2015 Small Biz Trend – Social Media Drives Your Spending Posted on December 11, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk As you make your marketing plans for 2015, don’t forget to allocate budget to social media. In 2014, both Facebook and Twitter began testing “buy” buttons, making it simple for social media users to buy products and services in a couple of clicks without leaving the platform. This update is actually a really exciting opportunity for small businesses, who have dedicated time and resources to building a presence on social media, but are often left scratching their heads when it comes to, “How is social media driving ROI for my business?” Buying products straight from a social media feed builds on another trend in 2015 – adding the human touch back to marketing. Here’s how this new “buying” power will be able to help small businesses provide a more human experience: Instant social recommendations mean that consumers will be able to buy from small businesses that their friends and peers are liking and buying from. With small business marketing automation technology, small businesses will be able to nurture new customers automatically, introducing them to a personalized selection of more products and services. Like social media ads, small businesses will be able to target “buy” posts to their ideal buyer – offering the right products and services to the right type of buyer. While Facebook and Twitter “buy” technology has only been rolled out to a handful of small businesses, you can bet it’s coming, and can prepare your small business in the meantime. Brand awareness is going to tie in closely to the new buying features on Facebook and Twitter. Getting your audience to talk about your business on social media today will pay off when you’re able to add that buy button to posts in the future. Build Conversation Around Your Brand There was a time when small businesses could reach far and wide on Facebook for free. That free ride is over. As Facebook has matured and introduced ads to help monetize the platform, organic reach has fallen, and small businesses have to “pay to play” to boost brand awareness. Here are a few ways to keep the conversation going for your brand: 1. Keep building awesome content. Creating and sharing quality content helps extend your reach on social media. Publishing great content to your website boosts SEO, attracting fresh leads to your site. Offering a valuable resource to download gives small businesses a way to capture new prospects. As customers discover your small business through solid content, you’ll organically grow more likes and follows on social media. 2. Email nurturing will help prime prospects to hit the buy button when they encounter your brand on social media. Not everyone who likes your business on social media or visits your website is ready to buy – but some day, they will be. Email nurturing helps keep your brand top of mind, educates your prospects on their pain-points and your solution, and shortens the sales cycle. As you provide value to through email campaigns, prospects will be more apt to hit your buy button on social media than to buy from a brand they’ve never encountered before. 3. What happens after the sale can make a huge difference. We focus a lot on helping prospects along their journey of “just looking” to “shopping” to “ready to buy.” But as it becomes easier to make purchases on social media, a customer’s experience after the sale is just as important as their experience before the sale. Stories of a bad customer experience travel fast – especially on social media. Continue to nurture and provide value to customers after the sale. Say thank you, offer special discounts, and ask for referrals. They pay-off will be huge – accolades on social media paired with repeat purchases. Ringing in 2015 with a focus on attracting new leads, nurturing your prospects and impressing your customers after the sale will put your small business in the perfect position to capitalize on the new social media buying trend headed our way.
