Monthly Archives: December 2022

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How to Thrive in the New Year

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Whether your venture is a recent start-up or a mature entity, it is a given that business owners and leaders must continually take steps to spur business health and vitality—in other words, growth = life. Many small businesses don’t make it past their first few years so to increase your chances of success, you have to be strategic from the very beginning. It’s important to direct your energy and resources toward actions known to work. Without a rationable straight-forward plan for growth, your business could struggle to take off and become sustainable. Presented here are five basic growth strategies, one or more which will likely work for your enterprise.

  1. Increase market penetration
  2. Indentify new channels
  3. Introduce market segmentation
  4. Develop partnerships
  5. Prioritize exising customers

Market penetration

This is a fancy way of telling yourself to cultivate a thriving client roster that is populated by a mix of new, lapsed clients who’ve been enticed to return and, best of all, legacy clients you’ve worked hard to keep within the fold. Market penetration is arguably the most critical business strategy of all; Freelancers and small businesses owners and leaders would be wise to employ ongoing tactics to take aim at long-term success with the use of a good market penetration strategy.

The goal is to increase sales within your current market. This can be difficult, as it requires you to beat your competition, but appealing to your current client list is an often successful path to growing sales revenue and profits. Clients do business with those they know and like and they do more business with those they know and trust.

New selling channels

Finding new opportunities to sell your products can be an excellent way for your small business to grow, especially if your current market is highly competitive. The internet has opened up alternative selling opportunities, giving you unexpected and innovative ways to reach out to not only your existing clients but to other markets, too. For example, if your business is online-only, consider opening a pop-up shop, maybe to capture Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day shoppers. If the strategy is promising, consider devising a way to become a permanent fixture at the pop-up location. See the partnership heading below and consider the possibility of a consignment arragement with a vendor colleague whose products complement yours.

If your small business operates from a physical store, then do the reverse and consider selling certain of your products online to broaden your reach (work with a skilled product photographer who will make your products look their best). B2B service providers can perhaps bring certain of your services online—maybe coaching sessions conducted by way of videoconferencing?

Market segmentation

Here, we have another fancy term for a simple tactic. Freelancers and small business owners often struggle to get traction in large markets because it’s nearly impossible to compete with bigger and better-financed companies. They’ll out-flank you on every metric, from breadth and depth of their product line to the advertising budget. For this reason, you might need to reevaluate your brand’s place within your market and hyper-focus your preferred playing field.

Think niche. Market segmentation involves dividing a broader market into smaller groups based on demographic information or buying habits. Then, you can choose one of these segments for your niche target audience. Marketing to a highly specific group of potential customers is easier than trying to appeal broadly to a massive group.

If you offer more than one product or service, market segmentation also helps you promote different products or services to different consumer groups. Taking this marketing approach will require careful research to discover which market segments are the most likely to buy each of your products or services, so be prepared for a time-intensive process. You can use email surveys, website analytics and purchase histories to find trends in your existing customers’ demographic or behavioral traits. Once you identify the most appropriate market segments for each of your product categories, create more targeted content for potential clients.

Partnerships

Partnering with another small business gives all parties involved access to a wider audience and if all works according to plan, everyone generates more sales and makes more money. However,

You’ve gotta know who you plan to dance with because a disappointing partnership deal can get ugly and steps must be taken to avoid misunderstandings and confusion. Due diligence is imperative when proposing a partnership of some sort. It is critical that you discuss the agreement—- responsibilities of the partners and expectations for outcomes—-in advance and, ideally, in face2face meetings. Then, follow up the agreement with unambiguously written emails. Due diligence is a must- do when proposing a partnership of some sort.

The partner’s products and services should be complementary, never a competitor, to your line, to ensure their client base will have an interest in your products or services. Ideally, a partnership should significantly benefit both business ventures. A partnership can take any form, from selling items on consignment to co-hosting a full or half-day professional development conferenceto sub-contracting a portion of a project where your own expertise would fall short—providing graphic arts or videography services at an event where you are he principle player. services could be an opportunity to tackle a big project by combining your resources, and it can be a chance to connect with another professional who may be able to offer their wisdom or skills. You could work with a partner to develop a new product, or you could host an event that promotes both brands. A consignment sales arrangement is usually low-stress and can be tested quickly and easily to illustrate how partners can work together.

