Jeanne Grunert

Should You Start a Blog?

Did you know that February 7 is international Start a Blog day? Plan now to begin the blog that's been on your to-do list forever!

It may seem crazy to encourage people to start a blog. After all, there's a ton of blogs out there covering almost every topic you can imagine. Mom blogs, cooking blogs, business blogs, gardening blogs, you name it, there is a blog for it.

Even though the internet seems saturated with blog content, there's still room for more blogs. If you have an original idea and are willing to invest the time and energy into creating unique content, blogging may be a good way to generate site traffic and content for your digital advertising programs.

5 Reasons to Start a Blog

1. Search visibility - blogs enable site owners to post multiple pages with keywords associated with their site. Think of each blog post like a page and you'll see what I mean. Each post acts as a potential entry point into your website, adding plenty of places for Google to find, index, and serve your site to searchers.
2. Branding - a blog provides your company with a unique opportunity to share your perspective on business issues. A well-constructed blog filled with content that supports your brand style offers another excellent branding opportunity.
3. Social shares - blogging provides fresh content links to share across multiple social media platforms. Such links may reach new audiences, people who may not otherwise have found your site.
4. Expertise - sharing your expertise on a topic helps boost your digital persona. A digital persona is an online impression people receive from all of your online interactions. Blogging around a topic of interest provides a focus to find experts on such a topic, and others may seek you out based on your posts.
5. Profit - yes, blogging can be profitable. A good blog can earn money through advertising, affiliate programs, product sales, and more. Some bloggers do earn their living solely from their blogging work and related products, such as books and courses, they sell from their blogs. How profitable a blog can be depends upon the skill of the blogger, the audience, and the topic, of course, but I do know two people who make their living solely through blogging. It can be done.

Two Popular Free Blogging Platforms to Try

Today on this "start a blog day" check out the two most popular blogging platforms.

WordPress: WordPress remains the most popular blogging platform despite a steeper learning curve than its competitor, Blogger. A free WordPress blog offers an excellent starting point for any content and can be upgraded to a paid site. (We recommend Web Design of Palm Beach if you want to upgrade. They host our sites and do a great job.)

Blogger: I started most of my blogs on Blogger. It used to be independent but is now owned by Google. It's difficult to create pretty blogs using their outdated templates but it is an easy, intuitive way to start a blog. Plus because it is owned by Google it is easy to incorporate Google AdSense and track your posts.

Now is the time to start a blog. If you'd like help starting a blog or creating unique content for your blog, please contact Seven Oaks Consulting. We provide consultation and writing services with an emphasis on SEO writing, including blogging.

 

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by Jeanne Grunert

Marketing Case Study: Mailing List Fail

Direct mail continues to produce strong results with an average response rate of 9% for house lists. A house list is a list of a business' customers or people with whom the business has a connection.

Prospect lists also do well these days with an average 4.9% response rate. Prospect lists can be sourced from other companies, compiled from public directories, gathered from subscribers of magazines, or rented from sweepstakes and coupon companies. The results of a mailing using either a house or prospect lists depend, of course, not just on the list, but on three additional factors: the offer, timing, creative.

This marketing case study looks at how a company got everything right...except for the mailing list.

It's a company you may have heard about: Chewy.com.

Marketing Case Study: Pet Product Company Mailing List Fail

Chewy.com is an online retailer of pet products selling everything from dog training equipment to goldfish food. They are known for great customer service, fast shipping, and competitive pricing.

A few months ago, we received an offer of $15 off of our first order. With seven cats and a new puppy on the way, we gladly used our coupon and were delighted with the entire ordering experience. We purchased cat food and continued to hope for more offers from the company via email, but the offers we received were for specialty products and gourmet foods, which our rescued cats don't get. (Sorry, fellas, but y'all just showed up here...you get what you get, and that's Friskies and Meow Mix.)

Marketing Case Study: Direct Mailing List Failure

Then in July, we received another mailer from Chewy.com. This mailer touted $15 off again. We held onto it knowing our new puppy, Zeke, would arrive in August and need some items.

We tried to utilize the coupon this week only to find we could not - it was for first-time customers only, and of course, we were returning customers now.

It was supposed to be our second order. We did not place the order.

Always Suppress Current Customers from a Mailing to New Customers

Chewy offers excellent customer service, but somehow, their marketing department neglected to update their mailing list against their customer list.

An offer for a new or first time customer should NEVER be sent to current customers.

Mailing lists can be compared using specialized software so that any potential duplicates are flagged and removed. If Chewy purchased a list of pet owners or people who own pets, for example, they could then send this list to a mailing list company or data provider and have any potential duplicates suppressed from the final list.

Why bother spending the money to suppress duplicates?

