Keeping It Cohesive: 3 Customer Experience Tips for Every Season

January 30, 2019 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

Just like a personal relationship, customer relations need variety to thrive. You might have wracked your brain in the past for exciting ways to shake things up, only to fall flat and realize that most of the large-scale options tend to come off as gimmicky. Sometimes, you don’t have to think outside the box or break the mold to make a mark. There are many small ways you can tailor your business throughout the year to provide a dynamic and engaging experience to your customers.

A brand is only as good as the people who support it. Customer service needs to be top-notch if it’s going to stand out in today’s oversaturated market. While most business owners are focused on the four quarters of the year, try shifting your attention to the four seasons for opportunities to enhance your customer experience.

Seasonal Exclusives

Consider offering limited-edition stock for various seasons. Have summer door-buster sales or major holiday discounts. Offer exclusive complementary items that tie into the season or major holidays. The weather and seasons play a huge role in our everyday lives, so you don’t want to miss out on the chance to connect with your customers through something so human and relatable.

Dress Up for the Holidays

Simple logos are good for many reasons, one of the primary beings that they’re easy to change without losing their identity. Switch up your graphics and logo colors to make the seasonal holidays. You can even put your own twist on them to stand out and grab attention. Seasonal designs and custom displays are a fantastic opportunity to humanize your brand and help contribute to the spirit of the holiday, whatever the time of year.

Fine-tune Your Content to Seasonal Needs

A content strategy should be fluid and reflect customer needs and current experiences. You don’t always have to create something entirely new in order to thrive. In fact, your target audience is already looking for what you have to offer anyway, so why not diversify your blog posts a little and branch out? Find ways to demonstrate your business’s value through content that taps into your customer’s current wants or needs based on the season.

Business analytics and metrics go a long way, but it’s important to remember the numbers on your data sheets are driven by real people. Behind every click, every impression and every engagement is a live human being who could possibly benefit from your services.

Stay in touch with your customers through social media. Interact as much as possible so you’re always in-the-know and equipped to make changes before they’re requested.

Dixie Somers is a freelance writer and blogger for business, home, and family niches. Dixie lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and is the proud mother of three beautiful girls and wife to a wonderful husband.

Getting Your Name Out There: 3 Tips for Business Promotion

January 24, 2019 / nancyrubin

One study showed that one-third of businesses lacked significant marketing resources. While some business owners may let that stop them, we already know that you’re a true entrepreneur. But the question still stands: how can I market my business when I don’t have a lot of money for advertising?

The answer? There’s a lot you can do with limited marketing resources, especially if you decide to get creative and resourceful. Here you’ll learn three ways that you can promote your business. You will get a much better idea of what you can do to put your name out there to your ideal customers.

Go Social

A set of researchers from the Pew Research Center found that over 75 percent of adults now use some sort of social media network. This number multiplied by ten from 2005, the last time the study was done.

Don’t just jump on several social media channels and then quit all of them a week later. All the social media channels have their own etiquette and rules of engagement, so pick one or two and really try to make them work. But if you put in the effort, you could find that you’ll get fans of your business to engage with you.

Create Viral Content

Your ideal customers want valuable content that they will want to share with their loved ones. Search engines such as Google want you to do the exact same thing. You can do such activities as creating infographics, making videos, blogging, hosting a podcast, and writing guest posts for authoritative websites. You won’t just become an expert in your niche, but you’ll also get web traffic. Other ways you can establish your expert status is appearing on podcasts in your niche and becoming a guest blogger on blogs in your space.

Don’t want to sit at your laptop for hours crafting the perfect guest post for your favorite blog? You can hire freelancers and agencies to help you create high quality content. Find companies that specialize in strategic communications and promoting businesses in your industry for the best results.

Guerilla Marketing Works

Guerilla marketing can work if you work it. Many small businesses use this type of advertising to compete with their larger competitors. You can plenty of tactics to advertise your business. Hire an artist to draw a mural on the sidewalk in front of your coffee shop. Get a flash mob to bring people into your clothing boutique. You’re only limited by your creativity.

Don’t let a lack of funds keep you from fighting the good fight. If you’re going to be in business, you have to weather a lot of bumps in the road. Getting your name out there in any way you can could give you great results if you stay the course.

A Shortcut To The Skills: Areas Where Outsourcing Can Really Save You Time And Money

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

As a business that is constantly looking forward, we’ve all got to embrace the latest trends, albeit to an extent. Whether we’ve gone analog and we’re embracing a new era of digital transformation, or we’re looking to round off the edges, the latest trends don’t necessarily mean the best for our business. Outsourcing is one of those things that, understandably, we all look upon with some form of trepidation. Some think outsourcing rids businesses of their personality, but outsourcing, for numerous startups, can save an infinite amount of time and money. Let’s show you how.

The Ever-Changing Technological Landscape

Because technology progresses at such a rate, the race can be hard to keep up with. These days, as there are so many different IT consulting firms, such as cyberjaz.net, we can choose the right company to partner up with, so they can guide us with a steady hand through these changes. For those people who aren’t able to acquire the skills of workers in-house, outsourcing to an IT support company can make the processes easier to handle.

Content Marketing

Creating content that is easy to absorb by potential customers is a fine art, because it can come across as being a bit too commercial-esque in the wrong hands. And when we haven’t got the time to learn how best to develop our voice, we have to outsource to a content marketing company that has the strategies in place that lends themselves well to your brand. The goal is always the same- to sell products- but we have to do it in such a way that it doesn’t seem like you are relying on sales and leads. We have to generate leads but we have to start relationships with our customers.

Bookkeeping

You may think it’s easier to manage all of the tasks yourself. After all, when you are a novice startup, it’s cheaper! But because the balancing of many plates can result in a dip in productivity, outsourcing to a bookkeeping company isn’t just taking advantage of their expertise, but it’s offloading the more mundane and stressful tasks. Your business needs adequate accounts and documents to support every item of expenditure, and while there are many reasons to not use outsourced bookkeeping services, accountingdepartment.com provides a solid argument for you to use them. You can’t be too careful when it comes to your money. After all, it’s a legal requirement that you keep everything in order.

Outsourcing isn’t a bad word anymore, and it is certainly a way for us to take advantage of the resources out there when we can’t complete certain tasks ourselves. Put simply, outsourcing gives you the opportunity to look at the skills you don’t have, and give the tasks to those that do. From content marketing to bookkeeping and the complicated minefield that is technology, we’ve got so many aspects to outsource. But these things can save us so much time, not to mention money. We could spend years finding the right people to benefit our business, but we have to pay them a full wage. Outsourcing is a great shortcut to the skills.

Why Does Content Work For Some And Not For Others?

September 25, 2018 / nancyrubin

The online space is witnessing increasing deployment of focused content by companies to drive better user engagement and build awareness of one’s brand. The reason is obvious. Content marketing is proving to be a profitable proposition for creating brand appeal among niche users and reaping rich dividends. The creation and distribution of meaningful, relevant, informative, easy to understand and implement, consistent and purposeful content can turbocharge your brand’s scalability index.

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Content marketing done in right perspective not only attracts and retains customers but also triggers word of mouth promotion by satisfied evangelists. With content, you are actually making the potential buyers more empowered and intelligent which motivates them to make informed and conscious purchasing decision in your brand’s favour. The underlying theme is that, if you keep providing your prospects with valuable and actionable information, it would get reflected in the form of steady traffic to your site and higher conversions.

Have Companies Benefited from Investment in Content Marketing?

Yes.

Stats from various studies show that the lead generation for content is 3x more compared to outbound marketing whereas the money pumped in for content generation and deployment is 62% lesser.

Additionally, content works because it is in demand. This demand for content can be seen in the online audience – a vast majority of people in the demographic class of 18-50 years prefer online news and content to secure the latest information. As a result, the growth in leads for SMEs which have their own blogs has been reported to be 126% more than those counterparts which don’t believe in blogging. In the USA alone, about 61% of online customers have made their purchasing decisions after going through fact-driven recommendations in blogs.

What Makes Content A Successful Strategy For Brands?

If you go by market-based insights, the reasons would be quite straightforward but many:

Good content has the right balance of short and long tail keywords which prompts the search engine crawler to index the related sites for all relevant search queries.
Quality content must be posted at frequent intervals; delayed or staggered posts are perfect catalysts for driving away your prospective buyers.
Content shouldn’t just be limited to your own blog. To make it work, target high authority sites and build your authority through guest posting.
Believable content has to be relatable and authoritative so that readers can rely on the information shared and become experts in navigating problems.
Exciting content never lets the focus of readers stray and grasps the short attention span through shorter paragraphs and extensive use of visual creatives.
Strong content is never overwhelmed with unnecessary words just for fulfilling the expected length.
Readable content uses easy to comprehend words and simple sentence constructs. Good content also eliminates the use of jargon.
Marketable content does not repeat ideas and never sports cookie-cutter characteristics.
Unique content is plagiarism free; even if ideas have to be borrowed, they are presented with a fresh perspective.
Engaging content allows sufficient scope to gauge the sentiments of readers and measures the resonance of ideas shared through user polls, reviews, social media shares etc.
Compelling content needs to be interactive and addressed to the readers in a manner that they find it more personal than advertising-centric.
Content works more effectively when you give your audience the choice to pick from different formats. This means videos, podcasts, blogs, infographics etc.
Updated content always gives reflection to activities of importance that have happened for your brand. And is attuned to the current industry trends.

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Why does Content fail to Deliver for Some?

If your brand fails to leverage the potential of content optimally for rich returns, it must be suffering from one or more of the problems outlined below:

The content might be pushy and/or advertising-centric.
It might not be working because it offers no real value to readers.
If the content is outdated, irrelevant and inconsistent with your brand’s vision- it won’t get you any engagement.
Your content could not be working because it might have plagiarism issues. Such content invites penalties from search engines.
When content lacks strong and catchy headlines, it fails to catch the reader’s interest. So even if your content is giving really valuable information, it might get skipped because it lacks an engaging structure.
Content containing spelling and grammatical errors doesn’t work for the audience.
When statements are not backed by facts, they harm your credibility. To make this work, you should link your content to high-authority and reliable sources.
When content does not have relevant keywords that would help the search engines categorize it properly, it fails to gain visibility.
Content that lacks any thought-provoking characteristics is also bound to fail.

Now that you have realized the apparent bottlenecks that are withholding your content from producing that killer’ effect, it is time to give your content strategy the much-deserved facelift. Skip the don’ts and work on the dos to get the most out of your content strategy.

Matthew Booth is the Global Marketing & Operations Director at SMEGoWeb, a global brand which has helped more than a thousand businesses achieve their online goals. With a decade of agency experience, he is now set out to share his marketing knowledge to help companies refine their digital strategies.

Starting a Business: How Bring A-Game in Your Marketing Campaigns

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 / nancyrubin

If you are a new startup, then it is essential that you bring your A-game to your marketing game before you even have enough experience to really know what you are doing. That is why it is essential to consider the different components of a campaign. Here are some tips on different marketing components along with basic tips you need to consider.

Television Ads

Almost 90 percent of adults see at least one television commercial every day. Therefore, it can be an important way to let customers know about your product. Using experienced TV and film actors can help deliver a powerful message. Consider which stations are most likely to connect with your target demographic.

Social Media

Social media can be very useful in building company trust as people often use it to find out more about your entity. People often check their favorite social media platforms multiple times a day, so make sure that they see you interacting with your customers when they do. Hiring a brand ambassador or influencer who already has a following can be key to building your audience quickly.

Website

Your company needs a well-organized website. With about 50 percent of all traffic coming from mobile devices make sure that it is optimized for all types of devices. Customers are unwilling to wait for your website to load, so make sure that your landing page loads in under a second. Make sure that your content is informative and well written.

Radio

Depending on who is in your targeted audience, radio can be a powerful way to reach them. Work with an experienced advertising director to create advertising that will capture the essence of your company in under 30 seconds. Then, play your ads on stations where your targeted audience is found.

Newspaper

While some insist that newspapers are dead, they can be an important factor with some targeted audiences. If you are trying to build a local business in a community that still has a newspaper, then advertising there may bring people in your business’ front door. Additionally, if your niche market has a popular newspaper, then appearing there can be a great way to build your brand’s authority.

The right mixture of each of these components depends on your targeted audience. Get to know them and you will learn where your marketing dollars will be most effective. Then, hire the best experts that you can to deliver marketing that will connect instantly with your target audience.

Guest author, Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. She went to college at The Ohio State University where she studied communications. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and long walks in the park with her 3-year-old husky Snowball. @LizzieWeakley

How To Use Content To Work Smarter with Sales?

August 29, 2018August 29, 2018 / nancyrubin

Content marketing will change the way you manage your business, and there are many people who will want to use content in a variety of ways to make their company look better. Someone who is using content marketing in the right way can continually use different methods to make their business look great. Content marketing creates exposure, makes brand into household names, and saves a company money.

Nine Steps For The Best Content Marketing That Converts Sales

Start A Blog

A blog is a good way for people to market their company because they can release information to the public with no trouble. You could respond to the public in these situations and will notice that people come by your blog to interact with you more than they could in other places. Blogs are a freeform way of writing, and they make the company must easier to work with.

