Learning from Business Mistakes
"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes." - John Wooden
Now I don't know who John Wooden is, but I do know that I make mistakes - a lot of mistakes.
Last week, I had the dubious distinction of being the only person I know of to trip going UP the stairs. I was carrying a cup of coffee in my left hand and a piece of toast in my right and ascending the stairs to start work for the day. My dog, Shadow, raced up to my right just as my left moccasin slipped off my foot. I caught my foot on the stairwell, and pitched forward.
In a split second, I had to decide, "Do I save the coffee, the toast, or me?" Well, the coffee sloshed over, the toast landed butter-side down, and I did a nice forearm-face-butt plant that left impressive bruises on my now coffee-splattered personage.
My dog, of course, looked concerned, then snatched up the piece of toast with glee. So much for man, or woman's best friend.
I was thinking about that fall today. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone falls now and then. In business, we make lots of mistakes. We hire the wrong person. We invest time and energy into projects that fizzle out. We launch a new website only to realize that it's not responsive. We make a typo in the annual report, or print a sign that says CHRIS IS RISEN instead of, you know, the son of God, Christ. (I saw that one on Facebook and truly appreciated it as only a writer can appreciate such a magnificent typo.)
After a fall, what do you do? Do you pick yourself up and keep going? Do you nurse your wounds and bemoan your fate? Do you blame others?
When I told my husband later about my fall, he had a good laugh, then asked, "Did Shadow trip you?" I could easily have blamed the dog. Heck, I could even have blamed my moccasins. They are too loose, anyway. But neither caused my fall. I was trying to hurry to work. I was carrying too many things. I'd filled my coffee cup to the brim. It was that kind of a day. It all added up to a spectacular trip and fall that ruined a good piece of toast and necessitated an impromptu scrubbing of my wooden steps.
When mistakes happen, you can blame the dog, your shoe, or your slippery steps. Or you can simply laugh and say, "Yes, I tripped and made a mistake." Then you grab the paper towels and start mopping up the mess.
Good business people know that grabbing the paper towels, mopping up the mess, feeding the rest of the toast to the dog and giving yourself a refill on the coffee is what to do next. It's really no use blaming spilled coffee, loose shoes or slippery steps. Instead, take immediate action to claim and own your mistake...then fix it.
I think you can tell a lot about a person by the bruises they wear and the blame they affix on others. We can only progress in our careers and lives if we accept responsibility for things that are our fault. More importantly, when problems and mistakes happen, we have to be the strong shoulders to bear the load and fix the problem.
When mistakes happen, pick yourself up, accept responsibility, fix what you can, and move on. Most mistakes in business as in life are like a spilled cup of coffee or dog-eaten, butter-side-down fallen piece of toast.
Smart business people know that it's only a piece of toast, after all. There's a whole loaf of bread waiting in the kitchen.
What Is Long Form Content and Why Does It Work?
I saw some fascinating research today on long form content. For those not in the marketing world, long form content refers to longer online articles and blog posts. Many people think that longer stuff doesn't work - that people skip over and don't read it. Research shows, however, that the opposite is true. Well-written long-form content gets two thumbs up from readers, especially business readers.
What Is Long Form Content?
Ask any two marketers what long form content is and you'll get two different answers. There's no industry standard definition. I'd put long form content at 1,000 words or more.
Long form content depends on several factors to make it work online:
- A broad enough topic so that you can get plenty of "meat" into the content;
- Great primary research. You can't fake good long form content.
- A solid outline. Like building a skyscraper, you need steel girders under it!
- Written to be formatted for the web. Because long form conveys a lot of information, the information needs to be written with formatting in mind. Plenty of white space, breaks, lists, subheadlines - you get the idea.
- Formatted for easy reading. You can't just plunk down thousands of words of text on a white web page and call it a day. Long form content has to be displayed for easy reading on mobile devices and screens. That means links, jump links, pictures and so on.
Why Does Long Form Content Work?
It works because it conveys information, plenty of information, and it gives readers tremendous value.
Wordstream offerred insights into why long form content works via several graphs. The interesting thing about long form content is that it increases reader engagement and time of visit, two important signals that Google and other search engines use to assess the value of website content. The longer people stay on your blog or site, the better. Long form accomplishes this admirably.
