Author Archives: Kari VanNoy

Are Daily Deal Sites Really so Bad for Small Businesses?

Posted on by July 2, 2013
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groupon Are Daily Deal Sites Really So Bad for Small Business?

Like a comet blazing against the night sky, daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial burst onto the scene promising great things for small business. You’d be able to grab new customers easily and quickly using these sites, and without a huge expenditure.

Unfortunately; not so much. This is largely due to several things: stratospheric expectations, poor press and the lack of clear strategy by businesses using this new tool.

All the media can seem to focus on is how much these companies, the two largest players in the space, are bleeding money. While both have suffered through massive growing pains, this was practically inevitable given the fanfare and splash they made coming onto the scene.

However, we’re not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater! We believe that with the right strategy and realistic expectations, businesses can use daily deal sites to their advantage and gain a new audience, as well as energizing their core customers. Let’s look at some key points in achieving this outcome!

Determine if your business is right for the daily deal model
Not every business is a good candidate for a model like this one. Be sure and ask an expert for their opinion, and contact some of their references for their take on it. Try and gather a decent sampling of data before signing on the dotted line.

The goal is repeat customers, not one-time buyers
Many of the sales generated by daily deals are people seeking a one-time purchase based solely on the price offered. This can and often does result in a customer who has no intention of coming back to you anytime soon. It’s your job to wow them into becoming repeat customers.

Track your results
To best understand whether or not daily deal sites will work for you long-term, you really need to track your results carefully, from total expenditures to customer behavior, including repeat purchases. Analyzing this data will help you make an informed plan going forward.

Be sure to follow up with these new customers
To increase the odds of securing a long term customer, make sure you follow up their initial purchase with some sort of incentive to keep shopping with you. This can come in the form of other coupons, sales, repeat customer spiffs or another incentive.

Daily deal sites aren’t dead, and neither will your business be if you can find the formula to make them work for you. The potential is enormous!

Simple Automation Tips to help you Re-gain Work/Life Balance

Posted on by June 27, 2013
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automation Simple Automation Tips to Help You Regain Your Work-Life Balance

Maybe you’ve bought into the dream of marketing automation, you know, the one where you set it up once and forget it, hit the easy button, and retire to the beach sipping margaritas. Or perhaps your experience is the opposite, where you are simply overwhelmed with all the tasks that need to be addressed with an online business, and can barely breathe.

The reality lies somewhere between these extremes. Unless you truly have gotten it together and are drowning in your own business, you likely need some help with regaining a sensible and profitable work-life balance. Let’s look at ways we can do this.

Some cool tools that can help with marketing automation

Hootsuite – Like it or not, social media is a vital part of your business going forward. Hootsuite helps you manage your social media marketing by aggregating all your important social accounts in one place, enabling you to respond with more agility, and saving hours of time.

Email autoresponders – One of the most lethal and useful tools in an online business arsenal is your email autoresponder. This keeps your brand in front of prospects on a regular basis, with practically no effort on your part, save setting it up once. A must-have!

IFTTT – If this, then that, is an ingenious tool (free) that works on formulas, or “recipes,” you create, such as “If I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook, then send me a text message.” IFTTT is tied into the web-based accounts that you chose to authorize, and will check for new data every 15 minutes unless you’ve chosen to make this instant.

Zapier – A paid service much like IFTTT, but with a few more premium features.

Google Alerts, Hangouts, Drive, Communities – The Google suite of tools is free and can be extremely useful for saving time and organizing teamwork. You can collaborate on work within Drive, Hangouts and Communities are terrific ways to synch up with team members and connect with prospects.

Best practices for automating parts of your online business

Autoposting – Can be useful for scheduling blog posts or other content.

Outsourcing – You can’t do it all. Delegate to staff, or hire outside outsourcers to handle tasks that you absolutely don’t have to do. Some good places to locate affordable outsourcing help are Odesk, Elance, and Fiverr.

