editor, Author at Mediastreet

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How To Get The Most Out Of Your Digital Ads In 2022

February 21, 2022 No Comments

As an e-commerce operation in 2022, chances are the bulk of your advertising budget is earmarked for digital advertising. With a forecast of $524.3 billion this year, the sector spans video, social media, mobile, search, display ads, native ads and email. Given the number of channels, the quickly evolving landscape, and the difficulty of tracking channel-specific ROI, the digital ad landscape can be complex for marketers to navigate and with so much of our ad budgets focused on digital ads, the stakes have never been higher.

When you add in ad fatigue of users, privacy concerns, an adoption of ad blockers, and rampant digital advertising fraud, building your digital ad strategy can be downright daunting.

Fortunately, there are best practices that can help you maximize your return on investment while protecting your brand’s reputation with consumers. Here’s how to get the most out of your digital ads in 2022.

Make Sure Your Ads Are Going To A Quality Audience

Most advertisers don’t realize how rampant digital advertising fraud actually is. Ensuring that you’re buying traffic from a reputable source is essential in getting the most from your ad dollars. Moreover, nefarious practices by some traffic providers, such as ad injection fraud or domain spoofing, can be bad for your brand’s reputation and potentially even result in legal fees.

Ensuring your traffic partner has first party data and is fully compliant with the regulatory landscape is essential – not only for the integrity of your advertising budget, but also for the integrity of your brand.

Connect With Consumers At The Right Moment

The timing and placement of digital ads, and the context in which they’re received by the consumer, should factor into your overarching strategy.

Gone are the days of bombarding consumers with ads that are disjointed from their purchase path or even their mood. To be effective in today’s advertising ecosystem, you need to reach consumers when it adds genuine value to their purchase journey, or to strengthen your brand by enhancing and sharing in the moment or mindset they’re in.

When ads are perceived as disruptive it can have a net negative impact on the brand. Moreover, marketers should consider ways to provide value through ads rather than simply monetizing consumer attention. Remember that putting your ad out into the world is only the first step. It’s crucial to consider how and when ads will be received by consumers, and their potential impact.

Measure Your Results

It’s likely that your digital advertising budget will be spread across multiple channels – from social media, to display ads, search, email marketing and more. Take the time to create infrastructures for tracking channel-specific results.

The first step is understanding exactly what you want to accomplish with your ads. Many brands are good at tracking ROI from sales, but neglect to measure other key performance indicators (KPI) like increased brand awareness, brand sentiment or the discovery of the brand by new audiences.

Once you understand what’s important to you, identify how you’re going to measure success in those areas. This is also a good time to communicate what success looks like with your team, and get their buy-in on big picture brand goals.

Optimize Based On Data

When you have channel-specific data, take action on it. Often, advertisers will go to great lengths to track results, but stop short of taking the critical step of making the data actionable.

In addition to understanding which channels are performing the best for your key performance indicators, you’ll also want to optimize based on what you’re learning from your audience and their experience.

Is your message resonating better with a key demographic? Is a particular ad driving more purchases, while others are driving more engagement? Are you having more success in particular geographical areas? There’s so much to learn from your data, it’s important make room for continual optimization.

With so much competition in the digital advertising ecosystem, it’s important to be intentional about your strategy. Aligning with reputable traffic sources and taking a data-driven approach to optimization are good best practices to follow. Even more important is remembering how you like to be treated as a consumer. To stand out in a crowded landscape, go beyond your KPIs and practice the golden rule.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Jia Wertz

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

I am a documentary filmmaker and the Founder of Studio 15, a socially responsible fashion brand. After leaving behind a 15-year career in the corporate fashion world, I started a company that focuses on doing good and supporting women. It’s Studio 15’s mission to promote and collaborate with other female-owned businesses and to support female entrepreneurs in developing countries through a partnership with Kleos MFG, a non-profit organization.

Sourced from Forbes

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Here’s What Your Company Culture Looks Like to an Outsider. Your team is tired.

February 21, 2022 No Comments

By David Finkel

The majority of business owners I talk to are tired. They are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week and still feel like they aren’t making any progress in their business. Their friends and family barely see them and they wonder how long they can keep this up before they reach critical burnout.

Now imagine having that same feeling of helplessness, as an employee. Imagine working for a company where it is ingrained in the company culture to never leave before your boss does. Imagine having to answer emails, texts, and phone calls all hours of the day and night because it is expected that you too keep up the pace of your overworked, burnt-out employer.

This scenario happens all the time, and it may very well be happening within your own company.

An Outsider’s Look at Your Company Culture

If you were to look at your company culture from the outside, what would you find? Would you find employees who are expected to work overtime or stay late most nights? Would you find team members who carry their phone with them 24/7, for fear of missing an email or a text from their manager and having to suffer the repercussions of a fire drill in the middle of the night? While there are some jobs that require such hours, the majority of them do not. The customer can wait until the morning. That sales call can happen when you are in the office. That email will still be there at 8 a.m.

Give Yourself (and Your Team) Some Grace

It’s really easy to create a company culture of urgency and overwork. It requires more deliberate action to create one of grace and work life balance. Begin by working on your own behaviours. Make it a point to leave the office at 5. Stop yourself before sending out that “urgent” email or text after hours. Try turning off your phone in the evening and avoiding your email all together when not in the office. These actions not only will help you find some peace and avoid burnout, but will save your team from having to field all those “urgent” calls and emails from you.

Once you have started to establish better work habits, make it known throughout the company that you expect similar responses from your team. Tell them that you never expect a response to an email after 6 p.m. Tell them that that phone call can wait until tomorrow. After all, they were staying late and working overtime only because that was what was expected of them. So publicly denouncing those behaviours will go a long way to helping everyone reduce their stress levels and prevent burnout.

