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How To Get More YouTube Views With VidIQ | YouTube SEO 2021 | New Channel | VidIQ Pro Free
How does my small channel with only 171 subscribers get 2,400 views per month? Its my not so secret weapon….VidIQ! This video I take an older video not getting many views and optimize it with VidIQ. This is how I get more YouTube views... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
Grow Your Business With YouTube | 3 Tips For Using YouTube For Business Marketing | Video Marketing
How do you grow your business on YouTube? Can you grow almost any business with YouTube videos? This short answer is YES. Small business, digital marketing entrepreneurs, and lifestyle channels and business can all benefit and gain hugely from targeted and properly optimized videos.... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
Should Start A Side Hustle Today | How To Start A Side Hustle | 3 Ways It Can Change Your Life 2021
Why Should You Start A Side Hustle? Maybe you want one of the following things: More Income Change Careers More Passion & Fun The great thing is that starting a side hustle will allow you to do all 3 of those things! But there... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
Should You Stop Searching For Your Passion? | How To Find Your Passion In 2021 | Do What You Love
What are you passionate about? Should your passion be what you do for a living? Are you even meant to do what you love for a living, or should you find more love in what you’re already doing. You might not be any good... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
When To Pivot In Your Business | Post C0V1D | Pivot Your Business | Entrepreneurs Pivot
When should you consider a pivot in your business? We are coming off of unprecedented global shutdowns due to the pandemic. And many business were forced to pivot or go broke. Here are some things business owners should consider about taking their company in... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
SEO For Small Business Owners | Top 5 SEO Tips For Small Business | SEO For Beginners | Quick Tips
SEO basics are a must-have for your small business online in 2021. Especially when you are on a limited budget and need all the help you can get. Most of these tips you can do yourself and get a LOT of bang for your... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
How To Get More Organic Traffic Fast – TikTok vs YouTube Shorts vs Instagram Reels
Which social media platform can increase your organic traffic the fastest? TikTok vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts. If you want to increase traffic fast to your website or business accounts online – each of these social media sites can help you get more... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
How To Market Your Small Business On A Limited Budget | Small Business Saturday | Google Ads Etc
Marketing for a small business on a limited budget is one of the main questions I get from owners asking about marketing online. And the answer is not an easy one. First, there are a few things you need to ask yourself first before... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
Is Angies List Worth It 2021 | Home Advisor, Thumbtack, Handy | Small Business Saturday
Does Angies List (Angi) still work for home services business in 2021? Depends. But you definitely do NOT want it to be your only focus if you have a limited budget. We go over pros and cons and what you should do to build... Originally posted at vincetrujillo.com
3 Tips To Increase Your Online Visibility | Quick Tips Tuesday
3 Tips To Increase Your Online Visibility. If you are a business owner or entrepreneur looking to increase your visibility online - these quick tips will give you an idea of what I’ve seen work based on 8 years of being an agency owner and also learning from some of the best marketers in the world like Russel Brunson and Steve Larsen.
Visibility is the lifeblood of any business and especially true online. If you want to compete in the new post pandemic world, increasing your online visibility with content is literally one of the most effective and lowest cost tools you can use.
I cover 3 C’s to increase your online visibility:
Committing To Content - 00:58
Client Avatar or Audience - 04:28
Capture Your Journey - 06:41
Go to: VinceTrujillo.com for free resources and tools This was Vince for 3 Tips To Increase Your Online Visibility | Quick Tips Tuesday.
Thanks for watching and please support our youtube channel to bring your more great free videos like this one!
Originally Posted at vincetrujillo.com
How to Effectively Market Your Business with No Money | Quick Tip Tuesday
How does an average business owner become their own digital marketing expert. This Quick Tip Tuesday we go over 3 thing that every small business owner and entrepreneur can do to start the path to becoming an internet marketer.
I got a call from a past client that needed some help with a website issue and we started talking about marketing online. She was concerned and had been trying many different things. We went over these 3 main ideas that simple took what she new about marketing offline and turned it into a simple online strategy. Don’t Miss!
Continue watching on youtube… https://youtu.be/j8NwQptBul8
Don’t forget to Like, Subscribe, Comment and Share! :)
This was Vince for Top Marketing Strategies 2021 To Get More Attention and Customers For Your Business.
Thanks for watching and please support our youtube channel to bring your more great free videos like this one!
