Why Your Credit Card Processor is Holding Your Business Funds

General Article

July 19, 2022Laura

Why Your Credit Card Processor is Holding Your Business Funds

You’ve had a very promising start to your business and are looking forward to reinvesting funds to chase your goals. However, you check your merchant account and find that a hold has been placed on your funds. Plans stall, frustration sets in, and now you’re wondering what it all means and where do you go from here. Most importantly, how are you going to pay bills on time? What should you do when card processors hold funds?

First, it’s important to know the difference between a merchant account hold, also known as a “funds hold” and a merchant account freeze.

What is a Merchant Account Hold?

A merchant account hold happens when a credit card processor pauses settlements and holds all processed funds in security. This is why you’re not seeing the money deposited into your merchant account. (Keep in mind a hold differs from an ACH delay or rolling reserve; these are an internal issue at the acquirer or processor level.)

There are many reasons why your provider might choose to withhold your funds. In the event that your provider says you broke the terms of your contract, you could wait up to 180 days to receive your funds. Common reasons why a hold might occur include limiting risk and chargebacks. The primary reason a processor will hold funds is to limit the risk of a merchant closing their account while they still owe fees, chargebacks and fraud.

They may also choose to hold funds to ensure there is money available in case chargebacks occur. Having funds on hold helps to shield them from suffering losses due to a merchant conducting fraudulent transactions, and to ensure they can pay any accompanying fees.

What is a Merchant Account Freeze?

A merchant account freeze is similar to a hold, but a freeze is a worst-case scenario for merchants. When a freeze happens, your business will no longer be able to accept credit and debit card transactions. To complicate matters further, any and all income from recent transactions will not be deposited until the processor lifts the freeze.

How to Avoid and Fix Account Holds

The most important thing is to be transparent and communicate clearly when it comes to your merchant account. Before partnering with a processor, spend some time going over the terms and conditions in the agreement so you can avoid unnecessary holds and freezes. Make sure you only use your merchant account for your business (not another business or person), and only sell items that you agreed on initially.

It’s also important to keep in touch with your processor over any and all changes to your business. For example, if you starteded out processing around $10,000 in transactional volume per month, but you suddenly experience rapid growth and it jumps to $40,000 per month, you’ll need to let your processor know. Another big thing to manage diligently is chargebacks. Find a processor that can help you fight against and protect your business from chargebacks.

All in all, …

Consulting Marketing

July 18, 2022Laura

Google AdWords – 3 Mistakes People Make

With beginners to Google AdWords, it’s easy to make a lot of mistakes. If you’re a newbie, you’ve probably heard of tremendous success stories on how Google AdWords can make you rich and incredibly profitable. But you should know that the reality, is much darker than the fantasy.
In short, what I mean is that you can try your luck at Google AdWords, but without the proper guidance and advice… you will more than likely lose a lot of money in the process. So before you embark on your pay per click adventures, make sure you don’t follow any one of the following mistakes when using Google AdWords. Here’s mistake number 1:
1) Using the display or content network to advertise “everywhere”
This is one of the biggest mistakes that people to Google AdWords do all the time. And in fact, even I was guilty of making this mistake. Even though you will see big companies advertising their products and services all over the internet, it doesn’t mean that you should go out and do the same thing. These companies have major advertising budgets, and you have no idea of how they are making their money.
The content network should be used as an ezine ad. What you want to do is find websites in your niche who are running Google AdSense ads on their website, and list these sites individually in the content network URLs to advertise on. This is a much better way of marketing using the content network instead of just opting to have your ad listed all over the place – on non-related website. Here’s another mistake people make:
2) Having low quality landing pages
If you’re going to advertise on AdWords, you will need a good and relevant landing page. Sometimes, Google doesn’t even accept “squeeze pages”… they want landing pages that are full of content. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should create a sales letter styled website – because they hate this also. Here’s the last mistake that people who use Google AdWords make.
3) Making your daily budget high
If you are making a profit or at least breaking even, I have no problem with making your daily ad budget high. But if you are losing money and are spending $10 to $20 a day on a campaign that isn’t profitable… you have to change something within your marketing strategy.
Maybe you should test a new niche, or change the price of your product if you want to test things. If it’s not working, it’s not working, and a high daily advertising budget will only cause you to go broke. I don’t recommend it to any beginner who are limited funds but thinks that AdWords will be their meal ticket to riches.
These 3 mistakes that people make on Google AdWords are things that need to be considered before the next time you go out and start trying to make your advertising campaign a success. Test first, then proceed if profitable. That’s …

