5 Small Business Lessons From Pinterest Quotes Posted on February 1, 2013August 25, 2022 by Lindsey Stroud A short background story – For the past 5 years or so, my mom has e-mailed me a daily bit of inspiration, or what she calls a “Cinnyism” (her name is Cindy). I’ve looked forward to receiving a quote from her daily to help start my day off in the right mindset, or boost a mediocre day to a magnificent one. Sometimes all we need is a short quote to feel inspired to make change or reinforce an existing belief. It’s no surprise that the day-to-day of a small business owner if often hectic and tiring. It is easy for a business to lose focus of the bigger picture as they take on addressing all the smaller pictures – or the “hurdles”. Motivation is important for setting a positive atmosphere for a small business and its employees. Perhaps all it takes is a short quote to have a large impact on a person or business. With that said, here are my Top 5 Small Business Lessons From Pinterest Quotes. If you haven’t already – don’t forget to check out our Inspirational Quotes board. I would love to hear what quotes most inspire your small business! Top 5 Small Business Lessons From Pinterest Quotes Define Your Business Story We are story-tellers by nature, and people like to feel that they are a part of something inspiring. Ask yourself who your ideal customer is – what do they look like? What do they do for fun? What are their pain points? Once you truly understand who your customer is, and what your business believes in – you will not only solve a problem but you will become the hero of their story. Become (And Remain) the Expert In Your Industry Becoming and remaining an expert in your industry is very important. Continually stay up to date with your industry so that you are able to share your expertise with prospect and customers. People love to receive information that impacts their daily life. They also trust those people who give them the valuable insight. Build & Maintain Relationships By Nurturing Treat your prospects and customers as you would your dearest friends – with consistent nurturing. This includes following up, staying in touch, and providing educational content over time. A relationship only lasts because someone is putting in effort to maintain it, so don’t forget to transition your business into the same mentality. Own What Makes Your Business Unique Even though many businesses do the same thing and offer the same products – there are unique factors which set them a part from their competitors. Whether this be company culture, background story, or shared beliefs – own and promote what sets your business apart from the rest. Use a Failure As a Lesson This humorous image proves a very valid point – if at first you don’t succeed, try again. As a small business, many things you do day-to-day will not be as successful as you hoped. Just remember that you are able to learn from these “mistakes” to better your product or business for the long-run. As Zig Ziglar said, “The most successful people are the ones who learn from their mistakes and turn their failures into opportunities.”
Increase Sales with Efficient Follow-Up Posted on January 30, 2013June 1, 2016 by Nicci Troiani As a busy insurance agent how are you supposed to know who to follow up with and when ? Not only do you not have the time to follow up with everyone that you would like to, but most likely, you also waste a good amount of time following up with people who aren’t ready to buy. So how do you cut down on the wasted time and only focus on those who are ready to buy? Here are a few tips that may help: Start “cold” leads on an educational campaign Cold leads need to be be nurtured (What is lead nurturing? Click here). They are ‘cold’ leads because they don’t realize why they need your product or service– so tell them. But don’t tell them in that pushy sales way, educate them. Send them interesting, educational information about financial products and insurance and why this benefits them. Remember the ‘whats in it for them’ factor. If a prospect doesn’t see a benefit, they will have no interest. Key point: Don’t waste time calling prospects who aren’t ready to purchase but stay top of mind by sending email communications. Start “warm” leads on a more sales oriented campaign Once the prospect has some understanding and is starting to engage with your e-mails, it is okay to send the occasional sales piece. Create a sales or prospecting marketing campaign for this specific group. It should still be focused on educating, so that you don’t push them away. However, at this point it is okay to reference your product or agency as an option to solve their problem. Key point: Offer your products as a solution. Focus on “hot” prospects Once that a lead’s behavior (opening emails and clicking on links) has indicated they are a “hot” lead, that’s when you should call and try to close the sale. At this point, the contact has engaged and has indicated that they are interested. Key point: Spend your days calling prospects who want to do business with you! Use a sales and marketing software that can help you score leads Automated sales and marketing software will enable you to see your leads move through the sales pipeline from lead to opportunity to customer, which is a huge advantage. Above that, if you are using a smart system that can track their e-mail opens and link clicks, then the system can score your leads for you. Using an integrated sales and marketing database will also keep you more organized and enable you to view a list of only hot leads as well as to keep track of your communications with them. These simple tips will increase your follow-up efficiency and save a ton of time, which will free you up for the other 1,000 things you need to do today. To learn more about Hatchbuck, view our software here:
Provide Exceptional Customer Service and Keep Your Clients Posted on January 28, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud What sets you apart from your competitor? Most likely this question gets harder to answer each year as technology allows every business to advance at the same rate. The gap that differentiates competitors pricing and features has become smaller than ever before. Out of desperation to maintain an edge, many small businesses resort to the “we are cheaper than our competitors” approach to try to drive prospects to buy and customers to stay. However, we know that businesses that master exceptional customer service truly gain the long-term edge over the competition. There will always be a competitor that is cheaper than you, but do you really want your business to have a reputation of cheap anyway? If your features or list of services is more wide-ranging than your competitors, it’s likely they will quickly adopt the same given that it is successful with the consumer. Now – If you let your focus be on your customer experience, you will surpass your competitors and keep customers for a lifetime. 4 Ways to Provide Exceptional Customer Service 1) Provide the Solution Ironically people love to buy and shop, but cringe at the thought of being sold to. Instead of rambling off a sales pitch, ask a lot of questions and customize your sales approach as the solution for the problem. You can learn about what a customer wants if ask, listen, and then help solve the problem they are facing. 2) Build a Solid Team Exceptional customer services starts with building the right team. Ultimately, you either build a team that loves what they do or doesn’t. People that enjoy their job will put forth more effort to work towards the same goal of providing exceptional customer service. Think of a time you were provided exceptional customer service – was it because the team was friendly, organized, and made your experience pleasant? A great team is what sets an exceptional business apart from a mediocre one. 3) Address Complaints In a Timely Fashion No one likes to receive or see a complaint floating around about their business. Fortunately, a business can learn a lot from a complaint and prove a lot about their business with how they respond. Address the issue in a timely fashion, offer any explanation you can, and make sure it will not happen again. Make sure to document complaints and take them seriously. They can keep you and your team on track, and allow for improvements to be made. 4) Reward, Reward, Reward! It’s easier to retain and up-sell an existing customer than to acquire new customers, and businesses recognize this. Think of all the customer loyalty programs that exist – you probably are an active member of several yourself. Special “Membership” discounts, earning points, and free offers after continued purchases are all great ways to thank your customers and keep them coming back.
A lesson from my kid’s school about getting email addresses… Posted on January 25, 2013 by jmiller It is all in how you ask your customers for their email address. My kids elementary schools sent out a green piece of paper that said “We’re Going Green” (the paper wasn’t even cut properly). They didn’t ask families, they told them. They even told me to look in my junk folder and make sure I mark them as “safe”. Position it with your customers the same way; as an expectation, not a request. “I expect you to do your part in my going green.”
Are You Sending Emails Too Often? Posted on January 25, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud Email marketing is a great tool for your business if done correctly. With that said, many people misuse their ability to communicate with prospects and customers through email by sending too many emails, too often. I recently discovered a member’s only online boutique that requested my email address to let me browse. As someone who appreciates a good deal, I didn’t mind giving my information way in exchange for awesome deals (even if I know they will add me to their email list). Little did I know, this online boutique would not only keep me up to date, but would also flood my inbox each week. As you can see, my inbox consists of a ton of emails from this particular company (not to mention all the emails I receive from other companies). How do they ever think I could process all the information that they are sending me when I am receiving 2-5 emails per day? As a side note, I would probably shop more often with the online boutique if they sent more tailored emails, less often. At this point, I will most likely un-subscribe from their list so I can get my email back to normal. Email frequency really can vary depending on the type of business, your contact lists, email content, etc. However, with the company above, I was only interested in browsing the website one time. I had not purchased any item with them before or expressed interest in receiving 2-5 daily emails from them after my first visit to their website. If you want to avoid over sending to your contacts and are unsure if you are, ask yourself these questions: Am I seeing an increase in the number of SPAM complaints & un-subscribes I receive? Am I seeing a decrease in email open rates? Am I finding people are engaging less and less with my emails overtime? Am I sending general emails to all of my contacts vs. targeted emails? Am I providing my contacts with relevant information that fits their needs/stage of the buying process? How often do you find it appropriate to communicate with your contacts through email? I would love to hear your opinion!
