10 Inspiring Small Business Quotes Posted on March 22, 2013October 14, 2022 by Lindsey Stroud 10 Inspiring Small Business Quotes “If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the wherewithal to do what it takes to make your product work.” – Jay Levinson “Be yourself–everyone else is taken.” – Oscar Wilde “Whether you think you can or can’t – you’re right”- Henry Ford “For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough” – Zig Ziglar “Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn’t do enough to advance the cause is waste.” – Seth Godin “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.” – Jim Rohn “I’ve seen life as one long learning process.” – Richard Branson “Effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.” – Stephen Covey “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
What Small Business Should Take From Big Business Marketing Posted on March 20, 2013June 1, 2016 by Nicci Troiani Do you envision your small business to be the next Coke or Apple? Those are 2 of the most well known and recognized brands and many small businesses owners out there dream of being recognized so widely. Running a small business is dramatically different than running a business like Coca Cola, which has been around since 1886. Despite the differences, many small business owners still spend a lot of time, energy and finances to use big business marketing techniques. There are a lot of things that small business can learn from big business marketing, including what to do and what not to waste your time on. Where to let Big Business influence your marketing 1. Website Your website is one aspect of your business that you should not skimp on. The majority of sales leads come in through a search engine now and do plenty of internet research before making a buying decision. You should offer them something of value and request a sign up on your site. Something like a white paper, educational video or a free consultation is great. You want to give them something that helps them with the buying process and is NOT pushy or salesy. Doing this allows you to capture their contact information and add them to your sales process, while educating them and gaining credibility. 2. Social Look at this image from Coca-Cola’s Twitter account. Small businesses need to use their social media channels to be interactive like this with their customers and prospects. Many big brands have the ability to have a big social presence A big awareness means a lot of automatic followers. While you don’t have that advantage, adding your social channels to your smart phone and giving quick responses to mentions and messages ensures that you are interacting with your audience. This will keep customers and fans happy and increase your following. Keeping your social outlets updated with new content is a must. Updating more often will keep your audience engaged and grow your following. What Small Business can do that Big Business Can’t 1. Follow up This is a huge advantage. People like a business that will work with them and treat them like a person. Big businesses have too many clients to focus on them individually. Even as busy as you are, using a good software to keep your clients and tasks organized can keep you on top. Try to use automated e-mail campaigns if possible to take down the effort level on your part. 2. Personal Touches Sometimes a hand written note or small gift can have a huge impact. When was the last time you got a personalized thank you note for purchasing from a big company? Leave These to the Big Guys 1. Branding Don’t get me wrong. The right name, logo and image are EXTREMELY important to your business. You should not write off branding completely. But you are not Coca-cola or Apple. You do not need to hire a whole team for your branding strategy and spend a large amount of your resources here– it will be a waste. Wait until you’ve been around a while and taken over the world– or at least your industry, to focus on this. 🙂 2. Expensive Advertisements When you buy television or print ad space you are competing for the viewer’s attention with brands that are much bigger and recognizable than yours. There are a few things to think about here. First, if you have a great social media strategy, you are getting brand attention here for free, so why spend money on advertising? Second, if you have the resources to purchase advertisements, do so wisely. Purchase ads in a smaller niche magazine or a local radio station. Find places where the listeners or viewers are more likely to identify with your company. Google and Facebook can be good advertising strategies because they are so targeted. Go for strategies like these versus trying to compete with the big guys.
