First, you have to define what exactly is your marketing department composed of : 1. Do you have technical writers, market analysts, product strategists, branding experts, graphic designers, advertising experts ? 2. What specific function of your marketing department is failing or stagnant ? 3. Are they failing to promote your products/services effectively ? 4. Are the failing to follow the competitor and market trends ? 5. Are unable to bring in good ideas for existing and new products ? 6. Are they failing in effective branding of your company/products? Marketing department these days is like the backbone of a company. In fact it's even critical to the other two core parts of the company, i.e. the sales and product team. So they need to be very passionate and active, and help push the company forward. Stagnation can be due to several causes e.g. : 1. Apathetic employees or team 2. Poor or inexperienced leadership (for the department) 3. Weak/New Industry, Poor/New Brand Name, Unmarketable Products (or difficult-to-market products) Outside firms are not cheap and not sustainable long-term (unless you can afford it). If you plan to do some one-time or short-term projects, like getting consultation on a new project, get a new website design, doing brochures, exhibition, advertising, some branding advice etc.. then that's alright. In the long-term however, you will still need a set of skilled and experienced people in your marketing department to help push the company forward. Also, doing this internally will give you better control and flexibility, and you can eventually accumulate a lot of know-how and experience in terms of marketing (that is very relevant and specific to your industry). I would recommend an in-depth analysis of your current marketing team and an optimization plan. Sometimes all you need is one genius, one fantastic marketing leader, who will turn the whole department around.

One challenge that you may be facing is that Africa has a tremendous problem with fraudulent businesses running online and telephone scams. With that said, some industry experts say that Africa is still a developing country and offers many great opportunities such as commercial real estate. Hopefully, you do have a well-written "business plan" and a "pitch deck templates." They are many sites on the Internet that provide these templates along with advice on what investors like to see. The first step in the marketing process is to perform a competitive analysis to find existing competitors in the marketplace using Google. Go to their websites and start cutting and pasting content into a word document. Make a note of their title, description and keyword Meta tags. In today's digital marketing world, knowing what keywords and phrases your industry is using including your competitor's names, locations and sales/distribution channels is critical. The key is to develop website content that has the right keywords and phrases so that customers and investors will find your company website when searching for your type of business. Next, build a WordPress website, that reflects the who, what, where, when, why and how much, about your company's products and services. Do Google searches on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to learn how to structure and write content that search engines like to index. Also include a press room so reporters can find you. Each website page should have at least 400 words of text and a graphic. Make that you add "Alt Tags" descriptions for pictures and "Title Tags" for URL links. Also add numbered and bullet points with links to other pages on your website. Add about 25 pages of company content and around 100 posts, which are considered "News" by search engines. As your building your website consider it as an electronic salesperson that needs to answer every Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) that a customer might have about your product or service. The purpose is to remove all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt from the sales equation. So that when a customer or investor calls or sends an email that will be ready to do business. The next step is to begin marketing this content via Facebook, LinkedIn and Facebook. When you post a URL link from your website, Facebook and LinkedIn will automatically pull the first picture and 100 words of text into your social media post. In addition, you will have the opportunity to put in a small pitch about what information you are sharing complete with a call-to-action that tells customers what to do. This will drive a lot of interested customers/investors to your website that will sign up for "Free Information" or fill out "Contact Us" forms, which will help you develop business leads and a customer/investor email database. In addition to sharing information about your company, setup Google Alerts for the top 5 search keywords that represent your products and services. This will generate a list of news items that will be sent to you every day via email. Pick and choose the best articles/content and then share them via your social media accounts. This process will make you a subject matter expert in your field because you will be reading every single news story that is coming out. If you share the best content, others will see the content and follow you on social media because they will want to become subject matter experts too. Building large social media networks loaded with great information on your products/services as well as equity crowdfunding is great way for people to find you versus you trying to find them. For an example, visit http://crowdfundingPR.wordpress.com If you'd like to chat my contact information is in the upper right hand corner of the page. The added bonus for you will be the extensive content on how to conduct a successful equity crowdfunding campaign.

