Wishpond vs. Hubspot: Generating Leads that Buy

Background

I spent the best part of last year sending out one-off email blasts to promote my e-commerce company. At the time I was using very basic email marketing software to try and move leads further down my funnel. The problem was this basic software did not allow me to ramp up my lead generation. There was no way to effectively nurture leads. And measuring the results of my lead generation and nurturing efforts was difficult.

This inspired me to search for an all in one solution that would maximize my lead generation efforts. After a lot of research, two contenders emerged. Before I reveal my choice, let me highlight the features I found most interesting. I’d also like to address some frequently asked questions about inbound marketing platforms.

What is Wishpond?

Wishpond is an all-in-one marketing platform that focuses on integrating email campaigns with social media lead generation. Wishpond handles:

Landing pages,
Email marketing,
Sign up forms,
Popups,
Contests,
Promotions,
Marketing Automation

The Wishpond platform allows marketers to understand potential customers better through behavioral analysis. Using this understanding, marketers are better equipped to send targeted messages to people may be unsure about making a purchase.

What is Hubspot?

Hubspot is another all-in-one marketing platform that is designed to help companies plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns. They focus on improving web presence so that website traffic can be converted into reliable leads. These leads can then be tracked within their system so they can be analyzed and nurtured. Linking analytics with nurturing helps keep campaigns on track. Hubspot helps both B2C and B2B businesses with these capabilities:

Analytics,
Blogging,
Content management,
Email,
Landing pages,
Marketing automation,
SEO,
Social media management.

Wishpond Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
User-friendly	Lacks advanced cart recovery
Useful integrations	Slow customer service
Works well with social media	Buggy landing page editor
Easy campaign duplication	Lack of template customization
Behavioral segmentation	Counter-intuitive workflows

Hubspot Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Commitment to educating users	No A/B testing in Basic Package
True all-in-one solution	Forced onboarding costs
Measurably improves ROI	High upfront investment
Works for products and services	12-month contract
Flexible pricing	Lack of integrations

Key Wishpond Features

Funnel Management

Every marketing campaign experiences waste. The sales funnel can leak at many points and it is very difficult to keep track of losses. Wishpond offers a capability that allows you to plug leaks in your funnel. This is an automated process so you don’t have to waste time figuring it out manually.

There are two areas where I was losing the most money: reader conversions and cart abandonment.

Email Nurturing

Wishpond allows me to trigger a drip campaign as soon as someone subscribes to my blog. This is more effective approach than sending an email announcing a new article. Dripping blog subscribers is better for converting loyal readers into paying customers.

Reader Interest Segmentation

Wishpond’s drip marketing feature allows for easier segmentation. I can see which articles my visitors were reading before deciding to subscribe. I found this very useful as it allowed me to produce more targeted content. It also helps us send email follow-ups related to what subscribers are most interested in reading.

Key Hubspot Features

Calendar Planning

Hubspot is also effective at reader conversion. It’s not as straightforward compared to Wishpond, but the option is there. I was able to create custom emails for subscribers that would notify them about new blog posts. Hubspot’s analytic tools then allowed me to see which blog posts were the most profitable. This helps me do a better job of planning my editorial calendar.

Contextual Drip Customization

I felt Hubspot let me down in relation to creating more personalized drip campaigns. I was hoping to create campaigns related to blog posts viewed before subscribing. I was only given the option of either instant, daily, weekly, or monthly notifications. Each of these notification emails is customizable. Yet, there is no option to trigger a custom drip sequence based on a subscriber’s individual interests. For such an expensive software platform I found this omission disappointing.

Recovering Abandoned Carts

Two things are responsible for most cart abandonment. Excessive extra costs (especially shipping) and requiring the buyer to create an account.

Cart recovery is where Hubspot really shines. I attribute this to the depth of detail Hubspot provides about the abandoned sale. Both my internal team and the prospective customer get all the information necessary to resume the sale.

Most people shop with many tabs open. And so memory aids, like an image of the abandoned product in the follow-up email, are very helpful.

FAQ

1. Why do I need a platform like Wishpond or Hubspot?

Inbound marketing is labor-intensive. This is because you shift focus from financial investment to creative investment. Things become far more complicated because you are attracting leads from many sources. In addition to ads, you can generate leads through SEO, blogging, and social media. Inbound traffic comes from a wide range of sources. That’s why you need an easy to manage, central platform to keep everything straight.

2. What do these platforms include?

For Hubspot and Wishpond what you get depends on the level of service you decide to opt for. Wishpond’s “everything you need” plan provides you with all the basics. This allows you to run effective reader conversion and cart abandonment campaigns. Those benefits alone are worth the monthly fee. Yet, Wishpond has a broad feature set that helps you convert cold traffic to paying customers. Hubspot includes everything that Wishpond offers except built-in contest management.

3. I’m already using WordPress and MailChimp for free, why change?

If you are still meeting your growth goals and you’re not overwhelmed. Which is especially common if you’re working with a Frankenstein system. That is something cobbled together from many services. In that case, there is no need to upgrade yet. This review is for people who are making money but know they should be earning a lot more.

4. Do intelligent drip campaigns have to be expensive?

The idea of expensive versus cheap doesn’t hold in business. The money spent on either Hubspot or Wishpond is an investment. The platform you choose will depend on your ROI calculations.

If you are just starting out, then Wishpond is the better choice for you. If you are more experienced, a powerful platform like Hubspot provides the most leverage. This is true even if the initial investment is greater. For example, the cheapest Hubspot plan that includes A/B testing is $800 per month. By contrast, Wishpond offers a plan that includes A/B testing for $99 per month.

Wishpond vs Hubspot Price Comparison

Number of Leads	Hubspot	Wishpond
1,000	$200-800	$49
2,500	$500-900	$99
15,000	$1,500	$299

Conclusion

Using Hubspot was mostly a smooth experience, at least for me. I did not have to make many changes to my workflow to get the benefits from their platform. Yet, I did find that I was having to find workarounds for the limitations of the platform. I liked Hubspot as a contact manager. It helped me to track the activities of thousands of people in one centralized panel. This helped me to manage follow-ups and gave guidance on when to push forward on a deal or drop an opportunity. The only other issue is that I work with a team of people. It doesn’t matter how good a platform is if no one is willing to use it.

This is why Wishpond took over. My marketing team preferred Wishpond over Hubspot. And since they would be the ones using it day to day, it as hard to argue. They convinced me to take another look at Wishpond from the perspective of using it to drive leads all year. From this perspective, Wishpond is the clear winner.

Wishpond offers a range of tools that help to promote creativity within a marketing team. This is especially true for the contests management feature. The toughest challenge in marketing is being remembered by your ideal customer. To be remembered, your company needs to provide memorable experiences. The same holds true online. We need prospective customers to remember our brand when they are in need. They also need to remember us to recommend suitable people that may need what we offer.

Wishpond’s contest feature stands out because it helps to make our brand sticky. It achieves this by getting people to be active in their involvement. Wishpond does this very well. I am impressed with how many positive messages we get about our competitions. Wishpond allows marketing to be fun for customers, this increases sales and referrals. If you need to improve the engagement and conversion rate of your marketing campaigns, then I recommend Wishpond.

article

Learn How to Win During Today’s Digital Media Transformation

This article was written by Luke Bilton and originally published on Innovation Enterprise

2017 was a year for high profile casualties in digital publishing, with Vice, Buzzfeed, and Mic all missing ad revenue targets and cutting jobs. Mashable sold to Ziff Davis for $50 million, less than 1x annual earnings and a huge drop from its $250 million valuation just one year earlier.

The Google and Facebook ‘duopoly’ now eats up 63% of all US digital advertising and this has taken its toll on ad-supported digital media. Facebook’s algorithm changes turned off the traffic tap, making a big dent in audience numbers for publishers reliant on social referrals.

Print circulations continue to fall by around -6% yoy in the UK. Time Inc was split and sold-off to Meredith and private equity. NME closed a month later after 66 years of publishing and Conde Nast closed Glamour, the tenth biggest-selling title in the UK. While both titles continue in website form and with occasional specials, these are significant bellwethers for the health of the magazine industry.

Innovation Feeling The Burn

Underneath these headlines, publishers continue to innovate – monetizing audiences through ecommerce and branded content, adopting the use of new technologies, developing new content formats and distribution channels.

The New York Times recently said it was more than halfway to its goal of doubling digital sales to $800m by 2020, thanks to online subscribers surging to 2.6m. The Guardian’s own paywall strategy is helping it to turn around its considerable losses to the point of breaking even next year.

The news itself is going through something of a renaissance. Despite claims of ‘Fake News,’ it is journalists, not opposition parties, who are holding governments to account with the Windrush Scandal, Cambridge Analytica, and similar scoops.

There is, as ever, a lot going on.

This summer, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit will be returning to both London and New York. The summits are designed to give publishing execs the actionable information they need to chart a path to revenue and audience growth.

If you would like tickets to either event, use the code SURVIVAL for 20% off two-day passes.

Here are some of the highlights:

Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, London June 26-27

A taster of the full agenda:

Monetizing Media

With digital advertising under greater pressure than ever before, learn how publishers are finding success through branded content and paywalls.

Dennis Publishing’s MD of Digital, Pete Wooton, will talk about revenue diversification across digital channels. Future Publishing will show they are monetizing their media audience with eCommerce. Tamsin Creed, General Manager, Private Media will be presenting how to pivot to a paid subscription or membership model.
Branded content experts who will share their best practices include the Head of Digital, Commercial Content at Hearst, the Director of Branded Content, EMEA at Quartz and Head of Digital at MailOnline.
Serena Guen, CEO of SUITCASE Magazine will discuss what it takes to launch a successful print magazine in the digital era.

Content Creation and Distribution Strategies

As the digital landscape grows increasingly crowded and social platforms shift, we shine the spotlight on how forward-thinking publishers are evolving their approach.

Experts in trending content from BBC, Telegraph, and MirrorOnline will reveal how social listening is influencing marketing and product decisions, while Cristy Garratt will talk about how CNBC have used online video to find new audiences.
Steve Rayson, Buzzsumo will be presenting new research into publishing in the era of ‘content shock’ and changing distribution channels, including an analysis of the impact Facebook’s recent algorithm changes has had on publishers.

Emerging Technology Platforms

Which technologies should publishers invest in to make the most of the opportunities presented by AI, voice and the data that unpins it all?

New research from Wessenden Marketing will show how UK’s major media companies investing in digital and where they are getting payback, giving you real numbers to benchmark your business against.
James Hewes, President & CEO of FIPP will be leading a panel discussion on new tech adoption and finding new platforms for engagement, which will feature participants from HuffPost, The Economist and Labiotech.eu.

Read the full programme here and use the code SURVIVAL to save 20% off tickets

Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, NYC July 18-19

New York publishers are making some of the biggest moves in the world to reinvent the business of news, and this year’s agenda is packed with publishing’s most influential leaders. See the full agenda here.

Meet the pioneer’s re-inventing news

Kourtney Bitterly, Head of R&D, The New York Times, will reveal how they are adopting and monetizing Voice AI .
BuzzFeed President, Ze Frank, Time Inc’s Editor-In-Chief, Mike Guy, and Vice publisher, Lars Bengstom, will talk about reaching audiences at scale through new approaches to content and social platforms.
Francesco Marconi, R&D Chief and Head of the Editorial Lab, The Wall Street Journal will show the WSJ is applying media science methods to empower ambitious journalism.
Jeremy Gilbert, Director of Strategic Initiatives, The Washington Post, will show how they are reimagining the election night experience,
Jesse Angelo CEO & Publisher, New York Post will show they are evolving their organisation.

New revenue streams

A series of talks will cover new approaches publishers are adopting to monetise their media business:

Brandon Berger, Chief Business Officer, the Skimm will talk about the new digital revenue streams and Dan Lagani, President & Chief Revenue Officer, Diply, will discuss powering up social commerce.
DailyCandy Editor-in-Chief, Dana Levy Founder, will show how she turned an email newsletter into a $125 Million Business.

Digital transformation stories

Modernising established brands for the digital age is a key theme at this year’s event.

Nathan Lump, Editor-in-Chief of Travel + Leisure, will explore the genuine opportunities ‘legacy’ media brands have in today’s world of commoditized content, and the pitfalls they must avoid if they hope to remain relevant.
Subrata Mukherjee VP, Product Management, will go inside For Dummies’ digital transformation journey, as they move from books to taking content directly to the learner.
Michael Villaseñor, Hearst Newspapers, will talk about how they have shifted their thinking from individual brand websites to a network that use a shared, flexible UX product framework.

Learn more about Digital Publishing Innovation Summit NYC here.

If you’d like to find out more get in touch or use the code SURVIVAL for 20% off two-day passes.

article

The Infusionsoft Alternatives You Need to Know About for Your Business

What is Infusionsoft?

Infusionsoft is a marketing automation platform with a built-in Customer Relationship Management. It is designed to help SMEs automate their sales and marketing processes. The platform focuses on engagement, customer tracking, and cash flow. You can use it to run a digital business from lead generation to final sale. This is what first attracted me to Infusionsoft. It was a single platform that could replace the three other services I was using to run my online business.

Why I started looking for alternatives

Poor Data Presentation

One of my main problems with Infusionsoft was the poor presentation of metric data. This is a tricky criticism to make because the actual data is excellent. Infusionsoft provides highly actionable information. It just takes a lot of number-crunching to make it useful for marketing decisions.

Ugly Email Templates

The other issue is their ugly email templates. I felt that my email results had reached a plateau. And this was partly because I was forced to send emails that were not visually pleasing. In my experience, well-designed emails increase trust and drive conversions.

Evolving Business Needs

In the end, Infusionsoft went from something I would happily recommend to colleagues to something I would steer people away from. When recommending alternatives to Infusionsoft (depending on the person’s personal circumstances and business needs) I would typically recommend one of three alternatives: Salesforce, Hubspot, or Ontraport.

Salesforce

This is the Infusionsoft alternative I recommend for professional services companies.

What is the main problem Salesforce solves for professional services companies?

For most professional services companies, the biggest challenge is generating and managing incoming call requests. I recommend Salesforce Sales Cloud as an alternative to Infusionsoft in these situations. Recently, I was advising a colleague of mine that was in charge of a midsized accounting firm.

A recent series of positive press articles had led to an increasing number of people using their website’s “call me back” button. The level of call requests began to overwhelm the sales staff. This is a serious issue because 90% of people hang up after spending 10 minutes waiting for a callback to be connected. To make matters worse, they projected that the volume of calls would double over the next four months.

Which Salesforce Sales Cloud features helped manage these inbound leads?

My colleague needed to set up a collaborative system of freelance teams. These teams would need to work with the core sales department to solve the call request overload problem. They did this by using a combination of Salesforce Lightning Dialer, Web-to-Lead Capture and Opportunity Score. These features allowed them to automate the lead follow up the process. This led to the highest value leads having priority for callbacks.

To make this run smoothly, he invested in the Enterprise Lightening Plan. You can see a plan comparison below:

Feature	Essentials $25 PU/PM	Professional $75 PU/PM	Enterprise $150 PU/PM	Unlimited $300 PU/PM
Account and Contact Management	✔	✔	✔	✔
Campaign Management	✘	✔	✔	✔
Customizable Sales Process	✔	✔	✔	✔
Duplicate Blocking	✘	✔	✔	✔
Einstein Activity Capture	✔	✘	$	$
Einstein Automated Contacts	✘	✘	$	$
Einstein Lead Scoring	✘	✘	$	$
Email Templates	✔	✔	✔	✔
Lead Assignment and Routing	✘	✔	✔	✔
Lead Management	✔	✔	✔	✔
Lightning Dialer	$	$	$	$
Mass Email	✘	✔	✔	✔
Opportunity Management	✔	✔	✔	✔
Opportunity Scoring	✘	✘	✔	✔
Rules-based lead scoring	✘	✔	✔	✔
Sales Console Apps	✘	1	✔	✔
Sales Teams Management	✘	✘	✔	✔
Salesforce Engage	✘	$	$	$
Task Management	✔	✔	✔	✔
Web-to-Lead Capture	✔	✔	✔	✔

What does Salesforce cost?

On Salesforce, there are 4 plans; Lightning Essentials, Lightning Professional, Lightning Enterprise, and Lightning Unlimited. The Lightning Essentials goes for $25 a month, the Lightning Professional goes for $75 a month, the Lightning Enterprise goes for $150 a month, and the Lightning Unlimited is $300 a month.

What were the results?

The new setup relieved the core team’s workload. This allowed them to focus on the most important leads. Salesforce was able to align the capabilities of the off-site freelance team with the firm’s goals. So then my colleague’s firm could maintain their high standard of client engagement.

Hubspot

This is the Infusionsoft alternative I recommend for e-commerce companies.

What major problems does Hubspot solve for e-commerce companies?

A close friend of mine had been running a successful clothing and accessory store for nearly 11 years. After opening a few locations, he decided that they should also launch an online store. The problem was that the online store quickly started eating the lunch of the physical locations. We call this cannibalization. The CEO wanted to solve this cannibalization problem. He needed an online store that generated independent sales, increased engagement, and expanded brand awareness.

Which Hubspot features were helpful?

The first thing the team did was dig into the Hubspot Academy. This gave them a foundational understanding of inbound marketing principles. This was an important step because they did not have a background in digital marketing. This educational resource maximized their use of Hubspot.

Next, they set up a blog using Hubspot’s blogging application. They used this to share fashion tips and information about new products. This went a long way to attracting relevant visitors to their website.

Finally, they began to use Hubspot‘s workflows application. They could then segment email marketing actions based on the behavior of their customers.

Key features of Hubspot Marketing Hub – from $200/month

A/B Testing
Advanced segmentation
Analytics dashboards
Blogging
Calls-to-Action
Content optimization & creation
Email marketing
Landing Pages Builder
Lead Management
All-in-one Marketing Automation
Personalized content and CTAs
Predictive lead scoring
Reports
SEO
Salesforce Integration
Social media tools

What does Hubspot cost?

On Hubspot, there are 5 plans; Free, Starter, Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. The Free Plan has no cost at all. The Starter goes for $50 a month, the Basic goes for $200 a month, the Professional plan goes for $800 a month, and the Enterprise is $2,400 a month. Check out which plan works best for you here!

