Monthly Archives: July 2022

Marketing , , , Leave a comment

Analytics Data: Your Content Marketing Navigator

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So, how are you doing with content marketing? Are you seeing the hoped- for results? Do you have it clear in your mind the reasons for launching whatever content marketing activity you do—blog? podcast? behind-the-scenes videos of your team in action?—-beyond some half-formed idea about how everybody’s doing it, it’s probably good for business, so get busy? I don’t want to be judge-y but if that is your reality, I encourage you to tighten up your game.

Whatever content marketing you’re into, it will all go down much better when you think about it in big picture mode. Content marketing starts with figuring out the purpose, what you want it to do, the end result you’d like to achieve. We know it’s about creating business, but you’ll help yourself by being more specific and thinking about how content marketing works.

Content marketing is premised on the soft sell approach, expressed by educating prospective clients about the performance, quality, cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness of your products and services. Supporting that primary message, you may also use this style of marketing to communicate the expertise of you and your team and portray your company as dependable and trustworthy. You might also send out the message that you are socially responsible, practice environmental sustainability (“green”) and believe in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

If you are put off or intimidated by the very thought of thinking this stuff through, I’ve given you a cheat sheet, shown below. Oh, and remember to invite website and social media visitors to dip into your marketing content by writing a good Call-to-Action that entices them to take a chance—do the survey, download the case study, join the webinar, opt-in and get the newsletter.

But the moral of this story is that you are advised to follow, weekly or monthly, certain key metrics that document how prospects interact with or respond to your content. That reported data becomes your recipe and roadmap for content marketing that works. The data also shows you what doesn’t work, by reporting lackluster numbers.

Follow the open rates, shares and likes of your blog or newsletter and discover which topics mean the most to your readers. You’ll also realize the topics readers don’t love, when your open rate tanks. Data is the navigator for your content. Follow it and find the road to achieving your content marketing and sales goals. Explore free and paid data analytics services and register your website and social media accounts to get started: https://bloggingwizard.com/social-media-analytics-and-reporting-tools/

Common content marketing goals:

  • LeadGen—bring potential buyers to your website and social media accounts, from new or established markets
  • Increasing Google EAT ranking—Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
  • Brand loyalty—-enhance company reputation, build trust, signal dependability, to know you is to love you

Track metrics that matter:

  • Lead metrics—how many leads does your content generate through email opt-ins, call-to-action appeals, or blog and newsletter subscribers?
  • User metrics—how many page views does your content draw? How many downloads, visits, shares and likes does your content receive? Which content format and topics get the most positive responses from readers and viewers, as indicated by high open rates?
  • Sales metrics—how many of the leads that you generate from your content become paying customers? What is your sales conversion rate?
  • Time metrics—how long do viewers spend engaging with your content, where do they stay longest and which pages do they visit?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Crunching the numbers that guided decisions made by the Oakland Athletics baseball team and resulted in big wins. The story was told in Moneyball (2011, directed by Bennett Miller) starring Brad Pitt (l) and Jonah Hill.

Administrative , , , Leave a comment

When to Hire, When to Outsource

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Increased sales and plans for expansion are a happy and exciting time for business owners . But as we discussed in last week’s post the bear market is in the house and caution is highly recommended. Along with confirming that customers will spend the way you need them to, you’ll also need to ramp up your operation in one way or another to meet the increased demand for what you’re selling.

Each of those scenarios requires a different type of staffing strategy—-maybe part-time, maybe full-time; temporary/ seasonal; possibly W2 and on the payroll or maybe 1099NEC Freelancer? There’s also the option to not hire anyone (unless your opening additional locations, for example). To figure that out, you’ll also need to make a realistic assessment of how much more work you can coax out of your current staff, without provoking a mutiny. Below are potential questions to ask yourself plus solutions for increased staffing needs at your growing organization.

Start your decision process by defining what “increased sales” means for your company. Is the plan to add e-commerce to your website so that you can sell products or provide services online? Or have you signed a new client and you’ll provide services on an ongoing basis—- or maybe the work will be completed in 4 months, but will keep you very busy? Maybe this is turning out to be a reality hot summer and the lines at your ice cream shop are halfway down the block? Below are practical questions to ask yourself as you figure out the best staffing solution for your company.

What function needs to be done?

HR, IT, bookkeeping and social media management are services that are often outsourced to a fellow Freelance expert or perhaps to a large company that operates nationally. Your company’s need for one or more specialized skills or labor may be ongoing, but the frequency of need may not require full- time work.

You can hire part-time help, but what kind of working relationship should you enter? Can you afford to make a commitment to pay someone maybe 10 or 20 hours per week, every week, as a W2 employee? Are you confident that your revenue will support the expense?

If it seems reasonable to assume that you’ll have the cash-flow and you have a good relationship with a particular vendor and you’d like to maintain that, then make a salary and time commitment offer. You might propose W2 status to someone who’s worked in your organization as a 1099NEC (who will be very happy to have taxes taken out during every pay period and eliminate at least one source of quarterly tax filing), or hire a newly recruited person.

