7 Small Business Hiring Hacks You Can’t Live Without Posted on September 11, 2015 by Erin Posey Finding strong talent is important for building a great team. However, small businesses often struggle with recruitment, since they can’t dedicate an entire department to the process and don’t always have the same things to offer that big companies do. Rather than settling for the lower talent pools, here are some hiring tips for hacking your recruitment process. Streamline the Process When you designed your website for the consumer, you probably put a lot of time and effort (and money!) into making the process easy to navigate and conversion-friendly. However, most companies don’t put much thought into their application process to encourage potential talent. Make it a one-click process and don’t require your talent to fill out page after page of information they have already entered elsewhere. To really streamline the process, you can even embed an “Apply with LinkedIn” button directly onto your website and remove barriers applicants might face with lengthy forms and indirect processes. Treat Candidates Like Customers As we just stated, you want to make the application process as easy to navigate as your product website is for your customers. At the same time, you want your listings to read like enticing products that peaks the interest of top talent. Be Authentically You Your brand needs to be a realistic place with a realistic approach to appealing to candidates. Stop purchasing cheesy stock photos and using them as-is. Instead, create your own images and visual aids that resonate with candidates because of the authenticity shown. Give your employees free reign to talk about their workplace on social media and be the kind of brand that builds brand advocates. This will help improve your candidate pool. Nurture Your “Leads” Candidates are like leads and you have to go past the lead generation. Sure, you can get new people clicking on links and viewing your job listings, but how are you connecting with them after that initial show of interest? Look into retargeting ads for those who saw the listing and never applied. Also, create an outreach plan to keep your candidates in the loop and let them know what they can expect from you and the company during the hiring process. Keep your leads in the loop and you won’t burn bridges with top talent as you go. Reduce Multi-Tasking Surprisingly, studies have shown that multi-tasking actually slows down productivity. Focus on one task at a time to get the most out of your efforts. If you have to juggle the recruitment efforts, consider taking a certain day of the week or time of the day to focus solely on your tasks related to recruiting talent and listing jobs. Create an Autoresponder To reduce your efforts, you can simply set up an automatic email to be sent to each new applicant, thanking them for applying and explaining the next steps in the process. By letting the applicant know what they can do next or when they can expect to hear from you, you will receive fewer calls and have to write fewer emails yourself. Send the email from the CEO or boss who will be overseeing the hiring process so there is continuity in the procedure. Keep the Candidate in Mind Once you’ve brought in the candidate for an interview, never keep them waiting. Your first impression is a lasting one and could make a big impact, driving away talent you need. Be prepared for the interview and offer refreshment. After the process is over, send a personal thank you and be honest about where they stand in the proceedings. Constructive feedback is valuable for nurturing talent and you may be able to glean tips for your own process (such as how other competitor hiring processes went and what you could improve on). During the hiring process, you are also being interviewed. With these hiring tips, you will win over the talent you need for your business.
7 Ways Small Businesses Can Compete with SEO Giants Posted on September 10, 2015July 22, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Can your small business compete with giant competitors when it comes to SEO? The bad news is, there are simply areas where being outspent by large corporations is going to be tough to break through. There are areas, however, where small businesses can have an advantage. Before you outsource your SEO, take a look at these 7 ways to improve your small business SEO. Start by making sure your website is well-optimized. There are a lot of factors in determining a well-optimized website, including having one that is responsive and mobile capable. This ensures your site can be viewed well on a variety of devices. If you seek to show up when users enter different keywords, create pages for each keyword as opposed to cramming them all into one page. Make sure pages load quickly and that there are no broken links. The best way to know that your website is not optimized is that is it not generating the leads you expect. Compete with a long tail keyword strategy. Odds are you will not compete against the big boys in the keywords you both are battling for but a well-executed long tail keyword strategy can bring results. This is especially true if your business is a local or regional one. By adding your location to your keywords you can create a strategy that is difficult for the big boys to adapt to. Small businesses can create better content marketing. In many cases, small business content marketing is created by someone on the ground floor. Superior content marketing pieces can be created this way because you experience what is going on every day. You hear the questions clients and prospects are asking. Many times, large competitors are churning out fluff pieces or those simply created to fill space. In the meantime, you can create well-thought articles that address the keywords and long tail keywords you need to address. Hang on to that domain name. Even if you have a flat, outdated website, if you have had your domain name for 10 years or more hang onto it. Most search engines, Google included, place a value on the length of time a company has owned the domain name. They view it as a sign of stability. While a web person may suggest a snazzier or more contemporary name, don’t be too quick to give up on your original. Get involved locally and use it as part of your content marketing strategy. Every small business is looking for subjects to talk about in their blogs. When you get involved in your community, you can promote an event prior to it happening, and then talk about it afterward. This better associates you with your community and can be very useful in SEO. This is not something the giants can do well. Pay attention to your online reputation. Ask good and loyal customers if they would consider submitting a review on sites like Yelp. Address bad reviews courteously and promptly. In today’s search engines, many of these reviews are showing up quite high. This is not something your giant competitors can do well. Know what you are exceptional at and own it. If you have a diner known for its fried chicken, make sure your viewers know it. If you are an HVAC company that 100% guarantees your work, make sure that is all over your website. If you are the most experienced at something or have the most up-to-date equipment, tell readers about it and create separate pages addressing those specific benefits. It is not always easy but there are ways small business can compete in SEO with the giants. Start using the above seven and get on your path to improved SEO.
