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Marketing Guidelines to Keep Your Marketing On-Track

Marketing Guidelines to Keep Your Marketing On-Track

Nov 2, 2024 | Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy

Keeping small businesses in mind, sometimes, marketing campaigns can seem overwhelming. We can get sidetracked and lose focus on the campaign’s objective. Let’s expand on the tips Jillian shared last week in Marketing for the Small Business in a Poor Economy.

  1. Be strategic with your marketing and advertising efforts. A marketing plan is a road map to keep you from getting lost and wasting precious time and money. If you have multiple products and/or services, segment and focus the plan using the 80/20 rule. Target your efforts on the products or services that will generate 80% of your revenue.
  2. Focus on your existing customer base and reward their loyalty with a loyalty plan or referral program. An e-mail list is ideal for reaching existing or prior purchasers. Reach out and bring them back with incentives, news and new products info, promotions such as loyal customer discounts, etc. A satisfied client with circle back and buy your you again if you reach out with a promo on something they may be considering.
  3. Create content that is informative and valuable to help your target market. Build relationships not by trying to sell, but by educating and offering solutions to the prospects’ needs and wants. Rather than focusing on how great your products or services are, talk about the benefits, how your products will make the customer feel, or how your services will address their needs.
  4. Use data insights to analyze the value of your marketing. Analytics provide a wealth of information to help you focus your products/services to your prospects’ needs. Look for analytic reports from your own sales as well as your competitors
  5. Remain agile and ready to pivot at any time. Analytics and market trends will give you insights to help you adjust your marketing. If you’re selling a solution that’s no longer relevant or trending, you need to re-invent your offering to capture the attention of those looking for what they want or need, not what you have right now.
  6. Consider doing videos and podcasts, to attract and build trust with customers. This is selling without selling. Showcasing your knowledge or products, addressing a prospect’s needs to a problem or helping them choose a particular products by discussing the features will build trust. Prospects do business with companies and people they trust.
  7. Improve the affordability of your offerings. This does not necessarily mean cut prices. Offer alternatives, like financing, payment plans, scheduled repeat orders, etc. Think outside the box, get creative.

With the New Year approaching, this is great time to review your marketing strategies; determine what has worked and what can be enhanced.

We’re offering a free Marketing Plan Template to help organize your efforts and maximize results. Just download and customize.Or Contact us to help you develop a strategy.

Relationship Marketing | A Neglected Strategy?

Relationship Marketing | A Neglected Strategy?

Nov 2, 2024 | Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy

We’ve all heard “it’s who you know” that brings in business. “People buy from who they know and trust.” But if you’re stuck in an office most of the time, how can you build relationships and share with people what, exactly, you can for them?

You can still build strong connections even while mostly office-bound. Some of the ways to do this is to actively engage with customers through digital channels like soliciting feedback, running targeted campaigns offering personalized interactions, following up with customers post-sale, dedicated customer relationship management (CRM) systems built into your website, email, and social media.

Soliciting Feedback

Here are several ways to find out how customers feel about your business and services.

__ Use live chat interactions on your website and social media
__ Analyze customer calls
__ Ask for feedback on social media
__ Provide feedback forms on your website
__ Send post-purchase emails
__ Offer incentives for feedback
__ Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Here are Some Tips for Creating a Targeted Marketing Campaign:

__ Identify who needs your product and who is most likely to buy it
__ Conduct a market analysis to identify your audience’s challenges and pain points
__ Use audience segmentation by dividing your audience into subgroups based on shared characteristics
__ Create an omnichannel marketing strategy by creating a customer centric approach that delivers consistent brand messages across all marketing channels
__ Analyze your campaign data by examining your analytics to identify what worked well and what didn’t

Following up with Post Sale Interactions
You don’t want your customers to feel that once your job is done, you don’t need to have anymore conversation with them. Make sure they feel that you care about their business by staying in touch with them even if the job you did was a one off job.

CRM
A few months ago we dedicated our emails for about 2 months to adding a CRM to your websites to help build relationships with your customers or find new customers. Here’s a link to those articles to refresh your memory

How to Make Your Website Your 24 Hours a Day, 365 Days a Year Sales Team

Email Marketing
Email marketing by reaching out consistently to your mailing lists with news, updates, trends, etc. It’s a great way to tell people all about your business just as you would be doing if you were out networking. As Charles said, “it shows you are on top of your industry, keeping customers current with news. They will rely on your knowledge when making purchasing decisions.”

Social Media
Maintaining an active presence on the social media platform that is best for your business is great, but how do we do that consistently when we’re busy with the day to day details of running a business? Honestly, it’s not enough to just post; you need to interact with those who comment on your posts. This keeps you busy. But this builds relationships just as much as if you were out networking. (We have a solution for that).

With the New Year approaching, this is great time to review your marketing strategies; determine what has worked and what can be enhanced.

We’re offering a free Marketing Plan Template to help organize your efforts and maximize results. Just download and customize.Or Contact us to help you develop a strategy.

