Modern Marketing is Inbound Marketing Posted on June 2, 2014June 24, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Maybe you have tried outbound marketing methods such as cold calling, direct mail or advertising to reach prospective customers and haven’t seen the results you would like. While these outbound methods have their place, they are becoming less effective as a stand-alone strategy. Outbound marketing methods used to work. Consumers had fewer choices of what they could purchase and how they could purchase it. They couldn’t go to Amazon to buy organic toothpaste in bulk. Instead they were restricted to the choices at the corner store. In traditional scenarios, marketers drove the conversation. They controlled the market, the message, and the channels. But things have changed… Today, consumers are driving the conversation and have a plethora of options when it comes to buying products and services. There are infinite channels through which we get information. We are no longer limited to traditional media, like television, print ads and radio. Because of the explosion of channels, it’s more and more difficult for marketers to interject their message without getting tuned out. Voltier Digital recently reported that, on average: 86% of people skip through television commercials 44% of direct mail is never opened 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call List” Why? First, people don’t want to be interrupted in the middle of their busy day with pushy sales and marketing tactics from a business they don’t know or trust. Secondly, the growth of the internet has changed the game, forever. Did you know that 9 out of 10 people research online prior to making any significant buying decision? In their research they will visit your website, your competitor’s site, industry portals, social media and online review sites. People want to buy; they don’t want to be sold. So with all the static and noise your prospects hear every day and their ability to tune you out so easily, what is a busy small business like you to do? It’s time to turn up the dial on Inbound Marketing. Inbound marketing or “Permission Marketing”, as best-selling author and marketing guru Seth Godin has coined, has quickly become one of the most effective ways for small business to drive new business. Inbound marketing is based on attracting prospective customers to your website by having a strong presence on search engines (like Google), your blog, and social media. Inbound marketing is about making it easy for prospective customers to find you online and the value your products or services offer them. Contrast this to outbound marketing, which is about pushing your products and services to a mass audience and interrupting them to sell them. The Bottom Line: Modern marketing is all about attracting new and repeat customers through inbound channels. Inbound leads are often more qualified and the most inexpensive cost per lead because they found you based on their own research and buying path. In fact, inbound marketing costs on average 62% less than traditional outbound marketing (Source: Voltier Digital Infographic). So what are the next steps to generating leads through inbound marketing? Check out our guide, “Getting Found: The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing” to learn how to use your website, blog and social media to attract more customers.
Who’s it From? Five Questions to Ask to Increase Email Opens. Posted on May 19, 2014July 16, 2021 by Jessica Lunk When an email hits an inbox, there are two elements that are integral to the email being opened: 1. A compelling subject line. 2. A trustworthy from address. Subject lines get a lot of attention in the world of digital marketing, but the “from” field is just as important in getting your marketing email from “sent” to “opened.” Have you ever received an email that looked like a garbled mess of letters and numbers, or a suspicious sounding domain? A from address like that automatically signals to you, “SPAM” and “DELETE.” If you want to stay out of the virtual trash bin, it’s worth taking a few moments to ask yourself five important questions about your from address before launching your next marketing email. Is the From Name Friendly? Every email address has a human-friendly name that lets the recipient know who the email is from, like “ABC Company” or “Jane Smith.” While this may seem like a no-brainer, it’s worth taking a minute to check the name associated with your email address. For example, if all of your prospecting emails come from a sales person’s email address, using their name instead of your company name might be a friendlier way to reach potential customers. Is the From Address Familiar? Every email address is made up of a username and a domain name: user@domain.extension. This is the format we expect, and a garbled username or uncommon extension is all it takes set of our internal “spam” alarm. Keep your from address clean, simple and legit. “firstname.lastname@companyurl” always works, as does something specific like “deals@companyurl” or “updates@companyurl.” Is the From Address Professional? If you’re still sending email from an @yahoo.com, @gmail.com or @aol.com email address, it’s time to think about investing in your own domain. Any reputable business should have their own domain name and business email, and it isn’t difficult to secure one. Check out these resources if you need to purchase your own domain: GoDaddy BlueHost 1&1 Is the From Address DMARC Compatible? Not only does owning your own domain increase your credibility, but now it may be essential for getting your emails to reach prospect and customer inboxes. DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance” and is a policy that is being implemented globally on the good ol’ world wide web to reduce spam and phishing schemes. In order to reduce spam and email abuse, soon all the major ISPs (internet service providers) will stop delivering emails from aol.com, yahoo.com, gmail.com and other free domain email addresses unless they are sent directly from an AOL, Yahoo, or Gmail account. This means that if you send emails through an email marketing tool, those emails will be blocked or bounced by most major ISPs, like Gmail or Outlook.com. Is the From Address Recognizable? When sending email marketing messages, you want to be recognizable and known. That’s why opting prospects in to your email list is important. This confirms that your prospects want to hear from you and will engage with your emails, increasing your overall email deliverability. Does your From Address shout, “Open Me, I’m Important!” or does it scream, “Proceed with Caution!”? It’s worth taking a second glance to make sure that your emails are delivered and opened.
