64 Small Business Tools To Prevent Marketing Madness Posted on March 13, 2017July 3, 2024 by Allie Wolff Keeping all of your marketing ducks in a row is no easy feat for a small business owner. You most likely run a tight ship and don’t have the personnel or budget resources to shell out for countless expensive marketing tools. The good news is that there are plenty of inexpensive and effective tools out there to help you optimize your marketing efforts and compete with the big guys. We’ve compiled a list of our 64 favorite tools to help you avoid marketing madness. (Side note: you won’t need all 64, and we’re not comparing apples to apples here. So find a few that work for your business and invest time and energy into maximizing them.) Read about each of these tools below the infographic. The Tools Analytics Tool of Choice: Google Analytics Chances are you’ve heard of Google Analytics. It allows you to capture and analyze data on your web traffic and visitors. When used effectively, you can greatly increase your site’s user experience and increase conversion rates. Kissmetrics Kissmetrics is a close second in our list of favorite tools. The platform is perfect for SaaS businesses, allowing you to find out where your prospects are coming from, and mapping their journey on your website from prospect to customer. Kissmetrics gives you the important data you need to optimize your marketing channels, attract more customers, and get them to convert once they reach your website. CrazyEgg CrazyEgg’s heat mapping capabilities will give you insight into what visitors are doing on your website. It tells you where they’re scrolling, clicking, and more importantly, what they’re not clicking. With CrazyEgg, you can optimize your landing pages to make sure you keep visitors engaged and help them down the sales funnel. Hotjar Hotjar is an all-in-one analytics and heatmap tool that integrates with tons of tools like WordPress, Instapage and Unbounce. Hotjar’s setup is incredibly easy AND you can record web visits to see where your customers are clicking and focusing on your website. Intercom Intercom is a customer messaging platform that allows you to see where your customers are getting tripped up and to send them targeted messages to solve their problems. The tool gives insight into areas of improvement on both your website and within your platform if you’re a Saas company. By automating customer service and triggering live chat, you can keep customers engaged and prevent costly churn. Pendo Pendo acts as an extension of your product so that you can capture all user behavior, gather feedback, and provide contextual help to your users. It provides robust reporting on page and feature usage to help you improve your product. GoodData GoodData is a business intelligence and data visualization tool. It’s more suited for enterprise businesses, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool that can benefit any business. Rather than using your limited resources building and maintaining BI infrastructure, GoodData lets you focus on turning your information into insight across your business. ChartMogul ChartMogul is another fantastic business intelligence tool. The platform integrates with many other tools you’re probably using (Zapier, Zendesk, Slack, etc) so you can calculate your key metrics in real time. Say goodbye to Excel spreadsheets! Content Marketing Tool of Choice: WordPress According to their website, WordPress powers 27% of the internet. And there’s a reason for it. WordPress is the easiest content management system out there (in our humble opinion) and is super reasonably priced. It’s free for personal use, but the best package for small businesses starts at $8.25/month. Feedly Content curation can be incredibly time consuming when building a social presence. That’s where Feedly comes in to help you search, organize and share relevant content. Feedly also integrates with several project management tools such as Slack and Trello. Grammarly Can’t afford to hire a copy editor to review your blogs before you post them? Grammarly can save you from embarrassing errors. Use it in combination with your spell checker, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many typos you avoid. If you spring for the premium version, Grammarly also offers a plagiarism checker. CoSchedule Content headlines are crucial. They determine whether or not readers click on your content. On top of their cohesive content marketing calendar, CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer tool will give your headlines numeric scores AND suggestions to make them stronger. Buzzsumo BuzzSumo is an excellent tool to help you uncover the trending topics and content that performs across various social media the best. You can also identify influencers (and spy on your competition if that’s what you’re into). Contently Not only does Contently allow you to schedule and optimize content, but the platform also offers freelancer writers to help your business create full-length articles and blog posts. While Contently is really geared toward more enterprise customers, you can’t make a ‘best of’ list without mentioning the platform. ClearVoice ClearVoice is a content creation and management platform. The collaboration tool gives you access to freelance writers and editors to create professional content. ClearVoice most likely isn’t the right choice for small businesses just starting out (they require an annual subscription), but it’s a great one to keep in mind when you’re ready to step up your content marketing game. Wistia Video marketing is all the hype this year and is an important piece of the content marketing puzzle. Wistia is our absolute favorite video tool. Like many social and content tools, Wistia offers analytics, automation and a place to host your videos. We love using Wistia to see which videos are performing the best on our site. The call-to-action features is also clutch for sending traffic to your site no matter where your Wistia video is posted on the web. Lead Capture Tool of Choice: Unbounce Unbounce is an incredibly easy-to-use landing page builder. They have beautiful, pre-designed templates that will allow you to get your pages up and running without the help of code or professional web design. Plans start at $49/month, and Unbounce offers a free 30-day trial. OptinMonster Their simple lead capture forms are an easy way to serve up irresistible resources to your audience, growing your list. OptinMonster allows you to A/B test your forms to see what’s working and what isn’t so you’ll understand why your visitors are staying and going. LeadPages LeadPages offers pre-designed landing page templates, pop-up forms and the ability to send SMS opt-in codes. They boast tons of easy integrations and their Pro Plan starts at $48/month. Sumo Sumo (formerly SumoMe) has an array of helpful lead capture tools, including sophisticated opt-in forms, easy integrations with just about any content management system, Google Analytics integrations and heatmaps. Pricing depends on your website visits but starts with a free package (best for those just getting started). Instapage Instapage is another helpful landing page builder. The platform offers PPC compatibility, many integration and helpful A/B testing capabilities. The basic package starts at $29/month (paid annually). HelloBar HelloBar adds a non-intrusive lead capture bar to your website so you can turn website visitors into email subscribers into customers. The tool allows you to promote your social content and easily A/B test your messaging. Qualaroo Qualaroo allows you to optimize your site by providing targeted website surveys to capture customer insight. With Qualaroo you can target questions to visitors anywhere on your website, in your product or in your conversion funnel. Their startup package starts at $199/month billed annually. LiveChat LiveChat does just what