Social Media Overload– How to get focused Posted on January 23, 2013June 1, 2016 by Nicci Troiani With all of the social media networks in existence it can be hard for a small business to keep up or even get started in social media marketing. Most bigger businesses seem to have a presence on every social media platform and update them all multiple times daily. While they make this look easy, remember that they have employees whose jobs are to content create and manage their social media presence. How can a small business still have a social media presence? Here are a few tips: 1.Start a blog While blogging seems intimidating to many small business owners, content creating is becoming a must if you want to keep up with your competitors. A blog will also give you content to post across your social media networks. The blog is the source that will keep your social presence consistent. Blogging multiple times a week is best, but when first starting, shoot for whatever time frame you deem manageable. That could be posting 2X a month. If you have other employee, ask them to contribute 1X a month as well. 2. Use an editorial calendar for your content Planning out your topics ahead of time makes writing them that much easier and gives you deadlines to stay focused. 3. Determine where to post your content: Some small business blogs are mostly written content, for others your blog may consist of more visual content. If you have the visual content, then you should be utilizing Pinterest and Instagram. If you don’t, don’t worry about having to come up with additional content and just focus on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Many businesses only focus on Facebook and Twitter which are great resources, but Google Plus accounts actually rank higher in a Google search which can be a huge benefit for a small business. Pick your 2-3 MUST-haves when starting and make a commitment to post consistently on those platforms– that’s the key to building a following. 3. Use a scheduling tool Use a tool like Hootsuite or Gremln to save you time. These programs will allow you to sit down and schedule all of your posts at once across your Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn pages. My advice: Don’t schedule too far ahead. If you write a blog on Monday, schedule it to post on Facebook once, Google Plus once (maybe one on Monday and one on Tuesday to spread them out) and on Twitter multiple times a day (4-6X daily is ideal because people usually just read their Twitter stream or lists and don’t go to your personal profile) but not further than Wednesday. Ideally, you would have new content by then, but either way you don’t want to post stale material. 4. Analyze your history If using one of the scheduling tools mentioned above, you should also be able to view reporting and analytics of your posts. See which content is getting the most clicks or which tweets received the most “retweets.” By analyzing what works and what doesn’t, you can keep your focus on what your audience likes. That’s not so bad is it? To start, try to spend 15 minutes a week on writing a blog– that should be doable. Then sit down and schedule it to post across the social media platforms that you have decided to focus on– that should take you another 15. 30 min a week is a small amount of time and a social media presence can yield a big return. Side note: Add your work social accounts to your smart phone. Responding to tweets or Facebook posts or thanking followers for a re-tweet should be done in real time for the best results.
Mass Emails or an Email Campaign ? Posted on January 21, 2013 by Nicci Troiani Knowing when to send an email campaign or when to send an individual email blast can be a confusing decision when using a marketing automation software. I have had many users struggle with the distinction. Although being able to develop and send a multi-step email marketing campaign is exciting, it’s not always necessary. Sometimes it just makes sense to send out a single communication. Here are a few key questions to ask yourself to help decide: 1. Is the content time sensitive? An email campaign is a series of steps, usually comprised of more than one e-mail. In a campaign, everyone starts at step one and goes through the entire process and the campaign can be initiated at any time. When you have a seasonal newsletter or want to send out a communication that has information relevant to the season, a holiday or other specific event, it should not be a part of a campaign. It won’t make sense to send it to someone later, so just send it as a one-off e-mail to all of your recipients. 2. Is the content evergreen? Content that is evergreen means that it is always useful and relevant. If you have written articles or archived content from other writers that won’t “expire”, that material is what makes a great educational drip marketing campaign. It won’t matter if someone is started on step one today or a year from now, because the information is always good. Educational campaigns can serve many purposes, including educating your leads and prospects into understanding your business and industry (and hopefully becoming customers), as well as educating your customers and inspiring new ideas within them. 3. Is it a sales flow? Email campaigns are both a sales and marketing tool. While sending out an educational drip campaign, you are marketing to your leads, prospects and customers. A campaign can also be a sales flow when steps like tasks to call the prospect are added and the e-mails are more focused on what your product or service can do for the contact. While this may still be educational, it is too salesy to send to all of your leads; this type of campaign is good for leads that are already warm and may look something like this: Step 1: Day 1, Send Introduction E-mail Step 2: Day 3, Task: Phone Call to Follow up Step 3: Day 7. Send Informative Email Step 4, Day 15 Task: Phone Call You benefit from making e-mails like this into a campaign so you don’t have to remember to make the follow up call and the e-mails can be spaced out however you would like. When dealing with cold leads, it is better to start them on an educational campaign so that they can learn why they might need your product. Hot leads should be receiving more one-off communications, because that is where you are more likely to be spending your time.
