5 Secrets to Solving Your Small Business Hiring Problem – Hatchbuck Posted on June 16, 2016June 20, 2016 by Erin Posey Small businesses have a lot of hard spending choices to make, so it’s essential they get the most bang for the buck they spend. And this year one of the places many will have to spend is on hiring. When it comes to small business hiring, the NFIB reports that 52% of small businesses reported hiring or trying to hire, but 45% had few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill. And in fact 15% of small business owners said hiring was their single most important business problem; it’s the number three problem on the list for all small businesses (behind taxes and red tape). Because the hiring market is robust and unemployment relatively low, small businesses are competing with larger entities for the same talent. Fifty-six percent of small business say they plan on hiring this year, according to a recent survey, but 70% of those said they haven’t been able to find qualified talent; 15% of small business owners said a lack of qualified candidates was the greatest threat to their growing business. In many cases the talent is there, it’s just that small businesses don’t think they can afford to hire the people they need. They wind up turning away customers (because they don’t have enough staff to take on additional work) and leaving revenue on the table. To make the most of your resources, hire smarter—think quality over quantity. Having more employees doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be operating better. Instead, hire the smartest people for the job–and those that are the best cultural fit—and you’ll be far more likely to set your company on a path toward growth and success. Here’s how: Don’t be afraid to hire people that are smarter than you. In the same way a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, your business is only as strong as its team and if there’s a weak link in that team, well, the team’s weak. The smarter your employees, the smarter your business. So if you interview someone who knows more than you do about your industry, or the technology you’re trying to create, the processes involved, the math—whatever it is, don’t be intimidated by it. Embrace it. As serial entrepreneur (and self-made millionaire) Ryan Blair wrote in his book Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: “It is my goal to be in awe of every person I hire. I want to see traits in her or him that are more dynamic or more positive than my own abilities in that area, because I know that simply by working with that person, I will be able to grow and the company will prosper.” Think outside the hiring box. Since you are competing with far bigger companies it’s not a great idea to single-source employees. If you use a recruiting firm (or more than one) that’s fine, but you should also use job boards, search engines and social media. It’s especially important for small businesses to go where the big guys don’t venture. Skip paying top dollar for a booth at a big career fair and attend small industry networking events instead. Talk to professors and career counselors at local universities that work to place students in local companies. For instance, at Hatchbuck, we’ve tapped into amazing talent from non-traditional avenues, like Venture for America – a nonprofit that pairs up talented college grads with start-ups and early stage growth companies – and teaming up with Washington University’s Olin Business School, to work on individual projects with students. Launchcode is another program that provides an untraditional path to hiring by pairing up aspiring developers with businesses that need tech talent. Think outside of the box to tap into new talent pools. Involve your team. Your employees in the trenches every day likely know best where you need to hire and what skills are necessary to do the job right. As a business owner you probably have more of a 30,000-foot view of things (or at best, maybe a 10,000-foot view). Asking your employees for referrals – by reaching out to those they know that they think would be a great fit, Tweeting about job openings, posting on Facebook and sharing openings on LinkedIn – means they put some of their skin in business’ hiring game, and are invested in the success of that hire. And, remember, a referral bonus never hurts when it comes to motivating your team to find the best candidate for the job. Don’t nickel-and-dime your business. If you approaching hiring like a bargain hunter, you risk hiring someone who is a bad fit for your current team and the business overall. You really do get what you pay for and, of course, there is rarely a discounted price for smart, hard-working, ethical employees. Depending on what you need, you may even wind up paying a highly qualified executive more than you pay yourself as the CEO or owner of the business. But if your company needs to be turned around or is poised for steep growth, you’ll be more successful with an experienced, top-notch professional leading the way than you will with someone less qualified but less expensive. You may have to pay top dollar for the expertise you’re getting, but consider it an investment in the company. Always be hiring. Small employers sometimes treat hiring like a one-off project: fill this open position and then wait until the next person leaves to start sourcing candidates again. It’s much better for your business and your staffing needs to continually be engaging potential hires, even after an open position is filled. Make sure your company’s website highlights your culture, the important members of your team and highlights why your business is a great place to work. Then you can establish connections with those interested in working for you—essentially building a talent pipeline–and that means when you have a vacancy you aren’t in crisis mode, scrambling to fill it or compromising on what you really want simply to get a warm body in a chair.
