More than 75% of businesses believe that digital marketing is either effective or very effective at attracting new customers.

If you are planning to start a new business or if you have recently launched your startup website, you need to get serious about marketing because it helps you gain customers and eventually helps generating revenue.

The following is a list of some of the best marketing tips for small businesses and startups.

1. Clearly define marketing goals and objectives

Define marketing goals and objectives. This is the first step towards a successful marketing campaign.

The goals and objectives should be clear, documented, and must be communicated to every single employee in your organization.

Vague and fluffy goals that do not make much of a sense should be avoided. For instance, an increase in sales or increase in business growth are poor marketing objectives that are hard to measure and harder to achieve.

Marketing goals should be quantified so that they can be measured easily.

The overall marketing objectives should be divided into smaller goals and monthly plans. This will make sure that your business moves towards the annual objective.

2. Know your customers

Do you know your business’s primary customers?

How well you know your customers.

The more information you get about your customers, the better it is because it will help you target the exact and most appropriate type of customers.

1. What are the interests of your customers?
2. What type of food they like?
3. Which social networks they use?
4. What is the average monthly income?
5. What is the biggest challenge they face in their lives?

These are just a few basic questions. You should find answers to these and several other questions. This will help you and your marketing team understand your business’s customers.

If this information is hard to get, conduct surveys. Conducting surveys can be expensive so be prepared to spend money on market research.

Pro tip: Run a survey on Facebook backed by a lucky draw or give away. No one will bother participating in your survey if there is no output. Monetise the survey or link it to something expensive that your target market is interested in.

3. Use social media to reach your target market

One in every three people in the world uses social network regularly. And the number is expected to increase by 2020.

This is one reason why social media marketing should be your business’s top marketing channel.

Create a Facebook page for your business, create a Twitter account, and try to be active on as many social networks as possible. Not everyone uses Facebook so sticking to a single social network is not really a good idea.

Use multiple social accounts.

Engage with your customers on social media. Read comments. See what type of posts they like. Get involved.

Statistics show that 71% of customers who have a good experience with a business on a social network are likely to recommend the business to their friends. Try to provide your followers with an exceptional social media experience. Keep response time under an hour. Respond to all messages, comments, mentions, likes, and shares.

If you do not have the resources to stay active on a social media, remove your account. Only use social networks if you can stay active there. If you can actively participate on one social network, stick to it and do not use other social networks.

4. Build a strong relationship with customers

Customer relationship goes a long way. The best business approach is one that puts the customer at the center of the business.

Building lasting relationship with customers is something that is not easy. It needs time, patience, and a customer-focused marketing strategy.

Here are a few tips to build strong relationships with your customers.

• Listen to them. Take feedback seriously. One nice way to get feedback from your customers is to send them a short survey via email once a month.
• Send emails regularly. The emails should be non-promotional and content-rich.
• Segment your subscribers and customers based on their interests, demographics, buying patterns, and other variables. This will help you send them customized content and offers. Treating subscribers individually always makes them happy.
• Initiate a customer loyalty program to reward your existing customers. Not having a customer loyalty program means you are leaving a lot of food on the table.

5. Measure marketing ROI

As much as 60% of small businesses are unable to track ROI of their social media marketing. Measuring ROI of your marketing activities is a massive marketing challenge that must be addressed.

Why?

Because marketers that calculate marketing ROI are 1.6 times more likely to receive higher marketing budgets.

As a business, you need to see results. If you spent €10K on marketing, you should know what is the return on this investment? If you have no clue and your marketing team is blank, you will most likely see a reduced marketing budget.

The starting point, therefore, is to select metrics and creating KPIs.

How will you measure performance?

This is the question that should be answered.

You can measure marketing ROI by tracking sales, conversions, leads, traffic, customer engagement, etc. There are several metrics to choose from.

To choose the most appropriate metric, go back and look at your marketing objective. If it is related to sales, choose sales as metric. If it is related to brand awareness, choose customer engagement and/or conversion rate.

Fine enough.

But the real challenge is tracking and measuring it.

Sales, conversions, revenue, and leads are some of the metrics that can be measured easily as long as you are using the right tools.

Customer engagement is, however, hard to measure.

For business startups, the best metrics are conversion rate and sales. These can be measured easily by Google Analytics.

Conclusion

These five marketing tips will give your startup a jumpstart. Time to put your new business on track right from day one.

Rebecca writes for Accountant Online; her latest post asks if you have what is needed to start a business. You can read more of her thoughts on small businesses on the blog.

The post Five Top Tips for Business Startup Marketing appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

From car rental businesses to hotels and restaurants, there are hundreds of thousands of travel businesses. If that doesn’t make you realise how big your market it is, Europe alone accumulated 37,000 million euros in the tour and activity sector in 2015.

The good news is that it’s become ever-easier to market to your customers online through social media. There are many ways of reaching your customers through marketing, but social media leaves an imprint on the consumers’ minds like nothing else.

Create an Experience

When using social media for your travel business, you should keep in mind that the consumer is always looking for an experience. Whether they say that directly to you or not, businesses need to keep in mind that creating a need for their customers, is what leads to creating more business and loyal customers.

The best way to grab the attention of future travellers is to post regularly about past customer’s experiences using your business to travel. If you do not have any previous customers, aim to create content that makes the consumer want to experience your business.

Pictures of beautiful scenery, events, delectable food, or additional outside experiences that your business offers are what consumers are most interested in.

Look to Friends and Family on Social Networks

Customers are more in tune with traveling than they were just a few years ago. The use of search engines, blogs, and social media has increased the want and need to travel.

Social media influences many to choose different travel destinations and agendas than they would normally pick, like a pilgrimage. According to Tnooz.com, a travel website, 52% of Facebook users said that their friends’ photos inspired them when making a choice for holiday plans.

Not only are these users inspired by social media, but they are posting about their own vacations on their own profiles. Information collected on social media users says that 76% of travellers post photos of their vacations on social networks.

