Category: Business

Make your business stand out to consumers during the holiday season

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Make your business stand out to consumers during the holiday season

Image with title: Stand Out During the Holidays

With every business competing extra hard during the holiday season it’s critical that you make your business stand out. With a little extra holiday cheer you can compete with top businesses. Here are a couple simple but effective ways to make your business stand out.

Holiday Drive

The best way to engage with the community while giving back to it is through a food, winter clothing, or toy drive. Choose a holiday drive you want to participate in and market it to your community. Getting the community involved in helping out others in need is sure to make your company stand out and show you care. Make the drive something personal to your company or your community.

To make your drive even more popular, you can also throw in a discount on items with a donation, such as 20% off your entire purchase with a donation. An example of a discounted drive that Credit Unions participate in all the time is for each can of food donated, they wave one overdraft fee. Customers feel as though they’re giving back to the community as well as gaining something from a business they’re a part of. It shows the company wants to do good in their community. Social responsibility plays a big part in consumers’ decision-making processes.

Send Out Holiday Wishes to Clients

Sending a note to clients during the holiday season can show clients you value them. It shows that even during the busiest season, you’re thinking about them and appreciate that they choose to do business with you. It humanizes your brand and builds loyalty between you and the client. The holiday wish can be as simple as an email saying happy holidays or as personal as a written letter thanking them and wishing them a happy holiday.

Give a Holiday Gift

Along with holiday wishes, holiday gifts are also a good idea to win over customers. Adding a little something extra to your holiday wishes brings even more delight to a customer. You can also choose to add a gift with purchase. It not only entices current customers to buy, it might also bring in new customers who love a good deal. Adding something extra to your already great deals will surely make your business stand out among others.

Give Holiday Discounts

During the holidays, consumers especially are looking for deals. Even if it’s just a small discount or added incentive, make sure you’re participating in the holiday season specials. Consumers will hold out looking for the best company with the best deals. With holiday discounts you’ll gain more customers than you’ll lose in profit. Holiday discounts are also a way to get consumers into the store enticing them to buy even more than just one discounted item. It also gives those who wouldn’t normally buy your product a reason to try it out.

Be Available

You’re obviously going to close down the office or store a couple of times during the holiday season and you should but be sure that you’re not restricting your hours so much that customers get frustrated. Customers want to be able to order at any time and receive customer service during normal times.

The holiday season is the one time a year you should be even more available than normal. Extend your customer service hours during the holiday’s to plant trust in your customers. The more a customer can trust a company to be there and meet their needs when they need it most, the more loyal that customer will become. The holiday season is a very stressful time and having a company that is there to solve their problems at the click of the button is something every customer wants.

If you’re an online store you also want to make sure your business is available without hiccups 24/7, being sure to fix any glitches as quickly as possible.

Charitable Contribution

Going along with social responsibility, a company’s contributions to charity also helps make them stand out. Ask your customers for ideas on what charities to donate to. Asking for their opinions will make them feel like a part of the decision, allowing them to help give back to a charity they strongly believe in. Making donations during the holidays is always a big deal and something people are proud to participate in. Customer’s knowing that their support in your company leads to you giving back to others will make you stand out during the holiday season.

Get started now on your holiday efforts to stand out among others and check out Marketing Ideas for Your Holiday Sales for even more holiday ideas including, holiday-themed offers, discounts, and content.

Spark Your Audience Engagement

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Spark Your Audience Engagement
Audience Engagement

All top companies have extensive customer engagement, and most notably, it’s largely customer-driven. Every company strives to have audience engagement. It helps build relationships, community, and loyalty, encourages conversation and participation, and makes your brand stand out among others.

Companies need a long-term engagement strategy as it is vital to their growth. Better customer experience means customers will not only choose your brand over any other they are also willing to pay more for your product or service. The better the experience the more loyal a customer will become and the more engaged they’ll get.

Humanize your brand

As a company you want to be able to play to people’s needs and be someone customers can relate to. Popular consumer brands such as Wendy’s and Under Armor have it easier while brands like banks and B2B companies have to try even harder. Utilizing people within your company that are passionate about your brand, you can work to create a humanized brand. Create content that is relatable, things consumers would interact with, and make your brand stand out as something they want to be a part of.