Company culture takes time to develop, and there will still be the occasional phone call or late night email. But the better you are about monitoring your own habits and behaviours, the better your team will get at learning that it’s OK to make a hard stop at 5 and prioritizing their mental and physical well-being.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By David Finkel

Author, ‘The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health, or Life’@DavidFinkel

Sourced from Inc.

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Coca-Cola’s new packaging design is a total mess

February 21, 2022 No Comments

By Daniel Piper

How many colours is too many colours?

It’s one of the most ubiquitous and recognisable brands on the planet, and there can’t be many people who’d struggle to identify a can of Coke in a line-up of soft drinks. But The Coca-Cola Company’s new packaging design almost seems designed to get lost in the crowd.

The company has revealed brand new packaging across the entire range of Coca-Cola drinks, along with a brand new flavour, Mocha (which we’ll be giving a hard pass). Coke says the redesign is designed to make the flavours easier to differentiate – but judging by the reaction online, it’s only making things more complicated.

Coca-Cola packaging design

How many colours is too many colours? (Image credit: Coca-Cola/Future owns)

Designed to “modernise and simplify” the brand’s packaging, Coca-Cola’s new cans and bottles feature full colours to “designate single flavours” and stacked colours to communicate “dual flavours” such as cherry vanilla (again, hard pass). But as if throwing a bunch of colours into the mix (at the expense of that instantly recognisable red) wasn’t enough, the company has also seen fit to mess with its iconic logo.

“We wanted to modernise and simplify the look of our packaging to help consumers find the flavour they’re looking for on the shelf through a colourful but clean packaging design,” said Natalia Suarez, senior brand manager of Coke Choice Portfolio, Coca‑Cola’s North America Operating Unit.

Coca-Cola packaging design — Good luck reading these from a distance (Image credit: Coca-Cola )

To denote either full-sugar or zero-sugar, the logo is rendered in either white or black script. That’s all well and good, and indeed a pretty smart way of communicating the two variations. But as plenty of internet users have already pointed out, this blanket approach has led to some legibility issues.

Cherry Coke, for example, features a black logo on a dark purple background. And vanilla Coke is white-on-gold. It’s enough to make you long for the halcyon days of simple white-on-red.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Coca-Cola update its packaging design in recent months. Just last April, it unveiled a bold and minimal new look for its core two flavours. But while this week’s new designs are consistent in terms of the placement of the logo, the choice of colours is anything but minimal. Indeed, what’s the use of one of the best logos of all time if you can hardly read it?

By Daniel Piper

Sourced from Creative BLOQ

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4 Marketing Strategies That Will Turn Your Customers Into Billboards for Your Business

February 18, 2022 No Comments

By Brian Buffini

Learn how to create lifelong relationships with your customers today so they become passionate champions for your business tomorrow.

People love to talk about great experiences. After all, when you really enjoy something, it’s human nature to want to tell others all about it! As a business owner, your aim should always be to give your customers such a great experience that they become walking, talking billboards for the service you provide. You need to do everything in your power to turn your clients into enthusiastic advocates who will send you referral after referral, helping you to build a solid business as well as a fortune.

Here’s how you can start creating lifelong relationships with your customers today so that they will become passionate champions for your business tomorrow.

1. Stay top of mind

If you want your clients to automatically associate you with a great experience and first-class service, you need to consistently stay in contact, provide exemplary care and create a strong sense of community. A really effective way to do this is to provide items of value that they might find beneficial, such as informative market updates, educational e-reports or simply helpful tips for living the good life. When you’re consistent with the high-quality service and value you provide, you’ll stay top of mind, be considered an expert in your field and become your clients’ trusted adviser.

2. Surprise and delight

Even in this technologically advanced world, there’s a human element to business that can never be underestimated. People crave true connection now more than ever, and, in our hectic and often impersonal society, a powerful way to really connect with someone is to surprise and delight him or her. A personal note is an enjoyable and effective way of reaching out and brightening someone’s day — after all, who doesn’t love getting a piece of personalized post in the mail instead of a bill? You could follow up a handwritten note by making a call to say hi or dropping by to deliver a small gift. All of these gestures are designed to show your top clients that you’re thinking of them, but they should never feel burdensome or fake. Keep it simple; keep it quick. And make sure you’re absolutely authentic in each communication.

3. Celebrate your clients

Your database isn’t just a list of names, phone numbers and addresses: It’s a treasure chest of relationships that need to be nurtured. A fun way to make your clients feel valued and part of a larger community is to bring them together to celebrate at a party. It doesn’t have to be a complicated or expensive affair; just getting your top customers together to say thank you and enjoy each other’s company will go a long way towards strengthening the bonds and deepening the relationship between you. Even if you can’t meet in person, there are a lot of fun ways you can connect online and create a community of like-minded people.

4. Ask for referrals

If you serve your clients at the highest levels, they’ll eagerly tell others in their circle. Word will spread, the referrals will pour in, and you’ll become known as the go-to person to do business with! However, it’s also important to remember that you shouldn’t be afraid to remind your clients that you’re never too busy for their referrals. When you go above and beyond to exceed customers’ expectations, you earn the right to ask that they consider recommending you to others. Working by referral this way means that not only will you always have a steady stream of high-quality leads and a business that lasts, but you’ll also get to work with quality clients you like. It’s a win-win!

The more you consistently demonstrate the high level of care you provide, the more your clients will associate your name with exceptional service. When you prove that you’re reliable, trustworthy and excellent at what you do, your customers become megaphones for you in the marketplace, eager to tell other people about the positive experiences they’ve had with you. As a result, they’ll enthusiastically and happily refer you, which means that the reach of your brand will increase, your business will grow, and you’ll be on your way to living the good life.

By Brian Buffini

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Brian Buffini is the founder and chairman of Buffini & Company, the largest training and coaching company in North America. Based in Carlsbad, California, Buffini & Company has trained more than 3 million business professionals in 41 countries and has coached more than 25,000 business people.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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5 Effective Tips to Improve Your Written Communication

February 18, 2022 No Comments

By Chris Odogwu

Written communication is a process of exchanging information, messages, and ideas through text-based messages. Here’s how to improve it.

