
Should You Stop Asking Your Customers for Reviews?
Because businesses have actively solicited customer reviews (and other feedback) for years, many online review sites look like over-caffeinated click-a-thons. It’s hard to sort out the helpful from the hype. But it’s clear that consumers want to consider other customers’ opinions and experiences before they buy – in other words, businesses need reviews. Savvy online shoppers, however, are becoming jaded, as they know they must read between the lines, sorting the real reviews from those that were planted or paid-for.
Business owners are sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place, too.
Yelp and Yext are both trying to help, in different ways.
Yext, the New Kid on the Block

Most people probably have heard of or have used Yelp’s reviews. These reviews live only on the Yelp site and help educate Yelp visitors on the businesses listed on Yelp.
Yext reviews are different. Yext reviews appear on only your site so are visible to all your visitors, and importantly, no competitors’ reviews appear (unlike on Yelp, where competitor reviews are 1-click away).
Also, and very notably, the average number of stars your business receives will appear in-line with Google’s search rankings.
How important is that?
According to Yext, internet users click 50% more often on starred listings than those without: because the stars make them stand out and because reviews truly influence buying behavior.
Remember, Search Engine Optimization (getting more traffic from search engines) is a 2-step process. First, your page has to rank well in Google’s search results (ideally on the first or second page) and second, visitors have to click on your listing rather than all the others on the search result page.
Most people forget that second step and that those noticeable stars will lead to more organic visitors to your site. (Read more about how the stars can can boost local rankings.)
Yelp Reviews
Since 2004, Yelp users have written about 150 million reviews, and the company works hard to help consumers sort out what’s real and what’s helpful. So while it may sound counter-intuitive for a review platform, Yelp strongly, clearly, and repeatedly has told businesses using its site to STOP asking their customers for reviews.
In 2018, that’s probably just a little too idealistic. “Everyone’s doing it” isn’t the best defense, but let’s be real: everyone’s doing it.
Wherever sales are made – online or off – shoppers are implored (and incented) to provide reviews. Receipts from Taco Bell, CVS, Kohls, Famous Footwear (among others) beg shoppers to rate their services, sauce packets, shoes, and to describe their service experience. Most of those requests come with incentives, and customers who complete reviews earn rewards ranging from points, coupons and free sandwiches to sweepstakes entries.
For its part, Yelp doesn’t seem to mind going against the grain. The company’s clearly-stated policy prohibits listed businesses from soliciting reviews directly from customers. Yelp regularly identifies organizations it believes is “gaming the system, ” and penalizes them.
But Everyone’s Doing It – And You Should Too
We like that Yelp is doing what it can to actively weed out reviews that don’t meet its standards.
The ground rules it has established for businesses are designed to serve customers as well as listed businesses (and Yelp of course).
In our opinion, Yelp should be concerned about the businesses that are trying to game the system (contests, discounts, fake reviews) but not target those which are acting in good faith when requesting that customers rate and review their products and services.
It should be noted that Yelp does recognize that most businesses are playing fair: the company points out that it recommends nearly three-quarters of the reviews on its site.
So Ask Your Customers for Reviews – And Don’t Stop There
Your prospects read reviews and weight them heavily in purchasing decisions. According to Forbes, “88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.“
We recommend that our clients structure their businesses and train their staffs to stack the odds in their favor of getting good reviews by providing great products and services. We also recommend they manage those reviews by requesting that happy customers post reviews using Yext. The reviews can be automatically fed to a website – usually the Home or Testimonials Page, * and their stars will also appear in Google results when prospects are searching for your business.
Takeaway: Yext reviews and ratings being displayed on your website is good – and at the same time, your website gets more natural search traffic. A no brainer given Yext’s modest cost.
In other words, as long as you’re treating your customers (and review site partners) honestly, asking for reviews is good – and Yext reviews can make a good thing even better. Yelp reviews appear only on Yelp, but, that’s not necessarily bad. If you’re a local, B2C business in fact, it could be critically important so Yelp has its place in the review universe too. (Yelp may be all a local restaurant needs!)