Because customers like us, eager to order again, left disappointed and annoyed at the fine print on an offer that we thought we qualified for but didn't.

If a company mails us a coupon, we assume we can use it. It should never be incumbent on the customer to get out a magnifying glass and check the fine print on the offer. And it is deadly to your e-commerce business to have customers get all the way to the checkout and as a last step, enter a coupon code only to be told the offer isn't valid.

We abandoned our shopping cart and bought the cat food and dog harness from Amazon. No, we didn't get $15 off, but we got free shipping and didn't feel cheated by the offer.

Key Takeaways: Direct Mail Basics

DO...

• Create a compelling offer. The Chewy offer was great. So was their timing and their creative execution.

• Be 100% sure that offers for new or first-time customers ONLY get sent ONLY to new and first-time customers. You can do this by sending your list data to a mailing house who runs it through a computer program and compares the prospect list to your customer file and suppresses any duplicates.

• Provide a way to honor the coupon if you make a mistake. Don't just turn customers away.

If Chewy woos us back with a great offer, we may consider shopping from them again. But with Amazon so convenient and accessible, and no feeling of being screwed over by them as we did when we were disappointed at finding our coupon didn't work, we may not.

 

 

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by Jeanne Grunert

Customer Service and Product Development

Customer service can be one of your best marketing allies. Listening to customer complaints can help you adjust your product marketing strategy.

Listen to Complaints

A young friend of mine launched an Etsy business this month. I watched from a distance as she carefully photographed and listed her products. She celebrated her first sales...and then came hot on the heels of those first transactions, her very first return.

She was devastated. She took to social media to share her disgust with the person who didn't read her listing. The customer thought they were purchasing one type of item, when in fact she did not sell that item.

Customer Service: The Underused Product Development Strategy

I don't know what the final outcome was of that transaction, but knowing my honest young friend, I suspected she eventually refunded the customer's money and moved on. However, a few things stood out for me in the story, and I thought I'd take a moment to share my perspective on customer service, particularly in an ecommerce or retail environment.

(A note from me first: I worked in retail, in the trenches so to speak, for two years. I ran a successful ecommerce business for over a decade. I managed marketing for an upscale retail store. I have a peculiar love of retail. It's exhausting. It's exhilarating. It's my thing. What can I say?)

4 Tips for Better Customer Service

1. Respect: The customer may not always be right, but should always be treated as if THEY believe they are right. In other words, you may have done nothing wrong. You may have provided the exact service they requested. You may have listed the product clearly on your Etsy store. But if they are unhappy, they are unhappy. That is the fact you must deal with - their unhappiness. Try to make them happy, even if they are not right.
2. Consideration: Issuing returns should be rare. If you find you are constantly issuing returns, it's time to check your marketing. There's a gap somewhere between customer expectations and what you are offering.
3. Integrity: NEVER take your frustrations out on social media. The second you start posting about your customers in any way, the second someone, somewhere, is going to read those comments. I don't care if you set your privacy status to super-duper lock down mode. Word will get out that you talk trash about customers, and they won't shop with you anymore. Don't do it. Just walk away from your computer before you share something you'll regret.
4. Marketing: You know the old chestnut about how you get 80% of your business from 20% of your customers? It's pretty accurate. If your customers aren't repeat customers because what you sell isn't conducive to repeat business, they tell others about their experience, and that brings more business to you. Be always on your guard against poor customer service. It can kill your business faster than you think.

Good customer service is often what sets apart similar products. People choose to do business with companies that treat them like valued customers, not like an annoyance. If you have any unhappy customer, accept graciously their feedback, take what you can and leave the rest.

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by Jeanne Grunert

Why Are Stock Photos for Business Websites So Boring?

Stock photos for business websites are boring. I don’t care which website you’re looking at; most feature one or more of the following

• People in gray or black business attire around a conference table
• Hands at a keyboard/calculator
• Desks
• Office buildings
• Binary code to make you think of “high tech”
• Two people shaking hands

Yes, stock images for business sites are boring.

Stock Images for Business Sites Are Boring!

Looking at this list, I notice one thing: a lack. A lack of zest, of creativity, of energy, of daring!

Unless your business is super conservative – and there are few of those left in this world – these photos are boring, clichéd, and (shudder) safe. So safe they blend into the woodwork like beige-painted walls.

Let’s not play it safe, shall we? Let’s be daring. Let’s talk like pirates. Let’s be bold, free, and most importantly – ourselves when it comes to images for our business websites!

Branding Through Images

Branding is more than the logo and colors chosen for your business. Branding actually consists of the spaces in between the tangible, the feelings and emotions evoked by a business. Diving deeply into your business through the feedback from your customers is the surest way I know to find your true brand image. Often what you believe is your brand isn’t your brand, but someone else’s ideas about your brand.

