Helpful Healthcare: What Are Clinics Doing Differently To Retain Clients?

Starting a new clinic can be quite challenging, and retaining patients is one of the many challenges new clinics face. Patients are often loyal to doctors they’ve been going to for years and just starting out it can be hard to generate reviews right away. Today there are many things new clinics are doing in order to retain clients, and below is a list you can adopt for yourself to get started.

Implementing a Referral Program

Implement a referral program where new patients who refer friends and family get rewards and discounts. These programs are not only great for recruiting new patients, but can also help the staff build relationships with their existing patients. If patients get a reward for referring other patients, then they will likely continue going to the clinic.

Surveying Patients

Clinics today are asking patients to give their feedback whenever possible. Surveys help give your business an idea of what they can do to improve their service. One of the key things is to offer quality care. If you are thinking about surveying new patients, it’s important to remember that a very short survey can give an indication of the patient’s opinion of their visit. Some clinics have patients complete a five-question survey about their visit before they leave which can be great for feedback on the clinic itself and the kind of care given by staff.

Reminding Patients of Their Appointments

People today are extremely busy and can easily forget about the appointment they have scheduled. It’s common practice now to call patients the day before in order to remind them of their appointment. Emailing and texting is also growing in popularity or you might consider hiring patient engagement solutions like Solutionreach to do the work for you. You can go even further by asking which reminder method they prefer, and what time of day wouldn’t be an interruption for them. Extra courtesies like these can be just the thing to win over new patients.

Convenient Waiting Rooms

Visiting any clinic is a stressful experience for many people. Try your best to make the waiting experience more convenient where you can. For example, you could have a TV and remote set up for patients to use or you could offer bottled water when they first arrive.

Follow-Up with New Patients

It’s always a smart idea for new clinics to follow up with a new patient. For example, a receptionist may call and ask about how their visit went. Patients may also receive an email asking about their visit. Calling and emailing help clinics build relationships and strengthen bonds with loyal customers.

It is not easy starting a new clinic since some struggle to retain patients at first. However, many practices are growing because they have implemented a referral program, follow-up with their patients, and ask them to take a survey. Small touches can be the key to giving new patients what they need and an experience they won’t forget.

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John Jordan Photography profiled

John Jordan Photography delivers quality, creative, tailored photography for Irish businesses, big and small, in the area of portrait, location and still life. We deliver it with flair, experience and commitment and have been doing so for over 14 years.

Why did you start?

Photography was always a way of life for me. I had been shooting rolls of film since I was 8 or 9. It was a good business to get into (when I did) and I saw it as a way of working with other local businesses in a creative, fulfilling way. Visual story telling is the future.

Why are you unique?

We like to engage with clients at an early stage in projects, and push hard to realise them to their best. We listen carefully and always get a feel for the job before we do anything else. We have the skillbase to work in several different areas, and we always find an angle to make sure our clients stand out.

Visual communication is key

Every job is unique and an opportunity to bring creativity and experience to the table. Photography is a really key part in personal and business branding. Just telling your story. Its unfortunate that people sometimes don’t realise this – particularly for profile pictures on LinkedIn.

In the small amount of time and space that you get to convince your customers, as they initially check your website, visual communication is paramount and effective photography is key in those few seconds.

Transform how people are portrayed

We work to transform the way businesses portray their brand, their personality, their values. We believe that the right photography is a really essential part of telling and selling your story and growing your business.

We strive to show people how compelling photography, as with great design, can add value and credibility to their business, changing the way not just customers think about it, but staff and management also.

Clients

It’s always an honour to be trusted with the responsibility of being part of a company’s visual presence/ identity. It’s one that we take seriously.

We have worked for small Start-Ups and SME’s right through to large multi-nationals like Arup and Aviva, and Danone.

What are your plans?

Continue to build strong relationships with good clients. Continue to play to my strengths and be open to new opportunities.

