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You are here: Home / Blog

Workplace Flexibility Helps Entrepreneurs Attract Top Talent

February 6, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Executive search firm Inkwell connects brands with seasoned employees who need flexible schedules.


February
6, 2019

4 min read

This story appears in the
January 2019

issue of
Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

So you’ve got to hire a CFO. The traditional path would be to find someone who shows up early every day and cranks indefinitely. But what if your new CFO was a young mom who works remotely one or two days a week, or comes in from noon to 8 pm, or maybe even works part-time? She comes with the high-level experience you covet, but she wants flexibility — and to get it, she’s ready to deal.

That’s the idea championed by Manon DeFelice, founder of an executive search firm called Inkwell. After having her third child, DeFelice was struck by how hard it was to work a traditional job structure around family life, and saw she wasn’t alone: Research has shown that career women who leave the workforce for three years or more will lose up to 46 percent of their earning power. They’re full of ambition, but they can’t manage a 9-to-5. “I wanted to catch these women before they dropped out,” DeFelice says. 

Related: 3 Ways to Balance Your Business, Family and Everything Else

Inkwell has been placing these candidates in flexible roles for the past five years (the company takes 25 percent of the first-year salary), and though 80 percent of the company’s 4,000-candidate community is female, men are coming aboard, too. Not every company is immediately comfortable with the trade-off, though. Here are three case studies of startups that hired flexibly.

Image credit:

Courtesy of Wetransfer

Benefit: Part-Time Execs

Case Study: WeTransfer

WeTransfer is a file-sharing service based in Amsterdam, where workplace flexibility is common practice. When president Damian Bradfield was hiring to staff the company’s tiny Los Angeles office, however, he didn’t think to offer much flexibility simply because it’s less common here. But there was a snag: WeTransfer wanted senior-level people part-time. “If I can hire a really good heavyweight executive a few days a week to make an impact on our business until we get to a place where we can afford them full-time,” says Bradfield, “that’s great for us, and even better if it works for both parties.” Through Inkwell, he found a mother with 12 years of experience to head up U.S. brand partnerships, and a man with a consulting firm who would double as VP of business development. Both started part-time and now work five days a week — with the option to do it remotely. 

Related: A Family-Friendly Work Environment Is a Powerful Recruiting and Retention Tool

Image credit:

Weston Wells

Benefit: Affordable Salaries

Case Study: Paddle8

In its early days, the online auction platform Paddle8 had 25 employees and was looking to scale, but it didn’t have the budget for heavy hitters. Cofounder Osman Khan says he liked the idea of “finding talent that was willing to take a haircut to their market rate” — and decided to try Inkwell. The first person he hired was his head of HR. She was a former head of HR at Gucci, where she’d made $500,000. At Paddle8, she made $125,000 — but could work at home two days a week. “Once I saw the success of that [hire], I drank the Kool-Aid pretty hard,” Khan says. He then filled several other key positions through Inkwell — a CFO, controller, a general counsel, accounting and marketing roles. “There’s a lot of people who assume that flexible work equals less work,” says Khan. “But productivity was through the roof. You just have to create a company culture that embraces that model.”

Image credit:

Courtesy of Crunchbase

Benefit: Diversification

Case Study: Crunchbase

In 2017, Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell was at a conference speaking about diversifying executive teams. Afterward, Inkwell’s DeFelice came up to him to explain her platform. He was intrigued, although concerned about the impact it would have on company culture. “But I was also super excited because I was looking to make my own team more diverse,” he says. McConnell hired his new head of people through Inkwell as a test case. He found a young mother who’d run HR departments for nearly 10 years and was willing to take the job so long as she could work from home on Thursdays. That hire turned out so well that McConnell engaged Inkwell to search for a head of finance. As for the culture? “When Crunchbase acknowledges that family life is important, we not only get better output from employees, we retain them longer.”

Related: 9 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Spend Their Weekends

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Reasons Working Too Hard at Your Business is a Waste of Time

February 6, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Why Working Too Hard Will Stop Your Business from Scaling

As the leader of a small business, you’re bent on driving growth. You are willing to put in the work that’s needed to achieve that, but paradoxically, working too hard could create unexpected obstacles to your business growth.

If you’re working hard and putting in long hours but your business has hit a plateau, it’s possible that your hard work is the problem.

Here are some of the ways that working too hard could be holding your business back from realizing its growth potential.

Working Too Hard Stops You from Delegating Effectively

When you work too hard, you end up micromanaging your own employees. This undermines their dedication to the business and sends a silent message that you don’t trust them to meet your expectations. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, generating resentment and an unhealthy work atmosphere.

“As a CEO and Entrepreneur, your success will directly correlate to how well you can assemble the best team and then bring out the best in those people,” notes Mark Moses, the CEO of CEO Coaching International. “Micromanagers should never be CEOs of large or growing companies. This is because they are simply too complex to micromanage. Being involved at every level and not delegating to your team creates a bottleneck that essentially strangles an organization.”

Indeed, in order for your business to really scale, you need talented employees who are experts in their areas of specialty. If you’re working too hard, you are probably carrying out tasks which don’t draw on your real strengths. When you hire experts, they can carry out the work in less time, thanks to their training and experience, and you can free yourself up to focus on those strategic tasks which no one else can do.

Working Too Hard Stops You From Building Scalable Business Systems

No matter how hard you work, there is a limit to what a single person can achieve. For a business to scale successfully, it needs to be based on smart systems that can expand beyond your own capabilities. When you focus on completing task after task at all costs, instead of building a scalable business process that will do it for you, you’re stunting your business growth.

“Yes, your talents and skills were the reason that it was able to get up and running, but they will not be the tools that allow it to reach future success,” says Ken Marshall, founder of Doorbell Digital Marketing. “Now don’t get me wrong, working hard and getting things done is not an inherently bad thing. In fact, when your company is in its infancy, you’re going to be doing most of the work. But at some point you’re going to have to figure out ways to remove yourself from all of the repetitive or non essential tasks, take a step back, and look at where the ship is headed.”

Working too hard can create an overdependence on you. If your employees are constantly interrupting you to ask for decisions that they should be capable of reaching on their own, it prevents you from focusing on your more important core responsibilities, and holds them back from potential growth in their own roles.

