Bicycle entrepreneurs are fashioning LED light sets that attach to wheel spokes and produce dazzling effects in the dark.
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Wednesday, May 31, 2017
‘Smart’ Money Moves That Aren’t So Smart
The odds of winning a lottery are infinitesimal. Yet inevitably, someone does. Inspired by the idea of a huge payoff, millions of people burn money on lottery tickets. The financial strategies below aren’t as much of a long shot as the lottery. More than a handful of people may actually benefit. But many who are...
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Stocks at Crossroads: 3 Things to Watch For in June
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has set new all-time highs in four out of five months this year so far. But despite the S&P 500 being up about 7% in 2017, skepticism abounds. Maybe stocks are overpriced. Maybe a few stocks have had an undue influence on the rally. Maybe the market is biding...
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Simplifying Saving With the 52-Week Money Challenge
As a fashion blogger, travel enthusiast and freelance writer, Alysse Dalessandro has a variety of interests. When it comes to saving money, the 29-year-old is just as open-minded. In late 2015, Dalessandro read a blog post about the 52-week money challenge, a popular savings strategy that gained momentum on social media platforms like Facebook. The...
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Mortgage Rates Wednesday, May 31: Holding at Half Their Historical Average
Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed loans held firm yet again, while 15-year fixed loans slipped lower and 5/1 ARMs were unchanged, according to a NerdWallet survey of mortgage rates published by national lenders Wednesday morning. Yesterday’s economic reports were essentially a non-event. The news was mixed: a little good, a little not-so-good, but all in all pretty much as...
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Why Kids Should Stash Summer Job Cash in a Roth IRA
There’s nothing quite like a first paycheck. For many teens, it comes alongside another first: weighing how to spend money they’ve worked hard for, rather than how to spend money their parents worked hard for. There’s a difference in how you process those dollars, mentally. A tank of gas turns into four hours behind the...
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Entrepreneurship: LED Bike Lights Target Night Riders and ‘Burners’
Bicycle entrepreneurs are fashioning LED light sets that attach to wheel spokes and produce dazzling effects in the dark.
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What a Boomerang Champ Can Teach Us About Breaking Bad Digital Marketing Habits
Back in 2012, Futurist.com published an article titled The future of marketing starts with cross-disciplinary thinking. In that vein, we have been consulting with creative athletes to see how their secrets of success can boost the impact of digital marketing. That’s cross-disciplinary thinking squared!
One of these athletes is Logan Broadbent, the number-two ranked boomerang thrower in the world—not just the United States, the world! Logan also recently taped his second appearance on the kick-butt television show American Ninja Warrior and finished strong in the Boston Marathon.
You’d think with all of his successes, he wouldn’t have too many bad habits to confess. The reality is, however, that Logan has bad habits like anyone else, but he’s willing to put in the work to recognize them, acknowledge them, and then overcome them.
One example: in boomerang competitions Logan must perform “hackey” catches. To do this he needs to throw his boomerang and, as it is returning, kick it up before catching it. He used to kick using the inside of his foot, and actually got pretty good doing that. Later, though, he began realizing the benefits of kicking away from his body, because that gave him the ability to dive, which allowed him to catch the boomerang more often. But to perfect this new method—the better method—he literally had to perform it hundreds upon hundreds of times.
So, we wondered, how can we apply these insights to digital marketing?
Recognize when you’ve fallen into a rut
It’s not uncommon to spend your days crossing marketing to-do tasks off your list, doing them simply because they’re on the list. And when you keep using the same strategies and philosophies, you tend to get the same results.
That’s great if you’ve got more leads and sales than you can handle, but not so great when your results are lukewarm. Be honest—are you so used to getting lukewarm results that you no longer try to enhance your digital marketing? Are you just crossing items off your to-do list? Until you can acknowledge that you’ve fallen into a rut, it’s difficult to fix the unproductive habits that are keeping you there.
Alternate strategies take time to brainstorm and test
Let’s say you’ve taken an honest assessment of your marketing strategy and realize you need to break habits that are no longer working. It can be challenging to set aside time to determine which elements of your marketing strategy or website to test since your marketing to-do list already takes up so much of your time, and you don’t want current traffic or conversions to drop while you test.
If this is the case, it’s time to audit your to-do list. What items really aren’t necessary? Which ones can be done less often? Which ones can you assign to someone else?
Statistically relevant sample sizes can take time to collect and analyze
The reality is it takes a healthy sample size to come to a scientific conclusion about whether or not your new marketing messaging is actually an improvement. So, don’t rush through testing. If possible, test for at least two business cycles and take variables such as holidays, peak seasons, and the like into consideration when analyzing results. It’s also unlikely that you can test only once, make a decision, and then move on with brand-spanking-new, sparklingly successful marketing strategies.
Two big bad habits in digital marketing
Logan identified his less effective habits in hackey catching, which opened the door to create successful ones. Look at the following two bad habits and be honest. Are they ones your digital marketing agency needs to break?
Bad habit #1: Focusing only on yourself
Picture your team sitting in a corporate meeting. People’s faces are shining with excitement as you’re ready to unroll marketing messaging that tells everyone about your brand and how amazing you really are.
Stop! Prospects aren’t going to listen very long if you just want to talk about yourself.
That’s why a key point offered at Adobe Summit 2017 was to create relevant content that speaks directly to consumers. Marketers were told to review content put out by Airbnb, Royal Caribbean, and Inspiralizer—three companies that do digital marketing right.
So, how can you make your brand an intriguing one? Engage people where they are in their own lives.
Bad habit #2: Ignoring what your data is telling you
To find out what your prospects and customers want to read, use your data to get insights. “Data,” reads a Mashable article about the Adobe Summit, “is everything—it gives you insights on the people you think you know perfectly, and can be used to effectively tell the future. If you’re not doing it to learn about your audience, you’re doing it wrong.”
Here, find more information about what else we’ve learned about digital marketing by talking to boomerang champions.