Do you anticipate short-term or long-term deployment?

Obviously, if you need labor or a skill set—-grant writing, meeting facilitation, website developer, or seasonal help (Christmas rush or summer help?)—-for just a few weeks or months, you hire 1099 NEC workers. The labor or skill set may be mission- critical because a lot is riding on its fulfillment, but you need it only for a special project or defined time.

But if sales at your bakery are up and the line for coffee and muffins is noticeably longer, then you’d be wise to hire one or more W2 employees to shorten the wait time, avoid over- working and frustrating your current employees (which could lead someone to unexpectedly quit and leave you in a bind) and maintain the positive customer experience.

Which costs more–1099NEC or W2?

There are costs and other downsides associated with both outsourcing and hiring permanent employees. Sometimes, calculating the costs, of dollars and other factors, can help you reach the most favorable. or least onerous, decision. Your HR/ payroll and benefits management service (which may be in-house or outsourced) can research the expenses associated with bringing in a W2 employee. A visit to indeed. com or Upwork can let you see the ballpark range of hourly or project Freelancer rates.

The bottom-line cost of hiring a 1099NEC Freelancer will be lower than the cost of hiring a W2 employee, but there are sometimes persuasive reasons to do the latter.

Calculate the time needed to get each choice up and running (onboarded)

The answer to this question has big impact. While you may have the money to hire a W2 employee and even prefer to install a permanent team member into a mission-oriented position, you may realize that hiring an experienced Freelance consultant to do the job will allow you to get things done much faster.

Your Freelancer will be a hired gun who possesses deep expertise, a pro who needs minimal onboarding and training to successfully produce the deliverables. Because your Freelancer probably concentrates his/ her work on just three or four related competencies, the quality of the work and knowledge brought to the table will be deeper and more specific. Going immediately to a Freelancer means you bypass the potentially time-consuming hiring process and obtain the skills or labor you need ASAP.

Do you want a boss-employee relationship?

Working with a permanent (well, more or less) team is a different dance. it’s a longer-,term relationship and it demands a different kind of leadership—more intense. If you enjoy this kind of stuff, you’ll get to help someone grow professionally nurtured by the training opportunities that you provide, through a combination of assignments that you initiate, skills building workshops that you make available and career development pep talks that you give.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The Stone Breakers (1849) Gustave Courbet (France, June 1819 – December 1877). The painting was destroyed along with 154 other paintings in February 1945, when a transport vehicle moving the art to the castle at Konigstein, near Dresden, Germany was hit by Allied forces (“friendly fire”).

Business Strategy , Leave a comment

10 Strategies for Surviving a Bear Market

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Step right up folks. Welcome to the bear market. Wasn’t this the party you were looking for? Probably not. But the bear market bus has left the station and you have no choice but to hang on for the ride. Get used to it—bear markets are stubborn. The bear market known as the Great Depression technically lasted for 3 years (1929-1932). The Dot.com Bubble bear market lasted 2 years (2000-2002).

However, the negative effects of bear markets—-high unemployment, inflation (higher prices paid for essential items) and downward pressure on business revenue (resulting from lower disposal income that limits discretionary purchases and higher interest rates on business loans)—-usually doubles the real-time negative effects of bear markets on the population.

So what is a bear market anyway? Economists declare a bear market when there are sustained declines of 20% or more in (recent) prices of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and commodities across several market indexes and exchanges —Standard & Poor”s (S&P 500), Moody’s, the New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street) , NASDAQ, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are among the well-known economic benchmark sources. Bear markets usually occur in tandem with a weak economy.

You may notice that stock and other securities prices demonstrate investor confidence and optimism. The high prices typical of a bull market, polar opposite of the bear market, indicate an expectation that big institutional investors are expecting growth and expansion of the economy. But in a bear market, it’s all about avoiding risk and conserving cash.

So, too, for Freelancers. Pulling back and going on the defense is the smartest bear market strategy. Conserve cash by trimming expenses that do not demonstrably contribute to customer acquisition, customer retention and the customer experience. Manage expenses to preserve your cash-flow. If you are able to save money on a regular basis, so much the better, so that you’ll have funds available to cover business and living expenses if revenues take a serious dip,

Be very cautious about plans to grow, expand, or scale your business and remember that business expansion costs money, a resource that is more expensive to obtain during high-interest bear markets. You can go out of business in a blink if you start drinking from the fire hose and expand too much and too fast.

You can run out of money because you can’t bring in customers fast enough to cover operating expenses. You can also be caught off guard by factors outside of your control—-like a pandemic lockdowns, a boat turned sideways in the Suez Canal, another war or assassination—- that deflates your once/ reasonable sales projections.

Furthermore, customer acquisition and retention are usually more difficult to sustain when disposable income drops and potential customers pull back on spending. Still, with the right strategy you might make money, or at least avoid big losses. Below are actions to help you minimize the bite of the bear.

