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Best Ways to Engage Your Customers on Facebook
Nov 14th
Selling shovels to miners was a very profitable business in the gold rush days. Selling data to Facebook Page owners might be today’s equivalent. You can buy ads on Facebook, just like you can on Google’s pay-per-click advertising network. You can do friend and fan campaigns.
But what creates true engagement on Facebook? What can help you extract the meaningful data that helps you do a better job than your competitors?
Most of us think we know the answer, but a recent study and new analytics platforms are giving small business marketers the deeper insights that help them create stronger relationships. Here are some data points from a recent survey by Roost, a social marketing platform that evaluated more than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter posts by small businesses from over 50 industries. (Read my product review of Roost.)
Not All Posts Are Created Equal
Beyond the standard Likes, Comments, Shares and Retweets, this survey determines which posts yield the highest levels of interaction amongst local business fans and followers. As a semi-related aside, some marketers have decided it is better to buy followers or fans with ad campaigns. If you’ve contemplated that, read this 2011 Wall Street Journal post that shows ad blindness is on the rise (which means click-throughs are decreasing).
Photos Rule on Facebook
The two greatest engagement tactics on Facebook are Likes and Comments, with Likes leading the charge. Roost finds that the best way to achieve Likes is through photo posts, quotes and status updates, with photos providing 50 percent more impressions on average than any other post type, and quotes providing 22 percent more interactions when compared to all post types.
Asking Questions Increases Engagement
Findings also show that questions generate almost twice as many comments as any other post type. The second most popular way to get fans commenting is through a compelling business status update. Facebook Shares are a great way to disseminate business and product messages across fans’ networks, and links are 87 percent more likely to be shared than any other post type.
Roost also evaluated Twitter usage and found that quotes drive 54 percent more retweets than any other type of tweet, with status updates being the second highest driver of engagement. So if you’re more active on Twitter, start sharing more quotes. In addition, a different study from Optify showed how the use of Auto-DM (direct messages) on Twitter decreased follower rates by 245 percent. (Read Optify’s blog post titled Auto DM Use Led to 245% Increase in Unfollow Rate.)
The Roost study essentially allows a small business to figure out which type of post drives engagement. As on many social network sites, visual options such as a photograph or video will spark more interest in the Facebook community. Selling shovels is definitely profitable, but most small business owners would rather be standing on the gold mine along with their customers.
Best Ways to Engage Your Customers on Facebook
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Death By Digital Products – Returns, Merchants and Customers
Oct 9th
75% payout. This proudct will benefit Any internet marketer or anyone who wants to be an internet marketer. The product is about merchant accounts, returns, customer satisfaction and physical products. Happy customers buy again. Make them happy.
Death By Digital Products – Returns, Merchants and Customers
Should SMBs Blog to Customers or Colleagues?
Oct 6th
It’s a question that I’ve seen come up a lot: When you’re blogging for SEO, who are you writing for? Should you be aiming your content at your colleagues in the industry, or are you blogging for your customers? Obviously, both are worthy approaches, but which gets the best results?
Over at GeoLocalSEO, Steve Hatcher recently offered a strong opinion for why SMBs should be blogging for their peers, not for their customers. Today I thought I’d bring the other side of the argument, because I do think it’s a worthy discussion.
That said, I respectfully disagree with Steve. For a small business owner, I think your blogging investment is far better spent producing content for your customers, not for your colleagues in the industry.
Why? Below are a few reasons.
Your customers are performing searches.
When we encourage small business owners to start blogging, we talk to them about keyword research. We offer them advice on how to find out what types of queries their customers are entering as a way to understand what they want, what they’re looking for, and what types of needs the business can fill. Once you know what your customers need and what they’re looking for, you can make yourself the answer to their problem. For example, if you know that 300 potential customers a month are searching for [product name battery life], you can create content that addresses that concern or problem. You make it so that when they’re looking for authoritative content, they find you. That’s not keyword stuffing. That’s solving a problem.
You need to build authority with customers, not colleagues.
We know that there are more businesses blogging today than there are businesses not blogging today. And one of the main reasons so many companies have made the leap is because they know with more competitors, more noise and a tougher fight for visibility, small businesses need to differentiate themselves by establishing an authoritative voice in their market. While people looking for a locksmith may not spend all day trolling blogs about locksmiths or hanging out in locksmith forums (those exist, right?), they are going to do their due diligence before hiring someone. When they get a recommendation from a friend or when Google shows them the nearest locksmiths in their area, you’d better believe that user is going to do their homework and check the company website, the blog, the Twitter account, etc. This happens. This is how we vet companies now. And by creating that authority via your blog, you put yourself in a better position to get that customer.
