Is Your Blog Making You Money Or Wasting Your Time? Posted on May 7, 2018June 12, 2018 by Allie Wolff In the last couple of decades, blogs have evolved from personal web ramblings to must-have marketing tools for businesses. They’ve evolved in both form and function: now, blogs often resemble journalistic feature articles, profiles, Q&As, and how-to (service) pieces that used to only exist in top print magazines and newspapers. Nowadays, you’re likely to find a blog somewhere on both B2B and B2C websites. But for those businesses with a limited marketing budget or lack of direction, blogging can sometimes feel like a shot in the dark. Here are some questions to ask to help you determine if your blog is making money or wasting time. Are you using your blog the right way? A blog is a marketing tool, not a sales tool. It’s an important distinction to make because marketing and sales have two very different objectives — and to expect one to provide the outcomes of the other is a recipe for disaster. The goal of marketing is to capture qualified leads, whereas the goal of sales is to convert those leads into customers. If you expect prospects to read your blog post and then immediately buy your product, you’re putting unrealistic expectations on your blog! Here’s why. A blog post is a top-funnel marketing tactic. People who read your blog are making only a very small commitment of their time, and may not be ready to buy your product or service yet. Therefore, your blog’s call-to-action should never be “buy this product.” It should, instead, prompt the reader to take a middle-funnel action, like: Read another post Subscribe to a newsletter Join our coupon club Schedule a free consultation What are you blogging about? Your blog isn’t a place to stash news about your company picnics or recent news appearances — unless you’re certain your prospects will be interested in these things. Your blog should instead aim to provide value. If you’re struggling to decide on topics for blog posts, pay attention to your customers. What do they want to know more about? Which elements of your product or service are confusing or exciting to them? Play mind-reader by stepping into your customers’ shoes and writing about things they’re already interested in. Do you have an editorial calendar? You’ve seen it before. A company launches a website and adds a blog as an afterthought because they know they’re supposed to have one. Different team members start adding posts — a few this week, none the next. Nobody posts anything for a couple of months, and then three more hurried posts come down the pipeline when the boss mentions that nobody’s publishing to the blog. A haphazard approach to blogging is no approach at all and is likely to be a waste of your time. Instead, choose a realistic blogging schedule and be consistent. If you can only commit to posting one piece per month, that’s fine: just stick to it. Are your blog posts search-optimized? Because blogging is a top-funnel marketing technique, it’s wise to optimize it for top-funnel prospects — namely, those who are conducting a Google search on a topic related to your business. Although a full primer on SEO is beyond the scope of this article, here are a few things you should do to your blog posts to give them an SEO boost: Pay attention to headers and formatting. Use H2 headers to divide your posts into relevant subtopics, and include related keywords within them. Use H3 headers, numbered lists, or bullets for lists and subpoints under H2 headers. Optimize your URLs to include long-tail keywords. Although big businesses can get their blog posts to rank in top spots for broad keywords like “digital marketing” or “blog tips,” most blogs will have a better chance of ranking if they optimize posts for very specific search terms — and include those terms in the blog post’s URL. Include metadata. On most blogging platforms, there’s a separate area where you can enter an SEO title and description of your blog post. Fill these out for an SEO boost. Optimize images. Name your images with keywords that describe the actual image, and compress your images down below 100kb to improve page load times. You may not think it matters, but the majority of internet users will abandon a page if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. Include links. Relevant internal and external links are essential, but the key word here is “relevant.” Nobody likes to feel spammed when they visit a blog (and Google might penalize you for overusing links), so link only to relevant studies and further reading on topics directly related to your blog post. Are you promoting your posts? Today, it’s rare that a visitor to your website will seek out your blog and read it at leisure. Whether through organic or paid tactics, you need to promote your blog to the wider world in order for it to lead to any kind of ROI. The method you choose depends on your specific business, but here are a few things to try: Organic Social Media Promotion Pick two or three platforms where you’re most likely to connect with customers, and publish links to your posts there. Though this method takes time, it’s free, and it’s a great way to build authentic connections with your prospects. Paid Blog Post Promotion Use paid social media advertising to promote your blog to an audience beyond your existing followers. Here’s a simple and inexpensive way to do this on Facebook. Pick a blog post that’s already performing well, write a social post about it (make sure to include the link to your blog post), and spend a few bucks to “boost” that post. Now, instead of the post only being visible to your current followers, it shows up in the newsfeeds of target prospects that meet certain criteria. Influencer Marketing Sometimes, it’s more effective to draw attention to your brand using an influencer as “middleman” than to target your prospects directly. Reach out to influencers who have a large following that resembles your target market, and invite them to do a Q&A or guest post for your blog.
