It’s said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we couldn’t agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers’ trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Previously, brands were focused on topping search engine page results. However, today, this is just not enough for building brand credibility and improving sales. Brands need to focus on ranking in the top searches plus social proofing. Let’s take a deeper dive to understand this concept better.
The driving force behind the idea of social proof is FOMO (fear of missing out). This is a feeling of anxiety we get when we feel we’re missing out on better experiences in life. Therefore, to ensure we enjoy the best life has to offer, we rely on other people’s experiences, recommendations and referrals. That’s where social proof comes into the picture.
Social proof works for both potential customers and brands. It provides external validation from actual users/customers, making a business more trustworthy and credible. In other words, it focuses on positive reviews, comments, or experiences shared by customers. Therefore, when applied to marketing, social proof shows that if the product or service worked for people in a similar situation, it will work for the potential customer too.
And let’s not forget humans are hardwired to care more about what others think. So, social proof can truly help businesses build brand credibility and trust, thereby increasing their customer base and sales. The key to effective social proof is keeping it real. Real opinions of real people; no trickery!
Nothing shows the true power of any marketing strategy other than statistics. Here are the numbers that reveal the importance of social proof for your business in modern times.
Simply put, social proof builds your credibility and increases your sales opportunities.
As the social media landscape continuously expands, employing the right strategy on the right platform will optimize your marketing efforts and increase your social proof along with your sales opportunities. That said, LinkedIn is a must for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer brands as buyers and consumers will evaluate your personal and company profiles before during business with you or your company.
For business-to-business companies, LinkedIn is the most important social media platform as evidenced by the following statistics.
For business-to-consumer companies, Instagram and Pinterest offer great opportunities to engage with consumers and provide a direct consumer sales channel. It is also helpful to have an active LinkedIn personal and company profile to provide additional social proof.
Other ways to integrate social proof into your customer journey are:
Every business is unique, so it is crucial to develop a customized social media strategy that works best for you. This is where we can help. Join our free live Social Media Made Simple Strategy Session to learn the best methods to unlock the power of social proof for your business.
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
Whether you’re operating a small business with a few employees or you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it’s important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
To do this, it’s important to first get back to basics and align your marketing goals with your business strategy. Start by asking yourself these insanely simple but crucial marketing questions from your target customers’ perspective.
1. What primary challenge does your product and service solve, or what opportunity does your product create for your customer?
Although this question may be an obvious one, it’s often overlooked by small business owners, freelancers and solopreneurs. Before you develop your next marketing campaign, think about the reason you developed the product or service for your specific target customers.
2. What unique experience do you provide to your customers?
Think about how you make your customers feel appreciated. Perhaps, you provide a complimentary follow-up service or make your customers feel extra-comfortable when they visit your business. Whatever your customer enhancement experience, consider making it a part of your marketing strategy.
3. When your ideal customer is searching for your product or service, what search terms will they use?
Keywords are the foundation of digital marketing. Finding the right keywords means thinking like your potential customer—use simple search terms and consider combining those terms with the geographic locations you serve. This approach will strengthen your marketing and increase your visibility.
4. Where are your customers most likely to search for your product or service?
Consider your audience when pondering this question. Determine where your targeted customer will most likely search for your product or service and will be receptive to your marketing campaign. In short, your marketing efforts should align with your customers behavior, so you show up where they are not where you would like them.
5. If your prospective or current customer isn’t ready to buy your product or service, what is the next action you’d like them to take in your marketing funnel?
While a prospective customer might not be ready to buy at this time, your marketing should help encourage them to become your customer. First, you should offer opportunities for them to engage with your brand by signing up for a newsletter, engaging with your social media content or taking other actions after they’ve discovered your product or service.
Developing a rock star marketing strategy that increases the visibility of your brand, products and services, engages with your targeted customers and creates opportunities to secure leads and sales, is within your reach. Using these five insanely simple questions to guide your marketing efforts will increase your success.
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
1. Believing “If you sell it, they will buy”
If you want your business to succeed, it is essential that you conduct marketing. Many small businesses and solopreneurs view marketing as an expense rather than as a mission-critical investment. Marketing is a necessary strategic investment, designed to generate leads for your business.
2. Using a One-Size-Fits-All Approach
Being strategic in your marketing efforts will yield better results. Specifically, segmenting your ideal customers into small groups and creating audience-specific marketing is imperative. This approach will optimize your marketing for maximum appeal as it will target the unique requirements of your targeted customer group and will save you money as well.
3. Omitting Research from Your Strategy
Research sets the foundation for every successful marketing campaign. It allows you to understand the needs and desires of your customers, make informed decisions on your marketing efforts and uncover vital insights to achieve your marketing objectives.