Questions about managing customer reviews, Yext, local search, or understanding how reviews sites affect buying behavior? Contact us.
* you do have a Testimonials page on your site, don’t you?
Sales Renewal’s insight:
According to Forbes, “88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.” Are you putting the right reviews in the right place?

Tips for Getting Better Business Images on a DIY Budget
Let’s call this the “fake-it-til-you-make-it” photo tip sheet.
To be clear: We are proponents of professional photography for your website, and all of your marketing material. High-quality images attract attention, communicate clearly, and sell.
Simply put, professional photography makes you look better. The better you look, the more people will look. The more people look, the more leads you’ll see.
But professional photographers aren’t always available when photo ops present themselves. And, a professional photographer doesn’t fit in every small-business budget. Still, every business needs quality images.
Here, we offer general guidelines and specific tips to help you get better quality photos of your business, your people, and your products – on a “DIY” budget.
See more tips for photographing employees on the job.
What You Need to Know about Small Business Photography
Equipment Matters. Photographers like to say the best camera you have is the one at hand – and that’s true, so plan ahead and use a real camera – or the best one you can get your hands on. If you must use your cell phone, follow this advice from TechRepublic. And no matter what kind of camera you use, use a tripod. (More on that later.)
Photography is the art of capturing light. So learn to use the aperture and white balance settings on the (best) camera you have. Also pay attention to color cast, and learn what temperature settings work best for your site. (Industrial lighting can be tricky, often turning images yellow or blue.) When framing your shots, notice shadows – and try to eliminate them. Generally speaking, shadows detract from your product images.
Closer is always better. The subject of the image should be obvious. You want to direct prospects’ attention so they look at and consider specific features of specific products. Nothing in the photo should distract from what you’re trying to sell.
Background Noise Detracts from your photos. Some tips to tune it out:
- First, look critically at the background when you frame a shot. If you can tell that a picture was taken in your break room, so can everyone else.
- Second, learn to use aperture settings to minimize depth of field. (Learn from the Fstoppers or see Nikon’s more artistic explanation.
- Challenging background? Some professionals recommend using a fog machine to blur the background, for example, when you need an image of a large machine in a shop setting and cannot isolate the machine or eliminate a distracting background. If that sounds too complicated, try creative lighting or professional post-processing. The point is to make it easy and pleasing for your viewers (prospects) to focus on what you’re trying to show (sell) them.
Remember, post-production is your friend. Many a photo has been saved by a little TLC on the back end. While very robust post-production software can run into the thousands of dollars, quite a few free, easy-to-use packages offer enough functionality to make your images look really good. (LunaPic and iPiccy are two nice, free options.) Standard post-production features to improve the quality of almost every image:
- Straighten the image. Unless your restaurant is the Leaning Tower of Pizza, your image should probably portray the subject straight, not at an angle.
- Remove or reduce shadows.
- Frame and format. Having each image the correct size (both file size and height/width ratio) makes a world of difference in the way your images, website, and handouts look.
- Crop. Crop. Crop. Less is more, and close-ups are generally better. Aim for less in the frame. Are you getting the picture? We hope so.?
5 Fast, Practical Tips For Improving Your Business Images
Place a white sheet of paper under a product to get an instantly clean and bright background. Or use a piece of Plexiglas to create a nice reflection. Shopify offers more ideas to improve your business photography here.- To improve lighting and reduce shadows, position two or three light sources on different sides of the product you’re shooting.
- Use compressed air to blow away dust particles, stray hairs, and anything that takes the focus (pun intended) off your product.
- Take pictures straight on – and if the resulting images are crooked anyway, use a photo editor to straighten it. The exception: when you’re taking pictures of people. In that case, some angles are good. Passports and mug shots are taken straight on – why draw comparisons?
- Use a Tripod. Sure, you’re steady Eddy. Use a tripod anyway.
Follow these tips and picture yourself increasing sales!
We’re marketing professionals, not professional photographers. If you need a business or corporate photographer, we are happy to recommend the business and corporate those that we work with. How can we help you improve your marketing programs and grow your sales? Let’s find out!