Originally Posted at vincetrujillo.com
Google My Business Setup For Small Business | How To Quick Setup Guide
Google My Business Setup For Small Business. If you want your business to get found with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) this is one of your very first steps.
This video gives the average entrepreneur and small businesses owner an overview and quick steps to get your Google My Business (GMB) profile up and running with some good tips as well.
GMB is very important for retail business locations since it help you get found, get phone calls, add images and posts, and a whole variety of other things that can enhance your businesses profile online and in Google Search.
Today, we’re going to go over our series of small business quick tips to help you make the most of your online presence and digital tools available now. Let’s get right into it.
Today, we’re going to be talking about Google My Business. Now, what is Google My Business? Google My Business is a free tool from Google to help get small businesses found on Google search and maps. Like a business listing, it’ll show your name, address, phone number, URL, business description, hours, any number of things. There’s advanced cool features that will also show things like your social media profiles, questions and answers, google posts, a whole ton of things. But today we’re just going to go over the basics so you can get up and running or do some tweaks and make the most of it in the time that you have right now.
Why is Google My Business important in general?
Well, because most of the search engine traffic going through right now goes through Google. They’re the 800 pound gorilla in the search engine market. And if you are searching online for something, about 60 to 80% of that traffic will be going through Google My Business instead of Yahoo and let’s say Bing. It’s also very important, because if you’re a brick and mortar location, or if you have a retail address, you’re going to want to be found on Google My Business. Here’s some stats to back it up.
About 46% of all, Google searches have a local intent. That means that people are searching for product, services, information in their geographic area, which is their city, suburb or neighborhoods. Now 93% of local searches now feature Google My Business listings. That means your competitors and other small businesses and retail locations in your area are using it. If you’re not, it’s going to stand out and it’s going to make it look like you aren’t a trustworthy source. And lastly, 68% of people contact a business directly from search results. Google My Business has very easy to find call features and direction features so if people are searching on Google and they find your business, they can click the click to call and also find directions. And if you’re not doing this, they’re going to go to your competitors.
Quickly, let’s go through what you’re going to need to get set up and where you need to go. Number one, you’re going to want to go to business.google.com. Once you get there, you’re going to sign up with an email through Google so they’re going to want you to set up a Gmail account or you can set it up with an email that you already have and get verified through there. And once you’re signed in and you get into the Google My Business area, you’re going to want to start entering these things in this order. And it’s the order that’s listed here so it’s not going to be too difficult.
Business name, make sure your business name is how it will be displayed across your social media platforms, on your business cards, on your retail location storefront. This is going to be your business name. Do not add extra things like your area, your neighborhood or other search terms in there, because Google can eventually penalize you that. You’re going to have to pick a business category. Now, this is your primary industry where you are and if you have a hard time figuring this out, check what your top competitors that you’re going to be competing with are setting up. There’s several categories in there and you can do primary and secondary categories. And it’s a number of ways to do that. Pick your primary to get started.
Business address, now there’s a couple of ways to do this. If you have a retail brick and mortar business address, you’re going to want to enter that in. Enter in your suite number on the secondary line and any other particular details of your address on that secondary line. Now, if you are somebody like a carpet cleaner or somebody else who doesn’t use their business address, they might have a home based business, but they deliver their products or services right to their clients’ locations, you’re going to pick a service area. Now, if you’re in a third category and maybe you have a retail location and you also deliver to a service area, you can fill both of those areas in.
Now after business address, you’re going to want to enter your hours. You’re going to have regular hours or special hours. This is a very important area to keep updated because time’s like COVID when people are closed or there might be temporary closures, you’re going to want to update your hours in here so people can get an idea of which businesses are open and closed and keeping up to date on that.
After hours, you’re going to have your main business phone number. This is another area very important if there are times like COVID for closures and such that sometimes your retail address may be closed. You might want to change out your primary phone number to a secondary phone number, like your cellphone number or vice versa. Either way, make sure your primary phone number here is one most listed that most people are going to find online for your business and update it accordingly.
After that, you’re going to want to add your business website address or URL. Now, if you have a hard time figuring out how to enter that, you’re going to want to just copy and paste it from the browser bar that you’re in, because it’ll include the HTTP or HTTPS address that you’ve been set up as. Now there’s also a great new function that allows you to do a shortener in here. And we’ll go into that a little bit more detail later, but you can copy and paste your Google My Business link in a much shorter version than what displays in the address.
