This Week in Small Business: Marketing à la Taylor Swift, sales strategies and some great habits.
I never thought I’d be referencing Taylor Swift here, but that’s the way we kick off our marketing advice section this week. You’ll also find tips on how to make the most from your airline award program and discover the habits required for the leader of a successful startup. Marketing and sales Even if you aren’t a big fan of the pop sensation, you’ll get something out of these seven marketing tips inspired by Taylor Swift…and maybe you’ll earn some cred with any tweens in the house. The second of Sujan Patel’s three tips on marketing to millennials shows an important way small business owners need to start “thinking differently.” There’s a shiny new thing in marketing being introduced almost everyday. You need to ask the right questions or your small business will get sucked into the hype. Good SEO today requires that you orchestrate your blog, your social media and your PR campaigns to best effect. Here’s what you need to be thinking about. Using an email marketing service that will automatically create newsletters from your RSS feeds is one of the points made in this email marketing overview. Content marketing If you really want to get your content shared and into high-profile websites, take the time to create killer data-based content. Companies don’t retain knowledge – the people behind them do. Tap into your small business knowledge bank for maximum content marketing ROI. Pinterest is a great content marketing platform for many small businesses. But what if your brand isn’t visual? Kevan Lee at Buffer shares some good ideas. Inject personality into your content marketing because people buy from people, not from companies. James Carson makes a good case for spending half of your small business content marketing resources on distribution. If you like slide presentations, this is one of the best that gives you the big picture on creating content for content marketing purposes. Need six-seconds of inspiration so you can create that viral Vine video to market your small business? Here are the best of the best. Sales Jack Kosakowski gives you the low down on five disruptive social selling tools. None of your hard work counts if your call to action fails. Here are five quick guidelines to help you formulate great CTAs. Are you completely DIY when it comes to creating small business sales and marketing materials? If so, you should have these copywriting books on the shelf. Beth Hayden’s tips are specifically intended to boost sales during webinars and they are great. But even if you don’t do webinars (yet), you’ll be able adapt some of these concepts. Entrepreneurship, startups and technology To drive a successful startup, there are certain habits that you need to embrace. This PressFarm article outlines 10 of those habits. “An entrepreneur without a country” is definitely one of this decade’s trends, as is outlined in this article from the Telegraph on digital nomads. Growing pains can kill a killer startup. Here are five challenges startups face as they move into the big leagues. Do you have an idea that could be as popular as an icy glass of Coca-Cola? Well, the soft drink maker may want to serve as your accelerator. Leadership, management and productivity Any small business that logs a lot of travel miles needs to...
read moreDear Politician: If Small Business Is So Important, How Do You Explain These Facts?
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I’ve been reminded of that old English proverb in recent weeks as I’ve scanned the news for articles on the state of small business in the US. The proverb comes to mind because when I read the news I begin to think about the way I “wish” it were for small business owners. Let me explain. You see, as we approach the major political season that comes around every four years, office seekers are constantly reminding us how important the small business sector is to the US economy. Politicians from both parties promise to help small business, whether it’s through tax reform, trade agreements or regulatory reform. But the sad reality is that when we examine the record, economic policies are going in the opposite direction. In fact, reforms touted as being small business initiatives end up benefiting large, multi-national corporations instead. Wall Street Journal writers Stacy Mitchell and Fred Clements recently wrote on this topic and they pulled out some damning statistics from the Census data. Market share of firms with fewer than 100 employees has fallen from 33 percent to 28 percent since 1999. There are almost 80,000 fewer small business retailers today than there were in 1999. Between the 1970s and the 2000s, the number of startups launched per year has dropped by 20 percent. So no matter what your personal politics are, small business “vital signs” are on a downward track. At the same time, youth unemployment and a clamoring for a hike in the minimum wage are up dramatically. Why can’t we see that these phenomena are related? If the small business sector was as healthy today as it was 40 years ago, we would be facing far fewer problems in our society. Want to reduce urban blight? Increase private sector jobs. Want to reduce the number of people needing food stamps? Increase private sector jobs. Want to reduce ballooning entitlement spending? Increase private sector jobs. Want to reduce the budget deficit? Increase private sector jobs…and pass a Constitutional balanced budget amendment or some other legislation with teeth. Not only does legislation supposedly written to help small business end up aiding big business, tax and regulatory policies take a much bigger bite out of small business. Some of this is because small business owners don’t have the teams of international accountants who are able to shelter money offshore and find other creative ways around tax law to ease the IRS bite. Further, regulatory compliance hits small businesses harder because they are unable to spread these fixed costs over a large operation. And this is huge: the current US regulatory burden is $1.88 trillion per year – that’s almost $15,000 for every family. A study published in the Journal of Economic growth estimates that the growth of federal regulations over the last 60 years has cut US economic growth by 2 percentage points each year. Without this burden, the average American household income would be $330,000, instead of the paltry $53,000, where it stands now. When you were a kid, did you ever try to cut your own bangs? It usually goes very badly and you keep trimming and trimming, and each time you wield the scissors, the situation gets worse. This is what our elected officials are...
read moreHow To Delegate To Boost Your Small Business Growth
Fact: If you don’t delegate, your business will never grow sufficiently. Absent of delegating many of the jobs within your business, the only way to grow the top line is to raise your prices. You could increase sales, but to achieve that in any great measure, you would have convert more prospects, which will take more people. By the way, increased sales will have a ripple effect through every other department in your organization, so I’ll go back to my first assertion: Unless you hand off some of the jobs within your business to others, the only way to grow the top line is to raise your prices, and that is subject to severe market constraints in most cases. Let me give you a good general rule to use as you approach delegating within your company: Delegate services that have become commodities, apps or can be performed by freelancers. Some of the entries on this list will be obvious: Bookkeeping. There are many Quickbook specialists in your neighborhood. Engage a good one. IT support. There are plenty of third-party companies as well as individuals who will do this part time. Further, you may have someone on staff who can jump into this position. Social media and content creation. There are some apps that help out here in a major way. There are also plenty of excellent freelancers who can take over much of this work for you. Customer service. There are good software as a service (SaaS) options to give your startup excellent customer service capability. Fulfillment. If you ship products anywhere, consider going with a fulfillment company. Why deal with the personnel and space required to do it in-house? Production labor. Are you still making all the widgets yourself? Many founders are too closely tied to the manufacturing of their products for too long. If you’re the only one with the recipe for the secret sauce, you’ll never grow. Now let’s look at step two of delegating: delegating authority. For many of the functions on the list above, in the beginning it can be delegated to one other person or a company that is set up to handle the work. However, when additional growth occurs, you need to hand off some of the day-to-day decisions to others. You must be the driver and decider on the important issues and also maintain your company culture. The question you need to ask yourself is this: Do my employees see me as a “micromanager.” If the answer to that is “yes,” then you need to find ways to back off a bit. You probably need to provide some additional training, upgrade some job titles, and define those areas where others can make the calls. As you are considering the items above and how you can begin to give others authority or limited autonomy, always do it in the perspective of how you are most valuable to your business. If delegating some of your work allows you to spend 20 percent more time in the areas where you deliver the greatest added value, think of the growth potential you are unleashing as that compounds over time. Image: “Fotothek df roe-neg 0002422 003 Läuferinnen beim Weiterreichen des Staffelstabes” by Deutsche Fotothek?. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia...
