Jamie Gallegos @jamie-gallegos - Tumblr Blog

Ways to Promote Your Business During the COVID-19 Crisis

It’s a tricky thing, figuring out how to promote and market your business in a time of crisis. On the one hand, many small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, hoping they will be able to weather the storm and reopen when the crisis is over. On the other hand, nobody wants to appear callous or opportunistic.

That said, there are still ways to promote your business during this unsettling and scary time. The key is to do four things at once:

Meet your audience where they are.

Provide clear value in a time of need.

Be sensitive to the times and avoid missteps.

Take advantage of special advertising offers and promotions.

Here are some suggestions to help you.

Meet Your Audience Where They Are In some ways, the fact that most people are staying home and avoiding social gatherings gives small business owners a unique opportunity. At the risk of seeming too cavalier about the seriousness of the situation, you have a captive audience.

That means that the people you want to reach are spending more time than they usually do online. Digital marketing is going to be more important now than it ever has been – and small business owners can and should take advantage of it.

This is a good time to revisit your marketing mix. You should consider pulling money from things like direct mail marketing, if that’s something you’ve been doing, and putting it into:

Social media advertising

Search engine advertising

Email marketing

It’s also a good time now that we’re a couple of weeks into the nationwide “stay at home” order to revisit your analytics and see what’s happening with them. Do you have a bunch of new followers on Pinterest? Your marketing budget should reflect that.

Provide Clear Value in a Time of Need While many Americans are scared and out of work, there are a lot of people who are working from home and eager to support local businesses. This is a good time to get creative and think about how to serve them.

For example, I’ve seen some businesses offering “Buy Now and Save Later” promotions where they introduce offers even if the business is closed right now. It’s a good way to keep your audience engaged and buying from you – and to create some continuity to help you through a temporary closure.

Another option is to find ways to put your regular services online. This isn’t a solution for everybody, but a lot of businesses have adapted in ways that are truly inspirational. If you can figure out a way to harness technology to help your audience, now is the time to do it.

If you’re a manufacturer, then there are potential opportunities to help people in a way that’s direct and concrete. A good example is Toast, a company that normally makes phone and laptop cases and other products out of natural materials such as wood and leather. In a short time, they have retooled their machinery and engineered a completely reusable face shield that they’re making available to hospitals and emergency workers.

Refine Your SEO Your marketing should reflect what you’re doing to provide value. If you’re providing emergency services or virtual services, you may want to put some money into SEO for keywords related to the changes. For example, a restaurant that now is focusing on takeout and delivery might put some marketing money into local keywords that include those terms to ensure they reach their audience.

However, it’s not a good idea to stop spending for your regular keywords completely. Remember that both Google and Facebook have ad credit programs for small businesses to use during the pandemic. It’s still important to maintain your Google rank for your usual target keywords. If you don’t, then you may find that your ranking takes a hit – and if that happens, it may be difficult to recover when we return to business as usual.

Keep the Conversation Going If your business is closed temporarily or providing limited services, you can still invest in “soft” marketing to keep your audience engaged and involved. Two of the best ways to accomplish this task are social media marketing and email marketing.

You might be sick of hearing me go on about email marketing, but it still has a very high ROI and it’s a great way to stay in touch without being overbearing.

The same is true of social media marketing. Your organic posts offer an opportunity to spark conversation, find out what your followers are thinking, and remind them of your value. Promoted posts can do the same thing.

Be Sensitive to the Times and Avoid Missteps One of the trickiest things about marketing during a crisis is striking the right balance between sensitivity and business concerns. Any business that is seen as trying to take advantage of people is likely to suffer unpleasant consequences.

The first thing to do is to avoid any marketing that appears to be taking the present situation lightly or being dismissive of the very real pain and fear people are feeling. Empathy is the word of the day and businesses that demonstrate are will be rewarded by their customers.

The second thing is to keep your focus on your customers and not on your financial worries. There’s nothing wrong with being worried about the survival of your business, but if it seems like the only thing you’re worried about, you may end up alienating the people you want to attract.

Be Adaptive None of us know what next week or next month will bring. It may be that a marketing campaign that works today will be twice as effective in a week, or that it won’t deliver any results and you need to revamp.

I realize that might not be reassuring, but I truly believe that with the right mindset, it can be a good thing. Check your analytics regularly. If you can afford it, do some A/B testing to refine your campaigns. Change things as needed – and be prepared to change them again if you must.

Marketing your business is still a must during the pandemic, but you’ll need to think on your feet and do everything you can to serve your audience. If you can do that, then your business will come through the crisis.

Originally Published Here: Ways to Promote Your Business During the COVID-19 Crisis

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

Social Climb In The News: Local Restaurant System To Change The Face Of Online Ordering

Social Climb has launched it's new Local Restaurant System which was developed as a result of the current conditions in our country. The coronavirus pandemic has changed how consumers purchase everything from groceries and food to electronics and cars.

The restaurant industry has especially been hit hard and the small local restaurants are unfortunately finding themselves struggling to generate business. Because of this we now have a commission free online ordering system for restaurants. It's a robust and simple website add-on that will let customers order directly from a restaurants website.

Commission Free online Ordering System

Yes, it is commission free so restaurants keep 100% of the profits from each and every order!

Read the full press release here

Get more information about the Local Restaurant System here

Read Full Article Here: Social Climb In The News: Local Restaurant System To Change The Face Of Online Ordering

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

What to do Now – COVID-19? Resources for Small Business Owners

If you own a small business, you might struggle to be profitable even at the best of times. The current COVID-19 pandemic has dialed up the stakes for most businesses in the United States and around the world. Non-essential businesses have closed their doors in an effort to halt the spread of the virus, and there is no clear end in sight.

There is a glimmer of good news. There are many resources available to help small business owners in this difficult time. Some are resources that were already available in some form but have been retooled to fill the changing needs of small business owners. Here are some resources and tools that may help you.

