COVID-19 Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

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Let’s face it. We are living in an unbelievably strange time. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, divisive politics, and an economy and workforce that is constantly adjusting and adapting to all of these changes means that a small business also must adapt and adjust its marketing approaches. How you market your small business during this time is critical. Since we are all experiencing this and the end date is uncertain, you can’t just send an email blast that says we care about you.

Instead it’s vital that your small business has a marketing plan that addresses customer or client needs directly.

Step Back and Make a Plan

Take a little time to prepare. Your goal is to create a marketing plan that will help you generate business but also ensure the safety of your customers and meet their needs and concerns.

1. Evaluate Existing Content and Graphics

Look at your website and any outward-facing materials or content that your customers, clients, or patients interact with. What message do they convey to site visitors? Is anything inconsistent with our new pandemic reality? Basically you don’t want the images and graphics you use on your website to be insensitive to what your audience is facing. The same concept applies to the specific phrasing you use in the copy on your website or internet presence.

2. Consider Offering Payment Plans

If your products or services are expensive, consider offering payment plans. You may be able to preserve your conversion rate by offering payment plans. Even if you have a service-based business, payment plans can help keep cash flowing toward your company. Once the crisis is over, customers you showed empathy to by offering a payment plan will remember that and may be more loyal to you and your services.

3. Be Sensitive in Your Messaging

Any messaging you put on your website needs to reflect your customers’ needs. The last thing you want to do is to appear insensitive or greedy. Make sure you show compassion. Don’t leave photos of an international vacation on your homepage or show people eating maskless in restaurants. Make sure that your graphics and messaging reflects the current COVID-19 reality. Being straightforward and compassionate will get you much farther with your customers than any sort of clever marketing plan.

4. Post More On Social Media

Social media posts are even more important in times of crisis. Since most people are stuck working from home, posting to social media is a way to interact and engage with clients. People are spending more time online so it’s critical that your company has a prominent presence.

Here are some social media tips – how to get social media right during Covid.

5. Give More If You Can

If your business is booming right now, consider giving away more for free right now or offering discounts. Sometimes when you give away more, you actually get more sign-ups and more customers. And as a plus, there’s a marketing karma related to helping out in hard times. By giving more if you can, you will add to your company’s good reputation.

6. Take Advantage Of Lower Paid Advertising Rates

The COVID pandemic has hit businesses hard. As a result, big businesses are advertising online less. This results in an opportunity for small businesses as paid advertising rates are much cheaper than they were pre-COVID.

Now Is Not The Time To Sit Back In Silence

While marketing your business during the COVID pandemic might feel like it’s in poor taste, your approach to marketing is the difference between poor taste and truly effective marketing. Be thoughtful in your messaging and images. Consider offering payment plans. Utilize social media. Advertise. Make sure you and your company are remembered for what you did during the pandemic.

Unscalable Marketing Tactics – Tactic #1 – Get Feedback

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Nothing about this title makes sense to the modern day marketer. We are all about scalable marketing tactics that maximize efficiency and are easily repeatable.

The biggest problem most businesses have is getting more customers. Business owners believe that if they could just find that one magic growth tactic, their business would be set.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of them will never find that tactic. And while they’re searching for that magic bullet, they’re passing up on smaller, unscalable tactics that could be getting them a consistent stream of new traffic. Unscalable tactics cost more per acquisition but deliver customers when other tactics are failing. These are best applied early on in a business, when scalable tactics (advertising, really high quality viral video campaigns, etc.) are not realistic.

People who sign up for a trial but don’t purchase usually have a reason for doing so.

Some marketers are so focused on getting new customers that they don’t realize that what happens after a signup or purchase is the most important factor behind growth. Growth comes from creating a product that is as close to the needs and wants of your customers as possible. You can’t create that kind of a product going on intuition, without any actual customer feedback.

No feedback is feedback: If someone signs up for a demo or a trial or purchases something from you, that tells you something.

It tells you that:

  • They need a solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.
  • They like the sound and/or look of your product.

But if a customer stops using your product right after they start using it (particularly for software products), that’s your feedback. Their problem didn’t just disappear. What happened is they concluded that your product couldn’t help them sufficiently.