Hire a virtual assistant – This can free you up in many ways, and allow you to focus on parts of your business you really need to attend to.

Worst practices (avoid these!)

Autoposting – Can be abused! Don’t schedule a load of mediocre or worse, poor content to be posted to your sites. This will hurt more than help.

Social Oomph – Though quite popular, this is one of the worst aspects of social media. No one wants to read a litany of quotes from dead men. This is the antithesis of “social” media.

Not paying attention – While it’s nice to have automated systems in place, that’s no excuse to not pay attention. Unanswered comments, questions and replies can lead to a reputation management problem, so keep an eye on it with the tools we’ve presented here!

Design is the Killer App

Posted on by June 25, 2013
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6-13-importance-of-designConsumers Have Choice – Don’t Let Your Design Make It Easy for Them!

So you don’t feel design plays a part in first impressions? Guess again! A study by researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2012 revealed that it takes two-tenths of a second to form a first impression, give or take a nanosecond. This makes it increasingly important, as the ability to obtain good design is growing, to ensure that we are doing all we can to get that favorable recognition. This is extremely important for small business, as a poor design can often lead to trust issues, an essential factor for smaller enterprises attempting to build their brand.

What can you do to promote good design?

The very first thing to do is to give this some thought. The competition has. Using a plan for presenting your brand and products to the world is largely accomplished by a carefully thought-out plan. Another significant finding in that study was that your logo gets the most attention, followed closely by images and social interaction. The visual elements matter considerably! So now that we have an understanding, there are essentially no excuses remaining, as now cost is not any longer a viable excuse for getting good design work done. The advent of crowdsourcing sites like 99Designs, CrowdSpring and others made what was once prohibitively expensive for small business, a very affordable item.

How are the benefits?

The benefits of good design in your business are numerous and sometimes intangible. While a visual redesign of your website is fairly obvious, other things like product packaging, your print and web advertising, and even site graphics are shared, Pinned and ReTweeted from your webpages. We are observing every day just how much this can impact your site’s reach and customer base. What’s more, that special feeling that visitors get when viewing a superb design may be hard to quantify, but when your site’s traffic increase and sales increase for no other apparent reason, you’ll be very glad you took a long look at your visual design elements today!

10 Ways to get Customers to Open Email

Posted on by June 20, 2013
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Why Won’t Your Customers Open Your Email?

Are your email open rates a source of embarrassment? Taking steps to improve them is a lot easier to do than you may think. According to Epsilon.com, email open rates sport an industry average of around 27.4 percent, with wide variations for markets. Understanding your email open rates and the way to improve them should be high on your to-do list!

Toward that end, listed below are 10 top tips for boosting your email open rates.

  1. Create something worth reading – Undoubtedly, the easiest way to have your email opened is to write something your email list can’t wait to get more of.
  2. Don’t write War and Peace – No one has enough time in their day, and long emails that meander and don’t deliver on the promise are one way to keep them from opening again. Also, make sure you make use of optimum sending times.
  3. Build great subject lines – This is actually the most important aspect in whether or not your email gets opened. Spend some time to write great subject lines.
  4. Use your first line effectively – Closely related is the first line, part of which is visible in their inbox. This as well is valuable real estate, and don’t permit yours to be populated with stuff like “If you don’t see any images in this message”
  5. Address their needs and concerns – Solve problems and offer solutions.
  6. Offer deals and savings – Everybody wants a deal, and email is a great way to communicate any deals or specials your company is offering.
  7. Teach – Presumably they are reading your email and or newsletter because they want to learn something from you. Don’t disappoint!
  8. Try and be entertaining – Don’t be boring! Use humor, wit, and a little controversy once in a while, but take care not to offend at the same time.
  9. Make your “From” line recognizable – Having your company name or the person who is branded as the sender imparts trust.
  10. Be sure and resend your unopened email – Quite simple to do, resending your unopened email is an easy method to increase your open rates.

