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Google Apps – Tips and Tricks for a more Efficient User Experience

04/24/2013 by

google_apps6464Improving one’s efficiency in the world of Google Apps can not only save precious time, but can also lead to a more organized and productive user experience. Our elaborate resource of Google Apps tutorial videos – GoogleGooru, provides step by step guidance from basic to advanced features.  In this post we’ve compiled a selection of  tips and tricks to help make your Google Apps experience more efficient and enjoyable.

Gmail:

Multiple Inboxes – Keeping Your Inbox Organized:

If you are using Gmail on a regular basis, there is a very high chance that you might find yourself spending a lot of time prioritizing your emails. Have you ever imagined what it could be like to have your emails arrange themselves automatically across multiple inboxes of your choice? In our Top Gmail Labs series we’ve provided a detailed video tutorial as to how to do exactly that.

One of the more powerful Gmail Labs is the ability to create multiple inboxes. In order to enable multiple inboxes (Mail Settings > Labs > Multiple Inboxes) please make sure your inbox type is set to classic. Go ahead and enable it.

Now you can use the mail settings interface to easily specify what type of email you want to appear in each inbox; such as drafts, sent mail  or a certain label.

Labels & Filters – Be More Efficient With Your Emails

One of the best ways to save time in Gmail is through the use of filters. By automatically applying actions to incoming messages, filters can help become more efficient in your workspace. According to the rules that you set – you can label, archive, star, forward, and delete messages automatically. Moreover, the process is rather easy: Gmail filters work just like search: just click the drop-down arrow in the search bar and set your own parameters.

Gmail also offers more organizational features such as labels. Unlike Outlook, Gmail allows you to apply multiple labels to a single e-mail. Using this method, you can organize, file, and later retrieve your emails more efficiently.

Canned Responses – Save Yourself Some Time

As one of the most popular Gmail Labs, Canned Responses allows you to create templates of emails that you send often, and quickly insert the entire template into an email.  That way, messages that are composed on a regular basis can be prepared in advance and later extracted rapidly, saving precious time.

Drive

Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Docs

If you are using Google Drive, you must be using Google Docs on a regular basis. In order to save some time while working with Google Docs, you might want to consider learning some keyboard shortcuts. While most of you must be already familiar with the basic  shortcuts such as cut, copy, paste, undo etc, our tutorials expose you to more advanced shortcuts such as copy and paste of formatting as well as keyboard shortcuts for headers. Check out the video on GoogleGooru to see a few of our favorites.

Advanced Search Operators

If you are a daily Google Drive user, your Google Docs must be rapidly accumulating within your Drive Library. While you can store and organize documents in different folders, it can sometimes be hard to find specific documents you’re looking for. Using Drive’s Advanced Search Operators you can find your Docs using not only their titles as the search word, but also through searching for keywords, frequent words and key phrases used within the Doc you are looking for. In addition, you can narrow down your search using sharing policies.

How to Copy a Collection of Google Docs

Another popular way to save time is through the editing of existing docs. In order to do so, most of us simply copy the docs we are interested in editing. However, Google Drive does not allow for the copying of multiple documents at a time. Fortunately, there is a way to do this using the offline version of Google Drive.

Open the desktop version of your Google Drive > Right click a folder of documents that you wish to copy, and click copy. Now right click again within your Google Drive, and click paste. You should see an identical version of your folder with ‘Copy’ in front of it. Next time you sync your desktop Drive with your browser version, you should see this copy in your Drive.

Matan Levin @thegoogleguru: The Google Gooru is your #1 resource for Google Apps how-to videos and for keeping up to date on the latest updates and new features in Google Apps.

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Why You Need to Simplify Your Message

04/16/2013 by

Developing the perfect user experience takes skill, a little bit of luck, and a whole lot of hard work. Perfecting UX is an ambitious project for any content management team to undertake. In order to succeed in our goal, every decision we make should bring our content platforms closer to meeting our audience’s expectations, while increasing sales and customer engagement.

But this isn’t always a happy marriage of goals, and nowadays commercial websites have become enormous, complicated structures that require FAQ pages just to answer site navigation questions. Meanwhile, competing websites will continue to offer audiences similar features and prices, but one will ultimately win out because it provided the better user experience.