There's a lot of money to be made in the luxury space, but you need to bring something unique to the marketplace. That means studying BEYOND that just what you learn in school.

You answered your own question yourself. You need some kind of, "data such as adwords conversion rates, cold calling success rates and things like this which would back up your claims" Without any kind of data which you've collected on your MVP, you can't make any statements on growth potential that any investors will actually believe. Without data you're just pitching an idea. While good ideas are needed, the investors need to see that _you_ are the right person to make and sell your idea successfully. You need your own personal data on your own MVP to prove that. You can't just say, "these smart guys from company Y were able to do X growth, so that means I'll get X growth too".

Are some of your friends online marketing experts? Do they study the trends and understand the dynamics of content creation? I am guessing your friends read a ton of fashion blogs, they just don't know it. The short version of the advice would be: use your WordPress blog as the hub of your entire online presence. Then use the social platform of the week to build and connect with your audience, and give them reasons to come back to your site. Whether this is SnapChat (stories, filters, etc), Instagram (featuring highlights of a fashion shoot, etc with more details on your .... you guessed it: blog), or Facebook teasers with links back to your site. Nearly every major content producer understands the importance so maintaining your own platform (your blog, in this case). Social media trends change, the ability to access your audience changes (Facebook is always changing their algorithm, and rarely in favor of brand pages), there will always be a new Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, etc .... but when you control the main hub, your website, you can stay connected to your audience much more efficiently over time. Your assumption is correct: use social as the "spokes" that lead visitors back to your hub. -Shaun P.S. If you want to discuss more in detail, I would be happy to help. Just book a time that is convenient for you and we can go over exactly what your next steps should be.

Have you thought about suggesting existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms? While they all have learning curves to tackle, they will still surely be time savers compared to starting from scratch. I'm a big fan of Infusionsoft and a Certified Partner but if a robust solution like that is too big for your needs then there are others like Hubspot CRM or even Insightly. They each manage contacts like a boss however they will each also have certain pros and cons that you'll want to research for your specific needs as well.

Revenue alone will not depict the traction. US is a huge market and highly competitive environment for business exists there. A detailed analysis is required to recommend the appropriate amount of funds required. I would encourage you to set up a call with me to do it professionally.

How to monetize your blog? There are all sorts of ways, all of which entail their own challenges – paid advertorials, banner ads, contextual PPC ads, pre-packaged affiliate programs, negotiated sponsorships, etc. Now, listen; don't take this the wrong way, but not everyone will be smitten by the brand name "The UNXPSD". As things stand, I find it a bit unwieldy, since any time the site is mentioned in conversation – i.e. without a visual – it involves a cumbersome explanation about spelling. That does inhibit word of mouth growth, which ultimately holds you back. The creative misspelling may also be an obstacle for sponsors and customers. Some will like the style, but some will see it as "cutting corners". So I can't help wondering if this will lower your chances of attracting sponsorships and advertorials. Obviously this is no reflection on the quality of what you're doing, content-wise. But books ARE judged by their covers. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you ought to rebrand. But it might do you a world of good to obtain the naturally spelled domain name and forward it to your website. That way, there's no longer any concern if people don't "get" the weird spelling. It's not uncommon for startups to begin with deliberately misspelled brand names, since this enables them to find a cheap domain. Likewise, it's not uncommon for the more successful brands to circle back later and buy the "upgrade" version. If you eventually decide that this may be worth pursuing, I can help you save time, effort, and possibly money – either advising you on how to proceed or even negotiating a domain acquisition on your behalf. Domain names are what I do professionally. So your situation – with all its pros and cons – is a common situation for entrepreneurs to be in.