eBook vs White Paper Posted on March 15, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud You’ll often hear marketing experts suggest your small business offer educational content to your prospects via eBook or White Paper. Don’t feel alone if you’ve wandered what the difference between the two is. Here is a quick run down of the typical differences between an eBook and White Paper. eBook Electronic Book Typically Not Used For Lead Capture (Do Not Require Information to Acquire) Short Interactive Visually Appealing (Graphics) Casual Designed for Skimming Bulleted Points Can Be Easily Distributed Often Landscape Design White Paper Formal Research Typically Used For Lead Capture (Require Information to Acquire) More Intensive Read Heavy Text Persuasive Fact-Based Plain In Design Logical Problem/Solution Format Often Portrait Design
Sales and Marketing Email Campaign Examples Posted on March 13, 2013 by Nicci Troiani Many e-mail marketing software providers have different explanations of campaigns. At Systematic Revenue, we think that a campaign has multiple steps and serves a purpose– sales and marketing. Many other email marketing software providers will call what we call an e-mail blast or mass email a campaign. Mass e-mails have their purpose as well– for example, a monthly newsletter or one-off communication should be sent as a mass e-mail, because they are only one step. Campaigns can be designed to have 2 steps or 200. This is of a completely different use than sending a mass e-mail. Campaigns can follow up with new sales leads, nurture and educate prospects and opportunities and keep communication with your current customers. This is an advantage because using an automated system enables you to accomplish this without having to manually start each step. Here are a few common sales and marketing campaigns: Sales Follow-up Campaign: Because you shouldn’t be e-mailing a list that you don’t know, when trying to add new, cold leads to your list, you should call them first. Then, provided that they don’t buy right away, you should start them on a follow-up campaign, which might look something like this: Day 1: Initial phone call You should introduce yourself and what you do. Ask them if they would like to receive more information about your business. Day 3: Follow- up e-mail: This e-mail should summarize who you are and what you do. An added bonus would be adding some sort of value add like an article,white paper or infographic that shows how using your service or products can benefit them. Day 5: Special Offer E-mail If someone is ready to buy at an early stage, you should entice them with some sort of offer like a discount, free consultation or trial to get them to take the plunge. Send this out in an e-mail with a link to a sign up form. Day 7: Task to follow up via phone and start on nurturing campaign You should make a last phone call to follow up with the sales prospect and if they still are not ready to buy, start them on a nurturing campaign ** at any point in the campaign, if the contact decides to buy, you would need to stop the campaign for them** Nurturing Campaign: A nurturing campaign should be completely educational. Each e-mail should be short, personal and have a link to a value add piece. The frequency is up to you, but you don’t want to bombard you contact list with content. Monthly or quarterly e-mails are usually frequent enough. Marketing Nurturing campaign: A nurturing campaign both serves sales and marketing purposes and most of your contact list should be on these campaigns. Monthly Newsletter: A newsletter can contain updates from your company and news within your industry as well as content like blogs or infographics that you have created. This should be sent monthly or quarterly to all of your customers and any opted-in leads. Customer Check-In: Keeping in touch with your customers is necessary for retention. Creating a campaign that is a personal check-in that occurs quarterly will keep you top of mind with your customers. Depending on the industry, you may also include a task to call and check in with them as a replacement for one of the e-mails.
Top 3 Lessons A Small Business Can Learn From Paula Deen Posted on March 8, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud Just last week I found myself glued to the television when it “somehow” landed on the Food Network Chanel (perhaps I was hungry?). Anyway, Paula’s Home Cooking was airing when I discovered my T.V. was on The Food Network. Honestly, it’s the most wholesome show I’ve watched on T.V. in a long time. It was 30 minutes of her and her family cooking together, sharing personal stories with friends, and visiting customers at her Savannah based restaurant. Now I know she has had her ups and down in the public eye (Diabetes PR nightmare) – but that aside, I think there is a lot a small business can learn from her mentality. I thought to myself – this woman is a celebrity chef worth millions, yet I feel like I could run across the street and ask to borrow a cup of sugar. Top 3 Lessons A Small Business Can Learn From Paula Deen: Lesson 1: Treat Your Customers as Friends “Love love love this place. We even met Paula and her family once! She was super nice and we even have pics with her.” – Customer Review On Yelp When people visit Paula’s restaurant, they know they will not only receive immaculate service, but will most likely run into Paula at some point during their meal. If you treat your customers as you would your dearest friend, they will become your biggest cheerleaders. Customer loyalty is extremely important for a small business. Make sure to listen (and address) suggestions and concerns from customers in a timely manner. Let your customer know how important their opinion is. Make sure to offer special exclusive deals to your biggest fans, and work on building relationships that go beyond a one-time transaction. Lesson 2: Tell a Business Story Worth Hearing People love to hear a story they can relate with that ends on a positive note. One of the most memorable aspects of Paula Deen and her multi millionaire empire is she is just like most of us. She was a single mom struggling to pay bills with Agoraphobia (a fear of leaving the house). She opened a small brown bag lunch business from the comfort of her own home and had her sons sell the lunches downtown. She didn’t inherit instant success or fame; she worked hard for more than 20 years to build her small business, which then expanded to what we know her as today. What stories exist within your business walls? Create a relate-able story to share with others, and people will stick around to watch your happy ending! Lesson 3: Turn A Negative Situation Into A Positive One We all remember the diabetes controversy that surrounded Paula within the last year. The media struck out calling her a “killer,” and fans expressed disappointment that she didn’t announce her condition earlier. It was a PR nightmare to say the least. Despite the negative attention surrounding her brand, she used the negativity and turned it into a positive experience. Now you will find Paula cooking with healthier ingredients, promoting portion control, and giving back to the American Diabetes Association. Your small business may stumble upon some of the same unexpected “PR nightmares” – but do not let them overcome you. Make a plan of action, redirect the attention to something positive, and learn from your mistakes. People tend to forgive easily when they detect an effort was made to correct wrong-doings.