3 Ways Inbound Marketing Can Fuel Your Automation Engine Posted on June 15, 2016June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk You’ve embraced automated marketing to manage daily tasks – like collecting new leads from your website, creating follow-up tasks, and sending automated responses – but your work isn’t done yet. Marketing automation is an engine, and inbound marketing is the fuel. Without a substantial flow of website traffic, your marketing automation will stay parked on the avenue to revenue growth. Even with marketing automation in place, you still have to make sure that your company gets noticed amid the clutter and competition of the online world to drive new leads to your website. Here are three ways to get noticed by prospective customers and get them into your sales funnel: 1: Embrace Visual Content When you are passionate about your work and about your product, it is easy to speak (or write) voluminously on the subject, and long form content is excellent SEO juice. The only problem is that without a compelling image or design, your amazing content can fly under the radar of your audience. According to one study, “The average attention span is just eight seconds.” That means that embracing visual content is a key part of your small business marketing. Consider outsourcing creative to create things like in-depth videos or intriguing infographics. Or, if you want to visual content in-house, products like Canva or Visage make it simple to create visual content. As Entrepreneur points out, even a freelancer with a good eye and a good iPhone can take great photos of your staff and your office in order to help your content catch the eye of your ideal buyer. With engaging visual content, you attract more people to your website, where marketing automation can pick up the slack and begin the nurturing and follow-up process. 2: Use Social Media Proactively Small businesses tend to struggle with social media because, while almost everyone agrees you should be on social media, not everyone knows what you should be doing with it. Merely having a company Facebook or Twitter account actually does little to engage with and convert customers – unless you’re interactive with your audience on social media. Social media tools, like Hootsuite, can monitor when your company gets mentioned online so you can engage with your audience, ask them about their experience and provide them answers they need. Social media monitoring is beneficial in two ways: it immediately helps the individual customer see your commitment to his satisfaction. At the same time, countless others also see how you treated this single customer, sending them a powerful message about your company. And, of course, don’t forget to “re-tweet” customers saying good things about your company – these are as great testimonials, and social proof for your prospects that your customers like and trust you. As you build a following and foster trust between your brand and your audience, social media also provides you with a content distribution channel. Share the creative, helpful and eye-catching content you’ve developed with your audience on social media to drive them back to your website. Marketing automation can help take the relationship from there. 3: Optimize Your Website for Conversion As you funnel your audience to your website through engaging content and social media, you need to lead them to the next step when they get there. The fact is, most people who visit your website for the first time will not convert into a customer. Your website must be more than a prolonged advertisement, it has to engage your ideal buyer and offer them tools and resources they can use now, building trust and setting the stage for doing business with them down the road. Offer a lead magnet to your audience, such as a newsletter, an interesting case study, how-to guide, or a video tutorial. Your visitors will be willing to offer you their lead info if they feel they can walk away with something immediately usable. Then, you can let your marketing automation engine nurture them the rest of the way into customers. Marketing automation is a key component to a smooth sales and marketing process, but before you can convert leads into customers, you need inbound marketing to get your audience’s attention. To see how automation can transform your own business, request a live demo!
Quick Guide to Creating Scrappy Tutorial Videos Like BuzzFeed’s Tasty Videos Posted on June 14, 2016June 16, 2016 by Jeanna Barrett If you haven’t been privy to BuzzFeed’s latest online media conquest — its Tasty cooking video channel — then it’s worth putting on this week’s to-do list to catch up on the hype. The mesmerizing viral videos have more than 50 million subscribers on Facebook, and every new video they post receives millions of views. The massive success of these videos can be attributed to smart video content marketing. BuzzFeed tailored the format of Tasty videos to the platform they’re posted on: Facebook. BuzzFeed doesn’t just create one piece of content and blast every single social media platform at the same time with the same content. This type of content marketing is not optimal — it’s best to tailor your message and format for each social media site. But, don’t get overwhelmed with this advice. It’s easy to start small with scrappy, tutorial, fast motion videos in the Tasty Facebook style. Tasty videos were made exclusively for Facebook’s video features, which includes autoplay without sound when you scroll your News Feed. You don’t need sound, however, to stop in your scrolling tracks and watch Tasty videos. Each video features a fast motion format of an individual cooking an easy step-by-step, drool-worthy recipe such as pizza tots, deep-fried blooming onion and s’more funnel cake fries. You heard that last one right. So, how do you create fast motion tutorial videos like Tasty videos to capitalize on this Facebook video trend for your business? It won’t cost you hundreds or thousands to hire a videographer or agency. In fact, you can do it with your own iPhone. Here’s our quick guide: Step 1: Tutorial Messaging for Your Customers These type of videos usually do best with a tutorial format — a quick version of teaching someone something new. Think about the message you want to get across to your customers. Is there something visual they’d like to watch? Is there something you can teach them? You don’t need to cook to create a Tasty video. A great example of a brand that has adapted this style to their own brand is Mental Floss, a magazine with articles featuring random and interesting facts. Their “How Does Disney World Stay So Clean?” video is an example of the Tasty tutorial video without sound. Instead of cooking, Mental Floss is using their blog content and repurposing it into a video. This is the easiest way to follow in the footsteps of Tasty videos and is easy for you to do too. Take a look at your