Option 1: Generally when you're first testing out an idea, you want to build a first functional prototype cheaply and quickly. The easiest way to do this would be to use existing tools that facilitate what you want to do. For instance, you could make a web-based version (which you could embed in an app too if you want) using Marketify, as described here: http://goo.gl/2kSkUm. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Option 2: If you want to skip straight to investing a lot of time and energy into testing the idea, then you'd want to find, or be, a developer for the platform of choice. Either iOS, Android, or React Native (both iOS and Android). Find someone that has experience in databases (would be needed for saving profiles, products, etc.), or, if possible, in marketplace type apps. Whenever you assign them a task, break down the task into small chunks. Make the chunks as small as you can (within reason, and to the extent that your knowledge allows), and tell your devs that if any chunks seem large, that they should further break those chunks down into bite size pieces. For instance, for the overall task of making a new webpage, _you_ might break it down as follows: 1) Set up a database 2) Make a form that takes user email, name, and phone number and adds them to database 3) Have our site send an email to everyone above the age of 50 each week When your devs take a look at it, _they_ might further break down the third step into: A) Set up an email service B) Connect it to the client database C) Figure out how to query the database for certain users D) Have it send emails to users over 50 You can use something like Trello to assign tasks and keep track of progress. In Trello you'd set up 4 columns titled, "To Do", "Doing", "Ready for Review", "Approved" (or combine the last two into "Done"). Then pay them and track their progress.

Yes, my agency uses 4-5 freelancers at any given time. We create marketing and social strategy plans for freelancers, consultants, and experts. I'm happy to connect, if you'd like. Best of luck, -Shaun

Hi there, I know this can be a frustrating problem.. I've been on Clarity since 2012 when its creator, Dan Martell, invited me and several others to the launch event and asked us to sign up as experts. For the first few years, I had hardly any calls. Also, it seemed like only those in the IT startup space were getting any traction. This was frustrating for a small business advisor like me who mostly works in the world of bricks and mortar. Things started to change for me after a few key things: 1. I started to drive my own 'tribe' to call me on Clarity. This increased my reviews and call stats on the platform and I believe this made my profile more attractive to Clarity 'native' traffic. 2. Clarity has been growing its reach. I'm meeting more and more callers who are not in the 'online startup' space who found me on Clarity. 3. More and more of the 'online startup' people are actually creating real businesses and have real business problems that I can help with... meaning they're actually having sales, organizational problems, partner concerns, etc.. not just chasing Angel Investors with their ideas. 4. I started to regularly check for public questions I could answer and I know this has led to several calls. I hope this helps, If you'd like me to review your Clarity profile and give some specific direct feedback, just arrange a call. Thanks David www.DavidCBarnett.com

I'm a developer of over 20 years experience and I've been building relational databases the whole time with varying degrees of normalization. I like it best when the problem is given to me as you stated above. From your statement, it seems like you are trying to design the database. Instead, you hired a developer, and that is what they do. Have him or her design the database. Give them all the information you have and answer all their questions in a timely manner and you'll get what you need. I'm not sure of your area of expertise or the relationship with and faith you have in your developer, but I would provide him the information from your question above. From that he/she should fire back a bunch of questions to you such as: 1. does every product require every choice? 2. Can a product have multiple options for a given choice? 3. Are the options for choices different dependent on the product? 4. Is there a higher level to consider of product categories? ... I think you get the idea. Using this dialog can help you both think of concepts or situations you both have missed and provide you with a more robust solution. I'd be happy to get on a call with you to discuss this further but it sounds like you have everything you need except maybe confidence in your developer(s). Best of luck.

