5 Steps to Ensure That Your Business Idea Can Really Work

Running a successful startup isn’t rocket science, but it’s also a delicate skill. It’s crucial when running a successful startup is to ensure that your idea can work. After all, one of the biggest reasons why so many entrepreneurs fail is because they are working with ideas that just aren’t applicable to the real world.

Balancing the needs of your consumers and your desire to create will mean life or death for your business. And unless your products can fill a need for your audience, it doesn’t matter how passionate you are about the product – it won’t work.

This guide is going to help you ensure that your business idea is viable and has a chance of working in the grand scheme of things.

Can You Build It?

To start, it’s necessary to see whether you can even build the idea. It may be easy to think that you can solve a problem by implementing different ideas, but often, the real reason why this hasn’t happened to begin with is due to the fact it’s impractical.

Rather than going straight to market, you should first build your product as a concept. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the finished product, but putting something out to test before finalizing will ensure that many issues can be addressed. There’s nothing wrong with building an early-stage prototype and testing it out in action with a small group. The feedback collected from choosing this step could save you product trouble down the line.

Is it Cost-Effective?

Once you are sure that you can build your idea, you need to be sure that the idea is cost-effective. But how do you determine how cost-effective something is?

You can begin by looking at your own bank balance. How much will your idea cost to make at this current time, and do you have the resources to cover it? If not, would you be able to gather resources to pay for the costs? Being able to examine whether it’s in your best interests to move forward with a costly project could play a big role in the future of this idea.

You also have to consider the price point you would have to sell an item at in order to make money. Sometimes you can have a perfectly good product, but because the manufacturing costs, it’s impossible to make a profit.

You can work out the price point by looking into your target market and getting an idea of the current price ranges for similar products.

Do People Want It?

For some people, this may be the first step. But even if it’s not, this is an important step to understanding if an idea is worth moving forward on. In many cases, inventors can’t test the demand for their product without a working prototype first. Go bold and take your product out to the general public.

People often fear this step the most, opting instead to confine product testing to biased family members and friends. But examining the true market appeal of a product will better serve you when it comes to bringing quality products to life for consumers.

Can You Market It?

By now, you know that there’s some demand for your product and you can make a profit. But the determining your product’s potential for marketing isn’t easy. Just because there’s a demand for a product doesn’t mean that you can marketing will come smoothly.

This is where you have to do research. Look into what your competitors are doing and you need to formulate a strategy. If you have a strategy that works, you may decide that it’s worth trying out.

Correct Scaling

At this point in the process, you may discover that you’re ready to warrant a limited rollout. The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make at this stage is to go all in. Going all in and hoping for the best can quickly drain your budget. It also means that you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the line if your product doesn’t sell like you wanted it to you are going to find yourself in trouble.

Start small and monitor how quickly you can sell your products. As time goes on, you can start to scale your efforts with a reasonable guarantee of making that money back. Remember, scaling too fast is one of the surefire ways to fail your startup.

The Biggest Decisions

For entrepreneurs, these are the business decisions that will prove to be the most difficult. You shouldn’t risk everything on one product idea or service. Startups need to ensure that they have performed due diligence prior to investing a significant amount of money in a venture.

How will you make sure that you validate your big idea?

Source: http://bit.ly/1OpcgkF

3 ways marketers can improve customer experience

Customer experience is a hot-button topic in marketing.

As more and more marketing pros seek to add this skill to their toolkit, advice from one of the leading minds in the field, Brian Solis, can help.

I met Solis, a former public relations and digital media executive, a year ago. My blog post about our conversation, Is Customer Experience the Next Killer App? was one of the most widely shared, liked and tweeted blogs that I have ever written. Since then, marketers are chiming-in everywhere you turn about improving CX.

I was talked to Solis again while he traveled to one of his worldwide speaking engagements discussing CX, and gathered more insights. Here are three main ways that Solis says PR and marketing pros can improve customer experience:

1. Uncover points of friction.

The first step is the most difficult. It requires that you recognize that customers’ experiences could be improved and requires you (and others) to step outside of your roles and collaborate to bring about sweeping change. But, it can start with small steps.