the name says. This simple tool allows you to get engage customers on your website, capture visitor information and provide more personalized, immediate customer service. The LiveChat starter package starts at $19/month. This is a great way to capture prospects from your website who might otherwise bounce. SEO/PPC Tool of Choice: Wordstream Not only does Wordstream have a phenomenal team and company culture, but they’re absolute bosses when it comes to all things PPC and SEO. Their free AdWords grader is a surefire way to know where your small business can make improvements. Yoast Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress. The tool works easily to optimize your content and landing pages to make sure your site is set up for success. With features like a readability checker and keyword optimizer, Yoast will make sure your content is optimized for the right eyes. Google Adwords Google AdWords may seem intimidating to small businesses, but the easy-to-use platform is incredibly important. They offer search, display and video advertising to help you reach your customers where they’re searching. AdWords will require an investment to be successful, but it’s worth it for your business to drive more traffic to your website. MOZ Not only does MOZ have an amazing blog (including Whiteboard Fridays which rocks), they help with SEO optimization, keyword research and backlink research. They also offer local search help to make your business more visible in your area. Google Trends Google Trends pulls data from Google Search to show you how often search-terms are entered in different areas of the world. With the help of Google Trends, you can find out what’s trending in your area and among your customer base. AdEspresso AdEspresso, a Hootsuite creation, helps you take your Facebook advertising to the next level. The integration with Hootsuite doesn’t hurt either – with both tools you can manage your ad campaigns inside the Hootsuite dashboard to make sure your marketing efforts are streamlined. SpyFu SpyFu literally allows you to spy on your competitors. The platform allows you to search for any domain and see every place they’ve shown up on Google. You can also see a list of every keyword your competition bought on Adwords, every organic rank, and every ad variation in the last 10 years. Now that’s good detective work. SEMRush SEMRush is another competitor research tool that can have a huge impact on your business. They offer the ability to compare your domain to your competitors, pull information on your competitors keywords AND help you discover new competitors in your space organically. Email Marketing & Automation Tool of Choice: Hatchbuck Hatchbuck is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation tool created specifically for small businesses. Our easy-to-use platform helps you to organize your contacts, automate marketing activities and drive higher response rates and sales through personalized prospect communication every step of the way. IFTTT IFTTT is a powerful automation tool that’s incredibly easy to use. You create or pick ‘Applets’ (formerly ‘recipes’) to automate specific tasks on Facebook, Twitter, and any other business app imaginable. Remember to share the wealth, IFTTT can also help your non-marketing team members. Zapier Zapier is the easiest way to automate time consuming administrative tasks so you can focus on running your business. The tool allows you to connect your web apps for easier automation that will optimize your processes and keep your small business running smoothly. Litmus If you’re an email marketing guru, Litmus is the tool for you. They offer tools for testing your code and emails across different platforms before sending them out so you’ll never have broken images again. They also have an absolutely rockstar blog with tons of valuable email marketing info. Email on Acid We love Email on Acid here at Hatchbuck. If you code your own emails, like we do, it’s an absolute-must to make sure that they look great in every inbox. Email on Acid’s easy tool allows you to test emails across the most popular email clients, apps and devices so you can fix problems before you hit send. Hubspot HubSpot offers a full bundle of products for marketing, sales, and customer relationship management that can be used separately or in collaboration. It’s an incredibly powerful platform but one that’s much more suited to for large and enterprise businesses. Pricing starts at $800/month for only 1,000 contacts and is an additional $50/month for every 1,000 more contacts. Infusionsoft Infusionsoft is an all-in-one CRM and sales/marketing automation tool with a focus on e-commerce. Pricing starts at $199/month plus a one-time onboarding fee starting at $999. MailChimp MailChimp is undeniably the most well-known email marketing platform. They have 15 million customers and tons of integrations, but they don’t offer the CRM feature. This tool is perfect for enterprise businesses who can build an integration with their CRM or for those not looking for CRM functionality. Design Tool of Choice: Pexels Choosing the right images for your blog and social media posts is essential. Many people respond to photos more quickly than to a headline. Pexels is our favorite stock site. They offer millions of free stock photos for commercial use without attribution. Can’t beat free. Canva Visual content gets much higher engagement and conversion rates than text only content. Canva helps you create beautiful images and other visual assets. If you’re not ready to create images all on your own yet, Canva is the perfect option for getting started. Stencil Stencil, similar to Canva, allows you to create high quality images for your social media and content marketing posts. The platform has almost a million images to work with, allows you to upload your own fonts AND has a handy Chrome extension that allows you to create images while browsing the web. 99designs 99designs is your source for all things design. They have an incredible blog alongside a network of talented design freelancers to help you with anything your small business might need. Adobe Creative Cloud Formerly Creative Suite, Adobe Creative Cloud offers all the tools a small business needs to create professional, engaging images to pair with content. There’s a definitely learning curve with Creative Cloud, but once mastered, the possibilities are endless. Piktochart Piktochart is a stellar resource for small businesses who don’t have a design guru on staff. The easy-to-use tool allows you to easily create reports and infographics on the fly. They also have simple social media sharing options so you can share your creations once they’re complete. Easel.ly Easel.ly is another chart and infographic design tool. It has less of the bells and whistles of some of the other tools, but you can sign up for free and get the job done. Infogr.am Infogr.am boasts some big name clients including MSN, POLITICO and Fast Company. Their infographic and chart templates are more data-focused and perfect more small businesses with more a data-driven approach. Their business plan will cost you though. It starts at $67/month and is billed annually. Project Management Tool of Choice: Slack We (like millions of other businesses) l-o-v-e Slack. The platform helps teams organize projects by bringing communication into one place, sharing and commenting on files, and integrating with other apps to get more done in less time. Not to mention the Giphy feature is loads of fun during team chats. Oh, and it’s free for almost all businesses (unless you need an upgraded account). Skype For Business We use Skype for Business here at Hatchbuck mainly for the video conferencing feature. The tool provides high-quality video with up to 250 people at a time and starts at $5/user per month. Evernote Evernote makes it simple to create notes and categorize task into project-specific notebooks. You can even scan in paper docs to make keeping track of project documents a breeze. Trello Trello gets good reviews from small business owners because of its seamless setup and ease of use. The main interface functions almost like a whiteboard. They offer a free package for small teams and their business accounts start at $10/month. Basecamp Basecamp is a killer project management software that will help keep your team organized for any project and to see your entire task list through to completion. Basecamp will also ensure that no assignment is left incomplete Asana Asana gives you a holistic overview of personal or professional to-dos. It’s a great option for teams and individuals alike. It also has important integrations that will help you or your team improve workflow. Google Drive If you’re just diving into project management, Google Drive is a simple way to share and collaborate on documents, see revision history, and let team members leave & resolve comments. Drive offers a plethora of business tools including documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides. Plus, it’s free. Freedcamp Freedcamp’s project management platform is another great option for balancing personal and professional tasks. They have a robust calendar that allows you to see daily or monthly schedules at a glance along with a helpful mobile app. Social Media Tool of Choice: Buffer We know social media can be a major time suck. Lucky for you, Buffer’s incredibly easy scheduling tool, content library and robust analytics make it easier to reach more people while saving you time. Hootsuite Like Buffer, Hootsuite is an incredibly robust tool that can save you time in your social media efforts. Our favorite features? The amazing reporting and the filters that allow you to monitor mentions of your brand across social. Pricing starts at $15/month for one user (but you’ll need to upgrade for the real deal analytics). Agorapulse Agorapulse is a cross between a social media monitoring/scheduling tool and a social media CRM. This tool focuses more specifically on Facebook engagement, and pricing starts at $49/month for one user. Bitly Bitly is the most popular link management available. Users can shorten, manage and measure shared links across the web giving greater insight into engagement. Best news? Bitly is free (unless you want branded links and an enterprise account). Sprout Social Sprout Social, a Neil Patel platform, is an all-in-one social CRM, scheduling tool, engagement monitor and collaboration platform. While it’s a more robust tool than most small businesses need, the effectiveness is undeniable. It’ll cost you a pretty penny though. The intro package starts at $99/month per user. Oktopost Oktopost is a social media lead generation tool. While social media dashboards like Hootsuite help businesses schedule content, Oktopost is designed to help you make money through your social media efforts. DrumUp Drumup is a newer kid on the block, but effective nonetheless. This scheduling tool allows you to curate content, schedule it AND suggests hashtags for your posts to expand reach and engagement. Cyfe Cyfe is business dashboard. Unlike other social media dashboards, it aggregates data from multiple platforms including social media metrics. The Cyfe platform allows you to see the big picture and assess and evaluate engagement impact and ROI for your social and content marketing.
Watch These 6 TED Talks to Improve Your Focus and Productivity Posted on March 10, 2017 by Jonathan Herrick If you’re feeling like you’re constantly working for the weekend or you don’t have enough hours in the day, it’s important to step back and recharge. In our opinion, there’s no better source of inspiration than Ted Talks. In 18 minutes or less, you can soak up great insights on on video from some of the top minds on the plane. And fortunately, if you’re looking to sharpen your focus and amp up your productivity, there are many excellent talks to spur you on. Here are some worth watching. The Happy Secret to Better Work by Shawn Achor: You may think you’re getting a lot done by staying glued to your desk until 10 pm, but if you’re not enjoying being there, you may be better off doing something fun, like going to dinner with a good friend. Achor, a psychologist who researches and teaches about positive psychology, has found that by raising your happiness level, you can expand your productivity. As dopamine floods your brain, it not only improves your mood but it also turns on the learning centers of your brain and helps you better adapt to the world. Result: Your creativity and energy level rise, and business outcomes improve. The Power of Time Off by Stefan Sagmeister: At his design studio in New York, graphic artist Stefan Sagermeister—who has served clients such as the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed—has made it a practice to close up shop for one year every seven years. He finds that giving himself time to think helps him get a fresh perspective when work has become routine. Most small business owners can’t afford to take a year off, but his Ted Talk offers a powerful argument for taking a sabbatical. Even if yours is just a week off from work, you’ll be surprised at how much unplugging helps you to reconnect with your best ideas. How To Succeed? Get More Sleep by Ariana Huffington Ariana Huffington is well known for her business acumen. In this video she reveals one secret to keeping her competitive edge: Getting enough Zzzs. Which is contradictory to the majority of the business world. “There is now a kind of sleep deprivation one-upmanship,” Huffington says. But her take is that it can lead to the kind of blurry thinking that leads to terrible business decisions. “I urge you to shut your eyes and deliver the great ideas that lie inside of us,” she urges. Why not give her idea a whirl and hit the sack an hour earlier this week or say no to that breakfast meeting invitation to see if extra sleep helps you achieve your personal best? How To Save The World (Or At Least Yourself) From Bad Meetings by David Grady Nothing is worse than sitting in a conference room for hours, wondering when a long, boring meeting is going to end. Whether you’ve gotten trapped as a client drones on or let yourself get suckered into a long sales pitch in a weak moment, you’ve probably vowed not to let it happen again. In this funny video, information security manager David Grady shares how to save yourself and reclaim your time. Although we often feel trapped into saying yes to meeting invites, “we’re not powerless,” as he puts it. There are respectful ways to opt out, as this video, with more than 2 million page views, will show you. The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers by Adam Grant In many businesses, creativity is the most powerful weapon an owner can deploy to stay ahead of the competition. Unleashing it can be hard, though, when your day is a blur of conference calls, team meetings and customer service challenges. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as you may think to tap into the habits of original thinkers, as Adam Grant, the famous organizational psychologist from Wharton, reveals in this popular video. One habit, for instance, is procrastination. For a crash course in the other habits original thinkers reveal, check out this much-watched talk. How To Make Stress Your Friend by Kelly McGonigal Many people think stress will destroy their health but that’s not necessarily true. One recent study found that stress only hurts you if you think it’s bad for you. Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal shows how to change your mindset and embrace the stress you face so it doesn’t derail you. Running a business comes with its share of pressures, so why not make the most of them? You’ll increase your personal strength and resilience and achieve much better results that way.
Social Media 101: Your Actionable Guide to Getting Started Posted on March 9, 2017July 22, 2022 by Ann Smarty Despite the rise in popularity, there are still plenty of social media skeptics who need to understand the value of a social presence for small businesses. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of social media, but I don’t consider this to be an invalid question. Really, the two major concerns are: It turns out social traffic (while being the easiest and fastest to acquire) is not that useful after all. A few years ago Chartbeat did a research to find that very few social articles had high read time. It turns out people seldom read what they share! Social shares don’t bring links. Buzzsumo did further research just a few weeks ago and found that there was no correlation between the number of shares and the number of incoming links. It looks like people share and link to for different reasons. So why invest time and money into social media marketing? Let me explain. 1. Traffic If you do everything right, you will get some nice traffic spikes. Here’s one of mine to get you inspired: But can a site rely solely on social media traffic? I don’t honestly know a site that could succeed on social media traffic only, but there are plenty of examples of social boosting traffic. If you’re doing it well, social media can hold its own in driving web traffic. 2. Brand Awareness and Authority Don’t roll your eyes on me here. Brand awareness is not one of those buzzwords a sneaky employee uses to pretend he’s actually working hard. Brand awareness refers to likelihood that potential customers have heard of your brand. Brand awareness is at the very top of the conversion funnel so it’s the first step in building potential customer relationships. Social media is often the first tool used to begin cultivating brand awareness. In fact, social media can contribute to every section of this graph: Brand awareness results in gradual traffic and conversion growth: The actual goal of social media marketing is not to improve your sales though. It’s to build the army of people who’ll promote your brand for free, over and over again. The hope is that they’ll turn into raving brand advocates. 3. Reputation Some brands believe that the less they are on social media, they less they provoke their customers to leave negative comments. Some people believe that the less communication happens online, the better. The harsh truth is that, whether you are online or not, your customers are there discussing your service and product. Whether you are there to join that conversation is what makes a real difference. By using your powerful social media presence, you may be able to turn an unhappy customer into a brand advocate with stellar customer service… Tips For Building Your Social Media Presence Assuming you are convinced, let’s go through the actual steps: How to set up your social media presence. When starting out, stick with major social media networks. Don’t try to be everywhere or you’ll be overwhelmed. Starting out with 4-5 social media accounts is ideal. Now set them up using the following checklist: Choose a solid profile image and use it everywhere you register an account. This will ensure people will soon start recognizing you and follow you. The best profile picture is a good high-quality image. You might use a headshot of your company representative (usually CEO) or your brand colors and logo to represent your brand. Use exact-match usernames. Make sure your username is a match for your business name and matches across platforms. Always complete the “Full Name” field. Stick to ONE version of your company name and don’t change it based on platform. Enable custom URLs. Wherever possible, make sure you customize the URL for your account to help your profiles rank. Always complete the description section. Make sure you have at least 200 words of good original content there. Write a different description for each platform depending on audience, hashtag ability and voice. Original content helps your public profile rank higher. Interlink your profiles: Several platforms allow you to link to your other business pages when creating a new profile. Co-promote all of your business accounts to give more information about company. This will encourage your new audience to follow you on other social networks too! Here’s a quick cheatsheet for you refer to when setting up your major social media accounts: (Download it here) The following meme is a great reference for understanding how each of social media networks work: Social Media Automation Tools Now that you understand the platforms, we’ve listed a few tools that will save you time and help you automate your posts across platforms. MavSocial: Mass-Posting MavSocial is a free social media management platform allowing you to share (and schedule shares) on multiple social media channels at a time. While native sharing is preferred in most cases, MavSocial saves a ton of time: DrumUp: Queuing and Re-using Important Updates DrumUp is another social scheduling program I use on a regular basis. It allows you to queue your most important updates to repeat them based on your schedule. This makes sure something will always go up on your profiles even if you are too busy to post an update. Cyfe: Monitoring Your Stats Cyfe is the business monitoring platform allowing you to create dashboards to track lost of data from one page. I use it to monitor my social media accounts, social advertising stats, analytics, and so on. Tweetdeck: Monitoring Twitter Tweetdeck brings my brand mentions to my desktop allowing me to monitor them all the time and react quickly and efficiently. Further Reading Obviously, it’s impossible to share all the social media marketing tips and tricks in one article without turning it into a book, so once you feel you are ready to move further, here are a few more articles that are worth the read! Social media tagging: How to tag influencers in your updates so that they notice them and interact with what you post How hashtags work: The comparison of how different social media networks handle hashtags with further explanations on how to utilize hashtags in your marketing strategy The best ways to add social media sharing buttons to your blog: These little things will boost your brand mentions, content shares and ultimately traffic! 17 Social Media Tools: This list includes more tools to automate your social media marketing to save time and increase engagement.
