Establishing Yourself as an Authentic Leader Posted on December 31, 2015 by Don Breckenridge As a small business owner, it can feel like you are trying everything you can to grow your market share and sell products. But have you tried being your authentic self? Consumers respond to companies who feel true and likable. It’s the same reason why we vote for people we would want to share a beer with. I’d like to share why it is critical to establish yourself as an authentic leader if you want to stay competitive and how to do just that. Why Authentic Leadership Pays Off for Your Business Being authentic has a range of benefits, both for you and your business. When you are not trying to be “all things to all people,” you have more energy to focus on your skills and passions. You will be more productive. Staff and customers will be able to perceive this difference. So don’t be afraid to let your true self shine! I know that my strengths are on the product development side, so I’ve been intentional from the beginning about bringing key team members into the fold at Hatchbuck, from my business partner, Jonathan Herrick – strong on the sales and marketing side – to our director of customer success, Erin Posey, who is responsible for creating the awesome customer experience that our customers rave about. When I bring the right team members aboard, I am free to focus more on my passion – shaping the product vision and roadmap for Hatchbuck. As a small business owner, you can’t do it all – and even if you try, chances are you can’t do everything well at one time. Focus on your strengths. Get the right people in your business to fill in the other areas that impact your business. Then, go back to doing what you were passionate about doing in the first place. The pay-off will materialize as a happy team, better products and services, and a better experience for your customers. How Authenticity Boosts Your Brand Your target audience is a particular person with a particular need. Maybe you are a local bed and breakfast appealing to couples, or maybe you advise other small business owners on their marketing strategy. Either way, one of the best strategies to connect with your target audience is to bring some of your personality into your brand. In other words…be authentic. Don’t be afraid to showcase your amazing breakfasts in pics or post photos of your team helping a client succeed. Customers will enjoy the chance to see the “real people” behind your business. We like to share company photos and give our customers access to the people behind Hatchbuck, whether we’re decorating the office for the holidays or donating meals for Thanksgiving. These social media posts and emails always elicit some of the best responses from our audience. When you’re authentic, your staff will feel free to share their thoughts and talents. Embracing their ideas can be the key to success. At Hatchbuck, our customers and our team members have tremendous influence in shaping our app, and I rely on their insights to help direct the growth of our product. Take the time to listen to staff and clients and consider how you can integrate their needs with your business. Authentic leaders listen and act, as Harvard Business School research shows. When you listen to your team, really hear your customers, and act accordingly, you earn trust. Your employees trust you to do the right thing. They become more engaged in the success of your brand. Your customers trust you to deliver on your promises, and happily refer more business your way. By being an authentic leader, your brand equity grows. How to Become an Authentic Leader Authenticity isn’t just reserved for the Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerbergs of the world – it’s available to all business leaders. You don’t have to have a specific personality to be yourself. To let your true self shine, think about your story: Why did you go into business? What inspires you? What makes you proud? Use these ideas to shape and articulate your business’s mission, purpose, and core values. Then, hire people that are aligned to these pillars of your business. You can articulate this story in presentations, meetings, and interactions with your team and your customers. When you communicate your story, it becomes ingrained in your business from your website, to emails and marketing collateral. Your customers pick up on it, too, staying on-message when talking about your business to your network. When you are contemplating a new marketing strategy, ask yourself whether the effort is an authentic one. For instance, if you’re an easy-going, approachable every-man leader, you might not feel comfortable with an ad campaign that takes uses off-color humor. When you stay authentic, you can easily take steps to market your business that are in line with your true self, and in line with the core values of your business. As Harvard’s research indicates, all businesses can grow in the short term but only authentic ones have staying power. With authentic branding and leadership, your business can thrive.
4 Branding Strategies for your Small Business Posted on December 30, 2015October 2, 2024 by Jessica Lunk Is your branding message truly getting across or are you simply blowing hot air? If you don’t have definitive guidelines for your brand and if you are not following them across all platforms, you could be missing out. Here are several ways to boost your branding and ensure that you are actually creating a cohesive and recognizable brand for your small business. Define Your Brand Guidelines Make sure that every promotional piece, press release, and Tweet that leaves your office conforms to your branding guidelines. Clearly outlining your brand expectations and how your logo, mascot, and merchandise are to be referred to can prevent mismatches and mixed messaging for your brand. Disney is one of the masters of branding and everything they put out is designed to clearly represent the brand. From the annual blockbuster movie to the whimsical, talking trash cans at the theme parks, every single item is carefully created and screened with the big picture in mind. A simple list that depicts phrases or things we “always” do when speaking with customers or promoting the brand can help create a consistent and positive message across all of your platforms. Putting together a Brand Guideline for your company can help you make sure everyone is on the same page – even if your business is small. Here are a few areas to address: Logo: Using your logo consistently across all channels adds cohesiveness to your brand. For example, is it ok to display your logo without your tagline, or not? Do you have a version of your logo to use on light colored backgrounds and a version you use for dark colored backgrounds? Is there an emblem in your logo that can stand alone, or do you always want to include the wordmark with the emblem? Staying within specific brand guidelines for your logo will help boost recall and recognition of your brand. Color: Even a color as simple as “red” has variation to it, and everyone has their own interpretation. Setting guidelines on what your brand colors are and how to use them will help everyone stay within the lines of your brand when working on print, web, or promotional materials. Identifying a Pantone (print) and corresponding hex color (web) will help keep your brand looking sharp and consistent everywhere your prospects and customers see you. Voice & Tone: Branding is visual, but there is also a copy element that comes to play. For instance, carrying a serious tone on your website while you’re funny and irreverent on social media would give your brand a bit of an identity crisis. Decide if the voice and tone should be