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Creative, Social Media

How to take better pics to promote your business online

By on

October 17, 2016

- Creative, Social Media

It’s almost 2017 and human beings officially have attention spans that are shorter than goldfish. Yikes. So what does that mean for promoting your business in the mobile-social revolution? VISUALS. The quicker you can communicate value to your potential target audience, the more chance you have to capture their attention and have a shot at converting them into a customer. This leads us to today’s discussion: how to take better pics to promote your business online. The best part? You don’t even have to have a big fancy DSLR camera. So whip out your smartphone, let’s do it.  

  1. STAY ON THE GRID.

They teach you fancy stuff in film school like The Rule of Thirds, but all you need to know is this quick iPhone hack. Switch the grid on! Go to settings and find Photos & Camera. Here you will find the hidden settings that were dismissed back in iOS7. Tap the switch next to Grid to turn it on. It’s about half way down, under the Camera section. Use this to line up horizons and space out subjects.

how to take better pics to promote your business on social media

2. GO INTO THE LIGHT.

A really nifty trick to shoot emotionally stimulating photos is to shoot silhouettes. Emotional recall is proven to create better brand awareness as users can more easily remember things that have moved them on some level. Silhouettes are a quick trick. Simply place your subject in front of a strong light source and shoot into the direction of the light source. Look at you, you romantic!how to take better pics to promote your business on social media

3. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND SYMMETRICAL.

Remember that grid from tip #1? Use it to center your subject directly in any of the center squares within the grid. Keep the background super simple for maximum subject focus. You can also create symmetry by placing two objects on opposing sides of the grid. Remember k.i.s.s., keep it simple and symmetrical!

how to take better pics to promote your business on social media

4. PULL YOUR FOCUS.

Once you’ve created your composition within the grid to your liking or even chosen a silhouette, make sure to choose your focal point. On most smartphones, you just need to press on the subject to pull it into focus. If you have a closer subject with some desirable detail, pull the focus to their face or detail point and watch the background magically blur out, creating a memorable, ethereal pull focus! You’re a pro!

how to take better pics to promote your business on social media

Photo tricks like these are simple and create the perfect grounds to build awareness and consideration for your brand, products, or services when promoting your business online. Try these photos out in some social media advertisements and don’t be afraid to drop us a message if you need help!

Happy snapping!

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Sales

Buyer Journey Breakdown

By on

September 28, 2016

- Sales

The buyer journey is something that any business owner must understand to stand out and be successful in the 2017 digital atmosphere. You must first put yourself in the buyer’s driver seat. Being a business owner, as many of you know, people are constantly trying to sell you shit. It’s ridiculous. Who wants to listen to an average sales pitch selling an average product? Most likely, it’s not even worth your time to listen to a guy talk about “why you need” his product. We can break down the journey of an informed/modern buyer in 5 Basic Steps:   Awareness, Engagement, Purchase, Loyalty and Advocacy. The key to success is to understand each step of the process and to figure out where the buyer is in their journey. Ask yourself the following questions: Has the buyer researched your company and your competition? Did this buyer find you or did you have to search for them? All important things to take into consideration. These things will tell you where your buyer is and how you need to approach him. So let’s break it down:   Step 1: AWARENESS A.k.a. GET FOUND. The beginning of the buyer journey starts by driving attention and awareness towards your company and products. This step is where creative branding, attractive and interesting social media posting, and Search Engine Optimization are key. Start by developing a strategy that will allow you to grasp the attention of your audience and drive them towards your products/services. Do this by showing them that your company has the ability and energy to impact their life or business in a positive way or answer/solve the question that they were searching for when they found you.   Step 2: ENGAGEMENT Once you get customers into the Engagement stage, you know that your awareness process is working. Now that the buyer is aware of your company and what you do, you have to keep them ENGAGED. You do this through means of providing interesting content which relates to them and their needs, a.k.a. giving them real value, free of charge. Blogs are a great way to do this (kinda like the one you are reading right now). With RIVALUS, we constantly provided daily content to boost awareness around our proteins and how our products differed and were better than our competition. Engagement doesn’t necessarily revolve around your products and services only, but also around information and new or trendy subjects that your audience will find engaging that are pertinent to the brand. For instance, at RIVALUS, we blogged not only about our supplements, but about valuable workouts. Were not selling workouts, but we want people to engage around the brand and spark conversations which in turn create engagement around your brand.   Step 3: THE SALE If steps 1 and 2 are successful, the sale becomes the easiest part of the process. Creating an easy avenue for the customer to make a purchase is key. Having a personable sales department and amazing customer service becomes essential so frustration levels stay low. Even the smallest glitch in your sales system can drive away a customer. In the end, there are other people who can sell them a similar product. To ensure the sale, be the company who has a flawless purchase plan, then, delight the shit out of them.   Step 4: DELIGHT: Turning a buyer into a Loyal Customer Marketing never ends. The sale is not the end goal. It’s the beginning. Now the goal is to create customers out of buyers. Keeping engagement at the forefront, we want to put information pertaining to other things which relate to original purchases. You will respond to messages, comments, and complaints in a quick and orderly fashion. This gives the feeling that you truly care about the customer and their experience.   Creating new, exciting, and intriguing products and content is the key to creating a brand induced community. This community will be loyal to your brand because you do more for those people then similar companies do. True communities will attract like people, growing your brand and bringing you more sales.   Step 5: ADVOCACY Creating advocated to spread the word about your business is not a one step process. You have to continuously engage with your audience and potential audience by providing actionable content that gives real value. This stuff takes time. A new follower likes a recent post? Go to their page and like 2 posts. Be a real life human representation of your brand. Give people incentives to be brand advocates and diplomats. Never stop creating new material for your loyal customers to read and enjoy. Engage them not only through your services and products, but give them information and news about exciting things that affect their personal lives. Each step of the buyer journey feeds off the prior: You can’t create brand advocates if you don’t have loyal customers.You can’t have loyal customers unless you have a flawless sales process. You can’t make a sale unless you have engaged with your potential customers. And customers don’t appear out of thin air. You have to give people a clear cut vision of what your product is and what it will do for them. We’ve only scratched the surface of the complexity of the buyer journey. We’ve only scratched the surface of the complexity of the buyer journey. What’s your key takeaway? What do you do with your business to set yourself apart during your buyer journey? Leave a comment below or tweet at us: @forgedigitalmkt
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