March 10, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

From entertainment to tech, women continue to face gender-based challenges in nearly every industry — and entrepreneurship is no different.

In a survey of more than 3,000 men and women entrepreneurs worldwide, 99designs uncovered the surprising number of challenges women entrepreneurs face in business compared to their male counterparts, with everything from raising capital to hiring employees.

Related: 4 Things Women Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Approaching Angel Investors and VCs

According to the research, surveyed male entrepreneurs were twice as likely to raise $100,000 or more of outside funding for their startups than female entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, these numbers stayed pretty consistent when this survey was conducted last year. When women can’t get enough funding to launch their businesses, it affects nearly every aspect of their startups, including hiring employees, renting office space and setting reasonable work hours.

Related: These Female Entrepreneurs Created a Fake Male Co-Founder to Work Around Sexism. How Well It Worked Is Incredibly Eye Opening.

Whether it’s due to a lack of funding or lack of employees, women entrepreneurs (68 percent) are more likely than male entrepreneurs (48 percent) to run businesses out of their homes. They are also more likely to register as sole proprietorships than men (49 percent of women vs. 31 percent of men).

In the study, the number of women and men starting businesses in various industries was for the most part equal, with the same number of women and men entrepreneurs going into areas such as business consulting, marketing and PR, retail and media and entertainment. The majority of surveyed men and women also agreed that not asking for help, getting out of their comfort zones and feeling guilt for working too often were some of the top challenges of starting a business.

Related: How to Succeed as a Female Leader Anywhere In the World

However, despite these commonalities, women are still discriminated against and gender inequality continues to persist in 2018. To learn more about women in business this year, check out the infographic below.

March 9, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Optimizing your website for keywords, building links and publishing great blog posts aren’t the only methods you can use to improve your website SEO. You can also leverage your Twitter account.

Did you know that Google and Twitter have a strong partnership? This partnership gives Google access to the Twitter stream, allowing the search engine to index tweets in its search results. This gives Twitter a key role in search engine optimization.

How can you use this to your advantage and use Twitter to improve your Google rankings? We’ll show you.

How Twitter improves SEO.

If you want to see how Twitter affects website and brand visibility on Google, go search for a brand name or a website on Google.

You’ll see the Twitter stream of that particular brand pop up on the main page of search results showing the latest tweets from that page.

You can also try searching for a hashtag on Google. Many people search hashtags on Google to discover content on social media. Guess which platform always comes on top when you search for a hashtag on Google?

The Google-Twitter partnership has given the micro-blogging platform an edge over other social networks. Needless to say, if you’re looking for new ways to improve your website SEO, Twitter is the platform where you should start your campaign.

The importance of social signals.

Even if your Twitter content is not indexed by Google, there are many other SEO benefits to using Twitter to promote your website. One of them is to build social signals toward your website and blog posts.

Related: 4 Keys to Marketing on Twitter

Contrary to popular belief, most SEO experts agree that the number of social shares referring to a link increases its value and influences higher ranking on Google. Simply put, the more shares you get on Twitter and Facebook, the more likely it will be to increase your website search rankings.

In addition, you can also use Twitter as a tool to boost SEO in many other ways. Here’s how.

1. Automatically share your blog posts.

Twitter now boasts more than 330 million monthly active users. You have a chance to reach this massive audience through your brand or business Twitter account. Not only that, you can also let Google know that you have an active website and blog by consistently tweeting links to your website to improve social signals.

Of course, when you’re managing a website and a blog, it can be tough to find the time to tweet about your website throughout the day. Thankfully, there are tools you can use to automate your Twitter sharing.

Related: 8 Plugins Every WordPress Website Needs

You can connect your blog to your Twitter account using WordPress plugins and tools to automatically send a tweet whenever you publish a new blog post. Some of those plugins and tools include JetPack for WordPress, Twitter Auto Publish, Dlvr.it and IFTTT.

2. Re-share your evergreen content.

Tweeting your blog post links once is not enough to generate social signals toward your website or let Google know that your links are worth ranking on the top of search results. So you need to consistently generate more shares for your blog posts and pages.