Do you read some messages from your colleagues that rub you the wrong way? The messages may not be insulting, but the tone is just off. You feel offended, and it reflects in how you relate to them. They probably meant no harm but used the wrong choice of words.

Written communication can go south in many ways. You have to be deliberate in improving how you communicate in writing, so your intentions aren’t misunderstood.

What Is Written Communication?

Written communication is the process of sending text-based messages and instructions through letters, reports, manuals, etc.

Used to pass information across in the workplace, written communication often takes a formal approach. It’s contained in official documents that serve as evidence and point of reference.

New developments are communicated to the team in writing. When team members exhibit unruly behavior, they are issued a query through written communication and respond in the same manner.

Unlike verbal communication that can be forgotten if not recorded, written communication lasts for long, especially if it isn’t tampered with.

The Challenges of Written Communication

As with other forms of communication, the goal of written communication is defeated if the recipients don’t understand the content of the message.

Written communication has several hitches that could alter the meaning of the message or the intention of the sender. Let’s take a look at some of them.

1. A Lack of Clarity

Communication loses its essence when it’s complex. The choice of words used by the sender in written communication can leave the receiver confused. And since the sender isn’t available to clarify things, the confusion lingers.

If employees feel compelled to take action upon receiving complex written messages, they may end up making mistakes due to a lack of understanding of the messages.

Mistakes made at work as a result of clarity issues are a setback for the organization as time and resources are wasted.

2. Time Constraint

The most efficient workflow is one that’s constantly moving. Team members should get whatever information they need instantly and apply it to their work. But that’s not always the case with written communication.

In written communication, the sender sends the message to the receiver. Instead of getting an instant response, they have to wait until the receiver receives the message and then replies. The time spent in between can be costly in urgent situations. The damage may have already been done before the information was gathered.

3. A Lack of Flexibility

The message you sent to a colleague at work might contain inaccurate information. You might want to update the message for more clarity. But once you have already sent it, you can’t do that.

You have to write another message from scratch addressing the misinformation or including the updates that you want to pass across. Doing all that is stressful, especially when you have a pile of work on your hands.

4. Delay in Decision-Making

Making decisions in the workplace requires some level of speed. Everyone involved in the decision-making process has to be updated with the latest developments and make their inputs in a timely manner.

When the decision-making process is coordinated with written communication, the time spent on receiving, reading, and responding to message delays the decision-making process. You can enhance your group decision-making process with the right tools.

5 Ways to Improve Your Written Communication

If you want to thrive in your job or career, you have to pay more attention to your written communication. And that’s because you communicate with people in writing almost every day.

Ensuring that they understand the messages you convey to them helps you to get the desired response. In light of this, let’s discuss some ways you can communicate better in writing.

1. Identify the Goal

What are you trying to achieve with the message? It’s important that you identify this at the beginning, so you can articulate your thoughts in that direction. You can get people to open and read your emails easily with effective writing.

A written message without a clear goal in mind is like a running commentary. You’ll have a full page of content without saying anything concrete. The content of your message may be misleading to the receiver if you don’t figure out your goal.

2. Step Into the Recipient’s Shoes

Written communication misses the mark if the recipient doesn’t have the necessary background information or context to understand the message they are reading. If you write to someone and mention things that they are oblivious of, they’ll be lost.

Put yourself in the reader’s shoes as you compose your message. How much do they know about the subject? Do they need background information or context?

Understanding the reader’s state of mind regarding the subject also helps you to choose the right words and tone to convey your message.

3. Jot Down Ideas

Having made a mental note to write a message, start preparing ahead for it by jotting down ideas that come to mind.

Since you can’t easily retrieve your message from the receiver to make edits or updates, jot down all your points beforehand, so you can include them in your message.

You don’t have to carry a notebook around for that purpose. A note-taking app like Simplenote makes it easier for you to jot down your ideas on your mobile devices on the go. You can access your notes remotely whenever you need them.

4. Be Clear and Simple

The most effective written communications are clear and simple. Now isn’t the time to impress your reader with big words and grammatical expressions.

There’s a tendency for you to want to come across as intelligent with the use of fancy words, but that’s counterproductive in written communication. Remember, you won’t be physically present when the reader reads the message. So, you can’t clarify things if they confuse the reader.

If you are working on a project, you can write a killer project purpose statement with effective written communication.

5. Edit Thoroughly

Reading messages with grammatical errors and typos is a turn-off. Save your recipient the trouble by editing your messages thoroughly before sending them.

Resists the urge to send written messages in a hurry. No matter how urgent it is, make time to edit it. There might be unnecessary words, expressions, and errors in the messages. Going through them one more time will help you spot them, but that won’t happen if you don’t make time for it. Apps like Grammarly are great for editing and fine-tuning your writing.

If you have a reputation for sending error-ridden messages, people will be reluctant to read your messages. They’ll allow your messages to linger until they have the mental strength to withstand the stress that reading your content causes them.

Passing Your Messages Across Effectively

The verbal interactions at work can be noisy. Written communication helps to create some quietness. Teammates can communicate in any situation without drawing attention to themselves.

Once your written communication is clear with the right tone, you can get people to do what you want without following up to clarify things. You also build a reputation for yourself as one who communicates effectively.

By Chris Odogwu

Sourced from MUO

In News

Where Do Salespeople Fit in the Digital World?

February 18, 2022 No Comments

By Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, Sally E. Lorimer, and Ty Curry

In-person meetings between customers and salespeople were once at the heart of B2B buying and selling. Now digital communication is embedding itself in every aspect of business. This had led some organizations to look at the future and ask a simple question: Will we still need salespeople?

