One of the main ways to sustain a healthy and growing business is to keep a steady customer base. A company doing well will typically see the 80/20 rule; 80 percent of its business coming from 20 percent of its customer base.
If you are looking to grow your business and to see it thrive well into later years, you need to start building loyalty with your customers and building relationships to keep them happy.
Communication is key
Keeping customers informed of what’s happening within your business, offers and up to date information will allow your customers to feel part of the life of your business. This could be via a number of mediums including newsletters, emails, social media or even a phone call but the fact that you are telling your customers about the latest news goes a long way.
You don’t need to be pushing sales at your customers all the time. Communications can be friendly, informative snippets along with a “how are you doing?’ every once in a while. People appreciate communication and it goes a long way in building customer relationships.
Always go above and beyond
This goes without saying in business, if you have a customer then you want to treat them right and maintain that customer for future potential sales. By going above and beyond in what you do for them at the start of their customer experience with you, they will know that you care about them and that you want their business.
It doesn’t take much to do a little extra, as Tesco’s motto says “Every Little Helps” and yes that might be in a different context but it’s the same principle – every little bit helps for your customers and you have an opportunity to show each and every client that you are there to serve them, along with wanting to provide 100% and beyond.
Be a problem solver – Be positive
It’s great when things are going well, but how do you deal with situations when they go slightly pear-shaped? How do you react with customers when they have a complaint or something to share?
As you build your business, you will come along characters that will test your patience and try to get something for nothing. But you are the face of your business and your reputation matters. Building a good reputation can take years but it only takes one or two customers to not like your practice to tear that reputation down.
Therefore, try to solve or defuse a situation rather than rise to it. Always try to show a positive attitude towards all customers, whether you like what is happening or not. You are more likely to have a positive outcome and a good response if you act in a positive manner and show professionalism.
Promote brand awareness
This is number one in a business marketing strategy but it can often be put on hold or forgotten about when other aspects of business take over. By promoting your brand and showcasing what you are about, you are building a base of followers who will get to know, love and understand who you are and what your business is about. Building a business takes trust and people need to trust your brand in order to feel comfortable buying from you. When you build on your brand awareness, they are given opportunities of seeing more and more about what you do and how you can benefit them or provide a service for what they are looking for.
Always target your brand awareness campaigns to people who are really going to want to buy from you. It’s vital to understand your target audience and to know what it is they are looking for so you can provide the solution for them. Understanding your audience will bring you closer to them and provide a way in to build relationships that build customer loyalty and longevity.
Show who you really are
It’s great to showcase your business and everything that it has to offer, it’s one step further to showcase who you are, as the business owner. People love stories and customers feel connected when they know there is a human behind all the technology. You may not feel comfortable speaking on video or promoting yourself but it will go a long way in building customer relationships and allowing customers to know the real you behind the business.
Video marketing is definitely the future. And if you’re not doing it now, you need to be very soon! It doesn’t have to be long drawn out videos, it can simply be you saying hi and and introducing yourself as the business owner. Pin a video post to the top of your social media posts so that each new customer can see the voice and face behind the company they are looking to engage with. It will go a long way – try it today!
If you’re still unsure on what impact your video marketing could have, check out these 100 video stats you should know – and see how you could integrate them into your marketing objective.
Get engaging!
We say it all the time but the key to building a loyal customer base is by engaging with them on a daily basis. This falls in with the communication point but it goes a little deeper. If you’re using social media to attract new customers and to retain your current ones too (and if you’re not using social media for business then please get in touch!), your followers are looking to engage with your business. Give them posts that they can reply to or share with their friends. Post articles that relate to their situation. Get your writing head on and create some posts or articles that really speak to the heart of your audience. When they see that you are actually speaking to them on a personal level, they will share that with their friends and family, they will recommend your business to others and they will start to love who you are which in turn leads them to be a loyal customer.