Q&A

Is HubSpot for startups any good?

“HubSpot for Startups is a great program. HubSpot provides fully integrated marketing, CRM, and sales platforms — this is difficult to stitch together on your own (there’s always something that doesn’t quite work when you bring multiple platforms together). Knowing who’s visiting your site, what pages they are viewing, and which gated collateral they are downloading provides visibility that is often missing. I customized our sales funnel in less than 20 minutes, providing clarity and metrics that drive success. And this is all available on day 1.” Matt Benati

What were the results?

These features transform their digital marketing strategy. They could build campaigns and develop workflow funnels based on historical customer behavior. Right now, every email they send makes use of Hubspot‘s Smart Content feature. This is built into the email application. And it allowed them to successfully nurture customers that abandoned shopping carts. They also send transactional emails based on how customers have behaved in the past.

This change produced a 52% increase in sales compared to the previous year. And most impressively, they convert over 45% of inbound leads to paying customers. All this adds up to making the online store a driver of 1/3 of the company’s profits. It is now one of its most important profit drivers. Whereas before it was draining profit from the physical stores.

Ontraport

This is the Infusionsoft alternative that I recommend to information marketers.

What major problem does Ontraport solve?

A classmate of mine had spent the last 15 years working as an environmental engineer. After so many years of doing this work, he wanted to do something fulfilling. He chose to help Americans reduce their carbon footprint as well as their energy bills.

To support this vision, he needed to set up a system to generate leads and manage a membership site. In addition, he needed a platform that would support rapid growth. The challenge was doing this without sacrificing his freedom and flexibility.

Which Ontraport features were most helpful?

Membership Sites

The first step was getting the membership site off the ground. Ontraport integrates smoothly with WordPress to create membership sites within the platform. This allowed for easy management of both membership access and subscription fees. Things were also better for his customers. They had the ability to update profile and payment details in a few clicks. These changes would be instantly reflected in Ontraport.

Marketing Automation

This business sells a digital product. Ontraport supports this by allowing information marketers like him to build intricate marketing funnels through their Sequences and Rules feature. This toolset automates lead generation, payment processing, and content delivery.

[earnist ref=”grow-your-membership-platform-the-easy-way” id=”33600″]

Payment Processing

Ontraport‘s payment automation has been especially useful because it is a massive timesaver. Everything from initial payments to declined charges is automated and dealt with. Payment automation does a lot of the work one might expect from a dedicated customer service rep without the extra cost.

Key Ontraport Features

2-way SMS Messaging
Abandoned Cart Follow-up
Facebook Integration
Lead Management and Scoring
Marketing Automation
Marketing Tracking
Membership Sites
One-click Upsells
Order Forms
PURLs
Partner Programs
Postcard Marketing
Split Testing
Task Management
Trials, Subscriptions, Coupons, and Payment Plans
Webforms
WordPress Integration

What does Ontraport cost?

Ontraport has four pricing plans; Ontraport Basic, Ontraport Plus, Ontraport Pro, and Ontraport Enterprise. The Ontraport Basic plan goes for $79 a month, the Ontraport Plus goes for $147 a month, the Ontraport Pro goes for $297 a month, and the Ontraport Enterprise goes for $497 a month. Check out which plan works best for you here!

What were the results?

The most important result is financial. His business generated over $4 million in sales last year. This success was made possible because Ontraport allowed him to generate over 170,000 qualified leads. This is what provided the foundation for him to sell over 80,000 memberships that year.

Comparison Table

Infusionsoft Alternatives	Who's it right for?	Main Solution	Main Features	Price
Salesforce	Professional Service Companies	Generating and managing incoming call requests	Web-to-Lead Capture, Task Management, Lead Management, Email Templates, Customizable Sales Process	Starting at $25 PU/PM
Hubspot	E-commerce companies	Solve cannibalization (Have an online store that generates independent sales, increased engagement, and expanded brand awareness.)	Hubspot Academy, Landing Pages, Marketing Automation, Salesforce Integration, Social Media tools,	Starting at $200/month
Ontraport	Information marketers	Easily create membership sites, automate marketing and process payments.	Marketing Automation, Membership Sites, One-click Upsells, Order Forms, WordPress Integration, Task Management	Starting at $79/month

Conclusion

As you can see, if you come to me and ask “what is the best alternative to Infusionsoft?” My response will be that it depends. You should select marketing automation software based on your business model and goals.

If you are an information marketer than your best bet is Ontraport. For running an e-commerce company, I recommend Hubspot. And if you are the head of a professional services firm, then Salesforce is for you.

article

Keep Plastic Out of the Ocean And in Your Pajamas: The Majamas Earth Review

Germaine Caprio, the founder of Majamas Earth, describes her ideal fabric this way: “Soft, comfortable, from a sustainable source, doesn’t disintegrate after use.“ Since starting Majamas Earth in 1999, she has worked with suppliers to change her materials from rayon to more sustainable organic cotton and modal. Little Bamboo is used because of the questionable land use, pesticides, and chemical treatment in the fiber’s production.

So far, the company has not used hemp or recycled cotton because customers tend to have difficulty in caring for those fabrics. On the other hand, recycled polyester is key to the signature contrast fabrics in Majamas Earth’s designs, though Caprio is aware of the challenges of this material, too.

Polyester Pollutes The Ocean

Polyester is plastic. No matter its shade, weight, or purpose, polyester is made by melting plastic, spinning it into fibers, then weaving or knitting it into fabric. The material is used in clothing from luxury fashion to athletic apparel and everything in between.

Any time polyester clothes are washed, more plastic ends up in rivers and oceans. Most wastewater treatment plants cannot filter out the filaments released when synthetic clothing is washed. A single garment can lose almost 2,000 fibers. These are more numerous and longer-lasting than other sources of polluting microplastics: microbeads in personal care products and degradation of larger disposed plastics. Consequently, plankton die and algae suffer at the bottom of the food chain while fish, seals, and non-marine creatures exhibit low energy levels and organ damage from the absorption of plastic and the toxins used in its manufacturing.

Fashion Innovation

One fashion industry innovation for reducing the amount of plastics in waterways is to use polyester made from recycled plastic bottles. B Corporations such as Athleta, Patagonia, tentree, United by Blue, and others produce apparel and accessories from recycled polyester.

Want to learn more about B-Corporations? Listen to Change Creator’s interview with Rick Alexander, their head legal advisor here.

Caprio describes the process for Majamas Earth products:

“The majority of recycled [polyester] comes from recycled water bottles and milk jugs. It takes some of those items out of the landfill, and it makes polyester. It doesn’t use a lot of water to make. When we print on it, we use a heat-transfer process: take the print off a roll of paper, like an iron-transfer. Paper is recycled, cardboard tube composted.”

Majamas Earth

When Caprio started her company, she was searching for comfortable pajamas for herself after giving birth in 1996. Finding nothing, she designed a nursing tank which was ultimately merchandised at Nordstrom. When the recession hit the maternity garment business, she diversified her product line to include all women and began selling items in Whole Foods Market.

This year, Majamas Earth will present its first offerings for men. Throughout its history, the company has manufactured garments and sourced fabric and trims only in the United States. In addition to a Shopify website, Caprio uses YouTube videos and a blog to face the challenge of educating consumers about the value of buying sustainable products:

“Americans demand a low price now. If I’m gonna make a profit, I have to make sure its a sustainable product, that it’s going to last, making a product that people can wear forever. It’s not about the quantity people buy, it’s about the quality people buy.”

East and Market Founder Renee Jones: How to Create a Side Sustainable Clothing Gig

A bright green polyester jacket dropped as I watched a garbage truck stop at each house across the street from the train platform. The workers picked it up and threw it in the back of the truck. I must have sighed or winced because I found myself explaining to my fellow commuters,

“Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world, second to oil.”

How does fashion pollute?

Pesticides used in growing crops can poison farmers and harvesters and can seep into water supplies. Transporting raw materials long distances to factories by planes, automobiles, and boats can create environmental hazards. Further emissions and waste come from processing raw material into textiles. Petroleum is required to make the synthetic fibers nylon and polyester. Waste from fabric dyes and chemicals for tanning leather can become pollutants in water systems. Unless patterns are precisely designed not to, the cutting floor leaves tons of remnant fabric. Once a garment or accessory is made, transit from factory to distribution center to store adds to the environmental cost. If an item does not sell, is not durable, or goes out of style, it is often trashed like the jacket I saw from the train platform.

(More details on fashion industry-wide sustainability and social responsibility challenges are available in the 2015 White Paper from Fashion Revolution)

What can a consumer do?

While some large and small companies are reckoning with environmental responsibility at every stage of sourcing and production, what can a consumer do to avoid throwing away clothing? Charity thrift stores can be a beneficial option, but excess donations sent overseas can disrupt local markets in already strained economies. Some consumers have the skills to refashion their unusable apparel, but there is also a niche of entrepreneurs who will do this for them. Renee Jones, the founder of East and Market, is making a living through upcycled textiles and the added value created by customers’ memories of the materials they send — visit them at their website.

Launched in April 2016, East and Market sells one-of-a-kind accessories and home decor made from recycled materials. Custom orders are welcome and have included materials ranging from a leather camel saddle to cotton baby clothes. I sent her two suede skirts I hadn’t worn in three years and a couple of unneeded t-shirts: she turned them into zipper pouches I gave to my family at Christmas. I recently interviewed Renee to find out more about her business.

What were you doing before you started East and Market?

I received my BFA from University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a concentration in metalsmithing in 2005. After college, I worked for a jeweler, and after some time feeling unfulfilled and overworked, I decided to go back to school to get my masters in occupational therapy. Since graduating, I’ve worked as a pediatric occupational therapist full-time. I continue to work full-time in home health with children with disabilities in Colorado.

I was drawn to occupational therapy because of the fine motor aspects of it. I was intrigued when I found out that the origins of occupational therapy began with therapists teaching crafts to soldiers as a therapeutic and healing intervention. I know that for myself, the craft has allowed me to express myself and heal, so I didn’t question the power it has for most people. It brought my art degree, my need for making, and my yearning to help people full circle.

Since high school, I have always made things, from jewelry to painting to weaving to knitting to gardening to cooking… I love it all!

Why did you start your business?

I started East and Market as a way to express myself and remain grounded in my making while working a full-time at a job that sometimes (but not always) includes a creative element. And since starting, I have made so many changes to my mission and making!

At first, East and Market was going to be a fashion truck which provided clothing that I was sourcing from wholesalers. It only took me a few months to realize how wasteful this process was. I also found that some of the clothing that I was sourcing was poorly made and I couldn’t even sell it. This was when I began using those clothes as liners in some of my bags.

At the same time, I was listening to an amazing podcast called The Spirit of 608 by Lorraine Sanders. She interviews and speaks about women who are forging the way in sustainable fashion and technology. Through listening to her, I took a hard look at my business and the waste I was producing. It was a shock! After about 2-3 months in business, I made some huge shifts and continue to learn and change to become as sustainable as possible. One such way was using second-hand materials to create handbags, which then led to me inviting people to send me their sentimental materials to have made into something special.

What are your top design principles?

As a business owner, I am very interested in using my brand in a thoughtful way to reduce my carbon footprint on the environment. East and Market specialize in creating beautiful handmade accessories and home decor. It is my mission to create handcrafted items using sustainable methods.

I promote sustainability by sewing with minimal to zero waste, reusing materials when possible, upcycling with second-hand materials and using remnant fabrics or cut-offs.

I enjoy creating handmade items from sentimental fabrics (pillows, bags, blankets, shirts….you name it!). I encourage customers to send me materials they have in their homes so I can incorporate it into their custom orders. I see this as a way to carry your fondest memories everywhere you go. It is a way to restore materials that are otherwise unused! It reminds us to treasure what we have and forces us to be mindful of our impact on the environment.

How do you balance the responsibilities of making your product and managing your business?

I find that making the product feels like a break from all of the other business responsibilities! Being a one-woman show means I am sourcing materials, making the product, testing products, managing social media, answering emails, doing some accounting work (yuck), networking, and being a photographer. It can feel overwhelming at times, but I have learned to slow down and only do what I can handle.

Where do you hope your business will be in 5 years? In 10 years?

In five years I hope to have hired a professional photographer! That would be a huge milestone! I also hope that my business will grow in the next 5 to 10 years so I can work the business primarily and occupational therapy part-time.

How do you define success?

My definition of success has definitely changed since starting East and Market. In the beginning, I thought that success meant sales, being busy, and getting a lot of social media followers. What I have realized is that success for me is being able to maintain my business to the best of my ability and increasing my skills to create products that people want and enjoy. It also means that I can have a great work-life balance. Success to me at this time in my life is happiness. Happiness in myself, my family and my work.

What would you say to a company that does not track the environmental cost of its production?

I guess what I would say would depend on their feelings and considerations about incorporating sustainable processes into their business.

If it was a business that was interested in sustainability I would say start with achievable goals. Small changes that can be maintained over time will go a long way. It may also help to list out daily/weekly/monthly/yearly waste. Make a sustainability plan, just like you would a business plan.

If a business voiced minimal or no interest in changes I may just suggest that they consider giving certain types of reusable wastes to companies or students that could reuse the material. A lot of people are willing to pick up materials.

What would you say to a person considering starting their own social enterprise?

The first thing I would say is: Just go for it!!! Start as soon as possible because if you wait until you’re “ready” you will never be ready. I have made so many mistakes and have learned immensely from all of those mistakes. They haven’t broken me, they have made me more knowledgeable, more socially conscious, and ultimately happier with my business and my designs.

I would also say you need to go into it being flexible and open-minded. Embrace the positivity given to you but be especially open to the criticism. Embrace the criticism and find out everything you can about it; it will make you stronger as a business person and designer.

That Green Jacket in the Trash

I also asked Renee what she would do with the green jacket I saw in the trash. She answered with enthusiasm:

“Sounds like it would make a great tote because the material is durable and bright! I may also be interested in pairing it with some leather to see how the difference in color and texture would mix to make a cool clutch! I love creating new textiles!”

Follow them on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eastandmarket/

article

Vend POS vs Shopify: Which One Will You Like More?

These days, Shopify is one of the biggest names in retail. The commerce giant is well-known for its e-commerce systems and is increasingly making itself known in the brick-and-mortar space with its Point-of-Sale (POS) systems. However, Shopify faces some steep competition from POS providers that specialize in the trade, such as Vend. That’s why we’re going to compare Vend vs Shopify.

The Main Differences Between Vend POS vs Shopify

The main differences between Vend POS vs Shopify are:

Vend POS is a point-of-sale tool, whereas Shopify is an entire ecommerce platform
Vend POS is a relatively new tool, whereas Shopify is more established
Vend POS monthly subscription rates are more expensive than Shopify, whereas Shopify can include a lot of upgrades as you grow your business
Vend POS is seen more as an ‘add-on’ service, whereas Shopify is dedicated to building ecommerce stores for its customers

Trends in Online Shopping — There is still a lot of opportunities

Retail technology has advanced a lot over the past several years in line with technological advancements elsewhere. Smartphones, smart cars, smart TVs, and yes now retailers can use smart Point-of-Sale systems. These POS will handle all of the duties of a traditional cash register, such as unlocking the cash drawer and providing receipts. At the same time, however, smart POS will track all of your sales, compile data, and even monitor your inventory.

Those dumb cash registers acted as “Point-of-Sale” systems. The cash register facilitating the sale right at the point where the transaction is taking place. These days, POS usually refers to physical locations, while e-commerce refers to web shopping.

Shopify has emerged as one of the most popular smart retail solutions. Shopify is used not “just” for Point-of-Sales systems, but also for e-commerce. With Shopify, you can set up an entire online retail store akin to Amazon. You can also use Shopify’s Point-of-Sale system, tying that online retail store into your brick-and-mortar efforts. Shopify’s primary focus has been e-commerce, with the POS being more of an add-on.

Vend is a sort of the opposite. The company is more well-known for its Point-of-Sales systems while e-commerce is a secondary focus. However, over time, both Shopify and Vend have developed good across-the-board capabilities and most businesses will be satisfied with both. Vend now has e-commerce capabilities while Shopify has developed a solid POS presence.

Whatever you choose, you must know — there is still plenty of room for business online. Knowing the right tools that work for your business is key to being able to succeed in any market, which is why I give you this full Vend POS vs Shopify comparison!

Vend: An Overview

Vend is based out of New Zealand but has a global presence. Despite being a relatively young company, having started in 2010, Vend has emerged as one of the biggest players in the POS space. Vend first rose to prominence by teaming up with Paypal but has since engaged with other corporate partners.

Vend delivers its Point-of-Sales services exclusively through the cloud and can operative on a variety of operating systems. Vend does not offer on-premise deployment, which could be a concern for some larger businesses.

Vend has emerged as one of the biggest Point-of-Sale providers in the world. 20,000 stores across 140 different countries are using Vend POS systems. Disney, Etsy, the World Wildlife Fund, and NASA are among the retailers using Vend.

While some POS and e-commerce providers like to build walled gardens, Vend is a relatively open system. For example, if you have a Shopify e-commerce website, you can actually integrate it directly into Vend. Want to build your own custom website using Vend? No problem, Vend will provide the basics while your development team gets to work.

While Vend is not as well-known in the e-commerce space, it has begun to offer solutions. So far, the company’s e-commerce website templates and other features have been well-received. However, Vend still lags behind Shopify and e-commerce leaders (more on that later).

Shopify: An Overview

Shopify has emerged as a retail and commerce giant. Over 600,000 businesses rely on Shopify and over $55 billion dollars worth of goods have been sold through the platform. In 2016 alone their Gross Merchandise Volume topped $15 billion. Tesla Motors, Budweiser, Penguin Books, and various other big names use Shopify for their e-commerce stores. Thousands of mom & pop businesses rely on their services as well.

Traditionally, Shopify has been more well-known for their online retail platform. Indeed, Shopify got its start when its Candian founders Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake tried to launch an online snowboarding equipment store. They quickly discovered that the out-of-the-box solutions for building online retail stores were limited. So they built their own platform and spun it off as a separate service.