You can do that by scheduling tweets to be published every day throughout the month. There’s no need to hire a social media manager for that job. You can use a tool like Buffer instead.

With Buffer, you can schedule your blog posts and links to be published on Twitter and Facebook according to a time schedule that you create. You can pick the best times to share the evergreen content on your blog and schedule the links to be shared on Twitter through each week.

Related: What Buffer Can Teach Us About Customer Service

Just remember not to spam your followers. It’s OK to send the same tweet more than once, as long as you don’t do that within the same day. 

3. Leverage Twitter handle and profile bio.

The bio in your profile and the Twitter handle you use to create your account also play a strong role in improving website SEO.

People who are interested in following a brand or a product on social media often search for Twitter accounts on Google (eg: Uber Twitter). Google will use the brand name as a keyword to search Twitter to find similar accounts with the same Twitter handle. Make sure your account uses your brand name as the account username.

Properly optimizing your profile bio will also help get your Twitter to rank higher on Google. Including an effective summary of your brand or business with the right keyword hashtags will make your Twitter profile more discoverable as well.

Then, you can use a pinned tweet to drive leads to your landing page to turn those profile visitors into subscribers and grow your email list.

Be consistent and keep promoting.

Every marketing strategy requires an investment. So invest in it as much as you can to improve your website search rankings.

More shares mean more awareness for your brand and better for website SEO. Keep sharing your website and blog post links on Twitter consistently to achieve the best results.

March 8, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

I’m constantly endeavoring to simplify how to get what you want, both rapidly and accurately. In the process of doing so, I’ve discovered two simple ways to get what you want in life or business:  

1. You can ask for it.
2. You can attract it.

How do you ask? How do you attract? Well, there are four methods of asking for what you want, and four methods to attract it.

Related: Asking For Help Is Good For You and Your Business

Asking for help

1. You can ask in-person.  
2. Asking via email is another option.  
3. You can ask via phone, through voice or text.  
4. Finally, you can ask through social media.  

Statistically, you stand a better chance for success if you have some sort of strategic ask in almost everything that you do — in-person, on the phone, over email, or on social media. Think about it: If you make one additional ask per day and convert at around 10 percent, then you have three people each month providing you with benefits that you’d have missed otherwise. 

Related: Success Is Likelier When You Make People Happy They Helped You

It’s essential to make sure that your ask relates to some direct path to what you want, whether it is revenue, a business relationship or anything else of prime importance to you.

Ask and assist.

This strategy uses the Ben Franklin Effect: When people do you a favor, they are more likely to do another. When you meet someone you yourself might be able to assist, ask for their help and, at the same time (e.g. in the same conversation) offer yours. And make a point to be of service even if others might not be able to help you immediately.

The same goes for phone calls, emails or social media interactions. Being afraid to ask for what you want is a detriment to your success and prosperity. If you lack this skill, then you need to work on it! Asking for help is a form of radical humility, something that with practice will have amazing benefits for all involved.

Related: 5 Reasons Why ‘Asking’ Is an Essential Skill for Every Entrepreneur

Having specific asks

There was a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology about a female student posing as a panhandler. The unkempt, slovenly dressed girl went up to people on the street and asked for money. The purpose of the study was to show the importance of being specific with your ask. When she simply asked for “money,” the percentage of people who gave some to her was 22 percent. When she asked for a specific amount (e.g. “Can you spare 47 cents?”), the rate of generosity increased to 36 percent. The researchers called this the pique technique, where an unusual request helps to persuade someone to help.

Use this study to your advantage! Don’t just ask people for help — ask specifically for what you desire. (Note: this “specific” attraction strategy also works when you ask the universe for help, which I’ll cover next.)

Related: Your Mom Was Wrong. Sometimes It Does Hurt to Ask.

Attraction needs attention.

In order to attract what you want, you actually have to consciously and strategically think about what you want and focus in on it. Then, you need to take some sort of action using the same four strategies you use to ask for help in order to make it happen. You can’t get what you want sitting around on your couch. You need to put yourself out there and stimulate interest in person, via email, by phone and through social media.