Take these points on board and use them to grow your business. Building a loyalty with your customers is so important if you want longevity in your business. Sustaining and maintaining your client base doesn’t have to be hard work but it does need dedication and commitment to see it work.
If you’re looking to reach a wider audience through social media or would like to know more about creating an effective marketing campaign, get in touch today!
You’ve got a great business in the making and you’re looking to tell the world about your fantastic product but how do you make an IMPACT using your social media? And more importantly how do you make an impact efficiently?
It all begins with the planning. Having a good marketing strategy will help you be efficient and effective in your social media campaigns and will give you clear direction on where you’re heading and what you need to be doing to get great results.
Having an impact with your social media doesn’t need to be a tricky task and actually it can be quite enjoyable when you get into the swing of how to be effective.
With literally millions of people using social media on a daily basis, the world is more connected today than it ever has been. Information and content is readily available and everything is at the fingertips of the consumer. So how in a world full of competition and no boundaries do we as business owners reach the audience that we are seeking to find?
There is such power in social media and the influence that it has on our everyday lives. Without realising, people are engaging and creating opportunities that we often are not even aware that we have become part of, by either clicking on a Facebook post or watching a video on YouTube, everything is there at the click of a button, content ready whenever we need it.
Be known
Also as we’ve said before, once your business raises its brand awareness it will be recognised by more people and the engagement through your social media channels will increase. This will help push your business forward and you’ll see better results when you gain more engagement – whatever medium or channel you are using. The more people who know and hear about your brand, the more people will want to engage with you.
What can you do to make an impact?
Firstly, you need to research your audience and be completely clear on who you are speaking to and reaching out to. There is absolutely no point in creating content for people who are not interested in it. Therefore researching who you’re trying to market to will make your content more appealing to those it reaches.
Who is your audience?
What are they seeking?
When do they like to engage most?
Where can you find them online?
Why do they want to engage with you?
Answering these questions in depth will help with your social media strategy and give you guidelines on who and why you are reaching out to your audience.
Make a plan
Once you’re CLEAR on these answers, you can start to plan your strategy. Stay focused on the target market and don’t steer away from these just because it’s nice to do something different. You’ve established who you’re speaking to, so you need to make it as tailored to them as much as possible.
What type of content do they want to see or hear? Which platforms are they most likely to engage on? What do you offer that’s different from other brands? Why should they connect with you?
Within your plan, you need to be clear that you understand your own brand identity and know exactly what it is that is YOUR unique selling point. You’ve seen a need in the market, you’ve gone out there are created a business to fill a gap – so why should people buy from you? Use THAT to connect and engage with people.
Create impacting content
Now you’ve established your who’s and why’s, it’s time to put your content together. In order for you to be noticed and stand out from the crowd, you need to ensure that your content is unique and personal to your brand. Sharing content that a hundred other people are sharing has its place but to really engage and connect with your potential customers, you need to offer something that is authentic to your brand. Something that they know they can only get from you.
Make your content eye-catching and appealing
You may have lots that you want to explain or tell your audience but how can you make that appealing?
Perhaps create a series of images with quotes over a period of time – this could tell a story or share the behind the scenes story of your business.
You could take your product out on the streets and photograph it out and about! Take your product to the school playground, take it to the beach, let people see and touch your products – what images can you make with these scenarios that make it look interesting and attractive? This may sound silly but doing this will make your business unique. It will allow people to see it in different settings and where they would least expect it – making it memorable and eye-catching. People will talk about it, if people like what they see, they will share your content. Creating engagement is key to your marketing campaigns.