Any employee or manager can address customer experience by looking within their domain—whether it is sales, marketing, product development or customer service.

A good place to start is uncovering points of friction. This can be done personally or with the help of other team members and customers. Look at the experience within and outside your department, paying attention to what happens before and after your department becomes part of the customer experience.

When you involve your customers and other departments, interesting developments can appear, enabling you to identify things that are broken and how to fix them.

2. Place innovation over iteration.

Changing the customer experience may not require a complete product or customer journey redesign, but every aspect can benefit from a benchmark review through the eyes of the connected customer.

To make meaningful changes, you need to look at the experience from both ends. This leads to improvements and opens the door to innovation. It’s important to find a balance between innovation and iteration. Both are required for success.

Take a note from Steve Jobs and the development of the iPhone. Jobs didn’t want designers with traditional cellphone experience on the team, because he didn’t want any previous biases. Rather than focus on what a phone was, Jobs looked at what it could be.

3. Rethink what success means to CX.

Improving the customer experience can have widespread value. It is important to determine goals and how to measure them early in the process. Goals should focus on business value as well as how they affect the customer experience.

What’s the ROI of customer happiness? You can use existing metrics, but to truly track experience, rethink what success means and develop additional metrics that ensure how the two align.

Track key performance indicators related to customer satisfaction, shared experiences, customer paths and conversions. Focus on new customer growth baselines, looking at revenues and return on revenues once changes are completed. Also look at the journey and whether or not it is efficient for customers based on intent, context, device and immediacy.

The more tangible goals that you set, easier you can measure success.

  Source : http://bit.ly/24Uyndd

4 things you can do to become a better manager today

 

Effectively managing people is difficult, and no one is born knowing how to do it.

Fortunately, management can be learned. We suggest following these four steps, which are simple, but time-tested:

1. Set appropriate goals.

Goal-setting is essential. It helps employees prioritize their activities and focus their efforts. When setting goals with employees, you should make sure that they are SMART goals (specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistically high, time and resource bound).

The goals must also be meaningful to the employee. Sufficient rewards for goal achievement and consequences for failure should be specified. This will ensure that the goal and what's needed to achieve it will rise to the top of the employees' "To Do" list.

Near the end of his life, H.L. Hunt, the self-made oil billionaire, was asked to name the requirements for success. He answered, "There are only two real requirements for success in life. The first requirement is deciding exactly what you want [setting goals]. Most people never get to that point. The second requirement is determining the price that will have to be paid to get it, and then resolving to pay that price."

2. Develop a plan to achieve the goals.

After setting goals with the employee, put together a plan to achieve them. To accomplish any individual goal, the employee will need to commit to a set of actions. A goal without an action plan is just a dream. It’s not real, and it’s not likely to happen.

Most people don’t understand how to break larger projects, goals or tasks down into actionable steps. As a manager, you can use your experience and knowledge to guide the employee. Keep the number of actions from becoming overwhelming by limiting them to what the employee can reasonably accomplish within two weeks. Set dates and even a deadline that makes sense, for when the employee will complete each action step. This will create the urgency necessary to complete the work in a timely manner.

Finally, holding a meeting that occurs at the same day and time each week will give you a mechanism for checking on progress and creating a natural deadline for your staff. The meeting can be as short as 15 minutes or as long as an hour, but should be comprised of three segments:

• First segment: Have the employee report to you on his or her progress.
• Second segment: Give the employee feedback and help him or her overcome obstacles that stand in the way.
• Third segment: Set new actions, including dates and times for completion.

3. Empower the employee.

To maximize the probability that your employees achieve their goals, empower them. That means three things. First, you must properly train your workers to do the tasks necessary to achieve their goals. This includes giving the employee enough time to practice the new skills so that they become proficient.

Second, motivate your people. Rewards for success and consequences for failure should be specified. But keep in mind that an environment that relies solely on either rewards or consequences will create a dysfunctional culture: You will have employees who either become used to a country-club existence or live in fear of making mistakes. Neither is conducive to long-term productivity.

Finally, remove roadblocks that are within the company’s control. Make sure that people have the tools, equipment and information they need to do their jobs. Removing roadblocks also includes developing effective policies and procedures.

4. Assess performance and make adjustments.

Once the above three steps are complete, you will need to assess performance and make any necessary changes. We’re not talking about annual performance evaluations. A formal review may happen only once a year, but effective management requires assessing performance much more frequently.

For employees who are new to the organization or learning a new task, you may need to assess performance daily or perhaps even more frequently. Get away from your desk and computer screen and walk around the area where your employees work. Stop to talk and ask questions. Be available and interested.

Employees who have demonstrated competence may require only a weekly meeting to stay on track. But, in either case, you should take an active role in monitoring and commenting on performance, to benefit both the organization and the employee.

Managing people is difficult. It’s not an exact science, and there is no magic wand to ensure you always get it right. In fact, you won’t always get it right. Even outstanding managers make mistakes. The good news is that managing people well is a learned skill.

With work, you can improve your capability in this area. A concerted effort on your part is required. But if your company is going to thrive, your skills as a manager will be of paramount importance.

   Source : http://read.bi/1PSHvVI

7 Simple Ways To Be Famous In One Year

There’s fame and there’s infamy. There’s long-term fame and “15 minutes of fame.” Actors and actresses have fame. Some of them have infamy. Barack Obama has fame, and he has long-term fame as a President of the United States. Osama Bin Laden had infamy, and he certainly had his 15 minutes of fame until taken out. Anyone can become famous, for good or for bad. And many can have 15 minutes of fame by getting hundreds of thousands of hits on a YouTube video.

There is another kind of fame, however. It is not global fame necessarily, such as that enjoyed by Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. But it can be a local, regional, and then national fame within a niche. And that fame can result in respect, authority, and income, whether that income comes from a business venture, a very smart investment in a startup or IPO, book sales, or another source.

This is the fame that is long-lasting and that says “success.” Many people achieve this kind of fame and do so relatively easily. And here are 7 relatively simple steps on that path.

1. Begin By Making It All About Others, Not Yourself

If you are going to reach niche celebrity status, your first step is to become a truly trusted resource for others. This means that you do the following:

• Inspire, entertain and educate others without thought to making sales or promoting yourself or your business
• Be a real person behind that company, not a faceless entity
• Be accessible and transparent; have a social media presence that involves conversations; answer emails; be present wherever there are important conversations occurring, especially in groups related to your niche
• Do not be “better” than others; rather be helpful and friendly and humble
• Engage others daily, especially influencers. Hanging out with influencers makes you one too.
• If you succeed, don’t be the first one to boast, but try to share the lessons you’ve learn and inspire other people to follow your path. And if you don’t succeed from the first attempt, don’t be discreet about your failure either. There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes and talking about that, rather than trying to appear as a super human.

Compare this to the traditional concept of a supposed industry leader – one who gave an occasional interview; one who had “gatekeepers;” one who knew s/he was “better” than the others; one who was inaccessible. This won’t work for you, because you don’t have any fame yet.

2.  Get Your Face and Your Personality “Out There” 

Brands are not really spread by products and services anymore. They are spread by personalities on social websites and news media.

It’s almost as if we have returned to days of old when storekeepers had personal relationships with all of their customers. Of course, these can no longer be face-to-face, but they can be strong relationships nevertheless. Today’s digital consumers of anything demand relationships.

If you have written a book, for example, you need to show online communities who you are, your sense of humor, your sense of compassion, your incredible expertise, whatever it is that makes you a bit of a “giant” in your niche. Provide excerpts from that book for free to every digital community possible. Set up book signings everywhere possible and call the local news media to cover them. Offer an additional benefit with a book purchase. Get buzz going by pushing your face and your personality, not just your book.