Stimulating interest in person can be powerful, especially if you surround yourself with the right people and the right ideas. A study by Nielsen found that 83 percent of people trust referrals from others they know. If you have a product, service, content or any other value that you provide to others, let them know when you talk in person or over the phone. As an example, if you’re working with a charity organization, tell a story about how much money you helped raise for another charity you’re affiliated with.

If you win an important award in an industry, put it in your email signature or as a tagline in a piece of social content. Showcasing your wins organically and authentically will attract more of the same. Create interest by focusing in on what you have, not what you’re missing.

Related: Top 10 Ways Others Can Promote You

Asking the universe

Another form of attraction occurs by asking the universe to take energy expended and attract similar energy back. Scientific studies have shown examples of attraction in people. We have mirror neurons in our brains that are activated when two individuals simultaneously experience emotions, such as anger, happiness or confusion. The neurons also activate when we observe these emotions in others. The emotions of others are then attracted to us.

Be the person with the confidence to attract and ask for what you want. I have given you two simple ways and four methodologies to make it happen, rapidly and accurately.   

It’s easier than you think. I invite you to use the simple, yet highly effective formula for getting what you want.

Ask others … and ask the universe.

March 7, 2018

2 min read

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

BrewDog’s attempt at a “satirical protest beer” for girls is falling flat for many women.

On Tuesday, the craft brewer released Pink IPA, a beer “satirically dubbed Beer for Girls.”

“BrewDog will be using its most iconic beer, Punk IPA, as a weapon in this fight, packaging it in lurid pink and renaming to Pink IPA — a send-up of the lazy marketing efforts targeting the female market,” the brewer said in a statement.

The company is also serving the beer at 80 percent of its standard price to customers who identify as women, as a nod to the gender pay gap, as well as donating 20 percent of profits to organizations fighting gender inequality.

However, while BrewDog said the beer is intended to “trigger questions about why women continue to earn less than their male counterparts,” many women saw Pink IPA as part of the problem.

“‘Let’s show that enough is enough with stereotypes…’ by using a stereotype,” one Facebook commenter wrote, adding the crying laughter and face palm emojis. “Sounds like trying to reel in a bad marketing decision.”

“Still building into a ridiculous stereotype that damages women in the beer industry,” another person commented on BrewDog’s Facebook post about Pink IPA.

Sarah Warman, BrewDog’s global head of marketing, responded to criticism saying that BrewDog anticipated that some people “might not immediately appreciate the irony of Pink IPA.”

“Pink IPA is clearly an over-the-top ridiculing of the types of sexist marketing we often see from brands trying to engage a female audience,” Warman said in a statement to Business Insider.

Warman continued: “This beer is part of a bigger campaign that raises awareness of the scourge of the gender pay gap and sexism; two issues we think we should be doing a lot more to solve as a society.”

The beer industry has historically struggled to win over women drinkers, who tend to prefer wine and liquor. Some brewers’ attempts to fix the problem, like a beer that branded itself as “the first beer for her,” have been mocked as sexist in their reductive portrayal of women.

March 4, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

All too often, people steal other people’s photos and images without even knowing. Of course, many use other people’s images knowing that it’s unethical and wrong, but in many cases, it’s also downright illegal. Whether someone’s aware of it or not, as a photographer, professional or hobbyist, it’s up to you to go the extra mile to protect your images.

Related: The Beginner’s Guide to Using Stock Images Without Getting Sued

According to a 2016 survey, 64 percent of professional photographers said they’d had their works stolen more than 200 times, reports Berify. Forty-four percent of hobbyists also said they’d experienced theft. And for every professional photograph stolen and used illegally, photographers and photo agencies lose around $446. So who’s to blame for the lost money and stolen images? Thanks to platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, bloggers and social media users do the most photo-stealing, followed by commercial businesses and individual professionals.

Related: 7 Tips to Start Taking Product and Lifestyle Photos for Your Small Business Today, According to a Professional Photographer

Unfortunately, image theft is a widespread problem. Compared to any other country, China has the highest number of cases of digital image copyright infringement, with France coming in second and the U.S. in third. Within the U.S., California specifically has the highest number of these cases — the state makes up one-third of the country’s infringement cases.

