6 Ways To Ensure Your Blog Post Is Search Engine Optimized Posted on June 22, 2017December 1, 2022 by Allie Wolff If you publish a blog post and no one reads it, does it even exist? Once upon a time, the only thing you had to worry about was getting exposure for your content or your ads. Today, that’s no longer a problem. The internet has democratized exposure so that everyone can share their story with the world. The new challenge is grabbing people’s attention. This is where SEO comes in. Do you know why Google became so popular? It’s because it organized the internet. Without search engines, we’d be wading through pools of irrelevant web pages, and the process of finding what we’re looking for would not be very user-friendly. Search engines smooth out the research process by presenting us with the top results deemed most applicable and useful to our query. Your job is to ensure your blog post is one of those top results for your ideal buyer. But where do you start? Before you outsource, check out our guide below. Find Relevant Long Tail Keywords Conduct keyword research before you even start writing. Once you decide on the topic you want to cover, figure out which specific keywords people are searching for in relation to that topic. You should focus on long tail keywords that are likely to match a searcher’s query. For example, if you’re writing an article about HR, pumping your blog post full of the term “HR” won’t do much to optimize your blog post for search engines. A search for “HR” returns countless results, and your article won’t be on the first page. On the other hand, a blog post that tackles “top budget-friendly HR tools” will have a much better shot of ranking higher on the search engine result pages (SERP). Focus and Don’t Keyword Stuff Keyword stuffing may have worked ten years ago, but today search engines like Google are backed by powerful algorithms, and they will penalize bloggers who stuff their articles with keywords. Overdoing it by jamming the words “budget-friendly HR,” “budget-friendly human resources,” “human resources ideas,” and “HR ideas” every other sentence isn’t a good idea. For starters, it makes your blog post basically unreadable. Yes, strategic keyword writing is important, but it should not take away from the clarity of the piece. Additionally, search engines pick up on these kinds of shenanigans. They’ll assume your blog post is unhelpful, unclear content and penalize your page by lowering its ranking. Remember: Write for your audience first. These algorithms are designed (and constantly updated) to spot relevant, useful content that people are reading and sharing. Stick to 1-2 long tail keywords and weave them organically into your blog post. Don’t Forget To Place Your Keywords in These Three Locations Once you’ve decided on a long tail keyword, where you place it is extremely important. In addition to weaving your keyword throughout the body of your article, you should also plug it into your title, your headers, and your URL. For example, if your long tail keyword is “top budget-friendly HR Tools,” it should be found in the: Title: Top 25 Budget-Friendly HR Tools Header: Budget-Friendly HR Tools That Won’t Break The Bank URL: www.website.com/budget-friendly-HR Optimize Your Images Search engines can’t “look” at pictures the way we do, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re not paying attention to them. When you include images in your blog post, change the file name so that it says “budget-friendly-HR-tools.jpg” instead of “IMG493.jpg” and remember to fill in the alt text. Make Sure Your Blog Post Is Mobile Friendly It’s important to optimize your blog posts for mobile now more than ever. Spend some time navigating your site using your smartphone. Is it a frustrating experience? Are the buttons too small to press? Is it difficult to find the main menu? If this is your experience, talk to your developer about making changes to your site. Make The Most Of Your Content With Internal Linking There you are writing your blog article about budget-friendly HR tools when you find yourself adding a paragraph about hiring the right members of your HR department. A month ago, you posted a longer article that covered that topic in detail. Hyperlink to that old blog post within the relevant paragraph in your new blog post. That way, if people want to read more about hiring, they are just bouncing away from your page, not your site. In essence, they spend more time on your website. This demonstrates to search engines that your blog has a significant volume of content and that people deem it relevant and useful by spending lots of time on the site. You’ve written entertaining, useful, and informative blog posts. Make sure they get in front of the right audience by optimizing for search engines.