You can also add more services and products in there too, but that’s for another time and a little bit more in depth coverage, but products and services can be listed additionally in there. If you are certain types of businesses or providers, you can have inventory that you display in there that for your top selling items. If you’re a restaurant, there’ll be a ton more features such as menu and other things that you can add. And if you’re certain types of service based businesses, you can add a lot of features in here as well. And we’ll go into that in another video.
After that, you’re going to want to add description. You should always have a short description for your business. Kind of like a elevator pitch where you talk about who, what type of customers that you serve the most of, what are your products and services are in a brief description and any other special differentiating items are going to be listed in your description. Do it naturally and don’t try to put too many search terms or any crazy speech, just differentiate yourself in your description so that people understand who you are. You’re going to be limited to 750 characters so use that limitation as a guide.
After that, you’re going to want to enter in some photos. Now this is very important. It’s actually getting more important since Google is actually displaying a lot more search terms for local businesses based on photos. You’re going to want at least an exterior and interior shots, depending on the type of business you are. Your exterior sometimes Google will put a default, which is coming usually from when they do the drive bys in their Google maps search. You’re going to want to replace those a lot of times with a nice exterior photo. Phones are very nice. If you have a decent phone with a nice camera, you can take that. Otherwise you can get professional photos of your exterior, interior. They make a big difference if someone is trying to select between you and a competitor and you have great pictures of your exterior and interior. You can also take pictures of your products or services or on a number of other things to differentiate yourself from your competition.
Now, there are some advanced features too like options like your store code if you have multiple location. Labels and extensions, if you’re using things like call tracking and you have multiple phone numbers too, but those are for a little bit later time, today’s episode is just going over quick tips to get you up and running.
Some of the other great features within Google that are just fundamental to getting a good business online presence for yourself is reviews. Now reviews comes along with your Google My Business, but you’re going to want to be proactive in getting Google reviews. One of the main things that people kind of avoid or maybe it’s just a little bit of more hard work is getting those Google reviews proactively. Now, what I mean is that proactive versus reactively because usually the first reviews or the people who are most strongly inclined to go and leave a review are the people who have had a bad experience or that one in a 100, one in a 1,000 times where it was really poor service or that person had a really grumpy day or the person you fired later on was the one who was interacting with this customer. They get online, they’re very engaged in leaving a bad review. However, for someone to leave a good review, it’s almost has to be outstanding exceptional service, or you’re proactively asking your good customers or the people very happy with you to leave a review.
The other side of that is and why they’re so important is that it takes several really good reviews to take that one star review all the way back up to four point something stars in there. And this is a big factor. When I go look online, I’ll look at their reviews and if there’s three or four or five, I’ll look at how many reviews and I’ll also look at if they have a four point something rating or higher. Now, a lot of customers use that, make sure you’re proactive in getting that done.
There’s some other advanced features like questions and answers so you want to make sure if you’re able to, take some time to put in some commonly asked questions and some of the answers to those as well. And also Google Post is a feature where you can put in posts about products or services and highlight certain aspects of your business or information that is going to be appealing to your customers. There’s also some advanced features that allow you to display your social media profiles in a certain type of a setting, but that’ll be for another time as well. Just know those exist.
We’re here in quick tips. I hope that you’ve got some information that’s going to get you to get online and get your Google My Business either set up or to go and take control of that and update it a little bit. Look at what photos are on there, how your reviews are looking. If you can put some Q and A’s, the commonly asked questions, or some people have already submitted some questions that you need to respond to. Either way, get that set up, get it optimized and we’re going to have another video in the future. One that’ll go a little bit more in depth into how to optimize this even further and take advantage of the really powerful tools that Google is allowing you to have, including things like analytics and search console which is tied to Google. This is how you see your traffic coming to your website and there’s some little neat tricks that you can do to actually see some of the people coming from Google My Business or your other search results.
This was Vince for quick tips for small business from Breakthrough Entrepreneur. Please like and subscribe or leave a comment. Let me know what you thought about this or something that I may have missed or if you have a comment or a question that I can answer a little bit more in depth. Take care and we’ll see you on the next one.
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Digital Footprint For Your Brand or Business | How To Improve Your Online Presence
What is your brand footprint and how to improve your online presence. Small business and brands should understand how potential customers search and find their business footprint online. Many times its not what you want showing about your business or product.
How to figure out what people are finding when they search for your business online. Improving it and taking advantage of the great and free tools available to get your more of the right types of customers.
Hey everybody. Welcome back. My name is Vince. This is Breakthrough Entrepreneur, and this is another one of our quick tips for businesses and entrepreneurs. Today, we’re going to be talking about our digital footprint or our online presence, brand presence, basically your business search results when you search for your business name. Now, why is this important? Because these are the websites, social media sites, business listings, and any number of online properties that are representing your business online. Some you may have set up, some may have been set up for you and you’ve forgotten the passwords or even how they did it, or when they did it. And others are just done by like robots online that are constantly picking up new businesses and listing them online then asking if you want to pay for this business listing. But this applies to primarily local businesses who might have listings out there and also entrepreneurs that are selling digital products online as well.
Now these sites and online properties are your ambassadors online. Whether you like it or not, they’re the ones representing you when someone searches for your business because they were referred your business, or they want to check out how valid you are online before they go and pay you money or go visit your business location. And if they’re not saying what you want them to say, they’re working against you. Sometimes they were set up years ago, but they might not have been updated or maybe you set them up at different times and then now your business has kind of progressed or changed, evolved, or even advanced to a level, but these properties online are still representing you from several years ago or not in the light you want them.
So these are your 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week sales representatives as well. So they’re either working for you or they might be working against you if they’re not done correctly. So the first thing you can do to get an idea of what I’m talking about is search for your business name, or maybe you’re an entrepreneur who has a product, an information product, or something, search for your business name or the main product that you’re delivering out there just by itself in the Google search bar, go in and do that and take note of what comes up. Now, if that’s not enough or you don’t see that because you don’t have a strong enough presence online, then if you’re a local brick and mortar, enter in your business name plus the city or suburb or location that you’re in and see what comes up then. What you should see is your website, it should be the number one result that you see for your business name or your brand online.
Secondly, you probably see a spattering of social media sites, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, a couple of other, Twitter, LinkedIn, these are the kinds of properties that tend to come up if you are setting up your business and controlling some of these social media sites. You can also see some business listings or yellow pages. Depending on the kind of business or entrepreneur and what you have going out there, you’re going to see different sites out there. Some might be the YouTube channels. Some might be podcasts. There might be a blog posts that you have out there. Whatever it is, if you just search for your business name or the business name plus your city, you’re going to be very interested to find they might not be properties or websites or listings that you control. So an important way to look at your digital footprint online or your brand presence online is as a little bit of a network of sites, a digital constellation of the assets, business listings, websites, whatever you want to call them that are representing you online.
In the center, you should always see your website. Now that is the business home for you. It’s very similar to having a retail business store. So this is the place that people should get your business card, your business brochure, your calls to action, your business description. It should be the home for your business online that is the end all be all of the representation online. Now around that, you’re going to have your little smaller constellations of representation online for your digital footprint. Those things are like your social media websites. Now, some people use social media sites more than others. Some are primarily Facebook and nothing else. Others use Instagram or Twitter, or maybe their LinkedIn page more or Pinterest or any number of social or other sites that are out there. Then you should also maybe have some of your contents channels.
Now some of these are already done on social media sites, but some people tend to use YouTube videos or Vimeo videos, and some might even have their stuff listed on a podcast. They might do blog posts. So they might be on Medium or any number of other blog and article aggregators out there. And then you might have places like business listings. So if you’re a brick and mortar, there’s business listings galore that you can get for free out there and you should have those set up with your business name, address, phone number, et cetera out there. There’s also things like Chambers of Commerce and affiliations that you have with an organization. If you’re a professional organization or a trade, there’s a trade organization that you’re involved with. Those are things that you want to be affiliated with. And there’s authority sites that you might have in your industry or the niche that you’re in, that you want to be listed on as well.
So once you do a business search for yourself, you’re going to find out some of these properties, I call them properties. Some people call them listing. Some people call them sites. They’re representation. There’s your digital footprint online. So take note of what those are, and then there’s also others that you may have set up, but they’re not really showing up for you. So you want to take into account all the ones that you have control of, and then you want then to try to figure out a way to get control of the other ones. Now, if they weren’t set up for you because it’s like a bot or something set it up, there’s not a lot of control that you can, so go and try to get the free listing for that. If not, someone on your team or somebody else might’ve set that up for you.