Marketing: Connecting People & Ideas Posted on December 3, 2014 by Travis Arnold A Guest Post by Eric McCarty of ITD Interactive Let’s whittle “marketing” down to its lowest common denominator. What is this marketing business about, at its core? Every marketing endeavor, regardless of which form it takes, is about connecting people and ideas. You have a product or service that makes another person’s life better. That is, in its purest form, an idea. In marketing, you need to plant that idea, that knowledge of a potentially improved life, into the mind of your prospect. How Thoughts Became Chicken Sandwiches The first best-selling “self help” book ever published (over 10 million copies) – Think And Grow Rich – had this message at its core: thoughts are things. They are real. Though you cannot touch them or hold them, they are capable of changing people’s lives and producing things that you can touch and hold. Ever enjoyed a Chic-Fil-A sandwich? You can thank, in part, Andrew Carnegie, the steel industry magnate who commissioned Napoleon Hill to interview the world’s leaders and write Think And Grow Rich. Truett Cathy read the book and said it influenced him to help build Chic-Fil-A. Carnegie’s thoughts influenced Hill’s thoughts which gave Cathy ideas and, voila, you enjoy a chicken sandwich. Thoughts turned into things. Notice that there were real people involved in this process. Truett Cathy read the book because of the people who were interviewed for it and because Carnegie commissioned it. He had trust in those names. Names Names Names Trust in people goes a long way in connecting people and ideas. That’s why you have names like Richard Petty and Johnny Bench endorsing Blue Emu (one of our clients). Blue Emu knows that people trust Richard and Johnny. They want to plant the idea of soothed sore muscles (without the stink) into your mind because you trust Richard and Johnny. Blue Emu is connecting people and ideas and turning thoughts into things. There’s something mysterious about names. Another famous Carnegie (Dale) wrote about the importance of names in How To Win Friends And Influence People. “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Have you ever noticed how you can skim a page of text and find your name instantly out of all the other characters on the screen? It’s your own name. It’s magical. It’s important because you are important. The most successful small-town newspaper publisher, Hoover Adams of the Dunn Daily Record in North Carolina, had a mantra of “names, names, names”. He told his reporters he would print the phone book if he could, just to get more local names in his paper. That principle guided the decisions of his editors and reporters and created incredible success. Think about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. A major component of the success of that campaign was the use of names. In each video, the participant mentions three names. “I challenge Jessica Lunk, Erin Posey, and Lindsey Stroud.” If your name is used it gets your attention. Pete Frates, who started that campaign, understood the importance of names. That’s great, you say, but how can I use this knowledge to make my business better? I don’t know any celebrities who would want to endorse my ideas, products, or services, so what’s the point? Why Does It Matter To Me? Remembering that thoughts are things and that names are important can open doors you didn’t think you could open. I can prove it. We just published an infographic called Marketing Blog Writing Styles that got shared by six top marketing bloggers – David Meerman Scott, John Jantsch, Pat Flynn, Derek Halpern, Marcus Sheridan, and Spencer Haws. And only one of them had ever heard of us. Those were names that our prospects trust and we got a lot of traffic from it. How did we do it? We connected their names and ideas. The idea was to take information that is already out there, connect names to it, and turn it into actionable content. It’s about connecting people and ideas. I wondered if it was a trend to break paragraphs up often. I see that a lot of top marketing bloggers hit the enter key quite frequently. That is something that could be measured with real numbers and it was just sitting there, waiting to be analyzed. With a few simple tools, I was able to compare sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, words per post, and characters per word of 12 big-name bloggers in our industry and track their style changes over a 3-year period. Why is that important? Because these folks are successful and we would do well to see how they do things. One of the big takeaways is that nearly all of these guys use short paragraphs. The median was less than two sentences per paragraph. Is that actionable information? Yep. You may have noticed I’m averaging close to two sentences per paragraph in this post. I now think about it consciously. The median word count per post is nearly 1,000. Is that actionable information? Yep. This post is over 1200 words. “Epic” posts (1,000 words or more) tend to get more trust and shares. Let’s do epic posts. So I had names and ideas but how would I connect them to get lots of exposure? I knew two things. These guys would be interested in their own stats. They write for a living (partially) and probably have no idea how many words per sentence and sentences per paragraph they average. If I were them, I would be interested in that data. (Nearly all of them who tweeted the infographic used the word “interesting” in their tweets.) These guys would be interested to see where they stood in comparison to other folks they respect and admire. If my name was mentioned in connection with some other top bloggers, I would want to share it because it puts me in their league. We intentionally used some with huge followings and some with moderate followings. The guys with moderate followings would really like being included! (All of them are worth following, in my opinion.) With an infographic we had the opportunity to use not only names but faces and we didn’t have to ask them for their profile pictures. Those are public. Here’s what it looked like: Next we had to figure out how to let these guys know that we included them in our infographic and hope they would spread it around. Then, if it’s worthwhile, their followers would spread it further. We took the time to find out where these guys interact online and connect with them in that arena. Some specifically said email on their website, some said twitter, some didn’t say but we saw that they responded to blog comments or tweets. So we went wherever they hang out and dropped a note. The result was six of the twelve made tweets to their combined 300,000 twitter followers. And their followers tweeted as well. Connect People & Ideas Notice that I’ve included the names of 17 real people in this post. Hopefully that made it more interesting, more real, and built trust in the ideas I’m trying to convey. Understanding the mysterious power at the intersection of people and ideas can change your business and make the world a better place. Marketing is connecting people and ideas. Connect your ideas with people and think your way to success. About the Author Eric McCarty is Marketing Director for ITD Interactive. He has launched several online businesses and participated in and judged at several Start-Up Weekends. A proud husband and father, he enjoys reading, running, and learning.