  1. Open a cash reserve account and aim to deposit 5%-10% of weekly net revenues. If you encounter ether an emergency or an opportunity, you will have waiting for you an interest-free line of credit, so to speak, to carry you through an unexpected cash-flow glitch.
  2. If you sell products rather than services, find back-up supply chain resources so that your shelves will remain stocked even if your usual supplier experiences delays. You must have products to sell when customers want to buy.
  3. Be cautious about plans to expand your venture, unless trustworthy research shows the ROI the time and money required.
  4. Cut excess operating (selling, general & administrative) expenses.
  5. Boost AOV (average order value) by bundling products together to increase sales revenue. Make it attractive to buy from you.
  6. Minimize or eliminate perks —-offsite retreats, meals, travel and the like—- unless you’re spending on customer acquisition or productivity-enhancing skills development.
  7. Raise prices in response to the impact of inflation on the rising cost of goods sold, to maintain profit margins.
  8. Consider investing in long-term opportunities or capital improvements that might now be discounted significantly. Who knows, if the financial prospects are good, maybe you can buy out a competitor who has good market share, but doesn’t have the money to overcome the bear market—/and you do.
  9. Focus marketing in the top three performing channels only and drop those that don’t add much to your sales/ mart pipeline.
  10. Use cash-flow and higher operating margins( (obtained by raising prices) to provide the working capital you need. Remember that the interest you pay on borrowed money from your bank is now higher with rising interest rates.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © The New York Times The Bear struts his stuff in the Boston Ballet production of The Nutcracker.

Professional Development , , , , Leave a comment

One Sentence Team Building

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The ability to harness the energy, creativity and productivity derived from group collaboration—-teamwork—-is a defining characteristic of good leadership. The best leaders have learned how to guide and inspire their teams, learned how to both challenge and support them. They know how to rally the team to deliver exceptional results and achieve mission critical goals that move organizations to greatness.

Effective leaders know that becoming a trusted and supportive resource for their teams is fundamental to achieving excellence. The best leaders demonstrate their commitment to the team by enabling the group to deliver results that meet or exceed expectations.. In their interactions with team members, the best leaders may make a simple but profound appeal to their team members with the question , “What can I do to help?”

This innocuous and disarming question is surprisingly powerful. When a leader asks this question, s/he opens the door to a teamwork culture that introduces a mentoring aspect to team building. With this question, the leader offers opportunities for confidence, trust and relationship-building that are often overlooked benefits of team building and often unacknowledged ingredients of a team’s success.

Unfortunately, the trite statements typically made by team leaders to express a willingness to advise team members who may be, at some point during the project assignment, uncertain about how best to proceed, often do not motivate team members to step forward with questions. How many times have you heard leaders insist that their “door is always open?” While no doubt spoken with good intentions, this statement often fails to encourage requests for help. Neither does it invite team member suggestions that may increase productivity or enhance results. Leaders who understand and fully inhabit their responsibility to the team know to be more emphatic in their outreach. They ask how they can help.

Communicate value, drive results

Ask the question during one2one meetings or project update check-ins. You’ll soon realize that knowing they are supported and valued greatly reassures your team members. You’ll be pleased to discover that members of your team will not only be comfortable discussing their questions, but might also share their thoughts on how to improve the results of project deliverables.

“Just ask” statements don’t feel real. A more direct and specific offer of assistance breaks down barriers and creates a safe space where team members can drop their guard. Team leaders may eventually realize that the silence that resulted when a general “just ask” offer didn’t mean that team members would not have welcomed opportunities to talk; it’s more likely that they weren’t sure how to ask for it, or worried that they might look less than smart if they did.

Asking “What can I do to help?” not only benefits team members lucky enough to be asked the question; leaders who are insightful enough to ask also benefit. Choose to extend yourself to your team and you’ll be rewarded with the recognition of the value you bring to your team and, by extension, your client. How powerfully affirming it is when the members of the client teams you expertly lead spread the word about how rewarding it was to work with you. Exceeding expectations and creating a satisfying project experience is everything you aspire to achieve.

Reward initiative

Be aware that more frequently than some realize, there may also be team member or two looking to receive support for contributing an outside-the-box idea to the project. Smart leaders are always willing to hear the ideas that team members would like to share. Some novel ideas may be feasible and others may not, but it’s important to welcome initiative and creativity.

Leaders who habitually refuse to consider unexpected methods or perspectives, who don’t reward a team member’s passion for giving the best of him/herself to the work, will eventually see that suggestions of useful ideas, along with the commitment and focus that created them, will cease. Team members who have no incentive to bring the best of themselves eventually pull back. They resign themselves to operate as mere functionaries, a waste of precious human capital.

By welcoming creativity, curiosity, diligence, attention to detail and basic pride in one’s work, high-functioning team leaders nurture an environment where useful ideas, perhaps unexpected, are allowed to surface and impact productivity and performance for the good.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The Bad News Bears (1976) starring Walter Matthau (center left) and Tatum O’Neal (#11)