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The first step towards success in marketing is your ability to identify common mistakes you and others are making.

Then, you can improve and avoid going down the same path. Web Success Portal shares some of the common marketing mistakes to avoid.

Web Success Portal offers expert digital marketing services and solutions for your business.

Common Digital Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

Some of the common digital marketing mistakes to avoid include the following;

Lack of Clear Goals

A significant blow you can cause to your digital marketing strategy is not to set precise or SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) goals.

Targeting The Wrong Audience

This is a common mistake when a brand needs to research its target audience beforehand.

A lack of adequate platform research can also lead to wasted efforts if your target audience is off the platform.

Lack of Mobile Friendly Websites and Content

Many marketers need to optimize their sites and content for mobile devices, forgetting that more than half the world’s population uses mobile devices.

Thus, causing mobile phone users to experience a poor UX.

Lack Of Competitor Analysis

Many brands need to analyze their competitors when building their strategy.

So, they make the same mistakes the competitors are making and find it difficult to improve on theirs.

Lack of Lead Magnets

One of the most common marketing mistakes is a need for lead magnets, something consumers cannot resist. It could be a free item, and it could be a discount or a coupon.

Lack of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization causes your brand to rank high in search results.

If your website is not Search Engine optimized, it will be difficult for consumers to locate your products and services.

How To Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Let Your Aim Be Conversion
Lead generation is quite an achievement, but leads are frustrating if they never convert to customers.

The main aim of business and marketing is to make sales. Thus, you shouldn’t just aim to generate leads but mainly to correct them.

Improve On Customer Interaction
Every interaction and engagement with consumers has a lasting effect. Your brand’s customer service has to be top-notch.

Your services should show that you care about your consumers. You can do this through customized products, engagement with social media tags, personalized emails, lead-based home pages, etc.

Optimize Consumers’ Buying Journey
The smoother the journey, the more likely consumers are to become customers.

It is crucial to improve the buying process by optimizing your website and making it easy for customers to navigate and purchase products or services.

Analyse And Reform
Lastly, you must know when and what to restructure and improve. You can do this by setting KPIs.

Key Performance Indicators point to what changes you wish to make in your marketing strategy.

You can analyze these KPIs monthly to see what works, what you need to improve on, what you need to stop, and what you can incorporate.

Buying a house for the first time can be very stressful, and Green Sprout knows this. This is why the experts at Green Sprout have researched and gotten the best mortgage options for first-time borrowers. The details can be seen below.

Who Qualifies As A First-Time Home Buyer?

A first-time home buyer isn’t a homeowner or an investor, nor are you re-mortgaging a previous home. So, generally, you must not have owned a house before or have a property to sell.

How Much Does The Bank Lend First-Time Buyers?

As a first-time buyer, you will find many money lenders willing to allow you to borrow up to 4 or 4.5 times the size of your annual salary. In rare cases, some will offer 5 to 7 times the amount.

Mortgage Options Available For First-Time Buyers

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Loans

The Federal Housing Administration is easy to qualify for and has a low down payment. In addition to the lower up-front loan costs and not-so-high credit requirements, the down payments get as low as 3.5%. Thus, making them great for first-time buyers.

This, however, depends on your credit score. The minimum credit score for FHA loans ranges from 500-580. Those with credit scores of 580 and above are eligible to make a subsidized down payment of only 3.5%, while 500-579 may be required to pay up to 10% in down payments.

However, all borrowers must pay a mortgage insurance premium to protect the lender if the borrower cannot pay back for any reason.

Conventional Loans

The federal government does not insure these types of loans. They have a lot of strict requirements, and this makes them difficult to qualify for.

Although they require higher credit scores, less debt-to-income ratio, the potential for private mortgage insurance, and larger down payments, they still cost less than federal government-guaranteed loans.

U.S. Department Of Agriculture (USDA) Loans

This loan does not require a down payment and offers 100% financing. The loan is for those seeking to purchase homes in designated rural areas. The loan does not require private mortgage insurance but has a 1% upfront funding fee at the closing point and a 0.35% annual fee.

U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Loan

The VA loan does not give out loans to everyone but guarantees those by qualified lenders. The loans are targeted at helping active or retired veterans or their spouses obtain home loans with good terms. They are usually easy to qualify for.