Be organised
Your social media marketing needs to be organised and intentional. Creating a plan that is only half thought out could have a negative impact on your business, which is not the path you want to go down. Whether you are a small business or a large organisation, creating a social media plan that you adhere to and follow will have a positive impact on your marketing. Making sure you do everything with purpose and thought and working with all the data available to you will make your efforts efficient and with impact
Don’t let your social media take over your life though! There is much to be said for taking time away from you mobile device and enjoying the other parts of your business! Attending networking events, speaking to people you meet and sharing business cards is all great ways to market your business. But don’t forget that when you make an impact on someone and they like what they hear, they will look you up online and therefore your branding and social media profiles need to reflect everything you’ve told them about your business. Your social media profiles and any online presence you have needs to reflect what your business offers and the values that it is about. Keeping on top of your online marketing can take a lot of work but ensure that you prioritise and take time for you. Your health and well-being is also important as it will have an impact on how your business looks if you lack time and energy.
If you’re looking for an extra pair of hands to help you with your online marketing strategy or just to ease the workload, we’d love to help! Get in touch today for a friendly, no obligation chat.
In today’s society it is a must for any brand to be using social media to grow their business. With literally billions of people worldwide that currently have an active social media account, it is a means of marketing that cannot be missed if you’re looking to truly expand your business and add value where it counts.
Harnessing the power of social media is a necessity to see business growth, if you’re not currently using social media for your business, you can be assured that your competitors are and you will miss out on many opportunities to reach your customers.
There is no end to the opportunities that are available to you as a business owner when it comes to social media and managing it properly with marketing campaigns. If you are not yet in a place where your business is using social media, it’s time to start working on your first campaign and embracing the online marketing world.
You may have a fantastic product or offer excellent services – but how are you reaching new clients to be able to increase your sales? Social media is an extension of word of mouth advertising and an avenue that is essential to any business and marketing plan.
So how can you be consistent and get the best out of your social media marketing?
Discover your best networks
There are many channels for social media available, but we believe that to market your business well, you need to focus on the channels that best fit your customer. Spreading yourself thin and trying to post and keep up to date with every platform going will not only be bad for your health (time and pressure wise), it could reflect badly on your business and professionalism may slip.
Take time to research the different social media networks and see where your ideal audience is present the most. Follow conversations and trends that relate to your industry and then where you find the majority of your audience, that’s where you need to be! From there you can put real focus in directly targeting the people you want to reach and provide value to them in their comfort zones.
Create mind blowing and creative content
We all know that social media can be pool of never ending posts and images, and many of these will pass people by without thought. Therefore, you need to create content that is eye catching and meaningful, showing your audience that you care and are passionate about your values. What do you want to showcase? What does your business believe in? Use the answers to these questions to create posts that people will aspire to and will want to engage with.
It’s fine to share other people’s posts and to get on board with other causes but remember that you too have something to offer that is of value and worth sharing. Always have in mind that with every post that you create – it needs to add value to someone, somewhere. You are trying to reach a potential customer in a busy chaotic world, so speak loudly and with authority and be seen and heard above the rest.
Just remember that there is no such thing as social media marketing without content!
Be consistent
We have seen it so often that people start a business social media account, keep it going for a few weeks with some great content, but then everything stops. A few months later there may be a few more sporadic posts, and then it stops again.
When it comes to social media, you need to be consistent. Yes it can be time consuming and yes it does take effort to manage effectively – but when performed correctly, it will have massive benefits to your business. If you’re struggling for time to manage social media, consider hiring a social media manager to lighten the load. The cost of hiring a social media manager will be balanced out and then cancelled out by the brand awareness and business growth that you will see going forward.
Plan and schedule and create a marketing plan that reflects your business. Post regularly to your networks and be interactive with your audience. This is a great way to provide an outstanding customer service experience that may at times be lost when a business is not consistent on social media.
Engage with your audience
Social media is all about engagement. It’s about understanding what you clients are looking for and giving them solutions. Social media is not a place to sit back and watch the world go by! People want to know that there is a human behind the business and by engaging and interacting with individuals and providing a great user experience, people are more likely to buy from you or to recommend your services. Networking and building relationships builds trust and loyalty. Understanding your audience will enable to you reach them and to target their specific needs. That’s when they will see your value and know that you really do want to help them.