This question is not new. However, two powerful forces are reshaping the answer. First, personal and organizational digital savvy are skyrocketing, even among those who were once digitally challenged. Second, evolving technologies make it possible for companies to engage customers in ever-richer experiences, both digitally (e.g., websites, mobile apps) and virtually (e.g. live video calls).

Where do salespeople fit in the digital world?

The Critical Roles They Play

The role of salespeople as talking brochures and order takers has been dying for some time. Yet salespeople continue to play critical roles in many circumstances. Even as customers spend more time interacting through digital channels, salespeople bring value to both new and existing customers, while helping align buying and selling organizations around a mutually valuable solution.

They bring in new customers.

Salespeople still have an important role with customer acquisition. In early 2019, the sales team at Google Cloud Services (GCS) was less than one-tenth the size of the leading competitors, AWS, and Microsoft. Seeking to expand share of the fast-growing enterprise cloud market, GCS went on a hiring spree. It tripled its sales force coverage within a year, hiring industry-focused sales executives. The move helped GCS penetrate many more enterprise accounts, driving revenue growth meaningfully above the overall cloud market. In such complex situations, digital connections alone can’t match salespeople’s ability to bridge mutual knowledge gaps with new customers. Salespeople can learn about customer needs and uncover latent needs. Salespeople can orchestrate the shaping of the offering and highlight the sources of customer value. This is especially critical when solutions are not completely defined (e.g., services) or have uncertain dimensions (e.g., logistical requirements).

They bring value to existing customers.

With expansion sales, the role of salespeople as mutual-knowledge-gap closers continues. And even as more cross-selling and up-selling shift to digital self-serve channels, companies are adding roles to help customers realize value, especially when products or services are subscription-based (e.g., SaaS) or consumption-based (e.g., cloud services and consumables). Usage by customers is the key to renewal and growth, and usage depends on value. Technology companies have customer success managers who work mostly via phone and video to help existing customers maximize the ongoing benefit of their purchase.

They align buying and selling organizations around a mutually valuable solution.

When a buying organization has multiple decision influencers, salespeople strive to build consensus. An under-appreciated role for salespeople is to also harmonize thinking within their own organization. While a sales manager focuses on sales metrics, a marketing manager thinks about product mix, and a finance person pushes to maintain margins. A technology buyer at our consulting firm, ZS, praised an account executive from our cloud services provider: “She connects us to their experts around the globe. She also negotiates on our behalf to ensure her company gets us the best deal.”

Finding the Sweet Spot for Virtual Connection

As simple seller-buyer engagements pivot decidedly to digital, customers continue to turn to salespeople for help with addressing complexity. However, many of the connections once made in-person have moved to virtual. Inside sales roles and hybrid roles (i.e., where salespeople interact with customers virtually and occasionally in-person) are fast replacing traditional field sales roles.

Virtual works when sellers and buyers have a trusted relationship.

In such cases, almost any sales activity can be done virtually. Examples abound. A seller of customized enterprise software established an inside sales team to sell ancillary products to customers after installation. A seller of business supplies replaced its entire midmarket sales force with inside salespeople. Other examples show field sales roles morphing into hybrid roles. A media industry sales team moved 80% of sales retention activity for midsized customers from in-person to digital and virtual channels, refocusing in-person effort on acquiring new customers. A nonprofit now uses informal small group virtual discussions to complement in-person meetings with loyal donors. The strategy has been highly effective for generating ideas and support.

Virtual works for motivated buyers and differentiated offerings.

In these instances, virtual selling can work for new customers and products, not just for repeat sales. The pharmaceutical industry has traditionally launched new products by having salespeople meet in-person with healthcare providers. During the pandemic, there were several successful mostly virtual launches of novel treatments for severe conditions. But launches of new drugs that were less differentiated from existing therapies achieved less success without in-person sales effort.

Leveraging the Power of Virtual Selling and Avoiding the Pitfalls

Sellers are quickly learning that effective virtual selling requires more than merely shifting what was once done in-person to a video or phone interaction. Yes, it’s easier to jump on a call than to jump on an airplane. And virtual meetings are practical for remotely located customers. The true power of virtual is realized by leveraging its unique advantages. Both buyers and sellers can assemble stakeholders and experts from multiple locations. Meetings can be recorded. Participants can quickly look up information and share it on the screen. Digital and AI-driven prompts (for example, about what similar customers find useful) can guide discussions.

Still, virtual selling isn’t right for every situation. Virtual doesn’t work for some hands-on activities, such as demonstrating physical aspects of products. And virtual is less effective with customers who don’t typically spend time at a computer. (For example, an agricultural products company found it difficult to interact with farmers virtually). A key account manager succinctly summarized some reasons to interact in-person: “Half my opportunities come from informal customer discussions. And off-the-record conversations never happen over video.” And another salesperson shared, “I sense what customers are feeling when I am with them.”

Adapting to Changing Buyers and Evolving Technology

Customizing offerings to customer needs has always been part of a successful sales playbook. Now it’s also about customizing communication modes, finding the right mix of face-to-face and virtual personal selling, along with digital outreach and customer self-service. Success requires tailoring connections at each buying/selling step to the knowledge and preferences of buyers, which in turn are evolving rapidly.

As technology continues to advance, the metaverse promises increasingly immersive remote virtual experiences. So the inexorable move from face-to-face to hybrid connection continues. The question is no longer: Will digital replace salespeople? Instead, the question is becoming: How can salespeople and digital work together to create unparalleled customer value and trust?

Feature Image Credit: Tarik Kizilkaya/Getty Images

By Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, Sally E. Lorimer, and Ty Curry

Andris A. Zoltners is a professor emeritus at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is a cofounder of ZS Associates, a global business consulting firm, and a co-author of a series of sales management books, including The Power of Sales Analytics.
PK Sinha is a cofounder of ZS Associates, a global business consulting firm. He teaches sales executives at the Indian School of Business and is a co-author of a series of sales management books, including Building a Winning Sales Force.
Sally E. Lorimer is a marketing and sales consultant and a business writer for ZS Associates, a global business consulting firm. She is a co-author of a series of sales management books, including Sales Compensation Solutions.
Ty Curry is a principal at global business consulting firm ZS Associates, where he helps businesses transform their go-to-market models and drive more effective customer engagement.