US Chamber of Commerce The US Chamber of Commerce has created a comprehensive guide for small business owners that includes links to many useful resources, including:

Loan and grant programs for small businesses

The Paycheck Protection Program, which is a key provision of the CARES Act that was recently passed by Congress

A to-do list for small business owners

It’s a very useful page with lots of links out to other resources and information. It’s also a good idea to check out your local Chamber of Commerce for additional resources. You can find your local organization here.

Small Business Administration The Small Business Administration (SBA) provides resources to small business owners all the time, including small business loans and government grants. They have some special resources for businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic:

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program

SBA Express Bridge Loans

Guidance for Businesses and Employers

SBA Products and Resources

Government Contracting

Local Assistance

EIDL loans have been expanded under the CARES Act. These are low interest loans that are coordinated at the state level with the help of governors. They can provide up to $2 million in loans to businesses to help them replace revenue lost as a result of the pandemic.

Even if your business does not qualify for an EIDL, you may still be able to get a $10,000 emergency grant to help you meet your payroll commitments and other business expenses.

Centers for Disease Control While many small businesses are closed with employees working from home, some are still open. Restaurants have retooled as takeout and delivery services, and some other small businesses have been identified as essential.

If your business falls into one of those categories, then the Centers for Disease Control website has a resource that you’ll need: Resources for Businesses and Employers. The page includes interim guidelines to keep your business safe, recommendations for cleaning and sanitizing your workspace, and a link out to OSHA guidelines for COVID-19.

US Tax Credits Expanded loans and payroll protection aren’t the only things in the CARES Act designed to help small business owners. There are also several tax benefits that may help you recover lost income.

Here are a few highlights.

The proposed bill waives tax penalties if you withdraw money from a retirement account before you reach the age of 59 ½. The waiver applies for amounts up to $100,000 and is good through the end of 2020. To qualify, you must demonstrate that you or an immediate family member were diagnosed with COVID-19 or that you experienced significant loss of income due to a layoff, reduced hours, or a business closing. You may still be required to pay income taxes depending on the type of retirement fund you have, but you can spread out the payments over three years.

The bill also includes a credit for employer taxes if you either closed your business for one quarter in 2020 or you can demonstrate that your income decreased by 50% or more due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are additional provisions that allow for increased charitable deductions. You can find a full explanation here.

Finally, you should know that the Internal Revenue Service has extended the deadline for paying taxes to July 15, 2020. You are still required to file by April 15, but you may wait until the extended deadline to pay any taxes you owe.

Google Small Business Fund While some big companies are asking for government handouts, others are doing what they can to help small businesses in this time of crisis. A good example is Google, which announced that it has created an $800 million commitment to help with the pandemic.

There are two key elements of the fund that apply directly to small business owners. The first is a $200 million investment that will be given to non-profit organizations and financial institutions to provide bridge loans and assistance to small businesses impacted by the pandemic.

The second is a $340 million commitment to provide Google Ads credits to every small business with an active account in the past year. The credits will appear automatically on your Google Ads account and may be used on any of Google’s advertising platforms (including YouTube) through the end of 2020.

It’s also worth mentioning that Google is providing support and funding to any manufacturing business that can retool their facilities to produce needed materials, including hand sanitizer and Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare workers.

State Relief Programs In addition to small business relief programs at the federal level, most states have programs to help small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find a partial list in this Forbes article. It includes loan programs, grants, and other assistance.3

If you don’t see your state on the list, you an either do a Google search for your state + COVID-19 relief for businesses. You can also find your state governor’s website on this page.

Keep in mind that some states may be lagging on offering assistance simply because they have not yet been as strongly impacted by the virus as places like Washington, California, and New York. Based on projections, that is going to change pretty much everywhere, so if you don’t see something now, keep checking back.

Facebook Small Business Grants Program Another big company that’s doing something tangible to help small businesses is Facebook, which recently announced the creation of a Small Business Grants Program.

The program will provide up to $100 million in grants to 30,000 eligible small businesses in 30 countries around the world. The grants may be cash, ad credits, or a combination of the two.

There is limited information available as of this writing, but if you click on the above link, you can sign up to receive updates and get more details as they become available.

UK Resources For businesses in the UK, there are several assistance programs available. There are too many to list all of them here, but some highlights include:

Deferment of VAT and income tax payments

A statutory Sick Pay Relief package for small and medium-sized businesses

Small business grants of up to £10,000 for companies in receipt of small business or rural rate relief

Up to £25,000 in grants for companies in the hospitality, leisure and retail industries

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, which offers up to £5 million in loans to small and medium-sized businesses impacted by the pandemic

You can find a complete list of the programs and resources available on the governments dedicated COVID-19 response page here.

Canadian Resources The Canadian government has responded vigorously to the pandemic, providing multiple assistance programs for businesses impacted by the outbreak. They include:

Business Credit Availability Program to provide $10 billion in loans to qualified businesses

Enhanced Work Sharing program

Tax deferments until August 31

A $5 billion expansion of Farm Credit Canada

The government has also put out a call to manufacturing businesses requesting help making needed items for healthcare workers. You can find more information on this page.

Other Resources The resources we’ve listed above are some of the most widely available and directly useful, but we also found an array of other resources that you should know about.

America’s Small Business Development Centers has created a comprehensive resource page for small businesses. It includes some of the same information we’ve covered above, as well as additional resources that you may find useful.

Small Business Majority has a collection of resources, as well, which includes live and recorded webinars to help small business owners cope with the crisis. You can find it here.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has a resource page that includes webinars, legal resources, FAQ, and more. You can find it here.

The ICIC has a resource page that includes webinars, a network for members, and federal and banking resources to help small businesses with their financial needs during the pandemic. You can find it here.

SCORE has a web page dedicated to pandemic-related resources for small businesses. It includes remote mentoring, webinars, and local chapter workshops and events. You can access it here.