How to Use Pivot Tables To Gain Insights From Your Marketing Data Posted on May 4, 2018June 12, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Here’s a situation: it’s the end of your company’s first quarter. Your boss asked you for a report of your progress over the last year – an easy-to-read chart that tells the story of your company’s growth by way of specific key performance indicators (KPIs), including conversion rates, monthly sales, social media engagement and any other metric you might be held to. You’ve got your data set, and it breaks down every item you’re dealing with: individual sales, individual social media posts, individual PPC campaigns. It could be anything. But the point is, it’s raw data. What are you going to do with it? The answer: pivot tables. What are pivot tables? In brief, a pivot table is just another way of viewing your data; it restructures (or “pivots”) your raw numbers in a different way. Ideally, this way is more legible and can tell a clear story. Microsoft Excel, the industry standard for spreadsheets, has put pivot tables front and center under the main menu when you click on Insert > PivotTable. So, how can pivot tables give you insight into your business? There are a myriad of ways, but it depends on the type of information you’re working with. You can find comprehensive guides online; this won’t be another one of those. Instead, this should help motivate you to find new ways to understand and appreciate your data. Pivot tables can help you understand your best social strategy. The good minds at Facebook and Twitter allow you to export a thorough set of post and page data for any company account you have access to. And while the data itself can be many tabs wide, subdivided into countless columns (many of which you likely won’t even need), the fact that it’s available to you is a godsend. Once you’ve exported your data from Facebook, for instance, how can you work with it? Pivot the data from focusing on individual posts to a monthly overview. Select your data range and go to “Insert > Pivot Table.” Now you can use the Pivot Table builder to see your data in a more meaningful way. Use “Months” as your row label, and change the “value” to the sum of link clicks, for example. Here you’ll find a succinct snapshot of your monthly clicks, which you can reorganize any way you need. From here, you can even insert a Pivot Chart to visually display important trends in your data. Instead of clicks, you can sort the value as anything else – retweets, non-clickthrough clicks (reactions on Facebook, say) or comments. If you’re tracking performance over a period of time, this kind of data is invaluable. Pivot tables can show you a paid campaign’s success over time. Paid advertising is still the most common type of digital ad spend in 2018, be it through boosted Facebook posts or Google Adwords. And you can see your data results broken down by campaign quite clearly with either one, with the left-most column indicating the campaign and each subsequent column depicting a different total analysis – click-throughs, engagement, cost per click, total views, and so forth. But what this top-level spreadsheet doesn’t show you very quickly is each campaign’s progress. For this, select your data set, format it as a table, and pivot it. Use your values to track the metric you’re most interested in – if we’re talking about total impressions, then you’ll be able to see how many impressions were reached each day. Then, you can use Pivot Charts to visual your campaigns progress over time. This can give you a clearer idea of how campaigns fare against one another on a given day and possibly inform you as to why they might perform the way they do. Pivot tables can show you hidden secrets about your own company. Let’s turn away from paid and social marketing and look at the broader picture: your own company. If you have a data set detailing your customers’ wants and needs, you can use that data to inform your next marketing initiative, or even shape the direction of your product. We survey our customer base every six months or so, to gather information, like job title, company size, company revenue, industry Net Promoter Score, most requested feature and so on. Even just asking a few questions can result in a pretty large data set. Using pivot tables makes it simple to cross-tabulate the data and find that sweet intersection of things like: What characteristics make up our promoters and detractors? What features should we be building for our promoters? What are some ways we can increase customer lifetime value? You can use this information to direct remarketing efforts, loyalty programs or re-engagement campaigns. As you can see, a pivot table is a useful little tool for reorganizing data in a way that tells a story and helps you make smart decisions about your product, sales and marketing. Regardless of how you use your data, the bottom line is clear: getting familiar with pivot tables will show you a whole new side of your data you’d never be able to see otherwise.