Sourced from Harvard Business School

In News

Ways a No-Code Platform Reduces Administrative Costs

February 17, 2022 No Comments

By Alex Chriss

It’s time to refresh and restart your approach to your business. Here’s how.

Whether you’re a veteran business owner with decades under your belt, or one of the millions of “early start” businesses that launched last year — it’s a new world for business owners everywhere. Never-before-seen opportunities and challenges face today’s entrepreneurs and are forcing them to reassess, reprioritize, and even reinvent how they operate so they can continue to drive their businesses forward.

And, as the small-business landscape is set to become even more competitive in 2022, with QuickBooks projecting that more than 17 million new businesses could form this year, the time is now for business owners new and old to position themselves to stand out. So here are three things all entrepreneurs can do to start smart and build a resilient, thriving business.

Avoid path dependence

Path dependence is an economic term that describes when people base decisions on a sequence of past decisions or events rather than on current conditions. Imagine someone suggests changing bank accounts for a better experience — if your first thought is “Ugh, but I’d have to change all my autopayments!” — that’s path dependence.

To put it another way, change isn’t easy. We know that most new businesses set up their services in the first two years of business, but only 7 percent switch suppliers in a given year. And, unfortunately, with the pandemic, we’ve all just seen what happens when small businesses encounter massive market change and can’t adapt.

To avoid path dependence, look for new ways to streamline and improve your business process. How much time do you spend each day determining the health of your business? How much time do you spend managing inventory? Where are your operational inefficiencies? There are online financial solutions that can help you save time, see the big picture, and find new markets. Our recent Small Business Insights report found that almost all business owners — 97 percent — said digital technology would be important to their business in 2022. Finding a trusted technology solution can make a huge difference for small businesses: Four out of five people we surveyed (80 percent) said apps, software, and other digital systems made it easier to share information with employees, suppliers, clients, and customers. And building a business process that scales up as you grow protects you and helps new businesses get it right from the start.

If you’re a more established business and making these changes fills you with dread, get outside help. If you can’t afford outside advisers, ask your network and be open to their suggestions. It also helps to keep your ears open for new directions from unexpected places. Do you find yourself taking your kids’ phones away because they’re spending too much time in online games or apps? They may have discovered your next online sales or advertising channels, and now your kids are your new consultants. Finally, other small businesses in your town or city may be experiencing similar problems. For changes that are too big for one business, seek out partnerships in your community.

Plan for rising costs

Labour costs and inflation are a huge concern for small-business owners. While most small-business workforces are back to their pre-pandemic levels, 88 percent of those surveyed are concerned about the cost of labour, and 48 percent are finding it harder to hire skilled workers. Exacerbating the problem, concerns about everything from inflation to rising material and equipment costs and the supply chain can plague you as you look for new ways to grow.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the one way to protect your business from the labor shortages and an uncertain future is to pay valued employees a salary that incentivizes them to stay with your company. I truly know how difficult it is to build this into a business plan, especially right now, but we are already seeing more small businesses make this adjustment: Forty-six percent of small businesses surveyed are raising wages for existing employees, and 36 percent are giving larger bonuses. This may not be a change you can make now, but be open and communicate with your employees about what they can expect in the next six months to a year.

Adapt to stress

Ok, we’re going on a short field trip. There’s a lighthouse located on a high bluff in the Point Reyes National Seashore, west of San Francisco. To get there, you have to pass beneath an archway of trees that have been shaped by the continual stress of fierce Pacific Ocean winds. Those arched trees are caused by a phenomenon called “reaction wood” or, more imaginatively, “stresswood.” The wood literally changes its own cellular composition to survive the effects of gravity.

And whether you realize it or not, you have to too. You have endured and survived unimaginable, frankly historic levels of stress for almost two years. Changes caused by the pandemic will continue to ripple through the small-business economy for many years, so it’s important to anticipate stress, incorporate it into your plans — and, most important, figure out how to manage it. Here are a few ideas:

Protect your time. There are 24 hours in a day. Plan for a future where at least four to six hours of the day are reserved for you to live your life, in a world where a business can feel like a never-ending investment.
Avoid time traps. No more manually updating a spreadsheet or paper ledger to keep track of your business. No more doing the books yourself. According to our report, accountants help small businesses make better decisions, save them money, and help them survive longer. And while 73 percent of small businesses overall said they have an accountant, among younger businesses (less than two years old), this drops to just 54 percent. Use the tools and resources available — like an experienced bookkeeper — to help your business operate more efficiently.
Know your finances and build back cash reserves. Knowing the truth about your business can be scary but it can also free you to make changes that will help you strengthen your company. Two key components of that truth are understanding your cash-flow situation and building back cash reserves. Almost three in five (57 percent) of the small-business decision-makers we surveyed have less than six months of cash reserves. If you have to temporarily focus or streamline your product and service offerings to do so, that’s OK.
Step away to see the big picture. Even if it’s only for five minutes, take a step back from the business. If you can’t make it to a lighthouse in the West this year, go find the trees that survived the fiercest winds in your community. Step back in order to see your small business with fresh eyes. After all, what is the most important resource for any business, whether brand new or new again? It’s you.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Alex Chriss

Sourced from Inc.

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How To Build A Strong Network And Create An Effective Networking Strategy On LinkedIn

February 17, 2022 No Comments

By Wendi Weiner

Building a strategic network requires formulating relationships, sending purposeful messages, and creating meaningful engagement.

In last week’s column, I discussed the importance of seeking out informational interviews as part of a job search strategy or career transition. This week, I want to include a complementary piece on how to properly network, build networking contacts, and create an effective networking strategy on LinkedIn.

