More Than A Few Words

Since starting my first Twitter account in 2008, I've had a love hate relationship with the platform. It's fast moving and entertaining.  There are days that I can scroll through and just enjoy the conversations. Sometimes it's great for business, and sometimes it's just a complete time suck. So how do you get the most out of the Twitter platform? That's a question. I've asked a number of people over the years. In this episode, you'll here excerpts of some of my favorite conversations about Twitter

Nobody told me when I was a kid how much harder it was going to be to make friends when I got older. Changing jobs and moving to new cities, I always felt like I had to start all over again. The same is true as you start your business. Sure you have friends from former jobs and other positions, but they may or may not necessarily travel in the same circles that you're moving in now that you're a business owner. And so it's time for you to go out and make new friends. Get out there and start networking and don't just look for customers. When you go to the next Chamber of Commerce event what you're really looking for are peers, other people in your industry and maybe even a few competitors. These are people that you'll be able to talk to about your industry and about your world. It's a great way to learn and share best practices. Don't limit your networking to in-person, there are great opportunities online to join discussion groups and industry forums.   

Want to grow your business from zero to 1000 fans?  Start by asking people what they want from you. Sounds simple, right? But that's exactly what my guest Josh Tapp, The Lucky Titan,  said he did to grow his business. In this episode we talk with Josh about building an audience of raving fans, customers who are so passionate about you, they will pay you, no matter what your offer. They're willing to come to you with their wallets wide open and say, "give me whatever you have because I know you care about me." More than a Few Words  is a marketing conversation for business owners, hosted by Lorraine Ball

Let’s face it, everyone is not your customer. Even if you sell the most basic of products like crackers or toilet paper, some people will like your particular brand and others won’t. And trying to make your product as generic as possible so that it will appeal to the widest group possible means that you’re probably not going to satisfy the demands of any one group. So, today’s tip is really to start thinking about who is your target customer? Who are the people most likely to buy? What makes your product most relevant for them? What are their needs, and how do you solve their problem? When you begin thinking about your target customers as individual people rather than a conglomerate of everybody out there you have a better shot of creating relevant and meaningful marketing messages.

Think Instagram is just for pretty pictures of food, fashion and flowers will think again. With Instagram stories, your business can deliver relevant messages to an audience that really cares. Our guest today Bobbi Baehne will share tips and tricks on how you can use powerful Instagram stories to grow your business. Instagram was about pretty pictures and celebrity chefs until it was purchased by Facebook a few years ago.  They have expanded the platform adding tools to make it more useful for businesses.  One of the most powerful tools in the platform are the stories. These larger posts take up more room in the news feed, can be customized with stickers, text and even polls.  And because they disappear in 24 hours people are more likely to pay attention, because they know they will be gone soon. 

Have you noticed that everyone seems to be changing their name lately? I mean, every time I turn around, Dunkin Donuts is now Dunkin and Weight Watchers is WW, Burger King is trying to slide in there with BK. What's going on? These brands that have been around for a long time and they are trying reinvent themselves. They think a shorter name makes them sound cooler and maybe a little bit hip. Also, it allows them to shift focus away from some of their core products. For example Dunkin Donuts wants to talk about muffins and other healthy alternatives. And Weight Watchers watns to be known for more than boring diets and face to face meetings. Can these brands get their customers to embrace the nickname? Only time will tell. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you want to call yourself. It only matters what your customers want to call you.

Let's face it, things happen. Businesses take twists and unexpected turns. But are they really all that unexpected? In today's conversation, Sam and I talk about how you can proactively plan for the crises, you know, are going to occur at some point.

Wouldn't it be great if your marketing could get people to buy from you? Unfortunately, as our guest Chris Hoyt explains, that's not how marketing works.  What can marketing do?  Marketing can help people know you exist.  if you are just starting out, marketing can help introduce your new company It can communicate your value  It can give people an incentive to try your services or your products And most of all it can help you listen to your customers.  Armed with this information you can make better decisions.  More than a Few Words is a marketing conversation for business owners. 