Get the logins for those, get those all under your control so that you have control or someone on your team has control of all of those accounts. Now, once you control of all those accounts, make sure that you have consistency across all of them. Primarily you start with, what does your business name look like? Is there a consistency of the way that displays across the entire breadth of all of the different accounts you have? You might’ve done it differently before. Try to get a consistency of how your business name shows up. Next, make sure your name, address, phone number are all set up and they’re consistent. So might be an old phone number. Maybe you move locations. Those are not going to help you in the long run, either in Google search or for your brand footprint. Then you’re going to want to make sure that your who, what, and how of your business are distinctly displayed on all of these. Now, what is the what, who, and how of your business, or how, who, and what of your business, however you want to put it.
It is who you’re serving. That means your ideal customer or avatar. Now a lot of people say, “Well, whoever wants to pay me money is my ideal customer.” And that sounds great and that’s funny to say, but it’s not necessarily true. Now there’s differentiations across for your ideal customer, either from price. Maybe you’re a discount provider, or maybe you’re a premium provider. Right there, you’re going to have to say that distinctly description so that people know who you’re trying to serve.
Then it’s the what of your business, what are the products and services you’re offering? So now that you know your who, then what are the products that you’re serving? A premium product, a discount product, a particular type of restaurant, maybe you’re a certain type of plumber, dentist, attorney, maybe you’re an entrepreneur delivering a particular type of information product, or in a particular way that they need to understand. So that is an additional differentiation that needs to be in your who, what and how.
Now the how is how you’re delivering that. Maybe it is a done-for-you service, or maybe I’m a coach, maybe I’m somebody who has a particular process or a plumber who does it a particular way, a dentist who does a particular procedure in a particular process or method. All of those should be displayed out in your description across all of these, your constellation of digital footprint that is out there. It’s also a great way to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is what some people call your unique selling proposition or your value proposition. It is in the how you do it. So once you have your who, what and how, then you kind of want to have some calls to action.
Now I’m going to have a separate video that’s going to go into some marketing terminologies and marketing ideas so that you can understand things like avatar, calls to action, making an offer. But for now, just think about the calls to action. If you were to visit this online constellation of your digital footprint, what are the messages? What are the actions asking some of your customers or clients to take? Are you asking just to call you if they want? Is your phone number just displayed out there and you’re hoping someone takes action on that? Are you providing a free initial consultation? Are you asking them to sign up to an email list or visit your social media property so they can get more information or join a group or something? Think about the calls to action that are being made other than just displaying a phone number and a email sign up or an email form.
Those are the basics that were done several years ago. And that’s something that is one of the foundations that people just expect you do, but to differentiate yourself and make sure that the customer reaches out to you once they find you, think about the calls to action that you’re doing, and then make that consistent across all of your online presence.
So we’re finishing up our quick tips. So yes, this takes some proactivity. This takes doing some things that maybe feel like “I don’t really know how to do that”, or “I’ve never done that before, someone else did it”, but it’s very important for you as the business owner, as the lead in your business, to start taking a more proactive control to the marketing and how your business is being displayed. If you leave it up to somebody else, it’s going to be left up to how much they care about your business.
And most of the time, no one’s going to care about your business or what the results are for your business more than you are. And another way to think about it is that imagine in your city or wherever you’re at or wherever your ideal customers are at, if you could just put up billboards everywhere. Wouldn’t you take a little bit extra time to make sure that that billboard went up, it looked a certain way, and if that was just free to do, or it took just some time and thinking, and maybe some people to help sometimes wouldn’t you take a proactive attempt to making sure that you plastered billboards and signage everywhere you could to get your ideal customer to come and spend money and help you grow your business? That’s what digital marketing has to it right now. There’s so many free assets out there.
So many free listings, so many free websites, whatever you want to call them, that you can display your business on. Just take a little bit extra time and work on the consistency of your name, address, phone number, URL, make sure those are done, then make sure your who, what, and how of your business are set up on all these digital billboards online. And then lastly, you can provide great calls to action so that you can make sure that they’re taking certain action that you want them to so that they can become a customer.