Elevate the Buyer Persona and Embrace the Radical Buyer Posted on June 21, 2017July 11, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick As every savvy marketer knows, using buyer personas is a time-honored technique that helps ensure messaging stays focused on the customer — nearly 60 percent of B2B marketers currently use them. The problem is that the results are mixed. Only a little more than a third of those marketers describe personas as being “very” or “extremely” effective, and 16 percent say they are “not at all” or “not very” effective. So why aren’t these marketers having better luck with what should be a surefire tactic? The truth is that no matter how hard you work to market your product, you’re not going to see success selling to the wrong persona. You wouldn’t target young professional men when the customers who really want what you’re offering are middle-aged moms. You probably can’t sell baby strollers to singles, for example. No matter how powerful your message or your medium, you won’t be able to break through without directing the right message to the right segment of your market. But what’s the most important part of the formula? Read Jonathan’s full article on Smart Insights.
The Anatomy of a Perfect PPC Campaign Strategy Posted on June 20, 2017October 21, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Paying to simply place an ad is so 2002. In 2017, you pay for results. PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns only cost companies money when someone actually clicks on their ad. But in order for a PPC campaign strategy to be effective, it needs to attract people to actually click on it. If you’re not paying any money for your PPC ads, that’s a problem because it means no one is taking the time to engage with it. If you’ve been using PPC ads for some time only to be met with underwhelming results, it’s time to rethink your strategy by following these tips. Focus On a Specific Product Don’t try to market every single thing in your wheelhouse, especially if you have a limited budget. Identify your most popular product or service for your first few ads. Instead of spreading yourself thin, you can work on crafting a perfectly targeted ad that wins new customers. Don’t Skip Over Keyword Research You want the right people to find your ads. One of the main ways sites like Google determine the relevancy of an ad is by comparing keywords. Conduct thorough keyword research to find both general and specific keywords that your ideal customers will be typing into a search engine. Not only does this increase your ad’s chances of being displayed, but it also increases your chances of someone making a purchase since they’ll be presented with an ad that corresponds with their search. Segment Your Ad Campaign Create different ad groups. Each ad group consists of specific ads that share the same keyword. For example, if you’re a SaaS company, it makes sense to have an ad group for each product category you serve. The SaaS SEO company, MOZ, might have ad groups for keyword research, link building, site audits and web page optimization. Each group consists of different ads for that category. Create Multiple Landing Pages for Specific Ads Each product should have its own landing page so that when people click on Moz’s ad for link building, they wind up on a page dedicated to link building. Forcing a potential customer to navigate your site gives them time to change their mind about signing up for a class. Another thing to keep in mind is your landing page’s loading speed. Can you remember the last time you waited for a page to load? Probably not. Chances are you exited the page and moved on to something else. That’s the last thing you want when there’s a customer willing to spend money. Speak to your website manager to ensure your landing pages load quickly. Diversify Your Ads When you’re displaying ads on Google’s search network, your ad is text based. But if you’re using Google’s display network or using Facebook’s network, avoid boring ads that repeat the same elements over and over again. Introduce some diversity to your ads with cool graphics, visuals, and of course great copy. Monitor Your Web Page Vital advertising budget decisions are made after an ad goes live, not before. Why is that? Because once a bunch of your ads go live, you can see which are working and which aren’t. If your gym’s Pilates ad is bringing in a lot of customers, but your yoga ad isn’t you can take data-driven action by doing one of the following: a) Canceling the yoga ad b) Canceling the yoga ad and putting more money towards the Pilates ad c) Tweaking your yoga ad to improve its performance d) Putting more money towards the Pilates ad By regularly monitoring your analytics, you won’t accidentally take money away from an ad that’s generating a large amount of business. Monitoring also allows you to notice trends. If there’s a high bounce rate (people leaving your landing page before making a purchase) but a high click-through rate as well (lots of people are clicking on your ad), it’s a sign that the issue isn’t with your ad but with your landing page. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, you can focus exclusively on improving your landing page. Anyone can execute a great PPC campaign strategy. All it takes is time, dedication, and a little creativity.
