Categories
Operations

Lessons from Gmail – 3 Tips to Improve Your Email Best Practices

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If you haven’t heard by now, Gmail is rolling out a major change to how its users receive emails. Basically Gmail will be sorting emails for its users and putting them in pre-determined folders.

Why would Gmail be doing this? I suspect at least part of the reason is because a common complaint from people who have an email address is “too much email.”

So, as an entrepreneur who uses email in your marketing, rather than worrying about which folder you end up in, I think a better use of your time is to take a look at how you use emails in your biz so this is not an issue for you and your subscribers will want to receive your emails.

And to help you with that, below you’ll find 3 tips to improve your email practices.

1. Start by taking a good look at how you’re using email now. Some things to look at include:

* How often are you emailing your list? Is it often (several times a week), is it moderate (several times a month), is it once in a blue moon? If you’re only emailing once in a blue moon, then unfortunately that list you worked so hard to build is probably pretty cold right now and when you do finally send an email, it will probably be regulated to spam.

Successful entrepreneurs typically send emails regularly to their list. That’s how you build a relationship with your list — you reach out and communicate with them. If you’re not reaching out, then you can’t expect to build a relationship with them.

* Are you sending content your subscribers find valuable so they WANT to receive your emails or are you just sending promotional emails? If all you do is send promotional emails, again you’re going to run the risk of your subscribers tuning you out. Sending out a balance of solid content with no strings attached (in other words they don’t have to opt in or listen to a pitch at the end) along with promotional emails for your subscribers who want to go deeper with your teachings is the way to build a strong responsive list.

* Do you encourage your subscribers to interact with you (clicking on links, submitting questions or comments, asking for their feedback)? Encouraging interaction is a great way for your list to feel like you actually care about what they want and it’s not just a one-way street with you pushing promotional materials down their throat.

2. So now that you’ve looked at how you treat your list, I want you to take a hard look at your results. Are your results what you want? Or do you think they could be better?

If you think they could be better, let’s look at what you can do to improve your results. Can you add an ezine? If you have an ezine, can you publish it more frequently? Are you sharing good content with your subscribers that they want to read or could THAT be improved? Can you find ways to interact more with your subscribers? Or maybe you’re someone who doesn’t really like to promote your products and services so while you happily publish an ezine, you not-so-happily send out promotional emails (so adding a few more promotional emails to your schedule may be your growth edge).

3. Now, put a plan together on how you’re going to improve your email practices and the IMPLEMENT it. Start small if that makes it easier but do start — because the sooner you do the sooner you’ll start seeing better results in your biz.

Categories
Operations

Getting Physical: Planning and Building your Presence from the Ground Up

The web is a wonderful platform to start and grow a business, but there is much to be desired when compared to a physical location.

A physical location allows businesses to interact with customers face-to-face; it allows them to take a stake within their community. An equally important reason one would consider, when choosing a physical location, is that the web cannot possibly provide the same quality of experience in certain industries which you may have chosen (e.g. an ice cream shop or roller skating rink).

The following is a cross-selection of items and activities you may want to consider when building your presence in the physical world.

Location

As they say: “Location, location, location”.

The physical presence of your business will greatly impact its ability to succeed. You may offer an amazing product or service, but if you fail to receive foot traffic you can’t possibly expect to generate enough sales to cover costs. Likewise, over-budgeting just to acquire prime real estate in a busy district could cause strain on your business that would require cut backs during crucial times.

Outlined in GetEntrepreneurial.com’s post “8 Office Location Tips for Small Business”, we can see why the location truly does matter:

·  Meeting the needs for employees and clients

·  Accessibility

·  The ability to show creativity (by avoiding saturated areas)

·  Space for expansion

The list goes on mentioning many other factors you will find vital to physical success.

Appearance

People judge books by their cover … they’ll do the same for businesses.

The building is representative of your unique selling point (what you have to offer). Consumers can take one glance at a location and immediately make a judgment as to whether the store has what they need or desire (it may not always be correct but appearance becomes a factor).

The use of construction software will allow you to coordinate plans with the construction company, granting you access to all the necessary features you’d want when overseeing the project. In the hands of the right construction company this type of software will streamline the building process so you can launch your business in due ready fashion.

The appearance will be under your direction but there are certainly elements to consider such as:

·  A “cartoonish” appearance if your product/services are aimed at young adults and children

·  A hard, futuristic look if you sell cutting-edge technology solutions

·  A rustic, Earthy design to compliment home décor

Pair your vision of the business with a sense of design and you will break from the blocky nature of physical businesses and stand out within the community.

Efficiency

Does the physical location of your business allow for maximum efficiency?

There are many questions to keep in mind when determining the location:

·  Will employees have easy access to conduct off-site sales and marketing?

·  Does my location offer high-speed connectivity?

·  Does the layout of my business reduce wasteful actions during automation?

Small business efficiency goes well beyond elements such as computer programs, outsourcing, SaaS services, time management, and employee tracking. A physical location has the benefit of being an area that can inspire employees to do great things. The location can be tailored to your ideal workflow to improve production time and customer satisfaction. The location can even take on a form to reduce the hassle of completing a purchase by removing analysis paralysis.