Supercharge Your CRM with Marketing Automation in 7 Steps Posted on September 9, 2015July 10, 2019 by Jessica Lunk Every small business should have a plan for customer relationship management (CRM). Sometimes CRM is managed through spreadsheets, notes, datebooks and page mark. Many small businesses seem to struggle with CRM while others are sailing along. As technology has advanced, so has CRM. Today, it is possible to automate tasks and updates to data in your CRM. By supercharging your CRM with marketing automation, you can lower overhead cost and receive better metrics to track your CRM activities. Learn the system. If you don’t use all the features of your new cellphone, it’s no big deal. But not learning about and using the features of your CRM and marketing automation system can cost you money in lost prospects and customers. Take the time to learn as much about your CRM and marketing automation as possible. And steer clear of CRM and marketing automation systems that are overly complex for your business needs. Enter data consistently. Your CRM and marketing automation will function only as well as the quality of the data that you enter. Reduce human error by automating as much data entry as you can. When importing bulk data from spreadsheets, make sure data is formatted correctly and that fields are correctly matched. Use drop-down fields instead of text boxes to reduce data inconsistency. Make it a part of your daily routine. Once you get your customer data entered, it is important to use this valuable tool daily. Start with simple tasks like setting automation to absorb data from your online lead forms and respond with automated messages. Monitor your system. Make sure data from forms are being properly absorbed into the system and segmented the way you want it to be. Consistently monitoring your data systems will save you from catastrophic mistakes when it comes to nurturing your leads. Set up a drip campaign. Drip campaigns are automated emails that help with sales efforts by trickling messages to prospects, with the goal of funneling them into becoming customers. Choose a system that comes with a wide choice of attractive and professional looking templates to help you easily create effective drip and email campaigns. Monitor reports. Each campaign you set up with marketing automation can be monitored with easy to read reports. It is here where you can fine-tune your campaigns and conduct A-B testing to improve your results. Like human salespeople, efforts should be tracked, monitored, and improved to make the most of your assets. Using data from reports can contribute to improving CRM. Commit to your CRM. Once you begin to see results from your marketing automation,you will better understand the full value the system brings to your organization and CRM. The longer you use marketing automation to improve CRM, the better you will be at using its full range of abilities. The better you become at using marketing automation, the more valuable the tool will become. Contact us to get your questions answered or try a free live online demo. Take your CRM to the next level with Hatchbuck.
The Ultimate Marketing Automation Guide Posted on September 8, 2015June 18, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick If you are a small business thinking about automating your marketing process, congratulations! You are about to embark on improving your customer relations and your bottom line. Automating your marketing and CRM will turn your website into the ultimate sales machine. Find out how by downloading this marketing automation whitepaper. In this free download, we discuss the three steps prospects go through before making a buying decision: awareness, consideration and decisions. If you have ever told a salesperson “I’m just looking” you’ve experienced the first of these steps. This whitepaper explains how and why you should engage prospects as early in the process as possible. It discusses the three ways you can capture these leads: Use Lead Forms: Make it easy for your web visitor to give you information. You want to use forms in a way that the visitor won’t feel like they’re being sold to, but rather that they are excited to give their information and learn more about your company. Give Value: For a visitor to give away their information, they need to feel like they’re getting something valuable. Think about what challenges visitors are facing and what solutions they are looking for. It’s not about you and your products, it’s about your prospect and what they need. Don’t Sell, Nurture: When you have your prospect, don’t sell right away. Help them first. Don’t hound them, nurture them by communicating in a consistent and relevant way by providing them with information that helps their buying process. This will make them come to you when they’re ready to buy. This marketing automation whitepaper can be yours today, simply by requesting your free download. It is just one of multiple guides and other tools that can help you sharpen your online marketing skills. Some other available downloads include: The Content Marketing Playbook Celebrating Small Business Customers You’ve Got (Personalized) Email and more! You see, we believe the more you know about online marketing, the more you’ll recognize its power, efficiency and accountability. You’ll discover that effectively using online sales and marketing software can take your business to the next level. At Hatchbuck, we created our company specifically to help small businesses. We sought out to change the industry by providing affordable, intuitive, and easy to use software. We are now used by small business globally from real estate and insurance agents to chiropractors and fitness centers. We created an email automation and marketing software that is easy to use and effective. Current customer lists are easily imported into the system from Outlook, Excel and other common programs. We have not only made it affordable, we require no long-term commitment. In fact, you can sign up for Hatchbuck on a month-by-month basis. Learn more by trying our live online demo or by contacting us. While you’re there, don’t forget your free downloads!