Inject your personality into everything you do online and on the ground. If you are in a business niche, hold events, make videos, and plaster them all over the place. Feature your customers in your blog posts, on your social media platforms. Do anything that you can to spread your brand by spreading the people factor, not by pushing the product or service. Come up with something that people will look forward to every week – things that will draw them to you and make them draw their communities to you too.

3. Provide Consistent, Public, Interesting, and Free Content

Jack Daniels is a well-known brand. It has been a well-known brand for years. And it has done this by consistently keeping itself in front of the public. Now, in years past it relied on TV advertising – expensive advertising. Advertising that those of us who would just like to become famous in our niche cannot afford.

We have to find cheap ways to become famous, and even Jack Daniels is going the cheap route now. It’s not all over TV – that’s a thing of the past. What does Jack Daniels do now? It has an amazing website and an amazing social media presence. It sponsors contests for people to submit new drink recipes. It asks customers to submit weird bar stories, which it publishes – consumers love it and they continue to love Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels will be famous for years to come because it understand how fame is now built. When you use the same strategies that Jack Daniels uses, you can build your fame too.

Get your “public” involved in everything you do. Other than the cost of maintaining your websites and social media platforms through employees or contractors, your cost of providing amazing and interest and entertaining and inspirational content is cheap. No one wants to read what looks like a textbook; and no one want to just hear about products. They want some fun and some education and they want it in engaging ways.

Even if your niche seems “boring”, there’s still a way to interact with your audience successfully and leveraging your authority status. Simply, by offering free detailed information of every aspect related to your business. For instance, Moverscorp publishes loads of amazing guides, covering pretty much any aspect of moving – from choosing the company to packing to tipping movers and things to do after the move.

You can build your fame if you are committed to giving your public the best content ever. On the Internet there are no walls and there are few rules. You build a fan base and that fan base reaches out to its communities, as long as your content is great. People share what is free and what is publicly provided. So give free and public!

4. Sponsor an Important Charity

One of the best ways to enhance your fame is to sponsor a well-known and compassionate charitable cause. You can do wonderful good while you increase your fame as well.

Why do people love Toms Shoes, and why has Toms Shoes become so famous? Because owner Blake Mycoskie, “chief shoe giver,” donates a pair of shoes to a needy child for every pair of shoes he sells. And he has branched out now into efforts for restoring eyesight and drilling water in 3rd world countries. He is a hero, especially among millennials, the biggest buying demographic, for all that he does. And he has great fame within his niche.

Jessica Erickson, owner of Headbands for Hope has gained national fame for her charitable work with children’s cancer research and her donations of headbands to young girls with cancer. If you want to make a difference in the lives of people and gain fame as well, this is a great path. Local, regional and state media love these kinds of stories, and the reach spreads. Both Mycoskie and Erickson have been featured on national television shows several times.

5. Develop Relationships with Influencers

There are famous people in related niches. Influencers are already famous within their niches. One of the “rules” for success is to hang out with successful people.

The same goes in the digital world. You can “follow” influencers, participate in their discussions, and make yourself known as an expert in your niche. Cultivate these relationships before you propose any reciprocity of promotion, but ultimately you can get to that. Being respected and liked by an influencer, even if not directly related to your niche is big. And influencers can introduce you to other influencers as well. This can ultimate get you speaking engagements, interviews, and/or promotion of your book, and so forth, depending upon the type of fame you are seeking.

6. Work on Your Fame Everyday

This means many things. It can be to join new groups. It can mean to contact local media with a press release. It can mean creating amazing content or videos. It can mean reaching out to new communities on social media. But you must consistently commit to doing something every day to promote your fame. If you do this for an entire year, you will be pretty amazed at how famous you have become with your ideal audience.

7. Cultivate your Guru Status

At first, you will give away a lot of stuff, maybe you will create free “how-to” e-guides.  Maybe you will create slide shows and videos that provide expert advice. As the demand for your stuff grows, create new “stuff” and begin to charge for it. Why? Because famous people are expected to charge for their “stuff,” and because you have the right to earn money for your hard work.

