J&M Group WordPress Blog

Small Business Branding Palm Beach Gardens

marciacatlin · October 25, 2020 ·

What is your website missing? It’s called small business branding. Branding a small business is a necessity for solo professionals.

It sets you apart from your competition. It showcases your smarts and proves why you outshine your competitors every time.

Branding Is The Way You …

Let people know what they can expect when they hire you.
Make your case for why you’re the best choice out of all the others.
Establish credibility.
Build awareness.
Become recognized and remembered.
Become known, liked, and trusted.

The Five Essentials of Small Business Branding

1. Know Your Why

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
Create a purpose statement to help you make decisions about everything
relating to your brand – who you’ll work with, what you’ll offer, what you’ll
say and do and what you won’t.

How To Create Your Own Unique Selling Proposition

2. Know Your Ideal Customer

Which segment of the market are you targeting? Who most needs the thing
you sell? When you categorize potential target groups, which group’s problems do you understand the best?

3. Be Unique

This is often the biggest goof small business owners make when it comes to marketing their businesses and websites. Don’t mimic your competitors’ websites! Be different! Elevate your design, choose distinctive colors and fonts.

How To Build Your Brand Through Web Design

Why would a customer choose me instead?” What are the characteristics or benefits of my service that would be hard for others to copy?

Become known for something. Make it crystal clear to your potential customers what that thing is. Then competition fades away because there’s no substitute for you.

4. Set Expectations

In a clear and concise way, you want to be able to describe the benefits of working with you and the transformation they can expect when they do.

This is your brand promise. It helps people to understand what they can expect when they do business with you.

5. Give Your Brand Personality

People buy from brands and they hire humans. So as you market your business, you want to express consistent personality characteristics and make your company values known through content and graphics.

Think about the words you’ll use to communicate what it’s like to work with you. Will you be a sturdy, reliable consultant? Or a quirky and fun coach? You’ll want to think about how you’ll speak and write that will help people get to know you.

5 Simple Changes to Turn Visitors Into Customers

Create a website that distinguishes your business from all the others. Contact Marcia below!

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What’s Wrong With Site Builders?

marciacatlin · October 7, 2020 ·

There are seemingly limitless site builders on the market today. Some are free, others require a license, still others are original theme & page builder combos for WordPress, in online and offline formats. What’s wrong with site builders?

Remember all the marketing collateral you always designed and produced yourself years ago? Like business cards, letterhead, envelopes, printed brochures, printed newsletters, magazines, literature, packaging, point of sale, direct mail, advertising, and signage.

I didn’t think so! You didn’t create your own promotional material. You farmed it out. Right?

So what’s different about websites that are way more technical, complicated, and effective than direct marketing products that you are now the DIY expert?

The truth? Not all sites need to use a page builder. For example, a modern blog, whether it deals with food, fashion, travel, or any other subject, rarely needs one. Blogs are meant to focus on content with as few bells and whistles as possible. Blog followers expect quality content that’s easily accessible and looks great on all devices.

No need for fancy landing pages, animations, or spinning images.

Here are 5 More Reasons To Forgetabout Site Builders

1. They are overly complex and come loaded with many different elements, often multiple elements for creating the same or similar types of output. A steep learning curve is often required.

2. They lock you in with their own unique code. Once you build a page with a page builder you are stuck with it. They generate their own output so you cannot switch to a different page builder.

Personally, I feel this is of huge importance, and a major reason I’d stay away from Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Shopify, Yahoo, etc. The website files and code belong to them, not you!

3. Slow and additional time required to load and save changes. Myriad elements and options add time to the task. Tedious content editing.

5. Bloat is added and slows the website frontend. They add numerous files such as stylesheets, scripts, font files, etc., that increase load time for a web page and are not even used.

6. Non-standard ways are used to work with content. A page builder replaces the standard WordPress way of editing content with a totally different interface and process. Each page builder has different quirks, bugs, capabilities, and limitations. There are more than 20 different page builders for WordPress!

7. Lack of customization. Limited tools, fonts, templates, and a lack of custom code result in bland, everyday, cookie-cutter websites. Prospective clients typically can identify free websites – not a great first impression of your company!

Happily, there is a solution to this page builder mess. It’s called Gutenberg. It is the brand new editor for the WordPress platform and the one we use exclusively at the J&M Group.

If you want a new website and don’t want to use one of those “easy” DIY site builders, give us a call at 561-906-3436 or fill out the form below.

And remember. Your company’s website is the best business card you have!

The Vital Newsletter during COVID-19

marciacatlin · July 8, 2020 ·

I might just be the last person to write about newsletters! Over the years writing my own newsletter on a regular basis has been too big a mountain for me to climb. Even Mailchimp couldn’t help. What do I say about myself and my own business?

But, writing newsletters for clients? Now that’s easier!

Certainly as a subscriber to a select group of really great ones, I do love reading them and learning new things.

But times have changed. Now that we live like monks walled off from the world, communication is even more critical.

“A global pandemic is a great time to launch an email newsletter,” writes Ann Handley Thank you, Ann, for providing these newsletter tips.

Why? Because a crisis is a time to be helpful and sincere. It’s a time to build relationships, nurture customers, and create long-term loyalty.

Your email newsletter is no longer important, it’s vital. Here’s why:

What Your 2020 Email Newsletter Needs

A clear niche with a point of view.
Heavy on insights, light on promotion.
Have an opinion. Tell me why I should care.
Include a Subscribe page. Who you are. What you’ll mail. When you’ll mail and how often.
How can I help?
Nix the salutation: “Dear Valued Customers.” Replace it with “Dear You.”
Lots of yous. The word “you” and not “we”.
Questions: “What do you think?” Constant audience feedback lets you adjust your focus.
Always write back.
Lively writing. Ask a question at the start, and answer it toward the bottom.
Build a bridge to other marketing. Do you have a LinkedIn or Facebook group? Highlight questions or discussions in the newsletter. Have Instagram? Share its images in the newsletter.

Contact the J&M Group and Marcia for all of your content marketing and newsletter needs.

Build Beautiful Online Courses with Course Maker Pro!

marciacatlin · June 14, 2020 ·

Interested in starting a business today?

More and more people start small businesses as a side hustle and turn them into their main source of income. The advancements in the digital world allow for making money regardless of borders, time zones, and
even your main occupation.

Sell Your Expertise

The market of e-learning is a very lucrative one for exploration. Forbes notes that by 2025 it will be worth $325 billion. Such high numbers combined with modern technologies create a unique opportunity to turn your professional knowledge into a strong flow of income.

Have you been trying to create and launch an online course but found the options overwhelming?

Here is a great option that will get you moving, easily, and effectively.

The Genesis WordPress theme Course Maker Pro has launched with one-click theme setup, starter packs, and LifterLMS integrations!

LifterLMS is an outstanding WordPress LMS solution. Combined with Course Maker Pro it is now one of the fastest ways you can launch a course or LMS site on WordPress.

So I Created A Store

“But now it was time to try something new. To create an online store that could sell my t-shirts for anyone who wanted one. So I created it – using WooCommerce and Printful. The first delivers the eCommerce features. The second delivers the fulfillment.” – Chris Lima
Create Your Own Store in Twenty Minutes

Chris Lema, blogger, speaker and the best WordPress coach, outlines in detail all the steps required for you to get your new store up and running. He includes a video and 7 resources. Here you go!

Resources

Best eCommerce Platforms for Small Business
Best Tools to Create Online Course
How To Launch An Online Store As Quickly As Possible
How to (Realistically) Start an Online Business That (Actually) Grows in 2020
How to Start an e-Commerce Business From Scratch
How To Start An Online Store

How To Become A Successful Bricks And Clicks Business

marciacatlin · April 25, 2020 ·

A successful bricks-and-clicks business uses its online and offline stores in tandem, with each supporting the other in a single retail strategy. Here are some of the ways that can work.

Buy Online, Pick Up in Store

Online shopping can be convenient and exciting but often fails to satisfy a customer’s desire for instant gratification. While visiting a store fills this need, it usually comes with the hassle and inconvenience of physically searching for products and standing in lines. With online ordering and in-store pickup, customers don’t have to choose between convenience and instant gratification.

Better In-Store Browsing

Customers who are used to the selection offered by online shopping are often disappointed by the limitations of brick-and-mortar stores. Retailers with limited physical space can expand their selection by supplementing the in-store experience with tablets, and scannable QR codes.

Out Of Stock Dilemma

No one wants to waste a trip to the store for a sold-out product that the website says is in stock. To prevent overselling and customer dissatisfaction, bricks-and-clicks retailers need to keep their inventory up-to-date, and consistent across all stores, online and off.

Flexible Return and Exchange Policy

When it comes to customer returns, bricks-and-clicks stores have a huge advantage. When items purchased in a physical store can be returned online and vice versa, customers have the freedom to choose the most convenient option.

How To Select An eCommerce Platform

Stunning Showrooms

Many customers prefer to view products in all their glory, in realtime before they make a purchase. To engage these customers online, retailers
should recreate this experience on their site with digital showrooms and detailed product views.

Great Discounts & Convenience

Convenience and cost are the primary reasons consumers choose online shopping. Brick-and-mortar retailers looking to drive more business to their physical locations must offer promotions, coupons, and lower prices on a regular basis.

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