If you own a small business, sooner or later you have to make sales. Some entrepreneurs view the prospect of a sales call with the same fear and loathing as having to face an IRS audit. Even if you have salespeople on your team, some customers – especially big customers and clients – need to see the owner before they’ll sign on the dotted line. So you’re going to have to get out there – or on the Zoom call – and make the pitch.
Take heart: Sales is a craft, not an art. It can be learned. Here are a few keys to successful sales:
Listen
No sales skill is more important than the ability to listen. A great salesperson hears what the customer wants – their concerns and priorities.
When calling on a customer, it’s tempting to immediately launch into your sales pitch, but by listening, you better understand how your product or service meets the customer’s needs and desires. Don’t just tell the customer what you think they’ll be interested in or stick to your standard sales patter.
Ask questions
You can’t listen to a customer unless you get them talking. Ask relevant questions to draw them out: “What do you like in your current solution?” “What don’t you like?” “What features are the most important?”
Don’t just ask questions to qualify them as a hot prospect, such as, “Are you ready to buy a car today?”
Tell them what they get, not what you do
When I was first in business, I went to many networking events, and I was struck by how many business owners told others HOW their product or service (or business) worked, not about the benefits. Customers don’t want to know the ins and outs of your business; they want to know how you meet their needs.
Appreciate the benefits of your product or service
Genuine enthusiasm is contagious. If you truly believe you’re offering the customer something worthwhile, you’ll be a more effective salesperson. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in your product, you shouldn’t be selling it.
Don’t oversell
It’s tempting to land a sale by telling the customer anything and everything they want to hear, but that’s almost certain to lead to customers’ being dissatisfied or disappointed. An acquaintance who owned a successful chain of moderately priced hotels told me his strategy was to “promise customers a Chevy, then deliver a Cadillac.” By under promising and overdelivering, he built an exceptionally loyal customer base.
Be honest
Lying is not only unethical and possibly illegal; it’s a sure-fire way to lose customers and potential customers. You may even find yourself facing a lawsuit.
Compare, don’t criticize your competition
Yes, I know, your product or service is so much better than your competitor’s, and they’re really not very nice people either. But disparaging your competition makes you appear malicious. Instead, factually – and positively – compare your benefits and value to those of your competitor.
Build relationships
One of Rhonda’s Rules is “people do business with other people.” We all prefer to do business with people we like and trust. Consider the “lifetime value” of a customer, not just a onetime sale. Often, you might want to make a little less profit to begin an ongoing customer relationship. Get to know your customers; find out about their businesses or families. One way small businesses can compete with the big guys is by building strong customer relationships.
How to structure your sales pitch in a conversation
By listening to customers, you find the issues important to them. At some point, you need to make the pitch – actually ask a “prospect,” to buy. Of course, you don’t push right in. A sales pitch goes something like the following:
► First, you’ve got the pitch itself: the description of your product or service and its benefits and competitive advantage. You can probably do that.
► Next, you wait. You listen for the customer’s concerns and objections. If they don’t say anything, you ask something like, “Does that make sense to you?”
► Third, you reply to their concerns directly. And you ask them something like, “Did I answer your questions?”
► Finally, you muster some courage and say, “I’d really like your business. I think we’re a very good fit for your needs. Can we make that happen?”
Of course, then you’ve got negotiation on price and terms and the like, but you’ve agreed to do business together.
Take heart. Making sales gets easier – not easy, but easier – the more you do it. And you have to do it if you want to grow your business.
By Rhonda Abrams
Rhonda Abrams was named a “Top 30 Global Guru” for Startups. Connect with Rhonda on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Register for Rhonda’s free business tips newsletter at www.PlanningShop.com.
It takes confidence to start a business, but entrepreneurs have a lot to gain by going it alone. Here are some of the big perks running a small business can bring you:
Independence – Small business owners can do things their own way, from the business plan and marketing to services or products sold.
Flexibility – Although starting a business takes a decent amount of effort, the payoff is being able to work from home or fit clients around your schedule.
Innovation – When you’re the person in control of the business, new ideas, projects, and opportunities are easy to grab hold of.
Feeling ready to start your business, but still need some inspiration? Read on for 7 of the best business ideas in 2021 for entrepreneurs.
Let’s start out with one of the most versatile business ideas out there. If you’ve ever been tempted to launch a retail business, now is the time.
An eCommerce store is perfect for small business entrepreneurs who want a job they can do from home with surprisingly minimal start-up costs.
Sure, you might want to make and store the products that you sell, but it’s easy to choose a business model like dropshipping that takes away the inventory management side of things.
With dropshipping, you order and ship products from suppliers based on demand from your customers. It’s a super low-investment option which still has traction.
Whatever ideas you come up with, you’ll need a website. The central function of eCommerce businesses, becoming a website owner isn’t as hard as you might think.
The fastest and most low-cost way to start a business online is with a website builder.
Although they’re low-cost, great website builders provide powerful tools to small businesses. Plus, you won’t need any coding skills to get started.
The very best website builder platforms have impressive eCommerce functions for your online store, too. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect from the key players:
Zyro — Fast and intuitive with smart AI features to help with branding and imagery, Zyro’s online store builder is beginner-friendly, ideal for users with new business ideas.
Wix — Another feature-filled all-rounder, building an online store is made simple on this platform thanks to easily editable website templates and a worldwide customer base.
Shopify — Used globally by businesses and entrepreneurs, Shopify stores come with tons of integrations. Just beware the transaction fees if you don’t use Shopify Payments.
WooCommerce — Built for WordPress and packed with add-ons, this ecommerce platform is a great place for people with a little more website building and business experience.
BigCommerce — Ideal if you’re dropshipping products on your online store, this highly configurable platform has plenty of support for its users.
There are plenty more business ideas, if having an online store isn’t quite your thing. Instead of selling products, you could sell your skills with online courses.
It’s a lucrative home-based business to start in 2021 as people look for new learning opportunities. You can likely find clients willing to pay for your expertise in most industries.
Whether you’re a makeup artist or you can teach writing skills, figure out what sets you apart. Which courses are in demand?
Put together a business plan that takes your idea from side business to main business. Think about things like subscription models and creating video content.
Starting a business like this can be low-investment and easy to launch with just an internet connection. Just make sure that you have a niche and – most importantly – some expertise.
3. Affiliate marketing
Get businesses to pay you to promote their products. If you’re a confident kind of person or a marketing pro, this is one of those business ideas that can grow exponentially.
With affiliate marketing, you promote the products that another business or store sells, and earn commission from your clients if customers end up buying from your referral.
It’s a well-known side hustle that’ll bring in money while you focus on other business ideas, but some people are able start a business focused on affiliate marketing services.
To thrive as an affiliate marketer, it pays to establish a standout online presence and grow from there. You can easily get started from home.
Set up a blog, website, or leverage your social media accounts to bring your clients a wide range of customers.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
4. Online coaching
Some of the best business ideas are about inspiring other people, not just selling products and services. If you’re that type of person, this idea is for you.
Self-improvement is always in style. If you’re able to offer a service like fitness, life, or career coaching, now is the time to start finding clients.
You’ll have to be an expert at the job, whether you’re a personal trainer or a content marketing guru. Most coaching clients are professionals searching for a high-impact service.
If you want to start a business coaching others, consider carving your niche by creating step-by-step programs or self-publishing a guide.
This is a cool low-cost online business idea that you can start from home. People are willing to pay for self-improvement, so set up a slick website and write your business plan.
Whether you’re a pro chef or a talented home cook feeding friends and family, there’s a small business opportunity waiting for you, too.
Foodie entrepreneurs have been changing the food business landscape for the last few years, making it easier for customers to find and buy healthy options.
People are embracing creative catering services more than ever, so this is an exciting business model to grab onto. Is there a niche that no one has thought of yet?
Storyboard some ideas for your catering service and get cooking. You could cater to specific clients or serve themed food, for example.
While a catering business is cool, make sure you’ve got the right permits if you turn this into your full-time job – especially if you work from home.
(Image credit: Pexels / Pixabay)
6. Craft beer and cocktail making
Some small business ideas aren’t super low-cost but they are super fun. Beer and cocktail making is one of them.
If you have the talent (and the start-up capital), this is a cool and profitable business to start. The demand for craft beer and cocktail kits seems to be soaring.
A lot of people start a business like this from a hobby or passion. It’s possible to get brewing at home, but as with catering services you’ll need to check for certification requirements.
Craft beer and cocktail making takes some real skills, so prepare for the start-up costs and the learning curve.
That said, if you work with the right people and nail your marketing efforts, you can create incredible in-demand products. Check out some brewery success stories to inspire you.
If you’re set on starting a low-cost small business from home, offering your services as a virtual assistant is a worthwhile move.
You might even be surprised to find out that businesses pay good money for someone else’s organizational skills. So if you’re an organized person, get networking.
As a virtual assistant, you could offer a range of services, starting from filing emails to planning calendars and streamlining the day-to-day life of a business professional.
This kind of service takes a proactive approach and a great network of customers. That said, it’s a great home business idea and pretty low-investment to start.
Why not think differently with your business marketing, and use your social media accounts to reach out to younger professionals or other small businesses?
One of the best small business ideas for industry professionals is to simply share your expertise. With some effort, you can seriously monetize your insider knowledge.
Consultants are often in high demand by both large and small businesses looking to scale, adapt, or change how they do things. What do you specialize in?
Include written or video testimonials from previous clients, or ask previous coworkers for positive references when you’re only just starting out with this business idea.
Embrace social media platforms, too. With channels like LinkedIn and Instagram, you can build a global network of business contacts.
(Image credit: McLittle Stock / Shutterstock)
9. Graphic design
People need graphic designers for a huge number of tasks, from building bespoke websites to designing packaging or event posters.
If you’re a trained or immensely skilled graphic designer, it’s time to put yourself out there. This is another business idea that you can start from home.
Like every impressive small business, it starts with a website. Show off your graphic design portfolio with a dedicated site, packed with photos and back-stories.
Stick to what you know, and don’t try to appeal to every business out there to make money. Advertise what makes you unique as a graphic designer and let people find you.
To help them, be sure to nail your marketing efforts. Get on social media, set up a business email address, and perfect your search engine optimization (SEO) setup.
Like the idea of having an online store, but don’t like the idea of storing inventory? Start printing on-demand: it’s low-cost, high-reward, and easy to get started.
From greeting cards to t-shirts, you can create custom designs and outsource the printing and production to a manufacturer. They’ll handle shipping, too.
This is one of the coolest business ideas for creative people who want to earn extra money from a side hustle – you can use your flair for design and let someone else manage logistics.
If you want to go all-in with on-demand printing and turn it into a small business, this is one idea you can easily scale.
Consider sharing your products and services on marketplace sites as well as your own website – before you know it, you’ll be building your own brand.
11. Translation services
There are many advantages to speaking multiple languages, especially when it comes to business opportunities. For starters, you can become a translator.
Translation is an invaluable service for tons of organizations, from governments and schools to blogs and marketing campaigns.
Start a small business from home and make money with a simple translation service, or grow it into a range of services and offer a whole catalog of ways to help people.
You could create online courses, provide virtual interpreting services, and even become a freelance writer if you can speak, read, and write in other languages.
If you’re looking for small business ideas that will make the most of your linguistic skills, look no further. The best part? You can work from home – or anywhere you’d like.
If you’re an accountant looking for a new challenge, or just a super organized person who’s great with numbers, consider this small business idea.
You can build an online business with a wide range of clients, specializing in one industry or generalizing by offering your services far and wide.
Plenty of businesses require bookkeeping support, so if you’re a savvy accountant who wants to make money from home, start networking.
Advertise your services on your professional website, on platforms like LinkedIn, and by reaching out to businesses that you’d love to work with.
Online bookkeeping can be a really low-cost yet lucrative way to build a small business. Make sure that people know you’re trustworthy and ready to assist.
13. Social media marketing
One of the most in-demand services in this list of business ideas, social media marketing is crucial to pretty much every modern online business.
Using social media to get engagement, new leads, and website traffic is key these days, whether you run a big or small business.
If you know how to help people blow up in the right way on social media platforms, start selling your services. Make sure that your own social accounts are in great shape.
From social media consultants to scheduling help and ideas planning, businesses will be looking for a wide range of assistance.
This is one of those business ideas that requires a solid portfolio of work or a network of happy contacts. If you’ve got that, what are you waiting for?
Small business ideas don’t have to be huge. If you’re simply keen to make money from home while flexing your writing skills, look for some copywriting opportunities.
For a low-cost route, advertise your services on freelance or task websites so that people or businesses looking specifically for copywriters can find you.
Of course, having your website is a great idea. You can fill it with examples of your work, positive testimonials, and contact information.
If you don’t have any experience, make and share examples of your writing styles and show people how versatile you can be.
There are plenty of businesses that could use freelance writers – you could do anything from affiliate marketing to SEO blogs, storytelling, or news articles.
So many small business ideas – how do you know which business to start? Well, that’s down to you.
If this long list of business ideas has inspired you, but you’re still not sure whether to open a store or offer cleaning services, here’s how to work it out:
Find your passion – A small business can be low-cost to start, but demanding to run. Ensure you’re pursuing business ideas and customers you’ll love.
Know your strengths – Starting a business needs expertise. Impress people by creating a small business you understand.
Determine your capital – There are plenty of low-cost business ideas out there, but you might need to spend money to make money.
Conduct market research – Make sure you’re offering services or products that people want. Only pursue small business ideas that are in demand.
The Reach-owned website was the only Northern Ireland-based news brand shortlisted in this year’s awards which rewards original, clever and thought-provoking work across the best platforms in the UK.
The commercial team at Reach NI was also highly commended in the Commercial Campaign of the Year category for their work with Electric Ireland on the ‘Power of Pause’ campaign which was nominated alongside work by Channel 4, LADbible Group and Evening Standard.
Editor of Belfast Live, Ryan Smith, said: “This is a very proud moment for us and it’s brilliant to be recognised among major titles across the UK.
“More people than ever are choosing Belfast Live for their news, with the latest Comscore figures showing that it remains Northern Ireland’s most read commercial news website.
“We’re nothing without our readers, so a big thanks to them for continually choosing us.”
Mark Whyte, Brand Partnership Director at Reach, whose team worked on the commercial campaign said: “Power of Pause was an honour to work on and be part of and to see it highly commended in these awards makes it all the more rewarding.
“The mental health crisis in NI is well documented and given the year that 2020 turned out to be, helping to normalise conversation around mental health issues and provide wellbeing signposts was the core purpose of this campaign.
“I’d like to pay testament to our partners in Power of Pause, Electric Ireland, whose passion for making a difference in our communities is unwavering.”
Anne Smyth, who is Sponsorship Specialist at Electric Ireland added: “As a brand Electric Ireland cares deeply about issues that impact our customers and local communities in Northern Ireland and our hope when we started to work on Power of Pause with the Belfast Live team was that we would be able to create content that would inform and support people throughout Northern Ireland in the most difficult of times.
“We are delighted to be recognised for the work involved in Power of Pause and proud of this partnership.”
Other winners included ITV, Channel 4 and CNN. View the full list of winners here.
Based on data from a well-respected search engine optimization expert, the The Daily Mail’s parent company, Associated Newspapers, and its U.S. unit, Mail Media, might not have merit to defend their position when it comes to proving an antitrust lawsuit filed against Google on Tuesday.
The lawsuit alleges that Google punishes publishers in search rankings if they don’t sell enough advertising space through Google’s marketplace, but at least one SEO expert believes the site is just not optimized to rank at the top of Google search results.
Lea Scudamore, the SEO lead at agency Aimclear, gave dailymail.co.uk a grade of “F” for an overall performance due to issues including excessive network payloads, long initial server response time, with a fully loaded time of 45.2 seconds. Google PageSpeed Insights gives the site a score of 6 out of a possible 100.
“Ouch, no wonder these pages are not competitive for keywords,” Scudamore wrote in an email to Search & Performance Marketing Daily.
Here are additional stats:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) reports the render time of the largest image or text block visible within the viewport and should occur in 2.5 seconds.
First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page (click a link, a button, etc.) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin to process responses to interactions. A FID of less than 100 milliseconds is the goal.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) that measures visual stability. Here is a link to the Google GIF that shows an example of CLS.
Visual stability means whether elements on the page shift in ways that users don’t expect and potentially interfere with their interactions. The goal is CLS less than .1.
“Popupsoffer users a poor user experience because they are annoying,” Scudamore explains. “The Daily Mail’s site is littered with ads that pop up.”
Some ads cover the content, making it difficult to read. She also explains that the pop-ups slow the loading of the page as the user scrolls, and pop-ups used inappropriately can trigger penalties from search engines.
For example, a pop-up surfaces on the home page of the site when going directly to the URL on a mobile device. In another instance, an ad for pizzas popped up over the headline on the home page and the section titled “today’s top videos” covered the text.
“When you try to click the X to close the video window to read the text, the focus is to the right of the X, so users are forced to another page they didn’t want to visit,” she wrote.
The site doesn’t follow basic SEO guidelines such as the length of URLs, meta titles, and descriptions.
According to Screaming Frog guidance:
URLs should be under 115 characters, 70% are over that length
Meta titles should be under 60 characters, 94% are over that length
Meta descriptions should be under 155 characters, 52% are over that length
SEOs would recommend that these elements be concise and the primary keyword be written to the left of the text.
“Overall, the site is cluttered and old-fashioned like the National Enquirer,” she wrote. “The Daily Mail’s competition is focused on users with clean-looking and fast loading sites and not how much stuff they can force on a page. The competitors are driving sports cars with clean lines and fast engines, The Daily Mail is driving an iron mining truck full of billboards.”
One of the most important, and neglected, skills in business: Valuing employees the way they’d like to be value
Most every manager knows the importance of recognizing their employees when they do good work. According to my research, some 80 percent of managers report they do this all the time. Yet when you ask their employees how much recognition they receive, only 12 percent (according to Maritz, Inc.) say they are recognized in meaningful ways where they work when they do a good job.
What this demonstrates is something I call the “knowing-doing” gap that is so common in companies I have researched and worked with over the last 25 years. Voltaire once observed that “Common sense is often not common practice” and nowhere is this more true than in valuing employees in ways they’d like to be valued.
In a large-based Internet survey I conducted, I found that personal praise and thanks is the #1 motivator reported by employees, 99+ percent of whom say it’s important for them to be thanked by their manager when they’ve done a good job. As Alan Mullany, the former CEO of Boeing and then Ford recently told me: “Everyone wants to contribute and everyone wants to be valued for their contribution. You don’t have to do that much. Just thank them, thank them all the time!”
Research on 65 workplace incentives by Dr. Gerald Graham, professor emeritus at Wichita State University, found 4 of the 5 top motivators to be relatively simple: personal praise (#1), written thanks (#2), public praise (#4) and morale-building meetings (#5). He concluded, “It appears that the techniques that have the greatest motivational impact are practiced the least even though they are easier and less expensive to use.”
Most managers, however, don’t do these things and instead feel that their employees only want more money. Yes, money is important (we all need to pay our bills), but once someone can meet their basic needs, their attention tends to turn to higher-order motivators such as purpose, being a part of something larger than oneself, being held in high esteem by one’s peers and leaders or challenging oneself to overcome obstacles and barriers to reach new heights at work.
Other things that cost little or no money have commonly been reported as top motivators by employees. For example, in employee segmentation research conducted by Dr. Rick Garlick, Vice President, Strategy Consultant for Magid, 8 percent of employees in organizations (a category he labelled “Upward Movers”) would like to be thanked for doing a good job by being given more responsibility. I’ve found that other non-tangible aspects are also important to employees: time with one’s manager, visibility, flexibility, autonomy, choice of working assignments, involvement in decisions, handling mistakes in a positive way, etc. Giving employees those things doesn’t require spending a dime.
Companies also need to STOP doing those things that demotivate workers. According to Maritz, 34 percent of employees report that the things their company does to recognize them and make them feel valued, actually demotivate them instead. Things like years-of-service awards, birthday parties, holiday celebrations, and so forth that mainly recognize presence, not performance, often helping to create a culture of entitlement.
Often such programs are set up with the best of intentions but along the way lose their lustre and often become a joke to employees. What good is having a service award for 5-, 10-, 15- and 20-year employee anniversaries when the average Millennial (the largest sector of today’s workforce) tenure is 1.8 years? Or a once-a-month, one-person quota for excellence when in reality you need EVERY employee to do their best EVERY day?? Companies need to stop doing things they’ve been doing since 1940 and instead find out what their employees most value and then give them those things when they perform in ways that meet or exceed your mutual goals.
Employee motivation is a moving target and the challenge is ongoing wherever you work. It is important to show your employees they are a priority to you through your actions so that they can have a better, more fulfilling and meaningful experience working for you and your company.
As the co-founder of an influencer marketing technology company and the commercial director of a merchandise shop solution, I’ve had a front-row seat for the rise of social commerce. Influencers are using merchandise to boost their brands not only for income but also to forge deeper connections with their followers. Some key players in the e-commerce space have taken notice, giving rise to SaaS companies and print-on-demand services integrating with social media giants.
In 2021, look for influencer culture to inspire more powerful social media retail integrations with almost limitless earning power for creators and the platforms that serve them.
Despite the challenges of the last year, I’ve seen three changes in the industry that I know will benefit influencers and creators in 2021. E-commerce professionals, social media agencies and influencer marketing agencies should pay attention.
1. Increasing use of e-commerce and the rise of selling via social media have produced creator commerce.
Last year was difficult for retail, but worldwide e-commerce sales grew by 27.6%. Within that rise, social commerce grew as well, and apparel and accessories remain the largest category. The global licensed merchandise market is expected to reach $338.7 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 2.2%.
At the same time, e-commerce platforms have upped their game. Powerful and easy-to-use print-on-demand shop systems now integrate with social media platforms. Spreadshop is one such POD system, but others include Spring, Bonfire and Printful. Influencers have long been able to open an e-commerce shop, but these developments give them the advantage of immediacy, which allows them to deliver both engaging content and buying options in the very same moment.
Influencers now have an alternative to just ads and brand collaborations. Promoting their own merchandise has become a way for them to diversify revenue streams and grow their brands. Audiences look for entertainment and then buy into their brands.
2. Influencers are becoming skilled at social commerce tactics to monetize their fame and content.
To their followers, influencers are like trusted friends whose opinions are sought and emulated. As Nielsen’s research points out, we are more likely to buy from people we know and trust. Influencers come together on social platforms like Clubhouse and Facebook; they share tips and tricks on how to gain followers and connect with fans. I’ve seen top creators often note that producing niche content and staying authentic is the foundation of the influencer-follower relationship.
Monetizing content through merchandise is funding creators and deepening the connection with their followers. I expect this to continue through 2021 with three merchandise trends:
• Personalization/everybody merchandise. What do you want to wear today? A brand, a business or a cause? Personalization means we can wear our allegiances in a size, colour and style to suit us. Creators can leverage this trend to increase brand awareness.
• Instant moment merchandise. With POD, new designs are available for purchase as soon as they are uploaded by creators. POD can move almost at the speed of a meme, quickly delivering on-trend items to customers’ doorsteps and making moment merchandise possible.
• Campaign merchandise. In the U.S., many politicians blur the line between political figure and social media icon. Campaign merchandise sales help candidates raise funds. It’s quite the statement to wear a political slogan, but it’s also an opportunity to publicly support a chosen candidate.
3. POD shop solutions have integrated with social channels to enable frictionless buying for the customer and full-service fulfilment for the shop owner.
The need for POD merchandise solutions is growing rapidly. Great new platforms are also pushing into the space, and the global POD software market size is expected to reach $10.8 billion by 2026, up from almost $1.9 billion in 2020.
To support growth, creator commerce solutions will have to deliver high-quality sales platforms and integrate new technologies. One of the most recent developments is the connection between influencer videos and merchandise. As Philip Rooke, CEO of Spread Group (Spreadshop’s parent company), recently wrote for InternetRetailing, “The potential success of video plus commerce is the combination of technology and the customer desire coming together at the same time. … Entertainment and frictionless commerce are going to be the big trend of retail in 2021.”
Platforms can stay ahead of the game by understanding what influencers and creators value. From our own research and observation, I know that the following five platform features are key:
• Social selling integrations.
• Highly customizable products.
• Premium-quality items.
• Zero cash out of pocket required.
• Full-service e-commerce.
Final Thoughts
From my vantage point, creators will continue to promote their personal brands using merchandise in 2021. To be proactive as an e-commerce professional, engage with influencers directly and address their needs.
As the decade progresses, we may see influencers and creators aim not just for the magic 1 million followers mark but also for comparable commission. Follower millionaires could start to become T-shirt millionaires as they monetize their fame. SaaS companies, social media agencies and influencer marketers that harness this trend will likely have an advantage in the highly competitive online retail space.
Make sure you exercise caution, however. Merchandise companies that fail to integrate with content delivery platforms are at great risk for obsolescence. All-in-one solutions allow simultaneous content distribution, merchandise solutions and persona monetization. As influencers seek to simplify processes, stand-alone solutions that serve limited needs may not survive.
From followers to merchandise, I see influencers making a big play in the social commerce game to truly monetize their fame. Will your brand be a part of it?
Dennis Doerfl, a former Groupon and Accenture executive, is Co-Founder of Fourstarzz Media and Commercial Director at Spreadshop. Read Dennis Doerfl’s full executive profile.
On Tuesday 27th April THINKHOUSE joined us to host “DELAY IS THE NEW DENIAL: COMMUNICATING FOR PLANET EARTH” an event for anyone working in marketing and communications for brands and businesses. This presentation followed Thinkhouse’s Earth Day event which took place 4 days before our AAI toolkit webinar.
Hosted by THINKHOUSE’s cross-functional PLANET team and powered by insights from The Youth Lab, the event is designed to strengthen our industry’s role in restoring our earth.
The full webinar is now live on our website so if you missed out you can still catch up here
Head keywords. Long-tail keywords. The chunky middle. The chonky thorax. Is it any wonder why most people outside of SEO think we’re talking gibberish? Ask a dozen SEOs what keywords qualify as “long-tail” and you’ll get 13 opinions and 17 fistfights.
What we can agree on is that — due to Google’s advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) — the long tail of search has exploded. However, I will argue that NLP has also imploded the long tail, and understanding how and why may save our collective sanity.
What is the long tail of SEO, exactly?
The long tail of search is the limitless space of low-volume (and often low-competition) keywords. Tactically, long-tail SEO centres on competing for a large number of low-volume keywords instead of focusing on a small set of high-volume keywords.
Long-tail SEO encourages us to let go of vanity, because high-volume, so-called “vanity” keywords are often out of reach or, at best, will empty our bank accounts. Low-volume keywords may be less attractive on the surface, but as you begin to compete on hundreds or thousands of them, they represent more traffic and ultimately more sales than a few vanity keywords.
You’ve probably seen a graph of the long tail like the one above. It’s a perfectly lovely power curve, but it’s purely hypothetical. And while you may smile and nod when you see it, it’s hard to translate this into a world of keywords. It might help to re-imagine the long tail of SEO:
I’m not sure the “reclining snowman of SEO” is ever going to catch on, but I think it helps to illustrate that — while head keywords are high-volume by themselves — the combined volume of the long tail eclipses the head or the middle. Like the familiar curve, this visualization dramatically underestimates the true scope of the long tail.
What are long-tail keywords?
In the words of the ancient SEOs, “It doth depend.” Typically, long-tail keywords are low-volume, multi-word phrases, but the long-tail is relative to your starting point. Historically, any given piece of the long tail was assumed to be low-competition, but that’s changing as people realize the benefits of targeting specific phrases with clear intent (especially commercial intent).
Targeting “widgets” is not only expensive, but searcher intent is ambiguous. Targeting “buy blue widgets” narrows intent, and “where to buy Acme Widget LOL-42” laser-focuses you on a target audience. As searchers and SEOs adapt to natural language search, previously “long-tail” keywords may become higher volume and higher competition.
The long tail has exploded
Google has told us that 15% of the searches they see every day are new. How is this possible? Are we creating that many new words? That’s sus, bruh!
I can explain it to you in a very short story. The other day, my (half-Taiwanese) 10-year-old daughter couldn’t remember what her Chinese zodiac sign was, so she asked Google Home:
Hey, Google, what’s the animal for the Chinese new year calendar thingy for 2010?
It’s easy to get hung up on the voice-appliance aspect of this, but whether or not you believe in the future of voice appliances, the reality is that voice search in general has driven the need for natural language search, and as Google becomes better at handling natural language, we’re reverting to using it more often (it’s our default mode). This is especially evident in kids, who never had to learn to dumb down their searches for antiquated algorithms.
How can we hope to target keyword phrases that are literally evolving as we speak? Fortunately, NLP cuts both ways. As Google understands context better, the algorithm recognizes that many variations of the same phrase or question are essentially the same. Which leads us to…
The long tail has imploded
Back in 2019, I did a keyword research case study at SearchLove London on UK mega-retailer, John Lewis. In my research, I was surprised to see how many searches Google was automatically redirecting. There’s the obvious, like Google assuming that people who searched for “Jon Lewis” in the UK probably meant “John Lewis” (sorry, Jon):
It’s interesting to note that Google has gradually, quietly moved from the previously more prevalent “Did you mean?” to the more assertive (some might say aggressive) “Showing results for…” In this case, optimizing for Jon Lewis in the UK is probably pointless.
I expected a rabbit hole, but I landed in a full-on bunny chasm. Consider this search:
Hjohjblewis?! I landed on this misspelling entirely by accident, but I imagine it involved an attention-starved cat and cat-adjacent keyboard. This level of rewriting/redirecting was shocking to me.
Misspellings are just the beginning, however. What about very similar long-tail phrases that don’t surface any kind of rewrite/redirect, but show very similar results?
Note that this same set of terms in the US overwhelmingly returns results about former US Representative and civil rights leader, John Lewis, demonstrating just how much not only intent can shift across localities, but how Google’s re-interpretations can change dynamically.
That same year, I did an experiment for MozCon targeting long-tail questions, such as “Can you reverse a 301-redirect?”, demonstrating that posts written around a specific question could often rank for many forms of that question. At the time, I didn’t have a way to measure this phenomenon, other than showing that the post ranked for variations of the phrase. Recently, I re-analysed my 2019 keywords (with rankings from April 2021) using a simplified form of Rank-Biased Overlap (RBO) called RBOLite. RBOLite scores the similarity between two rank-ordered lists, yielding a score from 0-1. As the name implies, this score biases toward the higher-ranked items, so a shift at #1 will have more impact than a shift at #10.
Here are the scores for a sampling of the phrases I tracked for the 2019 post, with the title of the post shown at the top (and having a perfect match of 1.0):
You can see visually how the similarity of the results diverges as you change and remove certain keywords, and how this creates a complex interaction. What’s fascinating to me is that changing the question phrase from “Can you” to “How do you” or “How to” made very little difference in this case, while removing either “301” or “redirect” had more impact. Switching “you” vs. “I” by itself was fairly low impact, but was additive with other changes. Even the SERPs with “undo” in place of “reverse” showed fairly high similarity, but this change showed the most impact.
Note that the week-over-week RBOLite score for the initial phrase was 0.95, so even the same SERP will vary over time. All of these scores (>0.75) represent a fair degree of similarity. This post ranked #1 for many of these terms, so these scores often represent shifts farther down the top 10.
Here’s another example, based on the question “How do I improve my domain authority?”. As above, I’ve charted the RBOLite similarity scores between the main phrase and variations. In this case, the week-over-week score was 0.83, suggesting some background flux in the keyword space:
One immediately interesting observation is that the difference between “improve” and “increase” was negligible — Google easily equated the two terms. My time spent debating which keyword to use could’ve been spent on other projects, or on eating sandwiches. As before, switching from “How do I” to “How do you” or even “How to” made relatively little difference. Google even understood that “DA” is frequently substituted for “Domain Authority” in our industry.
Perhaps counterintuitively, adding “Moz” made more of a difference. This is because it shifted the SERP to be more brand-like (Moz.com got more mentions). Is that necessarily a bad thing? No, my post still ranked #1. Looking at the entire first page of the SERPs, though, adding the brand name caused a pretty clear intent shift.
The long tail is dead. Long live the long tail.
In the past decade, the long tail has exploded and then imploded (in many ways, due to the same forces), and yet somehow we’ve landed in a very different keyword universe. So, where does that leave us — the poor souls fated to wander that universe?
The goods news of this post (I hope) is that we don’t have to work ourselves to death to target the long tail of search. It doesn’t take 10,000 pieces of content to rank for 10,000 variants of a phrase, and Google (and our visitors) would much prefer we not spin out that content. The new, post-NLP long tail of SEO requires us to understand how our keywords fit into semantic space, mapping their relationships and covering the core concepts. While our tools will inevitably improve to meet this challenge (and I’m directly involved in such projects at Moz), our human intuition can go a long way for now. Study your SERPs diligently, and you can find the patterns to turn your own long tail of keywords into a chonky thorax of opportunity.
It’s easy to confuse digitization — be it a sleek app design or automated business intelligence — with digital decisioning. Both play a role in the larger concept of digital transformation, but the difference is digital decisioning is at its centre. Think of decisioning as the brain and central nervous system of your business. It provides you not only intelligence, but also the ability to coordinate your entire body to move and respond to the world around you. Together, this creates a feedback loop that enables you to continuously learn and adapt.
Digital decisioning is active and anticipatory. It moves you to act — to take the next step before you know that step exists — by showing you the bigger picture of your business, your products and your customers. With digital decisioning, split-second actions are continuously optimized for the best outcomes. Holistic, 360-degree customer views are powered by a tailored, ever-expanding data feed from multiple sources and the ability to seamlessly share “decision assets” across the company.
In essence, digital decisioning enables radical, customer-focused change because it gives you two things: clear visibility into and across your business and the power to act on that insight.
It’s a disruptive market force that facilitates innovation, allowing businesses to introduce new offerings, collapse protracted timelines and personalize customer journeys, all while fuelling business continuity and “next-best-actions” that boost incremental revenue.
Currently, an estimated $6.8 trillion of direct investments in the digital experience are expected through the next two years, as 75% of organizations pursue comprehensive digital transformation. Organizations with more mature digital strategies in place are reporting significantly above average net profit margins and revenues, compared to those with less mature digital strategies. The digital revolution is well underway, and digital decisioning is at the centre of it all.
It Answers ‘What Do I Do Next?’
Digital decisioning is a complex analytic process that occurs behind the digital interface. It determines a customer’s immediate situation at the moment of engagement and automatically triggers the right actions at that precise moment, without human intervention. The keyword is “action.” Digital decisioning is about taking action, responding in real time to data and insights to drive outcomes. It intelligently answers the question, “What do I do next to achieve the results I want?”
Say a bank customer applies online for a credit card. As they’re being pre-qualified, digital decisioning will instantly analyse all the customer’s accounts with the bank including disclosed and undisclosed cash flow. It assesses risk exposure and other details and uses machine learning to anticipate the customer’s immediate need(s). Based on the bank’s comprehensive understanding of that customer at that moment, it triggers a personalized cross-sell offer for another relevant financial product, automatically boosting incremental revenue.
Think about scaling this speed, efficiency and agility across key operational functions and millions of transactions — per second. Put simply, no amount of manpower or human expertise can match it.
Business applications for digital decisioning extend far beyond banking and financial services. To name a few, organizations across the supply chain and logistics, insurance, health care, airlines and retail industries are using digital decisioning.
A Synergy Of Inputs, Outputs And AI
Digital decisioning is a culminating synergy of inputs (a continuous data feed that bridges silos), outputs (a direct feedback loop) and AI-powered technology. Each component is essential to the digital decision, and when adopting digital decisioning technology, you should make sure any solution you consider has these qualities:
• Continuous Data Feed: This is the lifeblood of the digital decision. It might include operational data, customer data or digital footprint data; however, regardless of the source, it’s critical that data across the enterprise is coalesced into a single, virtualized view. This breaks down data siloes, where critical information might be held in separate databases or repositories.
• AI-Powered Technology: The action or decision is sparked by machine learning technology. It evaluates the customer profile at the exact point of engagement and determines what personalized outcome will be most successful as learned from the feedback loop. It can even balance competing priorities and efficiently optimize resource constraints to ensure the organization maximizes its desired outcomes.
• Direct Feedback Loop. Every decision has an outcome. For example, an automated loan offer is either accepted or declined by the customer. These outcomes — good and bad — automatically feed into the decisioning model, which enables the machine learning technology to “learn” which decisions are optimal, given the circumstances and customer profile. This enables it to adapt and grow more accurate and precise over time.
Spark Growth, Innovation And Imagination
When customer data, decisioning assets and analytic expertise are mobilized under a shared decisioning platform, organizations are empowered to experiment and find new ways to solve customer problems.
• Organic Growth, Customer Lifetime Value: By better understanding customers from all angles, you can dig deeper and target high-potential niche audiences with more personalized offers and incentives. Likewise, you can create personalized customer treatments, which leads to higher customer satisfaction, retention and lifetime value.
• Net-New Growth, Untapped Markets: Detailed customer and market insights and hardened decisioning assets enable new levels of granularity and precision, just as advanced profiling and feature generation can reveal new markets fit for existing offerings.
• Innovation, Experimentation And Collaboration. Imagine setting up a digital “twin” of your business where you can safely experiment with key processes, product development, customer treatment strategies and more. Forward-thinking businesses are already doing this, using digital decisioning platforms to orchestrate simulations, perform experimentation with different components and strategies.
As businesses look for ways to adapt to increased competition and customer demands for immediacy and personalization, digital decisioning technology is providing the enterprise-level visibility, speed and agility necessary to intelligently pivot. It’s the start and the heart of any successful digital transformation, as it can move an entire organization forward by automatically answering one simple question: “What do I do next?”
Social media has long been in the spotlight; however, over the last few years, the giants have been under fire for numerous reasons. Pick your platform — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. They’ve all been embroiled in problems and scandals, with public and political outrage often the result. Yet many of us still flock to them in droves. And where the public goes so do businesses and marketers. If public opinion is often so low for social media platforms, why do we still use them?
A good start to answering this is remembering what exactly the giants of the industry have done, and there’s no better one to start with than Facebook. The social media behemoth has more than 2.7 billion monthly active users and by 2025 is expected to be used by just over 69% of the U.S. population. Yet even those who have no time for social media or have little care for the news likely know about at least one of the multitude of controversies the social media giant has found itself in. Tax avoidance, censorship, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how the platform handles users’ data are just the start of the dizzying list. Then there’s the scrutiny it has come under for shirking its responsibility to monitor what is posted on the site, such as hate speech.
And this is not to say the other major social media sites have not been in similar trouble. Instagram, YouTube and Twitter have all been accused of not being proactive enough when it comes to regulating what people post online, as well as a whole array of other problems, like taking a rape threat and making it into an advertisement or fake Twitter accounts trying to sway public opinion. Such controversies have been met with public disgust and anger, prompting politicians to move toward more regulation.
All of the incidents above have been major controversies, but social media platforms also have made smaller moves like algorithm and design changes and the infamous Instagram shadowbans, which, aside from being a mild irritant to daily users, have created major hurdles for marketers and businesses. In early March, many Instagram users suddenly found that likes were no longer shown on their posts. This turned out to be a trial of a feature that accidentally included too many people. But here in Canada, this is how it has been for two years now. Add in changes to Facebook’s algorithm to put friends and family first, and suddenly you’re likely dealing with a loss of impressions, reach and likes.
You would think with all of this that social media platforms would be losing millions of followers, right?
Facebook actually saw its U.S. and Canadian user bases decrease toward the end of last year, but the drop has done little in the grand scheme of things. The social media site still recorded huge revenue and gained more new users in Asia and the rest of the world. Instagram has over a billion monthly users, and that number is predicted to continue rising. Twitter has over 322 million users and will likely continue gaining them. And TikTok set a record for app installs last year after surpassing 2 billion downloads. Despite all the outrage and dislike of social media sites, people still flock to them in the millions and billions. But why?
The simple answer is that they connect us. It’s been over a year since the Covid-19 pandemic began, and lockdown measures closed stores and cut off our usual social interactions. The importance of sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many others for keeping people connected not just to the people they are close to but also to strangers or people in need of support has truly been shown.
We live in an age when we can publish a post in Boston that can be seen within seconds in Berlin. We can communicate with friends around the world in an instant, and often the main way we do this is through social media. We can connect with those with the same interests. We can find jobs and network. And businesses can connect with audiences on a larger scale and reach more potential customers. Social media is a major part of how we stay connected. Last year proved that.
But what does that mean for those of us in marketing and PR or running businesses trying to connect with our audiences? We must go where the customers are. But this leaves us at the mercy of algorithms and major platform changes. When Instagram decides to tweak its systems again or a social media site finds itself grappling with a government, what can you do? Major changes can have serious effects, and before you know it, your reach and interactions can drop drastically. So how do you work around this?
To use an old phrase, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversifying between multiple social media platforms may mean posting in more places, but it can offer many benefits. The main one is that you are not dependent on a single social media site. If one is hit by regulations or changes its algorithms suddenly and accidentally takes out your page, you have others to fall back on. It also can provide you with a much larger reach. While a large section of your audience may be on a single platform, that doesn’t account for all of them. With a presence on other social media platforms, your brand can reach more people and possibly a wider range of demographics.
It will be interesting to see from here what happens to the social media giants with regulations and their relationships with audiences. For those of us in Canada, it would be nice if Instagram could let us see the number of likes on our posts again.