Neil Patel, the guru of content marketing, has the perfect combination. He is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Hello Bar. These are for-profit companies with famous clients like Amazon, GM, NBC, etc. He also has a blog, called Quick Sprout. Here he provides free educational articles for content marketers and business owners. But always on that blog, he is promoting his fee-based services, one of which is to make a business owner a “guru” and famous in his/her own niche.

Becoming famous in a year is simple, but not necessarily easy. It takes concerted effort and a commitment that must be held every single day of that year. It means spending two hours working on that book; or it means an hour contacting local press to promote a charitable event; or it means writing the best content ever; or it mean networking and “rubbing elbows” with influencers. It can be tiring and it can mean that your workday just got longer.

You have to ask yourself, before you take on this “fame” goal: why you want to become famous and what it will mean for you? If you can answer these questions positively, then you are ready for the journey.

   Source : http://bit.ly/1Q6zc8g

5 of the Biggest Obstacles Facing Entrepreneurs

When you first decide to make the big leap and become an entrepreneur, you will face many hurdles along the way. However, if you know what these hurdles will be, then you can begin to take steps to overcome them. Here are five major issues that you will face once you have decided to become an entrepreneur and start your own business.

Financing Your Business

This is probably the greatest hurdle you will face. The great thing about this is that once you overcome this problem, everything else will be much easier. Some of the obvious solutions for this problem would be small business loans and crowdfunding campaigns; however, you can also get funds from friends and family. It is also important to realize that there are many other ways to get funding, including various business competitions and government grants.

Building a Customer Base

Once your business is up and running, you will need to attract customers. Social media is the first solution that you should start using right away because it is free. This tool also allows you to perform valuable research about individuals who need your products and services. In addition, you can promote your business with various marketing campaigns, such as topbargains.com.au offering online coupon codes and deals once you have a strong enough web presence. However, if your business is a local brick and mortar organization, then you also have other options, including flyers, word of mouth, phone calls, and door to door solicitation.

Quitting Your Day Job

This is a major factor to consider when you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. You need to make sure that you can pay your bills while you are starting your journey. The best solution is to have a nest egg tucked away that will give you the freedom to pursue your dream. However, if you can get financing rather quickly, then you might be able to deal with this problem a little more easily.

Building Your Team

This is one the most important issues you will face when starting your own business. You need to locate and hire quality employees that will be highly dependable and able to quickly adapt to any situation rather quickly. It is also important that your very first employees remain loyal to you because in the beginning stages of your operations, replacing them will be extremely difficult.

Creating Your Network

You need to begin building relationships with suppliers, sellers, and all of the other various entities that you will need to associate with in order for your business to function properly. You will probably have many choices, so you need to be well informed about the prices and the quality of the goods and services that they offer.

In Conclusion

When dealing with many of the troublesome situations that you may encounter, one of the best things you can do is examine your competitors and see how they overcame these problems. You can also look to other similar businesses and find out what they did or didn’t do in order to deal with any of the obstacles you might be facing in the near future.

Source : http://bit.ly/1YHfczt

Top 5 marketing quotes

5 Ways to Build a Personal Brand in 2016

Today’s modern business differs from the traditional business of yesterday as building a personal brand is one of the most effective marketing strategies you can pursue—especially for a digital business.

Unless you are a Burger King or Nike, no one will immediately recognize or trust you. A personal brand, however, ultimately offers a unique way to build trust which can lead to customer loyalty and increased revenue.

We are seeing more businesses being built around personal brands than ever before. From Tim Ferris to Gary Vaynerchuck, and to YouTube influencers like Roman Atwood and Bethany Mota who are banking millions using their personal brands, and Jen Selter who is a fitness expert and MKBHD who is a tech and electronics expert.