You want to start conversations with customers, not colleagues.
Steve makes a worthy point in his post when he says that the people who comment on his SEO blog are other SEO experts, not people looking for services. And that’s often the case in the world of SEO and Internet marketing, but when you venture away from this circle I’d argue that it changes.
- Do you know who comments on blogs related to cooking and recipes? People who are interested in cooking and possibly buying your cookbook.
- Do you know who comments on active lifestyle blogs? People who may be in the market for a new kayak or a six-person tent.
- Who comments on blogs about cars and automotive issues? People who love cars and often spend their weekends working on theirs.
Those of us in the marketing world live in a very incestuous bubble. But “normal people” do not.
Your customers are checking for your pulse, no one else.
The Web is changing customer buying behaviors. Today customers go online to research companies on their own before they ever attempt to contact them about their product or service. They’re looking for signs of a pulse when they do this–signs that you can give them what they need but also that your company is human and relatable. One of the great things SMBs have been able to do through their blogs is to tell their stories and show their human side to an audience that’s waiting for it. They’ve been able to talk about how they got started, share what drives their passion, and introduce their customers to people on their team. This has helped them find customers and differentiate themselves from everyone else in your industry. Your colleagues probably don’t care why you love what you do or what drives you to get up every day. Your customers absolutely do.
As a small business owner, there are many different approaches to blogging that you can take. You can blog for your customers, the people you’re trying to attract to your website. Or you can blog to your colleagues. In my opinion, your time is better spent appealing to the first group. They’re the people searching for you, evaluating you, and coming to your site (and the search result pages) looking for helping solving problems. Speak to them.
What about you? Who is your blog content aimed at?
Should SMBs Blog to Customers or Colleagues?
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Three things clients and customers want
Aug 16th
Not just the first one.
And not all three.
But you really need at least one.
1. Results. If you can offer a return on investment, an engineering solution, more sales, no tax audits, a cute haircut, the fastest rollercoaster, a pristine beach, reliable insurance payouts at the best price, peace of mind, productive consulting or any other measurable result, this is a great place to start.
2. Thrills. More difficult to quantify but often as important, partners and customers respond to heroism. We are amazed and drawn to over the top effort, incredible risk taking on our behalf, the blood, sweat and tears that (rarely) comes from a great partner. A smart person working harder on your behalf than you’d be willing to work–that’s pretty compelling.
3. Ego. Is it nice to feel important? You bet. When you greet us at the door with a glass of white wine, put our name in the lobby of the hotel, actually treat us better than anyone else does (not just promise it, but do it)… This can get old really fast if you industrialize and systemize it, though.
This explains why the local branch of the big insurance company has trouble growing. It’s hard for them to outdeliver the other guys when it comes to the cost effectiveness of their policy (#1). They are unsuited from a personality and organizational point of view to do #2. And they just can’t scale the third.
Put just about any business with partners into this matrix and you see how it works. Book publishing, for sure. Hairdressers. Spas. Even real estate.
The Ritz Carlton is all about #3, ego, right? And on a good day, there’s a perception that the guys at Apple are hellbent on amazing us yet again, delivering on #2, taking huge career and corporate risks on our behalf. As soon as they stop doing that, the tribe will get bored.
(There’s a variation of ego, #3, that comes from being in good company. This is what gets people to sign up for Davos, or to choose ICM as their agent. Your ego is stroked by knowing that only people as cool as you are part of this gig. Sort of the anti-Groucho opportunity. Nice position, if you can get it, because it scales.).
It’s tempting, particularly for a small business, to obsess about the first—results—to spend all its time trying to prove that the ROI is higher, the brownies are tastier and the coaching is more effective. You’d be amazed at how far you can go with the other two, if you commit to doing it, not merely talking about it.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
New Lotto Approach- 3.3% Cr- Happy Customers
Jul 14th
This is probably one of the best lottery offers ever. The unique approach makes it sell like hot cakes. Affiliates will receive all the help for promoting it efficiently and 75% commission out of $67. You must see the sales letter…
New Lotto Approach- 3.3% Cr- Happy Customers
Learn How to Gain Retail Customers for Life With “Reinventing The Wheel”
Jul 9th
Chris Zane, founder and president of Zane Cycles, offers a brilliant look at customer service and business growth through the tactics at a scrappy and innovative bicycle retailer. Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers sounds a little more technically researched than it actually is. Yet Zane provides the right clues to the puzzle of building a retail organization and selecting the perfect elements to satisfy customers. The book caught my eye while browsing a Barnes & Noble shop, so I asked the publisher for a review copy.