Finally, you can access FEMA’s emergency plan for businesses here. It includes guidelines to help you plan and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This list is as comprehensive as we could make it, but there are likely to be additional resources that we didn’t cover as well as new resources that become available in the coming weeks and months. We will keep you posted, but we also encourage you to seek resources on your own. If you don’t see your country represented, we suggest starting at the main government website, where you should be able to find announcements and links to resources.

The best thing you can do at this time is to educate yourself about the available resources and be as practical and calm as possible. The more you know about what’s out there, the easier it will be to choose the resources that are most helpful to you and your employees at this difficult time. For more information about surviving and thriving during these hard time contact us.

Original Post Here: What to do Now – COVID-19? Resources for Small Business Owners

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

15 Awesome Strategies for Marketing Your Content to Drive Leads

Did you know that article marketing strategy earns an average of 3 times more leads than paid searches? And more than 20 billion new blog posts were published on WordPress in 2019? That's a significant number and it's one that highlights the ongoing significance of content in marketing.

That said, your content isn't going to do you any good if no one sees it or interacts with it. Bummer, right?

The key to propelling involvement and using your article to create leads is recognizing how to advertise your article. Promotion is what will certainly make certain that folks see the great article you're producing and recognize how your business and products or services can help them.

So, without further ado, here are several of the very best ideas I know to promote your post, locate your target market, and kick-start your lead gen.

Utilize Your Social Network Cover Photo to Advertise Content Do you have a deal you'd like to advertise on a recurring basis? One very easy way to obtain more website traffic is to include your offer right into your cover photo on Facebook. You can hotlink the picture to your landing page and replace it regularly as needed.

Produce a Hashtag to Promote Your Content Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all permit users to employ hashtags to categorize the content they publish. Best of all, anybody who wants to can develop a new hashtag and use it. The next time you have content to market, consider developing a customized hashtag to use with it. You'll obtain the most effective outcomes if you use popular words at the beginning of your hashtag since more people will see it when they search.

Utilize Numerous Hyperlinks to Your Deal on Your Site A mistake I see a many companies making is only promoting their content in one place. There's no reason you can not have several web links to your most important information on numerous web pages of your site. You can either integrate them right into your text or put them in a box next to other content.

Put a CTA (Call To Action) for Your Deal on Your Home Page Your home page is the first thing many people that look for your business online will see. Therefore, you need to always have a call to action for your primary deal on your home page-- ideally above the fold.

Blog About a Piece of Content Numerous Times When you've spent your valuable time creating a lead magnet, it makes sense to promote it as long as feasible. One means to do it, is to blog around corresponding subjects from various angles. End each related blog post with a call to action leading back to your article.

Produce a Content Library on Your Site If you've created numerous pieces of evergreen information, why not place a content library on your site? A content library can make it simple for guests to your website to discover your most valuable content. You can develop a system where visitors have to supply their email address to access the content. Then, you'll have a list of prospects you can turn into paying clients!

Create a Trigger-Based CTA

Static calls to action can be powerful, yet it's much more effective to display a CTA based on actions. A trigger CTA can pop up when a site visitor has been on your web page more than 5 mins or when they've read more than 50% of your article-- or when they're about to leave your site without opting in!

Motivate Social Sharing Among the easiest ways to get your article in front of even more individuals is to encourage visitors to share it on social media. Including share buttons and also embedded Tweets is easy-- both can be done with a free plug-in-- and your website's visitors will likely do the rest.

Make a Sales Video Landing pages with video media convert at a higher rate than web pages without video. You don't need to spend a ton to produce an unforgettable sales video which you can upload on your landing page. On a related note, you can additionally publish excerpts on YouTube and social media sites with a web link to your content landing page.

Produce YouTube Pre-Roll Promotions

You know the video footage advertisements that appear prior to most YouTube videos? You can develop an easy ad and pay to have it show up prior to videos that are related to the keywords you pick.

Link E-mails to Your Article Do your emails have a signature at the bottom? If so, you can merely revise yours to provide a hyperlink to the content deal you wish to market. If you don't have a signature, you can add one with any type of e-mail service provider you use and include the link in it.

Email Your Customer base One more quick and simple method to let your existing subscribers find out about your web content is to email them with a hyperlink to your landing page. You can make use of the e-mail to motivate them to download the deal and share it with their friends and colleagues.

Increase a Facebook Post You most likely already know you can publish your content special offer on Facebook. Since Facebook's algorithm can make it tough for your followers to see it, you can use part of your marketing budget to boost the message and get in front of a larger crowd. (Tip: Develop a lookalike audience to get to individuals that might not otherwise see your information).

Partner with Some Other Local business. A lot of times, local businesses share customers in common. If you know some other business owners in your area, why not collaborate to share one another's information? Simply make certain to set the agreement in writing, to make sure that all parties recognize their obligations and commitments.

Obtain Industry Influencers to Link to Your Post. When you hear about influencer marketing, it often pertains to big stars. Nevertheless, somebody in your industry or niche with a decent social media following can do your organization a great deal of good by talking about your information. Seek influencers and work out a deal to have them market your content to their followers.

The point? Advertising your web content and creating leads doesn't need to be challenging and it doesn't need to cost you much cash, either. The concepts here are going to allow you jump-start your lead generation and expand your business this year. If you're ready to learn more about generating more traffic, leads & sales for your business call (303) 900-4688

Originally Published Here: 15 Awesome Strategies for Marketing Your Content to Drive Leads

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

Is Mobile Marketing A Smart Option For My Business?

First, let me say that not every business needs mobile marketing but it is fair to say that most businesses can benefit from a smart mobile or text marketing strategy. Experimenting without a plan can result in lost revenue so it is best to start with a plan and some guidance.

Knowing how you want to implement your mobile plan and ensureing you have a way to track your results should be the most important part of your plan. Today almost everyone has a mobile phone so demographics is rarely an issue but you should still take your audience into consideration as part of your plan.

Most businesses have services and products that are ideal for mobile marketing. Retail, for instance is one that can benefit tremendously from a mobile program. Every retail business should definitely have some type of mobile marketing program.