The study of user experience involves many different aspects of web design and content writing. These are details that your users will always notice on their end, but will often get overlooked by management. Here we will focus on the idea of minimalism, highlighting the potential benefits of offering customers a more simplified experience on your website and in your other content platforms. We will also discuss why this strategy works, and what outcomes to expect. But first, let’s take a look inside the mind of a user and get an idea of where they’re coming from.

What Do Users Want?

People’s habits on a web page aren’t much different than their physical behavior in a retail store. They’ll quickly glance over your landing page, scan some of the text and then click on the first thing that really catches their attention. This could be some sort flashy new content or anything that would lead them towards that thing they came looking for in the first place.

If the new landing page doesn’t fulfill their expectations or wants, they immediately turn back and start the process all over again. As a result, there will be many different parts of your website that users will never actually look at or read through at all. This boils down to two distinct behaviors all users share:

Scanning – Users scan content. A study by the Nielsen Norman Group found that on the average web page, users will read through only 20% of the content. This isn’t a habit that reflects ignorance or disinterest on the user’s part, it merely shows us that people are busy and will quickly scan content to determine whether or not it is any good.

Intuitive Search – Users follow their gut. Most of the time, they would rather find their own way through a site than read through and introduction page explaining the process. Think of it as the equivalent of a guy refusing to ask for directions. As you might imagine, users won’t always make the best decisions as a result. They’ll either end up somewhere completely irrelevant to their goal, or get completely lost and assume that their solution isn’t offered on your site.

Users want instant gratification

This involves the shortest, quickest route possible towards fulfilling their needs and wants. Maybe that’s the quality of your content. If users know that you’re going to deliver really good content on your end, they’ll usually put up with advertisements, call-to-action pop ups, and other intrusive materials on their end.

But the real question is whether or not that’s a necessary risk. If a website falls short on experience even for a second, then the user will bounce and you lose the sale. So instead of focusing on improving experience by adding, try to think about what you can omit.

Users Know Where Things Should Go

According to the many eye tracking studies conducted in the past, users tend to start scanning through the content of a web page on the top left corner of a site. They then proceed through the rest of the content in an F-like pattern, occasionally stopping whenever they find something particularly interesting or useful to them. As a result, users have become accustomed to looking for certain key elements of a web page on certain parts of a website. Let’s take a look at an example:

Category pages enable users to search through product catalogs quickly and efficiently. So where do you typically find category menus on a home page?

amazon

ebay

apple

Users typically begin their search on the top left corner, so it’s easy to see that category menus are one of the most important aspects of an ecommerce website. Each of these websites is unique and has developed incredibly strong brands, and yet their site designs aren’t all that different when you take a closer look at it.

That’s because part of developing the minimalistic user experience involves understanding where audiences will expect to see certain elements of a website. Avoiding this altogether and doing your own take on it will cause users to waste time. Remember, users rely on intuitive search, so unnecessary site reorganization could ultimately lead to user disinterest and a loss of sale.

Users Want It Quick and Obvious

Content should be clean and out in the open. If a website provides a minimalist, simplified design, users will spend less time learning how to find what they want and more time actually finding what they want. The problem though is that we often have so many great ideas and content that we end up throwing it all up at once. It’s almost ironic when you think about it. We spend so much time thinking about cool new things we could add that we end up overwhelming our users with header art, signup sheets, FAQs, drop down menus and other excess materials.

There’s nothing wrong with constantly researching new ways to make the user experience better and more engaging, but it’s important to keep in mind that users want things quick and obvious. They want a clear road that will lead them to their goal, and they want to discover it for themselves. So why make it harder for them? Let’s take a look at this example:

OpenMile.com is a truckload freight broker that brings users with shipping needs to the companies who want to provide them these services.

Here’s their original landing page: 

Open-Mile-AB-test-Control

It’s a very clean and straightforward design. But the problem was that the cover art (original as it may be) proved to be too distracting to users looking to find where they could get a quote. As a result, many of them never noticed the solid “Get a Truckload Quote” button even though it was near the top left corner of the page.