The Startup Playbook for Account-Based Marketing Posted on May 3, 2018June 12, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick For years, inbound marketing has been the go-to marketing strategy for budding businesses wanting to drive results. The playbook was simple: Create content and cast a wide net in hopes of driving traffic and loading up sales funnels. The more traffic you could attract, the better your chances of finding the keepers, even if you had to sort through the duds along the way. Today, successful startups are winning with a new playbook — it’s called account-based marketing, or ABM. Account-based marketing shifts the focus away from a wide-net approach to a more highly targeted, customized approach, trading your net for a harpoon. Read Jonathan’s full article on StartupNation.
Even Cold Emails Can Warm Up Your Audience Posted on May 2, 2018June 12, 2018 by Guest Author A guest article from Andrew Lowen, CEO of Next Level Web. Cold emails – we all dread sending them. No one wants to see them in their inbox, and no one wants to read them, right? We know that if we send an unsolicited email to a prospect, the said prospect is going to shake their heads and instantly press “delete.” Actually, that’s not quite true. Sure, the average conversion rate is just 0.5%, and sure some prospects will shake their heads, shove their fist into their mouth and instantly delete your cold email … … But only if you do it wrong. Like with everything in life, there’s a right and a wrong way to write cold emails. If you get it right, you could end up with conversion rates that reach an insane 86% – just like these guys. And these guys. Oh, and these guys, too. Because businesses kind of have to send cold emails out (it’s one of the best ways to warm new customers up), let’s take a look at how to write effective cold emails. Deliver an Awesome Subject Line First impressions are literally everything where cold emails are concerned. If you don’t get the subject line right, the prospect will pass – and they won’t give you a second chance. The type of subject line you compose will depend on what your overall aim is, but if it’s to warm more customers up, it’s key that your subject line stands out. The average open rate for cold emails is around 30%, which isn’t bad. But it could be better. However, to even get 30%, your subject line has to be on the money. Here are two different types of subject lines you could try: The Referral Subject Line You can only use this if you actually have been referred to someone by an individual they know. If you have, leverage this. There is, after all, nothing quite as powerful as a bit of name dropping. For example: “John Richardson told me to get in touch with you.” The Curious Subject Line The curiosity theory shows us that humans dislike being uncertain about things. If someone goes missing? We feel anxious. If we’re stranded at the airport? We feel anxious. You can take advantage of this sense of unease by delivering a subject line like this: “I’m gonna cut to the chase …” The recipient has one question that they shout out as they sip some more coffee: “Cut to the chase about what?!” You’ve already hooked them! Nail The Intro With Originality, Personality, and Humor Imagine if you’re a business owner who’s just received your 20th cold email of the day. Like the previous 19 cold emails, it was dull and really salesy. You sigh and delete it. This is generally what happens. Prospects are tired of the same formula. You might have something for them, but if you’re clichéd in your delivery, your email might not be read. So that your emails stand out, try something different with your copy – try being original, personable and funny. Humor makes us smile. It can help warm prospects up by building rapport, and it can really brighten up what is an otherwise dull day. If you’re funny and a bit different, there’s a chance that your whole email will be read. Consider these two examples: 1) “To whom it may concern, I am writing in the hopes of finding the appropriate person who handles … If this is not you, could you please point me in the right direction?” 2) “Hello ‘appropriate person’, So why am I writing to you today?! You’ve got three choices at this point: Delete this email (popular choice) Block me (Noooooo!) Read on for how I’m going to solve your BIGGEST problem right now. The first email is bland and people get it all the time. It tells the recipient that yet another sales pitch is on the way. The second email is playful, original and creative. It’s funny, too. Remember, your aim is to get people to open your email. The next aim is to get them to read the next line and then the next line, all while building rapport and trust. This is what humor can help with. Build a Relationship When you send a cold email to a prospect, the prospect is cold. They didn’t ask for this email, and they weren’t expecting it. As far as they’re concerned, they don’t have a problem. Your copy is your weapon – it’s how you build a relationship with prospects and convert them into paying customers. Sales pitches used to cut it – but not so much anymore. If it’s crystal clear that you would cut loose and run to the