Three New Year’s Resolutions for Your Small Business
It’s a new year for your business – time to save money, be more productive, and advertise smarter.
1) I Will Test the Office Phone System
When was the last time you checked your employee directory?
Old toll free numbers can get lost, employees can move or switch titles and cubes and old numbers may lead to dead extensions. It’s not uncommon for a small business to lose anywhere from 2% to 15% of its potential sales and customer retention simply by not checking to see that their phone system turns every single extension into the proper employee and that each number has a voicemail box that is checked. Promotions, new titles, new departments, and even old employee business cards should be checked by actually calling these extensions.
One exercise that we like to do to test voicemail systems is to wait after hours, then call the phone extensions with this message:
“Hi, this is ______,
I’m testing our phone system and was wondering if you could let me know that you’ve gotten this voicemail by sending me an e-mail to ____@___.com and leaving me your extension and phone number where you reached this voicemail. This will ensure that our customers can always reach us, thanks!”
While this can be time consuming, it’s a critical (but critically boring) task that is one of the easiest ways for the office manager to boost customer sales & retention. We don’t mention this often enough, but how your customers get presented with your voice mail greetings and the ease of your employee directory (if you have one) is one of the first impressions of your company and brand.
2) I Will Follow, Comment, then Tweet
2010 can be the year your business finally launches on Twitter. But be forewarned – success on this social media juggernaut won’t have a “if you build it, they will come” strategy.
If you’re a B2B business, a common way to build your Twitter “presence” is to find the influential KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) on Twitter and follow their “tweets”. Comment and contribute to their posts and let them know that you appreciate their content. Over time a certain portion of these folks will follow you as well, and they in turn will become your conduit for information about new products and company PR. Because followers of tweets can “retweet” (repost your tweet to their own network of followers), one message about e.g. a new break-through skin cream to a few dozen dermatologists can spread like wildfire.
If you’re a retail or consumer oriented business, a commonly used method for getting Twitter followers is to offer specials, coupons, and rebates to those that follow your tweets. This is commonly done by making such offers “time sensitive”. The real-time nature of Twitter allows such offers to be made as “coupon alerts” to an increasingly wider array of people.
Remember, Twitter marketing is a continued investment whose ROI will increase over time as your followers increase in size and relevancy.
3) I Will Finally Start Tracking My Marketing Spend
According to Google, only about 5% of AdWords customers use Conversion Counter, much less track the phone calls their online ads generate. There’s a famous saying amongst professional marketers, “I know I’m wasting half my advertising dollars, I just don’t know which half”. But that can be easily solved by buying low cost toll free numbers that can be tied to specific marketing campaigns and lead generation drives.
Making New Year's Resolutions is a great idea for every business.
For example: Having a Google AdWords ad list a new trackable toll free number means that you can not only track the ROI of your ad spend by the click, but by the actual number of phone call inquiries these ads produced. Same goes for Yellow Page ads, print ads in magazines and even brochures and flyers.
These low cost toll free numbers are easy to get and easy to track call activity online, so why not order several and tie them to specific marketing campaigns and track the productivity of each? It sounds cumbersome, but virtual office providers make it so easy to order such toll free numbers and track the call activity online. Your CEO will be amazed at how much you can say about what advertising investments are producing and which should be cut.
How much did that $5,000 YellowPages ad produce in sales or sales leads last year? A trackable toll free number can answer that and more in 2010. Seriously, it’s time.
Find out more about these services and see how RingCentral compares: Employee Directories, Visual Voicemail and Toll Free Numbers.
Small business
Often we forget the little guy, the SMB, in our discussions of the comings and goings of the Internet marketing industry. Sure there are times like this when a report surfaces talking about their issues and concerns but, for the most part, we like to talk about big brands and how they do the Internet marketing thing well or not so well.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Small business
The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary……….
Small business
4) Small Business owners are largely forgotten. Thats why I only focus on them. I have experience several members of my family file bankruptcy due to small business failures. I also I suffered through 2 destroyed businesses due to failure however, in my failings I have learned some of the secrets to success. (Who can say they know it all?)
What I like about small business owners is that they are not afraid to take huge risks and lay it all on the line. But, I agree they do need a lot of help with their marketing. I think having them go the social media and email route is not only the least expensive but its also the most effective. Thanks for the stats!