Is Performance-Based Pay A Successful Motivator? Posted on June 19, 2017July 11, 2018 by Jeanna Barrett Whether you’re a business owner hiring employees for your small business or an agency manager adding rock star employees to your team, you might think that the best motivator for the people you hire is more money. You’re not alone. Many companies pay their employees based on performance. This can take the shape of bonuses when a milestone is hit, gain or profit sharing which offers cash when the company sees profits increase, or skills-based rewards when employees attend yearly trainings. However, a new study conducted by Human Resources Management Journal has shown that performance-based pay often leads to higher stress levels and decreased job satisfaction. Why is this? It’s because many individuals associate performance-based pay with the expectations of being overworked and underappreciated. Performance-based pay can come across to employees like you’re requiring them to push themselves past their limits, work long nights and weekends, or generally offset their work-life balance just to increase profits for the company. With increasing news coming out about Americans being overworked with less vacation time and sick pay and some of the lowest parental leave policies in the world, it’s not an incentive anymore to work harder and faster and for more money. Here’s some ways you can incentivize your employees outside of offering them more money: Increased Vacation Days or Sabbaticals Everyone loves vacation and a time to unplug and recharge, yet most companies only offer two weeks of paid vacation a year. If your employees are motivated by time-off with their families and travel (because who isn’t, really), then offer the opportunity for them to earn an extra week or two of vacation a year based on their performance. Offer Internal Recognition and Rewards Create a system that publicly rewards your top-performing employees. When someone feels recognized for their hard work, this can go a long way in motivating them to work hard and perform their best. It can also motivate others to achieve those top rewards in the future. Schedule Workplace Retreats Even if you can’t offer additional PTO, planning a short workplace retreat for your employees can feel like a vacation; plus it works double to create team building and bonding among your team. Even something simple like renting a cabin in the woods for everyone to spend the weekend, and creating group meals or playing games can be a great incentive that will have employees saying, “Man, I work at a great company.” Increased Workplace Perks If your employees are incentivized to work hard by great perks, this can work wonders for employee morale. Offer company lunches, game time, motivational speakers, movie days or anything that makes it feel like you’re a “cool” place to work rather than a place that will work them to the bone. When employees feel happy about their workplace and want to come in every day into a well-designed office with places to hang out and relax during their work day, they’ll likely be more motivated to perform well so they don’t have to leave and find another job somewhere with fewer perks. Remember, offering other incentives like this doesn’t mean you can underpay your employees. But if you offer competitive financial compensation packages plus these incentives, then your employees might feel like they have a great workplace to walk into, a work-life balance and a recognition program that makes them feel like an important part of the team. All of these will go a long way in keeping employees motivated to work hard for you, rather than feeling like you’re overworking them for more cash. Whatever you do, have an open conversation with your employees on how their compensation packages are working for them, and if it’s motivating them to bring their best every day. It’s very difficult to find and retain great employees, so don’t be afraid to shift your perks and benefits to avoid losing great people.
6 Traits Of Successful Dads That Make Successful Leaders Posted on June 18, 2017June 16, 2017 by Jonathan Herrick Every year when Father’s Day rolls around, I take the time to reflect on the connection between my home life and work life. As a father and a small business owner, I can honestly say that two of my most fulfilling adventures in life are owning a business and raising children. You want your children to develop into strong, healthy, productive members of society. You want your business to thrive as a prosperous, constructive part of your community. Many of the characteristics of a great father translate into those of successful small business owners. Here are just a few of those traits. 1. Patience This one seems like a no-brainer, right? Any dad knows that one of the foundations of parenting is patience. As an entrepreneur or small business owner, patience (and level-headedness) are vital to building a business that will succeed. Without it, you’re bound to make quick decisions and rash judgements that can lead you down the wrong path (poor partnerships, wasted money, bad PR). 2. Empathy You’ve probably read over and over that business owners need to lead with an iron fist, but there’s no quicker way to alienate your employees than leading like a tyrant. Just like every father needs to find the perfect balance between parent and pal, every leader needs to toe the line between chief and comrade. 3. Discipline Discipline is profoundly important as a leader, parent and person. Without discipline, children lack direction and restraint. Without discipline, employees and leaders alike are less productive and inefficient. Whether in the office or at home, discipline is not about showing them “Who’s Boss” but rather giving your kids and employees life instruction that is built upon accountability. 4. Honesty Honesty and transparency should be pillars of any company culture. Without the opportunity for open communication and direct feedback, any business is doomed for failure. Similarly, as a father, it’s important to build a relationship of truthfulness with your children. 5. Sense of Humor If you’re a father or business owner, this one should be obvious. Without a sense of humor, issues and unexpected hurdles can be exponentially more stressful. If you can manage to go through your days with a smile on your face, it’ll make those ledges seem a little lower. In both roles, those looking to you as an example (children and employees) will follow suit. If you’re able to tackle tasks and problems in a positive way, that attitude will become the norm. 6. Servant Leadership As a father, your purpose is to act as a mentor, teach accountability and teach children that every person deserves respect. These are just a few of the pillars of servant leadership (and only a few of your responsibilities as a parent), and they are equally important to instill in your team as a business owner. While fatherhood and business ownership including many, many more layers, these traits will guarantee success in both roles no matter what barriers you may face. Happy Father’s Day to the fellow dads out there!
