Conquer Small Business Automation With These 12 Tools & Apps Posted on August 22, 2016September 29, 2020 by Jeanna Barrett Because it’s becoming increasingly easier to automate previously time-consuming and clunky business tasks, there’s never been a better time to be a small business owner than in 2016. Technology platforms provide hundreds of ways to run your business from the cloud, creating more efficient processes that save small business owners time and money. And really, what’s better than making more money and having more time? But, with so many options for tools, it can be hard to know what exactly to use for your business. I’ve gathered a list of the best small business tools — at the best price point for scrappy budgets: Hire Someone to Manage Your Social Media Accounts with CloudPeeps Price: Free Feel like you don’t have the time to manage, moderate, and post on your business social media accounts every day? Social media community management can be really time-consuming and difficult for business owners to find the time to manage, however, it’s very important to keep an active social media presence. Instead, hire a professional and experienced social media manager within a budget that works for your business using CloudPeeps. Their professionals are handpicked from the best, creating a network of people you can trust to manage your business accounts. Easily Schedule Meetings with Calendly Price: Free Have you ever sent dozens of emails back and forth with a client or partner, trying to find a time that works for both of you to meet? With Calendly, you skip the back and forth and create time slots that contacts can use to schedule a time that works for your availability. Just send a link to your Calendly, and they’ll pick a day and time themselves. Then you’ll both receive a Google calendar invite so the appointment shows on both calendars. Badabing, badaboom. Treat Your Employees Like Gold with Gusto Price: Starting at $19 + $6 per employee, per month It’s tough to find great employees, so when you do, you want them to stick around. With Gusto, you can easily manage the most important parts of your employees’ tenure with you — their payroll, health benefits and workers’ compensation insurance. Gusto has great features like easy online enrollment for both payments and health benefits and personal touches to payroll stubs such as thank you notes and birthday messages. Offer Easy Online Booking with Fynder Price: As little as $12.50 a month If you’re offering classes or appointments, it’s imperative to have a seamless booking system that makes scheduling time with your business easy for your customers. There are a ton of online booking tools out there, but one of the best of the bunch is Fynder. The tool was created by studio owners for studio owners, instructors and other personal service providers. It’s mobile friendly and designed to highlight your brand. It’s also integrates with Facebook pages, SquareSpace, WordPress, ClassPass, Stripe and more. Send & Sign PDF Documents with FillAnyPDF Price: $3.99 a month If you’re creating contracts or documents that need to be reviewed by clients and signed, you can do this electronically by using a tool called FillAnyPDF.com. Upload documents, fill fields and request or add electronic signatures all through this tool. DocuSign is the leading provider for this service, but it you’re just starting out and have a small budget, FillAnyPDF is most competitively priced for small businesses. Automate Your Marketing & Track Customers in a CRM with BenchmarkONE Price: Starting at $39 a month BenchmarkONE is a sales and marketing automation platform that includes simple-to-use tools for email automation, contact management, small business CRM, and lead capture, and is priced competitively for the small business market. Ranked highest in customer satisfaction by Trust Radius and G2Crowd, BenchmarkONE is a solution specifically built and tailored to self-made small businesses. Track Your Expenses with Expensify Price: Starting at $4.99 per user, per month Expensify is the best way to track all business expenses to ensure you’re keeping your business and personal expenses separate. You can sync multiple credit cards, and easily scan receipts and track charges as soon as you make them with their mobile app. It’s great for managing employee expenses too with easy expense approvals. Expensify integrates with all major expense platforms such as Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and more. Send Invoices & Accept Payments with FreshBooks Price: Starting at $6 a month Sending recurring and occasional invoices is easy with FreshBooks, which allows you to charge clients with a couple clicks of a mouse and then receive the payments via credit card. You can also keep track of clients, expenses and time spent on projects too. If you like all-in-one software, FreshBooks is a great option. Offer Exceptional Customer Service with FreshDesk Price: Free FreshDesk offers the best customer service management out there — manage all of your customer issues with a ticketing system that allows internal collaboration, time tracking and prioritization. FreshDesk’s automation options also help you save time and money. Set up canned responses, set bulk actions that can categorize, delete or assign tickets with a few clicks, or setup scenario automations that allow you to perform the same set of actions quickly. Manage Many Projects & Tasks Efficiently with Trello Price: Free Trello is a life-changing, free tool that can be used in a variety of ways. Use it to track projects and collaborate across your business, create your own to-do list, manage a content marketing calendar — Trello’s boards and lists let you do all of that and more. Trello also has a mobile app that syncs, so if you’re on the go and think of a project update or task, it can be added remotely and synced to the board your employees use. Turn Your Cell Phone Into a Business Line with Grasshopper Price: Starting at $26 a month Grasshopper allows business owners to setup a professional phone system with their cell phone. You can keep an existing number for your business, if one has already been set up, or get a new toll-free or national number. Grasshopper allows you to forward all calls to your cell phone, receive transcribed voicemails to your email and skip buying expensive phone hardware for your entire office. Eliminate Junk Mail with Unroll.me Price: Free It’s important to effectively manage email as a business owner — timely responses can mean more business and happy customers and partners. If you feel like it’s difficult to sift through the business from the junk, you might want to enlist the help of Unroll.me. This free service allows you to create one rolled-up email that consolidates the emails of your choice into one email a day. It also scans your email for all subscriptions and allows you to bulk unsubscribe from lists you don’t want to be part of anymore. Manage Your Business Communications, Storage & Collaboration with Google Apps Price: Starting at $6 per user, per month Managing your business with Google Apps for Work will likely change the way you do business. Google’s tools are easy to use, integrate with one another and allow you the safety of keeping all of your important documents on the cloud, accessible anywhere and anytime. By using Gmail for your business email, you get the power of Google’s search engine in your email, tagging for easy email management, top-notch spam protection and 30GB of storage. Save and create all of your business documents — Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and POwerPoint presentations — using Drive. You can even have company meetings with up to 25 people via video conferencing using Hangouts. All of these tools and apps might not be necessary for your small business, but with a select few, you can save yourself time and money which can mean nothing but good things for your bottom line.
