The speed at which technology is advancing is astounding. The way consumers engage with companies and their marketing is changing just as fast. The ability for a consumer to block your efforts to reach them is increasing on most traditional platforms, like television and radio. Now most businesses are turning to digital solutions to make up for the loss and are finding great results at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing efforts. I've laid out seven tools you should consider incorporating into your business development and marketing to help you grow in 2017.
Traditional marketing platforms have very high costs and limited targeting ability. With social ad platforms, you can now target audiences with dozens, if not hundreds, of criteria, behavior, and interest categories. With direct mail, television, radio, and other traditional marketing platforms you are reaching a very general audience. The approach is like a shotgun and sprays an area but most of the time your target is not hit. With social targeted ads, you are taking a sniper approach. If you want to reach mothers of toddlers that live in your zip code, you can. Here is more information about social targeting.
Wouldn't you like to be able to market to the anonymous visitors that have been on your website after they left? Google, Facebook, and many other platforms allow you to get your ads in front of those anonymous visitors. The ads can be set up so you are not annoying your former web visitors. You can adjust the timeline and frequency of when the ads appear, so you can set up ads to be seen only once, or as many times as possible over two months, for example.
Retargeting connects you with anonymous website visitors. Prospecting tools are great for B2B's because they allow you to see what companies have been on your website, what they are looking at, how often they have visited, and for how long. Businesses with a direct sales team love prospecting tools because this helps them find potentially warmer leads because it is clear that someone at ABC Company has been on their website. Prospecting tools can also be used to see if your competitors are looking at your website and may give you insight into their activity.
Another tool I recommend is smart content. It is the Amazon approach. When you look at a few products on Amazon the next time you return to the site you will see content related to your last visit. If you have many products and services, you can implement the same strategy Amazon does and offer up a quick path to the products your previous web visitors are interested in.
If your website is creating leads through downloads and offers, you should be nurturing those leads with email workflows. An email workflow is a series of emails you create to help nurture leads to a decision or sale. Workflows are automated and can be set up to be delivered when there is a trigger, like a download or they can be date driven. The bottom line is they are automated and help you stay connected to your leads and save you a ton of time.
IP and Mobile targeting is different than targeted social marketing. These campaigns are driven by separate analytics databases of demographics tied to the IP address or mobile ID of millions of consumers. This can be a high dollar ad spend but can yield great results for businesses with a high customer lifetime value or high product price like jewelry, cruises, and higher education tuition.
I love the campaign tool HubSpot created to track campaigns. It allows you to group all of your digital assets into a single analytics dashboard. This is campaign central and has become one of the most powerful tools I use to tie all of my activities together. Being able to see how every asset is working for you is incredibly helpful to measure what is working and where the most leads or best leads for a particular campaign are being generated. You can tie specific activities or content to resulting customers, not just leads. I cannot live without this tool.
There may be a single tool that you find brings the best results but you will not find out until you try. My recommendation would be to start with a marketing automation tool. Be conservative in your spend in discovering what works then begin increasing your budget where you have proof. There are no shortcuts but these tools will likely help you grow. Create some realistic goals and jump in- start with one of these tools. Get a free one-hour consultation here.
You are in small business, so you have to keep it simple. You have to be able to make it, sell it, and manage the money. You wear several hats and it is our job to help you simplify so you can do more with less. I am going to quickly cover the five things every small business should be doing on Facebook to help their business grow.
Number one is to tell your story. In a world of vanillas be the rocky road. Telling your story is mostly about consumers connecting with you as a person and the culture of your company. And the culture of your company is largely the personalities of your employees. The bottom line is people want to do business with people. Many businesses get caught up in making what they sell the primary focus of their social posts and they fall into the trap of being another "me too" company. Unless you have an exclusive product no one else has don't make the product the sole focus of all your social content. If you share on social every day make sure that thirty to fifty percent of what you do is tied to the human element, and show off your people and your story. Show off the "who" and the "why" behind what you do.
Make goals every month to increase the number of likes your page has. Don't simply focus on engagement with your posts, although that is important. If you take care of number one you will get post engagement. Go back to everyone who engages your content and ask them to like your page. Also, over the course of every month, be sure your posts encourage page likes. Mix it up and have a contest once a month or once a quarter to encourage page likes. Your Facebook page can be a powerful thing if you are continually growing it.