Hit the pain point

Yes, it is necessary to find the main concerning points of your target audience and develop content accordingly. Suppose if your company provides life insurance then you can create an article on the how responsible dads can keep their family safe.

Use Facebook

Facebook is its own animal when you start doing any form of content marketing. Facebook actually allows you to purchase ads, and you could write articles that are posted to Facebook throughout the day. You might share releases of your new products, or you could link to videos and other things that you want your customers to see. Facebook is one of the more popular places for people to look for information, and people could comment on your posts. The Facebook Messenger is a unique customer service tool that you might use to give instant feedback to your customers.

Use Twitter

Twitter is a place where you can post small bits of information with links. You might use Twitter because you like to be a little bit wittier than your competition, or you could have interactions with other companies on Twitter. You could use Twitter to give vital information to a large group of people, and there are many who will share your tweets throughout the day. You might announce releases on Twitter, or you could post information that would be helpful to your customers.

Use YouTube

YouTube is a place where you can post information in video or commercial form. You might create something that offers tips to your customers, or you could create videos that read like commercials. You might do interviews with people who work in your industry, and you could have a video made that explains how to use an upcoming product. You want people to be intrigued by what your company does, and you could put a face to the name of your company.

Make A Playlist

The playlist that you create for your company could be something that you build through a company like Pandora or Spotify. There are news stations using these companies to make playlists for morning traffic, and you will find radio shows making playlists for their listeners to use as inspiration. People who write or work in the entertainment industry will make their own playlist, and you could make a playlist that people will use while using your service. You might make a playlist for when your customers use the tools you sell, or you could make a workout playlist if your company is in the fitness industry.

Publish Only Your Best Stuff

You must publish only your best content so that your readers grow accustomed to seeing something wonderful. You will confuse people if you release information that is hard to understand, and they might be turned off if you write in an inconsistent style. Only release something that you know will turn the heads of your customers, and remember that you could hire someone to do this for you. You probably do not have the time to do this all by yourself, but you can hire someone to help.

Be Consistent

Your company must post often so that you have a chance to reach people every day. You never know who will run across your blog or website, and you must have something fresh for them to enjoy. You might continue adding items to a playlist, or you could make a new video every day. You must give the public a reason to patronize your business, and you must compel them to keep up with you because of the way that you write, talk, or think.

Create A Voice

You must create a voice for your company that is shown through these many channels. You must give your company a personality, and the personality that people see if what they will remember when it is time for them to buy something. You might have a voice that is funny or snarky, and it might be the thing that your customers love about your company. You might show your customers that you are working hard at being serious, and you could have a voice that changes to solemn during tragedies. You can show the world that you care, and you might use that voice to ask for donations to charity.

Honourable Mention: Hire A Marketer

You must hire a marketer who will help you make the choices that are best for your company, and they might direct much of this effort for you. They know how to help you when you need something written, and they can show you how to create content. Anyone who is using content marketing could pay a small fee to have a marketer do much of this work for them. You might take over some of these tasks once the marketer has shown you what to do.

Conclusion

You can change the course of your business with content marketing, and you must be certain that you have chosen all the right avenues for marketing. You can deploy content marketing tactics every day that make your business stronger, and you will find that you can easily bring in more customers because they are intrigued by what it is you have to say. Make a video, be funny on Twitter, and spread around as much content as you can with a blog that is directed at customers.

10 Marketing Tactics For Sustainable Business Advancements

August 27, 2018 / nancyrubin

Have you ever been interested in how to market for sustainable businesses? Well, today is a great day for you, as you will be provided with information on 10 marketing tips for sustainable businesses. The type of business that will be set as an example is going to be for acne treatment. The first tip will be the importance of marketing through a website and marketing online you can help save the environment. Next, we will focus on the importance of combining claiming and marketing sustainability tactics together.

After, we will discuss how important it is for you to have a message that pushes the moderate use of your product without destroying your bottom line on sales. Then, we will go over how to incorporate new marketing techniques that are not well known or used yet. Following up, you will be provided with tips on how to build a culture in your business that continues to enforce success and sustainability. The next tip will revolve around the importance of really marketing purchasing bundles instead of single items. The 7th tip for you will focus on how you should really learn your market and your customers to reach their needs.