Networking in the digital age is significantly easier than in the predigital age. This is because you have wide access to a larger portfolio of potential contacts — former co-workers, mentors, high-profile executives (such as the general counsel at Starbucks), business leaders, law firm partners, legal commentators and journalists, and fellow law school alumni. These individuals are merely a click away on LinkedIn and can easily loop us into a networker’s paradise.

Building a strategic network requires formulating relationships, sending purposeful messages, and creating meaningful engagement. Networking is not a race to build more followers on LinkedIn or engage in a “comment-for-comment” quid pro quo on your content. Networking is a long-term strategy with a tactical process involved. Yet, and probably like you, I get dozens of misguided and misdirected messages on LinkedIn every week.

Here’s an example of recent networking gone wrong on LinkedIn:

During the last days of December, I received a message in my inbox with an attempted networking call-to-action from a connection on LinkedIn: “Wendi, I’d like to introduce you to a UF graduate all-star. ____ was a student leader at (insert fraternity name here) and left his mark on future generations there. He works in support[ing] the legal industry. Of course, I thought of you when he told me what he is doing. Please review his profile and take his phone call as he will be reaching out to you soon.”

Typically, people reach out to me at the very end of the year to kick off their job search. The message did not seem to have a purpose other than letting me know the recent grad supported the legal industry (he marketed software to firms). So, I let my connection (a financial services professional who added me a few years ago on LinkedIn) know I was out on a holiday break and that I worked with senior attorneys, executives, and C-suite/board leaders for career services. I provided him with a referral to a colleague who was a more appropriate fit for him. The next response came in from the recent college grad:

“I appreciate the introduction. It’s a pleasure to continue to grow my Gator Alumni network. Wendi, it is very nice to meet you via LinkedIn and I hope you had a nice holiday. A few months back, I spoke with ____ about expanding my professional network and he has been helping to connect me with fellow colleagues in the legal space. If you have 15 minutes come January, I’d love to speak with you to learn about your practice as well as share some information about what it is I am doing. Please let me know what date might work.”

The initial sender was the past president of the same fraternity chapter nearly 40 years ago and had genuine motives and interest for his young protégé. However, he didn’t create a message with a purpose or address it to a targeted recipient. Instead, he quickly ran a search of his connections with “attorney” or “lawyer” in their headlines and sent out the same blanket message to each of those connections, hoping for something to stick. If you skim my LinkedIn headline and about/summary section, you’ll learn in less than 30 seconds what I do and who I serve. You’ll also quickly realize I’m not a Gator alumnus (I graduated from Florida State University in 1999), I’ve never owned my own law firm, and I haven’t held a legal role since I left practicing law in 2015.

Since the initial outreach was not targeted correctly, the outcome resulted in a new college grad asking to set up a 15-minute coffee chat with someone who would never be a potential client — a waste of time for both of us. The original message also lacked purpose, strategy, and clear messaging, which defies the goal of networking.

As the recipient of these messages (and repeated faux pas) on a weekly basis, it feels more like a pepper spray approach of hitting “connect” with the same cookie-cutter messages. While I realize many utilize automation software as part of the sales networking funnel and marketing strategy, lawyers are in a business (and industry) of building relationships. That means we connect purposefully and with intent. We know time is money and we also realize that relationship building is something that takes credibility and trust to foster.

A network is only as strong as the connections you have in it — and while we all welcome new connections, messages should have a purpose for that call-to action.

Here’s my simple advice for LinkedIn networking: be sure you read through the person’s profile thoroughly before you “pitch” them or ask for a coffee chat. Don’t send mass connection requests and cookie-cutter connection messages. Don’t assume that each person will want to engage in a “15-minute call” for networking. Instead, engage virtually and foster synergy. Think about how you’ll add value and create a truly authentic connection. Your LinkedIn inbox provides enormous networking capabilities, but you must use it wisely.

Remember, you want the right people connected to you as well as the right people in your network — otherwise networking loses its meaning and goal.

By Wendi Weiner

Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing services company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, executives, and C-suite/Board leaders for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. You can reach her by email at [email protected], connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.

Sourced from ABOVE THE LAW

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The 10 Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples to Learn From

February 17, 2022 No Comments

By Harikrishna Kundariya

Email marketing has been a leader in the marketing domain since its inception, and no other marketing channel has been discovered that is so cost-effective. Email marketing started way back in 1978, and since then, it has been widely used by businesses to promote their products and keep in touch with their customers.

Before diving into the best email marketing campaigns, you should have a quick look at email marketing. It will help give a clearer picture of the ideas discussed below.

What is email marketing?

In simple words, email marketing is a process used by companies to promote their goods and services over the mail. Today, email marketing has grown from just promotional emails to personalized emails, and it has become the centre of customer interaction. It is one of the best return on investment marketing strategies for companies. Hence no matter what new strategies arise, this one does not diminish.

Time for some quick facts and statistics about emails and email marketing.

In 2019, every day, 296 billion emails were sent.
Email Marketing has the highest return on investment. For example, every $1 you spend behind email marketing gives you a return of $42.
Email marketing is vital for the success of a business, it has been admitted by 78% of marketers.
Email engagement is used to track content performance across channels, and 90% of people believe this.

Now, you know what email marketing is and some eye-opening facts about email marketing. So here are some of the best email marketing campaigns that you can learn from.

1. Uber

Uber is a leading ride-booking and taxi application that operates in multiple countries. Uber has significantly benefited from its email marketing campaigns. Its email campaigns are really straightforward and simplistic.

It keeps the call-to-action(CTA) very clear, and the newsletters don’t take much time to read. They deliver all the essential news effortlessly that helps get their point across. In their personalized emails, they share journey maps that make customers feel special.

Learnings From This Campaign

What you need to learn here is that content matters, and a proper CTA is equally important. While creating email marketing templates and newsletters, you should focus on providing quality content to your audience rather than experimenting with catchy colours and photos.