Facebook has great targeting tools that are easy to use. You are able to create saved audiences that save you time on future ads you run. If you are taking care of number two (Grow Your Channel), you will be able to get in front of your entire audience quickly with small ad spends. Ten dollars can go a long way on Facebook and create a tremendous ROI for very little cost. Facebook also has retargeting tools that help you generate ads for prospects who have been on your website recently. Drop a little code in your website header and you are off to the races. Click here for some helpful information to help you get started or you can request a training course with us to help you get started with all the ad tools Facebook offers. You can also check out this recent blog post to get a step-by-step guide to setting up a Facebook ad.
Why spend money if you don't have to? Take steps every month to convert your Facebook audience into email contacts. Email is still a very powerful and effective marketing tool and it's free. If you have offers, contests, giveaways, or special events you think a person would exchange their email address for - you should go for it. Every month, make a goal to convert some of your Facebook audience into your email database. If you have one thousand followers why not make a goal to get 100 of those people on your email list. If you are able to grow your audience ten percent every month, make a goal to get half of them on your email list.
Always be telling your story, but also show off your knowledge and passion. Remember not to make this the main focus of your social posts throughout the month. Keep this category to twenty percent or less of all of your monthly posts. People don't want to be sold. They want high-quality information so they can educate themselves. The modern consumer can shut off most advertising and so businesses need to shift from an old-school advertising mindset and become educators.
Here is some bonus information, too. If you still are struggling to find time to do this consider getting someone else to do this for you. Most small businesses could cover these five steps in four to five hours a week. If outsourcing this to a marketing agency likes ours is not the right fit you could get a person on your team to own this for you and with the right training they could do wonders for your business. One of things I like most about social and digital marketing is that you can measure the results. This will move the needle for ninety-nine percent of small businesses. It just takes persistence and refinement.
It's not like you need more things to do, but if you have found Facebook to be a valuable tool for your small business then you should be looking for things that will simplify your time and tasks on social media. I put together five simple things every small business should consider doing on Facebook every week and month to see a continual benefit.
1. The first thing is to be real. This is especially true of retail, restaurants, and practically every direct-to-consumer business. Take ten minutes every week and get out your smartphone and snap images of your employees, your storefront, your products, and maybe some of your favorite customers (with permission of course). While your creativity is fresh write down something to go with each image or ask one of your employees something about them so your customers can begin to know more about your company. You do not need to get a professional photographer that charges a premium to create content for your Facebook channel. From time to time, this may be valuable, but your day to day social content should not be over thought or have extremely high-end production. I have found that raw posts with images or video we capture on our mobile devices often produces the best results and engagement. Check out one of my favorite tools to edit images and do text overlay - Canva. There are also some great online tools to help you share your content like Buffer or Hootsuite.
2. Create a calendar. Some people are completely spontaneous but those people usually find five to ten days between posts. It is beneficial to post one to two times a day on Facebook as a small business. Of course this varies by industry but generally, that is the rule. If you get disciplined by creating a calendar you should create a content category list to help you fill those buckets and assign the ratio of each category accordingly. An example would be creating categories for products, employees, services, special events, holidays, recognition, charities you admire or support, customers, and maybe quotable quotes. Take your categories and decide how often you want to post for each category. Let's assume you have 45 posts in a thirty day month, averaging 1.5 posts per day. You can slice that pie however you like, but I would recommend doing slightly more people and event related content over product or service content. Which leads me to the next point.
3. Use Facebook so people get to know your culture. If the majority of your posts are advertisements or are product or service centric you are missing the point of "social" media. Be social. People love businesses that are lovable. Most products and services are not endearing. People are endearing. Share great content about your people, your mission, values, and beliefs. Share content about your customers and share real stories about real people like the founders, the employees, or leaders in your community.
4. Really engage. Business pages on Facebook have some limitations on engaging personal profiles pages, which is why creating content your followers engage with is extremely important. Once someone makes a comment or reviews you be sure you are responsive. They may have made a comment, asked a question, or just was engaging, join the conversation and participate.
5. This is not really a task to check off, but a state of mind. Do not overthink this stuff. Do not act like a big PR firm for a fortune 500 company. If you get a bad review be honest, polite, but straightforward. Be humble and apologetic if the customer is right. If they are wrong, stand your ground but be courteous, because social media is no different than the town square, everyone can see and hear you. Sometimes if you have built a loyal following of customers they will often be the ones who jump in and defend you. If you are funny then be funny. If you are not funny, don't try. Be yourself and let the personality of your company come out on Facebook. Be the real you, have a plan, be transparent, engage your followers, and don't overthink it. This should be fun.
Facebook can be a huge benefit for businesses, just be sure to utilize it to your needs. Want some guidance through this? Get the conversation started.
There a few important numbers that really impact your marketing decisions. Owners and marketers alike should know these numbers and keep an eye on them since they change every month or quarter. I am going to cover what I consider to be the two most important numbers and why your business should be tracking them closely.