In other videos, we’re going to be going over some of the marketing concepts that I really enjoy talking about. Some things like how to funnel people in. How to make the offer. How do you do a value ladder, which means you’re taking them in from your lowest priced or free offers all the way up to your premium offerings. So thanks for watching. This was a brief overview on some of what your digital footprint online presence, brand presence, can look like online and how you can start taking control of that and understanding how you can utilize that to help grow your business. Please like, or subscribe if you like the video and also don’t forget to leave a comment about something that was very helpful to you or something that you’d want me to cover next time. Take care, and we’ll see you next time.
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6 Small Business Tips For Online | COVID & Recession Proof Your Business
6 Small Business Tips for online strategies to help your small business more resilient to COVID shutdowns and recessions.
With all the digital tools available to small business and entrepreneurs – now is the time to use them to avoid losing your business to shutdowns and pandemic recessions.
Hey everybody. Welcome back. This is Vince and you’re listening to Breakthru Entrepreneur. So my video today is about six top level strategies, tips, that you can use in your business to make sure that you can make it to the other side of this COVID scare and be prepared for the next one. There’s a lot of stuff that’s out there that’s probably saying things are going to come back maybe in the fall or the winter or next year, either way, small businesses can’t afford to just hope things get better. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are some of the most innovative, strong people, resilient people, that I’ve ever met. And I’m happy to be part of that group. So I want to share some things that are going to help you strengthen your business with the tools available right now in digital marketing, to make sure that you’re going to make it through there and you’re going to be strong on the other side, right after this.
So with everything that’s been going over the last couple of months, one thing that’s been very readily apparent is that it is so important for your business to be online, and for you to understand as the owner of your business, as a small business, a sole proprietor, or maybe the lead or the manager, whatever roles you fill with your business, to make sure that you understand some of the key elements so that you can help your business make it through the tumultuous time we have now and going forward. So let’s get right into that right now.
Number one, upgrade and renovate your business location, online I mean. Now whether you’re using a website landing page, or a social media site, as the main home for your business online, it’s very important to identify where can people know and trust that they can get updated information about your business, specials, deals, coupons, they can find out if you’re open or closed, or if you are pivoting and trying to deliver your product or service in a new and interesting way. I don’t know how many businesses I visited online over the last couple of months, some of my favorite vendors, restaurants, coffee shops, and I’m trying to see if they’re open, or if they’re partially open, and they don’t have any updated information. You literally have to drive up to some of them to see on the little written sign that they have under window, what their new hours are.
Take that written sign, and through the magic of internet and digital, you can actually put that online on your website, social media properties, you can create a brand new account if you needed to, you could send that out on your email list, which you should have, you can send it out in any number of ways to your customers, business partners, associates, other businesses. There’s so much that you need to be doing this. Google My Business is a very important one. I don’t know how many Google My Businesses that had the wrong hours or even the wrong phone number, maybe it was the landline at the business location, and instead they were taking calls on their cell phone. You need to update that across your business properties online. So update and renovate your online business presence.
Number two, what are your communication channels? Now what do I mean by communication channels? Make it very simple, how do you interact and communicate with your customers. And before, if the only way you are doing it is when they walked into your store and you said, “Hello.” You saw how hard that was after COVID hit, and a lot of people had to shut their businesses, or forced to close for a period of time, or even now they’re still closed some of them. And you weren’t able to communicate with your customers online.
So email list, it’s very important that whatever you’re starting to do now, and here going forward, that you start collecting emails, if you can, from your customers. You can do that a number of different ways, there’s tons of videos and information, and I’ll have more on that later. So start collecting emails, whether it’s through your social media sites, whether you’re doing that through your website, or even when customers come in, if you’re having them, have a little email list by your register or when your people take orders or you’re interacting with your customers say, “Hey, just give me your email, and I’ll send you an email update on what’s going up.”
You can even give them incentives like a coupon, or give them access to a special, or you’ll say, “Hey, I’ll let you know when I have that thing coming in and I’ll be able to send it directly to you. I can send it out and I’ll give you an online way to pay for that.” As I said before, most small businesses, the only way they’re interacting with their clients, is a signage on their window. And that’s really sad that in the digital age, with so much communication available to us, that you’re still not doing that. So take some time, and I’m not saying you have to do every single thing out there that’s available, but pick one or two things that you know, that you’ll be able to do. We have smartphones now, so you’re able to access social media accounts.