This means that more people are willingly sharing their experiences with hotels, businesses, and restaurants that they come across while traveling. If you can get your customers to share their experiences freely you are moving in the right direction.

Of course, not all customers will be willing to give their recommendation for free on social media, but word-of-mouth advertising from family and friends has proven to work best and become trusted more often than any other form of marketing.

Social Media Giveaways and Customer Loyalty Programs

If you are looking to increase your reach on social networks, try the “LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE” tactic. Post a giveaway on Facebook or Twitter stating that each person who likes, comments, and shares/retweets your post will be entered to win something from your business.

Be it a stay at your hotel or a discounted tour around town, you will reach far more people through this approach than your regular day-to-day posts. This is a great way to improve your reach and increase your social media following without having to pay for it.

Social Media Paid Advertisements

Your most important friend on social media is paid advertisement. This is the best way to reach your traveling customers as 85% of travellers use their phones abroad. Paid advertisement will help you locate customers near and far that fit your customer segment. If you are unsure what you are looking for in terms of selecting a demographic (age, location, etc.) then start simple with a Facebook paid advertisement.

Facebook paid advertisements offer you many options in terms of price, location, reach, and look of the ad. However, the most important thing Facebook offers businesses is insights. Insights will give you a look into what your customer really looks like. How old are they? What time of the day are they most active on the site? What posts do better or worse than your average? These can be determined through looking at insights.

Instagram is another popular paid advertising platform. With a simple picture and short blurb about the post, you can pay a small amount of money to post your ad to the world around you. This will expand your reach, but it can give you a view into who is wanting to see of your ads so you know better next time.

Let the Social Media Elite Visit or Use Your Business

Although this is similar to paid advertisement, many travel businesses have been using the tactic of allowing popular social media individuals to visit their business or try something from their business for free.

In return, these individuals create a post tagging your travel business with a small verse below about how great your business is. Hotels do this frequently, but it is not just for them. Air travel companies, restaurants, tour guides, theme parks, and more have all used this tactic to attract more visitors.

Getting to Know Your Business Through Social Media

In today’s market, almost every business is trying to have a localised feel. Each time a traveller makes plans for traveling, they are expecting a new and unique experience that cannot be found anywhere else. The easiest way to establish your brand and the culture of your business is to post regularly on social media with the personality you want to portray. If you are laid-back all-inclusive hotel, you most likely want to portray your business as a place to come relax and be waited on hand and foot. If you are a tour guide who takes expert-level hikers to Mount Everest, you want to portray that you can be trusted and are capable of making such a difficult journey.

These can be easily portrayed through social media posts that describe you or your business. Keep in mind the tone of voice and verbiage used throughout your posts and make sure that they are consistent so you do not confuse your consumer, but intrigue them each time they come back to read about your business.

Social Media Does It All

The best thing to keep in mind when starting social media for your travel business is to be yourself and show your customers what you think is best about your business. Post items that are exciting and original, and the travellers will come in numbers to visit.

Rebecca writes for Sunway Holidays one of Ireland oldest and most popular tour companies. They offer sun holidays all over Europe and exciting adventures destinations worldwide.

The post Using Social Media – New Travel Business Example appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

Name it!

One thing that often gets lost in the beginning of a business is the thoughts towards a name or a logo for the business. The most important element of the personality of your business of product comes out of the logo. This is the coal face of your business and will give your business it’s much hoped for lasting impression.

Now, I know it’s our job to help with the logo and we can do that. However, coming up with a name can be a very subjective process. A name represents the company, explains its personality, its brand, it can lend credibility or fun to the business and picking the right name is crucial. There’s notone beter than the business owner to come up with it but its not always that easy for them. I remember in the past some clients ridiculing business names out there and erring on the side of caution and sticking with a defined combination of company owner’s names or a name that spells out exactly the prduct. This can indeed work but its one thing to be serious and reliable and a totally other thing to be memorable. If there was one company I could point at its Google. It’s possibly one of the most memorable and alternative names and yet, one of the most successful global brands. By all means be safe and serious but give thought to giving your company more than your own name. And giving it a sparkling personality! Either way come to us with your thoughts and we can work together to get the right name for your business.

Colour my logo

Colour is exceptionally important and a blend of colours can explain so much about your brand personality. Consider blues and darker tones for more serious, corporate reliable businesses. Green is often considered calming and reflecting nature. Purple is an outstanding colour celebrating individuality. Red, obviously for a passionate type but in a logo, it can be representative of sustainability or alternatively danger. Yellow is often seen as a fun colour giving thoughts of summer days and bright futures. However, colours can change personality when combined and can indeed set the tone and direction for your stationery, your website and your brand. My advice would be to start with what you like. After all you will be looking at it most of the time. After that, speak with your designer and work together on whether you can get a proof of a selection of colour options or combinations so that you can pick one that work for you. When it comes down to it, you will know what you like and I always encourage the client to go with their initial gut feeling.

Fonts – which is which?

There are several types and designs of fonts. Firstly the main 2 styles would be Serif and Sans Serif. A Serif is like Times Roman and has the small chiseled edges or ticks. Generally Serif Fonts can be representative of being reliable & dependable. If you are considering a Serif Font, your business may be of a more corporate nature. Having said that, Serifs have moved forward in recent years and there are others available that have less of a traditional feel to them. Sans Serif Fonts are like Ariel that are clean at the edge and don’t have the chiseled ticks. These are seen as being fun yet clean. Some say they are easy to read. Online, though a Serif often works better for reading. Most businesses I know use both. Maybe a Serif for headings and a Sans Serif for body text in brochures, flyers or information leaflets. Again, your designer will be able to pull some recommendations together for you. If you in doubt, you can always go to https://fonts.google.com/ and search what they have to offer. They are some of the best.