Using Chat-Bots to Market Your Small Business or Practice

Using Chat-Bots to Market Your Small Business or Practice

Nov 2, 2024 | AI (Artificial Intelligence), digital marketing, Marketing, marketing for professional practices, Relationship Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy, Web Design

Using Chat-Bots to Market Your Small Business or Practice

Have you ever gone to a website to find support and you encounter a little box that pops up usually on the right side, asking if it can help you?

You really wanted to speak to a person or at least submit a support ticket? But you don’t readily see a phone number or a way to fill out a support ticket. So you decide to speak to the little box.

It says, “Hi, I’m ___________. How can I help you today? You find yourself trying to explain politely to the box what you are looking for. Sometimes the little box understands you right away; sometimes it asks you for more information. You try again to politely explain what you need. Now the little box comes back with, “I still don’t understand you. Can you explain more clearly?” Now you’re getting annoyed and are a little less polite. You think, “maybe the little box doesn’t understand being mannerly, so I’ll be more straightforward and use less socially gracious words.” So now, you just speak simply, precisely and clearly. Now you think you will make some progress, but the little box comes back with links to articles that it thinks will help you. So you give up. You just want to speak to a person!!!

But, the little box passes your message on to real support person and lets you know that one of the support team will get back to you. And someone usually does but often it’s not until the next day depending on where they are located.

Pros of Chat-Bots

I’m sure you’ve experienced this scenario so you know what I’m talking about. There are some positive uses for chat-bots, especially when combined with the option to choose how you want to communicate with a business.

Chat-bots are great for quick answers to simple questions.

  • They can save time and offer relevant suggestions.
  • They are multi-linqual
  • Can be accessed over all communication channels; phone, email, messaging apps, and social media.
  • They are available 24-7.
  • The business owner that opts for a chat-bot on their website has the opportunity identify potential new customers who interact with the chat-bot when you aren’t available.

There are limitations as I pointed out in my opening paragraphs; but chat-bots can be useful to small businesses who don’t have time or office staff to always be available to take a call. Chat-bots help you recognize that someone “out there” has a need for your services which then provides the opportunity for you to follow up on that lead.

When I design websites, I always ask the clients if they would like this form of communication added to their custom website. But, in addition to adding a chat-bot, my recommendations are to make all forms of communication available and easily visible. Adding the chat-bot, the phone number (hyperlinked to make it easy to dial), and a hyperlinked email address (making it easy to email you right on the spot) all in one spot  next to each other makes it convenient for the customer to contact you with the method of their choice.

Just this simple addition makes your website user friendly and ready for customers to contact you.

Increase Your Business Awareness with a Holistic Marketing Strategy

Increase Your Business Awareness with a Holistic Marketing Strategy

Nov 2, 2024 | Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Small Business Marketing Strategy

Increase Your Business Awareness with a Holistic Marketing Strategy

Most businesses need a marketing strategy to keep their business going. A business can’t exist in a vacuum and, unfortunately, some businesses are left with that option because of the high cost of marketing.

Developing a holistic marketing strategy that encompasses both online and offline channels is a healthy way, and relatively inexpensive way, to increase business awareness. A multi-faceted approach maximizes your reach (and that’s the key) and helps increase sales for your business.

Our approach to a holistic marketing strategy is this:

  • Custom designed thank you cards for business referrals
  • 2 Social Media Platform posts up to 3X weekly
  • Landing pages for each product category or practice area you want to promote
  • SEO (on-page and off-page)
  • Monthly eMail blast
  • Google reviews & testimonials from customers
  • Google Ads

We’re currently offering 20% off on this marketing strategy that we will design and implement for you. To learn more about the details, go to our home page.

Get 20% off your 2025 holistic marketing campaign. Offer expires 1/31/25. Contact us to learn more about how you can take advantage of this special and a free consultation.

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7 Ways to Convince Prospects that You are the Right Company for Their Needs

7 Ways to Convince Prospects that You are the Right Company for Their Needs

Sep 9, 2024 | Blog, Marketing, Online Sales Team, Small Business Marketing Strategy

7 Ways to Convince Prospects that You are the Right Company for Their Needs

When you go into business, you believe you have something special to offer to your customers. It’s important to identify that aspect of your business that makes it stand apart from your competitors. Especially, when in a highly competitive industry.

We believe; that for us, it is exceptional customer service. For some, it might be an innovative product or a strong brand. How you get this across to a prospect can make all the difference when you’re faced with a new opportunity. Here’s some ideas:

  1. Listen and seek to understand your prospect’s challenges and address their specific situation.
  2. Provide a solution to their problems, not just a product.
  3. Provide industry knowledge and educate them about your product by providing detailed descriptions of your products or services.
  4. Be transparent and reliable.
  5. Be aware that skeptical buyers are wary of jargon that sounds good but doesn’t mean anything.
  6. Learn the opinion of the person you’re speaking with and take that opinion seriously.
  7. Direct your prospect to a satisfied customer’s testimonial. (And don’t forget to ask for these testimonials to add to your website.)

If you are already doing these things, awesome! But sometimes, we can lose sight of what’s important to the prospect. We know what we can do for them. We know we can do the job and do it well; but, how we communicate that is what bring us the sale!

 

 

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