What’s the point of getting new customers if you barely retain any of them? On top of that, you need to absolutely thrill customers if you want them to recommend you to others.

The solution? Get feedback: As long as you collect email addresses when people sign up, you can contact them. If a large portion of your new signups are disappearing on you, personally send them an email and find out how your product fell short.

The customer is still in “pain” because they haven’t solved their problem, which makes them pretty receptive to outreach.

It’s not scalable to email every single new customer you get, but this type of feedback is how you’ll make your customers love your product. You could even survey a fraction of your customers and still get really valuable feedback.

You can also preemptively get feedback by sending your customers a welcome email, asking them how they found you and what they’re hoping your product can do for them.

 

 

Calls to action to use in your email marketing campaigns

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When you create an email marketing campaign, the most important components are the calls to action or CTA. Calls to action grab a subscriber’s attention and encourage him or her to act.

For this action-packed post, we’ve curated calls to action, broken out by category to help you use calls to action effectively in your email marketing campaigns.

Calls to Action That Get Clicked

Calls To Action that encourage a purchase

Shop now
Shop our fall collection
Shop now. Get 50% off.
Shop our best sellers
Act now
Save today
Buy now
Buy now. Pay later.
Buy it today
Yes! I want one.
Order now
Repeat your order
Claim your coupon
Reveal my mystery coupon
Start saving today
Don’t delay. Save now.
See your hand-selected deals
Get 50% off now
Shop for the clothes you want
Get the style you want
Get your winter wardrobe
Get free shipping
Free gift with purchase

Calls To Action for content

Learn more
Read more
Curious? Read on
Download the eBook
Download now
Keep reading
Read the full story
Get the app

Calls To Action for video

Watch now
See the crazy video
Hear from our CEO
Hear her story
See the difference you make

Calls To Action for events

Reserve your seat
Register now
Book your tickets
I’m coming!
I’ll be there!
Count me in!
Book now for early bird prices
Sign me up
Save me a spot
Register for our webinar

Calls To Action for service-based businesses

Book your next appointment
Start your free trial
Upgrade now
Yes! I want a free upgrade.
Make me a VIP
Sign up and save

Calls To Action that focus on results

Find out how
Start today
See how your business benefits
Get results now
Start now. Get results.
I’m ready to see a change

Calls To Action that collect feedback

Complete our 5-minute survey
Take a survey
Leave a review
Give us your feedback
Let us know how we did

 

Managing Multi-Channel Marketing

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In simpler times, online marketing was just about web and email. While the marketing process was much simpler, the opportunities were also very limited. You could only reach someone while they were on their computer – and even back then there were emails and pop-ups vying for their attention. Today with multi-channel marketing we have more channels than ever to reach prospective customers and clients – internet radio, digital television, ads, re-marketing, social media. But no one has enough time or resources to manage all these different channels, so it is critical that marketers prioritize and plan accordingly.

One thing is very clear – you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket. While marketing on Facebook might be important, it’s also important not to lose sight of your website.

Managing Multi-Channel Marketing Step 1: Create a Unified Presence

The first step is to decide on a unified approach. This is the biggest change you can make that will have a ripple effect. Think about your message and your audience and regardless of the channel, the over-arching message should be the same.

Managing Multi-Channel Marketing Step 2: Prioritize Your Channels

Since you don’t have enough time or money to market to all channels, you have to prioritize and figure out which channels make the most sense. Don’t just look at the channels from a profit standpoint. Look at things like:

  • How easy is it for the company to deliver the message to your audience?
  • How much does it cost?
  • How likely is it that the customer will buy from this channel?
  • How likely is it that the customer will share with others from this channel?

Gauge your various channels to determine which channel delivers the best quality leads at the lowest cost – this should be your priority.

Managing Multi-Channel Marketing Step 3: Determine the Right Performance Indicators

Once you’ve decided on a few channels, you need to figure out how you measure performance.

Multi-channel marketing can seem overwhelming but there are ways to make it manageable. The payback in terms of revenues, customer loyalty and reinforced brand messaging are there for those marketers willing to make a concentrated effort and make that leap. By creating a singular brand voice along with crafting a plan that puts your best channels first, while measuring the metrics that matter, you’ll be able to make a confident foray into the world of multi-channel marketing.