The key is to identify your niche or area of expertise to become the go-to person in your industry. It doesn’t matter if you are healthcare marketing expert or a makeup aficionado, you need to build a recognizable personal brand to be able to get:

• A better job
• High-paying clients for your company
• Recognition in your industry

That’s right–I started off my list with “a better job” because even if you are work for someone else, you can focus on building a personal brand to get better opportunities.

Matthew Barby, an online marketing consultant who used to work at Wow Internet, could have ignored building a personal brand; instead he started blogging and created a personal brand that not only helped him get consulting clients, but also paved the way for better opportunities. He’s now the Global Head of Growth & SEO at HubSpot.

The most influential people understand that even if they are employed, they are running their own business of being a personal brand.

1. Identify and Determine Your Area of Expertise

Envision what you want to be known for, what words people should utter after they hear about you. Are you going to be “the wine guy” (Gary Vaynerchuk), the prankster (Roman Atwood), or be known as an e-commerce expert (Andrew Youderian). 

In a world where there are a flood of entrepreneurs, being a marketing expert is no longer enough. That is why it’s best to develop a specific niche to build a strong and relevant audience.

2. Pick a Platform and Double Down

There is no such thing as overnight success; you have to work your way for success. Gary Vaynerchuk, who runs a successful social digital shop, VaynerMedia, spent 15 years working in the background of his father’s wine business. He made over 1,000 YouTube videos from 2006 to 2011 before he became the brand himself.

So, if you want to build a personal brand, pick a platform and double down your efforts on it. It can be anything from blogging to making videos on YouTube, or even dominating a social media platform like Sue B. Zimmerman who became The Instagram Expert, Alex Pettit who is considered a Periscope influencer and the most loved person on that platform, or someone who is just an expert on emerging and latest technologies.

3. Join Emerging Platforms

Emerging platforms are super important for you to pay attention to and you should lookout for the next Snapchats, Meerkats, or Instagrams. During the first 6 to 18 months of a platform’s life is when you have the opportunity to become a disproportionate voice of that community or platform; these platforms start small and have a lot of affinity with early adopters.

Joining an emerging platform early really gives you the leverage to build a strong brand. Jérôme Jarre did that with Vine and is now the fourth most-followed individual on that platform; he scores millions of dollars of deals being a personal brand.

4. Offer Multiple Touch Points to Your Fans and Followers

Sticking to a single platform is not enough if you want to build a personal brand; you also have to be active on other social media platforms. When Jérôme Jarre became the most followed person on Vine, during the same month he became the first celebrity to join Snapchat, he has over 1 million followers on Twitter, and close to a million followers on YouTube.

If you are building a personal brand, you have to offer multiple touch points to your fans or followers because not all your fans will be on a single platform or prefer to connect with you on a single platform. fouseyTUBE, a famous YouTuber, uses Facebook and Twitter to stay connected with his audience even though he has a daily vlog channel; he also uses Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook to announce when he releases new videos.

5. Be Honest and Authentic

As a personal brand, you have to build an honest and transparent brand. It doesn’t matter if you are a YouTuber or an author, speaker, or consultant like Kimanzi Constable. You have to be transparent and honest with your audience because at the end of the day, you want to build relationships with real people.

Imagine how hard it would be to build a brand around your “fake self” and then have to act fake for so long. It would get exhausting, and eventually you’d let your fans down–and that would make dent in your personal brand. Instead you need to be honest and authentic; real people connect and trust real people. It’s okay to be vulnerable and have failures–in the long run, your personal brand will end up becoming stronger.

Source : http://bit.ly/1S24kYZ

Vintage advertising

5 Rules for Stand-Out Marketing Campaigns

Seven years ago, in the midst of an economic recession, Boston’s Yale Appliance + Lighting was losing money. “I’d read somewhere that people will buy some things anyway during a recession -- and one of those things was refrigerators,” recalls CEO Steve Sheinkopf. “So we pumped more money into radio and newspaper advertising, thinking it would help. It didn’t -- it hurt.”