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11 Ways to Share Knowledge With Fellow Entrepreneurs
Talking through a problem helps: You can get a sense of what went wrong, and what your options are. Talking with entrepreneurs who’ve had similar experiences helps even more. They know the feelings of frustration and can offer perspective on what worked or didn’t work for them.
But what’s the best way to share information? Is it better to talk online or over drinks? To find out what works best, we asked 11 successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council this question:
Q. What’s one great way entrepreneurs can exchange knowledge with one another (e.g., workshops, meetups, etc.)?
1. Join a mastermind group
2. Meet one-on-one
3. Build a trusted network
4. Collaborate equally
5. Go to industry conventions
RELATED: Successful Business Networking: 6 Secrets to Deeper Connections
6. Connect online
7. Call for agency-owner therapy sessions
8. Tap into Facebook professional groups
9. Reach out on LinkedIn
10. Look into entrepreneur organizations
11. Attend local small business development presentations
RELATED: 7 Face-to-Face Networking Mistakes That Could Kill Your Professional Image
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Customer Experience Is Everything: Three Steps to Make Yours Unforgettable
By Jamie Domenici
In today’s digitally driven marketplace, all it takes is a swipe or a click for a potential customer to find a better price, a wider selection, or a more convenient location. So how do you make your growing business stand out from the crowd and turn fickle shoppers into loyal customers?
For most forward-thinking companies, the answer has become customer experience.
According to a recent Gartner study, 89% of companies now expect to compete mostly on the basis of experience, compared to 36% just four years prior. This dramatic shift sends a clear message to business leaders: It’s no longer enough to make customer experience a priority for your business—it has to be your absolute primary focus if you want to remain competitive.
My own customer experience epiphany occurred a few years ago when I was shopping for my wedding dress. After attending a bridal show, I received an email from one of the participating boutiques, and that set off on an experience so amazing I still rave about it today.
What’s most remarkable is that there was nothing complicated about the strategy that business followed. Your company can create a customer experience that’s just as unforgettable if you build it on these three simple rules:
Know your customers
When I showed up for my first appointment with the boutique, the people there made everything all about me from the moment I stepped in the door. They greeted me by name. They knew all about my family and my wedding party. They even knew my size and preferences, and had dresses picked out and ready to try on. It felt like I was being treated as a person, rather than a transaction.
The boutique was able to provide such personalized service because it was using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that gave associates all of the information they needed—from my wedding date to my favorite color. It didn’t matter that different pieces of information came from sales, service, or marketing, because all three systems were connected and shared all the information in one place.
The high point of their service came at the low point of my wedding day when I accidentally stepped on my gown and tore a hole in it. I called the boutique in a near panic, not really expecting much more than their sympathy. Instead, the staff quickly pulled up my record on their CRM and got the details of my dress style and my wedding location. Within 30 minutes there was a local seamstress at my door with the matching thread for my dress in hand. Talk about a seamless experience!
RELATED: How Creating Value for Your Customers Can Give Your Business a Competitive Edge
Watch every touchpoint
My wedding-day rescue was incredible, but customer experience isn’t about a single interaction. It’s about all of them taken together throughout the life cycle of a customer relationship. It includes everything from advertisements and promotions to sales calls, product usage, and customer support.
The reason my bridal boutique experience is so memorable is because it focused on my needs at every touchpoint. To make your business equally unforgettable, you need to create the same kind of strong, memorable brand that flows consistently through everything you do.
One of your most important touchpoints is your sales team, and to bring them on board you need to empower them with a marketing mindset. This means that your sales reps should focus on solving customer problems rather than on making sales. Reps should start by identifying a customer’s pain point or challenge, and then add value however they can with every engagement. The goal is to create customers for life—but the ultimate result for your sales team and your business will be more sales than ever.
RELATED: 5 Ways to Turn Your Customer Service Team Into a Secondary Sales Force
If your business is built around one-time purchases (like wedding dresses), then the marketing mindset is an invaluable tool for creating brand evangelists (like me) who will spread the word about their awesome experiences and keep new customers walking through your doors.
Plan ahead and position yourself for growth
One of the toughest dilemmas for a growing business is that your personal touch is what makes you successful, but then your success makes it more difficult to provide it. You can have the best of both worlds by planning for success early on. Individual point solutions for just sales, service, or marketing may be tempting to solve your immediate growing pains, but they’re not integrated for a connected customer experience. Plus, they’re only temporary fixes.
A good CRM, on the other hand, is not only designed to scale indefinitely, but also built around the customer by connecting sales, service, and marketing on a single platform. If my boutique decides to open another store, it’s ready to go. It just needs to use the CRM to sort customers by closest location, and the store is all set to provide the most convenient experience.
CRM allows everyone to work with the exact same customer information, including everything from their tweets about your company to their most recent purchases to their latest service request. With complete 360-degree views of customers, a CRM system can give every team in your small business the information they need to provide the ideal customer experience at every touchpoint.
I don’t plan on buying another wedding dress, but if my boutique ever expands its services to outfit busy executives, I’ll be first in line. Why? Because it perfected the art of using CRM to provide small business personalization with enterprise polish. And that’s an experience I’ll never forget.
RELATED: Want More Customers? Reinvent Things That Normally Suck
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Tuesday, May 30, 2017
7 Ways to Ready Your Finances for Divorce
For some couples, no amount of marriage counseling is enough to avoid a divorce. It’s a tough process emotionally and financially. Untangling two people’s money is messy. Long before spousal or child support is awarded or your post-divorce budget is in place, you’ll need to prepare your finances for the work ahead. Because each divorce is unique, specific...
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Class of 2017: Get a Jump on Adulthood With These 7 Tips
College prepares students to be everything from accountants and teachers to government workers and health care technicians, but not all students learn basic money management skills. Here’s advice for this year’s graduates on how to succeed financially. 1. Use a tried-and-true budgeting strategy A regular paycheck, however small, can feel like a windfall for those...