If you’re been in business for a while, your customers are going to know, like, and trust you. So it’s a great way to say, “Hey, given everything that’s going on…” They’ll especially understand now during COVID to say, “Hey, give me your email.” Reach out to them on social media and say, “Hey, I really want to interact with you and let you know what’s going on. So just sign up for this list or send me your emails and I’ll be able to contact you directly to let you know about what’s going on.”
Number three, now that you have your communication channels set up, communicate, communicate, communicate. Start making a practice of communicating with your customers so they get trained to know that you actually talk to them. So if you do ask for their email, and you get an email list, something in your store where they’re sending it, or you start collecting it from the way that you check somebody out, or maybe you’re doing that on social media, you start getting some followers, or you’re proactively going out on social media and finding your customers and saying, “Hey, make sure you go like my page.” Whatever you’re doing, start communicating through those channels.
And for anyone that’s going to start doing something like that, it’s always uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable for me the first time I got on camera. It’s uncomfortable the first time you talk to somebody, you were uncomfortable the first time you talked to your wife or husband of 20 years, whatever it is, it’s going to be okay. Start practicing communicating through social media, through your email list, do it over and over again. Even if it’s once, twice a week, start getting used to doing that. Set a reminder on your calendar, that’s when you’re going to reach out. It takes 5 or 10 minutes sometimes just to send a little message out and then your customers actually know, great, they’re open, they’re going to be available. And next time I have an issue, I can actually reach out to them and know that they’re going to be available so that I can get my coffee, my food, my service, my home care service, whatever it could be, I know that they’re going to be around because they’re communicating with me.
Another really great thing about communicating all the time is that when you are hard hit or forced to shut down, or you have some big announcement that you want to do, they’re already used to hearing from you and they trust and like that, that they’ve been hearing from you. So you can do a special, you can do a group buy, you can do any number of two for one, a buy one get one free, whatever the thing might be, is that you can actually get them to do that now, because they’re used to hearing from you. So what a great way to raise some funds and some money or cash flows for your small business in the future when there’s a down month or so, is that you can actually do that. Now you have a list, and they’re used to hearing from you.
So number four, get creative. Now, a lot of businesses had to adjust, figure out how they’re going to stay open. Some were forced to close over the last few months, some businesses are 25 and 50% open now, some were deemed essential, some weren’t. I guess the overall point I’m trying to make is that, it’s a time of trying to survive and thrive, it’s going to require the business owners and entrepreneurs to get a little bit more creative on what they’re doing. So instead of waiting for other people to say, you could be open or not, is there other ways that you can deliver your product or services, even if you were asked to stay at home?
For instance, some of our local businesses here where I live came up with a couple of different solutions. For one, we had a restaurant and there were a high end French restaurant, I really enjoy going there. And a little expensive, so you can only go every once in a while. But letting you pick up to go, the ingredients that were going to be in your special meal. So it created some attention around what they were doing, that you could actually make this great meal at home and have it nice and hot and fresh, and they were doing just special menu items for awhile on that too, so that made it really interesting and creative. It was a way of getting into, “Oh, we can make that at home.” Which was very interesting because a lot of businesses were just delivering their normal products, but this made a creative way of engaging.
Do it yourself kits for home, or gift boxes, coupons, and gift certificates, those kinds of things are already known to a lot of small businesses and retail stores. But gift boxes is a great way. We saw some people putting together some gift boxes of products that were just sitting on their shelves because they weren’t allowed to be open, and they were creating a gift box, and then they would communicate on social media or their email lists and and just send that through the mail to the people at their homes. Some of the things that I saw some hair studios doing were instructional videos. Now this was really interesting because, most of the time you don’t want to cut your own hair, or have someone else do it for you, but I saw some great videos coming out of the Midwest of some hair salons that were actually doing these great do it yourself at home, either colorings, or cuts, or children’s cuts, a lot of great things.
I also saw a donut store out of the Midwest also came up with a great suggestion of how you can make your own donuts at home for the brief period, I think it was about two or three weeks at that particular area was forced to have things closed, so they had these recipes, told you the ingredients and you could make these fun things at home with your family. Business owners, entrepreneurs, we’ve always had to be creative, we’ve always had to be resilient, get creative, come up with solutions and ideas and be proactive about it before the next thing happens or comes or recession comes, whatever it is, make sure that you’re out there as much as you can, and you have so many different channels to deliver your products or services to your customers.