2. Netflix

Who uses technology better than Netflix, which originally is based on Node.js development services. Its marketing teams always come up with fresh ideas that go on to become a trend in the industry. There are many such examples, and here is one of their email marketing campaigns.

Netflix started a campaign to target an audience that was not active on their platform. With its AI and machine learning technologies, it was easy for the firm to identify such users. Then Netflix started sending personalized emails to every customer based on their viewing history and likes. This campaign helped Netflix grow its active user base by bringing people back to the platform.

Learnings From This Campaign

One of the key learnings of this campaign is that taking care of your users is key. Sending personalized emails and notifications develops a sense of commitment and connection between the users and your brand, and when this is done, you can grow exponentially.

Another thing worth mentioning is that you should get help from technology as much as possible. This will help you uncover hidden data and insights which are worth taking action on.

3. PayPal

PayPal is a leading payments processing platform for global transactions. It is an online service that charges some money to help you transfer money from one part of the world to another. PayPal is an innovative company, and it is constantly thriving to make its products the best. Here you’ll see an email marketing campaign from PayPal.

PayPal introduced the new “checkout with PayPal” feature. This feature was integrated into many online e-commerce stores and other offline stores too. But to make it popular, the company’s marketing team resorted to email marketing. The emails were sent to all subscribers of its promotional campaigns, and it was a significant hit.

PayPal focused on providing value to the user, so they concentrated on showing the benefits of this new feature in their marketing campaign. They never promoted the features in the campaign; it was all about how customers could benefit from using the new service.

Learnings From This Campaign

Instead of marketing the features of your products, you should consider highlighting the benefits to the customers. More people will use the features if you deliver value straightaway. This helps customers determine whether a service is worth their efforts or not.

You can quickly drive more customers to use your products with value showcasing. It is a humble and straightforward way of marketing new offerings.

4. Starbucks

Starbucks sells coffee, but there are brands that sell even better beverages than what Starbucks offers. What fuels Starbucks’ business is its innovative marketing strategies and tactics.

Starbucks sends newsletters and promotional emails to its customers regularly, and these emails are filled with colors and enticing graphics of coffee and other beverages. This makes people drool over the offerings and drives more people to their stores.

Learnings From This Campaign

Email marketing is not just plain words. You need to enrich it with images and catchy content. With the right combination of design and marketing tactics, you can increase your product sales, and Starbucks coffees are the prime examples of this.

5. Uniqlo

Uniqlo is an online eCommerce website that deals in a variety of products. It aggregates users’ email IDs for login, identity verification, promotional emails, and meaningful order updates.

Uniqlo ran a unique email marketing campaign where the company sent emails to users about price updates for items in their wish list or carts. This campaign reduced cart abandonment, a common problem in the eCommerce industry.

Learnings From This Campaign

For eCommerce companies, cart abandonment is a significant problem, and keeping in touch with customers helps reduce this. Plus, this provides customers a feeling of savings when they find out that the prices of their liked items have decreased, and they can buy them now.

6. Airbnb

Airbnb started humbly, and it polished its services through user reviews. Airbnb ran an email marketing campaign where it asked people to take a survey about their services.

In this campaign, Airbnb reached out to their customers and gave a survey link to each of them with the email. The email template was simple, starting off with thanks and then a perfect CTA for the survey. Many customers took the survey, and the marketing campaign was really successful for Airbnb.

Learnings From This Campaign

If you want to grow your business, being open to customer feedback is the best way. As emails have high opening rates, you get more customer feedback, and the more feedback you get, the more you can work on the betterment of your brand. It establishes a connection between the brand and your customers.

7. BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed is a content-centric business, and who knows emails better than they do. BuzzFeed uses email marketing to generate traffic to its website.

It increases traffic with email marketing by providing beautiful snapshots of the content and artistic imagery. It raises curiosity in the email reader’s mind and then carefully places a CTA to redirect traffic to its website.

Learning From This Campaign

You should use email marketing with a good CTA to increase website traffic if you run a content-centric website. To do this, you first need to have an organic mailing list so that you can drop emails to the right audience instantly. When your website traffic increases, your domain authority also increases, and you start ranking higher on search engine results page.

8. Headspace

Headspace is a mindfulness and meditation app that has garnered quite a popularity with the covid-induced lockdowns and stressful environments. With its domain, it follows calm colors and simplistic visuals. This same brand identity it follows in its emails.

Headspace runs email marketing campaigns with simple images, and it solely focuses on the power of its products. It showcases the power of its features through its welcome emails. The welcome emails are full of soothing colours and graphics that provide a premium feel to new users.

Learnings From This Campaign

Sticking to your brand identity is essential. It helps people visually distinguish your brand. People receive hundreds of promotional emails every day, so to help them identify and interact with your email, you need to fashion it according to your brand identity. You can use the colours and graphics that your branding consists of so that it looks more appealing.

9. Mint

Mint is a finance tracking application from Intuit, which is a global brand. The platform helps people track everything about their money, starting from saving to investing. It is like a one-stop-shop.

Mint runs an email marketing campaign where they send personalized birthday emails to their users. Though it is a small gesture, it goes a long way. Mint does this with the help of automated email drip campaigns and their customer’s data.

Learnings From This Campaign

Making your customers feel special on their birthdays is a great way to increase brand loyalty. Mint does not provide any marketing information or a CTA in such emails; it solely wishes the customer a happy birthday without any business expectation. But this makes a lasting impact on the users, and the product grows because it looks more personalized to the user.

10. Withings

Withings is a health-tracking application and platform aimed at helping people achieve their health goals. It follows a reward-based approach, and it rewards people based on their goal completion percentage.

Withings has an email marketing campaign where the company sends personalized emails on the achievement of every milestone. This helps the users stay on track and be motivated for their health choices.