4 Quick Tips for a Thanksgiving You Won’t Forget Posted on November 26, 2014June 27, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Thanksgiving kicks of the start of the holiday season. Tomorrow many of us around this great nation will celebrate turkey day with family and loved ones and dig into that turkey feast. Oh and don’t forget Grandma Ruth’s famous pumpkin pie. It’s one of my favorite holidays, I love the smell of the bird cooking in the morning and all of the long standing family traditions. Check this out you’ll see what I mean: I do love the tasty food but the real reason I love Thanksgiving is because it is a time to truly reflect and give thanks for the blessings in my life. Thanksgiving lands every year on the 4th Thursday of the month but it wasn’t always that way. Our great leader and president, Abraham Lincoln, proclaimed the date to be the final Thursday in November in an attempt to unite and bring healing to our great nation. We now celebrate “Turkey Day” as a day set aside for coming together, reflection and giving thanks. So in that light I thought I would share a few tips to help make this year’s Thanksgiving the most memorable one yet: Give Thanksgiving is a time to remember what is most important in your life and your work. It helps you to reflect on the things most precious to you. Winston Churchhill said it best: “We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give” This holiday, find a cause you can truly support and give. If you have team members, empower them to be a part of the journey to give and make a difference. Make giving not just a one day event but use Thanksgiving as a springboard to infuse it into your daily culture. Places like www.kiva.org-Loans that change lives for just $25, http://www.operationhomefront.net/ which helps our military families as their loved ones are deployed, or places such as http://www.havenhousestl.org/ that provide housing and support for families traveling out of town to have extended medical needs met for their kids are great places to give your time and resources to. You can also check out http://www.charitynavigator.org/ to get insights into multiple charities and how they use your donations to further their cause. Slow Down I know, I know you are too busy to take a day off. Hogwash. You need to routinely take time away from your business or work to reflect on the blessings you have and recharge the batteries. According to Harris Interactive, the average American had 9 unused vacation days at the end of the year, up from 6.2 days in 2011. Study after study demonstrates that you and your team are more productive when you slow down and give your brain a break. Mark Rosekind, researcher at Alertness Solutions found that the effects of a vacation can increase performance by 80%. Take the next few days to nap, read a book, or if you’re in Buffalo NY, build a snow man! Use the time to get away and connect with those around you that you are most thankful for. Be Human This Turkey Day spend less time trying to capture moments with your iPhone and more time making them. Recent studies show that taking those must have pics actually hampers our ability to recall the event. So for just one day, try putting down the technology gadgets and enjoy being free from expectations to post every bite of turkey on Facebook. Use your time to reconnect with family and friends in a more personal and authentic way. Say Thank You This is a great time to pause and give thanks to your customers, vendors and most importantly your team members that make your business what it is today. As a business, your dream would be just that – a dream – without your loyal customers and great team alongside of you to help drive your mission. Show your appreciation with a simple email, handwritten note, personal video, or even a gift card. Here is a free holiday email template you can use to send out to your customers to let them know just how much you care: Thanksgiving templates This Thanksgiving take the time to reflect, recharge and give thanks. From all of us at Hatchbuck, may your holiday be filled with amazing memories with your family, friends and loved ones and give you the opportunity to start this holiday season off right.