next prospect the moment a recipient hesitated, they’re just going to think “good for you” and move on. Building a relationship with a total stranger via cold email sounds impossible, but it really isn’t. As mentioned earlier, it’s very important that you come across as personable, as this helps to instill confidence in both you and your product. This is easy to do. Tell them you hope they’ve had a great day so far, and perhaps make a comment on the weather. You also need to provide them with as much value as possible. Take them on a brief story that starts by highlighting their problem. Then, show them how you’ll solve it. To this end, use numbers: “I boosted another client’s open rate by 13.1% and here’s the evidence.” Support your efforts by outlining the benefits they’ll receive. Remember, while a prospect is happy to laugh along with your humor, what they really want to know is what’s in this for them. Show them as soon as possible. Lastly, the key to warming prospects up and building a relationship is brevity. Don’t waste their time. Get to the point as soon as possible. You could structure your emails like this: Humorous (or at least original) intro Introduce pain points Show them how you’re going to solve this for them CTA Naturally, there’s no magic bullet here. You will need to do your own split testing to see what works and what doesn’t. But if you use the above structure, arouse curiosity with your subject line, hook them with your intro and use a bit of humor in your copy, you can warm your audience up and boost your cold emails. AUTHOR BIO Andrew Lowen is the CEO of Next Level Web, a trusted marketing agency based in San Diego, California. He has three lovely daughters and the most patient wife of all time. They specialize in Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, PPC Advertising, and Email Marketing (The Agency – not the daughters… yet).
4 Ways Founders Can Go Back To School Without Spending an Arm and a Leg Posted on May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick Do you ever wish you could go back to school, now that you really know you need to understand to run your business successfully? Many entrepreneurs do, but that’s not always practical. Cost is a big obstacle. The average college tuition is $32,400 at a private four-year college, and at a public college, $23,890 for out-of-state students and $9,410 for in-state students, according to the College Board. MBA programs are not inexpensive, either. The average cost of an online MBA at the Top 25 schools in the website Poets & Quants’ Online MBA Ranking is $52,264, but many programs are pricier. So how do you go back to school without spending more than you can afford or going into debt? Here are four strategies to use. Try continuing education. Many community colleges and universities are making a big push to stay relevant at a time when students’ educational options are proliferating. If you haven’t looked at the adult education programs offered by traditional educational institutions in your area, check them out. Professionals who work in fields such as social media marketing and web design often teach continuing ed courses, so you’ll often pick up lots of practical knowledge—at a much lower cost than through a traditional degree program. Explore online learning platforms. Platforms like edX and Udemy offer low-cost courses that may allow you to pick up the know-how you need without setting foot in a traditional classroom. edX offers free courses from the world’s top universities—such as Columbia, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology–and a program where you can take a cluster of courses for a small fee each and, if you pass exams on the material, put them toward a “MicroMasters” credential. Some universities will allow you to apply the MicroMasters credits toward a traditional degree. Among the courses: Micro-economic principles: Decision-making under scarcity; Business Communications and Family Business: Strategy Essentials. Udemy offers many courses by experts from both academia and outside of it. Some current offerings on Udemy: Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing Mastery Guide 2018, Leadership Skills: Leading Teams to High Performance, Sketch from A to Z: Become an App Designer and a Complete Guide to Building Your Network by Keith Ferrazzi. On Udemy, courses range from $19.99 to $199.99. No entrepreneur can do it all, so don’t overlook the value of training your employees in skills you don’t have time to learn. Udemy for Business offers more than 2,000 courses to employers and their teams. Turn your car – or your treadmill—into a classroom. Some of the best business thinkers around are running podcasts to sharing their unique business wisdom and that of the experts in their network. If you do a lot of driving or work out on cardio machines, why not use some of that time to tune in? Even if you’re fighting traffic, you’ll find that time passes quickly when you’re listening to one of your business heroes or an up-and-comer you’ve just discovered. There are so many great podcasts it’s hard to pick just a few, but some that are popular among entrepreneurs include The Tim Ferriss Show, The James Altucher Show, Noah Kagan Presents, Dan Pink’s Office Hours and Lewis Howes’ The School of Greatness. Head to a Meetup. In today’s economy, there may not be a university course in everything you need to learn to grow your business. Sometimes, dropping into a Meetup where you can hear an author speak about a new business book, listen to a talk by a local angel investor or network with fellow business owners can be the best way to gather information on something you need to know. Hint: Don’t rush out early. Stick around for the Q&A session at the end, if there is one. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions of an expert you might not bump into every day. These days, business changes so quickly that the best teachers are often entrepreneurs and leaders who have already experienced what you need to learn. You’ll be surprised at how many are happy to share their knowledge with you, whether in a continuing ed classroom or the many new learning venues opening up.
5 Ways To Generate B2B Leads With LinkedIn Posted on April 30, 2018June 12, 2018 by Allie Wolff It’s been said that…. Facebook is for friends; Instagram is for celebrities and brands; Twitter is for politicians; Snapchat is for teenagers. And LinkedIn? LinkedIn is for professionals. More than any other social platform, LinkedIn is confined to the realm of networking—and B2B networking ranks among the most effective. Users can connect with similar professionals, exchange ideas, discover new leads, look for new jobs and find unique ways to create new partnerships. Several case studies have proven that LinkedIn drives the highest percentage of customers to your business. The underlying reason is self-evident: the only people on LinkedIn are by nature interested in connecting with like-minded professionals. Rarely has anyone joined LinkedIn “just for fun.” The minds at LinkedIn know this, of course, and charge a hefty several hundred dollars in annual fees for LinkedIn Premium, the service that allows you to message anyone, regardless of whether you’re actually connected to them. For our purposes, we’re going to assume you don’t have LinkedIn Premium, and stick to old-fashioned techniques that will work regardless of your investment. Craft a Profile that Sells Yourself If you want any success on LinkedIn, you need to dress to impress. Get a good photographer (or at least a good camera and a tripod), find a clean background, wear your finest work clothes and look confidently into the camera. Put on the same face you’d make if you were actually meeting your lead for the first time—after all, the second they first see your profile picture will basically be that moment. Optimize your profile by tailoring your headline to include your specialty and even a CTA. Here’s a great example: Her profile doesn’t just say “Business Trainer” or something generic, but acts as a tagline to her entire business. It’s a great move for entrepreneurs whose job descriptions may defy the confines of a simple description. If you’re up on your industry’s SEO keywords, you can even leverage LinkedIn’s search-engine authority to boost your personal page’s search ranking. Finding an organic lead that way would be the easiest of all. Become a Thought Leader LinkedIn may be for professionals, but it’s still a social network. So get social! Join groups relevant to your industry (or create one—more on that soon), find questions you can answer on forums and get your voice out there. Write clearly and correctly, and always naturally include your company in your answer. But don’t focus too much on your company. This isn’t a sales pitch; it’s basically content marketing, except you’re trading the long-term gains of SEO juice (which you’d earn by hosting on your own site as a blog post) for the immediate results of social media. (Though if you want to truly leverage your efforts, why not turn your LinkedIn post into a longer blog post for your own site?) Be sure to include CTAs and links to your site. You can basically use LinkedIn as a blogging platform to write and expand your thoughts. If you’re not a great writer, but you have topic ideas, there’s no shame in hiring a ghostwriter to help you craft the posts themselves. The important thing is to establish yourself as a brand and connect with B2B leads in your industry. Offer Free Tools to B2B Leads If you’ve been in an industry any amount of time, you must have some degree of connection to most people you’re looking to pitch. But this isn’t a free license to pitch willy-nilly to anyone you can find; instead, you’ll want to find something valuable and send it to the right people. Use LinkedIn’s exhaustive search functions to find exactly the leads you’re looking for. You can search by job title (CEO), industry (pallets) and location (Michigan) to make sure you’re targeting the right folks. Then tailor your headline to something that resonates (e.g. “Harry Switchbuck | Marketing Guru | Ask Me About the Insider’s Guide to Pallets”) and connect with your leads by offering them something. You can add a maximum 300-word note with each connection request—use this space to mention a free guide, webinar, whitepaper or anything