To avoid contributing to the problem, next time you want to use someone’s image, make sure you’re allowed to. While all original work is protected by copyright law, whether it’s registered or not, every image might have its own level of permission, so it’s important you do your research first.

Related: 14 Amazingly Free Stock Photo Websites

To learn more about online image theft today, check out Berify’s infographic below.

March 3, 2018

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Millennials often get a bad rap in the workplace, but the reality is many of these young people are extremely hard workers and willing to make sacrifices to get ahead in the workforce.

To find out exactly what these young people are willing to give up for their careers, financial intelligence company Comet surveyed 364 employed millennials who are single and don’t have children and asked them whether, and to what extent, they would put their work before relationships.

Related: 11 Reasons Talented Millennials Get Fired

For many millennials, it’s about the money. With a focus on their finances, 41 percent said they would end a relationship if it meant getting a major promotion at work. In fact, if offered a life-changing promotion, the average surveyed millennial said they would stay single for 11 years, delay marriage for seven years and wait to have kids for eight years. However, while many millennials might give up dating, when it comes to long-term relationships, it’s a different story. To the contrary, millennials are willing to make job sacrifices for a long-term relationship that has a promising future: Over half of respondents said they would give up a career opportunity in exchange for a long-term relationship and 86 percent said they would move to another city if their significant other was offered a better job.

Related: 10 Lucrative Side Gigs for Millennials Looking to Earn Extra Money

While focusing on their careers is one of the reasons the surveyed millennials said they chose to stay single, some avoid relationships for entirely different purposes. The top reason is because they are are “picky.” Others say it is because they haven’t found anyone or dated much, don’t go out enough or simply haven’t found someone they liked enough to date.

Overall, the study found that millennial men were more willing to make sacrifices for their careers than millennial women. According to the research, it would take men an average raise of $21,000 to choose to delay a relationship, while women said it would take a whopping $51,000 to make the same sacrifice. The same was true for delaying marriage and kids. On average, men said a $37,000 raise would influence them to delay marriage, while woman said it would take $93,000. Millennial women were also less likely than men to end a relationship if it meant getting a major promotion or pass on a long-term relationship if it jeopardized their career.

Related: 8 Ways Any Millennial Can Be a Millionaire in 5 Years

To learn more about millennials and the sacrifices they are willing to make for work, check out the infographic below.

March 2, 2018

9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In theory, Google Shopping is simple. You upload your products to a feed through Google Merchant Center, connect it with Adwords and voila, your product images and price will start to populate on Google’s search results. 

Related: Why Ecommerce Owners Must Create Google Shopping Campaigns

If you are an entrepreneur looking to get started on Google Shopping, Adwards has a video tutorial that walks you through setting up a campaign in under 5 minutes.

Just so you have a visual representation of how Google Shopping works, below you can see how a product from your website will populate via an image after someone conducts a Google Search for the product name. If you have the right Google Shopping strategy, this can be a lucrative way to grow ecommerce sales.

The issue with Google Shopping is that you lack control, which means you can spend a lot of money without being profitable (unless you follow the hacks below). With Google PPC, you bid on keywords and your advertisements will only populate if people search for those specific keywords. I wrote an article on Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAG) that details how controlled you can get with Google PPC.

Google Shopping pulls in product information from the title of your product along with information on your website, so there are much more search terms that can drive people to your site. Sometimes this can be good, other times, not so good.

Related: Are You Taking Advantage of Google’s Local Inventory Ads?

Here are six hacks that can save you money on your Google Shopping while boosting your profitability. 

1. Optimizing content on your website

Make sure your product titles are strategically selected and the content on the product pages of your website is well optimized.

If you are selling a product from a manufacturer, you’ll want to make sure the title is consistent with what the manufacturer has listed since this will likely be what people search and convert for.

If you have your own brand, it is beneficial to select titles that have keywords with good search volume so people can actually stumble on your product via Google Shopping. 

Having unique content on each product page is an important way to differentiate your brand. If you just copy and paste the same content as a manufacturer or competitor, you could be looking at duplicate content isssues. Google is going to crawl the content on your product pages, so optimize each product page with search terms that can convert.

