Maybe you are an entrepreneur just starting out. Perhaps you are a veteran small business owner. In either case, you probably recognize that with a deeper understanding of the data which drives your business, you will be more productive, your systems will be more efficient, and your business will be more successful.

This is true whether you are selling xylophones or zebras, physical products or virtual services. Understanding how people interact with your website or blog is crucial for the longevity and profitability of your business. That is exactly what Google Analytics offers.

Google is the largest search engine in the world, responsible for up to 90% of all web searches depending on what estimates you refer to. 40,000 search queries are processed every second by Google. This means that the traffic coming from Google to your website, whether paid or generic, can provide you with the best possible view of important business metrics.

Google Analytics is a Google product. It is a web-based application that reveals important traffic and behavior patterns in relationship to your online business. The free service has evolved since 2005 to answer, among other questions, the following:
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• How many unique and repeat visitors go to your site/blog each month?
• Which countries is your traffic coming from?
• Which websites, blogs and search engines are referring your visitors?
• Do your visitors access your business on their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop PC?
• Which web browser do they use?
• Which pages of your site attract the most traffic?
• What type of content engages your prospects and keeps them on your site, and what kinds of content have them leaving in a hurry?
• Which of your marketing campaigns and strategies are the most and least effective?

Understanding the answers to those and other important traffic questions is extremely powerful. Google has created an intelligent and free piece of software which integrates perfectly with your website to reveal important information you need for optimizing your site to grow your business.

Until next time...

Have a great day,
Susanne

Check out my upcoming workshops here!

Many social media marketing campaigns are primarily designed to help gain more social following, increase product/brand visibility or drive traffic to a website. Here are quick tips you should consider when rolling out your next social media campaign.

1. Reserve your username across all platforms. Reserve your username across all the social media platforms even if you do not need them now. This keeps imposters away and you may need those usernames some day.

2. Decide which social media platform(s) best suits your needs. Not all social media platforms are suitable for your kind of marketing campaign. Trying to build a presence and stay significantly active on all available social media platforms can be time consuming and counterproductive. Instead, you need to identify platforms that bring the best results and focus on them.

3. Optimize your social media platforms. Once you have decided on the platforms you intend to use, focus on optimizing your profiles in order to get more followers. A few items to consider include using a real profile picture, writing clear and comprehensive about pages for your profiles and including a link to your website.

4. Connect your social media accounts to your website. Having all your active accounts connected to your websites helps to keep the conversation going. Visitors on your website can link to any of the listed accounts and your followers on social media can find out more about your offerings.

5. Track mentions. This is where PR kicks in. Use available tools to track every mention of your brand across all platforms and find out what people are saying about you or your brand. Do not miss a chance to neutralize any negative talk.

Until next time...

Have a great day,
Susanne

Check out my upcoming workshops here!

I have had several business owners ask me why they need to create a marketing plan. They think going to a couple of networking events and posting about their product/service on social media once or twice will cause the flood gates to open with customers. These owners are shocked that they have very low (or no) sales and they say networking and social media do not work.

Creating a marketing plan for your business and individual products/services/events is essential to generate sales. I mention individual product marketing plans because you may have two products that appeal to two completely different types of people. Consider a car dealer. Generally, cargo vans are bought by businesses, however mini vans are purchased by families. As a purchaser of a cargo van, I want to know how much product I can fit in it. As a purchaser of a mini van, I want to know how many people I can fit in it.

Here are a few basics on what to include in your marketing plans.

Market Research

• Collect, organize and write down data about the market that is currently buying the product/service you sell. Some areas to consider: 
• Market dynamics, patterns including seasonality 
• Customers - demographics, market segment, target markets, needs, buying decisions 
• Product – what is out there now, what the competition is offering 
• Current sales in the industry.

Product
Describe your product. How does your product relate to the market? What does your market need, what do they currently use, what do they need above and beyond current use?

Competition
Describe your competition. Develop your "unique selling proposition." What makes you stand apart from your competition? What is your competition doing about branding? 

Target Market
Find niche or target markets for your product and describe them.

Pricing, Positioning and Branding
From the information you have collected, establish strategies for determining the price of your product, where your product will be positioned in the market and how you will achieve brand awareness.

Budget
Budget your dollars. What strategies can you afford? What can you do in house, what do you need to outsource.

Marketing Strategies
Write down the marketing and promotion strategies that you want to use or at least consider using. Strategies to consider: 

• Networking - go where your market is 
• Direct marketing - sales letters, brochures, flyers 
• Advertising - print media, directories 
• Training programs - to increase awareness 
• Write articles, give advice, become known as an expert 
• Direct/personal selling 
• Publicity/press releases 
• Trade shows 
• Website

Marketing Goals
Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into numbers. For instance, your goals might be to gain at least 30 new clients or to sell 10 products per week, or to increase your income by 30% this year. Your goals might include sales, profits or customers satisfaction.

Monitor Your Results
Test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are working.

By researching your markets, your competition, and determining your unique positioning, you are in a much better position to promote and sell your product or service. By establishing goals for your marketing campaign, you can better understand if your efforts are generating results through ongoing review and evaluation of results.

Until next time…

Have a great day,
Susanne

Check out my upcoming workshops here!

​Many people are confused as to whether they should create a business or a personal account or both. Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not require you to have a personal account to maintain a business account. If you are not a Twitter fan (of course you are a Twitter fan -- it is the quickest social media platform) and do not plan to use it personally, do not create a personal account. If you already have a personal account that you never use or want to use any more, you may wish to recycle it as your business account and not keep a personal account.

Begin your Twitter journey with the end in mind. You may eventually sell your business. If your business is not tied to your name, set up a business account and treat it as such. It is much easier to maintain consistency for followers during the transfer of an account if the account already has a business name such as ABCPlumbing rather than having the account JoeSmith which the new owner will need to rebrand.

Having established marketing channels will help your business attract buyers. Social media accounts and email lists with followers of 500, 1,000, 10,000 and etcetera are a benefit to your potential buyers when the time comes to sell your business especially if you can provide statistics to show revenue coming in from these sources. Decide which metrics can quantify revenue and start tracking and recording those numbers. (a like is useless and is not worthy of tracking)

If you are a personality such as an author, actor or other media you will probably use your personal account. It is not like Meryl Streep can sell herself to Gwyneth Paltrow. Remember this is also your business account and be true to your brand. Many people get on social media and shut off their brains. You would not expect the same types of tweets from Oprah Winfrey that you might see from Paris Hilton.

Be sure to set some branded social media guidelines and stay consistent. Before jumping in the fray of the current social hot button, decide if the topic aligns with your brand. My business is marketing so my opinion as to whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem is completely irrelevant and does not belong in my feed, however if I were a sports reporter, I might weigh in.

Followers expect a business account to tell them about their business. We do not want the play-by-play of your business’s activities, but we do want to know about your blogs, specials and upcoming events so tell us about them. Social media is a marketing channel, not a direct sales tool, however if you are not converting any of your followers into customers you are wasting your time.

Until next time…

Have a great day,
Susanne

Check out my upcoming workshops here!

There are two operating types of small businesses. I call them the collective operation and independent operation.

The collective operation business resembles a beehive and requires the help of others from the very beginning. The queen bee (owner) works to give birth to and grow the business while the worker bees (employees) complete the various day-to-day tasks necessary to keep the business operational. Collective operations include restaurants, doctors, day spas and etcetera. While it is technically possible for one person to be a cosmetologist, massage therapist, nail technician, esthetician and make up artist, it is highly unlikely a day spa will be successfully operational with only one person.

The independent operation business can be started and run by a single person. The independent owner must become a jack of all trades. Strategy, administration, marketing, service, bookkeeping all starts and stops with the owner. Independent operations can include coaches, financial planners, direct sales, caterers and etcetera. The independent operator can be reasonably successful as a solo-professional, however there is usually an income ceiling based on the time available to work.

Many small business owners, if possible, start as an independent operator. It generally makes sense when you have more time than money to do as much as you can do well when your client roster is small. What if you want to grow your independent operation into a collective?

You may notice I said you can do what you do WELL. Yes, you can google how to create a business plan and fill in a template, however if you have never managed a business before you may not have any idea where to get usable data to put on that template. If that is the case, you should take a hands-on business planning workshop or hire a business planning coach to walk you through process step by step.

When should you consider hiring someone to help you? It may be from the beginning as in the case of tasks you do not do well. You do not need to hire an employee for single tasks. If you need to learn accounting software that you will manage initially, hire a short-term trainer. You may discover that you really dislike the data entry necessary to use that accounting software. Instead of hiring an employee to work two hours per week, outsource the task to a freelance bookkeeper.

What if you love accounting and marketing and you have a relatively successful business? Do you need to hire someone to help you? It depends. Do you have tasks you dread doing? Are you working more hours than you should be? Has it been years since you have given yourself a raise?

If you answered yes to any of those three questions, you need help. During the course of a week, track your working hours and the tasks you do each day. Do you log into social media for a 15-minute “business check” and then get distracted for another hour by personal posts? When you are focusing on completing client tasks are emails and phone calls interrupting you? Track all your work in a seven-day period. If you work evenings and weekends, notate it.

Next, total the time you spend on each category. Create categories such as social media, client work, bookkeeping, phone calls, email, networking and etcetera. Once you have that divided list, check to see if there are systems you can implement to become more efficient before you decide to get help. If emails, phone calls and social media notifications keep interrupting your tasks, shut off the notifications and set “answer times”. Devote up to your first 30 minutes each day to checking and responding to requests made after business hours. Set another answer time right after lunch and again before you finish for the day.

After you check your systems, review the hours it actually takes you to do your client work and adjust your rates if necessary. If it takes you an average of two hours to do a one-hour, in-home massage after you add in travel and clean-up time instead of the one and one-half hour you set your rates to when you started, raise your rates to encompass the extra half hour. An in-home massage is a premium service and your travel time needs to be billed at the same rate as your massage time.

The last step to take before you move past this initial list is to determine which tasks could be completely removed from your business schedule. Not all marketing platforms work for all businesses. Perhaps you are solely a government contractor. Regular Facebook posts are not likely to ever help you get a contract, however reaching out and establishing some LinkedIn connections that will let you know when jobs are up for bid could morph into business if you have a competitive bid. Drop Facebook from your work schedule and only use LinkedIn.

How do you know if your marketing is effective? Set tracking metrics and check them! I have a client with a very tiny email list who compared the purchases her customers made the year before she started her email campaigns to the year after she started. Email is her primary marketing platform. She saw a big enough increase in sales to warrant continuing. She checks her numbers each year to make sure her sales are not dropping, and her open rates are consistent. If her open rates and sales dropped, she may consider another marketing method.

Go ahead and get started auditing your business hours. This will enable you to set a strong base as you start your journey from independent operator to a collective, so you can grow your business.

Until next time…

Have a great day,
Susanne

Check out my upcoming workshops here!