read moreIs Your Blog Getting Lonely? All The Tips You Need To Rekindle Your Love
Are you and your blog having relationship problems? I’ve seen it so many times. Here are the common troubles I’ve witnessed: You know you should have a blog, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet, You started a blog, but have lost your motivation and are letting it slip, and You want to love your blog, but you’re running out of things to say. Do any of those sound like you? If so, stick with me for a couple of minutes while I try to give you a little motivation as well as make your life a little easier. Motivation A blog is one of the least expensive tools you have to boost your small business sales and marketing. Here are the basic things it accomplishes (and sometimes all at once): Boosts your Search Engine Optimization, Develops deeper relationships with your small business customers, Establishes your authority, and Provides you with a platform for selling. All of the above elements are critical to small business success. If you are naturally discussing your industry or business in your blog, you will be doing all the good stuff Google wants you to do to rank more highly within its search results. At the same time you’ll be entertaining and informing your prospects and existing customers. They’ll think you’re pretty cool and begin to see you and your small business as the go-to authority in your area. And hey, when you have all the authority behind you, you can even use your blog to point people directly to your products and services and people will be ready to press an “Add to Cart” button or contact you via phone or an online form. These points alone should motivate you to start your blog or resurrect a blog that has fallen by the wayside in recent months…or years. How to keep it going If you don’t want to write anymore and don’t have anyone nearby who can pen your posts for you, consider a service like BlogMutt where you can affordably have a third party do your writing. Connecting with a freelancer via one of the online services is also an option. However, if you want to save the money and do it yourself, here are some tips to help you break through your writer’s block: Use Evernote to capture ideas during all your waking hours. It allows you to clip inspirational articles, jot down random thoughts, make voice memos and more. Allow yourself the luxury of posting some short fun items. Not every post has to solve the problems of the world as every cat video ever posted has proved. Invite guest posts. Ask permission to run posts from others or trade posts. Brainstorm with your team and come up with an editorial calendar. Pencil in at least one solid blog per week. Review things: books, products, services. You know that e-book or white paper you’ve been putting off writing or having written for you? Get it done and use sections within it for individual blog posts. Next time you find some interesting statistics published about your industry or a topic your customers would find interesting, use them to make an infographic. Connect with someone on Fiverr or try Piktochart. Take any of the tips shared here and soon you’ll...
read moreIs a Rock Star From the Industry Leader Just What Your Small Business Needs?
It’s a common problem in a small business: You’re doing fairly well, but you believe that things in sales, marketing, operations (choose one) could be going better. You’re pondering the situation one day when you hear about a rock star from one of your industry’s leading companies who might be willing to join your team. You immediately form a mental picture of some guru coming into your small business and anointing you with all the inside information and tricks of the trade that you need to conquer the world. Before you start casting bronze idols and burning incense to this demigod from Mt. Olympus, consider the candidate, your needs, your culture and your current team carefully. While bringing a rock star on board can be a good step, perhaps just as often it doesn’t work out as intended. Be sensitive to the candidate’s background Frankly, it takes a different set of skills and a different attitude to perform well in a scrappy small business than it does in an “established industry leader” setting. If you expect a three-piece flannel suit to be comfortable in a polo shirt environment, you’ll usually be wrong. You need to find out a lot about the rock star’s background before you make the offer. Don’t get all ga-ga over achievements or positions at the previous employer. They may not transfer. Further, a great deal of flexibility is required to work in a small business environment. Often we have others – and ourselves – perform tasks that are outside our strict job descriptions. Some individuals from the corporate world may view these tasks as beneath them. However, if your rock star has a small business background or entrepreneurial/startup roots, the fit could be fantastic. This is why you have to be a little more clever in your discussions with the candidate. These aren’t big issues when you’re bringing in someone from a similarly sized company. But if your candidate is “downsizing,” they can torpedo your chance at success. Consider your current employees You also need to consider personalities. Some members of your current team may be slightly put off by the idea of bringing in someone they perceive as being a “know it all.” Their perception may be completely wrong, but your candidate needs to have the people skills and personality to allay those kinds of fears. Also consider the specific skills required for success in your organization. For example, selling a well-known brand is different than selling a new entry into the marketplace. Doing a great job at the care-and-feeding of an existing customer base is different than enthusiastically evangelizing prospective customers. Running operations in a company with deep pockets is far different than running a lean startup. Finally, don’t let your enthusiasm lead you down the wrong path. Remember, some rock stars end up trashing their hotel...
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