Consistent communication

Your engaged customers want to hear from you. They want to know they can count on you to inform them of updates to your product/service and company, especially in these unusual times. In gaining audience engagement, you also want them to count on you for supplying them with information within your industry. In gaining engagement, you must be consistent in your newsletters, social media posts, emails, and any other form of communication you use.

Get to know your community

The more you know the easier it is to interact with your audience. Do your research as to why your audience is drawn towards you. Take time to get to know them so you can engage accordingly. Know their interests, wants, needs, and lifestyles. Knowing your audience drives you in the right direction, making sure you don’t strike out when trying to engage. Asking for feedback will also help you get to know your community and gives you ideas of what your audience thinks currently and what they want to see in the future. Most customers are very willing to give their opinions and thus become engaged with your product and brand. You’ll also see engagement levels rise once you start implementing their ideas.

Surprise personalized outreach

Digital marketing allows companies to take personalized engagement even further. The most effective content strategy is to offer something that they wouldn’t expect. Real-time personalized deals are a sure way to get customers to engage with your brand. Making your deals relevant to customers right when they need it makes them feel as though the advertisements were made for them. Be sure to create marketing and advertising campaigns based on location, social platform, and specific products to boost your consumer engagement strategy. However, personalization should be about making the user feel welcomed and known without feeling like you’re digging into their personal data.

Schedule weekly activities

It can be effective to post activities or ask questions the same day each week on social media – promoting things like Sales Tip Tuesdays or Motivational Mondays. After posting your content, ask your followers to join in, sharing their tips and advice, or posting a photo of what motivated them. This encourages followers to not only engage with your post but others in the community as well. Being the source of community engagement ups your brand and encourages users to return to your page to interact each week, growing your engagement.

Understanding What Customers Want

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Understanding What Customers Want

Three Tips to Understand Your Customers

If we could understand what every customer is thinking, we’d be selling left and right. Of course, it’s very rare that a customer tells us how they’re feeling. With the constant bombardment of advertising and everyone wanting them to buy, customers are a lot less trusting and require more time and effort to convince to buy.

customer service image

Understanding what drives an individual to want to buy is a key factor in selling today. If you don’t get lucky with that customer who willingly tells you their wants, needs, and concerns for your product/service, it means you must figure it out on your own. Knowing how to figure out a client’s wants, needs, and concerns and use it to your advantage is something every good salesperson understands how to do.

Here are three ways to understand what potential customers are thinking.

Be the guinea pig

Go through the customer experience process. Follow the paths they would take on the route to buying from you. Act as though this is your first time coming across the product and note what value you receive. What key information do you take in, is there something not mentioned that you can note in your sales pitch or a key factor you can build off of? It’s important to understand the process and information the customer is taking in before they reach you. This way more value is being added to your product instead of just highlighting what the customer already knows. The more value you can add, the more likely a customer is to buy.

Learn as much as you can about your client’s job and life

It’s important to focus specifically on those who will be using your product/service. Learning about your customer’s job or life often helps bring to light key factors your customer wouldn’t think of if asked what they wanted from the product. The more you know about a customer, the better you can pick out key things the customer would enjoy. This tactic takes more time and empathy from the salesperson, but the more personal you can get, the more likely a customer is to buy from you specifically.

Understand what customers want

Personalized service, consistent answers, and optimized user experience.

Personalized service. Customers don’t want to be treated like a case number. As you want to learn as much as you can about your client, you also want to create an experience that’s personalized to them. Work with the client to figure out the best package for them, making sure to pay attention to their needs and wants. Giving them an experience different than the usual sales pitch will get them much closer to buying.

Consistent Answers. Seventy-six percent of customers receive conflicting answers from different support agents when asking the same questions. Make sure your sales team is on the same page. Consistent answers throughout the buying process will increase the likelihood of completing a purchase more so than receiving different answers to the same question. It shows you have your stuff together and that a customer can rely on each representative to give a good deal.

Optimized user experience. User experience is a huge factor in choosing to buy. Non-responsive and hard-to-use websites turn people away. Make sure your website is user-friendly through the navigation, homepage, and cart checkout. You want to make it a fun, easy experience. Aside from online experience, you also want to make sure customer support services are optimized. Using quality sales skills, salespeople can make for a troublesome user experience, one that will keep customers coming back.