Here’s there updated landing page: 

Open-Mile-AB-test-Variation

Notice how the distracting cover art is gone leaving a plain “Get a Quote” button dead center of the page instead. The surrounding color complements the button by bringing it out in the open instead of masking it in the page. It’s literally the first thing you saw when you looked at it right? This is what I mean about providing a clear and obvious road. Users will discover it themselves and commit because of it. What were the results? Well a study by Visual Website Optimizer found that the change was responsible for a 232% increase in lead generation.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to make a website a new and fresh experience, but you have to remember to keep the ideal user experience in mind first. Don’t force them to relearn browsing concepts they are already familiar with and understand that sometimes less will really mean more.


Vincent H. Clarke is a Marketing Analyst for USB Memory Direct, a wholesaler of promotional USB drives. While he mostly writes about marketing and branding, he also enjoys writing about productivity, content strategy, and user experience. Connect with him on Twitter @_vhclarke.

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Communication of the Social Message: Tips for Business

04/10/2013 by

For every brand, it’s important to think about public perception. How the public, your customers, thinks and feels about your company is vital for maintaining a competitive edge. Companies make impressions through their corporate message and how it’s delivered. As your organization grows, and you add talented players to your team, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that every member of your staff is on the same page. The last thing you want is for a team member to send out a Tweet or status update that’s completely at odds with your company’s overarching social message.

It’s also important to realize that your message may experience some shifts throughout the course of your company’s life. Every company needs technology to help keep everyone up to speed on your company’s branding message. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the resources and tools companies of all sizes should consider and implement.

Tools for Unifying Your Message

—     Collaboration Tools: Collaboration is the lifeblood of the modern business structure. With tools like hosted SharePoint services, companies of all types can stay connected in real time with employees. This is one of the most effective ways to keep everyone up to speed on branding. In most cases, if your employees are engaged with your collaboration platform, it’s easy to disseminate information in a way that is both non-intrusive and easy to access.

—     Cloud Data Access: Another similar way to deliver this information is through an integrated cloud storage service. Not unlike your collaboration tool, a cloud storage platform is a seamless way to deliver complex branding information in an easy-to-access package. While some companies are still wary of the cloud, studies indicate that more businesses are experiencing both the financial and logistical benefits of implementing cloud resources.

—     Virtualization Infrastructure: Regardless of what platform you use to deliver sensitive branding data to your staff, every company needs a powerful infrastructure to make branding data easily accessible for everyone. The problem many SMBs are facing relates to infrastructure itself. Smaller businesses often don’t have the financial resources to integrate and manage a dedicated server to deploy and manage complex branding and messaging information. This is why many SMBs are migrating to virtualized infrastructure solutions like virtual private server technology, which gives you the control and computing power of the cloud without costing what an entire cloud platform would.

Branding Communication is Serious Business

Keeping your team up to speed on your overall social message is no easy task. Not only is it difficult logistically, but you’ll come up against employees that disagree with how you approach your branding. It’s crucial to maintain dialogue about branding processes with your employees. If your employees weren’t on staff, they would be potential customers, so their feedback is valuable. The fact that not everyone is in the same geographic location can muffle this communication. Again, having powerful collaboration and cloud storage tools can serve as the proper remedy.

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Social Media Positives: Conversion is Achieved with a Personal Touch

04/03/2013 by

Marketing strategies are always evolving, and chances are, even the best methods today will be outdated within five years. However, that doesn’t mean that your business should ignore them. You need to be up-to-date with the best ways to reach your customer base, and right now, social media marketing is one of the methods at the top of the list. Familiarize yourself with the rules of the road when it comes to marketing on social media, both in terms of what to avoid and how to reach people and convert them into customers.

Remember you’re reaching individuals: Even if the person you’re marketing to is representing a company, you’re still interacting with an individual. Therefore, your marketing needs to have that personal appeal that will engage people. After all, your content is going to be lumped in with everything people are seeing from their friends, too. A casual voice, lighthearted tone and a little bit of personality will go a long way in connecting with your audience. Before posting anything, ask yourself whether it’s something you would be interested in looking at during your leisure time. If it’s not, rethink your content and adjust it to make it more interesting and relevant for the people you’re trying to reach.

Be trendy, but don’t break copyright: Sharing viral content on social media is all the rage, but you have to do so in a way that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others. For example, many companies ran into trouble when they tried to post Harlem Shake videos because of copyright issues with the song. The safe method is to reference trends, while still keeping all of your actual content original. That way you’ll attract the attention of your customers without running into legal issues.