else they might genuinely find useful. Create a Group of Leads, Just for Yourself Credit to Neil Patel, who penned an enormous blog post detailing this step-by-step: instead of simply joining a pre-existing group, create your own and invite hundreds of potential leads into it. After you’ve honed your own profile and found your target connections, you can go one step further by creating a group and blitz-inviting relevant industry professionals to it. Call your group something like “Pallet Manufacturers of the Midwest” and begin by propagating it with relevant content you find online. Search for articles in trade or commercial publications and post them, asking how new developments might affect the industry. Ask group members what they think of new laws or regulations. Heck, you can even ask for advice. This is more like forum moderation than anything and will take several weeks, if not months, to show results, not to mention daily monitoring. You’re building a community. But by adding a thousand potential leads, even if hundreds accept and only dozens post regularly, you’ve still found dozens of proven leads—and actually established a real connection. That makes your pitch a much smoother process and creates a platform to grow exponentially within your field. Create LinkedIn Ads If all else fails, just throw a bunch of money at LinkedIn and run ads. Money solves all your problems, right?
5 Tips For Fine Tuning Your Marketing Agency’s Offerings This Year Posted on April 27, 2018April 27, 2018 by Katie Culp Marketing agencies spend their days thinking about the brand positioning and messaging of their clients. So much so that their own marketing needs often fall all the way to the bottom of the list. This isn’t a smart strategy, because when the hustle and bustle of a product launch or a big event for a client dies down and the agency needs some fresh business coming through the door, it’s going to become clear that no one’s been working on generating leads. To avoid this unpleasant situation, here are some tips for fine tuning your marketing agency’s offerings this year. Consider Offering Industry-Specific Marketing Solutions Businesses want to feel like their marketing agency understands their needs and their target audience. They’re not interested in generic solutions that are offered to every client that walks through your door. What are the top industries that you typically market for? Have you noticed a pattern? Consider positioning yourself as a marketing expert in specific industries and highlight your connections and network within those industries. Additionally, write case studies from previous clients and request references so you can demonstrate your expertise to offer specialized marketing solutions. Expand Your Marketing Solutions Are you limited to content writing, social media management, or event planning? Remember that technology is transforming every industry, marketing included. Expand your agency’s talent pool strategically by keeping an eye on emerging marketing technology trends like AI, voice search, mobile searching and more. As brands increasingly turn to tools like branded apps and chatbots to promote themselves, your marketing agency will need to be able to facilitate such activities. Educate Your Audience on Your Marketing Solutions Clients may be overwhelmed by one of your offerings not because it’s unimpressive but because they genuinely don’t get it. For instance, let’s say you present a bespoke content management system as something your agency offers. This offering has the potential to make the back-end of a client’s content so organized that the front end is produced seamlessly and efficiently. If the client doesn’t understand the first thing about metadata or content taxonomy, this all sounds like something unrelated to the task of promoting their business. Create infographics, hold webinars, and produce videos that explain the benefits of some of your services and value adds in a way that doesn’t rely on marketing jargon and is simple for a non-marketing professional to understand. Consider Axing Your Less Effective Agency Offerings Get a little ruthless. If there’s an element of your business that isn’t winning much business, it’s a sign that you’re either not well invested in it or you’re not that good at it (which in some cases amounts to the same thing). In any case, if you don’t plan on investing significant resources into making it a worthwhile area of your business, then it’s best to just axe it and focus on improving the areas where your agency excels. Create an Internal Governance Policy To Share With Clients A large part of being a marketing agency is handling requests, pivots, and uncertainties from a client. The level of service you provide, in addition to your results, determines whether these clients will return with more business. Formalize your governance process and make it available to prospects so they understand how issues will be identified and rapidly resolved, how to escalate issues, and how a project will be kept on track. Dedicate some time this year to analyzing, ideating, and refining your existing offerings to position your agency for success in 2018.