Up until 2013, Shopify remained relegated to the web. That year, the company expanded into the brick-and-mortar space with its Point-of-Sale system, allowing small businesses to integrate their brick-and-mortar stores and online presence under one system.

Vend offers a 30-day free trial while Shopify offers a 14-day free trial.

Vend vs. Shopify Pricing

We all want the best value for our money. So how about Vend versus Shopify? Which one is the better deal? To be honest, the pricing for both products can be a bit difficult to sort through. It’s wise to first consider your needs and then individual plans. We’ll help you get started.

Shopify’s “Lite” plan is the cheapest option per month

Shopify offers a Lite plan that starts at just $9 per month. However, this plan is very basic. With the Lite plan, you can make “buy now” buttons for your existing website and social media. You can also use their Android and iOS app to accept credit cards. However, you will have to pay transaction fees with every Shopify plan.

Shopify’s full-featured but still basic plan starts at $29.99 per month.

Vend Stars with a higher price but costs quickly converge

Vend’s basic plan starts at $69, while Shopify’s basic plan starts at $29.99. With Vend, just $10 more gets you access to the more advanced features, such as gift cards and expanded payment options, for just $10 extra per month. Shopify’s comparable plan likewise costs $79.

Vend does not charge separate transaction fees

With Vend, you simply pay a monthly subscription fee. Payments are month to month and you can cancel at any time. You are not tied to the company’s hardware, and your hardware won’t be tied to the company. Unlike other POS and e-commerce solutions, Vend does not charge transaction fees.

Shopify charges transaction fees

Shopify features low monthly subscription fees and most of its add-on services and products are affordable as well. Yet there is a major downside: Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee for its basic plan, 1% for its normal plan and .5% for its advanced plan. This will be paid on top of any other payment fees the payment processor might charge you. By using Shopify payments, however, you can eliminate these fees.

Shopify also charges fees for credit card transactions. Each transaction will cost 30 cents plus 2.9% for the basic plan, 2.6% for the mid-range plan, and 2.4% for the premium plan.

Comparing Vend vs. Shopify Attributes

Vend is operating system agnostic

Vend can operate on a variety of operating systems. So long as you have access to a web browser, you’ll be able to run Vend. Windows, Apple, and Android are all supported, so when it comes to hardware, you’ll have plenty of choices.

Shopify works best with Apple iPads

Shopify does offer an Android app. However, the company packages its POS with Apple iPads and has put most of its POS resources into Apple products. iPads aren’t exactly cheap, so keep tablet costs in mind when comparing costs.

Vend is not as e-commerce friendly

Vend has been building up its e-commerce features but lags behind industry leaders (such as Shopify). Vend doesn’t currently support drop shipping, integrated with distribution centers, and other features found in advanced commerce solutions. However, Vend’s website is advising people looking for such features to keep an eye on future releases.

*Remember: you can integrate your Shopify e-commerce store and Vend.

Conclusion: Choosing Between Vend and Shopify?

So who wins in the Vend versus Shopify matchup? Both platforms are quite good, but they each excel in different ways. Vend started as a POS system and while it has been expanding its e-commerce capabilities, it’s still not as feature-rich as dedicated e-commerce platforms.

Vice-versa for Shopify. While Shopify has been expanding its POS offerings, the company is still most well-known and best suited for online retail. With Vend currently lacking drop shipping and other advanced but increasingly common e-commerce features, web retailers will likely be better off with Shopify. Vend could and likely will level the playing field by integrated such features in the future.

The other big difference between Vend and Shopify is pricing. Vend’s monthly subscription rates are significantly more expensive than Shopify’s. However, Vend doesn’t charge the 2% transaction fee that Shopify does.

If you already have a Shopify store and are looking for a great add-on, Vend can be a nice integration. You might also want to integrate a decent landing-page builder app, such as Shogun, or Pagefly.

You might also enjoy:

article

Lessons For a Simpler Sustainable Life By Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard

In the early 1970s, the American rock climber would be hard-pressed to find gear of any quality. In fact, he or she would probably have had to turn to Europe, where the nascent sport was more popular and companies were manufacturing equipment for it. “There were probably 250 climbers in the country,” Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard recalled with a chuckle in a recent interview with NPR.

But even if that climber chose to buy gear from Europe, it would likely have been low-quality, made of soft iron, the kind of equipment you use once and toss. Chouinard and his friends, following in the footsteps of transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Muir, believed they should climb the mountains but leave no trace behind. Pitons should not be used once and left wedged into rock. Discarded lengths of rope should not be left on the forest floor.

The same problem applied to sporting clothes. At that time, and especially for men, activewear consisted largely of sweatshirts and matching sweatpants. There were no clothes that made sense for people doing intense, outdoor activities.

Chouinard never wanted to be a businessman. “This was in the 60s, and businessmen were all greaseballs in the 60s,” Chouinard said at the Commonwealth Club of California in 2016. “We didn’t respect business. In fact, they were the enemy.” But he did have an innate sense that he could improve the tools he was using. “It’s just I have this knack that every time I look at a product I look at it and think, ‘well, I could make something better than that. It could be better,’” he said during an interview with NPR. This is exactly what Chouinard and his friends did. When they went climbing, they would return with ideas about how to improve their tools.

Soon, Chouinard realized that he could not avoid the obvious solution: build better equipment, make better clothes. So with that in mind, Chouinard got some books on blacksmithing and began to forge the gear that he and his friends wanted to use themselves. Soon, he was selling his pitons for a dollar and a half each, far more expensive than the European equivalent, but made to last. “I just happened to be a craftsman. Every time I looked at a piece of equipment I had an idea of how to make it better,” Chouinard said during a lecture at UCLA.

Soon, expansion happened. After a trip to the United Kingdom, where Chouinard saw a rugby-style shirt that seemed to fit the needs of climbers, he began importing sporting clothes and then designed and produced them himself. That was how Patagonia was born.

From there, Chouinard’s fledgling company began manufacturing a broad line of clothing meant specifically for sportspeople. Or more accurately, they began making clothes that Chouinard and his friends wanted to use themselves when they climbed and hiked and surfed. In reflecting on this time, Chouinard recalled trying to put himself in the shoes of his customer, hoping to come up with products that people didn’t yet know they wanted or needed.

The Uncharacteristic Entrepreneur

Yosemite climbing pioneer Yvonne Chouinard checking out the view from Big Sur ledge the first ascent of the North America Wall on El Capitan. End of pitch 11, Fall 1964.

“If I get an idea, I immediately take a step forward and see how that feels. If it feels good, I take another step. If it feels bad, I take a step back,” Chouinard told NPR. This has been Chouinard’s approach since the start. At the beginning of Patagonia, he was neither an expert in manufacturing nor in apparel. In fact, Chouinard has no formal business training at all. He was simply a passionate sportsman–a person who just wanted to be outdoors and have clothes that made sense.

Chouinard is quick to admit that his not having the traditional background in running a major retail company has had positive and negative effects. “[I was] trying create a business that we wanted to come to work in. All of us. So that’s what we did,” he said in a talk at the Commonwealth Club of California. In all likelihood, that unfamiliarity with business and his wish to build something new helped Patagonia avoid some common traps fledgling companies fall into.

On the other hand, the same unfamiliarity led to some difficult situations, most notably in the 1980s, when about a decade after Patagonia’s founding, the company ran into trouble. “The market wanted our products, so we were growing 50% a year. But you can’t grow a business with 50% growth year after year on retained earnings. At some point, you’re going to crash,” Chouinard said at the Commonwealth Club of California. From the perspective of the long-term health of the company, Chouinard knew that such rapid growth was not sustainable.

For Chouinard, the goal was not simply growth. In fact, the way he saw it, the faster his business grew, the faster it would die. It was about making a change, about using environmentally friendly material and teaching people that you don’t throw out things, you repair them. Chouinard’s vision was that Patagonia would commit to owning one of its products forever. If something no longer fit, they would help sell it for you; if it broke, they would fix it; if it was really spent, they would recycle it.

At an early stage, Chouinard and Patagonia conducted studies on which materials were the friendliest for the environment (they were surprised to learn that 25% of all agricultural pesticides are used for cotton production) and adjusted their production accordingly. In light of what they found out about cotton, Patagonia started using 100% organic cotton in 1996. Chouinard wanted something lasting so that Patagonia could have an impact and exist far into the future. The same was so for the materials they used. After commissioning a study, they realized the impact of the cotton they were using. For Chouinard, such high growth would not take them to his goal.

To keep the company on track, Chouinard actually slowed growth, which with the addition of a recession, led to a critical moment for Patagonia. Chouinard didn’t know if the company would make it. Banks stopped lending the company money and revenues became tight. But with some tough decisions, including management level staff layoffs and an improved growth program that looked toward the future, Patagonia made it through. For Chouinard, there are two types of growth: that which leads to you being stronger and that which leads to you being fatter. Of course, he wanted the former.

In an interview with NPR, Chouinard reflected on entrepreneurship:

“One of my favorite quotes is:

‘If you want to understand entrepreneurship, study the juvenile delinquent because they’re saying this sucks and I want to do it my own way.’ That’s what the entrepreneur does. They just say, ‘This is wrong and I’m going to do it this other way,’ and that’s the fun part of a business. I love breaking the rules.”

It seems one rule that Chouinard has tried particularly hard to break is our modern consumer mannerisms. What is essential for Chouinard is that Patagonia offers a lifetime guarantee. In fact, it seems that the Patagonia mantra should be one of Chouinard’s core beliefs, which is to own very few but very good things.

Indeed, in a world where there exists an abundance of cheap clothing made with questionable materials by people in poor conditions–and our global problems are only growing–it seems we need more companies that share Chouinard and Patagonia’s mission.

Chouinard has never been interested in coming out with a cheap line of clothes. That is evident if you take a look at Patagonia’s online catalog. Despite Patagonia’s price points, Chouinard’s goal is not to reduce prices and appeal to a mass customer base like other retail stores. For him, good quality clothes which are made from responsible materials simply cost more. And we, as good consumers, should prioritize buying less but buying responsibly. That, Chouinard believes, will help us approach some of the daunting problems we face, which seems an idea that deserves reflection.

Patagonia Mission Statement

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Wise words for the young entrepreneur

There is no doubt that Patagonia has a compelling story. What is now a company with reportedly over $600 million in revenue was started by Chouinard and his buddies because they wanted better sporting equipment.

Their impact on how we purchase and consume clothing and how clothing material is sourced is significant, perhaps even paradigm-shifting. But also worth discussing are the things we can learn from Chouinard’s approach to business.

Many have considered Chouinard’s style of managing his employees and a huge corporation as eccentric. In fact, many might have laughed at his company directive to hit the waves when the surf was up, or at his annual six-month vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But no one can argue with the outcomes, both in business but also in environmental impact and employee welfare.

In the early days of Patagonia, the company pioneered on-site childcare, flex-work based on a trust policy, paid maternity and other leave, coverage of healthcare premiums, and generous employee development programs. These benefits, of course, are still not entirely common in 2017, over forty years later.

What’s more, Chouinard took an unusual approach to staff his company. Most companies, as he points out, are strongly top-down. There are rigid corporate structures in place and hierarchies that determine how a company will operate. Patagonia, on the other hand, hired a bunch of young and independent people, and then left them alone. Chouinard recently mentioned that psychologists have come to study how the company manages to function so efficiently with this approach. Chouinard seems to bask in his unusual tactics. He doesn’t care when his employees work, so long as they get the job done.

For young entrepreneurs, Chouinard also gives some on-point advice. “If you want to be successful in business,” he recently said to NPR, “you don’t go up against Coca-Cola. They’ll kill you. You just do it differently. You figure out something that no one else has thought of and you do it in a totally different way. So, breaking the rules means you have to be creative.”

Above all, what seems to drive Chouinard the most is the wish for a simpler life. This can be seen in his approach to business, his slowing the growth of his own company, and his encouraging customers not to buy his products but to repair, reuse, and recycle.
Chouinard brings us a lot: wisdom about business, the environment, and how we as consumers should strive to better ourselves in a world that is being taxed by our needs and wants.

But perhaps most poignant are his words about life, which he recently said in an NPR interview:

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything pulls you to be more and more complex. I think what I have learned from fly-fishing is that if we have to–either we’re forced or we decide to–go to a simpler life, it’s not going to be an impoverished life; it’s going to be really rich.”

That too deserves some reflection.

You might also enjoy:

article

Neil Patel Advice: 4 Tips to Win With Video on Facebook

Hopefully you know by now that video is a part of the online marketing future. That’s where people spend their time and that’s where big online brands are leaning into. Any technology trend or new development such as Facebook Live and Facebook Watch will be favored by Facebook. They will give you more reach if you use those tools because it’s their next big thing.

Consider this, by 2019 it is expected that Facebook will be 90% video! Think about your own behavior. Do you stop to watch videos that have text subtitles mostly or do you open articles?

Experts like Neil Patel test strategies all the time and he’s got some great tips to share that will help you make your videos have a better chance of going viral. They do weekly marketing videos jammed with great advice. This stood out because video is such an integral part of the online marketing future.

I realize that video is not everyone’s sweet spot but sometimes you have to find ways to break into new areas you might not be comfortable with. And you will suck for a while…but that’s part of the process. We all start that way.

So what do you need to know?

1 – Never share a Youtube video on Facebook

Something Facebook thrives on is their engagement rates and they are always looking for ways to get people to spend more and more time on Facebook. Any link out of Facebook is not favored by them.

This means you need to upload the video to Youtube and Facebook natively.

Neil has found they will likely get 20-50 times more views by doing this than if you used the Youtube link.

2 – A Video Length of 5-10 Minutes Seems to Work Best

This is one of the more interesting tips in this video.

We have all probably heard that shorter videos are better because people don’t stay and watch. We all now have short attention span, right?

Well, that’s not the case here.

Again, the goal is to get people engaged and videos between 5-10 minutes work best on Facebook.

But it’s important that your creative is good and you target the right people. If your video is relevant to a certain region of the the country or world, target them specifically.

3 – Make Sure You Have captions or subtitles included in the video

As I mentioned earlier, you most likely stop regularly to watch a video but don’t always click it to hear the sound. You just read the text on screen, right? If it gets really interesting you might pop it open.

This is critical to hooking people who are just curious and getting them to engage. If you don’t have the text on screen they may not even give you a shot.

Neil found that videos get 30-35% more views and engagement when they included the text on screen. Makes perfect sense, right!

4 – Presentation Matters

You might think they’re talking about the quality of the video. Honestly, I personally had a nice DSLR (Cannon) but for the sake of simplicity I moved over to using an iPhone because the the quality is great. Keep it simple. You don’t need $10k of studio gear. iPhone and Lapel mic does the trick.

But they aren’t talking about quality, they’re talking about how you present yourself.

Russell Brunson calls it the “attractive character.” Present yourself with enthusiasm, emotion, show passion for what you do, be authentic. These are traits of great leaders and entertainers.

If you’re boring then anyone who sees you will be bored. Nobody is a master of this art right away. It takes practice.

Hopefully at least one of these quick hit tips are helpful. Pass on the knowledge to someone who you think might benefit from these tips!

If you want more from Neil Patel check out our exclusive interview here >> “Turn Ice Cold Prospects into Smoking Hot Traffic: Interview with Neil Patel”

list video

B2B Website Best Practices: Why Your B2B Site Might Not Be Working for You

If you are running a B2B website then you are looking to convert browsers to leads then to buyers. Despite digitizing your business in this way, your business website could be slacking in generating you the business it should. If your conversion rate is lower than you think it should be, it might be time to evaluate if these 5 key areas of your website could be letting you down. Listen. If you want to learn more about B2B website best practices, it starts with what you are not doing well. That’s why we are going to talk about why your B2B site might not be working for you first.

In 2018, we are not going to rehash the importance of creating responsive websites, landing pages that convert, or how to optimize your B2B website’s SEO.

Instead, we look at 5 critical aspects of B2B website performance that could be hampering your overall inbound marketing ROI.

Your Content is Attracting the Wrong Target Audience

Content is king only if it is targeted to address solutions to the right audience. If you are struggling to get views, likes, comments, and so on, then your content may be irrelevant to the people reading it.

That can mean two things:

Your B2B website content is reaching the wrong audience
Your business content strategy is not optimized to attract your core audience

Are you addressing your prospects’ pain points?

Does your B2B website design incorporate content elements that your target audience easily identifies? Can they easily understand your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) without much explanation?

Also, you’ll want to strike a good balance with your content strategy using the 80/20 rule.

You’ll want to create 80% of quality content that is targeted to your core audience’s pain points and relevant solutions. Then you’ll want 20% of your content addressing a wider audience to allow you to onboard and network with other industry players that might have connections to your niche.

This way, you can become an authority in your niche as well as remain open to welcoming players and clientele from other sectors.

If you are wondering if you are creating the right content for your B2B website, start by re-evaluating your buyer personas. See if your B2B content strategy is properly aligned. Then you can use feedback-gathering tools such as Feedbackify, Hively, and Qualaroo to find out from your readers on different online platforms.

You Have Inconsistent Website Design Elements

You do not need to create a B2B website design elements list to get a crisp idea of whether your website design elements are inconsistent or not.

Keep in mind that website design elements speak volumes about your brand. They tell leads about you. Like whether you understand your buyer persona biases about branding. Whether you are informational or functional, serious or fun, and so on.

Inconsistent typography, calls to action, brand voice and colors tell you are not sure what you mean, and that can kill trust and make you look amateurish. It is off-putting to potential customers looking for credible brand authority, hence increases bounce rates.

Ensure your website design elements such as typography, H1 tags, meta tags, and color scheme are matching across different web pages of your B2B website to boost trust and increase conversions.

Your B2B Website Layout is Adding to Bounce Rates

You not only want your website layout to transition visitors to next pages seamlessly, you also want it to encourage visitors to move from awareness to purchase stages of your buyer journey.

Is your B2B website buyer journey clear and fluid through the different pages? Is your home-page chockful of blocks of text that make it hard for potential customers to follow your buyer journey?