Easy Jam Poptarts

Posted on by June 19, 2013
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cooked poptarts1Looking for something quick and delicious for breakfast, but don’t want to buy junk food from the store? Why not make some super easy and quick homemade poptarts?

 

1 package all-natural pre-made pie dough, enough for 2 pie crusts

Any flavors of jam you like, I used peach and strawberry. You could also use nutella, or nutbutters mixed with honey, feel free to get creative with your fillings.

1 egg to make an egg wash

sugar and cinnamon

 

uncooked poptarts

Roll out the pie dough on a well floured surface till 1/8 inch thick, and try to make it as square as you can. Lightly brush the whole thing with egg wash. Mark into equal squares, rectangles or triangles, depending on the shape of your dough. Put 1 Tablespoon of jam in the center, making sure you have 1/2 inch all the way around. once you have little blobs of jam in each center, lay second rolled out pie dough on top and using a knife or pizza cutter and cut into shapes. Use a fork and cold along all the edges, pressing them together with the tines of the fork so that they are sealed. Poke some holes in the top with the fork to let out the steam as they bake. Brush tops lightly with egg wash, and sprinkle on some sugar and cinnamon. Put on parchment covered baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 22 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. Let cool on cooling rack, eat warm. Or, pop them in a toaster oven to reheat in the morning. Easy and tasty!

Smitten with Content Marketing

Posted on by June 18, 2013
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Small Businesses Are Smitten with Content Marketing (For Good Reason)
Java Printing
Content marketing

Content marketing may be a term you’ve heard tossed about lately, and still may not know exactly what it means for your business.

Simply put, content marketing is the practice of creating, collecting, and making available fresh content for your readers. This can come in many forms, such as blog posts, articles, whitepapers, short reports, videos, podcasts, ebooks, social media and more.

We live in an age that treasures information, and the more you can provide your readers the more authority you will carry in their eyes, which can often result in better rankings, more traffic, links, and sales.

Content Marketing is getting more and more popular
According to BusinessBolts.com this year some 74 percent of businesses plan to do an increased level of content marketing. Only 4 percent are not. There are many reasons for this, among them cost-effectiveness, near-instant results and control over the medium.

With Content Marketing you are able to shape your message, control the flow, and utilize many different mediums to get your content to your market.

For example, an article or blog post may be written, posted on your site, excerpted in social media, made into a video or audio and social bookmarked across the web.

Repurposing your content for various platforms is the order of the day. Moreover, this can happen quite often, and an entire content marketing campaign can be realized quite quickly.

A real-world example of how content marketing can rock your sales
The New York Times recently profiled a Northern Virginia company, River Pools and Spas, was that watching as their sales tanked due to the housing recession of 2008. Orders shrank from six per month ($50,000 a pop) to less than two. What had been a $250,000 yearly spend on radio, TV and pay per click advertising, was now out of the question.

Instead owner Marcus Sheridan embarked on an ambitious content marketing campaign consisting of blog posts and videos, and within a short time had not only recovered but exceeded pre-recession levels.

In fact, Sheridan attributes nearly $2 million in sales to a SINGLE article he wrote on how much a fiberglass pool should cost!

Content marketing can and should be a major piece of your online marketing strategy for 2103. The good news is that it’s all within your control!

The Awesome Power of Video Marketing

Posted on by June 13, 2013
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The Awesome Power of Video Marketing
video-marketing
Video marketing

Quite often, the biggest challenge we’ll ever face in online marketing is extending the reach we have. One of the fastest and easiest ways to do that in 2013 is by using the immense power of video marketing.

The evidence is staggering: online video has become inextricably woven into the fabric of our daily lives. According to Nielsen, YouTube attracts more than 136 million unique viewers per month. Another very recent accounting done by comScore shows that in November 2012 alone the average viewer enjoyed 1,182 minutes of online video! That’s a lot of watching.

So what are some of the benefits of video marketing?