Find the Right Sales and Marketing Software for Your Small Business Posted on March 6, 2013 by Nicci Troiani If you own a small business, the marketing options are endless and overwhelming. Using a sales and marketing software to streamline your efforts and reduce the time you spend on e-mail marketing and follow-up is becoming a necessity. There are tons of options out there– how are you supposed to decide? There are many things to consider when narrowing your options, here are a few that we have run into: Talk to Current Users If the company has a blog, ask questions to current users in the comments as well as read the current comments to see what people are saying. Search for forums where people are discussing products that they have used as well. Check out their social media sites and see if their current customers are saying anything there. You can get a good idea about the pros and cons of a software by what the current users are saying. You don’t want to waste your hard earned money on something that won’t be effective for you. Compare Price versus Features This is a pretty obvious one. Price is everyone’s first concern when shopping around. That said, if you go with the cheapest option with software, you will get what you pay for– less features. Make a list of what is important to you and then find 3 or 4 systems with those features and then compare prices between those few. Many will offer free trials as well, give your top 2 a try. Getting started with these systems can take some time and effort, so you really only want to test out a couple and give them your full effort, not spread yourself thin testing too many at once. Do you already have a CRM? Some sales and marketing software systems have full CRM features and some don’t. If you are already using a CRM that you love, try to find something that will integrate or work well with your current system. If you aren’t using something or aren’t sold on the system that you are using, then try to find something that has CRM features. It’s easier to only have 1 database to focus on instead of trying to combine or use 2 or more of them (as many people do).
A-B testing, How and When to do it Posted on March 4, 2013 by Nicci Troiani We get asked a lot about A-B testing for e-mail marketing. When you are sending to a large group, testing is a vital part of the process. However, when your list is so small that you would have to be testing groups of 20 or smaller, the results won’t be as clear, so it’s smarter to just send to the whole group. Ideally, each test group should be at least 100 contacts. if you have an extremely large contact list, bigger is okay. In fact, the bigger the test groups, the easier it will be to see distinct differences. Remember that a good open rate is somewhere around 20% , so with groups of 100, you will probably be seeing 10-20 opens per groups. You want to be able to judge the different groups by the number of opens and the number of link clicks. If one group has 10 opens and one has 20 you can clearly see that the group that had 20 opens yielded a better result. However, if you are testing groups of 1,000 and one group has 100 opens versus a group that has 200 opens, that’s a bigger difference so you can feel more confident that the test group with 200 opens is a significant difference. Here are a few items that should be A-B tested Subject Line This is what directly influences someone to open an e-mail. If you only test one thing, this should be it. Subject lines ideally should be straight forward and not try to be too creative. Test out saying what is in your e-mail a few different ways and see what people respond to the best. Content Your content should also be short and to the point. If you want to send out an article or e-book, send out a link to it, not the whole thing. That said, make a couple different versions of your email. Keep in mind that many people either click to open the email in their browser and don’t scroll down or open it on a mobile device. Because of this, you need to keep the most important information in the first paragraph. Image versus no Image This can be a tricky one. People like things that are visual, but many people have images blocked in their e-mail browser. Because this can be hit or miss, it is a good thing to test putting an image in the e-mail for one group and keeping it out for the others. Merge Fields Putting merge fields (like someone’s first name) with in the subject line can actually yield more opens– or look super cheesy. You won’t know how people will respond until you test it, and from our experience it is something worth trying.
3 Easy Ways To Keep Up With Your Customers Posted on March 1, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud Employees within a small business are likely wearing several hats at any given time. The number one complaint I hear from clients is, “I just don’t have enough time in my day, and therefore I’ve neglected to follow-up with my customers.” We are all human, and if you’ve ever felt this way – rest assured you are not alone. With that said, here are 3 easy ways you can set yourself up for success that won’t take hours of planning or take attention away from where you need it most. 3 Easy Ways To Keep Up With Your Customers: Send Text-Only Emails Creating a huge HTML newsletter sounds intimidating, right? You have to find all the right images, articles, and then try to come up with the content on top of that. Where newsletters fall short, text-only emails stand out. Sometimes all a customer needs from you is a short follow-up, “Hey just wanted to check in and see how everything was going,” – or a thoughtful, “Found this great article that I wanted to share with you, check it out and let me know what you think!” Interact On Social Media Social Media allows you to quickly and easily interact with your customers upon short notice. Instead of using Facebook or Twitter to merely self-promote, try providing a mix of business information and general news. Stumbled across a great article or blog? Why not share it with your customers and start a discussion. It’s a simple way you can maintain presence within your customers lives while on a hectic schedule. Utilize Your Customer Relationship Management Program (CRM) Remembering everything about your customer is super-human. We often pressure ourselves to try to remember everything from re-order dates to quarterly check-ins, resulting in lousy follow-up. Don’t put another unnecessary responsibility on your plate that a CRM could take care of. Having information in one place with automatic reminders can prevent guess-work, and create better follow-up habits for your small business.
The How and Why of Lead Nurturing for Insurance Agents Posted on February 27, 2013June 1, 2016 by Nicci Troiani What is lead nurturing? Lead nurturing is a marketing process designed to educate and build relationships with your leads and prospects who are not quite ready to buy yet. Why do agents need lead nurturing? 1. Only 25% of new leads are ready to buy and another 25% are not going to buy. You need to properly maintain communication with the other 50% without being the pushy, sales type that they are now conditioned to ignore. By sending them informative, educational information about insurance and financial products, you are building a relationship. The prospect needs to be able to trust your advice, so that when they are ready to purchase, they know where to go. 2. Automate your follow up Following up with new leads and maintaining communication with current customers is a problem that all insurance agents face. It is easy to only focus on “hot” leads and let all others fall by the way side. By using a system that will allow you to send automated email marketing campaigns and trigger tasks and reminders to you, you minimize the time and effort on your part to follow up with all of your contacts, which gives you more time to focus on those ‘hot’ leads and make more sales. 3. Score your leads Whether you purchase leads or simply collect business cards, all leads you get are at a different part of the buying cycle. Tracking behaviors such as email opens, link clicks, white paper downloads and webpage visits will give you an idea of who is most interested. You should be focusing on contacting people who have indicated that they are interested with behaviors like these. Ideally, using a sales and marketing software than can track and score this information for you will save you time and the headache of trying to keep track yourself. How do I start nurturing my leads? Use current marketing materials You don’t want to use material that sounds salesy and chances are, most of your current marketing material does. Your current marketing materials can make a good outline or starting point though. Use what you have and do some additional research if necessary to write a few short and educational articles about your industry. Give the prospect tips on buying but don’t mention your product or service. Leverage other people’s content Start following blogs and publications that write about insurance. They need to provide good, educational information (but isn’t written by a competing agent). Keep and archive good ones that your find (I like Diigo.com for keeping track of articles that I like). Start a blog A blog is a great way to not only attract people to your website, but to keep ideas in writing. Old blogs can be revamped into a new e-mail marketing campaign so its great to have content like this on hand. Send your content out to current prospects via e-mail You should develop an e-mail marketing campaign with your new content. Don’t put long articles into your e-mail, no one will read them. Stick to a short introduction and then a link to the article or blog. Again, this can be a link to someone else’s article as long as it isn’t a competitor. Give new leads your content via social LinkedIn groups are a great place to post your content. Find groups that make sense to post your content (writing about group insurance? post in small business groups) and write a short description with the link. Also, post your links on Facebook and Twitter. You never know who may click to read and become a prospect in the process.