The following tip will help you learn the importance of creating a specific marketing campaign that would work perfectly for you and your business. The next tip will focus on combining everything you do in your business with the sustainable issue you are choosing to build around. Finally, the last tip you will learn is how to properly value your products properly due to the higher costs of selling sustainable goods. Furthermore, after learning these amazing tips you will have gained more knowledge on how to build sustainable marketing strategies for your sustainable business.

Marketing Online

It is very important for you to market online when trying to build a successful sustainable business. Moreover, marketing online will provide a way to reach millions of people and still keep your promise of being a sustainable business. You will not have to focus on marketing by mail or business card removing some of your carbon footprint from your business. There are plenty of ways to market online by offering free samples after a customer provides their e-mail address where you can send them future deals or promotions in the future.

Claim and Market Sustainable

Now in this tip, you should really use both claim and marketing techniques for sustainability to really show the world your business is a sustainable company. Claim means that you will provide a sticker or message that shows how your product is environmentally friendly and how your customers can help the environment. As for marketing throughout all of your marketing efforts you should have a positive message that again pushes how your company is great for the environment.

Push Moderate Product Use

It is important to push moderate product use, so your customers learn that you are all about keeping the environment safe and healthy. For example, using acne products you could build a dispenser that dispenses the perfect recommended application size for your customers. Furthermore, you might need to alter the size of your product to ensure that you continue to make a profit for your business.

Incorporate New Marketing Strategies

There is no one way to market and strategies constantly change and evolve over time. It is always great to try a/b testing or new ai technology that can help you learn how to market better to your customers. It will only benefit you to learn and combine different marketing strategies that can help build a new way of marketing for your sustainable business.

Build a Sustainable Culture

It is important to start your company with a sustainable culture and work environment, so this can roll over into your actual operation. Especially if you are starting off as a smaller company building a culture around sustainability is a must. Moreover building this culture can lead to new ideas from your workforce that can help provide even better ways to help your company grow its sustainability.

Focus on Selling Bundles

Selling bundles is a great way to push that you are helping the environment by limiting the amount of shipping waste you end up producing shipping out your products. You can even make a reusable shipping box that is made completely of recyclable products if your company can afford it.

Learn your Niche

In whatever sustainable market you decide to focus on it is important to ensure you understand the products you are selling. This is important so you can know what your customers look for when they are buying the type of product you are selling. For example, working with acne creams you would need to know how to push sustainability when working in the acne removal business. An example would be helping the environment by using fully recyclable bottles for the product.

Create your Specific Marketing Strategy

Now that you know your niche you can learn how to market towards it properly. You can research the demographic that would be the most likely adopt your product and push for sustainability. This is a great tip that works perfectly in tandem with knowing your niche so you can know who to market to.

Connect the Business with the Issue

It is important that throughout your website and on your products every customer knows your company is about sustainability or helping the environment. Explain how the product they are purchasing is helping them and the environment around them. The goal is to show your customers you are very serious about being a sustainable business. Continuing on, you could have an offer that also donates a percentage of each purchase to a non-profit organization or your own whose main focus is the same issue you are helping alleviate. Your customers base will feel proud they are helping the environment and issues around the world.

Value your Products the Right Way

You must price your products at the right price to ensure your company can build a profit. Your company cannot run forever if it is not building a profit. In this case, if you are using fully sustainable products it is going to cost your customers more. You need to emphasize that your products cost more due to keeping the environment safe and your goal of being a completely 100% sustainable company in the near future. Said that you should also consider designing your product pages attractively and they should be user-friendly as good designs can help you increase the CTR which results in increasing the revenue. For example, Rodan and Fields have kept high product images with a white background making the website look neat in their acne treatment page.

Conclusion

You have just been presented with 10 tips to marketing a sustainable business. Again, the first step focused on how you should really focus on marketing online. Next, you learned about claiming and marketing sustainable. After, you were taught to push the moderate use of your products to show you are serious about sustainability. Then, you learned why you should try new marketing techniques to expand your brand. Building a sustainable culture was an important tip shared so you can really build a great sustainable business.

The importance of selling bundles was a great tip to help with sales an shrinking your environmental footprint by lowering the number of shipping supplies you have to use. Focusing on learning your niche and market will help you better understand your customers and market. Then, you learned how learning about your niche can help you understand how to properly market to your customers better. The next tip revolved around the importance of really combining your business with the sustainability issue you choose to focus on. Finally, the last tip you learned was to value your products properly so you can make a profit and still be a sustainable business. After sharing these tips you are one step closer to properly marketing your sustainable business the next step is to take action.