Don’t Just Hire Freelancers – Outsource Your Management

Navigating the gig economy as a small business owner can feel overwhelming. Freelance and contract workers are more available than ever before, and can prove highly effective in maximizing both your budget and your company’s output – but hiring contracted help introduces a difficult maze of understanding, communication, and management that may be more draining for you than it’s worth. Fortunately, at Sales Renewal, we’ve become the experts in building and managing outsourced marketing teams designed to meet your business’ specific needs and goals!
When you attempt to hire freelancers yourself, you’ll likely encounter a very common barrier almost immediately: understanding the scope of their work to a level that allows you to make informed decisions. You may not have an extensive knowledge of marketing strategy, tasks, and tools to know if you are hiring the right people for your needs. Working with an outsourced management company puts years of experience and expertise at your fingertips, ensuring you’ll have the right team with the right skills to advance your goals effectively and cost-efficiently.
A single point of contact simplifies development and coordination of your marketing strategy, and increases accountability through organization. Having an expert manager at your disposal also means your needs and asks can be clearly communicated to the right personnel at the right time, streamlining strategy processes and producing higher quality results more quickly. When your strategy needs to pivot to a new tactic, your marketing manager can shift your outsourced team around the new goals without forcing you to start over with new hires and new relationships.
So when is the right time to reach out to an outsourced marketing manager? Generally, when you are facing a short term project or a very limited number of tactics to handle, traditional freelance roles may be sufficient. Once you’re looking for a longer term strategy incorporating numerous complementary tactics, though, juggling numerous freelancers becomes more difficult. This is the perfect time to bring in an experienced outsourced marketing agencythat can take your goals and run with them. Start-up businesses, for example, often hit a point in their development where adding an official marketing department is a stretch, but a freelancer or two can no longer keep up with the business needs. Building a relationship with a marketing management team can grow with the company and remain consistent throughout the lifetime of the business.
Outsourced management is also ideal at the end of a company’s lifetime, when you’re beginning your exit planning. As you prepare to sell your business, running marketing investment analyses can help you determine whether you’ll achieve the financial balance you’ll need to retire comfortably. You can ramp up your marketing to hit those numbers without adding or maintaining a marketing staff, which makes your business more appealing to potential buyers that won’t have to consider layoffs or employee integrations after acquiring your company. You’ll also offer your buyer the benefit of consistency and knowledge transfers, as your management team bridges the gap as you transition out of the company.
Freelancers can enhance your business in many ways, but to truly make the most of contracted marketing help, consider working with an experienced, outsourced marketing agency; especially one that shares the risk & reward! Learn more about the unique JointSourcing Solution to see how our team can build your business in a smooth, effective, and results-driven way!

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Hire Non-Vetted Freelancers

Recruiting freelancers for your business can be a headache, especially when you’re trying to fill and manage positions you’re not always familiar with yourself. For Sales Renewal’s JointSourcing Solution, we routinely need to find and manage subcontractors (freelancers and other marketing agencies) as we assemble our client’s virtual marketing departments staff, and over the years we’ve gotten pretty good at vetting, verifying, and managing them. Here are some tips on how to carefully vet freelancers to prevent missed deadlines, communication issues, security breaches, and more.

Of course, we’d still be happy to help you not only build, but also manage, an outsourced marketing department that’s perfect for your business!

Read the full article at: www.smallbizdaily.com

Webinar: Crafting Products and Services to Reduce Time-to-First-Dollar

The Problem: Prospects Sit In Your Pipeline Too Long

Many service providers often have a single, all-inclusive service that’s presented as a binary choice: hire us for the whole service or don’t hire us. Because these services are typically important and consequential (e.g., wealth managers help save for retirement, lawyers defend against lawsuits, architects design bridges, …) prospects are typically in no rush to make a decision. They like kicking the tires to be sure you are the right guy or gal and your firm is the best choice for such an important decision.
The end result is prospects sit in your pipeline too long.

Targeting & Reaching Your Fastest Prospects

Of course, one of the primary goals of marketing is to move prospects through the sales pipeline as quickly as possible and a tried and true marketing strategy that does this is to define, target and reach your fastest prospects: those who most need you, when they most need you (aka,  “lowest hanging fruit”).
Importantly, this focus on fastest prospects accelerates and improves the performance of all lead generation marketing tactics: advertising, email marketing, content marketing, networking, all of them perform better when targeting prospects at the precise moment they have the most critical need for your service.
For example, one of the fastest types of prospects for a wealth manager is middle class, middle-aged people who have just received an inheritance: they probably don’t have a current wealth manager, know much about investing and are highly motivated to put their new money to work for their retirement.
Employing Content Marketing and SEO tactics, you could (1) write a blog post titled “What to Do and Not Do with an Inheritance” (a subject that these prospects would probably be very interested in) and (2) work to have it rank well in search engines so that it’s easily findable and widely available.