Great Service Begins the Moment a Person Enters Your Store
To get into Reinventing The Wheel you have to understand the author. Chris Zane loved bikes and business at a young age. He has owned Zane’s bicycle shop since his teen years, and has grown it into one of the largest bicycle shops in the United States (it is also the largest Trek bike retailer in the world). He has won awards and has been featured in Harvard Business Review and Inc., among other publications.
How did he attain this visibility and success – over $15 million in annual revenue? Zane illustrates how providing unexpected service builds customer loyalty with a metaphor about a bowl of 400 quarters representing how much he’d spend on service to a customer. In his standard presentations he encourages the audience to take quarters from the bowl, watching the various amounts the audience members would take. Yet no one “takes the whole bowl”:
“The point is that when you as a customer are presented with more than what seems reasonable, like a bowl of 400 quarters, you will self-regulate …. By providing more service than what folks consider reasonable we can build trust and loyalty and remind them how hard we’re working on their behalf.”
Zane goes on to note how giveaways that cost his shop just $86 brought about 450 one-on-one interactions that “alleviated a bit of pain for customers and created a lasting memory while doing it.” He also notes what at stake for businesses that don’t live and die by the “quarter mantra:”
“As hard as it is to win a customer’s loyalty, and regardless of how big your bowl of quarters is, you can also lose that customer in a heartbeat if you and your employees ever turn on your autopilot.”
Retail Insights and Guerilla Marketing Muscle
Much as Bob Taylor gets into the fine points of guitar manufacturing in Guitar Lessons, Zane describe growth challenges he faced along the way, such as gaining corporate approval to sell Trek bicycles into the premium market. These stories provide useful insight into how a business owner transitions from a small operation to an advantageously organized provider of niche services and make moves beyond the hustle mode. Zane notes to a Trek rep how his job is easier, selling 100 bicycles in one call, where Zane must find 100 buyers for those bikes.
Zane explains how he upsets the competition in segments like “drive up the price tag on competition” in which he tried to recruit a competitor’s manager. He gives several examples of strategically outwitting the competition through guerrilla marketing to acquire new customers:
“My competitors didn’t understand that I had changed the rules of the game on them and that every time they thought they were matching me, they were actually falling further behind.”
Some of the game-changing tactics will sound overly competitive if you operate in an industry where “frenemy” relationships among service providers are the norm. But there’s understandable science behind the madness, like not competing on price. Zane makes much-touted concepts like customer service as a profit driver more real than any white paper could.
The last chapters touch upon people-oriented subjects such as employee selection and embracing customer diversity as good business. The last chapter, “Think Nationally, Act Locally,” sums up the previous chapters well and serves as a reminder of how working with customers locally can make a difference.
Who Will Benefit From Reinventing the Wheel?
The book contents best aids service businesses. The most prescriptive text will benefit thoughtful, aspirational business owners who know that a hustle mode is not sustainable beyond specific moments of sales growth. There is a lot of bravado mixed in with Zane’s suggestions, but daring to offer your customers the best is Zane’s overall point. I found the book a stimulating concoction of aggressive competition and customer-oriented focus that distinguishes it from other memoir/business books.
Reinventing the Wheel will show how reinventing your business for growth can be easy.
Learn How to Gain Retail Customers for Life With “Reinventing The Wheel”
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
4 Ways to Engage Your Customers in Your Green Efforts
Jul 8th
It’s great to be a green business. But even better is being a green business with customers who are highly passionate about your sustainability initiatives.
Many of today’s popular “green” brands – think Seventh Generation or Whole Foods – have found ways to get their customers involved with their environmental good work, whether it’s offering free parking spots to hybrid drivers or giving tips on how to be eco-friendlier at home. This is certainly not a quick process, but rather an evolution that involves thoughtful and ongoing communications.
Here are four strategies for engaging customers in your green initiatives:
1. Use social media to talk about green. Social media can be a great tool for communicating your sustainability goals and achievements and making your customers aware of them. Use your blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to let your customers know what you’re doing to reduce your environmental footprint. Of course, avoid “greenwashing” – or suggesting your company is green without demonstrating results. Whether it’s recycling, energy efficiency or locally sourcing products, provide specifics. Social media can also help spur your customers into greener behaviors. For example, you might offer a discount if they swing by your store on a bike or by foot. These types of challenges are also a great way to see how much reach and impact your social media really has.