Here are some things I would try. 1. LinkedIn Advertising. Why? Because it seems like your app is designed for a very specific type of person and on LinkedIn you can target users with ads by job description (amongst other things). In short, if you've got a pretty good idea of the job titles, skills, industries your target audience is in, LinkedIn might be a good option. You could send users to a company page (where you register interest in a product). Build your network (by building up your audience on LinkedIn). Or send users to a dedicated landing page where they can download the app/register their interest. 2. LinkedIn Group Discussions - Find and sign up for groups on LinkedIn relevant to the app you're considering - Propose the solution you're considering testing - Ask people if this sounds like something they would be interested in - Ask for beta testers to sign up (by emailing you or to a mailing list) 3. Facebook Ads. This approach would be similar to the LinkedIn Advertising. Set up a simple landing page (using something like Unbounce or Leadpages) or whatever you have access to, create some niche audiences using Facebook ads and see what happens. 4. Podcast shout out. Look on iTunes for a podcast related to your audience/industry. Set up your landing page. Pay the podcast a small fee for advertising/referencing your service and give listeners an exclusive discount. 5. Twitter ads. Same as Facebook/LinkedIn but with Twitter. You might want to use the "lead gen" option to collect email addresses and then go from there. If there are common keywords that people in this industry are likely to put in their bios or reference in their timelines, you can use a tool like Followerwonk to build a niche targeted list of 100 users to target with advertising on Twitter. 6. Reddit could work. You'd follow a similar process to that noted above but instead of finding users on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you'd have to spend some time finding relevant SubReddits to post in. 7. Google Ads. If there are specific, niche keywords people use in this industry you could set up a landing page and then send traffic via AdWords. The key would be making sure your keyword research is super tight. You might just want to use exact match keywords for a campaign of this nature. 8. If you have them already, message your LinkedIn connections. Ask them if they would be interested in the product you are offering and if not, would they have any recommendations for people who might be interested. You can connect with the people they recommend on LinkedIn, or just ask for a bit of word of mouth support. 9. Meetup.com If it helps to keep things small scale, maybe you could go local. Use meetup.com to find groups that are relevant to your audience. Attend their event. Demo your product/service and see if anyone will buy or is interested in testing. This is a really useful way to get direct feedback. 10. Target followers/users of any competitor products. You can do this in most of the advertising platforms noted above in one way or another. You can also do this on Twitter. -Find a competitor account. -Put their Twitter account name in the tool Followerwonk - Download their follower details - Go follow and engage with some of their followers - See if you can build up a small audience who you already know are paying for something similar to what you've created 11. Another Twitter option. - Download Tweetdeck - Set up a column that filters by keywords related to your product,service,app or industry. If anyone shows any indication they might be looking to buy a product like yours or maybe you can just help them in some way, start Tweeting them. Costs you nothing but your time on this one. Hope these ideas help! Good luck with your app!

Can you provide more details? Who is your target - age, gender, geographic location, etc?

You can search Google for a list and then I can help you in developing a strategy for data extraction and rest of the process. Let's setup a call.

The biggest challenge is not finding money but finding viable livelihood options for the poor. I suggest you study Prof. Yunus work. First work with the poor and let them come up with local opportunities for generating income. Take a few viable cases and fund them. Once these ventures are viable, you have a proven business plan for the investors. Why investors? You may even go through the regular banking system. Your margin will be what you charge extra above the lending rates. VC funding will put extra pressure on you to charge very high rates and it can be regulated by the govt, as it has happened in India. Such high rates also defeat the core purpose of your business. All the best.

Keep asking great questions and focusing on fixing the issues and you'll get there! Video needs some innovation to become more accessible - you're on an interesting path! Upon visiting the site - I'm not surprised that this is an issue. You are doing very little to illustrate how your product delivers value - and oddly, there is no explainer video - which for a company that produces marketing video, seems like not only an obvious move, but a requirement. You need to go beyond benefits and talk about the value, but also tie it to how you create it. Not suggesting any of the below as actual copy - just illustrating: "The marketing value of video is huge - but producing video is time consuming and expensive. We've made it easy by producing the video for you - all you have to do is pick the one you want, add text, a logo, and your call-to-action and you've got a ready-to-upload video in minutes." I'm sure you can improve upon the wording - and I may be off on exactly how it works (since we've agreed that the site isn't telling us that) - but I think you can greatly improve conversion and interest in the product with something similar. If you'd like to walk me through the product I'd be happy to provide more specific feedback once armed with the facts.