Content Grid: What to Send and When to Send It Posted on May 8, 2014June 9, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Part of a great personalized email campaign is knowing what types of content to send throughout a campaign as your audience travels down the sales funnel. Here is a handy grid to help visualize what to send to your contacts, and when to send it. You don’t need every type of content on the grid, but working toward a good mix of content for each stage of the sales funnel will help you fuel email marketing campaigns that raise awareness of your brand, deliver resources to prospects, help opportunities evaluate your product or service, and keep customers engaged. (p.s. Don’t forget that you don’t have to create every piece of content on your own. Supplementing email campaigns with curated content can also add value to your audience.)
To Create or Curate? Content that Feeds Your Email Marketing Campaigns. Posted on May 1, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Your small but mighty business is running a tight ship. You know that content helps to entertain your audience, educate prospects, and convert opportunities into customers, but not many small businesses have resources that can be completely dedicated to creating content. When our small business customers think about sending an email marketing campaign, they often feel overwhelmed by producing enough content to power their email marketing. But feeding your email marketing engine can actually be pretty simple. Here are a few tips on what to create and what to curate: What to Create: Repurpose existing assets. Some content is evergreen and never goes out of style. Recycle your existing content to expand your content library. Combine 10 related blog posts into an ebook. Break up a guide or report into 10 new blog posts. Upload an existing presentation to SlideShare. Reimagine print material like brochures, handouts and packets into online presentations, articles, and guides. Customer stories. Your best customers are advocates of your brand who want to help you succeed. Interview your customers for powerful collateral you can share with your prospects. Ask how your business has impacted your customer for a compelling case study. Ask your customer how they have tackled a problem that your audience faces for an easy how-to article. Survey results. It’s the age of big data, and we love using data to draw conclusions and to back up opinions. Send out a quick poll to check the pulse of your audience and write up a blog post on your findings. Survey your current customers and create a sharable report. Images and Slides. While you might not be an infographic genius, tools like Canva, Powerpoint, SlideShare, and Prezi make it easy to look good. Break up an article into digestible chunks for a sharable presentation. Create a workbook using a Powerpoint template with prompting placeholder text. Use slides to highlight individual data and facts. Team Members. Often content creation falls on one person, whether it’s the marketing manager or the owner themselves. If you’re driving content creation, don’t forget to reach out to your team members for help. Interview a team member for a Q&A article. Ask a team member to write a blog post about their niche or give their view on a topic. What to Curate: Lists. Pick and topic and run with it. A top 10, the best of, the mostest – lists are like candy, they’re addictive, easily consumed and your audience loves them. Curate a list of articles. Take a page from BuzzFeed and compile a list of fun photos or gifs. List stats, facts, or data. News. Were you mentioned in an article? Is your industry in the national spotlight? Share with your audience. Set up a Google Alert or Talkwalker Alert to be notified when your business or industry makes news. Follow reputable sources in your industry on social media and share the news that’s going viral. Videos. Share informative and entertaining videos. Embed a video within a blog post. Curate videos on your YouTube channel and share the link. Infographics. Search Google images for powerful infographics that speak to your audience. Embed (and attribute) an infographic in a blog post. Send a link to a helpful infographic in an email. Industry Reports. As a smaller biz, you don’t necessarily have access to tons of customer data. Third party reports can help add credibility to your value proposition. Industry analyst reports. Reports published by non-competitors in your space. Thought Leadership. Share what thought leaders are saying about your industry or a customer pain-point. LinkedIn is a great place to start looking for thought leadership articles in your area of expertise. Photo Inspiration. A photo is worth a thousand words, but you may not be a photog or designer. Tap into others’ talents to inspire your audience. Create a Pinterest board and send it out in an email campaign. Creating your own content is extremely valuable, but can be time consuming. Don’t be afraid to supplement the content you’ve created with awesome third party resources. Not only will your audience love seeing something fresh, inspiring, entertaining or educational, but you’ll gain a bit of good karma by sharing (and attributing, of course!) in today’s social economy.
