Category: Sales & Marketing

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Sales & Marketing

Building Your Fan Base: A Case Study

As some of you may know, I’ve recently taken up social dancing in a big way. Now, I tend to do everything in a big way- really digging into something for a few weeks or months until I’ve gotten whatever I wanted from it. I change hobbies often, but I’m super committed while I’m there.

Anyway, I’ve been taking a mix of private lessons and classes at Dance Bethesda, learning, so far, the basics of foxtrot, waltz, salsa, tango, rumba, and swing. The instruction has been top notch, and I’ve made significant progress in just a few weeks. My instructor is talking about me taking part in my first competition by November of this year; it might be my very own version of “So You Think You Can Dance?”

The reason I wanted to write about my dance studio today is that they are doing several things very well in terms of creating a fan base and following. The strategies they are using are ones you can use, too, to build your fan base through social media marketing.

Strategy #1: Be as inclusive as possible. One thing that impressed me, a lot, about joining the studio is how friendly and welcoming everyone has been. Of course, it is called SOCIAL dance, but a key strategy is to make newcomers feel welcome and included. We all have some anxiety about being the “new kid on the block”, whether in real life, or online, so be as welcoming and inclusive as possible. You might include a warm and friendly welcome video on your site, or you might make a special effort to reach out to new followers or friends. Whatever you do, make people feel welcome- they will stick around much longer.

Strategy #2: Start as early as possible. Dance Bethesda is just rolling out a kids dance program, starting ballroom and latin dance lessons for children as young as 5. Not only will this help them build another level to their training and instruction, but it’s a smart long-term customer strategy. It’s likely that these kids will continue to take part in studio activities for multiple years, and they are likely to get their parents involved too. For you, think about how you can broaden or widen the range of people you work with. You might create some infoproducts, or do some live trainings, or offer new products or services to aid more people across the business cycle. When you start early, you create longevity and lifetime customer value.

Strategy #3: Spice it up. Dance Bethesda not only offers lessons, but they also offer training for competitions, as well as dance focused cruises. They hold weekly dance parties for all sorts of holidays, and try to keep their clients interested and learning. How can you offer new and unexpected value to your network, so that they are continually learning and investing with you?

Strategy #4: Integrate your marketing. The studio uses online and offline methods to drive people to the door. They are using Facebook and email newsletters, for instance, and also advertising in the local neighborhood. Although most of us probably focus on online methods, offline ones still work. And you can build a stronger business by using both. Don’t overlook the fact that some of your future best customers can be right outside your front door.

Strategy #5: Have fun with it. Dance Bethesda has a lot of fun- and they share it. New pictures are posted regularly on their site, and they continually invite you to take part in the fun. How can you create a fun or more exciting experience within your business? Remember, everybody likes to feel like they are part of something cool and unique and interesting and enjoyable. How can you bring these qualities into your business more fully?

And the final strategy, of course, is to track your progress and give the process time to work. Tracking helps you know what’s working, so you know what to do more of- and being a little bit patient gives your marketing time to take root and grow strong.

If you want to build your social media fan base, these strategies will help you do so more successfully.

RachnaJainPhoto.jpgDr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation.  Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business  owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing  strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media  process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and  visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased  website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and  more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog

Categories
Sales & Marketing

What Information Products Can Do For Your Business

After spending the past few issues talking about mistakes entrepreneurs make creating and selling information products, I thought maybe it was time to talk about why you want to bother with this whole mess to begin with.

Well, let me give you 5 reasons why you want to add information products to your business:

1. An additional income stream. If you’re just making money selling your services, adding information products gives you a passive or leveraged income stream. It also can help stabilize your cash flow. If you’ve been in business for a few years, you notice there’s an ebb and flow to sales — offering a variety of packages, products, services, etc. helps minimize those cash flow “ebbs.”

2. Options for your prospects. If the only way your prospects can invest with you if through your services, you’re limiting yourself. Some people aren’t going to want to invest in your services — either it’s not right for them now or not right for them at all. But an information product may be exactly what they want. However, if you don’t have one to offer, you’ll lose the sale.

3. A way for your prospects to “try” your services. Sometimes your ideal clients need to “test you out” before they invest in your full services. An information product lets them do that — they can go through your product and if they decide they like what they see, they’ll take the next step with you.

4. Options for marketing. If you have information products, it opens up doors for you. You can sell your information products on teleclasses, you can sell them at the back of the room for live events, you may even find other opportunities falling into your lap. It’s amazing how much you can expand your marketing once you have an info product to sell.

5. A way to uplevel your entire marketing. If you have information products you can do things like have a product launch (or relaunch) or a sale. And every time you do a launch or a sale, not only do you have the opportunity to make money right then from that product, but you’ll also gain visibility, grow your list, and probably sell your other products and services as well. Best yet, the more launches you do, the more you’ll see your overall business grow.