Of course, we can’t ignore Scripts. Scripts can be seen as being old fashioned, traditional or if used correctly give a feeling of a funky personality and approachability. For example my own logo at www.designerg.ie where I chose cool greens and a clean, black background to reflect my own design business and personality.

What’s extremely popular right now is the hand-drawn style font. I have written about this on my blog https://www.designerg.ie/the-hand-drawn-fonts-phenomenon/. It explains how this style of font is working well in terms of fostering a hip and relevant look and feel to various elements within design.

Whatever combination you decide to go with give yourself a break and go with what you want. Get the options you need from your designer. A good designer will get a feel for the business from your briefing meeting and be able to provide you with enough options to get you going. If there is one thing I know from experience is that once the logo is designed, my clients are usually thrilled. It’s the minute the business feels real and you can start working on getting your business or service out there. Good luck with whatever you decide!

This article was kindly written by Sinead at www.DesignerG.ie

The post Logo Design – What suits my business? appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

Your content and your delivery. Each one determines just how well your audience receives your new idea.

Part 1

Your Content: Pitch Decks

Online software presentation companies like Prezi, Emaze and Canva have now over 100 million users of pitch deck templates from all corners of the globe. From 2009, as Prezi set out to take on Microsoft’s PowerPoint, the world of pitching and presenting changed drastically.

By 2017, investors and audiences now expect that you have a well designed deck that clearly tells them the WHAT, WHY, WHO and HOW of your business.

Key things to remember with deck slides:

• Develop Your Story – Before you throw yourself into some colourful creatives, break down exactly what you want to say and how it should start, flow and end. 

• Define It–  Decide what’s most important to your startup that you really want investors and backers to take away with them. Make it memorable by weaving through interesting stories and facts that drive home the unique selling points of your product. You are playing to the head and the heart of your audience.

• Design– Image and Text. Balance between strong images that convey your product or service and compelling words that add value to your brand. 

               Text – Don’t use heavy text that reads like paragraphs – If your audience has to read a long worded explanation of your business, chances are they have lost interest by the second slide. This shouldn’t be work for them, you are supposed to do the work for them by explaining your business in an easy and simple manner.

               – Powerful images that convey your message – Humans are visual. We are drawn to images that help us see something more clearly. Investors are the same. Use illustrations that help them see the bigger picture with your product and lets them visualise a scenario that they can relate to. Do not, however, rely on just beautiful images that have no relevance to your brand, it will distract their attention away from your product.

Getting Started

Opening Slide – This is your hook. You have a very short amount of time to reel them in, so you need to use this to entice your audience and point your pitch in the direction you want it to go. 

Problem

A popular way to kick off is to create a problem slide, as you immediately get straight to the point of your business and show that you have created something that solves a common issue or problem. You are trying to engage your audience here to give them something that they can relate to.

Question

Another opening method is to simply put a one-line question on a slide. If your question is interesting enough, your audience will mentally answer it and you have their attention before you even speak.

Hard hitting fact or figure

Great ways to pique curiosity is to throw a ‘bold’ number or percentage out there that has great impact on the audience or investor. It can be something that is relevant to your market or industry or just a general figure that is not very well known. You are educating your audience now and giving them something new that they were not aware of before now.

Story Slides:

Now that your audience is listening, the platform is yours to tell your story and share your vision with them. Bring them in to how you created your product, how it is going to directly benefit customers and how it will change the industry you are targeting. You can also show them what you have learned along the way and how your product will keep improving with the right investment behind it.

Marketing Slides:

No great pitch deck is complete without showing how you are going to get to your customers or clients. It is often left out and yet it is an essential part of any new business plan or idea. Failing to show your route to market means that you might not have properly thought through all aspects of your business to be successful.

Money Slides: 

Always, always, always include how your business is going to make money. This is where investors decide just how credible you are and how serious you are about turning your idea into a profitable and viable business. Rarely can a new idea be sustainable without paying customers to build and grow it into a success. A graph or chart that explains how you will scale up your revenue streams over a reasonable time should always be included.

Wrapping It Up:

‘The last thing you say is the first thing they will remember’. This is your final chance to leave your audience with a positive impression of your business and something memorable to take away. The most important part of your idea should be placed here. Going back to your opening slide can be effective as it ties up the whole point of why you created your product in the first place.

This post was kindly provided by www.Vidpitch.com – if you need help with your pitch get in touch with the guys on hello@vidpitch.com

The post Deck and Deliver The two key ingredients to a successful pitch – Your Decks and Your Delivery appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

You should definitely write a company blog for your new business. Do not take my words for it, here are a few reasons why you should start a blog for your business now.

1. Blogs generate traffic

Blogs help you generate traffic.

Who doesn’t need more traffic?

Companies that have a blog receives 55% more traffic than companies that do not blog.

Every single blog post that you publish on your company’s blog has phrases, and keywords that your target audience enters into Google to find what they are looking for. New blog posts generate more impressions and clicks.

Blogs help your target audience find you, your website, and your business.

In fact, it is not just organic traffic but blog helps you attract traffic from social media and from other websites and blogs.

When you share your newly published blog post on your business’s Facebook page and Twitter account, your target audience will use it to find your website.

Other websites and businesses will link to your valuable blog posts. These links improve your website’s search engine ranking and at the same time, they send direct traffic to your website.

Over time, you will continue to receive traffic from multiple sources all because of your company’s blog.

2. Lead generation

Marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than their counterparts. According to PWB Marketing, companies that blog more than four times a week see an increase in traffic and leads.

A blog doesn’t just generate traffic but it converts that traffic into leads. When you blog regularly and keep publishing high quality valuable content, you will continue to receive new leads for years.

In order to generate leads from your blog, you must optimize your blog as well as individual posts for lead generation. Every blog post should have a purpose and a call to action. It must guide the reader what action he has to take after reading the post.

