SMRT Social

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What not to do on social media

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Social media is a great place to create a positive image of your brand, however, there are some key mistakes businesses make that hurt more than help. First of all, never bash your competition. Focus on positive things about your own business and what great services you have to offer. Don’t be afraid to even take it a step further and join in on constructive conversations with competitors and complimentary businesses. This will make you appear unselfish, involved, and willing to connect with other people, which are all good attributes for your company to have.

Business too often get tunnel vision when it comes to social media and only associate it with marketing. Being truly effective on social media is less about advertising and more to do with creating bonds and connecting with your customers. No one gets on social media to have advertisements shoved down their throat, they come to connect with people and gather information. Therefore, get to know your customers and post content that would appeal to them, and once they feel you as a business care about them, they will be much more welcoming to the advertisements you do post. Try to limit the posts about to your business to only 1/3 of your content. Remember that people use different sites for different reasons so make sure your posts are staying true to the site you’re posting on. Because of this, avoid positing the same thing across multiple platforms. Your posts should be diverse in content and diverse in timing depending on the site you’re using.

                  Take every opportunity on social media as an opportunity to improve your brand’s image. Never argue with customers, use negative feedback as a learning experience. Respond to that negative feedback quickly and with a willingness to solve the problem. Actions like these will not only show that person you are willing to resolve the issue, but also lets other customers see you’re committed to improving as a business. Customers want to deal with genuine and authentic businesses, therefore, buying followers or likes on your content is never a good idea. Not only does it show a lack of authenticity with customers, but it throws of your analytics completely and doesn’t lead to any, if not less, increase in revenue. Also, the FTC has it’s own set of do’s and don’ts in place for social media, brush up on those to make sure you’re staying legal or lookout for our episode on FTC guidelines.

How to optimize video for Search Engines

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Trevor Hanson, who runs Hanson Media Company, joins us today to discuss his business and share insight as to how to build an effective presence online for videos, primarily through YouTube.

Before you create and post a video the address are these 3 questions:

Who is going to watch it?

Where are they going to land?

What are they going to do?

Once answered, you will not only have the outline for your video, but also be on your way to ensuring the video is as effective and targeted as possible. A video’s effectiveness relies on its ability to reach the target audience, therefore it is vital to research keywords customers in your field are using to derive your titles and tags. By using Google’s Keyword Planner (which is free with a Gmail Account), you can search your topic and it will generate a list of keywords customers have been searching. With that list you now have all keywords you need for your YouTube tags and title. Just keep in mind, the lengthier more specific keywords you find, the more likely it is that you will find exactly the target audience you are looking for.

The more involved with YouTube you are, the more YouTube will help your video reach the top of the search results. So first of all, be sure your profile appears official and provides all necessary information. But on top of that there are some tricks you can use to bump your video up further, such as: linking similar videos to your description and compiling similar videos into a playlist. These show YouTube you want to be active and involved in their service and they will reward you with a higher priority in search results. Finally, always be sure to keep your video focused and to the point, the video should never exceed 4 minutes to keep users interested.

The key to generation more leads in 30 days!

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The number one thing that a business owner looses sleep over the most is making sure they have enough leads to keep their business growing. Kevin Smullin, an expert on lead generation, defines marketing as, “finding a limited market and seeking to dominate it totally”, and the only way to really do this is to get specific and carve out your own personal niche in the market. Always remember that generalities are the death of marketing, too often businesses are too vague and fail to be specific. This destroys the unique thing your business has to offer and makes it unable to stand out from the crowd. So when advertising, be sure to avoid common phrases such as low prices, and great service because although these sound nice, they don’t stick in the minds of your target group. Instead, create a Market Domination Statement, which addresses: the target group, the specific problem, and how exactly your business will solve it. By implementing these short term steps while marketing, finding leads will become much easier.

It is not enough to just gain clients, it is vital to retain them as well. Keep in mind that the best leads are people you have already worked with because there is already a relationship and they will already be familiar with your work. Therefore, it is important to keep them around with a client retention strategy that Kevin condenses into 4 simple points:

  • Write to clients monthly
  • Personally contact clients quarterly
  • Send them something on their birthday
  • Hold an annual event for all of your clients

 

These steps are designed to strengthen the bond between clients you have already dealt with so they will be far more likely to remember you, and be much more apt to refer the people around them to you.

The Customer’s Journey

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Many businesses look at selling as an event. It’s the moment a person buys and we want that moment to happen as often as we can. The challenge is to realize that sales (and marketing for that matter) is a process or journey your customers need to go through in order to do business with you. The more you understand your customer journey the easier it will be to make more sales.

Blue Person With 3 Arrows Showing Choice of Direction

For most consumers their journey begins with understanding they have a problem and are looking for a solution. They wish their life was better or that they could solve a pain they are experiencing in their life. Once you realize you need to find a solution to something your brain begins to filter through information and experiences in your life to help you find what you are looking for. Your perceptions begin to shift so it is easier to find a solution. If you have ever needed help fixing something in your home and found yourself noticing handyman services more as they drive around town you know what I’m talking about.

Most marketing is driven by the idea that we need to find and connect with these types of customers as much as we can. We craft messages to help those that are looking for a solution to find us. “We don’t want the whole market just those that need our help today” is a common thought. This is an approach to just finding people towards the end of their journey and encouraging them to work with us.

A great way to grow your sales is to start at the beginning of the process and help people come through the process.

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Taking time to know the steps your customer goes through to work with you is very important. Some industries have lots of education in the market so people already have an understanding of what to expect. Often times it is hard to differentiate yourself in these markets since what you offer is probably commoditized to an extent. Oftentimes the customer journey may not be a long one. Restaurants or grocery stores tend to fall in this group. The key is to build relationships with your customers at the beginning and make it easy for them to remember you when they need you.

If your industry needs to educate the customers so they can make a good decision your customer journey is probably a longer one. It may take weeks to months for a see to form. Know what evaluation steps your customers go through and provide messages and information that will make the process easier. Train your sales team to identify which stage your customer is on and how to be supportive at each step.

CREATE CONTENT FOR EACH STEP

Young adult working on a digital tabletOne of the great advantages that have arisen out of the popularity of content marketing is having the ability to use marketing to facilitate each step of the journey. By creating unique content for each step and encouraging this content to be seen by customers can help them through the journey and a logical conclusion of doing business with you. Rather than wait until near the end to talk with customers, start at the beginning and encourage them the whole way.

MODEL THE JOURNEY IN YOUR MARKETING

Make sure your sales and marketing reflect and follow the steps for your customers. Having your sales staff trained to understand where in the journey each customer is and how to help them to the next step is vital. Digital marketing can be automated and used to help this process along. For instance, Say you use social media to actively connect with your customers and help them know you are available to help them. You post content that will help them get to know your business and encourage people to sign up for a white paper offering specific advice for them. You follow up with the white paper by either contacting people to answer any questions they have or encourage subscribing to your email newsletter.

Young businesswoman asking her partners sign paper at meeting
 

You use the newsletter to solve issues and educate your customers on your value more. In the email you encourage people to a webinar or to sign up for a free quote. This generates leads for your sales team where they can work one on one with customers to help them through the rest of the journey.

TRACK THE JOURNEY PROCESS

By taking time to document how many people are in each step and how often do they move to the next step you can predict your revenue and look for ways to improve your systems and grow revenues faster. This will also help you gauge how well you are being received in the market.

 

A sale is an event that is reinforced by a process of finding a solution. The more present you are in each step the more likely it is the customer uses you.