professional, playful, comedic, introspective – whatever best reflects your brand and culture. Naming Conventions: What you call things can increase brand equity – and even help build a sense of community around your business. Think Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers, Rackspace Rackers, and, of course, Hatchbuckers. From your tagline to your product and service lines, naming consistently gives and instant lift to your branding. Message Consistency Once you’ve established some brand guidelines, you need to share them with everyone on the team, from the employees who create the packaging and images to the ones who answer the phones. One of the most often overlooked branding slipups is via your social media channels; make sure every site you use has a fully branded profile and that the person posting your tweets, updates, Instagram shots, and pins is correctly representing your brand. Enhance your Brand with Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing allows you to position your brand as a go-to for education, innovation and expertise. When you put informative branded content out there for prospects to find, use, and share you’re building focus on your brand in a positive way. It doesn’t matter what you sell as long as you’re getting information into the hands of people who can use it in a good light. This will automatically enhances your brand. Leverage Social Media If you have social media accounts just because you “should”, you’re not using them with branding in mind. Your social media accounts can be valuable brand builders, provided you cultivate followers and actually engage with users. Simply throwing up a (branded) profile page isn’t enough, you need to join the conversation. A quick look at your social media accounts can tell you how you are doing in this area. If you are not consistently posting and interacting with followers and connections, you’re missing out on a powerful way to build your brand. Branding may seem like a task left for the bigger guys, but defining your brand and staying consistent across all channels can be extremely valuable to your small business. Invest some time in developing your brand to develop instant recognition and recall of your business when it’s time for your audience to buy. Original source of the infographic: Better Business Brand
The Most Important Online Marketing Lessons of 2015 for Small Businesses Posted on December 29, 2015July 8, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Can you believe that 2016 is just a few more days away? If you’re like us at Hatchbuck, you’re ready to jump into the new year and continue the momentum you’ve built in 2015. While we’re setting the deck for 2016, we thought it was a good time to look back on the year and reflect on what worked best on the marketing front. To help, we’ve tapped into small business influencers to ask them the most important marketing lesson they learned in 2015. Here’s what they had to say: The Cloud Is a Given, The Focus is on Tools Marketing technology is evolving fast, and the beauty of SaaS (software as a service) is that it gives small businesses the ability to quickly implement cloud-based technology without being tied down to long-term contracts or manual maintenance and upgrades. This is a unique advantage to small businesses, as their counter-parts in the enterprise space can find it challenging to switch out legacy systems and adapt. Today, SaaS is the obvious choice for small business, changing the conversation from, is it in the cloud? to does it work for my business? “Cloud is out, usefulness is in,” says Anita Campbell, Founder and CEO of Small Business Trends: The focus going forward is on what that software can do for your small business — whether it’s marketing software or any other kind of software. And since cloud software is now the default choice of small businesses, the emphasis is on the ability to quickly get up and running, and do tasks seamlessly, without a lot of custom programming. That’s what business owners and marketing managers looking for marketing tools will be focusing on in 2016. And that’s where the focus should be — on the usefulness of the tool, not on enterprise buzzwords like “the cloud” that we consider a given. Your Customers Hold the Key to Your Success You can spend lots of time and money to attract new customers to your business, but if your customers don’t stick, you’re left with a leaky boat that is tough to paddle where you really want to be as a business. In 2015, putting the customer first was the ticket to success, according to Nellie Akalp, CEO of CorpNet.com: The biggest marketing lesson I learned in 2015 is to think like the customer in all efforts! Where are my customers online? What conversations are they having? What outlets are they reading? Those are just some of the questions I was able to answer to target key clients and market them services resulting in fantastic ROI. I used this tactic from everything to my social media to content marketing and plan on doing so in 2016! Deborah Sweeney, CEO of My Corporation also credits re-engaging customers to her business’s success in 2015: Our best online marketing lesson this year is the value of re-targeting to current customers. We do a lot of work to bring new customers into our net of offerings. Once we have their attention, we have truly recognized the value of offering value-add services and ancillary services to grow our interaction with our customers. When we market to small business owners and entrepreneurs initially, they may not need certain services we offer, but re-marketing with other offers (For example, the entrepreneurs initially need a corporate filing or DBA assistance. Over time, though, they may need business licenses and trademarks.) Marketing to your own customers and providing top-notch customer service in the process will keep your customers coming back and your revenue growing! For us, that was the best success story in online marketing from 2015. Whether you’re launching a new service or introducing a mobile app, tapping into your customer base can give your initiative instant momentum. Rebecca Xiong, CEO of GrowEpic, leveraged GrowEpic’s engaged audience of customers to drive downloads of their new mobile app: We have an active software-as-service social tool site with hundred of users a day. We used that to market our mobile app, telling people the app makes it easy for them to do what they do on the site already. Most apps rely on app store promotion or a branding site to promote. With our strong user-base and regular new users, our mobile app grew quickly and reached 100,000 downloads in a few months. It Pays to Invest in In-Depth Content The key to getting found online in 2016? Creating in-depth, quality content that goes beyond the standard 500-word blog post will bring big returns in getting your business found online, according to Martin Harrison, Co-Founder at Copify: The biggest lesson I learned in 2015 is that Google is increasingly favouring long form content in its search results. We have seen our rankings for several competitive terms switch from specific landing pages created specifically for that query, to long form, guide-style content such as this: http://us.copify.com/guides/how-to-start-a-blog. My advice for brands would be to invest time and budget creating new, or expanding upon existing site content to deliver genuine value to your audience. Entrepreneur Brent Hale echos Harrison’s advice to invest in in-depth content this year: The biggest online marketing lesson I’ve learned over the past year is that content marketing is still the most effective and economical way to expand your audience (for businesses where content marketing makes sense). Not only