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New Post has been published on https://webcranks.com/blog/?p=63

How to Make a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business.

Unless your target audience consists of baseball-playing ghosts, your potential customers aren’t going to come to you — you’ll need to spread the word about your business and what it has to offer. In other words, you need a marketing plan.

We’ve already covered how to conduct market research to understand your key audiences, how to build a brand around your business’s unique value proposition, and how to create a website that conveys your value and resonates with your key audiences. If you’ve tackled those things, you’ve laid the foundation for a strong marketing plan.

Marketing Basics.

Before you dive in, it’s helpful to understand the typical path a person takes on the way toward becoming your customer. This path is illustrated by the marketing funnel.

The most well-known version of the funnel is the AIDA model, attributed to turn-of-the-century advertiser Elias St. Elmo Lewis. The steps in this funnel are:

Awareness of the existence of a product

Interest in evaluating the product’s benefits

Desire for the product

Action by trying or purchasing the product

The funnel has many variations and modifications, such as the sales funnel, purchase funnel, and conversion funnel, but any funnel-inspired model depicts two primary ideas:

The sequence of steps a person takes to change (or “convert,” in marketing speak) from a non-customer to a customer, or from inaction to action (an action could mean making a purchase, but it could also mean a smaller step like subscribing to a newsletter)

The process of sifting that happens to your audience, as your pool of potential customers narrows down to your pool of actual customers.

Why It Matters.

The purpose for understanding this sequence is to ensure that the transition between each step is as smooth as possible. It’s natural to expect that there will be some drop-off — you can’t please everyone, so not all of your potential customers will become your actual customers. But keeping an eye on how people move through this process, and where people tend to drop off, gives you an idea of how to improve.

For example, did you create an effective online ad that got people’s attention, but when people visited the product page on your website, they quickly clicked away? That means you’re doing well with awareness, but need to improve on interest by making the product page more clear or engaging.

Marketing Approaches.

The good news is there are numerous potential approaches for moving potential customers toward becoming actual customers. Here’s an overview of potential approaches and handy guides to getting started with each one. Keep in mind that there isn’t a discrete line between these approaches; they can and should overlap and be used in combination with each other.

Content Marketing.

What it is: As defined by Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content,” and that in exchange for that valuable information, customers will “ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.”

Social Media Marketing.

What it is: Social media marketing uses social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to reach customers both widely and deeply — widely, because posts can be shared quickly and broadly, and deeply, because people can interact directly with the brand and engage with other people around that brand.

Email Marketing.

What it is: Email marketing is the practice of using emails and email newsletters to communicate with potential and current customers, with an average ROI of $38 for every $1 spent.

Public Relations.

What it is: As described by The Work Crowd, “PR is about building and maintaining a good reputation for your business by developing your story and a dialogue with key journalists, influencers, and competition.”

SEO.

What it is: As defined by Moz, SEO is a “a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines.”

Advertising.

What it is: Advertising is paid promotion, and although it’s technically its own separate discipline, it does support your marketing efforts. These days, running ads on Facebook and Google is just as common as print ads.

Integrity.

Whatever combination of approaches you choose, there’s one approach that will always apply: integrity. The truth is, a great marketing strategy can’t compensate for a not-so-great product.

If you’ve created a robust, thoughtful business plan, you’re already on the right track. But even then, it can be tempting to get caught up in trying to reel in customers by any means necessary. Umair Haque, writing for the Harvard Business Review, offers this guidance:

“The real question — the one that counts for leaders and institutions today — isn’t ‘How loyal can we compel, seduce, or trick our customers into being?’ It’s: ‘How loyal are we to our customers? Do we truly care about them?’ Not just as targets consumers, or fans. But as people. Human beings. … If you want to matter to people, you must do more than merely win their fickle, fleeting, frenzied attention. You must help them develop into the people they were meant to be. When you do, maybe, just maybe, they’ll reward you. With something greater than their grudging, wearied attention. Their lasting respect, enduring trust, and undying gratitude.”

New Post has been published on https://webcranks.com/blog/?p=60

How to clean Website files from malicious code?

If your website has been hacked and malicious content has been inserted into your files, you should clean them as soon as possible to prevent further damage to your hosting account.