Why Don't More Companies Use Long Form Content?
Company owners have also bought into the myth that "people don't read anymore." My question to you is this: what people are you talking about? Do YOUR customers read?
Let's look at two of my niche areas: gardening and business. In both niches, people can and do read. They crave information. Gardening tends to rely a lot on pictures, but the business world? People love facts, figures, case studies, illustrations and more.
Long form is harder to write. If you're used to just dashing off any old thing for your blog or website, the idea of creating a 1,000+ article can be daunting. Most casual writers can't craft a solid outline, and they sure as heck can't create readable online copy. That's where long form content separates the men from the boys or in my case, the women from the girls; it's where the better writers excel, and the weaker ones flounder.
I love writing long form content and offer it as my area of specialty to interested business owners. If you're intrigued by the thought of adding some longer guides, articles and blog posts to your website but still uncertain whether or not they work in today's fast-paced world, check out the following articles:
- Forbes: Why Long Form Content Marketing Works and Why It Doesn't
- QuickSprout: How Content Length Affects Ranking and Conversion
- KISS Metrics: Why You Should Create Long Form Content (and How to Do It)
- Search Engine Watch: What Type of Content Should You Create
Retention and Loyalty Marketing Strategies
Today on my Blog Talk Radio Show, "Words That Work," I'll be speaking about retention and loyalty marketing strategies. In the world of direct marketing, there are three phases of direct marketing: acquisition, retention and loyalty building. I like to apply these concepts to the world of content marketing.
Most businesses spend a tremendous amount of time, money and attention to the acquisition phase of the business cycle. They emphasize bringing new customers and new business into the firm, and spend princely sums on wooing new customers in the door. The problem with that model is that eventually you do run out of new customers. Worse still, it's difficult to bring in new customers if you haven't put any emphasis on retention or loyalty-building strategies.
Your best marketing is conducted not by some fancy advertising or marketing agency, but by satisfied customers. Consider the following statistics, all gleaned from 7 Surprising Facts About Customer Referrals:
- 5% of new business comes from referrals – New York Times
- 92% of respondents trusted referrals from people they knew – Nielsen
- People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend – Nielsen
Given these statistics, focusing on retention (keeping a customer for the long term) and loyalty (keeping long-time customers happy and eager to be your "brand advocates") makes good sense.
Encouraging Happy, Loyal Customers and Brand Advocates
Over the course of my 20+ year career as a marketing executive, I've found that the following 10 ideas and concepts will help any business grow their base of happy, loyal customers, customers who are eager to become your brand advocates. See if you can implement any of the following ideas:
- Reward existing customers first before offering deals to new customers: Satellite TV and cell phone companies are notoriously BAD at doing this. They offer great discounts to new customers but treat their existing customers badly, raising rates, hiking fees, and charging for every little thing. Instead of giving great discounts to your new customers, reward your longest and most loyal customers with surprise savings. Waive fees for them. Give them coupons, discounts, special gifts not available to your new customers. Let them know you value their loyalty.
- Surprise and delight your long-time customers: This is a corollary to item one, above. Surprise and delight your long-time customers. Waive a monthly service charge. Give them one thing free.
- Say thank you: This may sound corny, but in an age of fast-paced digital everything, an old fashioned, hand-written thank you note may really surprise and delight existing customers. This is especially good for service-based businesses. Let customers know you DO appreciate them.
- Ask for their opinions and ideas: Engage your long-time clients in customer panels, surveys and discussions. Call them and ask them what you can be doing better. They will be flattered and honored that you are asking for their opinion!
- Change only what's broken; don't change what you are doing right. You're obviously doing something right if you have customers loyal to your company for many months or years. Don't noodle around with what's working. You can add product or service extensions, but avoid the "new Coke" trap and don't mess with what's working. People DO like classic things and don't always crave the new!
- If you do add something new, offer it to your long-time clients first: If you do add a product or service, let the old timers know first. Make them feel like they are part of an inner circle of advocates by releasing new product information to them first.
- Go the extra mile: Set up a special hotline for your long-time clients. If they have a problem, prioritize your customer service by loyalty, giving special attention to customers who have been loyal to your company for a long time.