Three Tips for Email Marketing that Creates Customers Posted on April 24, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk We know that email is a primary channel for revenue. So how can you maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing to produce more customers so your business can grow? Speak to the needs of your prospects: Segmenting prospects by their interests helps to deliver personalized messaging that potential customers can relate to. To engage prospects, uncover their unique challenges and provide them with a solution. Example: You are a real estate agent and your customers’ pain-points include determining how much they can afford. You provide a mortgage calculator on your website, and drive your prospects there through email. By helping your prospects answer a question or overcome a challenge, you add value and increase awareness of your brand. Evaluate your prospects’ place in the sales funnel: A prospect who is just browsing has a different set of priorities than a prospect who is ready to buy. Serve up helpful, value-added content at the awareness level, and save the feature and benefit comparisons for hot leads in the buying stage. Example: A prospect in the awareness stage is just beginning to research buying a new home. They aren’t sure what they can afford. A mortgage calculator is valuable at this stage. Down the line, they determine their price range and are ready to shop. At this stage, sending home listings in their price range keeps them engaged. Finally, they find the right home and are ready to buy. Resources that help them secure financing are going to be of the greatest value at this stage. Focus on a single call-to-action: Each individual email should have a clear call-to-action, such as visiting your blog, downloading a resource, or contacting a sales representative. When your email focuses on one single outcome, conversion rates increase. Example: When faced with too many options, your prospects often end up choosing to do nothing. Dear Jessica, Searching for a new home? Determine how much you can afford with our mortgage calculator: http://www.mynewhome.com/mortgagecalculator Or check out our list of lenders: http://www.mynewhome.com/lenders Or visit our website to see our latest listings: http://www.mynewhome.com/listings A single, clear call to action will increase email conversion because there’s only one choice to make – to click through or not. Dear Jessica, If you are thinking about buying a new home, you may be wondering, “How much can I really afford?” We hear that question a lot, so we’ve provided a handy mortgage calculator to help you determine yoiur price range. Check it out:http://www.mynewhome.com/mortgagecalculator Today’s consumer is desensitized to generalized batch & blast email. A more effective approach to email marketing is to create a pitch with a single call to action that speaks to a potential customer’s interests and their place in the sales funnel. A personalized, targeted approach will increase email engagement and convert more prospects into customers.
Turning the St. Louis Startup Scene into Reality Posted on April 18, 2014June 1, 2016 by Don Breckenridge A recent article in Fortune asks if St. Louis can become the next tech hub. At Hatchbuck, we certainly think so, and being fresh back from visiting an area that has exploded on the tech scene, Denver and Boulder, I can’t help but draw the parallels. The city of St. Louis and the surrounding region has continued to build up a vibrant startup community over the past decade. Today we have the same catalysts in place that helped launch Colorado’s thriving startup success. Supporters in the Denver and Boulder region who are invested in helping startups and the economy grow are big contributors to Colorado’s success. In a 2013 startup report, 151 Colorado startups were launched, and 122 additional companies raised $461 million in funding. What is perhaps most notable is that of the $461 million in funding, only $9 million was raised by companies outside of Colorado. The local presence of Brad Feld’s venture capital firm, Foundry Group, the Techstars accelerator which Feld founded, as well as the Galvanize incubator, are among the pillars that fuel Colorado’s digital ecosystem. Our team had the opportunity to visit Galvanize, where we soaked up the same excitement and buzz that is being generated in T-REX, the tech incubator that Hatchbuck calls home. You could feel the innovation catching on through the osmosis that occurs when ideas, capital, and vision come together in the same place. St. Louis has its own homegrown support system, including accelerators like Capital Innovators, Arch Angels, Arch Grants, VCs like Cultivation Capital as well as T-REX. These local resources have been integral to building St. Louis’s startup culture. Another factor that has helped Colorado keep it local is the state’s ability to attract millennials. In Denver, we also visited Innovation Pavilion, a tech incubator that focuses