Let’s say that the following code has been inserted to some of your files:

<?php eval(base64_decode(‘malicious_code’)); ?>

You have to search in all of your files for this string. You can search in your files using a local website building application such as Dreamweaver.

First you should download all files to your local PC using an FTP client.

Once you do this, you should use the search option in Dreamweaver and search for the malicious code. Delete it from the files and the issue will be resolved.

When the malicious code has been removed, you should upgrade all applications on your hosting account to their latest stable versions.

To ensure you are the only one who has access to your account, you should also:

1. Update your Antivirus software to the latest version. For Windows we recommend Norton Internet Security.

2. Run a complete antivirus scan on your local computer including all hard drives.

3. Ensure your Operating system (Windows, Linux or MacOS) is up-to-date and all security patches are applied.

4. Ensure your Internet connection is secure. If you are using wireless connection the only secure encryptions is wpa2. For more information contact your router vendor or ISP.

5. Change your cPanel password.

New Post has been published on https://webcranks.com/blog/?p=53

What is ModSecurity and why you need it?

With the growing use of internet, deployment of web applications has also increased. These applications are used to perform functions like collecting personal and confidential information like credit and bank account information, internet chatting, sending emails etc.

But these web applications, being easily accessible, are a gateway to the web and database vulnerabilities which are on the rise nowadays.

How your web page acquires vulnerabilities?

  Improper/poor coding of website or web applications

  Complex set up of applications

  Downloading of open source applications – WordPress, Joomla  etc.wikis, bulletin boards, and portals without much upgrade or patching.

What are the common security vulnerabilities that attack web applications?

As per research, a maximum number of web attacks are carried at the web application level. Some of the common vulnerabilities are

SQL injection and Blind SQL injection.

Cross Site Scripting (XSS).

OS Command Injection and remote command access.

File name injection.

ColdFusion, PHP and ASP injection.

E-Mail Injection

HTTP Response Splitting.

Universal PDF XSS.

Trojans & Backdoors Detection

Thus, one needs a strong security solution like MOD SECURITY which detects and blocks these web vulnerabilities on one hand and strengthens the security of the server on the other hand.

What is Mod Security?

Mod Security is an open source, embedded web application firewall which protects your website and its applications against various attacks by blocking malicious scripts, programs and injections with the help of regular expressions and set of rules.

It is a module for Apache web servers and checks all HTTP requests that reach Apache and Nginx- supplementary web server of Apache.

What can Mod Security do to protect your website?

The Mod Security engine scans all the requests which come to the web server and relative responses which are sent from the server as per its set of rules. If the check succeeds, the HTTP request is passed to the website content but if it fails, then it blocks the request and performs following actions

Security monitoring and access control

Virtual patching

 Full HTTP traffic logging

Security assessment

Web application hardening

Passive security assessment

Simple request or Regular expression based Filtering

URL Encoding Validation

Auditing

IP Reputation

 Null byte attack prevention

Server identity masking

Uploads memory limits

How to recognize if Mod Security is installed on the web server?

Recognizing Mod Security is quite easy. For e.g. any website which shows messages like 406 error-Not Acceptable, 403 Forbidden error ,404 Not found error and other false positive symptoms instead of displaying the web page shows that server on which it is hosted has Mod Security installed on it.These messages occur due to the violation of the Core Rules Set (CRS) by the mod security.

You can also check whether your web hosting company is providing it or not by directly logging into your control panel and checking it.

What to do when your IP is blocked/blacklisted?

Regular triggering of Mod Security rules results into blocking of respective IP address in server firewall from which request has been sent regularly.

Blocking off your IP address means nothing is accessible to you on the web server. So, in that case, you need to contact your hosting provider. Note- Mod Security Rules and IP address can be White listed by the support team of the web host only. (Whitelisting your IP will allow any requests from that particular IP which would normally be blocked by Mod Security to be allowed instead.

How to disable Mod Security from Apache module?

If at any point of time you feel that rules of this security tool are interfering with the operations of the website and do not find modification of rules comfortable ,then the best solution for you is to disable Mod Security filtering and rules.

Here’s how you can disable Mod Security for your account/website:

Step 1. Log into your hosting CPanel account

Step 2. Find Mod Security in the search bar

Step 3. Click on Mod Security icon

Step 4. See the dashboard for Mod Security-Domain Manager

Step 5. Final step to disable Mod Security.