Info products can be a great addition to the other programs and services your business offers. But, remember, none of the above 5 things just “happen” — you still need to take the time to properly market and create them. They’re not a magic bullet but over time, they CAN transform your business.

Categories
Operations Sales & Marketing

Top 5 Reasons to Hire Outside Marketing Expertise Now

If you find yourself short on talent necessary to grow your business consider these benefits of augmenting your existing staff with temporary marketers:

1) No long-term commitment. You can generally hire full- or part-time marketing resources by the hour, week or month without committing to long-term employment.  This allows you to cover temporary holes (i.e. maternity leave) or limited workload surges (i.e. a new product launch) without affecting headcount.

2) Scale up or down at will. Flexibility is the biggest benefit of contract marketers.  As your needs change so can your temporary workforce whether it be the overall number of contactors you use or the individual skill levels you choose to access.

3) New ideas. New marketers bring a fresh perspective and new ideas.  By augmenting your current staff with marketers from other backgrounds and industries you bring new ways of approaching old problems to your organization.

4) Rent-to-Buy Option. In a resource constrained environment hiring the wrong person can be catastrophic.  In many cases, hiring a marketer on a short-term contract allows you to test drive them before committing to permanent employment.

5) Saves Time and Money. HR experts say it costs a company a year’s salary just to hire a new employee.  Depending on the level of the position it can take 2-6 months to land the right candidate.  In the meantime, work is falling through the cracks.  Contract marketers are generally available to start making contributions within 48 hours with little or no upfront costs.

The final chapters of The Great Recession will be written in the next 12-18 months.  Those who boldly embrace the nascent recovery will gain share and thrive in the years to come.  Those who continue to cower and wait for better days may be irreparably harmed.  But seizing the initiative will take resources, specifically the arms and legs necessary to keep your marketing initiatives on track.   Perhaps now is the time to take a new look at securing temporary marketing talent.

If so, check out my new checklist: “How to Choose Interim Marketing Resources That Won’t Waste Your Time and Money.” Get it now for free at: http://www.imperativesllc.com/newsite/learningcenter/publications.html

About the Author:
Pioneering Marketing Consultant and author of Strategy Activation: How to Turn Your Vision into Marketplace Success Scott Glatstein drives profitable growth by filling clients’ existing resource gaps with talented contract marketers. Now check out his free checklist that will help you choose an outside marketing firm that will enable you to achieve higher profits. Get it now at: http://www.imperativesllc.com/newsite/learningcenter/publications.html

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Outsourcing Your Marketing – Should You Hire Outside Marketing Help Now?

Article Contributed by Scott Glatstein

After huddling in our bunkers for much of the past 18 months we look forward to restoring growth and prosperity to our companies. Many firms will find, however, that they are unable to harness the early breezes of expansion due to resource constraints that are a direct result of recent knee-jerk staff reductions.

Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of the school’s Center for Human Resources observed that the recent economic crisis forced many managers to focus only on the short-term. Slaves to quarterly performance expectations, departments cut employees with little concern for the long-term impact of layoffs. In many cases they were forced to sacrifice core competencies resulting in a devastating brain drain.

As an expert on post-recession employment recovery Cappelli knows that it will be some time before hiring begins again in earnest. “Companies will always wait to see that the demand is there because the fixed cost of hiring isn’t trivial.” Instead companies will use contract/temporary workers to hedge their bets on hiring, rather than committing to paying wages and benefits to permanent, full-time workers.

The use of contract labor to augment one’s staff isn’t a new concept. In fact prior to the recession it was fairly commonplace in IT, Finance and even Human Resources. Many firms outsourced whole projects or departments to large staffing firms. But this practice was less prevalent in marketing.

Top 5 Reasons to Hire Outside Marketing Expertise Now

If you find yourself short on talent necessary to grow your business consider these benefits of augmenting your existing staff with temporary marketers:

1) No long-term commitment. You can generally hire full- or part-time marketing resources by the hour, week or month without committing to long-term employment. This allows you to cover temporary holes (i.e. maternity leave) or limited workload surges (i.e. a new product launch) without affecting headcount.

2) Scale up or down at will. Flexibility is the biggest benefit of contract marketers. As your needs change so can your temporary workforce whether it be the overall number of contactors you use or the individual skill levels you choose to access.

3) New ideas. New marketers bring a fresh perspective and new ideas. By augmenting your current staff with marketers from other backgrounds and industries you bring new ways of approaching old problems to your organization.

4) Rent-to-Buy Option. In a resource constrained environment hiring the wrong person can be catastrophic. In many cases, hiring a marketer on a short-term contract allows you to test drive them before committing to permanent employment.

5) Saves Time and Money. HR experts say it costs a company a year’s salary just to hire a new employee. Depending on the level of the position it can take 2-6 months to land the right candidate. In the meantime, work is falling through the cracks. Contract marketers are generally available to start making contributions within 48 hours with little or no upfront costs.