6 Ways to Sharpen your CRM Data to Improve Sales and Marketing Posted on September 3, 2015June 20, 2018 by Erin Posey Using customer relationship management (CRM) software to administer and prioritize your prospect and customer base will increase your revenue. However, sales, marketing and CRM work more efficiently if the data is accurate. Inaccurate and incomplete data means that your marketing efforts are wasted because your prospects are not receiving your emails and other communications. The more fine-tuned your marketing system is, the more prospects and customers you will reach. Sharpening your CRM data will increase your ROI, revenues and profits, and it will reduce frustration and wasted time. Here are 6 ways you can sharpen your data to boost your marketing and sales efforts. 1. Verify New Data As you receive data from your various marketing channels such as your shopping cart or landing pages, the first step is verifying it. Adding new email addresses can look good on paper, but if they are inactive or misspelled, then they won’t add any revenue to your bank account. Anyone can type incorrectly or transpose numbers when entering them. Double check new data before entering it in your system. 2. Add Missing Data Not all data is available when you first get a prospect’s or lead’s contact information. If you want to plan an email campaign, you can’t send it to leads if you don’t have their email addresses. Spend time periodically to update and complete prospect information by reaching out to your leads, researching online or calling their company for missing data. It is common for attendee lists from trade shows to only have some of the contact information you need; therefore you should have a process in place to gather the rest. 3. Eliminate Duplicates Duplicate records are clogging up your system, but they may not be readily apparent. Here are some reasons that you may have duplicate records: Listings under a maiden name and married name Listings of the same person under more than one company due to a job change Listings for a full first name and a nickname Typos or misspellings in one of the listings Listings under more than one job title Changes in home or work contact information Commonly, about 10 percent of CRM data is duplicate listings. Routinely removing duplicates or merging them will help give you a more accurate database. 4. Update Your List Periodically Depending on how you communicate with your leads, you need to update your list at minimum yearly, and preferably once a quarter. About 11 percent of the population moves every year to new homes and new jobs. If you send out your marketing pieces in the mail, then you are required to update the list 95 days before mailing to qualify for Post Office discounts. 5. Add Context Adding more details to each record will improve your knowledge of your leads. While adding basic contact information is a no-brainer, you should note as much information as you can in your initial meeting, and continue to add to it as you nurture your relationship. Details such as where you met, demographics, opinions, relationships with other clients or prospects, inter-company relationships and other unique details can offer more meat for the CRM system – and the people who use it – to work with. 6. Enforce Spelling To help your CRM program sort and segregate data, you should enforce spelling for titles and other standard words. For instance, one entry may say “CEO,” while another lists the same title as “C.E.O.” By creating drop down boxes for data entry, you can enforce specific spellings of keywords for better management by the CRM. What do you think of this list? Have you experienced lost data or duplicate leads before?