that, but the longer and more thorough your content, the more effective it is. Ultimately, if you can produce high-quality content that educates and inspires your audience on a consistent basis, you will see a significant increase in your business. Guest Podcasting is Effective, Inexpensive and Scalable Building your small business brand? Shawn Chhabra, Host & Creator of the podcast, “Winning the Game of Life,” explains how small businesses can build an audience in a very effective, inexpensive and scalable manner: Podcasts are effective because you are being featured as a show guest on the shows where your prospects and ideal customers are listening to the Podcast; whole hearted, fully involved while listening. You are really speaking directly to your dream customers as a Podcast guest. They want to hear what you have to say, so you can see how your listeners can turn into your loyal customers. It is inexpensive and almost free, because the host of the Podcast show is the one who is doing almost everything. All you have to do is just show up for the interview. Scalable because you can continue to look for other related Podcasts where you can be featured as a guest. Social Media Isn’t Just About Engagement – It Should Convert Small business owners know that they should be using social media, but are often perplexed at how social media can actually impact their business. Casey Cornett, Director of Social Media at VI Marketing and Branding, advises to think about your entire marketing funnel when putting together your social media strategy: If I had to give one marketing lesson from 2015 for small business owners, it would be to stop looking at social media as just one section of your marketing funnel (Engage), and begin using it at all areas: Attract, Educate, Engage and Convert. Social Media has grown tremendously over the past few years, but one thing 2015 brought to the industry is incredible targeting (offering very cost-effective Attract), auto-play videos (use to Educate) and finally reliable Conversion tracking through website pixels. Stop posting your latest 10% off sale, and begin growing your customer database. Your Marketing Strategy is Bigger than Each Individual Channel Social media, SEO, email marketing, content marketing – each digital channel you touch will give lift to your other campaigns. So, if you have a well thought-out content strategy, it will naturally boost your SEO, impact what you share on social media, and influence what you send in your email newsletter. Likewise, building an enormous social media following can impact SEO as your content is shared, and drive more traffic to your website. When you orchestrate a marketing strategy in which each channel works together to augment the others, you’ve got a recipe for blockbuster success. Mandy McEwen, Inbound Marketing Specialist and Leader at Mod Girl Marketing, explains: If we learned anything in 2015, it is the importance of cohesive digital strategies. Online marketing has a lot of moving parts that businesses cannot ignore. The days of one-channel digital marketing are gone. It’s not enough to just have a great SEO strategy. It’s not enough to just have great content. It’s not enough to just have an email newsletter. Effective online marketing must be holistic and must be user-centric. In order for businesses to really succeed online, they must have a holistic and mobile-friendly marketing strategy that includes several digital channels and segmented campaigns. Having a strong brand voice and active social media presence is no longer an option – it’s a necessity. Let’s not forget about analytics and user experience, which are both extremely important when devising marketing strategies that actually produce a healthy ROI. Investing in the right software solution, turning existing customers into repeat buyers, expanding on existing content, leveraging guest podcasting, converting social media connections into customers, and leveraging each digital channel to boost the others – successful small business marketing is all about making the most of every resource you have at your disposal. What marketing lessons did you learn in 2015, and what marketing strategies are you ready to try in 2016?
Small Business Goal for 2016: Kick Some SaaS With Marketing Automation Posted on December 28, 2015November 22, 2023 by Jessica Lunk The rise of the robot is upon us, and no industry has been transformed by automation more than marketing. A well-organized automated marketing campaign can address the specific interests of thousands of companies in a warm, personalized manner. At the same time, software as a service (SaaS) has made it simple for businesses of every size to access technology without the hassle of manual software updates and complicated installs. These two technological advancements go hand-in-hand. SaaS is the perfect way to make marketing automation accessible and affordable, while marketing automation is the perfect way to help any SaaS company find and keep more customers. To make the most of SaaS marketing automation, focus on: Message Management Effective marketing automation strategies for SaaS companies require messages that appeal to specific target audiences. To craft such messages, you must account for: Buyer Persona– Position your product to appeal to the different types of customers you serve. For instance, a company that has recently been started may be researching your type of product for the first time. They may not have even yet chosen whether to install software or buy it as a service. For new businesses, the conversation will be more towards educating them about all of the options available. They will view your product differently than a long-established business that already has a legacy product in place. For an established business, the conversation may be more around switching from a competitive software. Problems and Solutions– Once you’ve chosen buyer persona, think about the specific problems that each persona may have. Some established businesses, for example, may be frustrated with the high maintenance and repair costs of maintaining their servers. Your marketing could thus emphasize that switching to your SaaS product will save them from such costs. Partnering with an experienced SaaS marketing agency can help you create targeted campaigns that highlight the cost-saving benefits of your product. Pricing Prudence– If you offer multiple pricing options, emphasize different options to each persona. Recent startups, for example, will likely want to experiment with different options before picking one permanently, so emphasize month-to-month costs. Established businesses may be more interested in saving money by buying service for years at a time. The more prospective customers feel that your marketing appeals directly to their needs, the more likely they are to buy your product. Savvy Segmentation Successful marketing campaigns don’t stop at generating interest in your company. They also cultivate it, transforming existing interest into the will to buy your product. To help customers along this journey, consider these stages of the buying process: Initial Interest– Provide informational and education content that is relevant to your space, presenting your company as a qualified source of information. This will appeal to new customers with no prior interest. Broader Benefits– Once customers begin to seriously consider your product, provide content with more specific information on the long-term benefits of your product as well as case studies, testimonials and reviews. Perceived Problems– Before they buy, customers will look up all the possible problems with SaaS services, so anticipate and address these objections. Present your company as