Sheinkopf, who had taken over the store founded by his grandfather, refocused with what was (at the time) a radical approach. He doubled down on a digital marketing strategy that included social media, blogging, reputation management and email components.

The focus on a content-based inbound marketing program allowed Sheinkopf to bring his advertising budget to near zero. (Last year, he says, he spent nothing aside from seasonal Google AdWords buys around Black Friday and a tax-free holiday weekend.)

Today Yale Appliance is profitable and growing, with 140 employees. Top-line revenue is expected to hit $80 million this year, and in June the company opened a state-of-the-art showroom in Framingham, Mass. -- only its second store after 92 years in business.

So how did Sheinkopf use digital marketing to turn around his grandfather’s company? There’s no magic or special gift involved. “Obviously I’m not a genius; otherwise, I wouldn’t be in the appliance business,” he laughs.

What he does have: commitment. A content-based marketing strategy requires it. Here’s how you can get similar results.

1. Actively manage your online reputation.

When you’re a small, regional business, you compete with companies that can easily outspend you in advertising. In Sheinkopf’s case, that includes big-time players: Sears, Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s.

But digital content can give small, scrappy companies a bigger footprint -- if they’re willing to work it. “Google is democratic,” Sheinkopf notes. What’s more, online review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List can give a small business direct insight into its brand reputation. “Businesses may despise Yelp, but [it’s] a window on how you operate and are perceived,” he says.

So encourage social reviews, thank people who say nice things, and view negative reviews as an opportunity to fix what’s broken. “It’s painful to see a negative comment or review,” Sheinkopf admits. But take a long-term view: Use the criticism as a chance to both resolve an immediate issue for one customer and to improve a process or system for the good of future customers.

2. Know what your customers want.

In 2007, when Sheinkopf started blogging, he got some traction through organic search results. But things really ignited when he dug deeper into digital marketing basics. He credits Marcus Sheridan at thesaleslion.com with teaching him how to write a metatag, a headline and a call to action that can convert prospects into customers.

Sheinkopf also studied customer reactions to figure out what kind of posts would be most useful. It turned out that trend pieces and specific comparisons of, say, a Thermador to a Viking cooktop, got the most traffic. Recommendation posts like “The 5 best counter depth refrigerators” also did well.

Creating customer-centric content takes time. But it’s a valuable exercise, for two reasons: It helps you understand what motivates customers, and it requires you to learn everything about your stock, inside and out.

Online content has become Yale’s biggest driver of new business, Sheinkopf says. Page views were at 18,000 visitors per month in 2011; this past August, the site had 448,000 visitors. What’s more, those who visit the blog and download buyer’s guides convert into buyers at a much higher rate. That’s why Sheinkopf personally reviews all the content his blog publishes.

I told him I was surprised that the CEO manages the company blog, and he laughed: “There’s no better business-development effort. So why wouldn’t I?”

3. Make customers smarter.

Yale Appliance has more than 20 guides covering everything from how to buy under-cabinet lighting to what to look for in a dishwasher. Many of those started as internal, vendor- agnostic training resources for new employees. “We already had a 10-page guide on an induction oven,” Sheinkopf says. It wasn’t a far leap to turn it into a buying guide for customers.

Yale uses marketing-automation vendor HubSpot to nurture customers through the buying process. Anyone who downloads a guide to buying a sub-zero fridge opts-in to a series of emails designed to deliver more information about the appliances. Those emails have a high engagement rate: 35 percent, vs. 5 to 10 percent for other emails Yale sends (mainly newsletters and daily promotions).

“We focus on making our customer smarter,” Sheinkopf says. “People want to be informed; they don’t want to be sold to anymore—if they ever did.”

4. Invest in staff and other resources that touch customers.

Customer happiness is rooted in happy employees. So Yale hires carefully, finding employees with the right cultural fit and making sure they are happy and well taken care of -- through profit sharing and generous benefit packages, as well as top-notch training programs.

Yale has also spent time and effort identifying and investing in improvements to customer experience, including better phone and computer systems.