We carry with us the images of all of the things we have encountered throughout our lives, and this colors our perception of “what a business should look like.” Most of us are numb to the images we see daily around us. The billboards, the websites, the signs. We are used to what others think a bakery should look like, or a pet grooming service, or a marketing agency.

My own business suffered from this for years. I had vowed a long time ago not to resort to the old-typewriter look on my website. Too many copywriters, marketing writers and freelance writers use the typewriter as a metaphor for writing. But truly, how many companies hiring us these days even remember what a typewriter was, never mind realize it’s a symbol of a writer? The only industry still clinging to its ancient symbolic roots like this is the caduceus in medicine or the draft horses on the teamsters union sign.

Computer keyboards are, alas, a typical stand-in to demonstrate our finesse as writers, but does this truly exemplify what we do? I am no more a typist than I am a red-pen artist; I write and I edit, I create and I craft, I define and I refine.

But how do you visually express create, craft, define, refine?

My customers tell me they love working with me for the solid, dependable experience I bring to the encounter, the warmth of our working relationships, the feeling that I “get” their business and am able to express what’s in their hearts and minds about their own work. How do you express that visually?

Storytelling Includes Metaphors. So Should Can Your Brand Images.

Storytellers often use metaphors to express feelings. When metaphors become clichéd, they are boring and detract from the writing.

Visual storytellers or web designers must reach for metaphors, too. It’s easy to fall back on boring and clichéd visual metaphors such as hands hovering over a keyboard or concerned people seated around a conference table. Visual and verbal metaphors remain part of the common consciousness because they work, at least on the superficial level.

To truly stand out, however, you must dig deeply for your next metaphor. Your visual images should convey your brand attributes in ways that feel right for your business. My own brand visual includes references to nature; I am at home in nature, whether walking the woodland trails near my home or tending to my garden. It is in nature that I am myself, and in nature that I am most creative, so in nature do I place my business.

The metaphors I’ve chosen echo what clients say and what our company name reflects: oak, a solid wood, one of the strongest, symbol of the great Norse gods and of strength, durability, and power.

As you choose images for your website, consider your brand attributes.

Creativity? Reach for the creative. Think big! Black and white with splashes of color, interesting angles, close-ups or panoramas. Give your audience the unexpected, the jarring, the unique.

Attention to detail is your brand attribute? Think tiny, intricate photos of the weave of cloth, of frost on a windowpane, or cells in a leaf. All of these are available as stock photos you can license.

Professional? Ditch the men in business suits, please. Consider abstract prints, artistic swirls, or something fun. Consider unusual images that reflect your bright shining personality, not the personality of Big Corporate Culture.

Choosing and defining your brand takes time. Once you’ve figured it out, however, you’re well on your way to avoiding the stock photos for business websites that make you sleep syndrome. Be the wake-up call for your industry. Be the leader.

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by Jeanne Grunert

Why Customer Service Matters

We've all experienced awful service. We've all experienced good service.

As business people, we all know - or should know- the value of excellent customer service.

How valuable is good customer service? If you improve service by just 5%, according to Bain & Company, profits can increase 25 to 90%.

So with just a little effort, training, and better hiring practices, you may be able to increase profits. Who wouldn't want that?

In this article written for Medium, I share not just the facts about why good customer service matters, but how to achieve it without spending a fortunate on fancy loyalty programs, punch cards, free gift with purchase items and so on.

Enacting a strong customer service policy isn't expensive, but it's not easy. It takes thought, effort, and consistency. When it's done well, however, it can reduce customer attrition (churn) and boost profits.

Again, I ask: Who wouldn't want that?

Read the full article here: The Customer Pays Your Salary - Why Excellent Customer Service Is Vital for Client Retention

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by Jeanne Grunert

Content Marketing Mistakes

I really liked this post from Amy Gynn on Content Marketing mistakes. I see so many of these mistakes, and most of them are easily prevented or corrected. Besides, a good infographic on content marketing deserves to be shared.

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by Jeanne Grunert

Customers Are Won, Not Managed

Far too often I hear company executive talk about "managing their customers." Customers are people who pay your salary, not widgets to be managed.

 

You can manage expectations, but managing people for profitability is just...wrong.

 

Let's talk instead about building trust, value, and long term relationships for enduring loyalty. And yes, profits. Profits come after building trust and value.

 

Today I've published a new piece on Medium talking about how CRM is often used to mean software instead of the relationship itself. You may read the article here: Don't Manage Customer Relationships. Build Them. 

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by Jeanne Grunert

5 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Email List Fast

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by Jeanne Grunert