However, even if you optimize the title and content on each product page, you’ll still drive traffic to your website that won’t convert, which is why the next step on negative keywords is so important.

Related: How to Make at Least $1,000 Your First Month of Ecommerce

2. Negative keywords

I can’t overemphasis how important it is to add negative keywords into each one of your Google Shopping campaigns. This can drastically save you money and increase your performance.

Within your Google Shopping campaign, you’ll want to click on “keywords” and then “search terms” and then segment by “clicks” to see which search terms are eating up the majority of your budget (see below). 

DermWarehouse, an ecommerce skin care brand, was nice enough to allow us to share campaign data for this Entrepreneur article so readers could get a better understanding of the examples we’re referring to. 

Google is trying its hardest to drive people to your site based on keywords on each product page. This doesn’t mean the traffic it is driving to your site will convert.

DermWarehouse sells a popular and trendy brand name Juara. Juara has several products that contain coffee ingredients. Above in the “search terms” report, you can see DermWarehouse converts on keywords pertaining to the brand name Juara (look at the conversions tab). When people searches for just “coffee lotion” they do not convert well. This is an opportunity to add the exact variation of “coffee lotion” as a negative keyword.

If you are having trouble grasping why the search term “coffee lotion” wouldn’t convert for this skincare company, think of how broad of a search term this is. Juara is much more specific, meaning people are deeper into the purchasing funnel when searching for this brand on Google. “Coffee lotion” is more likely an initial search people are typing in, meaning it won’t be as likely to convert. 

Can these more generalized keywords such as “coffee lotion” convert? Absolutely! You have to keep a close eye on your shopping campaigns to monitor what’s converting and pause the poor performers by adding them as a negative keyword. Anytime we see a search term that has over 30 clicks without a conversion, we either lower the bid or add the search term as a negative keyword. 

Related: Set up Your Google AdWords Campaign in 9 Steps

3. Segmentation 

One of the biggest mistakes we see among ecommerce brands is they upload all of their products into one Google Shopping feed and it is a massive free-for-all. 

Sticking with the skin care example, Glytone is a much more popular brand than Juara. This means there are more search terms for Glytone products compared to Juara. If you have one campaign with a $100 daily budget, Glytone would likely eat up 90 percent of the daily budget. Even though Juara isn’t as popular, since it is more niche, it could convert three times higher, which is why it is so important to segment your Google Shopping campaigns. You want all of your products to have a chance to prove whether or not they are profitable for your company. 

I recommend segmenting your Google Shopping campaigns based on the following: 

• Price of product: $10-$29, $30-$49, $50-69, etc. 
• Brands: Juara, Glytone, ClarityRX, Alphaeon, etc. 
• Seasonality: Summer, fall, winter, spring 
• Top sellers 

Below is an example of campaign segmentation for the top 30 selling products for DermWarehouse. In order to find the top selling products, there was prior segmentation based off of each brand. You can see the day I took the screen shot below, DermWarehouse spent $8.16 on this specific Shopping campaign and generated three conversions for $122 in revenue. This is a 14.95x return on advertising spend. While there wasn’t a lot of money spent at the time of this screen shot, you can see how past data is being used to make Google Shopping work smarter so the campaign is profitable. 

Related: Use This Google AdWords Hack to Lower Costs and Increase Leads

4. Proper bidding

In the example above, you can see how there are different bids (default max CPC bids) for each product. You want to make sure you are bidding strategically based on the price of the product along with your profit margin. 

We recommend taking the price of the product and dividing this by your profit margin. If you have a $100 product and your margins are 50 percent (after all expenses), then you are looking at $50 profit. According to SmartInsights, the standard ecommerce conversion rate percentage is 3.78 percent on desktop devices; on mobile devices, it is 1.14 percent (more on mobile bidding to come). You’d want to take $50 and multiply this by .038 to get a $1.90 bid. This is a good starting point! If you can convert above 3.78 percent on this $100 product, you’d be profitable. 

Too often, ecommerce businesses will have the same bid for each product despite a drastic difference in pricing. This is a major flaw that can hold back your profitability on Google Shopping. 