Keep the conversation going: Social media marketing isn’t your traditional outbound marketing. Rather, it’s a continual conversation with the people who interact with your company or brand. People are going to be posting questions or comments directed at you, or replying to questions or comments you make. Therefore, you need to be checking these and engaging with the people who have made the effort to engage with you. This often comes easily when people have positive reactions or honest questions about your products, but it can be more difficult with customer complaints. Remain polite and address everything, even the negative items.

Consider what people are interested in: People who are connected with you on social media don’t just want to hear about your brand and products all the time. Instead, they’re interested in information, fun facts, and news related to your type of product and services. Therefore, do lots of linking to interesting blog posts, news stories, and other content that will add value to those you reach. Go light on the promotional links, and tread carefully if you’re linking to anything that could be considered misleading.

Your business marketing strategy needs to include social media involvement, but it’s not going to be effective in converting customers unless you’re using the right tactics. Take a look at how companies similar to yours run their social media accounts and the results they’re getting in terms of customer engagement. Engagement often translates into sales, so if people are interacting with them, they’re doing something right. Of course, you don’t want to just copy your competitors, but to put your company’s unique voice and style into your social media marketing messages.

 

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Can Technology Damage Small Business Efficiency?

04/01/2013 by

web-security-threatsSmall businesses everywhere are constantly being told that the more they embrace technology, the better their opportunities to grow will be and the more efficient they will become. The thought of technology having a negative impact never enters their heads, and why should it. However, as they begin to grow and explore other areas, it is very easy for various technology platforms to start doing as much harm as they do good.

Don’t get us wrong; we are not saying businesses should ditch technology. What they do need to do, however, is ensure that they are cutting out complacency, and maintaining a focus on the products they do use at all times.

We explored some examples of business technology, and looked at how they can damage efficiency, and what they can do to deal with and prevent problems.

Poor IT Procedures

The biggest cause of data breaches in businesses is negligence. Even if you are a local company with no more than five or six employees, you need to have an IT policy and clear procedures in place. Not only does this protect your business, it means you can deal with people who decide to put your business at risk directly or indirectly, and it will improve the use of IT and the whole culture in your company.

Dealing with this problem can cost time, money, and your business’ reputation, and the best cure here is always to be preventative.

IT Maintenance

This is where the line about “the more they embrace technology” comes into focus.

When first buying hardware or servers, you naturally go for the best product available, or at least the best you can afford. As you move forward, however, it is easy to neglect upgrading these services or products, either inadvertently or because you don’t want to invest any more money.

The efficiency you lose because of slow systems or out of date hardware will cost you more than an upgrade, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot!

Not Going Mobile

If a business hasn’t gone mobile, then there are huge opportunities being missed. Why have people in an office sat in front of a computer making appointments, when they could be doing that on the phone while physically traveling to appointments and looking up information and potential leads on a mobile device at the same time?

When you do go mobile, it is important that devices are subject to the same security levels and maintenance as office hardware would be, even if you use mobile as part of a BYOD setup. Many businesses have lost data or been breached because they have accessed data via a tablet or phone, for example, that is otherwise secured in other locations.

Ensure your business is not caught out!

It’s a Must

If you don’t put this advice into practice, then you had better be ready to learn the hard way the importance of maintaining your technology platforms and security. It might seem time intensive and costly, but rest assured, it is more efficient than what you are currently doing, and definitely more so than having to deal with any problems.

Jaguar PC is the original leader in VPS hosting, providing the best web hosting with 100% network uptime and free-domain transfer

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Designing for Social Engagement

03/21/2013 by

Businesses invested in social media are aware of the benefits it can deliver. While social media is a long-term investment focused on increasing brand visibility and recognition through consumer engagement and relationship building, it can pay out enormous dividends over time. A social presence is particularly useful when your website is publishing original content with value to your consumer base.

By creating content designed for social sharing, you can essentially turn a normal blog post into productive inroads with prospective customers, using a shared link to bring new traffic to your website. From there, you have the opportunity to produce a conversion — but only if you have a well-developed website waiting on the other end of the link. I repeat, if there’s no ill web design waiting for users who click through, they’ll bounce faster than the king of the four square courts. Whether you do it yourself or hire some professional Web designers, make sure it looks good!