business’ website and social media site metrics and pick the top read and shared articles. This is a great indicator of the type of information your customers are looking for that would make great videos. Step 2: Choose a Background The background to your video should be clean and consistent with every video. You could choose a type of desktop background that has props that fit your video theme. For instance, the Mental Floss videos always use a desktop with a pencil and some binder clips, and the text is always written on a Post-It note. Step 3: Gather Scrappy Video Equipment Some of the best brand videos out there were created on an iPhone, so try to step away from the belief that you need videography experience and fancy equipment to create great videos for your business. In fact, Bentley, Veuve Cliquot and Frye Boots are all big-name brands that recently created ads with iPhones. If you don’t have an iPhone, most smartphones these days have high-quality cameras that create beautiful videos, so don’t sweat it. Other than a smartphone, all you need to record is an inexpensive iPhone tripod that will help with the hand shakes, so your video is not the next Blair Witch Project. KobraTech’s mini iPhone tripod stand is a great option and only $14.99. Step 4: Understanding Time-Lapse (Fast Motion) Videos Fast motion, or Time-Lapse, videos take normal speed and speed it up to create a short video that might otherwise take a long time to watch. There are two ways to create a fast motion video: either through Time-Lapse on the iPhone’s Camera app, or by recording your video at normal speed then editing the speed to be faster in iMovie. For the first approach, Time-Lapse is a setting on the iPhone’s Camera app. When you open the app find where it says Photo above the camera button and swipe right until you get to the last setting, or first in the series rather. The Time-Lapse feature on iPhone has a specific speed of recording, so understand the length of you video and how it will compress it, and then just do some quick backward math. If you want a one-minute video, the iPhone records your video at 15x the speed. So you need to film a 15-minute video to get a one-minute Time-Lapse video. It’s also possible to use iMovie to slow down a Time-Lapse video or speed up a video recorded at regular time. Within iMovie, select the portion you want the speed changed, or the entire video, and choose Clip from the menu to access speed controls. Which brings us to step five… Step 5: Video Editing & Background Music To finalize your video, all you need is an inexpensive video editing program like iMovie, which comes installed for free on Macs. If you don’t have a Mac, you can use one of these 10 free online video editors. Otherwise, plug your iPhone into your computer and sync content, then open your video within iMovie. You can find a lot of free guides online to using iMovie, if you’re not familiar. Mostly it’s quick to pick up and will likely only require a little bit of time to get the hang of things. You’ll also want to add free music under the Creative Commons license to your video. A ton of resources exist to find royalty-free music, but one of the most well-liked sources is Incompetech.com. Finally, upload your video to Facebook and see how it performs with your audience! It might take a couple videos for Facebook algorithm to kick-in and optimize your posts for your audience’s News Feed, but you should have a healthy audience in no time.
Website Visitors Not Ready To Buy? Do This. Posted on June 13, 2016June 9, 2016 by Jessica Lunk If you are a small business owner marketing and selling your products or services online, trying to convert website visitors into customers, I have some shocking news for you. Keep reading to find out more… You can invest heavily in your online marketing in terms of money, expertise, time and effort. You can build an attractive, eye-catching website. You can enjoy massive success getting traffic to your website. You can have persuasive, engaging written copy. You can have high-quality products and services. But even if all of these things are true of your business, most visitors to your website, even if they are interested in what you have to offer, won’t do business with you after their first visit. They won’t contact you. They won’t buy from your online store. To convert website visitors into customers, you’ve got to do more that get them to your site one time. Now they may sincerely want to make a mental note to check out your site again in the near future. But there’s a good chance they will then get distracted and forget all about you. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring these folks in order to put all of your online marketing focus on the small percentage of your site visitors who want to buy right away. By focusing only on those visitors who want to buy now, you are costing your company a lot of sales, including repeat sales, now and in the long run. So pay attention to those site visitors who are interested but, for whatever reason, don’t buy or contact you the first (or second, third, etc.) time they visit your site. What can you do about this problem? Let’s look at three options you have: Keep in touch with these not-yet-ready-to-buy visitors until they are ready Give them solid, persuasive reasons to contact you or buy now A mixture of 1 and 2 Didn’t Convert Website Visitors the First Time? Keep In Touch With Them. As we’ve already discussed, for whatever reason or reasons, most visitors won’t buy the first time they land on your site. They may be hesitant to open up their wallets. They may not yet trust you. The problem they are looking to solve may not yet be so intense and uncomfortable that they are really motivated to take meaningful action now. If they visit your site and don’t take action but intend to later, there’s a good chance they never will. They are busy. They’ll get distracted. They may choose one of your competitors. They may totally forget about you. Don’t let this happen. Build TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness) in as many of these folks as you can. In other words, you want your solution to be the first one they think about when they think about taking action on their problem. How do you build TOMA? To build top of mind awareness, leverage the power of free, useful content. Make sure it’s content that, even if they never buy your product, offers them massive value. Also, employ email marketing, social media engagement, online communities, and retargeting to remind them of you. Build trust and credibility and set the stage for that moment when they are ready to buy. Give Them A Reason To Buy Now Don’t assume that just because they aren’t ready to buy now that there is nothing you can do to persuade them to change their minds. Think about and implement ways to get them off center and make a decision now. Ever heard the acronym “WIIFM?”