The mobile and text marketing opportunities for most businesses and other organizations like Realtors, promoters/event coordinators, churches and schools are endless!

There are many other types of local businesses that can benefit greatly from a smart marketing strategy including, but not limited to:

Home Services

Restaurants

Nonprofits

Politices

Automotive

Spas

Gyms

Healthcare

Sports

Real Estate

Imagine the benefits of offering coupons, sharing recipes, health tips, managing fan clubs, loyalty clubs and VIP clubs. Or how about ticket sales, class schedules, details on properties for lease or for sale. Share store events and new publications by a favorite author or musician and appointment reminders.

Clearly, this isn't a complete list. You can take many of your offline promotions and modify them to work on mobile. You may have promotional ideas the wouldn't work offline but can be executed online. There are no limits to using your creativity with mobile text marketing!

Examples Of How You Can Use Text Marketing:

It’s beyond the scope of this guide to discuss in detail all the ways your business can market using mobile, but a mobile marketing consultant is able to help you plan your marketing campaigns.

We’ve found Mobile Text Marketing will deliver the best ROI and is the most affordable way to market to this huge audience. Text Marketing out performs even the best mobile website which requires a smart phone to view and therefore only reaches 28%.

To learn how your business can incorporate mobile in your marketing strategy schedule a free consultation.

Read Full Article Here: Is Mobile Marketing A Smart Option For My Business?

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

Effective Use For A Call Tracking System In Your Business

Call tracking systems give your business the ability to see how effective your businesses advertising and sales methods are. You will be able to determine just how well your businesses sales and advertising budget is being spent, make adjustments where needed to ensure its effectiveness and success. Call tracking systems will help your business to become aware of any ineffective sales and advertising methods with ease.

Begin to Utilize a Call Tracking System Within Your Business

If your business is looking for a way to determine the effectiveness of your sales and advertising methods through a secure process then begin utilizing a call tracking system today. You will not only be able to learn how the interested party found your business but it will make it possible to track where your businesses most profitable leads and customers are coming from.

The Ability to Monitor Incoming Phone Traffic

Using a call tracking system will give your business the ability to monitor incoming phone traffic from nearly any form of advertising, such as yellowbook or yellow pages, TV, radio, print ads, Google, and even business cards.

You will be able to determine which advertising method your business is using is effective by assigning each campaign a unique phone number. For those web based sales and advertisements your business will be able to track the referring domain where the prospective customer came from.

Big Results with Call Tracking Systems

With call tracking system technology growing there are many benefits to your business as far as reviewing the effectiveness of sales and advertising methods. Your business will be able to promote growth through a top call tracking system. Your service based business will be able to keep your businesses advertising budget in check and ensure the productiveness. Your business will be able to increase the success of your sales and advertisement as well as customer satisfaction by using a call tracking system.

Read More Here: Effective Use For A Call Tracking System In Your Business

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

How to Improve Your Reputation As A Roofing Company

Every business—big or small—needs to have a good reputation. Having such a solid standing in the community gives a business a much better chance of being patronized by more people. Even with similar products or services on the market, the company that people speak well of often becomes the preferred one.

Building a reputation for offering top-notch products or services takes some time and effort on your part, though. If you’re a roofing contractor and you want to boost your roofing company’s reputation, then you might find the tips below useful:

Put a premium on your professional appearance. How you, your employees, and your company vehicle look in public is extremely important. Your workers can’t be pulling up to a customer’s house on a filthy, rusty truck with no logo or contact details. Nor can they stand in front of a customer wearing tattered jeans and a shabby statement shirt.

Your employees' appearance is indicative of the level of respect they have for them, and showing up for a job looking like any of the above shows a lot of disrespect, whether they realize it or not. A roofing company is in the service business, and workers in the service businesses must look professional at all times.

A professional appearance doesn’t mean they’ll have to wear a suit to work. A simple but clean pair of jeans and a shirt that serves as a uniform will do. An actual uniform with the company logo emblazoned on it would be even better. That company logo would also look good on your company vehicle, which should look clean and fully functional as well. It also wouldn’t hurt if your company vehicle bears contact details like phone numbers, email addresses, website address, and social media accounts.

Establish an online presence. In a world where just about everyone is on the Internet, having a website for your roofing company only makes perfect sense. With a website, you should be able to show off the kind of roofing work that you do. You can also put all the information about your services that customers and potential customers are going to need.

A social media account can also help you improve your reputation. If your roofing company has a Facebook or Twitter account, you get the chance to engage with existing customers and prospective ones. You can even establish your company as an authority in the roofing industry by sharing tips and advice on how to care for their roofs and other relevant topics.

Get listed on business review sites. Claim a listing on review sites like Yelp and Yahoo! Local and get reviewed by customers. If you’re confident about the quality of work and level of service you provide, then you are going to get glowing reviews. You can then use those reviews to promote your services, and your reputation will get a boost.

Get roofers’ insurance. There was a time when all customers cared about when choosing roofing contractors is the quality of their work. As long as they provide excellent roofing service, homeowners will readily hire such roofers with little to no questions asked.

That no longer holds true these days, not when homeowners have become so much smarter when hiring roofers and other types of contractors.

Roofing is an inherently risky job. It is, in fact, listed as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The risk of injury or even death is high, and customers wouldn’t want to be held liable for any injury or property damage that may occur within their property.

When looking for a roofing contractor, customers now ask if the company has roofers insurance, and will likely pass on roofing contractors that don’t have one. These days, having roofers insurance is an excellent way of building your reputation as someone who cares about the protection of clients.

Reputation may take time to develop, but everything will be worth it once it helps you get a steady flow of business for your roofing company.

Originally Published Here: How to Improve Your Reputation As A Roofing Company

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

Why Every Restaurant Should Have A Birthday Club

One of the most beneficial revenue boosters a restaurant can create for their business is a birthday club. Probably the most obvious reason for a birthday club is that people love to celebrate their birthday. And more importantly, Birthdays are the most popular occasion to dine out. Birthday clubs are also one of the most overlooked marketing system that many businesses owners fail to implement in their restaurant. In this brief article I will show the importance of 'why you need a birthday club' and the revenue booting benefits of implementing one.