5. Quit procrastinating.

Sheinkopf embraced content marketing long before a lot of other businesses caught on. So is his success linked to a first-mover advantage? “Good, original information is still good, original information,” he points out. “Good content is still good content.”

In other words, any small business can -- and shouldtake advantage of these digital strategies. “I’m not an outlier,” Sheinkopf adds. “There are still millions of industries and countless opportunities in underserved markets. You just have to refuse to do business like everyone else.”

Source : http://entm.ag/1Y7i4oW

3 reasons social media relationships aren't virtual

I remember saying that if I could ever figure out how a person could be in two places at once I’d retire a billionaire.

Then, I figured it out.

Being in two places or more simultaneously is exactly what social media allows us to appear to do. With a nearly endless supply of apps designed to cross-post anything we can enter into a digital device, you’d think the impossible had finally been achieved.

Certainly a lot of innovative people have ensured a comfortable retirement by making that illusion easy to create. But what is it costing entrepreneurs who fall prey to it?

Back when I was lamenting the impossibility of being in two locations at the same moment I was working with service professionals, primarily doctors. We all know what happens when a doctor gets scheduled to be in two places at once; we have to clear our schedules because we’ll be spending most of the day in their clinic.

So, part of my consulting role was to teach micromanagement of the service provider’s appointment book to make the most of their available seconds while keeping their schedule as close to on time as possible.

You might think that showing up on social media has very little in common with being physically present with a patient, but you would be wrong. Social media gives us the opportunity to really show up, but most people confuse posting to a platform with having a presence in that space.

Thinking you’re really showing up on social media using apps to create and recreate content is like a doctor writing about the symptoms of a disease for WebMD. It’s marketing, it’s valuable content, but it is not the same as being present with the patient in the examining room.

1. Content equals marketing; conversation equals a relationship.

You post content, and with the magic of technology it shows up everywhere you tell it to go. Then, boom! There you are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, any social media platform you choose.

That’s marketing. Sometimes it’s really good marketing, but like all marketing, the purpose is to make you visible, to make you valuable, to get you on the radar of prospective customers and brand ambassadors to invite them to raise their hands and say, “More please.”

Marketing doesn’t build relationships. Most of the people telling you that social media doesn’t work aren’t really building relationships, they’re marketing. These are often the same people who tell you networking doesn’t work because they go to live networking events with a stack of cards and an agenda to market to as many people as possible.

Perhaps all you need from social media is a place to promote yourself and your business. In that case, carry on as you have been; this discussion won’t apply to you. If building relationships is part of your success strategy, here are some things to remember.

2. People have relationships with people.

People might develop loyalty to a brand, but they have a relationship with the people who represent that brand. If you are the brand, then their relationship has to be with you. Show up as a person who has a brand, not as a brand who is a person.

3. To have a relationship you have to relate.

Some of us are very private by nature. But if you can’t be personal, even vulnerable, people will see you as a personality, not a person. The admonition to “get real” has never been more applicable than here.

4. We bond over things we care about.

If your posts are never about anything except yourself and your work your family and your pets and your life, you’re sending a message that you are pretty much all that matters to you.

This may not turn people off initially, but it creates a revolving door of relationships with people who thought they had something in common with you, then slowly realize the only thing you have in common is that you both like you.

5. Relationships are built on know, like and trust.

Letting people get to know you is all about putting yourself out there. If you’re charming enough, people might like you just from what you have to say, but to trust you they need to believe you care about them.

Take the time to show up in their space. Do more than just like, retweet, or leave a “You go, girl!” Respond, engage, invite dialog, and demonstrate that you recognize the unique value of their personhood.

6. You really can only be in one place at once.

I really thought I could have overcome the impossible by now, too. Though I can market in multiple places at once, I can’t really show up as a person and engage in multiple places at once. I spend most of my “person” time on Facebook, that’s my home base of choice. What’s yours?

Source : http://bit.ly/1NMFOf4