Working Too Hard Prevents You from Thinking Creatively

For your business to scale, you need to feel passionate about it. But when you work too hard, your drive and passion get drowned out by petty tasks that should be delegated to someone else.

You could end up focusing too narrowly on the minutiae of the business, making it difficult to see the big picture and create an effective business strategy. At the same time, rushing so fast from one task to the next prevents you from focusing fully on any one aspect of the business, which will also prevent you from maintaining perspective with a holistic growth plan.

A study by Stanford University designed to measure cognitive load found that people who were told to remember a seven-digit number made far poorer decisions than those told to remember a single-digit number. When you’re stressed out by your unreasonably large workload, it hampers your ability to think creatively. It maxes out your cognitive load with minor issues, leaving you with no capacity to make difficult business decisions or react to important growth opportunities.

How to Avoid Being a Bottleneck at your Own Company

Changing the habit of working too hard is easier said than done. Simply working less isn’t a viable solution. There’s a good chance that vital business processes grew up around your habit of overwork; if you suddenly reduce the amount of work you’re doing, you could cause the whole business to fall apart.

An important first step is to reflect on what is causing you to work too hard. Identifying the cause could give you the insight you need to change your work habits.

Sometimes, CEOs end up working too hard because there isn’t enough money to hire more employees. If this is the case, then the solution is simple – get out there and find a way to add an employee or two. A business loan could give you the working capital you need to make some new hires.

Often, the habit of working too hard springs up because you are the one who established all the key business processes. You never transmitted them to others, so no one else knows what to do. By sharing core business processes, contacts and passwords with selected executives and employees, you can withdraw your personal involvement in every business issue.

Having trouble accepting that someone else can do a task as well as you can is especially common among CEOs who’ve nursed a company from its startup days. If you’ve always been the one to do this task, it’s easy to think that no one else can replace you. But no one is irreplaceable. Learning to step back a little and show some trust in your employees is the path to a better work atmosphere, as well as improved business growth.

Occasionally, CEOs overwork themselves simply out of ignorance that there is a better way. It’s not easy to pause the whirlwind, but investing time to develop more sustainable, growth-friendly business practices is a worthy investment.

Are You a Roadblock or a Catapult?

As the CEO, you could work hard in ways that hold the company back from reaching its full growth potential, or you could work smart in ways that make you the source of its success. Working too hard can creep up on you without you realizing.

With a little perspective, you can gain insight into the causes of your behavior, and learn how to change it to enable your business to scale successfully.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “Reasons Working Too Hard at Your Business is a Waste of Time” was first published on Small Business Trends



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20 Types of YouTube Videos You Can Use to Promote Your Business

February 5, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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20 Types of YouTube Videos You Can Use to Promote Your Business

You can’t ignore YouTube if you’re looking to promote any type of business these days. There are 1.9 billion monthly users and over 30 million daily users. With numbers like that, you’ll want to know about the 20 types of YouTube videos you can use to promote your business.

Types of YouTube Videos

Testimonials

These have a great impact but you need to be careful. Stay away from just having a talking head in the video. It’s best if you can show a customer using your product while they talk about it.

Store Tours

These are made better when you can get the owner to provide helpful tips along the way about the goods and services. The added personal touch builds engagement.

Reviews

Everyone likes customer reviews. They are a lot like the client testimonial versions but you need to make them more realistic. Get opinions on the street to make them even more authentic.

Demonstrations

You need to understand the problem you’re solving for the prospect here. Using a “day in the life”  series of demos gets them to relate.

Unboxing Videos

These are one of the latest ways to engage your audience. People love to watch someone else unwrap something new and these are a great vehicle for influencer marketing.

How To’s

It’s important to be specific with these ones so you’ll attract the right target market to your video. For example, “How To Use This Screwdriver” won’t be as effective as “ “How To Use This Screwdriver On Drywall.”

Shopping Sprees

Not only are these one of the most popular kinds of YouTube videos, but they work well with small business products if you can find an influencer who will highlight your goods.

An Introduction to Your Business

This works especially well if you’re a sole proprietor in a service industry like accounting. These also work best when they’re not overly scripted.

Explainer Videos

Animation is a great way to capture your target market’s attention . These are a popular way for your small business to explain what they do because they’re fun.

Offers

If you use the right keywords in the description , you’ll get people flocking to these types of videos. Limited time promotions are one of the best versions to use.  Remember to put the url in your description.

Behind The Scenes Videos

These really foster engagement. People love when they get to peek behind the curtain and see what goes on when folks are relaxed in a work setting.  These are great for personalizing your business and giving it a face.

Live Webcasts

If you’re really confident in the way things are running at your business, you can go live with a behind the scenes video. Promoting these for certain times and dates when you know your target market is online requires a little research that pays off.

A Series of Video Tips

These do well because they position you as an expert and put a face to what you’ve got to sell.  Remember a constant stream of content works best.

Interviews

These are a little different than testimonials. They can be in a newsy style with the interviewer off camera for an added touch. Asking folks on the street in front of your store what they think about your goods and services works. Don’t forget to include a call to action in your description.

Webinars

These are generally high value and they don’t cost a lot. Creating a slide show to add to the mix is a good idea. You can go live with one of these on YouTube so you’ll need energetic presenters.

Narrated Powerpoints

These are simple and visual—two of the cornerstones of making a great sale. Just put one of these presentations together, talk over the visual and upload it.

Educational Videos

These are popular for small business owners that want to stress their expertise. If you can fill a room of interested people, these are even more popular and credible when you present from the front.

Comparison Videos

You might be tempted to get long winded here but don’t. The small business videos that get the best responses are three minutes or under.

Staff Videos

YouTube Analytics is a great tool that will tell you how these are going over with your target market. Having your staff talk about why they like working in your shop makes for a feel good video that attracts clients.

Corporate Videos

Production value matters here. When you’re on this level, you should be looking at hiring professionals. Don’t rush into these. A carefully designed plan works best.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, “20 Types of YouTube Videos You Can Use to Promote Your Business” was first published on Small Business Trends



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Successful Freelancers Have Learned How to Make More Money

February 5, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Photo by Fancycrave.com from Pexels

Working for yourself is a long-held dream for many. The day you finally get to claim your place among full-time successful freelancers is one you’ll never forget. Moreover, there are few who would wish to return to the rat race once they’ve glimpsed the freedom of self-employment.

That said, freelancers don’t always have it easy. It be difficult to make ends meet, especially in the early days. What’s more, there are major downsides when it comes to sick pay, holiday pay, and maternity leave.

This means that in order for freelancers to earn their monthly bread and butter and still be able to take the occasional break, their overall turnover has to have a little extra included to set aside for a rainy day. 

So, are you one of the world’s growing number of freelancers? As such, are you looking for a few simple ways to make more? Then here’s what we suggest.

Successful Freelancers Learn How to Spend Less

freelancers
Source: Pixabay

For successful freelancers, having more in the bank is not entirely reliant on an increased monthly income. Spending less can also contribute toward your goal.

That’s why we recommend learning how to budget, both in your professional and everyday lives. Keep an eye on your overheads, cut out unnecessary expenses, and do your best to master the art of savvy shopping. It’s the little things that will make the biggest difference, such as knowing where to find the most economical offers around.

Those who enjoy an online flutter, for example, might want to click here to find the best real money mobile casino deals. On the other hand, freelancers who enjoy the occasional spa day may wish to head on over to Groupon to save some dollars on their chosen indulgence.

RELATED ARTICLE: WANT TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS? SOME BASIC TAX TIPS FOR FREELANCERS

Look for Collaborators 

Spending less will inarguably leave you with some extra funds each month. However, you’d no doubt like to increase your income, too. One of the best ways to do this is by looking for collaborators. That is, look for websites, agencies, or other related companies who can send some business your way.

There are plenty of these to be found online, from sites such as People Per Hour to agencies that advertise for freelance talent via job websites. The important thing is to be proactive. Therefore, whether it’s attending networking events to meet others in your field or spending a few hours on the Internet each evening, try to build a web of professionals who need successful freelancers like you.

Grow Your Talents 

freelancers 2
Source: Pixabay

Last but not least, it’s a good idea to consider how you can expand your professional appeal. We’re not saying you should make forays into a different field entirely. However, the more strings you have to your bow, the more in-demand you will be.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a copywriter. Although your grasp of punctuation and prose may be impressive, would it not also be helpful to be able to perform basic HTML for your more technologically challenged clients? If so, see if you can teach yourself. Adding this sort of small accomplishment to your portfolio can only be helpful in increasing your appeal to those on the hunt for a specialist professional such as yourself. After all, the more boxes you can tick, the more sought-after you’ll be. 

Isn’t
it time to make your business earnings the very best they can be? If so, you
know exactly where to start. 

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5 Basic Elements of a Successful Franchise Marketing Plan

February 5, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Franchising is a great way to grow a business and generate meaningful income. But having a successful franchise marketing plan can be challenging.

A successful franchise marketing plan ensures that you deliver the right message to the right audience. It’s rare to see a franchise being sold out of coincidence. In other words, you don’t normally see clients coming in to buy a franchise just because they want to.

On the contrary, franchise sales are usually a byproduct of a series of well-executed franchise marketing strategies.

However, if you don’t have a plan in place yet and you’re looking into franchising, you’re in luck! Here is a list of the five basic elements of a successful franchise marketing plan.

#1 Buyer
Persona

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal buyer in a particular market. There’s no sense in having the best franchising system in the world when you can’t market it to the right buyer. Successful franchise marketing is all about knowing who your target audience is.

Therefore, before launching ads or doing content marketing, it’s crucial that you know who you’re talking to. Understanding your buyers will mean that you can maximize the return on investment on your ads and the content you create.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE BEST WAYS TO DELIVER YOUR BRAND MESSAGE TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

To create your buyer persona, do the following:

Research

If you’re new to franchising, you may not have an existing client to talk to who can help you with your research. What you can do instead is to find your direct competitors and look at their existing clients. Use services like Similar Web to help you find out where their online traffic is coming from.

Additionally, visit their blogs and look at the people leaving them comments. Look at their profiles and learn about who they are. At this stage, get as much detail as you can.

Find
Similarities

After doing your research, find something in common from the things you’ve gathered. Doing so will help you narrow down the specifics for creating your buyer persona. Here are some details you can look into:

  • What are their ages?
  • Where do they live?
  • What is their occupation or level of
    income?
  • What are their interests?
  • What challenges do they have?

Refine

Once you’ve figured out the core qualities of your buyer persona, create separate categories for each type. For example, a male customer in his 40’s will have different financial goals when compared to male customers in their 60’s. Moreover, create names for each persona you create. Doing so will help you refine your message more easily. This will help you to create content for a specific buyer persona.

Your buyer personas will change as
you learn more things about your target market. Be sure to revisit them and
update their information when needed. Your buyer persona is the cornerstone of
your marketing plan.

#2 Branding

Most people buy a franchise because they’re familiar with the brand and feel an affinity for it. For this reason, it’s your job as a company to shape how people react and relate to your brand. For example, brands like Apple, Microsoft, and Google all have one thing in common: They all have a high brand value.

franchise marketing plan

Why Is
Branding Important to Customers?

Your brand value may be intangible. However, a strong brand will benefit from high customer awareness and credibility. Moreover, franchise buyers want to make sure that they’re putting their money in the right investment. A conscious buyer is willing to look for additional value through the following methods:

Online Research

A customer’s buying journey usually
starts online. Customers will try to research everything and anything there is
to know about your business.

Social Proof

Some customers will also look for
social evidence from customer reviews and social media profiles.

Identity

Franchise buyers will buy from companies who share their values. Without a strong brand identity
baked into your marketing plan, how will you expect people to know about you
and relate to your business?

Your branding journey starts with focusing on creating a strong brand message and logo. You also have to think about the tone of voice to use when talking to your target audience. Additionally, think about your color schemes, font types, and sizes. All of these things are important. That’s because you want every marketing material you use to be associated with your brand.

Be
Consistent with Your Branding

There’s no sense in creating a strong brand identity when you’re not strict about its usage. As a franchisor, you need to ensure consistency with all your franchises. Create strict guidelines for your franchisees to follow when they market their products across different channels.

The bottom line is to create a
strong brand identity that’s incorporated into your marketing strategy. Strong
brand identity will help set you apart from the competition.

#3 Budget

Your budget is one of the most critical elements of your marketing plan. Budget allocation will depend on your goals and your available resources. More often than not, there’s not enough budget for you to do everything. Therefore, you learn how to be more strategic. Just as when you’re handling your personal finances, a marketing budget will require you to think creatively about how to use your marketing budget.

Most franchising companies make the mistake of limiting their marketing budget to ads and promotional materials. However, a realistic marketing budget covers all aspects of your business. For example, consider the following:

Market Research

You need to conduct market research to figure out what the marketplace needs. You can’t create a product without first knowing if there’s a need for it. Therefore, allot budget for focus group discussions. Additionally, you’ll want to bench mark the competition. You’ll also need to conduct surveys and hire consultants. Finally, you’ll need to test market your franchising system.

Product Development

This includes payment for design, prototyping, and paying for other services that relate to your product. For example, if you have a food business that you plan to franchise, you need to pay for a culinary expert to optimize your recipe. Moreover, you’ll need to make it competitive against other food franchises.

Advertising

This includes your media plan to get your product out there. The cost consists of copywriting and designing. Additionally, it includes the purchase of advertising spaces for offline marketing efforts.

Public Relations

Public relations take into account how you spread awareness among your market. This includes attending trade shows and sponsoring events.

The costs of marketing aren’t always apparent. Whether doing an email marketing campaign or launching an ad on social media, your goals should be to increase brand recognition and establish a relationship with your customers.

Your marketing budget may seem significant at first, and that’s natural. As you learn what marketing strategies work for different types of audiences, you will be better able to optimize your marketing efforts. In other words, as you become more experienced, you’ll be able to create a more realistic budget.

#3 Sales
Funnel

Your success in sales depends on your numbers. In other words, the more money you spend on your franchise marketing plan, the more of your franchise you can sell. That’s because the money you spend on your franchise marketing generates leads. In turn, these leads fill out applications. Then, a portion of those customers who filled out the form will set a meeting. Finally, a percentage of those who went for a meeting will translate into your selling a franchise. This is what marketers call a sales funnel.

A sales funnel is a representation of a customer’s journey from awareness of the product to purchase. A sales funnel has one single purpose. That is, its function is to drive sales. When you’ve figured out who your target audience is, you can start targeting them and begin to guide them through your sales funnel.

4 Stages of a
Sales Funnel

Prospecting
Stage

This is also called the lead generation stage. This stage is where you identify the right customers for your franchising opportunity. When you’re looking for buyers, it’s crucial to keep an open mind and try to fill your funnel with a lot of leads. You can generate leads for franchise marketing through the following:

  • Referrals
  • Networking
  • Website opt-in data
  • Participating in trade shows and
    organizations

Your marketing team should always be generating leads for your franchise business. The more leads you have, the more chances you have of closing a sale in the future. It’s also vital for you to gauge the spending capability of your leads at this stage. You don’t want to be spending time and resources on a lead that can’t buy your franchise.

Cultivating
Stage

At this stage, you’ve already established a relationship with your lead. Now, you can consider calling them a client. This stage usually takes the longest. That’s because people want to do business with people they trust. Moreover, at this stage, they’re still undecided about whether you’re a reliable business.

What’s more, cultivating relationships is a two-way street. More than showing off what your business can provide, you have to listen to your client so you can meet their needs. Follow through on whatever you promised, whether it’s to get back to them regarding additional information or just to follow up on their decision. Doing so will help build trust and make the buying decision easier.

Positioning
Stage

The positioning stage is the part where you explicitly tell your customers what you can do and how you will do it. You’ve almost closed the sale but the customer needs a bit more push.

There are various strategies that you can employ to seal the deal. For example, you can use videos to influence their buying decision. You can send your customer a video about how your franchising system works and how you’ve spent time refining the processes. Additionally, you can include stories and testimonials of other franchisees who have succeeded with your business.

Closing

Closing is the easiest part of the funnel. There’s no extra work needed. All you have to do is seal the deal with payment. Your marketing effort has paid off at this point. You were able to find out what the customer needs. And they were able to see that doing business with you is a good fit. All that’s left to do is maintain that level of relationship between you and the franchisee.

#5 Timing

Your timing will play a significant role in your marketing efforts. Franchise businesses that don’t take into account the season of the year can optimize their marketing efforts by spending more money at specific times of the year.

For example, people aren’t usually keen on buying franchises or making any substantial investments during November and December. During this time of the year, most people aren’t focused on making life-changing decisions. That’s because, generally, people are occupied with the holiday season.

Likewise, during the summer season, people are more focused on spending more time with the family and splurging on vacations.

Therefore, the first quarter of the year is the best season to generate leads for your franchise business. For example, January is the best month to target potential franchise buyers. That’s because people are generally in a reflective state at the beginning of the year.

A franchise buying decision usually takes about 12 weeks so. Therefore, be sure to factor that in when timing your marketing efforts.

Seasonal
Franchises

Things may be a bit difficult when you have a seasonal franchise. For example, if you’re a lawn maintenance company, you’ll have to shut the business down during the winter. Moreover, perceptive franchisors will be hesitant to offer franchises during the off-season. That’s because they don’t want franchises to struggle until the market picks up. Likewise, they won’t want to offer the franchise business in the middle of the season when franchisees can get overwhelmed.

Seasonal franchisors with a successful franchise marketing plan work backward from the ideal opening time. For bigger franchises, this could mean working backward from the grand opening. They would take into account the build-out stage as well as training and the sales process.

This is of course not a hard rule. Some franchisors will still accommodate buyers during the off season as long as the franchisee is prepared for it.

Develop a Robust Franchise Marketing Plan

Every successful franchise marketing plan starts with an ideal customer in mind. Knowing who your customers are, where you can find them, and how you can relate to them is the most critical step.

Thereafter, create a brand that people can recognize no matter where they are. This builds brand recognition and generates profit for your franchises. Finally, figure out how you can guide your customers through your sales funnel while taking critical timing into consideration.

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Innovating Your Product Distribution Is As Important As Innovating Your Marketing

February 1, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Discovering a new distribution channel can do wonders for you. Imagine if you’d been one of the first apps in the Apple Store!


February
1, 2019

7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


Great! You’ve just spent months (or years) figuring out a fantastic product in a new category, but now comes your next big challenge: getting that product into the hands of users who don’t yet know it exists.

Related: What’s the Best Way to Monitor Your Distribution System?

In other words, you need to innovate in the distribution process the same way you innovated in the product-development stage.

Developing a winning product and creating a viable distribution framework are more ideologically similar than you’d think. When you develop a product, you look for gaps in the market and perform experiments to solve those problems. As you do that, you build confidence in your product, because your experiments are drawing feedback from early adopters.

Creating a distribution framework is no different: With marketing, you can’t rely just on existing techniques or assume you know the right niche for your product — unless you experiment. With product distribution, you’re again testing out-of-the-box ideas to find the the very best one.

Apply the lessons learned from your marketing strategy to your distribution strategy. 

If you relied on traditional channels to market a new invention, you most likely found them expensive and ineffective. Why? Because you were competing with established products that already had your customers’ attention. “Who is the person suffering from the problem that my product addresses?” you had to ask yourself.

Hopefully, you discovered who that person was, and the pain of the problem he or she was experiencing. What was the precise point where your product became a priority for this person? How were your would-be customers finding existing solutions? At least initially, you probably avoided the marketing channels that established products already used.

Related: 5 Steps for Getting Your Product into Stores

A case study: AirBnB

One of the hosting company’s most famous growth hacks was its controversial “integration” with Craigslist. Another AirbBnB strategy that I found interesting, and applicable for any startup, was that the company looked for untapped demand: For instance, it launched during the Democratic Convention of 2008, when its founders knew that hotels would sell out and their company could capture the excess demand.

Now, how about applying these same marketing lessons to finding the right distribution solution for your own product/service? Consider these steps:

1. Determine if your product is a primary or complementary product.

In order to hone in on an appropriate distribution plan, first determine if your product is a primary or complementary solution. Is it a primary thing people want? For instance, a movie ticket fulfills someone’s desire to see a film, while a steakhouse satisfies a person’s craving for a steak. So, both the movie ticket and the steak are primary products.

Complementary products, on the other hand, are those that a customer purchases only after signing on to the primary product. Nobody goes to a movie theater just to eat popcorn and drink soda, but plenty of people buy those snacks once they’ve purchased a movie ticket. You have to think about where your product fits in, because that affects your distribution. 

Case study: Zapier

Zapier is a great example of a complementary product for the modern era. It helps connect common business apps (i.e., Dropbox, Trello, Hubspot) to one other so that information can flow automatically between them. 

Zapier further automates and simplifies your workflow with no coding required. However, initially it was challenging to market because its service focused on other companies’ apps. In response, Zapier came up with a very powerful SEO strategy to raise awareness of its product.

It created content so that when potential customers Googled for ways to integrate two apps, a page explaining how to connect the two with Zapier appeared. The company created thousands of these pages. This distribution strategy helped it reach $35 million in ARR in 2017.

2. Determine your customer triggers: When do they need your product most?

With my own SEO software company, RankSense, our main triggers are big website changes that can result in the loss of SEO traffic. These are typically website migrations and redesigns.  

We research sites that recently migrated and lost traffic, and offer them free SEO monitoring and reports that can help them recover quickly. Curious that we have pinpointed their painful problem, these sites then often reach out to learn more about our product.

3. Determine if you’re in the (nonscalable) product-validation phase or (scalable) product- distribution phase.

A mistake many businesses make is assuming that they’re ready to scale their product when they are not. If you’re in this position, determine whether you’re still validating your product or if it’s ready for massive distribution.  

During the validation phase, it is unwise to scale because your product might not be the ideal solution for your customers.

Moreover, when you’re scaling, big distribution channels will want some evidence of success before they take your product on. You have to bring value to potential partners. If it is only your company that benefits from the partnership, you’ll find it harder to build lasting distribution opportunities.

4. Pinpoint the optimal SaaS and app partnerships in your marketplace.

If you are in the SaaS business, integrating with complementary apps can be an effective distribution strategy. Take the example of Paypal. Paypal owes most of its early growth to piggybacking off of eBay. In the early days of eBay, buyers had to mail a physical check to a seller. The seller would wait for the check to clear,  then ship the item.

With this system credit card companies had difficulty dealing with fraudulent orders. Paypal was able to streamline the process for payment and find ways to minimize the risk of fraud. This led to Paypal’s growth into the household name  it is today. 

Determining which app or SaaS is most complementary to your product allows you to scale quickly. Nevertheless, SaaS partnering in app distribution must solve real problems in order for it to work.

LeadsBridge is a SaaS startup that takes this tactic to the extreme with great success. LeadsBridge transfers leads from Facebook campaigns to hundreds of content-management systems. It even offers to build new custom integrations for free.

5. Nail the timing of distribution.

Timing is critical for distribution. Being among the first to discover a new distribution channel can improve your scalability. For instance, consider the value you would have realized had you been one of the first apps in the Apple Store after the iPhone came out: You would have been on the cutting edge of a new distribution channel!

For a more recent example, take Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a content delivery network which powers more than 12 million sites, speeding them up and making them more secure.

Cloudflare includes built-in apps to protect you from malicious attacks. The company recently announced an app marketplace that opens the doors to a new generation of third-party business apps that can add complementary value to the millions of domains in the platform. This provides an opportunity for third-party companies to get in on the ground floor and “piggyback” on Cloudflare’s distribution.

Related: Would a Promotional Product Be Effective at Helping You Market Your Startup?

With your own company, don’t assume that a distribution channel that worked in the past or worked for another company will be the best one for your product. You need to investigate and you especially need to innovate, to seize upon the optimal timing — and run with it.



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How to Integrate Chatbots Into Your Conversion Strategy

February 1, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Adding a chatbot to your website to guide shoppers through the buyer’s journey is actually not difficult.


February
1, 2019

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


Have you landed on a website lately and been greeted by a little box popping up in the corner to say “Hello”? You probably have because that’s a chatbot — and they’re everywhere.

Related: 4 Uses for a Chatbot That Will Transform Your Business

Maybe you’ve never interacted with a chatbot before and don’t exactly understand the need for them. But the truth is that that helpful little box isn’t there only to welcome you to a website, it can actually be used to improve your customer experience and increase conversions.  

Increase conversions? Maybe that makes your ears perk up! Suddenly you’re interested in this chatbot trend.

And the good news is that adding a chatbot to your website that can communicate with and guide shoppers through the buyer’s journey in a personable, human-like way isn’t difficult, What’s more, there are a number of tools available that make it incredibly easy: You just plug in some information about your company and your customers, and your chatbot is all set to skyrocket your conversions.

If you’re ready to start making sales day and night, here are the leading ways to integrate chatbots into your conversion strategy.

Improve customer service.

Even if you don’t implement chatbots for any other reason, you need to implement them for customer service. Consumers these days are used to instant gratification; with the advanced technology that’s available to them 24/7, they’re accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it.

So, your customer service needs to be available  at all times. Furthermore, according to research in the Harvard Business Review, people are willing to pay higher prices for faster customer service. In the study, customers who received customer service in five minutes or less were willing to pay almost $20 more for the same service.,

To underestand this motivation, imagine this scenario: Consumers interested in your software product, for example, typically have many questions about the product before being ready to buy.

They might want to know if your software is the right solution for their business, if it has certain features, if it will work with the current software they’re using, etc. With a chatbot, consumers can get all those questions answered immediately, eliminating their hesitations regarding taking the plunge and making a purchase.

And that’s the advantage: Customer-service chatbots aren’t just for keeping your current customers happy; they can be used to boost your conversions too.

Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

Give product recommendations.

Instead of having users search through your online store trying to find the perfect item, you can bring those coveted items straight to them, using chatbots. Bots can speak to customers to find out exactly what they’re looking for and provide them with options that meet their needs; it’s like giving them their very own personal shopper.

As the example below from MVMT illustrates, a user can tell the chatbot that he or she is looking for a men’s watch and can even provide the style preferred, like a leather band. The chatbot will then curate the best products, along with a link to purchase. The company doesn’t have to stop there either; it can also easily upsell and cross-sell items with a chatbot.

Chatbot example

Image credit: Shopify

Using chatbots to give product recommendations is like placing your hottest products in the hands of online shoppers and virtually walking them to the checkout.

Qualify leads.

Since some of your site visitors may not be the right fit for your product or services, especially in B2B industries, you need to qualify your leads in order to determine if you should be spending your valuable time trying to convert them, or if you should move on to a visitor who’s more likely to buy. Luckily, you can use chatbots to qualify leads for you.

Chatbots can be set up to automatically interact with visitors to your site, welcome those visitors,  then ask them lead-qualifying questions that you’ve pre-determined, such as:

  • What brought you to our website today/What problems are you looking to solve?

  • What is your budget for this project?

  • Who is the decision-maker at your company?

  • What other solutions are you evaluating?

Having your chatbot qualify leads for you will weed out those visitors who aren’t worth your time, so you can focus on the ones who do. You’ll also have gotten all the information you need to help you make the sale.

Engage users on social media.

What if users didn’t even have to visit your website to make a purchase? That’s a reality with chatbots.

A lot of people prefer to interact on social media — they’re already there most of the day anyway and might not want to take the extra step of finding their way over to your website. In fact, according to studies from Michigan State University featured by the American Marketing Association, chatbots provide a better mobile experience for users.

In the MSU experiment, only 35 percent of respondents completed a web-based survey on their smartphones, while 76 percent completed the same survey via a Facebook messenger chatbot. This indicates that you can capture more customers on social media using chatbots.

Many companies are already taking advantage: For instance, Domino’s Pizza launched its own Facebook Messenger chatbot whereby customers can order a pizza straight from the social media platform:

Domino’s Facebook Messenger

Image credit: IPG Media Lab 

With chatbots, you can add an even more convenient way for consumers to make a purchase from your business. Users can bust out their credit cards and place an order right from their favorite social media app.

Over to you

Welcome to the new world of online shopping. There’s no need to miss out on sales during after-hours because your chatbot can convert shoppers into customers any day, any time, and guide visitors from their initial interaction or welcome all the way through becoming a repeat, loyal customer.

Related: The Definitive Guide to Chatbots: These Bots Are Here to Serve.

So, clearly, integrating chatbots into you conversion strategy is something to consider very, very carefully.

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Empower Your Team to Be More Productive with This Intuitive Tool

January 30, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Whether you’re a team of two or 2,000, monday.com can help your business cultivate a transparent and collaborative environment.


January
30, 2019

3 min read

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.


A successful business is sort of like a Big Mac in that it relies on a secret sauce to pull all the fixins together. In this case, that “secret sauce” comes in the form of effective, teamwide collaboration and communication.

Teams can take all sorts of approaches to concocting the metaphorical sauce recipe that works best for them. As a manager, maybe you organize bi-weekly check-in meetings, send out teamwide progress emails every morning, organize daily scrums and communications training sessions, or abide by an open-door policy to encourage transparency. And to be sure, all of these approaches can improve collaboration so that you make deadlines and centralize workplace processes. But are they really unlocking your team’s true potential for productivity in the most intuitive, convenient sense?

Say hello to monday.com, the team management tool that can help you do just that. The platform was launched in 2014 with the intention of fostering a culture where team members aren’t just productive, but feel like they’re part of something bigger than their job description. This sense of ownership and empowerment cultivates a productive environment where individuals stay engaged and on top of their work, all while using a product they love.

To see its vision through, monday.com places both teamwide projects and individual duties on a simple (but not simplified) task board that serves as a beautiful, centralized space for managing and streamlining different workflows. Tasks’ progress are visualized as colorful columns, which can be tagged to monitor progress and inscribed with notes for additional context. You’re also given the option of integrating other productivity services like Dropbox, Slack, Google Calendar, and Trello within monday.com to further streamline your workflow and organize your files. (Custom integrations can be set up, too — just reach out to one of monday.com’s certified partners for more information and a quote.)

Image Credit: monday.com

monday.com’s format is unique in that everyone gets the same view, which increases transparency for employees, allows managers to easily distribute resources, and — perhaps most importantly — breaks down silos between different departments. With monday.com, you’re not just collaborating on initiatives, but fostering a culture where everyone feels invested in them.

So go ahead — scrap those clunky Excel files, put the whiteboard in storage, and cancel tedious team meetings that no one actually finds useful. Whether you’re a team of two freelancers or a global institution of more than 2,000 individuals, tech-savvy or otherwise, you’ll be able to see the big picture on monday.com’s beautiful, flexible, and scalable dashboard.

By signing up for monday.com, you’ll join a community of more than 35,000 paying teams, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, that includes the likes of NBC, WeWork, and Uber. Don’t misconstrue those big names for a hefty price tag, though, because you can start using monday.com today for free.

Think monday.com is the right team management tool for you? Create your account to begin your free two-week trial.

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Startup Life Cycle in One Chart

January 29, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Startup Life Cycle in One Chart

Small business startups go through a typical life cycle of three stages.  I’ve observed this startup lifecycle time and again. In fact, I have gone through it myself.

If we recognize the three stages, it’s the first step to getting through them successfully.

Before I go further, let me say I’m not talking about the standard development stages of a high growth startup. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurship professors often talk about this.  But they are thinking about the Facebooks, Googles and Ubers of the world.

I’m referring to small business startups — the ones you and I and millions of the rest of us start. Our small businesses have a life cycle, too.

And while the first and last stages are great, the middle stage is not always pretty.

Defining the Startup Life Cycle

It helps to understand a small business life cycle by reflecting on a law of physics: the first law of motion.

The first law of motion is a principle identified by Sir Issac Newton centuries ago. You’ve probably heard of Newton’s first law, paraphrased as:

“A body at rest tends to remain at rest. A body in motion tends to remain in motion. “

Sound familiar?  This is describing inertia and momentum.

In the simplest terms, when it comes to business:

Momentum = good

Inertia = bad

Inertia is a major obstacle to success in a small business startup.  It’s not helpful in any business. But it impacts startups and small businesses to a greater degree.

Why? It’s because we have fewer resources available to combat it.

After the initial rush of starting the business, we reach a point where we max out our resources. We’ve dug deep. We’ve squeezed out every last ounce of energy and resources.  And suddenly we have no more to give. We have no more money, no more people, no more time to put into our businesses.  Yes, we’ve used it all up.

Simply put, we get stuck. After the initial excitement of getting the business off the ground, we can’t seem to make forward progress. We can’t seem to get big things moving again.

Our businesses become like boulders chained to our ankles.  We push and we pull. That boulder budges a few feet but it doesn’t roll along the way we want.  If you are a hard charger or Type A personality, it gets frustrating.

Oh, we’re busy — we’re slammed.  We may be profitable and able to make payroll.  That’s not the issue.

Rather, everything starts to feel hard.  Growth doesn’t come as easily as we want it to.

We struggle to make forward progress in our business growth, profitability and success.  We feel mired down, like wading through mud.

That’s inertia we’re battling. In fact, inertia is a natural part of the startup life cycle.

As I said at the beginning of this article, most of us as entrepreneurs go through these three stages in starting and operating a small business.

Let’s walk through the three stages, so you know what to expect.  And if you are in one of the stages currently, see if the experience sounds familiar.

Startup Stage 1:  Launch

We start out with grand plans.  We entrepreneurs have big ideas and we’re bursting with energy at first.

After all, we’ve created something from nothing.  We’ve done more than most people will ever do. We took a leap, started a business and got it off the ground.

When I first started my business, I had so much energy I had difficulty channeling it.  I loved my business  so much!  I was ready to take on the world.

And if I was gone from my business, I couldn’t wait to get back.  I probably spent too many hours on it. But it was a labor of love.

Other entrepreneurs I’ve talked with describe a similar experience.  We’re all filled with excitement when we first start a business.  It’s almost like going through a manic episode (but in a positive way).  We’re focused and we’re on fire.

We’re all Davids ready to trounce Goliath!

Startup Stage 2:  Trough of Reality

While the launch phase is exciting, at some point we fall into … the Trough of Reality.

To describe this stage, I have to give a nod to the Gartner Hype Cycle.  The Hype Cycle is famous in business circles for describing the growth of new technologies.  After the initial peak of excitement and high expectations, at some point the new technology hits the “trough of disillusionment.”  That’s the point when:

  • Interest in the new technology starts to wane.
  • Expectations get scaled back.
  • Some producers of the technology fail.

It’s quite similar in a small business.  But in the case of business owners, it’s not so much disillusionment. It’s that we come face to face with reality.

The Trough of Reality is the point where we start to get customers. By this point we probably have employees or outsourced workers and services.

All our energy gets caught up in day-to-day work.  We are buried in minutiae.  We have bills to pay; a payroll to meet.

In short, we’re no longer just dreaming about a business. Now we have to operate it. Yikes!!!

Owners end up with a classic case of working IN the business when they should be working ON it.

My own business went through the Trough of Reality. There were several years where it seemed like we merely existed. Yes, we squeezed out a profit.

But as I look back, those years were a struggle. I did a lot of freelance writing and consulting work on the side to subsidize growing my digital publishing company.  Twelve hour days – heck 14 hour days — were nothing.

We survived, of course. After 15 years we’re still here — and thriving.  But back then I worried a lot. I wasn’t having fun. And it took all my energy.

Some businesses wallow in the Trough of Reality for years.  They manage to pay the bills, but growth is slow.

But even if you don’t want growth — let’s say you are a self-employed freelancer content to stay at a steady pace of work — your quality of life suffers. You may personally feel beaten down by business pressures.

Call it burnout, call it exhaustion, call it lack of motivation. You long to spend more time with family, or on hobbies or outside interests. Yet you just can’t work up much extra energy for your business or your life.

As owners, our businesses start to feel like that boulder chained to our ankle. And the boulder is barely moving.  It’s hard to get that boulder rolling along steadily again.

Startup Stage 3:  Momentum!

The good news is, there comes a stage where things turn around. It is when you feel like everything “clicks.”  Your business starts firing on all cylinders. Amazing things happen.

Business picks up. Sales roll in faster and more consistently. Revenue seems to take less effort to generate.

  • If you have a team, they are able to operate on their own. They start coming up with new ideas you never would have thought of.  Your people make more of the decisions. They achieve things without you being involved in every detail.
  • If you are a solo owner or freelancer, you develop systems that enable you to manage it all better. That word of mouth you developed through the first two stages of your business?  It now starts to generate sales steadily. You learn how to say no and focus your time to get the highest psychological and financial rewards.

At this stage of the small business life cycle, the owner can start taking longer vacations and holidays.

Your days feel more rewarding — less of a drag. You have more energy, or so it seems.

Your creativity peeks through once again. You experience renewed interest in a hobby or activity you used to love.

In short, you’ve broken through inertia. The boulder (i.e., the business you’ve built) now starts moving along of its own momentum.

How did you you do it?  By sticking with it. By continuing to come to work everyday.