Marketing Ideas for Your Holiday Sales

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Marketing Ideas for Your Holiday Sales

Image with holiday items and title

When it comes to the holidays, we are all looking for that special offer or bonus to go along with our shopping. As a business this is the best time to pull out all the stops. To reap the benefits of the holiday season, businesses have to pull out all their best offer saving discounts and go total marketing on them.

As a business you’re going to want to take advantage of the holidays. Here are several ways in which you can rock the holiday season and boost your company’s sales.

Once November 1st hits let the holiday marketing begin. We suggest not going full blown Christmas quite yet though. Start out with thanksgiving themed marketing, leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales before heading into Christmas.

  1. Offer and Discount Ideas

    • Offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and promotions. Black Friday is huge and for online only businesses and services so is Cyber Monday. Capitalize on this opportunity.

    • Give out holiday-specific discounts or coupon codes such as entering code TURKEY30 to receive 30% off the order.

    • Offer time-limited sales to convey a sense of urgency. Example: Save 40% on Cyber Monday.

    • Offer free or low-cost shipping. Many people are turned away with the added cost of shipping. Close more deals by shipping for free or giving a discounted shipping price.

    • Create holiday gift packages – packages you can’t get any other time. Put together a package that includes items customers usually buy together or different items you offer that customers could then try out.

    • Offer a free holiday themed gift with a purchase. This will give buyers an extra incentive to buy and entice hesitant buyers.

    • Offer 2-for-1 products. The buyer gets to keep one for her/himself and give the other one as a gift.

    • Send out discounts on future purchases for all items bought during the holidays. Set yourself up for post-holiday success.

    • Team up with another business to create Christmas gift bundles. Combine your product and their product into a gift package.

    • FSL + Infofree offer

    • Send small gifts to your loyal customers. An inexpensive gift like a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine can show you care and puts your business at the top of their minds.

    • Offer flash deals and expedited shipping for last-minute shoppers.

    • Run a 12 Days of Christmas holiday promotion. Offer a different sale or discount or promote a different product each day leading up to Christmas.

    • Hold an advent calendar campaign. Offer a discount on one product per day throughout the entire Christmas season.

  1. Promote your holiday offers repeatedly. Don’t be afraid to share your sales and deals more than once. You want to make sure your promotions reach your potential customers.

  1. Content Marketing

    • Provide holiday-themed information to your target market. Direct social media posts and blog posts to holiday-themed information.

    • Create a holiday landing page where you can display gift ideas or discounts.

    • Update your social media covers to show some holiday cheer.

    • Thanksgiving FSL Header

    • Capture the holiday related search engine traffic by publishing content optimized for the season on your website.

    • Make your email template holiday themed.

    • Send holiday promotion emails with all your discounts. Send one right before Christmas too with last-minute gift ideas.

    • Send emails with your holiday offers including one promotion per email. Space these out accordingly.

    • Find gift guides in your industry and ask for your products to be included.

    • Include a holiday countdown ticker on your site. This will let visitors know exactly what day they need to order by to receive their products in time for Christmas.

    • Send your customers Christmas or New Year cards via mail or email.

Start planning and implementing your holiday marketing now! With your extra holiday efforts you’ll be selling like crazy.

Need more inspiration on how you can stand out to customers during the holiday season? Check out Make your business stand out to consumers during the holiday season for ideas!

Thanks to Kim Garst for the holiday themed ideas!

Advice for New Salespeople

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | 3 Comments on Advice for New Salespeople
Saying: "Create wow moments for your prospects and watch your close rate grow tremendously

Whether you’ve known you wanted to go into sales your whole life or you’re just now getting into it, we all have to learn somehow. If you look at a seasoned salesperson, they make it look so easy. It’s like they were just born with the natural ability to sell. Chances are, however, they were once just like you, researching how to become better at sales. Sales isn’t a magical talent you’re born with it’s something that with a lot of practice anyone can be good at.

Here are six quick tips for new salespeople to become all stars:

  1. 1. Ask questions

    You will be around people who have been doing the job much longer than you have. While you might have learned all the new sales techniques, they’ve actually been doing the job. Ask questions often and learn from your peers. Many salespeople often regret not asking more questions. Make your life easier and don’t be afraid to ask when you don’t know or want to know more.