particularly good at solving SaaS problems, as this will make them choose you over competitors. Segmentation is most effective if based on specific customer data. Learn as much as you can about each lead, assemble it into a database, and target each segment as specifically as you can. Customer Management For SaaS companies, that recurring revenue is sweet – but it also means that customers paying month-to-month aren’t locked into a long term contract and can leave at any time. Taking care to nurture your customer relationships can ensure that your customers stay with you longer, increasing your Customer Lifetime Value. Here’s how: Reach out Often- Use milestones like birthdays, anniversaries and renewal dates to say hello and check-in with your customers. Cross-sell and Upsell- Marketing isn’t just for prospects. Market additional services and add-ons to your customer base to become more ingrained in their business and boost their spend with you. Provide Outstanding Service- When it comes to SaaS, letting your team members shine is a great way to connect with customers so they feel they’re getting more than just a tool. Reliable support and scheduled check-ins creates valuable face-time with your customers, translating into contract renewals. If you’re marketing your SaaS company, marketing automation can help you scale. Developing relevant messaging, segmenting your leads and delighting your customers is a recipe for success – and we know it works because we use Hatchbuck’s marketing automation to grow Hatchbuck.
The Pulse of Marketing Automation Platforms in 2016 Posted on December 22, 2015June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Marketing automation platforms – though still in their infancy compared to traditional tools like email marketing software – will continue to gain steady ground in 2016. What used to be viewed as a toy for either the big boys or tech related companies has proven to be core tool for any business that wants to increase leads and grow profits. So what’s in store for marketing automation in 2016? Here are 22 marketing automation stats and why they matter to you as we head into the new year: Marketing automation adoption is rising quickly across companies of every size. In 2014, marketing automation adoption was at 60% for companies with $500m or more in revenue, at 10% for companies between $20-$500m in revenue, 5% for companies between $5-$20m and 3% for companies less than $5m in revenue. (Raab Associates, 2014) Key Takeaway: Originally accessible to only enterprise or tech-related businesses, there has been a trickle-down effect for marketing automation into the small business market. Although market penetration was only at 3% for businesses less than $5m in revenue in 2014, this number is continuing to rise thanks to software solutions like Hatchbuck that cater to the small business market. Early adopters in the small business market will reap the biggest benefits from implementing marketing automation to optimize their pipeline. Marketing automation runs on marketing strategy. Only 38% of businesses that have implemented marketing automation are using more advanced marketing tactics like progressive profiling. (Webmarketing 123, 2015). 85% of B2B marketers using a marketing automation platform feel that they’re not using it to its full potential. (SiriusDecisions, 2014) Key Takeaway: Tackling this whole “automation thing” is tricky, but a solid sales and marketing strategy will help you take full advantage of marketing automation features. Marketing automation is built on a solid foundation of email marketing. Companies that use email marketing are 75% or more likely purchase marketing automation software. (Venture Beat, 2014) Of marketing automation, CRM, and email marketing systems, email marketing technology has the highest adoption and is used by 82% of companies. (Ascend2, August 2015) 27% of those new to marketing automation say that more relevant messaging is a result, but that increases with time to 74% for experienced marketing automation users who started using marketing automation more than two years ago. (B2Bmarketing.net and Circle Research, 2015) Key Takeaway: If you have experience using email marketing to stay in touch with your audience, you’re already on the right track to implement marketing automation for your business. Though it may take some time to segment your leads and build out your lead nurturing strategy, marketing automation will result in relevant, personal emails to your audience, boosting the ROI of your email marketing efforts. Choosing the right fit can make or break marketing automation success. 38% of marketing automation users were actively considering switching marketing automation systems in the coming year. (Venture Beat, 2014) 86% of marketers said “ease of use” was the most important factor when choosing a marketing automation platform. (Regalix, 2014) 59% of companies aren’t using the marketing technology they have available to its full potential. Companies that don’t have all the marketing technology tools they need are much more likely to fully use what they have (33%), than those that do have all the tools they need (9%). (Ascend2 , 2015) Key Takeaway: Implementing sales and marketing software can be costly and time consuming if the system you’ve chosen isn’t compatible with your process. Avoid getting too caught up in feature or price comparisons, and instead focus on buying the right functionality for your business. As Ascend’s report indications, too many features may mean that the software is too complex, resulting in underutilization. At the same time, the least expensive option may not have enough functionality or the right training and support for your business. With marketing automation, businesses are generating a higher-quality sales lead. The #1 benefit of marketing automation according to B2B marketers is the ability to generate more and better quality leads. (Pepper Global, 2014) Companies that excel in lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead. (Forrester Research, 2014) Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. (The Annuitas Group, 2014) Successful lead nurturing breeds educated, gratified customers who channel their satisfaction into their purchase sizes, making 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Kapost, 2014) Key Takeaway: Nurturing leads through marketing automation creates a more sustainable lead generation process. Instead of hitting every new lead with your sales pitch – only to have them die on the vine – you can nurture a steady stream of leads into quality, educated prospects for your sales team. Marketing automation optimizes pipeline conversions. B2B marketers who implement marketing automation software increase their sales pipeline contribution by an average of 10%. (Forrester Research, 2014). Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report, 2014) Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (Nucleus Research, 2014) 80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase. (VB Insight, 2015) Key Takeaway: Marketing strategies like SEO, PPC, content marketing and social media fill your pipeline with marketing leads. But once you have traffic to your website and are capturing leads, marketing automation can convert the leads you’ve invested in into actual customers for your business, boosting the ROI of your marketing spend across all channels. To gauge marketing automation performance, you have to measure success. The most useful measure of marketing automation performance is conversion rate, say 70% of very successful Marketing Automation users. (Marketo & Ascend2, 2015) Key Takeaway: If you aren’t measuring key small business metrics, like your lead conversion rates and customer lifetime value, you won’t be able to measure the success of you marketing automation platform. Getting these key metrics down first is a great way to clean up your sales and marketing process before implementing a marketing automation platform. Is marketing automation worth it? With the right strategy, absolutely. 