Business Building Tips Archives | Your Online Marketing Team

How to Use Bad Ideas to Build Your Online Reputation

September 12, 2019 by Jama Leave a Comment

As participation in internet marketing continues to grow, and as more people declare themselves “experts” to their audience, bad ideas, misconceptions, and just plain stinkin’ thinkin’ proliferate. While such ill-conceived thinking can be problematic for consumers, these poorly conceived and misunderstood areas can be a great opportunity for you to build your online reputation – as long as the bad ideas are not yours!

When you realize that the majority of self-proclaimed “experts” online deal in little more than clichés, platitudes, and simplistic solutions, the potential for making a real difference in the lives of your audience will easily double or triple.

In other words, by debunking popular misconceptions, errors in judgement, and poorly explained answers to common questions, you will build your reputation as an expert in your field. And, as your reputation grows, so will your audience, your subscriber list, your list of leads, and your conversions!

Build, and Protect, Your Reputation Online

In many ways, your online reputation is your greatest asset. In fact, it literally represents the unified mental construct everyone who “meets” you online shares about you; a mental image of who you are and what you have to offer.

Of course, the clearer that image is, the stronger their perception of you and the more valuable you become to them.

This makes building, and protecting, your online reputation of paramount importance for both the short- and long-term success of your business.

According to an article at Entrepreneur.com, there are threes areas of focus for creating a positive online presence – and keeping it intact:

Create great content – The paradoxical nature of content creation as it relates to online marketing is that, while you’re creating content with the hope that it will eventually help convert, the best content is rarely created with that in mind. Keep in mind that consumers today are pretty savvy and expect a certain level of effort to be put into any content they consume, especially if it’s designed to turn them into paying customers.

(This makes blogging extremely important to building your reputation, and we explain the value of blogging in an earlier post.)

Social media presence – It’s hard, if not impossible, for your audience to care about your social media accounts if you’re not using them. So, if you want to turn your business into an online authority, you’ll need to be ahead of your competition when it comes to social. That means having a consistent posting schedule, using a variety of different social media platforms and, most importantly, actually engaging with your audience.
Testimonials, reviews, and perceptions – Known as “social proof”, what others think of you will make a huge impression on your audience and potential clients. Digital word of mouth is one of the most persuasive forms of marketing to the modern consumer, and it tends to be a massive aspect of the decision-making process for the average person because people trust other people. And, if an unbiased third party tells someone your business is not to be trusted, then you’d better believe people are going to have some reservations. Then again, a few positive reviews can lead to increased engagement (at worst) and inspire more conversions (at best).

Ultimately, the key is understanding how to be successful in leveraging the tools and techniques of reputation management to effectively build your online reputation, enabling you to meet your goals.

Looking for more client retention strategies, online marketing tips, and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

Client Acquisition Tip – You’ve Already Acquired Your Most Valuable Clients

August 15, 2019 by Jama Leave a Comment

Perhaps the most misleading client acquisition tip you can receive from the myriad and many self-proclaimed online marketing experts who proliferate the internet today is: focus on new clients to grow your business.

The truth is, client retention is far more valuable – and profitable – than signing up new clients. (Uh oh, was that thunder from the Marketing Gods on high we just heard?)

Obviously, finding new clients is important for growing your business, and we would never suggest that you ignore attracting new clients. But, your return on investment from client retention is almost guaranteed to be higher than your ROI for client acquisition. Substantially higher, in fact.

Repeat Business Boosts ROI

For most business owners, the need to increase revenue and/or steady their cash flow leads them toward investing their hard-earned dollars in finding new customers. That’s fine when you have plenty of cash but, it turns out, generating new business is expensive and the returns tend to be small.

Let’s look at some numbers (with help from ConstantContact.com), shall we?

Repeat customers spend more money – 300% more, according to RjMetrics.com. Not only are your repeat customers purchasing more over time than new customers, they likely trust you enough to purchase your more expensive products or services.
Repeat customers are easier to sell – You have limited time and resources; you don’t want to waste them on potential customers who never end up buying anything. Keep in mind, when you’re marketing to a prospective customer, you only have a 13% percent chance of persuading them to make a purchase. On the other hand, repeat customers have a 60% to 70% chance of buying.
New customers cost you more – If you’re a small business, you need to save money anywhere you can. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current customer. Plus, closing that new customer costs 16 times more than making a sale to your current customers.
Repeat customers promote your business – Marketing can be expensive but, by focusing on repeat business, you’ll create a group of loyal customers that will happily sing your praises and promote your business for you. Repeat customers refer 50% more people than one-time buyers.
Businesses are built on customer retention – Your business shouldn’t be a revolving door of customers. By increasing customer retention just five percent, a company’s profitability will increase by an average of 75%.

One last thing to consider is the good old 80/20 rule of business; in this case, that 80% of your future profits will come from 20% of your current clients.

So, is this really a “client acquisition tip”? Maybe not, but maybe yes. Since you worked so hard to acquire your current group of clients, it makes sense that you should work even harder to keep them – because they are so very valuable to the future of your business.

Looking for more client retention strategies, online marketing tips, and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

Goal Setting for Success – How to Set Reachable Business Goals

July 18, 2019 by Jama Leave a Comment

Far too many people, whether in business or their personal lives, set unreachable goals, only to wonder why they never achieve them. As an entrepreneur with a growing business, you are a team leader as well and it falls to you to set reachable goals for your business and your team members. Goal setting for success requires that all targets must be realistic, specific, and reachable or they are a waste of time and energy for you and your team.

Goals that are ill-defined or patently ridiculous do no one any good, least of all you; as poor goal setting will reflect badly on you as a leader. You will be perceived as either unrealistic or ill-equipped for the job. Both of these impressions undercut your authority and make you a poor leader.

Here are a few things to consider about the goals you’ve set for your team – or for yourself:

The goals you set must be specific
The goals you set must be attainable
The goals you set must be tailored to your team
The goals you set must benefit your business – and your team

A broad-based concept such as “To sign more clients,” is not a proper goal for a professional business environment. It is far too nebulous, and requires little commitment from your team members. A more specific goal, such as “I will close 50% of all of my clients this year,” is far more productive. It is clear and concise – and it is also measurable. A goal which cannot be measured can rarely, if ever, be met.

Well-defined goals get met, vague goals do not

Better yet is a set of incremental goals for your team to aim at; such as, “I will close 50% of all of my clients this quarter, and 55% next quarter, and 60% the next quarter …,” and so on. This will keep every member of your team focused on constant improvement and, once again, it is measurable.

It goes without saying that the numbers must be realistic – or it should – but specific goals such as these are much more valuable than some vague notion of “getting better.” If you truly want your team and your business to “Get Better,” help them set goals they can actually achieve – with goal setting for success as your goal for the next year, and beyond.

Looking for more online marketing tips and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

Email Marketing – What is a Nurture Email Campaign?

July 5, 2019 by Jama Leave a Comment

In a previous post, we suggested you should survey your audience quarterly to get to know them better. The obvious question that follows is: how do you use this valuable information in your email marketing campaign?

The answer is: once you have an idea of the issues that are most important to your audience, you can up-level your email marketing efforts by employing a series of emails designed to follow-up with your audience.

Known among online marketing coaches and consultants as a nurture campaign, the idea is to create a series of emails focused around the answers you received to your survey questions.

Doing this will enable you to more fully engage with your subscribers, build relationships, firmly establish your expertise, and encourage them to act in ways that will benefit them – and you.

Your nurture campaign should be focused on marketing and communicating with your subscribers, clearly showing them that you are listening to them, that you understand their needs and that you have solutions to their pain points.

Designing a Nurture Email Series

Begin by picking the TWO most common answers to the question, “What is the most burning question…”

In your follow-up email, ask them to choose ONE of the two and hit “Reply” to tell you.

Once you receive their answer, you have the perfect opportunity to send them the ANOTHER freebie you created for that particular issue or problem: “The Solution to [problem A/B] That Always Works”. Click here to download your free copy today! [insert link to download]

Uh-oh, I think we forget to mention the new giveaways you’ll want to create for your subscribers!

It’s Time to Create More Giveaways

Because the point of a nurture campaign is to encourage increased engagement with your subscribers, offering them more freebies as a call-to-action is the best way to get them to “click-through” to your website and grab your targeted giveaway.

It should go without saying that this approach will only work as a nurturing tool if the freebie has real value to individual subscribers. In other words, it must truly offer a solution to the “#1 most burning question” they identified when they responded to your survey.

Ultimately, your nurture campaign has three goals:

Convert subscribers into leads
Convert leads into buyers
Generate referrals & more leads

Obviously, while your Big Goal (and hope) in following this email marketing strategy is to make a sale, if you accomplish any one of the three goals above, you can consider your nurture campaign a success.

*NOTE: By definition, a nurture campaign is NOT a blunt instrument. Instead of a “one-off” hard-sell pitch for them to buy, your series of emails should gently encourage them to take action and be focused on building a relationship with them. You will be sending them more emails after this first follow-up – usually a series of three to six in total. With each, you will want to offer them something of value, which can include: a free consultation or free estimate of a larger, in-person solution to their problem.

Ideally, you will set up your nurture campaign to run automatically, using an automated email marketing service like Infusionsoft (easily the best choice among many – and we are experts at Infusionsoft set up and implementation).

Putting together a series of emails to follow up on your survey is just the beginning of a nurture campaign. It is also a time-tested and effective email marketing strategy that, if implemented with regularity and sincerity, can bring you an excellent return on investment.

Looking for more online marketing tips and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

Online Marketing Tip: The Value of Blogging (Why, Why, Why Do I Have to Blog?)

June 20, 2019 by Jama 2 Comments

Despite the fact that blogging began in the Jurassic era of the internet (1994 by most estimations). Despite the fact that content marketing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Despite the many funnels available for implementing a successful online marketing campaign, the value of blogging has never been greater.

“Why is this true?” you ask.

In a nutshell, it’s because access to your audience is shrinking, making the information you share with them ever more valuable. It was inevitable that corporations would finally discover the value of online marketing – and they have. They are now eating up more bandwidth than ever, leaving reduced access to online markets for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs.

For example, back in the day, your Facebook News Feed was dominated by information sites; often individuals who were sharing high-value data and facts that interested you, based on your search history. Now, however, that same feed is dominated by advertising, often from companies you’ve never heard of.

As these businesses buy up and dominate the bandwidth, smaller voices are being drowned out and silenced. As a result, the search engines have fewer opportunities to present you to your audience because the Big Boys are dominating access.

Despite this trend, all is not lost. You still have access to your audience, IF you offer valuable information that is easy to find: using your website, social media platforms, video channels – and your blog, which remains the most important of these.

Why Blogging Has Value

First, blog posts remain the purest, most accessible form of online content. Despite the amazing advances in technology, as well as the refining of search algorithms by the search engines, written text remains the easiest form of content for Google and the others to crawl, index, and rank in their search results (SERPs).

In fact, because the written word is so easy to read, blog posts are the most valuable content published to the internet – and always will be.

Next, weekly blogging gives you, and your business, a voice; an opportunity to be yourself and share what matters most to you. Whether you share personal stories and experiences or the latest updates and news about your business, writing a blog provides you with a fantastic opportunity to build your reputation and generate trust – which leads to loyalty – which will ultimately generate leads and increase your potential to make sales.

Blogging provides you with the opportunity to let your personality shine online, while offering your target audience the chance to learn about your business.

Finally, blogging is an easy way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Because it’s easy to share, your blog is a powerful tool for word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing to promote your products or services more efficiently than many other marketing methods. And, adding a blog page to your website is easy, while publishing to your website is simpler than ever – no coding needed!

Blogs remain one of the most popular social sharing funnels on the internet, so taking advantage of this phenomena makes sense as part of your online marketing strategy.

In short, the value of blogging has never been greater, for the following reasons:

Blogging keeps the search engines interested in and ranking your site – they exist to catalogue valuable new content for their customer, the searcher. As long as you provide them what they’re looking for, your ranking will improve.
Blogging keeps your visitors interested and engaged – while building your online reputation as an expert and enhancing your brand.
Blogging is easy to do, with little technical knowledge needed to publish regularly.

If you aren’t blogging as part of your online marketing strategy, now is the time to start. Now that you know the incredible value of blogging, whether for personal or business reasons, you do have an audience who is just waiting to hear from you.

Looking for more online marketing tips and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

Client Attraction Tips – Do You Know Who Your Ideal Client Is? (Or Should Be?)

June 6, 2019 by Jama Leave a Comment

“How do I get more clients?”

Without a doubt this is the question we hear most often, not just from emerging online business owners, but even from veterans of the internet marketplace. Regardless of past success, client attraction remains an important element of your business, leading to increased referrals and long-term growth – as well as a steady revenue stream.

So, how can you become a client attraction magnet for your own business?

Attracting new clients requires two basic steps: creating or enhancing your brand; identifying and appealing to your target audience. Being recognized as an expert in your niche, one who can offer solutions is critical to your success.

However, it’s just as critical to understand the needs, wants, and desires of potential clients. In other words, HOW you present yourself is as important as WHAT you have to offer, while knowing WHO to target is as important as knowing WHY they will benefit from your services.

We’ll offer some ideas on brand building in a later post but, for now, let’s focus your attention on creating an ideal client profile, okay?

Identify Your Ideal Client

To become a client attraction guru for your online business, you have to be able to step into your ideal clients’ head. If you have a clear profile of who they are and what they need or want, you’ll be able to speak to them in a way that will make them WANT to work with you! You can repeat this process over and over again when creating new products or services. The result is marketing materials you can use in multiple ways.

To accomplish this, there are a number of questions you’ll need to answer:

Who is your Ideal Client?
What are their Pain Points?
What are your Solutions?
What do they need to Know/Learn/Do to find a Resolution?
What is their Ultimate “Why” for Seeking your Help?
What is their Ultimate Outcome?
What will Success Look Like?

Ultimately, your goal is to answer the most basic question of all for them, “What’s in it for me?” If they can’t identify a benefit from working with you or from buying your product, they won’t.

When you’ve completed your Ideal Client Profile, develop one simple sentence to put it all together, what’s often called an “elevator statement”.

When you’ve finished, you’ll discover a stunning type of clarity around who you want to work with and what you can do for them!

Your elevator statement can then be used in multiple ways: in conversation with a potential client, in networking situations, as material for your home page – and as inspiration for blog posts, articles, newsletters, and list-building materials.

If you have more than one ideal client, work your way through this process again to create a new profile.

Once you’ve created your unique, identifiable brand and developed your ideal client profile, you can begin to generate content that enhances your identity and speaks directly to your target audience, enabling you to enhance client attraction to a new level.

What are your favorite client attraction tips? Have you put them into actual practice, or, have you been struggling to attract new clients? Share with me below!

Looking for more online marketing tips and ideas? Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.

25 Things Every Small Business Should Automate

... to save you time and money

Business Building Tips

Client Acquisition Tip – You’ve Already Acquired Your Most Valuable Clients

Goal Setting for Success – How to Set Reachable Business Goals

Email Marketing – What is a Nurture Email Campaign?

Online Marketing Tip: The Value of Blogging (Why, Why, Why Do I Have to Blog?)

Client Attraction Tips – Do You Know Who Your Ideal Client Is? (Or Should Be?)

25 Things Every Small Business Should Automate

... to save you time and money