Top 5 Reasons to Have a Birthday Club

Highest Transaction Customer: According to the National Restaurant Association Birthday patrons spend on average $78 per table.

Goodwill: When patrons dine with you on their birthday, they bring good will and an upbeat energy. This keeps the establishment happier!

Groups: It is rare that a birthday guest will dine alone and often times they bring groups of family and friends to celebrate with them. Birthday tables on average have 3-4 people

Low Hanging Fruit: More than 55% of all Americans will eat out on their birthday. So why not capitalize on what otherwise would be lost revenue?

Revenue Multiplier: The power of just one more patron can have a tremendous impact on your bottom line. Just imagine how having multiple customers dining with you on a daily basis can impact your business.

So How Do You Create A Birthday Club?

Create a Compelling offer - An important component is to ensure you have a compelling offer that will incentivize your customers to dine with you versus your competitors. A typical offer involves providing a complimentary meal or dessert to the patron if they are accompanied by a paying guest.

Design The Marketing Collateral - Create marketing material that will showcase the birthday club and offer to existing guests encouraging them to sign up for your club. This can be post cards you send in the mail, business cards or table tents with a call to action to join your birthday club.

Website Landing Page & An Autoresponder - Your marketing material should include a destination (landing page or website) for the guest to visit to sign up for your birthday club. Your page doesn't need to be complex, it can be a simple one page website that is connected to an email autoresponder to capture the customers information and automatically send them their birthday offer at the time of their birthday.

Sign Up Form - This can be less formal using paper forms to capture all your customers pertinent information. This information would then be entered into a spreadsheet or database.

Negatives of Managing A Birthday Club

An internal birthday club offers tremendous benefits for you business but is creates an additional responsibility that requires constant attention and management. Unless you have a designated person to enter new sign ups, track the responsiveness of your marketing, maintain your marketing collateral (which can get expensive) and manage the program, then having a birthday club can quickly go south. For this reason we recommend creating an EXTERNAL birthday club as opposed to an INTERNAL birthday club.

The Most Effective Way To Drive New Customers Into Your Restaurant

In addition to the tedious work it requires to run an INTERNAL birthday club, a common concern we hear from restaurant owners is the need to attract NEW customers and not just provide discounts and specials to existing customers who may already have intentions on celebrating their birthday with their restaurant without having to provide a discount.

Recently, we’ve been having great success with a new beta program we created called Birthday Marketing. Our program helps local restaurants get more new customers on an ongoing basis. Our system allows us to geographically target thousands of people on a daily basis whose birthday is in the next 7 days within a 10 mile radius of your restaurant! We then send these customers to your restaurant to celebrate their special day.

Since we are confident in our approach, we practice exclusivity. Meaning, we only work with two restaurants per geographic region to maintain the effectiveness of our program.

“We Drive The Most Qualified Leads To Your Business. You Ensure They Show. Its A Win-Win”

We’ve truly created a sustainable system that will produce new customers on a daily basis to your restaurant. If you can benefit from a steady flow of new customers, and would like to be the exclusive restaurant we deploy our birthday system with, then make sure to proceed to the next step below to learn if having a external birthday club is a good fit for your restaurant. Our EXTERNAL Birthday club is the most hands off, passive, hassle free way to increase your revenue and drive new customers into your restaurant daily. Contact us to learn more. We go over our detailed exact process of how we target 1000’s of birthday guest every day.

Post Source Here: Why Every Restaurant Should Have A Birthday Club

Social Climb 8310 South Valley Highway, 105A Englewood CO 80112 (303) 900-4688 https://goo.gl/4OFHNi

3 Tips To Higher Landing Page Conversion

Let’s face it: When it comes to the internet, there’s a lot of stuff out there — too much, in reality. Have you ever clicked on an interesting link and found yourself on a page that had nothing to do with the link or you had to dig around to find the information you were interested in? Unfortunately, this happens all too often.

Now think about your company’s landing page. If that happens to you on a frequent basis, how often do you think it happens to people who visit your landing page? Are they turned away because of design or difficulty finding what they need or something else? In fact, if you haven’t defined an action for visitors to take, you stand a good chance of losing them without ever even having a chance at converting them. So how do you optimize your landing page and make it more of a conversion-oriented experience? This graphic from salesforce.com offers some key steps to help you with the development of your landing page.

Learn More Here: 3 Tips To Higher Landing Page Conversion

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How to Conduct Page vs. Page Competitive Analysis

One of the biggest factors of SEO is that your success depends on what your competitors are doing in terms of their own digital marketing campaigns. This makes SEO so exciting for many people, including SEO agencies, but so frustrating for others. This is especially true for those who carry out some great SEO work month after month but still can’t seem to crack page one of Google or rank close to their competitors.

To get the best idea of how well your own SEO activities are working, it is essential to carry out competitive analysis. Rather than looking at yours and your competitors’ websites as a whole, breakdown your key commercial pages, and analyse them in this manner.

Here’s what you should do:

Check Rankings and Page Authority Use the Opensite Explorer tool from Moz to check competitors page rankings, links, and authority over your own. As well as the comparison, you can look at where your competitors have built links and the anchor text they have used to build them.

This will give you an idea of where you are outperforming competitors, as well as the things you need to do better in order to catch up. Take note of potential link building opportunities that you might not already be taking advantage of. You should also look at the distribution of follow and nofollow links as well as the mix of internal and external links being used.

Find Their Keywords There are a number of ways to find out what keywords your competitors are targeting, if you don’t already know through your frustration at ranking below them in search. Because you should already know, this exercise is really about identifying the keywords your competitors are using that you could start targeting, especially if they are ranking highly for non-competitive ones.

Why do keyword research yourself when you can discover what your competitors have done?