Current clients

One of the most ill-advised yet common strategic missteps that business owners routinely make is prioritizing new client acquisition over developing client retention protocols. Clients with whom you have a history have demonstrated their confidence in your organization and need only a little love from you and your team to secure their loyalty and future business. While there is no doubt that recruiting new customers is an essential business goal, it is in fact customer retention that is the key to business success, as we discussed above in market penetration. Convincing a client to remain (or return) to your business is far easier than convincing a new client to give you a chance. Client retention is the engine that drives sales revenue and profit. Moreover, current and returning clients are your cheerleaders and are a good source of word-of-mouth advertising.

BTW, an email marketing strategy is probably the easiest way to stay in touch with the roster of clients you regularly work with. The right call-to-action will help you persuade clients and other website or social media visitors to surrender an email address in exchange for receiving something (free) that they value, such as an interesting report, informative e-book, revealing case study, or link to a podcast or webinar in which you participated (always provide an opt-out feature).

To your curated list, you may promote your brand and yourself by sending updates about new products or services, talks you’ll give, classes you’ll teach, charity events you’ll join, special pricing deals and other relevant news. Finally, you can as well demonstrate your respect for your clients by periodially conducting (short) surveys to guage their opinions on how you address their needs and what you can do to improve the client experience.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year. I appreciate your presence and support!

Kim

Image: This is how we do it. Window washers from a family-owned small business in Gresham, OR working for a local small business colleague. © The Oregonian March 21, 2013.

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A New Year’s Resolution for 2023—Be Visible

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A New Year will soon welcome us and with its arrival you will reach a naturally occurring turning point, or inflection point, as thought leaders like to say. A New Year is one way that the universe gives you a nudge that can inspire a beneficial reset personally or professionally.

It may be your custom fo create a short list of resolutions, goals to set you on a path that leads to a successful and rewarding year. Maybe you prefer to think of the process as giving yourself a fresh start at the top of the year—whatever! This year, I respectfully recommend that you plan to rev up your PR strategies. It’s crucial that you establish yourself at top of mind amongst those who are likely to become customers for your services or products by showcasing your EAT qualities—Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, still prized by Google. As well, aim to promote your dependability, authenticity and relability, all in service of building loyalty to our brand and stimulating customer retention and referrals. Here are five good promotional ideas for you in 2023.

Attend conferences

One of the best ways to meet professional colleagues and also grow your skill set and perhaps even find a client or a referral partner is to attend conferences. They can be quite energizing and inspiring and leave you buzzing with good ideas on how to do business with more intention and finesse. Conferences allow you to network with other business owners, Freelancer colleagues and traditionally employed executives and can open the door to lucrative new business.

Join, or at least occasionally visit, your local Chamber of Commerce or other professional organizations in your town. Find out, then get involved. One of the best ways to become known in the community is to be actively involved with the people and the commerce that make the town run.

Give talks

Freelancers market the skill set(s) that define their business and for that reason, you’re naturally positioned to take on public speaking. Along with teaching, there is no better way to showcase your expertise than to get yourself in front of an audience of colleagues and peers. As you attend conferences, make inquiries about speaking opportunities. Organizers routinely seek out those who can deliver a topic that will interest their members. When you join a neighborhood business or professional association, you’ll improve your chance to receive an invitation to speak. Furthermore, seek out webinar and podcast organizers are also in search of guest speakers.

BTW, speaking opportunities are more than delivering a keynote address. Introducing a speaking, moderating a panel, or appearing on a panel are also great opportunities for public speaking. Regarding potential venues, contact local libraries and other nonprofit organizations about talking to their members. Libraries, especially, have added career development information to their programming. What business topic can you address? Start outlining a 30-45 minute talk now and then go to work on the Power Points.

Community involvement

Your current and prospective customers will find you more relatable and authentic when you demonstrate your corporate social responsibility through your involvement in local philanthropy. Potential causes can be as varied as a Christmas tree lighting in early December to a 10K road race that raises money for math tutoring services for financially disadvantaged children.

PR campaigns

If you’re going to teach and give talks, then you’ll need to build an audience. News of your upcoming appearance is the perfect excuse to send a press release to your neighborhood paper. Read a few issues and familiarize yourself with the names of reporters, especially the business reporters. Find out how often the paper is published— neighborhood papers are usually free and published weekly. Once you get the particulars worked out, call the editor or business reporter and introduce yourself. Confirm who should receive your press release.