Just like any part of a business, marketing is an important aspect and for it be effective, it needs to be done correctly. Online marketing is often over looked or pushed to the back burner but if you consider what power social media has to drive your business forward and to increase your bottom line, there is absolutely no reason why any business should not be using it!
If you’d like assistance in getting started or putting together a marketing strategy that fits your business model, get in touch, we’d love to chat with you.
Whatever type of industry you are in, a large majority of your customers are going to be on social media – so that’s where you need to be too if you are wanting to grow your business.
Many businesses set up Facebook pages or open a Twitter account but are then not sure of how to move forward in using these effectively for their business. This is where the help of a social media manager or agency comes in.
As with any part of your business, for it to be successful, it needs to be done correctly. Skipping parts of a project to make it easier often comes with a price. This is just the same for your marketing budget and strategy and online marketing is an important part of this.
How can social media benefit your business?
A huge amount of people use one or more social media networks.
Facebook: 2.07 billion users
Twitter: 330 million users
Instagram: 100 million users
LinkedIn: 500 million users
These figures speak for themselves and can’t be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy! Social media has so many benefits when reaching out to potential clients and creating solutions for the problems they are trying to solve, for reaching out to people who are looking for YOUR product, for reaching out to people who want YOUR services. Your business needs to be put in the forefront of people’s minds and with the fast-paced environment that we live in, being online is the best way to achieve that.
Which social media platforms should you be using for your business?
Each social media platform has its benefits and are effective in different ways. We believe that being competent in one or two platforms is much more effective than spreading yourself thin and trying to manage too may all in one go. If you’re not sure on what you’re doing you may well end up giving a bad impression of your business rather than the positive vibe that you intended to, meaning that your efforts have a negative effect on your business growth.
Facebook
Facebook is a great way to be able to offer excellent customer service along with personalised 1-2-1 interaction with your customers or potential clients in a professional manner. You’re able to show the human behind the online screen where engagement can take place and people can ask questions or know that you are interested in what they are looking for.
With Facebook being the biggest social media network, with over 2 billion users worldwide, it certainly is not a platform that you want to miss! People are searching and researching their chosen products all day long and often they will seek out a Facebook page to see what kind of service you are offering and if it is engaging for them.
There are over 50 million businesses who have a Facebook business page and nearly one third of Facebook users engage with brands regularly. That’s a large number of people that could be engaging with your business if you gave it the proper chances!
Twitter
Twitter is used more for informational purposes and to give opinions and share views. It moves very quickly and to be effective on Twitter you must keep up with the pace. You could place the same 5 posts throughout a day and reach a different audience each time. People want ‘now’ when it comes to Twitter and like to jump on top of trends and find the latest news or happenings.
Businesses use Twitter to inform people about their services which then links the reader to their website or product. The business needs to capture a reader with only a few characters and therefore copy writing needs to be a skill to make it engaging.
With visuals being a big part of social media – the more visuals you use, the better. GIFs and short videos are becoming even more popular and this is definitely something that you should consider if you’re looking to stand out from the crowd.
Instagram
Businesses are presented with a real opportunity when it comes to Instagram to be able to market their product to a more targeted and unique audience. Instagram is a way to get creative. Focus on what your branding is about rather than your actual products. You are able to create an image that highlights your business in a different light and use hashtags and keywords to attract the exact audience you want to engage with.
Choose hashtags that relate to your niche and your location. You don’t want to go mad with hashtags but you want your images to be noticed. Choose one that is unique to your business which people can use when they mention your product or company. If you’re running a campaign, create a hashtag that you can use throughout this time and will get noticed across the board.
Use the Instagram Stories function to be able to show a human side of the business. These stories will be visible for 24 hours and then disappear! (although you can save them so you can use them again at a later date). These stores can capture behind-the-scenes content. You can use these to experiment and try out new ideas – knowing they can be deleted or that they will disappear anyway.