Reevaluate Your Offerings

A more fundamental approach to reducing the time-to-first-dollar would be to take a fresh look at your services from a Product Marketing perspective (product marketers are responsible for designing, creating and managing profitable products and services):

Here are two proven product marketing strategies that minimize time-to-first-dollar for service businesses (and that product businesses use all the time):
New services for your fastest prospects: do your fastest prospects need different services than the ones you have now?  If you developed new ones specifically for them, would they buy even faster, pay more, be more loyal, etc.?
Unbundle your all-inclusive service to make it easier to become your customer: can you unbundle your service to create simpler, more focused services so there’s less of a barrier to doing business with you? These new entry point services should be less expensive and consequential and should ideally provide a natural upgrade path to the rest of your services.
For example, the first thing a wealth manager typically does with a new client is to create a financial plan. What if instead of insisting they sign on for all your wealth management services in order to get a financial plan, you spun out a new standalone, financial planning service?
There will be more prospects for this new entry point service and they will move much faster through your pipeline because: financial planning can be marketed using traditional lead generation techniques like advertising and is a lot less risky than investment management (the most you can lose with a bad financial plan is its fee, unlike bad investments which can ruin lives).
Importantly, financial planning creates many opportunities for a wealth manager to show off their skills, intelligence and trustworthiness and creates a natural upgrade path. If they’ve been suitably impressed with the development of their financial plan, they will turn to you to implement the plan.

Takeaways

1. Focus on targeting & reaching your “fastest” prospects: those who most need you when they most need you.
2. Develop new services for your “fastest” prospects
3. Unbundle your all-inclusive service to create tiered services with upgrade paths. The entry-point service should be less risky and require less commitment & dollars

Sales Renewal Can Help

Sales Renewal is working with all of our clients on refining their business and marketing strategies for the Covid era. Whether it’s shortening the “time-to-first-dollar”, implementing minimal contact sales and marketing programs, creating alternatives to traditional  face-to-face marketing, or revamping communications to earn trust, contact us to learn what we can do for you.

Webinar: Considerations for Adapting Your Business and Marketing Strategies for the New Normal

The New Normal for Business and Marketing Strategies

As businesses around the country try to assess what’s next after the big Shut Down, many are realizing that it won’t be “business as usual”, not just because of the reopening guidelines imposed by the government, but because customers and clients may not feel comfortable reentering the same old economy and now have a brand new set of expectations around service delivery.
Major brands are highlighting their contactless, distanced ways of doing business, even if they’re not so different than they were before. Pizza Hut promises that once your pizza comes out of the oven, the only person who touches it is you; we hope that this was true pre-Covid as well, but conveying that sense of comfort is important these days.
Leading-edge service delivery models, such as purchasing a new car online, may have been targeting early adopters pre-Covid, but are suddenly becoming mainstream. Drive-by document signing is now an accepted way of closing a deal. Even voting by mail is gaining traction since people are wary of physically entering crowded places.

How Will You Adapt?

There is no doubt that the key to winning back customers in the new normal is trust. Trust that you, as a business, understand your customers’ concerns and are doing everything in your power to keep them safe.
While some businesses may need to address fundamental operational and human resource processes, much of adapting your business to the new normal revolves around messaging, positioning, and communication (such as the Pizza Hut example.) In other words, around marketing.
First, show your customers you are doing the right thing. Keep your premises (including parking lots, entrances, and lobbies) spotless and common spaces delineated for distancing. Provide PPE for all employees and ensure they wear it to show your organization is not cutting any safety corners. Enforce all scientific and medical recommendations for safety and physical distancing — not just because it’s the right thing to do but also to signal to employees, prospects and customers that you take their safety seriously.
And then, tell them. Build trust by making sure clients and customers know and understand you’re doing what you can to keep them safe. Messaging, positioning and signaling in the new normal should focus on health, safety, and well being.

Professional Service Firms

Professional service firms have particular challenges in this pandemic environment because of their historic reliance on face-to-face marketing tactics (e.g., networking, events, seminars) which desperately need to be updated for a minimal contact world.
Even more challenging is their tendency to have a single, all encompassing service that is critically important to their prospects, presented as a take-it-or-leave-it offer, which results in very long sales cycles (e.g., signing up for a wealth management service is a very consequential decision so prospects are very careful and take their time).
To shorten the time-to-first-dollar,  we recommend “unbundling” services to create tiered offerings that build on each other and provide a natural upgrade path. More on this can be found in Crafting Products and Services to Reduce Time-to-First-Dollar.