Contact details

John Jordan Photography

T.00353-1-4450261

M.00353-87-2454871

email: isee@johnjordanphotography.com

web: www.johnjordanphotography.com

twitter: @johnjordansnaps

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How To Break Out Of Smaller Markets

Office Workers

Owning a small company and starting from scratch is not an easy task. That is why many people fail and go bankrupt, but for those who survive the initial hardships, there are new challenges. When you obtain a loyal customer base another problem occurs. Your appetite will grow, and you will want to reach out, and make it big. But the problem is, that no matter how much effort some people put into their growing business, once they hit the hard cap, they cannot go any further. This is where certain changes have to occur in order to maintain the company’s growth. Here are some of our ideas.

  1. Add New Products And Improve Customer Service

Most owners want to stick to the thing that brought them success, and are not ready to try some new things, fearing it might not work out. This is the exact reason why their business suffers. You must be able to adapt to the market, as it will not happen the other way around. The important thing is to listen to your cogniview customers, and try to supply them with whatever they need. Customer service is also very important, as all people like to get their information quickly and easily. It also creates a bond between your customer and your brand, and you can get great reviews on social media in this way.

  1. Internet Is A Powerful Weapon

Social media has taken the place of the most powerful marketing tool in the world. A lot of people are still hesitant thinking so, and do not invest much of their time and effort into it. This can be fine if they own a small business, but if they aim for the bigger market, creating a well known brand is one of the most important things. If you create a website for your company, it can add up to a huge boost in sales. Many people are still wondering; what is content marketing, and how can it add to my success? Well, by creating a loyal fanbase of readers, you will be able to place your product better, and it can affect your sales numbers. So take a few days and inform about this, it may be the step you need to convert to a powerful and famous company.

  1. Install A Software Which Will Increase The Productivity Of Your Employees

This can be an expensive step, but it is a necessary one. A small business can be controlled by a few people with no problems, but once things speed up, it becomes impossible to manage every little thing. That is when the owners try to fix the problem by hiring more people, and it just creates an even bigger confusion, as well as it brings the payroll up. A good software increases the productivity of workers, saves a lot of time, and provides better results for the customers. You do not have to use software from big companies which will charge you with huge amounts of money. Instead, buy from a small company wanting to make it big. It can be a boost needed for both of you.

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This post was originally published here - http://www.smallbusinesscan.com/break-smaller-markets/ on thinkbusiness

Increase Brand Awareness: Implied Links and Brand Mentions

A lot of businesses still don’t know what is a fast and safe strategy to get an organic brand visibility online. How not to be penalized or banned in search engines and get customers flow. Interested how to increase brand awareness in a right way? Let’s dive into.

Rolling out algorithms like Penguin Google’s goal is to decrease a value of “grey hat” link-building strategies that allowed to get faster visibility growth for new websites, products or startups or get higher rankings results for low quality websites.

Here is a citation from recent SEMPRO Club meet-up with googlers from search quality results department in Dublin in Kiev Andrey Lipattsev:

“Google ignores up to 95% of links. Do not spend money on low-quality blog post submissions, link farms or buying links on link broker websites like Sape. It’s so easy for us to recognize link patterns and disavow their value. It’s better to invest those assets in increasing quality of website, product that would lead to increasing brand awareness in a natural way.”

So, it’s clear that search engines push businesses to natural link-building that is earning or acquiring links as acknowledgement of service quality, uniqueness or its advantages. Or Eric Ward link-building style that would work too but costs a lot due to amount of consumed time.

So what new businesses should do to increase brand visibility in search engines results without being penalized sooner or later?

Disclaimer: Provided tactics below are not pure spam on social networks or forums as it has been for years. The main goal of all tactics is to help people in first using personal or brand expertise and get brand mentions, follow and implied links as an additional bonus for a well-done work.

Is brand mentions a new “link-building” strategy?

Brand mentions or “implied links” could be a part of Panda algorithm keynotes that are mentioned in patent registered by Google, described in Simon Person research at MOZ.

It’s clear now that Google can associate some brand queries (reference queries) with the website. Once visitors type-in brand queries and click on a site results, connections are made and search engine starts associating unlinked brand mentions (citations) as “implied links”.