- Send a token gift: A small gift to say thank you may be appreciated by your customers.
- Share information freely with them: Add rich content to your website that continually strives to help your customers solve problems, learn new things, or interact with your brand. Make the content free. In the long run, you will reap new sales from existing customers that will more than pay off your investment in long-form, rich content.
- Integrity builds loyalty and trust: When all is said and done, it is professional integrity that builds loyalty and trust for your brand. All the free gifts in the world won't make up for a company that misses appointments or deadlines, sells products that break, or doesn't live up to its brand promise. Make your word and keep your word to build long-term loyalty.
This post was written by Jeanne Grunert, president of Seven Oaks Consulting and author of Pricing Your Services: 21 Tips for More Profit. Please feel free to share a link to this content via your favorite social media outlet. Thank you.
B2B Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition
I generally think of marketing in three phases: acquisition, retention and loyalty-building. Content marketers tend to focus on the tail end of that three-phrase cycle, loyalty building. B2B content marketing is ideal for building brand loyalty. Magazines, long-form content, case studies and similar content marketing strategies are often used to great effect by B2B marketers to boost loyalty. However, B2B content marketing for customer acquisition can be equally as effective if it’s done well.
Why Are Customers Looking for Your Products or Services?
All good marketing programs, including content marketing programs, begin by answering the question, “What do my customers want or need?”
People shop for products and services based upon needs. Those needs may be physical needs; you need milk for your cereal, so you go to the store to buy it. Needs may also be psychological. I made an appointment with my favorite hair salon a few weeks ago, and the first words out of my mouth to my stylist were, “Blonde me.” I needed a psychological “lift” for the new year, and my naturally ashy blond hair had turned dark brunette over the past year. An hour or two at the salon and I left with lighter hair and a lighter spirit. In that case, my needs were psychological.
Before crafting your content marketing programs, know what your customers want or need. Conduct surveys, listen to their comments on social media, visit with them, hang out with them, but do understand what they need. That understanding flows into the first segment of a three-step acquisition program.
Good B2B Content Marketing Begins with Education
Once you understand what your customers want or need, you can begin to think of how your products and services might fill that need. But don’t rush right into an advertising campaign disguised as content marketing. Instead, educate them first on how your products or services solve that need.
How do you educate customers via B2B content marketing? You have many choices:
- Educational content: This type of content tends to revolve around industry facts. Statistics, facts, data, product information are all forms of educational content marketing.
- How-to articles: Teach your customers how to tackle simple tasks that solve their problems and win their attention and loyalty. How to choose an accountant, how to tackle a computer-based task, how to do something smarter, better or faster are all great how to article types for B2B content marketing.
- Advice: I like using personal advice from an authority or expert to educate customers. This works best when your brand is already well-known or you have a strong ‘voice’ in the industry. I’ve used this successfully with manufacturing clients and those who have a very unique, specialized area of expertise. Customers are hungry for advice from a true ‘expert’ in their industry, especially industries where products are more prosaic and functional.
B2B Content Marketing as an Acquisition Funnel
All steps along your B2B content marketing program should act like a sales funnel, gently leading and guiding prospects to make that final decision to call, contact, or complete a sales action. Once you educate prospects, it’s time to introduce solution-focused content. Such content takes the educational information shared in step 1 and introduces your firm as a solution for whatever problem led them to your content in the first place. By helping, advising and guiding instead of hard-selling them on your product or service, you can share useful, actionable information without clubbing them over the head (figuratively, of course) emotionally with hyperbole charged rhetoric. Instead, you’re selling to professionals in a manner that appeals to them as business people.
Jeanne Grunert is the president of Seven Oaks Consulting, a content marketing writing and services firm based in Virginia. She hopes you found this article educational and informative.
Project Management Tips: What to Do When Deadlines Slip
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams
What to do when deadlines slip?
First, don't panic. Next, gather your information, take a deep breath, and get ready to do some quick thinking - and acting.
Love them or hate them, deadlines are a part of life. As a freelance content marketing writer, consultant and marketing teacher, deadlines are as much a part of my life as a cup of strong coffee in the morning; in other words, I need them to survive.