Sales Renewal Can Help

Sales Renewal is working with all of our clients on refining their business and marketing strategies for the New Normal. Whether it’s shortening the “time-to-first-dollar”, implementing minimal contact sales and marketing programs, creating alternatives to traditional  face-to-face marketing, or revamping communications to earn trust, contact us to learn what we can do for you.

6 Insanely Effective Tactics to Engage Email Subscribers

Marketing Automation is noted as a top marketing trend for 2019. But how to do it well? There are a few proven tips and tricks to increasing engagement and therefore customers via email marketing. It all comes down to list segmentation, telling the right story at the right time to each individual, and powerful design. While these may seem challenging, when you break each down and have a good plan, it really is achievable.

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.

A Unique Selling Proposition May Be the Big Idea You Need

Creating a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is a risky move – but with a well-developed strategy and a coordinated public relations and marketing effort, it can pay off.

Creating a USP

Jim Bolin was born and raised in Casey, IL. As he grew up, Bolin watched a familiar small-town story unfold: Casey lost population, visitors, business, and industry. As the town’s revenue went downhill, so did Casey. Bolin responded with a plan to put the town on the map, and back in business.

Bolin knew Casey needed a marketing plan, a plan that focused on why people should visit (and shop, and eat, and otherwise spend money) in the town. After all, there are a lot of quaint towns with friendly people and small businesses with great customer service in the Midwest. What Casey needed was something to truly differentiate it. So if marketing Casey as a great small town wouldn’t work, what would? Something a little bigger. What Casey needed was a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Casey was about to become the small town where big things happen.

In Business, It Pays to Think Big

Bolin was determined to give people a reason to visit Casey. What he came up with were several reasons – big reasons. They include the World’s Largest Wind Chime, World’s Largest Golf Tee, World’s Largest Rocking Chair, World’s Largest Knitting Needles, and the World’s Largest Mailbox.

The unique attractions drive traffic – a lot of traffic – to Casey. In fact, so many people visit Casey to see the (big) sights that it’s created a (small) problem: the occasional traffic jam.

At this point, it’s safe to say that Bolin, and everyone in Casey, has learned that success can drive traffic – and more success.

Certification Supports USP

The USP that Bolin “made up” for Casey may sound quirky, but it’s legit – all of the town’s World’s Largest attractions have been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. Casey’s largess goes a little further, however.

Once the town began to garner attention for its World’s Largest items, Bolin (with the support of the majority of residents) added several other oversized attractions. While they don’t carry the official “World’s Largest” designation, they’re still part of Casey’s allure, and they align with the USP.

What If You Don’t Have a USP?

To be clear, we don’t necessarily recommend that clients “invent” a USP – but we won’t create a marketing plan without one.

The efforts led by Jim Bolin in Casey provide an excellent example of how you can put your business, services, or attractions on the map.

Bolin clearly had a vision. Big Things in a Small Town is what Bolin dubbed his local workshop, which is now a tourist attraction in its own right. But vision isn’t enough.

Bolin put Casey on the map with a solid strategy and coordinated marketing effort.

Here’s how Casey’s “invented” USP drives traffic to the town and its businesses:

• Excellent use of Social Media – check out the town’s Facebook Page to see what we mean.
• Face-to-Face Marketing – all of the town’s retail businesses participate in some way to promote Casey’s unique features.
• Operational Support – a trolley runs on the weekends, carrying tourists from one big attraction to another, and the local post office hand-cancels postcards deposited in the World’s Largest Mailbox with – what else? – a stamp that reads “World’s Largest Mailbox.”
• Coordinated Marketing/Public Relations efforts have resulted in press coverage from regional news outlets and niche publications like Roadside America and Road Trippers to a recent feature on CBS Sunday Morning

As we’ve stated before, a purely invented USP won’t work for everyone. But when you have a USP, a solid marketing strategy, and coordinated, well-managed promotional tactics, then you’re on your way to growth. Big time.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Effective marketing starts with a thorough understanding of your business and how you stack up against the competition. (In other words, discovering and testing your USP.) You also need a methodical assessment of your opportunities, and a little bit of vision. This is why we start each client relationship by completing a Blueprint, a comprehensive assessment of your business. It is invaluable in determining the strategies needed to grow your business, and once it’s complete, the blueprint becomes an actionable plan for that growth. We use the Blueprint to weigh each marketing program and expenditure before launching any initiative. For our Joint Sourcing clients, the Blueprint also forms the basis of our shared risk and reward. In fact, we’ll go so far as to say that Joint Sourcing is our USP. Contact us to learn more about the Sales Renewal JointSourcing™ process.