The One Word That Will Change The Way You Lead Posted on April 26, 2018April 26, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick Love isn’t a word that always mixes well with business. For many business leaders, what it brings to mind are office romances…that eventually lead to problems between employees when they end. But love—the non-romantic kind—can play an important role in your business. Here are four ways you can bring love to your business. Love what you do. Most entrepreneurs have started their business because they want to be their own boss, enjoy the control they have over their own schedule and in many cases, want to follow their passion. But over time, it’s easy to get burnt out and caught up in day-to-day pressures, forgetting about all of the good things running a business brings. So how do you rekindle the spark? Take time at the start of each day for a moment of gratitude, where you write down your three or four favorite aspects of running your business. Ask yourself what you love about it: Is the chance to work on what you’re best at? The freedom to go to yoga class at noon? The interesting people you meet every day? The chance to make a difference? Reminding yourself of all of the good things your business brings you on a regular basis can help keep your original passion going. Love your community. Your business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s part of a community – of customers, employees, professionals and contractors who help support you. Look for opportunities to show your appreciation to the community that makes your business possible as often as you can. Did a fellow business owner give you a great idea for a new service to offer? Why not invite him to lunch? Is there a customer who keeps referring business to you? Why not give her a small gift or free service the next time he comes in or? Do you run a brick-and-mortar business to which customers are flocking? Why not ask to take their photos and create a collage on the wall honoring the many people in the community who support your business? And, of course, consider your opportunities to support a nonprofit or give back to your community. It’s a great way to show your appreciation. Love the environment. Even if you don’t see yourself as running a “green” business, there are many opportunities in every business to show appreciation to Mother Nature. Take stock of your business this week to determine if you are doing all you can to protect Planet Earth. Are you fully set up to take advantage of the recycling program in your community—or are there are few more steps you could be taking, like adding a trash can for recyclables in your office? Have you opted for software that lets you go paperless more often, instead of printing out or copying lots of documents? Are your heating, cooling and refrigeration systems in good repair or do they need a tune-up to run more efficiently? Do you offer any work-from-home arrangements that employees can tap into to reduce their commuting time? Even taking one or two steps can make a difference. And in many cases, using resources like paper and energy more mindfully can save your business money, as well. Love your industry. “Love” and “industry” don’t sound like they belong in the same sentence. But many of us wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for the community of companies that make up our industry—and the people within them. Most of us have had some help along the way from colleagues in our field who gave us advice or perhaps a trade association where we had a chance to attend events or classes. Take a moment to think about how you might give back to the industry you’ve come up in. Do you have valuable knowledge to share with others in your field as a thought leader? Are you ready to mentor a young professional in your field by joining a program that matches business people with mentees? Are there informal ways you can help others in your industry, such as offering to help someone who asked you for advice at a Meetup you attended? Looking for ways to pay it forward to colleagues is a great way to show you care. When others around you “feel the love,” you’ll create positive energy around your business—and that’ll fuel its growth in surprising ways.