When you’re working with a group of people on a project, however, deadlines can be tricky to navigate. The larger the group, the more difficult it is to get everyone on the team to adhere to a schedule and meet deadlines. Even when the willingness is there, conflicting priorities, unexpected delays, and life events like someone coming down with the flu can derail the best project schedule and make deadlines impossible to meet.
What then? What to do when deadlines slip?
Here’s a short primer on what to do when you see a deadline slipping on a critical project. Of course, your reaction to the problem may change depending on how critical the project is, your role on the team, and whether or not someone else can fill the gap and help meet the deadline. Only you or your project manager can decide which of these methods will work for your project and team.
5 Project Planning Tips to Help Teams Meet Deadlines
- Make sure all parties understand the reasoning behind the deadlines: Many years ago, I was brought into a marketing agency as a consultant to help the agency understand why their direct mail pieces were being delivered after the offer expired on them. The client was justifiably angry that their mailings were a waste of money, since by the time customers received the offer, the coupons inside had expired. When I spoke with the creative and production departments, the issue wasn’t that they didn’t understand deadlines, it was that the mailing client itself didn’t understand the time requirements for direct mail. The coupon vendor was submitting projects without adequate time for the production team to meet the deadline; even by working around the clock to design and mail the coupon-filled envelopes, the way the United States mail works they couldn’t possibly get the coupons into the customers’ hands on time. By working with both the client and the account managers to help them understand the need for more flexible deadlines, the problem was solved. Make sure that your team members not only understand what the deadlines are but why they’re critical, especially when factors such as mailing times are completely out of your control.
- Allow adequate time for each project component to be completed: Another problem with meeting deadlines is under-estimating how long each task on a project plan will take. If you’re not sure, find out from previous project documentation or other team members how long this or a similar task took in the past. Then use that figure as your baseline.
- Build cushion time into a schedule: Always build more time than you think you need into a project schedule. A little cushion goes a long way to helping teams meet deadlines.
- Check on the progress of project milestones as well as the overall progress: One way to ensure that deadlines don’t slip is to check project milestone completion. Milestones, or small sub-goals leading to a larger goal, are a good way to ensure that projects stay on track. It is also helpful to spot issues in a project or individuals who may be over burdened and unable to complete their tasks in the future.
- Don’t over commit. The biggest flaw in any project plan is over committing people’s time. It’s a common flaw, especially among top performers. When someone is good at what they do, managers tend to fight for their time, which ends up overburdening them and over committing them to too many projects. Then deadlines begin to slip and projects fall behind. Spread the work out and be sure to check with other managers before scheduling someone’s time to ensure they have adequate time to work on your needs, too.
What to Do When Teams Miss Deadlines
When a deadline starts to slip and you noticed project milestones lagging behind, ask:
- Will more people working on it help?
- Can the project component be cut without sacrificing the quality of the project?
- Can you make up time in the schedule in other areas?
- Can the task be outsourced to someone else?
- Can the task be broken into smaller portions and handed off to several people?
- Does the person adequately understand the task itself?
Many years ago, my marketing department was working on a major marketing plan for a new product launch. Our advertising coordinator kept missing his deadlines on the project. It turned out that he was both over committed and unsure of his next steps on his deliverable. I worked with him to re-negotiate his work load and priorities, as well as to break down his task into smaller, more manageable milestones. Another team member, eager for a project to help her add to her resume for a potential promotion, asked to tackle a portion of the advertising work, so she was able to help, too. We were able to guide the project back on track and meet the deadlines with a little team work, quick thinking, and trust.
Such a scenario only works with the last item - trust. Your team members must trust you enough to ask for help or guidance when it is needed. They won’t come to you to tell you that they’re missing a deadline if they feel you’ll get angry with them or that help isn’t forthcoming. As a manager, earning your team’s trust comes from consistent management practices and a calm demeanor. When a project plan starts slipping, your team members will then feel confident enough to come to you to ask for help rather than hiding the fact that they might miss a deadline.
Boost Organic Search Traffic with These 3 SEO Basics
You can boost your organic search traffic with these tips.