Do you know the lifetime value of your customers? We should start here and move backward. Knowing how much the average lifetime of your customers is will help you answer so many questions, including seeing if your marketing activities help improve this stat. We serve clients as much in retention as new client acquisition, so it is important to be able to tie the marketing activities to real data and lifetime value. In my opinion, this is vital. Here is a link to help you learn how to calculate the average lifetime value of your customers based on a Starbucks case study by KissMetrics.
Basic equation: (average spend per customer per transaction) x (average number of transactions per month) x (average customer lifespan) = LTV
Do you know how much it costs to get a new customer? You need to know how many new customers you are getting and how much it costs you on average to get each one. The reason why is because once you know this, you can take strategic actions to lower the cost. If you have multiple online and offline efforts, you should calculate the costs for a specific time period and divide it by the number of new clients you get for the same time period. The costs are not just ad spend but labor also; both internal and outsourced. Get specific, but not too granular - like the cost of paper coffee cups. Don't change the formula regularly. Find something that works for you and make sure decision makers agree that you are measuring the right things. Here is a great blog that explains multiple ways to calculate COA.
If you know these numbers you should be able to quickly identify what marketing channels or tactics are having the best results. If you are a larger company, you should be using some form of marketing automation that tracks a lead through converting to a customer. If you know how the person converted to a customer and what channel produced that result you may consider putting more emphasis and budget behind that channel. The key channels we always encourage people to look at leveraging are web content and blogging, social channels, and permission email marketing. There are also paid channels that can have a big impact on lead generation and customer conversion like pay-per-click through Google and Youtube, paid social targeting, and retargeting.
Do you know what efforts have the biggest impact? Just because one channel does not perform well does not mean you should abandon it. If you are not experimenting regularly with different tactics across multiple channels, then you will never make big strides in improving your lead generation. Want some guidance through this? Get the conversation started.
So many of our clients have extensive "frequently asked questions" (FAQs) on their websites because they took the time to address the questions their prospects and clients have. But often the FAQs are not as thorough as they should be. Using your blog to elaborate on the most asked questions is a great way to help build your web traffic and new visitors. Link to your blog from the FAQs and elaborate by using two or three paragraphs to explain the answer to the question in greater detail. Future prospects just may find their way to you as a result of that blog. Here are some tips to get a little more mileage out of blogging your way through your FAQs.
I know I just told you to elaborate on your FAQ but you don't need to write a novel. If you only have a few lines in response to a question on the FAQ it would be helpful to expand your response into a couple paragraphs in a blog about the same topic. Think of a few ways to ask the question or variations of the question you have heard over time that might result in a slightly different answer or response. Address each of the nuances, if any, that exist around a particular question.
Instead of just answering a question, think about additional content someone might be interested in because they are asking a certain question. Is there a guide or tips you could offer them that are related to their question? We had a client in industrial safety equipment that had extremely technical content and the people who needed help had to abide by national regulations. Those regulations were interpreted differently across multiple states. They decided to create an "Ask The Expert" button on their blog and website that helped people ask very specific questions. Often the questions submitted through the "Ask The Expert" page would give us great ideas for new blogs. Be looking for new ways to help answer problems and create ways to encourage visitors on your website to ask more questions.
Sometimes your FAQ's are very simple and easy to answer, so it may be hard to elaborate on them. Try taking the top three most asked questions and combine them into a single blog. You may find this becomes a great piece of content for your sales team to use to educate new potential buyers. Turn the top three blog into a downloadable piece on your homepage and see if this gets you any new prospects. Whoever answers the buyers' questions first, the easiest, and fastest just got the competitive advantage.
If you haven't done this, you should consider polling your new customers about the top questions they have when educating themselves on the products or services you provide. Ask them to provide three or four of the most important questions they had when considering working with you. Ask them for the answers to those questions. Perception trumps reality. Their answers may not be what you think you presented to them. I know there have been times I think I have done a good job of communicating who we are as a company, but I have heard people tell others something completely different than what I told them. Never underestimate peoples' ability to misunderstand you.
You should consider the answers to your FAQs when you are looking at your website copy. Are you doing an adequate job of answering their questions throughout the website or does someone have to go to your FAQ to get an answer? You might find out you can work yourself out of having a FAQ by editing the copy on your website to address questions people have and save them the trouble of finding it elsewhere. Blogging in further detail about the most asked questions will help you become better at answering the problem simply through the discipline of writing your thoughts out. The more you do it the better you will be at helping your customers.
If you're interested in diving deeper into your digital marketing strategy, give us a call at 502-276-5744 or contact us here.