Furthermore, make it your business to learn all the free online listings services. The Patch is a great free listing service that’s available in many communities in America, both small towns and big cities. Finally, if you can muster an advertising budget, buy a business card size ad to run for two (or more) weeks simultaneously with the story featured in your press release and/or online listing, to amplify the impact of your story. Talk to the paper’s ad rep to see what types of deals you can get for advertising (within your budget) to stay in the public’s eye.

The above strategy also applies when you participate in a community charity event, or should you nominated for a business award. Kick your PR campaign into gear and savor the flattering publicity that flows to you and your business.

Promotional items

One of the best ways to get people interested in what you have to offer is to give something away. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your product, though it certainly can be. Giveaways can be an effective way to get people through the door of a physical store or to visit your website.

Consider giving away inexpensive but useful items that feature your company logo —-note pads, pens, magnets, tote bags and mugs, for example. Those items are popular and will keep your name visible. Whatever you give away, know that consumers recognize your goodwill and may reward you with more business. Are there local fundraisers that are looking for sponsors or door prizes? Find out how to get involved with these functions and get your products and your name in front of a prospective customers.

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Kyodo News June 1, 2019. Yumi Ishikawa, writer, actress and founder of Japan’s #KuToo movement. The social media hashtag references the Japanese words for shoes, “kutsu,” and pain, “kutsuu,” with a nod to the #MeToo movement.

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Back to Basics: Content Marketing 2023

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The inbound marketing strategy known as content marketing has the power to bring paying customers into your business. The results you see might happen quickly or over a somewhat longer period of time but if you put a content marketing strategy in motion, it’s close to a guarantee that customers will arrive, checkbooks in hand.

What will it do for you?

As you must do for all business initiatives, you need goals, tangible or intangible—your wish list!—and a recipe to make them happen. If you’re like many Freelancers and small business owners, however, you may be a little flummoxed by how to get content marketing going, of deciding what it makes sense to do. so FYI, the focus of a content marketing strategy is simple and straight forward:

  • Encouraging brand awareness, trust and loyalty
  • Generating leads within your target market
  • Converting leads into customers (sales)
  • Inspiring good word of mouth, repeat business (customer retention) and referrals

A content marketing plan is a journey. You’ll want to keep your destination in mind (goals) as you map the easiest and most effective path (strategies and actions) to get you there. Think of a 12-18 month campaign time frame. Develop the content narrative , perhaps quickly summarized by bullet points, to persuade the target audience. Moreover, choose relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will document your progress—or give a red flag to let you know that a course correction is needed. B2B marketers primarily use website traffic to measure success (60%).

Demand Metric, a content marketing firm headquartered in Ontario, Canada, recently reported that 91% of B2B companies engage in content marketing, spending 25+ % of marketing budget on the format. Demand Metric research also found that 68% of people read about brands that interest them and 60% will follow-up on a product or service after reading content marketing info. 70% of potential buyers prefer to read an article about your product or service than see an advertisement. 82% feel more positive about a company after reading content and 90% feel that such content is useful. High quality, interesting content inspires potential buyers to follow your content on social media and makes them more likely to do business–become a customer.

So what do potential buyers consider appealing content? Demand Metric research points to blogs, finding that 59% of B2B marketers produce more leads with blog posts. FYI, I don’t want to ruin your day, but Demand Metric research also found that 91% of email marketing recipients opt-out (hint—develop a good list and keep in mind that a small yet robust list still has value).

Remember your audience

Your content is for your target buyers. Therefore, you have to know who your target buyers are so you can decide the best way to sell your content to them. tailor your content marketing strategy to accommodate your ideal buyer’s content preferences and behavior. Your content is meant to push your brand as a trustworthy expert in your industry. This means you have to set yourself apart from competitors in the industry. To do this, you have to let your audience know what makes you unique through your content while showing them you are trustworthy by solving their problems. Most users look at the content to find solutions. Therefore, your content should indicate that you understand their pain point and you are able to solve it because you have the solution. Content that portrays such confidence is instrumental to generating conversions for your products.

Depending on your target audience, your content format can come as infographics, videos, podcasts or more. This also goes for the platforms you choose to deliver your content. For example, TikTok is predominantly used by young people, which means it could be the ideal delivery channel for your content if your audience falls within that demographic of users. In addition, it means your content has to be predominantly videos.

