As a business owner, your marketing strategy is your biggest asset. And while you probably have quite a bit of tools in your marketing strategy arsenal already, there are a handful of tools no business should be without.
Here are four resources you can use to boost the success of your business:
1. No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy
Written by the highest paid direct response copywriter in the world, No B.S. Direct marketing will absolutely transform the way you see (and practice) marketing.
Kennedy is known for his no nonsense approach and frills have no place in his marketing strategies. In this book, he drives the point home that direct marketing is a strategy that will support any business in any industry – on or offline.
If you’ve never heard of direct marketing, or if you haven’t started using it for your business, you need to. In fact, Dan’s blog states that six of the most common direct marketing principles can (and should) be applied to social media marketing.
Direct marketing isn’t dead, despite what rumors say. And when you’re running an online business, you can combine your online marketing efforts with direct marketing to reach people in a different way.
2. Professionally programed invoice templates
Your vendor and client invoices should always follow the same format for consistency and professionalism. But sometimes it’s hard to create the perfect template. And even when you search online, many of the free templates are unprofessionally crafted.
Instead of hunting around for hours, or paying for templates in a package at the computer store before you can even see them, you definitely want to take a look at these free invoice templates from Hloom. Not only do you get access to free invoice templates – you get an entire guide on how to handle your invoices from the moment you create them until you deliver and accept payment.
And Hloom has more than just invoice templates. They offer a huge selection of over 1,500 templates for Microsoft Word, Excel, and even Google Docs, giving you no reason to struggle with making your own.
3. WordPress Beginner Tutorials
With 21.7 million downloads and over 47,000 plugins, it’s clear that WordPress is probably the most popular website content management system on the planet. In fact, since WordPress powers over 27 percent of the entire internet, it’s safe to say it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
If you’re using WordPress to run your website, it’s important to understand how it works in more ways than just editing a post to update an image. Because it’s built to be user-friendly, you really don’t need to be a programmer to make it work or troubleshoot most issues. But you do need to gain a more in-depth understanding of how it works.
The tutorials on WPBeginner are designed to help you do this. These tutorials teach you how to build your site, choose the right plugins, fix certain errors, and follow best practices to ensure your site is up to par.
4. Email marketing guide for beginners
Seasoned marketers already know this, but email marketing isn’t just about frantically collecting email addresses from any source, and trying to get people to open your email at any cost. Email marketing is a strategy that, when done correctly, can lead to long-term relationships with your customers that still exist even when they’re not buying anything.
Even if you’ve had a running email marketing campaign for a long time, you may benefit from revisiting the basics. This email marketing guide from Kiss Metrics is a resource you’ll want check out before you send another email.
Don’t get caught up in numbers associated with open rates. While that’s important to measure, the most important aspect of email marketing is knowing when and how to pitch your customers. Email marketing is one area you’ll want to do by the book.
Get past the learning curve by using these resources
Of course, there are plenty of useful resources online for businesses, and these are just some of them that cover four of the basic aspects of marketing faced by business owners. Adding these four resources to your marketing arsenal will help you learn something new and reach a new level of success in your industry.