How to Build a Referral Program – Part 2

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In the first post – How to Build a Referral Program – Part 1 – I discussed the reasons why you should create a referral program and described what you should and shouldn’t do to be successful. In this post, I am going to give you a few examples of online referral programs.

Examples of Great Online Referral Programs

Dropbox – Dropbox built their empire out of their referral program. Dropbox gives you and your friends an extra 500MB of storage space for each referral, up to 16GB.

This is a legendary referral program: Dropbox’s refer-a-friend feature permanently increased signups by 60%, with users sending 2.8 million direct referral invites by April 2010.

Why Dropbox’s referral program was so effective:

  • Prior to the referral program, Dropbox was using SEM (search engine marketing) and affiliate marketing, with a CPA (cost per acquisition) of $288-$388!
  • But the math didn’t work; their product was $99/year.
  • Inspired by PayPal, they added a double-sided referral program, where both referrer and their friend get rewarded
  • The referral rewards were extra storage space, something that was key to usage and enjoyment of their product

PayPal’s Referral Program literally gave users (and their friends) cash.

referral-paypal

This program ended in 2003, but referrals helped PayPal achieve 7 to 10% daily growth, catapulting their user base to over 100 million members.

According to David Sacks, original COO of Paypal, Paypal used to literally pay people to invite their friends.

It turned out to yield better marketing ROI than traditional marketing channels.

Airbnb will give you $100 for every friend you invite.

Airbnb Coupon Codes- Invite Your Friends 2016-03-18 10-22-25

 

How to Build a Referral Program – Part 1

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Many of us get most of our business referrals through word-of-mouth advertising. But what we usually miss is the idea that word-of-mouth advertising isn’t something that always has to happen completely organically. With a little strategy, you can encourage customers and clients to spread the good word about your business.

If you create a successful referral program, you can track brand advocates, incentivize happy customers to promote your product, and increase customer acquisition and retention.

But how do you do this? How do you take an idea like “word of mouth” and turn it into a successful, manageable program that includes dashboards, analytics, and results? This post, will explore how and why you should build a referral program for your business.

The Benefits of a Referral Program

If you are thinking to yourself “I don’t have time to set up a referral program because I need to focus exclusively on leads,” you should start by reading this Nielsen study that demonstrates how referrals and word of mouth is the most trusted form of advertising. And certainly referrals build your leads because you are rewarding people who are helping find leads for you.

What are the specific benefits of a referral program?

  • The leads you acquire will trust you more.
  • The leads you acquire are more likely to hire you.
  • The leads you acquire are more likely to remain loyal customers.
  • Loyal customers are more likely to refer you to new leads.

How to Set Up a Referral Program for your Business

The first step in setting up a referral program is to decide on your offer. Referral programs are all about rewarding (giving) in exchange for referrals. You have to come up with an offer that works with your brand. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What are they looking for? What kind of incentive will actually motivate them to show off your product to a friend or confidant? Some businesses create contests, while others simply announce that if customers refer a friend, they get a flat payment.

Create a System That Puts Your Customer In Charge

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my business it’s this – never make things difficult for your customers. Or at the very least – always try your best to make things easy for your customers. That’s also true for referrals. Your goal is to make the process of referring new customers and earning their rewards as easy as possible.

For now, focus on these two concepts to put your customers in charge:

Social Sharing: You want to make sure your referral program is shareable. If you’ve created a substantial incentive for your customers, you’ll give them reason to spread the word. Make sure that your referral tool makes it easy for them to share. Stitch Fix makes it easy for customers to refer their friends by including a social sharing widget right in the dashboard.

refer-your-friends-referrals

Seamless Integration: Don’t make your customer jump through hoops. Even your most loyal customers won’t want to participate if they sign up for your referral program and then find out there are three more steps they have to complete before collecting their referral reward.

Promote Your Program

Unfortunately life and business isn’t really like the movie Field of Dreams. You have to do more than just create a referral program. Like the product itself, you have to get the word out before you can expect anyone to participate. One of the most common ways to do this is through triggered or time-based email campaigns. A few days after someone makes a purchase, you can encourage them to share a referral link to give them and a friend further discounts.