Nail Your Small Business Financial Model with These Simple Tips Posted on August 19, 2016August 19, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick It’s easy to get stuck in the past when you’re building a financial model for your small business. After all, you already have data on what you’ve accomplished and how much you’ve invested in areas like marketing and payroll. But only looking in the rearview mirror won’t take you to where you need to go and it certainly won’t deliver the best forecast. Ideally, you need to understand where you’ve been while also looking out the windshield ahead to propel your business into growth mode. That means it’s important to know which levers to pull to multiply your revenue and profits in the future. Take a look at factors like visits to your website, conversion rates and repeat purchases as you build your model and determine what is attainable for your small business. Whether you are hoping to attract bank funding, an outside investor, or wanting to grow organically, developing a sound model based on past and future information will give you the keys to accelerate your growth. Use these simple, effective tips to nail your small business financial model: Think Like a Puppeteer The first step to creating a winning business model is to understand what drives your revenue. Keeping accurate data on the efforts you make to drive sales is a key part of understanding which strings to pull in your business to achieve the best results. Are you constantly keeping track of visits to your website—and whether they lead to customer acquisition? Are you collecting data on conversion rates from your various marketing efforts and repeat purchases by your customers? Are you analyzing data on how various demographic groups of your customers behave? Are you looking at how profitable it is to sell each product or service you offer? It’s important to set up systems to track the correct data points or you won’t be able to figure out what really drives your growth. By having insights into where your revenue is coming from, it makes it much simpler to develop a sound financial model and gives you the ability to pull the right levers to achieve your business goals. Geek Out On the Numbers At first, you may find all of the data you are collecting a bit overwhelming. Once you start to analyze it, though, you may begin to find some fascinating trends. Often, there are big surprises. You may find that different factors are driving your revenue and profits than you expected. For instance, maybe your business is driving the bulk of sales through your website or maybe it’s from your email marketing efforts, through personalized email campaigns. Instead of poring over reams of spreadsheets — who has the time? — use the dashboard within your CRM to track key metrics that may highlight interesting patterns between your marketing activities and closed sales. Rethink Your Target Market Once you can see the true connections between your marketing efforts and increase in your revenue and profits, it will be easier to come up with a business model that will allow for exciting future growth. You’ll also be able to see which activities you should discontinue, so you can focus more time and resources on those that help you grow. In the early days of running a business, it often makes sense to work with almost anyone who will do business with you, so you have some cash flowing in. Once you take a close look at your data, you’ll probably want to narrow your target market. For instance, you may want to stop marketing to customers who tend to only buy from you when you are offering deep discounts and focus more on cultivating repeat business with customers who are willing to pay full price. If you can find a successful way to do more of your business with your more profitable, raving customers, you’ll be able to come up with a more attractive business model. Keep Experimenting Just because a potential driver of your business hasn’t panned out this time, that doesn’t mean it never will. Let’s say you’ve taken out an advertisement in a local magazine to offer potential customer a free consultation, but no one is biting. Perhaps running the same ad on your website, in a relevant publication online or advertising it in your emal newsletter will result in a better response. You’ll never know until you test different approaches. Keep experimenting with the different levers of your business—and track the results—until you are clear on what business model works best for you. Once you really know what sales and marketing strategies will drive your future growth, you’ll be able to plug them into your financial spreadsheets and create future projections in a more logical way. But even when you reach that point, don’t stop experimenting. Your business and market conditions aren’t static. You never know when you’ll discover a brand new way to increase your revenue and profits dramatically—and need to weave it into your fast-evolving business model. Growing your small business requires planning. The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the the past and the present. By creating a rock solid financial model, you’ll propel your business into the fast lane and ensure you are pushing all the right buttons.
