Branding in Business: 4 Tips to Implement a Brand to Your Online Business

Here are 4 tips that you can implement into your online business when you start setting up your brand.

1. Define Your Brand

   Even in an online business, a brand is very important. I am sure that some of you have heard about "The Rich Jerk." This was a classic example of a brand. The Rich Jerk was a digital product of an affiliate marketer that was literally a "rich jerk." The Rich Jerk made more money than you because most people were cowards, and never took action. The sales copy was hilarious, but it worked! The Rich Jerk product went on to make a lot of money and did it because of having a solid brand. It was controversial, amusing, and effective! For your online business, what does your brand say about you? Are you the "newbie" up and comer? Or the seasoned expert that helps those looking to elevate their sales? Or are you focused on helping retirees make a secondary income? All these questions will help design your brand.



2. Trust-building Relationships

   One of the ways that you can implement branding in your online business is to establish a culture of trust very early on. Focus on giving your customers the trust in you to help them with whatever you are providing. Always follow through on your promises, and do not make promises that you know you cannot keep. As your trust grows with your clients, this can become part of your brand. For instance, you can always use true testimonials as part of your branding. This will help create that level of trust in your relationships.



3. Never Underestimate Innovation

   In an ever-changing world of business, keep in mind that innovation can take you a long way. Just try to maintain consistency with your existing brand while making changes on the fly. No one is going to believe you if you totally flip the script overnight with your messaging.



4. Actually Doing It… Branding that is.

   In the respect of sticking to the topic at hand, make sure that you are actually using your branding once it's been established. And you should be branding everything you own or publish. Many successful online marketers implement injections of their brand during every sales pitch, page, or video that they put out there. It might be something as simple as reiterating their story from rags to riches, or some sort of story that is intertwined into the branding message. Keep up on your branding strategy and monitor that it is being implemented in each thing that you do. This is especially true if you are having proven results. You don't want to take a step backwards because you started leaving out the details that got you to where you are today

Matt Lloyd - How to Reduce Bounce Rates on Your Website

online business education

So what is bounce rate and why is it important? Well, it is not as important as you might think in many circumstances. And depending on your site, you may not need to worry about it at all…

So What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people that leave your site without clicking links and navigating through to other pages.

If your site has a low bounce rate, it is considered "sticky." Because, well, people are inclined to stick there awhile and check the place out. And many SEO experts know this to be true. However, that is not the entire story.

First of all, you can use Google Analytics to calculate how sticky your site is, but that is not going to be the entire story. You see, Google does a lot of things under wraps, and if it's algorithm was divulged right in their analytics, many would have figured it out by now.

A website's stickiness really comes down to one thing: visitor engagement. Does your site serve its suggested purpose? For example, if your site states that it is designed to help basketball players jump higher, and you are trying to sell them ballet shoes, people are going to obviously "bounce" rather quickly and leave your site.

However, if your site has tons of information on it regarding helping people with their jumping ability, along with other closely related topics to either jump training or basketball, people will tend to stay awhile and click through to other pages.

Now that's sticky!

When Bounce Rate Does Not Matter

Remember, at the end of the day…

Every Website Should Have a Purpose. So, here comes the marketing tie-in. For the purposes of marketing, here is where I see many businesses fail. And by fail I mean they spend lots of money making the website companies rich but their websites pretty much are crap for what they were designed for.

"Oh, but they LOOK pretty," you say. Sure they do. But are they getting results?

What I mean by this is, let's say you have an opt-in page or landing page to capture website visitors. By definition, this type of page is going to have a high bounce rate. Because, well, people are either going to opt-in, or "bounce." And if they opt in, you have the potential of a long-term customer that may buy from you for years!

However, just because the bounce rate is high, does NOT mean that the page is not serving its purpose, or that it is not a sufficient page!

In addition, once you have your mailing list, you can then direct your list suscribers to a sales page (for example) where you might actually have a much lower bounce rate. Now that your list knows who you are, and trusts you, they are more inclined to stick around on your site and see what you have to say.

Or maybe you want to direct them to your blog where your bounce rate is important.

When Bounce Rate is Important

So, continuing on with our example, you get a list of subscribers, and you want to re-direct them to your blog.

One thing that will help you visitors stick around, is to have your site formatted so that it is clear, and easy to understand how to get around. Properly formatted text, engaging copy and pictures, and avoiding basic design flaws will all help make your audience stick around.

A Sticky Blog

The benefits of having a sticky blog will help you pull traffic from other sources. As long as you are following the basic SEO rules and not trying to pull off "black hat" (i.e. bad Google practices") with your site, getting people to stick around on your site will help you gain some traffic from other sources.

For instance, pick keyword phrases that people are looking for related to your niche, and when your re-directed visitors (from your email list) hang around on your site for a while, Google will take note of that and your bounce rate will go down, making it more suitable for your topics in Google's search results.

Other Things to Consider

Last, pay attention to the navigation options for your page. Have things organized neatly in different pages, subpages, and categories so that people can find their way around your site. This is specifically important in e-commerce sites where people are browsing around for different products.

There truly is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to designing web pages with regards to how the bounce rates are. It depends on too many variables, including audience, niche, your branding and marketing, to name a few.

Often times, you will need to test different options to see which of your designs or layouts work better. This is extremely important for online marketing so that you are not wasting valuable marketing dollars!

Nate Rio

College Degree Does Not Equal Success in Business

Many people wonder if you need a college degree to get started with your own business and the short answer is: NO!

Focus on Learning, Not the Degree

 If you ask around (and I'm sure you've probably done this) you will probably not see any correlation between college degrees and who is succeeding in business. Have you ever heard of any of these cliche statements:

1. "It's not what you know, it's who you know"
2. "I learned on the job"
3. "I learned in the school of life"
4. "I never used my degree"
5. "If I could go back to college, I would have studied …"

So what does all this mean?

The point of this topic is that you do not need a college degree to be successful in business. Now before everyone starts biting my head off, let me explain a few things.

First, for many professional careers, a degree is important, and required! For instance, doctors, lawyers, certain technical careers, etc, all need the required education in order to do their jobs correctly.

But not in business, baby!

Also, as a college attendee myself, the one thing that I would never give back is the set of skills I learned having to study a bunch of course materials I will never need to know again!

For instance, this is the invaluable part of higher education:

• how I learned how to think
• To question things
• How to study effectively
• How to perform under pressure with deadlines, etc
• Communication and interpersonal skills

The key thing with most successful business owners is that they will all tell you: "Never Stop Learning." This is of utmost importance, regardless of what you do!

People Judge You By Results in Business - Not Certifications

Think about the last time you were at a fine dining establishment and you were completely blown away by the service of the waitstaff. I bet you didn't ask to see their "waiter qualifications degree," now did you?

That is because, just like in business, we are not typically going to ask to see qualifications upfront (with the rare exception of course). We want to see results!

So if you are thinking about starting a business online for instance - what type of results or service are your clients going to expect? They most likely will want to see your acumen and results - not that you graduated Magna Cum Laude from XYZ University!

No Degree = No Problem!

 I bet you know someone in your immediate circle of influence that is a business success that has never set foot into an institution of higher learning…

Maybe it's your friend's uncle who is a millionaire pizza shop owner, or a cousin who has a hugely successful extermination company, or something crazy like that.

When is the last time you heard of a Pizza Company or Exterminator P.h.D.? It's the school of hard knocks as they say!

As you probably know, a degree does NOT guarantee you a high paying job or success at any level, especially for entrepreneurs. But what about doctors and lawyers you say? Again, I'm sure you can think of a few people with both of these degrees that are not practicing, or making as much money as some of the other school drop-outs.

Here is an example:

Have you ever heard of John Paul DeJoria? Most people have not heard of him. John Paul was the classic example of a student who was told while in school that "he would never succeed at anything," and boy were they wrong…

DeJoria did go on to graduate high school, but opted out on the whole college education thing. And guess how much he is worth now?

$4 billion.

John Paul DeJoria and a close friend went on to create the Paul Mitchell line of haircare products. AND, Patrón tequila. You ever heard of these 2 brands?

Yep, $4 billion. Not too bad for a kid with no degree who was told he would never succeed at anything!

Moral of the Story

The lesson here is that not having a degree is not an obstacle in having a successful business. To reiterate - a degree can be an important part of the process of discovery for many people, and also really important for some technical careers. However, to start a business it does NOT require a degree, so make sure you don't let this stop you from your dreams!

PLUS, nowadays we have an unlimited supply of knowledge right at our fingertips in the form of the internet. Getting answers to your questions is as easy as your resourcefulness with the search engines!

Mobe Matt Lloyd:  one-thing-you-need-to-succeed-in-lifepath