on fast-tracking high school and university students into tech careers, filling the talent gap. Here in St. Louis, the 2000s have brought encouraging growth, netting a 35% increase of those in the 25-30 age range. Like Denver, we are also making strides in developing talent locally, perhaps most notably through Jim McKelvey’s Launch Code program, which pairs up aspiring coders with experienced developers. What coastal hubs like Silicon Valley and New York have, and what Denver and Boulder have managed to capture is what St. Louis needs to continue building – a strong presence of local resources. As St. Louis receives more attention from the coasts and continues to invest in our own startup ecosystem, we’re going to see a snowball effect that will further catalyze startup growth. Data from the St. Louis RCGA 2014 St. Louis Startup & Capital Report Created by
An Easy Guide to Creating Customer Personas Posted on April 16, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Customer personas are the foundation of personalized marketing that converts. Armed with airtight personas, you can address your prospects’ pain-points and tap into the motivation behind their decision to buy. Customer Persona: A fictional person, rooted in research, that represents the needs and interests of your audience. Hint: Learn why personas are an important building block for marketing in our Simple Introduction to Customer Personas. Personas are fictional people, but to understand their motivations and challenges, you want them to feel as real as possible. To build an effective persona for each segment of your audience: Create an identity. Understand their day-to-day challenges. Uncover the problems that your business can help solve. Bonus: Grab our Persona Workbook to start building your own personas. Craft an Identity Find out who your persona is and give them a backstory. Ask: What is their name? What generation are they from? What is their home life like? What is their level of education? Joe the single twenty-something is going to have different motivations than Mary the 40-something divorcée with 2.5 kids. Construct a Day-in-the-Life Think about the routines and processes your persona embarks upon every day. Ask questions like: Where do they go every day? Do they wake up and head to the office each day? Are they the jet-setting type? How do they communicate? Do they pick up the phone and dial? Do they send out a Tweet? What is their role? Do they wear many hats each day? Are they in a stringent position? How do they work? Are they managing a team? Do they work independently? What is the best way to reach them? Are they tech-savvy? Are they technically challenged? What personality characteristics do they possess? Are they goal oriented? Do they tend to be complacent? What is their environment like? Are they suburbanites? City folk? Use insights about the daily achievements, struggles, and processes of your personas uncover what motivates them to take action. Uncover Pain-Points Hypothesize, then validate through research (more on that below), the biggest challenges your persona might face. What problems does your persona have? Where do their obstacles intersect with your expertise? What specific challenges can you help them overcome? Once you’ve tapped into your customers’ challenges you can: Develop value-added content that solves a problem for your customers, keeping your business top-of-mind. Position your products and services in a way that addresses their challenges. Create new programs, products, and service offerings that meet their needs. Persona Research Personas are imaginary, but they are rooted in real life. One of the advantages of being a small business owner is that you connect with your customers every day. Likely, you’re more in touch with your customers than say the CEO or VP of Marketing at a large corporation. The first versions of your personas might be built on educated guesses and hypothesis. That’s a great start, since you innately know things about your customer base. But don’t assume anything. Reach out to your customers and prospects in your target market to continue to learn about their identity, motivations and challenges. Continue to revisit your personas and let them evolve as you discover more about their real-life counterparts. Do this by meeting with customers in person, creating places for feedback at your brick and mortar location, or sending out quarterly surveys with tools like Surveygizmo or Survey Monkey. When you try to be everything to everyone, you spread yourself too thin and end up being nothing to no one. Instead, develop personas based on the 2 or 3 main types of customers you have. Use your personas to create messaging and content that feels like it’s meant for a single person, and everyone will feel like you’re reaching out to them individually. Ready to get started building your personas? Grab our handy Persona Workbook and start building personas for the 2 to 3 main types of customers that you sell to.