5 Tips For Getting Your Small Business Active In The Community Posted on March 8, 2017 by Erin Posey More and more, small business are shaping their communities—and vice versa. As locals proudly differentiate their city from the rest, small businesses are emerging as an obvious bragging right. From one-of-a-kind cafés to locally sourced markets to homegrown startups attracting fresh talent, there is a growing devotion to supporting local companies. Ideally, that kind of local notoriety can become self-perpetuating, with the business’s reputation doubling as free advertising, drawing in new business and allowing owners to focus on keeping their customers happy and reputation thriving. There’s only one real question, then: how do you get to that level? We’ve put together a list of simple ways to get more involved outside of the office for the good of your community (and your business). Become a Sponsor. Sports teams, charity runs, music festivals– the opportunities for sponsorship are endless in most communities. Find something in your neighborhood that you believe in (and might attract your ideal buyer), and see what sponsorship options they offer. Many of these events rely on sponsorships to keep entry costs low, and if it’s in the name of charity, you also benefit from donating to a cause, getting a tax break and doing your part to keep your community thriving. Orillia Ribfest keeps its admission free by signing on several national and local sponsors. When these events go well, they’re a big win for everyone. Event sponsorships are a perfect line item for you marketing budget: you’ll earn great exposure from anyone who sees your logo on the event’s promotional material. You can also use this as a networking opportunity to chat with other business owners and event organizers, bolstering your list of professional contacts for future partnerships. Show Your Neighbors Some Love. Lots of business improvement associations create networks for local businesses to cross-promote within their community. Even if you don’t sell others’ products, you can reserve a space in your office for relevant flyers and cards from around the neighborhood, or offer coupons for relevant services. By embedding yourself within your community’s DNA, you’re becoming part of that referral conversation. By forging those local partnerships, you’re helping other businesses like yours succeed while keeping yourself top-of-mind within the community. Make Time to Volunteer. Every community is driven by volunteers, and there are countless ways to find out how to get involved. Websites like VolunteerMatch can help direct you toward a place to start, or you can find a community hub that’s relevant to your business in some way. Libraries, homeless shelters, community boards and food pantries are all great places to start looking. You can even take this one step further and close your office for a day, organizing a team volunteer day. This doubles down on your community involvement by keeping your employees engaged to the same causes you are, while building your team’s chemistry along the way. Work With Local Charities. Whenever you’re asked if you’d like to round up your change as a donation to a specific charity, how often do you say no? There are countless ways small business can work with charities in their communities. Asking for donations at a counter is one—but employees have to really believe in it, otherwise they’ll sound like bored McDonald’s cashiers asking about supersizing. An easier way is to set up a box to collect canned foods for a local shelter, or add a button somewhere on your e-commerce site offering the option to make a donation with a purchase. You can also provide meals to a local shelter or adopt a family for Christmas if you don’t have a full day to dedicate to community service. Forge Human Interactions. As you become more active in your community, you’ll discover ways to help your neighbors and fellow business owners in a more personal way. Programs like Habitat for Humanity or Learn To Be offer the opportunity to interact with the people your philanthropy is helping. You can also create a scholarship at a local university. It doesn’t need to be more than $500 or $1,000, and it gets your company name in front of a potentially huge number of students. This is an increasingly popular choice for businesses, as university tuitions skyrocket and the businesses themselves can earn a hefty tax break. There’s a strong element of human interaction here, too, as you can have a choice in the recipient, depending on how you set up the scholarship—you can go through an existing charity (which is easier, but cedes majority control to them), or work directly with the university or college. While many of these options offer fiscal benefits for your business, the philanthropic and moral payout is priceless.
11 Instagram Accounts To Follow For Small Business Inspiration Posted on March 7, 2017June 20, 2018 by Allie Wolff For a small business still building your online reputation, Instagram might seem like an unimportant platform. But that’s where you may be wrong. One of Instagram’s biggest benefits is the ability to churn out compelling content at little to no cost. That’s saying a lot when you’re a growing business on a tight budget. Sharing photos on Instagram is an easy way to give insight into your company culture and the team contributing to your small business. But if you’re not quite ready to hit the ground running with your Instagram account, take some pointers from these influencers (and get inspired while you’re at it). 1. Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee Gary Vee is a machine that functions effectively across all social media platforms. Not only is he a firehose of inspiration, his Instagram is full of smart business tips and a killer example of how to market yourself successfully. 2. Greats @greatsbrand Greats, a Brooklyn-based sneaker brand, is an impressive example of how to build a following – and an entire business – around Instagram and social media. The brand reached its first million customers mostly thanks to their Instagram marketing. The key to their Insta-success? Unlike many other brands, they’re not pushing their brand but focus on providing value. From posts like tasty hamburgers to cool pictures of sneakers, they’ve got a nose for what’s trendy on Instagram — and they don’t take themselves too seriously. 3. Entrepreneur Magazine @entrepreneur A classic brand in the world of small business, Entrepreneur Magazine features inspirational founders on Instagram. You can find different kinds of business owners and learn from their stories. And they’re not just posting standard business headshots. The publication captures each entrepreneur in their element. 4. The Honest Co. @honest Jessica Alba is not only a successful model and an actor, she’s founded and built a billion dollar empire, Honest Company. She managed to balance a career, family and to take a small business to an IPO in a short period of time. (It doesn’t hurt that she had some extra cash flow to get her started.) While pictures of cute babies are completely irresistible, Alba infuses her own personal brand into Honest Co’s Instagram account, sharing quotes and experiences from her own life – setting the brand apart in a crowded market vying for those parenting dollars. 5. Grant Cardone @grantcardone Grant Cardone is pretty much the expert when it comes to building a brand online. As an author, entrepreneur and advisor, he offers valuable tips for growing your business. Whether you’re looking for inspiration, a sales advice or general business tip, his account is where you’ll find it. 6. Tai Lopez @tailopez Tai Lopez made himself popular through his “one book a day” challenge, when he read and reviewed one business or self improvement book each day of the year. He became a successful entrepreneur and lot of that book wisdom as well as practical advice can be found on his account. 7. Manny Khoshbin @mannykhoshbin The highly successful real estate mogul has quite possibly the most inspiring stories on Instagram. He came to America from Iran when he was 14 and could barely speak English. He’s now living the “American dream.” His Instagram features a mix of inspiration and his private collection of cars. If nothing else, looking at all of his ridiculously expensive cars gives us all something to aspire to. 8. Brit Morin @brit Brit Morin, founder of Brit&Co., started as a blogger and turned her website into a prolific brand and a successful multi-million dollar business. Her Instagram is a great display of what a professional brand account should look like. Her posts are engaging and consistent which is hugely important when building a following through social. 9. Richard Branson @richardbranson Everyone knows the founder of Virgin and an adventurous entrepreneur Richard Branson. It should be no surprise that his Instagram account is an instant source of inspiration. His posts are a great reminder that building a business is about more than paperwork. He not only shares business advice, but he’s constantly posting photos of his travels and meetings with other influencers. 10. Mark Cuban @mcuban For Mark Cuban, business is a game. And you better believe that he’s out there playing to win. His account is video heavy with lots of advice and reminders that as a business owner, you have to work to be the best. 11. Ellen DeGeneres @theellenshow Who doesn’t love Ellen, right? The famed talk show host’s Instagram account is full of inspirational examples of her helping others. It’s a fantastic reiteration of her motto: Be kind to one another. While she might have a larger stage and fatter wallet that your small business, her account (and talk show) are a great reminder that we should always be doing our part to give back to others.
7 Questions To Ask Before Hiring Your Next PPC Firm Posted on March 6, 2017July 12, 2018 by Jeanna Barrett Search engine marketing is one of the number one ways to drive prospective customers to your website and then acquire these visitors as new customers. But, if AdWord groups, cost-per-acquisition numbers and Quality Scores are tying you down while trying to juggle other key pieces of your business, it might be time to let someone else handle the AdWords job. It could be a smart decision to hire outside help from a PPC agency to manage and optimize your Google AdWords campaigns. But, before you sign on the dotted line, be sure to ask the following important seven questions of every PPC firm you interview for the job. 1. Can You Share a Success Case Study from One of Your Clients? Read a case study from a previous client to understand if your prospective PPC firm knows how to drive real results. A lot of agencies charge expensive fees to manage PPC, but don’t follow through with meaningful results, so you want to ensure you’re staying away from these type of agencies. Also ask what type of results they expect to produce for your company. And for the ultimate cherry on top, ask to speak to one of their current clients. This way, you can get an unbiased view on what it’s like to work with this agency, the pain points and the successes. 2. What Analytics & Metrics Do You Track? It’s important that you and your prospective PPC firm are on the same page with business goals and metrics. Before they launch your campaigns, get a clear understanding of what defines success and what results – whether it’s click-through rates, conversion rates, or customers – that your business needs to achieve to be successful. You also want to receive a regular monthly custom analytics report and analysis from the agency. 3. What Will My PPC Budget Be vs. The Cost to Pay Your Agency to Run the Campaigns? Get a clear understanding of what the agency’s contract includes: how much of the monthly charge will be your AdWords budget, and how much will be overhead for resources to run the campaign? Make sure you’re not overspending on agency hourly rate or contract fees. Be sure to shop around to find a number of agencies to compare prices, so you can find the best price for your business. 4. Who Will Own the PPC Campaigns — Me or You? Some PPC firms set the campaigns up under their business account, and then when the client/agency relationship ends, your campaigns stay with the agency and not your business. This is a situation you want to avoid. It’s important to have access to historical data for your campaigns, so make sure that the campaigns are setup under your business account — where they’ll stay if you end the partnership. 5. What is Your Client Retention Rate? Firms with a high retention rate are producing great results that keep their clients happy. These are the types of firms you want working for you. The best PPC firms usually have a 90 percent client retention rate (CRR) or higher. Also dig into how long their clients have been their customers and if these clients are keeping them around for longer than two years. 6. What Ad Networks Does Your Firm Manage? Some agencies only manage Google AdWords — but the best PPC agencies will understand and run ads for your business from all the major networks, including Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn and maybe even Twitter. 7. Can I Review the Contract? You want to have a deep understanding of your contract before ever signing it. How long are you locked into the contract? Are there startup fees? Who owns the data? How (and how soon) can you cancel the contract if you’re unhappy with results? Avoid signing contracts that don’t feel right, and don’t be shy in asking for a contract change if you don’t feel comfortable signing the version they sent over. Once you have a clear understanding of the quality of PPC firm you’re looking for and what they’ll provide your business for the budget, you’ll be setup to find the best agency to meet your goals.
5 Email Marketing Strategies You Can Use For Your Agency’s Clients Right Now Posted on March 3, 2017October 21, 2022 by Katie Culp An email list is a marketer’s godsend. Not only is this a direct line to your target audience, but you’re talking to a group of people who clearly love your brand so much they have invited you into their inboxes. They’re interested in your brand, able and willing to act, and you’ve already got at least 1,000 names to get started. So when your agency’s clients come to you with 10% open rates and even lower click-through numbers, you’ve got to know how to turn that around. There are some obvious tricks you most likely understand at this point—list segmentation and email personalization are assumed. But email marketing campaigns, much like the rest of technology, are constantly changing, and strategies that worked in 2013 are minimally effective today. Knowing the latest tricks can help you surprise your clients by unearthing new levels of engagement in a list they’ve been sitting on for years. 1. Do Personalization the Right Way—Not the Creepy Way Personalization is a foregone necessity with email marketing campaigns, but many agencies and marketers still rely on the [firstname] shortcode to do the trick. It doesn’t. It’s transparent and lazy. Instead of relying on using their first name (and is it even their first name? Who knows?), you should be segmenting email lists by geographic location, purchase history or visit frequency, and using those signs to personalize your emails, instead. It’s more approachable to say, “Hey there, thanks for buying something from us yesterday!” than it is to say, “Hi joeschmo8, thanks for your purchase!” There’s a give and take here, as well. Transparency and friendliness go both ways—if you’re interacting personally with your audience, you should reciprocate by showcasing the decent human being that you are. That means no more emails sent from “noreply@”, and making sure people know that they can respond to you directly by replying to the email. If you want to stay invited to their inboxes, you’ve got to welcome them into yours. You can bring email personalization to a new level by tailoring specific recommendations to subscribers based on what they’ve shown interest in before. Netflix does this especially well every time they add a new show, offering the subject line: “We’ve just added a show you might like.” 2. Tell Them to Delete Half of Their List Sound crazy? It isn’t, when you think about it. Purging your email list will keep your client’s list current, responsive and tight. You don’t need to literally delete half of it, but by deleting some old, dead emails that are either bounces or haven’t engaged in two years, you’ll be increasing your client’s open and click-through rates in a fair and accurate way. Obviously this should not be done lightly, or even as a first response to low engagement rates. It’s always a good idea to try re-engagement strategies a few times to entice old customers and remind them why they signed up in the first place. But when all else fails, if they’re not interested, it’s better for both sides to part ways. You’ll be doing yourself a favor in the long run. 3. Freshen Up Their Automated Welcome Campaign We’re assuming every new subscriber to your client’s email list gets at least one welcome email, telling them a bit about the brand and thanking them for subscribing. In 2017, this is considered a common courtesy. What’s less common is researching and creating a whole series of two or three emails, spread out at least 24 hours apart, which continue a logical thread that should engage the customer. This will vary depending on your client’s needs, of course. Informing subscribers about little-known deals or benefits to keeping in touch is ideal, but you might also recommend a friendly follow-up email ensuring people are finding what they want, or satisfied with your service. This also opens up an opportunity to get genuine customer feedback—since, after all, the emails are coming right back to your client’s inbox. 4. Simply Ask Customers to Take a Survey Sometimes, the most direct approach is the easiest. It’s no secret that email marketers want to be relevant in their audience’s lives. So taking a survey to get to know more about them is a great way to help give some direction for email list segmentation and overall company direction. Often, simply sending a basic text email—no fancy templates, no big CTA buttons—can be effective. It reads as refreshingly human and simply. You can sweeten the deal by offering entry to a giveaway or a coupon code to a product you know they’ll appreciate. 5. Round Up Your Client’s Best Content One easy campaign to run is a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. For media publications and some digital companies, it’s top-of-mind; for others, it’s less obvious. If you’re emphasizing content marketing with your client, compiling the most popular articles into a regular newsletter is a no-brainer. You can mix and match those articles with new, relevant products to increase CTRs, and offer other tidbits to delight their audience—fashion tips, industry notes, infographics, inspirational quotes, whatever works. If your client has any kind of evolving web presence, transforming that into a newsletter is a quick and easy way to repurpose content in a direct, helpful way.
7 Ways To Convert Your Blog Traffic From Readers Into Leads Posted on March 2, 2017July 12, 2018 by Jessica Lunk You know that you need a blog to help your audience find you online through social media and search. But what are you doing with the valuable traffic your blog generates? Are you capturing new leads, or losing out on potential customers as they bounce from your website? As you create and share content, you’ll begin to organically grow traffic. Here’s how to make sure that blog traffic eventually converts into customers. Lead Magnets A lead magnet is something of value that you offer in return for a prospect’s contact details. It can be an eBook, a white paper, a market report, a video or anything that provides value to your audience. Lead magnet example courtesy of ChartMogul The key here is that the magnet needs to be something highly relevant and worth your prospect’s time. This ensures the you attract quality leads and filter out people who will never convert. But don’t forget to gate the content so you actually capture the prospect information! The great thing about lead magnets is that because you offer something of a higher value you can ask for more details than just their email address. As a result, you can generate high-quality leads that include phone numbers, job titles and other valuable information. Remarketing Marketing tools like AdRoll, ReTargeter, and Perfect Audience allow you to pixel your existing visitors and target them with relevant offers on websites outside your blog. Image Credit: Perfect Audience The efficiency of your retargeting depends on how good your ads are. Each ad needs to have a clear and powerful copy, a visible CTA and needs to direct your prospects to a landing page where they’ll then convert. Remarketing is an effective way to stay top-of-mind with your website visitors long after they’ve left your website, and driving them back to convert. Content Upgrades The content upgrade is relatively new term in content marketing, although it’s a strategy that’s been around for a while. The concept is simple. Let’s say a potential customer reads a blog post on your website, and she loves it and wants to learn more. The article is valuable and offers very efficient how-to advice she’s going to use. Somewhere in the middle of your blog post, you offer your readers a free download of a simple checklist or a list of resources needed to execute the advice in the article. And that’s it. A content upgrade can be anything that adds to the article: a checklist, list of resources, or simply a more interactive PDF version of the article. It’s a great way to turn someone who’s already interested in what you have to say into a new lead you can nurture further. Webinars The great thing about webinars is that you basically get face time with your customers and an opportunity to pitch your product in person in exchange for their contact information. Image Credit: Kissmetrics However, the webinar itself shouldn’t be about pitching your product – no one wants to take time out of their day for a sales pitch. Instead, offer value, engage with your audience and in the end, give them a discount or an exclusive offer should they choose to sign up. Again, like other lead magnets, the best webinars are highly relevant to your audience, helping you attract super-targeted leads. Special Promotions Offer something special and personalized to each lead. It can be a limited-time discount on your product or a giveaway in return for a sign up. If you’re running a fitness business, for instance, you could offer a chance to win an annual gym membership. Partnerships with other businesses can also be extremely effective, because they help get your brand in front of a whole new audience. It’s a win-win for you and your partner (as long as you share the same, or very similar, target audience). A great example of this is our partnership with the small business loan expert, Kabbage, to co-create and co-market an ebook, The Big Guide to Small Business Marketing. With relevant content for both of our target audiences, we were able to expand our reach through shared marketing. Use your creativity to dream up a promotion your audience will love. Call-To-Action For marketing experts, this one seems like a no brainer, but it’s often forgotten. Once people land on your blog, you should try to go for the kill and convert them to customers right away. This means you want to have a visible CTA somewhere on your blog. Ideally, you can include the CTA just above your website footer or at the end of a blog post. That way, you’ve earned trust first by providing helpful content, making it more likely your visitor will convert. The best strategy might be to lower the barrier of entry for the visitors to your blog. Instead of asking for a big investment upfront, offer something like a free trial or more information about your product. Then make it easy to sign up so you can reach out to these interested leads and help them to convert. Newsletter Signups Having website visitors subscribe to your newsletter is the most basic way to generate leads – but it works. If your content is good, people will sign up to read more. So focus on creating high quality content and make it easy for people to subscribe. There are tons of ways to capture new subscribers. You can add a static bar with a “subscribe” CTA on top of your blog. You could implement pop-ups, sliders and static ads across your website. Or you could use an exit pop-up to capture people leaving your website. But be careful, too much of everything is always a bad thing. Too many pop-ups and CTAs can ruin the entire experience and make your visitors leave. Email Marketing Email is still the most effective marketing channel when it comes to ROI for your investment. Staying top of mind with your contacts is key to convert them into customers. As you’re generating leads from your blog – through newsletter signups, lead magnets, webinars, and CTAs, close the loop with email marketing. Using all of these methods, your blog can become more than just a platform for you to share your business knowledge. It can become a plentiful source of nurtured leads ready to take the deep dive with your small business.
5 Brands Spicing Up Social Media (That Aren’t Taco Bell) Posted on March 1, 2017March 26, 2024 by Allie Wolff Hey, Taco Bell…we get it. Any time we search for brands dominating social media, your name pops up. You pull ridiculous stunts and embrace your status as a drunken late-night feast factory. In fact, you’ve made such a name for yourself on the interwebs that there have been entire listicles like this one we’re writing that are devoted to how well you alone are killing the social media game. But, today we want to recognize the other guys (and we’re not talking about Wendy’s). There are other fantastic brands doing impressive work, running clever, responsive, viral campaigns across all social platforms. So we’re taking you out of the spotlight, Taco Bell, and we’re going to focus on five phenomenal brands that are nailing social media in 2017. NASA When NASA announced the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets only 40 light years away (which is reasonably close, as far as planets go), within 24 hours there were scientists answering questions on Reddit. This isn’t unusual. Whenever NASA makes a breakthrough of any sort, they have a team ready to discuss their findings with curious minds in the immediate, democratic town hall–style forum that are Reddit AMAs—”Ask Me Anything” sessions open to anyone. Social media has arguably been the best public relations boost for NASA in recent years. It’s given some of America’s most brilliant minds a chance to explain exactly what they’re doing to the general public, using clear language, catchy videos and high-res photos. NASA has more than 22 million followers on Twitter, nearly 20 million on Instagram and millions more across Facebook, Pinterest and Snapchat. NASA offers a great example of how to use social media to explain complex issues in layman’s terms to engage a massive audience. GEICO Car insurance has got to be one of the least glamorous industries around, but that hasn’t stopped GEICO from forging one of the most innovative video campaigns YouTube has ever seen. Take, for example, their infamous “hungry dog” ad. It’s the best example of grabbing attention and ensuring viewers don’t hit the “Skip Ad” button on YouTube. Their other social platforms are a bit more standard—their Twitter feed feels a lot like a series of colourful ads, and their Facebook content largely comprises content-marketing blog posts, occasionally funny pictures and their well-known commercials. But they know it’s their video department making the real name for them in the consumer world, from the gecko mascot to the hungry dog. As they say on their YouTube page, “We know you came for the Gecko, but we’re sure you’ll stay for everything else.” KLM KLM (or Royal Dutch Airlines) is a superb example of attentive customer service and good humor wrapped into one neat package. Not only is their Twitter feed a 24-hour customer support line working in 11 different languages—their header image is updated every 5 minutes with the current response time—they also pepper their feed with delightful little moments like this: The social team at KLM understands that, sometimes, the best you can do with social media isn’t advertising, attempts at going viral or traffic direction, but just being a pleasant brand to follow. Of course, they couldn’t get away with that stuff if their customer service wasn’t top-notch; the two go hand-in-hand. KLM comes across as genuine and likeable, which, for an airline, is about as good as you can get. R/GA This bold, design-focused ad agency knows branding well, but what’s interesting is how discrete their social platforms are. Their Twitter feed, unlike their more mild Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, is a wholly sardonic beast fuelled by one company member. The bosses at R/GA clearly understood early on why it’s important to leverage your strengths toward each platform individually, rather than repost the same content a few different ways. Overlooking one social platform entirely would be a wiser move than mindlessly posting the same content across platforms. As Chapin Clark, who runs R/GA’s Twitter feed, once told AdWeek, “If you were in a room speaking to an audience of thousands of people, you’d take that pretty seriously, right? I don’t see how Twitter is all that different.” Jetsetter Winner of the 2015 Shorty Award for Best Brand on Pinterest, Jetsetter—a hybrid search engine/magazine/inspirational travel brand—has found its biggest success on the pinboard platform, with more than four million followers and dozens of inspirational boards. They succeed, in part, because they use the platform democratically, pinning pictures from across the web, not just promoting their own content. Their board on vintage travel posters, for example, barely features anything linking back to their main site, but is a delightful set of sleek, old-fashioned-looking posters that are perfect for Pinterest’s vertical-image preferences. They also run Instagram photo contests and are pushing Snapchat, evidence that beautiful photos are engaging, regardless of where they come from. Nothing wrong with well-curated aggregation—especially if it helps build a community that shares your interests. While your small business may not have a dedicated team of social managers manning your accounts 24-7, it’s important to make your presence (and personality) known on social.