If there are no call-to-actions in the blog post, you will not see any increase in leads. The idea is to use powerful CTAs with every blog post with sign up forms so that readers enter their email address to grab the lead magnet (a free report that is used for list building).

If all the blog posts are optimized for lead generation, the probability of generating leads from your business blog increases significantly.

3. Natural links

Businesses that blog receives 97% more backlinks (naturally) than those that do not, according to Business2Community.

Now this seems to be a solid reason to write a company blog for your new business. Other bloggers and businesses will link to your blog posts, business website, and individual blog posts if you write awesome content regularly.

As the number of new blog posts increases, other blogs will link to your existing blog posts. This keeps generating natural backlinks to your blog.

As already discussed, backlinks increase search engine rankings. There is nothing better than getting backlinks naturally and free of cost. While your competitors will spend hefty money on creating backlinks, you will get them for free.

Besides, Google and other search engines love websites that get backlinks naturally. Building backlinks with an intention to manipulate search engine rankings is not recommended, and if you do so, your website can be penalized.

All the search engines guide webmasters to generate backlinks naturally.

Every backlink has the potential to send referral traffic to your website. So it is not just about search engine rankings but links send direct traffic. Think of having a link from CNN or maybe from Forbes. You will receive thousands of visitors at no additional cost.

4. Establish authority and trust

People trust blogs.

A survey rated blogs as the fifth most trusted source for accurate information. Whatever you publish on your blog, it is read, trusted, and is considered accurate – in general.

When you keep publishing blog posts for years and continue to solve reader’s problems, you eventually become an authority in the industry. The idea is to write with a purpose to solve reader problems and to answer the questions that readers may have.

This is how you will establish yourself as an authority in the industry by helping your target audience, by solving their problems, and by sharing valuable content that they do not find anywhere else.

Though authority and trust are somewhat vague metrics that are hard to measure but you cannot ignore them. These two metrics do exist and they really matter.

5. Communicate and engage with the audience

There isn’t any better communicate method than a blog. You can post news, stories, and pretty much everything on your blog.

For example, if you are about to shift your office, the easiest way to communicate the address of your new office is to write a blog post on it and send it to your subscribers. Similarly, you can post about latest promotions and discounts.

Posting regularly will help your business engage with your audience. Blog posts help you develop a relationship with the readers. This goes a long way.

Conclusion

With these benefits in mind, can you afford to not having a blog for your new business?

Stephen runs and writes for Parcel Direct, an Irish Parcel Delivery Comparison site where you can order online. They also offer ecommerce plugins to help with deliveries of your products directly from your website.

The post Should You Write a Company Blog for Your New Business? appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

One of the easiest ways to gain a competitive advantage on your competitors is to get better with daily business operations and master them. If you can optimise, automate, and master everyday business processes, you’ll find yourself doing better than most of your competitors.

Retailers struggle managing daily tasks. Master it to gain competitive advantage.

If you just started a new retail business, using SAP Business One will help stand out from the crowd and get better with managing your business.

This is, however, just one benefit of using SAP B1. It helps your new retail business in several ways across all verticals.

Here is a sneak peek into what it can do for you.

Is SAP Business One for you?

Before you can even think of using SAP B1 for your business, you must figure out if it is really for your retail business and it is really the best solution available.

Ask yourself following questions.

1. Are there multiple teams in your organization?
2. Do teams find it hard to communicate and share information?
3. Is it a pain to streamline tasks and projects?
4. Do you’ve multiple people working on the same projects?
5. Do you’ve to ask for reports and data for analysis from multiple teams and individuals?
6. Managing business activities and integrating information is complicated?

If the answer to all of the above questions is a loud Yes, SAP Business One is for you.

How it will help your new retail business

Let’s dig a bit deep and see how it will help your retail business in reality.

1. Business process integration

Imagine you’ve two (or even more) employees working on the same task and you only find it when at the month-end they come up with similar reports.

Imagine the resources wasted.

SAP Business One helps you streamline and integrate business processes. It helps you save resources. You and your team know what they have to do, how it has to be done, and they can monitor the progress in real-time.

All the business processes are integrated.

A new customer order will show in the sales immediately, the inventory will be recalculated, the financial statement will be adjusted, assets will be revalued, cash flow will be updated, and customer account will be created and updated.

Imagine doing it manually.

It will take at least a couple days for the order to reach finance department and warehouse where you then realize that you’re out of stock.

Nothing like this happens with the SAP B1. Everything works smoothly and the entire business operates as a single whole.

2. Automation

Don’t be afraid of automation.

In fact, putting your retail business on automation from day one will give you a jumpstart. If your business’s routine daily processes run on autopilot, you’ll have all the time to deal with strategic business processes.

SAP B1 has the power to put your business on automation. Starting from customer order processing to inventory management to order fulfillment to order shipping to customer services to billing to financial management to reporting and analysis.

You just name it.

It covers everything.

3. Easy decision-making

Making right decisions at the right time is crucial for retail businesses. Not just the decision has to be right but it must be timely.

You need to data and reports to make decisions.

SAP B1 helps you in making right timely decisions in two three ways.

1. It generates meaningful reports automatically on the basis of data that it deals with on daily basis.
2. Workflow-based alerts help you make decisions on the basis of specific business events such as reduction in conversion rate.
3. It keeps a record of exceptions and creates reports automatically. For instance, if sales increased significantly on any given day, SAP Business One will generate a report on the same and you’ll be notified. You can then take necessary action accordingly.

Since analysis and reporting are real-time, therefore, you don’t have to wait for your reporting and analysis team to create a meaningful report for you. It is always there in the system.

This allows making decisions right on time when they’re needed.

4. Easy-to-implement and use

SAP Business One is affordable, easy to implement, and easy to use complete business management system.

The transition doesn’t take ages, it is instant. Once it has been installed and implemented, your staff doesn’t need the training to get started, it is simple and extremely easy-to-use. Even if they need training, there are free online training resources available to choose from.

