Tag: Blog

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How And Why You Must Remove Distractions

The key difference between a successful entrepreneur and an unsuccessful entrepreneur is action. In order to take action, you must remove the distractions preventing you from doing the work to achieve your goals.

 

Successful entrepreneurs understand they must remove distractions for three key reasons:

  • For Better Time Management and Productivity

Distractions only take up your time and resources, therefore, reducing your productivity. Removing distractions prevents you from wasting this time on things that ultimately don’t matter.

 

  • For Better Creativity and Quality Work or Products

Zero distractions mean you gain more time to develop a deeper focus and concentration that allows you to work better and produce higher quality work. It fuels creativity and inspiration.

 

  • For Proper Business and Personal Organization

Removing distractions means removing possible frustrations, stress, and constant confusion of wondering where you left off last. Keeping your personal and business life organized. Organization allows you to stay focused and on track to accomplish your goals. When you have a clear path and understanding of what needs to get done, it’s easier to achieve it.

 

Follow these four tips to help remove distractions to achieve your goals faster and easier:

 

Establish Realistic Work Hours

If you can create your own schedule and work hours, take advantage of it and be realistic and honest. If you know you are a night owl, for example, then don’t expect yourself to work by 6 AM.

 

If this isn’t a good time for you, no matter how good you are at getting up on time, you won’t be working at your best or produce your best work. Schedule your work hours during times you know you will be fully rested and ultimately distraction-free.

 

Understand Your Limits and Willpower

In other words, if you know you won’t stop looking at your phone, then you must put your phone in a separate room. Create strategies that work with your weaknesses to ensure you don’t limit your success. If you want it, you will find a way to work around your downfalls.

 

Stop Multitasking

Believe it or not, multitasking is a distraction. Every time you switch between a different task, your brain needs time to reset even if you don’t notice it.

Positive Attitude

Let Others Know Your Goals and Needs

The more you inform people upfront about your intentions, the less likely they will keep you from them. If they do, then they are not there to support you, and best to keep them out of your life.

How to Identify Over the Top Goals to Make Them Reasonable

If you aspire to be a mover or shaker or achieve your dreams at all, you need to be the one creating the distractions, not entertaining them. Implement these tips and tricks into your daily routine to keep distractions from interfering with your dreams.

 

 

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What Is Business Resilience?

Being able to pull yourself up after a setback and move on from it – not just learning but thriving in the process – shows resilience. You can demonstrate resilience by your actions after disruption regardless of planning, but real business resilience is baked in from the day you start your business through planning, organization, and persistence.

 

If you have a resilient business, you have taken the time to plan every aspect of your business, from the workflows to the big hairy goals you’ve set, to determine precisely what is essential so that you can maintain even in difficult times.

 

A resilient business can:

 

  • Adapt to Disruptions – There are always going to be setbacks and things that disrupt your business. It might be something internal with yourself, or it might be something external that you have no control over at all. Regardless of the issue, you can put in place planning to accommodate most issues.

 

  • Maintain Continuity – If you take the time to put in place plans to keep going in hard times, your business may not be super-profitable during that time, but it can continue until the hard time is finished.

 

  • Safeguard People – If you do hire people, sometimes disruptions come from having to lay them off, or from having them make a mistake or don’t show up. If you plan in advance for these contingencies, you can avoid disaster.

 

  • Protect Assets – Good planning, saving for a rainy day, and using the right tools can protect your assets when something goes wrong. A business that has trouble should not mean that your entire life is put in jeopardy. With the right type of planning, you can protect your assets.

 

  • Build Brand Equity – If a national disaster happens, which is a set back for all, but you can maintain business continuity even if it’s difficult and things change slightly, your business will build brand equity even then. Some of the most well-known companies today have survived the great depression, many recessions, and other internal and external disruptions.

 

  • Recover Quickly – The future planning for disruptions will not be able to cover every single thing that might happen, but it can help you recover faster if you have at least given potentialities some thought and consideration.

 

  • Reduce Stress – Continuity planning in the face of disruptions inside and outside your business will also help you personally by reducing your stress. Anyone who has experienced setbacks knows that the wrong thing happening at the wrong time without any planning can make things worse due to the stress it brings.

 

To accomplish this, each business, even a small sole proprietor online business, or mom and pop store, needs to think about – possibilities in advance as part of the normal business planning process to develop disaster and disruption strategies that help avoid downtime and shore up vulnerabilities.

 

 

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8 Things You Should Outsource in Your Business

As you learn more about business automation, it’s important to realize there is another way to automate your business, and that is by hiring someone else to do the work for you. Hiring experts to deliver work for you on your behalf is called outsourcing.

 

You can outsource to contractors, or you can hire employees. It’s up to you and depends on the type of business you want. Outsourcing to contractors allows you to hire experts for parts of projects without keeping them on payroll long term and is focused just on deliverables. In contrast, hiring employees puts you in charge of their time and gives you the ability to direct them more closely.

 

  1. Legal Work – Most small business owners will not hire a legal person to work on their team as an employee. Instead, they hire a law firm on retainer and use them only when necessary. If you do have a lot of contracts and other needs for a legal team, this is your best answer to those annoying legal issues. It’s also nice to have someone on call that you can ask simple questions of and check over contracts.

 

  1. Finance – Most small business owners can save a boatload of time, stress, and money if they find someone to help them with taxes, bookkeeping, payroll, and other issues with money and accounting. You can hire a bookkeeper, a CPA, an EA, or even an admin person to do the data entry to help remove some of these responsibilities, but this is where you really do need an expert, at least at first.

 

  1. Technology Needs – Most small business owners hire people and use automation technology when it comes to their websites. Building websites, using automation software, and all that technology really does need someone who understands it all in a professional sense.

 

  1. Marketing – Whether it’s social media marketing or some other type of marketing, hiring an expert will pay off. Experts know how to use the software available and know all the tricks of the trade to ensure the process works. When you outsource marketing, you free up time to do something you’re more knowledgeable and skilled at doing.

 

  1. Graphic Design – Giving a designer ideas for your graphics is so much easier than trying to design them yourself. Even if you think you can deliver good ideas using software like Canva.com, it’s not going to be as excellent as an expert can make it, and letting someone else do the design will save an enormous amount of time.

 

  1. Customer Care – No business owner should be handling their own customer care because it’s just too hard. You’re too close to your product or your service, and it’s too easy to get upset about issues. But an expert can help set up your customer care in a way that takes it off your plate for a lot less than you may realize.

 

  1. Administrative Tasks – Track the admin tasks you do every day, and you can likely save a few hours a day if you hire a virtual assistant to do the administrative stuff all business owners have to do. Whether it’s managing events, performing personal errands, or other tasks as directed by you, this is a substantial time saving and can really turn your business on like nothing else.

 

  1. Writing – Your business needs a lot of content for customer education, product information, and so forth. Whether it’s blog content, article content, sales page content, or internal content, a professional writer can help you with it.

 

Whether sales, marketing, finance, accounting, customer service, or helping manage a team, you need to outsource in your business. You may not have enough resources to outsource it all right away, but you should consider creating earning benchmarks that signal the time to outsource the task. When you outsource more, you free up your time to focus on what you do best.

 

 

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What’s Your Customer’s Buying Journey

 

One of the first things you need to learn about your business is your customer’s buying journey based on the sales funnel. Big businesses like to call this their customer relationship management pipeline. They tend to use a few basic pipeline structures that follow their customer’s buying journey from awareness to delight.

 

The truth is that no matter what type of business you have, the basic sales funnel is the same and defines the buyer’s journey.

 

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Consideration
  • Decision
  • Delight

 

Map your customer’s potential journey so that you can visualize where you need to place touchpoints. For example:

 

  • Awareness – Sync your favorite apps such as Google Sheets, Aweber.com, and other apps using software like Automate.io or Zapier.com to deliver the right content at the right time based on the customer’s behavior.

 

  • Interest – Automatically deliver email subscribers content that teaches them about the products and services you offer via your email software as well as your website using auto sequences and conversational chatbots.

 

  • Consideration – This is when the buyer really wants what you have to offer, and it’s your sale to lose or gain. You can automate content delivery that asks for the sale, such as delivering a free webinar to them. Using the right software, such as offered by HubSpot Automation and others, you can even let the software generate new one time offers based on their behavior.

 

  • Decision – Depending upon the type of business structure you have, whether it’s a course or a physical product or not, you’ll want to help them make the choice to buy by setting up automated discovery call appointments. You can synchronize your website with scheduling software like Acuityscheduling.com to let your customers schedule their own call.

 

  • Delight – Finally, you can create a whole new funnel to use during the post-purchase stage in order to elicit customer delight. When you delight your customers, they’re going to make more purchases and recommend others to you. One way to do this is to automate the onboarding of new customers so that they receive enough information to want to stick with you.

 

People add different steps along the way to each of their funnels based on the path the buyer likes to travel on their buying journey. Each step is a chance to streamline and automate part of the process. To make your customer’s buying journey successful, you’ll hopefully lead them through the entire process past the point they decide to buy your product to include customer delight, loyalty, and advocacy when it’s appropriate.

 

 

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What’s Your Business Type?

 

Do you have a store where people purchase products, or do you offer a service like coaching?

Maybe you offer courses and classes, or you provide customer support or something else entirely? Whatever you offer, how you have structured your business is vital to determine before you start your automation plans.

3 step plan

If you have an online store that people come to in order to purchase products from you, the way you automate and run your business will be very different from the way someone who offers courses or one-on-one personal services does.

 

So, consider what your business type is.

 

Online Store

 

If you sell any type of product, whether it’s physical or digital, with a shopping cart, you have an online store. You may be selling books, content, and even courses if you’re selling them as a product without your extra coaching and input. Essentially if you sell anything online in a shopping cart, you have an online store and can use a lot of automation tips for online stores.

 

Virtual Services

 

If you sell any type of service, administrative, one-on-one coaching, and so forth that you perform at a distance, using your website as your storefront, you are a service-based business. As a service-based business, you’ll organize your business and market yourself differently from an online store where you don’t speak to the customers directly yourself and sell products directly.

 

Virtual Support and Consulting

 

You may also offer only virtual support and consulting without offering direct service. For example, you may coach your clients to create a sales page, set up a freebie, set up a discovery call, but you don’t do it yourself, you simply advise them on what to do, and the client with their team does it. This is an entirely different business structure than a business that does the services directly or delivers the product directly.

 

Virtual Training

 

If you offer classes and “how-to” information to your customers via courses, classes, and content, you have a business that provides classes either self-paced or teacher-led this is a training business. A training business sometimes needs more personal input and engagement than a storefront that just sells the complete self-paced course.

 

There are numerous opportunities for automation in each of these business structures. But first, you need to write it down. What does the composition of your business look like? What do you do for customers and clients, and how do you do it? Is it hands-off or hands-on, or a combination of both? The more you can document how your business works, the easier it will be to find ways to automate and outsource.

 

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11 WAYS YOU CAN INTRODUCE WALKING IN YOUR DAILY LIFE

Many people claim that the reason they cannot walk more is their busy schedule. However, the truth is, the things you make time for are the things that get done. By planning for roadblocks and developing a plan to overcome them, you can fit walking into your daily schedule seamlessly without much trouble. Just follow these tips.

 

* Walk during Lunch – You shouldn’t miss your food break, but you can eat a sandwich or fruit and walk at the same time. If you have a flexible office, another alternative is to walk during lunch and eat at your desk while doing your work.

 

* Only Watch TV while Moving – If you like to watch TV, make a rule that you can only watch while moving. You can walk on a treadmill, or you can just march in place during the show. That is going to bring lots of extra walking into your life.

 

* Listen to Audio Books – If you like to read, instead of reading buy audiobooks, then make a rule for yourself (and even your kids) that you can only listen while walking and moving.

* Start Your Day Right – Get up 30 minutes early so that you can work in a 20-minute speed walking session before your shower, coffee, and breakfast. By starting your day right, you’ll be ahead of the game.

 

* Walk Instead of Email at the Office – If you work in an office building, you probably send a lot of emails back and forth. But if you know that the person you send the email to has to print the document, you can print it yourself and then walk it to them to get in those extra steps.

 

* Park Your Car Further from Your Destination – Always park as far from an entrance as you can and then walk to it. That is going to add a lot of steps, plus it’s going cut down on stress in parking lots. You’re less likely to be involved in an accident if you park far from the crowd.

 

* Get Off the Bus Early – If you take public transport, don’t get off at your stop but get off early in an area that is safe for you to grab 15 extra minutes of walking.

 

* Walk to the Store – Do you live near a minimarket or some sort of convenience store? Instead of grabbing the next carton of milk by driving to the store, just walk to your local store. Even though it cost more money there, the added benefit of walking and using less fuel makes up for it. Use a backpack to carry your groceries home safely.

* Keep Your Gear with You – Keep a set of walking gear in your vehicles such as shoes, socks, and clothing, so that you can dress for walking any time you want to.

 

* Add Walking to Your Daily Family Time – Walking for 20 to 30 minutes after dinner used to be a time-honored tradition for families who lived in the suburbs in the days of wrap-around porches and close community connections. You can still do that with your kids and partner to add walking into your day while also spending time with the people you care about.

 

* Avoid Sitting When Waiting – If you must wait on people for appointments, instead of sitting, take the time to pace and walk. Even if you just march in place, it will make a difference.

 

Any bit of movement you can squeeze out of your day is beneficial to your health mentally, physically, and spiritually. You’ll feel better about yourself the more you can walk, and it’s going to show to others in your appearance and your health.

 

 

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13 WAYS WALKING CAN BENEFIT YOU

 

There isn’t even enough space here to include all the benefits of walking. Walking is simple to do, most healthy people can do it even if it might seem hard at first, and you can do it almost anywhere at any time. The only special equipment you need are good walking shoes, and then you’re in business.

walking

  1. Burns More Calories – Walking burns calories like any other exercise, but without the impact and stress that other forms of exercise can like jogging and running. Even if you’re not feeling well, you can go on a leisurely stroll and still get the benefits of the movement.

 

  1. Builds a Strong Heart – Working out always helps your heart because you cause your cardiovascular system to work a little harder, which is good for it when you’re healthy. Keeping your heart strong will keep you alive much longer.

 

  1. Builds Better Bone Health – As we age, our bones become more brittle and we experience more pain. This can lead to broken bones and other issues. But if you keep walking and moving, you’ll be less likely to develop those problems.

 

  1. Improves Balance and Coordination – The more you use your body, the more it works for you. Walking more often improves your balance and coordination because your body gets used to standing upright and moving more often. It’s a matter of practice and getting the muscles and ligaments strong.

 

  1. Improves Your Lung Capacity – Walking, especially fast walking, will get your breathing up and cause you to build your lung capacity. Usually it takes about six to eight weeks of cardiovascular workouts to see the full improvement that you can experience.

 

  1. Lower Your Blood Sugar – People with high blood sugar can see huge benefits from walking and burning off that extra sugar in their blood. It’s not a cure for type 1 diabetes but it can help people with type 2 tremendously, and it can help people with type 1 lower their insulin requirements.

 

  1. Eases Joint Pain – As people age, they tend to get joint pain, often caused by arthritis. It might seem counter-intuitive to keep moving through that pain, but pain from arthritis absolutely can be reduced from more movement. This is because arthritis causes build-up of scar tissue in the joints from lack of movement, so if you move more it can stop that problem.

 

  1. Bosts Your Immunity – Getting your blood pumping and your cardiovascular system working will also boost your immunity from regular common illnesses like colds.

 

  1. Energizes You – Anytime you’re feeling tired for no reason, try going on a fast, ten-minute walk and you’ll find that you have much more energy. This is one reason a fast walk is an excellent way to wake up in the morning.

 

  1. Improves Your Mental Health and Mood – A nice walk in nature can vastly improve your mental health and mood. If you are feeling down, getting out in nature for a leisurely walk can help. If you’re feeling anxious, try a fast walk (even on a treadmill) to burn that extra energy.

 

  1. Helps You Live Longer and Healthier – When you incorporate daily exercise into your life, it will extend your life. Not only that, you’ll also enjoy your life much longer because you won’t be as sick or in as much pain.

 

  1. Strengthens and Tone Your Leg Muscles – There is no hiding the fact that walkers have good legs, but it does also improve muscle tone all over your body – especially if you work on getting your arms in on the action and pay close attention to your glutes and core muscles.

The Areas of Life You Need to Design for Success

  1. Boosts Your Creativity – Anytime you’re having a glut of good ideas for anything you’re trying to accomplish, going for a walk without technology, just you and nature (or just you and the treadmill), you’ll get a boost of creativity that will carry you through.

Walking is something almost anyone can do. Because of that fact, it makes it the perfect exercise to start if you want to get healthier and improve your life in every single way. When are you going to start your walking program?

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10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success

Email marketing is a segment of content marketing. Content marketing describes marketing that uses information and content to inform, engage, and persuade your audience to act. Content includes text, visuals, and audio information that sends a message to your audience.

email marketing

To be successful with content marketing, you’ll need to plan your marketing based on your audience’s needs and your goals for them.

 

  1. Know and Maintain a Consistent Brand Voice – If you want your audience to read and enjoy receiving email messages from you, make sure you know what your brand voice is. This includes the terms you want to use, the tone you say them in, and your values and principles.

 

  1. Create Targeted Lead Magnets – When you develop lead magnets to build your list, make sure you target each freebie toward a particular member of your audience. Casting a smaller net will result in higher conversions.

 

  1. Craft Meaningful and Persuasive Messages – Every message you send them, whether email or in your blog, or even on social media, need to be meaningful to them so that you can persuade them to act.

Tips to Develop Your Overall Content Marketing Plan

  1. Use Content to Segment Your Subscribers – The content you publish on your website and in email can be used to further segment your audience based on their behavior. The more segmented they are, the better you can communicate your value to them.

 

  1. Ask Subscribers What They Want – Send surveys and questionnaires to your list members, social followers, and blog readers to find out what they really want to know about. For example, under a blog post, you can post something like “want more content about this topic” and let them check yes or no and sign up for your list to be reminded of new content about that topic.

 

  1. Encourage Subscribers to Share Your Messages – Even when you send an email, with the exception of private information, you should encourage the recipients to share with their friends.

 

  1. Conduct A B Testing Regularly – You don’t know for sure if the content is doing what you want it to do unless you test it. Try changing headlines, subject lines, and subtle information to improve each interaction.

 

  1. Send Valuable Actionable Messages Often – While you do want to send valuable and actionable messages to your email list, often make sure each message really does have a reason for existing before sending.

 

  1. Focus on Audience Delight – When you focus on delighting your audience, you’re going to see a massive difference in their engagement with you. Find ways to make them say “wow” to the content you deliver to them.

 

  1. Remember the CTA – Don’t bother sending even one message without a call to action based on the reasons you are sending the message. The CTA doesn’t have to be about buying. It can be about sharing, liking, replying, and so forth too. Tell your email list member and reader what you want them to do next, and you’re going to get a lot more results.

 

Content marketing will help you improve all aspects of your marketing and advertising by helping you keep top of mind at all times. Every message you create for them needs to have a reason for being and a goal in mind. If you cannot figure out the goal, don’t create it.

 

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com/SalesVideo

 

 

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Steps to Develop Your Overall Content Marketing Plan

To use content marketing and especially email marketing efficiently, it’s always better to have a plan. To create and develop your content marketing plan, there are some things you need to do and know to get it right. Let’s explore the ways you can set up your content marketing plan effectively.

marketing plan

  • Set Your Goals – Before you produce one piece of content, you really do need to understand the purpose of it. Set different goals for each promotion and for your business overall to help you figure out what to publish and where.

 

  • Know Your KPIs – The key performance indicators that help determine if your actions produce the results you want need to be spelled out. For example, if you publish a sales page for your freebie, who is it for, and what data will you use to determine if it’s working or not? Be specific.

 

  • Know Your Audience – You have seen this a lot, but it cannot be stated enough. Knowing your audience isn’t a one-time research opportunity. It’s ongoing. Remember that audiences change slightly over time. You would not market today to the same demographics the way you did in the 1950s or even the 1980s.

 

  • Understand Your Competition – How and when your competition does things is just as important as what you’re doing because it can help you identify gaps in coverage. This is the only way to make sure you stand out. Know them and find ways to differentiate yourself.