The tools recommended in the next post on referral marketing will feature some ways to do this, including creating contests through social media, posting directly to social media, or creating emails so you can announce to your list that the referral program is in place.

Make sure to integrate your referral program with new purchases of your product or service. I recommend including a mention of the referral program on your post-purchase confirmation page. This is an ideal time to capture your customer when they’re feeling good about their purchase and want to spread the word.

7 Keys to Keeping Customer Trust and Gaining Customer Loyalty

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The most important part of a thriving business is sales. If you have enough customers, even a poorly run company can survive. However, the sales process isn’t easy and for most businesses it’s far easier and cheaper to retain a customer than it is to develop a new customer. Customer loyalty is extremely valuable because a lifelong customer will buy from you again and again.

This is why gaining customer trust and keeping it after the initial sale is so important. Too many companies focus exclusively on the initial sale and then fail to deliver on customer service after the initial sale. If you haven’t given some serious thought to how your customer experience after the sale affects trust and loyalty, it’s time.

The rest of this post is going to break down the 7 keys to keeping customer trust and gaining customer loyalty.

Do everything you can to make sure your customers are happy.

The biggest reason customers leave a brand is because they don’t like the product or service they get. Your number one priority is to have a system in place for addressing customer complaints.

When a customer comes to you or anyone on your team with a complaint, they should be met with the following:

  • Listening – Don’t try to fix anything before the customer has been able to vent and explain the problem. Give them as much time as they need.
  • Empathy – Always try to find ways to relate and connect with the customer. It turns the situation into an “us vs the problem” situation instead of the original “you vs the customer” situation.
  • Apologizing – You need to try to give every customer the best experience you can. If something goes wrong, a simple apology goes a long way. People can be pretty understanding when you sound like a person and not a corporation.
  • Solving – First, ask the customer how they’d like the problem to be solved. Or offer your own solutions for them to choose from. Go above and beyond here to maximize your chances of retaining that customer.

Encourage your customers to communicate with you. Provide them with multiple access points – email, phone, web forms – and make sure they are visible on your website. Take the time to follow up and see if your customer is thrilled with your solution. If they aren’t, encourage them to contact you again.

Be a Psychic for your Customers

If you could anticipate customer complaints, you could take preventative action and minimize the number of complaints and bad experiences. Many complaints happen because customers don’t fully understand what they are buying. It could be because the sales page isn’t clear or because the customer is assuming far too much – either way, the customer doesn’t get what he expected and is dissatisfied.

So how do you prevent this from happening?

Answer all the questions before a purchase is made. Remember that it’s never just one potential customer with a question. So, even if you only get one or two complaints about a specific issue, it could mean there are several other customers with the same problem.

But you can eliminate a significant number of these bad experiences by using a simple FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on your sales page.

There’s Nothing Worse Than Feeling Used

Don’t let your business be the guy who pays someone a lot of attention, so they naturally think you like them. Then, as soon as you get something from them, you stop paying any attention to them.

That is, until you need something from them again in the future. Your relationship with your prospects and customers is a relationship. It goes beyond just getting money from them for your products. They need to know that your primary desire isn’t just to make money but to try to improve their lives and the lives of others like them.

This starts with giving more than what you take. Here are some tips:

  • Be mindful of what your sales pitches look like.
  • Make sure that once the sales cycle is completed, you continue to offer your customers solutions to other problems they might have.

Support Before Moving Forward

When someone buys a product, they’re trading their money for your product. However, if they purchased it online, they may not get that product for a while. Usually, that’s at least a few days if it’s a physical product.

At this point, they’ve given up money but got nothing in return, which makes them feel like you owe them something—which you do.

But if you just ask them to buy additional products at this stage, they have no choice but to think that you don’t really care if they get what they’re owed. It seems like you only care about making money from them.

It’s a great way to lose a customer.

You need to take care of all aspects of your customer’s order before moving them on to any future products.

A good friend always checks in – As someone who has sold both products and services, I love seeing how they improve the lives of my customers. Check in with your customer after an appropriate amount of time (enough to receive and possibly try the product).

Case Studies Aren’t Just For Selling

Regardless of whether someone just bought something from you or is considering buying from you, you want them to think one thing:

That if they buy it, they will be making a good decision. It will make them happy.

A lot of factors go into that feeling, but more than anything else, it is seeing the results of others.

If you showcase happy customers in your case studies, it’ll help your new customers feel like they probably just made a good decision instead of feeling buyer’s remorse.

The better someone feels after buying one of your products, the more likely they are to buy again in the future.

Over-Deliver On Your Promises

If you do one thing right, do this – over-deliver on your promises. Deliver a great product or service and surprise your customer by giving a little more than expected. This will go a long way towards happy customers and long term loyalty.

Reward Customer Loyalty

If you give your customers something extra, most will be inclined to give something back to you somehow. Your options depend heavily based on your type of business, but here are four main types of rewards you can give out:

  1. Exclusive offers
  2. Loyalty programs
  3. Fun bonus events
  4. Samples

You can also do this on a more personal level. Take some time and go to lunch with your clients or customers.

Conclusion

If you want to maximize the value of a new customer, you need to convert them into a loyal, repeat customer. To do that, you have to demonstrate that you deserve their trust and loyalty. Focus on these seven and make them part of your overall customer loyalty service system and you will be well on your way to repeat, loyal customers.

 

 

Content Marketing: Don’t forget the marketing side of content marketing

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Everyone is doing content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 94% of all small businesses, 93% of B2Bs, and 77% of B2Cs use content marketing. That’s basically everyone.

However, not everyone is doing content marketing the right way. One of the quickest ways to kill your content is to do nothing after you take the time to write it.

Some people think that content marketing is all about merely creating content and waiting, a la field of dreams, for people to come and find it. This is the wrong way to approach content marketing and a good way to waste your time.

Creating content is only one half of the process of content marketing. The other half is the marketing part – getting out the word, spreading your message, and sharing your content.

Let’s break apart content marketing into its two main components parts:

  1. Create content.
  2. Promote content.

Which of those two are you doing or not doing? If you do a lot of promoting, but just a little of creating, then you are probably more successful than a company who does a lot of creating, but very little promoting.

Content promotion is just as important as content creation.

How do you promote your content? Here are a few easy ways to promote a single blog post:

  1. Email newsletter
  2. Marketing email to a landing page
  3. Tweets. Be sure to tweet it several times and ask for retweets
  4. Google+ posting
  5. Facebook posting
  6. Sharing in LinkedIn
  7. Find influencers in your industry who can also share your content
  8. Pitch site owners and other bloggers to see if they will share your content
  9. Mention your content while commenting on other sites

If you aren’t doing any promotion, I recommend adjusting the amount of time you spend on content creation and allocating half that time to promoting your content.

 

Content Marketing: Ten Questions To Ask Yourself Before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

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Blogs are one important component of content marketing. The beautiful part about content marketing is that it can bring you hundreds, if not thousands, of social shares, new email subscribers, and tons of comments. But you have to do your content marketing right.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategy of producing and publishing information that builds trust and authority among your ideal customers. It’s a way to build community and relationships so that people feel loyal to you and your brand. It’s also a strategy for becoming recognized as a thought leader in your industry. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s a way to “sell your goods” without cold calls or traditional sales tactics.

Ten Questions To Ask Yourself Before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

Headline – Ask yourself these questions when composing your headline.

1. Would someone type my headline into Google? – If they would, then you are more likely to get search traffic.

2. Does my headline contain any popular keywords or phrases? – If it doesn’t, don’t expect to rank for any terms on Google.

Introduction – Every blog post should have an introduction. Here are some questions your should ask yourself when working on your introduction.

3. Am I hooking my readers with a question?  – This is easy. Just remember to ask a question.

4. Did I include a picture? – You should always start your blog post with some type of media. Whether it’s a picture or a video, make sure it entices people to click through or continue reading and make sure it relates to your blog post.

Body

5. Did I use subheadings? – Subheadings make it easier for readers to skim your content.

6. Did I link out to anyone? – When appropriate, link out to other websites. Then once you publish your post, you can email those sites and ask them to share it on their social profiles.

7. Are my paragraphs fewer than 5 or 6 lines? – Anything longer than this will seem overwhelming to readers.

Conclusion

8. Did I end my post with a question? – This is a great way to generate more comments. Remember to italicize this question.

9. Does my conclusion encourage people to read the content? – Sometimes people will scroll down and read the conclusion first. Make sure your conclusion entices people to read the entire post.

Promotion – I’m going to create a follow-up post solely on promotion and blog posts, because there is clearly more than 1 thing you should do in terms of promotion.

10. Have I repurposed my content? By turning your blog post into a PDF or a slide deck and sharing it on the Internet, you can get more traffic. Just submit different versions to sites like Slideshare, and your traffic will increase. Make sure you adjust and edit your content however. You don’t want to be hit by a duplicate content penalty from Google.

Conclusion

If you ask yourself the ten questions I posed above, you’ll quickly see that there’s a lot of work to be done to get successful results with your content marketing.

Don’t worry if you don’t have time to do everything. Just know that the more you do, the better off you’ll be.

So, did I miss anything? What other questions should you ask yourself before publishing another blog post?

 

New Top Level Domains Are Available: Be A Savvy Marketer

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Top level domains – you know them without really being able to define them – they are the .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and even .mil. Top level domains also include the country domains – you’ll see something.ca, for example, and know that’s a domain related to Canada. .jp is for Japan and so on.

Now there are a whole host of new top level domains available for purchase and the benefits for marketing and differentiating yourself are compelling.

What Are the New Top Level Domains?

There are about 1300 new top level domains and they are being released to the general public slowly. There are 111 that are now available for purchase. The new top level domains cover a wide range of topics. Here are a few examples:

  • .academy
  • .agency
  • .bargains
  • .bid
  • .bike
  • .build
  • .builders
  • .catering
  • .cleaning
  • .club
  • .construction
  • .democrat
  • .education
  • .expert
  • .guru
  • .marketing

Top level domains like .law, .lawyer, and .attorney will be available for pre-registration soon. What should a savvy marketer do to take advantage of these new domains?

1. Innovate Your Brand

I’m sure we can all agree that your domain name is important for the branding of your company. After all, you would expect to find Connect4 Consulting at www.Connect4Consulting.com,  right? And the same is likely true for your business domain.

But what if the game changed so that your business domain could be more aligned with your business? We could be Connect4.marketing or Connect4.consultant. Own a car dealership? How about www.BethesdaFord.cars? Have a law firm? How about www.washingtondc.law or www.personalinjury.law? Are you a politician? How about www.joesmith.democrat or www.joesmith.gop?

These changes and more are all coming in 2014. Savvy marketers need to get in front of this new domain landscape and line up to protect their brands (or even consider re-branding).

2. Protect Your Brand

If you have a domain that is your company name or a domain that reflects your branding, it’s time to protect variations of that brand that are becoming available.

For example, Connect4 Consulting only works with companies in the US and Canada, so we’d probably be okay with a foreign entity owning <a “href=”http://www.connect4consulting.asia/”>www.connect4consulting.asia. But we definitely would not like another agency to grab www.connect4consulting.marketing.

3. Get Up For The Sunrise

As each new top level domain becomes available, there’s a 60 day “sunrise” period for trademark holders to purchase their domains. For example, this will allow Hertz to scoop up www.hertz.cars and Amazon to get www.Amazon.book. Trademark holders still have to purchase the domains but they get first pick.

To view the list of all the new TLDs, take a look at Name.com’s TLD Watchlist Here you can see all the new TLDs and also mark the ones you’re interested in so that you can be notified when they become available. Your domain registrar may offer a similar service. As these new domains become available, you can purchase them for prices similar to those for your existing domains. Tip: Go to Name.com’s TLD Watchlist and see what TLDs are of interest to you. Then add these names to your Watchlist (right on the same page).

4. New Top Level Domains and SEO

According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the new top level domains won’t have an SEO advantage over existing domains. What will matter, however is the memory of the end user and your branding. Which is better Ford.com or Ford.cars? Hilton.com or Hilton.hotels? Today it’s easy to say that .com is better for brand recall, but over time I think we’ll see a shift as brands use the top level domains as part of their overall branding strategy.

The Bottom Line on New Top Level Domains

Our suggestion is that you register new top level domains that match your business objectives or that you want to protect, either because of your own trademarks or for future use.