Throughout the process of building the physical location should be a nagging voice that asks whether a particular element will aid the workflow or become a burden.

Networking

Have you taken the time to meet your potential business contacts (or competition)?

Business-to-business referrals can be a very powerful way to generate leads and sales as long as there is some form of value exchange or relevance to the customers coming through both locations.

Consider taking time, before making the decision on the location, to scout the area, meet with business owners, employees, and customers of these stores. Take notes about what you’ve found, categorize and evaluate the potential to build a business contact, and generate ideas on marketing campaigns you may introduce between the businesses.

Having a game plan going into to the community will allow you to launch with support.

Conclusion

There are, of course, many other elements of building a physical location (i.e. legal) which goes far beyond the scope of this post (and its purpose), but these four items and activities should kick-start your creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. The physical world has many great opportunities for those that want to do something different and willing to take the leap.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Categories
Customer Service

How to Approach Lapsed Customers

Customer-Centric-Approach

I’ve been involved with similar projects to re-connect with lapsed customers in 4 different companies over the last couple of months and following some undoubted successes I thought I’d share with the wider world the smartest way to approach these particular accounts.

The same old story…

I’m always interested to see how people plan to approach these accounts because it’s very easy to adopt an approach equivalent to waving a brightly coloured flag at your prospect which says:

‘We lost your business some time ago and we’ve finally got round to attempting to do something about it’

A couple of genuine examples of this that have come out of recent workshops are:

‘We used to provide you with…..’

‘I noticed you haven’t ordered from us for a while….’ 

‘I wanted to understand why you haven’t used us for …’

These are pretty typical answers although I personally think there is a far smarter way to be approaching this..

You see, the problem with these approaches to re-engaging with lapsed customers is that they’re simply far too negative for you to expect much back in terms of positive responses.

They draw attention to a possible breakdown in the former working relationship, the fact that account management hadn’t been great which is why their business wasn’t retained, and the fact we’ve left it longer than we should and have only got round doing something about it now.

My view is that in preparing your sales call in this instance, you need to consider the following:

  • What is your objective for that call?
  • What action do you want your prospect to take?

Then, in terms of your call opening we need to be a bit smart.  Usually the value statement in your sales call will be centred around profit or productivity increase, time savings etc whereas for this task your value statement needs to be based around something different.

Order Histories. (Which should be easily accessible through your CRM – Please don’t tell me you’re still using spread sheets!?)

There’s a couple of variations of my recommended approach to this type of call below and then we’ll examine why it works underneath.

….I was just taking a look at the (1)order history on (2)your account with us and wondered if you’re still(3)outfitting your team with the (4)blue t-shirts with your logo’s matching the thread colour?

I’m looking at the (1)order history on (2)your account with us and wondered if you’re still supplying  branded pens with the (4)silver plating as gifts to your renewing clients?

How and why this works:

When approaching the account we need to make a positive link with our prospect and as such items 1 and 2 from the above example should always remain unchanged.

1) Referring to someone’s order history refers to a historical relationship in a much more positive light than some of the examples in the beginning of this article which make it glaringly obvious that for whatever reason we lost that business.

2) The phrase ‘your account with us’ indicates they are still a customer or certainly that we still regard them as so. It also doesn’t make reference or draw attention to the period of time in which they had not used you or your service for.

The 3rd & 4th elements to the approach are your variables which allow you to tailor the approach around the order history itself:

3) This is where we look at the specific orders that the customer has made in the past. Look for repeat orders of specific products and use that item or items to tailor the approach to that particular account. You will find that you make a connection because you’re clearly demonstrating an existing knowledge of their requirements whether they have changed or not.

4) This is where you can further demonstrate your knowledge of their business by referring to how the prospect made use of the items from those historical orders or certainly their specific preferences.

It’s really quite a simple yet effective approach and can be adapted very easily on an account by account basis. If you have lapsed accounts that you really should be re-engaging with, this is the way to do it.

Always make sure your approach is well thought out, relevant and confident. You’ll most likely be pleasantly surprised by the receptiveness of the people you speak to when you can clearly show them that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to their business.

Categories
Home-Based Business

10 Free Ways to Market Your Mom-Owned Business

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VentureMom.com is a website devoted to encouraging moms to start their own businesses and giving them free exposure. Founder Holly Hurd knows all about entrepreneurism and has helped many moms by featuring them on her website and by showcasing their products in the VentureMom Shop. For moms who are looking for ways to market their products, Hurd shares these 10 ways to market your business for free:


1. List your business in free online directories and shops. There are hundreds of business directories online where you can list your business for free such as People’s Guide and Yahoo! Local. You simply sign up for an account, add a business logo and description and you’re good to go. Some directories are more customizable so you can add even more information about your business. The VentureMom Shop is a great online store that will feature your mom-made products so other moms can shop your brand and you can support fellow mompreneurs.