Food Marketing

July 17, 2022Laura

Creating New Play Lists To Increase Number Of Views On YouTube

This one’s a little bit more advanced. Basically, all it means is that you basically create new playlists. If you’re in your channel, you look on the right here and you can click on that link. You can add basically of it on your videos. This is useful for when people search for a series of videos and they don’t want to keep searching for new individual videos. They want to see a series of videos and it takes them through the course or something. You can create this sort of idea for them to not go through all your list to search video.
You can use this to your advantage. You can look for other popular videos on YouTube and combine them inside your own list with your own videos. When other people search for those videos, the play-list with the popular video in it will come up, and because your videos are in there as well, when people go through it they’ll be able to see your video too and increase your views that way. Just play around with this. You can create your own if you’re on the play-list-menu. You create it by just going to New and click on Play-list-link, and you can select any video you want to add to this new play-list-area. It’s a pretty cool strategy. We haven’t done this too much, but it’s a strategy that Julie Perry is very keen on.
Moving on. This is the last one for creating increasing number of views, then we’ll go on to the next area that you can increase the number of videos. This is the bulk of it, so we’re getting there.…

Business Marketing

July 16, 2022Laura

Make The Most Of Social Media Marketing With These Important Pointers

Think about adding social networking to your marketing strategy, if you find that your statistics for the month are disappointing. Incorporating something new and fresh might be just what your business needs to help it claw its way out of a slump. Social media marketing can be successful, cost effective, and gets you out to a new audience. This article provides smart, easy steps for starting a successful marketing campaign with social media.

Create a plan before you start social media marketing. You will have to determine how you want your page set up, how often you can work on it, and who will do the work. Establish time guidelines for each aspect of your campaign. Stick to your plan as firmly as you can, and you will find success in social media marketing.

Become completely compatible with the big social media sites by adding comments, ratings and a sort function on your website. By adding these things, your readers will be able to mark their favorite articles or pictures. You should keep track of what kind of content is popular.

Post new updates as often as possible. A lot of social media users expect frequent updates; if you don’t come through, you may lose a lot of people. Work on updating your followers a couple of times each week.

Utilize social media to create a user friendly atmosphere. Design a store on Facebook which can be readily accessed through your posts, as an addition to your independent site. Many Facebook users prefer to remain on the site while browsing, so this option allows them to see and even purchase your products without leaving Facebook. You can have them make their purchase without leaving Facebook to go to your main site, which is usually their preference anyway.

When posting from your social media accounts, you should strive to come across as humble and approachable. Regardless of whether you are a start-up or an established business, readers will recognize arrogance and be turned off by it. You must always remember that it is your customers who ultimately wield the most power in your relationship, not you. Without them, your business can never be successful.

If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, make one so you can go through Yahoo Answers. Users submit their questions here and other users can answer them for free. Search questions in your market niche and give answers that highlight your products or services. You can become an expert through giving quality answers in a specific category.

You will frequently see interesting photo-shopped images on social media ad pages. Using these images is very smart because it draws peoples eyes to your ad. Once they look at your ad, then there is a greater chance they will visit your site.

