Don’t Overlook These Email Marketing Fundamentals

In a world where every marketing plan is competing for attention with thousands of other messages, email marketing is one of the best ways to get YOUR message directly into your audiences’ hands. While other digital marketing strategies rely on the audience to visit or view your content, emails land in their inboxes, and recent data shows people check their email an average of 15 times per day! Whether you’re already using email marketing, or are just starting to add this tactic to your overall strategy, make sure you’re building a solid foundation to maximize your reach and your impact.

Read the full article at: www.clickz.com

The Power of Empathic Storytelling: How to Make Your Customer the Hero of Your Story

Modern consumers have evolved beyond the scope of traditional “buy this product” advertising; these days, your customers and clients are as interested in the why and how of products and services as they are in the what.  Creating purposeful narratives that connect with your target audiences on a deeper personal or emotional level will help you stand out amongst your competitors and build a lasting bond that keeps your clients coming back.  Discover how to focus your storytelling content on your customer in this article from Entrepreneur.

Read the full article at: www.entrepreneur.com

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

Benefits of Gender Diversity

With International Women’s Day happening this month, you may have seen your news feeds filled with appreciation, support, and celebration of women everywhere. Though that hasn’t always been the case for women in the workplace, the gender gap is rapidly closing – and the economic benefits of gender diversity has become readily apparent. Study after study has proven that the inclusion of women in business environments has direct and indirect financial benefits. In the US alone, gender equality practices and policies could inject over $4 trillion into the economy in the next five years, with gender-diverse businesses in some sectors showing up to 14% higher average revenue and up to 19% higher average quarterly net profit than less-diverse counterparts. 
Why does gender diversity return such large economic benefits? One reason is that prioritizing gender diversity within the workplace allows businesses to draw from a much wider talent pool. With women typically obtaining college degrees at a higher rate than their male counterparts, this opens the door to more hiring options with a wider variety of experiences and viewpoints, while still maintaining a high level of knowledge and ability. Inclusivity has been flagged as an important employment decision factor by 85% of women, so not only does gender diversity grow the available hiring pool, it also actively attracts those highly capable workers away from other companies, giving your business the marketplace advantage when seeking talent. Increased diversity of opinions and viewpoints also enhances your business’ opportunity to think outside the box while simultaneously providing a better internal representation of your external market.
Once women are on board, incorporating gender diverse policies further increases creativity, retention, productivity, and loyalty. A culture of inclusivity boosts morale and promises greater opportunities for advancement and overall job satisfaction. Women are more likely to feel heard and able to safely communicate their ideas and feedback, making them more likely to stay invested in their work with a positive mindset. Additionally, gender diverse policies addressing issues like family leave and affordable childcare can facilitate a fusion and balance of family and career (which benefits men too); under such policies, women have experienced lower stress levels during pregnancy, were up to 93% more likely to return back to the workforce within one year of giving birth, and were more likely to increase their working time by up to 17% within three years. Building a more inclusive workplace keeps your talented employees working at higher efficiency and output rates for longer, while staying happier and more loyal, contributing greater long-term ROIs on your hiring practices.

Inclusivity in the workplace has been proven to provide businesses with clear, measurable advantages and successes over less inclusive organizations. Companies are more likely to hit financial goals, generate innovations, be considered high-performing, and experience better business outcomes when diversity is present and embraced through company culture and policy. Creating a gender-diverse environment in the workplace has also demonstrated large-scale economic boosts in many ways, as well, documented in a 2016 report from the United Nations.  When plotted against the gender inequality index, data consistently shows the most gender-equal countries are the most developed, have the highest income per capita, are associated with faster economic growth, and experience stronger national competitiveness. Gender diversity and inclusivity are key building blocks to business success and directly impact your business’ bottom line.
Assess your company’s diversity and inclusion levels, and learn how to enhance your current office culture and policies to produce greater business benefits, with this simple checklist from Glassdoor.
 