2. Reach out to be covered by bloggers. Befriending bloggers who have the same target audience as your target customers is beneficial for you and the blogger. Start a partnership where you agree to feature or link to their blog on your website in return for them featuring your website or products on their blog. VentureMom has a Featured VendorMom each month that gets a great spot right on the site’s homepage as well as featuring other venturemoms’ products in the site’s collage blogs.

3. Write guest blogs. Guest blogging is a great marketing strategy that has many good advantages. When your blog post gets featured on another blog, if your post has good content then the readers of the blog will most likely click the link to your website and may potentially become your next clients. You can get back links to your website from other blogs and increase traffic for your own website. VentureMom.com posts guest blogs on her site from time to time which give moms ideas on how to make their way in the world of entrepreneurism.

4. Use Facebook to tell the world about your product. Anyone can create a free Facebook page for their business which allows you to have a big cover image, icon image, and customized tab pages. Make sure to post updates often and schedule posts in advance to save time. Whenever you have a new product or special promotion, post it on Facebook to keep your fans updated.

5. Start a Twitter page to Tweet your info. Setting up an online Twitter profile is so easy that every business should have one. Follow other businesses that have similar target customers and see who their followers are and who they are following. If you follow these users, chances are that they will follow you back because they will have the same interest in your business. You should use Twitter to interact with your followers and get their feedback.

6. Build your email list. Include a simple email sign-up form on your website to gather emails from all of the people who visit your site and shop your products. It’s a good idea to give users an incentive for signing up to your list such as sending them a free eBook to download or some helpful tips. Having a substantial email list will help you with the next step.

7. Send out a free email newsletter. Create an account with a free email marketing company like MailChimp to help you create your own newsletter from a template to send to your customers. The newsletter can include short articles, feature new products, include promotions or contests, or just keep your customers updated on what’s going on with your business.

8. Create online YouTube videos. This is a great way to use your creativity and have fun making videos that feature your products or services and show your business in action. You might want to create a “behind the scenes” video to show all the work that goes into running your business. You can even create a “meet the team” video so your customers get to know the faces behind your brand. You can add links to your website in your video descriptions so more people can click to your site.

9. Make sure your website is search engine optimized. You want your website to show up on the first page of search results on Google and the higher up your website appears, the better. Include commonly searched for keywords (but not too many!) relating to your business within the text of your site. Try to get other trusted websites to link back to your site and offer to do a link exchange. Optimize the images on your website by adding a title, description, and alt text. It takes time to optimize your website but the results are worth it.

10. Start your own thread on a forum. There are so many online forums for all different interests and audiences. Find a forum community that would be interested in your products or services and actively post on the forum to get to know other users and promote your business. Forums are also great for sharing ideas with people and getting feedback.

Categories
Success Attitude

3 Ways to Positively Grow Your Business with Gratitude

gratitude

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

You’re increasing your sales. Your team is more productive. You get out of the office earlier to do what you love with those you love…

…and yet there’s something missing. You struggle to keep all the business plates spinning simultaneously. It’s exhausting to be you some days. Your family and friends ask, “Are you okay?”

The missing something is Gratitude.

Here are 3 Ways to Positively Grow Your Business with Gratitude: 

Gratitude Focuses on the Positive

You see what you look for.

Is your default zoom set on what’s wrong with your business? That’s a source of exhaustion.

Of course all of our companies have plenty of room for improvement. Systems and strategies can at least be tweaked for greater efficiency. Yet if that’s all you see when you look at your business, you completely miss what’s working positively.

Ask yourself, “What have we done that’s producing positive results?” and “What can we celebrate because it grew profits?”

Focus on this positive aspect. And be grateful. Allow yourself to experience happiness, joy, even elation at your remarkable accomplishment. Write it down in your Gratitude Diary so you read and relive it later.

Such gratitude that focuses on achievement instead of absence, that sees what you have done instead of what needs to be done creates a Work Positive attitude that is your jet fuel to stratospheric future results.

Gratitude Finds Positive People

Inevitably as you focus on the positive at work, you recall that these most excellent outcomes were done by people. These people constitute your Work Positive Dream Team. Every extraordinary goal met involves ordinary people who went the extra mile when others quit.

Instead of worrying about how to please the negative people—Eeyore Vampires—at work, be grateful for these people. They could work anywhere. They could do business with your competitors. And yet they chose you.

Then go one step further. Express your gratitude to them in very specific ways, remarking on their positive qualities that contributed directly to the growth of the company.

Gratitude Finishes Positive Actions

Once your gratitude focuses you on positive results and finds positive people, you find your energy level turbocharged, your attention riveted, and your time more productive.

Those unfinished to-do list items previously surrounded by road blocks like fear of failure are done, and you’re moving forward with ease.

How?

Gratitude redefined your reality.

You now focus on positive results and know that if you did it then, you can do it now. What you have done and what you do have are your default zoom settings.

You now find positive people who contributed to those positive results. You discover that these ideal customers send their friends to do business with you, because they know you will appreciate them.

Instead of, “Are you okay?,” your family and friends say, “You look great! What’s going on?”

Your new-found gratitude propels your business upward on a profitability trajectory for which you say, “Thank you!” as you Work Positive and achieve your business dreams.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Work Positive coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.