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How a Credit Union Raised the Roof on Credit Card Rewards
A leader is emerging in the world of credit card rewards, and it’s not one you might expect. After revamping its credit card portfolio, Chicago-based Alliant Credit Union now has two cards that outperform even the most generous rewards cards from many major issuers. One offers 2.5% in ongoing cash back, with a $59 annual fee,...
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Simplifying Saving with the 52-Week Money Challenge
As a fashion blogger, travel enthusiast and freelance writer, Alysse Dalessandro has a variety of interests. When it comes to saving money, the 29-year-old is just as open-minded. In late 2015, Dalessandro read a blog post about the 52-week money challenge, a popular savings strategy that gained momentum on social media platforms like Facebook. The...
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Corner Office: Elisa Steele on Trusting Your Instincts
The chief executive of Jive Software says that she learned through experience not to assume that others had better answers than she did.
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5 Ways to Swiftly Boost Your Business Credit
If your business is young, its credit history may not impress many lending institutions, who typically look for long borrowing histories when evaluating the creditworthiness of a business. Don’t despair, however—building up your credit isn’t out of your hands. Get the jump on growing that business credit with these specific, actionable strategies for improving your business’s standing with credit agencies.
How Good Is My Business Credit, Anyway?
Your business credit score, like your personal credit score, is a number generated by credit bureaus describing your business’s trustworthiness when it comes to borrowing. Business credit scores vary from agency to agency, more than personal credit scores. Your business’s credit history is also publicly available, unlike your personal credit history, meaning anyone (including your competitors) can pay to view it.
Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax are three of the most prominent business credit agencies, and each one will evaluate your credit differently. Once you select a bureau and pay for a credit report (anywhere from $40 to $100), you’ll receive a score from 1 to 100. (There are other scales—FICO uses a different scoring system, for instance—but 1-to-100 is common.) If your score falls under 75, you’ve got work to do.
Here’s how to quickly boost your business credit.
1. Start paying your bills on time (or early), immediately.
The simplest way to build strong credit is by paying punctually. Payments towards your rent, utility bills, business credit card statements, and other monthly expenses can all have an impact on your credit score. Consider setting up automatic payments, and pay early (20 to 30 days before the deadline) whenever possible. If you find yourself unable to make a loan payment on time, you can always ask your lender to clear the late payment with a “good faith removal,” which they may grant you if your track record as a borrower has been excellent.
2. Set up a strong credit profile.
Apply for your very own DUNs number through Dun & Bradstreet, and take charge of managing your credit profile. Once you’ve received your unique DUNs number, you’ll be able to update your business’s profile and view any public financial information D&B has gathered on your business, including liens, financial reports, registrations, and more.
Keep this profile up to date as your business grows. That includes adding trade references—vendors and suppliers with whom you have a positive payment history. Favorable trade references can do wonders for your business credit if your borrowing history leaves something to be desired.
3. Check for errors in your credit report.
As many as 20 percent of Americans—one in five—have errors in their credit reports. If a credit bureau claims you’re delinquent on a bill you’re sure you’ve paid, first check with the institution you allegedly owe, and then gather the documentation you’ll need to dispute the error. Statements, receipts, and correspondence will all help you make your case to the credit bureau and clear the error. It may take anywhere from one month to six weeks before you hear back from the bureau, so check your report immediately if you’re worried you might be a victim.
4. Open a new, different line of credit.
Taking on more debt might seem counterintuitive, but diversity in your lines of credit looks good to lending institutions. Get a business credit card, and use it for business expenses you know you won’t have trouble repaying. After several months of payments, you can ask to increase your credit limit. Keep your credit utilization down (under 30 percent is best) and stay timely with your payments, and you’ll start to see a boost in your credit score.
5. Start monitoring your score today.
Paying for a credit report once a year isn’t the only way to stay informed on the health of your business credit. Experian and Equifax will monitor your credit regularly for a fee and tip you off to any sudden drops in your credit. By monitoring your credit year-round, you can watch how your spending and borrowing affect your credit and plan for future financing.
If you’re an energetic, motivated business owner eager to take your business to new heights, building up your business credit may feel like a tedious process. Put that energy to use by following these actionable steps, and trust that your smart credit habits will soon speak for themselves.
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Mortgage Rates Tuesday, May 30: Mostly Steady; Economic Reports Looming
Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed loans held steady, while 15-year fixed loans ticked higher and 5/1 ARMs were unchanged, according to a NerdWallet survey of mortgage interest rates published by national lenders Tuesday morning. The remarkable recent period of calm mortgage rates may be coming to an end soon. With President Trump back in Washington, politics may...
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How to Create a Best-Selling E-Book
Cover Your Ass: Foolproof Excuses for Any Occasion is a hit humor book available on Amazon, the Apple Bookstore, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and other online bookstores.
In this article we interview the author, Manly M. Mann, as to how he came up with the idea, how he got the e-book produced, and his insights on how would-be authors can best create and market their own e-book.
AllBusiness: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Manly M. Mann: Well, as I say in the book, I am a New York Times best-selling author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, and have sold over 100 million copies of my book in 125 countries (including Zimbabwe).
AB: Wow, that’s amazing!
Manly M. Mann: Yes. And, of course, none of that is remotely true. But since my book is about humorous excuses, I have a good excuse as to why I made that up. You will have to buy the e-book to get the answer.
Manly M. Mann: I actually had the idea for a print book many years ago and prepared a comprehensive book proposal. I called it “The 999 Greatest Excuses Ever Invented.” I sent it to 15 publishers and got 16 rejection letters back. I then shelved the idea for a while, and then decided to resurrect it as an e-book because of the ease in creating and distributing e-books.
AB: Why did you decide to do the book as an e-book instead of going to a traditional print publisher?
Manly M. Mann: Traditional print publishers are slow and impose onerous terms on authors. And they do very little, if any, marketing of your book unless you already are an established best-selling author. I decided to publish as an e-book first, and then as a print book after a while.
