Fast Marketing Minute

Need free photos for your marketing projects?

If you do any kind of content marketing, you need visuals – photos and images to use on your website, on blogs and articles, and reports – as well as on social media.

Here are 5 free photo sites for your next marketing project

1. Unsplash

Unsplash has thousands of high-quality free photos and images that you can use in marketing and design projects. What makes it easy is that you can find them with a user-friendly search tool. Just type in your keywords, and voila. Photos on demand.

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is another favorite for free photos and has one of the biggest collections of no-cost stock photos and illustrations online. There are over a million images – ranging in quality, with a strong landscape and Editor’s collection.

3. Gratisography

Gratisography is unique an if you haven’t checked it out, you’ll want to. It offers a small selection of fun and quirky images that aren’t your everyday photos. They’re taken by photographer Ryan McGuire. H4e definitely provides a breath of fresh air in the stock photo world.

4. Pexels

With Pexels, you’ll find free public domain stock photos from photographers around the world. Search for something specific or browse by topics – even emotions. Look beyond some of the cheesy photos to find more creative images.

5. Pikwizard

If you’re looking for natural photos of people or urban photography, check out Pikwizard. The photos on this site are offered under two licenses – free and Creative Commons. Free means free, and a Creative Commons license means that the photographer has waived their copyright.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. If you’d like more marketing tips and want to hear about grants and marketing services, visit my website. I’m at RobinSamora.com.  Talk soon!

The post 5 Free Photo Sites for Content Marketing appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Want to grow your business? Then you need a marketing plan.

3 Reasons You Need a Marketing Plan

1. A marketing plan is a comprehensive report. It analyzes your brand or business’ situation, and identifies your target audience, challenges, opportunities, and competition. It contains key industry information, data, and marketing insights that differentiate your brand, and give you a competitive edge online and offline.

2. A well-written marketing plan supports the direction of your company. It has two parts a marketing overview and an action plan. The action plan outlines every step you or your team need to take on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and one-time only basis. It’s a road map for you to follow, that’s clear and actionable.

3. Every marketing plan should be unique. It’s customized for your brand’s individual situation. Your challenges, and goals. You have an important role to play because you start the process by providing information. Our team, then for example, would gather extensive marketing research based on what you have to say.

The end result is that you have a marketing plan that addresses your specific challenges, current data, focused on lead generation, and PR savvy. And that it works for your brand and personality.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Check out my website at  RobinSamora.com and my FAQ section to find out more. Talk soon!

The post 3 Reasons You Need a Marketing Plan appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Ever dream of being famous? What’s the Secret Sauce?

5 Ingredients in the Secret Sauce of Marketing

1. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel if You Don’t Have To

2. Master the Art of Execution

3. Who Do You Need to Become?

4. Know the Right People and Make Sure They Know You

5. Make Networking Part of the Road to Fame

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Stop by my website at RobinSamora.com and see how I can help you. Talk soon!

The post Want the Secret Sauce to Marketing? appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Yearning to buy or get followers to build your Instagram list? Here are some popular ones.

6 Marketing Sites to Grow Your Instagram Following

1. Stormlikes. Stormlikes allows you to buy followers in bundles of 100 to 1,000. If you buy a few hundred followers from time to time, you’ll increase your rate of growth. In small increments, it looks organic.

2. Kicksta. Kicksta is super easy. Just describe your ideal follower and Kicksta will find and engage with users who match your specifications. No spam, no fake followers, no bots. Just pure organic growth. Worth a try?

3. Hashtagsforlikes. Hashtagsforlikes identifies trending hashtags based on a search of your choice and recommends hashtags. It also provides analytics and data. Using trending hashtags can also spark fast and organic growth.

4. Mr. Insta. Similar to Stormlikes where you can buy Instagram followers immediately, Mr. Insta also offers free followers and likes new users as a way of test-driving  the service. You can also sign up for a monthly paid subscription service and get new followers each day.