? It stands for “What’s In It For Me?”. And it is exactly what your visitors are asking themselves as they consider buying from you. So, in vivid, compelling terms, tell them what’s in it for them. Talk about how they will benefit when they buy from you. Paint a word picture in your copy that is so inviting and compelling that they deeply and passionately want to be part of it. Give them specific reasons to act now instead of waiting indefinitely. For example, offer a special, discounted introductory rate for these “on-the-fence” potential customers. But build in a sense of urgency. Put an expiration date on your special rate and stick to it! Kindly and subtly imply that they will miss out, and will regret it, if they don’t act now. Stay In Touch? Get Them To Act Now? Why Not Both? Want to really boost your success rates when it comes to converting these site visitors who don’t buy right away? We’ve talked about keeping in touch and top of mind with them. We’ve talked about persuasively convincing them to buy now. Why not do both? Regularly contact them (don’t be a pest) with the twin goals of staying fresh in their minds and persuading them to act sooner rather than later. Online marketing is a challenge, to say the least. You have lots of competitors trying to woo the same customers you are. Try these tips, and subscribe to our blog digest to help you win more of them. Happy Selling! p.s. Whether you are trying to stay in touch with your visitors to capitalize on that time when they are ready to act, or you are trying to get them to change their minds and buy now, you need the right marketing software working for you. You need to harness the power of marketing automation to help you grasp opportunities as they are presented. You need to create campaigns that help you nurture leads and give them massive value as you lead them to conversion. You need software that helps you keep marketing opportunities from slipping through the cracks. Find out more here.
How to Cultivate, Appreciate and Grow Your Brand Ambassadors Posted on June 10, 2016October 21, 2022 by Jessica Lunk The term “brand ambassadors” may feel new but it’s actually just a modern-day spin on an old-school strategy: word-of-mouth advertising. And it’s still the most credible form of marketing today. According to a survey last year by Nielsen, 83% of people worldwide say they trust the recommendations of friends and family. What’s changed over the years are the ways in which those that believe in your brand can recommend it to others. Research from Nielsen shows that trust and action are linked—83% of respondents to the survey also said they take action on opinions of friends and family at least some of the time. Millennials have the highest levels of trust in recommendations found online and in mobile formats. You can’t promote your product or service without the help of word-of-mouth recommendations from people that are truly enamored with it, so cultivating and growing your base of brand ambassadors is crucial. You don’t necessarily have to put in a formal ambassador program, you can build up a base of brand evangelists more organically, too. Here’s how to grow your cadre of ambassadors and make sure they feel appreciated: Keep your ears open. Start listening to what’s being said about your brand in conversations online. You can do that by reading and responding to comments that appear on your company’s blog, Facebook page, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, etc. In addition, there are both free and paid services that can be used to help you listen in on conversations about your brand happening out there in the ether. Social Media Today put together a great list of small business reputation management and brand monitoring tools: Google Alerts and Talkwalker are free services your business can use to find mentions of your brand online. Reputology, Mention and Social Mention are paid brand monitoring tools that comb the web for mentions and track your brand reputation. The social media platforms you use – like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – have built in notifications that let you know when someone engages with you or uses your social media handle in a post. Hootsuite is also a great small business tool for pulling mentions of your brand into one spot from your social media channels. With mobile and email notifications, you can listen in on conversations about your brand 24/7 – squashing out any potential media fires, or helping spread the flames of positive conversations at a moment’s notice. Create a list of those that say—or could potentially say–good things about your brand. These could be reviewers on Yelp, OpenTable and other review platforms, as well as those Instagramming photos of your product or talking about you on Facebook. Use specific search terms to find those with blogs covering your product or service niche. If your small business sells, say, high-tech automation equipment to be used in greenhouses, you can search for bloggers who have written specifically about greenhouses and technology or greenhouses and automation tech. Using “and” as opposed to “or” will narrow down your research results to bloggers that are truly in your niche. Create a contact database of these folks so you can regularly communicate with them and stay top of mind. Ask loyal customers to be brand ambassadors. It sounds obvious but it’s not usually the first thing a business thinks of doing—asking their customers for help with marketing. Yet, when public relations professional and author Gini Dietrich published her second book, Spin Sucks, she promoted it with a word-of-mouth marketing campaign that involved hand-picked brand ambassadors. [image courtesy of Convince & Convert] Dietrich already had a fairly large audience reading, commenting and contributing to her blog, so she asked those interested in being ambassadors for the book to apply for it. More than 800 applied and from those she chose 150. She asked them to read her book before its release, write an honest review and help promote it during launch week. She supported those ambassadors with pre-written social media updates they could tweet or use on other social networks, provided video content they could embed, sent daily updates during her launch week and created a special Facebook group for ambassadors. Use a small business CRM to decipher which of your customers may be interested in being ambassadors for your brand. Since you’ll have activity logged, you can easily spot which customers would leave you an honest review or share a testimonial on your behalf. Give product or services away. Your best brand ambassadors will talk about your product or service for free just because they love it. But others will need to be incentivized in some way, in order to share their love with a bigger audience. It could be you offer a free night stay at your bed & breakfast, a gift card to try a week of yoga at your studio, or