AB: So what publishing platform did you use and why?
Manly M. Mann: I looked into various options and decided on Pronoun, which is now part of the huge publisher MacMillan. The Pronoun platform allowed me great flexibility, super attractive terms, and the ability to immediately get on Amazon, the Apple Bookstore, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other places. They also have a number of marketing tools and an online dashboard that allows me to get daily reports on my e-book sales. And I was able to keep the copyright to my work, which most traditional publishers will resist.
AB: Tell us a little more about the contents of the book.
Michael M. Mann: The concept is that we all get in trouble. We are late. We get caught speeding. We don’t get our homework in on time. So this book gives you humorous, foolproof excuses for any situation to “cover your ass” (hence the title).
The e-book includes pop art illustrations and scenarios. Examples of chapters include:
- Why I Won’t Have Sex With You
- Why I Can’t Come to Work
- Why I Can’t Go to the Gym
- Why I Sent You a Drunk Text
- Why I Went Off My Diet
AB: What helpful tips would you give to aspiring authors?
Manly M. Mann: Here are some key writing and publishing tips:
- Don’t take forever to write the book. Trying to be perfect is the enemy of getting something good done.
- Develop a great book cover as that will be important for your Amazon listing and book promotion.
- You don’t need to make your e-book 350 pages. As an e-book, you can make it however long you think appropriate, and many e-books are only 50-100 pages long.
- Start your project as an e-book, then later move to a print book. You can get published very quickly as an e-book, and if you get traction in sales, you will be able to get much better terms for a print book from traditional publishers. For example, the 50 Shades of Grey series of books started as e-books.
- Use a flexible, easy-to-use publishing platform like Pronoun.
- Have a catchy title for the e-book. Come up with five alternate titles and run them by friends and family to see which one resonates the most.
AB: Most books don’t sell unless there is significant marketing for the book. What marketing/promotional techniques would you recommend?
Manly M. Mann: Just because you write a book and get it onto Amazon doesn’t mean you will generate lots of sales. There are millions of books and e-books out there, and you have to do things to make your work stand out. Here are some marketing/promotional tactics to consider:
- Get favorable reviews on Amazon.
- Get favorable reviews on the book review sites.
- Offer the book free on Amazon for a week to move up on the Amazon rankings.
- Do as much continuous social media marketing as you can—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
- Create a great and comprehensive description of the e-book for your Amazon listing and other books sites, using the critical keywords describing your work.
- Prepare a short video of the e-book for YouTube—this is fairly inexpensive and most freelance videographers can produce this for you.
- Consider buying keyword ads on Facebook, Amazon, or Google, but make sure this is cost effective and results in profitable sales.
- Do content marketing—see if you can get articles published on the web about your book and consider driving traffic to those articles through Outbrain or Taboola.
AB: What resources did you find helpful in creating your e-book?
Manly M. Mann: There are tons of resources online to help authors in all aspects—writing, editing, creating the e-book, and marketing. Here are a few that I found particularly helpful:
- Book Cover and Illustrations—Charlie Pabst of Charfish Design (he did a fantastic job in designing the cover and providing illustrations for my e-book)
- Advice and Consulting on E-books—Jane Friedman
- Platforms for Creating and Distributing the E-Book—Pronoun and Createspace
- Images, Photos, and Illustrations—Freepik, Getty Images, and Shutterstock
- Author Support—Authors Guild
- Freelancers—Reedsy, Bibliocrunch, and Fiverr
- Marketing—BookBub, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads
Manly M. Mann: I have just published another humor e-book called Real Men Don’t Eat Kale. It’s a guide on how to man up. And the premise is that kale is awful and will lead to the downfall of civilization as we know it. The chapters give guidance on what real men do and don’t do.
AB: How can readers find your e-book and other works?
Manly M. Mann: Here are some links to check out:
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Should You Try Airbnb for Your Next Business Trip?
A hotel is no longer your only option for business travel. Home-sharing company Airbnb has launched a campaign to attract business travelers to its properties.
To make Airbnb for business more appealing, the company has rolled out features that make it easier for business travelers to book and manage travel, find business-travel-friendly rentals, and get receipts for their expense reports.
Should you choose a hotel or Airbnb for business trips? Here are some questions to help you make the decision.
What amenities do you need?
Business-travel-ready homes on Airbnb must have reliable Wi-Fi, 24-hour check-in, and space to work. However, if you want additional services and amenities, such as maid service and an on-premises fitness center or pool, a hotel is probably a better bet.
How many people are traveling?
In order to be listed as a business-travel-ready home, Airbnb requires homeowners to list the entire home for rental (not just a room). This can be a good option if you have a close team that’s taking a trip together. You’ll have a built-in, comfortable meeting place instead of having to meet in the lobby of a hotel or find a conference room. Depending on your group, renting a home could offer a great bonding experience—or a little too much togetherness.
Are you mixing business and pleasure?
If you’re taking your family along on a business trip so you can spend some time sightseeing before or after business is done, an Airbnb home can be a great solution. Your family can spread out and feel comfortable while you’re working. Since you’ll have access to a kitchen, you’ll also save money on eating out—a big plus for families with young children.
RELATED: 11 Best Business Travel Hacks
How independent are you?
Airbnb business-friendly hosts are required to have a 90 percent-plus response rate within 24 hours. That means if something goes wrong, you should be able to get help fairly quickly. However, if you want to be absolutely certain you can get 24-7 assistance, you might not feel comfortable staying in a home where you don’t have help at your beck and call.
What type of experience do you prefer?
On some business trips, you may want to experience the flavor of the city. Perhaps you have more downtime than usual or you’re going someplace you’ve never been and always wanted to visit. On the other hand, if you’re going to be working 18-hour days, you might prefer a hotel where you can get room service, send clothes out for dry cleaning, and don’t have to think about anything except falling into bed at the end of the day.
Where will you be meeting with prospects or clients?