Using only ethical, honest SEO basics and internet marketing tactics, you can help the search engines find, rank and share your content. The more they share your content, the better your chances of attracting new website visitors and turning casual visitors into loyal customers.
Three Ways to Boost Organic Search Traffic
Search engine optimization is the art and science of helping search engines find, rank, and serve your content to people searching the web for the best information on a given topic.
A search engine’s job is to find the best content online that fits what a given user types into their browser window – no more, no less. These automated robots scan the billions of pages of internet content available, indexing, archiving and serving web pages and all sorts of online content, including images and videos, based on what they can “see” online. What they “see” are words: only words. They can’t read a picture or video, so anything other than text must be tagged with words in order to be found online. (That’s why I emphasize “words that work” – because online, your words are working words. They must serve a purpose!)
So what are my top three SEO basics to boost organic search traffic? There are over 100 factors that search engine marketing experts believe go into a well-optimized web page. I’ve heard some experts claim there are 100, and others say there are 200! No one knows for sure, because the folks at the search engine companies don’t tell us exactly what goes into the algorithm or ranking formula that propels the little bots out into the world and helps them sort through everything from Aunt Gertrude’s bread pudding recipe to the President’s latest speech.
Marketing writers like me, as well as SEO companies and experts, look at the tweaks they make to web pages, analyze the data, and determine which factors helped boost page views, traffic and more. Then over time, they notice trends, and share those trends as SEO best practices.
Here are my top 3 SEO basics or best practices that your company should implement immediately to boost organic search traffic.
SEO Basics Tip 1: Keyword Phrases
- Research and update your keyword phrases: The topic of your content is represented by keywords or keyword phrases, groups of words that cluster together to give both search engines and readers an idea of what your web page is about. A well-chosen keyword phrase can do wonders to boost search engine traffic. What’s a well-chosen keyword phrase? It’s one that represents what’s on the page honestly and truthfully. It’s one that few companies have figured out yet. And it’s one that a lot of people are searching for.
It’s darned hard to find, that’s what it is.
Yes, finding the best keyword phrases for search engine optimization can take forever. Sometimes it takes months to find the best starting phrases for a new website. Don’t rush the process.
To find great keyword phrases for your own website content marketing needs, start with how people are finding your site now. Look at your online records; what keyword phrases are guiding people to your site now? Which content is performing the best? Focus on those phrases and run them through Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool or a paid tool. Look for over 1,000 searches per month as your first criteria; look at the competition next.
Keywords and keyword phrases are words that work. They’re my favorite SEO basic to focus on when I find an underperforming website that needs help, because often with a few tweaks in the on-page content, the back end tagging and the tags on images, I can boost traffic dramatically in a few weeks or months.
SEO Basics Tip 2: Inbound Link Strategies
- Add inbound links and linking strategies: Links, links and more links. Inbound links are links from other websites that send traffic to your site. They’re golden. They’re great. They give you amazing traffic if done correctly. But they must be added naturally and without artifice. The search engine gods are good at spotting artifice and artificial linking schemes, and they punish without mercy those seeking to manipulate their search engine rank through the use of such schemes. So don’t offer an “even swap” of links with a friend: “You point to my site, I’ll point to yours.” Such swaps, once standard fare among SEO companies, are now out of favor with the search engine gods. While you won’t get penalized, you won’t benefit, either.
What WILL get you in trouble are those paid linking schemes where you plunk down cash and a company spams the world with your links. Not only is that an obnoxious marketing tactic, it’s ineffective. It will also get you in trouble with the search engines. Don’t do it.
So how DO you build links into your website? The old-fashioned way: by producing well-written, rich content that tells a story while it sells. I don’t care whether you’re selling pain cans or traffic cones, with B2B content marketing, you need a story.
I’ve heard folks say that “busy business executives don’t have time to read long content” but that’s not true. They don’t have time to read USELESS content. To build inbound links, you need great content that provides useful information to a busy executive. Such content may get picked up by other news sources, social media link-sharing sites liked Stumbled Upon or Reddit, or shared via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other platforms. Once it is shared, the links multiply, and so does the traffic. But you must start with useful content.
SEO Linking Best Practices
Some best practices for encouraging inbound links to your website include:
- Offering facts that are hard to find elsewhere, or that few people know about in your industry. You can discover these facts through surveys, studies, and other methods. Distill them into digest-sized blog posts, papers and presentations that you share on your website, and post a prominent notice encouraging people to link to your site as the source. Perhaps you can conduct a study of how traffic cones are used, or the best color for traffic cones if you are a B2B manufacturer of traffic cones. Such a study, if done well, may be of interest to your primary customers such as law enforcement, municipalities, and more.
- Create guides and have them professionally written and designed. Make them into PDFs and offer them as downloads without making customers jump through hoops to obtain them. Sure, you want some content that requires a visitor to turn over their precious email address to build your list. But don’t make every download on your website contingent upon signing up for a list. Be generous. Content marketing is all about generosity, and generously shared, relevant and well-written content works wonders to increase your inbound links.
- Make a link-building strategy a long-term project. Links don’t happen overnight. It can take time to encourage inbound links. Work with a professional internet marketing agency or content marketer to create a strategy and tactical plan that aligns with other marketing channels and helps your business achieve its overall goals through a solid linking strategy.
SEO Basics Tip 3: Images
- Use your images to boost organic SEO: I mentioned earlier that search engines cannot read pictures. That’s true, but they can read file names, tags and descriptions of images that you upload to a server. One SEO best practice or SEO basic that many people neglect is using images as part of their search engine optimization. Rename your image files with keyword-rich titles that reflect the images but also boost traffic. Use the alt-tags to provide more words that work for search engines, and don’t forget to use any and all tags in the back end of your website to their full advantage. This includes meta keywords, which although not widely used today may still help, title tags, page descriptions, and anything else your system provides to help you tag, title and create keyword-rich data for search engines to grab onto.
These three SEO basics have helped both my clients’ websites and my own websites and blogs rise in the search engine ranks among some stiff competition. They can work for you, too. Try them yourself and see. If you’d like some help creating a strategy around SEO basics, please use the Contact Form on my website and schedule an appointment. We can discuss your website goals and needs, and I can provide you with a fair estimate for my work to help you. Let’s figure out how to make words work for you.
Three Reasons to Use Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail isn’t dead, despite opinions to the contrary. Rather, it is undergoing a Renaissance. Many businesses are returning to direct mail marketing or incorporating it as part of an integrated marketing campaign, aligning it with digital marketing channels. Here are three great reasons to use direct mail.
1. Direct Mail Is Personal
Printing techniques have evolved to enable customization of direct mail that makes it both personal and targeted. Gone are the days of “dear occupant” letters. Instead, mailers can address letters to the recipient and even target the offer to the intended recipient, depending upon how the mailing list database is set up. Personal offers and appeals, even personalized gifts with purchase can be tested, measured, and used to boost response rates. Personalization is the number one reason why direct mail remains a popular marketing tactics.
2. Direct Mail Is Competitive
The U.S. Post Office shipped 79.5 billion pieces of advertising mail in 2012 compared to 103.5 billion in 2007, according to their website. Although that seems like a huge amount of mail, consider how many television, internet, radio and magazine ads customers are exposed to daily. They may receive two or three advertising pieces in any given day; chances are good that they will see 10, 20 or 30 times that many ads or more on other marketing channels.
With less direct mail arriving in the mailbox, businesses have a better opportunity of standing out with clever, attractively designed direct mail pieces. The International Journal of Research in Marketing published a paper in 2011 stating that direct mail creative design accounts for 10 to 25 percent of campaign success. (Feld, S., et al., The effects of mailing design characteristics on direct mail campaign performance, Intern. J. of Research in Marketing, 2012). Investing in professional creative design for your direct mail piece appears to boost open and response rates.
3. Direct Mail Is Effective
Direct mail remains a very effective form of direct response marketing. The Direct Marketing Association published a report in June 2012 stating that the response rate for direct mail is 4.4 percent compared to direct response email marketing, which achieves an average response rate of 0.12 percent. While it is true that the cost per piece or cost per contact for direct mail is higher than that of email, the return on investment may also be higher, depending upon the price point of what is being sold and the costs to produce the mailer. When all things are equal, direct mail continues to outperform email.
