Content Marketing—Got Ideas? I do!

I’ve brainstormed with hundreds of small business owners who were stumped about the best content to provide that benefits them and their customers using posts on social media, blogs and email newsletters. Here are a few tips I suggest to help them find the right balance. Remember the best content will benefit your followers and your company. If you need help finding content marketing that makes sense for your company—give us a call at 310-791-6300.

Tip 1. Who is your target audience? Know their demographics and interests before you determine the best content. Find out what questions they have in common that you can address with your content using tips, checklists, pictures, coupons, events, videos, articles, ebooks, news and other tools.

Tip 2. Start with the goals your customers have for following your company.  What are you giving your fans, followers  & email subscribers that makes them glad they follow you? I suggest you provide something that does one of the following:

1. Saves them time
2. Saves them money
3. Provides them content they would be challenged to collect themselves
4. Entertain them with  Images, Videos & articles related to your business

Tip 3.  Don’t just provide content, ask them to take an action within that content. Add links, documents, video start buttons, subscribe links or connections to events, workshops or ebooks that you provide. Make sure that link is trackable and above the swipe point on a smart phone—don’t make them swipe for it.

Tip 4.  Use blogs, keywords, descriptions, categories & tags as well as hashtags to reach more people beyond your followers and your lists. Content marketing is about keywords. What are yours? Use the terms people search for in your product, service or non-profit industry.

Tip 5.  Write about what you know. The good news is that you know your organization and industry well and you can easily provide ideas and tips on how your customers can educate themselves.  Use your membership, professional journals or application photos of how your product or service is used to share what you know. This is an opportunity to share your knowledge and raise your profile as an interesting organization and an expert in your field—otherwise known as an Influencer.

Tip 6. Here’s some content ideas:

Tip 7.  Use one of the following resources you have to see if there is content already created that is uniquely related to what you do.

• Manufacturer or Industry Stats or Stories
• Infographics or White Papersto simplify advice
• Events they can sign up for or attend
• Customer experience stories or testimonials
• Lists they can use to accomplish their goals
• Content that is worth sharing and would give them some likes.

If you need help creating custom content that meets your goals, contact us by email  or 310-791-6300.  Get more done with your digital advertising efforts.

Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing,  training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at her Torrance, CA office at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also see her upcoming training workshops calendar at http://adteamla.com/facebook.

How to Segment & Target Email Marketing With Call-To-Action Buttons

Segment & Target Your Email Marketing List Based On Your Customer’s Interest

A targeted promotion always out performs a general one. Here is how to use a Call-to-Action Button on your next Email Marketing Campaign (example is using #ConstantContact) to automatically segment contacts who use that button to be added to a strategic follow-up list and receive an automated campaign customized for those engaged contacts:

Example: In the below example, a landscaper offers three different services in one email. Each button link is segmented so that when a contact clicks on it, they are automatically added to a list for the specific service they clicked on. When the landscaper is ready he can send an email to only his contacts interested in landscape design and email his other contacts at another time. Here is how to do it using #ConstantContact:

1. Create an email and insert a text link, button or clickable link.
2. Click the button, link, or image and click Link to select the type of link you want to insert.
3. Add the link, email address, or select the document you want to link to.
4. Select “Enable Click Segmentation”.
5. Create the list you want to add your contacts to when they click your link or button.
6. Click Insert.
7. Click Done.

When you’re ready to send an email to your segmented list, create a new email and select the list on the schedule page.

Create a Segmented List that Triggers an Auto-responder Email

Click-segmented emails take a little bit of planning. You’ll need content for the email you’re sending and content for the autoresponder email that is automatically triggered when your contact is added to the list. For example, you could reward your most engaged contacts with a coupon when they click on a link to buy an item or view your menu, or you could use it to trigger more detailed informational content for those you know are interested in receiving it:

1. Create a new contact list. Make sure to give it a name you’ll recognize.
   
2. Create an autoresponder series and choose to send to your new list. It’s fine to create a single-email series.
3. Schedule your autoresponder email to send to your contacts after they’re added to your list. Most of the time it’s best to give your contacts a couple of days between emails, but sometimes it’s also fine to send a follow-up email the next day.
4. Set up the follow up emails to go out to the list of interested parties.
5. Determine the action they will take either a download, a link to a webpage or even an Email or link to Get A Quote or Estimate or Schedule Maintenance.
6. Set up your Email so that people will be identified when they click on your button.
7. Enable Click Segmentation so that they will be added to a list which will receive a follow up email or a series of emails.
8. Then create an email and insert a text link, button, or clickable image link.
9. Click the button, link, or image and click Linkto select the type of link you want to insert.
10. Add the link, email address, or select the document you want to link to.
11. Select “Enable Click Segmentation”.
12. Select the new list you created.
13. Click Insert.
14. Click Done.

When you’re ready to send your email, you won’t have to do anything special. Once your contacts start clicking on your links or buttons they’ll automatically be sent the email from your autoresponder series whenever you designated it to go out. If you want to try this on Constant Contact click here to get a FREE Trial.

Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing,  training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also view her workshop schedule here.

Is Your Landing Page Doing It’s Job?

One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is creating digital ads that point to their website instead of a good landing page. Many times it is their home page and though the digital ad got the right attention, the landing page fails to get the readers to take action. Don’t make that same mistake. Design your landing pages with actions in mind.

To create the best landing page for your digital or email marketing efforts, you need to ensure that your landing page has the following features:

1. The who, what, where, when, and why information they need in order to say yes or no to your offer.
2. A website for more information if they still have questions.
3. A coupon or call to action button that offers them an incentive to take the action my client wants them to take.
4. My client’s logo and tag line and branding so it is easy to recognize them
5. A deadline that encourages them to take that action soon.
6. Incentive or encouragement for them to share the offer with their friends.

If you have a website that you have control over, creating a good landing page means adding a page to your website or blog that provides all this information on one page (see my example). If you don’t have an easily editable website or blog, consider using a mobile responsive email marketing template as a landing page. If you don’t have one, you can try Constant Contact to set up your next landing page highlighting your action item for events or offers for your digital ads (from Facebook to AdWords).  You can also easily copy the template and test more than one layout to see if you can improve your digital ad results. If you need help creating a landing page that gets you results, contact me for more information about our digital advertising services.

Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing,  training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at her Torrance CA office at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also see her upcoming training workshops calendar at http://adteamla.com/facebook.

Time for a 6 Month Marketing Check In?

Summer is here and half of the year is almost over. So it’s time to evaluate your 2017 marketing plan and it’s effectiveness and to compare it to your goals. While I do an entire class or consulting session on the subject to help small businesses thrive, here are 8 tips to get you started on evaluating your current plan.

1. Compare your sales or donations to date with the goals you set back in January. Are you up? Are you down? The economy is good so you should be up, unless there are other variables keeping you from achieving those goals. Stop now and fix them.
2. Follow-up. What is your plan to reach your target market 7-14 times in 6-8 weeks. Write it down and evaluate how you are doing. If a monthly Email or ad is part of your marketing mix, what is the rest? Digital ads, direct mail, social media? Create a chart on how often your prospects & past customers see your brand & offers.
3. Go digital. If you are not online with up to 50% of your budget, you are not in company with the most thriving businesses in the country.  Consumers search, research and purchase online these days, even when it comes to picking their non-profit donations. Add digital to your media mix.
4. Review your top clients, customers and donors and figure out what they have in common. You need their reviews and their support, so remember to Thank them and see if you are meeting their needs. Consider a survey or a personal check-in.
5. Determine if your target market has changed over time or if you are seeing any new opportunities that can help you grow with a new market. Reach out to a new market or set up new strategic alliances.
6. Add contacts and make sure you have their email addresses. All digital advertising works best when you can connect with your target through social media and online ads in addition to your regular Email marketing program.
7. Join one of my workshops to Grow your Business Faster and learn more tips on how you can meet your growth plan in the second half of the year. If you are not growing, you are falling behind.
8. Schedule a 6 month marketing check-in with me and let’s review your particular business needs and explore your marketing plan for more potential. Email liz@adteamLA,com today.

Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing,  training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also join her training at http://adteamla.com/facebook.

Small Business Week Workshops

Join me 5/2 @6pm today at the City of Bellflower for a FREE Automate your Marketing Workshop with @SCOREOC @ConstantContact @SmallBiz @SBA.gov to maximize your online marketing time http://bit.ly/52automate 

 

Your Biz Can Thrive & Support International Women’s Day

On March 8th, women in 30 countries are supporting a day of solidarity by asking women and the people who support them to not shop or work (if they can afford to) in solidarity of casting light on the buying and working power of women. It is an effort to show the power of women’s support and shopping habits that make companies strong by reducing sales and productivity on International Women’s Day. The organizers hope this will cement the connection between supporting women’s causes like equal work for equal pay (see the stats to support this issue), childcare for working women, and a woman’s access to birth control her personal freedom.

