Archives for April 2016
Customer Acquisition: 3 Risks to Avoid
Obtaining new customers is an exciting and fulfilling experience. It brings you closer to the light at the end of the long dark tunnel. You have put a lot of time and effort into launching your business and now you are finally seeing some return on your sweat equity. But be careful, more customers can mean more problems if not handled correctly.
Here are three customer acquisition risks to avoid:
Risk # 1: Unwritten agreements or promises
When advertising your products or services make sure your ads precisely describe what you are selling. Do not leave any detail unmentioned and left to the customer’s imagination. If the client assumes your product or service entails something that indeed doesn’t, your company will likely lose that custumer and possibly have a law suit on its hands. A good way to divert liability is to have a contract agreement. Never do a deal with just a promise and a hand shake.
Risk # 2: The Clingy Customer
Treating the customer right is a company’s number one priority. However, there are times when bending over backwards gets to be too much. A needy, clingy customer will jack up your CAC (customer acquisition cost) and bring down your LTV (long term value of a customer), throwing off the balance that you’ve been working so hard for. Clients who are calling and asking questions constantly can take up a lot of time which shifts your focus from gaining new customers to dealing with one. The answer to this ties in with risk # 1. Make sure your bill of services are clear so the customer can’t take advantage of your time.
Risk # 3: Underestimating Customer Acquisition Cost
Underestimating your CAC can lead to big problems in the near future such as digging a huge hole in your budget. Prevent this blunder in the planning stages of the business. Intensely research the market that the company will be entering. You want a good idea of the amount of potential customers there are, and what kind of demand there is for your product or service. If there is a high demand and lots of customers your CAC may be low depending on the cost of advertising.
In the end your main focus is gaining clients so your business can grow. If you are not obtaining new customers then the company cannot grow. That is the bottom line. Once you are taking in new clients you will have to balance the effort it takes to keep them with the dividends you receive.
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC
by Rob Carpen
Rob is a content writer and editor, specializing in a variety of fields. He helps B2B and B2C clients with blogs, social media, press releases and web content that create more value for their marketing campaigns. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He played Club Rugby at IUP for four years. He loves Rugby and recently attended the Rugby World Cup in Newcastle, England – New Zealand All Blacks v. Tonga Match. Rob is passionate about craft beer. He is transitioning his eight years of home brewing to earn his professional brewer certificate.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.
5 Tips to Help You Generate More Leads
Being smart about lead generation doesn’t have to be a mystery —  here we detail our top five tips for generating lots of good leads and revenue.
- Produce quality content. This may seem like a given, but it’s often overlooked by businesses. The content you post socially and on the web needs to be informative and useful to your audience. The more traffic your site captures, the higher the likelihood that it will be seen long after you first publish it. Use engaging details like info-graphics and videos when appropriate. Once you have content posted on social channels, those who click on your content are driven to your site and your re-marketing kicks into high gear.
- Engage better. Social media done right is social media with real engagement. Yes, that means a real person responding immediately to comments, shares and private/direct messages. Twitter becomes more engaging when tweets include a visual element, like an image or video. Twitter followers that send you a direct message require a quick response. There are also apps that help you analyze your followers’ behavior, which allows you to target them at certain times of the day when they’re most active.
- Follow industry blogs. When you comment frequently on relevant blogs in your industry, you can generate clout for yourself as a useful and informed resource. Offer helpful, informative comments, and you’ll establish yourself as a trustworthy source. Guest blogging can also serve you well to generate leads. Just be sure to analyze the audience and quality of the blog before you agree to write a guest blog. You want to be sure the opportunity for leads is real and useful to your company.
- Talk to your customer. Make direct contact with your customers online. Use live chats, social media and helpful video pages in a membership portal to engage on an individual level. Social media is an excellent place to find leads because people tend to come back to them for help. It’s also easy to directly contact leads about offers or to answer questions on a forum. It’s all about customer service!
- Use Wistia and PlusThis. Two powerful tools that enable a personal and relevant response. Create a video channel for your business that produces tutorials and short informative videos about your business. This will set you apart and give you a competitive edge — and help leads to see you are unique. Then tie viewing intelligence gained from Wistia to your Infusionsoft campaign via PlusThis – now you're really cooking!
Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more lead generation tips!
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
Facebook Audience Optimization and its Use for Publishers
At the start of 2016, Facebook launched Audience Optimization. This new tool is one for publishers to keep their eye on — especially as it grows from its infant phase. Audience Optimization was built to help publishers specifically target and engage their audience. By using the tool, page administrators are able to identify users most likely to interact with a post, and in turn, craft posts more relevant to those users.
What does Facebook Audience Optimization do?
With Audience Optimization, Facebook page admins are able to control who sees a specific post by adding qualifiers such as language, gender and location. They can also add interest tags, which gives audiences the opportunity to engage with topics they are most interested in. It also allows a publisher to review key analytics, breaking down how well a post performs compared to others.
So what?
The key takeaway from this new tool is what it says about the way publishers can market on Facebook. By engaging with users on a person-to-person level, publishers have the potential to establish more meaningful connections with their target audience. By understanding what a reader wants to see and read, content can be carefully curated to serve those needs. Results from early adopters of the Audience Optimization tool have proven to heighten engagement and created a much greater correlation between a given target audience and the content a publisher produces.