4. Confusing the Marketing and Sales Functions
While marketing and sales are often used interchangeably, it’s important to remember that these are very separate but connected functions. While the marketing function produces and nurtures your leads for your products and services, sales transitions your leads into actual customers and creates revenue. Successful marketing strategies focus on creating and cultivating customer leads.
5. Underestimating the Power of Integrated Marketing Campaigns
Integrated marketing, also known as marketing communications, uses multiple marketing tools, mediums and channels—such as earned media, paid media, digital and traditional marketing and social media—to convey, amplify and reinforce your message.
6. Focusing Your Efforts in the Wrong Places
A narrow focus is a big problem when it comes to marketing. Oftentimes, marketing efforts are focused on large marquee target customers or the wrong market altogether. The most successful marketing efforts should focus on target markets and customers that are within your reach to build your customer base and experience to compete for marquee customers.
7. Going All in on Digital and Social Media Marketing
Digital and social media marketing is powerful and should be in your marketing strategy. However, it’s definitely not where you should invest your entire marketing budget and resources. Using traditional marketing and earned media will amplify your digital and social media efforts. Digital and social marketing typically require higher financial investments and more time to achieve results, so incorporate traditional and earned media to have greater success.
8. Avoiding Social Media
While it’s important not to spend your entire budget on social media, its marketing power shouldn’t be discounted or ignored. Finding a balance between social, digital and traditional marketing strategies will maximize your opportunity for success.
9. Mirroring Other Marketing Campaigns
Your marketing campaigns should be unique to your company, products and services. Mirroring your competitors or peers marketing campaigns isn’t likely to help you in the long run. Even, when marketing to the same or similar target customers, what works for one company might not work for yours. Displaying and uniquely differentiating your products, services and brand are vital to achieving marketing success.
10. Undervaluing Metrics and Evaluation
Setting attainable goals for your campaigns is a crucial part of strategic marketing campaigns to optimize success. Use metrics to monitor your marketing efforts and make adjustments to your campaigns wherever necessary to achieve your goals.
Avoiding these common marketing mistakes will exponentially increase your opportunity for success. Remember, marketing is a mission-critical investment. So, make sure you understand these common mistakes, and familiarize yourself with other growth strategies before you market your small business.
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
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Welcome to this episode of Ensightium podcast. Today, we will discuss the 10 Knucklehead Marketing Mistakes to Avoid for Better Results. I’m delighted you joined me today. This is by far one of my favorite topics to discuss, because it has so much potential to help small business owners, solopreneurs, and freelancers improve your marketing results and strengthen the growth and health of your company.
[00:00:28] So let’s get right to it. The number one mistake to avoid is believing that if you sell it, they will buy it. Many business owners believe that marketing is more of an expense rather than a strategic investment to help them attract their ideal customers and expand their businesses. If you are not actively engaging in marketing from a strategic perspective, you’re missing a huge opportunity to build a strong, healthy company and also to expand and grow it as well. Now, I know if you’ve recently launched or whether you’re even a veteran when it comes to business ownership, there are not enough hours or minutes in any day to actually get through your to-do list.
[00:02:12] The second mistake to avoid is using a one -size -fits- all approach to your marketing. If you’re marketing but aren’t using segmentation or creating opportunities to broaden your reach and resonance. Then you’re missing yet another opportunity to improve the health of your company, grow your sales as well as potentially set yourself up for further growth in the future. So, what do I mean by that? Essentially many business owners who are engaged in marketing have a one size fits all approach, meaning that they don’t look at the nuances of their ideal customer base or segment. They’re essentially saying here’s how I’m going to market. Take it or leave it. And then they believe they’re good to go.
[00:04:21] The third mistake to avoid is omitting research from your strategy. When you’re creating your marketing strategies, research is extraordinarily important as it helps you not only better understand the needs and desires of your prospective customers it also helps to uncover vital insights that will assist you in achieving your marketing objectives.
[00:05:54] The fourth mistake to avoid is confusing the marketing and sales functions. Now, oftentimes marketing and sales are used interchangeably. However, they are actually two very distinct functions that are connected. The purpose of marketing is to generate leads for your products and services.
[00:06:58] The fifth mistake to avoid is underestimating the power of integrated marketing campaigns. Integrated marketing is also known as marketing communications. It uses multiple marketing tools, mediums, channels, and strategies such as earned media or PR, paid media also known as advertising, digital, traditional as well as social media marketing to deliver, amplify and reinforce your marketing message. Many times, business owners simply focus on one strategy or they focus on one or maybe two marketing channels and they miss the opportunity to fully reinforce their marketing campaign and give it more visibility as well as a greater opportunity to resonate with your targeted audiences.