According to above mentioned statement, brand mentions could be used for measurement of website authority. High-quality brand tend to have more brand mentions online (linked or unlinked) that could be used as a visible website authority factor.

To say in easy words, in order to increase online brand awareness for new product, service or startup, businesses need to pay attention to increasing number of brand mentions. No matter, linked or unlinked. This strategy will allow to get website visibility in organic way without violating Google webmaster guidelines.

P.S. If you want to transfer some brand mentions into links, follow this strategy.

Crafting perfect online brand awareness strategy

There are tons of ways to build brand awareness online. I would recommend you to start from reading guide from Neil Patel about personal brand developing. There you can find decent strategies that could be used for developing brand awareness for any business or startups.

Let’s describe main tactics that you can try to create brand recognition:

  • Infographics
    Just include your brand name just under main graphic content. If the infographic is useful, people will definitely search for your brand name to find out more related information.
  • Guest posts
    Allows to build personal expertise and promote your business.
  • Content syndication
    Allows a broader audience to learn about your brand.
  • Influencer marketing
    Try to network with influencers in your niche, show the benefits of your product, how it can help them in a daily life, etc. More details on how to manage this here.
  • Forum link-building and brand mentions
    One of the best ways to show an expertise in your niche. Show how your business would be useful for a target audience. This channel is very powerful and if done right can generate leads and sales.
  • Q/A sites
    Very powerful tool for creating first brand mentions. It’s very easy to become useful answering their questions and proving real value.
  • Blog comments
    Still can be used for creating unlinked brand mentions. Keynotes: do not spam or promote too much, choose niche-leading blogs with audience.

Some of these tactics could be called guerrilla marketing tactics. Guerrilla marketing is an marketing strategy designed for small businesses to promote their products or services in an unconventional way with little budget to spend.

Using above listed tactic especially brand mentions on forums and answering questions on Q/A sites is an affordable and natural way to improve brand recognition for new service or product and even generate leads. Furthermore, those links (express or implied) would have a positive influence on your SEO due to natural looking link profile and brand mentions.

How to utilize online guerrilla marketing tactics, what tools to use?

Buzzbundle

Paid tool that allows to monitor topics (on forums, blogs, social networks) you are interested in and answer on any of them directly from Buzzbundle software. Using this tool allows you to save time and get rid of routine tasks like keeping in mind all your social accounts, etc.

Google Alerts

Free tool from Google where you can adjust notifications to your email whenever topic you are interested in pop-ups online. So you can easily jump into conversation there (help people using your experience, promote your service or product, build relationships, etc).

Works great for online reputation management. Using Google Alerts you will find the latest brand mentions and would react faster than ever.

Talkwalker

Social data intelligence tool that allows to track, analyze your brand activity on social networks and all over the web.

Developing brand awareness case study

Case is provided by BrandCitations.com.

The goal – increase brand name awareness and traffic.

The tactic – answer people questions and mention new brand name without linking to website.

The result – 15% up after 1 month of work

impression

organic traffic
Screenshot of branded organic traffic

If you have no time for improving online brand awareness by your own, my advice to outsource it tohttp://brandcitations.com/.

Offline

This channel is more used by big brands or brick and mortar small businesses. I will count few most often used techniques:

  • Coupons, Giveaways;
  • Print marketing;
  • Signs, Banners;
  • Conferences, public events;
  • Networking;
  • Word-of-mouth.

Sources for additional reading:

Utilizing these offline activities will lead to improvement of online brand awareness as well. People will start discussing your product, service online.

Easiest way to measure brand awareness online

  • Use Google Webmaster Tools. Track the volume of brand searches using data from Search Analysis report.

google analytics impression

By the way, do you remember case study before? That’s the same site a year after, developing brand citations bring more than 4 times (400%) more brand searches online.

  • Use Google Trends. Track the graph of popularity for your brand keywords. example.

By the way, one more citation from Andrey Lipattsev from Google web results quality team (video in russian):

“Yes, guerrilla marketing or crowd-marketing (aka brand mentions, expertise answers on forums and Q/A sites) works for businesses. Businesses need to go to discussion boards and have a conversation with the target audience, help them. There is nothing wrong. We support that.”