The Marketing Minute: Patience Let's talk about patience, because that is something  small business owners typically don't have. We start our businesses with grand plans.  We go out and start marketing our product and we expect results righ away. Unfortunately,  good marketing takes time. This is true of all types of marketing, but particularly inbound marketing and content marketing.  These activities will not double your web traffic overnight. If you created great content a week, a month or even a year ago, it will continue to be discovered by niche searches and drive traffic for months and years to come. Search engines may not notice the first article you write on a topic, but once you have a series of related articles, suddenly you are seen as an authority on that topic  and you may see your search traffic go up. As that begins to occur, your inquiries come as well. So my friends, be patient.

The problem with automated marketing is that well, it feels automated. There's a not quite human sound to the way those emails and chat bots respond to questions from real customers. Your challenge is to humanize your automated marketing and make those communications sound like they come from you. To help us discover how to create personal campaigns that really bring people to you we invited Ellen McDowell, the founder of Ellen McDowell, Your Social Butterfly to join us. She says the key is to make sure that you are speaking authentically, using your language  you normally would use. Don't rely on the templates that your software tools are providing. Use text from emails or simply imagine a conversation with a potential customer and use the same words in your automated chat response or email that you would use if you were face to face.  More than a Few Words is part of the Digital Toolbox from Roundpeg

Today's conversation is a bit of a departure for us, but it is such an important topic, property taxes. I know , nobody wants to talk about property taxes. But  if you don't talk about it, and you don't think about it, you're gonna pay more. Our guest Joshua Malancuk, founder of JM Tax Advocates explains the two components of property tax calculations; the tax rate and the assessed value. While you can't change your tax rate, which is set by your local government, you can present logical arguments for reducing the assessed value of your property. Most business owners don't have the experience to make the case for a tax assessment reduction on their own.  That's where professional tax advocates can play an important role. This is extremely important for capital intensive businesses, but individual taxpayers can benefit from the evaluation process as well.   

Is email marketing or social media a better tool for your business. The truth is, it’s not an either or situation. Each of these marketing tools has a very specific purpose. Social media is where you meet lots of new people with your messages. If your content is interesting you can reach new audiences through your existing connections.  But at the end of the day, it’s like going to a singles bar. Your end goal is to bring your date home for a more personal conversation, without competing with pictures of babies, and kittens. That’s where email shines.  It is more one to one conversation. And at least from the moment that they open your email, you fill their inbox and their screen and there are no distractions, you have a significantly higher conversion rate on activities from email rather than social media. So as you’re thinking about your marketing, make sure you have a role for each of these tools. This marketing minute is hosted by Lorraine Ball

What is a rich snippet?  Rich Snippets is the term used to describe structured data markup that site operators can add to their existing HTML, which in turn allow search engines to better understand what information is contained on each web page. However, the major search engines have taken this a step further, and now use this markup to present richer search results, enabling users to more easily find the information they are looking for. Sounds kind of geeky, right?  Well Lorraine and Sam break it down so it makes sense to all the non-techies in our audience. 

What if you had an employee who could be hard at work as you were doing something else. Sounds wonderful, right?  Well that is the idea behind marketing automation.  With a little planning, you can create campaigns which will reach out to customers and prospects, with just the right message at just the right time. As our guest, Travis Merle explains automation isn't one size fits all. It is about sending timely and personalized information in response to sales or support queries About Travis As a Channel Manager at ActiveCampaign, Travis works with agency partners that leverage and/or are looking to leverage marketing & sales automation as a service at market. A two year veteran, which is an eternity at AC, he spent the first nearly 9 years of his career at various agencies and media production companies. He's no stranger to marketing. He loves his partners, his teammates and the world of automation.