Learnings From This Campaign

Interacting with users and rewarding them for their achievements goes a long way. It is one of the simplest and most effective methods to keep users active with your product. You can set up an automated email campaign for this task, and it can keep sending emails to your customers forever.

Wrapping up

Before you start an email marketing campaign, it is good if you can have a look at some successful campaigns. This helps you brainstorm and include things in your marketing campaign to make it more effective.

This article provides a round-up of the best email marketing campaigns with their learnings. So be sure to use these learnings in your email marketing campaigns to help your business grow.

By Harikrishna Kundariya

Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

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The Business of Harnessing the Power of Social Media

February 16, 2022 No Comments

By Juda Honickman

As business owners and entrepreneurs look to harness the power of social media in a shifting digital landscape, they will need to have an excellent grasp of social media fundamentals and keep up with evolving social media trends.

Social media platforms and channels continue to evolve, challenging businesses to adjust social strategies to capture the attention of target audiences, build brand visibility and generate leads. As business owners and entrepreneurs look to harness the power of social media in a shifting digital landscape, they will need to have an excellent grasp of social media fundamentals and keep up with evolving social media trends.

The sheer number of social media users makes a compelling case for businesses to increase their social media acumen. As of April 2021, social media platform users reached a global total of 4.33 billion – that equates to more than half the world’s population which stood at 7.85 billion at the start of April 2021.

On average, users spend nearly 2.5 hours on social media. Much of this time is spent on the larger social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. This captive audience provides business owners and entrepreneurs a powerful opportunity to reach and connect with key stakeholders. The most effective way for business owners and entrepreneurs to do this is by adhering to best practices when it comes to social media fundamentals and making it a priority to keep up with evolving social media trends. The following are a few of the social media fundamentals and trends every business owner should either master or be aware of.

Know your audience

Today, competition for capturing the attention of target audiences on social media platforms is fierce. And, considering that according to one oft cited study, the average human attention span is eight seconds which is less than the reported 9-second attention span of a goldfish, brands don’t have much time to attract notice.

Competition for mind share and dwindling attention spans make it critically important for brands to understand who their audience is to most effectively connect and engage with them.

The process of knowing the audience includes determining what social media platforms they most use and researching what their ‘pain points’ are, what their needs and wants are and what content will most appeal to them. Surveys, customer data and social media analytics can help companies refine social media strategies to ensure the right audience is targeted with content that is relevant and personalized to them.

Find brand voice

Brand voice is defined as the distinct personality a brand takes on in its communications. A strong social media strategy starts with companies knowing who they are and what they represent. According to a Sprout Social Index survey, brands that stood out more to consumers on social media had more memorable content (40%), had a distinct personality (33%) and told compelling stories (32%). Sprout Social noted that “in all three of these aspects, brand voice plays a significant role. You can’t have a distinct personality without a distinct brand voice.”

Developing an authentic voice aligned with company branding develops trust and recognition with audiences, allows key stakeholders to get a clear sense of company values and connects audiences more deeply to brand messaging.

Consistently post content

An intentional social media strategy that focuses on posting content consistently keeps audiences engaged, develops loyal followers and boosts brand awareness. In the social media realm, lack of consistency is a sure way to lose audience interest.

Research from Hootsuite revealed the ideal number of times a day (or week) to post for each platform:

On Instagram, post between 3-7 times per week.
On Facebook, post between 1 and 2 times a day.
On Twitter, post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day.
On LinkedIn, post between 1 and 5 times a day.

To stay on top of posting regularly, business owners can develop a social media content calendar as a tool for scheduling out social posts each month. This strategy can help businesses plan for and tie social posts to holidays, recognitions and upcoming events. Using a content calendar to develop a consistent cadence of posting also allows companies to analyse what content is working and what is not so that the content strategy can be fine-tuned across platforms to ensure that posts most effectively resonate with and engage target audiences.

Engage in social listening

Social listening allows companies to monitor and analyse digital interactions and conversations related to company, product, competitor and industry mentions across social media channels. Talkwalker notes that social media listening gives companies the view from 30,000 feet by “pulling conversations from social media and analysing the conversations in aggregate for insights.”

Social listening can help companies understand whether mentions are increasing or decreasing in a given month, whether people are engaging with content, what is trending related to a specific industry or topic and whether sentiment/feedback is positive or negative.

Now let’s take a look at some evolving social media trends.

Video

The popularity of video content on social media will continue to grow. Consider that on average, more than 100 million video hours are watched per day on Facebook and according to data from Limelight Networks, user generated content such as videos on social media significantly increased in popularity, doubling over the past year to four hours per week.

Video content is also going short form. The fact is, most social media users don’t have time to watch videos that are longer than a few minutes, making the optimum length for these shorter videos about 90 seconds or less. Audience preference for short form video content is a major reason for the surge in popularity of video-sharing app TikTok which reached 1 billion active global users in September 2021.

Stories

Immersive and interactive, stories remain one of the most popular features on social media. The personal and ephemeral nature of these 10-15 second photo or video posts make them more compelling to audiences than newsfeeds. They are typically a vehicle for brands to more casually share the inside scoop on company updates and showcase products and services.

Instagram is one of the most popular platforms for this feature, reporting 500 million daily active Stories users worldwide in 2019. Currently, 9 other social media platforms have their own version of stories available including business networking platform LinkedIn.

Live stream

Live streaming is trending on social media now. Companies are using this approach to stream behind-the-scenes content, announce new products, demonstrate products, give facility tours and host live Q&A sessions. Live streams also allow businesses to inject more personality into their social media with challenges and giveaways as well as surveys and polls.

As a tool for real-time engagement, live streaming is a great way to increase brand awareness, improve and enhance communication with target audiences and gain a deeper understanding of audience interests.

By Juda Honickman

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Juda Honickman loves growth, strategy and being creative with disruptive brands. Currently serving as CMO for Slinger Bag Inc., an innovative sports brand focused on game improvement, Honickman previously held senior marketing positions in global consumer and tech companies.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe