This Week in Small Business: Text and Email Marketing Showdown, Why You Need a Vacation, and more
Among this week’s curated articles, it’s great to see someone size up email and text marketing and see which one would emerge the victor in a cage fight. But maybe my favorite article of the week is the one that tells me exactly why I need to go on a vacation this summer. That’s advice I’m sure to take. You should too! Marketing and sales In this corner we have the reigning champion: Email Marketing, and in this corner we have the feisty challenger, Text Marketing! Which packs a bigger punch? The sales funnel guides customers through a journey. This article outlines ways to “disrupt” your sales funnel for better results. Whether you’re a marketing pro looking for a job or you’re looking for a marketing pro to add to your small business team, here are three skills that are required for the job today. You’ll find the latest social media marketing data from surveys, studies, and industry predictions in this article and they should help your small business decision-making process. If you think that social media is your prospecting golden ticket, you’re wrong…at least according to Mark Hunter. Can a “mom and pop” small business land a contract with a national chain like Best Buy? The answer is yes and when you read this, you’ll see that SEO was the key. Do you run a retail small business? If so, here are six strategies for marketing your business online. Videos will be 80 percent of all Internet traffic by 2018, says Cisco. But more importantly, it’s crucial for your marketing automation strategy. Leadership, management and productivity Okay, not that I need a lot of convincing, but here’s an article that tells us why we need to take a summer vacation this year! Not every business needs its own app, however a good app can offer tremendous benefits to your small business in customer service and marketing. And with today’s DIY app building sites, it is easier and less expensive than ever before. The best things in life may be free, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire. For example these 10 skills that are hard to learn but pay off forever. At the heart of an amazing customer experience, is a team that is amazingly aligned with each other and your company’s goals. Shep Hyken shares two keys to keeping your organization well aligned. The secret for successful projects may be in “free range developers.” Learn how to get the most benefits from a remote workforce. You may have noticed little shiny chips on some of your customers’ credit cards. Come October, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them and you need to be ready to accept EMV payments! Here’s how to do it. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Vitaliy Rizhkov says that raising money from family and friends is a very bad idea and he has a personal tale to tell about it. Politics, government and the economy No matter how you align yourself politically, the news out of Washington D.C. has been interesting. Small business owners see this Supreme Court ruling on the EPA as a win. Image: Muhammad Ali, © 2009 benyupp, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Text and Email Marketing Showdown, Why You Need a Vacation, and more
Among this week’s curated articles, it’s great to see someone size up email and text marketing and see which one would emerge the victor in a cage fight. But maybe my favorite article of the week is the one that tells me exactly why I need to go on a vacation this summer. That’s advice I’m sure to take. You should too! Marketing and sales In this corner we have the reigning champion: Email Marketing, and in this corner we have the feisty challenger, Text Marketing! Which packs a bigger punch? The sales funnel guides customers through a journey. This article outlines ways to “disrupt” your sales funnel for better results. Whether you’re a marketing pro looking for a job or you’re looking for a marketing pro to add to your small business team, here are three skills that are required for the job today. You’ll find the latest social media marketing data from surveys, studies, and industry predictions in this article and they should help your small business decision-making process. If you think that social media is your prospecting golden ticket, you’re wrong…at least according to Mark Hunter. Can a “mom and pop” small business land a contract with a national chain like Best Buy? The answer is yes and when you read this, you’ll see that SEO was the key. Do you run a retail small business? If so, here are six strategies for marketing your business online. Videos will be 80 percent of all Internet traffic by 2018, says Cisco. But more importantly, it’s crucial for your marketing automation strategy. Leadership, management and productivity Okay, not that I need a lot of convincing, but here’s an article that tells us why we need to take a summer vacation this year! Not every business needs its own app, however a good app can offer tremendous benefits to your small business in customer service and marketing. And with today’s DIY app building sites, it is easier and less expensive than ever before. The best things in life may be free, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire. For example these 10 skills that are hard to learn but pay off forever. At the heart of an amazing customer experience, is a team that is amazingly aligned with each other and your company’s goals. Shep Hyken shares two keys to keeping your organization well aligned. The secret for successful projects may be in “free range developers.” Learn how to get the most benefits from a remote workforce. You may have noticed little shiny chips on some of your customers’ credit cards. Come October, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them and you need to be ready to accept EMV payments! Here’s how to do it. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Vitaliy Rizhkov says that raising money from family and friends is a very bad idea and he has a personal tale to tell about it. Politics, government and the economy No matter how you align yourself politically, the news out of Washington D.C. has been interesting. Small business owners see this Supreme Court ruling on the EPA as a win. Image: Muhammad Ali, © 2009 benyupp, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike...
read moreWhen a drop in unemployment is bad news
Some will trumpet today’s announcement of a two-tenths of one percent drop in the June unemployment rate as great news, but in fact it just masks the truth of what is happening in the US economy: The administration is breaking the back of the job creators. Once again we’ve seen an unemployment rate drop due to workers dropping out of the labor force far more than due to adding jobs. The labor participation rate is the lowest in 38 years – 400,000 workers left the labor force. These are Americans who have given up trying to find jobs. We could call this the “Hope Index” and it has been miserably low throughout the current “recovery.” Youth employment is pathetic and unemployment among African Americans is terrible, nearly double the national average. The average workweek has stalled at 34.5 hours and hourly wages are also stagnant, despite cities in many major urban areas passing higher minimum wage laws. National leadership and major news sources seem unable or unwilling to “connect the dots.” For example, under the Affordable Care Act, when many employers hit a 30-hour workweek level with their employees, they are forced to buy overly expensive health insurance. Is it any wonder the workweek is failing to grow? I know a pre-school teacher whose employer had to cut everyone’s hours to 29 per week. Because of this, several teachers were forced to find second part-time jobs. Do you know how many additional problems this causes for the very people the administration was seeking to help via the ACA? It is ruinous on family life, increases commuting costs and causes enormous personal stress. This scenario has been playing out all across the country. Further, the administration has imposed regulation-after-regulation on businesses in recent years. Every regulation costs money; money which otherwise could have gone to increasing wages and hiring additional employees to carry out expansion plans. On top of that, the 150,000-plus pages of federal regulations prevent many would-be entrepreneurs from even testing their ideas in the marketplace. Right now the administration is gearing up to redefine exempt and nonexempt employees with the hope of increasing worker pay by increasing overtime pay. However, business owners and managers are not stupid; if these new regulations are imposed, businesses will merely cut jobs and reduce hours to minimize costs. In the end, workers – and the labor force in general – will suffer. Unfortunately, today’s drop in the unemployment rate is bad news. When we consistently have months where the labor participation rate goes up while the unemployment rate goes down, then we’ll have some news to...
read moreSnapchat: Use Short-Lived Images to Create a Long-Term Revenue Stream
I was just reading an article about the cable news ratings war for second place. (Fox News is firmly established in the number one position.) CNN had been trailing MSNBC, but has recently reversed its fortunes and is now on a winning streak. Critical in this battle is which network wins the highly coveted younger demographics and CNN is doing well there too. This is also why people are anxious for Snapchat to go public. It has somewhere between 100-200 million users and kills in the 18-34 year old demographic. In fact, some 45 percent are in the 18-24 year old group. Build brand awareness This is the same reason many should consider adding Snapchat to their social media marketing lineup. Small Businesses that sell to this group need to put it high on their to-do lists. If you can make Millennials and younger consumers customers today, you can establish brand loyalty and keep them onboard for a nice long ride. Snapchat burst onto the social media scene as a private personal photo sharing platform. It’s claim to fame was that photos disappeared after 10 seconds. They added video, with the same super-short shelf life. The app also allows for on-screen doodling and chat sessions. While those time constraints seemed to move it out of the marketing arena, many businesses have found ways to take advantage of the “immediacy” that accompanies an image that is here one moment and gone the next. For example, a New York City yogurt shop used it to get coupons to buyers. They had to grab their coupons via Snapchat as they were about to check out and the discount could be anything from 16 percent off to free. After all, a segment of retail depends on the “impulse” buy. Snapchat is essentially “impulse” social media. Wed those two worlds and you can have a major winner on your hands. Tap customer creativity With the doodling feature, you can conduct “art contests.” Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO of VaynerMedia, had users transform their selfies into scenes from Jurassic Park using the doodling feature. (By the way, although images disappear, you can save them for posterity via a screen capture.) Not long ago Snapchat added another feature: Snapchat Stories. A story is a string of images and/or videos that have a life of 24 hours. I think we’re seeing Snapchat groom itself to make the service more accommodating to commercilization monetization. If you’re trying to create buzz around an event, for example, creating a Snapchat story can be a good way to get some eyeballs. The NBA used the Stories feature to capture a day of activities leading up to Kevin Durant’s acceptance of the MVP award. The goal was to get people involved so they would tune in and watch the ceremony live. Snapchat is evolving. The same is true with the relationship between businesses and Snapchat. Brainstorm with your crew – and be sure to include younger users of the social media platform – and occasionally search online to find new ways small businesses are using...
read moreWhat Uber Is and Isn’t – and How You Can Benefit
Uber is celebrating its fifth anniversary and it certainly has accomplished a lot in five years. It’s hard to imagine another company that has so quickly established a global presence. The last figures I saw said that Uber operates in 300 cities strewn across 58 countries. Let’s compare it to Starbucks, which certainly has an impressive reach of its own. Starbucks opened its first store near Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 1971. It took the company 16 years to hit a grand total of 17 stores. Twenty years after opening, Starbucks tallied 116 stores. You would be correct to categorize Starbucks as a coffee shop – although it really redefined what that means. However, how would you categorize Uber? Here’s where the story gets interesting. Uber, adamantly and legally, declares that it is not a transportation company. This is the important take-away when you look at Uber and its tremendous growth. Making connections Uber is an information provider and communication facilitator. It let’s people who own cars and have spare time connect with people who need rides somewhere. It provides information based on locations and needs, and communicates those needs to people who have cars and time. Let’s quickly look at this from two other angles. First, if you or I wanted to truly build a transportation company that provided rides to people in 300 cities, could we do that in five years? No, it would be impossible and crazy expensive. Second, Uber provides information and communication services built around transportation. However, the “transportation” part is irrelevant. The same kind of system can be built around any perceived need people have when there are other people who have the means to meet that need. A spare cup of coffee As a silly example, say that I often brew one or two cups of high quality coffee that I end up not drinking in the morning. If I could somehow connect with people in my neighborhood who were in a rush and wanted coffee at around the same time, perhaps I could sell my oversupply for less than they would pay at Starbucks. (Watch out Starbucks! I’m coming after you!) The beauty of Uber – and other peer-to-peer companies – is that it takes the huge evolution in commerce that we have seen over the last 30 years and turbo charges it with the rapid evolution in technology that we have seen over the last 10 years. By this I mean that it combines a service industry with the information industry. These are the two commodities that people desperately need and I don’t see the demand for them going away within our lifetimes. People need services and information. If you can combine those two elements, you are well on your way to perfecting a winning business formula. Experimentation required The trick is that one side of the “service plus information equation” is usually an “unknown.” The need for transportation services is well established. However, the information on private drivers available to provide the service was unknown until Uber began to experiment with providing it. Uber started out as a small operation in San Francisco. Do you see a service in your community that might be revolutionized if you could provide people with the right information? Reexamine your small business. You...
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