Here is a list of some major features that make SAP B1 user-friendly as well as business-friendly.

• It has a simple user interface that’s intuitive in nature. It is just like using Windows or any other software. The user-interface makes it super-simple for your employees to get a hold.
• It needs minimal maintenance and modification. Once it has been installed and implemented, you’ll rarely have to modify it.
• Managing and administrating the entire SAP system is quite simple that reduces the cost as well as helps streamlining the operations to a significant extent.

5. Improve customer satisfaction and relationship

Making your customers happy is a piece of cake with SAP Business One. It deals effectively with Customer Relationship Management by monitoring and understanding your customer needs based on demographics, buying patterns, and other variables.

Based on the advanced reporting on customer needs and behaviors, you can take steps to make your customers happy. Not just happy but you can increase revenue per customer and at the same time, convert customers into loyal customers.

Planning to start a customer loyalty program?

SAP Business One allows you to create and implement customer loyalty programs for your retail store. This helps increasing revenue and in building strong relationships with your customers.

This is just a basic overview of how SAP Business One will change the way you manage your retail business. Once you’re onboard, possibilities are endless.

The post How SAP Business One Can Help Your New Retail Business appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

Thankfully all that has changed and it is now incredibly easy to get selling online and to start taking payments (I can now have a great looking E Commerce site up and running in a matter of days).

The game changer for me was Shopify, I have been using them for years and we run our website www.Thebeerclub.ie on it. It is a great way to test an idea and to get your E Commerce store up and running quickly – the buzz of your first order is amazing!

Shopify offer a 14 day Free trial so you can play around with it and see if it is right for you!

Below is a little history of the company and further information on it’s key features –

Background

If you don’t want to join them, try your best to beat them.

That’s the philosophy Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake followed when they created their own eCommerce platform, Shopify.

Based out of Ontario, Canada, Shopify began as a better way for the trio to sell their snowboards online. Since its founding in 2006, though, Shopify has grown to be much more. The company now hosts more than 325,000 stores worldwide and has facilitated over $24 billion in transactions.

And it’s not just about snowboards anymore. Shopify merchants sell everything from handmade soaps to refrigerators, and Shopify hosts a handful of big-name clients, including the Foo Fighters, Amnesty International, and Github.

As a fully hosted, web-based platform, Shopify specializes in simplicity and ease of use. And despite its lack of some advanced features, Shopify’s platform provides the basics that can support most merchants. The rest can be added on with integrations and applications.

Shopify is one of the shopping carts that we most frequently recommend here at Merchant Maverick, quirks and all; it’s fully deserving of its high marks. Keep reading to find out why.

Pricing

Shopify’s pricing plans are billed on a month-by-month basis. While there are no contracts to sign, if you choose to purchase a full year-long plan, you can save 10%. If you purchase two years at a time, you’ll save 20%.

Here’s the full rundown of Shopify’s four basic pricing tiers.

Shopify Lite plan: $9/month

• Credit Card Rate:
  • 2.9% + 30¢ Online
• Transaction Fee:
  • 2.0%
  • No transaction fee if you use Shopify Payments. If you choose an external payment gateway, there will be a variable transaction fee, based on your plan.
• Features:
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited number of products
  • Unlimited online storage
  • Facebook integration
  • Chat & Email Support
  • One staff account (in addition to the owner’s account)

Basic Shopify plan: $29/month

• Credit Card Rate:
  • 2.9% + 30¢ Online
• Transaction Fee:
  • 2.0%
• Additional Features:
  • Pinterest integration
  • 24/7 Support
  • Shopify Mobile
  • Discount code engine
  • Free Shopify Card Reader
  • Online store and Blog
  • Two staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)

Shopify plan: $79/month

• Credit Card Rate:
  • 2.6% + 30¢ Online
• Transaction Fee:
  • 1.0%
• Additional Features:
  • Gift cards
  • Professional reports
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Five staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)

Advanced Shopify plan: $299/month

• Credit Card Rate:
  • 2.4% + 30¢ Online
• Transaction Fee:
  • 0.5%
• Additional Features:
  • Advanced report builder
  • Real-time carrier shipping
  • Fifteen staff accounts (in addition to the owner’s account)

If you’d prefer a visual representation of Shopify’s plans (not including Shopify Lite or Shopify Plus), this screen shot might help you out.

You may have noticed the transactions fees listed under each plan. While most other shopping carts have eliminated transaction fees, Shopify maintains theirs, which is, no doubt, a pain. On the other hand, Shopify waives those transaction fees if you choose to use Shopify Payments as your payment gateway. More on Shopify Payments in the Payment Processing section.

Web-Hosted or Licensed

Shopify is web-hosted, SaaS (Software as a Service) technology. You’ll never have to worry about coordinating with a third party hosting service.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Because Shopify is a web-based platform, all you need to access it is a computer, an internet connection, and a reliable web browser.

Ease of Use

There’s a Free 14 Day Trial available for you to test out Shopify, no credit card required. When you sign up, you’ll receive an email with a login for your admin as well as a link you can use to view your storefront. The account automatically cancels at the end of fourteen days; in order to activate it again, you have to purchase a plan.

I think you’ll be pleased with your trial of Shopify’s admin. Ease of use is what Shopify does best.

Shopify’s dashboard is clean and orderly.

Although there is no tutorial video or setup wizard, Shopify helps you get started with a checklist on your dashboard. From here, you can choose a theme, add products, and set up your domain (you can also purchase a domain from Shopify. Last I checked it cost $13).

Adding products is easy. It only takes a few clicks and keystrokes.

There’s a visual theme editor available, and you can preview all of your changes before your store goes live. Read more about the theme editor in the Web Design section of this article.

The only thing about the admin which really bothers me is that the pages don’t load immediately. I often have to wait a few seconds before the next page is ready. It’s slightly irritating, but it really isn’t too bad.