Monitor and fine-tune

Finally, you’ll want to make decisions about what success or missing the mark looks like. You can choose to follow whatever metrics are available to you but I suggest you keep in mind the most common goals of content marketing campaigns and choose metrics that reveal their performance. Depending on what you learn each month about your campaign’s ability to deliver, or not, gives you the flexibility to make adjustments along the way.

You can track the progress of your content marketing campaign by using your website and social media platform traffic data, as well as making note of the leads you’ve received and deals closed by way of leads generated.

If budget allows, do yourself a favor and invest in marketing services company such as HubSpot or Buzz Sumo. Among the metrics you’ll follow will be:

  • Social media shares
  • Website traffic
  • Click-through rate
  • Content engagement—- comments , shares, likes of your content
  • Backlinks— which high- traffic sites link to yours and increase the activity and credibility of your website and social platforms? Google E.A.T. (expertise, authority, trust) remains an influential
  • Time spent on time, another demonstration of engagement with your content. Pay attention to the topics that readers prefer, based on the time spent reading certain posts.
  • Bounce rate (tidy up your email list)

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Jane Wyman (L) 1917 – 2007 won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Actress in the title role of Johnny Belinda. Wyman was married to Ronald Reagan 1940-1949, they are the parents of Maureen and Michael. Superstar Hollywood costume designer Edith Head and Wyman review designs for Lucy Gallant (1955). Head (1897-1981) was the recipient of eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, including All About Eve (1950) and The Sting (1973).

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Fight Back Against Recession

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Economists and other thought leaders predict that 2023 will be a recession year and if the prediction holds, many Freelancers will see a decrease in sales revenues. Diminished revenue has the potential to bring on many unpleasant outcomes, among them the imperative to reconfigure how you can best allocate your shrinking funds. Belt-tightening isn’t fun, but do it right and you might survive or even, eventually, thrive. Take these three actions:

  1. Defend cash reserves
  2. Identify most profitable business activities
  3. Guarantee the optimal delivery of products and services

Conserve cash

You may not have a large amount of cash on hand in your business, but make a point to locate where you might find revenue that hasn’t been tapped. The first place Freelancers should investigate is the Accounts Receivable file. Rethink your strategy to collect unpaid AR and better still, start planning for AR when discussing the agreement with clients you’re about to work with. Request up-front money before you start project work on jobs that bill for less than $100—10% – 20% in advance is reasonable. Second, tie interim payments to project milestones where possible. Institute policies to avoid leaving more than 50% of the fee payable when project deliverables are handed over. The best defense is a good offense.

In the present tense, identify outstanding invoices and tactfully, persistently, pursue payment. Follow-up with clients who might be struggling to pay invoices and negotiate a payment plan if possible. Do whatever you can to ensure that all money owed to you will be paid as soon as possible (FYI, I’m negotiating right now with a client who should have no problem paying, but is 60 days late). Bring in the money and hold on to it—spend only on activities with demonstrated potential to increase revenue.

Double down on money makers

Going into a recession is a great time to do an audit and verify the most profitable parts of your business. When the economy becomes favorable again, you’ll be even better set up for success. Once you’re sure of the money-makers, do what you can to expand billable hours of those assignments. If you can scrape together a marketing budget, here is where you spend.

Marketing sometimes seems counterintuitive when you have less available revenue but in most cases, you can’t make money unless you spend money. What you must do is limit spending to activities that positively impact revenue generation. It could be that you buy a software program that makes it faster to generate and send client invoices. You might also invest in making credit card payments available and thereby make it easier for clients who can’t afford to write you a check can nevertheless use credit to pay your outstanding invoice.

There are also the more immediately recognizable marketing activities, among them selectively attending meetings and conferences where you might encounter prospects who may become clients and advertising, print or on-line, in publications that are read and respected by your target audience for your rainmaking projects.

All about deliverables, client retention, referrals

Happy customers create more business. Repeat and referral business is extremely important in a recession. Ensuring that your clients are happy is vital in any economy but especially in a recession. Creating glowing online reviews, testimonials and good word-of-mouth are essential to growing your revenue when times are tough (and even when there’s lots of money rolling around).

Sometimes when the economy changes, so do your client’s needs. Extract this opportunity, hidden in adversity, to learn more about your clients and what they feel they need now to ensure the survival of their organizations. Now is the time to talk to your clients and discover any changes in what they consider the pain points and priorities. Once again, it will be demonstrated that when you are attuned to the needs of your clients that knowledge can lead to more more active clients, more referrals and more revenue and profit.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Protesting the rise of food prices in 1973.