Author: Sujan Patel

A Guide to Instagram Video Ads

Author Sujan Patel | 2 Comments | Social Media

Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly active users. Even better, those users are highly engaged. Every day, they’re uploading 80 million photos and “liking” 4.5 billion posts.

But that’s not all Instagram has to offer advertisers.

Instagram posts are naturally intrusive, but in a good way that feels native to the platform. While it’s easy to scroll past posts users aren’t interested in, it’s essentially impossible to avoid them altogether.

This means the potential reach and impact of any type of Instagram ad is huge – but you want the best possible results from your online advertising, don’t you? In that case, one format consistently outperforms all other – video.

Instagram’s video view rate benchmark regularly averages over 40%, depending on the month.

Continue reading → A Guide to Instagram Video Ads

How to Increase Sales with Conversational Marketing

Author Sujan Patel | 5 Comments | Marketing

I’m going to be straight with you. Conversational marketing isn’t rocket science. It’s essentially having a conversation with your customers and asking questions, rather than achieving the same thing by having them fill out a lead form. Basically, it’s a fancy way of referring to live chat tools, chatbot apps, and the sales and marketing folks who leverage these tools.

But just because conversational marketing is easy to understand doesn’t mean it’s not powerful.

Continue reading → How to Increase Sales with Conversational Marketing

Why You Need to Be Doing Secondary SEO

Author Sujan Patel | 3 Comments | SEO

We all know SEO is great. But there’s no arguing with the fact that it can take forever to see results.

When you’re first starting out, you can bet it’s going to take at least a year or two to see any significant progress in the rankings – and it’s going to cost you a fortune while you’re waiting. SEO itself may be free, but these days, doing SEO is pretty much like running a fully-fledged marketing campaign, given the way you have to invest in publishing content and building your brand.

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100+ Ways to Promote Your Content – 2018 Update

Author Sujan Patel | Zero Comments | Content Marketing

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re an established content marketer, you will always have to be creative about the way you promote your content.

My friend Rob Wormley and I just recently wrote an eBook 100 Days of Growth and since we had $0 marketing budget, it forced us to get very creative about promotion. Through this process I’ve learned (relearned… it’s been a while since I’ve been this hands on) first hand how to effectively promote your content and site.

With that in mind, I wanted to share my list of ways that you can promote your content without breaking the bank. It doesn’t matter what level of experience you have, these are things that you can and should be doing right now.

I hope you find it as useful as I have!

Continue reading → 100+ Ways to Promote Your Content – 2018 Update

What Really Works for Content Promotion in 2018

Author Sujan Patel | 10 Comments | Content Marketing

There have been hundreds of articles written already about content promotion. If you Google “content promotion Sujan Patel,” you’ll see that I’ve written a few of them myself (see here and here).

But add up the number of tactics each of these articles shares. My articles on the subject alone cover hundreds of ways to promote content – and they’re hardly comprehensive. Ultimately, they add up to a ton of different tactics you can use to promote your work.

But which of them should you do? Which of them really work, and which just result in wasted time, effort and spend on your part? Having more techniques available to you doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get better results.

Throughout 2017, I promoted over 100 articles for 20+ websites, and in that time, I’ve found that there are 4-5 “tried and true” things we do consistently that make 90% of the impact for our campaigns. I’ve outlined them below for your reference. Use them to streamline and optimize your own efforts to get eyes on your content.

Continue reading → What Really Works for Content Promotion in 2018

How to Out-Market Your Competition

Author Sujan Patel | 4 Comments | Marketing

It’s tough out there for small and growing businesses. Not only do you have to juggle multiple hats to meet your organization’s operational needs, you have to do so while facing the fact that  customer expectations have never been higher.

According to data gathered by HelpScout:

    • 78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made an intended purchase because of a poor service experience.
    • News of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience.
  • It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience.

Fail to meet these expectations, and you can be sure your competitors are waiting – ready to claim customers that should be yours.

Continue reading → How to Out-Market Your Competition

13 “From the Trenches” Lessons Learned from Bootstrapping Multiple SaaS Businesses

Author Sujan Patel | 3 Comments | Business

Warning: this post is full of cliches.

It’s full of things that might seem obvious from the outside. But the thing is, when you’re in the weeds of entrepreneurship, you get blinders on. That’s why it’s important for me to be aware of that and try to look at what I’ve accomplished from the outside. I recommend you do the same.

In 2017, I was involved in 11 SaaS companies. I own and operate five of them, I’m a partner in one, and I’m an advisor or investor to another five SaaS startups. Through my company, Ramp Ventures – which acquires and grows companies – I’ve had the opportunity to thoroughly review 20-25 more SaaS companies in 2017 alone. And although we only ended up acquiring two of them, it gave me a really good overview of the world of a self-funded SaaS startup.

Continue reading → 13 “From the Trenches” Lessons Learned from Bootstrapping Multiple SaaS Businesses

A Marketing Roadmap for Totally New Business in 2018

Author Sujan Patel | 2 Comments | Podcast

In this weeks podcast we look at how to market your business in 2018. It’s a new year and it’s time to consider new technologies, new channels of traffic, and other factors that might be new in 2018.

● 1:40: Voice search: Will Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa change how you market in 2018?
● 4:15: How the changing Google algorithms and search methods will impact how you leverage SEO and the way you work your site.
● 5:30: Thoughts on differentiating yourself through your brand, particularly through content marketing and education.
● 8:00: How you can have a mini personal brand built around one specific niche.
● 10:40: Some “old school” strategies that still work.

How to Use Chatbots for Sales and Marketing

Author Sujan Patel | One Comment | Podcast

Everyone is jumping on chatbots as the new thing, and today we’re going to talk about how to use chatbots for sales and marketing.

● 1:00: What chatbots work best for, as well as how to categorizes the different types used for various applications.
● 2:55: What a driftbot is and what they’re best for.
● 4:45: Why people might choose a chatbot over other types of marketing, as well as what type of people are more likely to use a chatbot and why.
● 8:00: Examples of companies that are using chatbots effectively.
● 10:30: Details about chatbots: How much they are, how long it takes to get it up and running, and whether it’s possible to build one on your own.