Ultimately, social media can become another conversion and revenue stream if you use smart development strategy at every point. Read on for tips to make sure your online strategy is aligned to maximize social opportunities.

Creating content worth sharing

Developing a social brand should be the first focus of any company. In the early stages, you don’t need to worry about creating phenomenal, mind-blowing content as long as you keep the quality high and consistent. Instead, start cultivating followings on major social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, to create a broad base of followers.

Once that base is established, work on increasing the uniqueness and quality of your content. Whether you offer whitepapers, blogs or static Web pages, the things you produce need to be relevant and useful to your consumers in ways that point to the value of your business. These aren’t explicit marketing materials, but they all need to relate to your company’s mission and your value to prospective customers.

As you develop your following and people consume your content, you’ll see more people sharing your content with others. Not only is social sharing a high-exposure, low-cost form of marketing, but it’s a great way to gauge what content is most valuable to your followers.

From content consumer to product consumer

By sharing your website’s content online, you’ll draw followers to your website. When that happens, they become social referrals and potential sales or lead conversions. That’s where your website comes in. As your content is making a case for your company’s value to the consumer, your website should make it easy for them to identify and enter the conversion process.

To do this, you need a simplified Web design that makes your marketing mission clear. Your site’s various links and images need to be simplified so they aren’t distracting — you want consumers to immediately recognize where and how to begin the conversion process. If you can get online referrals this far down the funnel, you’ve got a good chance at securing a conversion.

Efficiency in the conversion process

Once in the conversion process, the trick is in seeing consumers through to the conversion’s completion. This is an efficiency game you have to play well to maximize your opportunities. Online consumers are deterred by seemingly insignificant obstacles. Every line of data you request — address, phone number or email — decreases the odds of potential customers completing the process.

Similarly, every step in the process — every time they have to click “next” or wait for processing to take place — gives them a chance to reconsider their purchase. The more you condense steps and minimize workload, the better. The proof is in the numbers: the easier you make the process, the more conversions you’ll accrue.

By optimizing every point in the consumer process, you can increase the efficiency of your website. From there, focus on creating worthwhile content that engages your consumers. The more useful and worthwhile your content, the more social shares — and, ultimately, referred traffic — you’ll generate from this rich resource.

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Email Marketing and the Importance of the Title

02/14/2013 by

Email marketing isn’t dead, but it sure could use a style makeover. Those old, boring titles just don’t grab a potential reader’s attention anymore. It’s no longer enough to be informative; you have to be creative and just a little bit snazzy as well. You want to stand out among business emails, communique from your customer’s family and friends, messages they’re receiving about store discounts, and, unfortunately spam.

Why email titles are important

How many email marketing messages have you opened recently? If you’re like most of us, you’re very selective about which email messages you choose to spend your time reading. Nine out of 10 messages get deleted without ever being opened. There’s a reason for that. Nearly 90 trillion emails were sent in 2009. There’s likely more today. You simply can’t read everything that hits your inbox.

What that means is that the majority of your hard work composing, researching and editing your email marketing message ends up in the recipient’s computer trash can. Just think of the results — i.e., sales — you could reap if you could get an extra 10 percent of your recipients to open your message. That’s where email titles come in. Make the title enticing and the recipient turns into a reader.

How to write effective email titles

How do you write email titles that will grab a recipient’s attention? It’s a slightly different skill than is necessary for the body of your email message, so it may take you a few tries to come up with a winner. Don’t feel bad if it does. Here are some suggestions for success:

  • Keep it short: Although each email service is slightly different, you have approximately 60 characters (including spaces) to grab your reader. Anything longer than that will get cut off and not show in the recipient’s email log. Be concise and be seen.
  • Be intriguing: Nearly 90 percent of online consumers check their email inbox at least once a day. In this age of information overload, you can be assured most readers have seen, heard and read all of the obvious marketing lead-ins. Be original to grab the recipient’s interest.
  • Pick clarity over creativity: The average email reader wants to know what’s in the body of the email before he or she opens it. If your title, intriguing as it may be, doesn’t impart that information, the recipient isn’t likely to become a reader. Subject lines like “Hey” or “Check this out” can come off spammy and result in your perfectly legitimate email being moved to the trash folder post haste.
  • Use numbers: Numbered lists attract readers. Titles like “5 Reasons to Buy More Car Insurance” or “7 Kitchen Accessories You Can’t Live Without” will get read more often than the same titles without the numbers. Readers like detailed information that’s also packaged in an easy-to-read format.
  • Use your name: Email titles that include the name of your company or the name of the sender get opened at a dramatically higher rate than those without a name. Yes, your name is probably in the sender information, but add it again. You’ll be surprised.

Don’t settle for just any title atop your email marketing messages. The title is the key to whether any of the rest of your work will get read. Content is king and that includes email subject lines.

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Getting the message across: Best practices for Multi-channel Marketing

01/17/2013 by

We’ve all seen the people who have stacks of papers, folders, and a dozen different electronic devices all spread out across a desk. Sure, they might just be messy, but often they’re some of the busiest people in an office, keeping track of hundreds of different things all at once. They might be the jacks-of-all-trades to whom everyone goes when they have a problem they just can’t answer.

Or, they might just be a marketer.

When it comes to Internet marketing, it’s always been helpful to be a multitasker. This is especially true if have a lot of clients. You can imagine the disaster that would happen if you cross-posted a status update to the wrong client’s Facebook account. No matter how quickly you got the rogue post deleted, you know someone would capture it. You would then have to deal with the public relations mess you created, and then you would likely lose a client.

Handling that to-do list

Cross-channel marketing isn’t as easy as hopping between social media platforms and making posts. Marketers could be handling email newsletters, SMS messages, social media accounts, websites – and all for multiple clients. If that sounds a little something like your reality, you may need to get some help from experts in cross-channel marketing, so you can always represent your clients in the best light.

Another advantage of getting some professional guidance is that you’re able to track how effective your marketing campaigns are. You want to know who’s reading your SMS blasts, your tweets and posts – and which form of communication is most lucrative for your client.

Sorting things out

Organization is your best tool in any marketing campaign. There are tools and software that can help you stay on top of marketing campaigns and allow you to focus on the platforms that appeal most to the audience you hope to reach.

Cross-channel marketing can be intimidating – especially if you’re someone who’s new to the world of hashtags, memes and viral videos. It takes some expertise to launch a marketing campaign across multiple platforms. You have to understand when to post, what to say, how to say it and how to time your message for the best results. Many companies report that they simply don’t have adequate staff to accomplish such a goal, or that their staff doesn’t have the knowledge to undertake such a campaign.

By bringing in an industry expert to help you analyze and fine-tune your cross-channel marketing, you can be confident that you’re getting the best results and making your clients happy.

Filed Under: Social Media, Strategy & Business Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Joy of Text: The Right Way to Do It

01/03/2013 by

SMS marketing can be an easy and inexpensive way to stay in touch with your customers. SMS — also known as Short Message Service — marketing is when you send a text message to your customer database in order to tell them about your service or product. Various sources will tell you that a majority of people now own cell phones and that text messaging is prevalent among those who do. Usually SMS marketing is a means to get your customers through your door — physical or metaphorical — in order to purchase your product. SMS marketing can be tricky, so it’s important to have the right people helping you along the way. As you get started with SMS marketing, here are some basics to think about.

Get customers to grant permission

Given the laws about soliciting people via cell phone — including by text — it’s important you ensure your customer signs up to receive your texts. One of the best ways to do this is to provide an incentive like a chance to win an exciting new piece of technology or a gift certificate. Provide the number for your customer to enter the contest. Be sure to let entrants know that entering the contest also grants their permission to receive further text messages from your company. Although some consumers utilize unlimited texting plans, others do not and will want to know they will be charged a fee for receiving your texts. Be frank but friendly; letting customers know pertinent information upfront will decrease the likelihood of angry customers blocking your texts in the future.

Keep customers engaged

Offer your customers promotions to entice them to continue receiving your text messages. Give them a certain percentage off by entering the code given in the text message. You could offer a bonus item to the first ten people through your door the following day. If you’re a company that gives out free samples, considering including some kind of giveaway with orders, whether placed in person or online.