Celebrate Achievements With Milestones Posted on November 4, 2014June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk A great way to step back and recognize your achievements is through social media. As a small business owner, you’re hustling to get as much done in a day so it’s hard to celebrate those achievements and goals you have met. Facebook has a cool, underused feature that can help you document and showcase your achievements in a simple, easy way: Milestones. Here’s how simple it is to upload your Milestones to Facebook: Step One: Go to your Facebook page. Step Two: In the section that Facebook asks you “What have you been up to?” and where you type out your status, there are three tabs in that box. Click “Offer, Event +” Step Three: Select Milestone Step Four: Complete the form (don’t forget to add a bit of background in the story section & a photo!) and be sure to keep ‘Hide from News Feed’ unchecked! Publish! Milestones can serve as a post in your social strategy to increase engagement! Your milestones will show in your About section under Life Events. You can use this as a quick reference and a source of inspiration to see how far you have come with your business! Add your milestones to Facebook when you complete a large goal such as earning your first buck and other big events. Other great milestones ideas are highlighting when your rockstar employees came on board, when you hit your 10th, 100th, and 10,000th customer, facelifts to your company with rebranding, and the launch of your big marketing campaign. Take pride in your great milestones as a small business owner and show the world the strength of your company with Milestones!
What’s Your #FirstBuckStory? Share it with us for a Chance to Win a $25,000 Marketing Makeover. Posted on October 23, 2014 by Jessica Lunk For entrepreneurs and business owners, it all starts with that first buck. Maybe it was the first buck you made on your paper route as a kid that enticed you to pave your own way. Maybe it was your business’s first customer – the one who validated your idea and brought to fruition all of the blood, sweat and tears you’d put into your company in one triumphant sale. Which ever first buck you hold the most dear, we want to hear about it! It’s Time to Celebrate the First Buck See, we know that as an entrepreneur or small business owner, you’re always looking ahead with your sites on the next horizon. You don’t always take the time to stop and celebrate those small, but significant milestones, like the first buck. That’s why Hatchbuck has launched First Buck Stories. First Buck Stories is partially a contest, but more than that, it’s a social movement to encourage entrepreneurs to share stories about what motivated them to become entrepreneurs, how they made their first sale, and what inspires them to keep moving forward. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to feel like you’re on an island. But the more we reach out and share where we started, how we faced challenges and how we thrived, the more we can learn from each other and push each other to succeed. Share. Vote. Win. To get the conversation around the first buck started, we’re calling all entrepreneurs and business owners to share a video of their first buck story. As extra incentive, we’re also giving away a $25,000 Marketing Makeover. The marketing makeover will include a PR campaign, a website redesign, content strategy help, and a lifetime subscription to Hatchbuck sales and marketing software. Here’s how to participate: Share: Share your first buck story at www.firstbuckstories.com by November 16, 2014. Vote: Get the vote out for your video during Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 17, 2014 to November 21, 2014. Win: Win a $25,000 Marketing Makeover. Finalists will be determined by the 5 videos with the most votes, and the winner will be selected based on creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and the story. We hope you’ll use First Buck Stories as an opportunity to pause and look back at where you started, marvel at where you are today and share your story to inspire other entrepreneurs to keep going toward their dream! Learn more at www.firstbuckstories.com.
Fall is for Community Posted on October 10, 2014June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Fall is for small business. Fall is for community. Fall is for magic and spirit and joy. When fall kicks in, there is magic in the air. Green leaves have soaked up enough color from the hot, summer sun to change hues, harvest moons are the sign for the last of the crops to come in before winter, and the air gets comfortably crisp. There’s a communal sense about as everyone preps for the winter – to soak up the last bits of fresh air. Vacations are over and it’s time to be as productive as possible. The best part of fall traditions is that we all help each other out. Transition seasons are our favorites at Hatchbuck… spring is the time for growth and fall is for productivity. Work hard and have fun is a strong fall theme and a Hatchbuck core value. By working together to get the ‘harvest’ taken care of, we can then sit back and reap the rewards of our hard work. Apple picking, pumpkin patches, canning parties, Oktoberfest are all celebrations of the labor that began in the spring but also continuing to prepare for the winter. There is beauty in the fall because it’s a celebration of the hard work that was put into the summer months but still wrapping up those rewards. Slowly, we’ll switch gears after this month to reward ourselves and others during the holidays and thank those that helped us prosper during the year. Make a difference! The first steps to start a community: Connect with other small business owners There’s power in the local business community. Entrepreneurs are cut from the same cloth, so very often our vision and goals align. Whether it’s idea-generating conversation or an inroad to a flourishing business partnership, there are many ways small business owners can connect to impact growth. Ask how you can help We often get caught up in what we need and we forget to ask others what they need help with. Whether it’s outside of what you’re selling, you still might be able to help another with a problem they are trying to solve. Plus, you’re set yourself up to receive help in the future. Trade your service Bartering is a great tool in your small business arsenal. Maybe I’ve got something you need and you have something I need… cutting out the middle man (cash money) can help you build a healthy, strong relationship within the community. Participate in a community festival Joining together with your community is a great way to build communal trust. The local community will come out in droves to a large local festival and the more they see of you, the better relationship they build with you and your brand. Block parties, festivals, and carnivals can be the highlight after a long work week – bring in the positive vibes and small business mojo! We’ll start seeing more and more holiday decorations and changes but only we can make the decision to ignore it just a few weeks longer to fully embrace the best season of the year! Don’t wait for someone else to start building a community… Take these small steps to start connecting with your fellow local business owners as you take in the last of the crisp fall air and sip on craft pumpkin ales. Tell us what your favorite autumnal things are on Facebook!