The easiest way to do this is to right click on their page and select “View Page Source,” and then search for keywords (CTRL + F) within the code.

You can discover some other techniques for checking out your competitors keywords here.

Meta Data Analysis Use a tool like Screaming Frog to look at meta data for you and your competitor. Is their meta description and title better optimized than yours? Are you missing a trick because your meta data is too similar?

Meta data analysis is a quick win if you are struggling to rank; changing titles and descriptions can make a big difference, especially if they are optimized to be more relevant to the content on-page.

Consider PPC Using PPC (Pay Per Click) alongside a targeted SEO strategy is a great way to boost performance from search. What keywords are your competitors paying for in Google AdWords? You will find some of these by searching yourself, while tools like Spyfu will enable you to discover PPC keyword targets that you weren’t aware of beforehand.

If you need help with competitive analysis, we have a range of tools on our website that will help you get an idea of where you are from a competitor standpoint. For a more detailed analysis and help putting your SEO and search presence on a par with your competitors, get in touch to discuss our approach to ensuring you start competing rather than merely surviving.

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Does Remarketing Work For Local Businesses?

Before we dive in to the strategy, let's define remarketing. Remarketing allows you to market to visitors who have showed an interest in your products or services by visiting your website without converting. A common remarketing strategy used in E commerce is to remarket to individuals who have abandoned their shopping cart. It's a great way to get in front of individuals who didn't complete their purchase.

Now let's take a look at how this might work for a service company.

For this example we will use a tree trimming company. Unless your tree is broken from a storm, this isn't an emergency service. So the consumer may shop around a bit before making their buying decision. The buying process could be as long as 90 days or more. Do you think they will remember which tree company's website the visited 90 days ago? Probably not. They will most likely begin their search all over again.

On the other hand with a smart remarketing strategy the tree company can stay in front of potential customers with their brand, a special offer and their great reputation.

Now when the prospect is ready to get their trees trimmed who is going to be top of mind? Do you think they will click on the ad and revisit the tree trimming site again? Yes, most likely.

According to AdRoll, only 2% of consumers convert the first time they visit a website. With those low odds it is imperative that every business implement a smart remarketing strategy that entices customers to revisit a website and complete the conversion.

One of the greatest benefits of online marketing is the fact that even small and medium sized businesses can compete with the big boys. The key to success in remarketing:

Use the right tools and delivere a smart message to your targeted audience

Create high converting display ads

Smart, strategic ad placement

Minimize ad blindness

Always split test your ads

As you can see remarketing is a smart investment for any local business. For a little more than you spend daily on your favorite cup of coffee you can implement a simple plan to get you started.

Are you ready to implement a remarketing strategy but not sure how or where to begin? We can help you dip your toe in the water and test this strategy in your business. Get started with a free display ad for your website. We'll design a high converting ad at no cost for you to get started. Click here to claim your free ad… Really, there is no catch!

remarketing for small business infographic

Infographic by Cardinal Web Solutions

Article Source Here: Does Remarketing Work For Local Businesses?

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30 Second Promotional Video Giveaway

Promotional video are the great way to introduce new products and services. These videos help to get the word out about your special offers and upcoming events.

Here at Social Climb we are promoting our Video Ad program and giving away promotional videos to local businesses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFEjvWaHx-s

If you're interested in taking advantage of this great offer go here to learn more.

Article Source Here: 30 Second Promotional Video Giveaway

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Revenue Attribution: The Science Of Measuring Marketing Efforts – Part 3

The Right Approach to Analyzing Data and Campaign Optimization The biggest challenge a marketer faces is when the data starts to come in after data capturing system is in place. One can be overwhelmed by the amount of data and may simply be stunted as to how to make sense of the data. Here are some best practices and strategies one may implement:

Understand Process and Output Metrics In order to fully optimize a campaign based on analytics and reporting tools, one has to understand both process and output metrics. The process metrics deals with email activities that includes total clicks, unsubscribe requests, opens, spam hits etc. These are measurements that help a marketer in improving the hygiene, deliverability and creativity of a campaign. The output metrics deals with revenue, cost savings, leads generated, order size etc. all of which help in fully optimizing a campaign. It also helps in gauging the performance of a marketing campaign against an organization’s goal.

Wait and Watch Upon implementing revenue tracking system, a marketer will start seeing data pouring in. The natural urge would be to jump on the optimization immediately. This is to be avoided until enough data set has been captured before making any changes to marketing plans. Now, the next step is to know when one has enough data to begin optimization. To begin with, a marketer has to see if campaign activities have garnered enough interactions with prospects and long enough. Also, it is advisable to wait until multiple types of marketing is in, example – campaigns, events, mailings etc. to be compared and evaluated to know how effective they are within the buying cycle.

Tweak and Optimize Future Campaigns Once a marketer has run marketing activities long enough and captured sufficient data, the next step is to analyse it and then put the analysis to best use. Quite naturally, activities generating most interactions should be given more emphasis and the ones with least performance should be reduced or eliminated. Some of the ways a marketer can gauge this is by observing website traffic sources that result in most consumer conversion, emails that influence prospects, offers that generate maximum leads and offers at last touch points that may be driving conversions, web pages that may be leading prospects to least or most conversions, campaigns that drive prospects to conversion faster than others etc. It is always best to compare the data outcomes of current campaigns with past ones for best optimization of future campaigns.

Focusing on Existing Customers as much as New Sales Traditionally, a high growth rate is conceived to be achievable by generating and converting new leads, which although being true for accomplishing surging growth for companies, experienced marketers would agree that it is much easier and efficient to retain and upsell existing consumers. While it is imperative to optimize and tweak marketing activities, it should be done without affecting repeat buying and upsells.

Higher Budgeting and Resourcing with Data ROI is often not used effectively to justify an elevated marketing budget for future by marketers. However, data output from a campaign activities can be used to cite how a certain marketing activity has effectively generated leads or conversions in terms of revenue and cost savings, which further can be used to justify future marketing budget requests.