a free subscription to your software service. You could also give them a discount on products or a gift card. If what you’re selling is truly fantastic, it shouldn’t be hard to get these people talking about it on social media. The power of ambassadors is their authentic love for your brand—that shows and is contagious. Let them post to your company’s blog. Or blog about them. If you’ve got certain lovers of your brand doing a great job of talking about it, you can feature them in a blog post and talk about their social media channels, why they became an “expert” in the niche, what they do in their spare time. You can also invite your best ambassadors to write a guest post on your brand’s blog, which they will certainly share on social networks. Say “thank you” with a gift. A token of thanks can go a long way with your brand ambassadors, and turn satisfied customers into raving fans.. Send your guest blogger a Starbucks gift card. Or, one of our favorite ways to say thanks at Hatchbuck, send a Greetabl to your customers just because you love them. [image courtesy of greetabl] Gifting expert, John Ruhlin, author of Giftology, says to send gifts not just during the holiday season, but at different times throughout the year when the recipient is not expecting a gift. It’s much more impactful and helps you stand out from the crowd. When it comes to marketing, word-of-mouth referrals, and brand ambassadors, you get what you give. When you put your heart and soul into a great product, deliver stellar customer service, and say give thanks when thanks is due – it all comes back to you.
Personas and Segmentation: A Winning Team for Agencies (who want to keep their clients) Posted on June 9, 2016December 5, 2018 by Katie Culp When a small business comes to your agency for marketing help, they want to see their investment in your services turn into real revenue. So how can you make sure your clients get the most out of every dollar they spend with your agency? Mapping out buyer personas allows you to segment leads and create targeted campaigns that result in more conversions for your client. Here’s how: One of Us… One of Us… Before you can help your client drive new business through marketing, you need to know who their ideal customers are. Sit down with your client and talk to them about their best customers and use their insights to map out their “buyer personas”. Your client may have just one, maybe two or three buyer personas to target. Interview their current customers and dig through their customer relationship management (CRM) system to find out more about the people who have spent the most with your client, are happiest with your client, or have made the most purchases with your client to learn more about the type of customers your client should be trying to attract. Note: Unless the business’ forms ask for very detailed information, there may need to be follow-up calls/interviews with those top customers to find out all of the information you need to create the personas. Each buyer persona should contain the following information to flesh out the business’ ideal customers: Background: What is the person’s job title? How long have they been in their job? Demographics: Here, you’re looking for age, gender, household income and residential area. (Suburbs? City? Farmlands?) Identifiers: What is the person’s personality like? How do they prefer to hear from a company? How do they usually research a company or product? Where does that person buy groceries and close? What bands/musicians do they listen to? (Those last two questions may seem odd, but they can really help, especially when you branch into videos and Instagram posts to reach possible customers for a client, so the background music and “look” of the videos and posts will be ear- and eye-catching to the potential lead.) Goals: What does the ideal customer focus on at his/her job? What is that person looking to accomplish professionally this year and next? Challenges: What problems does the person encounter in the workplace? How the Solution Helps: What can the product or service do to counter the challenges faced by this ideal customer? Elevator Pitch: If you had this ideal customer’s ear for just 15 to 20 seconds, what would you say about the product or service that would get them interested to take action? What’s Your Next Move? Once you know who your client’s ideal customers are, you can create targeted messaging that speaks to them on a personal level. With more personalized marketing from the top of the funnel to the bottom, you can increase conversions and deliver better results. Here’s how: Go where the customers are. This seems simple, but if a buyer persona uses Quora quite a bit and your client hasn’t considered Quora for marketing, it’s time to start. If a buyer persona hangs out on Twitter, test a Twitter sponsored ad. Identify the marketing channels your client’s ideal buyers spend the most time on. Target content. Create separate blog posts, social media posts, and online ads that speak to each one of the personas. With more targeted content, you can attract top-of-funnel leads who better match the qualifications of the ideal customer. For instance, on the Hatchbuck blog, we have content that speaks to our two main personas – the small business owner and the marketing agency. Optimize landing pages. Create unique landing pages with the language and descriptions that align to a particular persona. Point your client’s persona-based online ads, blog posts and email marketing campaigns to the corresponding landing page to improve landing page conversions. Segment new leads. As your client shares targeted content in all the right places, they’re getting more leads in the door. Make sure to segment those leads as they come in, so you can continue to reach them in a personal way through email marketing. For instance, add a drop-down question to your client’s newsletter subscription form, like,“What is the biggest challenge you face in the workforce?” Provide an answer for each of your client’s buyer personas so you can easily segment new leads in your database. Marketing automation can make database segmentation a cinch through online forms, dynamic tagging, and automated campaigns. Create personalized email marketing campaigns. Today, personalization means more than putting a prospect’s name in the subject line of an email. Consumers expect email messaging to be timely and relevant. Segment your client’s database by personas and use marketing automation to send targeted email campaigns, driving prospects back to your client’s website until they convert. Buyer personas and segmentation are the winning team you need to create more successful marketing campaigns for your clients. Use them together to attract the right buyer with targeted content, capture new leads with relevant landing page messaging, and convert more prospects into customers for your client through email nurturing.