10% of marketing automation users find it inexpensive, 47% fairly priced, 22% pricey but worth it and 11% too expensive. 10% was not sure. (VB Insight, 2015) The most challenging obstacles to success are lack of quality content (40%), budget constraints (38%) and the lack of an effective marketing automation strategy (38%). ( Marketo & Ascend2, 2015) Key Takeaway: Most marketing automation users find that their investment in the technology pays off. However, having a strategy to drive traffic to your website, capture those leads and nurture them into customers is key to generating ROI from your efforts. Marketing automation benefits customer engagement, too. Marketers say that the biggest benefits of marketing automation are saving time (74%), increased customer engagement (68%), more timely communications (58%) and increased opportunities including up-selling (58%) (Adestra, 2015) Increasing sales revenue (53%), lead nurturing (43%) and customer engagement (37%) are the most important objectives of a marketing automation strategy. (Marketo & Ascend2, 2015) Key Takeaway: Is “marketing automation” a misnomer? Maybe so. Instead of turning your business into a robot, marketing automation can take administrative tasks off of your plate, opening of your day to focus on high-impact, relationship-building tasks. Not only does marketing automation help you convert more sales-ready leads into customers, but it also helps you build stronger relationships with your customers, boosting your customer lifetime value and word-of-mouth referrals. If you need to generate higher quality leads for your sales team, convert more prospects into customers, and build better relationships with your customer base, 2016 can be the “Year of Marketing Automation” for your business.
The 8 Disastrous Small Business Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Posted on December 21, 2015August 5, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick Marketing is an essential part of promoting your small business and growing sales. Yet too often small business owners try new marketing tactics without measuring the results and knowing how it aligns to their goals. It can cause a small business to put the clamps down on the marketing budget–or skip it altogether. So in order know how and where to spend your marketing resources, you need to first avoid the marketing pitfalls so many owners fall into. Here are eight common marketing mistakes small businesses make—and how to avoid them: Treating marketing as an expense vs. an investment. An expense is something you buy and depreciate. An investment is something you purchase that will deliver value in the future. The sole purpose of marketing is to drive more leads into customers and keep them as raving fans. So if you run your small business looking at marketing as an expense-ready to cut marketing campaigns and programs when things get tight, you may want to reshape your perspective on small business marketing. Often when turbulent times hit and sales fall in the tank the first inclination is to reduce your marketing spend. This is the absolute wrong decision. Marketing is the very catalyst you need to spur growth and drive new opportunities. Not developing a written marketing plan and marketing budget. It an old adage that still holds true today: Failing to plan means you are planning to fail. Small businesses that don’t have a rock solid marketing plan have a high rate of failure and usually lack the proper marketing budget. In fact, according to the 2016 marketing trends report from the Content Marketing Institute, B2B marketers said their effectiveness increased significantly when they had a documented content marketing strategy and 40 percent of marketers deemed least effective (according to how effective they rated their content marketing) had no written marketing strategy. My advice to you as a small business owner, is “Just Do It”. Take the time to develop a strategic marketing plan. As you create a marketing plan, be sure to address the financial costs of implementing each strategy. For most small businesses, the general rule of thumb is that 9-12% of revenue should be earmarked for marketing efforts. If you are in start up mode or early stages you may need to invest more as you build your brand awareness. Your plan should outline the specific allocation of dollars, for things like website design and maintenance, inbound marketing, marketing collateral, Facebook ads, logo design and, if necessary, finding and paying a freelancer to assist with the areas of your plan you don’t have the expertise to execute on. Part of your budget planning should include money for technology and software tools that will deliver a return-on-investment of your overall marketing efforts. Targeting the wrong audience. No matter how great your messaging, logo or ad campaigns are, if you’re targeting the wrong audience, you’re flushing marketing dollars down the toilet. When you target the masses, follow your “gut” or have a preconceived notion about who your prospect or customer is, rather than looking at data about who is actually making purchases–it can drive up marketing costs and plummet sales conversions. Spend time getting to understand why your customers buy and what problem they were trying to solve when they found you. Use email marketing to send a feedback survey or use a simple NPS survey. Marketing efforts can then be shifted to match the results and demographics such as gender, age, industry and reasons they made a purchase. Misreading an audience can send your small business down the wrong path. However if you target your ideal buyer you will maximize the most of your marketing budget and find yourself attracting and keeping more customers. Not differentiating your product or service. It’s rare that a business creates its own category or a product or service that’s never been seen before. In most markets, small businesses face competition, which is why they need to communicate their unique value proposition-why they are different. You need a solid reason that’s easy to explain and gives people an obvious reason to do business with you instead of your competitors. Use your marketing to educate potential customers, not just sell to them. Educating consumers in a way that defines what differentiates you from your competition makes it easier for them to make a buying decision. If you can’t define why your product or service is unique, you can’t expect a potential customer will be able to either. You haven’t a clue what kind of marketing your competitors are doing. Keep abreast of what your competitors are doing for marketing and study their efforts, you’ll see which of those initiatives succeeds and fails. Are there tactics they tested and then never do again? Which do they employ month after month? Use a tool like Spyfu to better understand the best SEO or PPC strategy for your business. Another simple tool is Google Alerts that enables you to stay up to date with real-time updates on your closest competitors. By being attentive to the competition’s marketing efforts you can learn from of their successes and failures and best allocate your marketing resources to find new customers. Failing to recognize the value of your existing customers. While attracting new visitors and buyers is key for your small business, don’t forget about your existing customers. Studies show that acquiring a