Special Programs For First-Time Buyers

Individual Retirement Accounts

Green Sprout shares that all first-time home buyers can take up to 10,000 dollars out of an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) without needing to pay the early withdrawal penalty. However, you still have to pay income tax on the money withdrawn.

Ready Buyer Program

The Federal National Mortgage Association has a program called Ready Buyer that provides up to 3% assistance towards closing costs on purchasing their property (foreclosed property owned by Fannie Mae). This is specially designed for first-time buyers.

Down Payment Assistance Programs

Down payment assistance programs for first-time buyers are available in some states. The program is mainly for civil servants and persons who earn low incomes.

Congratulations! Getting married is a huge accomplishment, and this is a very exciting time in your life. Now that you’re married, a few things in your life are likely going to change a bit. You don’t just have yourself to worry about and take care of now, but your new spouse as well. Although there are many benefits that come with being married, there are also some things you may have a more difficult time transitioning into. If you are in need of some guidance, here are 4 tips for recently married men. 

Become A Good Listener

Working on your listening skills will help you to be a great husband, no matter who you are married to. Your new spouse will appreciate being listened to, and it will help you to avoid arguments and fights. Becoming a good listener will also benefit you in many other areas of your life such as work and in friendships.  

Get Gifts “Just Because” 

As a recently married man, you may feel like you don’t need to buy her flowers anymore because you are no longer in the courting stage of your relationship. However, for a successful and happy long-term marriage, you should do little things such as cleaning up the house, giving her flowers or candy, writing love letters, or getting other small gifts “just because” to let your wife know you love her and are thinking of her. 

Don’t Tell Lies

Being honest is important in most relationships, especially in your marriage. Lies are one of the biggest reasons romantic relationships fall apart and why so many marriages end in divorce. 

To avoid this from happening to you, make sure to never tell your spouse any lies. If you have lied in the past, come clean and tell the truth. Many other mistakes can be forgiven, but a lot of people will not be able to forgive you if you are dishonest with them. 

Make Time For Your Spouse

No matter how many jobs you work or how busy you are with other responsibilities, now that you’re married you should try to make time for your spouse whenever possible. Spending quality time together is as important now as ever before in order to keep the sparks in your relationship alive. 

Change around your schedule if possible to fit with your spouses, or declare a certain day of the week “husband and wife day” so that you both have time to look forward to when you know you will get to hang out with each other. 

Being a newlywed can be a lot of fun and with the help of these tips can be totally stress-free. Hopefully, this helps you to settle into your new lifestyle with ease!

Are you looking for a new hobby in your life? Finding new hobbies can change and enrich your life in many ways. There are many great hobbies to consider, but sailing is one that many find to be life-changing, and this is for a few reasons. First, it allows you to enjoy spending time out at sea and in nature and this can do wonders for your physical and mental health. It is also an active hobby yet one that requires a lot of skill and knowledge, plus there is a very strong community so it can be a social activity too. It can also be a hobby that is daunting to get started with, so this post will offer a few tips for beginners.

Find Someone To Go Out With

Before you start looking at courses and clubs, it is first a good idea to simply get out on the water to see if this is a hobby that suits you. Try to find someone that can take you out on the boat and show you the ropes so that you can get a sense of what sailing is like, what is involved and how it makes you feel. Most people find it to be an invigorating experience, but it is also not a hobby for everyone.

Research As Much As You Can Online

It is also a good idea to spend some time researching sailing online to give you an idea of what is involved. You can immerse yourself in the pastime by reading sailing blogs, joining online communities and watching videos on YouTube. This will help you to develop a basic level of knowledge that will come in handy once you start to get out there and give you more confidence in your hobby.

Join A Sailing Club

Find out which sailing clubs are near you and join. Sailing clubs are highly social and they can be a great way to meet new people and learn about sailing, plus most will offer the chance to easily hire a boat and get some experience. Sailing clubs may also be able to arrange or help with sailing courses to help you to get started.

Sign Up To A Sailing Course

Following this, you will need to take a sailing course before you head out onto the water yourself. Sailing courses will teach you the basic skills and help you to get used to being out on the water with the help of an experienced instructor.

Start Sailing

It is then a case of simply getting started. Initially, it is a good idea to hire a boat until you are sure that this is the right hobby for you. After this, you might want to buy your own boat which will be an amazing feeling. You can find boats for sale online and then use a boat transport comparison tool like https://www.shiply.com/boat-transport/ to find the most trustworthy boat movers to get your boat safely delivered to your destination (you can usually keep a boat at your sailing club).