As a company you may be not supportive of a day of no
shopping as it will reduce your bottom line that day.  However  if you are thinking long term, there may be a way for your company to thrive by supporting this cause.  Here are a few ideas:

1. Wear red on March 8th and remind your team to do the same and go here to learn more about the event.
2. If you are a Woman Owned Business post it proudly as organizers suggest any shopping take place at small women-owned businesses.
3. Recognize the day by posting & adding signs at your business that celebrate International Women’s Day on Wed, March 8 and that you support women.
4. Consider donating some of your proceeds that day to support equal work for equal pay or other organizations that support women’s economic strength and choices.
5. Review your business and hiring practices that day to ensure you are not discriminating between the compensation you offer men and women for the same job.
6. Add a sales day during the week or month that celebrates your loyal female shoppers and offers a discount (20% to represent the gender gap) or a donation to their causes.
7. Offer to let your employees take time off to support the cause if your business can afford to do so. If not, offer a celebration (free lunch, donation or a meeting to air concerns). This helps your employees feel included and valued by their employer.
8. If you are open, consider charging women who shop at your business a discount that day or this week, that’ reflective of the difference in wages, roughly 80% of a man’s wage. See stats here.
9. Post and support the cause using your social media and hashtags that include #WomensMarch, #DayWithoutAWoman, #BeBoldForChange, #EqualWorkEqualPay and any others to connect the conversations and connect your company to supporting your buyers. Get more facts here: http://bit.ly/IntlWomen2017day
10. Understand that anyone not shopping on that day or not showing up at work are not fighting you, they are standing up for what they believe and trying to be counted in dollars to the country. So don’t take it personal, recognize the integrity it takes to stand up.

For more information on ideas to grow your business and keep connections with your buyers , contact Tailor-Made Advertising for a one-on-one online or in person consulting appointment to review and improve your efforts, or to help you manage your Email Marketing program or other online marketing efforts. For more information about Liz or Tailor-Made Advertising, visit tailormadeadvertising.com. To schedule Liz Harsch as a speaker for SCORE, SBDC, Constant Contact, Chambers of Commerce and Small Biz Groups on Traditional and Online Marketing, Social Media, Analytics or Email Marketing for your organization, email us at tmade.mkt@verizon.net or call us at 310-791-6300.

 

7 New Constant Contact Features That Can Help Grow Your Business Faster

Constant Contact has changed in order to create a better marketing tool for small business owners. If you have not re-trained yourself on the program you are probably missing opportunities to create a better Email Marketing and media plan for your biz.

Here a few new features I hope you are using:

1. Do you see a menu that shows you the different programs that Constant Contact offers with their format? It should look like this image and give you choices for 7 different marketing options to create. Try them out as they are goal based and help you use the right tool for the job.
2. Make sure you have switched to using mobile responsive templates. In order to get there optimize your results. With over 60% of people opening your emails on an ipad or smartphone, the new drag and drop editor features templates optimized to be viewed on a phone. If you do not see the following image when you create an email, contact Constant Contact to ask them to update your program for the 3G Editor.
3. If you have an old account, don’t just copy an email and keep using the templates. At the top of the page on the right it will give you the option of using the new templates. These templates are mobile responsive and allow viewers to click on your phone number and dial you up. They also offer a preview to view your email as a person on a smartphone will see it as well as a person using a desktop to view your email. The reporting also shows you what percent of your subscribers use a mobile or desktop to open your emails.
4.  The new editor also allows you to create an email template using a pdf or custom code so you can copy an email template from a manufacturer or distributor and edit it for your own company.
5. Use the new Autoresponder series  which allows you to create a series of Email templates to send to your database (time triggered or variable triggered)  expedited over a period of time (you define) to automatically follow up with your database. You can focus on running your biz while your series keeps your company top of mind for your leads or past customers.
6. Are you using tags? Tags allow you to segment your market and send the right message to the right market. All your contacts can then be on just a couple of lists (like a leads list and a customer list) and then you can tag them to segment further (manufacturer, dealer, new lead, student). It allows you to get a lot more targeted with your list and define segments based on actions. Simplify your list using tags.
7. Add more social media posts as a follow up to your Email launch by using their automatic post feature and advertising feature that lets you take any email and turn it into a Facebook ad or pdf for other uses.