The final chapters of The Great Recession will be written in the next 12-18 months. Those who boldly embrace the nascent recovery will gain share and thrive in the years to come. Those who continue to cower and wait for better days may be irreparably harmed. But seizing the initiative will take resources, specifically the arms and legs necessary to keep your marketing initiatives on track. Perhaps now is the time to take a new look at securing temporary marketing talent.

About the Author

Pioneering Marketing Consultant and author of Strategy Activation: How to Turn Your Vision into Marketplace Success Scott Glatstein drives profitable growth by filling clients’ existing resource gaps with talented contract marketers. Now check out his free checklist that will help you choose an outside marketing firm that will enable you to achieve higher profits. Get it now at: http://www.imperativesllc.com/newsite/learningcenter/publications.html

Categories
Online Business Sales & Marketing

The Basics of Content Syndication

Content syndication is a hot topic in social media, and there is a lot of confusion about what it is, and how to do it. In the most basic sense, content syndication refers to the process of efficiently distributing your content around the internet.

Since effective content syndication does require a little bit of technical know-how, most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear about it. The problem is that if you’re ignoring the power of content syndication, you are only getting about 1/3rd of the value from your social media efforts as you could be.

Done correctly, content syndication can help you accomplish four main business goals. It can help you generate more targeted visitors to your website and blog, it can help you improve your search engine positioning, it can help you build your following, and it can build your expert status. All of these are valuable outcomes for a process which doesn’t really take a lot of time.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is in creating content (for their sites, blogs, teleseminars or trainings) and then only using the content one or two times. This means that your time to create the content is only paying off minimally.

Far better to repurpose your content into multiple formats, and be able to use it multiple ways, so that you are getting maximum value from the time you spend creating the material in the first place. Repurposing efficiently and regularly is one of the key underpinnings of an effective content syndication strategy.

An example of repurposing your content would be to take a written blog post, convert to an audio (instant podcast), turn to a slideshow, and then convert to a video. Your one blog post then becomes deployable in multiple formats, and can be sent out to the various article, audio, and video sites. So, in essence, you get four times the value for your content. There are multiple other ways to repurpose your content, and you’ll find, as I have, that once you get good at doing it, it’s kind of addictive.

So now that you understand the background of content syndication, let’s look at some easy ways you can get started:

1.   Make use of RSS. RSS stands for “really simple syndication” and is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start syndicating your content. RSS is a technology which takes your content and puts it into a special format (you don’t need the details) so that the content can be shared easily and republished across the internet. The majority of the open social sites use RSS. You can find the link to your RSS feed by searching for the RSS icon, which often looks like the icon at the beginning of this paragraph. Sometimes it’s colored differently, but this symbol denotes the RSS feed. What the RSS feed represents is an aggregated container of that content.

To actually start using RSS, you can take your RSS feeds (such as from your blog) and submit these to RSS search engines, such as Bloglines, Blogpulse, DayPop, and Feedster. (There are many others, this is just a partial list.) The idea is that the RSS format allows for content to be deployed and shared in a consistent and standardized way. When submitting your blog’s RSS feed to these search engines, you are increasing the likelihood of your content being found, and, also, potentially giving others the option to republish your content with attribution to your site.

You can also submit RSS feeds from your Twitter account, as well as other social sites. There are specialized software programs that can help you rapidly submit your RSS feeds as well.
RSS submission is one of the easiest ways to get started with content syndication.

2.  A second strategy for getting started with content syndication is to send your blog updates to your Twitterfeed. If your blog is built on WordPress, you can configure a plugin such as Twitter Tools to send blog posts to your Twitterfeed. This is a great way to drive traffic to your site, especially if your titles are compelling, and you don’t overtweet your new content. Since Twitter updates are searchable, you can find yourself getting first page ranking in Google for your content. This listing may not last, as tweets are constantly updated, but it’s a good way to get your content out in front of more people.

3.  A third simple strategy for content syndication is to import your blog posts into Facebook and LinkedIn. You can use the Notes application in Facebook to get your blog posts publishing in there, and you can use the WordPress application in LinkedIn to get your blog content published there as well. Again, if you focus on highly relevant content, and use strong titles, you will see clickthroughs to your site. Importing your content into these sites also helps establish your expertise and credibility, and can grow your brand following.

While there are many other content syndication strategies you can use, these are three solid strategies to get you started. As you invest more fully in content syndication, you’ll find that your online following grows, that you get more opportunities, and generate more leads into your business.

Content syndication is an important step in the chain of social media profitability. Get started using it today.

To get 4 weeks of focused training on content syndication and repurposing, check out From Platform to Profit.

RachnaJainPhoto.jpgDr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation.  Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business  owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing  strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media  process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and  visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased  website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and  more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog