Archives for March 2018

Choosing the right digital channel for your small business will greatly improve the likelihood of successfully reaching your audience. A new infographic from Connext Digital provides a guide to choosing the digital channel that is right for you.

“A Guide To Choosing The Best Digital Channel For Your Business” looks to help businesses maximize their marketing dollar so they can get the best ROI.

How to Choose a Digital Marketing Channel

Achieving the best ROI is especially important for small businesses with limited marketing budgets. But the wonderful thing about the digital ecosystem is there are ways to maximize your marketing efforts no matter what free, DYI or paid tools are at your disposal.

Rob Fitzgerald, the Founder and CEO of Connext Digital says, “The digital channel you choose should largely depend on the type of your business, the kinds of customers you’re targeting, and your overall business goals. Before picking the channel that fits your business best, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the various digital marketing channels available.” 

Email

With returns on investment of up to 4,300 percent, email is a digital channel used regularly by all demographics at different levels. Once you begin engaging with your customers using email, you can improve conversion rates and sales, identify better-quality leads, lower marketing costs and integrate your efforts with other channels.

Display Ads

When properly deployed, display ads can deliver great returns. Native ads with rich media like images or videos can drive up to 60 percent more conversions than those without. With 64 percent of respondents saying ads are annoying or intrusive, you have to be selective.

Mobile In-App Advertising

Mobile ad spend is growing at a very fast rate, and in-app advertising is one way to get your message out. Whether through gaming, video, images, social media or blogs, you can use apps to place ads strategically without being too obtrusive or with the consent of users.

Social Media Marketing

With billions of global users, marketing on social media can yield great returns. The key according to Fitzgerald, is to target customers with interests related to your business.

SMS

With open rates as high as 98 percent, SMS can be used to inform, update and market to your audience affordably. It can be used to direct customers to your digital or brick and mortar outlets.

SEO

According to Context Digital, 93 percent of digital experiences begin with a search on Google, Bing or another search engine. So implementing SEO techniques to make your business easy to find on the major search engines makes sense. By optimizing your online presence with SEO, you can get more clicks to your website, store, blog or other digital channel.

Using these digital channels for your business will deliver results, but according to Fitzgerald, they have to go hand in hand with other considerations. These include setting clear business objectives, being aware of your brand, accurately targeting your audience, knowing the limitations of your budget and understanding the capabilities of the talent you have available, to name a few.

You can take a look at the infographic below for more details.

Images: Connext Digital

One of the challenges of running a bar is conducting an inventory. This is because the inventory is fluid (pun intended) and very hard to keep track of if you are not on top of things. The new liquor inventory app from BarDog Technologies looks to simplify the process by matching the content of your shelf directly to the app, making it easier to track.

The BarDog app has a single user interface which lets you organize your inventory, count it, log purchases and view your gross margins. And you can do this no matter where you are, whether it is on your mobile device or desktop from remote locations.

According to the American Nightlife Association and based on IBISWorld data, there are around 70,000 locations primarily engaged in the retail sale of alcoholic drinks — and this doesn’t include restaurants. The industry is dominated by small businesses owned and operated by families. More than three quarters or 77.6 percent employ nine people or less. So the BarDog app is going to help many small businesses eliminate a labor-intensive task. In fact, one app user said just that.

Pete Sittnick, Managing Partner for Waterbar & EPIC Steak, San Francisco, said on BarDog’s official website, “BarDog takes an outdated process and simplifies it. This means less time doing low-value work, and fewer errors.”

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The Bardog Bar Inventory App at Work

BarDog lets you create a master catalog to organize all of your inventory while at the same time remembering what’s on the shelf, the order size, who you ordered from and more. It matches your shelf directory with the mobile app so you can make quick counts on the go alone or simultaneously with your staff.

The reporting mechanism has a dashboard with counts, total values, pour cost, spend by category and other data you can import to a spreadsheet or PDF.

It also integrates your vendors and distributors with a list containing payment terms, the name of sales representatives and contact information.

Pricing and Availability

BarDog is now available with three different pricing structures. The Pup, which starts at $35 per month provides unlimited inventories, master catalog, purchase and transfer log and more for three users.