Generate More Leads with These Expert Email Newsletter Tips Posted on August 18, 2016July 1, 2021 by Jamie Miller From bulk print mailings to email updates, the newsletter has long been a chief tactic for generating leads and getting them in the sales funnel. Email marketing for small business has experienced many changes over the years, and yet, use of the email newsletter has endured. This easy marketing approach has remained a go-to option for good reason — it’s effective. If you aren’t already using an email newsletter to enhance your small business marketing efforts, it’s time to get started. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll be on your way to building a more loyal customer base and pulling nurtured leads into your sales pipeline. Craft Relevant, Meaningful Content Many businesses make the mistake of using newsletters solely as a means of broadcasting company developments. Most recipients have no interest in reading these stories, and as a result, the unsubscribe option is chosen almost immediately. The occasional company update is perfectly fine, but the average subscriber would much rather read something relevant to his or her own life or business. Instead of sending a weekly bulletin, focus on meaningful content that will add some value to your readers’ day. Ideally, the majority of your content will be educational, with promotional language taking a backseat. These proportions can be skewed on occasion when your company has groundbreaking news to report, but in general, the less sales language, the better. Instead of directly telling people about your expertise and industry authority, show them through meaningful content. Create an Effective Call-to-Action Promotional content should be kept to a minimum in your email newsletters, but if there’s one place you’re definitely encouraged to promote your company and its services, it’s the call-to-action. A good call-to-action can be the difference between a cold lead and a hot prospect, so take time to craft something short and snappy — and a message that will generate an immediate response. One effective call-to-action is far more valuable than several scattered throughout, so aim to streamline your content in a way that ties it all together with a single CTA. Personalization Recipients respond far better to personalized newsletters than they do to form emails obviously sent out en masse. In fact, according to a study from Marketing Land, personalized emails deliver six times the transaction rates of normal emails. Despite this, only 30 percent of brands use personalization in email correspondence. Personalization should go beyond simply using the recipient’s name in the introduction to the newsletter. Consider also adding the recipient’s company when possible, or in retail capacities, including a mention of a past purchase. Segmentation can prove useful in this regard, as not every person on your list will respond to every newsletter. A/B Testing Concise emails with clever subject lines and snappy CTAs are important, but ultimately, the best way to learn what works for your customer base is to test your newsletters. Use A/B testing to determine when it is most effective to send emails, how recipients respond to various layouts, and what type of content they prefer. Something as simple as the color of your CTA can make a huge difference, but you’ll never know unless you test extensively. From building brand identity to generating leads, your email newsletters can accomplish great things. Forget the spam and send your audience something useful; the result will be more conversions and fewer newsletters in the junk folder.
3 Reasons to Update Email Marketing with Marketing Automation Posted on August 17, 2016March 6, 2020 by Jessica Lunk This blog post was updated on February 21, 2020. It seems like a new hot marketing tactic is popping up every day (do you need to be on Snapchat? Should you invest in video marketing?). So it’s easy to overlook email marketing – the old standby that businesses have used for decades to reach potential customers. However, email is still a very powerful and effective marketing tool for turning contacts into customers. In fact, according to McKinsey & Company, “E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.” So how do you harness the power of email? Email marketing software for small business has come a long way from the “batch & blast” email systems of the past. Today, email marketing software with integrated marketing automation technology helps small businesses to dynamically respond to the individual needs of their prospects and customers. Here are three reasons to embrace an all-in-one email marketing and marketing automation software as a critical component of your company’s toolbox: 1: Make the Most of Email Marketing Data Stand alone email marketing software tracks basic metrics like clicks and opens. While click-through and open rate indicate how effective your emails are, they don’t do much in the way of guiding your contacts to the next step in their customer journey. Marketing automation software is a tool that lets you do more with your email marketing data. Marketing automation tracks which email links your contacts click on, which pages they visit on your website, and even which forms they fill out. This data paints a picture of what your contacts are most interested in, allowing you to focus your marketing campaigns accordingly. 2: Provide Context to Each Email Send One of the reasons that many people overlook email sent from different businesses is that it feels generic. That is, the company is trying to cast such a wide net and reach as wide an audience as possible, but it leaves those who receive it feeling like the business sees them as anonymous walking wallets. However, email marketing software for small business allows you to add contextualization to every aspect of the email marketing experience. In a stand alone email marketing software, you might have lists like “Customers” and “Prospects” that you manually import from your email client, spreadsheet or database. When you use marketing automation, however, you can create dynamic lists. You can pull an up-to-date list based on your contacts’ interests, their demographics, or their contact status. By creating distinct groups of customers, you can send targeted emails to the groups likeliest to respond to these particular messages and offers. You can also set up triggered email that helps to follow up on earlier interest a customer may show. You can create entire nurturing email campaigns to organically move customers through the sales funnel while letting you monitor where they are at each step of the way. By sending relevant resources and solutions to those who need them, you show your contacts that you understand their needs, building trust – and eventually sales. 3: Take Advantage of Autoresponses and Transactional Emails When it comes to email marketing, naturally, the focus is building marketing emails and campaigns that drive conversions. However, transactional emails are opened far more than marketing emails. Think about it. When you send a marketing email, you’re pushing a message out to your audience – whether they’re ready for it or not. When it comes to transactional emails, however, you’re sending an email in response to an action from your contact (like paying for a service, or requesting more information from your website). Transactional emails therefore have higher engagement, giving them the potential to generate far greater revenue than marketing-focused emails. Transactional emails are the perfect opportunity to make a lasting impression on your prospects and customers. Personalize where it makes sense. Make sure they are in-line with current company branding. Opt for friendly language. Buffer, for example, does a great job of making a run-of-the-mill invoice into an opportunity to showcase their company culture: Not only is the Buffer email super personal, but the “P.S.” also provides a touch point with the customer – an opportunity to be heard. Marketing automation can help you offer a next step in your transactional emails to make prospects and customers feel more invested in your business so you can capture additional revenue. For instance, if a prospect fills out a form to receive an e-book from your website, send a thank you email with a link to the e-book they requested, but also take the opportunity to help them to learn more about your services. Ask them to check out a related video, for example, guiding them further down the path to conversion. Marketing automation software can monitor engagement with transactional emails. As with marketing emails, you have an opportunity to see what works and what does not and to make even this once-perfunctory part of your company communication more in line with customer expectations. Marketing automation is a powerful way to utilize email marketing to its fullest so you can squeeze every opportunity from your list of prospects and customers. With marketing automation, you send more personalized messages, building trust and nurturing relationships into more sales for your business.
This 3 Letter Word Is Your Key To Sales Persuasion Posted on August 16, 2016August 16, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Here’s a scary thought: In today’s economy, your company can do almost everything right and still go out of business. You can have a thorough business plan. You can have a beautiful website that’s responsively designed to help you gain more mobile customers. You can have all components of your marketing well integrated. You can even have a snappy, eye-catching logo. But if you can’t get your prospects and customers to say one, simple, three letter word to themselves or out loud, you will fail and be out of business in short order. So what is this three letter word? “Yes.” You have to persuade buyers to say “yes” to investing in your product or service. Let’s look at a few ways you can get to that important commitment with your prospects and customers. Most buyers are often hesitant to say “yes.” Chances are you’ve found this out the hard way. Why? “Yes” can be such a difficult answer to reach. Think about it. Unless you sell low-priced commodity items like groceries or gasoline, your prospects have a financial risk involved in their buying decision. You are asking them to part with their hard-earned money. The product may not give them the results they want. In a B2C purchasing situation, they may face the wrath of an unhappy spouse. In the B2B world, they may lose their job, or their company may be at risk financially if a large purchase goes sideways. You can bet they have their guard up. So even if they are in the market and are qualified to buy what you sell, you don’t have a slam-dunk guarantee of making the sale. Are You Trying To Sell Steak To Vegetarians? So what can you do to increase your chances? Enter the art and science of persuasion. To get your buyers to commit, you have to make sure you are trying to persuade the right audience. This is critical, so please don’t skip over it. It doesn’t matter if you have a solid marketing plan, well-written, engaging content or stellar sales skills. If you are trying to reach the wrong audience, you will fail. Here’s an absurd but compelling example: If you owned a restaurant, would you try to persuade committed vegetarians to buy your steaks and barbecue? Of course not. You would invest your time, energy and resources trying to appeal to steak eaters. According to legendary copywriter and direct response marketer Dan Kennedy, this is paramount to the success of your business. So once you have determined that you have a viable product or service to sell, find the audience that’s ravenously interested in it, and market your product and yourself to them. Go after the “meat eaters,” and don’t even think about trying to convert the “vegetarians.” Focus On “Them” Not “You” To paraphrase Dale Carnegie, talk in terms of “what they want, not what you want.” Obviously, you want them to buy from you. But they are not buying for the sake of buying, they are considering buying because