There are many, but let’s just focus on a the top five:

Improve your search engine presence. Ranking videos high on YouTube and Google is significantly easier than ranking web pages. According to one calculation from a Forrester Research analyst, you have a 50x better chance of ranking video content (versus text content) on page one of Google!
Increase your reach. Having your videos on platforms where millions congregate will help spread the word about your business quickly. According to Facebook, posts that incorporate a photo or video generate 120 percent more engagement than the average post!
Improve your branding, trust and online authority. Simply putting a face to the name can lend authority to your business. According to a CMI survey, 46 percent of people say they are more likely to seek information about a company, product or service after seeing a video about it.
Generate traffic and help with lead generation. A video that becomes popular can result in a great deal of new visitors and business.
Catch a wave. You can respond to market events and news incredibly quickly (sometimes the same day) and reap the search benefits of first responders.

An example of how video marketing can make a difference

BlendTec, a Utah based company that sells commercial blenders, spent $50 on five videos, using the hook, “Will it blend?” Their videos showed them blending everything from iPhones to marbles.

These, short low-budget videos generated more than 35 million views, which helped sales grow from $2 million to $10 million in two years. Not bad for a $50 investment!

It’s no surprise, then, that 22 percent of U.S. small businesses plan on using video in the next 12 months to promote their business!* (Source: BIA/Kelsey)

Would your Company Benefit from Having a Mobile App?

Posted on by June 11, 2013
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5-13-mobile-appsWould Your Business Benefit from Having Its Own Mobile App?

It’s no big secret that mobile has captured the imagination and a lot of market share when it comes to online shopping.

In its early years mobile faced many challenges, such as people not trusting their provider to provide a safe, secure transaction, to the prevailing practice of using mobile only for location.

Mobile has now overcome much of this and is poised to offer so much more to companies willing to go all in.

One thing is abundantly clear: the numbers are staggering. We can’t resist tossing in some revealing statistics:

According to Frank N. Magid Associates, over three-quarters of Americans age 43 and under now use a smartphone; in other words, the people doing most of the buying.
Nearly all Generation Y consumers owned a mobile phone of some kind and 72 percent owned smartphones. Source: Forrester, 2013
Time spent with mobile apps is starting to challenge television: consumers are spending 127 minutes per day using mobile apps—up 35 percent from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year—and spend 168 minutes watching television per day. Source: Flurry, 2012

However, you still may have questions as to whether or not taking the time and expense to develop a mobile app is right for your business. Let’s look at some pros and cons.

Some of the Pros of Mobile Apps

Repeat business and instant feedback – We crave convenience, and by having your app available makes it easy to get repeat business. You also will get instant feedback, which even if negative can be good to know!
Far better presence – Instead of having the user search for your business on their phone browser, your app is front and center, ready for duty!
Helps you to brand and develop loyalty – By having your app on screens everywhere, your brand is always on their mind, making them far more likely to return to you.
Can also be a useful tool for sales team and vendors – An app for such as the one Bell Nursery uses to keep track of the 1700 people it uses to supply plants to 150 Home Depots is an indispensable aid to their business.

Now Some of the Cons…

Can be wildly expensive – While you can use a do-it-yourself builder or a software solution, the results may not be useful. An app with all the bells and whistles optimized for each mobile platform can run many thousands of dollars. If you can’t afford a multi-platform app just yet, settle for your mobile website until you can.
Need to be fresh – Unfortunately, apps are seldom set and forget. Your users will soon get bored without fresh, updated content.
Requires different apps for each phone platform – Unlike a mobile website, mobile apps have to be built specifically for each platform: Apple, Android, etc.
Difficult to measure return on investment – Can be very difficult to gauge.

Walking Before Running
The fact is, most small business don’t have mobile-friendly website—so that’s where most of you should start before you even consider going the app route. (As it happens, 3 in 10 small businesses still don’t have a website at all!) Nonetheless, it’s certainly worth considering a business app in the future, once you’ve mastered the basics of mobile marketing.

Is a Customer Loyalty Program Right for your Business?