3 Unique Trends to Watch in Marketing Automation Posted on September 2, 2015June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Small business owners consistently have competing priorities. Your time is limited, and often that time gets consumed with solving crises. It can be tough to continually find new leads, nurture them and convert them to new customers. If leads are neglected, your revenue will dry up. Luckily, there’s a solution for small business owners. Marketing automation has been developed to help businesses work with their leads more efficiently, alleviating the strain on resources and time allocation. Marketing automation also helps prioritize leads and alert you when they are ready to buy so that you don’t let them slip away by inaction. In today’s digital landscape, marketing automation is a necessity for businesses that want to grow. The technology is becoming more sophisticated as developers respond to marketers’ feedback. Here’s where we see marketing automation going in the future: 1. More Streamlined Software As the buying experience becomes more fragmented, marketers will want to work with increasingly streamlined software. Streamlined marketing automation means giving marketers all of the sales and marketing data they need in the same place, prioritizing leads and offering up holistic reports for marketing campaigns. By putting sales and marketing data together, each team has a better idea of what the other is doing, so that they can work together to increase revenue. Sales teams can offer feedback to marketers to help make campaigns more targeted, while marketers can prepare the sales team when a new marketing campaign is launching. As the marketing automation industry becomes more complex, streamlining will have to become inclusive and categorize even more data, so that a diverse list of companies can use it. 2. Mobile Optimization With mobile marketing growing and mobile sales on the rise for both B2B and B2C companies, marketing automation software will have to focus on reaching customers via mobile platforms. Indicators show that by 2017, 30 percent of retail purchases will come from mobile devices. Marketing efforts will have to ensure campaigns work across mobile devices, such as creating mobile-optimized email campaigns. 3. Predicting Behavior Marketing automation systems already analyze current leads for their sales potential at every point of contact. This analysis comes from how the prospect interacts with designated triggers such as webpages, forms, emails and links. However, marketers need a peek into the future, and this comes with better predictive behavior analysis. Instead of understanding where a customer is now, wouldn’t you like to know where they will be in the future on your scale of lead-to-repeat customer? Features like contact scoring will continue to improve to help marketers predict future behavior. Are ready to embrace the future of marketing for your business, or still trying to wrap your head around marketing automation? Check out our 2 minute overview to see how marketing automation can help your business prioritize leads and close more deals.
Ready for the Future? You’ll Need an All In One CRM Software Posted on September 1, 2015June 20, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Wish that you could predict what the future holds for your small business? Part of preparing a business for the future is having a strategic plan. Combining this plan with customizable marketing tools will protect you and your customer base from the future unknown. Plan For Your Future Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a tool that you can use to prepare your company for the future. An all in one CRM software solution puts all the tools you need for your small business in one place to improve your ROI for prospect interactions, marketing campaigns and sales calls. The right solution should take administrative work out of your hands and automate the process, leaving the all-important direct customer interactions to you and your team. Personalize Your Marketing Consumers are savvy and are looking for a more personalized experience with the brands they do business with. So, instead of blasting your contacts with a generic email, all in one CRM software can automatically tag and send relevant content to your prospects based off their activity on your website. Nurture Long-Term Relationships When you start personalizing your marketing messages, you begin nurturing a healthy relationship with your contacts. Since most of your website visitors are not ready to buy the first time they visit your site, it is important to use email campaigns to educate them on what you do and how you can help them. That way, when they are ready to buy, your business is top of mind. Also, by effectively nurturing your customers, you can turn a one time buyer into a repeat customer. Lower Your Costs Automation lowers your costs because the CRM does the heavy lifting for you. An all in one CRM strengthens your sales and marketing process, allowing you to use your talents where they count without worrying about opportunities falling through the cracks. Track Your Metrics All-in-one CRM software can also track your prospect and customer behavior, giving you detailed insight into the people who buy from you. This insight can help you plan your sales strategy, optimize your marketing, and deliver a better customer experience. By getting to know your customers better, you can learn what they want to buy and give them exactly what they are looking for. A perfect match! So, while a CRM software, like Hatchbuck, doesn’t necessarily have any magical powers, you might feel as if you have a magic wand once you start using it for your business. Your customer interactions will become more successful, your costs will decrease and your profits will increase. If that isn’t magic, what is? Hatchbuck can put the power back in your hands, and enhance all of your customer relationships.
How to Hire the Right Employee for Your Small Business Posted on August 31, 2015April 3, 2024 by Don Breckenridge There are few things more crucial to the success of a company than its people, especially for a small business. With a small workforce, each new hire has an outsized impact on the company’s culture and achievements. Brett Lewis, who co-founded Skillbridge, an online platform for business freelancers, has said, “Great people versus okay people is the difference between success and mediocrity.” Hiring the right people is also important for controlling costs. Recruiting is a big expense for a business of any size, and if that employee isn’t a good fit it’s expensive to replace them. The median cost of replacing an employee is 21 percent of that person’s annual salary according to the Center for American Progress. For employees earning less than $50,000 annually it’s about 20 percent; for positions that pay $30,000 and under—which includes more than half of all U.S. workers—it’s 16 percent. That’s significant, especially to a small business. Make sure your hiring practices allow you to find the best candidates for every position. First, write out all the tasks involved in the role you need to fill. Then add to that the personality you feel is best for the role, the salary, benefits, time commitment and the other employees that person will be working with regularly. Write out the overall goal of the position, even if it’s very general. Then include the specific skills needed for the job, whether that’s knowledge of Java, QuickBooks, Excel, WordPress, etc. Devote time to hiring. As a small business owner, you probably don’t have an HR department—and likely not even an HR person–to whom you can delegate a lot of the hiring process. Yes, it’s difficult to add this to the array of hats you’re already wearing but it’s crucial for the success of your business. So schedule it into the workday as you would any other meeting or task. Look in the right places for the right people. Now that you know what you are looking for, where do those types of candidates spend time, both on and offline? Find out by talking with other small business owners, as well as vendors, friends and family about where they find good candidates for the position you need to fill. Don’t limit yourself to active job seekers. Every employee today is a passive candidate, so it pays to look where people are already doing the job you need done at your company . If you need someone with HR experience, for example, go to human resources association meetings. If you need someone in sales, attend trade shows in your industry. If it’s someone with very specific expertise, for example, a senior financial officer who understands financial technology, try fintech meetups. Don’t be desperate. Desperation will only cause you to compromise on what you want and, ultimately, wind up with the wrong hire. So don’t fool yourself into thinking that a warm body in the position is better than no body at all—that can wind up being an expensive mistake. Wait until the right person is available for the job. Test drive. Consider hiring someone on a contract basis, which is a cost-effective way of conducting a candidate search. Contractors mean you can have the staff you need immediately but without having to make a long-term commitment. If the person turns out to be terrific then you can offer them a full-time position. And since they’ve already been doing a great job, you can be secure in the knowledge you’ve hired the right person. Hire the right employee the first time to conserve costs and drive growth for your business. Do you have any hiring tips to share with other small business owners? Share them with us on Facebook.
5 Simple Content Marketing Tweaks for Your Small Business Strategy Posted on August 28, 2015June 28, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Do you have a content marketing strategy? Content marketing is an extremely valuable way to help build your inbound marketing. Content provides value for your prospects and helps position you as an expert in your field. The challenge for small businesses is that content like emails, eBooks, blogs, etc. can be time-consuming and expensive to create. Here are 5 simple content marketing tweaks for your small business. Use Guest Bloggers. If you have a blog on your website encourage guest blogs, perhaps from some of your satisfied customers. Share these blogs via your social media channels and other online sources. Ask guest bloggers to create blogs about subjects of interest to them, and they will likely appeal to your prospects as well. You can ultimately build an army of guest bloggers to provide a wealth of content for you. Make Use of Surveys. Interesting survey’s make for good content marketing, especially when you post their results and associated comments. Surveys can be used to engage prospects and clients and exchange feedback. You’ll want to be careful however, to avoid the two hot buttons of conversation: religion and politics. You don’t want your content to get off the rails. Instead, create business or personal related surveys that may spur discussion. “What percentage of your gross revenues do you spend on marketing?” or “How Many Tattoos Do You Have” are very different questions but both could provide interesting insight into your readers. Use this insight to create relevant content. Use Video. Sitting in front of a video camera and talking about a subject that relates to your customers is an easy way to create content that can be very shareable. If you are in real estate, create a two minute video about five quick ways to prepare your home for sale. If you own a Fitness Center, it is easy to demonstrate the proper way to do pull-ups, sit-ups or a variety of other exercises. Lawn Care companies can create a variety of self-help videos on lawn care and gardening. Instructional videos showing how to use your product can help “sell” your product. Use Photos. Photos, especially interesting images, can make for solid content. Have you just acquired a new piece of equipment? Have you remodeled or recently moved? Have you hired a new employee? Photos can be of interest to viewers, especially if there are accompanied by clever captions. Photos are also a way to interact with viewers either by creating a photo caption contest or asking for submissions on a particular subject. Make Use of Employees. Your employees can be a source of some terrific content. They each have their own areas of expertise and have experience and tips to share with readers. You can make employees a part of instructional videos or blogging. Include photos to add interest. Employees may ultimately develop their own personas and online following. Content is a valuable component of online marketing. These tweaks will expand your small business content marketing strategy and provide you with more materials to work with. You can get more mileage out of your content by piecing them together in new ways for different channels.