Overall, Shopify gets an A+ in terms of ease of use.

Why not sign up for that Free 14 Day Trial to try it out for yourself?

Features

Shopify comes with all of the basic features you need to set up shop, right out of the box. Advanced functionality often requires add-on applications, but if you don’t need to have a bunch of bells and whistles, Shopify likely has enough features to get you rolling.

You should note that some of these features are only available with higher level plans. Look into each plan before you purchase.

Checkout

• Language Capabilities. Your checkout can be displayed in over 50 different languages.
• Automatic Shipping Rates. Shopify calculates shipping rates from UPS, USPS, and FedEx (available only in the Shopify Advanced Plan). And, you can select the factors that determine the cost of shipping, whether it be a fixed rate, a tiered rate, a weight-based rate, or a location-based rate.
• Abandoned Cart Recovery. When a customer leaves items in their carts without purchasing, you can automatically send an email to encourage them to complete their purchase.
• Automatic Tax Calculator. Shopify calculates tax rates based on your location and the locations of your customers.

Store Management

• Guest Checkout. Don’t let a customer’s fear of commitment keep them from purchasing. Shopify allows customers to buy without creating an account.
• Customer Accounts. On the other hand, customers are also able to create personal accounts to make future transactions easier and to receive your promotional emails.
• Customer Segmentation. Use those customer accounts to find out more about your customers and to group them by factors like location, shopping tendencies, and demographics.
• Fulfillment Center Options. Shopify connects with fulfillment services like Amazon, Rakuten Super Logistics, and Shipwire.
• Dropshipping Apps. Shopify integrates with Ordoro, Inventory Source, and eCommHub.

Marketing and SEO

• SEO Best Practices. Shopify follows SEO best practices with features like a customizable H1 and the ability to write title and meta tags as well as product tags. Also, a sitemap.xml is automatically generated for your store.
• Discounts. You can create discount codes and coupons. Gift cards are available at higher plans.
• Social Media Integration. Sync your information with Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. You can even use Shopify to sell on Facebook, provided that your page and products comply with Facebook’s Terms.
• Email Templates. Shopify comes with its own email template. The platform also integrates with Mailchimp if you’re looking for more complex email functionality.
• Product Reviews. Let your customers give your products star ratings and write comment-style reviews. Potential customers will trust your brand more if they know that others approve of it.
• Analytics. Use Shopify’s built-in analytics to view product reports, export reports, and traffic reports. Or, you can integrate with Google Analytics.

Product Management

• List Unlimited Products. Keep track of all of those products with Shopify’s inventory management and product category organization features.
• Product Variations. List variations on your products like size, color, and material. You can list up to 100 combinations per product.
• Digital Products. Sell both physical and digital products from the same site.
• Bulk Import/Export. Use this feature to facilitate migration from your previous platform.

Web Hosting

• Unlimited Bandwidth. You’ll never be charged bandwidth overage fees.
• Daily Backups. Ensure your content is saved.
• Automatic Upgrades. Keep your site up to date with Shopify’s newest features, without any effort on your part.
• 99.9% Uptime. With a record like that, you can be confident that your store will stay online through high traffic seasons.

Shopify Mobile

• Access your Site from Anywhere. Use Shopify’s app to manage your admin from your mobile device.

But, wait! There’s more! For Shopify’s full features list, click here.

Web Design

Shopify’s web design is truly beautiful. There are 53 mobile responsive themes available and nine of them are free. The rest are priced between $120-$180.

These themes are among the best I’ve seen. They’re professional, elegant, and easy for your customers to navigate.

Editing these themes is also relatively simple. Using the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, you can update content on your pages quickly. The theme editor in the backend allows you to make small changes to your theme and to preview those changes in real time, without reloading the page. From the theme editor, you can change backgrounds, images, colors, and fonts without ever touching a piece of code (hallelujah). This is what the theme editor looks like.

Shopify has also recently introduced a new way of theme editing. It’s called Sections, and it’s currently available with select themes. Sections is almost a drag and drop feature. You can arrange the order of your storefront’s widgets by dragging and dropping elements in the toolbar on the left. Shopify hopes to make Sections a feature of all of its themes soon.

Here’s what the Sections theme editor looks like.

On the other hand, if coding is your thing, there’s an HTML/CSS editor. You should note that Shopify themes are built with Shopify’s own coding language, Liquid. Here’s an example of Liquid code.

If you know what any of that means, congratulations. For the rest of us, I’ll translate a bit. Liquid is a flexible code that allows changes in the admin to be featured on your site. While I personally do not speak computer, I’ve read several reviews from developers that praise Liquid as an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use language. So, that’s a plus.

Although Shopify is not open source, further customization is still an option. There are Shopify Experts ready to help you with that.

Integrations and Add-on

The Shopify App store is one of the most extensive I’ve seen. With over 1500 apps available, I can say with certainty that Shopify integrates with whatever you’re looking for.

A word of warning: Part of the reason Shopify’s App store is so extensive is because Shopify stores often have to use applications in order to get all the features they want. While Shopify does a great job offering the features most stores need, any additional functionality requires an app.

So, if you want to add faceted search AND automated email marketing AND one-page checkout, you’re going to have to spring for three apps, most of which are billed on a monthly basis. That can get expensive. Make sure you know which features you need before joining Shopify. While Shopify is typically one of the least expensive shopping carts, it can quickly become the most expensive option if you need lots of advanced features.

(If you’re looking for an easy-to-use cart with lots of advanced features already built in, I suggest you take a look at Zoey. Their plans are slightly more expensive than Shopify’s, but you won’t have to purchase as many add-ons.)

Payment Processing

Shopify integrates with over 70 Gateways, including Paypal & Stripe.

As I’ve mentioned before, Shopify also offers its own payment method, Shopify Payments. With Shopify Payments not only do you enjoy 0% transaction fees, but also you may benefit from reduced credit card fees. Shopify Payments is currently available to merchants in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Ireland. Take a look at the graphic below to see what credit card fees would be for your plan.