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Budget won’t support professional product or corporate photography? When you need to take your own business images, follow these tips to get better pictures for your website and for all of your marketing material.
Yext and Collecting Customer Experiences
“No one says ‘let me tell you about a mediocre experience I had.'”
That’s what Jay Baer told Yext partners at the platform’s most recent Summit.
Jay is the author of “Hug Your Haters” and a proponent of of listening to your customers (whether they’re happy or not). And while we agree with him, we think collecting information on the mediocre is OK – especially if it is an important part of your service, it can (and probably should) inform your marketing message.
For example:
Maybe your customers don’t complain about your delivery service because you get it right so often, that’s exactly what they expect. Ho-hum? Hardly. “Deliveries You Don’t Have to Worry About” is a message worth sharing with customers and prospects.
We’re not taking exception to Baer’s statement, just augmenting it with the fact that that collecting run-of-the-mill information from your customers is as important as collecting the exceptional. How do you stay close to your customers? If you’d like to get more bang for your buck from your Yext account, or are looking for a more robust program of review management, contact us. We can help with that important piece of your overall marketing strategy.

Multi-Faceted Marketing, Flexibility Proves JointSourcing a Good Solution for Professional Services Firm
Sales Renewal Announces First Anniversary of
The JointSourcing Solution™ for The Harvest Group
Professional services firm successfully outsources marketing function
Concord, MA, November 27, 2017 – Sales Renewal, a unique, full service marketing agency that is revolutionizing small business marketing with The JointSourcing Solution™, is pleased to announce the one-year anniversary of JointSourcing with The Harvest Group, a multigenerational family team of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS™. JointSourcing (“joint venture + insourcing”), a comprehensive, one-stop marketing solution, is a boon for any business without a fully staffed in-house marketing team, or one that simply has gaps in expertise or bandwidth. A proven success for a wide range of companies, including retailers and manufacturers, Sales Renewal is now pleased to confirm JointSourcing’s success with professional services firms as well.
In October 2016, the three principals of The Harvest Group made the exciting move to become an independent Registered Investment Advisor, leaving the large brokerage firm they had been with for many years. The principals understood the challenges of differentiating themselves in a heavily regulated and highly competitive market and realized they’d need help refining and getting their message out to clients and prospects. Without their own marketing department, and no desire to either staff it or find and hire a raft of specialty marketing and technology firms to handle what was required, the firm turned to Sales Renewal for answers.
“I believe in focusing on core competencies, ” said Roger H. Ingwersen, CFP®, CIMA®, CRPC®, managing partner and founder of The Harvest Group. “Working with Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing Solution is like having an in-house department of marketing experts who handle our day-to-day marketing strategies and initiatives, allowing us to focus on what we do best: financial planning, wealth management and building relationships with clients and prospective clients. Importantly, we’re still in control, but we can now leave the day-to-day details to marketing professionals.”
“I believe in focusing on core competencies. Working with Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing Solution is like having an in-house department of marketing experts who handle our day-to-day marketing strategies and initiatives, allowing us to focus on what we do best”
– Roger H. Ingwersen, managing partner and founder of The Harvest Group
Sales Renewal worked collaboratively with the principals to develop the firm’s custom JointSourcing Blueprint, the foundational marketing plan for all JointSourcing clients that defines their business & marketing strategies, brand & positioning and their most cost-effective marketing tactics. Additionally, all the human expertise and technology required to implement the plan as well as a detailed, 12-month budget were presented to, and approved by, the firm.
Once the Blueprint was complete, Sales Renewal managed the team as they worked to bring all the firm’s existing marketing assets and capabilities up to the Blueprint’s specifications and has been actively managing the marketing program on the firm’s behalf ever since.