Get started on your Email Marketing with a Constant Contact 60 day free trial account.

Liz Harsch is a trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides private or group training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives. She can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at tmade.mkt@verizon.net.

 

3 Experts Help Step Up Your Business in 2017 1/19 – Manhattan Beach Workshop

Did you set your New Year’s resolutions for your business? Are you ready to grow your business faster with financing, market targeting, media changes, strategic partnerships or changing your business plan? Join me, the SBDC, Constant Contact, and a Crowdfunding Expert in Manhattan Beach, CA  on 1/19 to strategize your growth with new ideas. Register here: http://bit.ly/119stepup.

If you are determined to grow faster in 2017, the key is planning now (in January) and making changes to get your company there. It starts with recognizing that doing the same thing year after year is not getting you there. So come get some new ideas, a planning worksheet, and tips on achieving more with your efforts in 2017. You will learn hot tips on today’s digital trends & social media for marketing, business management and savvy advice from SBDC Director Star Van Buren who shares her top tips for business growth after working with hundreds of small business successes. Her advice alone can save you years of trial and errors. Remember that your SBDC is an arm of the SBA — your tax dollars at work so use their services. She can even provide free counselors.

If you are going to spend time this year growing your business, take the time to identify what you are going to change and do it. Stop wishing for growth and let’s start planning for success. If you are not local, contact my company for a worksheet to help you get started. You can also watch my blog for the top takeaways from our event.

Liz Harsch is a trainer for small businesses with SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and County outreach and MWD, Constant Contact, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at tmade.mkt@verizon.net.

Market 2017 Better With a 2016 Review

How are you going to grow your business in 2017? Did you set your goals? Do you know how to get started?  To grow your business better this year, you need to objectively review the success you had in the past and plan how to get to where you want to be at the end of 2017. Start your plan today by reviewing your resources and your marketing tools as well as your statistics and how your marketing tools performed.

I meet with my regular clients for our planning meeting in December or early January to review our successful promotions and compare them with sales or fundraising dollars. Are they are growing or are their non-profit donations and volunteers increasing? Did we meet the goals we set for 2016?  If not, we review which months or promotions missed their mark. But mostly, we look at our successes and build on that experience by duplicating it for other months or other opportunities. That also includes looking at our buyers or donors and seeing if we have found a new audience we can expand upon for 2017.

Whether you are a new business or an existing business, the key is to planning for 2017 is to project your sales or fund-raising goals and set milestone goals to help achieve or exceed them in 2017. By reviewing your past performance,  we can determine what is working and what is not working and whether you are taking advantage of today’s marketing tools. We also look at the competition for opportunities we may be able to identify.  By reviewing all stats from website views to social media and newsletter sign ups we look at results in dollars before we set you new goals.  Then we set new goals and determine the best marketing strategy to get your company the results they need. The planning process makes all the difference and provides a guideline by which to measure progress each month with hard statistics.

Much like setting weight loss goals in January, you need to shed the least helpful promotions and replace them with marketing tools that achieve the actions that lead to sales or donation (clicks to your website, shopping cart or donor button).  To help you plan ahead, I have designed 4 complimentary January workshops to help you plan a smarter marketing plan for 2017.  In addition to providing you with a marketing checklist for 2017, the local workshops will feature a live demonstration on launching mobile responsive Email Marketing campaigns to increase your results: Join my local Jumpstart Workshops and live demonstrations in Bellflower: Jumpstart 2017 on 1/10/17 or in Join me and the SBDC in Manhattan Beach on 1/19/17 with 3 Speakers from Crowdfunding to Market Planning and a Live Demo or come learn to Win the Battle of the Inbox for Online Marketing with the Torrance Chamber of Commerce on 1/25/17.  If you cannot come to plan in person, consider attending my online Junpstart 2017 Marketing Webinar on 1/11/17.  Or better yet, contact me (liz@adteamla.com) to help you customize your marketing plan for 2017.

Liz Harsch is a trainer for small businesses with SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and County outreach and MWD, Constant Contact, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008.  She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at tmade.mkt@verizon.net.