A business hotel offers the convenience of multiple options for client meetings. There’s the hotel bar for a drink after the convention or the hotel restaurant for a breakfast or dinner meeting. If you choose Airbnb for business, you’ll need to do a little extra homework to find suitable locations for meeting outside of the client’s office.
Will you actually save money?
Renting a home might sound like it will automatically save you money compared to a hotel. However, be sure to consider hidden costs. For instance, if the rental isn’t close to the business district, you might spend more on transportation getting to meetings. Hotels have hidden fees such as taxes and parking charges, but also offer the chance to earn frequent traveler points or other perks. Read the fine print of both options carefully before making your decision.
If you do decide to test the waters of Airbnb business travel, be sure to read listings and reviews carefully. Never assume a home has an amenity if it isn’t listed. (For example, that seemingly perfect apartment might not have a coffee maker, which can really throw your morning off.) Ask plenty of questions to ensure the location has everything you’ll need to make your business trip go smoothly.
RELATED: 11 Ways to Stay Productive on Your Next Business Trip
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FHA Loan vs. Conventional Mortgage: Which Is Right for You?
When exploring mortgage options, it’s likely you’ll hear about Federal Housing Administration and conventional loans. Let’s see, FHA loans are for first-time home buyers and conventional mortgages are for more established buyers — is that it? Not necessarily. Actually, the differences between FHA loans and conventional mortgages have narrowed in the past few years. Since 1934,...
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Monday, May 29, 2017
Customer Experience Is Everything: Three Steps to Make Yours Unforgettable
By Jamie Domenici
In today’s digitally driven marketplace, all it takes is a swipe or a click for a potential customer to find a better price, a wider selection, or a more convenient location. So how do you make your growing business stand out from the crowd and turn fickle shoppers into loyal customers?
For most forward-thinking companies, the answer has become customer experience.
According to a recent Gartner study, 89% of companies now expect to compete mostly on the basis of experience, compared to 36% just four years prior. This dramatic shift sends a clear message to business leaders: It’s no longer enough to make customer experience a priority for your business—it has to be your absolute primary focus if you want to remain competitive.
My own customer experience epiphany occurred a few years ago when I was shopping for my wedding dress. After attending a bridal show, I received an email from one of the participating boutiques, and that set off on an experience so amazing I still rave about it today.
What’s most remarkable is that there was nothing complicated about the strategy that business followed. Your company can create a customer experience that’s just as unforgettable if you build it on these three simple rules:
Know your customers
When I showed up for my first appointment with the boutique, the people there made everything all about me from the moment I stepped in the door. They greeted me by name. They knew all about my family and my wedding party. They even knew my size and preferences, and had dresses picked out and ready to try on. It felt like I was being treated as a person, rather than a transaction.
The boutique was able to provide such personalized service because it was using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that gave associates all of the information they needed—from my wedding date to my favorite color. It didn’t matter that different pieces of information came from sales, service, or marketing, because all three systems were connected and shared all the information in one place.
The high point of their service came at the low point of my wedding day when I accidentally stepped on my gown and tore a hole in it. I called the boutique in a near panic, not really expecting much more than their sympathy. Instead, the staff quickly pulled up my record on their CRM and got the details of my dress style and my wedding location. Within 30 minutes there was a local seamstress at my door with the matching thread for my dress in hand. Talk about a seamless experience!
RELATED: How Creating Value for Your Customers Can Give Your Business a Competitive Edge
Watch every touchpoint
My wedding-day rescue was incredible, but customer experience isn’t about a single interaction. It’s about all of them taken together throughout the life cycle of a customer relationship. It includes everything from advertisements and promotions to sales calls, product usage, and customer support.
The reason my bridal boutique experience is so memorable is because it focused on my needs at every touchpoint. To make your business equally unforgettable, you need to create the same kind of strong, memorable brand that flows consistently through everything you do.
One of your most important touchpoints is your sales team, and to bring them on board you need to empower them with a marketing mindset. This means that your sales reps should focus on solving customer problems rather than on making sales. Reps should start by identifying a customer’s pain point or challenge, and then add value however they can with every engagement. The goal is to create customers for life—but the ultimate result for your sales team and your business will be more sales than ever.
RELATED: 5 Ways to Turn Your Customer Service Team Into a Secondary Sales Force
If your business is built around one-time purchases (like wedding dresses), then the marketing mindset is an invaluable tool for creating brand evangelists (like me) who will spread the word about their awesome experiences and keep new customers walking through your doors.
Plan ahead and position yourself for growth
One of the toughest dilemmas for a growing business is that your personal touch is what makes you successful, but then your success makes it more difficult to provide it. You can have the best of both worlds by planning for success early on. Individual point solutions for just sales, service, or marketing may be tempting to solve your immediate growing pains, but they’re not integrated for a connected customer experience. Plus, they’re only temporary fixes.
A good CRM, on the other hand, is not only designed to scale indefinitely, but also built around the customer by connecting sales, service, and marketing on a single platform. If my boutique decides to open another store, it’s ready to go. It just needs to use the CRM to sort customers by closest location, and the store is all set to provide the most convenient experience.
CRM allows everyone to work with the exact same customer information, including everything from their tweets about your company to their most recent purchases to their latest service request. With complete 360-degree views of customers, a CRM system can give every team in your small business the information they need to provide the ideal customer experience at every touchpoint.
I don’t plan on buying another wedding dress, but if my boutique ever expands its services to outfit busy executives, I’ll be first in line. Why? Because it perfected the art of using CRM to provide small business personalization with enterprise polish. And that’s an experience I’ll never forget.
RELATED: Want More Customers? Reinvent Things That Normally Suck
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11 Ways to Share Knowledge With Fellow Entrepreneurs
Talking through a problem helps: You can get a sense of what went wrong, and what your options are. Talking with entrepreneurs who’ve had similar experiences helps even more. They know the feelings of frustration and can offer perspective on what worked or didn’t work for them.
