Rivera Business Review: Marketing

Saturday, March 4, 2017

6 Ways to Keep Your Business Relevant

Businesses must continuously evolve to keep up with industry changes and stay relevant. Regardless of your business model and status, unpredictable changes in customer preferences and the economy can cause your organization to remain stagnant. Thus, staying in touch with your target market and their needs is vital for continued success. Here are six ways to make sure that your business stays relevant, allowing you to achieve long-term growth and profitability.

1. Adapt to new trends

As market trends emerge and technology advances, there is always something new to implement. Adapt new business tactics by learning from customer habits and purchase decisions. If you notice an increase in refunds over time, for example, identify the root of the problem through asking a series of relevant questions and inspecting detailed statistics. By leveraging an e-mail marketing service, you can create effective e-mail campaigns that will help you gain valuable insight.

2. Engage employees

A great advantage that small businesses have over large organizations is a feeling of community. Establish an engaging company culture by getting employees involved in every business decision. For example, ask everyone to submit new tips and suggestions on a quarterly basis as a means of improving your products, services, and overall reach. Put everyone's answers up for a vote and offer a reward to the most promising lead. This tactic is especially valuable for businesses that are primarily composed of millennials, as many workers from this group can be quite savvy about new, disruptive ideas.

3. Be flexible

You can never go wrong with catering to your customers' preferences. By adding a personal touch to your products, you can give people a greater feeling of ownership and show how much you care about customer satisfaction. This step could be as simple as personalizing a piece of jewelry with a person's name or preparing a meal to his or her liking. These personal touches can effectively leave a positive impression, which often results in repeat business and profitability.

4. Acknowledge your customers

Recognition goes beyond personalizing your products and services. Customers enjoy status and empowerment, which you can provide through a series of rewards or even with an intangible scheme. A digital business may implement a points system awarded to those who make certain purchases or perform other actions; these points can then be exchanged for various discounts. Likewise, a more traditional approach could involve offering special deals to those who have been with you for a set time period. These strategies that depict your competitive nature and attention to detail can help you remain relevant.

5. Learn from the competition

Needless to say, you should always strive to maintain an advantage over your competitors. Even if your offerings are virtually identical, you should pay close attention to the small details and make any changes that you deem necessary. These changes may include reorganizing your store's merchandise improving your customer service or adapting a new promotional strategy. There is nothing wrong with healthy competition, which ultimately promotes growth and forward thinking among you and other businesses in your industry.

6. Simplify your approach

Make it easy for others to connect with you and get what they need by eliminating hassles in favor of quick and accessible alternatives. For example, consider offering instant savings over mail-in rebates or revamping your customer service line to make it easier to reach a live representative. You could also reorganize your website, establish a live chat system for faster customer support, or implement other improvements.

Staying relevant is all about analyzing new trends and adjusting to market changes. By taking the above actions, you can increase your chances of remaining profitable in the long run.

Friday, February 17, 2017

Small Business Saturday: How to Prepare

1. Highlight your best products

With every small business in the country vying for attention on Small Business Saturday, you need to make sure that your company stands out from the pack. Make sure that your marketing materials highlight the stars of your product line, and offer your most popular goods at prices that cannot be beat. By exceeding expectations during this event, you will be more likely to win return customers.

2. Get the word out

The end of November is a busy time for stores and shoppers. Therefore, it is important to find a way to get your message out to both loyal customers and potential new ones. One way to attract business is to send previous customers a special deal via e-mail. You can also place signage in your storefront windows and use the Small Business Saturday logo in your brand's social media posts to let customers know that you are open for business and are offering great deals. The American Express Shop Small website even has free promotional materials that you can use for the big day.

3. Prep your website

Customers will likely be visiting your website to check out your offerings prior to Small Business Saturday. As such, it is important that you add any special sale information and ensure that all of your inventory is up-to-date. After all, you do not want people showing up to your store looking for last season's inventory. If you are seeing large spikes in interest, you may want to prepare your server for higher rates of traffic, as well. Finally, you should make sure that your site can be easily navigated on mobile phones, where the majority of shoppers do their browsing.

4. Do a store walk-through

Many small business owners conduct so much of their business online that they sometimes forget about the first impression a customer gets when visiting their actual stores. You might want to ask your business partners and staff members to walk through your store before the big shopping weekend. As a group, you should examine how easy it is to walk around and whether or not everything is clean and organized. You should also make sure that your prices are clearly marked, your best goods are front and center, and everything looks eye-catching. You may only get one shot with consumers: Make it count.

5. Fortify online security

In the midst of your online marketing efforts, you may find yourself with more customers buying products through your website than walking through your store. If so, you cannot afford to have any web security problems. Reevaluate your cybersecurity before the holiday season. Any site that lacks end-to-end encryption and other high-level security features should be upgraded before the big day. You should also walk through the proper protocol for handling credit cards with your team.

6. Make Small Business Saturday four days long

Most small business owners will focus on having a great Small Business Saturday. But why not plan for a blowout beginning on Black Friday and ending on Cyber Monday? Since you are already investing resources in marketing, inventory, and extra staff members, you should take full advantage of the higher traffic levels.

8 easy ways to improve your business writing skills

Before you write a word of copy, make sure you know who your target audience is and what specific result you want to achieve. Take a few minutes to visualize yourself in the shoes of the recipient and to imagine what this person’s world is like.What does his typical day look like? What are his unique needs, goals, and challenges? What problem is keeping him up at night? The more thought and research you invest in defining your target audience and how you can help them, the more powerful your written communications will become.
Avoid using your company acronyms and buzzwords. While these words might seem clever to you, a busy executive may find them annoying. Also avoid academic language like “ergo” or “henceforth” and technical jargon. Keep it simple. For example, choose “use” instead of “utilize,” “send out” instead of “disseminate,” “fair” instead of “equitable.”
Use a strong, active voice instead of the impersonal, passive voice. “The meeting agenda could be discussed further” is passive. “Let’s discuss the meeting agenda” is active. Express confidence and decisiveness in your business communications. Instead of writing, “I intend to write a report on sales performance measures,” which comes across as weak and indecisive, write: “I’m currently writing a report on sales performance measures for completion before the end of the second quarter.”
Write in a conversational tone. Don’t alienate your readers by being too formal and bureaucratic—unless you’re writing to a bureaucrat or someone who prefers formality. Know your audience! Even if you are writing a marketing communications piece that will be read by several thousand potential readers, make your writing as inviting and personal as possible. Write as though you are having a conversation with one specific person—your ideal customer. Keep this one person in mind and you will positively engage thousands of readers who will feel that you are writing directly to them!
Replace hyperbole with solid facts and reputable testimonials. Phrases like, “We’re #1,” “We’re the leader in our field,” or “We provide the best service,” aren’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, use glowing testimonial, for example: John Jones, president of Acme Inc., ranks our company #1 for quality out of 500 certified companies.
Convert product features into benefits to engage your customer emotionally. Here’s an example of benefit-oriented copy: “Our automatic domain name renewal service will provide you with the added security and comfort, knowing that your domain names will never be hijacked by your competitors while freeing up your administrative time to focus on growing your business.”
Don’t rely on on-screen editing. Print out your document and read it aloud. If you encounter any awkwardness in speech you need to rewrite your piece to make it more conversational and to flow better.By reading your document aloud, you will also be able to spot typos and errors that your computer spelling and grammar check program might not have detected, for example, “echo friendly” when you really meant “eco friendly.
Always write from your customer’s perspective. Start off praising your customer’s company. Describe the specific attributes you like about the company instead of bragging about how wonderful your company is. Overuse of “I,” “me,” or “our company” is a sure sign of ego getting in the way of business. Make sure to generously use “you” and “your” in your business copy if you want to make more sales.