This article should have convinced you that it’s pretty easy to get into the social media marketing groove! Once you start something like this you can keep on educating yourself in the ways you can make …

Digital Marketing

July 14, 2022Laura

Article Marketing Secrets – Learn How To Properly Optimize Your Article Marketing Strategy

What are article marketing secrets and how can you use them to your advantage? Most people are lost when it comes to thinking outside the box and becoming creative. Super successful article marketing experts have implemented and applied the information given in this article. The reality is that the strategies always work, but you have to put them to work for you. Let’s have a look into HOW you can be unstoppable profitable with this strategy.
Picking your niche:
How can you be successful in writing content if you are not passionate about what you are writing? You can’t be effective in doing a task, content creation, and providing value in an area that you simply don’t like. What is the solution? First of all you need to be sure about which niches you want to write about. It might online marketing, training dogs, hotels in new york, scuba diving in Philippines or even gardening. It doesn’t matter what it is that you want to talk and write about, but make sure to select something that doesn’t bore you.
You might have to do some research to get to where you want to go. Go to and search for the topic that you’ve selected. After that you need to spend some hours, maybe even days or weeks to train your brain with practical and useful information. Once that is done and you managed to do some consistent research, you can freely and independently write about your chosen topic. Don’t forget that the first step always is to INFORM yourself first.
Practical article marketing secrets:
The second step to focus on content creation, so that you have the possibility to establish yourself, position yourself as an EXPERT, and deliver your website or article visitors maximum value. The reality is that the more you focus on what you need to write about that is useful to others, you won’t concentrate on black hat methods such as keyword stuffing, providing general content.. How fast will you be in the position to write freely about a topic or subject? That’s hard to say, but it should take you at least several weeks of practice to write in a way it is most beneficial for both you and your readers.
Make sure to entirely concentrate on writing, planning, putting more and more content up, and reviewing your published articles and posts. Reviewing is the key to judge whether your previous hard work was effective or not. Even if it wasn’t effective, reviewing will help you to correct mistakes and make it BETTER. These are all the article marketing secrets that should help you to become a professional writer.…

General Article

July 13, 2022Laura

3 Big Tips to Using Article Marketing to Build an Email Marketing List

If you want to know about using article marketing to build your email marketing list, then you are in the right place. This article will cover 3 tips to help you along the way of building a list with articles.

Many people use pay per click to build lists, and that works fine. But for the Internet marketer who wants to do it for free, articles marketing is the way to go.

One way to do this is to write articles and submit them to article directories. Ezine Articles is the most important directory because it gets the most traffic, but there are other ones also such as GoArticles and Buzzle. By submitting articles to these directories and then adding a good authors resource box that makes readers want to click, you are well on your way. When the readers click on the links in the resource box, you should direct them to a squeeze page which will sell the reader on giving you their email address. Without enough articles in the directories, you will get a lot of traffic and a lot of people potentially clicking on your links to visit your landing page and sign up to your email marketing list.

Another way to use article marketing is to write guest articles for other marketers. As a marketer with a list, we want to give our subscribers useful information. So offering a useful article to another marketer will benefit both you and the marketer. You will benefit because with you resource box intact, the marketers readers will have the opportunity to join your list. And the marketer benefits because his or her readers get beneficial information.

A third way to use article marketing is to sign up to a program that syndicates your articles around a network of blogs. These programs will allow you to place links in your articles which you can direct to your landing page to collect email addresses. There are several programs like this out there, one of which is Article Marketing Automation. Using a combination of these three methods will put you on the fast track to building your email marketing list.…

General Article

July 10, 2022Laura

Reconnecting After Recession

Economists all over are now predicting that the end of recession is near. While the Feds won’t still acknowledge that, it makes sense for your company to be ready to play the game again. But, the recession has caused a paradigm shift in consumer behavior. Consumers will now think twice before parting with their dollar and expect more value for money. What should your marketing strategies be so that you are all set to face the recovering markets? Read on…

1. Reconnect: It’s great that your company managed to stay afloat through the recession. Reconnect with your customers and tell them you are still around. Something as simple as e-mail flyer would do. Since your customers will now look to stretch that dollar to the maximum, offering online discount coupons is also a good idea.

2. Learn more about your customers: This is a good time to understand and get to know your customers better. This way, you are better equipped to meet their needs once the clouds of recession lift. Use this time to study customer patterns. If you are using a marketing automation software, start generating relevant reports and studying them. If your firm does not use a marketing automation tool, this would be a good time to migrate to one.

3. Be selective: One common mistake companies make at this time is getting too desperate. Don’t fall into this trap and bombard all the prospects in your database with marketing e-mails that resemble junk. Instead, target those areas intensely, which are expected to be brimming with opportunities once recession lifts. A good example would be sending personalized HTML e-mails or e-newsletters to your best prospects rather than sending a generic e-mail advertisement to everyone on your database. Do not compromise on customer privacy or permissions. Try too hard and you may be perceived to be as annoying as the telemarketer who calls up during dinner time…

4. Provide value, restore faith: Provide value to your customers. The term value here doesn’t only mean monetary value. Define value from the customer’s perspective. The first step involved in doing this is to understand what the customer values. Recession has caused an erosion of faith in all corporate brands. To regain that trust, you have to enhance customer experience at every chance you get. Remember that by providing more value, you can create more business.

5. Changed conditions: While it’s true that no pessimist can be an entrepreneur, don’t expect things to return to normal too soon. You might have to make changes in the way you currently conduct business. Do majority of your sales happen online through credit card transactions? Post-recession, you may want to offer other payment options to your clients, as many of them may be wary of buying too much on credit. Anticipate your client needs and start working towards satisfying them.

The ideas mentioned above will not require any major increase in your marketing budget, but, on the other hand, can offer …

General Article

July 9, 2022Laura

Market to Succeed in 2010

2009 saw marketers experiment with varied strategies in the hope that something will yield results. These experiments along with the current economic conditions have shaped the marketing strategies for 2010. This article outlines some of the up-coming marketing trends.

1. Value addition: The recession is just lifting and people are still cautious. They don’t want to spend too much too soon. People are willing to put their money only where they get real value addition. What you need to do is position your brand in such a manner that it reflects value.

2. Meet expectations: We spoke about value addition above, the next challenge is to meet consumer expectation-ensuring that what you offer is of value to your customers. People now want more for less. To make your brand truly successful, it is important that you offer them what they perceive to be of value and importance.

3. Enhance consumer experience: Does your company perennially put clients on-hold? Does your site take too much time to load? Now is the time to look into these areas and fix any discrepancies. People are still lethargic when it comes to spending money. You need to be proactive and make every interaction your prospect has with you, a positive experience.

4. Use Social Media effectively: We all remember the buzz created by e-mail when it entered the marketing world. Today, it’s the Social Media that seems to be all-set to take the center-stage. In fact, a report published by the Social Media examiner states that a startling 64% of marketers spend over five hours each week on social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Blogs, You Tube have become solid platforms for networking and improving business relations.

5. Content: Update all your customer touch-points with relevant content. Whether it’s your website, blog or your social networking profile and wall, make sure it reflects the latest on your brand. If you send newsletters to your prospects/clients, ensure they reach them consistently. And last but not the least, try and keep the content customer-centric.

6. Personalize: Don’t want to spend too much at Pizza Hut? How about the pizzeria at the corner of the road? More and more people are turning towards local businesses. This is time to make your presence felt locally. Get to know your customers, personalize your communication with them.

7. Intelligent Marketing automation: So you have a marketing automation software program or intend on using one to take the pressure off you. Sounds good, but make sure that the program you deploy is intelligent. An archaic automation model that helps you send mass e-mails won’t suffice. What you need is an intelligent marketing automation tool that can integrate the various modes of customer contact and thus enhance your marketing efforts.

Marketing in 2010 is not shouting from roof-tops about what you have to offer. It is all about anticipating what your prospects want and giving it to them even before they ask for it.…

General Article

July 6, 2022Laura

Streamline Your Sales by Switching To a Marketing Automation Solution

A manual process is time-consuming and has a high rate of errors whereas an automated system enables one to get rid of redundant data and focus on quality data, leads as in this case.