The productivity Conundrum

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Being an Entrepreneur comes with loads of work to be done, many hats to wear, tons of selling and always issues with people to take care of. Everything you need to do can be classified in to one of two categories: Working on your business or working in your business.

frustrated young business man working on laptop computer at office

Working on your business is about spending time doing things that will help your business to grow and reach the goals you have for it. It’s about taking time to work on the vision and long term value of the business. When you are working on your business you are doing things like improving your employee compensation packages, hiring new employees, reviewing your marketing strategies, considering rebranding your company, looking at improvements to your location or move to a new location. You are spending time making sure your business looks good and is running well.

Working in your business is about doing the work that needs to be done each day so you can keep everything running. This is actually taking care of what you promised your customers. Making the product, fulfilling the service, handling sales calls or customer service requests, doing accounting, working on marketing, etc.

Working in your business tends to be easier because it is apparent what you need to do and how to do it. There are usually clear objectives or tasks that you need to perform to fulfill your obligation to your customer. Working on your business is a challenge because it really is harder work in the sense that you have to think better and keep pushing yourself so your business can grow. Many starting Entrepreneurs have a tendency to get stuck working in only one of these categories. Either you love the idea of being in business and want to spend your time growing your business rather than quality control of working in your business or you tend to love what you do so much that you see working on your business as taking you away from what you love. Now these aren’t absolutes, Of course, and the goal is to get good at doing both of them. That is where your business has the opportunity to really take off. May I recommend several tips to helping you solve this challenge:

Do not be afraid of getting your hands dirty

Making sure you are just as willing to do the grunt work to fulfill your customer agreements is key to success. A restaurant owner that isn’t willing to jump on the line and cook or grab a bus tub and clean tables is a bad sign of the kind of quality you can expect. Sometimes you need to work in your business to make sure things get done especially when customers flood in to work with you. If there is one thing we can learn from the tv show Undercover Boss is there is tremendous insight you can gain in to how your company can be better when you know what its like to be on the front lines. Never be afraid to jump in and get work done.

Take time to step back and manage the entire picture

Many people get in to business because they are passionate about doing something and believe they can do it better than their employer so they strike it out on their own. As their passion comes through in their work and more customers show up to do business with them they end up having a challenge getting the work done and making sure the business is taken care of. This is a common time when you start hiring employees to do the work so you can run the business. Before long you aren’t doing the work anymore and just spending time working on the business and wishing you were still doing what you love. It is important to set aside time to work on and in your business. The amount of time you spend tends to change periodically yet make sure you are doing both.

Consider systems

A growing business means the need for more systems. Systems are a great way to make sure the work is consistent and accurate while making sure you can handle the volume of work you have. Systems can help you know when you need to spend more time in certain areas of your business by alerting you to changes or issues quickly. A good example is using software to manage your accounting and alert you if your accounts reach a low level or help you track your sales and marketing to make sure you can keep enough business coming in the front door. Automating things in your business can help you get more done and allow you to focus on the key things that need to be done now.

Always be willing to learn and grow as an Entrepreneur

The more you are willing to push yourself and grow your skills as an entrepreneur the easier it is to keep your business growing. Take time to understand things like accounting, employee management, marketing/branding, customer relationship management, etc. The best advice most Entrepreneurs got from the late Steven R. Covey is that taking time to “sharpen your saw” is vital to success. Businesses tend to have lots of moving parts and many things can go wrong yet if you keep yourself moving forward in your own skills you will be prepared to find the issues and resolve them before they become an issue. Keeping your ship in top condition is just as important as the cargo you are carrying.

Use KPI’s and metrics

Making sure you can keep track of the key parts of your business is very important in helping you allocate your time and energies to the things that need to be done for your businesses success. For every part of your business you want to figure out what are the key parts I need to track to know if the company is doing well or a problem is starting to form. For instance, take time to map out your customer experience and find where are the main points that will tell us what your customers think. This can not only help you with customer feedback but can tell you where potential leaks are in your sales process. Once you have your metrics in place you need to review them regularly to help you know where you should focus your attention.

Working on your business and working in your business can seem a daunting task yet when done properly can allow your business to reach new heights and opportunities for your success!

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