Hopefully, these tips will encourage you to get started with sailing and find a new hobby that will improve your life in many ways.

If you live alone and plan on living alone for the foreseeable future, it makes sense to create a home that’s going to suit your needs and make you feel comfortable. However, many men who live alone default to having a home that looks more similar to their dorm room than to an actual home for an adult. Luckily, if you find a home with the right foundational elements, it can be extremely easy to design a home that’s perfect for your lifestyle.

To help you see how this can be done,  here are three things to look for in a perfect bachelor pad. 

Ways To Bring In Warmth

Oftentimes, a home that’s designed and decorated for men can have kind of an impersonal feeling to it. With all of the sharp edges and flat surfaces, it can easily feel cold. However, this doesn’t have to be the case, especially if you’re able to find a home that has some natural warmth to it.

Warmth can be found in a home in all kinds of ways. One of the best ways to do this is to use warm wood colors. These lighter colors of wood in all kinds of accent areas can really warm up a room without having to add a lot of bold colors or textiles that may not appeal to some men. 

A Space To Entertain

When living on your own, it can be fun to have guests over from time to time. But if you do, you’re going to want to have a place where you can entertain them. 

When looking for a place to live, look for homes that have space where you can entertain. An open kitchen is a great find so that you and your guests can stay close to the food without missing out on any of the socializing. If you can find a place with outdoor space where you can entertain as well, even better. 

Keep A Clean And Well-Maintained Bathroom

It’s not only the kitchen that your guests will be seeing when they come to your bachelor pad. So to help ensure that anyone stopping by isn’t disgusted by the way that you’re living, make sure you choose a home that has a clean and well maintained bathroom that you can continue to take care of. 

Along with keeping this room clean, consider decorating the space a bit more so that the design of your home goes all the way into the bathroom and doesn’t leave this room feeling like the one place in your bachelor pad that’s been forgotten. 

If you’re wanting to move into the perfect bachelor pad space, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you know when you’ve found it.

When people look at gaming laptops and gaming PCs in general, they will usually start by looking at the graphics card and the CPU. They will then start looking at things like the RAM and some will look at the quality of the SSD storage. But there are so many other features that can affect your gaming experience when picking a gaming laptop and overlooking them could leave you with a disappointing machine. Let’s take a look at some underrated features you should look for when buying a gaming laptop.

Viewing Angles

A lot of people will pay attention to the resolution and the refresh rate on a monitor and base their opinion of it based on that only. They then realize that the screen needs to be tilted at just the perfect angle for them to enjoy the colors fully. This is why you must check the viewing angles on a laptop before you make your decision. This is something that you’ll be able to find out by looking at in-depth video reviews of laptops online.

The Keyboard

Unless you’re going to buy an additional keyboard, which is not something most laptop gamers want to do, you have to look at how good the keyboard on the laptop is. Ideally, you want to try the keyboard in person first if you are going to buy the keyboard online, but you can tell what type of keyboard you’ll be dealing with by checking the technology and things like travel and key pitch, among others. Go for a chiclet-style keyboard with full travel on the keys if you want to replicate that mechanical keyboard feel. Don’t forget backlighting either.

Battery Type and Life

Battery life is another thing a lot of people tend to overlook. Most gamers leave their laptop plugged in pretty much all the time and assume that they’ll always be able to find an outlet to plug their machines into, but that may not always be the case. Look for a machine that can give you at least five hours of playing without being plugged in. We also suggest that you go with a laptop with a removable battery as batteries on gaming laptops can wear out quickly.

Touchscreen

Very few people will look for a touchscreen on their gaming laptops, but more should. An increasing number of PC games use touchscreens, and they can enhance the whole gaming experience.

Mirror, Slay the Spire, and SteamWorld Heist are all examples of great games that you can play on your laptop. There are also tons of building games and rhythm-based games that support touchscreens as well. If you’re looking for a great laptop that has that feature, check out these touchscreen gaming laptops from Lenovo.

Look for these features on top of the usual specs if you want to get a truly awesome gaming machine. Some of these features are more important than others, however, so set your priorities and compare features and prices between machines until you find the best one for you.