Is your website’s navigation clear and easy to follow? Even for a complete stranger? For example, a Hamburger Menu was initially assumed to help boost your conversion rate compared to a visible menu. However, with time this has not turned out to be true since the Hamburger Menu assumes the user already knows what the three overlaying lines mean—when they might not.

Even Apple and Spotify have since ditched the Hamburger Menu UX, and the latter has gone on to experience a 30% jump in navigation clicks as people know exactly where to tap on to navigate the Spotify site.

If you have doubts about these questions, you have a new assignment in your in-tray. You can use Google’s Webmaster Tool to check for these and more.

While at it…

You’ll want to ensure you do not have 404 error pages on your site, which could be rudely crashing your conversion rates by interrupting user experiences along your customer journey. The 404 errors could also hamper on-page and off-page SEO optimization for your B2B website.

You also do not want your footer links mistaken for trying to manipulate PageRank on SERPS. Important too, is ensuring you submit your sitemap to Google through your Google Search Console account for indexing.

If you are still wondering what your searchers want while attracting search engines to your online platform, check out the Search Quality Rating Guidelines that Google released sometime back.

You’ll find a July 27, 2017 PDF document detailing how Google, through human testers, sets the criteria for awarding different page ranking scores based on what Google thinks searchers want to find online. You can use the valuable information contained therein to improve your website layout and copy based on searchers’ intents.

Your Website is Not Optimized for Local SEO

While you may have done the right thing by avoiding black hat SEO techniques in your content strategy and SEO optimization plan, you may innocently miss the smaller picture.

As much as the web empowers your business to market to the entire global market, you are likely to sell to everyone. The key, again, is to re-evaluate your target audience and align your SEO and SEM marketing to that core audience for better SEM returns.

For example:

If you are a digital marketing agency, the assumption is you can afford to market to a global market. But there are tons of different buyer personas across multiple regions and it might be tough to address all their pain points to increase conversion.

This is even more highlighted for B2B websites supporting a local store or brick and mortar premises.

Most buyers first check online to find a local business to buy from—instead of walking or driving around looking for billboards or knocking various doors. So improving your local SEO index will help you attract business to your local premises or store.

Your Website Has Unclear Calls to Action

A B2B website without clear, compelling CTAs is an unnecessary bog for your inbound marketing dollars.

Creating a good CTA for your B2B website is all about creating a direct instruction that encourages your visitors to take the next immediate or important action you want them to take.

You’ll want to use CTAs on relevant content pages and context, otherwise, you’ll confuse your visitors and risk losing them to a competitor with clearer and compelling calls to action sections on every page.

Your visitor is likely to be bombarded by a ton of information online that can easily feel overwhelming. One effective way to drive engagement and boost the attractiveness and effectiveness of your CTAs is to apply them in your content mix—especially with video.

Inc. Magazine found that 92% of B2B customers watch online videos. More importantly, though, 43% of B2B customers do so when researching services and products for their businesses.

By creating clear and compelling CTAs, you empower the reader to know what to do next to find the solution they seek while encouraging them to move along your customer journey towards your purchase page.

Some B2B Website Best Practice Tips

Think about your brand at every touchpoint of your website, logo, color choices, your call to actions — don’t confuse your buyer with conflicting brands along the way
Think about the buyer journey — what do you want your buyer to do?
Always think mobile first — If your site is not responsive, it should be.
Do have specific landing pages for offers and promote directly to them
Do make the sign in processes easier.
Offer some valuable free gifts to your audience. Give your audience some kind of information they will use over and over again, a reference material of some kind, a checklist.
Have clear Call to Actions on every page.

Conclusion

While B2B website design elements such as mobile-friendliness and fast-loading pages will help retain more visitors, the above 5 key areas your B2B website could be letting you down will help convert that precious traffic to more quality leads and increase conversion and grow your business. Using a few of our B2B website best practice tips will get you off and running, making more money sooner than later!

article

Shopify vs. Neto: Which E-commerce Platform is Best?

Shopify is one of the giants of e-commerce platforms. If you’re involved in the space, you’ve surely heard the name. Neto, on the other hand, is a spunky up and comer from the land down under. Australia-based Neto has been building momentum and has established a loyal user base. We’re going to dig into the comparison between Shopify vs Neto, but first, let’s talk about e-commerce.

The Main Differences Between Shopify vs Neto

The main differences between Shopify vs Neto are:

Shopify has over 500,000 users and growing, whereas Neto has a few thousand users
Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce platform giant, whereas Neto is the new guy in town
Shopify has hundreds of themes to choose from, whereas Neto does not have as many choices (some look dated)

There are a lot of giant e-commerce websites out there, including Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. However, many smaller retailers have realized that they can earn more money by having their own online shopping website. In the past, setting up an e-commerce website could get very expensive. These days, e-commerce platforms make it easy to build an integrated, fully-functional e-commerce website.

An e-commerce platform will handle most of the difficult aspects associated with setting up a retail website. For example, with an e-commerce platform, website managers can use templates to quickly set up new product listings. By and large, it’s plug and play. You insert the necessary text, prices, and other vital details, and the e-commerce platform takes care of the rest. If you had to set up each listing individually, updating products and expanding offerings would suddenly be very time-consuming.

E-commerce platforms also make it easy to accept payments, acquire the necessary personal data, such as shipping addresses, and can even organize the shipping process itself. Twenty-some years ago such capabilities were revolutionary. Now, e-commerce platforms allow you to set up the whole system within a matter of hours.

Common Ecommerce Features

Ability to quickly and easily set up an online retail website.
Capable of accepting a wide range of payment options, such as credit cards, and digital payment systems (i.e. Paypal).
Tools for completing, shipping, and tracking orders.
The setup process is generally easy and straightforward.

Most e-commerce platforms charge both a small monthly fee, usually less than $50 per month, and a percentage of payments processed. The percentage cut is usually an affordable 2 or so percent. However, some platforms, including Neto, don’t charge payment fees. Either way, setting up an commerce has never been easier or more affordable.

As already mentioned, two of the more well-known e-commerce platforms are Neto and Shopify. We’re going to dig into the pros and cons of each platform shortly. However, both choices are good choices. The question is, which choice is better for you and your company? You need to approach the decision-making process rationally and need to focus on your needs. Keep yourself in mind while reading through our comparison.

Both platforms offer great e-commerce solutions. Shopify has been around for years and can be found on countless e-commerce websites. Ultimately, Shopify is one of the most tried-and-true e-commerce solutions. Neto isn’t as established but it has been gaining popularity. That’s not by accident. At the end of the day, both e-commerce platforms are a great choice, but there are some important differences.

What is Shopify? An Introduction

Shopify is a complete e-commerce solution that is used by over 600,000 businesses. Roughly $55 billion worth of goods has been sold via Shopify. The platform offers a variety of prebuilt themes, allowing businesses to quickly set up clean, easy-to-use websites. Most themes require a one-off payment of roughly $150.

Shopify not only makes it easy for online retailers to set up an e-commerce web but also allows them to integrate their social media and offline selling. Shopify makes it easy to accept online credit card payments, Paypal, and other payment methods. In total, Shopify can accept payments from over 100 different sources.

Shopify also features a variety of automated fulfillment processes and makes it easy to integrate 3rd party shipping apps. In fact, Shopify has actually set up an App Store with well over a thousand apps on it. This plethora of 3rd party solutions is one of Shopify’s strongest selling points.

What is Neto? An Introduction

Markets are driven by competition. Neto has emerged as one of the most serious challengers to Shopify’s market dominance. Roughly 3,000 websites are using Neto. While this pales in comparison to Shopify, it’s still a strong base.

Neto likewise offers a variety of themes at about the same price as Shopify. However, Neto does not offer as wide of a choice, and many of their themes look a bit dated. Neto does offer a good mobile experience for most of the themes, but in general, Shopify is regarded as having a better selection and more visually-appealing themes.

Unsurprisingly, Neto is not as a feature rich as Shopify. Neto does feature a number of add-ons, such as Salesforce, Zoho, and Shipwire. It is also possible to run 3rd party scripts, but few are available for sale and Neto does not cover them. Regardless, Neto offers many of the most useful and common add-ons.

Shopify Versus Neto: Costs

Both Neto and Shopify Offer 14 Day Free Trials

Try both for free. No credit card required. No commitment.

Neto Subscription Costs Are Higher

Neto plans start at $79 Australian dollars per month (~$60 USD). Neto’s basic plan includes listings for only 1,000 products. While this might be enough for many small businesses, do not underestimate how quickly your shop might fill up. A medium plan costs $199 AU per month and allows you to list 5,000 item, while a large plan costs $349 per month and allows for unlimited items.

Shopify Subscriptions are Cheaper but you Pay Transaction Fees

A Shopify plan starts at just $29 USD per month and immediately allows for unlimited product listings. However, Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee on purchases through the basic plan. The normal plan charges 1%, while the advanced plan will set you back .5%. Either way, as you can imagine, these transaction costs could add up quickly.

Shopify also charges credit card fees as follows:

Basic Shopify: 2.9% + 30 cents for credit card charges

Shopify: 2.6% + 30 cents for credit card charges

Advanced Shopify: 2.6% + 30 cents for credit card charges

Neto’s Basic Includes Only One Sales Channel

When pricing Neto, it’s important to understand that the plans start with only one sales channel. If you decide to add another sales channel, such as Point-of-Sales devices to accept physical payments, you will need to pay an extra $49 AUD per channel. You can also add Amazon and eBay.

Note: Equipment for both Neto and Shopify must be bought separately. When considering a POS, it’s best to determine the specific costs for your business.

Shopify Does Not Charge Per Sales Channel

Shopify also makes it easy to integrate sales channels. Shopify supports:

Pinterest
Facebook
Messenger
Amazon

Other 3rd party sales channels can also be integrated. Please be aware that some sales channels, such as Amazon, will charge fees on their end.

Both Shopify and Neto Feature Numerous Shipping Tools

Shipping is often one of the biggest headaches for any e-commerce website. Fortunately, both Neto and Shopify feature a variety of tools to reduce the burdens associated with shipping. However, there are some important differences.

Shopify is feature-rich out-of-the-box

Even with the basic plan, Shopify gives e-commerce platforms access to most of their shipping features, including:

Shopify Shipping discounts rates
Print shipping labels
Display calculated rates at checkout
Shipment tracking
Automatic customer email notification
Ship date (U.S. only)
Signature confirmation

However, some features will cost you extra money, such as returns. Shopify has a return plugin that will reduce many of the headaches associated with returns, but you’ll need to shell out $10 extra per month.

Neto includes free return management

Neto also includes the ability to print shipping labels and real-time shipping quotes. Returns processing is also free with Neto.

Comparing Other Value Added Features

Both Neto and Shopify offer a range of value-added features. However, in many cases, these features will cost extra money. In some cases, such as setting up a Point-of-Sale system, you may have to buy external equipment.

Higher Cost Plans For Both Support Gift Cards But At a Cost

Gift cards are a popular gift and a great way to drum up sales. E-commerce platforms can be set up to accept gift cards. However, for both Shopify and Neto, you’ll have to opt for their second tier plans. Their basic plans do not include gift cards.

Both platforms feature a variety of product management tools

Managing product stocks and other inventory issues can be immensely difficult. Both platforms, for example, feature low stock alert features. Other features include inventory tracking and barcode management.

Both platforms allow you to set up affiliate marketing programs

Affiliate marketing has emerged as one of the most powerful and valuable marketing methods online. With affiliate marketing, you’ll essentially reward people for selling your goods. Both Neto and Shopify allow you to set up affiliate programs with ease.

Both platforms contain countless other features

There are, quite simply, far too many features for us to list out. Both platforms are feature-rich. Shopify has more features and add-ons, especially when you count third-party solutions. However, Neto manages to cover the most vital features. For many businesses, the extra features and add-ons on Shopify will never actually be used.

Still, you should sit down and consider your business and the challenges it will face. Then, you should write these potential sticking points down. Finally, check to see if Neto and Shopify offer tools that will help you address these issues.

Conclusion: The Neto vs Shopify Choice is Yours

Both Neto and Shopify are excellent choices. Shopify is more feature-rich and more widely-used. Further, e-commerce websites on Shopify tend to look more slick and modern. Still, Neto does feature a variety of useful tools and it’s quite possible that you’ll never notice that a feature or add-on is “missing.”

Don’t count out Neto. Since the platform doesn’t charge fees per sale, long-run costs could be substantially lower. Companies producing high sales volumes could potentially save a lot of money with Neto. On the other hand, e-commerce websites that want the sleekest website and most advanced features will be better served by Shopify.

If I were forced to make a decision right now and had to choose one ecommerce platform that would be best for most growing businesses, I would definitely say Shopify. With so much flexibility and support, it’s the one that is meant to last. So many online companies swear by Shopify and from my experience, it’s a tool that you’ll really enjoy for the long haul. Try Shopify for free for 14-days — click here!

If you already own Shopify and are looking to make some serious improvements to your store, you might want to invest in a solid page builder, such as Shogun or Pagefly — which can make your life so much easier.

You might also enjoy:

article

Why You Should Consider Being on a Nonprofit Board: Kate Kayes (Interview)

Exclusive interview with Echoing Green Director, Kate Hayes.

Subscribe to this show on iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

In this interview Adam talk with Kate about nonprofit boards. Oddly, enough this seems to be a much overlooked area when considering social change. Yet, it’s full of potential for impact.

We talk about the traditional role boards have played along with their shortcomings. Kate explains how this is changing today and what she’s doing to help reshape the role boards and their members play. This is a really exciting topic and a powerful way to become a leader who drives real social impact.

Who is Kate Hayes anyway?

Hayes oversees programming for a dynamic group of emerging business leaders who are dedicated to realizing their full potential as agents of social change.

Prior to joining Echoing Green, she worked as Director of Evaluation and Program Impact in the national office of Minds Matter, where she developed new systems and methods for evaluating organizational success. While at Minds Matter, she led several new initiatives for engaging alumni, scaling the organization, and training 1,700 skills-based volunteers across the United States.

Kate currently sits on the Executive Committee at the Northfield Mount Hermon School, where she also serves as Chair of the Young Alumni Committee.

Some of the questions we discuss:

How did Kate get involved with Echoing Green and her mission around nonprofit boards?
What do boards traditionally look like and what do you want them to transform into now?
How do you make sure the new functions of a board happen effectively?
Do board members think big picture or roll up their sleeves to help with the details?
How can you drive true change by joining a board?
Who is the right person for a board and how big are boards typically?
Should your nonprofit have a board?
What does great leadership look like?

That just scratches the surface.

Listen to the interview for more.

interview

My Ultimate Wishpond Review: Is This For You?

What is Wishpond?

Wishpond has been at the forefront of creative lead generation for many years. This is been achieved through ongoing updates of the Wishpond feature set. If you are looking for an effective, online tool that can help you grow your business, you have to read my full Wishpond review here. Let’s get started!

“A Platform Designed for Growth.” — That’s the promise that the folks at Wishpond set out to deliver, but does it. First, Wishpond has been around for awhile, secondly, it does continue to improve and update its features.

In 2017, Wishpond released a trio of new features aimed at helping you to maximize the value of each website visitor.

Along the top of your pages, you can insert an unobtrusive opt-in bar;
a ‘welcome mat’ can appear for new visitors, taking over the entire page;
and if you want an in-between solution, they released a slide-in pop-up. This captures the email of new visitors without being too intrusive or ignored.

Start your free trial today!

Another exciting update focuses on the email editor. I was very impressed by the improvements made to the email editor. The improved editor greatly enhanced the visual attractiveness of my email marketing campaigns.

They also added a time-saving feature allowing me to import and edit images from a wider range of sources. These include Google Drive, Facebook, and Instagram.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Mobile-responsive contests	Sluggish page builder
Easily scalable viral campaigns	Lacking all-in-one marketing automation functions
Competitively priced	Buggy editor
Excellent A/B testing functionality	Tough to use API
Simple to use for beginners	No calendar management
Large number of integrations	Lacking ROI tracking features

Key Features

A/B testing
Change the published URL
Collaboration Solution
Drag and drop WYSIWYG editor
Edit landing pages any time
Email notifications
Form builder
Free subdomains
Heatmaps
Instant analytics & data
Lead-gen dashboard
Mobile responsive
Professional templates
Publish to multiple domains
SEO plugin
Social widgets
Support for video
Template Importer

Feature Spotlight

1. Landing pages

Wishpond provides over 100 great looking landing page templates to act as a starting point. Certain elements within these templates are customizable within the drag and drop editor. Yet, it is not as customizable as some other competitors. Even so, forms, buttons, text boxes, and media can all be edited within the builder. These options should provide enough customization for most people.

The editor can be a little buggy. I often find myself having to click repeatedly to select the text I want. It’s a little annoying because it adds time to the building process. It may also increase the risk of repetitive stress injuries if you need to edit a lot of text-heavy pages.

A/B Testing Capabilities

A key feature of Wishpond landing pages is A/B testing. The testing reports provide ample detail. Just enough to give you confidence. You will have a clear idea which landing page versions are producing the best results.

Integration with WordPress

Do you use WordPress as your content management system? If so, you can make use of the Wishpond plug-in. This also works as a landing page builder without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

2. Forms

Building forms in Wishpond is just as easy as building landing pages. The same drag-and-drop logic applies. This makes forms easy to create and publish. This ease of development fits well with the A/B testing feature. As with landing pages, Wishpond allows you to split test forms. This feature allows you to work out which format provides the highest conversion rate.

Key features of the forms module include:

Advanced CSS and Javascript (for customizing the design of your landing page)
CAPTCHA field (preventing SPAM)
Drop down menu for a long list of options (keeping your form short)
File upload field (for collecting collect files and documents)
Hidden fields (to collect analytics data)
Merge tags (for form personalization)
Multiple checkboxes (so that leads may opt for many lists)
Multiple-choice questions.
Real-time analytics.

Pop-up forms

Most of the time, you will be using forms on landing pages. But, to maximize your profit per visitor, you will also want to use popup forms. Wishpond seems to recognize how important pop-ups are for lead generation. In light of this, they provide six different pop-up types.