Related: 4 Ways to Squeeze Every Last Bit of Value From Your Google AdWords Budget

5. Mobile bid adjustments

Any digital markter is going to tell you about the importance of mobile. The issue is that mobile has an ecommerce conversion rate of 1.14 percent, less than half of desktop. 

Most advertisers don’t realize that you can reduce your mobile bid adjustment, which will make your Google Shopping campaigns more profitable.

If you go to “settings” and “devices” you have the option to reduce mobile bidding. In the example below, you can see the mobile bid adjustment has been reduced by 50 percent. This has dropped the average cost per click by more than 50 percent on mobile. This is making our budget work harder on desktop, where all of the conversions have come from. While we don’t want to give up on mobile completely within this campaign, we know it isn’t as profitable as desktop and tablet, hence the 50 percent bid reduction. 
 

Related: 3 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Ad’s Clickthrough Rate and Lower Your Cost Per Click

6. Retargeting

I mentioned earlier that the standard ecommerce conversion rate percentage is 3.78 percent on desktop and 1.14 percent on desktop. This means that 97 out of 100 people who are visiting your website are not converting! 

Make sure you have retargeting set up so after someone drops off your site your branded advertisement will continue to be served for up to 30 days. 

There are advanced features of retargeting called dynamic search retargeting and RLSA (retargeting lists for search ads). For starters, make sure to create your first display retargeting campaign so your brand will stay top of mind to people who drop off your site. 

February 28, 2018

4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Standing out is one of the toughest things to do in a crowded market. You are too busy chasing your dream job and wanting to do your passion project for a living that you forget to make money. How do we go about it?

Make yourself equal and make yourself different.

What do others expect from you?

I always tell people to deliver what other people do not expect from you. Back when I was the CEO at Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment, we would tell our athletes to surprise people by presenting themselves in a different manner from how others perceive an athlete normally behaves.We taught the players to make sure they were always the first to hold a door and say “thank you.” A simple action can go a long way.

Challenge others to re-evaluate their perspective on who you are with your unexpected actions. Catching someone by surprise allows us to make a bigger impact on those around us who expected something else. Use this surprise in your favor by making it into a competitive advantage.

Create a competitive advantage.

Surprising people also means that you tend to have a competitive advantage over the rest of the field. You have something different to offer, which helps you to get noticed.

What we want to do before leveraging your advantage, though, is make ourselves equal to our competitors. Show how you possess the same attributes as your competitors, that you are equally deserving of consideration.

Simply saying “I’m different” does nothing to convince others of your value. Prove it. Show them that you have the same skills as your competitors. The same knowledge. The same desire. Then, show them how different you are from the rest.

If you cannot convince someone you are equal first, trying to convince them that you are different becomes more difficult.

See separation in action.

Whether we’re applying for jobs, dreaming about what we want to do next in our career or just meeting people, we want to make ourselves their equal first.

Recently I went into a business meeting and, because of my career history, they were expecting me to act like a sports agent. They were expecting more of what they had received in the past from other people in that industry, one based on greed and insecurity.

I showed up and made myself equal, as I still possess the skills and situational knowledge of a sports agent. But, I also made myself different from other agents they had met before with an abundant attitude. Unlike most sports agents, I believe that there is more than enough of everything for everyone and this approach resonates with people who do not expect it.

Differentiation means success.

Making yourself different means you are more likely to have long-term success.

Renowned business strategist Michael E. Porter teaches us that, “The fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage. Though a [person] can have a myriad of strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis [her] competitors, there are two types of competitive advantage that a [person] can possess: low cost or differentiation.”

Competitive advantage is broken down to two simple things: being cheap and being different. Which would you prefer to be known for?

With a differentiation strategy, a person seeks to be unique in an industry, selecting attributes that others in the industry perceive as important and positioning themselves to meet those needs.

Be the same and then be different.

You must remember to come into a situation humble and make yourself equal first, then get to work on differentiating yourself. Your competition never quits, and neither should you. Your work on yourself needs to be consistent if you want to maintain your competitive advantage. Keep striving to be different, but don’t forget to make yourself equal first.