6 Marketing Tools That Make Marketing Less Expensive – and More Effective Posted on June 8, 2016September 17, 2021 by Steve Strauss As a small business columnist for USA Today, I hear from a lot of small business owners. They tell me what works and what doesn’t. They share their tricks and tips and strategies and in turn, I share those with my readers. One thing that has become abundantly clear in the past few years is that because marketing has gone through so many big changes, and it’s a topic lots of small business owners struggle with. I’ve seen these changes in my own business. Back in the day, I practiced law (but fear not, I came to my senses long ago!) Back then, getting clients was both an iffy and expensive process. Put an ad in the paper and hope people saw it. Record a radio spot and hope people heard it. That was a lot of hoping. Way too much hoping. These days, marketing is much different, and, though change is hard, I think modern marketing is much better. When small businesses embrace new marketing technology, marketing becomes less expensive, more effective, more targeted, and better performing. If you’re ready to move away from traditional marketing methods and add modern marketing to the mix, here are 6 marketing strategies to consider: Content marketing: People love content. Look – you are reading some right now. Using content to drive traffic and sales is called “content marketing.” There are a lot of ways to do it, but here are my three, simple, handy dandy tips: First, create some valuable content. It could be a blog, an article, a video, a podcast, whatever. There is no shortage of options today, that’s for sure. Say that you own a nail salon. A video entitled “3 Mani-Pedi scams you better to know!” might work. Second, in your video (or article or blog), link back to your site. Finally, share the article via your social networks, your e-newsletter, your blog, wherever. Get people to share it. And that’s it. While certainly a simplified plan, the fact is, if your content is valuable, people will share it, and they will click the links and go to your site. Voila! Video: I mention video twice up front because it is that important. Did you watch a video online today? Most likely, the answer is yes. There are 900 million unique visitors to YouTube every month and 300 hours of video added to it every minute. While yes, that is a lot of competition, it is the broader point that is more important: Video is hot. Video, when done well, can be a great compliment to your website and Facebook page. Keep video content short and digestible (when was the last time you watched a 20-minute video on your mobile device?). And, if you’re uncomfortable tackling video yourself, check out a service like Video Brewery to help. Search engine optimization (SEO): No, getting to the top of a Google ranking is not easy. SEO is not easy. But it’s not impossible either. What it takes is learning the basics of SEO and some time. Creating SEO-optimized pages on your website will help you get found, and when that happens, it is marketing gold because people will start clicking over to your site 24/7/365 with no additional effort on your part. If you aren’t tech savvy and don’t like creating content, it may be wise to look into outsourcing your SEO to a marketing agency to help your business get found online. Pay-per-click (PPC): Even if you have a tough time getting that No. 1 Google ranking, you can still get found on a Page 1 search result by buying an ad for those keywords and phrases through a service like Google Adwords or Bing Ads. The beauty of PPC is that your ad gets served to a targeted audience searching for a solution just like yours. You don’t pay for that ad until someone sees it and clicks on it. Retargeting: Ever notice that after you do a search for a product on a website that you see that ad all over the Net for a while? That is retargeting, and it’s very effective at driving your audience back to your website, giving them every opportunity to convert into a customer. Email nurturing: What I love about email nurturing is that it’s kind of like permission-based advertising. That is, by opting-in to an email newsletter, or an email course (like the Lead Generation course on Hatchbuck’s resources page), people are giving you permission to contact them. That is amazing. However, remember that with great power comes great responsibility. When it comes to email nurturing, send your audience something of value, and don’t push your product until you’ve built trust and rapport. Being too heavy with the sales pitch will lead you right to the spam folder. In the next few months, I will be sharing additional ideas and insights here at the Hatchbuck blog. I hope and think you will find them useful (and a bit entertaining too!) If I do my job right, then yours just got a little easier.
