Maximize Customer Engagement With the Right Data Insights from the Right Data
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Many of us understand that analytics are key to gaining a competitive advantage but fewer of us really understand which data is important and how to put that data to use. Whether it’s Big Data or little data, technology can help all businesses gain valuable intelligence about their customers. This article outlines 3 steps to gaining actionable insights from your data. Important aspects of making the most of your data includes providing context, looking at trends instead of individual data points, and gaining insights that are aligned with your overall strategy.
Managing When the Future Is Unclear
The term "strategic ambiguity" might be enough to send your heart rate racing and your stress level into the stratosphere. However, this article acknowledges an under-appreciated reality: we often find ourselves managing in situations when it isn’t clear where we’re going or how we’ll get there. Discover some practical approaches you can take to emerge from periods of change a stronger manager and an exceptional leader.
Marketing New Year Resolutions
We’ve all said it, we’ve all done it …. New Year’s resolutions. But, the real question is, who is still looking at those resolutions we made months ago? Not many. A new calendar year symbolizes a new beginning. Many of you are probably thinking about personal resolutions, but how about establishing New Year’s resolutions for your business?
Small business owners are consistently pulled into many different directions. We spend so much of our time trying to make that next sale, keeping customers happy and product on the shelf, that many tasks fall by the wayside. What if you set just five or six manageable goals and looked at them on a weekly or even monthly basis? Consistency and keeping them top-of-mind is key. Write them down, don’t let them weigh you down.
We challenge you to think about these five marketing ideas in thinking about how to focus your 2019 business resolutions.
- What do your online and real-world footprints look like?
- Do you know who your customers are?
- What is your brand saying to your customers?
- Have you actually listened to your customers?
- Are you putting too many of your marketing eggs in one basket?
You might be asking yourself how to turn these into resolutions.
- Pick one real-world or digital channel each month, whether it’s Facebook, Google Search, Yelp, etc on the digital side or your collateral, trade show booth, business signage etc on the real-world side and dive deep and learn how your customers are reacting to your messaging across all the channels? Are you being consistent in your messaging? Are you leading with your competitive advantages?
- Make this the year, you will know who your customers are. Even if you cannot afford a fancy customer relation software, a simple excel spreadsheet will work to start.
- Details matter. Take one piece of marketing collateral – a sign, a brochure, one page on your website – and take a critical look, or better yet, ask someone in your professional network to take a look. Tell them what your goal of that piece is and ask them does it achieve it. Each month, pick a different piece of material.
- Words are powerful. Customers want to be heard. Picking up the phone, talking to a customer face-to-face in a store means you are connecting. In the days of heavy automation, that personal contact is lost. Set a goal. How many customers are you going to connect to this month? Make sure it’s realistic.
- Many companies try one marketing tactic; sometimes it goes well, but many times, it fails. There are many reasons for the failure, however the biggest is that just one print ad or one Facebook ad or one direct mail piece isn’t going to move the needle. Customers consume their information in a variety of different ways and you need a suite of integrated activities to help you move the marketing needle. What product or segment are you going to focus on?
Go ahead, write down those resolutions today and throughout this month, refine them until you have 2 or 3 achievable ones and 2 or 3 stretch ones and then make a plan. 2019 is the year of technology mixed with getting back to basics. Your customers are your success. If you have a solid actionable and results-oriented marketing plan, making that next sale will be easier and keeping your customer happy will take less time. Let us help you make your 2019 resolutions a reality!
20 Small Business Trends and Predictions for 2019
A study stated that office workers are becoming more distracted at their desks and feel like they don’t have a space to be fully focused. Our company is fully remote and with project management and communication programs, our employees feel the same comradery between each other, and feel more productive and focused in their own environment. While offices continue to transform into spaces with more perks, like games and snack bars, employees could be prone to get more distracted. While many argue that the productivity between remote and office workers fully depends on people’s personalities, there are several key differences that can make an impression on one’s work performance.
What is Retargeting and How Can Professional Service Firms Utilize It?
A study stated that office workers are becoming more distracted at their desks and feel like they don’t have a space to be fully focused. Our company is fully remote and with project management and communication programs, our employees feel the same comradery between each other, and feel more productive and focused in their own environment. While offices continue to transform into spaces with more perks, like games and snack bars, employees could be prone to get more distracted. While many argue that the productivity between remote and office workers fully depends on people’s personalities, there are several key differences that can make an impression on one’s work performance.
The Most Common Small Business Marketing Problem: Missing the Forest for the Trees
Many small business owners know that successful marketing can play a huge role in their growth. It is very common for us to hear these owners have great ideas for what they want to do, but they all have the same issue: due to lack of people and resources, they fall into the trap of focusing on single marketing ideas or tactics, instead of an integrated marketing strategy that incorporates multiple tactics for reduced cost and increased performance.
There are a lot of marketing agencies out there who focus on specific marketing tactics such as direct mail, new websites, advertising, etc. Yet, for a business to have integrated marketing, they would need to hire multiple companies and have the time to manage and coordinate all of them to ensure they are helping the business grow.
We have worked with a client who has the yearly tradition of going to an important trade show that they once deemed perfect for their market. They make it a priority to go each year, with the same booth they’ve used for years, to get their business noticed, make good connections, and hopefully come back with buckets of leads.