new customer can be nearly 6 times more costly than cross-selling or upselling an existing one. If you only focus your marketing efforts on acquiring new customers, you’re also likely to neglect your existing customers and provide them with less-than-stellar customer service. According to Forrester Research nearly 70% of consumers check out customer reviews prior to purchasing a product or service. That means that if you make a mistake and forget about your current customer base your sales growth is in jeopardy. So allocate a portion of your marketing budget to customer advocacy and retention, you will find it will propel your brand and deliver more referrals in the long run. You don’t have a strong online presence. Believe it or not, almost half of all small businesses in the U.S. don’t have a website. From a marketing perspective that can be devastating. Some small business owners think because they are local, or have just one location, they don’t really need a website. But the game has changed. More than 90% of consumers search online for products and services and consumers will generally find you online before they go to your business. In today’s digital age there is no excuse for not having a responsive website with so many easy, DIY options available. Creating an online presence is a proactive way to promote your business, and it gives prospects and customers a way to learn about your business and your offerings at their convenience. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Google are not just for social hour. They can give you access to your target audience and drive real results when leveraged correctly. It can also provide valuable insights which will help you measure and track the success of various marketing efforts. You don’t know your marketing metrics. I talk to a lot of small businesses everyday and very few have a great handle on the metrics that make their business go. By knowing your marketing metrics and ratios it will give you insight into what is working, what isn’t and how much you should be spending to reach new customers and keep existing ones. So let’s say you are investing $500 per month in PPC and $500 per month in Social media. Which marketing channel is the most effective channel at driving leads and customers? Should you shift your marketing spend from PPC to Social? What is your cost per lead (CPL) and cost per customer? (CPC) A big mistake is not knowing what the average lifetime value of a customer (LTV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC) are for your small business. It is hard to decide what you can afford to invest to drive more sales leads when you are unsure of what a customer is worth to you and how quickly you can get a payback on your marketing spend. There is a slim line between success and failure for any small business. By eliminating these eight costly mistakes and having a sound marketing strategy in place you will be able to reach more customers and grow profitably.
The Force Awakens: 5 Marketing Lessons Small Business Can Learn From Star Wars Posted on December 18, 2015June 27, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Nearly 40 years ago when the original Star Wars movie was created I don’t think anyone would have imaged another Star Wars movie to hit the box office some 38 years later with revenue total estimates north of 8 billion dollars. But a lot has gone right for the empire and in large part due to how it has approached marketing. If you are like me, you grew up with Star Wars lunch boxes and the motion pictures being a big part of your early childhood. In fact every time a movie came out, it seemed like everywhere – stores, restaurants – was overrun with Star Wars hype and merchandise. It almost seems unfair, doesn’t it? So how can you tap into Star Wars-like buzz for your business? As the latest of the Star Wars movie descends upon us, “The Force Awakens” gives us a chance to look at what the Star Wars franchise has done right to remain a thriving business venture after all of these years, and what lessons your small business can take from it. 1. Develop Raving Fans Star Wars didn’t become a franchise phenomenon overnight. Before there was the prequel trilogy, Star Wars developed a cult following. Yep, these movie-goers are more than just fans, they are die-hard Star Wars fanatics. A fan likes the movies, but a Star Wars fanatic belongs to the Church of Jedi (yes, this is for real). The Star Wars movies didn’t set out to gain mass appeal. Instead, the movies appealed to the ultimate Sci-Fi geek. Then, from a core of loyal fans, the mass appeal spread. Think about it; while not everyone is a Star Wars aficionado, most people can name a character from one of the movies. Your business can take the same approach. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, zero in on your ideal buyer to create raving fans of your products or services…the mass appeal will follow organically. 2. Connect with a Story The great thing about all of the Star Wars movies is that they had characters in the storyline that the everyday viewer could connect to. So whether it was Han Solo, Luke Skywalker or the proverbial villain in Darth Vader, the series of movies knew their audience and delivered a connected experience. For example, the most epic part of the original trilogy isn’t a special-effect powered battle in space, but rather the father/son storyline when Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father. The same holds true for your small business today. After you’ve identified your ideal audience, don’t just push your products or services on your buyers. Instead, craft an engaging story with your customer enabling him to relate to the the hero and differentiating your brand from your competitors. With a powerful story, you can do more than just drive sales – you create a tribe of followers of your brand. 3. Be Memorable No one remembers ordinary. In fact if you think of Star Wars, you may not remember every scene, but you would be hard pressed to forget the “Main Title” by John Williams: In your small business, what will you leave your visitors and customers with? What makes you different? There is a restaurant in Sikeston Mo named Lamberts Cafe. Its moto? “Home of the Throwed Rolls.” Each day they toss over 200 dozen of the baked goodies across the restaurant to their patrons. It is what makes Lamberts unforgettable, and what gets people talking about their brand. Great businesses do more than just deliver a good product or service. They put their unique stamp on everything they do. 4. Create Anticipation and Urgency Even though the Force Awakens didn’t come out until today, they have been marketing it for months to create pent up demand. “Force Friday” was launched in September in order to give their audience a chance to get pre show release items such as new toys, games and accessories. It was a huge opportunity to connect to every generation of followers and to engage on social media to start the buzz engines churning around the new movie. So if your small business is planning to market or launch a new product or service don’t miss out on the opportunity to go big and announce it early. Open up a VIP pre-launch page and capture email addresses in exchange for early usage of the product or features. Or, have a sneak peek event before your main event to start the PR train. Engage your core of raving fans early to help boost your reach when the main event arrives. 5. Leverage Partnerships Star Wars is reaching a wider audience by leveraging cross promotion and partnering with big brands to tap into alternate fan bases. For instance, Covergirl is offering Star Wars-inspired makeup lines like “Storm Trooper” and “Jedi.” And Google is letting users customize their experience with their Awaken the Force Within UI. There are dozens of other examples, but the takeaway is that two or more brands can be more powerful than one when it comes to extending brand awareness and reach. With the right strategies for your small business, like identifying your ideal buyer, using storytelling to connect to your audience, leaving your own unique stamp on the customer experience, creating buzz and leveraging partners in your space, you can have blockbuster success.
Are You Measuring What Matters? 3 Sales Performance Metrics You Aren’t Thinking About. Posted on December 17, 2015June 27, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick Many shops and small businesses use core sales performance metrics such as the number of monthly sales made and revenue as common benchmarks to measure success. While these are associated with the bottom line, they can be lagging indicators and don’t necessarily tell the whole story. In order to get a bigger picture owners tend to lean on traditional metrics such as activities and proposal generated. When it comes to your business, it’s not just about where you’ve been, but where you’re going. While the number of sales or proposals generated last month doesn’t always provide a good indication of where you’re headed this month. But, with the right sales performance metrics, you can easily gauge the pulse of your business and make adjustments to keep your business healthy and humming. Don’t Call Me, I’ll Call You In this new digital era, sales happen differently. No longer do sales occur only by picking up the phone and making cold calls. Think about it…when was the last time you responded to a cold sales call? Today, buyers are doing their research online first before talking to a sales person. With intelligent automation, it is now possible to reach people who are in research mode, driving leads inbound to your small business and talking to them only when they are sales ready. The buying process has changed, but have you? If you haven’t changed the way you are measuring sales performance metrics and you don’t have insights into the process that drives sales, consistent revenue growth can be extremely difficult to sustain. Modern Sales Performance Metrics Whether you’re the captain of your sales team or have a sales leader in place, here are 3 sales performance indicators to gauge the health of your business: 1. Lead Conversion Performance – Lead Response Time Today, marketing’s job is more than just designing fancy brochures; marketing is responsible for generating qualified leads and opportunities for your small business. The faster you can respond to marketing leads the better chance you have of setting the appointment and converting the sale. In fact research shows that the odds of contacting a lead if called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The odds of qualifying a lead if called within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. Smart tools such as marketing automation platforms enable you to nurture leads until they are ready to buy and automatically notify your sales team to engage with prospects when they are most interested – maximizing sales response time and increasing sales conversions. Not only can you nurture leads into conversions with marketing automation, but you can also track lead source to learn about what’s working – and what’s not working – for your small business. For instance, when you reach out to your leads to qualify them and don’t make contact, you can track them as “Closed Lost – [Reason Why]” such as “Closed Lost – No Response” in your CRM. This gives you valuable data to track back to marketing and better understand if you have a channel that may be driving unqualified leads or you have a sales response time issue that needs to be addressed. 2. Pipeline Opportunity Performance In order for sales to happen each month they have to come through the pipeline. When you analyze your pipeline the key is look for ways to boost conversions. By tracking deals as they move through the pipeline you can measure sales performance metrics such as: Lead to opportunity: This ratio measures the effectiveness of leads converted into opportunities (deals). It can help you measure the quality of leads that you’re attracting to your business. Opportunity (Deals) to customer: This ratio measures the effectiveness of opportunities converted into customers. It can help determine the quality of your sales reps and the efficiency of your sales process. Average Opportunity (Deal) Value: Revenue amount assigned to an opportunity when it is created. This can help you forecast your revenue. So if you know that you consistently win 60% of the opportunities (deals) in your pipeline, you can predict your revenue for the upcoming month. Days to Close: How long it takes to move a deal from creation date to close. This metric gives you more accuracy in measuring the health of your lead channels. For instance, if your average days-to-close is 60 days, you know to evaluate a new marketing campaign 60 days post-launch (not 30 days) to get the most reliable picture of success. Probability to Close: Percentage chance you will close the opportunity. This gives you a better ability to predict sales and revenue for your business and to set sales and marketing goals each month. So, if you know that you close 60% of opportunities (deals) that you bring in, and you have a sales goal of 10 new customers for the month, you can set a marketing goal of bringing in 17 deals for the month. Days in Stage: Historical tracking of lead or opportunity by stage. This can give you data to see how long each stage of the sales cycle is, helping your team manage expectations and time. So if it usually takes 10 days to write a proposal and get a signed agreement back, your team can be prepared for when to expect a new customer to come onboard. Filters by Sales Rep and Lead Source: There are a number of filters within the pipeline that you should filter on to get the micro level metrics you need to make better decisions about your business. Maybe you’re spending money on a lead channel that never produces a customer. Or maybe you have a channel that converts at a high rate that you could invest more in. Or, maybe a sales rep needs additional training or better tools to help them convert more opportunities into customers. These important data points are early indicators of future revenue for your business. For example what does your 3 month forecast look like? What would happens if you shortened your sales cycle by 50%? Or increased your opportunity to customer ratio by 10%? By understanding your sale pipeline metrics in depth, you have the ability to optimize your sales process and know which levers to move to drive more sales for your small business. 3. Customer Retention Metrics Customer loyalty is often a metric used to measure the effectiveness of your support team. However in order for you to have the net customer growth year over year that you are looking for, you need to make sure you are attracting the right customer, signing the right customer, and getting them to stay and purchase from you. One way to break it down is to look at the Customer Lifetime Value of your customers to better understand who you’re best and most profitable customers are. This gives you the insights you need to ensure you are spending your valuable sales hours each day with your ideal buyers and with opportunities that have a higher propensity to convert into lifelong customers – not just one time sales. By knowing how your lead performance, pipeline metrics and customer retention data points you’ll be able to measure what matters – the metrics that lead to more sales and revenue.