Today, just one year later, the firm’s competitive differentiation is well honed: it has established an entirely new brand strategy, implemented a robust thought-leadership program, launched a new website and online social presence, and benefited from numerous PR placements and interviews, all benchmarked by extensive analytics. Sales Renewal’s custom-configured marketing team, based on The Harvest Group’s unique needs, continues to deliver the day-to-day management and implementation of the plan, whose strategies & tactics are reevaluated on a quarterly basis to reflect real-world feedback and modified as necessary.
Also important to the Harvest Group was JointSourcing’s flexibility: while JointSourcing normally couples a one-stop marketing solution with a shared risk and reward business model, it is flexible enough that clients who are unable to take advantage of this model due to regulatory restrictions (such as financial service firms like the Harvest Group) can still benefit from JointSourcing’s ability to assemble, deliver and manage a comprehensive, one-stop marketing solution.
“It is gratifying to see that The JointSourcing Solution can be applied to any business, across industries and markets, ” said Keith Loris, president of Sales Renewal Corporation. “We developed JointSourcing to solve the problems small businesses have with marketing and it is encouraging to see that professional service firms can greatly benefit from it too. It’s been great working with The Harvest Group this first year and it is exciting to build on their initial momentum as together we continue to grow their business.”
About Sales Renewal Corporation
Sales Renewal is a full service marketing agency that is reinventing small business marketing with our complete, one-stop marketing solutions, shared risk/reward business model and impressive client results. The JointSourcing Solution™ (“joint venture” + “insourcing”) delivers all the strategies & tactics, human expertise and sales-enabling technology needed to grow revenue while sharing risk and reward with clients. With JointSourcing, Sales Renewal literally invests in your success and becomes your expert partner who strives to get the most bang for our mutual bucks. Learn more at www.salesrenewal.com.
This press release was distributed via PRWeb on December 18, 2017
Sales Renewal’s insight:
“I believe in focusing on core competencies. Working with Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing Solution is like having an in-house department of marketing experts who handle our day-to-day marketing strategies and initiatives, allowing us to focus on what we do best”
– Roger H. Ingwersen, managing partner and founder of The Harvest Group
Surveys, Complaints, and the Value of Regularly Scheduled Listening
Who doesn’t get excited about survey responses, right? Right?!
In case it’s not coming through on screen, that was written in a sarcastic tone. Creating and managing customer surveys online (or paper, or phone surveys) is rarely earthshaking. Survey response rates are often low, and responses tend to roll in rather slowly. But the insight from even a very small number of respondents can be invaluable to planning and executing your marketing and sales strategy.
Customer Surveys Are Worthwhile
Low response rates do not necessarily indicate failure. The voice of the customer always has value. An ongoing collection of input (and responding to that input) positions your company to be successful in several key areas.
Our advice? Keep asking questions. And even more important: Listen.
Of course there are things you can do to improve your customer surveys and response rates. See below for tips to improve your surveys and feedback forms. But remember, how you handle the process and what you do with the responses is every bit as important as the collection process. To put it simply, you need to make listening to the customer a habit.

Customer Stories = Marketing Gold
If you don’t already monitor your “listening” channels, make a list and check it twice (or more) in the coming year. A robust website should have several touchpoints or data collection tools. Consider how you use those on your website:
- RFP/RFQ Buttons
- Contact Forms
- Social Sharing icons
- Sign up for newsletters/promotional communications
- Thank you for shopping with us auto-responders
- Sale cancelled/abandoned cart follow-up emails with surveys
Employees, Vendors and Partners Have Stories Too
Speaking of the voice of the customer, one thing we hear repeatedly from our small business customers is how valuable it is to have regularly scheduled marketing meetings with a team of people – both internal staff (a cross-functional team is great) and in-sourced marketing experts. In monthly marketing meetings with our clients, we consider all customer reviews, complaints, survey results, anecdotes, and other input, and discuss it briefly in the opening few minutes of a monthly marketing meeting. That input informs not only marketing strategies but often, also the company’s overall business direction.
Hidden Value, Surprising Benefits of Using Surveys in Your Business
We say surveys are a marketing “gold mine” because surveys –
- Provide a mechanism to listen to customers
- Personalize your brand
- Strengthen your relationship with your customers. (Even if they don’t complete your survey, making one available creates a line of communication.)