Positive Reviews and Testimonials

Shopify has far more positive reviews than negative. Here are the most commonly voiced pros.

• Ease of Use. As I’ve said before, ease of use is Shopify’s niche. You can get a store up and running in just a day. It’s a great approach for startup and midsize businesses alike, even if you have very little experience with creating a website.
• Beautiful Themes. A professional-looking site inspires trust in your customers. Shopify helps by providing the best-looking themes I’ve seen from an eCommerce platform.
• Liquid Coding. Isn’t it strange how sometimes a negative can become a positive? Although Liquid does take a bit to learn, once you’ve got it down, it’s easy to make changes to your theme at the base level. Most developers love Liquid.
• Good Customer Service. I can only shrug.

Other customers mentioned:

• A Well Documented REST API. It’s easy to build integrations and applications.
• The Benefits of a Fully-Hosted Platform. It’s nice to not have to worry about organizing a third part host for your site.

Security

Shopify is Level 1 PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliant, which is the gold standard for eCommerce platforms. Every merchant gets a free 128-bit shared SSL certificate.

Shopify is currently working on encrypting every page on every site that they host. You just have to opt-in. Read more about why and how to encrypt your store on their blog.

Final Verdict

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, dependable, and elegant online platform for your store, you can stop the search now. I feel confident recommending Shopify to most merchants, provided they aren’t seeking lots of advanced functionality on a shoestring budget.

But before you make the leap, I encourage you to take the admin for a test drive. Sign up for your free trial, call into customer support with any questions you have, and see what features you may need to add-on. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Get Started with Shopify

The post Getting Started With E-Commerce – Shopify Review appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

The logo should be the “hero” of the card, so that the brand and business is memorable and recognisable. A well-designed logo will represent the business and offer a hint to the personality or identity of the business. Consideration should be given to printing on both sides of the card. This might allow the business card to have the actual company logo on one side and contact details on the reverse. This frees up space and allows the details to breathe.

Check out here how we can help design the right logo for you.

If there is a website, emphasis should be placed on that as more information can be included there. More and more businesses are encouraging traffic to their websites for full information.

Another element of the design process for designing a good, decent business card is considering the board they are printed on and the finish. For a long lasting card, a finish can be put on top of the card to keep it clean and strong – a matt laminate will do the trick. This is extremely important when engaging with new business.

One of the best-designed business cards could simply have a logo, telephone number and website address. Ultimately nothing else is necessary.

My advice would be to engage with a good graphic designer for this and avoid the tempting offers of cards online. If an offer seems too good it probably is. It’s evident that little or no thought is put into the designs of the cards as every card should reflect the company and it’s identity. And the print quality is usually pretty awful and the card is cheap. This is not what you want for your business.

Click here for tips on getting the most from your Graphic Designer

Get in touch with me to discuss your business card requirements and how I can make this valuable sales tool work for your company!

Designer G is a Dublin-based Graphic Design agency with a passion for launching, rejuvenating and propelling brands – www.DesignerG.ie

The post What makes a well-designed business card? appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

When you think of running an ad campaign for your business, the ad networks that come to the mind are Google AdWords and Facebook. These are the two leading PPC ad networks.

Google AdWords takes 33% global digital ad revenue while Facebook only takes 5%. Both, Facebook and Google AdWords, have over four million advertisers.

If you are a startup owner who is planning to run an ad campaign, it is challenging to choose the right ad network. The following guide will show you which ad network is more suitable for your startup.

Major features of Facebook ads

1. Multiple types of ads

Facebook offers different types of ads to choose from such as post like ads, page like ads, lead ads, app download ads, website clicks, post engagement, and many others.

There is something for everyone at Facebook ads.

And the best part – they keep adding new ad types.

When Facebook ads was launched, there were limited ad types but since then, they have added several different types of ads for the advertisers. It is something that advertisers love.

The ad types are linked to the objective of the campaign. For instance, if you are interested in sending traffic to your landing page, you must choose Website Clicks ads while if you are interested in increasing page likes, go for a Page Likes campaign.

As a startup, you have a lot of variety in terms of ad types.

2. Better targeting

Facebook is a social network with massive reach. Users save all types of data on Facebook such as employment, location, places they visit, marital status, education, schools attended, interests, likes, dislikes, and much more. The list can go on and on.

This is what makes it an awesome ad network that allows granular targeting. You can target anyone in any part of the world with Facebook ads.

You can target audience based on their interests, pages they have liked, devices they use, demographics, schools attended, places visited, and more. The ability to select the most appropriate target audience for your audience is what makes Facebook better than all the other ad networks.

3. Best for visual ads

While most of the ad networks are text-based, Facebook is a visual platform. Since it is a social network where people share videos, images, and other forms of visual posts, therefore, it is highly unlikely that someone will run text-only ads there.

You cannot have text-only ads on Facebook.

It is best known for visual ads.

Visuals convert better than text. Images persuade people to act. Image are appealing. Above all, it is easier to convey the message in the form of an image compared to text.

Major features of Google AdWords

1. Biggest ad network

Google AdWords is the world’s leading ad network with massive global reach. The global net ad revenue in 2015 was well over $51.81 billion.

It has truly no competitor when it comes to PPC because Google is the most used search engine. It has 75% market share on desktop and 78% on mobile. Since it is the most used search engine, therefore, anything you put in the search results as ad will get all the exposure.

On the other hand, the display ad network is powered by Google’s publisher network, Google AdSense. Millions of websites and blogs use Google AdSense as their primary source of earning and this is where your ads are served.

Both the search and the display ads are equally effective – and together make Google AdWords the leading ad network in the town.

2. Large audience

Google handles more than 40K search queries every single second. This means it serves over 1.2 trillion searches a year and the number is increasing exponentially.