Click popups (turns any link into an opt-in process)
Entry pop-ups (displays a popup as soon as a visitor lands on your site)
Exit intent (appears when a visitor is about to leave your site)
Page Scroll (this a popup that appears when visitors scroll down your site)
Timed Pop-ups (this popup appears after the visitor has spent a set amount of time on your website)
Custom Javascript allows you to configure pop-ups based on a wide range of triggers.

Start your free trial today!

3. Promotional Contests

One of the best ways to nurture leads is through promotions and contests. But, many marketers tend to put too much emphasis on promotions. This leads to reduced margins in the short and long term. The long-term damage comes from training customers to expect a new social promotion to be just around the corner. This means that they are more resistant to buying at full price. The solution to this problem is highly engaging contests.

Contests also help with lead generation. For example, you can set up fun polls that require email addresses for voting. You can then use these addresses in follow-up campaigns within Wishpond.

The voting feature can also be socially integrated. You have the option of using Facebook Likes as a vote. This boosts social media engagement as well as the social proof of your pages. You also have the ability to improve the viral potential of your contests. The best way to do this is by including social sharing buttons. This allows you to offer rewards in exchange for referrals. You can offer people rewards when they refer friends to the contest you are running via social media.

Wishpond has many apps on offer to help you create a wide variety of engaging Wishpond social contests. With all these options you will be able to run a unique contest every month of the year. This is true even if you only stick to a couple of the contest types:

Coupon
Essay Contest
Instagram Hashtag Contest
Photo Caption Contest
Photo Contest
Pinterest Contest
Referral Promotion
Sweepstakes
Video Contest
Vote Contest

You can publish these contests on Twitter or Facebook. But, if you prefer, Wishpond gives you the option of publishing contests on your own website. One thing that sets the Wishpond contest feature apart from competitors is how these contests look and function. These contests look especially beautiful on both mobile phones and tablets. This is important because people increasingly shop and interact with brands via their mobile devices.

Start your free trial today!

Alternatives and Comparison

Wishpond

eClincher

HubSpot

Sleeknote

Price

Wishpond pricing is between $49-199+

eClincher pricing is between $49-599

HubSpot pricing is between $0-2,400

Sleeknote pricing is between $55-749

Trial

Yes, no CC

A/B Testing

✔

✘

✔

API

✔

✘

✔

Automatic Notifications

✘

✔

✘

CRM Integration

✔

✘

✔

✘

Calendar Management

✘

✔

✘

Campaign Analysis

✘

✔

✘

Campaign Management

✘

✔

✘

Campaign Scheduling

✘

✔

✘

Content Management

✘

✔

✘

Conversion Rate Optimization

✘

✔

Conversion Tracking

✘

✔

Custom Templates

✘

✔

Drag & Drop Interface

✔

✘

✔

Email Integration

✘

✔

Keyword Tracking

✘

✔

✘

Lead Generation

✘

✔

Lead Scoring

✔

✘

✔

✘

Multi-Channel Marketing

✘

✔

✘

Promotions Management

✔

✘

✔

✘

Real Time Analytics

✔

✘

Reporting & Statistics

✘

✔

✘

Scheduled Emails

✔

✘

✔

✘

Social Media Integration

✔

✘

Integrations

AWeber
ActiveCampaign
Base CRM
Batchbook
Benchmark
Campaign Monitor
ClickWebinar
Clio
io
Constant Contact
Contactually
Emma
Eventbrite
GetResponse
GoToWebinar
Highrise
Infusionsoft
Insightly
LemonStand
Mad Mimi
MailChimp
OnePageCRM
Pipedrive
Salesforce
SalesforceIQ
com
Slack
SurveyMonkey
Thankster
Twilio
UserVoice
VerticalResponse
WordPress Site

Conclusion: Should You Get Wishpond?

As online marketing evolves, we have access to increasingly advanced tools. Wishpond provides a broad range of tools to help generate more leads with less effort. The primary features that support lead generation in Wishpond are:

landing pages,
lead tracking,
email marketing,
and contests.

Wishpond focuses on improving e-commerce marketing performance. You may have noticed that its features are designed to help you avoid message fatigue. Another step in this direction is their partnership with Shopify. This partnership provides new features that allow the creation of commercial pop-ups. You can then link them to your Shopify products. For instance, I was able to create exit-intent pop-ups that were product specific. This allowed me to link products to relevant blog posts. When pop-ups have high relevancy, I notice an increase in revenue and fewer page bounces.

Wishpond is especially useful for lead nurturing. It is an effective tool for moving a lead efficiently down your sales funnel. As a lead management tool Wishpond is especially handy for e-commerce marketers. Especially if you need to keep in touch with customers without triggering message fatigue. If you are running an e-commerce store you may find it difficult to engage your customers in the long term. Wishpond offers something beyond money off vouchers and seasonal sales. This can help you increase the average annual transaction-per-customer without sacrificing profit-per-customer.

Start your free trial today!

Steps Your Social Enterprise Can Take to Combat Climate Change Now

This article was written by Wayne Wachell and originally released on B The Change

First, the dark stuff.

We are at a point in history where climate change is no longer a looming threat but a reality that’s very much upon us. Carbon dioxide levels are the highest point in 3 million years, according to the Global Atmosphere Watch program. All the while, the number of people on the planet is growing at an exponential rate. Worldwide population is 7.6 billion, and the United Nations estimates it will increase to 11.2 billion by 2100.

The situation seems dire, and it is. But when talking about climate change, it’s easy to get bogged down by the magnitude of the problem, so it’s important to lead with hope.

The good news is, as B Corps, we’re solution seekers by nature. There are actions we can take as business owners to slow the rate of climate change, and with Earth Day celebrated earlier this week, they’re top of mind.

Where to Start

A good place to start: taking a look at your carbon footprint. We collectively need to do better if we’re to reduce carbon emissions for the greater good of the planet. Investors are increasingly (and rightly) asking for information on the emissions of companies they are investing in, and we need to respond to this need.

One method of measuring CO2 output by businesses has been developed by an organization called Greenhouse Gas Protocol. This methodology acknowledges the emissions a company can actually control (such as fossil fuels used in operations, manufacturing, and heating), and the emissions a company can influence (such as those from employee commutes and third-party distribution). If more business owners were to use this methodology, they’d have a greater understanding of their business’s impact.

Once you have a gauge on the CO2 output from your business, you can look at tangible ways to reduce it, like putting an automatic timer on the lights, installing shades to help regulate the temperature without electricity, or using Skype or Zoom for remote meetings to reduce unnecessary travel.

Transport

If transport is essential to your business, consider purchasing a company electric car. In-person meetings are hugely valuable from a relationship-building perspective; that’s why at Genus we’ve recently adopted a new company mascot in the form of a Chevy Bolt. The Bolt has a regenerative braking function, which means the driver can recoup energy during deceleration. I typically gain 5 km worth of energy during a regular journey by using the downhill momentum.

Investments

If your company has investments, consider using them for impact by supporting clean energy companies over fossil fuel companies. History shows us divestments happen in three waves, and the same is true for fossil fuel divestment.

Already churches, universities, cities (like New York) and financial institutions (like Norges Bank) are announcing divestments, and we expect to see more in the coming months. While there is a moral reason for doing this, there is also a strong business case. As the world transitions to a low-carbon economy, there’s a huge risk of stranded assets — fossil fuels losing their value while still in the ground.

It is also worth evaluating the carbon emissions your company can save. Do you have a “smart” commute scheme to encourage carpooling or the use of public transit? Do you offer a financial incentive to employees who purchase commuter bikes or a stipend for bike maintenance for regular bike commuters?

Education

Education also plays a key role in influencing change, and your employees have a lot to teach you. Invite them to share their ideas for how to reduce your carbon footprint collectively. Maybe that involves improving home insulation, eating less meat, or opting for local fruit and vegetables with fewer food miles. A single employee or a group might emerge as your in-house environmental champions.

Final Thoughts

While climate change is a daunting subject, we believe it’s too important not to broach. At an international level, the Paris Agreement set a global action plan to avoid unpredictable climate change by limiting global warming to below 2 degrees C. While progress is being made to turn these goals into actions, we too as business owners have a valuable role to play — not only by reducing our own emissions, but in influencing others to make meaningful changes, too.

article

9 Best Wix Websites For Business Inspiration

With over 110+ million users worldwide, it seems that everyone on the internet is using Wix to build their website.

And why wouldn’t they? Wix is free and it’s awesome.

If you want to build a website and don’t have the budget for a web developer, nor do you want to be stuck with messy WordPress installs, Wix is a great choice for building your professional, business website.

There are hundreds of beautiful templates for you to choose from – and their robust customization tools allow you to create exactly the kind of website you want.

Not just that, Wix also has a booming marketplace full of apps (Wix’s version of plugins) which you can integrate with your website to add more functionality.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

To show you what Wix is capable of, and to inspire you to build your own business website, we’ve compiled a list of, what we think, at the top Wix websites.

And these websites aren’t being used for hobbies and personal blogs. No, people are running fully-fledged businesses on them.

The reason we’ve created this list is to show you that business websites don’t have to be generic and ugly. Instead, they can be beautiful, wacky, colorful and unique.

9. Two One Studio

Two One Studio is a graphic design/product creation company in Lisbon where they collaborate with artists and creatives to create high-quality designs and products.

Their website focuses on showing off their latest designs and clothing items. They do this by featuring high-quality images and applying the use of rich gallery templates to show off their portfolio. In addition to that, they also have an online store and complete checkout and payment functionality so customers can order items directly from their website.

The design of their website is fairly simple with a menu bar at the top all with links to their dedicated landing pages.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

8. Brown Owl Creative

This website belongs to another creative agency – called Brown Owl Creative. They are a web design agency in Essex who build beautiful websites and web experiences for their clients.

That’s why, naturally, their own website has to be beautiful as well – which it is! It’s based on a template which allows the agency to show off delightful, rich images of their work. What brings the website more alive is that the image thumbnails aren’t static, but are animated.

Navigation is easy thanks to the ever-present hovering menu bar that moves with you as you scroll. Plus the beautiful typography makes reading the website an absolute pleasure!

7. Chris Covert

Among business websites, you might be wondering why we’ve included a portfolio website on our list.

The answer is because not all people who run businesses have big teams and huge setups. Instead, for many people, their business is selling their skills. And Chris’ website does a marvelous job of doing that for him.

Another reason why this website deserves to be highlighted is that Chris used the power of Wix Code to add custom animations and effects to his website – utilizing the full power of his web development skills on Wix.

Visit his website and you’ll see exactly the limitless possibilities Wix is capable of.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

6. Cuts & Bruises Barbershop

So here it is – the first e-commerce website on our list. This website is special because it shows how different each website can be on Wix.

Here, Cuts and Bruises have created their website to reflect the personality of their barbershop, which is inspired by the music of hip-hop, metal, and grime.

Their website is chock-full of awesome functionality. Not only can visitors see awesome pictures of the barbers in action, they are also treated with delightful animations as they scroll.

On their main landing page, they have a ‘contact us’ form and an interactive map. Plus, the website offers the ability to buy their cosmetic products and book haircut appointments, which no doubt give them access to additional customers for their business.

5. Le Tigre Tents

Le Tigre Tents is an awesome circus and entertainment show full of talented performers.

Their website is a classic example of how you don’t have to conform to the design standards and rules of 99.99% websites out there.

The moment you land on their website, you’ll be transported to the 1950s. The vintage colors, beautifully written signboards, the moving gallery showcasing their show and performances – all make you wish you could experience their performance in person.

Their website features a simple landing page, a menu bar, share buttons and a contact form which let you get in touch with the people in charge.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

4. Chiles Mexican Grill

The first restaurant website on our list, Chiles Mexican Grill’s website also, like Le Tigre Tents, customized their website to give visitors a feel for their unique branding and style.

The whole website is themed in a beautiful yellow color, has a beautiful image slider which shows their many delicious and mouth-watering dishes and deals.

The website mostly consists of images – but at the bottom of the homepage, you’ll see a form where you can subscribe to their newsletter and an interactive map which you can use to get directions from your place to their restaurant.

3. Seven Grams Caffe

Another incredible website, Seven Grams Caffe doesn’t waste much time to show their tantalizing and incredibly tasty pastries and baked items.

Their website makes use of a restaurant template where images take place front and center.

At the bottom of the website, you’ll find a slider gallery showing their deserts in full glory, a testimonial section which shows different reviews from people and a locations section where you can click to get to a page with an interactive map.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

2. Bruno Barba

The most underrated feature of Wix is the ability to create beautiful stores. And Bruno Barba, a beard oil products website, shows just how amazing and functional e-commerce websites can be when created on Wix.

The website features beautiful typography and tons of pictures of handsome bearded men. The menu on the upper right-hand includes links to different pages of the website, including the shop, where customers can directly buy online. In addition, the website also has a shopping cart icon on the upper right corner where you can see the number of items you’ve added to your cart.

Overall, the website is fast, beautiful and a pleasure to use for any bearded/ non-bearded person alike!

1. Valeria Monis

Straight out of Russia, Valeria Monis makes beautiful, hand-painted ceramic plates and vases. Their website is extremely beautiful, minimalistic and a pleasure to browse.

Their website is fairly simple, with a hovering menu bar at the top that moves with you as you scroll. There are plenty of eye-catching pictures of their ceramics, which are subtly animated to move as you scroll. The website features rich typography that makes reading a pleasure.

In addition, the website features an online shop where you can purchase ceramics and make payments directly from within the website.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

Tips You Can Use To Make A Great Business Website As Well

The best Wix websites, as you can see from the above, have one thing in common. All are beautifully designed and easy to use.

This is important for you too if you wish to create a Wix website that gets you more customers and sales.

So, to make sure you also create an awesome website, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Make Navigation Easy:

Your website will have a lot of pages that lead to many areas. Your job is to make sure visitors find it easy to get to the page they want. For that, categorize different pages of your website into sections and add these sections to your menu bar. This is particularly important if you plan to create an e-commerce website with different products as it will allow visitors to easily explore and discover the various parts of your website.

Add Lots of Whitespace:

Don’t make your website crammed with text, images, and links. Make sure different elements of your website are evenly spaced and the room between elements. This makes sure people don’t get overwhelmed by your website and that they find everything easily.

Focus on Creating A Beautiful Layout:

Every website needs a different layout depending on the business you want to run. An e-commerce website is different from an education-focused blog, a portfolio, and services website is different from a restaurant blog etc. Luckily, Wix will provide you with a template that’s fully optimized for your business. Choosing a template means you won’t have to spend too much time on designing your website – and you have the freedom to customize the template any way you want.

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

Keep The Design Consistent:

Sure, there are a lot of beautiful color combinations and fonts you can use on different pages of your Wix website. But be careful to stick to just two-three fonts and a single color palette for your website. If different pages of your website have different fonts and coloring, users will get confused and you won’t be able to create a memorable design that’ll represent your business website.

Add Additional Functionality For Your Customers:

What makes Wix so amazing is that you don’t have to write a single line of code – yet add functionality that was previously reserved for big-budget websites. For example, if you offer services, you can add the Wix bookings plugin that lets your customers book an appointment with you online. Or if you’re a local store, you can add the interactive map widget to your website which visitors can use to instantly get directions to your shop. These features are mostly free and can be added to your website in minutes.

So there you go.

These tips, along with the 9 websites we listed above, are sure to give you a solid idea of how to get started building your website. So, sign up, choose a template and get started building your awesome website on Wix today!

Try Wix! It’s FREE!

How To Build A Landing Page for 5 Popular Ecommerce Tools

Most people are confused as to what a landing page is. That’s why, before we can learn how to build a landing page, let’s briefly define what a landing page is – and why it is used.

Here’s how Unbounce.com defines a landing page:

“… a landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for the purposes of a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” when they have clicked on a Google AdWords ad or similar.”

The purpose of a landing page, according to Unbounce.com, is to convince your visitors to take a single specific action of your choice, which is done by adding a CTA (call to action) button.

The Anatomy of A Well-Built Landing Page

No matter how many fancy software you use to build your landing page, you need to first learn how to create it. Ask any seasoned marketer and they’ll tell you that good writing is crucial to the success of any landing page.

Keeping this in mind, here’s are the top things your landing page should include to increase your chances for its success.

A Relevant, Persuasive Headline and Subheadline

Your headline should match your advertisement copy – and it should in one sentence, explain why your visitors should be interested in what you have to offer.

Benefit Driven Copy That Showcases Why People Should Buy What You’re Selling

Ensure that you write the benefits of what you’re selling, as that is more important than the features. For example, the feature of your product might be that it is 2 times faster. But the benefit of your product is that your users save 10 minutes of their time as a result of your product being faster. For more impact and greater visibility, list these benefits in bullet points nearer to the top of your landing page.

Testimonials To Increase Your Credibility

People don’t like be the first to try something new or untested. Similarly, they also don’t like to be left out of a good deal as well. If you could add testimonials from your previous customers, or positive reviews, it will go a long way to convince readers to act on your CTA.

GrooveHQ’s testimonial section includes one-sentence reviews of their product from acclaimed news sites.

GrooveHQ showing how many customers have bought their product is a great way to persuade new buyers.

A Pricing Section If You’re Selling A Product

If you’re selling a product or service, it’s important to justify the price. At the end of your landing page, create a table summarizing everything your potential customers will get when purchasing your product/service. In addition, also add a money-back guarantee or a free trial if possible to build more trust.

Pricing Table for Thrive Themes Paid Membership

Your Call To Action

70% of people will only read the top and bottom of your landing page copy. That’s why add your CTA button at the top and bottom of your landing page. But if your landing page is longer, you can add your CTA button on three to five areas.

A Call-To-Action Button on the KopywritingKourse sales page.

How To Build A Landing Page Using 5 Easy-To-Use Website Building Tools

Now that you know the basics of how to write a landing page, it’s time to learn how to build it using many of the incredible tools available online.

For this article, we’ve selected 4 of, which we think, are the best landing page building tools out there. They are:

1. Clickfunnels

2. Wix

3. Shopify

4. Instapage

5. Squarespace

All these tools are extremely powerful and have their own strengths and weaknesses, which we’ll discuss below.

How to Build a Landing Page: Instapage

If you need a simple, easy to use and fast solution to build your landing page, there’s no better choice to do that than in Instapage.

Here’s how to build a landing page on Instapage:

1. Choose A Template: Instapage offers hundreds of templates for any purpose imaginable. Landing page to collect emails? Check. Landing page to sell ebooks? Check. Landing page for a product launch? Webinar? Thank-You page? Check, check and check!

2. Edit The Landing Page: The Instapage Landing Page Builder is the place where you can edit the template you’ve chosen. Here, you can write your headlines and copy, add testimonials and images, and change the theme of your landing page template.

3. Publish Your Landing Page to A Domain: Instapage offers free hosting for your landing page, but for your visitors to be able to access it, you need to connect it to a domain (web address). To do that, simply click the publish button on the Instapage landing page builder tool. There, you can choose the way to connect your landing page to your domain. Options include connecting to your custom domain, your Facebook ad link, WordPress, Drupal and more.

Try Instapage free today!

How to Build a Landing Page: Shopify

If you are selling a huge collection of products, like clothes or mobile phone accessories, building landing pages for each product in your inventory is going to take a lot of time.

A better solution is Shopify. We love Shopify so much around here, we’ve created an entire post to help you do that, but here are some quick pointers to get you started.

Shopify lets you build a fully-fledged online store where every single item can have its own unique page.

To start, select one of the many themes available on Shopify. After you’ve chosen your theme, simply add the product(s) of your choice to your Shopify store and edit the product pages to include your own text and images.

A Shopify store with the product’s landing page showing images, features, color options and an ‘add to cart’ button.

However, if you want to go one step further and create a dedicated landing page for your Shopify store products, consider installing the Shogun Drag and Drop Page Builder Plugin to your store.

This will allow you to create landing pages separate from your Shopify website (yet integrated with it).

You can use the Shogun web builder to create a landing page complete with your product’s image, description and a checkout solution, which is perfect if you plan to run FB or Google Adwords ads for a specific product.

Try Shopify free for 14 days!

How to Build a Landing Page: Wix

Wix is another great tool you can use to build a landing page.

What makes Wix extra special is that not only can you build landing pages, you can build fully-fledged websites as well.

The process of making a landing page on Wix is fairly simple – and in many ways, just like Instapage.

To start, you choose a landing page template of your choice.

Once done, Wix will take you to their website editor tool where you can make any kind of changes you want.

And here’s where you’ll see why Wix is much more powerful than other landing page builders out there.

In the editor, you can not only add forms and a complete checkout solution, but you can also add interactive maps to show directions (if you’re advertising a physical location on your landing page), add bookings and appointments functionality and even add options for your customers to ‘pre-order’ your products.

Get Wix! It’s FREE!

How to Build a Landing Page: Clickfunnels

No article which shows how to build landing pages can do so without mentioning Clickfunnels.

Why?

Because even though all the above tools are awesome, none of them really are a complete solution like Clickfunnels is.

That’s because Clickfunnels already has pre-built sales funnels you can use to create your landing pages.

It’s simple. Here’s how you can create a beautiful landing page on ClickFunnels:

1. Choose Your Desired Template: Clickfunnels, like other landing page builders, has templates for selling anything imaginable, whether its ebooks or physical products or webinar tickets or just for collecting emails.

2. Do Some Branding: After you’ve chosen your template, just add your own copy and images. In fact, Clickfunnels lets you add any element such as picture, text, video etc to your landing page instantly.

3. Publish To A Domain: Clickfunnels includes hosting in their package. Simply just integrate your landing page with your domain (that you own) and that’s it. Your landing page is ready to go. Click here if you want step-by-step instructions on how to connect your Clickfunnels landing page to your domain.

Get Clickfunnels for free for 14 days!

How to Build a Landing Page: Squarespace

Creating a Squarespace landing page should not be as complicated as it initially seems.

So you want to create a custom landing page using Squarespace and are wondering how to go about it, step-by-step?

Not only can you build a beautiful website with Squarespace, you can also build your email list or boost sales with your own landing page on the platform. You can use a few Squarespace hacks to turn ordinary pages to stunning landing pages in the form of welcome mats, product-focused pages and thank you splash pages.

Creating great landing pages using Squarespace will save you time and money that you would have to spend on a third-party, dedicated landing page builder services like Instapage and Leadpages.

The cost of creating a landing page on Squarespace is factored into the monthly $18 subscription you shell out to use the platform’s website builder tools.

There are several ways to build custom Squarespace landing pages.

3 Ways to Create A Landing Page On Squarespace

Some of them are super simple and will not require you to show off your programming expertise—if you have any, which is great for the coding-averse.

Others will require a bit of coding. But it is only a few lines of code. The code will actually be already done for you, and all you have to do is copy-paste it to your forming landing page to make things happen your way.

Without further ado, here are ways to build a custom landing page using Squarespace.

Using a cover page

Squarespace allows you to create a simple and elegant landing page using the Cover Pages feature. Squarespace Cover Pages present one call to action in a bold and simple way.

No navigation links. No unnecessary content. No distractions. There’s only one button to encourage a visitor to complete one call to action. The ABCs of landing pages at their best.

Once you are logged in to your Squarespace account, you can find the feature tucked neatly in the admin area. Clicking on it will reveal several Squarespace landing page templates you can choose from.

So depending on your product, service, branding or messaging, you have options to choose what you think will work best. The Cover Page also allows you to add video in the background if you are wondering.

Of course, you can A/B test what works best for your primary goal, whether you want to capture email addresses or boost conversion for a sales drive you just kickstarted or plan to launch.

After creating your custom cover page, the next step is to add your email automation service link to that page.

If you are using ConvertKit and Zapier:

That’s pretty much it. You have a Squarespace landing page using Cover Pages.

Create A Custom Squarespace Landing Page Using A Normal Page

Cover Pages are good for creating simple landing pages but are quite limiting. You only get to display a single image with a single call to action button. Custom CSS does not apply in Cover Pages, either.

In fact, Squarespace throws up a disclaimer warning that adding custom CSS to a page might break its design. So you might want to be careful before using this hack.

But, what if you need to use more images and buttons on your landing page to bring that conversion to pass?

Then you’ll want to crank out a custom landing page in Squarespace.

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough for you by Roxy of City Girl Searching:

You can add a new page on your Squarespace website from the backend of your site by clicking on:

Pages > Not Linked > + > Cover Page

Now, as you’ll notice, a normal Squarespace page comes with a navigation bar. You’ll want to remove that to make it easier for your visitors to focus only on your primary call to action.

There is more to creating a landing page on Squarespace, but this will get you started.

What To Do After Your Landing Page is Up And Running

After building your landing page, you’ll need to look at your analytics to see how your page is performing.

If you can’t see a dashboard with analytics, most landing page software will allow you to integrate with Google Analytics. Look at the data in the analytics software and see how many sales and subscribers you’ve got.

Then, create different versions of your landing page with different heading, call-to-actions, and images and see if conversions (sales and subscribers) have improved.

If they do, make that variant of your landing page your new default landing page.

In addition, here are some other things to keep in mind about landing pages:

1. Have One Goal:

Your landing page should guide users to take only one action. It shouldn’t serve two purposes such as selling your ebook and subscribing to your blog. It’s a research-proven fact that landing pages with more than one CTAs confuse readers and result in low conversions.

2. Don’t Make it Your Homepage:

A landing page is different from your homepage, so don’t turn it into one. Sure, you can borrow parts of the copy but don’t add links to your website to your landing page.

Get yourself a decent landing page builder, like Shogun, which will not only allow you to create a solid landing page but also allows you to expand the landing pages that you love to new markets, to new stores, plus you’ll get the analytics you’ll need to grow.

3. Consider Hiring A Copywriter:

The words on your landing page are what get you sales. If your landing page is poorly worded or doesn’t make sense, you’ll get low conversions. To make sure that doesn’t happen, hire a copywriter who knows how to write persuasive copy and ask them to build your landing page. You’ll definitely get lots more sales and subscribers.

And that brings us to the end of this article.

We hope you get awesome conversions and tons of sales and subscribers when you build your own landing page software.

What are the landing page builders you going to use next? Let us know in the comments below!

You might also enjoy:

How to Make 5K More a Month Easy: Actual Expert Advice!

Making your first 5K isn’t that easy. It can take a lot of work to build your business to get into the black, but what about your next 5K and beyond. If you are not focused on making money in your business, what are you in it for? Here’s how to make 5K more a month easy (with tips from actual experts!).

“A business without revenue is just a hobby.”

If you want to make 5K, 10K and more, it starts with some strategic thinking. I reached out to several experts with the simple questions: How do you make your first 5K, or how to make an additional 5K per month in your company?

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but getting over those hurdles could mean more cash flow as you build systems that work. If you can make 5K, you make 500K — what are you waiting for?

Here are the 9 tips to make 5K per month:

1. Create a new promotion.

I believe in the value of ‘low-hanging fruit’ — most business owners seem to forget about the audience, clients, customers they’ve already built up. This first piece of advice, from James Pollard shows how easy it can be to ‘find’ an extra 5K by targeting the people who already love you.

“My name is James Pollard and I’m the owner of a marketing consultancy that works specifically with financial advisors over at TheAdvisorCoach.com.

If I had to make an additional $5K per month, I would discount my current offering and send a promotion out to my current list of prospects. Everyone loves a good discount, and if you attach a deadline to the promotion, it gives it the little extra boost it needs to get people to take action.

Another amazing strategy that I’ve used successfully is to send out a “thank you” letter to my current customers, upselling them. I’ve done this via email, but a handwritten note sent directly to them tends to work best.

This is also why it’s important to develop a marketing list – if you ever need “money on demand”, you can create it.”

2. Have no doubt. Make room for money in your life and business.

This next insight comes from someone who has been there. This tip is for anyone who needs to make a few bucks, regardless of what stage we are in business. Let’s face it. We all have to hustle and make shit happen from time to time.

“One of the biggest roadblocks for most people when it comes to making money or making more money is doubt—I’m not good enough, I’m not good at anything, etc.

But really, it’s not that hard. Meaning, getting started is not hard. Paralysis by analysis is real, and far too often we sit and stew to the point of taking no action at all. It’s brutal.

So, do or die, people need to:

1) Ask themselves what they’re good at (we are all at least decent at something).
2) And/or, ask themselves what they enjoy doing (many times, we don’t realize those things can be monetized).
3) Just do something. Somewhere. Anywhere. Find a low barrier/ low-risk opportunity and go.

Personal example:

I was looking for more ways to make money in grad school…I had a full-time job, but it wasn’t enough.

1) I thought I was a decent writer.
2) I enjoyed writing.

I then encountered the roadblock:

“I’m not a writer; I didn’t major in English; I’ve written class projects and a couple blog posts, that’s it.” = “I’m not good enough to get paid to write.”

But, I took the third step and just tried something. I looked to freelance job sites, started bidding on jobs, quickly found there were things I could do to set myself apart from other writers and the rest was history. I outline everything here but happy to provide more details if necessary.

Best of luck! Ryan, Learn more about Rent My Words.

3. Get your partners to sell you and share revenues.

I’m the CEO of Swurveys and my company has faced this exact situation in Q1 of 2018.

In reference to your query on making $5,000 per month at all costs as fast as you can, I can state that we faced this exact issue. My tips are actual items that we took to achieve that goal starting in February and carrying it through March and into April.

Focus on existing and past customers! Push the vast majority of energy to this goal— 80% or more. Go back to them and see if there is additional work you can do for them, if there are other use cases that can use, or if there are other departments that you can work with.

Set goals by everyone on your team towards the goal of revenue. This could be uncomfortable for some on your team, but if things are dire than “all-hands” have to get involved in revenue generation.

See if any of your customers can act as resellers or channel partners. One of our customers was an agency that has a number of clients that make good Swurveys customers and we created a revenue-sharing agreement to have them push to their customers.

I am always looking for other ways for us to generate more (and consistent) revenue. I’d love to see/hear what other scrappy entrepreneurs are doing to achieve this goal in a stressful time in their business.

Sincerely, Zachary Rozga, CEO, Swurveys

4. Narrow down your offering.

Find something in your field that is: 1. Really needed, 2. That you are really good at doing, 3. That is really niche. You can’t be everything to everyone.

As Sid below tells us, it’s important to niche down your offering. It could be the key to you hitting the big numbers. Think small, to think big.

“As a marketing consultant to SAAS companies and previously VP of Growth at Thinkific. I hit my 5k in my very first month, after I left my previous role to become an independent consultant, and have been growing ever since.

The key here is to identify one thing that you’re good at, like a service you can provide, and an audience that needs it. Too often, people try to be everything for everyone. I see folks who offer web design, development, SEO, and a host of other things all at once. They also try to appeal to software companies, eCommerce companies, and anyone who has money.

Instead, niche down. I focus specifically on strategy consulting for software companies. I say no to people asking for help with SEO. I say no to eCommerce companies. This way, I brand myself as the go to person in my niche for my specific service. So software companies are willing to pay top dollar to hire me, and they’ll mention me to other similar software companies.”

Cheers, Sid, www.sidbharath.com

5. Figure out the problem, then offer a solution.

Okay. This one might seem a little ‘on the nose’ but how many of us need a reminder that it really is this simple. Figure out a problem, then offer a solution.

If you want to make 5K a month, you don’t necessarily need 100 clients, or customers either. You just need 2 customers that are willing to spend 2.5K each, or one that is willing to spend 5K!

It’s not magic, it’s math. If you want, or need to make 5K, what valuable service can you offer? Target those who can afford your services and don’t settle for anything less than your worth.

“To make $5K/month quickly, I’d recommend using your 9-5 skills and finding high-ticket freelance or coaching clients, so you would only need 1 or 2 to hit the $5K mark. The key is to find those already make 7 or 8 figures a year so they can afford your services, and to position yourself as one who has the answer to problems they didn’t tell you or even were 100% aware they had.”

Stacy Caprio, Accelerated Growth Marketing

6. Need to make money right away? Consult.

While you are building your business or creating new revenue streams, how do you bridge that gap between almost broke and very successful? Those days, weeks, or even months can be rough. If you need to make money right away, there’s always a way.

One of the best ways any entrepreneur can start making money today is through consulting. You might not think you are an expert in anything someone would want to pay for, but if you’ve done something successfully in business, you can be sure someone else could learn from you.

Consulting can take all shapes and sizes. You can consult on almost anything included in a business. Usually, the more niche you get the better. Don’t just call yourself a ‘business consultant’, — yikes! Figure out the niche you can really help people in. Are you good at SEO, or social media strategy? Maybe you can help with pitch deck consulting? Or personal brand storytelling? There are a lot of business owners that need your specific type of help out there!

“Lend your brain to your customer.

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of hiding behind their marketing strategy when they could be having a real impact one-on-one.

Some call it coaching, some call it consulting.

It entails putting yourself in front of the business and selling time with you to help your customer achieve their goals.

These services can be charged at a premium of upwards of $800/month. 6 clients per month, one hour a week with each, will get you to $5K quickly.”

Ina Coveney, BS, MBA, Techie Business Expert, inacoveney.com

7. Diversify your revenue streams.

On top of consulting, you could create new products to sell. Think this is impossible? Well, not really. It’s not as overwhelming to create new products to sell in this digital age.

“My best advice for making $5k in a month would be to diversify your revenue streams. With the plethora of platforms available to creators today, there are multiple ways to do this. One I would suggest would be to create print collateral that aligns with your brand. This could be a lookbook, brand book, cookbook, workbook, journal, calendar, photobook, etc. It could even be a book about your brand story or philosophy. Creating multiple products and printed collateral can be a great way to increase revenue, drive sales, and establish yourself as an expert in your field.”

Chelsea Bennett, Public Relations and Events Coordinator for Lulu.com.

If you are interested in diversifying your revenue stream, services such as Lulu.com is a great way to start. It’s self-publishing print-on-demand platform that makes publishing easy and cost-effective. We have a substantial community of entrepreneurs who use our site to raise awareness, share knowledge, make money and gain credibility.

8. Create your own affiliate program.

One of the ways you can start to make 5K a month is by creating your own affiliate program for your services or products. Think about this. If you offered 30, 40, even 50% of your profits to someone else, just for bringing you solid leads, how fast can you get to your 5K?

Creating an affiliate program should be a no-brainer for all of you with products to sell. Without investing too much legwork into the setup, you can get others to share your products with their friends. Think of this as your ‘warm introduction’ + ‘marketing’ all rolled up into one.

When Sam Parr at The Hustle wanted to seriously ramp up his email list, he used what they called the Ambassador Program to do it, and it worked. Give people who already love your product a chance to get something back!

You can listen to our full interview with Sam Parr here:

9. Create your own seminar.

One of the quickest ways I know to make a few extra bucks a month for your company (and possibly build leads) is to create your own in-person seminar each month. I have seen these in-person training sessions help so many local businesses grow.

Think about who your ideal target audience is, what you could teach them, what would make a great seminar topic. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here people. Do some homework. What seminars have you attended in the past? Which ones are popular? Is there a topic that comes up over and over again?

Figure out something you can either teach or pull local experts in to teach. Any kind of business growth topics always does well. Marketing and social media are also big topics that could fill a room.

How do you make money holding a seminar?

Well, there are a few ways you can make that 5K (or more) just by creating a seminar.

The first way is to charge enough and offer a more in-depth learning seminar that people will pay for. Often companies offer incentives for their marketing teams to educate themselves, so don’t be afraid to try this option. Digital marketing, search marketing, content marketing are all still relatively new topics to cover, so companies will pay to train their employees on these sorts of topics.

Approach One: A Highly Valuable Workshop Seminar

If you go with this approach, you can charge 1000 a ticket or more. Make sure you share really valuable information, book a full day, and offer refreshments and a catered lunch. If you booked 10 people to come to one of these ‘highly valuable’ industry insights sessions, you could make 5K easily after expenses. Plus, you’ll be seen as more of an industry expert.

Approach Two: A Loss Leader Seminar

Another approach I’ve seen work quite well for local business owners is the ‘loss leader’ seminar option. Think about the kind of new clients you want to attract. Are you targeting small business owners? Let’s say, for this example that you are. What do small business owners need to learn about to support their business? Maybe how to write a business blog? Great. That would make a great ‘loss leader’ seminar.

Find a local space that isn’t too expensive, perhaps a local library? Make tickets something anyone can afford and sell out the room You might not make your 5K doing the event, but the leads you’ll get are invaluable.

This kind of approach can work for all kinds of companies. It’s all about your ability to upsell your product. Finding new clients can be tough, but once you’ve given them something of value, you’ll be the first ‘expert’ they reach out to.

Final Comments: Now, go out and make your 5K!

This is just a few ways to make your first, or an additional 5K. Sometimes, it can be hard to get over that ‘hump’ when it comes to positive revenue streams. We can devalue what we do so often that 5K often feels like 5 million!

And, really, that’s the point.

If you can master making 5K, you can master making 500K! It’s all about mindset.

Here at Change Creator, we want to help you get the business you want. We want to help you make more money and save the planet while doing it!

If you have any great money making tips, we’d love to hear them! Comment below!

You can also get some great insider tips in Change Creator magazine. We give you exclusive interviews with some of the leaders in business and social impact. Tips, strategies, insights you won’t find anywhere else.

My Full Leadpages Review: Is it Worth It?

What is Leadpages?

Leadpages is an online solution allowing you to capture email leads. With their excellent drag and drop builder, you can create effective landing pages. To get you started, Leadpages offers a wide range of templates to create a profitable funnel. I use it daily to keep my pipeline full of high-potential leads.

Leadpages has been a market leader since 2016 when they updated the page builder. Leadpages boasts a large library of landing page templates. Yet, they are not a static company. Leadpages is very responsive to customer requests. This led to some recent innovations and special features, such as:

Event countdown timers
Movable calls to action
Easier video or image insertion
More flexible page layouts

Although the platform is not perfect, they do listen to customers. This kind of responsiveness is rare, especially in larger companies. But, Leadpages seems committed to evolving with their customers. This allowed them to grow to over 60,000 paying customers and counting. You may be unhappy with the current performance of your landing pages. That may be because you are currently using a DIY solution or another platform. In either case, you may find this review helpful. Read on to find out whether Leadpages could be a good solution to increase the ROI of your marketing.

This review will explore both the positives and negatives of Leadpages. By the end, you will understand the most important features of Leadpages. You will also understand how it compares to other similar solutions on the market. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to make an independent buying decision. And answer the question, what is the best tool for improving your marketing?

Pros and Cons of Leadpages

Pros	Cons
100s of well-styled templates	$2,388 annually for phone support
Drag and drop page builder	Page builder can be sluggish
Flexible page layouts	No conversion rate optimization
Excellent email support	No heatmaps
Deep knowledge base	Lacking ad attribution features

Key Features

A/B testing
Change the published URL
Collaboration Solution
Drag & drop WYSIWYG editor
Edit landing pages any time
Email notifications
Form builder
Free subdomains
Heatmaps
Instant analytics & data
Lead-gen dashboard
Mobile responsive
Professional templates
Publish to multiple domains
SEO plugin
Social widgets
Support for video
Template Importer

Feature Spotlight

1. Customizable Templates

Certain features are crucial in a landing page platform. One of the most important is the ability to produce professional designs at scale. Leadpages allows you and your team to create conversion ready, branded templates. All this without needing to go through an entire wireframe process. These customizable templates reduce the time it takes to develop new landing pages.

2. An Easy-To-Use Builder

Page builders are always a tricky compromise on landing page platforms. On the one hand, we needed to have enough features to be useful. On the other, we don’t want to be so overwhelmed with functions that the builder is counterintuitive. The page builder that comes with Leadpages strikes the right balance. It allows you, and your team, to create high converting landing pages. A key benefit is the ability to add multimedia elements without needing a developer. If you want to create a page from scratch, then the Leadpages builder makes it easy.

3. Easy Publishing

With Leadpages, it is simple to publish a landing page on your website. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a content management system or not. If you are using a content management system then it integrates very well. Especially with the most popular platforms: WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal.

4. Impressive Analytics

Marketing teams don’t like to fly blind. Analytics allows us to understand how each landing page is performing. This data allows you to optimize paid advertising campaigns. This way, they become more profitable over time. Leadpages allows you to track key performance indicators. You can track visitor numbers, cost-per-lead, and conversion rates across your landing pages. This gives you a clear idea of where you can make improvements.

5. Reliable A/B Testing

To get the full benefit of analytics you need to be running A/B tests. Leadpages offers reliable tools for testing different versions of your landing page. This allows you, and your team, to scientifically figure out what is driving conversions.

A/B testing is one of the most effective methods for improving return on investment. This is why expert marketers use them to improve the efficacy of paid advertising. If you have any A/B testing experience, you know it involves statistical calculations. The math for figuring out whether your results are statistically significant is difficult. Yet, you need to ensure you have enough data to determine which version of your page is more successful. With Leadpages, you do not need a deep knowledge of statistics. Their A/B testing platform is easy to use without sacrificing accuracy.

6. Collaboration Tools

It takes a wide range of skills to put together a successful landing page:

User experience expertise,
search engine optimization,
copywriting,
and graphic design.

It’s very rare that all the skills reside in a single person. So, it is important for landing page platforms to have built-in collaboration features. This is especially true for creative teams. Leadpages allows you to invite team members to different landing page projects. This feature also allows you to control which accounts individuals have access to. This all makes collaboration easy and efficient. Especially when dealing with many people across multiple time zones.

Feature Summary

Leadpages provides search marketers with a diverse library of easily customizable templates. The page builder is easy to use. You can choose to customize an existing template or create a landing page from scratch. There is also a wide range of publishing options. You can publish through a content management system, Facebook, or CNAME.

The collaboration features make it very easy for teams to get together and setup A/B tests. Having these two features in the same place cuts down on a lot of arguments. This is because any disagreements can be subject to split-test.

This is all backed up by excellent customer support. Representatives are able to guide you through the various features of Leadpages. The support staff is also helpful for figuring out how to get the most out of the Leadpages’ powerful analytics. This insight will help you better understand the behavior of your users.

Leadpages vs. Alternatives

Leadpages

Unbounce

Drip

Landingi

Price

$69-229

$99-499

$0-99

$29-249

Trial

Yes, no CC

Yes, with CC

Yes, no CC

A/B Testing

✔

✘

✔

API

✔

✘

Automatic Notifications

✘

✔

CRM Integration

✔

✘

✔

Conversion Rate Optimization

✘

✔

✘

Conversion Tracking

✔

✘

Custom Branding

✔

✘

✔

Custom Templates

✔

✘

✔

Drag & Drop Interface

✔

Email Integration

✔

✘

✔

Email Notifications

✔

✘

✔

Landing Page Templates

✔

Monitoring

✘

✔

✘

Reporting & Statistics

✔

✘

✔

Testing Management

✘

✔

Integrations

ActiveCampaign
Acuity
AWeber
Calendly
Constant Contact
ConvertKit
Drip
Emma
Facebook Ads
GetResponse
Google AdWords
Google Analytics
GoToWebinar
HubSpot
iContact
Infusionsoft
Joomla
LinkedIn
MailChimp
Marketo
Ontraport
PayPal
Salesforce
Shopify
Squarespace
Stripe
Timetrade
Twitter
WebinarJam
Weebly
Wix
WordPress

Conclusion: Should You Buy Leadpages?

The success of your ad campaigns depends on your ability to create quality landing pages. Your long-term success depends on your ability to create these pages at scale. Choosing the correct platform allows you to do this with a better return on investment. Before selecting a landing page tool, you need to ensure the chosen tool has all the basic features. The features we have discussed in this review are the things that will contribute most to your ROI.

If you choose Leadpages, you can be confident that you are covering all your bases. Their customizable templates are already optimized for conversions. The excellent support infrastructure reduces the learning curve. This means it is not as steep compared to other platforms. I can say from personal experience that Leadpages has made marketing simpler.

Leadpages provides great variation in communicating with potential customers. It offers a broader set of tools for converting prospects into paying customers. It has done this by providing a centralized communication system. This improves the relationship between your business and individual customers. Allowing you to make quick independent decisions and clearly observe the results. This speed of testing is one of the greatest advantages of Leadpages. If you value speed and accuracy, this is for you.

article

How To Use Wix – The Ultimate Guide to Creating Stunning Websites

Before the arrival of website building tools, if you needed to design and develop your own website, you had three options available.

1. Learn Web Design & Web Development yourself

2. Hire an experienced web developer to build your website

3. Get a ‘pre-designed’ website on WordPress.

The problem with the first option is that you need lots of time to learn how to build a website. The problem with the second option is it costs a lot of money. The problem with the third option is you don’t have a lot of control about the design of your website.

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

Website builders solve these problems. The advantage of using a website builder like Wix is that:

You can build your own website by yourself without learning to code.
You don’t need a big budget to build your website.
You have full control and can make your website exactly the way you want it.

Why Use a Website Builder?

These three reasons are why website builders have taken off in popularity. Wix, the website builder we’re about to learn more about, has more than 110 million users.

In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to use Wix so you too, can build your own website as soon as today!

You’ll learn the different tools and options available, and how to navigate and make sense of the interface, which we admit, can be overwhelming at first sight.

Wix – A Short Review

Wix is a ‘visual’ website builder.

This means that In Wix, you don’t code to build your website. Instead, Wix has a drag-and-drop website editor where you can put elements of your website by clicking and dragging things onto the screen.

For example, if you need to add text, just add a text box to your website and type in some text. Then drag the text box wherever you want.

And just like that, you can add everything from images and videos to blog posts, drop down menus and more. Everything is added by dragging and dropping

This is basically how you build a website on Wix.

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

But do you know what’s the best part?

Designing and developing your website inside Wix is completely free.

Without paying a single penny, you can create unlimited pages for your website and use any of the features available to build and design your website.

However, hosting your website is not entirely free.

To start, Wix gives you:

Access to their 100+ templates
A free subdomain ending with ‘.wix.com’
500 mb storage for your website media
500 mb bandwidth for traffic
Ability to use all their tools to build your website

This gives you a solid foundation to get started. But if you are serious about creating a website, you’ll need to subscribe to one of their monthly premium plans – most of which are less than the price of a Starbucks coffee.

Know that all premium plans include free hosting, the ability to connect to a dedicated domain name, 500+ mb of storage and 1+ GB bandwidth. Plus, with the unlimited and ecommerce plan, you get the form builder app and site booster app, both which are awesome tools for your website.

And that’s all you need to know as to what Wix is.

Now let’s get to the part you actually came for: how to use Wix to build your website.

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

How To Use Wix: Getting Started

Before you can use Wix, you need to sign up and create an account. To go to the signup page, click here

There are two ways to sign up on Wix.

The first (and easiest) way is to simply continue with either Facebook or Google. Doing so will log you in without having to fill any signup form.

The other way is to click on the ‘sign up’ button under Log In and fill in the signup form.

Once you’re in, Wix will ask you a few questions regarding what kind of website you want.

It takes less than a minute to answer. But if you don’t want to, you can skip ahead.

Based on your answers, you’ll see two main options to build your website.

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

a) Let Wix ADI create a website for you: With Wix ADI, you don’t really have to build a website. You just answer a few questions and Wix will build your website for you. After that, it’s just a matter of adding your own text, images and videos and customizing the style, fonts and animations. It’s the fastest and easiest way to build your website.

b) Build your own website in the Wix editor: The Wix editor is the drag-and-drop tool with which you can build your website from scratch. You just have to choose a pre-designed (or blank) template and then customize it however you like with the editor to build your website. Yes, it takes more time but it’s more fun as well.

How To Use Wix: How To Create Your Website With The Wix ADI

If your answers after the sign up suggest you’re inexperienced at building websites, you’ll see the following screen:

Wix will recommend you to create your website with the ‘Wix ADI’. But if you want, you can build your website with the Wix drag-and-drop editor (which we’ll discuss below) by clicking the option on the right side of the screen called ‘Choose a Template’. Feel free to skip to that section if you want.

For now, let’s see how you can build your website with Wix ADI – or rather, how Wix ADI can build it for you!

After you click the ‘Start Now’ button, you’ll be greeted with this screen:

The questions are fairly straightforward:

1. First, Wix will ask you what kind of website you want. Since I told Wix I wanted to build a blog website at the start, it’s giving me suggestions of different blogs I might want to create.

2. Next, Wix will ask you whether you’re going to sell, have subscribers or take bookings or appointments on your website. Check the desired options.

3. Then enter the name of your website.

4. Next, enter the location of your business (if you have a physical address). Otherwise just skip this step.

5. Finally, you’ll see a form where you’ll have to enter details such as your logo, links to your social networks, address, numbers and more. Just enter the details you want and click next.

That’s it.

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

After you answer these questions, Wix ADI will show you different designs you can choose for your website. Once you choose, the ADI will automatically create your website for you.

You will see that you don’t actually have to build a website – rather, the website has already been constructed and you just have to edit it to make it your own.

Once you’re inside the Wix ADI, this short 3 min video will clearly explain how you can customize your website using the Wix ADI:

How To Use Wix: How To Build Your Website Using The Wix Website Editor

If you’ve chosen to build your website with the Wix editor, you’ll see this screen:

Here, you can choose any template you want for your website. If you don’t have experience designing a website, it’s recommended you select a template.

Take your time to explore the templates. There are lots of them!

And if there’s any part of the template you don’t like, you can always change it.

But if you want to completely design your website from scratch, you can choose a blank template from the list of templates on the left-hand column.

Will give you a blank slate to start from to build your website.

Choosing a template will open up the Wix editor in a separate tab.

To make sure you can easily understand the editor, we’ve divided it into five parts:

1. The Header: This is where you can navigate the menu of Wix’s editor. Here you can choose what page of your site you want to edit, explore the menu options such as ‘Site’, ‘Tools’ and ‘Upgrade’, undo and redo your edits, switch to the mobile version of the site, and print, preview and publish your website.

2. The Site Structure Column: On the left-side of the screen, you’ll find a column that lists the hierarchy of your website. This is an easy way to see what page of your website is located where. If you’re an experienced web developer, here you can also add .js files, web modules and your own Wix media files located in the database cloud.

3. The Hover Menu: This is where the magic happens. If you want to add something to your website, you do it from here. It’s divided into six sections:

Menu & Pages: This is where you control the menu of your site and what pages goes under which menu. You can also change the animation of your pages.
Background: If you want to change the background of your pages, you can do that here. Simple choose an image, video or color of your choice. Or upload your own!
Add: This is the most important menu. Everything that can be added to your website is added from here. Images, text, blog posts, gallery, about me sections, testimonials, sliders, APIs and more!
Add Apps: This is Wix’s version of plugins. If you want to enhance the functionality of your website, you need to add apps like ‘site search’ which let your visitors search your website, ‘form builders’ which let you create forms your users can fill and ‘visitor analyzer’ which tracks how users are engaging with your website. Explore and choose the app you want!
My Uploads: If you’d like to upload your own media to your site, this is where you can do it.
My Blogs: There’s a great chance you’ll be adding a blog to your website. This is where you can write new posts and add blog posts to your website.

4. The Toolbar: Any element you add to your page, this is where you can interact with it. It gives you options to copy, cut and duplicate elements. Moreover, you can also change the size, position and orientation.

5. Wix Code: Wix code lets you add more functionality to your website. Using this console, you can write your own Javascript code or add APIs. This short, two-minute video will better explain what Wix code can do.

Final Thoughts

Till now, Wix is the most impressive website builder we’ve found. Sure, there are others as well that may be just as powerful.

But what makes Wix so different is the highly active developer community behind it.

When you use a website builder, you run into problems. But since Wix has such a big community, you’ll surely find solutions all over the internet. Moreover, Wix also offers additional services as well such as domain registration, SEO analysis, logo creator and more- but that’s another topic for another article.

For now, head over to Wix.com and create your free account to build your very first website.

Hopefully, you’ll have a lot of fun exploring and building on Wix just like we did!

Sign up for Wix now! It’s FREE!

Gary Vaynerchuk Advice: How to Win, Right Now in Business

Gary Vaynerchuk continues to storm stages around the world not just building his personal brand but to impact people’s lives by helping them understand the incredible time they live in right now.

Change Creator has said it before and I’m going to say it again now, there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur…if you’re willing to go all-in.

In this one hour video, Vaynerchuk passionately shares his insights around two key components for success:

Mindset
Facebook & Instagram

The Essential Foundation

While he hates to talk about the nontangible mindset factor he makes it clear that it is the essential foundation for long-term success.

“Too many of you are about to take fucking notes right now and think it’s about a Facebook ad, but if your foundation isn’t right you have no shot at long-term success.” ~Gary Vaynerchuk

He explains that so many people are in the “excuse business.” I could not agree more and it’s a huge challenge for people.

It reminds me of an interview I did with the founder of Addicted 2 Success, Joel Brown, I brought this very topic up to hear his perspective.

At the time I had many conversations with people who told me they wanted to start a business of their dreams or make a change they desire in their life but said the didn’t have time because they are busy with family, kids, whatever it was.

I asked Joel if those life situations were reasonable or excuses.

His answer was:

‘Unfortunately, those people are making excuses and the sad truth is not that they don’t have time, it’s that they aren’t willing to make the time.” ~Joel Brown

The hard truth Vaynerchuk shares is bold, honest and unfortunately, spot on – a lot of things can happen in life but the world just doesn’t give a shit.

So what has worked for Gary?

Well, simply put he states what worked for him is – optimism, gratitude and overall, a positive mindset.

Black and White

From Vaynerchuck’s perspective, life is black or white – you can be on the offense or the defense.

It’s a really simple way of putting it but sometimes keeping things simple is the best way to put it. You can walk through life creating reasons “why not” or you can walk through life creating reason “why yes.”

Sounds simple, right?

These perspectives are easy to understand but most will not consciously put in the effort to shift their thinking.

The problem is that you are deeply conditioned through all the years of your life. They way you think now is not something you just flip the switch on and change. You have to work hard at it.

The optimistic outlook he talks about is important and fundamental to long-term success because it will shape how you make decisions and the results you get.

We talk about this in a recent article we shared, “4 Tips to Get Out of Your Own Way And Create Next Level Success.”