Fragmented Sales and Marketing Sucks! Posted on January 18, 2013 by Lindsey Stroud Marketing is more to sales than just pretty banners and graphics, sales is more to marketing than whiny complainers. They are brothers or sisters and must exist in harmony to get things done. Historically, however, sales and marketing teams either: a) don’t talk, or b) hate each other, but don’t know why. The key is alignment and communication which in this case is the responsibility of marketing. Why is it the responsibility or marketing? Because, let’s face it, sales isn’t likely going to say “hey, come take a look and learn about what we’re doing and what our processes are”. It’s not because they don’t want to share, it’s because they are focused on closing business (hopefully business you brought them). The first step is to get buy in from sales leadership. You’ll need to ask for access to the sales pipeline, the sales process and any data not currently available to you. Why not just use your marketing automation tool? Because they can leave out details that can help you work better together in the future. Next, take a look at actual sales data to understand how marketing qualified leads (MQL) are faring. Are the leads marketing sends getting past the sales qualified lead (SQL) phase? Are there good reasons for that? Find out those answers by looking at the data first and then approaching your buddies in sales and present solutions to the problem. Sometimes it’s an easy fix like arming the sales folks with a relevant piece of content. Sometimes it involves setting up lead scoring and only delivering leads when they’re ready. Whatever the case; find the problem, fix it and help sales close business. What about sales helping marketing, why does marketing have to do all of the work? We (marketers) have to do it because we know the buyer better than a sales rep (gasp!). That’s right. We understand the buyer as a whole and look at data to make our decisions and recommendations; not a single deal or single customer. We help them by delivering the right buyers; they help us by closing business we send – the perfect circle of life. How are you aligning sales and marketing? Do you have your own story or thoughts? I’d love to hear them. ——————————————————————————————————————————– About Travis: I’m just a guy who likes building sustainable marketing teams that drive long-term revenue. I like design and believe in it’s power to invoke an emotional response. When marketer’s pair the right content with the right design, great things happen. http://travisarnold.com/
Events and Email Campaigns Posted on January 16, 2013August 29, 2016 by Nicci Troiani Many businesses host events. Whether it’s a networking event, an educational lunch or an online event such as a webinar, it should be incorporated into your e-mail marketing campaigns. Here are a few ideas: A sign up form: A form like this can serve a few purposes, if you are using a marketing automation system: 1. It can automatically send them details of the event or any communications you would want an attendee to receive. If it is a event that requires payment, you could have the form send them to the ecommerce page after submittal. 2. This form can “Tag” the contact with their choice: This will enable you to be able to pull a list of everyone who completed the form, or everyone who is attending as well as everyone who is not. This is important because then you can split up your database to send the specific communications. Ask those who replied “no” why they aren’t coming You need to know if the event is something they are unable to attend or just don’t want to. Send your attendees a “thank you e-mail” as well as details about the event. This again can all be automated within your system. Get Creative Depending on the event, you can use an email campaign to get creative with the attendees. Have a contest and send clues every week in an email. Let the guests respond with their guesses and award the winner with a prize. Don’t forget to get responses after Send a survey out to your attendees via email the day after the event. It’s important to get their thoughts so that you can improve next time.