Aligned teams collaborate and share their insights about their customers. Otherwise, a major disconnect can happen in their degree of understanding of the customer.

Your marketing and sales teams may be on entirely different trajectories regarding their perceptions of how a customer moves between different stages in the sales funnel.

Image Source

This is one of the major reasons why leads don't turn into customers. Customers are smart. They can sense a disconnect between your marketing pitch and your sales process as soon as they interact with your brand.

The results may surprise you when teams are aligned towards a mutually understood customer journey. The collaboration should start right after a customer is first exposed to your brand, i.e., when they hear about it. And it should last till your last communication with them.

2. Helps Different Teams Agree on a Customer Persona

Again, serious disagreements often happen between marketing and sales teams about their perceptions of the target audience. It results in both the teams looking for different qualities in the same customer persona. If your idea of your target customer is unclear, it affects everything from marketing messages to sales plan.

With that said, it becomes crucial to agree on a customer persona. It will allow you to market to them as per their personality traits at each stage of their journey without any disconnect.

Image Source

3. Helps You Deal With the Shifting Nature of Markets

Your marketing team will identify people interested in your product. In contrast, the sales team filters this list and focuses on people ready to make a buying decision soon.The driving factors that make a person interested are pretty different from those that make them ready to buy.However, with the changing nature of markets, sales and marketing teams should be flexible about their buyer personas. Customers' pain points keep changing, and if you don't adapt, you won't move even an inch ahead.These dynamic changes in market trends can be overcome by the marketing and sales team collaborating and working in tandem.

4. Helps You in Customer Outreach

Even though both departments are equally valuable, marketing should take precedence. Sales have become increasingly difficult in the past decade, mainly owing to the boom in cold calling, cold emailing, and other forms of unsolicited marketing. People just don't like it.

The best marketing approach is to figure out where your customers usually hang out. This allows you to meet them at their preferred hangout place, whether online or offline. Ofcourse, we are talking about various popular online channels here. Once your marketing team figures that out, they can start a targeted campaign to attract customers.

And once a few interested customers show their hands, your sales team can easily take it from there!

5. Helps You Track Joint KPIs

Even if you hate tracking joint KPIs, the strategy tells you what you need to fix. When the teams are not aligned, they might track different KPIs. For the sales team, KPIs like overall conversion rate and new accounts created are far more critical than lead quality and quantity or advertising results.However, aligned teams can reduce this friction through weekly meetings and daily collaboration. In those meetings, sales and marketing teams can share customer pain points and their preferences and discuss how they can use this data to turn missed conversions into sales.

Final Words

Aligned teams can refine your brand message and make it look uniform, consistent, and professional. If different teams use different terminologies, it may not only sound unprofessional but will also confuse your customers. It will quickly erode customer trust.

Again, it's essential to craft your marketing messages according to your buyer personas and their stage in the customer journey. Targeted marketing also helps you plug in the various loopholes in sales. Any disconnect here will lead to the failure of your entire sales campaign. That's why sales and marketing alignment are often called innovative marketing and should be practiced by every business to succeed.