Inbound marketing is always preaching that you should build your own audience, and while it is true that the audience you build on Facebook is not altogether yours, it still can have tremendous value. The people who like your content and your brand on Facebook can impact your business in numerous ways, and even become customers and promoters. I want to show you a few things you can do and can things you can post that will help you increase your likes on Facebook and turn those likes into leads.
My first suggestion is simple: ask people to like your page. People respond to invitations. Maybe not everyone you invite will like your page, but a great deal will if you do it right. The first way is to ask people to like your page through a post from your personal Facebook page. It could be as simple as, "It would really mean a great deal to me if you would take a moment and 'Like' my business page. Click here to see our page and please click the like button," and share the link to your business or organization's Facebook page.
An even better way to get your friends to like your page is to private message them a personal request. We had a contest last year to see who in our office could get the most likes on our company's page. I pulled out all the stops after one of my co-workers dropped the gauntlet and said there was no way I could beat her. So I put my thinking cap on and crafted a personal message to my friends. I personalized each private message with their name and kept it short and sweet. I would sometimes put a single line about our connection or ask them a question so they would follow up with me. It was highly effective and got me more likes than any of the other methods. Another way I presented an invitation was through an image with a message in it.
I unabashedly used my children to elicit support for my personal campaign. I had my kids pose on the steps of my home with signs that implied they were asking people to like our company page on their dad's behalf. Anytime you can leverage the power of cute kids or pets, I say, "Why not?"
Anytime someone comments, shares, likes, or reacts to your posts, you have some new tools on your belt that you can take advantage of. A great way to grow likes for your company or organization is to look closely at the engagement on your posts. Facebook has made it easy to connect with people who engage your content. The blue text at the bottom of your post shows likes, reactions, and shares.
If you click on the line of people who have liked or reacted to your content, you will see a list of people pop up. Out to the right are a few buttons that will appear. It will either say INVITE, INVITED, or
LIKED. If it says INVITE, you can click that button and Facebook will send that person a notification that they have been invited to like the page. If it says INVITED, that means the person already has been invited and this prevents you from repeatedly asking them. If it says LIKED, it means that person has already liked your page. You can see in the screen images what this looks like when you click on the names of the people who liked your post and how you can easily invite people to like your page.
If you click on the number by the shares in your post it will bring up a list of people who shared your content and a visual of what their post looks like. Be sociable and LIKE their share. Maybe even add a comment to the post that says something like, "Thank you for sharing our post. We really appreciate it!" Depending on the privacy setting of the user you may not be able to comment as your organization. Some privacy settings do not let business pages comment at all. Take advantage of the ones that let you like their share and comment when you think it is valuable and makes sense. This is a powerful way to connect with people who took the time to share your content.
Lastly, for post engagements, be sure you like and respond to everyone that has positive comments. Gratitude goes a long way, and people love to be appreciated. Thank them and let them know your appreciative. Like their comment and pay attention to see if they respond to your comments. Keep the conversations going if it make sense. You may learn a little bit about how people perceive your brand in the process.
In order to get access to more people, most businesses and organizations are having to experiment with the paid ad platform Facebook offers. You can do "Like" campaigns, but a better, more effective approach to getting likes is to find out what content has had the best unpaid response and engagement. Put some money behind that content and target people geographically that could actually become customers. Once you boost that content, implement the strategy we discussed in the previous section. Follow-up with every like, reaction, share, and comment. Invite people to like your page. You can get some serious results from combining a paid strategy with the follow up process for post engagement.
Turning visitors into leads all starts with a great piece of content or contest of some type. Hopefully your website is setup to convert visitors into leads. Even if your website is not completely up to par, there are third party landing page builders that can really come in handy. If you have a great promotion, a guide, or a contest, you can put an entry form on your site or landing page to turn visitors into leads. Put a great title on your page for your offer, explain what they get with some bullet points, and include a great graphic that helps them convert and that can be used to promote your offer on Facebook. Make sure your form is simple enough and only includes the fields appropriate for the value of your offer. Don't ask for 10 pieces of information on your form if the offer has a small value. Just ask for an email address for basic offers. If you have a particularly valuable offer, you can experiment with asking for more information on your forms. Share the link to the page on Facebook along with the image you want to promote your offer. Experiment with the copy above the post image and see if one outperforms. With everything digital, be sure you measure your results and make improvements.
If you are only engaging your Facebook likes on Facebook and you never invite them to your website where they can become a permission marketing lead, you are missing the real value of social media. Take some time every week and build the audience on Facebook and make sure you have a plan to convert those likes into leads on your website.
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