Now this brings up my point number five, which is you need the ability to be able to transact online. And what I mean by this, it means you need to be able to send somebody an email, and in that email is a link and maybe you have a special offer or you’re doing something that you’re trying to get them to come into your stores again, a coupon, or maybe it’s just a regular time of the year where it’s a seasonal thing that you’re letting them know about, and you want them to purchase a gift certificate, coupon, or do that purchase online, so you can maybe mail the product to them, or it’s a different type of service delivery, whatever it is, you need to be able to let them swipe or enter in their information and pay you online.
There’s so many ways to do that now, Facebook has ways to do that, you can do it through Google pay now, there’s things like PayPal, there’s Stripe, there’s any number of online processors now, whatever the favorite one is, even your bank has a merchant services department sometimes that has the ability for you to collect credit card information online, they even give you a little code or it’s just a link sometimes that takes you to a page, whatever it is, there’s tons of ways to do that now.
So in the future, if you get stuck, now you’ve done the thing of you updating your website all the time, you have your list already started, you’re communicating with them through the communication channels that you set up and they’re used to hearing from you and trusting your voice, then you send them out a coupon, or a discount, or something that they can purchase online, and you make it as easy as they can click on the button, purchase it from, and you can collect the money to your bank account, now you’re cooking. Now you’re coming up with ways that you’re mitigating that risk of when things shut down, but also just in the normal course of being a small business owner, you’re also reducing your exposure to just other fluke things that hit every business owner. You can communicate with your people and collect money online, it’s going to help you survive and thrive during this time as well.
The last thing on my list, number six is learn. Now what I mean by learn it’s like, “Okay, I’m learning enough and I just need to get my business open and to get going again, I need to get customers.” Now, over the last couple of months, has been a perfect time, if you didn’t take advantage of it, to have started learning some of the things that are going to help your business going forward. Now, everything that I mentioned before, steps one through five may cause you to have to do something that you’re uncomfortable with or that you’ve never done before. But let me tell you one thing, small business owners and entrepreneurs are one of the most resilient bunch of people that I’ve ever met. These are people who are constantly overcoming obstacles, are constantly coming up with new and inventive ways of taking care of problems that come up and getting a solution to that.
So, don’t tell me that you don’t have the ability to probably go and look at a couple of videos or read a blog post. I’m not saying it has to be within your wheelhouse, I’m just saying you should know enough that you can make decisions for your business on your website, on what communication channels you might want to use, or even what communication you’re going to be sending out there. You, as the business owner, as the lead in your business, you should be more involved with all of those aspects, and now’s a brilliant time in history to be able to learn some of that. It’s also a good time to figure out you like watching videos, or you like listening to a podcast, I put on podcasts all the time, I’ll be doing something I need to do or even driving, when you’re driving somewhere, it’s a 15 minute drive, I throw on a podcast, and I’m learning constantly. We have so many things available to us right now that we can learn.
It’s also a great time to figure out what communication methods you like to get your information from. So some people like podcasts, some put videos on, when I’m washing the dishes, I’ll put a video on my iPad in front of me or my phone, I’ll be listening to a podcast with my earbuds on, when I’m driving somewhere. And I can learn something that I wasn’t able to pick up before a little bit more easily that way. Some people like reading, they want something to read before they go to bed. And you can look at your blog post on the subject, whether it’s putting together an email list, how to write an email, how to set up a social media account. All of these things are available now, and learning is a really awesome way to do that. When I could have just said, “This is something that’s going to help my business, help me make my business a little bit more COVID or recession proof.” And it makes it a little bit easier.
So I just want you to know that I’m here for you and I’m going to be doing a lot more videos on different types of subjects that are going to help small businesses become resilient and to be able to make COVID proof and recession proof, by mastering some of the tools that are available to them online. I want you to know you’re strong, you’re able, and you’re very resilient. You can make it through so much and you’ve made it through so much already to get to where you’re at right now. So thanks for watching, please comment or subscribe to the channel, if you like what you heard. Please share a comment below and let me know what made sense to you or what felt like it was long and rambly, sorry I get that way on some of my subjects. But take care, stay strong, stay safe, and we’ll see you on the next one. Thank you.
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