Listen, and Share
While constantly running promotions and discounting your products is not recommended, listening all the time absolutely is. We’ll go so far as to call it a best practice. But, listening isn’t enough. Listening and using customer feedback to improve operations isn’t even enough. You have to share, too.
By the way, this is one of the reasons why we like Yext Ultimate Reviews so much – the powerful tool makes getting client reviews and adding them to your website easy and attractive – and because of its design, businesses that use it see increased natural search traffic to their sites. More on that in a future post.
Letting your customers and prospects know what you’ve learned from them is part of the process. People like to know that they’ve been heard; they’re interested in hearing what others think about the same thing; and they LOVE IT when a company makes changes based on their imput. So sharing on your website, newsletter, social channels, and in face to face marketing events (like trade shows or at point-of-purchase displays) is critically important to getting the best ROI on your survey program.
When you continually seeking feedback, ideas and other input from customers you’ll gain insight that will help you make good business decisions. You’ll also gain a reputation as a company that’s receptive, and easy to work with.
Not a bad way to start a New Year.
Regularly-scheduled meetings are a hallmark of the JointSourcing client relationship. We are committed to listening to our clients, and to their customers, in order to recognize and respond quickly and wisely to changing market demands and opportunities. Need a partner to help you listen and respond to your customers in order to grow your business? We’d love to help you start a conversation with your customers – and meet your sales growth goals.
Tips to Make Your Customer Surveys More Useful |
|---|
|
Sales Renewal’s insight:
When you continually seeking feedback, ideas and other input from customers you’ll gain insight that will help you make good business decisions and develop a winning marketing strategy. You’ll also gain a reputation as a company that’s receptive, responsive, and easy to work with.

Best of Growth Spurts – Focus on Customer Feedback and Reviews
In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on the many different ways businesses use customer feedback and reviews in their day-to-day marketing and business development. Reviews can be used to boost your online, local presence via SEO. Through reviews, your fans can help do your marketing for you. Survey feedback can be used as a source of ideas for your content marketing plan. Feedback can be used for product development and changes, and also to retain customers by making them feel valued, respected, listened to.
Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at getting the most from customer feedback and reviews.
Three Customer Feedback Myths That Deserve Busting, marketingprofs.com – Surveys are invaluable tools for making sure you’re meeting customer expectations. Learn why simplicity is probably the best route to go. Read the full article here.
Maximize Your Local Listings Presence with Online Reviews, yext.com – In today’s mobile-first world, reviews drive awareness and consumer decisions. Businesses need a comprehensive review strategy to beat the competition. Read the full article here.
How User Reviews Can Drive Your Business – A The New York Times article looking at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions. Read more about the study here.
Creating Magnetic Marketing Content with Surveys, surveygizmo.com – One of the many uses of surveys is to generate content for your blog. You can ask for feedback, report on findings, create a “top questions asked” series, and much more. Read more here.
How Successful Companies Engage Customers During the New-Product Development Process, marketingprofs.com – From large-scale intelligence gathering, like crowdsourcing or social listening, to a narrower, targeted approach, like focus groups and advisory councils, successful B2B businesses use customer feedback to ensure they are on track with product development. Read more here.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on the many different ways businesses use customer feedback and reviews in their day-to-day marketing and business development. Reviews can be used to boost your online, local presence via SEO. Through reviews, your fans can help do your marketing for you. Survey feedback can be used as a source of ideas for your content marketing plan. Feedback can be used for product development and changes, and also to retain customers by making them feel valued, respected, listened to.
Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at getting the most from customer feedback and reviews.

How User Reviews Can Drive Your Business
In 2013, we covered a The New York Times article looking at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers. The article concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions.
The article, “There’s Power in All Those User Reviews, ” compared a study from pre-Internet days to a similar one just recently conducted.
The first study compared purchasing decisions by consumers presented with two priced options and by those presented with three.