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.

Home Grown vs. Professional Video – Each Has a Role to Play in Small Business Marketing

Guest Poster: Peter Stassa of Davideo Company, corporate video production specialists.
You probably don’t have an unlimited budget. We get that, neither do we. We understand that while you value the use of video content to build brand awareness and credibility, you still need to stay within your means. So, ask yourself this:

Where is your content going to be seen?

If you’re posting short videos to consumer-driven social media (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) to promote live events or short-term special offers, go right ahead and shoot those yourself. The audience on those platforms is used to seeing a more impromptu, “selfie” style and is less critical of production quality.
But what about the important video content that lives on your website or is being embedded in email campaigns and newsletters? The “about us” videos that explain what your organization does and why you do it? The testimonial stories that are intended to build trust?
You may think: “My phone has a really good camera, I can save money by producing marketing videos in-house instead of hiring an outside company to do it!”
Yes, you can – you can also save money by doing your own dental work with a mirror and a pair of pliers, but it will cost you more in the long run.
For one thing, it takes more than just a good camera. Do you have the other necessary tools and skills to properly record and edit the raw footage so that the end product is worth watching? Do you have the time?

You have to be careful when cutting corners on the production process because home-grown video can backfire on you.

For example, a Brightcove survey of more than 1,200 consumers revealed that the quality of a video has the potential to change the perception viewers have of your brand:
“When consumers are confronted with poor-quality video, they are 62 percent more likely to have a negative perception of the brand that published the video.”
“23 percent of consumers who have been presented with a poor-quality video experience would hesitate to purchase from the brand.”
Sure, the world of B2B and B2C communication has become relatively casual in recent years, and some marketing pundits have been saying that consumers prefer video that is more “spontaneous”, less “flashy”, and thus more “authentic”. But if your camera work is shaky and your image is dark and your audio is hard to hear, your viewer will not stick with it long enough to absorb any of your “authentic” content.

Poor production values are a turn-off. They distract from your message.

Today’s buyers are doing most of their initial research online before they ever get to the point of reaching out for a proposal, which means your odds of getting onto their shortlist depend largely on the quality of the content you post online.
As the saying goes, “you get only one chance to make a first impression” and if the video content on your website, on business-oriented platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, and in your newsletters and email campaigns looks amateurish, it will pale in comparison with the content offered by your competitors… and you won’t be getting those calls.
Effective and engaging video does not have to look like the opening to the Super Bowl, but sticking to the basic best practices of clean production will allow the viewer to focus on your content. For this reason, you should stay away from a “homegrown” video for critical applications and consider working with a professional when your target audience is made up of your core prospects and potential partners and supporters.
 

How Chinese Companies Have Responded to Coronavirus

7. Prepare for a faster recovery than you expect.

Source: hbr.org
Well worth the read; here’s a sample:
4. Reallocate labor flexibly to different activities.
For example, in response to a severe decline in revenue, more than 40 restaurants, hotels, and cinema chains optimized their staffing to free up a large share of their workforces. They then shared those employees with Hema, a “new retail” supermarket chain owned by Alibaba, which was in urgent need of labor for delivery services due to the sudden increase in online purchases. O2O players, including Ele, Meituan, and JD’s 7Fresh followed this lead by also borrowing labor from restaurants.
5. Shift your sales channel mix away from face-to-face towards new channels
For example, cosmetics company Lin Qingxuan was forced to close 40% of its stores during the crisis, including all of its locations in Wuhan. However, the company redeployed its 100+ beauty advisors from those stores to become online influencers who leveraged digital tools, such as WeChat, to engage customers virtually and drive online sales. As a result, its sales in Wuhan achieved 200% growth compared to the prior year’s sales.

Understanding Searches Better Than Ever Before

Google is understanding natural language in searches better than ever before, so well, that it represents “the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search …
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning [1 in 10 searches], Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”