[00:09:14] The sixth mistake to avoid is focusing your marketing efforts in the wrong places. When you narrowly focus your marketing efforts on landing a large contract or a marquee customer, or even use the wrong marketing message or channel, your marketing efforts are more than likely not going to yield the results you’re looking for.
[00:11:10] The seventh marketing mistake to avoid is going all in on digital and social media marketing. Now, digital and social media marketing are absolutely powerful tools and they should be included in your marketing strategy. No doubt. However, solely focusing on digital and social media marketing limits your ability to effectively increase your reach as well as your return on your marketing investment.
[00:13:57] The eighth marketing mistake to avoid is not using social media. Now, as noted, social media is an extraordinarily powerful marketing tool that you should be engaging with your prospective and current customers on. That being said, it’s important that you find a balance between social, digital and traditional marketing to ensure that you maximize your ultimate opportunity for success.
[00:15:50] The ninth marketing mistake to avoid is mirroring other marketing campaigns. Now, we’ve all noticed highly successful marketing campaigns. And at times probably even wondered if that campaign would work for us. However, when you mirror a marketing campaign, even if that campaign is targeted to the same or similar target audiences that you might have, it isn’t likely to be as successful for you.
[00:16:57] The 10th marketing mistake to avoid is undervaluing metrics and evaluation. Setting attainable goals for your campaign is critically important and a key component of a strategic marketing campaign. It’s how you can optimize your success.
[00:18:45] If you want to increase your marketing success, avoiding these common marketing mistakes will absolutely help you. Remember marketing is a mission critical investment rather than an expense. So, be sure you understand these common mistakes and familiarize yourself with other growth strategies before you market your small business.
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
This article was originally published on behalf of the Detroit Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program for the Sterling Heghts Regional Chamber of Commerce.
As a business owner, solopreneur, sales or marketing executive, having a well-thought-out and integrated marketing and sales strategy is extremely important to achieve and exceed your targeted revenue goals.
Oftentimes, the marketing and sales functions are “mashed up” into a single effort that increases expenses, lost customer opportunities and results in lower revenue. Worse yet, the marketing function is nonexistent and increases the sales cycle.
There are five incredibly simple and powerful strategies that will transform your revenue generating opportunities and help you achieve your revenue target.
1. Make the investment. Marketing can be a daunting challenge. And, the landscape seems to evolve daily with new digital and social media platforms. If that’s not enough, there are the issues of what to say, how to say it, where to say it, and who should hear it. Marketing is and should be viewed as a critical investment for the financial success of your business. Yet, many business owners and executives view marketing as an expense rather than an important component of a solid sales strategy. Marketing is not optional. It’s imperative.
2. Understand the difference. While marketing and sales is usually used interchangeably, each function has a unique and important role that contribute to producing revenue for your business. Marketing generates and nurtures leads for your sales efforts to convert purchase-ready and qualified leads into customers.
3. Align marketing and sales.If you are a small business owner or a solopreneur, then you may perform both the sales and marketing functions. It is important that these functions are performed separately as they contribute differently to your revenue generation endeavors and can yield immeasurable benefits for your company. If your company has both sales and marketing teams, collaboration and integration are imperative. Without alignment and collaboration, your bottom-line can be adversely impacted.
Why is sales and marketing alignment important to achieving higher revenue? Simply put, harmony and coordination between these equally important functions will lower your costs and increase your revenue. Here are several alignment benefits. According to a 2015 Act-On Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey, 56 percent of aligned organizations met their revenue goals, and 19 percent beat their goals.In comparison with misaligned organizations, just 37 percent met their revenue goals, and just 7 percent beat them.
The Act-On study also found that sales and marketing alignment delivers, on average, a 36 percent improvement in customer retention and 38 percent higher sales-win rates — and it accomplishes this feat by improving only half of the end-to-end customer lifecycle.
Your marketing and sales funnels should be jointly created. Employing a six- phase funnel approach, the marketing team owns the first three phases, including prospect attraction, lead generation and lead cultivation.
Once the lead achieves qualified status, a transition or handoff occurs to the sales team that is then responsible for lead conversion, proposal development, negotiation and finally closing the sale.
Following the sale, both teams should work together to cultivate loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
4. Segment your marketing efforts. Oftentimes, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach is used. This approach diminishes your ability to effectively attract, engage and cultivate prospective customers for your products or services. In fact, the one-size-fits-all approach actually trains your sales targets to ignore your communications as they are not relevant and do not resonate with your prospective customers. By segmenting your marketing communications, your messages are more attractive and will increase your visibility and credibility with your target customers.
5. Optimize your Brand. Taking the required time to proactively and consistently manage your company’s brand provides unmatched opportunities to increase your market share, attract purchase-ready customers, retain your top customers and achieve your revenue target. A strong business brand is vital to the long-term profitability of your business and enables your customers and prospects to more quickly understand why your products or services will fulfill their needs and why they must make the effort to move to a buying decision.
Both sales and marketing are two very different, yet equally important functions that must be aligned for your company’s long-term success. Aligning your sales and marketing strategies can yield tremendous financial opportunities, including achieving and likely beating your revenue goals.
With alignment, your actual marketing and sales expenses will be reduced as collaboration significantly enhances productivity and profitability. For companies, create a culture that rewards of respect, collaboration and accountability because what gets rewarded gets done. For solopreneurs, work with an accountability partner.
Always, use a dashboard that equally sets goals and evaluates both the marketing and sales teams, individually and collectively to monitor progress. Good luck!
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
This article was originally published on the Business 2 Community Business Blog.
For business owners and entrepreneurs, every day presents a myriad of new business challenges. Chief among them is the constant and relentless pressure to grow your business in an increasingly competitive and noisy marketplace
As most businesses and consumers are risk-averse, avoiding an expensive mistake is the top priority in their purchase decision process. Having a solid brand strategy will allow your company to be perceived as less risky and as a more reliable choice. Here are the top eight reasons to manage your brand as a key business growth strategy
1. Customer acquisition. Building a brand that consistently (and without exception) places customers first and ensures a first-class experience with your company is the most critical reason to manage your brand. Delivering an exceptional customer experience when things are going well is usually easy. The more important customer experience is when there is a real or perceived complaint that requires delicate negotiation to successfully resolve the concern. Here’s where your brand must excel by living up to your customer promise of quality and service.
2. Innovation or reinvention. All businesses—small or large—must continually innovate or reinvent themselves to remain relevant and to consistently meet evolving customers’ needs and marketplace trends. For businesses, this is especially true, and it requires a commitment to forward-thinking and a willingness to adopt strategic and early adjustments to marketplace trends and changes. In this case, a company’s brand must be strong enough to build upon and to evolve with the changing marketplace dynamics without sacrificing brand equity.
3. Reputation. Managing your brand can significantly influence your reputation and enable your company to break through the marketplace noise to attain top-of-mind industry positioning. Additionally, creating a solid and positive reputation can be helpful when addressing a negative or crisis situation and can create opportunities to promote the company.
4. Profitability. A strong, positive and resonant brand will command premium pricing, as the customer value is clearly and consistently articulated through actions and communications. According to McKinsey and Company, business-to-business companies with brands that are perceived as strong generate a higher EBIT margin than others. In 2012, strong brands outperformed weak brands by 20 percent, up from 13 percent in 2011.
5. Talent acquisition. Want to successfully compete for the best talent? With a strong employer brand, business owners can and do recruit high demand talent. This is an area often overlooked, and even ignored, by many business owners. An Employer Brand International study indicated only 41 percent of companies have an employer brand strategy.
6. Disruption. Stagnation is a common challenge for many businesses. While disrupting an industry may be a long shot, becoming a disruptor within an industry niche is often doable for small business owners. Having a brand that enables the company to quickly build credibility in the new marketplace or to launch new offerings is imperative for success.
7. Resilience. Economic downturns happen, and most brands stumble from time to time. During these challenging times, it is important to expand your knowledge, capabilities and opportunities. Another imperative to remain relevant is to continually refresh your products to meet consumer desires and to stay steadfast to your brand values. Consumer responsiveness is a hallmark of great brands and should be a goal for business owners.
8. Engagement. Highly successful companies cultivate innovation and creativity and empower their employees to create a high performing culture. These companies embody their brand promise throughout their touch points and have no fear of failure as they celebrate, embrace and respect calculated risks with both good or bad outcomes.
Whatever your business status, managing your company brand should be strategic, purposeful and consistent to yield endless opportunities and unlimited success. A proactive and well-thought-out brand strategy is the secret to the long-term viability, growth and success of your business.
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It is said that the power of social media can make or break your business. And we could not agree more. After all, there are now over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide! One thing that has changed over time when it comes to building business credibility, boosting sales and earning customers' trust is the way prospects use the internet and social media.
Whether you are operating a small business with a few employees or you're a freelancer or solopreneur, the ability to effectively market your products and services to your target customer is vital. Before developing your marketing campaigns, it's important to develop a well-thought-out strategy that conveys the right messages and achieves your marketing goals.
Marketing is a critical part of every successful business. It’s crucial to take a strategic approach to your marketing efforts to optimize success and maximize your investment. Here are ten knucklehead mistakes that often hinder marketing success for small business owners, solopreneurs and freelancers.
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