Tag in other accounts for people to notice you, i.e. if you’re looking to work with influencer marketing. Not everyone monitors the hashtags on social media so tagging a collaborator is a good way to get noticed.
Conclusion
Whichever platform you decide to work with, ensure that they are presented well and are appealing for the audience you are targeting. Another tip is to ensure that all your company information and bios are up to date and are clearly branded to show continuity from your website through to your social media networks.
KJP Creative is here to help at the click of a button for anyone wanting any further advice or would like to move forward in working with a social media manager. Knowing that your social media is in good hands is one weight taken away from you. If you want to grow your business, focus on the parts of your business that you enjoy doing – and leave the rest to the experts!
Do you often find yourself in a place where you need to be motivated and inspired to keep you on track?
Are you in the right mindset and ready to get your thoughts pointed in the right direction to make your business a success?
If not, then please please get in touch with us here at KJP Creative. Being in the right mind will enable you to do amazing things and staying positive and thinking. You need to have the right inspiration and support behind you. You need to be motivated and to be kept on track.
Support is a wonderful thing and when you’re starting out in business it can be a very lonely road. But please be assured that you’re not alone and there are people there to come along side you.
Today we’ve got a few tips for you – just a couple of programmes that we use to make our lives a bit easier so we don’t forgot things as we get stuck in to the busyness of lief!
Evernote
Evernote is a fantastic programme which you can have either on your laptop or phone and it’s basically a note pad / to do list / Dictaphone all in one. It’s perfect and is there at your times of need!
We use Evernote for personal and business use as it’s always with us. When writing shopping lists or to do lists for home, you can make notes.
When you’re sat in the school car park with a blog post ready in mind, make notes!
You can organise your notes and create separate notepads per category as to make things easier and more efficient when dealing with different aspects of your life / business and it’s such a handy piece of kit that we love it!
You are also able to sync your mobile app with your computer so when you’re out and about making notes, they’ll all be at home waiting for you when you get back!
Hootsuite
The next programme is Hootsuite. This is a social media manager and allows you to connect up your different social media accounts and manage them all from one dashboard. How much easier is it to log into one central place rather than into each individual account and make/create your posts.
This also allows you to schedule your posts or tweets so you can easily plan the next week or month in advance and not worry about tweeting or posting every hour.
It’s fantastic and it’s FREE! Can’t be better than that.
This will really save you time and effort. It’s great to log in on a Monday morning, write out the posts you want for that week and then forget about it for the next few days – if you’re working on your own or you even just want to use it for your personal social media accounts, it will save a great deal of time, which is brilliant to say the least! We highly recommend it – and you’ll definitely notice the difference.
Canva
Canva is a great platform for creating beautiful images. You can create images of any shape or size and really is a great FREE app for anyone creating social media posts or marketing material. Your images are available to download straight away (free of charge) and can be .jpg / .png / PDF format.
If you’re yet to discover Canva and you’re looking for the perfect, simple and quick way to design artwork – this is the place to be. It’s available to use on desktop or mobile and both accounts can be linked together so if you’re on the go or at home, your images are kept in one place.
So, hopefully these tips will save you time and let you spend more time on the things that help you build your business and keep you motivated.
Design your own App
If there’s not an app out there that suits you, why not create your own!
You may be thinking that you don’t know the first thing about designing an App as well as App-making software, and yes if you went to an app developer and asked them to help it would probably cost a fortune. However, there are tools out there which can take you through the process and make it as easy as possible. This would enable you to a) make money on the side if people like your app software and b) provide you with something that fits your organisational requirements.
Just a little food for thought – every idea is a good idea. Just making it work is where the work comes in!
If you’re looking for help to get yourself motivated and in the right mindset to be successful, we’d love to help. This is the first step in conquering your journey and being successful in your business. Organisation, preparation and motivation… key elements to success.
Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss how you can push forward in your own business and in life… We’re here to help at the click of a button.