If you're like many business owners, you started your company to do something you enjoyed. Maybe you were a chef and you started a restaurant, or a doctor who wanted to take care of people, or a marketer who enjoyed the creative challenge of engaging customers with a product. Whatever it was, you started your company to do that thing. Along the way you learned running a business required sales, bookkeeping, IT and human resources skills. There are multiple distractions dealing with an unhappy employee, preparing paperwork for your accountant, or calling clients who are behind in payments. Each of these tasks takes you further away from what you set out to do. So how much time do you really spend doing what you set out to do?  If your day is primarily taken up with things that you'd rather not do, you're heading for burnout.  You need to recognize the warning signs and reverse course because life is too short. To get back on track, the first step is to build a plan. Maybe you need to change your business model

These days inboxes are overloaded and social media news feeds are controlled by the platform algorithms.  So, as a small business owner how do you break through the clutter to be sure customers see your messages? In this episode our guest Alfredo Salkeld explains how texting can be the answer for many small businesses with the ability to deliver simple, timely messages to an audience interested in what you have to say.  About Alfredo Salkeld As marketing manager, of SimpleTexting Alfredo is responsible for attracting new users to the platform then helping them see real results with SMS as quickly as possible. He and his team do this by creating expert articles, guides, videos, webinars and more full of useful, actionable advice. Thanks to this content plus SimpleTexting's stellar support team, the company has doubled in size since Alfredo joined in 2019. Prior, Alfredo lead the content strategy for Oasis—a luxury home-sharing start-up backed by Hyatt Hotels. He also worked as a copywriter at Push, an advert

If you have ever read a comic book you know that the Super Hero has amazing powers, but also the one critical weakness.  Business owners are marketing super heroes with amazing skills and talent, but weakness which can bring us an our business to the ground, like kryptonite does to superman.  Our guest, Karen Sullivan suggests that a good marketing strategy can help your overcome your kryptonite.   Curious about your marketing superpower ? Take this quiz.  About our guest - Karen Sullivan Karen Sullivan is a fourth-generation entrepreneur and award-winning designer with a life-long passion for persuasive visual and written communication. She founded Sullivan Solutions nearly 25 years ago to help entrepreneurial companies augment their in-house marketing with expert services that help drive sales further and faster. Her expertise enables clients to develop effective strategies that are built upon their unique strengths and make confident marketing decisions that drive demand for their products and services.

The next time you go to a networking event, ready to launch into your hard sell pitch stop and try something new.  Don't ask the same tired questions.  Instead, our guest Patti Farmer suggests three quick questions which will help you quickly qualify each conversation, so you know who to follow up with and how.    About our guest Patty Farmer is an award-winning Marketing & Media Strategist, International Speaker, Podcast Host, Magazine Publisher, and Event Producer and works with small business owners, entrepreneurs & speakers to attract and convert their ideal clients so they can make a big impact in the world, and bigger deposits in their bank account. Patty believes we all have a message and her mission is to help them master their marketing, leverage the media, and monetize their business in a way that creates transformation for both them and their clients while designing a lifestyle they want to live.  

Small business owners are often very short sighted when they consider the value of a customer, looking only at what they are going to spend today and maybe in the the years to come. But if you delight that customer, they will bring something worth more  more than the value of all they will buy from you. A customer who really knows and loves you, will be willing to talk about you to their friends and their families.  Their endorsement is the gift that keeps on giving. So as you think about how much you will spend to generate leads and drive prospective customers to your business, you also need to think about keeping those customers for the long term. MORE ON THIS TOPIC:  Be sure to read this check out our Customer Acquisition Worksheet  that is included in our Marketing Budget kit to calculate how much you can afford to spend for each new customer.  

Are you looking to expand your organization?  If its a struggle to find qualified candidates. you might need to change your focus. Typically the focus is on the candidate.The hiring company tells them to change their approach, resume, writing style, and exceptions to meet the company's needs. In today's competitive job market however, it is often the company that needs to change. Before you look externally, you need to look internally to see what image you are  projecting.  If your brand image in the market is lackluster and generic you are likely to get a lot of resumes that are lackluster and generic as well, because "like attracts like". This week our guest Career Success Coach, Lisa McDonald sat down with host Lorraine Ball and explained if you're having trouble attracting great resumes, you might want to start with your own corporate resume.