The Dog goes up to $99 per month and includes all of the features of the Pup but includes unlimited users, staff training, user activity tracking and more. The pricing for the Pack is not available without contacting the company, but is structured for multi-location management along with region and location reports.

Images: BarDog Technologies

Last year at Nextiva’s NextCon event, one of the featured presentations was from Lawrence Cole, the Head of Mid-Market, U.S. West for Google. It was such a good session that I’ve been wanting to have him join me for a conversation for this series ever since.

2018 Search Marketing Trends

And this week I was able to talk with him and get his take on a number of themes around search, SEO, conversion rate optimization and how machine learning is democratizing the availability of insights in all these areas.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.  To hear the full interview,  watch the video below, or click on the embedded SoundCloud player.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends:  Maybe you can give us a little of your personal background.

Lawrence Cole: I actually got my start working as an engineer quite some time ago. I was a software engineer for EarthLink at the start of my career, back when they were, I guess you could say cresting in their trajectory some years ago.

I spent a lot of time in the logistics industry. I work in the crosses of several different departments, and functions.

I also spent a great deal of my time in the small business space. Starting small companies, working from small companies, so I spent a great deal of time developing an understanding what small companies go through. Even some of the initial digital marketing skills that I’m now able to apply, and lead new teams.

In a large tech company, they really began with me being a person who, either from my own, or someone else’s small businesses, figuring out things such as search engine optimization, email marketing, digital marketing. Even before we had social media, and Google Adwords, and these sorts of platforms. I’ve had kind of a mix of large company engagement, and small company engagement. Even now, a lot of the teams that I lead deal primarily with small companies, and start-ups. Sometimes maybe starting to begin to startup a small companies. Now they scale into half a billion, or a couple of billion dollars in revenue.

Small Business Trends:  How has search engine optimization changed over the last couple of years or so, and is it as important, or is it more important today than it was a couple years ago?

Lawrence Cole: I think it’s always important, because it is just one of many ways to get in front of people. I think that search engine optimization has become a little more commoditized than it used to be, which also, I think makes it a little more equitable of an opportunity. I can remember doing well in search engines had a lot to do with you being in a certain loop of people who had figured out some things, and they were way ahead of everyone else. Now, with all the information, with it is much less of a black box. It’s available for everyone, but it also makes it a lot more competitive as well, because the tools for success are more common in knowledge than they used to be. But, like I said, it’s always a worthy investment.

I think that you should look at a marketing and customer acquisition strategy very wholistically, as opposed to hanging your hat on any one thing by search engine optimization, or social media, or ads spend, to look at it in its totality, and to figure out, more important than anything else, where your perfect customer lives. One of the best platforms, and method is to reach out to them.

Small Business Trends:  There’s a lot of emphasis on CRO, conversion rate optimization. It seems like there’s so much coming at people. They’re looking for information. They’re making quick decisions. They’re also making quick decisions as to where do they spend that little piece of time that they have to try to figure out the challenge that you’re trying to solve. Maybe you could talk a little about the urgency of trying to get that person’s attentions that’s doing a search, and converting that attention into an actual interaction opportunity.

Lawrence Cole: I think one of the distinctions about customer acquisition as things have changed over the years is that focusing on urgency is not necessarily the way you want to go. For one, it is very difficult to influence consumers to do anything they don’t want to do in this economy. There are so many choices… There are so much that are educated on what their choices are, and their habits have changed. They spend a lot more time researching, because they can on their phone at their fingertips. Typically, when someone’s seriously considering what we have to offer, they probably already determined that they want what you have. They’re just trying to decide who to get it from.

In terms of optimizing for conversions, my advice is to focus on being as frictionless as possible. Making it simple, and as easy, and seamless as possible. Reducing the number of steps that it takes to be able to get to whatever it is you have to offer. I can’t tell you how many time that I, as a consumer, have been on the way to buying something from a company, and they ended up losing my money, because it just took me too many steps, or I had to wait too long, or something would not load. I just went elsewhere, and bought the exact same thing from someone else.

So, I think making your process as friction free as possible. Looking at things like the speed of your site, the number of steps that it takes to get to your shopping cart, the number of different types of payment that you take, do you even take PayPal, and not look just on your regular desktop site. You need to think about mobile, because more and more people are competing to go from, not just researching on mobile, but being very comfortable at purchasing on mobile, as well. Especially for things that are not huge, and major purchases. I think that all of those things should be considerations, but the bottom line focus really should be on how frictionless as possible can you make your customer acquisition process.