This massive audience provides advertisers with the opportunity to serve ads to all types of audience based on their search queries, interests, websites they visit, etc. Google maintains audience data primarily through its search engine and this is what helps advertisers in targeting the most appropriate audience for their ads.

3. Variety of ads

Just like Facebook, Google too offers a lot of different types of ads such as search, display, review ads, geolocation, shopping ads, and more. Google AdWords has different extensions for its advertisers that power your ads.

These ad extensions enhance your ads in several different ways. For instance, there is an ad extension that allows you to add a call button on ads on mobile so that your potential customers can call you from their phones. One problem with AdWords is the complexity, which leads companies to hire an AdWords Manager to run the advertising for them

Which is best for your startup?

Both.

It depends on your campaign objectives, your budget, product, and several other factors.

These two ad networks are completely different.

Facebook is a social network and is more suited to visual ads that appeal to a wider audience. It is best for promoting entertainment offers. This is because people are not in a buying mode when they are on Facebook.

They are there to socialize, not to buy something.

Someone who is chatting with a friend on Facebook will not be interested in your brand unless it is appealing.

On the other hand, Google AdWords is best for promoting pretty much anything. Someone who has typed where to buy iPhone 7 is interested in buying an iPhone. A relevant ad can do the trick.

You can, however, only use text ads with search ads. If your product is innovative or something that cannot be explained in words, you must use Facebook or Google’s display network. Unique and innovative products do well with Facebook ads.

You see there is no rule of thumb here.

You must evaluate both the ad networks and then see what your ad campaign’s objectives are. Everything must be considered before finalizing the ad network.

You must do a lot of testing. You might have to switch from Facebook ads to AdWords after several campaigns on Facebook for a few months.

The rule of the game is to test, analyze, and tweak.

You will eventually land on the ad network that’s best for your brand and product.

Eimear is the Marketing Manager at Power Meters, one of ten sites she is responsible for. Over the last year she has experimented with all advertising mediums and found Adwords the most suitable for their business.

The post Google AdWords or Facebook Ads: Which is best for a startup? appeared first on Starting a Business in Ireland | Help for Ireland's Entrepreneurs | Start Up Your Own Business.

What New Marketing Tools Can You Find on Facebook?

Facebook loves to keep evolving. Its ingenious strategies for development and relentless endeavour to introduce positive change make it the undisputed champion of the social media universe. Facebook makes sure that it looks out for its casual users as well as those who are interested to use the website as a marketing platform.

The developers are well aware of the website’s value as a launching pad for new businesses. This is why it is fair to assume that some of the latest Facebook features are intended to optimize the social media marketing strategies of promising new enterprises. Here are three of the new features that have become a global phenomenon so far:

a) Live: This is Facebook’s reply to Periscope. As the name clearly suggests, this option allows Facebook users including business pages to live stream videos directly to Facebook.

b) Reactions: Everybody was praying for a much needed “dislike” button when Facebook decided to offer them something far more useful. The reaction buttons are supplementary to the like button and allows users to react to a Facebook post through certain expressive emojis.

c) 360 Photos and Videos: Virtual reality is the next big technology that the world is patiently awaiting. Facebook has taken a step towards improving the existing VR technology by bringing it to the masses with 360 videos.

How Facebook Live Can Benefit Your Business

Here is an interesting piece of information to get you started. According to Social Media Examiner’s 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Facebook live is the hottest new trend for marketers around the world. The report states that 50% of marketers plan on using live video services of Facebook and Periscope. The other 50% are eager to learn more about the perks of using live video.

There is no denying the fact that the concept of going “live on social media” is unknown to a lot of marketers, especially those who prefer traditional marketing strategies. That being said, it is important for marketers to realize that the reach for a Facebook live post is significantly higher than an ordinary post. Facebook has made sure that your live videos are more likely to pop up in your audience’s News Feed courtesy of the exclusivity of the feature. Not many businesses have the appropriate content for a live video. Therefore, a business that can come up with a strategy to interact with the audience in real time is going to be favoured by Facebook over other businesses that are sending out conventional posts for boosting user engagement.

In addition to the higher reach, live Facebook sessions are invaluable when it comes to attracting a large audience and keeping them hooked to your message. Live contests, live giveaways, live tours, live product displays and live question and answer sessions are some of the few ways in which you can explore this new Facebook tool for marketing. The only drawback to using Facebook live for marketing purposes is that there are no retakes! You need to get it right at the first attempt, and even if you commit errors, you are likely to be excused by the amused live audience.

Reactions Help You Understand Your Customers Better

Start-ups that are successful have one incredibly important characteristic in common. They have all mastered the art of understanding consumer psychology within a very short period of time. Knowing how your customer feels about a particular product, service, promotion or package is essential to figuring out what works for your business and what does not.

Facebook Reactions make it easier than ever to assess the user’s state of mind. Did you post something that angered your customers? Are they liking the product or loving it? Do they find worthwhile humour in your content? Are they reacting in similar ways to your competitor’s posts? These are some of the areas that you can analyze.

In simple words, the black and white world of “liked posts” and “seen posts” have now been replaced by wide range of responses that new businesses can scrutinize to develop an accurate understanding of customer behaviour.

360 Photos and Videos are a Fantastic Bonus for Start-ups

On the surface, 360 photos and videos may not seem like an immensely helpful marketing tool. But what this new feature does really well is give new businesses an additional tactic of keeping users engaged and busy with their posts. As long as you are giving people something to talk about, you are doing a fine job of marketing your products and services.

You could also use 360 photos and videos to find out the kind of angles that the viewers prefer as Facebook is going to launch a new heat map feature in insights view of Page Insights and Video Library. This provides feedback on which parts of the 360 view are being most enjoyed by the audience.

Anna runs and owns Bronwyn Conroy Beauty School. Her training courses are perfect for Facebook promotion due to the visual aspect. This leads to a higher than average share throughout Facebook.

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