So, that’s all. Now it’s time for you to think it over and start following this online brand awareness strategy. And if it done correctly, you will definitely reach your goals.

Have additional questions, have no time for doing it yourself? Get in touch with me.

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The Definitive Guide to Local SEO

Local businesses are finding it increasingly important to have an effective online strategy. The days of knocking up a cheap and cheerful website that acts as a glorified business card are long gone.

The simple fact is that the businesses with a top ranking are the ones who are getting the lion’s share of the traffic.

But equally true is that these businesses haven’t got an amazing (and expensive) marketing team working for them. In fact, all they have done is to focus on some straightforward techniques that any small business owner can put in place.

That is exactly the reason why Pickaweb put together the Definitive Guide to Local SEO to help any small business owner to get their online strategy back on track – quickly.

Here we’ve got a quick summary of some of the key points to help you hit the deck running.

The Basics

First up there are some SEO basics that need to be put in place. This is all about applying some best practices to your site.

Things like keyword selection, setting up metatags, using keyword rich URLs, linking between pages, adding more pages for specific products or services, etc..

These are definitely quick wins and should be your first priority.

Name, Address & Phone (NAP) Citations

As well as fixing up your site you need to ensure that you get listed in authority websites – especially those related to local businesses. These are called local citations and they are very important for any local business serious about getting traffic.

But you need to ensure that you are listed consistently across them, especially your business name, address and phone number – hence the acronym NAP.

Fortunately there are loads of NAP sites to chose from and you should also pay attention to niche citation sites.

This is definitely an easy win. That is not to say it isn’t time consuming although there are a number of companies like BrightLocal that can do all this for you.

Link Building

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to you. In recent years it has gained a tarnished reputation because people tried to game the system and were penalised by Google.

However, it is still a legitimate strategy for any business and despite the mystery that surrounds it there are still some surprisingly easy ways to get links for your local business.

Google My Business

These days if you are serious about getting traffic from Google then you need to play by their rules and that means setting up and configuring your Google My Business listing.

Creating your listing is just the first step and you need to make sure that you optimise it and make full use of all the features that Google provides for you.

Blogging for Local Business

Most local businesses do not have a blog. Possibly because they either can’t see the benefits or they can’t think what to write about or maybe they are just in a plain boring industry.

But there are definitely benefits to blogging for any local business. You just need to get started and create some initial content ideas for your blog.

Customer Reviews

Getting reviews is a vital part of any local SEO strategy these days. In fact you may have noticed that the local businesses that tend to get a high ranking have got one thing in common: Google reviews. Go check it out.

People often think that getting customer reviews or testimonials is difficult. But there are easy ways to get customer reviews too.

Video for Local SEO Success

With great video cameras in most smartphones these days there is no excuse not to make videos for your business. You can create great quality videos using your iPhone and some basic equipment.

But it isn’t just about creating video for the sake of it. Video can be a great way to improve your site’s ranking.

So, it’s: Lights, iPhone, Action!

Mobile – The Future of the Net

These days people aren’t just sitting at home browsing the web. They’re out and about using their smartphone or tablet. In fact the growth in mobile usage is staggering and is behind Google’s decision in April 2015 to promote mobile friendly websites in their mobile search listings.

First up you need to check if your site is mobile friendly. If it isn’t then one of the ways you can address this is to consider switching to a responsive website.

Google+ for Local SEO Success

Google+ is Google’s social platform and it is increasingly important for local SEO success.

There are some basics that you need to ensure that you get the most from Google+ but there are considerable benefits for any local business.

Tools of the Trade

There are loads of great tools for Local SEO whether you want to get the basics right, get on top of your NAP Citations, create a better blog, get more reviews, use video or get more mobile traffic.

by Pickaweb

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Pros and Cons of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation has indubitably come a rather long way from being but a simple method of sending automatic marketing emails without any specific focus. Throughout the years, it has developed into a versatile tool that many marketers now use to create sustainable value for their customers, thereby generating more leads and ultimately converting them to much needed sales. However, marketing automation isn’t a “one size fits all” solution, and this is something that every marketer should keep in mind while tailoring the approach to actively engaging their target audience. Here is some food for thought to help you get a clearer picture of what the benefits and potential pitfalls are for those who have chosen to automate.

Pros

Marketing automation can facilitate a synergetic relationship between your marketing and sales teams.

Often enough, there is significant information asymmetry between these two departments and this can cause a costly rift in your value creation chain, meaning less leads and sales than you could be having with your level of investment. Proper automation requires both teams to be in the loop – this creates a process structure that actually makes it nigh impossible for these two departments to become misaligned. Build value from the inside!

It allows for major future returns by keeping your leads in “stand-by” mode until they’re ready to convert.

A well-timed action from your automated system can mean the difference between reinvigorating your communication with a customer and losing it to the competition.

Big data means big opportunities.

Marketing systems rely on trending, trial and error and machine learning, which means they get smarter by constantly doing and re-analyzing. You can easily measure the effectiveness of certain messages and formulations and then adjust your approach accordingly – constant feedback means constant improvement.

Inspiration through integration!

Many marketing automation solutions offer a rather high degree of integration with major customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which can further help you tailor a more personalized instrument to reach your customers.

Strength in numbers

Your new system can indeed help you fire in quick succession and even simultaneously at a host of moving targets in various marketing channels!

Cons

It might prove to be a costly investment.

The knowledge required to create an efficient and dependable marketing automation system comes with a price. That price does depend on the amount of functionality and the ability to use it as a scalable solution, but its true cost is always relative to your expected ROI. Do your math carefully!

You’re going to need a ton of data and content.

Processing and learning algorithms work by analyzing huge quantities of data to assess consumer trends and serve your marketing offer accordingly. If your data is scarce, incomplete or even faulty, your automated system is going to be doing a whole lot of missing, and getting wrong or generic offers and messages is something that consumers find irritating.

“Automated” doesn’t equal“no maintenance”

Sometimes it’s just the opposite. You need to manage your tools like you would normally manage your people. There is always some tweaking to be done in order to help this investment of yours grow to its full potential, which means dedicating some human capacity to boostyour machine learning.

It could make you lose your ability to act moderately

Many risk becoming too aggressive, too passive or too generic by relying on a machine to do all the work. Automation may offer you some serious data analytics, but marketing is about building interpersonal relationships through value, and this creates sales.

Wisdom for the road

Marketing automation is a mighty tool with the proven capability of boosting your leads and sales, but getting it right is tricky. If you plan on going “full auto”, bear in mind that the costs can quickly rise and surprise, so keep a close eye on your process, feed it ample data and remember: marketing is about understanding psychology, and psychology is about fundamentally understanding people.

 

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Business Signs: Illuminate Your Business To Success

Every business needs marketing, many opt for on-line marketing campaigns and others go for the old fashioned way of using magazines, newspapers and other directories. There is nothing wrong with using any of these, in fact, they all work quite well! In the past few years there has been a massive boost in the use of custom signs for businesses, companies are employing architects to create weird and wacky designs to compliment their services, professionalism when it comes to signs has gone out of the window here as quirky is here to stay.

Let’s take a look at some fantastic business signs…

An amusing sign for a bar

Sometimes a little humour goes a long way, this sign does just that. Using humour in your sign can instantly create an inviting vibe, it will also be talked about, I can guarantee it. Though only a bar would really get away with this type of humour.

Waffle house sign

Waffle house sign

This one is jumping on the social media bandwagon, I think this one is very clever as I am sure everyone walking past here is bound to snap a photo or two of the sign and put it onto their own Facebook pages, who does not like free advertising? To pull this sort of thing off you will need to be very careful not to infringe on the copyrights of social media platforms, personally I think this one is too close for comfort.