The 6 Best Small Business Loan Options For A Cash Flow Emergency Posted on June 16, 2017July 21, 2022 by Guest Author A guest post by Meredith Wood, Editor-in-Chief at Fundera. Even the most highly-prepared entrepreneurs can sometimes run into financial setbacks. Whether it’s a pipe bursting in your retail store or a long-overdue payment from your largest client, there are unforeseen issues that arise and require small business owners to scurry for emergency financing. And with 82% of failed businesses reporting that the number one reason why they failed was cash flow, these cash flow emergencies can be a sink or swim situation for a small business owner. Below we’ll explore the seven best types of financing to ensure you’re able to recover quickly from any unpleasant cash flow surprises. 1. Short-Term Loans Short-term loans function like a traditional term small business loan, but the good news here is that the approval process is quick — some alternative lenders will approve you on the same day you apply — and the repayment schedule is short, ranging from a few months to a couple years. However, these loans can get expensive, therefore they are best for dealing with one-off issues you might run into, like a broken hot water heater in your store or a totaled vehicle in your delivery fleet. 2. Long-Term Online Loans If your emergency situation allows for a few days or weeks delay before securing cash in hand, applying for a long-term online small business loan can have some major benefits. Traditional bank loans can take many, many months, but a medium-term loan from an online lender can be approved in a few days or weeks. Not only that but also, if you qualify, you’ll benefit from much lower interest rates than you would find with other types of “fast funding” options. 3. Invoice Financing If you’re falling behind on your own financial responsibilities because you’re waiting for clients to pay their invoices, invoice financing might be the best option for you. Invoice financing companies will advance you a portion of the outstanding invoices and hold the remaining amount in reserve. Once your customers pay their invoices, you’ll receive the reserve funds, minus fees. The approval process is generally swift for invoice financing, so this can be a smart option if you find yourself in need of cash quickly. 4. Business Credit Cards Business credit cards are essentially a short-term loan. Fortunately, in today’s world, plastic is as good as cash just about everywhere, so business credit cards are a great option for dealing with unexpected costs. If you’re a sole proprietor, all you need to apply for a business card is your social security number; larger businesses need to also apply with a Federal Tax ID. Many business credit cards offer an introductory 0% APR, and with the average APR hovering around 15% after the introductory period, credit cards can be an appealing alternative to other types of loans. 5. Short-Term Line of Credit Many alternative lenders offer short-term lines of credit with fast and easy application processes. Lenders like Kabbage or BlueVine allow you to apply online, provide approval quickly, and are more lenient than traditional lenders when it comes to an applicant’s credit score. Short-term lines of credit are useful because you can guarantee yourself access to cash when you need it, but you don’t begin paying interest on the funds until you actually draw money. 6. Merchant Cash Advances Merchant Cash Advances (MCAs) can provide immediate cash; a merchant capital company advances you a lump sum of capital and, in exchange, you repay the company by offering a daily cut of your company’s credit card sales. However, this option is at the bottom of the list for a reason: it is very costly. With fees ranging from 70% to 350%, MCAs can cause even more cash flow problems than you had when you started. While MCAs certainly qualify as a viable option for emergency funding, you should think of them more as a last-resort than as your go-to option. It’s nice to know that even if your small business runs into some unexpected cash flow issues, you do have options to help keep your company afloat. Weighing the pros and cons of each type of financing and taking your company’s unique financial status into account will allow you to select the small business loan product that makes the most sense for you. 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.