2. Donate a portion of profits to charity. Let customers feel extra good about their purchases by donating a portion of your profits to an environmental cause aligned with your sustainability goals. This is also a good way to generate awareness about the environmental issue you’re trying to solve. Make sure it’s a reputable organization. Guidestar.org and CharityNavigator.org are great websites for researching a nonprofit’s financials and making sure most of the donations actually go toward the cause, not the charity’s employees.
3. Give customers an easy way to help. Find ways to let your customers play at least a small role in your sustainability mission. A recent study by the National Restaurant Association found that 85 percent of Americans adults sort their trash at quick-service restaurants when recycling receptacles are available. The takeaway: Customers are eager to help you meet your goals and become more sustainable — so let them help.
4. Inspire them to go beyond. Green communications has become more than just communicating your own sustainability progress. It’s about empowering your customers to take it a step further. You might suggest ways for them to be more eco-friendly at home or enlist them to help with a cause. One company that makes footwear out of recycled yoga mats, for instance, encourages its customers to support Surfers for Cetaceans, a nonprofit that promotes marine life conservation.
How you engage customers will ultimately affect how connected your customers feel to your sustainability mission. And that’s an important part of making it successful.
4 Ways to Engage Your Customers in Your Green Efforts
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
4 Ways to Engage Your Customers in Your Green Efforts
Jul 8th
It’s great to be a green business. But even better is being a green business with customers who are highly passionate about your sustainability initiatives.
Many of today’s popular “green” brands – think Seventh Generation or Whole Foods – have found ways to get their customers involved with their environmental good work, whether it’s offering free parking spots to hybrid drivers or giving tips on how to be eco-friendlier at home. This is certainly not a quick process, but rather an evolution that involves thoughtful and ongoing communications.
Here are four strategies for engaging customers in your green initiatives:
1. Use social media to talk about green. Social media can be a great tool for communicating your sustainability goals and achievements and making your customers aware of them. Use your blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to let your customers know what you’re doing to reduce your environmental footprint. Of course, avoid “greenwashing” – or suggesting your company is green without demonstrating results. Whether it’s recycling, energy efficiency or locally sourcing products, provide specifics. Social media can also help spur your customers into greener behaviors. For example, you might offer a discount if they swing by your store on a bike or by foot. These types of challenges are also a great way to see how much reach and impact your social media really has.
2. Donate a portion of profits to charity. Let customers feel extra good about their purchases by donating a portion of your profits to an environmental cause aligned with your sustainability goals. This is also a good way to generate awareness about the environmental issue you’re trying to solve. Make sure it’s a reputable organization. Guidestar.org and CharityNavigator.org are great websites for researching a nonprofit’s financials and making sure most of the donations actually go toward the cause, not the charity’s employees.
3. Give customers an easy way to help. Find ways to let your customers play at least a small role in your sustainability mission. A recent study by the National Restaurant Association found that 85 percent of Americans adults sort their trash at quick-service restaurants when recycling receptacles are available. The takeaway: Customers are eager to help you meet your goals and become more sustainable — so let them help.
4. Inspire them to go beyond. Green communications has become more than just communicating your own sustainability progress. It’s about empowering your customers to take it a step further. You might suggest ways for them to be more eco-friendly at home or enlist them to help with a cause. One company that makes footwear out of recycled yoga mats, for instance, encourages its customers to support Surfers for Cetaceans, a nonprofit that promotes marine life conservation.
How you engage customers will ultimately affect how connected your customers feel to your sustainability mission. And that’s an important part of making it successful.
4 Ways to Engage Your Customers in Your Green Efforts
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Can Your Customers Live Without You?
Jun 26th
Is the recession over? I keep hearing that it is, but I don’t believe it (that’s my issue). But what matters to our businesses is how our customers feel. In and out of recession, they still have needs and wants, and if we meet those desires, then we are still in business.
The Product
In “Are Consumers Ready to Start Spending?,” Anita Campbell says, “While it is possible that consumer spending attitudes will loosen up as the recovery strengthens, it’s also possible this may not happen for some time.” So what’s the small business solution to encouraging customer spending?
Anita gives three suggests to help us do this, including the recommendation that you “position your products and services as good value.” She explains that value “mean(s) your products or services are high quality and lasting, making them a good value for the money. With consumers spending less often, they are being more critical and cautious when they do buy and looking for things that are worth spending on.”