they are hoping you can help them solve a frustrating problem or reach a desired goal. Before you can convince your audience to say “yes,” you have to first gain their interest. That all starts with capturing their attention. Talking to them about what they want will help you stand out in a sea “me first” businesses. Authenticity Above All Here’s another crucial point: Persuasion isn’t manipulation. It’s not trying to trick your audience. It’s not “twisting their arm.” It’s helping them to do something they already want to do. The steak eater who can afford to go out and dine at a local steakhouse and has the financial means and desire to do so is going to do so somewhere. Work to persuade him to buy from you. Your customers have to trust you. So work on building that trust. How? Be likable. Give without demanding anything in return. And demonstrate your credibility by showing case studies – actual results of what you have achieved for customers – and client testimonials on your website. Written client testimonials leverage a powerful persuasion technique called “social proof.” This plants the notion in your prospect’s mind that, “Hey, other people like me have bought from that company and enjoyed great results. Maybe I can also!” It has been said, and rightly so, that “selling is a transfer of emotion.“ The enthusiasm you have about your product and the good it can do for your potential buyer shines through when you are selling and makes your prospect more likely to buy. The same thing is true for your written sales copy and content. To quote poet Robert Frost, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” The emotions you feel when you write your marketing messages are noticed by your reader and can actually affect their emotions. So when you are writing your marketing content, be excited! Be enthusiastic! Generate an emotional state in your reader that will generate momentum towards the sale. Yes, momentum is crucial in the sales and persuasion process. You need to get the ball rolling and do your best to keep it rolling. A proven way to do that is to get your potential customers in the habit of saying “Yes”. In your written copy and face-to-face, ask them simple, low-commitment questions where their only natural response is to say “yes.” Developing the sales momentum of getting them to say “yes” to little questions will make it more likely they will commit when you ask them the big question. Continue Your Persuasion Education I hope this article has developed your motivation to learn more about why the power of persuasion is so vital to your sales success. It’s far too big a topic to cover in one brief blog post. Want to learn more? Robert Cialdini, Ph.D’s Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion and Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People are two proven resources in the persuasion department. And here’s a bonus to keep in mind: persuasion isn’t just a valuable business and sales skill. It’s a useful life skill. So my advice? Become a passionate student of persuasion.
5 Signs Your Small Business is Ready for Sales and Marketing Software Posted on August 12, 2016September 16, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick If you’re a small business owner, chances are you have heard about the surge of sales and marketing software tools designed to help your business be more efficient. Incorporating CRM (Customer Relationship Management), email and marketing automation into one software platform, helps businesses to reach more new customers and drive repeat sales. But maybe you’ve been slow to implement new tools into your business fearing they are overly complex, costly, or far too impersonal. Fortunately, digital technology has evolved. No longer are sales and marketing automation tools designed just for the Fortune 500. Sales and marketing software is not only affordable and easy to use, but it boosts your sales efficiency. In fact, businesses that use marketing automation for nurturing prospects experience a “451% increase in qualified leads.” One main reason for the increase in conversions and leads is that sales and marketing automation is far from impersonal: It actually makes your prospects and customers feel like you care about their individual needs, concerns, and goals. So, is it the right time to bring sales and marketing software into your business? Here are five signs that you are ready to jump in. 1. You’re Not Finding Ideal Buyers While it has always been important for your business to stand out, the digital era has made it more important than ever for you to understand who your best customers are and where they are online. If you try to appeal to everyone, all of the time, then prospective customers may dismiss your business in favor of one that understands their specific needs. Automation software lets you identify and cater to ideal buyers of your products and services. By monitoring and reporting on the behavior of your website visitors, email responses, and customer purchases, you can begin segmenting prospects and customers more effectively. Each segment within your contacts has different goals and different ways of meeting those goals. Let’s assume you own a commercial insurance agency and decide to send an offer out to your leads. One prospect, Jane, opens your email but is looking for life insurance for her family. While Steve, a more qualified prospect has a need to insure his new office space. He opens your email, clicks on the email link and also visits your quote page. By determining how each prospect is interacting with your content and online, you can start to deliver the right message to your ideal buyers — like Steve. Attracting ideal buyers like Steve may also include: Making sure your website has pictures of Steve’s demographic Ensuring that your email campaigns offer resources for his specific problems Creating social media-friendly media content, such as videos and infographics, to help Steve meet his goals. Ultimately, one of the greatest strengths of sales and marketing software is that it consistently gives you an opportunity to improve: The more you know about your best customers, the more you can customize an experience to appeal to your ideal buyers. 2. You’re Missing Out On Hot Sales Opportunities Most sales people focus their efforts on cold calling leads and moving them through to a closed sale. The problem is that it’s an inefficient way to grow sales in this modern age. Even for veteran sales members knowing when a sales lead is ready to contact and following up on sales opportunities can be tricky. Often, the sales team is in the dark about how visitors interact with your website, where prospects fit in the sales process, and which opportunities to spend their valuable time on. Sales and marketing automation provides real time sales data right to your fingertips and “Hot” leads to your doorstep. You get valuable insights into which prospects are ready to buy and which ones need a bit more nurturing. For instance, let’s say you sell tax software and your goal is to get your ideal buyer into a demonstration of your product. A prospective customer, Jill, visits your website and your “Take a live demo” page but doesn’t fill out the form to see your software. Another prospect, Sam, visits your demo page and fills out the contact form to take a live demo. Even though Jill didn’t follow through on taking a demo and may not ready to convert, she’s most likely interested enough to receive a nurtured email campaign to sustain and build her interest. When Sam fills out your call to action form, all of this information is automatically sent to your sales team, with the CRM software automatically moving Sam and the hottest leads to the top of the stack. Sales and marketing software helps reduce the amount of sales time you spend with prospects like Jill and makes sure you never miss another “Hot” opportunity like Sam. 3. You Don’t Have Insights into Sales Pipelines and Activities The goal of your business is to convert more leads into customers and grow sales in an efficient manner. That means your sales and marketing process shouldn’t be left to trusting your gut or only based on feedback from your sales team. In order to drive better sales and marketing results you need to know what’s working and what isn’t through real, actionable data. Sales and marketing software gives your business the insights into which lead sources are converting, where opportunities stand in your sales pipeline, and what sales activities your sales team is working on. The better you can identify bottlenecks in your pipeline or sales and marketing process, the quicker you can adapt and fine tune your sales and marketing machine. Improved sales data will also help you to forecast monthly sales more accurately and measure sales performance so you can increase your ability to exceed your sales goals. 4. You Need to Grow Revenue with Existing Customers A great way to grow sales for your small business is to market to your existing customers. After all, repeat customers spend on average 20% more than new customers. Whether it’s an up-sell (finding ways to increase sales through existing products), a cross-sell (selling a new product to an existing customer that drives revenue) or a referral, there are a number of ways to gain more revenue from your customer base. If you’re struggling, like most businesses, to get more repeat sales and keep customers, sales and marketing software maybe the answer. Using online behaviors such as webpage visits and purchase data within your sales and marketing software, you can better target customers’ specific needs based on what interests them and then nurture them with personalized emails until they are ready to purchase. Automatic campaigns can also be set up to reach out to customers on important events such as birthdays, contract renewals, or even to request a review or referral for your business. 5. No Central Place for Information If your sales and marketing process consists of sticky notes and a series of Excel or Google spreadsheets, it’s probably time to step up your game with an all-in-one sales and marketing system. Standalone tools such as Outlook or Gmail are fine if you only have a handful of customers. But, as you grow and build new connections, it becomes impossible for you or your team to know who has been contacted – when and by whom – making it really difficult to build those close, profitable relationships with your contacts. There are other issues that can arise when hosting customer information in multiple silos. For instance, one of your sales reps may end up reaching out to try to sell to a hot lead, only to find out that this “hot lead” is already using your product. This is a “lose/lose” scenario because your sales team not only wasted time trying to sell to someone who is already a customer, but left the customer wondering if your company even cares about having his business at all. With CRM and marketing tools in one spot, you get a better picture of the entire customer lifecycle and can improve communications with your prospects and customers every step of the way. All of your team members have instant access to detailed customer records at the click of a button, making sure that nobody’s time ends up wasted. With all of your data in one place, your entire business stays on the same page. Customers receive email nurturing campaigns that are unique and distinct from what those on your prospecting lists receive. This ends up being a”win/win” scenario. Your sales team avoids embarrassing flubs, improves efficiency, and prospective and existing customers get the warm, fuzzy feeling that you value your relationship with them. Incorporating sales and marketing software into your business can help you reach new customers and drive repeat sales. With an improved process and all your data in one place, you’ll have your finger on the pulse of the marketing efforts that are driving sales and gain real time insights into the needs of every prospect and customer. So what’s the best way to see if sales and marketing software is right for your business? Request a live demo!
3 Simple Tests to Increase Landing Page Conversions Posted on August 11, 2016 by Jeanna Barrett If you have created a few landing pages with offers for your prospective customers, congratulations you’re making significant headway on becoming a marketing automation superstar. It’s important, however, to not just “fix it and forget it” with your landing pages. You want to make sure you’re optimizing every part of the page to maximize the number of downloads and leads you capture. Here are three easy landing page tests you can do to make sure you’re reaching your full lead capturing potential. Swap Out Images You want to make sure your landing page images are compelling, on-brand, eye-catching and convey the proper message. The use of different imagery throughout your landing page design can affect conversion on your page. According to the Association for Psychological Science, there is a direct correlation between emotions and imagery. They found that emotions could be evoked and manipulated through the use of different photos. What emotion do you want the image on your landing page to evoke? For instance, sunshine evokes feelings of happiness and freedom, as do warm colors like orange. Dark colors can evoke foreboding, sadness and unhappiness, so use dark colors wisely. Learn how to manipulate your photos to portray the emotions you want your customers to feel. It’s also important to use photography on your landing pages that feels genuine and on-brand. Since being genuine is associated with trust, you want to make sure your customers perceive you as honest and trustworthy. Oftentimes, generic stock photography can portray the opposite of those feelings. Instead of using a generic stock photo of a brunette girl with a customer service headset on, why not take a picture of your employees standing at the front desk with your shoppers, or an employee talking on the phone with a customer? Instead of a generic photo of a business person, include a picture of yourself on the landing page. For instance, we did a photoshoot with our customer service team and one of our customers, CEV Consulting to use on our website. Check out the difference between that authentic photo Compare a generic stock photo of a customer service rep: To our authentic team + customer pic: The more your landing page images feel true to your brand, the better your prospective leads will feel about giving you their business. Also, don’t discount taking photos with an iPhone or smartphone and doctoring them up in a photo editing program if you can’t afford a photographer. This type of scrappy work can result in beautiful, professional landing page images. Finally, studies have shown that featuring humans in photography are more compelling than logos, landscapes or other generic images. Facebook recommends using photos of real people in Facebook ads instead of illustrations or logos. Because of the positive, emotional connection with photos of individuals, it’s probably a good idea to include them within photos on your landing page. However, you can’t be absolutely sure what will resonate best with your audience until you A/B test photos with humans and without. Test Button Colors & Calls to Action You want your landing page visitors to click and convert, and the way they do so is through your call-to-action button. Don’t assume that the best button color for your landing page is a color that matches your brand. You want your button to stand out, and a contrasting color is likely best. Studies have shown that red buttons beat green buttons, but orange is best. Some brands have followed this advice, however, and seen opposite results. So the best thing to do for your business is to test different colored buttons to see which make your customers want to click. You also shouldn’t default to “Submit” as your text on the button either. “Submit” is dull and doesn’t give the lead what they want. Try changing your call-to-action buttons to say something like: See Business Plans Start Your Free Trial Download My Free Guide Create My Free Account All of the copy on these buttons have one thing in common—they’re speaking to what the lead is trying to obtain by clicking submit. Don’t overthink your button text because you can test and change it— “Get” is one of the most effective calls to action. Just remember to keep your call to action short and focused on what your prospective buyer will receive. Finally, make sure your button isn’t competing with any other calls to action on your page. You don’t want three buttons inviting your customers to sign-up, see your testimonials and email you. Decide what you think is the MOST important action you want visitors to take, and make that button prominent and the only option. Try Out Different Forms You want your customers to fill out a form before they click submit, so you can gather lead intelligence that will help your email marketing campaigns or sales team. But what is the right length of fields on a form? Generally, the advice is not to include more than 5 – 7 pieces of collected information that a lead needs fill out. Our resources page, for example, only asks for name and email address. For bottom-of-the-funnel leads who are requesting a demo, on the other hand, we ask for a bit more information as they are more invested in our solution. However, much like the button color the best advice is to test what works best for your landing page visitors. Every target audience can exhibit different behaviors. Another variable that matters on the form is the type of information you’re requesting. Leads might be willing to give their phone number, but not their email. They might balk at a question such as, “How often do you need financial assistance?” but be more willing to answer, “Would a loan be useful to you?” The way you word your form questions matters. Be sure to think carefully what types of information will help you segment your leads, and decide which are more sales qualified, then test out different versions of these questions. As with all A/B tests, it’s important to isolate a variable you’re testing. If you’d like to test your button color, make sure nothing else is different about the landing page. Landing page variation A should look the same as landing page variation B, minus the one test you’re performing. This way you can be sure the test is accurately recording a lift in change. If you’d like to understand more about how to use A/B testing with Hatchbuck, you can check out A Quick 5-Step Intro into A/B Testing.