Direct Mail Remains Competitive for Certain Market Segments
Lastly, direct mail remains a strong marketing tactic to reach specific market segments. Wealthy consumers continue to respond to direct mail pieces, taking the time to read long form copy and respond to offers for luxury products. Niche markets, including hobby and special interest markets, respond well to well-targeted product offers, especially offers for products they cannot find easily in stores. With a good mailing list, expertly designed mail piece, and an appealing offer, direct mail continues to be an effective marketing channel.
Direct mail isn’t dead. It remains a viable, effective marketing channel for many businesses.
How to Get a Mailing List for Your Business
Many small business owners want to use direct mail as part of their marketing mix, but they're not sure how to get a mailing list. The best mailing lists are the ones the business itself owns, called house files. These lists, usually compiled from customers who have purchased products or services from the business in the past, are great to promote sales or new products to loyal customers. But what if you want to generate new sales and acquire new customers? You must rent a mailing list.
Lists Are Rented, Not Purchased (You Don't Own the List)
Lists are rented, not purchased. Many marketers and business owners talk about buying lists, but lists are usually rented for specific uses. They may be rented for one time use, which means that only one mailing can be sent to the addresses on the list, or they can be rented for unlimited use. Unlimited use is something of a misnomer, as there may be boundaries around the usage.
For example, depending on the fine print in the contract, unlimited use may mean that you can continue using the list for as long as you want to or it may mean that you can mail to the list as many times as you want to during a discrete time period, such as within one year.
What Is a List Broker?
Companies that rent lists are called list brokers. Using the analogy of renting an apartment, a list broker is like a real estate agent. If you were searching for a one bedroom apartment with a balcony, a real estate broker would generate a list of potential apartments in your price range for you to see. List brokers perform a similar function.
After learning about your mailing and possibly reviewing a sample mail piece, they may ask you questions about the target audience. They may want to know what you intend to sell, or more about the customers you'd like to reach. These questions help brokers narrow down the choices and provide you with the best possible lists for your needs.
Types of Direct Mail Lists
There are two basic types of direct mail lists. Compiled lists are the least expensive, but tend to be the least effective. Companies compile customer data and mailing addresses from public documents, such as telephone directories, to create lists based on zip codes. Usually, little or no data on the customers on the mailing list is available beyond basic census data.
Response List vs. Compiled Lists
Response lists usually perform better than compiled lists, but they are also more expensive to rent or lease. Response lists may be based upon lists of magazine subscribers, catalog purchasers, or people who have in the past responded to a direct mail offer. Many response lists offer renters additional data points for consideration, such as the last time customers purchased something, information on what they purchased and other facts.
These can help you target the best possible recipients for your direct mail offer.
When Was the List Cleaned?
Like an apartment, a list needs to be cleaned. List hygiene includes the last time the list was updated, the last time it was checked against the post office's change of address files, and whether or not it has been checked against the file of deceased persons. Such tasks can reduce the number of nixies, or returned direct mail pieces that are returned because they are undeliverable.
If the list broker cannot perform these tasks, a mailing house or printer who handles direct mail can typically provide the services or help you find a local vendor who can.
Removing bad addresses from the list saves postage, printing and mailing costs. It also enhances good will. Nobody likes getting mail addressed to a family member who died!
How to Choose the Best List
Be choosy about where you rent your mailing lists. Old mailing lists are not only more likely to be undeliverable, but they may also be beyond the original terms of the lease agreement. Direct mail companies do track the usage of their lists by using something called a seed file or seed addresses. These are a few addresses seeded or sprinkled throughout the list of employees or subcontractors of the mailing list owner who get a copy of every direct mail piece sent to the list file.
You can't tell at a glance who those people are; their addresses look like anyone else's. They will, however, check mail they receive against approved use of the list, and if a list is used outside the scope of an agreement, expect a bill in the mail from the list company.
Direct Mail Works
Renting mailing lists is an art and a science. It's always smart if this is your first time choosing a mailing list to speak with a professional direct marketer and seek their advice. Direct mail offers a powerful, measurable method of acquiring new customers. Direct mail may be an older market method, but it remains a vital and powerful one when used correctly.
3 Tips to Get More Traffic to Your Website
Wouldn’t it be great if you get customers to flock to your website like this? While there’s no magic formula, there are specific steps that you as a small business owner can take to boost your website traffic. Here are my top 3 tips for improving your site’s search engine position, visibility and traffic. If you need help implementing any of them, contact me at Seven Oaks Consulting for a consultation.
Tip #1: Update your website frequently with juicy, interesting content and share-able graphics.
Search engines love fresh website content, and the more frequently a site is updated, the better. That’s one of the many reasons why website owners love Wordpress-hosted sites; the built-in blogging capacity offers easy site updates.
It’s not enough to simply swap out a picture or change a headline and call it a day. What are you saying on your website, both through your text and images? Are you using information to enhance your expertise, your brand position, your approachability?
Content offers entry points for visitors into your website. If you don’t have a content marketing plan, create one or talk to us about creating one for you. Content continues to be an integral part of online marketing and a great way to attract new site visitors once it is shared.
Tip #2: Share Content on Social Media
Share appropriate, brand-supporting links; build networks by commenting and interacting with your followers. Make sure you have social media icons prominently displayed on your website so that site visitors can find you and follow you on their choice of media platforms. Building a robust social media presence helps you generate links into your site when you share those links widely across social media.
Tip #3: Interact Beyond Your Usual Online Platforms
Broaden your outreach efforts. Consciously make an effort to visit new blogs. Bloglovin’ is a great place to find blogs of interest. You can type in the name of a blog you like, and the site helps you find similar ones. I also find fascinating new blogs through Pinterest. Many pinners share images from their blogs, and the link appears below the image when you click through to the original pin. It’s worth trying, especially if your business website is one that lends itself to images or blogger outreach.
Building website traffic takes time and effort. If your traffic is stagnant, it’s time to look beyond your current internet marketing efforts. [pullquote align="left|center|right" textalign="left|center|right" width="30%"]Getting customers to flock to your site is a combination of creating a great website with frequently updated content, sharing that content, and introducing yourself to a wider circle of acquaintances.[/pullquote] Try these three tips today and spend time this summer boosting your visibility online.
Three Ways to Generate Content When You're Stuck
Everyone gets stuck on occasion. I'm not talking stuck, like Winnie the Pooh in his tree or like a kid getting his head stuck in a stair banister. I'm talking creatively stuck, as in, "Oh no...I've got write four blog posts this month and I don't know what the heck to write about..."
Feeling stuck like that is no fun, especially when you're a business person with a pile of tasks waiting for you. It's easy to push aside content marketing and get back to things you feel like you can actually do right now, like pay the bills and check your Facebook account for the 100th time today (guilty as charged).
But if you keep avoiding the blank page, or in this case the blank screen, you'll be left without content and without the opportunity to share your expertise with the world. And what fun is that? None in my book!
I've pulled together three of my top tips for generating content when you feel absolutely stuck, like you're staring at a blank wall or that the creative well has completely dried up. Feel free to grab any of these tips and try them today if you're facing that situation.
- Compile your own "top 10", "top 5" or whatever list. Go back and look over what you've already created. Chances are good you've got several posts you can group together into a 'best of' sequence of posts. Write a one paragraph summary and introduction (surely you can do THAT), and then use bullet points to link to the original posts you wrote. Voila. Instant blog post!
- Create a meme, quotable quote, or Pinterest-worthy share. Use only your own original photos to ensure you're in the copyright clear. Find a quotable quote. Use a free service like Pixlr.com or PicMonkey.com, add the quote, and share. Instant content!
- Review a product, service or website in your industry or niche. I like this one because you can talk about something or someone else without feeling pressured to sell, sell, sell. Plus, you're sharing the love, by helping someone else sell without any pay off on your own. It's a feel-good way to get yourself writing again. I'd stick with only positive reviews, but that's just me. Negative may get you more press, but positive gets you more karma points.
The next time you're feeling stuck, think of this:
So take action!
Written by Jeanne Grunert, Seven Oaks Consulting. Jeanne is an award-winning writer, blogger and marketing consultant helping companies acquire, retain and create loyal customers. She is available for freelance work.