(The study) “showed how marketers could manipulate consumers. Just by presenting three differently priced options, they could get consumers to gravitate to a midprice one from a less expensive one. This finding further led Dr. Simonson and other scholars to describe widespread “irrational” behavior by consumers who made decisions not based on a product’s actual value but on how the item was presented relative to other products.”
In the more recent study, conducted as part of an ongoing research project at Stanford Graduate School of Business:
“participants were asked which of three Canon cameras they’d like to buy. Before deciding, they were allowed to spend a few minutes reading user reviews and other information about these and other cameras on Amazon.com… That made a huge difference. When given three camera options, consumers didn’t gravitate en masse to the midprice version. Rather, the least expensive one kept its share and the middle one lost more to the most expensive one.”
The article summarizes the conclusions of Itamar Simonson, a Stanford marketing professor and the lead researcher of the study:
“The results suggest that companies should spend less money trying to shape consumer opinions in traditional ads… and more on understanding what and who are shaping those opinions.”
User Reviews, Quality Content and Being Social
Can we use these insights to shape our sales and marketing programs today? Do they change the way we do things? The conclusions drawn in the article reinforce our approach to the work we do on behalf of our clients in two ways:
- A commitment to producing quality online content, from a well-planned, well-written website that speaks to the needs and concerns of customers and prospects to a robust blogging program that demonstrates the company’s expertise and adds value for the readers; and
- A commitment to real online “engagement”, which means using your social media networks to find, understand and interact with your customers and prospects where they are online. It’s not sufficient to auto-post a sporadic blog post; rather, genuine interaction is necessary in order to advance your business; and
- A commitment to reviews management, to actively manage reviews, ratings and comments made about your business wherever they are made across the Web. The goal is to widely leverage positive comments (whether initially made on your site or third party sites, like Yelp) while increasing the satisfaction of customers making negative ones.
We’ve written before about the blurring of the line between SEO and other forms of marketing, and our emphasis on quality in our marketing programs. This article is further proof that today’s marketing requires an understanding of the power of the Internet and continual assessment of how to best use it to support your business message.
Originally published 12/3013; updated 6/2017
Sales Renewal’s insight:
A The New York Times article looks at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers. It concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions.

Sales Renewal to Help The Harvest Group Grow Its Business and Brand
Concord, MA-May 17, 2017-Sales Renewal is pleased to welcome Waltham, MA-based The Harvest Group, a family-owned Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) specializing in family wealth management, as its newest JointSourcing Solution™ client. Led by Roger H. Ingwersen, CFP®, CIMA®, CRPC®, his son Todd M. Ingwersen, CFP®, CIMA®, and daughter Laurie E. Ingwersen, CFP®, CRPC®, CDFA™, the firm provides individuals, families and family businesses with customized wealth management, investment management and financial planning services.
Sales Renewal is working with The Harvest Group to enhance and strengthen its brand and grow its business through a comprehensive, integrated, marketing program. Managed by Sales Renewal, the program includes public relations, advertising, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media, an enhanced website, analytics, and more. As part of our work with the company, we have partnered with Trevi Communications to execute the public relations component of the custom marketing plan.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Concord, MA-May 17, 2017-Sales Renewal is pleased to welcome Waltham, MA-based The Harvest Group, a family-owned Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) specializing in family wealth management, as its newest JointSourcing Solution™ client. Led by Roger H. Ingwersen, CFP®, CIMA®, CRPC®, his son Todd M. Ingwersen, CFP®, CIMA®, and daughter Laurie E. Ingwersen, CFP®, CRPC®, CDFA™, the firm provides individuals, families and family businesses with customized wealth management, investment management and financial planning services.

Best of Growth Spurts – Focus on Maximizing Your Content Marketing Efforts
In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on different ways you can get the most out of your content marketing and blogging efforts. After all, content marketing is often one of the biggest components – in both time and dollars – of many small business marketing budgets, so it makes sense to maximize that investment.
To be successful, it’s important to see content marketing not as a silo tactic, but rather something that is just one component of your overall integrated marketing strategy. So, a single blog post can be used to support your SEO, email, social media, PR, and retention efforts, to name just a few. The goal is to get the most out of every piece of writing, whether you share it on social media, link to it in your email signature, syndicate it, create a companion download, or even pay to promote it.
Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at maximizing your content marketing efforts.
How to Reuse Old Content to Boost Your SEO and Keep Your Audience Engaged, marketingprofs.com – Does your content plan include “evergreen content”? While it’s critical to have a steady flow of fresh, quality content, you can often maximize your impact by including at least some content that doesn’t “expire” (in other words, it will still be relevant a year from now). This content can then be re-used and repurposed for SEO and social media. Read the full article here.
How to Create Content That Keeps Earning Links (Even After You Stop Promoting It), moz.com – Content + linkbuilding = powerful SEO strategy. And the key? Creating something that people will find and link to when they’re in need of sources to cite. This puts you in a good position to earn a lot of passive links.
This article describes the content types most likely to satisfy people in need of sources and tips on how to execute these content types. Read the full article here.
7 Ways to Ensure You Maximize Your ROI from Content, quicksprout.com – From “picking 1-2 channels and designing around them” to “never stop promoting, ” this post offers solid advice for getting the most out of your content marketing efforts. See all 7 ways here.
How We Grew Our Organic Traffic by 43% Without Publishing a Single New Blog Post, hubspot.com – An interesting approach one company took to maximizing its content marketing efforts by putting into place a strategic plan that included the whole staff. Read the case study here.
28 Ideas for Content Upgrades to Grow Your Email List, sumo.com – Get more out of your content creation efforts – whether you’re doing the writing or have hired a writer – by creating a companion “upgrade” or bonus (tip sheet, checklist, video, slideshow) that you can promote and give away for the “cost” of an email address. See all 28 ideas here.
The variety of ways a business can get the most out of its content marketing efforts can be overwhelming. Sales Renewal has programs that can help, from our comprehensive JointSourcing Solution™ to our guided Marketing Essentials Solution™ to our on-demand Flex Marketing™. Get in touch today.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on different ways you can get the most out of your content marketing and blogging efforts. After all, content marketing is often one of the biggest components – in both time and dollars – of many small business marketing budgets, so it makes sense to maximize that investment…

Sales Renewal Joins Panel at Exit Planning Exchange Summit, May 4
Thursday, May 4, 10:35 a.m. – 11:35 a.m. Waltham Woods Conference Center, Waltham, MA
Keith Loris, Sales Renewal’s President and CEO, joins a panel of experts to present at the Exit Planning Exchange New England 2017 Summit for a panel discussion: “Leveraging Intangible Assets to Increase Business Value.”
Recent industry studies estimate that up to 90 percent of a company’s value lies in intangible, invisible assets not found on the balance sheet; that is, technical expertise and skills, innovation, public reputation, patents, business networks, and institutional knowledge. Consequently, what one knows can be just as valuable as what one owns when it comes to maximizing business value for the eventual exit.
Attendees will learn how to identify and leverage intangible assets to create equity and drive business value, hear proven techniques for raising visibility and enhancing that value, and ultimately gain an understanding of how the intangible can have very tangible impacts on growth and exit planning.
Details and registration information here.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Thursday, May 4, 10:35 a.m. – 11:35 a.m. Waltham Woods Conference Center, Waltham, MA
Keith Loris, Sales Renewal’s President and CEO, joins a panel of experts to present at the Exit Planning Exchange New England 2017 Summit for a panel discussion: “Leveraging Intangible Assets to Increase Business Value.”
Recent industry studies estimate that up to 90 percent of a company’s value lies in intangible, invisible assets not found on the balance sheet; that is, technical expertise and skills, innovation, public reputation, patents, business networks, and institutional knowledge. Consequently, what one knows can be just as valuable as what one owns when it comes to maximizing business value for the eventual exit.
Attendees will learn how to identify and leverage intangible assets to create equity and drive business value, hear proven techniques for raising visibility and enhancing that value, and ultimately gain an understanding of how the intangible can have very tangible impacts on growth and exit planning.