5. Trollishly. Trollishly provides five different packages for buying insta-followers. Need 100 followers? How about 10,000? Tollishly can provide them. They also offer packages for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

6. Social Fried. Social Fried offers a wide range of different packages. It operates more like a marketplace or e-store. Instead of having a handful of pre-determined packages, Social Fried allows you to browse and cherry pick exactly what you need.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Visit my website at RobinSamora.com and while you’re there, check out my marketing services. Talk soon!

The post 6 Marketing Sites to Buy Instagram Followers appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Hiding behind the computer not sure how to use digital marketing for cold calls? Listen up!

1. Figure out who your ideal client is. Who do you need to reach? What kind of company or industry are they in? What are their problems? How can you help? Once you can answer these and other questions like them, you’ll have a pretty good ID on your target audience.

2. Find the decision maker. You can’t just fire off emails to customer service or go down the rabbit hole of the company contact list. Your emails will most likely get deleted. You need to find the right people to reach out to. Fortunately, there’s a great email finder tool called Hunter that can help you find the right email addresses of people you’d like to connect with.

3. Personalize your outreach. Seriously. Take the time to write a personal email to each prospect on your list. Use the prospect’s first name and company, and write a unique question or thought. And of course, finish with a call to action.

4. Don’t forget to follow up. This is not a fire-and-forget exercise — you need to follow up. And often. If you’re targeting busy people —and who isn’t busy these days — you may need to follow up multiple times to get their attention and earn their trust. CoSchedule says the   best days and times to follow up are Tuesday at 10 a.m., Thursday at 8 p.m., and Wednesday   at 2 p.m.

What works for you?

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. If you’re looking for online marketing tips, you’ll find tons at my website. You can find me at  RobinSamora.com. Talk soon!

The post How to Use Digital Marketing for Cold Calls appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Nothing’s changed and everything’s changed since Covid hit the world. With so much going on, how do you grab your entrepreneurial edge?

5 Ways to Grab Your Marketing and Entrepreneurial Edge 

1. Grow market share. Do you operate in a market where leaders are vulnerable? The shutdown/reopening might be an opportunity to move up from the number 3 or 4 position and take over one of the coveted top spots. Keep your eye on the ball and see what’s shaking out in your industry.

2. Leverage brand names. The brand with the highest recognition has an edge. If that’s not your brand, consider purchasing or licensing a top brand to enhance your impact. With so many businesses struggling to survive, important patents and licenses may become available. This may be your chance to snag an important resource at a mark-down price.

3. Seek out available supply opportunities. Supply agreements with volume commitments may be up for grabs since many businesses can’t meet their obligations. You may be able to step in and get a better deal on supply agreements.

4. Develop consumer loyalty. Loyalties may shift during the shutdown. Customers may have difficulty buying their favorite brands. The reopening may be an opportunity to develop loyalty from new customers or to take on a struggling business and capitalize on their most loyal fans.

5. Break down the barriers to entry. During the shutdown, the walls that protect brands and markets may be lowered or breached. Now may be the time to enter a new market before those walls are rebuilt.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. If you love these tips, I’d love to have you visit my website and Top 40 Small Business Marketing Blog. You’ll find both at www.RobinSamora.com

The post How to Claim Your Marketing Edge Post-Lockdown appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Like it or not, online networking is here to stay. Want some pointers on how to get the most from it?

Look for opportunities. Keep an eye out for events that best meet your needs. Participate in live chats, Q&A’s, informal discussion groups and other interactive forums. Some events will use platforms like Zoom that allow viewers to chat with each other, while others may use a more broadcast forum, like Twitter, where chats happen with a hashtag.

Get Active. No matter what type of forum you join, participate in a meaningful way. You must add value to the discussion to get noticed. Some of the best ways to add value is to build on to someone else’s comment, provide clarification or add sources or resources to support a thought.

Follow up. Once you’ve put yourself out there, keep the ball rolling. Add new people on social, then interact with them on a regular basis. Keep it light, remind them how you met — don’t jump into an immediate ask. Let the relationship grow. Be consistent while continuing to add value.