But what’s the best way to share information? Is it better to talk online or over drinks? To find out what works best, we asked 11 successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council this question:
Q. What’s one great way entrepreneurs can exchange knowledge with one another (e.g., workshops, meetups, etc.)?
1. Join a mastermind group
2. Meet one-on-one
3. Build a trusted network
4. Collaborate equally
5. Go to industry conventions
RELATED: Successful Business Networking: 6 Secrets to Deeper Connections
6. Connect online
7. Call for agency-owner therapy sessions
8. Tap into Facebook professional groups
9. Reach out on LinkedIn
10. Look into entrepreneur organizations
11. Attend local small business development presentations
RELATED: 7 Face-to-Face Networking Mistakes That Could Kill Your Professional Image
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What a Boomerang Champ Can Teach Us About Breaking Bad Digital Marketing Habits
Back in 2012, Futurist.com published an article titled The future of marketing starts with cross-disciplinary thinking. In that vein, we have been consulting with creative athletes to see how their secrets of success can boost the impact of digital marketing. That’s cross-disciplinary thinking squared!
One of these athletes is Logan Broadbent, the number-two ranked boomerang thrower in the world—not just the United States, the world! Logan also recently taped his second appearance on the kick-butt television show American Ninja Warrior and finished strong in the Boston Marathon.
You’d think with all of his successes, he wouldn’t have too many bad habits to confess. The reality is, however, that Logan has bad habits like anyone else, but he’s willing to put in the work to recognize them, acknowledge them, and then overcome them.
One example: in boomerang competitions Logan must perform “hackey” catches. To do this he needs to throw his boomerang and, as it is returning, kick it up before catching it. He used to kick using the inside of his foot, and actually got pretty good doing that. Later, though, he began realizing the benefits of kicking away from his body, because that gave him the ability to dive, which allowed him to catch the boomerang more often. But to perfect this new method—the better method—he literally had to perform it hundreds upon hundreds of times.
So, we wondered, how can we apply these insights to digital marketing?
Recognize when you’ve fallen into a rut
It’s not uncommon to spend your days crossing marketing to-do tasks off your list, doing them simply because they’re on the list. And when you keep using the same strategies and philosophies, you tend to get the same results.
That’s great if you’ve got more leads and sales than you can handle, but not so great when your results are lukewarm. Be honest—are you so used to getting lukewarm results that you no longer try to enhance your digital marketing? Are you just crossing items off your to-do list? Until you can acknowledge that you’ve fallen into a rut, it’s difficult to fix the unproductive habits that are keeping you there.
Alternate strategies take time to brainstorm and test
Let’s say you’ve taken an honest assessment of your marketing strategy and realize you need to break habits that are no longer working. It can be challenging to set aside time to determine which elements of your marketing strategy or website to test since your marketing to-do list already takes up so much of your time, and you don’t want current traffic or conversions to drop while you test.
If this is the case, it’s time to audit your to-do list. What items really aren’t necessary? Which ones can be done less often? Which ones can you assign to someone else?
Statistically relevant sample sizes can take time to collect and analyze
The reality is it takes a healthy sample size to come to a scientific conclusion about whether or not your new marketing messaging is actually an improvement. So, don’t rush through testing. If possible, test for at least two business cycles and take variables such as holidays, peak seasons, and the like into consideration when analyzing results. It’s also unlikely that you can test only once, make a decision, and then move on with brand-spanking-new, sparklingly successful marketing strategies.
Two big bad habits in digital marketing
Logan identified his less effective habits in hackey catching, which opened the door to create successful ones. Look at the following two bad habits and be honest. Are they ones your digital marketing agency needs to break?
Bad habit #1: Focusing only on yourself
Picture your team sitting in a corporate meeting. People’s faces are shining with excitement as you’re ready to unroll marketing messaging that tells everyone about your brand and how amazing you really are.
Stop! Prospects aren’t going to listen very long if you just want to talk about yourself.
That’s why a key point offered at Adobe Summit 2017 was to create relevant content that speaks directly to consumers. Marketers were told to review content put out by Airbnb, Royal Caribbean, and Inspiralizer—three companies that do digital marketing right.
So, how can you make your brand an intriguing one? Engage people where they are in their own lives.
Bad habit #2: Ignoring what your data is telling you
To find out what your prospects and customers want to read, use your data to get insights. “Data,” reads a Mashable article about the Adobe Summit, “is everything—it gives you insights on the people you think you know perfectly, and can be used to effectively tell the future. If you’re not doing it to learn about your audience, you’re doing it wrong.”
Here, find more information about what else we’ve learned about digital marketing by talking to boomerang champions.
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The Best Advice for Mergers and Acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions involve a great deal of critical business, legal, financial, and deal negotiation issues. In order to get you started with the most important information you need to know, we’ve compiled this list of the best articles our M&A expert Richard D. Harroch has written on many of the key issues involved in the sale of privately held companies:
22 Mistakes Made by Sellers in M&A Transactions
Selling a company can be a very time-consuming, complicated process. Here’s a list of common mistakes private companies often make when attempting to sell themselves.
Mergers and Acquisitions: 15 Important Considerations for In-House Counsel
An overview of 15 key strategic, negotiating, and diligence considerations involved in the typical sale of a privately held company, and the steps in-house counsel can take to better understand, prepare for, and address these considerations and related issues.
20 Key Due Diligence Activities in Merger and Acquisition Transactions
A company going through an M&A process needs to anticipate the extensive due diligence that the acquirer will undertake. This article discusses the critical due diligence activities that the seller needs to be prepared for.
13 Key Intellectual Property Issues in Mergers and Acquisitions
A summary of the most significant activities and issues relating to intellectual property connected with a typical acquisition of a privately held company.
Negotiating an Acquisition Letter of Intent
In a business acquisition, the purpose of the letter of intent is to ensure there is a “meeting of the minds” on price and key terms before both parties expend significant resources and legal fees. In this article, the key elements of drafting an acquisition letter of intent are discussed.