6 Ways to Save on Marketing Your Small Business Posted on April 25, 2018January 7, 2020 by Guest Author A guest post by Meredith Wood, Editor in Chief at Fundera. Major corporations spend a lot of money on marketing. From seven-figure advertising budgets to PR firms kept on retainer, global brands are allocating a lot of money and resources to keeping their products in the public eye. If you’re a small business owner, you likely don’t have a lot of spare cash on hand to dedicate to marketing efforts; but don’t fret, you can still make a splash and generate attention for your company. Read on for ideas and inspiration that will help you save on marketing your small business. Master Social Media Starting a social media account is free, so if you know how to leverage these platforms you can gain attention for your brand without spending a dime. The key here is to find the social media platform that best fits your business and prospective customer base. Are you a florist who does beautiful arrangements for weddings and events? Focus on Pinterest, where a lot of brides-to-be turn for inspiration. Running a local bakery? Consider Instagram where you can share enticing pictures of your delicious creations. Targeting a younger demographic? Think about Snapchat, where the majority of users are between the ages of 18 and 24. The other important piece of the social media puzzle is being active. Due to the setup of the algorithms on most channels, the only way to make sure your content is seen is to be consistent and to foster conversation by engaging with the community around you. Don’t set up an account on every platform possible only to let them lie dormant. A social media content calendar can allow you to harness the marketing power inherent in these platforms; Hootsuite provides an overview of how to effectively create one here. Offer Up Your Expertise Before you started your business, you spent a lot of time and energy getting to know everything you could about your industry. That knowledge is what will help you grow your business day-to-day, but you can also leverage your know-how to gain the attention and respect of potential customers. By starting a blog or podcast, appearing as a guest on an industry leader’s blog or podcast, or speaking at a conference, you’re establishing yourself as a trusted voice in your field and you’re winning recognition for your brand at minimal cost. Court Local Media If you can get your business written up in the local paper or featured on the six o’clock news, you’ve gotten your name out there on an established platform at no cost to you. Think about ways to pitch your story that will interest reporters. If you’re opening up a new location in a dreary part of town, maybe a news station want to do a piece about the local business owner revitalizing the neighborhood. If there’s a big annual community event coming up, consider getting involved so that you can become part of the coverage of the larger event. Be Charitable Giving back to your community not only makes you feel good, but it can also be a way to generate local awareness for your business. Consider donating your goods or services as a prize for a silent auction for a charity in town, or organize a day where you and your team serve food at a local soup kitchen or participate in a community clean-up at a nearby park. These efforts can get your name out there to a wider audience and introduce you to potential clients who would not have otherwise known about you. Plus, if you’re seen taking an active role in your community, people will feel better about spending their hard-earned dollars with you. Consider Cross-Promotion Think about businesses that will complement the goods or services you offer, and reach out to someone who owns that type of business to see if they’d be willing to offer some sort of discount or reward to your customers who do business with them, and vice versa. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, which introduces your existing customers to them and theirs to you. It also allows you to split any associated marketing costs with another business owner, all while doubling your marketing reach. Nominate Yourself for an Award Local business awards not only get your name out there to prospective customers, they also lend your business an air of credibility. Take a bit of time to research local awards, such as “Best Of” lists published in local magazines, or recognition programs run by your local Chamber of Commerce. Consider nominating yourself, or ask a friend to put your business’s name in the running. If there’s an online contest, solicit support from friends and customers on social media or via your email list. Even if you don’t have a marketing budget to rival a global brand, there are ways for you to generate attention for your business and win over new customers. Some creative thinking and a little bit of hustle will allow you to take advantage of some of the low- or no-cost marketing options available to any small business owner. Author Bio Meredith Wood is Editor-in-Chief and VP of Marketing at Fundera, a marketplace for small business financial solutions. Specializing in financial advice for small business owners, Meredith is a current and past contributor to Yahoo!, Amex OPEN Forum, Fox Business, SCORE, AllBusiness and more.