Unfortunately, the buckets have been getting smaller each year and they’re not sure if it’s the show (Is it still the best show for them? Are there newer, better ones now?) or them (is the booth the best it can be? Should we do any marketing before the show to drive up booth attendance?)..
Worse, the effort this trade show requires held them back from doing other marketing. Trade shows, take up a lot of time, dollars and stress, so often doing just this will feel like enough to a small business owner. Who could blame them when they don’t have the time or resources for more?
Fortunately, since working with Sales Renewal, we have been able to work with them to increase the return of their Trade Show investment while at the same time combining Trade Shows with a diverse set of other marketing tactics that complement each other nicely.
Want to learn what we may be able to do for your firm? Get in touch now.
Remote Workers Are Outperforming Office Workers–Here’s Why
A study stated that office workers are becoming more distracted at their desks and feel like they don’t have a space to be fully focused. Our company is fully remote and with project management and communication programs, our employees feel the same comradery between each other, and feel more productive and focused in their own environment. While offices continue to transform into spaces with more perks, like games and snack bars, employees could be prone to get more distracted. While many argue that the productivity between remote and office workers fully depends on people’s personalities, there are several key differences that can make an impression on one’s work performance.
Holiday Marketing For Law Firms
Holidays are a time for interacting with people, whether it be your family, friends, neighbors or coworkers. This also makes it a great time to socialize with your clients. The end of the year makes a perfect time for you to say “thank you” to your clients and wish them the best for the new year. Personal interactions around the holidays are things your clients will remember in the new year.
How Financial Services Marketing Is Rebuilding Its Image
In the wake of several turbulent years throughout the financial industry, confidence in financial advisors has never quite fully recovered. Financial jargon, misplaced guidance and an inconsistent customer experience are but a few of the reasons behind this mistrust. So how can financial advisors regain the respect and trust of their clients and prospective clients? The solution: effective marketing. Read more about how marketing can transform how the financial world is perceived and how your firm can use a variety of tactics to increase client loyalty and develop new business.
Proud to Work Alongside Our Non-Profit Clients
While Sales Renewal is best known for our one-stop marketing solutions, JointSourcing and Marketing Essentials, we are equally happy to work on smaller-scale projects. One of our strengths at Sales Renewal is that we work across a variety of different industries, offering unique perspectives that can shed new light on traditional strategies and “the way things have always been done”. Some of the work we are most proud of has been for non-profits, spanning educational, government, cultural, healthcare, and religious institutions, for which we have developed a number of innovative solutions on an a la carte basis. Our a la carte clients pick and choose what’s most important to them at that point in time, a perfect fit for clients who are budget-sensitive or may need help with one or two discreet marketing tactics such as a new website, an online membership directory, an events calendar, or online donation capabilities, without the ongoing commitment of a longer term program. Here we highlight a few examples of our project work for non-profit clients.
The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School (CHLPI), which advocates for legal, regulatory, and policy reforms to improve the health of underserved populations, turned to Sales Renewal to to help solve the problem of accessing the large number of documents housed in their Health Library, including published research, academic articles, and legal documents. Sales Renewal created a custom search system for CHLPI’s Health Library Publications that integrated multiple off-the-shelf plugins to meet their requirements at an affordable price. In addition to the classic series of filters, we created a visual map-based filter for a more user-friendly, interactive interface for selecting state specific publications.
We find that an important consideration for many non-profits is being able to manage and maintain their website in-house. When the Concord MA Chamber of Commerce struggled with how to manage their ever-growing paper membership directory, Sales Renewal proposed moving this document online and incorporating it into a new, easy to maintain website, also created by Sales Renewal. A unique challenge on this project was the fact that, due to the generous terms of the contract with their third party mailing house, the physical mailing actually produces an important stream of revenue for the Chamber. We were able to implement a solution that brings the directory into the modern world without losing this revenue by creating two versions: an interactive, online directory as well as the traditional hard copy, also available as an easy-to-read online flip book. Once everything was in place and with some initial training, we were able to turn the reins over to the Chamber to manage and maintain the directory and the website themselves.
Similarly, The Armenian Church turned to Sales Renewal to create a new website including an online events calendar and online donation system to keep their congregation and friends engaged and informed. After we created an easy-to-read, and importantly, easy-to-update events calendar within an updated website, the church is now able to maintain their own online presence to more effectively connect with their community.
The Boston Musician Association is a labor union (local 9-535) representing over 1,600 professional musicians in the Boston metro area and beyond. When creating its new website, the association had two main goals: 1) to provide a central place for its members to stay informed publicize their own upcoming events, and compare notes on venues and employers, and 2) to make it easy for the public to find musicians they could hire to perform, or who could provide instruction in a variety of instruments. Sales Renewal’s challenge was to automate this process to avoid the need for manual data entry as much as possible and we continue to work with this client to fully integrate and automate these important functions. The Music Buyers Guide, created by Sales Renewal, provides a central repository of musicians, sorted by the instruments they play and includes a full biography of their experience. The musicians themselves are able to send changes to their profiles directly from the site making for fast and easy updates.
As these very different clients show, Sales Renewal has the breadth and depth of experience to handle any size project and we are happy to work with our non-profit clients to make the most of their limited budgets. Often, seemingly daunting challenges can be handled can quickly and efficiently if the right expertise is brought to bear. Learn more about our a la carte services and how Sales Renewal can help your non-profit benefit from a new approach to marketing.