With a marketing automation solution marketers can manage all the complex and time-consuming tasks of lead management, lead scoring, lead nurturing and CRM integration. Thus marketing automation is the optimization of the complete marketing process right from campaign planning to lead winning.

What does marketing automation software do?

Marketing automation software studies a prospective buyer’s digital body language and can assess their level in the buying process and zero in on their area of interest.

The automation software also assists in scoring leads by carefully categorizing the readings and letting a marketing person know if the buyer is ready to talk with him or whether his Digital Body Language shows his disinterest in the product.

Delivery the right content

The content to be delivered needs to be highly personalized and the buyer has to feel important. Furthermore, this data needs to be cleansed and standardized periodically. Delivery the right message at the right time can be done through marketing automation. With automation, workflow is streamlined and time saved.

Campaigning

Marketing automation software allows aligning the campaigns with the sales teams in an efficient way. The software targets, builds, executes and measures the success of the campaign, the issues therein and converts good leads into qualified ones. The software further helps to customize email messages and campaigns that match the customer needs.

Creating promo offers

The software helps create discounts and promo offers based on the buyer data and interest. This is a smart way to manage your leads.

Post sale – The automation software organizes post-purchase actions like helping you develop better customer relationships and follow-up.

Automating the billing process – The software’s billing automation features manages your billing and collections processes. In addition it automates multiple accounting tasks that otherwise eat up a lot of time

Inventory tracking – Automation software tracks your inventory and sends alerts if the product is out of stock. It also sends delivery details directly to the person eliminating any error.

Thus the best part of marketing automation software is that organizations can use it in different ways to meet their specific needs. They also use marketing automation tools for creating, executing, managing and measuring online marketing programs.

An automation software ensures that marketing and sales can work together to ensure the right follow-up of each potential customer. Automated workflows analyze and deliver automated responses based on the customer’s area of interest. The moment the marketer knows that the customer is showing interest, the software further helps him in narrowing this customer and organizing the next step of lead nurturing. This automatically turns into lead scoring and finally lead winning.

The above shows that a automation software helps marketers to focus on managing demand rather than following – up. It …

General Article

July 5, 2022Laura

Internet Marketing – Will Your Business Benefit From Internet Marketing?

Every day more people turn to the internet to find information to solve their problems and to network with others online. We also hear about numerous offline businesses finding further success by creating an online presence. However in order to work out if your business will benefit from internet marketing you need to find out what is really happening in your business niche online.

How do you find out what is happening in your business niche online?

The first thing you must do is find out how likely your targeted audience is to look for your products and/or services online. It stands to reason that if no one looks for your products online then internet marketing will do little for your bottom line.

Conducting market research will help you determine whether or not you should market your business online. You could survey your existing customers with suitable questions to find out if they use the internet to research information about your products and/or services. Alternatively you could hire a market research company to carry out this research for you. They will conduct research quickly for you, gain a lot of valuable information and give you their opinion of the outcome you can achieve marketing your business online.

They will be able to tell you things like whether your targeted audience only searches for information about your products online or they actually make online purchases. Without this research you may have little idea of whether or not internet marketing will benefit your business. So a little time, effort and money spent on research first may save you wasting more time, effort and money on marketing that will have little effect on your business.

If your research indicates that an online presence is worthwhile for your business then you will need to work out how you are going to advertise your business online.

How do you advertise your business online?

Your research will also give you a good idea of whether people search for information about your products and/or services online or will actually buy from you online. With that information, unless you have a good knowledge of marketing online, it will be extremely worthwhile to seek the help of professionals. They will consult you to determine which online marketing strategies will be the most effective, design advertisements for your campaign, help you implement the campaign and evaluate the results of your online campaign.

The success of your online marketing is only limited by your ability to execute effective marketing strategies to promote your products and/or services. Some strategies you might employ may include optimizing your website for relevant search terms, placing links to your site elsewhere on the internet, writing and publishing articles and newsletters and using affiliates to promote your products.…

Month: July 2022