Dragon Building Decoration

Dragon Building Decoration

Have a sign already but the building itself is a little, boring? Jazz it up and make it the wow factor by adding your mascot right on the front of your building, this could work with any business, it would be especially good for a kids themed restaurant or a company that works with children such as play areas and play warehouses. Also having the mascot on the building as well as business cards, posters and flyers will ensure the nobody misses your establishment!

Why Have A Sign Anyway?

The cost of a new sign and the cost to design it will be a significant investment, you can count on it! The initial investment will be well worth it and the money spent will made back quite quickly as they have a positive effect on the profitability and financial health on any organisation. The U.S small business administration states “For businesses that choose to enhance their signage with an electronic message display, the owners typically see an increase in business of 15% to 150%.”

The Placement

When business owners think about signs, they typically think about it being attached onto their own buildings, in some cases companies are kept well out of the way in business estates that are not in view of the road so this would be pretty pointless as they would only require a small sign with their company name on it. For those that are off the beaten track, the best option is to rent a plot or space that is on a busy intersection or highway, the more visibility the better.

As with the signs above, if you allow room underneath for special offers and monthly offers whenever you run them, you can add them onto the sign and bring in even more potential business through the door by the temptation of saving money for the consumer.

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Influencer Marketing to Spread your Brand’s Identity

Our product is unique, Our service is innovative! Customer’s inboxes are getting flooded with these marketing pitches. But how many of them actually get influenced by these words? May be a few of them… but what about the rest of the customers? As they receive impressive marketing messages from so many different brands, customers become sceptical about which brands to belief and choose and which one to avoid.

Marketers often do not understand how they can get their messages heard and absorbed. However, the key is identifying and empowering a brand’s most influential fans and followers to their network. Who are these influencers? They are individuals who have a sway over your audience, who have large followings in certain niches and affect opinions. The process eventually increases the visibility of your products and services. So how do you market them?

Put away the sales pitch. Your aim should be to bring people into your’ Marketing Sphere of Influence’. And once they arrive, it is your responsibility to deliver, engage and build the bond with your customers. The process is comprehensive but not difficult to achieve…

Search your Influencers from your Industry

With social media marketing being the buzz of the world, it is the easiest way to see who is talking about your brand. As you follow the influential, check out what and who they follow. You must recognize that influence is contextual. Your influencers entirely depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Participate in regular conversations relevant to your industry. Besides, some of the online tools also help you to see who’s sharing your content and how influential they are.

Do not Confuse Influencers with Reach

Some people assume that to find the influencers, they have to reach as many people as possible. However, influence marketing is all about reaching the right set of people. The motive should be to make the right people identify your brand. Create content that is specifically designed to attract the attention of the influencers. Try to follow the principle of reciprocity that says people are more likely to take interests in your stuff only when you take an interest in their stuff first.

Target and own your Niche

If you want to become the authority in your industry, you need to know your niche well. Do not jump into selling your products first. Read their content, articles, and discussion threads that you may come across. Do not overlook the loyal blog readers who subscribe to your newsletter, give interesting comments on your posts, or retweet your tweet. Focus on the primary influencers who get you traction. Own them by commenting on their blog posts, reply back on Twitter, respond to their Facebook status updates   and send them emails pitching your products and ideas. Do not underestimate the power of communities.

The more you interact with your influencers, the better you’re amplifying your brand message.

Sell through your Content

Look at the influencers as your potential consumers of your products. The product, in this situation is your content. You can probably apply AIDA’s progressive techniques in sales which incorporates four major factors to consider

Attention: Gain your influencer’s attention with a brief intriguing subject line

Interest: Draw their interests through genuine data and exclusive videos

Desire: Elicit a desire with emotional marketing (content) that most closely reaffirms with your products and audiences’ beliefs

Action: Ensure that your pitch includes the required call-to-actions.

Engage your Influencers

Engage people in your marketing space. Some of the best ways to drive engagement are through forums, groups, or communities. Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook will help you have the pipeline straight to the right people.  But how do you choose among the bazillion groups on LinkedIn or Google+? Make sure that your group

  • Are fit for your market
  • Are actively involved in
  • Have active and engaged members

However, be ready to manage the traffic before you start growing your marketing sphere.

Show some Love and not Business

Leveraging your influencers begins with building a strong bond with your customers. Investing in a superior customer experience and checking how frequently your customers speak about your brand on social media should be a top priority. If required interact directly with the customers, provide loyalty programs, promotional discounts, or create customer advisory board. This gives enough opportunities to encourage positive, organic and authentic sharing about your brand.

Attributes that make the Influencers

Echo: An influencer should be able to mobilize opinion and create reactions when they converse about a topic

Exposure: The size of the influencer’s community in a specific area is an important attribute to consider

Share of voice: influencer’s degree of participation on a given subject matter is a significant factor to regard.

You’ve Enough Reasons to Pay More Attention to the Influencers

Influence Marketing for Better Targeting

Word-of-mouth is the best searchlight that goes through every social network to find the most interested consumers.

Advanced SEO with Influence Marketing

By interacting with Facebook users and influencing their networks, marketers are able to reach a new group full of qualified prospective.

Influencers Affect Decision Making Process

Preferences or decisions coming from friends, families and social media networks always have a strong impact on the buyer’s purchase decisions.

Companies who understand the value of influence marketing stand to gain if they plan and execute well.

 

 

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Influencer Marketing to Spread your Brand’s Identity

Our product is unique, Our service is innovative! Customer’s inboxes are getting flooded with these marketing pitches. But how many of them actually get influenced by these words? May be a few of them… but what about the rest of the customers? As they receive impressive marketing messages from so many different brands, customers become sceptical about which brands to belief and choose and which one to avoid.

Marketers often do not understand how they can get their messages heard and absorbed. However, the key is identifying and empowering a brand’s most influential fans and followers to their network. Who are these influencers? They are individuals who have a sway over your audience, who have large followings in certain niches and affect opinions. The process eventually increases the visibility of your products and services. So how do you market them?

Put away the sales pitch. Your aim should be to bring people into your’ Marketing Sphere of Influence’. And once they arrive, it is your responsibility to deliver, engage and build the bond with your customers. The process is comprehensive but not difficult to achieve…

Search your Influencers from your Industry

With social media marketing being the buzz of the world, it is the easiest way to see who is talking about your brand. As you follow the influential, check out what and who they follow. You must recognize that influence is contextual. Your influencers entirely depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Participate in regular conversations relevant to your industry. Besides, some of the online tools also help you to see who’s sharing your content and how influential they are.

Do not Confuse Influencers with Reach

Some people assume that to find the influencers, they have to reach as many people as possible. However, influence marketing is all about reaching the right set of people. The motive should be to make the right people identify your brand. Create content that is specifically designed to attract the attention of the influencers. Try to follow the principle of reciprocity that says people are more likely to take interests in your stuff only when you take an interest in their stuff first.

Target and own your Niche

If you want to become the authority in your industry, you need to know your niche well. Do not jump into selling your products first. Read their content, articles, and discussion threads that you may come across. Do not overlook the loyal blog readers who subscribe to your newsletter, give interesting comments on your posts, or retweet your tweet. Focus on the primary influencers who get you traction. Own them by commenting on their blog posts, reply back on Twitter, respond to their Facebook status updates   and send them emails pitching your products and ideas. Do not underestimate the power of communities.

The more you interact with your influencers, the better you’re amplifying your brand message.

Sell through your Content

Look at the influencers as your potential consumers of your products. The product, in this situation is your content. You can probably apply AIDA’s progressive techniques in sales which incorporates four major factors to consider

Attention: Gain your influencer’s attention with a brief intriguing subject line

Interest: Draw their interests through genuine data and exclusive videos

Desire: Elicit a desire with emotional marketing (content) that most closely reaffirms with your products and audiences’ beliefs

Action: Ensure that your pitch includes the required call-to-actions.

Engage your Influencers

Engage people in your marketing space. Some of the best ways to drive engagement are through forums, groups, or communities. Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook will help you have the pipeline straight to the right people.  But how do you choose among the bazillion groups on LinkedIn or Google+? Make sure that your group

  • Are fit for your market
  • Are actively involved in
  • Have active and engaged members

However, be ready to manage the traffic before you start growing your marketing sphere.

Show some Love and not Business

Leveraging your influencers begins with building a strong bond with your customers. Investing in a superior customer experience and checking how frequently your customers speak about your brand on social media should be a top priority. If required interact directly with the customers, provide loyalty programs, promotional discounts, or create customer advisory board. This gives enough opportunities to encourage positive, organic and authentic sharing about your brand.

Attributes that make the Influencers

Echo: An influencer should be able to mobilize opinion and create reactions when they converse about a topic

Exposure: The size of the influencer’s community in a specific area is an important attribute to consider

Share of voice: influencer’s degree of participation on a given subject matter is a significant factor to regard.

You’ve Enough Reasons to Pay More Attention to the Influencers

Influence Marketing for Better Targeting

Word-of-mouth is the best searchlight that goes through every social network to find the most interested consumers.

Advanced SEO with Influence Marketing

By interacting with Facebook users and influencing their networks, marketers are able to reach a new group full of qualified prospective.

Influencers Affect Decision Making Process

Preferences or decisions coming from friends, families and social media networks always have a strong impact on the buyer’s purchase decisions.

Companies who understand the value of influence marketing stand to gain if they plan and execute well.

 

 

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Creating a Successful Branding Strategy for your Small Business

Small businesses need to devote a lot of time and energy to creating and reinforcing their branding strategies; perhaps more than the ‘big brands’ out there, whose only job is maintenance. This is the age of the small business – in fact; many corporate brands are re-engineering their style to resemble smaller brands in order to appeal to consumers who prefer to promote the up-and-coming brands.

As a small business owner/entrepreneur, you probably know that branding is vital for business success, but do you really know why? There is a direct link between marketing success and strong branding, but until you fully understand exactly where this is, the best you can do is try to copy what’s been done before by successful brands.

Strong and successful branding extends beyond just having a nice logo and improving brand awareness and external perception. Strong branding must permeate every aspect of the business, so much so that the word ‘business’ can be seamlessly substituted for ‘brand’.

What is branding?

Branding is the vehicle through which you define the business not only to external parties, but also to your team and even yourself. It defines the ‘identity’ of the business and is an embodiment of the values, objectives and core competencies of the business.

However, this is different from advertising. Today’s customer can tell when a business is just glossing over or trying to charm their way into higher sales revenues. Branding must be the real deal; reaching out to customers in much the same way a young man trying to woo a lady might do – honest, but impressive.

Having a strategic brand definition will help your potential clients to connect with your brand on an emotive level, since they share the same beliefs and values espoused by your brand. This in turn increases sales, improves loyalty, memorability and advocacy and improves brand differentiation. It can also help you protect your pricing should competitors resort to discount offers to drive sales.

Creating a successful branding strategy

  1. Brand definition

Review products/services offered by the business and identify the niche you serve within the market. Conduct research on the rational and emotive needs of that niche and how your brand character can help you connect with consumers in a distinct way.

  1. Characterization

Imagine the brand you’re building as a person with values, beliefs, purposes and a unique character/personality. This directs behavior, presentation and communication. For human beings, this comes intuitively, but for a brand, all these aspects must be carefully engineered to provide an accurate picture.

  1. Business drivers

You should have this by now, but if not, consider the values and beliefs of your brand, the core objectives for which it exists and who you consider to be your brand heroes. This will establish a brand positioning platform and drive character and identity for improved brand communication.

  1. Consistency

Finally, aim to create a long-term relationship with consumers. This means that you cannot raise expectations beyond what you can offer or embellish your real picture that results in broken promises and broken trust, things you cannot afford when building a brand. Create an honest brand by speaking with a consistent tone of voice and acting consistently with the message you transmit. This will reinforce who you are in the minds of consumers.

Bio: Lalit Sharma is an SEO consultant who runs a SEO house called Ranking By SEO. He is specialized inlink building and other SEO related activities. You can also find him on Twitter, Google+ and his personal site.

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