The Importance of Online Data Rooms in Mergers and Acquisitions
If you are a seller preparing for an M&A transaction, it’s important to set up an online data room to expedite the process. Read this guide to getting started, including an extensive list of what documents to include.
The Importance of Disclosure Schedules in Mergers and Acquisitions
Disclosure schedules are an integral part of any M&A transaction. Learn common mistakes made when preparing disclosure schedules, and download a sample template to get you started.
Negotiating Investment Banker Engagement Letters
Companies often hire investment bankers for capital fund-raising and M&A activities. This article discusses certain guidelines that are appropriate when drafting an investment banker engagement letter.
The Key Elements of Non-Disclosure Agreements
If you are sharing confidential business information, learn when it makes sense to have an NDA in place as well as the important terms that agreement should include.
What Entrepreneurs Should Do After They Sell Their Company
When the time finally comes to sell your business, you will be faced with the daunting task of what to do with perhaps the largest influx of funds in your lifetime. This article provides advice on how to protect proceeds, minimize taxes, and plan for your family’s financial future.
9 Key Ways to Prepare for an M&A Transaction
M&A transactions can be time consuming and stressful for a company and its management team. Learn some important things a company can do to maximize the likelihood of a successful sale.
30 Key Lessons Learned from M&A Transactions
Mergers and acquisitions are difficult to accomplish. They require strong preparation, sophisticated advisors, and a dedicated management team. This article provides various lessons learned from M&A transactions involving the sale of private companies, from the perspective of the selling company.
Read all of Richard D. Harroch’s articles here >
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Friday, May 26, 2017
Your 3 Edges Over the Investing Pros
Wall Street and the financial media love to tell individual investors they have no chance in the stock market against big-money professionals using high-tech software to sift through complex stock trends. That’s true to an extent, but it’s only part of the story. Sure, if individual investors want to play Wall Street’s game, they have...
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3 Good Reasons to Buy a Stock
For new investors drawn to the $3.4 billion initial public offering of Snap Inc., the parent company of social media darling Snapchat, watching the stock price the past three months has been a roller coaster. The day after its IPO, Snap sold for more than $27 per share, but it has since traded as low...
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How to Ask for a Raise
Asking for a raise can be anxiety-inducing, but that one conversation can also mean having more money left over at the end of the month. We asked Robin L. Pinkley, co-author of “Get Paid What You’re Worth: The Expert Negotiators’ Guide to Salary and Compensation,” for tips on how to best make the case. Just do it “The most...
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Debt Consolidation in 250 Words: What to Know
What is debt consolidation? It’s rolling several debts — like credit cards and medical bills — into a single payment at a lower interest rate. Ideally, this is part of a plan to become debt-free. When should I consolidate? Debt consolidation is a good idea if you can qualify for a lower interest rate that makes payments...
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How to Create a Best-Selling E-Book
Cover Your Ass: Foolproof Excuses for Any Occasion is a hit humor book available on Amazon, the Apple Bookstore, Google Play, Barnes and Noble and other online bookstores.
In this article we interview the author, Manly M. Mann, as to how he came up with the idea, how he got the e-book produced, and his insights on how would-be authors can best create and market their own e-book.
AllBusiness: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Manly M. Mann: Well, as I say in the book, I am a New York Times best-selling author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, and have sold over 100 million copies of my book in 125 countries (including Zimbabwe).
AB: Wow, that’s amazing!
Manly M. Mann: Yes. And, of course, none of that is remotely true. But since my book is about humorous excuses, I have a good excuse as to why I made that up. You will have to buy the e-book to get the answer.
Manly M. Mann: I actually had the idea for a print book many years ago and prepared a comprehensive book proposal. I called it “The 999 Greatest Excuses Ever Invented.” I sent it to 15 publishers and got 16 rejection letters back. I then shelved the idea for a while, and then decided to resurrect it as an e-book because of the ease in creating and distributing e-books.
AB: Why did you decide to do the book as an e-book instead of going to a traditional print publisher?
Manly M. Mann: Traditional print publishers are slow and impose onerous terms on authors. And they do very little, if any, marketing of your book unless you already are an established best-selling author. I decided to publish as an e-book first, and then as a print book after a while.
AB: So what publishing platform did you use and why?
Manly M. Mann: I looked into various options and decided on Pronoun, which is now part of the huge publisher MacMillan. The Pronoun platform allowed me great flexibility, super attractive terms, and the ability to immediately get on Amazon, the Apple Bookstore, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other places. They also have a number of marketing tools and an online dashboard that allows me to get daily reports on my e-book sales. And I was able to keep the copyright to my work, which most traditional publishers will resist.
AB: Tell us a little more about the contents of the book.
Michael M. Mann: The concept is that we all get in trouble. We are late. We get caught speeding. We don’t get our homework in on time. So this book gives you humorous, foolproof excuses for any situation to “cover your ass” (hence the title).
The e-book includes pop art illustrations and scenarios. Examples of chapters include:
- Why I Won’t Have Sex With You
- Why I Can’t Come to Work
- Why I Can’t Go to the Gym
- Why I Sent You a Drunk Text
- Why I Went Off My Diet
AB: What helpful tips would you give to aspiring authors?
Manly M. Mann: Here are some key writing and publishing tips:
- Don’t take forever to write the book. Trying to be perfect is the enemy of getting something good done.
- Develop a great book cover as that will be important for your Amazon listing and book promotion.
- You don’t need to make your e-book 350 pages. As an e-book, you can make it however long you think appropriate, and many e-books are only 50-100 pages long.
- Start your project as an e-book, then later move to a print book. You can get published very quickly as an e-book, and if you get traction in sales, you will be able to get much better terms for a print book from traditional publishers. For example, the 50 Shades of Grey series of books started as e-books.
- Use a flexible, easy-to-use publishing platform like Pronoun.
- Have a catchy title for the e-book. Come up with five alternate titles and run them by friends and family to see which one resonates the most.