You have just read Part 3 of ‘The Science of Measuring Marketing Efforts’. Read Part 2 here

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Revenue Attribution: The Science of Measuring Marketing Efforts Part 2

Establishing Revenue Attribution Model Creating a revenue attribution model depends on how a marketer wants to spread revenue across activities targeting customers. There are different models to attribute revenue with pros and cons.

Single Attribution Model As the name suggests, this model is attributing revenue to a single marketing strategy or campaign, which typically used by marketers just beginning to adopt revenue tracking. They would usually attribute revenue to either first or last touch point before a prospect’s conversion. This results in a flawed emphasis on a single factor being the reason for conversion.

For example, assume a marketer adopts the single attribution model for his/her brand. A prospect lands on the brand’s website through Google search. Then the prospect views the demo on the website and gets interested in consuming the offer, becoming a priority lead for the sales team. A month later, the conversion of the prospect takes place. In this example, a marketer might credit Google AdWords for generating the lead, ignoring other factors like demonstration on the website and interactions created thereafter. Single attribution model puts disproportionate stress on factors influencing a sale that a marketer should be cautious about.

Multilevel Attribution Model In this model, varying revenue attribution is given to each different marketing activity with multiple touch points. In a simple example, a prospect lands on a brand’s website through Google search and reads about the brand’s booth at a trade show. The prospect then visits the booth and fills out a form to share his/her contact details. A month later, the prospect visits the website again and watches a demo video and eventually converts. In a multilevel attribution level model, each marketing activities would share the revenue.

The exact distribution of revenue would vary from company to company. Some may evenly distribute while some may prefer varying attribution based on individual marketing activities. The most common models adopted by companies are the following:

Evenly split model: Equal revenue attribution for each touch points (marketing activities).

Interaction based model: The more a touch point generates interactions with prospects, the more revenue attribution it gets.

Position based model: Specific touch points are credited with greater attribution compared with rest in an entire set of marketing activities. Usually, the first and last touch points are attributed with most revenue.

Time varying model: More weight is given to the marketing activity closest to conversion, usually last touch point.

Title-dependent model: Greater revenue emphasis is given to touch points that attract high-level executives.

What model should a new marketer adopt?

A new marketer should not prematurely finalize on a strategy as the factors affecting lead generation and conversion of every organization may vary widely. A safe and easy approach for a marketer to begin with is adopting evenly split model, giving equal emphasis on each individual activities and then iterating the attribution after few months, after careful analysis of influences and revenue. This reduces the chances of creating a flawed model that results in incorrect assumptions.

One may also apply a combination of these models such as using interaction based model with title-dependent model to gauge where maximum interactions occurred and the position of prospects interacted before converting. You also need to consider the expiration of a touch point from being valid in a system of marketing activities, which may have taken place long time back and that may or may not be valid in measuring revenue attribution. For example, a prospect may have opened an email about an offer nine months back but makes a purchase nine months later; this puts a question whether the email marketing activity should be given credit for influencing the purchase. It may be or may not be depending on the length of sales cycle and model.

You have just read Part 2 of ‘The Science of Measuring Marketing Efforts’. Read the Part 1 here

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Revenue Attribution: The Science Of Measuring Marketing Efforts – PART 1

Introduction Revenue attribution is an avenue that has never been more important to marketers like now. Marketers who clearly align with their business goals by providing enhanced customer experience and lead generation need to have a clear view of the landscape where campaigns and initiatives drive revenue growth. Given the current trends, one can safely assume that majority marketers in B2Bs do not employ close interaction and alignment of marketing and sales teams, which successful marketers are more likely to employ to know the return of investment (ROI).

Although many marketers know the importance of tracking revenue attribution, and given the lack of insights and resources – they find it extremely difficult to connect marketing activities with revenue. Typically, the mutualistic nature of B2B sales data and marketing automation systems has made it difficult to track revenue attribution, which even if attempted, is limited to the first touch-point in the buying cycle.

However, here comes the good news. The new advancements in technology and tools have made it easier to track revenue attribution and carry out multiple touch point models that can accurately reflect the buying cycle. What does this translate to marketers? It means greater assurance to marketers that they are putting their eggs in the right set of baskets, i.e., putting resources and budgets in the right place.

This also greatly helps marketers to meet the growing expectations of buyers for personalized and relevant content across multiple channels, and the effectiveness and efficiency they seek for their investments.

Establishing the Ground Rules Increasingly it has become easy to get large volumes of data and information to connect marketing interactions and revenue, but error-filled data erroneous or incomplete data can make it a pain to attribute revenue accurately. There are several steps marketers may adopt in order to create a strong base on which they can calculate attribution more accurately.

Capturing both Source and the Offer A customer’s final touch point before conversion could be an online demo on a company’s website. However, if the marketer assumes it to be the biggest source then he/she is making a mistake. The marketer would not have any clue as how the customer found the demo, all the data consumed on the path to conversion. The marketer is only seeing a tiny part of the entire information system.

Sources can be explained as something through which a prospect gets to know about your brand, and offer being the reason why they chose to reach you and give their information. In order to get the right insight, one is required to look at both the source and offers. It is imperative to track both source and offers as a buyer may interact with both in unexpected ways. A simple example of this is a user searching for a product on Google lands on a certain product’s page of your brand through Google ad (source). He/she then downloads the product catalog (offer) while signing up for your newsletter (offer). After some days, buyer returns to your website to attend a webinar (offer) and disappears for few weeks. A month later, the buyer returns to download a manual/tip sheet on the product. With the right system to capture source and offer, a marketer can keep a tab on all elements that will help in determining sources that should be budgeted for to attract prospects, and offers that might pull most buyers and lead them to convert.

Establish your system to Capture Source and Offers In today’s world, prospects interact with a brand across an entire gamut of channels and platforms. A marketer should be able to capture all of it to understand which marketing initiatives are working. Traditionally, most marketing platforms tend to track how prospects interact through emails, but they fail to gauge other touch points like interactions that happen on a brand’s website. Here, web tracking tools can help track interactions up to individual page and element level.