Reasons to Study Your Competition Carefully

  • Know Where You Stand Now and Where You Want to Go – Studying where you are now in your goals is the best way to figure out how to get where you want to go. Use analytics to help you set the standard you want to achieve.

 

  • Determine the Best Channels to Publish Your Content – The act of creating your plans will help you figure out a lot of information like where you’re going to need content published. For example, your blog, your email, social media platforms where your audience hangs out, and maybe some industry sites where you can guest blog might work for you.

 

  • Know the Types of Content You Need to Publish – When you create a plan to publish content, you’ll be able to choose the right messages to get your point across. It also helps identify areas you can repurpose content.

 

  • Find and Earmark Resources – Planning in advance also helps you budget better and find the resources, monetary and human, that you will need to be successful.

 

  • Create a Content Calendar – Once you have figured out what you’re going to do, don’t just have it in your head. Instead, create a content calendar so that you can follow a plan that gets a little done each day.

 

  • Create and Publish the Content – Once you have the plans, start creating and publishing the content. As you move through your plan, note the results, and keep going.

 

  • Advertise and Market the Content – Publishing isn’t enough today. You also need to actively market the content you’re going to create. Share it more than once via email, your blog, social media, and so forth.

 

  • Measure the Results – Data is your friend. Use it. Use whatever analytics you have native in your email marketing software and on your website to determine if what you’re doing is working or not.

 

  • Adjust and Repeat – Once you start implementing your plan, use the metrics to help you adjust your plans. Repeat what works. Let go of what doesn’t.

 

Content marketing, whether your business is online or offline, or both, is an essential component of any marketing plan today. You’ll need content in every aspect of your business from the external obvious sales pages, blog posts, and so forth to the internal information such as email messages, social media promotions, and even internal training for employees, contractors, and affiliates, or other stakeholders.

P.S. How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com/SalesVideo

 

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Email Marketing: What You Need to Make It All Work

When you think about building an email list, it can get overwhelming thinking about all the technology you need to work together to make it all work. Keep in mind that some of the systems are redundant, and you may not need all of these, but you will need the following:

 

  • A website – What platform will you use to build the site? You can choose self-hosted WordPress, or you can build your website another way. Know how all the technologies work together. For most needs, self-hosted WordPress will work great.

 

  • A website host – Pick a website host that will work with you based on your needs. Remember that bigger is not always better. But you want the host to have a good reputation and provide excellent customer care. If you’re a newbie, you may need hand-holding – in that case, a good choice is a host called Mom Webs.

 

  • A social media presence – Create social media accounts on platforms your audience likes to use. Update it often with relevant information and content for your audience. Choose at least the top three that your audience likes to use. Consider using automation via software like Hootsuite.com too.

 

  • A targeted and compelling freebie – You may need or want more than one freebie that you create based on where your targeted audience member is in their buying cycle.

 

  • A landing page or sales page – Treat your freebie as you would any product you’re going to sell to your audience. Create a sales page for it so that your audience knows the benefits of getting it. While you can build a landing page using a standard WordPress new page, using software like HBA Funnel Builder is also very helpful and makes it quick.

 

  • An email autoresponder service – You must have an autoresponder such as Aweber.com, Drip.com, or Get Response (or others) to deliver the messages to your subscribers. Don’t be tempted to use your own website and private email because these services are more secure and work better.

 

  • A place to store downloads – You may want to use your own server, or you might want to invest in a better system that is more secure like Amazon S3 to store your freebies and products safely.

 

  • A way to deliver the freebie – You don’t want to attach your freebie to the email. Instead, you’ll want to create a download page or use an automatic system to help deliver it, track it, and segment your audience with it.

 

  • An email marketing sequence of messages – You’ll want to create an email sequence to welcome your subscribers based on the freebie they download or the product they buy and add information to guide them in their choices in the future.

 

To choose which technology you’re going to use, it’s essential to understand what your business stands for, what your budget is, and what you plan to do in the future too. Choosing systems that can grow with you is important.

If you missed yesterday’s Blog Post you can read it here:  Choose Your Email Marketing Technology Carefully