AB: Most books don’t sell unless there is significant marketing for the book. What marketing/promotional techniques would you recommend?
Manly M. Mann: Just because you write a book and get it onto Amazon doesn’t mean you will generate lots of sales. There are millions of books and e-books out there, and you have to do things to make your work stand out. Here are some marketing/promotional tactics to consider:
- Get favorable reviews on Amazon.
- Get favorable reviews on the book review sites.
- Offer the book free on Amazon for a week to move up on the Amazon rankings.
- Do as much continuous social media marketing as you can—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
- Create a great and comprehensive description of the e-book for your Amazon listing and other books sites, using the critical keywords describing your work.
- Prepare a short video of the e-book for YouTube—this is fairly inexpensive and most freelance videographers can produce this for you.
- Consider buying keyword ads on Facebook, Amazon, or Google, but make sure this is cost effective and results in profitable sales.
- Do content marketing—see if you can get articles published on the web about your book and consider driving traffic to those articles through Outbrain or Taboola.
AB: What resources did you find helpful in creating your e-book?
Manly M. Mann: There are tons of resources online to help authors in all aspects—writing, editing, creating the e-book, and marketing. Here are a few that I found particularly helpful:
- Book Cover and Illustrations—Charlie Pabst of Charfish Design (he did a fantastic job in designing the cover and providing illustrations for my e-book)
- Advice and Consulting on E-books—Jane Friedman
- Platforms for Creating and Distributing the E-Book—Pronoun and Createspace
- Images, Photos, and Illustrations—Freepik, Getty Images, and Shutterstock
- Author Support—Authors Guild
- Freelancers—Reedsy, Bibliocrunch, and Fiverr
- Marketing—BookBub, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads
Manly M. Mann: I have just published another humor e-book called Real Men Don’t Eat Kale. It’s a guide on how to man up. And the premise is that kale is awful and will lead to the downfall of civilization as we know it. The chapters give guidance on what real men do and don’t do.
AB: How can readers find your e-book and other works?
Manly M. Mann: Here are some links to check out:
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Ask Brianna: Should I Pick My First Job Based on My Debt?
“Ask Brianna” is a column from NerdWallet for 20-somethings or anyone else starting out. I’m here to help you manage your money, find a job and pay off student loans — all the real-world stuff no one taught us how to do in college. Send your questions about postgrad life to askbrianna@nerdwallet.com. This week’s question:...
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How to Save Up for a Secured Credit Card Deposit
A secured credit card may be the simplest and quickest way to build credit, but getting one isn’t always easy. Even if you can get approved for one, you can’t use it until you supply a security deposit, usually a minimum of $200 or $300. The deposit protects the credit card issuer in case the cardholder doesn’t pay as required,...
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Mortgage Rates Friday, May 26: Mostly on Hold Ahead of the Holiday
Mortgage rates for 30- and 15-year fixed loans were steady today, while 5/1 ARMs moved a tad lower, according to a NerdWallet survey of current mortgage rates published by national lenders Friday morning. With the bond markets shutting down early today and closed Monday for Memorial Day, traders are likely considering picnic spreads rather than yield spreads....
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5 Ways to Empower Your Frontline Retail Employees
By Rieva Lesonsky
Post sponsored by Microsoft. Part 3 in a 3-part series.
The employees on the front lines are at the heart of your retail business. After all, they’re the ones ringing up sales, assisting customers, and serving as the “face” of your store. Are you empowering them to do their very best work?
When your frontline workers are distributed throughout the store—or when you have multiple retail locations—communicating, collaborating, and sharing information can be a challenge. Fortunately, by investing wisely in the right technology, you can give your frontline employees the productivity and collaboration tools they need. Here are five ways to empower your frontline retail workers.
1. Simplify scheduling
Relying on whiteboards, spreadsheets, and printouts to create and share employee schedules is a recipe for disaster. Inevitably, it leads to miscommunication—and missed shifts. Your managers and frontline employees will always be on top of things when you use cloud-based scheduling tools. For instance, Microsoft StaffHub lets you create and manage employee schedules from your desktop or mobile device. Employees just go online to access their schedules from anywhere, anytime. They can easily manage their schedules, ask for time off, or trade shifts with each other.
2. Provide education and training
Today’s shoppers enter your store armed with a world of data in their pockets (in the form of their smartphones, that is). Your frontline employees need to be even more knowledgeable than your customers about products, features, and options. Keep your team in the loop with training materials as they come on board, and with continued training throughout their careers. StaffHub creates an online community where you can share training materials, such as videos and manuals, with your entire frontline team or just a few employees.
3. Communicate consistently
Whether you’re grabbing your store’s frontline staff for a quick morning meeting or holding a quarterly call with team nationwide, communication between frontline and back-office employees is key to a smoothly running retail operation. Microsoft’s Office 365 Enterprise K1 plan gives your team many ways to stay in touch, from email and chat to the private Yammer social network. It also includes Skype for Business so your employees can communicate in real time and participate in Skype Meeting Broadcast sessions.
4. Share data securely
When company data lives in the cloud, employees can access, store, and share it anywhere, anytime, on any device. But security is vital when you’re dealing with sensitive customer data such as payment card numbers and financial information. OneDrive for Business, included with the Office 365 Enterprise K1 plan, gives each user 2GB of personal cloud storage in a secure environment. OneDrive makes it easy for administrators to manage employee access on both company-owned and employee-owned devices.
5. Keep it simple
Frontline retail employees have a lot on their plates. With the free Office Online apps included in Office 365 Enterprise K1, they don’t have to learn a whole new way of working. Instead, they can use the familiar Microsoft apps they already rely on.
The retail industry is undergoing a massive transformation. Frontline employees empowered with the right technology tools are your store’s best weapon for survival.
Read the other articles in this retail series:
- Give Customers the Personal Touch: How Your Retail Store Can Profit from Personalization
- 7 Ways Mobile Devices Can Transform Your Retail Store Operations
About the Author
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