Be yourself. The most important asset you bring to an interaction is you. Be authentic. Your story and experiences make you unique and that has value to others. Relax and have fun. Networking, done well, isn’t a chore. It’s a fun way to make connections with people and build a community. Have fun!

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Like these online marketing tips? You can get a ton more at my website, RobinSamora.com. And while you’re there, sign up for my weekly insight!

The post 4 Marketing Tips for Online Networking appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

Think surveys are pointless? Hang on before you say yes. Find out how you can leverage marketing and PR value from them.

Blog it. Write a blog post for your own website about your survey results. This will serve as the foundation for all your social and mainstream media outreach. Everything else you do should link back to this primary source.

Design it. Create an infographic about your survey results. People love visuals and they’re a compelling way to deliver information. They also get lots of attention on social media. Include a link back to your blog to maximize your return.

Publish it. Write an article on Linkedin or Medium. Don’t just copy your blog, write an entirely new article that can reach a much wider audience and even go viral. This can be a short teaser that compels people to click over to your original blog post for more details.

Video it. Create an informative video about the results of your survey. Keep it no more than two minutes and include captions, since most people usually have their sound off.

Pitch it. Tell the media about your survey findings. Tools like Cision and MuckRack can help you build media lists or you can create your own by searching for recent articles related to your survey topic. Write a powerful subject line to hook a reporter’s attention, then follow up with your most important finding and why your organization is a credible source.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Like these online marketing tips? You can get a ton more at my website, RobinSamora.com. In fact, join my Robin’s Rainmakers community!

The post How to Leverage Marketing Value from Surveys appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

With everything virtual now, what are some of the best marketing strategies to promote a virtual event?

Set expectations. Is this a presentation, panel discussion or town hall? Will the audience be able to ask live questions? People need to know what they’re signing up for. Be clear on what the audience take-aways will be.

Work with a partner. Co-branding and co-marketing are great ways to gain a larger audience. Match a brand with a community partner and a small business specialist. In the end, all three parties will attract their own audience and the partners can share leads.

Have everyone promote the event. Incentivize employees to promote the event to their contacts and set the expectation that all speakers will do outreach to maximize the audience. Provide assets to everyone involved — graphics, images, videos, URLs — to enable people to easily promote the event.

Customize invitations. Use customized emails to target different segments of your potential audience. A personalized email for an executive might look very different from an email for an engineer. Use your lists and take the extra step to target the right people with the right message.

Track your results. What worked and what didn’t? You can make your next event better by capitalizing on the pluses and rethinking the minuses. Use UTM codes in all your promotional tactics to see where your sign-ups came from and help you figure out where to put your efforts next time.

I’m Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Like these online marketing tips? You can get a ton more at my website, RobinSamora.com. While you’re there, sign up for weekly marketing insight!

The post 5 Marketing Strategies to Promote a Virtual Event appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.

What are some of the hottest social media marketing trends for the rest of the year? Listen in!

Shorten your content creation process. Content you created six months ago and planned to use today may now be outdated. Compress your content creation down from months to weeks or even days. You can still sketch out your plans for the future but don’t invest a lot of time in detailed creation — leave room for changes so you don’t have to scrap everything and start over.

Be quiet and listen. In the past, social media was all about telling what great products and services you offer. Now, it’s time to listen. Are your products and services well positioned? You’ll never know if you don’t listen to your market.

Stand up. People expect more from their trusted brands, than ever before. Take principled positions on important social issues. Yes, you might lose a few customers, but you’ll gain more in the long haul by taking a stand on the right side of social movements.

It’s not all about you, it’s about all of us. Now is not the time for non-stop self-promotion. It’s the time to help. Reach out and do what you can to help people in any way you can. Remember to put people first. Focus on the human element instead of boring product descriptions. Build relationships now, and sales will follow.

This is Robin Samora with the Fast Marketing Minute. Like these online marketing tips? You can get a ton more at my website, RobinSamora.com. Talk soon!

The post 4 Social Media Marketing Trends for the Rest of 2020 appeared first on Fast Marketing Minute.