Small Business Trends:  It’s been months, but I remember in your presentation you talked about how Google has about seven properties that have over a billion active users. An incredible amount of interactions that Google has an opportunity to look at. How could a small business, how could any kind of business who’s looking to build relationships, look at any of the ways that Google, and the data that Google has to help them, leverage that data and be more strategic with the way that they interact, or try to get the attention of somebody they’re trying to do business with?

Lawrence Cole:  One of perennial challenges with small businesses, Brent, is a lack of access to leverage; Not having the financial resources, not having the headcount resources to compete with larger concerns in the same space. One of the things that is going to, and is already begun to democratize that, is machine learning; and how Google, in particular is using and leveraging machine learning in our products to look at a innumerable number of signals across those several properties. To be able to collect really smart data that can help small businesses to optimize the return they’re getting from what they’re investing.

When I began managing paid advertising, everything was manageable, and your results had a lot to do with the skill of the person who was managing your account. What machine learning is doing, is it’s taking the focus of optimization away from human knowledge, and it’s shifting it over to machine knowledge, and machine learning, so that even a small business can compete very well if they can be smart about how they’re leveraging automation. Then things like remarketing, and some of the audience based targeting options, customer matching – matching for similar audiences- that Google has available to everyone on its platform.

Small Business Trends:  Talk a little about video. It captures people’s attention in a way that text just doesn’t. When you look at the opportunity that video presents for engagement from a customer-vendor perspective, what do you think small businesses need to know, and maybe they just don’t seem to be embracing well enough?

Lawrence Cole:  I believe that one of the misnomers is that a small business can’t compete in video, because they don’t have access to large scale production, equipment, or talent, to write, et cetera. The reality is that there are many ways to scan that casts. For instance, I think that the most important thing is to understand how ubiquitous video is becoming. By 2020, something like 90% of the time people spend online will be watching videos. A lot of it is who is understanding what the folks that you are looking to target see is important. What are they watching? You can leverage that without a video. You can place an ad next to a video, or on a video, and be able to leverage that without any production at all. Or, you can produce things very cheaply, or pay to get them produced very cheaply.

Let’s say you don’t have a big budget to spend on marketing that video. Producing something as simple as a how-to, can be very powerful, because people forget that YouTube, which is a part of the Google family, is the number two search engine in the world, next to Google search. I tell people that people go to Google search to look up what … they usually go to YouTube to look up how. So, if I had a haven’t tie a bow tie, like two years, I can relearn how to do it, I go to YouTube to do that. If I forget how to,  YouTube tells me how to do that.

You have this type of powerful service that lands to needing to tell a story about it, or show someone how to do it, how to use it. You can actually do it very well for free, by just simply putting a YouTube video up that helps to drive traffic to your site, or your app based on the quality of your content, and also how good of a job you do at second targeting. Those are two options. One is there is cost, but it doesn’t require video, the other one requires video, but it has little to no costs. That will allow small business to be able to answer in that space with the goal, of course, of scaling.

Small Business Trends:  One last question, before we search, what do small business need to know about voice search, and how quickly do they need to start thinking about it being a need to be prepared, versus nice to be prepared for it?

Lawrence Cole:  One of the things about a small business is that it’s so much nimble than larger competitors, and that market allowed the companies that I’ve worked with to become large, who have become companies that drive hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in revenue. It’s because they entered a market as a small competitor, and they got ahead of the curve on a trend. In terms of any trend that we know is going to become fairly ubiquitous, whether it’s mobile, video, voice. Those are all things that a small business person should be looking at, and relentlessly thinking about ways that they can cut some of the larger competitors off at the pass by being a fast mover in new trends, and being able to use that to siphon some of the market share.

The thing about larger companies is that they typically take a longer time, and to be able to catch on to trend, they have a lot more loops, and they often wait, and look at the market, and see how things shift first, before they invest.  Small companies, they absolutely need to be at the forefront of any trend that comes out. At the very least being educated on it, and maybe doing some light, and extensive testing to see if it works for you.

Small Business Trends:  Lawrence, this has been great. I really appreciate the time. Where can people learn a little bit more about some of the things that we just talked about?

Lawrence Cole:  One of the places that I would send people to is actually  Google Adwords Academy that’s free. It’s a wealth of information. It’s kind of a gateway to a lot of the tools, and resources that we have to offer. To begin to develop a general acumen around some of the best practices.

Again, when I started doing digital marketing, all of this stuff was a black box. You had to find someone, or pay someone who was willing to give you the secret sauce, if you will, of how to be successful online. Now, it’s all free information that’s just out there for everyone. I would definitely start there.

This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it’s an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.

Ever wonder what strategies set fast-growing companies apart? Or how they fuel continued revenue growth? In partnership with Vistage Research, a division of Vistage Worldwide, we recently surveyed 1,350 SMB CEOs, all Vistage members; to understand what high-growth companies* are doing differently than their slower-growing, stagnant, and declining counterparts. In a sneak preview, we revealed some of the strategies high-growth SMB CEOs have to grow their business.

The full research report, Customer Growth: Decisions for the SMB CEO, takes a look at the strategies and investments that high-growth small businesses are implementing across the marketing, sales and service to grow their customers. Here are some of the findings:

1. High-growth SMBs are 30% more likely to engage in more strategies that drive customer growth

We took a look at the top customer growth strategies of small and midsize businesses and found that high-growth companies do more of them, and they do it better. How are they doing it better? Well that leads us to our next finding…

2. They’re 2x more likely to have leaders in marketing, sales and service in place

Investments in such diversified growth strategies often times require specialized leadership. We found that high-growth companies are more likely to have dedicated leadership in marketing, sales and service. As an added benefit of the leadership and expertise in those lines of business, high growth companies are 20% more likely to report their use of technology as extremely effective.

3. They’re more likely to rely on new customers to fuel revenue growth

As they’re more likely to engage in more customer growth strategies, it’s not all too surprising that high-growth businesses rely more on new customers to fuel revenue growth. This is no easy feat, and again, leadership and technology play an important role in how effective growth strategies are carried out.

4. They’re more likely to invest in talent, technology and training

To support their customer growth plan, high-growth companies are 28 and 29% more likely to invest in talent and training respectively, and 31% more likely to invest in technology. This makes sense because if you’re growing the business, you’re growing the talent and processes that come with supporting those new customers.

5. They’re more likely to chose a packaged application rather than a homegrown solution

High-growth companies are ditching the spreadsheets and using specialized applications to growth their business. As small businesses begin to grow, purpose-built applications make it easier and more effective to manage customer engagement. Rather than dedicate the time and expense to building a solution, they purchase packaged applications with proven, best practice business processes.

To learn more about the winning strategies, initiatives and investments high-growth SMBs are leveraging to find, win, and keep more customers, download the full research here.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Photo via Shutterstock

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With more than 800 million users worldwide, Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites. It is also a leading platform for small business promotion.

But what makes Instagram popular among small business owners?

Reasons to Use Instagram for Business

Digital company NoHatDigital has compiled a list of the top 10 reasons small businesses should adopt Instagram. Here are some of them.

Put a Face to Your Brand

Instagram is a visual platform to help you form a more personal connection with customers. You can share pictures and videos of your team and happy customers to engage your audience.

A visual feed can reflect your brand’s uniqueness and differentiate your business.

Boost Your Sales

You can use Instagram to update your followers about sales and special promotions. For example, you may run a promotional ad campaign to create awareness and drive more traffic to your website.

If you are launching a new product or service, use Instagram to provide a sneak peek into your latest offerings.

Tell Interesting Stories

Instagram is the perfect place to be creative when marketing your brand. Instagram Stories, in particular, is designed to boost audience engagement.

You can use Instagram Stories to offer discounts and run flash sale. You can also run contests to keep your customers interested.

Build Connections with Like-Minded People

Social media is all about networking. And Instagram is a great place to find like-minded people who share similar interests. You can expand your social network and collaborate with a brand or influencer to reach more people.

Stay Up to Date with Consumer Trends

Another reason why you should be on Instagram is because it can help you make the most of new trends. You can use it to promote causes or simply generate interest by posting holiday-specific content.

Check out the infographic below for more reasons to join Instagram.

Photo via Shutterstock

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