  2. 2. Get a mentor

    A mentor can help speed up the learning curve. They’d act as your own personal resource. You would be able to shadow them to see them in action. A lot of people are hands on learners, and this is the perfect way to learn quickly. Listening in on phone conversations and in person pitches will give you a wealth of information to learn from. If your company doesn’t assign you a mentor don’t be afraid to ask for one.

  3. 3. Understand the clients’ perspective

    Don’t get stuck in your own perspective. You will be talking to clients who are older than you that have different views and aspirations. If you fail to understand or even just respect the perspectives of other, you will battle to maintain relationships with some clients and struggle to close sales with many prospects.

  4. 4. Do your research

    With understanding your clients’ perspective, you also want to understand their business. While you can’t become an expert overnight you can learn the key aspects. Being able to speak specifically to their business will not only impress your client it will also it will position you above others who can’t, giving you the advantage. Research helps you shape your pitch. Find a problem your client has and explain to them how you can solve it.

  5. 5. Don’t be an order taker

    Get out in front of your customers – don’t sit back and wait for them to come to you. People like to see initiative, it shows that you value their business and want to help them succeed. Go out and find new clients on your own.

  6. 6. Don’t oversell

    If you present someone with too much upfront, you can cause confusion. The client wants to know exactly what they’re getting. By pointing out too many features you can easily overwhelm them and cause them to be turned off. Keep it simple. It’s better to be great at a few things than okay at a lot of things. Point out the features that are specifically useful to them and leave out the ones that aren’t.

Remember to keep learning new sales techniques and implementing them into your work so you’re always improving.

Find Your Target Market

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | 1 Comment on Find Your Target Market
Graphic target market profile

We have seen it numerous times, businesses not realizing they are missing a huge opportunity because they are either targeting the wrong market entirely or so focused on one target market they don’t notice the large chunk of people coming from another.

It’s crucial that businesses find their prefect target market. Before diving in you must first understand that a target market does not encompass your entire selling market. A target market is those who really want or need your offering, the people most excited about your product, and most likely to buy over others. These are the people you want to direct your marketing campaign towards.

Here are some tips for finding your perfect target market:

  1. 1. Gather information about your company

    Figure out what problems your product/service solves. Be as specific as possible as this will help you narrow your audience down. Once you know the problem you’re solving, find the characteristics of those that have the problem.

    Next, identify what features and benefits your product/service offers. Features are something your product has or is, while benefits are the outcomes or results that users will (hopefully) experience by using your product or service.

    The overall question here is, what will the customer get out of using your specific product or service?

  2. 2. Analyze your current customers

    The best way to find your target market is by learning who is already buying your product/service. Learn their demographics, interests, behaviors, what benefits they get out of the product/service. You want to know how they think and act.

    Once you have a general idea of your current customer base, you’ll want to highlight the similarities between them to come up with your top customers.

    Website and social media analytics are great resources to gather this information. Analytic tools help to see who is visiting, buying, and exploring your website or social media. It also shows how long they spend exploring your website, where they’re located, what industry they work in, their interests, and more. Do not be afraid to also reach out to your existing customers to survey them too.

  3. 3. Analyze your competitors’ customers

    You can find out a lot about your potential customers by researching your competitors. This research will show if competitors have been successful at attracting specific types of customers and whether or not you should be trying to attract those customers too.

    You can learn basic information about your competitor’s customers by looking at their social media accounts and searching through their followers and likes on their posts. If your competitor has a physical store you can also check out who is shopping there.

  4. 4. Conduct market research

    Conduct secondary and primary research to gain more insight. Secondary research is any outside research done about your company or industry. Gather information from other resources that will help find your target market. Primary research is research done by you. Create a survey to gather information on your current customers and everyday people. Ask about their demographics, interests, perceptions of your product and your competition, what services or products they would like to see, etc. Ask any questions that would prove helpful in finding your key market.

  5. 5. Complete your customer profile

    Once you’ve gathered all the information you can, compile a complete profile of your perfect customer. If you offer more than one product or service, you might have multiple target markets. Your profile should include both demographic and psychographic information. From here, you can work on how best to market and advertise to your target market.

The most important and toughest thing to avoid in finding your target market is making assumptions. Let the information you gather tell you who your best and most popular customers are, do not draw your own conclusions.

You must also note that your target market is flexible and always evolving. Knowing who you are targeting and continually refining it will ensure you’re on the right track.