Posted on by June 6, 2013
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5-13-customer-loyalty

 

Is a Customer Loyalty Program Right for Your Business?

Customer loyalty and rewards programs have been around for ages, though their online cousins are a relatively new addition into the mix.

Businesses are always on the lookout for ways to keep loyal customers coming back for more, and increasing the lifetime value of that guest. The good news here is that with few exceptions, a customer loyalty program could be an easy and painless way to do just that for your business. Let’s look at how.

How does an online customer loyalty program work?

An online customer loyalty program replaces all the cards customers would otherwise have to carry around with them in their wallets, purses or keychains, and instead allows customers to give their mobile numbers or email address at checkout who enters it right into the register.

This enters them on to a customer database (totally permission based) and enables the business to send offers and news about their membership. This rewards loyal customers with prizes and discounts for both purchases and interactions.

Why should you do this, and what would be some of the applications?

Beyond the obvious benefit of being able to sign up existing customers to your list, there are a number of ways business owners can benefit with this type of program.

Announce sales, offer discounts and new products and services.
Target your customers using the geo-location capabilities of their smartphone, for spur-of-the-moment promotions.
Consider “gamification” of your loyalty program, as this increases engagement many-fold.
Accept mobile payments from the same platform.
And most of all, improve customer retention. According to study by Bain and Co., a mere 5 percent increase in customer retention can result in up to 75 percent more profitability. Is that worth it?!

An example of how well a mobile loyalty program can work!
Jersey Mike’s Subs launched a mobile loyalty program in April 2012 and within one month had signed up more than 200,000 members nationwide! Their loyalty program was allows customers to earn free food and benefit from frequent special offers.

All that is needed from their customers is a mobile number, and Jersey Mike’s can communicate with its customers directly both locally and nationally, thereby targeting campaigns accurately. Mobile loyalty has helped this 56-year-old company find ways to expand their revenue using their current base.

So what about your business?

Implementing an online customer loyalty program can be the deciding factor in whether or not your business finds profitability in these tough economic times. This can be done with a relatively small investment, and utilizing your best existing resource: your current customers!

Common Social Media Mistakes

Posted on by June 4, 2013
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5-13-five-social-media-blunders

 

5 Common Social Media Blunders and How to Avoid Them

Social media marketing for your business is tough enough without shooting yourself in the foot. Self-induced social faux pas are easy to commit, and difficult to overcome. Social media is not only necessary to include, but crucial to get right! Even though 74 percent of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media, in contrast to another 83 percent have abandoned a purchase after a bad or non-existent customer service incident. (Creotivo.com)

So to help you ward off the mistakes that could be looming in your social media marketing, here are five social media mistakes you need to avoid!

  1. Not engaging with your audience – Make sure you are actively engaging your social media audience. Seek advice, conduct polls, share funny stories (hopefully somewhat relevant) and ask their thoughts: they’ll gladly provide them, and you’ll be far wiser and nearer to your goals in a number of ways.
  2. Lacking excitement or passion – If you’re not excited about your brand, it’s likely to be very difficult to get other people excited about it, either. Communicate this in your postings, and in your campaigns. Everybody wants to create a buzz about our businesses, but it starts with you!
  3. Always promoting – Nobody wants to be constantly sold to, and social media is littered with companies that have tried. Endeavor to develop relationship and trust first, and after that it will be much easier to send an occasional selling message.
  4. Not responding to your customers – There is no faster way to ruin whatever goodwill and respect you’ve developed in your brand than to ignore your customers. It’s way too easy to totally miss customers and prospects posting their concerns, questions or complaints on these very platforms! Don’t be that guy!
  5. No plan for social media – Not having a strategy for your social media marketing is sort of asking for it to fail. You need to understand why you’re doing, and which platforms are ideal for you. (Not all are!)

We would be remiss if we didn’t share a link to a glaring example of what NOT to do! After the recent Boston marathon bombing, the food site Epicurious sent out a couple of unfortunate tweets.