How to make it work for you
First, you need to answer some key questions about your audience. How is Facebook currently working for your business? Which audience members do you value most in terms of voice, opinion, etc.? By answering those questions, you can then determine the best way to utilize Audience Optimization. With highly adept users who completely control what they read and engage with, the best method for marketers is to walk with them as they make purchase decisions and read articles online. The Audience Optimization tool is an inroad to keeping in step with your users’ wants and needs and providing them with the content they desire as they need it. The overall digital marketing industry is bending towards the importance of establishing one-on-one, personal experiences for users, and Facebook’s new tool makes it easy for publishers to do just that.
Viral Solutions can help you take your digital marketing to the next level. Contact us for more information about how you can get started.
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.
Overwhelmed Small Business Owner: How to Hire Help
So your business is small, but it is growing. Growth puts more and more responsibility on you. Your to-do lists get longer and longer, and tasks are starting to pile up. To weather this storm, you are going to need help. It’s about time to hire some employees.
Never fear, learning how to hire help, isn’t as bad as it sounds. Here are a few tips to ease your worries.
We get real and we stay that way. We know that no amount of great marketing, sales techniques, software as a service (Saas) or operational consulting will fix a bad entrepreneur. We are prepared to deliver our best, to enable you to raise your anchor through the one set of activities that sets the best apart from the rest.
Tip # 1: Be strategic
Before hiring new employees, come up with a solid job description that encompasses the tasks that need to be completed. Then seek out the individuals that have the right qualifications for those jobs. This is half the battle.
The other half of your strategy is posting the job description at the right time. You don’t want to hire employees that you don’t need. That could get expensive. Wait till you start to bring in more work than you can handle; this is the time to start hiring.
Be sure to have a good idea of your current amount of business and determine if your company could still employ those new hires should the workload start to drop.
Tip # 2: Outsourcing is an option
Depending on your workload and the type of tasks that need to be done, outsourcing might be your best option. It can save you money in the long run since you don’t have to pay for health care for an employee. Hire a freelancer to build your website and keep up with social media. There are many marketing firms out there that have excellent professionals in these fields that will give you a great product and save you a headache.
Tip # 3: Know the rules
One more thing to take into account are the laws that come with hiring and firing an employee. There are a set of US Employment laws that regulate how you can write up your job postings and how you interview and sign employees. Be sure to get a firm grasp of these laws before you begin recruiting. Also, know the law and best practices of terminating an employee. There is a possibility that you could be slapped with a wrongful termination lawsuit from a disgruntled former employee. Learn how to avoid these devastating situations to save your company.
Remember when business gets too busy you have options, you don’t have to hire full-time staff members right away. You can outsource or hire temps as well. Know your workload before you rush into hiring.
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC
by Rob Carpen
Rob is a content writer and editor, specializing in a variety of fields. He helps B2B and B2C clients with blogs, social media, press releases and web content that create more value for their marketing campaigns. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He played Club Rugby at IUP for four years. He loves Rugby and recently attended the Rugby World Cup in Newcastle, England – New Zealand All Blacks v. Tonga Match. Rob is passionate about craft beer. He is transitioning his eight years of home brewing to earn his professional brewer certificate.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.
Why Outsourcing Content Marketing is Right for You
Quality content on your website is crucial to the success of your business, but maintaining a steady stream of always-relevant, quality pieces takes time and effort. It’s a full time job in itself to curate relevant content for your social media sites, not to mention creating interesting blogs and how-to’s for your customers.
Did you know that on average, 44% of B2B marketers outsource their content creation?
Tim Backes | King of Client Copy, is a content writing and editing specialist with significant experience in a wide variety of fields. He helps clients in B2B and B2C industries develop web content, blog posts, press releases, articles, social media content and more that add to their overall web marketing campaigns.
The benefits of getting specialized help to maintain your content marketing will have a substantial impact on your overall marketing strategy. We detail a few highlights below.
- Conserve your valuable resources. With a team of skilled professionals at your disposal, you can redirect the energies of your in-house marketing staff to focus on day-to-day priorities for your campaign. Good content marketing is timely, high-quality, and efficient. You’ll be hard-pressed to maintain those traits if your marketing team is stretched thin with their other tasks.
- You control the frequency. When you hire a content marketing agency, you determine how much and how often you’ll need content. This eliminates the hassle of scaling your internal team up or down based on a need that may not be static. You won’t have to quickly hire or let go internal employees, because your agency will provide you with content based on your need and budget.
- Access to quality resources. On your own, your content marketing tools are likely very non-specific. Your analytics may measure a broad range when you really only want to focus in one or two areas. An agency is likely to have software that allows for very specific analysis and a way to view all of your content in one place.
- Curators will do the heavy lifting. If you decide to hire a content curator, he or she will be responsible for finding, organizing, and publishing relevant content for your brand. This relieves you of the need to juggle all of your social media sites, blog posts, and newsletters at the same time. A curator orchestrates the timing for your posts and thoroughly reads the latest news of your industry, so he or she will be able to efficiently manage timely articles to be retweeted, topics for your blog, and highlights for your newsletter.
- Implementers generate content for you. Implementers are often freelance writers who quickly supply you with articles based on your need. They are familiar with your marketing strategy and gear their content creation accordingly.
- Partners do it all. Hiring a partner means you hand over the reins of your content marketing completely. An agency takes care of your every content need – from analysis and publishing to content creation, they become a near-extension of your team. This more personalized experience means the agency becomes a cohesive participant in your overall goals as a company by understanding your audience and collaborating with you to achieve your content marketing goals.
Copyright 2016 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant, a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords and a Mobit Certified Partner.