A Simple Introduction to Personas Posted on April 15, 2014June 13, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Imagine you’ve been asked to speak at an event to a group of 500 people. How do you engage each person in the room? If you ask a public speaking expert, they’ll likely tell you to imagine the audience naked you are having a conversation with a single person. Then, they’d suggest you make eye contact with just a handful of people in the room. By taking your communication to a personal level, everyone in the room feels like you’re speaking directly to them. Today, marketers are taking the same personalized approach. Small business customers have become desensitized to generalized, batch & blast messaging. Instead, they expect a personalized experience based on their unique agenda, obstacles and level of interest in your business. To deliver this personalized experience, you need to know your buyer so intimately that you understand their pain-points and can anticipate their needs. Personas Uncover How and Why Your Customers Buy Your target market may be hundreds, thousands, or millions of contacts. Instead of trying to formulate messaging that is generic enough to address them all, lock your sights on two or three types of people on your list. For example, if you’re an architectural firm, your target audience may be made up of general contractors, engineers, and business owners. When you segment your list by these types of leads, you are able to address them in a more personalized, engaging way. Take segmentation one step further. Personas take initial segmentation one step further by assigning an archetype customer for each group. So, instead of thinking of a group of your customers as “General Contractors in the Retail Industry,” personas help you think of them as “Greg the GC.” With a strong persona, Greg isn’t just a general contractor. He’s a 45ish guy who’s been in the business for 20 years. He’s married with 2 kids, lives in the suburbs and drives an SUV. He struggles to find good tradesmen, and his business is built on repeat customers. He is tech savvy, but finds that the latest gadgets usually aren’t rugged enough for the field, so his business is often a late adopter. His dream is to keep his business growing so that his kids can inherit it someday. His challenge is balancing business development with daily business operations. Suddenly, you have insights into how Greg spends his days, what motivates him, and the types of problems you can help him solve. With a persona behind your content, you can create a much more compelling message for Greg and your prospects who are just like him. Personas keep marketing on the right track. Creating personas for the main types of people in your audience helps you to address the challenges they face and understands what motivates them to act, whether you are creating an email marketing campaign, sending out a direct mail piece, speaking at an event, or updating your website content. Offering solutions to their challenges through engaging content adds tremendous value to your prospects, converting more of them into customers so your business can grow.
6 Simple Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Your Blog Post Posted on April 2, 2014 by Jessica Lunk Keeping up with your business blog isn’t easy. Even for someone like me who enjoys writing, coming up with new ideas and posting consistently is really challenging. So if you’ve conquered inertia, sat down and written a great blog post, give it the finishing touches- and the attention- that it deserves: 1. Add a great image. Whether you’re flipping through articles on Flipboard, or scrolling through your Facebook feed, you’ll find that marketing is becoming more and more visual, and a great image can help grab a reader’s attention. Here are a few ways to whip up an image for your blog post: If you’ve got an artistic side, put your graphic design skills to the test and create your own image. Sometimes a smaller canvas brings out the most creativity. You might surprise yourself. Inspiration is all around you. Grab your smartphone, snap a pic and slap a filter on it for an insta-image. Take advantage of others’ talents and search for eye-candy on Google images, Flickr and more using CreativeCommons image search. 2. Create a post excerpt. It’s tempting to move onto the next thing once your post is in the can, but one tiny extra step can make a big difference in your marketing. Write a short teaser in just a couple sentences. If you already have a great lede that entices your audience to read on, you may not even have to write anything. The content is already there. 3. Add a call to action. Your blog post shouldn’t be a dead end. Help speed up the conversion process by making sure that prospects who have come to your post know what to do next. Link to a related article or page on your website, ask them to sign up for your email newsletter, or point to a free resource that you offer. Don’t let them fall off your site because there was nowhere to go next. 4. Share on social media. Social and content go hand in hand. Content feeds your social media engine, and social distributes your content to a wider audience. Oh, and guess what – you already have a snappy excerpt and eye-catching image to help spread the word. 5. Alert your team members. Amplify your social media efforts by alerting your team members that a new article is up. Pass along your excerpt as well to make it super easy for them to share with their unique groups and networks. 6. Create a value-added email. It’s easy to turn your blog headline into a subject line and to craft your pre-written excerpt into a value-added email that you can share with your prospect list. Do this for every post, and soon you’ll have a great drip campaign that will keep marketing leads engaged. There is no better feeling than wrapping up an interesting, funny, educational, or entertaining blog post. But don’t just click “publish” and forget it. With a few extra steps, your hard work will get way more mileage, reaching a bigger audience with your brand.