6 Budget Tips for Bootstrapping Your Business on a Shoestring and a Dream Posted on June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Operating a small business on a budget and properly managing cash flow can be difficult even in the best of economic times – especially if your budget is tight. Unknown variables can quickly alter your plan and impact your cash coming in the door. Unexpected events like a client going out of business, a vendor raising prices, or even losing that key employee can cause a dramatic effect on your business finances. That’s why having a solid budget in place is critical to your business’ continued operation—it helps you manage costs and determine profit goals. Since many small businesses and startups are bootstrapping their growth without the help of loans or investors, a budget designed to keep costs down is essential. Here’s a look at six budget tips designed to help you successfully run your small business on a shoestring and a dream: Create Accurate Sales and Revenue Projections Sales and revenue are the building blocks of any business budget. The key thing to remember here is not to overestimate incoming cash. Sure, you’re aiming to double sales this year, but the odds of that happening may be slimmer than you think. The best way to project sales and revenue for the year is to look at what you made last year. Be conservative in your projections—better to be pleasantly surprised than have cash flow issues. As you’re formulating what you can expect to bring in each month, keep in mind that your business and industry may experience predictable up-and-down sales cycles. Almost every industry has busy and slow periods during the year, and that needs to play a role in your projections. It should also play a role in budgeting your time—use any pockets of downtime to ramp up other efforts, like creating new marketing initiatives that can fuel sales growth. Take a Guerrilla Approach to Marketing For small businesses running a lean ship, it’s important to find cost-effective ways to get your business out there and in front of your target customer. There are a ton of low budget marketing ideas such as running a Facebook contest or implementing a unique customer referral program – like Uber did: Another great low-cost marketing tip is to catch the tidal wave of video. Video marketing is a great way to reach your audience in a more personal way. The best part is, you don’t need a big marketing budget to make an impact with your online content. In fact, Wistia has a great how-to article on using your iPhonene to make killer videos. Keep a Lid on Expenses While you have to spend money on sales and marketing to make money, unexpected or unnecessary expenses can be a budget-killer for small businesses. Some small businesses have widely varying expenses, especially if they work on a project-to-project basis or with a lot of different clients. Every client and project is unique and it’s often difficult to predict project cost overruns – often times there are costs that just can’t be anticipated. That’s why, when you bid for work, it’s wise to err on the side of overestimating expenses slightly. If you do wind up going over, you’ll have compensated for that. Also, plan for large capital expenses realistically and early. If your business relies on expensive equipment, don’t go overboard and anticipate conservatively when you will need to replace or service any of it. Although it’s often the case that your biggest expenses occur when you least expect them, you want to try and avoid that. Planned expenses like office renovations should be carefully timed and budgeted to avoid causing cash flow problems or creating a financial burden for the business. Remember to ask yourself, how does this expense grow the bottom line? If your budget is tight you may need to hold off on any unnecessary expenses. Make Strategic Investments Keeping a tight budget isn’t just about saving money – it’s about making investments that will move the needle for your business. So, when it comes to hiring, filling a key role in your business may be a bigger investment, but may also increase productivity in the long run – much like this example from The Profit. Likewise, keeping the company snack shack full each month may seem like an unnecessary expense – but it could be the key to keeping your best employees happy and engaged at work. Let Technology Do the Heavy Lifting No doubt you know that there are many tools for managing your personal finances; small businesses can take advantage of tools like those too. Expensify for example, is a free tool for creating expense reports; Xero is an online accounting software designed for small business owners (and accountants) and is available online from your computer or mobile device. Business finances and cash flow are updated in real time and Xero integrates with hundreds of third-party business applications. And there’s always the standard bearer, QuickBooks Online, from Intuit. There are also a number of cloud-based sales and marketing apps that allow you to stay organized and grow sales without growing your headcount. Leveraging tools such as marketing automation and CRM software can give your business the ability to track what marketing tactics are driving results and which ones aren’t – helping to get the most out of your marketing budget. Update Your Budget Each Month Sure, you make an annual budget and estimate expenses and revenue. But your budget is constantly changing because your clients change, purchases change, cycles change – just about everything is subject to change in the world of a small business. Regular budget revisions give you a chance to reassess your projections and make smarter financial decisions for your small business. The SBA recommends a small business’ budget be dynamic—updated and changed as the business changes. As the economic climate evolves, so will your business. You’ll want to keep adjusting your budget based to match your growth.