Past Customers: An Overlooked Resource for Your Small Business Posted on August 9, 2016August 10, 2016 by Tegan Arnold When you own a small business, you have to utilize every tool available to maximize your success. So why not leverage an existing resource? Past customers can be a gold mine of repeat business. While every business needs new customers to survive, it is expensive to acquire them. Your easiest and most predictable revenue source is from customers familiar with your business and products. Plus, repeat customers spend about 67% more than new ones. Here are ways to reach out to existing clients to get them to do just that: Offer A Bonus Put some thought into what your customers are buying and the additional needs those purchases trigger. For instance, if you sell printers, your customers are going to need ink to go with it. Stocking those complementary items can expand your gross margins. Incentives can turn one client into multiple clients. Reward customers for recommending you to their own clients or other companies they partner with by offering discounts or credits. This can strengthen your relationship with customers while generating new clients without a time or money investment. Keep in Touch Haven’t heard from a major customer in a while? Give them a call, drop them a note or, if you’re trying to reach a large number of customers, use automated marketing to contact them multiple ways, such as email and social media. Automated marketing allows you to schedule emails, automate social media postings, track results and more, all in less time and with less effort. Don’t use this method to blatantly sell to clients you haven’t heard from in a while but let them know you have gotten new inventory in or are trying a new product line. Even your best clients aren’t aware of all the products and services you offer. Remind them by sending out a postcard, email, Facebook or other social media post occasionally. Once again, automated marketing can help you reach a wide audience across several platforms to maximize more personalized outreach. Use this opportunity to remind your clients ways you can make their life easier by cross-selling or upselling relevant products that are in line with their purchase history. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Incentives can also encourage repeat business, foster relationships and increase sales. It doesn’t have to be cash. Thinking of creative perks for customers based on their industries and interests will differentiate you from your competitors. For instance, if a past customer travels frequently, a non-traditional incentive such as an airline voucher is a great way to show them that you’re paying attention to their needs. Access to networking events or industry conferences that help with professional development are also good, as well as providing free consulting to a company that has given you repeat business. Put your reputation on the line by using performance-based contracts with customers who know you, and whom you know. Tell your clients that if you can’t deliver, they don’t pay. And when you do deliver, ask for a percentage of the gain. The client has nothing to lose and you win if they do. Don’t be shy; reach out to a past customer today. Invest in developing new business as well, but keep in mind that former customers can be your secret to sales growth.
The 7 Habits of Ultra-Productive Leaders Posted on August 8, 2016August 16, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Do you ever get to the end of a day and feel frustrated that so many to-do items are still on your plate? Then you talk to a leadership peer who got twice as much done as you did in that day? Why is that? It’s time to learn what they’re doing differently so you, too, can start crossing important items off your list and feel accomplished at the end of the day (instead of being so stressed). If you want to be more efficient then read on for seven tips of ultra-productive small business leaders. Turn Off Social Media Notifications. Seriously. If you have your phone set up to notify you every time someone comments on your Facebook or Instagram post, tags you in something, or sends you a message, you’re going to spend your day reacting to those notifications instead of the items that truly move the needle for your business. After all, Winston Churchill said it best: “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” The same holds true if you have Facebook or twitter tabs open on your laptop. When your eyes glance up and see activity there, such as showing how many notifications you have, it causes a Pavlov’s dog-like reaction and makes you want to click on that tab to see what’s you’re missing. Just close the tab (and don’t re-open it until either during lunch or the end of the day). Make a List and Check it Twice. Okay, so even when it’s not Christmas time, lists are so important. Try going old school with a daily planner to prioritize and keep track of everything you have to do that day or use the automated task creation feature of your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Either way, your paper or electronic list serves as a reminder to you all day about what’s important and what’s not (talking about the latest episode of “Game of Thrones” with a coworker). Plus, checking things off of a list gives you an instant sense of accomplishment and motivates you to tackle the next important item on your list. Start Checking Email Just Twice a Day. This may sound odd — and if you’re used to replying to an email the minute it comes in, it’s going to take some getting used to — but it really does work. When you’re not being bombarded and sidetracked by emails every few minutes, you’ll be able to focus on what needs to be done at that moment instead of dealing with interruptions. Pro Tip: Have an automatic reply set up that tells people exactly when you’ll be checking email each day so they’ll know when they could expect to hear back from you. Re-think Meetings. When you have a lot to do, is your time better spent sitting in a meeting that could easily be knocked out via email or working on the task at hand? I think we can all agree on the latter. Decide if that meeting you want to set really needs to happen or if a quick team standup or office chat will get everything settled. You’ll save yourself and your busy employees valuable time to work toward goals and will avoid meeting fatigue. Delegate. Do you know about the 80/20 rule? It says that 20% of what you do produces 80% of the results. So if you want to be a more productive leader, focus on the work that’s going to give you the best end results and delegate the rest to your smart, efficient team. That is what you hired them for, so utilize them. Invest in Technology. It’s 2016 and time to get rid of the sticky notes. There is a plethora of productivity tools designed to help you get the most out of your day. From organizational tools such as Evernote to social media tools like Buffer. Using technology to build a more efficient process is key to getting time back in your day and stuff done. Start Early. The old adage goes, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” It’s also true that rising early gets you into the office earlier than most others, which means you have uninterrupted time to get things done. First thing in the morning is seen as the best time to focus on your most important tasks, so grab your coffee, get into work and get going. Follow these 7 habits of highly productive small business leaders and you’ll soon be that person others look to- wondering how you get everything done in a day.