Do Your Employees Care About Your Success? Posted on December 16, 2015 by Erin Posey Employee Recognition Ideas to Boost Motivation and Performance Remember when stickers were exciting, and you loved getting that extra gold star on your school work? Though you may have outgrown your love for gold stars, you can still tap into the same principles behind those stickers and leverage the power of recognition to boost productivity in your small business. The Value of Employee Recognition Think of a business as a thriving ecosystem—particularly as one that’s made up of many interdependent moving parts. Different teams in business handle different tasks, and they’re all important in their own unique way. To keep the ecosystem in its best state, every part of it must be in its healthiest and happiest state. If your employees are unhappy or feel undervalued, then their work suffers and so does the entire business. Employee recognition, in its many forms, is a key way to keep employees happy. Employee recognition reaps many benefits, including: Increased loyalty to the company A sense of ownership for one’s work Enhanced engagement within the work community Best of all: better business results As a small business owner, fostering a positive work environment is vital. That sense of camaraderie and community is what sets small businesses apart from their larger and more corporate counterparts. Just one excluded or unappreciated employee can have detrimental effects on clients. Instead, creative incentives make sure your co-workers feel valued. How to Validate Your Team Members There are three core ways through which you, a small business owner, can recognize your employees: by publicizing achievements, focusing on the positive, and connecting team members to the bigger picture. Publicize Achievements At Hatchbuck, we do a great job of recognizing each other for our achievements. And, what’s pretty amazing is that recognition doesn’t just come from the leadership team. Every team member feels empowered to give a shout-out to a fellow co-worker for a job well done, in a company meeting, for instance, or with a team-wide email. These little moments of recognition keep everyone engaged in their work and in the success of Hatchbuck. Our culture of recognition does more than motivate employees to earn praise, but it fosters an environment in which we all work hard not to let our team members – or our customers – down. Everyone loves having his or her work recognized, especially when everyone else knows about it. This encourages a healthy sense of pride and gives other employees models to work from. At your next meeting or business-wide email, test it out and congratulate an employee who’s provided exemplary work. Who knows? These public notices may even help facilitate healthy competition that can drive your business forward. Focus on the Positive Employee recognition can also take place on the individual level. Focusing on the positive when you’re confronted with a situation in which an employee is struggling is to your benefit as well as theirs. When talking with your employees about their job duties or expectations, highlight where they’re succeeding in addition to where they could use some help. Maybe they could use extra training or resources to perform at their peak. Maybe their role and daily tasks aren’t aligned. Or maybe they are in the wrong role and would excel in a different position. Instead of focusing on the negative and creating a situation where your employee becomes unengaged and fails, look at the positives and find a way to put their strengths to work. At Hatchbuck, we’re always careful to hire people not only based on their skills, but based on their character and culture fit as well. We have great people on our team, and if someone is struggling, we know we can help them succeed by making adjustments that help them lend their greatest strengths to the business. Focusing on the positive is a win-win for your business and employees, but it starts with hiring the right people. Connect to the Bigger Picture When it comes to managing my team, determining our goals is an exercise we do together, not something I do in a silo. Then, I give my team members the autonomy and resources to do their job to the best of their ability to make our goals a reality. When my team takes ownership of Hatchbuck’s success, we excel as a company. My team members bring great ideas to the table everyday and have been instrumental in creating a customer experience Hatchbuck users love. For smaller businesses and start-ups, every employee has an impact, from an intern to the CEO. Remind your employees how they impact the business, and give them ownership of their projects and the direction of the business. Employee recognition pays off in huge dividends when it comes to customer service and the health of your business. From my own experience, when our team members are motivated to be their best every day, our customers benefit. In fact, Hatchbuck consistently receives the highest ratings for customer service in the marketing automation space from software review sites like G2Crowd and TrustRadius. Employee recognition doesn’t just give your team members the warm fuzzies, it impacts the overall success of your business.