Know your customer and your product

It’s important for you to understand when your customers will be free to check their texts and respond to your message. If you’re appealing to stay-at-home parents or foodies who plan meals at the start of the day, considering sending a text in the morning about a dinner special you’re offering. Tantalize customers when they are likely to be hungry and looking for options. A late afternoon text can prompt action from a customer willing to stop by your place of business on his/her way home from the office, whether s/he’s picking up dinner or popping into your store to pick up a sweater on sale.

Use SMS marketing timing to your advantage

If business is slow, use SMS marketing to boost your sales. The message you send will get to your customers in a matter of seconds. Use that window of time to offer deals or discounts to customers who buy from you within a certain time frame. Be sure to be clear on the details of the offer, such as noting your offer is only good on the following Monday — not every Monday.

Be prepared for customers to respond

Once you have appealed to customers and you begin attracting business, make sure you’re able to provide what was offered. If you offer a buy-one-get-one special, have enough of that item to get through the promotional period. If you’re asking your customer to click on a link in a text message, ensure the link works so the customer can get to your website. Make sure the customer has a good experience so they will continue to receive the SMS marketing messages. Customers who have to jump through hoops just to save a small percentage off the regular price might not follow through if completing their purchase becomes an ordeal.

Opting out

Always give your customer a chance to opt out of receiving text messages from you. Every message you send should include instructions on how to stop receiving messages from you. Ideally, you’ll never lose any customers, but making it difficult to stop messages — no matter how interested the customer was when s/he signed up to receive communication from you — will only result in bad word of mouth that can affect the rest of your customer base.

SMS marketing is one of the easiest ways to stay connected to your customers. It’s crucial to get permission, respect your customer’s privacy and make it easy for them to both contact and shop with you. Happy customers breed positive feedback and return business!

Filed Under: Strategy & Business, Success Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Create a Business Model

11/19/2012 by

Think of your business model as a football playbook, as a way to implement
and execute your plan of success. The touchdown is your revenue. As the coach
(or small business owner), your job is to sift through the variety of ways
that will show how you are going to achieve your ultimate goal. By “drawing out”
your plan of action, you are simply showing how you will implement your
plans and what outcome is anticipated.
The purpose of a business model is to let others know about your product, the
value it brings to your target market, who that target market is, how you will
compete with similar companies in the same market, and how you will make money
using all of these components. Once you know the components of your business model,
structuring it will be easier to do, but first you need to know what type of
business model you should be looking at. This will be completely dependent on the
product or service you are providing and what you ultimately decide to do with the business

Though there are many different business models to consider, a basic structure
of a business model is a good place to start. Knowing how you will get your product
or service to the end user or customer will give you an idea how to choose the model
best suited for you. For small business owners in this day of technology, creating
a business model that will include social media is a key point for any market.

Traditional business models for example would include:1) direct marketing to customer
(think Dell), 2) retailers or sell to distributor and allow them to sell it for you,
3) exclusivity (rights to certain distributors only, such as music), 4) franchise and
5) advertisers (that sell ads for others). New business models are emerging with the
expanding technology of online. You will do well to utilize the social media platforms,
blogs, websites, content marketing, email blasts, and SEO.

 

Companies like Amazon, EBay, and Dell have captured the online
market with their business model. Some of their components allow the customer freedom
to shop whenever they please and have their items shipped straight to their home.
However, brick and mortar companies, such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy have amended their
business models to give customers the convenience of online shopping capabilities
combined with the ability to same day pick up.

 

So how do you draw out the business model once you’ve finalized your final draft?
Consider using PowerPoint or Google Docs for creating your model. Both
provide the tools you need to create professional looking business model designs.

 

An example of a simple business model created in PowerPoint:

 

 

As you can see, a business model can be as simple or as complex as you like.
Just keep in mind that the most important points of your business model should
be included. If your business is going to place the focus online, include that
as a point. Do not confuse a business model and a business plan. A business
plan is far more detailed and complicated than your basic model. Remember, your
business model is only to represent your plan of action, a visual of your ideas
and the ultimate goal in a simpler way.


Ryan Franklin is a guest blogger who writes about small business issues and technology on behalf of Ordoro.

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