How to Grow Your Facebook Following When You Have Fewer than 100 Likes Posted on June 15, 2017July 11, 2018 by Allie Wolff For the past few years, Facebook has been limiting how much free exposure businesses can get on the social media platform. As the billions of users grow and connect, Facebook has—necessarily—cracked down on business pages’ organic reach, instead placing greater emphasis on updates from friends and family in the newsfeed algorithm, as well as video and photo posts. This has been a constant issue for digital marketers and especially small businesses as of late. It’s well known that Facebook only shows your updates to a small fraction of your total Facebook fans—nobody knows the exact amount, but it’s less than 10 percent. So if you have 600 fans, only 60 will see your updates for sure. Facebook uses them as a de facto testing group—if they like, share, click, watch or comment on your content, then the levee opens and more of your fans will see it. There are few ways to get real exposure on Facebook in 2017. A few tactics include: paying to boost your posts beyond the walls of your limited fan base, focusing heavily on photos and videos (sticky types of content that the Facebook algorithm is said to prefer), focusing on creating shareable content, or just being freaking awesome at Facebook. Here, we’ll focus on that last one. If you want to grow your Facebook following on a shoestring budget and are just starting out—maybe you’ve got fewer than 100 likes, maybe a few more—these tips are for you. Run a Contest. We’ll start with the most obvious strategy: contests. Everybody loves winning stuff, and liking a Facebook page is about the easiest action a potential lead could perform. There are no shortage of contest ideas to generate engagement—you could reward people for commenting on posts, tagging friends, etc.—but to generate new followers, your best bet is to hold a giveaway in exchange for a free product or small prize you can easily handle. Keep in mind Facebook has strict rules regarding sweepstakes and contests—for example, you can’t require people share your post on their wall to win something. Always check the rules to see if your idea is legit. Once you’ve got the idea in place, don’t just post it—market the hell out of it. Post it to contest giveaway sites and aggregators, share it on your personal feed and write a blog post about it. Note that the types of people you collect here may not be real fans—so your engagement rate may drop because they potentially don’t actually care about your product—but you can mitigate this by making the prize specific enough (like a niche product) to only appeal to the audience you’re truly after. If you have any money to give to Facebook, give it a little boost. But be careful when it comes to spending money—which brings us to the second recommendation… Be specific when spending money on Facebook. It’s a dangerously easy black hole to just throw money at Facebook and hope for results. If you’re aiming for new likes and boosting posts on Facebook, be sure to specifically exclude people who already like your page when choosing your target audience. Facebook’s advertising manager has gotten significantly more sophisticated in recent years, so use that. You can target specific ad placements, user behavior and interests on a far deeper level than simply gender, location and age. Use this to make sure you’re spending your dollars wisely. Be shameless. First off, if you haven’t invited literally all your Facebook friends to like your page, do that now. You’d be surprised—even your friend’s weird brother whom you haven’t spoken to in a decade might like it. And if he doesn’t, you’re no worse off than when you started. (And if you’re worried about how awkward it might seem to invite someone you barely know to like your page, then ask yourself: would it really be any less awkward if you saw them on the street tomorrow and tried to strike up a casual conversation? Bottom line: you have awkward relationships. Embrace the awkward.) While you can’t force people to share your content, you can always share stuff on your own wall. You’ll be a little annoying, but if you’re just starting out, you need to make a splash. Otherwise, your social media presence will disappear quicker than it began. You can also be shameless when it comes to your own page, too. Again: you can’t force people to share your content, but you can politely request it. Obviously this won’t work for everything (“Just got new team t-shirts! Please share!!!”), but this is where a social media strategy comes into play. If you’re getting involved in the community—partnering with local charities or sponsoring a kids’ sports team, for example—you should absolutely post that on Facebook and politely ask people to share and donate. You’ll get far more genuine shares, reaching hundreds of new eyeballs and giving yourself more organic chances to gain a following. Be a Facebook networker. Tagging other business pages is free publicity, and it’s easy to develop a strategy around that. Simply reach out to other brands and be honest about what you need. Let’s say you’re a gym and you really did just get new team t-shirts in. One easy method of outreach would be to message equipment companies—let’s call them Fitness Masters—and say something like, “Hey, our gym uses your equipment and would love to cross-promote this on Facebook to boost exposure for both of us. I’ll tag Fitness Masters, and would love if you tagged my page in a post of your own. I’m attaching a photo of your equipment in our gym that you can use if you like. Thanks!” If Fitness Masters has 10,000 followers, a post from them could grab you a few new followers—totally free, totally organically. Be good at Facebook. Honesty, diversity, consistency and personality—these are the central tenets of good social media. At the end of the day, if you’re posting fun, original, authentic content that people genuinely like, they’ll be more inclined to engage with your content, share your posts and support your brand. Think about the kind of content you’d want to share yourself, and try to emulate that. Pretty soon you’ll have more than 100 Facebook followers to show for it.
Is It Time To Re-Evaluate Your Sales Funnel? Posted on June 14, 2017June 14, 2017 by Jeanna Barrett In the past, the traditional sales funnel has been a great way to visualize the progress of business leads as they make their way towards becoming customers: They start as a lead, you nurture that lead, and move them down the funnel as they show intent to buy. Then, if all things go according to plan, they purchase. But, what happens when you’re unable to get that prospect through the funnel? Is this traditional sales funnel and process d-e-a-d? And shouldn’t customers who continue to purchase be part of this sales funnel? As the modern customer changes and uses dozens of different mediums available on the internet and their mobile phone, the funnel that is traditionally relied on needs to change, too. The buying experience has evolved in recent years, and so have customers’ expectations when they decide to start their purchasing journey. For example, did you know that 84% of CEOs and VPs use social media to make purchasing decisions? Social selling might seem a lot more important now than before, but where does it fall in the sales funnel? How do we better understand our customers, where they come from, and how they purchase? The way people buy is no longer a simple path from awareness to prospect to sale — it’s much more complex. So, how can you “refresh” your sales funnel? Let’s begin with these five strategies: 1. Understand Your Ideal Customer It doesn’t make sense to drive a bunch of unqualified traffic and leads that won’t actually purchase from you. But, before you find qualified leads, you need to understand your ideal customer. And the more you understand them, the more qualified your leads become. Your ideal customer profile should include more than the person’s age, gender and job status. Demographics only offer broad descriptions of people, such as male executives, aged 35-50 or mid-level managers at an accounting firm. Dig deeper into these profiles to learn more about the clients’ psychographics — do they like to shop online? Are they more likely to be loyal to a brand or buy what’s on sale? Do they like to watch sports or exercise? You want to know how they spend their money and how they spend their time. Also, where they go to research a product they want to buy and the types of publications they read. You can discover these deeper demographics with simple interviews or online research. With a better understanding of who the customer is, you can provide relevant content and are more likely to convert these prospects into customers AND retain them. 2. Are You Aiming Too High or Too Low? Inbound marketing uses the value-added content that a marketing team (or marketer) creates to attract new leads and drop them into a funnel to convert them as customers using nurture and sales tactics. But, there is a lot of room for error in the process. Ensure you take the time to discuss metrics with your marketing and sales team members and decide what it takes to convert leads into buyers. Pinpointing inefficiencies in your sales funnel is vital as it helps you spot and plug the leaks that are detrimental to your ROI. There are tons of different marketing platform tools to help track and evaluate your success, such as Google Analytics or Crazy Egg. These platforms can help you measure data such as: How you’re capturing leads — what is and isn’t working with your content? Call-to-action effectiveness — are people clicking and converting? Landing page submission rates — can you optimize your landing page designs? Email marketing performance — are people clicking links and can you improve the automation process? 3. Increase Targeted Follow-Up Customer service can make or break a buyer’s journey. When following up with a lead, you want to make sure you’re not wasting their time by giving them unhelpful, irrelevant content. Massive amounts of customer data is being created at all times and predictive analytics are maturing rapidly. This means that your marketing and sales efforts can become significantly more productive and efficient with the right tools. The use of a customer relationship management (CRM) tool will empower you to do things like provide the most relevant content to a particular lead, better gauge which prospects are likely to become a high-value customer and know what the next steps should be in bringing leads deeper into the sales a funnel. 4. Reward Loyal Customers While new leads are great (and necessary), don’t forget to reward your current customers with special offers and first-time access to new products. On average, current customers spend 67% more than new customers. Customer retention and increased spending should be an addition to the sales funnel. It’s important to up-sell current customers or keep them in mind as “prospects” still instead of always spending your time on leads who haven’t purchased yet. So, how can you continue to keep customers coming back to your business? By implementing a loyalty program, such as a point or tier system, or structure a non-monetary program around your customers’ values, similar to Patagonia’s Common Threads initiative. Your loyalty program’s effectiveness can be easily measured through your customer retention rate and a negative churn rate. 5. Generate a Better Customer Onboarding Experience The way you onboard a new customer will determine whether you retain them or not. It’s important that your onboarding extends seamlessly across both in-person and online by blending the human and digital experience. You want to ensure your team has the same objective and enthusiasm about the company and product they are working for and can represent and articulate that through to the customer. From a digital standpoint, use a software solution to help manage and streamline customer service, such as Groove. Groove allows small businesses to tackle customer support in a simple, personal and organized solution. Overall, we may have lost the predictability of the traditional sales funnel, but what we’ve gained is more valuable: more opportunities to understand, connect with and provide value to future customers than ever before.
5 Ways To Grow Your Email List With Webinars Posted on June 13, 2017July 11, 2018 by Jessica Lunk If you want to grow your email subscriber list, there are few routes better than webinars. The immersive online lectures have become a popular choice among inbound marketers, but they’re also intimidating — can you pull one off quickly? Easily? Is it cost-effective? Time-effective? While the concept may sound intimidating, if growing your email list is a priority, webinars are absolutely worth the investment. Here are some ways to make it work and see that ROI take effect. Promote your webinars on your blog. Cross-pollination between platforms is one of your best bets for encouraging repeat visitors. Regardless of whether or not you have a strong blog following, you want to make at least three announcements: once to announce your webinar, another reminder closer to the date, and a third after it’s done so people who missed it can catch up. In each instance, you can collect emails by promising to keep subscribers up to date on the event’s progress. You can offer multiple opportunities to sign up for your newsletter when promoting or posting webinars, and also encourage direct communication with a “get in touch” call to action—another opportunity to create one-on-one leads. If you’re asking people to spend up to an hour with you, it’s not a big stretch to ask to keep in touch during the process. If you’re hosting the webinar on your blog afterward, design the page with a sidebar, pop-ups or some other call-to-action encouraging newsletter signups. They’re there anyway—you’d be remiss not to take advantage. Share hosting duties and sign-up emails. If you partner up with another company, you can capitalize on a broader audience by sharing email lists and splitting the promotional budget. Shopify, the e-commerce giant, partners with different thought leaders all the time to product high-quality webinars. We can’t say for sure whether they split the email lists for signups (they’re an enormous company, so they could have enough leverage to simply promote their partners through exposure, backlinks or some monetary compensation). For smaller businesses, sharing the email signups is certainly doable and a great way to double your strength by partnering with another budding business. Reuse your webinars after they’ve been archived. All the above rules hold true for reusing old webinars, particularly if they’re newsworthy again. Post links to them on social media or write a new blog post to remind new visitors what you’ve got in your archive. Once they’re done, you’ve got content in the bank—ideal for reposting on a well-thought-out editorial schedule. By creating this constant content output, you’re creating more incentives for potential subscribers to sign up for your content. Remember: just because you made it doesn’t mean everyone saw it, especially followers you’ve gained in the last few months. Revive popular webinars every few months, and you’re bound to convert a few more readers into subscribers—or, if it was a notably well-received webinar, you could even post a permanent link in your sidebar as part of a “most popular” tab to keep the momentum going. Make your webinars informative, fun, original—and consistent This one’s a no-brainer: if your webinar sucks, nobody’s going to want to sign up to see more. You’ll need to create a reputation for producing high-quality content, making sure your webinars are actually informative and useful. Getting feedback from viewers is critical for this, and will make sure you’re creating a reputation for yourself that sees more and more people returning and spreading the word. But that also involves a level of consistency and commitment that can add extra hours to your workload. It’s not ideal to do your research, host a great webinar, grab some subscribers and then never do another. Webinars get easier the more you develop a following and reputation, so keep consistency in mind when taking on this kind of project. Follow Up. This is perhaps the most crucial step of all, particularly if webinar viewers didn’t subscribe to your newsletter. You’ve created a great excuse to email them again: how did they like it? What feedback do they have? Did they find certain tips useful? If they left midway through, why? Following up via automation is one of the four crucial steps to making a great webinar, but it’s also an opportunity to convert vaguely interested parties into leads. Craft these emails smartly and personably, and they’re one of your strongest tools for email marketing growth.