You did it by making daily decisions. Perhaps you hired the right person here or there to help.  You discovered new tools to drive efficiency. You put systems and processes in place in your business.

Your offerings are now proven. And you’ve built up a customer base.

Most of all, you’ve learned valuable lessons. You know what to do and what not to do — the lessons of experience. That makes things easier and more rewarding.

The combined force of all these things helps break through inertia.

The momentum is back.

And it’s a wonderful feeling!

The Startup Lifecycle Makes You Stronger!

If you are currently in the Trough of Reality, you are not alone.  Others are at that stage with you.

That’s important to recognize.  It’s easier to get through a challenging time if you know it’s not unique to you.

Millions of your peers got through that phase of the startup lifecycle. They survived and thrived.  You too can get through it.  And when you do, you and your small business will emerge all the stronger for it.

Like the old saying by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

This article, “Startup Life Cycle in One Chart” was first published on Small Business Trends



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The One-Stop-Shop Platform for Your Online Course Business

January 28, 2019 by Asif Nazeer Leave a Comment

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Image Source: Pexels on Pixabay

If you’re running a business selling online courses, you can’t help but wear a myriad of hats. Depending on the phase you’re in with your business, you’d have to be the marketer, the product creator, community manager, web developer, and more. It can be overwhelming to say the least. That is why, if you want to streamline and optimize your online course business, you need a tried and tested online tool—one that can accommodate your growing needs as a business owner. Kajabi is one such tool.

The platform is often touted as a one-stop-shop solution, an all-in-one tool for online business owners, or an all-encompassing software to run a digital business. For this reason, we decided to check it out to see if it lives up to the hype.

The result? We were super impressed with what we saw. Therefore, if you’re thinking of starting an online course business (or you’re already running one), you need to check out what Kajabi has to offer.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: TIPS FOR CREATING A SUSTAINABLE HOME BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

 

Overview of Kajabi

kajabi 1

Kajabi is a knowledge commerce platform that empowers thousands of people to share and monetize their knowledge.

Through Kajabi, you can create websites, manage your users, market your business, create your products, and more. Moreover, industry leaders such as Chalene Johnson, Brendon Burchard, and Billy Gene use this platform.

 

Kajabi’s Key Features

Kajabi’s features can be grouped into four main categories: website creation, product creation, community management and marketing. Here’s how each one works.

 

1. Website Creation

The platform allows you to create websites for your online course business. Moreover, you could create a website for almost any type of online business with this platform. Through the site, you can create landing pages, homepages, static pages, a blog section, and so on.

Because Kajabi’s Premiere Framework theme allows you to customize your website into a myriad of layouts, you can create a beautiful site for your online course business in minutes.

Additionally, Kajabi has several pre-made layout presets available that users can choose from. Once you have chosen a layout preset, you can start adding content and customizing the theme’s styles.

kajabi 2

This is a screenshot of Kajabi’s website creation page.

 

kajabi 3

Here’s how it looks when you edit your pages using Kajabi’s editor.

 

2. Product Development

There are numerous product types that you can create through Kajabi. Among the many products are mini-courses, evergreen courses, email marketing courses, and evergreen training.

And because of Kajabi’s pre-made product templates, users can upload online course content without having to do much setup.

You can set your price, create offers, encourage upsells, and even send automated emails to people who abandon your checkout pages.

kajabi 4

This is Kajabi’s blank template for creating products.

 

kajabi 5

Here’s Kajabi’s Mini Course template for creating products.

 

3. Community Management

Kajabi’s People tab houses a good bit of its community management features. For example, it can show you the purchases made by a specific user and when they joined your community. In addition, you can offer them discounts, send them passwords, and so on.

 

4. Marketing

You can run email marketing campaigns, publish blog posts, set up automations, and even create events through Kajabi. These are just some of the platform’s main marketing features. What’s more, Kajabi even allows you to collect payments from your customers.

Another Kajabi marketing feature that’s worth mentioning is that they allow their users to create pipelines. They even have several pre-made pipelines:

  • Freebie
  • Sales Page OVO (Opt-in Value Offer)
  • Product Launch OVO
  • Coaching Campaign OVO

With these pipeline templates, you won’t have to set up your marketing funnels from scratch. You just need to pick a template, customize it, and add your content. Of course, if your funnel is a bit more complicated and none of the templates on the site fit what you’re looking for, you can also create your funnel from scratch.

kajabi 6

One of Kajabi’s key marketing features is the email sequence.

 

Minimal Learning Curve

From the Kajabi dashboard, all the way to the specific feature that you’re looking to use, you’ll notice immediately how easy it is to figure out how the platform works.

For instance, you’ll see all the key functions categorized and bundled up in one place. Moreover, even the words they use to label and describe their features are easy to understand.

Kajabi 7

Here’s a screenshot of Kajabi’s dashboard.

As you can see from the screen captures, it’s very easy to understand how the tool works. Even someone who’s fairly new in the platform will have a good idea of what they’re supposed to do on the pages they’re on.

When you think about how the knowledge commerce industry is often visited by people who want to make money out of their passion—but aren’t necessarily exposed to the workings of digital marketing—it’s crucial for them to have a platform that they can understand and use to monetize their passion.

 

Customer Support and Training Materials

However, if you do happen to come up against a roadblock and you need help with your Kajabi account, you’ll be happy to know that Kajabi offers a myriad of support options:

  • 24/7 Chat Support
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • Video Tutorials
  • FAQs

 

Pricing

For as little as $149 per month, you can sign up for Kajabi’s basic package to start using the tool.

This gives you access to a good bit of Kajabi’s most useful features to help you run a successful online course business. For example, you’ll immediately gain access to creating landing pages, pipelines, your website, marketing emails, and so on.

However, if you’d like more advanced features, you can opt for Kajabi’s Growth Package at $199 per month, or the Pro Package at $399 per month.

Simply click this link to learn more about Kajabi’s pricing packages and their features.

 

What’s Next?

Because of the multifaceted nature of running an online course business, you need to have a reliable online tool, a tool that can cater to your needs.

Kajabi’s numerous features are geared toward helping you advance, organize, and streamline your online course business. Accordingly, you no longer need to sign up for various third-party apps. Kajabi has everything you need and then some.

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Biz Opps

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Customer Focus

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Entrepreneurs

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Strategy

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Supply Chain

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