4 Rules for Staying in Touch with Your Email List Year-Round Posted on December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 by Jessica Lunk With the end of the year snowing down upon us, you may have already hit the “Go” button on your holiday marketing emails. It’s easy to extend your well-wishes and cheer during the holiday season, but wouldn’t it be nice to stay in touch all year? (Your grandma certainly thinks so.) We understand: it’s hard to keep your email marketing momentum going when there are so many other things to do. There are so many “rules” these days when it comes to sending emails. Your copywriting needs to be spot-on, your subject line has to hook the reader, your emails should be personalized and your call to action should be as irresistible as Aunt Emily’s pumpkin pie. Just getting these emails written is a steep task, let alone setting up rules and automations. However, just taking a bit of time to set up automated drip campaigns will ultimately save you a ton of time – and do much of the heavy-lifting involved in converting leads into brand loyalists. To make things easier for you, we’ve boiled email automation down to four simple rules to help you keep in touch with customers year-round with half the effort. #1: Define your email marketing goals. So how can you nurture your customers better through emails? It depends on your business objectives. You might want to expand into a new market, grow your existing client base, convert more prospects into sales, or turn regular customers into brand evangelists. Your automation campaigns will hinge on your big-picture goals, so get clear on them before you begin. Need a place to start? Consider these goals: Customer win-back. You’ve already done the hard work (and spent the money) to find these customers, so bring them back with a nurturing campaign that lets them know you miss them. Nurture cold leads. Keep in touch with new leads to build trust. With the right sales and marketing tool, you’ll know just when they’re warmed up and ready to take the next step in your sales process. Upsell current customers. Increase the lifetime value of your customers by introducing them to your other products and services. Turn hot prospects into customers. Let your prospects in on just how you can help them meet their challenges head-on to win more customers. #2: Create a logical flow for your email automations. Email automations work best when they’re structured intentionally to move customers down your funnel. With your big-picture plan in mind, design a journey with sequential emails while keeping your customer in mind. You might group your automations by: An external theme. Holidays, seasons, cultural events, and upcoming conferences are all ideas for pre-planned drip campaigns. A promise of results. “We’ll help you get X results with X tips over the next X weeks.” Giving customers something to look forward to in their inboxes will help ensure they won’t unsubscribe. A series of resources. Perennial content like downloadable resources is easier to automate than newsy content like blog roundups or company news, but all of these work as email marketing automations. #3: Add tags to individual clients to track their interests and other data. If you’ve avoided crafting a steady stream of email content because your contact list is a mess, it’s time to bring in the power of the tag. When you create a tag, you create a custom label that you can apply to as many (or as few) contacts as you’d like. For instance, if you’ve just visited Content Marketing World and met a handful of new people, you can label these people with a tag like “CM World” so you’ll always know where they came from. Tags can also provide insights into what people are interested in, what their job role is, where they live, whether they have children or not, and on. The greatest part: you can manually apply tags, assign tags when uploading new contacts, or create rules in Zapier or your email marketing tool that assign tags when contacts take certain actions. Automatic tags are a great way to segment your email list without having to put in much effort. For instance, let’s say you’re trying to settle on an email marketing strategy for 2019. You’re hoping to find out which customers prefer coupons, which prefer blog post roundups, and which want fewer emails altogether. You can set up a poll in an email that automatically tags each recipient with “coupons” “roundups” or “fewer emails” based on which response they click. Now, your customers have segmented themselves — and you can better serve them the content they want in the new year. #4: Segment your email contacts to avoid overkill. Let’s face it: some of your contacts are going to be way more interested in hearing from you weekly than others. The misuse of email automation, where too many contacts get too many emails, can be dire for your business. Fend off this faux pas by segmenting your contacts into groups based on where they are in their customer journey, so you can send them only the content that’s relevant to the status of your relationship with them. Here are some examples: Top funnel, cold, or leads: These are the people who probably only want to hear from you every once in a while, and who will be most receptive to offers that feel really life-changing. You’re not going to sell these contacts on your top-dollar service or most complex product yet, so keep your emails infrequent and focused on providing value rather than selling. Middle funnel, warm, or prospects: These contacts may be qualified leads or prospects who have opened lots of your emails in the past or frequented your website, but haven’t made a purchase yet. They may be interested in your business but need more information or inspiration to make a buying decision. Bottom funnel, hot, customers, or even brand evangelists: These are the people who’ll be most interested in cross-promotions, discounts, referral programs, rewards programs, and keeping updated on company news. These are your “best friends,” the ones who look forward to seeing your business’s name in their inbox.
How Much Holiday Cheer Is Too Much In Your Advertising? Posted on December 7, 2018December 7, 2018 by Jessica Lunk ‘Tis the season to get salesy, fa la la, la la, la la laaa laaaaaa. Yes, it’s routine. Yes, you might hate the songs. But the holiday season is a valuable time of year, as anyone in business knows — Q4 is almost always the biggest quarter for businesses, sometimes providing up to 50 percent of their annual sales revenue. So you’ve got to buy into it, whether you like it or not. Slap on the Santa hat. Smile for the customers. Wish them happy holidays. Buy into the holiday spirit, and customers will buy from you. So, yes, it’s important to be well-prepared for Q4, and engaging in holiday cheer is just another aspect of that. But that doesn’t mean you should run wild with the frankincense and myrrh just yet. As important as it is to lean into the holiday season, it’s just as important to temper it. But it’s not for the reasons you might expect. Too much holiday spirit will blend in with the rest Customers are getting savvier, and there are more options to buy from than ever before. That means more marketers trying to stand out from the busiest shopping season of the year. If your company dives in head-first to the Arctic waters of the North Pole, then you’re that much likelier to blend in with every other snowflake-splattered ad campaign out there. You can still incorporate Christmas themes into your advertising — Christmas colors and imagery can make an appearance — but take care to distinguish your brand. This classic ad from Tide gets paraded around a lot as an example of one of the best Christmas advertisements of all time, and for good reason. It’s freakin’ clever. It’s distinct, it’s on the nose, but it also has a ring of subtlety about it. It’s minimal. It doesn’t bash you over the head with garish and obvious imagery. It’s smart. Lay off the jingles In December 2015, a poll by YouGov found that 34 percent of respondents said they liked Christmas music “not much” or “not at all.” (The rest liked it “a lot” or “some,” in equal amounts.) That gels with previous studies, such as the 2011 Consumer Reports survey that found 23 percent of Americans “dread” holiday music, while 36 percent of respondents to a 2014 Research Intelligence Group poll claimed they left a store sooner because of the jingles. Surprised? Don’t be. Christmas music is often played indiscriminately, on repeat and ad nauseum. If you’re preparing music for a video campaign, try something that will stand out, and don’t feel compelled to play the same jingling tune you hear everywhere else. Avoid cliches — no matter what Here’s a helpful tip: if you see your holiday ad slogan somewhere else, you’ve made a huge mistake. It can be tempting to offer up an easy solution to a holiday marketing problem. “Uh… a special gift for you?” you might think. “Best wishes from our family to yours?” But these are all beyond tired. Instead, find a tagline that suits your brand. Search for emotional truth and honesty. Humans react positively to emotional marketing, and the holiday season is the perfect time to lean into that spirit. Again, you should start off assuming your audience is sick of holiday cheer already. You don’t want to overwhelm them with more. Instead, find a tone that cuts through the ubiquitous saccharine nonsense and find something affecting. Find your chimney There’s a reason Santa comes down the chimney – and doesn’t just saunter in through the front door. It’s a delivery that captures attention. Spreading holiday cheer isn’t only about your message, but how and when you deliver it. For instance, Email Industries is sending out customer swag this holiday season in a box with very clever messaging, “100% Open Rate.” The message that might drown in a crowded inbox gets a fun pop as a physical package. Spreading cheer to your customers is great – but if your message gets drowned out in an echo-chamber of corporate gifts and cards, it could be a waste of time and money. So try something different this season. If you always send a card, consider creating a video for your customers. Or if you have a strong digital presence, send something to the mailbox instead of the inbox to get an extra boost of awareness. Lean into the tackiness Should you decide to embrace the tacky flavor of Christmas, embrace it with both arms. The skyrocketing trend of ugly Christmas sweaters is proof of this concept: people don’t mind being tacky if it’s a non-judgmental environment. Hatchbuckers never shy away from a tacky sweater. So you’re being super cheerful and sappy. So it’s a consumerist holiday. So what? Have fun with it! Just be clear that you’re pushing that line deliberately, and keep the messaging on point, and don’t forget your core marketing basics. It’s the holiday season, sure, but it’s still Q4. And the stress of that period can be a far less cheery than the spirit of Ol’ Saint Nick.
Web Design For Beginners: Vital Elements of a One-Page “Website” Posted on December 6, 2018December 6, 2018 by Allie Wolff Website design was once the exclusive domain of coders and web aficionados. But as the rise of drag-and-drop website builders came about, it opened the doors for small businesses around the world to market themselves like never before. But this new flood of websites seemed complicated. The rules of proper SEO and good UX have only gotten established in the last decade or so. Many of these issues have been resolved by business owners and marketers preferring to create smaller, simpler, cleaner websites that fill every need without overwhelming the visitor. So, who should use a one-page website? There are plenty of instances that warrant smaller sites, including solopreneurs, small businesses and freelance portfolios to name a few. Additionally, a one-page site can be the perfect fit for a local business who does most business offline – you’ll make your presence known, show up in search listings and let people get to know your business before making a visit. These sites usually comprise a single, long page users can scroll down within a few seconds. A header menu would skip down to the relevant spot on the page, usually with contact info filling the footer area. There are many, many ways to execute a one-page site effectively depending on your business and your needs. On that note, here are the elements of a one-page website that you’ll need to remember when building your own. Keep it simple To repeat: the idea is that users cannot get lost to prevent them from bouncing off your site. Either they scroll up or down, maybe click something that brings a pop-up photo or blurb, but they can’t get stuck in some awkward corner of your site. You’ll notice a lot of simple one-page sites – including templates on WordPress or Squarespace – employ the chic minimalist aesthetic, all white backgrounds with a clean statement font and a dash of color. That’s because simplicity is quick to load, easy to code and works across all browsers and devices. Take a look at this gorgeous site made for Kazumasa Nagai, a Japanese designer. It’s an editorial product, yes, made literally by and for designers, which means it can afford to nix anchors and links in favor of pure design. But note how smooth it is and how quickly it loads. Technically, and aesthetically, it’s simple, even though they make bold choices with the font and colors. Don’t overload it The folks at First Sip Brew Box, a monthly beer subscription service, employed a wonderfully creative web design – it’s unique and distinct, even if it’s a bit difficult to read. The problem? I can barely run it on my browser. There are so many animations and so much code that I had to wait about four minutes before it was scrolling properly. (And no, it’s not my Internet connection.) The problem is simply that their ambitions overran their capabilities. Reining in their ideas a bit for the sake of a simpler, cleaner, faster site would be optimal. If I were a customer, the exorbitant load time would have caused me to close the window long before I’d have been able to read the content. Focus on copy – more than you normally might When your site is just one page, you’re aiming for simplicity. Bold headers and taglines will be imperative here – they’ll be what grab your audience and communicate your ideas. You may already be noticing that one-page websites use fonts as design elements, rather than just words. That only works if the content – the words themselves – are also perfect. To see an example, let’s turn to an Australian copywriting collective called Apostrophe. Their stunning website is perfectly clear, with an obvious emphasis on vocabulary. If it has any faults at all, it’s a little silly, but the elements of design overwhelm that. See… a little silly. But the menu is clean, the site is quick and the color palette is inviting. Plus there’s the real takeaway: the attention to copy. They know their audience, and they’re writing directly to them. Bring it to life with multimedia – but not too much You may have the bright idea to go in the opposite direction – a grandiose one – with animations, videos and music. Look, people do it. It’s not a bad call. But what matters is doing it well, which means being thoughtful about where you’re inserting your multimedia. Let’s look at the German bike company Canyon Bicycles, which launched a microsite for their Torque model. There’s animation every step of the way – subtle flows in and out, overlapping photos, a slideshow and an embedded YouTube video near the top. There’s also a beautiful navigational trick here, where they divide the site into three sections – unruly, unbound and unreal – which correspond to different elements of the series, and can be accessed after you’ve finished reading one section. This breaks up the single-page effect into three websites, even though the site is anchored to one URL. It’s a great example of a lively, animated site that doesn’t sacrifice weight or speed. Integrate social media smartly Let’s return to Japan for a moment, to the website for the Parfait Stand. It is a simple store in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district that offers a select few types of parfait, and nothing more. That simplicity is translated into their website design. The site offers slideshows and animations, but they’re hardly big enough to slow things down. Instead, it shoots for brevity, just like its brand. What’s best about this self-described “hipstyle parfait” is its Instagram integration. Their aesthetic is spot-on with their brand, so they can integrate it into their main site as a gallery that doubles as an invitation to follow them on Instagram. That kind of intelligent design – rather than just plopping social widgets somewhere – is a far better resource when your site is designed to be essentially simple. By the end of all this, you may be overwhelmed. Rightly so – these are beautiful examples of web design, and none of them can be accomplished without proper planning and attention to detail. But the basic tenets of good web design are there, and that’s what matters. Don’t get distracted by other possibilities. Take the time to make your site great, invest in a developer if you need, and your audience will appreciate it.
5 Signs Your Business is in Danger of Failure Posted on December 5, 2018December 5, 2018 by Jonathan Herrick Entrepreneurs are eternal optimists, but optimism alone can’t fuel a business. Often, when a business fails, owners are surprised, but usually there are many clues leading up to a business closing. And the situations leading to failure tend to repeat themselves among businesses. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that lack of profitability is consistently the number one reason for business discontinuance around the world for 2017 and 2018. Here are 5 signs your business is in danger of failure—and how to turn them around. Warning sign #1: The thrill is gone. It takes passion to run a business. If you find you’ve lost interest in your business or you actually dread doing your work, that’s not a good sign. You won’t have the staying power you need when times get tough if you’re not committed to seeing things through. What to do about it: If you’re spending all day, every evening and most of the weekend working in your business—as many owners do—you’re bound to burn out and start questioning why you even got into it in the first place. That’s a recipe for closing up shop. To turn things around, take a look at your calendar now and schedule some time for “refilling your cup” this week. If you’ve been neglecting working out, make some time to do something active. Haven’t spent much quality time with your family or friends? Plan that into your calendar, too. You’ll be surprised at how much enthusiasm you can get back if you give yourself time to recharge. And don’t just make time to take care of yourself this week. Make it a regular practice. Warning sign #2: Business is very slow. You can’t run a successful business if you’re not making sales. Whether you’re selling a service for which demand has dried up or you’ve introduced a new product that no one seems to want, that’s not a good sign for the future outlook of your business. What to do about it: When sales are slow, it’s important to diagnose why that is. In some cases, it may be that you’re so busy running the business that you have no time to sell and need to add to your sales team. But if you’re selling the wrong product or services, hiring a new salesperson won’t help you. Can’t put your finger on the pulse of exactly what’s wrong? Ask a mentor or trusted business colleague to lunch and seek their advice. SCORE, which has a presence across the country, can match you with a seasoned business professional as a mentor if you don’t have one. Warning sign #3: Your whole industry is collapsing. Many industries are being disrupted by sweeping trends, such as new AI technology and global outsourcing. If your work can now be done by a software program or machine, the days when you can keep doing it are numbered. That’s a tough reality many business owners are facing today. What to do about it: Don’t wait until the inevitable happens to make a change. Most of us have skills and ideas that can be deployed in more than one industry. If, for instance, you’re an attorney who prepares a lot of simple business documents, and you are finding that many of your clients are turning to online sites for those documents, it may be time to refocus your practice on services they do need. Not sure where to begin? Ask your existing clients about their pain points and look for ways you can solve them in a cost-effective manner. Warning sign #4: You’re in legal trouble. You’re facing a lawsuit that is going to cost thousands of dollars in legal fees. While big corporations have the deep pockets to recover from a disaster like this, small businesses usually don’t. What to do about it: Know your objectives. While you may want to win a lawsuit, settling may cost you less in the long run, when you factor in legal fees. If you’re not sure you’re getting good legal advice, don’t be shy about talking to other attorneys for advice. With a great attorney on your side, you may be able to weather the storm. Warning sign #5: You’re having a cash-flow crisis—again! Growing your business can require a lot of cash but if you’re continually running short and in a perpetual scramble to pay your bills or make payroll, there’s something wrong. Running out of cash could kill your business if you are not careful. What to do about it: Borrowing money is a short-term solution, but it’s not one you should be relying on habitually, given that you have to pay it back. Most likely, you need to take a hard look at your financial processes. Are you getting out your invoices on time? Are you collecting on late invoices after 30 days and following up if they aren’t paid? Are there recurring costs you’re incurring for services you no longer need that should be cancelled? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself. If you run a small business and are not staying on top of your finances, consider hiring a freelance bookkeeper. Having someone else get things in order will take a lot of pressure off of you, so you can concentrate on bigger-picture activities, like working on your strategy, winning new customers and growing your business.
6 Mistakes Employers Make Around the Holidays Posted on December 3, 2018December 16, 2021 by Guest Author Companies have their collective hands full come December. They may be balancing increasing demands on their business with the various needs of their employees, who may want time off to travel, spend time with family, or simply decompress. Both sides of that equation are crucial—nobody wants to lose out on new business, especially at the end of the year when it’s crunch time for meeting goals and quotas. But respecting the needs of your team is important to keeping your valuable employees happy. Typically, with all of this to juggle, employers tend to let certain things fall by the wayside. Failing to plan properly, do due diligence, or otherwise cutting corners leads to dissatisfied employees and lower productivity as a result. As we approach another holiday season, keep an eye out for the following six mistakes that employers make, and try not to do the same. Mismanaging holiday pay A small business may have two kinds of employees: Exempt and non-exempt. Exempt employees are salaried, and are thus not subject to overtime regulations, while non-exempt employees receive an hourly wage and are eligible for overtime. During holidays, such as Christmas Day or New Years Day, it’s on the employer to give employees advance notice of the closure. If non-exempt employees aren’t given advanced notice, they may be entitled to expected pay. Exempt employees must continue to be compensated for business closures than last less than one full week. Well before the end of the year, ensure that you’ve clearly outlined your holiday schedule, and that you’ll continue paying those who you are legally obligated to pay despite the days off. Failing to set holiday work schedule expectations Whatever policies or expectations you have about working in December should be clearly laid out in the company handbook, as well as discussed in meetings far in advance of the holidays themselves. In order to ensure there are no misunderstandings between employees and management, ask your team to finalize work schedules or requests for time off before the holidays arrive. An exempt employee can refuse to work a holiday if they can establish reasonable grounds for not doing so, or if they were given short notice — which means you might put all parties in an uncomfortable position by dropping an unexpected schedule change. Essentially, no one should be surprised when someone does or doesn’t show up for work on a given day, even if it’s a holiday. Putting little effort into the company holiday party A holiday party can be a good way not only to show appreciation for the work your employees have done throughout the year but to give them a chance to relieve stress and bond with each other. The more opportunities you give people on your team to interact, the more likely they’ll establish relationships that can benefit their working environment. But many claim to dread their company holiday party and would rather skip it in exchange for an extra day off. In order to encourage people to attend and feel excited for the opportunity to celebrate, take the time to plan and invest in the party. If budget allows, rent a venue, encourage people to bring their significant others, or even their pets, give out appropriate holiday gifts, and don’t cheap out on drinks, food, and music. Use this opportunity to show your team you actually care about them, and it will show. Not checking to see benefits changes The benefits packages that you offer employees, such as medical or dental care, may change slightly from year-to-year. A medical plan offered to employees may now have a slightly higher copay or deductible, or may not be available at all due to new legislation or other changes. Check in with your HR team and ask them to relay any changes to your health insurance plans to your employees. Even a tiny change can leave workers feeling confused or betrayed. Starting seasonal hiring too late Lots of businesses may choose to bring on employees on a temporary basis to help with the increasing demands of the holiday schedule. But if you plan on hiring someone for just a few months, don’t wait until the week before you need them. Start your hiring process as early as possible to identify and lock down top candidates who can bring the experience, professionalism, and skills your company needs this time of year. Otherwise, you may find yourself scrambling to fill positions at the last-second—never a recipe for success. Asking people to volunteer instead of work One of the most famous HR holiday mistakes of all time came courtesy of URBN, the parent company of Urban Outfitters. URBN—perhaps having failed to plan ahead on seasonal hiring—asked their salaried workers to “volunteer” to work at their fulfillment centers leading up to holiday shopping season, billing it as “team building.” That means that URBN didn’t have enough labor to work shifts sending out packages, so they asked their employees to do it for free instead. Working for free when you could be spending time with your family, or working to make more money to spend on your family for the holidays, is no one’s idea of a good time. And it’s not how you run a successful business. You should be looking for ways to excite and engage your employees this time of year, not give them additional responsibility without compensation. *** Some of these mistakes may seem like no-brainers to SMB owners, but all it takes is one missed email or misunderstanding to set one of these situations into motion. Be diligent around the holidays, and your employees will be less likely to spend their days off looking for another job. Author Bio Meredith Wood is Editor-in-Chief and VP of Marketing at Fundera, a marketplace for small business financial solutions. Specializing in financial advice for small business owners, Meredith is a current and past contributor to Yahoo!, Amex OPEN Forum, Fox Business, SCORE, AllBusiness and more.
Stealth Mode Social: What You Can Learn By Spying On Your Competitors on Social Media Posted on November 30, 2018November 16, 2018 by Guest Author When it comes to competitor research, most businesses rely on site auditing tools that look exclusively at things like keywords and traffic. This is an excellent strategy, but it results in many of the same businesses completely overlooking social media as a platform for a potential recon mission, which is an enormous missed opportunity. Spying on your competitors on social media can provide an immense amount of information, giving you data beyond a simple number of who has more followers on what platform. You can gain insight into what’s happening with their business in a number of different ways, which you can then leverage to your advantage. And the best part? You don’t even need expensive tools in order to get most of the information. Native tools and manual reviews of your competitor pages will be enough to give you everything you need to know. Let’s take a look at the 6 key things you can learn by spying on your competitors’ social media. 1. Their Current Offers & Ad Strategies You can learn a lot by checking out a business’s ad campaigns, including: What offers they’re promoting, like free shipping, discounts, or sales. The pain points or value propositions they’re appealing to. What audiences they’re targeting. The imagery and videos they’re using, and the stories they’re telling. To check out a business’s current ad campaigns, use their Facebook Info & Ads section, which is found on their Page. It will show you all the newsfeed ads that the Page is currently running, and will take you to the designated landing page. Ad campaigns give you huge insight into what strategies and appeals your competitors are using to connect with customers. Use this to try to look for strategies that you may want to test for yourself, and to understand what they’re offering. If you can find a way to either beat it– writing more persuasive copy, having better sales, etc.– or to offer something different, do so. 2. What Their Customers Are Saying Customers have a lot to say, and it’s easy to think that if you aren’t the one getting an inbox full of those opinions, there’s no real way to hear them outside of scoping out reviews. While scoping out online reviews– on Facebook and off– is helpful, taking a look at what people are saying about a brand instead of to it can be even more helpful. Get on Instagram and Twitter, and search for both the branded hashtags and just the brand’s actual name as a hashtag (if different). On Instagram, you’re more likely to see positive user-generated content. Check out the campaigns that your competitors may be using to increase the UGC here; do they have specific instructions, like telling users to share their “unboxing,” where they share their experience unpacking their packages? Specific instructions increase the likelihood users will share UGC, so take a look at how your competition is doing if it works for them. Most brands will typically have this in their bio. Twitter is where you’ll really see the opinions flying hard and fast. People take their complaints to Twitter and make them public, hoping they go viral. You’ll also see some competitor wins, of course, but if you want to get a solid idea of where your competition is falling short (and how you can step up to fill those needs), this is a good place to do it. 3. Distinct Brand Voice If you really want to understand the relationship your audience has with your competitors, getting a feel for their distinct brand and their brand voice is incredibly helpful. And when it comes to social media spying, one of the best places to really get a firm grip on brand voice will be in Facebook and Instagram’s (and potentially Snapchat’s) Stories. Stories are quirky, and they’re meant to be fun. Brands are getting creative and really showing who “they” are, including featuring behind-the-scenes team members and events that they might not have shared otherwise. Check out your competitor’s Story by clicking on their profile, and then on their profile picture. If they have Stories, you’ll be able to see them. You should also check out a brand’s Highlights on Instagram if they have any, which are archives of their Top Stories. They’re only 15 seconds long at the maximum, so take some time to watch them and understand their brand as your customers would see it. 4. Pertinent Business Information Want to know if your competitor has made a big business announcement? Launched a new product, or a service, or is promoting a big sale or special offer? All of these things can impact you, because it could potentially allow them to poach some of your customers or potential customers. Individuals aren’t the only ones that have #FOMO and a need to look impressive on social media; businesses are the exact same way. As soon as they have big news that they can share, they will. This could be a new product release, an update about expansion, or an inside look at events they’re hosting or participating in. You can even get an idea of what community events they’re taking part in and look for similar opportunities yourself. Scoping out your competition on social media is a fantastic way to see what they’re up to and how you can factor that into your business and marketing plans. 5. Their Customer Service Standards Every business claims to care an enormous amount about customer satisfaction, but in reality, not every business delivers in this area. If your competitors are falling short in the customer service department, this is something you want to know so you can make sure to highlight that you deliver customer service excellence every time. Social media can help you see this. Check out a brand’s social media, and see how they’re interacting with their customers. Is their Facebook reply rate on the lower side (which you can see by their response rate, as in the screenshot above?)? Look at their Tweets and public posts from other users; are they responding and addressing public complaints quickly? Are they only addressing complaints, and instead ignoring everyone else who is trying to interact with them, or vice versa? Look at how they’re interacting with their customers, because this is often a direct reflection in their off-social customer service, too. 6. How Your Social Performance Measures Up to Theirs It’s no surprise that checking out your competition on social media will help you determine how your social performance measures up to theirs. You can see who has more followers, who has more reviews, who seems to be getting higher numbers of comments. This matters, but sometimes there are more “quiet” metrics that are actually more valuable to watch. For best results here, look for advanced social media analytics tools like SEMrush’s Social Media Tracker, Rival IQ, or SocialBakers to see detailed analysis of how you’re holding up against the competition. Engagement rate, for example, is much more important than just the sheer number of likes or comments a brand obtains. If your brand posts 4x per week on Facebook and has 1000 followers and has a total of 200 engagements, you have a higher engagement rate than a competitor posting 8x per week with 10000 followers who has 600 likes, comments, and shares. And engagement rate does matter– it shows you how well your audience is responding to it, it can signal the formation of a community on social media, and it can help you get higher placements in the algorithm. Conclusion Competitor research will always be an essential part of marketing. Not only can you assess how your social media content is measuring up in comparison to theirs, you can also get an enormous amount of information about their business if you know where to look – even if it’s the stuff they might want to hide. In many cases, the best way to beat out your competition is to figure out what they’re doing, and either make sure you’re doing something completely different or that you’re doing better; competitor research on social media can help you do both. Author Bio Maria Raybould is a Content Writer and Strategist at SEMrush. Nothing excites her more than seeing her content make a difference. Working alongside the SEMrush Social Media team, Maria strives to deliver the best toolkit for social media professionals all around the world.
Can You Ever Win Unsubscribed Prospects Back? Posted on November 28, 2018November 15, 2018 by Jessica Lunk There’s no doubt about it: unsubscribes hurt! But you shouldn’t take them personally. Regardless of your email marketing prowess, you’re going to deal with subscribers leaving you from time to time. But before you start out on a manic quest to win back your lost followers, it helps to know what’s normal. Unsubscribe rates can range dramatically based on what you do. A 2018 study showed that while religious organizations saw an average unsubscribe rate of just 0.06% in 2017, industries like accommodations and personal/professional services saw unsubscribe rates upwards of 0.25%. Another important factor to keep in mind is that your unsubscribe rates will always look better when you have more contacts. If you’re just starting out with email marketing and you lose one subscriber on your first campaign, your unsubscribe rate will be 0.20% if you have 500 contacts. However, if you have 2000 contacts and you lose one subscriber, your rate will only be 0.05% — what seems like a dramatic difference! So before you start rushing to win back your prospects, consider why they unsubscribed. Take a look at your email copy, the frequency of emails, the length, and the style of email content before a group of users unsubscribed. Is it likely that they left because you sent: Multiple emails in a week, or a day? Irrelevant content, or content that was otherwise different from what the opt-in had promised? Content that wasn’t mobile-friendly, or had other technical issues? Content that reads like spam, and might be winding up in spam folders? (All caps, too many buzzwords like “free” and “sale,” or overly promotional subject lines.) If these sound like possibilities, we have good news: with a few focused changes, you can definitely win these prospects back. On the other hand, if your contacts are unsubscribing because of poor targeting (they were never the intended audience for your product/service) or because they’re truly not interested in what you have to offer, you’re probably better off focusing your energy on obtaining new contacts and nurturing those already in your pipeline. But for the rest of you, let’s charge onward and start reigniting that flame between you and your lost opportunities. Here are four steps to take right now to start winning back your unsubscribed followers. #1: Check the legality of following up with unsubscribed contacts. If a contact has unsubscribed from all communications with you, you could get into legal trouble for sending further promotional content via email, no matter how brief or compelling your content is. Many email marketing platforms (Hatchbuck included) won’t allow you to send further emails to unsubscribed contacts. However, if a contact unsubscribed from one list but remains subscribed to another list, you can win them back on the unsubscribed channel through further emails. For other contacts, however, you’ll have to opt for different methods of communication to get them back — advertisements, direct mail, a phone call, or a social media message, for example. #2: Wait. No matter how masterfully you craft your “please come back!” message, your lost prospect won’t be too keen on returning the week after they went through the trouble of unsubscribing. Instead of reaching out to lost prospects directly, see if you can recapture their attention with less intrusive digital marketing techniques, like: Facebook or Instagram ads Google Display or Search ads Better on-page SEO and lead captures PPC advertising Video marketing, which is often effective for top-funnel or cold leads #3: Create an irresistible offer. When you do reach out to your unsubscribed contacts again, it’s especially important that you make the right impression. Imagine a date giving you a second chance after a failed courtship: you wouldn’t meet up in your sweatpants and just “wing it.” You’d prepare, you’d be respectful, and you’d woo them with an irresistible activity or locale. It’s the same with your lost prospect. Take the time to create an offer that is so valuable to them they’d be foolish to turn it down: a $20 Amazon gift card in exchange for a quick phone call, a free trial of a new product, a useful resource that will make their job easier, or a webinar featuring a famous industry leader. #4: Fix your email content. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is. If your future email marketing content isn’t relevant and interesting, your prospects are going to continue to ignore your offers (or unsubscribe altogether). Furthermore, if your subject lines are spammy, you’ll continue seeing an uptick in unsubscribes. For a deep-dive in what not to do, check your own spam folder. Read these emails carefully and note whether you’re guilty of any of the faux pas that plague these messages. Then, go back to the drawing board. With your unsubscribed prospect in mind, write an email message the way you’d write a friend: be kind, succinct, and stick to one point. When you spend more time and resources on creating strong campaigns with powerful content, you’ll not only win back your unsubscribed prospects, but you’ll see your unsubscribe rate go down overall. And while you can never insure against all unsubscribes, you can strive to keep your rate lower than your industry standard — a strong indication that what you’re doing is working. #5: Use automation to perfect your timing. Even if your emails are pristine, they won’t resonate with your audience unless the message is relevant to them. Marketing automation (like Hatchbuck’s) can help you segment your audience by their interests, so you can send spot-on communication. Using marketing automation, you can group your contacts by actions like: The forms they fill out on your website The pages they visit on your website The links they click in your emails These little indicators all add up to powerful insights you can use to send content your subscribers actually want – keeping unsubscribes at a minimum.
B2B Small Business Marketing Automation Hacks Your Business Needs Posted on November 27, 2018March 6, 2020 by Jonathan Herrick This blog post was updated on February 28, 2020. Are you among the 51% of B2B companies currently using marketing automation? You should be. After all, marketing automation has been proven to deliver a 47% increase in sales revenue and a 29% increase in marketing productivity. But these results aren’t achieved by simply launching a campaign. It takes planning and strategy. And even with access to marketing automation tools, whether through your CRM or other productivity apps, it can be tough to figure out how marketing automation can actually boost your B2B marketing and sales process. Whether you’re just starting out with marketing automation or you’re looking for some serious growth hacking opportunities to skyrocket your small business past the competition, we have you covered. Here are our ten marketing automation hacks for small B2B businesses like yours. 1. Identify and Eliminate Before You Automate You probably already know that marketing automation can be used to streamline email campaigns, but if that’s all you’re doing with it, you’re missing out. To unlock the full power of your platform, you should identify other tasks that are prime candidates for automation, such as routine, repetitive activities that are eating up time and hindering productivity. Things like lead follow-up, prospect nurturing and updating your CRM can all be automated, saving time and freeing you up to focus on more important things. With that said, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of automating as many mundane tasks as possible. But it’s never worth it to automate a task that you don’t need to complete in the first place. To identify these “dead weight” tasks in your processes, make a list of each step in a process. Be as specific as possible. Then, identify steps that aren’t completely necessary — and get rid of them. The steps that remain are the best candidates for automation. 2. Don’t Post Anything Manual to Social Media Manually managing social media is a huge time suck. You have to log in to any given platform, write (or paste, if it’s prewritten) your content, create or find images for your content, and post it at the best time of the day. You then have to repeat that process for every channel on which you’re active. Instead, use a tool like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social to manage all of your social accounts in one place. If you’re already using one of these, dive deeper. You can select preset times and numbers of posts per day, per platform, so your scheduled posts will fall into time slots that work best with your target audience’s time zone and media consumption habits. Further, with a third-party connection app like Zapier, you can create and edit content in one place and have it automatically post to your social media automation tool without even needing to log in to that. 3. Capture Leads Like a Pro Automation Marketer If you’re spending valuable time conducting web searches, sifting through LinkedIn profiles, gathering lead data, and putting this information into a spreadsheet, it’s time to offload these tasks to the robots. Set up a CRM or other tools designed for lead generation. Hatchbuck CRM, for example, can help you automatically merge lead data from multiple sources (think CSVs, Google contacts, and LinkedIn connections lists) without duplicating contacts. From there, its automatic lead scoring capabilities do the heavy lifting so you can focus on following up with hot leads at the exact moment they’re ready to buy. Scoring leads is a valuable practice in any business model, but in B2B it’s even more beneficial due to the lengthier sales process. With long sales cycles, understanding a prospect’s interest in your product or service is essential. Automatically assigning scores to your leads based on factors such as their behavior on your website, engagement level with your messaging and various touchpoints across your platforms can help you determine who to follow up with to achieve optimal results. 4. Rethink Lead Nurturing Work with your salesperson or sales team to identify how sales is following up with leads. If you’re using email templates, set up an automation that sends follow-up emails at regular intervals based on where your leads are in the sales funnel. If you have a content marketing campaign designed for educating prospects, identify triggers that indicate a contact is ready for a specific piece of content. For example, if a known lead visits your “pricing” page, send an automatic email about your pricing (or a discount) straight to their inbox later that day. Research indicates that segmented emails boast higher open rates, better engagement rates and ultimately result in closing more deals. By segmenting your campaigns based on the interests and engagement level of your contacts, you can tailor your messaging to better match their needs and preferences. When you address the specific needs of your prospects through segmented messages, they will be more likely to come to you when they’re ready to buy. 5. Automate Mundane Customer Service Tasks Do you answer endless queries on Facebook Messenger about business hours and prices? Do away with these drab conversations by using a bot to answer FAQs for you. If you’re not sure chatbots are right for your business, the trick is to keep it simple. Customers don’t mind (and many prefer) interacting with a bot when they have basic questions about your products and services — as long as they have contact information for a human for when they need help with more complicated questions. 6. Create Quality Content Your marketing automation tool may be able to do a lot of things, like determine which leads are hot as well as the best time to communicate with those leads. The one thing it cannot do is produce the message you’re trying to send. To get the most of your marketing automation, do not underestimate the importance of creating quality content. The right message can dramatically improve your chances of conversion. 7. Set Up Preset Drip Campaigns You can create an email drip campaign for just about every marketing objective: nurturing leads, warming up your prospects, extending special offers to increase conversions, and even influencing post-purchase behavior. A drip campaign, if you’re unaware, is a preset flow of emails that get sent out at regular intervals to encourage customers to take a specific action. In a post-purchase drip campaign, for example, your goal may be to ensure your customer understands how to use the product or solution you’ve provided. Your drip campaign, then, maybe a series of weekly follow-up emails providing tutorials and contact info for customer support. 8. Get Personal One of the biggest mistakes B2B marketers make is forgetting that they are marketing to people, not just faceless brands. You will be far more successful with your marketing efforts if you remember to include the human element. Speak to your audience as if you were having a conversation rather than issuing a cold, robotic and impersonal message. For instance, rather than saying “Attached is the literature you requested,” say, “Here’s the information you asked for.” That human touch is what will ultimately win you new business. When it comes to being successful in the B2B realm, marketing automation can be your ace in the hole. The tips above should help you maximize your efforts and gain consistent results.
7 Ways to Use Google’s Keyword Planner That You Haven’t Thought Of Posted on November 26, 2018October 25, 2022 by Allie Wolff If you’ve used Google AdWords, you’re probably familiar with the Google Keyword Planner. It’s a very powerful tool that you can use even if you don’t want to spend money on an AdWords campaign. You do, however, need to set up an AdWords account. Once your account is set up, sign in and go to ads.google.com. From there, click the Tools icon, then click Keyword Planner in the menu that flies out. So, now that you’ve got access to Google Keyword Planner, what can you do with it? First, two obvious ways to use the tool: Discover New Keyword Ideas Once you open the keyword planner, you can enter a variety of options to get new keyword ideas. Google’s instructions say to “Enter words, phrases, or a URL related to your business.” Google will then display a list of keyword suggestions. Once you’ve entered your word or phrase, select “Get Ideas.” You’ll be taken to the Keyword Results page, which is where you’ll find potential keywords. Take a look through the list — you might find some new keyword ideas you haven’t tried using yet. Get Search Volume and Forecasts Once you have a list of keywords, you can see metrics for them by choosing the Get search volume and forecasts option. Here, you won’t see keyword suggestions. Instead, you’ll see an estimate of how many clicks and impressions you could expect if you ran an ad for 30 days using those keywords. You can also see estimated costs, CTR, and CPC information. Pro tip: Go to the Historical Metrics tab and change the date ranges for even more insights. Although it’s designed for use with AdWords, Google Keyword Planner has many other helpful uses. Here are the top seven ways to use Google’s Keyword Planner that you haven’t thought of. 1. Use Keyword Planner Country Data to Inform Facebook Ads Knowing more about what’s being searched for — and where — can help you create the most effective ads on other platforms, including Facebook. Use location filters to look at the reach for a product or service you want to promote. You can find out where certain types of ads perform better than others. Then, you can focus your ads on the locations most likely to generate more customers. 2. Explore Seasonal Trends Keyword Planner data can also be used to learn more about how interest in certain products evolves from month to month. For example, you’re more likely to see searches for sunglasses from February to July — or searches for Halloween costumes from August to October. The keyword tool might also uncover that searches for particular products are relatively consistent throughout the year. Armed with this information, digital marketers can adjust their plans to better target the right people at the right time. 3. Research Your Competitors Most of the time, Google Keyword Planner is used to research keywords related to certain search terms. You can also repurpose it to search for terms related to certain websites. Instead of using a search term, start with a URL and search the entire site. From here, you’ll be able to see the keywords related to your competitor’s site. This can help you identify which keywords are the most (and least) successful for you and your competition. 4. Guide SEO Content Decisions Keyword Planner helps you learn how your audience is searching for your products and services. With these seed keywords, you can develop content such as blog posts that addresses the selling points of your solution. Check out average monthly searches to see how keywords are ranked over time. If there are very few searches for a particular keyword, don’t bother creating content that uses that term. Instead, focus on the terms with the highest rankings. 5. Take Your Keywords With You You can export your keywords from the Keyword Planner by clicking the “Download Keyword Ideas” button. By exporting your keyword list, you can cross-reference it with other keyword research to get the best results. You can export the entire list or choose specific keywords to export. 6. Forecast the Results The forecasting graph in Google Keyword Planner is great for estimating the optimal CPC for the keywords you want to target. Find the point on the graph where your CPC bids reach diminishing returns and compare that number to your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). 7. Use Device Estimates to Inform Advertising Strategy The device estimates should give you an idea of the distribution of clicks your keywords will generate from the various possible devices. These estimates can help you determine which kinds of ads to run. If you get more action on mobile, you’ll want to focus more of your efforts on mobile-friendly advertising and marketing. No matter how you use Google Keyword Planner, its benefits can help marketers at organizations of all sizes get the most bang for their buck. Combining these strategies can make it easier to go after the audiences who are most likely to become customers.