The Unexpected Way Your Business Can Boost Sales Posted on June 7, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick A question for you: Of all the challenges you face in running your small business, which is the most difficult and least fun? I’m guessing that, like a lot of business owners, you said sales. I agree with you. It’s hard to boost sales when you don’t like selling. But guess what? Like it or not, you have to do it. Your business can’t survive without selling your product or service. But take heart. There are ways to make it easier and a lot more profitable. Interested? Keep reading… Too many business owners and even full-time sales professionals have a wrong view of selling. They are so hyper-focused on making the next sale “right now” they forget something very important – setting the stage and taking the actions that will help them make repeat sales to their existing customer base and maximize lifetime customer value. Why is this important to small businesses like yours? And what are the benefits of thinking long-term when it comes to customer relationships? The first sale you make to a customer is almost always the hardest. Why? An Old, But True, Cliché Think about the old, but true, cliché – people buy from those they know, like, and trust. Your potential customer doesn’t really know you yet. Hopefully they like you, or will grow to like you. And you definitely want them to trust you. But right now, they’re leery. They’re skeptical. You have to build a relationship in which they are convinced you have their best interests at heart. Where they are convinced you can do what they want and need you to do for them – to solve a pressing problem or reach a cherished goal. Once they’ve bought from you, these obstacles have been crossed. They know, like and trust you. You’ve solved a problem for them. You’ve set the stage for future sales or add-on sales with this transaction. Manage your customer relationships properly, and future sales to them will typically be much easier than the first sale. Another tough thing about the first sale – it’s the most expensive. You have marketing costs. If you have a sales force, you have the overhead of equipping, training and paying them. If you do the selling yourself, you have your time to consider. Repeat sales will have a much lower cost than the initial sale. As your customer base grows and your buyers become repeat buyers, your income and ROI from marketing and sales will boom! Think Long Term So how do you go about reaching this happy outcome? First, keep in mind it won’t happen overnight. So think long term. To succeed at making multiple repeat sales, you need to lay a firm foundation for a successful relationship when you first win a new customer. Scratch that – start laying the foundation before you win the new customer. A lot of the steps we talk about today will involve effective marketing and selling. But what use is it to be fantastic in these areas if your product is lousy? So make sure your offering is of the highest quality available. When you make the sale, send a sincere, heartfelt thank you note, (a handwritten one will go a long way in this digital age). In this note and in other post-sale content, plant the seeds of future sales by Offering your customers a time-sensitive discount on additional or related products or services Asking them (and giving a powerful incentive) to sign up for your newsletter and visit your website regularly Sending them useful, interesting, fun-to-read content on how to get more enjoyment and value from the thing they just bought from you Notifying them of new products you think they might find interesting Also, you may even want to check with them by phone from time to time to see how they are enjoying their purchase, and to remind them to feel free to contact you when they are in the market for a replacement or related item. As humans, we want to be involved. We crave community. Many successful companies have built communities around their products. Why don’t you do the same thing? Have meetups. Host user groups. Build an online forum. So what’s the benefit to having happy, involved customers? They are much more likely to become repeat customers, even customers for life. Do You Want Fries With That? Yes, following an effective strategy to boost repeat sales can give your business some big returns. Here’s another often-overlooked sales booster: Add-ons at the point of sale. What’s the ultimate example of a company using this technique to explode their profits? McDonald’s. Over the years, the company has boosted their income exponentially by training their employees to ask customer the simple question, “Would you like fries with that?”. In the online realm, Amazon may be the undisputed master of this strategy. Next time you make a purchase there, notice the site makes subtle suggestions with the goal of getting you to buy more. For example, when you visit a specific product page, you see a “Frequently Bought Together” grouping that includes the product on the page and others related to it. On the checkout page, you see a “More Items To Consider” heading. In the confirmation/thank you email, you see a “Buy It Again” section with links to items you purchased previously. As you might have guessed already, one of the secrets to making repeat and add-on sales is to simply ask customers if they want to buy. McDonald’s and Amazon have made a fortune through upsells, and you can too with this simple strategy. Do You Owe It To Your Customer To Sell? So at the right time, simply ask your customers if they want to buy. Don’t be afraid to do this. If you are, maybe a “sales paradigm shift” is in order. Think of it this way: if buying your product, including the one you are offering as a follow-up or add-on item, will help your customer solve a problem, don’t you owe it to him to offer it? In a retail setting, if offering add-on items will save your customer time, money and aggravation by keeping her from having to drive all over town to finish her shopping list, don’t you owe it to her to ask? Similarly, when a customer visits your website, and looks at your product, isn’t it helpful to follow-up with a relevant email that drives the customer back to related info on your website? It’s easier than ever to follow-up with your customers and offer excellent service post-sale. Marketing automation can track how your customers are engaging with your emails as well as which pages they are visiting on your website. Then, you can automatically follow up with content, deals and add-ons that cater perfectly to their needs. Making add-on sales and repeat sales doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be like a trip to the dentist for a root canal. On the contrary, it can often be simple and pleasant. Here are a few tips that can boost your sales and develop thriving, profitable, long-term customer relationships Offer an outstanding product or service Show sincere appreciation to your customers Offer great post-sale service Through content, phone calls, events, etc., stay in touch with your customers So you want to hit the business goldmine and boost sales month after month? Try these tips and be prepared to see your sales and Lifetime Customer Value skyrocket! Happy Selling!