The White Paper – A Cornerstone of Marketing Automation Posted on October 3, 2014June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk When it comes to marketing automation, content is key to attracting new prospects and nurturing them through the sales process. A white paper is one of the primary building blocks of your marketing automation strategy. Here’s how white papers fit into marketing automation, and how to build one: Attract New Prospects Marketing automation uses online forms to capture information about the leads that are visiting your website via search engines, online ads, and social media properties. However, most people don’t just offer up their name and email address online without getting something in return. Offering a white paper on your website creates a give/get scenario. You can give your audience a great white paper that will educate them on an challenge and it’s solution. In return, they’ll give up their credentials, like name, email address, title, company size and other information. You get a new lead. Nurture Prospects Leads generated through inbound marketing are extremely valuable. By downloading your resource, they’ve raised their hand and said, “Hey, I’ve got a problem you can help me with!” Once you’ve collected information about a contact through an online form submission for a white paper you’ve offered on your site, you have a fresh new lead. The worst thing to do would be to let that lead sit on the sidelines, waiting for them to come back to your site on their own, or putting them on your generic email blast list. Instead, marketing automation nurtures these leads with relevant content until they are ready to make a purchasing decision. With a white paper as a resource, you have a foundation of content for fueling marketing automation’s nurturing process. You’ve already put a significant amount of content in your white paper, and have it well organized. To get more milage out of it for the nurturing process you can extrapolate on the main ideas to create blog posts, infographics, guides, checklists, slideshares, and other types of content to fuel a hyper-relevant email campaign to follow the download. How to Build a Whitepaper So what does a good white paper look like? GOAL: The goal of a white paper is to be informative, educational and solution-oriented. It’s not meant to be a hard sell. Providing long-form information in an easily digested format is a doorway to building brand awareness among your audience and building trust in your brand. In addition, while you want to educate and provide value to your audience, you don’t need to write a text-book or dissertation. Make it simple for your reader to understand the problem and the solution. BRANDING: A white paper can demonstrate your thought leadership on a topic, and is a great opportunity to showcase your brand. The tone, look, and feel should match your branding and value proposition. For instance, at Hatchbuck, we provide simple marketing automation software to small businesses. It wouldn’t make sense for us to publish a complex white paper using overly-technical jargon. We keep our resources in line with our brand, not only following our visual brand guidelines, but also echoing our value proposition of simplicity by using simple language and organization to help small business owners be more effective at marketing. ORGANIZATION: Topic: choose a pain-point your audience has that you can address. Problem: empathize with your audience by outlining the problem. Solution: add value to your audience by outlining a course of action they can take to solve their problem. Awareness: reinforce your authority on the topic and introduce your audience to your business. A white paper is a cornerstone to your marketing automation strategy. Hit on an obstacle your audience is facing, and serve up a solution to drive new leads, and nurture them with relevant follow-up content until they convert.
4 Reasons Marketing Automation Helps Businesses Be More (Not Less) Human Posted on September 24, 2014June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Marketing automation doesn’t suck the human element out of your marketing. In fact, it augments it by giving owners and marketers better information about their prospects so that they can get into real, authentic conversations. With marketing automation, you don’t eliminate the human relationship with your prospects and customers – you can actually strengthen it. Here’s how: Turns Handshakes into Conversations When you meet someone for the first time, it’s customary to give them a handshake (or a high-five if you’re on the Hatchbuck team). In our increasingly digital and global economy, your website is often the first interaction someone will have with your business – it’s like a handshake with new prospects. But where does your relationship go from there? In the physical world, you’d introduce yourselves, exchange business cards and have a brief conversation, advancing your relationship. Marketing automation does the same thing. A prospect visits your site. If you’ve caught their attention, they’ll leave their credentials behind by filling out an online form. Then, you can send them an introduction email, and track their visit the next time they come to your site. Without the ability to collect those important contact details, it would be as if you’d never met. Helps You Get to Know One Another So you’ve met your new prospects, and got the conversation rolling. As they continue to interact with your brand, you’ll have a better idea of what types of content they find the most engaging. You’ll learn more about their challenges and the solutions they are looking for as they visit specific pages on your site and click links in your emails. You can then continue the conversation, by delivering personalized emails that address their greatest obstacles, moving the ball down the court. Like a good friend, marketing automation helps you listen to your audience, so you can deliver the information they need, building trust in your brand. Helps You Take Relationships to the Next Level Remember the days when you used to have a landline, and a sales person would call and interrupt you in the middle of dinner? No one likes unsolicited calls out of the blue, and as a salesperson, cold calling prospects can be an unproductive use of your time. Wouldn’t you rather be talking to prospects who are receptive to learning more about your solution? With marketing automation, you track how prospects are engaging with your website, forms and emails. It’s like receiving a friendly wink, letting you know that it’s okay to reach out to them – they are ready to go to take your relationship to the next level. Leaves Robotic Tasks to the Robots Staying organized makes a big difference in the way you run your business. At the same time, tracking, filing, and following-up can get time consuming if you’re doing it manually – that’s a lot of sticky notes! And wouldn’t you rather use that extra time to build relationships with prospects, and make sure your customers are completely satisfied? Marketing automation takes those organizational and administrative tasks off your plate, like: Sending thank you emails to prospects who download a resource or request more information. Sending a follow-up email after your initial point of contact. Creating follow-up tasks when a prospect takes an action, like visiting a certain page, or reaching a specific tag score. Nurturing prospects through step-by-step, personalized email campaigns, building awareness of – and trust in – your brand. Dynamically segmenting contacts by their interests, tagging them based on their online activity. Tracking every activity along the way, like the pages they’ve visited, the emails they’ve opened, the email links they’ve clicked, and the forms they’ve filled out. Marketing automation helps you put the human touch back into your business by giving you insight into what your prospects and customers need. At the same time, automating those no-brainer steps – like sending a thank you, sending a sequence of emails, or creating a follow-up task – saves time for you and your team. With better insights and more time, you can be focused on the human elements of your business, such as speaking with hot prospects and delivering excellent customer service.
Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day! Posted on September 19, 2014June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk “It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy” – Steve Jobs Small business owners are pirates and rebels. We don’t accept the status quo and we set out on our own paths. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re lawbreakers but we are troublemakers. Without a little disruption, we wouldn’t have the internet, smart phones, or even the United States of America. This country wasn’t built for big business but rather a community of people sticking it to The Man working together to actualize their ideas. That’s why we are recognizing Talk Like a Pirate Day… just another excuse to celebrate small business owners with big dreams and the wind in their sails. Ahoy, me Hearties! Would ye like t’learn how t’talk like a pirate? All hand hoay! – All hands on deck Batten down the hatches! – Put everything away on the ship and tie everything down because a storm is brewing… that’s a metaphor and as a small business owner, I think you know what it means 😉 Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! – Pull up the anchor and the sail and let’s get going! Walk the plank! – Punishment for bad email marketing. The consequence is a visit to Davy Jones’ Locker! Davy Jones’ Locker – Where your business could go when things make a turn for the worse Scallywag – Your competitor Hornswaggle – What your competitors do Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!