The number one thing to do is to make sure your email template is mobile responsive. If you are using a mail service like Mail Chimp, that work is done for you. But if you are using a CRM that requires you to create the template, you want to ensure it is designed for mobile. Gmail can be especially tricky with responsive. Here is a great tutorial that goes over designing for Gmail: http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-future-proof-responsive-email-without-media-queries--cms-23919. But if you don't have someone on staff that does your web/email design and you're technologically challenged...this is definitely something to invest some money in a good template for. Second, for email copy, you want to keep it short and your calls to action, near the top of the email. Think about how you personally read email on your phone...having to scroll down through an email, after a few scrolls, you stop and move on. Make sure you get your point across early so that people don't move on past your key message. All graphic emails and short infographics also do well on mobile. I love this website for inspiration for short or graphic emails: http://reallygoodemails.com/ Third, take advantage of the preview text in your email. Preview text is the snippet of copy pulled in from the body of your email and typically displayed underneath the from name and subject line in a subscriber’s inbox. You want to grab people's attention here so that they open your email. Here is a great article on taking advantage of this text. https://litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-preview-text-support

The procedure of creating multilingual sites in WIX is quite complicated, as described here: https://www.wix.com/support/html5/article/tutorial-creating-a-multilingual-site Should you decide to drop WIX and move forward to WordPress, you can use the WPGlobus plugin. Everything is much easier there.

Crystal balls are never as crystal clear as we would like when peering into the fortunes of the stock market. I've worked in the market for more than 35 years and can tell you no one truly has the answer to this question. I'd be happy to talk to you about my views and give an overview of the current market valuation and factors that could create more volatility in the coming months.

Conversion at the page level is often impacted by who is showing up - and could be indicative of a mismatch between the ads you are running, the audience they attract, and the messaging on the landing page on arrival. You're also asking for both a phone number and an email address - while offering very little information in return - like what cities this is available in - what it costs - how long it takes, how it's different / better than other services in this same vein. Consider narrowing the focus of your ads down to a single city, and then customize the lander to include challenges specific to that city that this would eliminate (the long Saturday lines at XYZ Market - traffic on the crosstown etc) and reference brands and stores they'll know. The more you can make the landing page a reflection of your user and the problem you're hoping to solve for them - the better. Right now, it's not reflective at all - leaving most details to the imagination. Once you've dialed in on the approach in a single locale, you can expand your campaign by repeating the process (still customizing per market). I hope this helps.

A $5 Billion purchase by Verizon is hardly what I would call a "collapse".

I'm in no position to advise on the cost of a Tinder-like app - having never used it myself. I can however share some thoughts on Freemium. Freemium is too often engaged because it is easy - not because it is right for the business. You'll still need to determine how'll you make money, even with freemium, so it isn't an escape hatch from figuring out monetization - knowing how you'll make money from the beginning is critical. Check out this video by Dan Martell: http://www.danmartell.com/4rulestofreemium/ I'll summarize the decision points around freemium below: 1. There are 10M+ users in your market. 2. Free distribution will give you a competitive advantage. 3. You have a simple value proposition and process. 4. The marginal cost to service additional customers is near or equal to zero.

Quality control is always a concern when working with an overseas vendor, and I can only imagine your frustration with the samples you have received. My advice having sourced from China and many other countries is that you need a person on the ground to make sure your expectations and specs are being met, so see if you can find an agent (not associated with the factory) to work on your behalf to save the time, cost and hassle of having to fly overseas. That said, unless you are at a scale where it makes sense, I have found over the years that it ends up usually being cheaper in the long run and much more efficient to produce domestically if you can. While overseas pricing can seem a lot cheaper on the front-end, if you run into issue (like you have), the savings end up evaporating. Hope this helps, and happy to jump on a call to talk in more detail.

Talk with the folks at MyUS.com about your situation. Likely they'll be able to provide a simple + cheap way to handle this. And... overseas shipping is always expensive, so depending on your product, profit margins may not allow selling through overseas Amazon organizations.