Sometimes, it’s easy to hear advice and move past it without applying it effectively. But take a minute and think about your own spending—especially if you are your target market. Note your behavior, then pay attention to your clients’ behavior. What type of product combination does your client need—what type of product combination do you need—to make spending worth it? Now put a strategy in place to create that combination In your niche, hopefully, your customers feel like they can’t live without you and your targeted solutions.
The Marketing
Keep this in mind, not everyone has been in a recession. It’s our responsibility to know our clients and adjust accordingly. But understanding your client base is just the beginning. You still have to market to them in a way that appeals to that particular group because it’s your marketing that will get them to your doors (off and online).
In the article “Attention Small Businesses: You’re ALL in the Marketing Business,” Ivana Taylor says, “You’re in business to make money (and, preferably, you keep more than you make).” In order to make that money, Ivana believes you need to employ an “attractor strategy.” She adds, “Throwing salespeople out there WITHOUT a marketing strategy and marketing support is what we do when we think we’re in the widget business.”
It’s our job
- to know our business and our clients
- to speak a language that connects with our (potential) clients
- to understand the strategy behind the business, which includes the marketing that keeps us connected to our clients
Put in the time to learn how the marketing piece of your business works. Then establish a system and team to support that strategy. After all, it’s hard to stay in business when very few know how great you are or that they need and want what you have. It’s your marketing that lets them know.
The USP
When you finally decide to put on your marketer’s hat (and keep it on), Susan L. Reid, in “5 Steps to Determine Your Unique Selling Point,” has a few tips for you. Your Unique Selling Point (USP) is the thing that makes you stand out. Without it, your potential clients cannot understand the difference between you and everyone else who does what you do. Without it, they can’t understand why they should choose you over anyone else. Without it, they can’t justify the ongoing spending to themselves nor the others on their team.
Susan urges you to find your USP and:
- “Stop putting your business at risk.”
- “Put an end to getting lost in the crowd.”
Plus she gives you five clear ways to get it done.
In the end, your business is about the people you serve, and it’s your marketing that connects you to them.
Can Your Customers Live Without You?
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
3 Simple Ways to Empower Your Customers to Sell For You
Jun 16th
3 Simple Ways to Empower Your Customers to Sell For You
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Video
Have you ever received a comment from a happy customer that went something like this: “Let me know if I can ever do anything to help you grow your business.”
My experience is that most businesses have at least a few of those evangelist type customers just looking for ways to sing their praises.
Sure, asking them for a few referrals is a great way to let them help, but I’ve found that there a few things you can do to really give your champion customers a voice and let them shine in the process.
1) Let me introduce you
I discovered the power of this first tactic quite by accident. I was speaking at a small event when an audience member came up and told me they had followed me for years, read my books and were really excited to meet me. Now that’s a happy customer!
The event was small enough that there were no plans to introduce me to the group before I started, so I ask this customer is she would like to introduce me to the group. She was happy to do it and proceeded to gush about how brilliant I was and basically had the crowd of her peers on my side in a way that no other emcee has ever done. And, she felt pretty special doing it as well.
So, if you hold events, either in person or online, consider getting one of those evangelist customers to introduce you or stand up at some point and tell their story about working with you.
2) Video testimonials
Capturing your best client’s success story on video is a great way to create compelling content and provide 3rd party proof that your business does produce as promised.
You should routinely recruit those customers that want to sing your praises to do so in this manner so you can capture and reuse their story over and over again.
I’ve had clients over the years hold customer appreciation events for just this purpose. They served some wine and snacks and then pointed to a video booth where a film crew would capture their story and, as a bonus, record some nice promotional video that the client could use for their own as well.
3) Peer to peer events
I’ve seen this tactic produce stunning results. The idea is to take a client or two that really want to help and ask them to facilitate a panel discussion on some topic related to their industry (and not necessarily related to your business.)
You invite other hot prospects to participate and then simply host and moderate the discussion among peers. If done as pure education this can be a very powerful way to add value to your current client relationships and demonstrate the way you operate to these hot prospects.
In almost every instance where I been involved in this format the existing clients actually do some selling around the problems and challenges they’ve had solved by the host, but do so in an authentic and non-threatening manner. Everyone wins again!
Creating ready made ways to amplify your customer’s desire to promote is one of the secrets to extending your reach and impact into new customer opportunities.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