Most of what Vaynerchuk has shared in 2017 was based on a USA perspective but during this talk, he shares fresh insights. While everyone tends to lean their marketing towards the USA as the biggest market he has found that Australia and New Zealand have a market with a 20%-40% higher consumption rate.

Don’t Judge

Nobody wants the new technology to come along and change everything we know. A lot of people hate change. I’m sure you have heard a member of an older generation say things about how it used to be or that kids today have lost the ability to connect in person.

Vaynerchuk makes the point that you can sit around and judge kids for being on the phone and not connecting the way people used to but at the end of the day, nobody cares. If you don’t adjust you will be totally left behind.

New Reality

The world is being lived through the smartphone today and that is the reality.

Years ago it was newspapers, Tv, and radio. Today its blogs, video, and podcasts. It’s the same idea but people are putting their attention in a different place.

Anything you want to do in life today as an entrepreneur requires a person’s attention – written word, audio, video. You must figure out where the people you want to share it with are and then you have to share the content.

We have all heard the hype of video. So does that mean you should become a video master? Not necessarily.

Vaynerchuk stresses that you have to be self-aware, who are you and what are you good at? Do what you’re good at!

Facebook & Instagram

Facebook and Instagram have massive audiences and the ad product is deeply underpriced right now. But it won’t be forever.

Vaynerchuk states that if you do not spend 2018 obsessing over how to succeed on Facebook and Instagram you will lose.

When Vaynerchuk was building his father’s liquor store google AdWords came out he has one big regret that offers a powerful inight. He bought every wine term for five cents a click and was getting customers for 40 to 80 cents which was worth $10-$15 to him. A huge win! But his regret was that he built his father’s company to a $60 million company but feels if he was smart he would be built it to a $250 million company. Why? He goes on to explain, at that time if he was smart he should have taken all his energy and money out of print, radio, and direct marketing and gone all in with AdWords.

From 2002-2008 guess who did go all in on that platform? Amazon!

Another great example he explains is the company called, Wish. A few years ago a few former Google engineers started the company and all they did was run Facebook ads. They were the biggest Facebook advertisers for the last five years and have exploded!

shopping app called wish – biggest facebook advertising in last five years

Nothing Lasts Forever

It’s important to understand that this opportunity could turn into a regret if you don’t take action because it will not last forever.

He estimates that you have about another 12-18 months before change happens. The biggest companies in the world are not spending enough money on these platforms. However, Vaynerchuk explains, once big brands like Mercedez Benz, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola get their act together moves their budget from old traditional marketing over to Facebook, you will no longer be able to spend $4 on a CPM (cost per thousand). It will become $86 for a CPM.

Facebook and Instagram are marketplaces. If you want to promote in their feeds you have to pay to play.

At the same time, as years go by people will get so tired of seeing ad that it will be hard and harder to get them to click and that will jack the price too.

This is a micro-moment – it will pass – you can act on it or look back later with regret.

While Vaynerchuk believes if you’re not spending 65% of your cash on Facebook and Instagram you’re leaving money on the table but he makes a few key points as to back that up with three key points before people go ham on these platforms:

The creative and copy matter – if they suck you will lose
Start with small budgets, test the creative and copy and then invest more on the winners.
You have to be the practitioner to be successful – learn it yourself, don’t pass the work off to someone esle.
Context is key – make your ad relevant such as localization – speak to specific people

It’s a science my friends, and you have to run tests.

Final Thoughts

Vaynerchuk shares a lot in this video and we tackle some of the key points here.

Being a successful entrepreneur is a skill set. You need to get yourself in the right place mentally and it takes a lot of work. Not just work, but smart work.

As we always say, the number of hours you work doesn’t matter as much as the quality of those hours.

Knowing what to do is far different than taking action and executing.

You might also enjoy:

article video

Instapage Review: Does This Landing Page Tool Live Up to The Hype?

What is Instapage?

Instapage is an online tool that helps you quickly create and launch landing pages. They focus on what happens after a user clicks one of your paid adverts. It’s also great at helping you track conversion rates on paid advertising campaigns. In the past, building landing pages used to be expensive. Good-looking mobile responsive landing pages were especially difficult.

The page builder that Instapage provides makes it easy to create landing pages. Especially when you have no coding skill. You can choose from 200+ landing pages organized by type. This allows you to easily create and test landing pages for a wide range of marketing campaigns.

Pros and Cons of Instapage

Pros	Cons
Drag and drop landing page builder	Slow support response
Instablocks	Occasionally buggy
Excellent A/B Testing	Limited integrations
Advanced attribution tracking	Expensive for full features
Effective real-time collaboration tools	Counterintuitive menu options
Great for beginners	Lacking in customization options

Key Features

A/B testing
Change the published URL
Collaboration Solution
Drag & drop WYSIWYG editor
Edit landing pages any time
Email notifications
Form builder
Free subdomains
Heatmaps
Instant analytics & data
Lead-gen dashboard
Mobile responsive
Professional templates
Publish to multiple domains
SEO plugin
Social widgets
Support for video
Instapage Template Importer

Feature Spotlight

1. Massive Template Library

You can choose from over 200 customizable templates. Each of these has been optimized for conversions. I was especially impressed with the range of templates on offer. You may need a page for lead generation, webinars, or an event registration. Regardless, you will find something that looks great and converts reliably. Another excellent benefit is the ability to import your own landing page templates. For instance, I love the selection of themes at ThemeForest. And the import feature allows me to upload premium themes to modify later on.

2. Instablocks

This is the unique way Instapage allows you to build landing pages at scale. This is important if you are advertising on a pay per click basis. PPC platforms offer discounted rates for more relevant ads. This takes into account both the ad wording and the content of the landing page. The higher your ad-keyword-landing page relevancy, the cheaper your cost per click.

Instablocks allows you to create landing page building bricks. These bricks can be used to construct a large number of landing pages in a short time. This allows you to create high-relevance landing pages at the same rate as you are creating ads. This also reduces the time it takes to set up a series of A/B tests.

I tested this feature with a brand-new campaign that required me to test 62 unique adverts. Running a test like this used to take a couple of weeks. Instead, I was able to create landing pages for each ad in a single afternoon. I was able to create custom building blocks for my campaign and save them for later, so I saved a lot of time not having to duplicate my work. This freed me up to create more unique variations. This, in turn, led to counterintuitive but profitable results.

3. Advertising Attribution

This is my favorite Instapage feature. When you spend serious money on AdWords there are lots of clicks flying around. Many campaigns, multiple ads, thousands of keywords. Which are profitable and where is the waste? It used to take a data analyst to figure all this out. I found that as my campaign scaled, this became prohibitively expensive. And it’s not as though the analysts never made mistakes.

So I love the advertising attribution solution. It had an immediate positive effect on the return on investment of the campaign I tested it with. More importantly, the results scale to all my pay per click activity. The Wanamaker conundrum is finally solved. I previously knew I was wasting half of my advertising money. And now I have a clear idea of where the waste was occurring.

Up to this point, the main difficulty has been tracking campaign performance. This has been especially difficult at different stages of the funnel. It has been tough to attribute conversions and revenue to specific keywords. How does one connect revenue to specific campaigns and individual ad costs?

It has been tough to track this automatically, and doing it manually gets expensive at scale. This happens because the middle of the funnel represents something of a black box. So much can happen between an ad being clicked and a completed sale. It is difficult to find a system that will keep track of everything that happens between the click and the sale.

Instapage’s advertising attribution solution offered me a newfound perspective. I now have a better idea of what is happening in the black box that represents the middle of the funnel. This is the only solution that gave me reliable data on both cost per visitor and cost per lead. Not just for paid ads, but for organic traffic as well.

4. Global Blocks

This is the key time-saving feature of Instapage. It is fairly new so I’ve not been using it very long, but it is a game changer. This feature allows you to manage all your landing pages instantly. This will save you a ton of time if you manage hundreds of landing pages across many campaigns. When managing so many pages, you will often need to make updates to specific parts of multiple pages. I can say from personal experience this can be a major pain.

For example, back in January, I faced the dull task of updating the copyright date at the bottom of my landing pages. It is a minor detail but needed to be done. This is both mind-numbing and time-consuming to do manually. Using global blocks allows you to create an editable block to be used across all landing pages. It doesn’t matter if you are working with five or 5,000. Imagine making these updates one by one? Instead, you can make changes in a single block and publish them to all your pages with a click.

The second, more profit-focused, use for global blocks is templating “champion” elements. Let’s say you’ve been testing 63 different calls to action. After extensive testing, you find a call to action block that outperforms all the rest. You can now publish that element to all your landing pages with a single click. This gives all your pages an instant conversion boost.

Take a look at Instapage’s different plans from the core plan to the Enterprise or Premium plan:

Alternatives to Try

Instapage

Unbounce

Drip

Landingi

Price

Instapage’s pricing range is $69-229

Unbounce pricing range is $99-499

Drip pricing range is $0-99

Landingi pricing range is $29-249

Trial

Yes, no CC

Yes, with CC

Yes, no CC

A/B Testing

✔

✘

✔

API

✔

✘

Automatic Notifications

✔

✘

✔

CRM Integration

✔

✘

✔

Conversion Rate Optimization

✔

✘

Conversion Tracking

✔

✘

Custom Branding

✔

✘

✔

Custom Templates

✔

✘

✔

Drag & Drop Interface

✔

Email Integration

✘

✔

Email Notifications

✘

✔

Landing Page Templates

✔

Monitoring

✔

✘

Reporting & Statistics

✔

✘

✔

Testing Management

✘

✔

Integrations

Drupal
Facebook
Google AdWords
Google Analytics
HubSpot
LinkedIn
MailChimp
Marketo
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Shopify
WordPress
Zapier
ConvertKit

Conclusion: Is Instapage Worth It?

Instapage is a powerful landing page software. Its power is enhanced by a few key features:

Advanced A/B testing functionality,
a diverse integrations ecosystem,
and seamless collaboration features.

This is a flexible landing page system with layered functionality. Instapage allows both solopreneurs and large marketing teams to execute successful marketing campaigns.

One of the first things you will notice about Instapage is that it is fully customizable. As you continue to use it, you will learn it is also scalable. I can recommend this landing page solution. It’s one of my top sales funnels software programs out there too.

When compared to other solutions, such as Unbounce, it is far more flexible. If you are managing a team of people with differing opinions about how the marketing campaign should be conducted then Instapage can settle a lot of arguments with its testing and collaboration features.

Instapage provides a lot of features that increase the accountability of team members. This is mainly due to its finest feature, the advertising attribution solution. Using attribution, you can tie specific results to the work of specific people or teams of people. This greater accountability produces more effective marketing campaigns. It also improves the productivity of the teams you manage over the long run.

Instapage offers the ability to optimize the comparative advantage of different team members. It also allows you to reward them for their marginal contribution. Combined, these are the two greatest benefits that make Instapage highly recommended. This becomes truer as your team grows.

article

Activecampaign vs Hubspot: Make a Smart CRM Choice Today!

Are you planning to start using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system? In the very basic sense, a CRM manages all strategies and activities used to interact with customers. CRM helps in building and maintaining customer relations. This, in turn, creates loyalty and increases retention.

While a CRM can do wonders for your business, it’s not easy to select the right product. Just search online and you’ll find dozens of good CRM solutions. There are hundreds of options and it’s easy to be confused.

Let us make things easier for you. We’ll select the two top two options: ActiveCampaign and Hubspot, and compare them both. This way, you’ll get a better understanding of which option does what. And you’ll be able to make an informed decision.

Let’s begin.

What is Hubspot?

Started in 2006, Hubspot began with the observation that businesses do not quickly adapt to the changing requirements of their clients. To bridge this gap, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah invented Hubspot.

Hubspot is user-friendly, feature-rich, powerful, and helps users get relevant and personalized results. The aim of Hubspot is to transform the businesses and make the industry more inbound.

What is ActiveCampaign?

In the world of CRM, ActiveCampaign is the most user-friendly marketing platform that’s designed with small and mid-level businesses in mind. If you want to create eye-catching campaigns and attractive marketing strategies, this platform can be the best for you.

From alluring email marketing drives to customer retention to many other aspects, ActiveCampaign can do it all. In particular, the visual campaign creator is very useful in making targeted email campaigns. The ads are based on customized user interactions. The software also records all interactions and assists in closing deals.

In addition, the software can also integrate more than 700 services and applications. These range from accountancy to content management system to every other aspect of marketing and business optimization.

How much do they cost?

Hubspot offers a number of pricing schemes depending.

The lowest version of Hubspot is free to use. However, the Hubspot Marketing Suite offers three distinct modes. These are based on different needs such as the scale of operations and other aspects. You can also try it for free in the beginning.

ActiveCampaign has 4 paid modules. Setup is free but it costs money to go above a set number of contacts.

HUBSPOT PRICING

ACTIVECAMPAIGN PRICING

Basic – $200/month (Billed Yearly)

Email Marketing
Social Media
Content Marketing
Analytics
100 Contacts + $100 per 1k extra

Lite Module – $15/mo (monthly) or $9/mo (yearly)

Limitless sending
Email Marketing
Newsletter Mailing
Max 3 Users
Chat & Email Support

Pro – $800/month (Billed Yearly)

Salesforce Integration
Smart Content
Marketing Automation
1,000 Contacts + $50 per 1k extra
All Features of Basic

Plus Module – $70/mo (monthly) or $55/mo (yearly)

In addition to all features of Lite plan, this one has:

Max 25 Users
CRM and Sales Automation
SMS Marketing
Deep Data Integrations
Custom User Permissions, Branding and Domain
Unlimited Sending
Contact & Lead Scoring
One on One Training

Enterprise – $2,400/month (Billed Yearly)

Predictive Lead Scoring
A/B Testing
Advanced Reporting
10,000 Contacts + 10 per 1k extra
All Features of Pro

Professional Module – $159/mo (monthly) or $129/mo (yearly)

In addition to features of Plus Module, it offers:

Max 50 Users
Limitless Sending
Site Messaging
Attribution

In addition to the above, Hubspot also offers a Sale’s Basic module. This free version is useful but does not have as many features as the Pro version. Here is the list:

HubSpot Sales Basics – Free

Restricted Calling and Documentation along with restricted email tracking and templates
Email notifications and scheduling
Integrated Outlook and Gmail
HubSpot CRM integration & API

HubSpot Sales Pro – $50/user/month

Sequencing
Prospecting
Metting
Everything in the Free version

Enterprise Module– $279/mo (monthly) or $229/mo (yearly)

In addition to features of Professional Module, this offers:

In-depth Onboarding
Uptime SLA
Free Social Data and Design Services
Limitless Sending and Users
Customized Mailserver Domain
Dedicated Account Rep

You can also get an add-on for all features for a one-time cost of $200.

The Best Features of Both

Email Automation

Both platforms offer very similar services in this area which include excellent and customizable email templates. However, ActiveCampaign does offer some better features than Hubspot. For example, you can leave notes under relevant automation series as well as ‘yes or no’ automation considerations.

Blogging Integration

In this area, Hubspot is the clear winner because it facilitates direct blogging from its website. Thus, it enables SEO and marketing to be directly integrated into the blogs.

Campaign Reporting

Once more, Hubspot offers better features here by generating social network source reports within 10 seconds. ActiveCampaign instead offers setting up website analytics and free conversion tracking through Google Analytics which makes the process slower.

Social Media

For 3^rd party app integration, both the platforms offer excellent integration features.

Also, in social media management, Hubspot wins because of its range of 0features like report generation, post scheduling, engagement monitoring etc. You can also create and upload a post spreadsheet which Hubspot will then use to automatically schedule posts. However, you must follow their template for this to happen.

Comparison Table: Hubspot vs Activecampaign

Software	Hubspot	ActiveCampaign
Audience	Best for small businesses	Best for small to mid-level businesses
Pros	Easy to use able to grow with this software Extensive insights into online marketing on its blog	Easy to automate Free to install Customize assistance
Cons	Only yearly subscriptions available Scaling is expensive Prompt tech support is costly	Few Interface customization facilities Can’t design a landing page Despite the attractive automation tool email builder and CRM are lacking
Highlights	Bulk social media posting Bi-directional CRM syncing Create invoices Lead segmentation and scoring Web activity tracking Mobile app Personalize web content Sales reports Social CRM Event management Real-time sales alerts Predictive analytics Split testing SMS marketing	Lead segmentation and scoring Social CRM Web activity tracking SMS marketing Personalize web content Lead segmentation and scoring Web activity tracking SMS marketing Personalized web content Create invoices Create membership sites Bulk social media posting Sales report Split testing Bi-direction CRM syncing Event management

On the whole, both Hubspot and ActiveCampaign are great options for CRM. While Hubspot is certainly more diverse, it is also considerably more expensive. So, the question boils down to how much of an investment you are willing to make in your marketing campaigns.

Conclusion: Which Should You Choose?

Analogically, you could say that the difference between them is the same as that between a digital and atomic clock. While ActiveCampaign, the digital clock, offers relatively accurate reading, it cannot match up to Hubspot, the atomic clock.

Normally, you should consider going for ActiveCampaign when just starting out your business. During this time, it is unlikely that you will have more than the basic threshold for contacts in the app. Also, ActiveCampaign is much easier to use and gets the job done with minimum fuss. So, it is a good place to start. If you have lesser than 3,000 web traffic per month, then ActiveCampaign is great for you.

However, as your business grows, you will come to feel that ActiveCampaign is just not cutting it after a while. In that case, it is probably time to switch over to HubSpot. By now, you must have your revenue streams sorted as well. So, it should not cost you a lot to operate the software effectively.

ActiveCampaign is great for starting. It handles central issues like email marketing and CRM easily. You can just use WordPress to make up for its lack of blogging options. Do the same with Google Analytics and Buffer. Nevertheless, Hubspot’s impressive functionalities will make you want to try it at least once.

So consider all the aspects, choose wisely and get the best out of your CRM.

My final top pick: Hubspot — If you want to grow your company, you need to invest in the right tools. I believe that Hubspot is an excellent CRM that you will love. Why not try a free 30-day trial today to find out for yourself?

article