Websites are just one of many touch points that a prospect interacts with in his/her journey to conversion. Hence, it is crucial to capture any interactions like video plays, downloads, submissions, custom events etc. to track the behaviour of a prospect that may be indicative of his/her engagement style, which in turn indicates ROI factors. It is equally vital to track offline interactions such as your brand booth at a local exhibition or trade fair.

Once the marketer has data collected from all various sources, there should be a platform in place that channels all these data to a central database that connects these multi-device and multichannel actions to a specific individual. So, the next the individual downloads a white paper or signs up for a webinar online, your system can identify and link this individual to information already stored in your database.

Incorporating CRM and Marketing Platform On top of a platform system to capture buyer’s interactions, the system should also be able to link the company’s CRM data with sales data. This eliminates records being duplicated in the system and enables a marketer to combine social, email, web and other activities with sales and revenue data, which in turn will help in connecting sales with marketing activities. This integration allows greater visibility into how marketing contents are being effective in interaction with prospects, and it enables sales people have better informed conversation with prospects allowing better alignment of sales and marketing activities.

Original Post Here: Revenue Attribution: The Science Of Measuring Marketing Efforts – PART 1

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Why Market Your Business Online?

If you are not already marketing your business online, it is time to start. Although there are a few exceptions, just about every business can benefit from online marketing. There are just so many advantages to this type of marketing. First of all, it is extremely affordable to market your business online. Other advantages to marketing your business online include the ability to reach a large target audience, the ability to reach potential customers all over the world and the ability to customize the marketing for different sectors of the target audience.

The affordability of Internet marketing is one of many reasons why many business owners are turning to the Internet for advertising. Advertising online is incredibly affordable especially when you consider how many potential customers a business owner can reach with an online marketing campaign. Most methods of online advertising are quite affordable and some of them do not have any direct costs. For example, you may choose to market your business online by participating in industry forums and posting links to your website whenever it is appropriate to do so. In this case the cost of creating and maintaining the website is insignificant in comparison to the number of potential clients you could reach through online marketing. Additionally, the costs associated with posting links to your website are incidental. You could consider the cost of having access to the Internet as part of the cost but you most likely require Internet access for other reasons as well so it is completely worthwhile.

Reaching a large target audience is another very worthwhile reason for marketing your business online. You may have spent a great deal of time and energy doing market research and determine who your target audience is. You may have also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the best way to reach this audience. This is a very sound marketing principle but as it applies to marketing on local television, radio and print media it only allows you to reach a limited audience. However, when you take your marketing to the Internet you automatically drastically increase your potential target audience because you now have the ability to reach members of your target audience around the world.

This ability to reach customers around the world is another major advantage to marketing your business online. Regardless of where you live and operate your business, you have the ability to reach those who have an interest in the products you sell or the services you provide no matter where they live. This makes it possible for you to do business with customers around the world.

Likewise the fact that the Internet is available 24 hours a day is also very beneficial to those who choose to market their products or services online. Shopping for products and services in person can be very difficult especially for individuals who work long hours or those who work unusual hours. These working conditions make it difficult for these individuals to do business and make purchases of products and services they need during regular business hours. However, business owners who have an online presence are much more convenient because unlike stores and calling centers, the website never closes. This convenience gives potential customers the ability to view products and services, compare these products and service to the ones offered by competitors and make a purchase at any hour of any day.

If you are a business owner who is reading this article and you do not already have a strong online presence, you need to immediately start learning more about the world of Internet marketing. This is so important because if your competitors are marketing online, you may find they are gaining a steady advantage and are becoming more appealing to potential customers. Before too many of your potential customers become loyal customers of the competition it is time to start figuring out how you can market your business online and keep up with the competition.

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Benefits of Lead Generation For Local Businesses

Lead generation is not a new marketing tactic and its usefulness cannot be argued. Find out how your business can benefit from using lead generation.

Nowadays, the internet is becoming a widely used tool for all kinds of things such as operating, maintaining and developing a business. It allows for less cost and more results, and is therefore easier to work with and more practical to carry out plans with. One of the ways it is widely used in business today is through online lead generation.

Lead generation is a marketing term that describes the practice of using the internet to generate the interests of potential customers and prospects about the products and services of a business. It is a process that businesses go through to ensure that they get new consumers and keep in touch with their regular customers.

Online lead generation is done by building websites that rank high on search engines. This process is time consuming since you would have to research on the correct keyword to SEO in order for your website to come up higher on the list whenever people type the keyword that you associated with your site.

Businesses that generate leads aim for quality leads. These are leads that are highly likely to purchase a product or service from you and close a deal with your business.

Customer Interaction There are several benefits of generating leads. It enables a business to interact with their customers. For example, a customer is able to ask about and request information from businesses that offer the product or service that they need and in turn, the seller is given the opportunity to pitch their product to that prospective customer.

Growth for Your Business Another benefit of lead generation is business growth. Generating leads can potentially increase your sales by a large amount. Look at it just like you would any other advertising endeavor but keep in mind that the people you will be advertising to have already shown interest in your product and a selected number of them have a high probability of actually buying your product or service.

Share Leads with Other Businesses Businesses that share the same niche market can also share their leads to pursue. This is ideal with businesses that are complementary. For example, a company selling IT services can partner and work with businesses selling computer software since the former’s target market would also be interested in the latter’s products.

Many companies, both small and large scale, turn to lead generation to sell their brand as well as their products and services. Keyword SEO, online eZine lists, Google and Facebook Ads, Paid for Lead services, and viral marketing are some of the methods of online lead generation that have been proven effective and that a large number of businesses use.

There are companies offering lead generation services. Hiring a lead generator without doing a background check, however, may pose a problem for the business as it might cost a lot with no real results. On the other hand, if the lead generator delivers, it can give you a large amount of potential quality leads.

Learn more about the biggest challenges small businesses face with lead generation.

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