Author Archives: Laurel Lindsay

About Laurel Lindsay

Laurel Stark née Lindsay has helped thousands of businesses get better results from their online marketing since she began her career as a web marketer in 2003. As a speaker, author and CEO of The New Media Group, she’s been featured on CNN, Entrepreneur.com, CTV and ShawTV.

Repeat Business

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Repeat Business - The New Media Group

Increase your sales by 20% with these 5 easy steps

Fact: It’s easier, faster and more cost effective for you to sell more to less people.

The least expensive sales for you to acquire are those from your existing customers.

According to Hubspot, it’s estimated you will lose 14% of your clients every year.

Imagine if you could not only increase your client retention rate, but get them to spend more with you?

You can generate up to 20% more in sales, just by increasing your repeat, add-on and follow up sales.

Follow this 5 step process in your business and watch your bottom line bloom!

Step One: Avoid Buyer’s Remorse

Did you know the moment after purchase is one of the most emotional for your customers?

When someone buys something from you, they’re going to either experience buyer’s remorse or they’re going to be super happy that they just purchased something.

The way to make sure that they’re super happy don’t have remorse is to give them something right away. This is especially important if what they purchase is a service or something that is going to take a while for you to deliver.

Something as simple as a client handbook or even a little gift can go a long way to making sure your customers feel happy through the entire process of interacting with you.

Step Two: Express Your Appreciation

The second thing I always recommend that you do is send out a thank you card.

Appreciation goes a long way.

You might even want to tuck a little coffee card in there or a gift certificate for dinner and a movie for two.

Giving a little bit of appreciation for their business will certainly make them feel good about doing business with you.

It’s simple, it’s easy, it doesn’t cost anything and it goes a really long way to keeping your current customers happy with you.

Step Three: Overdeliver!

Now during the process of them interacting with, you whether it is a product or a service that they are purchasing, I want you to make sure that you are doing something to over deliver.

  • Under promise and over deliver.
  • Give them something free.
  • Give them a free upgrade, anything that they are not expecting that is of value to them.  

(This is a technique employed by Zappo’s employees to delight, surprise and wow their customers. They almost always upgrade their customer’s to a faster shipping method, at no extra cost, and without being asked. )

And this will boost their satisfaction through the process of doing business with you.

Step Four: Follow up & Gather Feedback

Once the process is over and then they have purchased something and you have delivered, what I want you to do is follow up a couple of weeks later.

Once they have time to use what you have given them, send out a customer survey.

You want to make sure that you are asking questions that will help you improve and let them know that you value their opinion.

Step Five: Ask for the sale, again.

Now the fifth step is the most important.

Assuming you have done steps one through four properly and appropriately, step five will absolutely boost the lifetime value of your existing customer base because they are going to keep on buying from you.

What I want you to do is take a look at a lifetime of your customer and take a look at three or four instances per year when it’s going to be appropriate for you to contact them back and ask for new business.

So for example, it’s a jewelry business and you just sold them a custom engagement ring.

After how long is it appropriate to ask them to come back and get that ring cleaned or repaired?

It’s the same thing with providing a website or with landscaping, or even gardening.

There is going to be intervals through the year where it’s going to be appropriate for you to touch base and ask them if you can help out depending on what is going on, on your business and in their lives.

Determining the appropriate times to contact them, and the best services to offer, comes back to knowing your customer, knowing the cycles of your business and making sure that you have add-ons that you can offer throughout the year.

Make a note in your calendar to follow up with this people whether it be over email or phone and ask them if you can continue to help them.

That is how you generate more business from your existing customers!

How To Get Great Online Reviews for your Business Easily, Quickly and Reliably.

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How To Get Great Online Reviews for your Business Easily, Quickly and Reliably.An estimated 70% consumers say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions.

If you cringe just thinking about a customer comparing your reviews to your competitors – than pay attention.

I’m going to show you how to implement a system that helps you get a glowing review, from every customer.

Imagine, your online reputation will soar, your sales prospects will be more plentiful and you’ll sell more often, all by just implementing these easy four steps…

Four Steps To Getting Glowing Online Reviews:

1. Prepare your customers and let them that you are that you are going to ask them for a review.

Somewhere in the sale process I usually say something like, “I want the results that I get for you to be so great you are going to give me 5 star reviews on all my social media and refer me to all your friends.”

I’ve planted the seed in their minds and I have let my client know I will be asking for a review – and a referral – later.

2. The second way to get great reviews—and this may be obvious—is to provide awesome service.

You want to over deliver.

Give your clients more than they expect for the dollar that they are spending with you.

Great service is the key to getting great reviews!

3. Ask the customer for their testimonial.

Again, this seems obvious, but if you want something you will have to ask for it.

Send your client an email and say,

“Hello Client,  As per our initial conversation, I want to follow up with you and ask you if you would be comfortable providing an online review of the service you received with me.”

Here is where you want to make make it really easy for them.

Make sure you have your links to all your social media properties. Below I have provided a template you can copy and paste over and over again. (Don’t forget to replace the links with your own).

Don’t expect your customer to go and find you on social and do that extra legwork.

Make it super easy by providing links right there in your email.

4. Offer an incentive.

The last way to get amazing reviews for your business consistently is to offer an ethical bribe or an incentive.

I’ll often offer my clients a small discount on their next product or service or sometimes I’ll also do a contest, like,  everybody who reviews me this month will be entered to win a prize.

Giving somebody an incentive over and above doing good deeds is a great way to get something to do something.

I hope you found this tip valuable, if you did, please like it and consider sharing with your network.

Thanks for watching!

Your Cut & Paste Templated email to request an online review from your client.

Good afternoon Client name,

Thank you again for your business!

It was a pleasure working with you on your INSERT SERVICE HERE these past few days.

As mentioned, if you’d be comfortable providing a review of your experience with me, I’d be happy to offer 25% off your next consulting purchase.

You could review me

On Facebook, here: https://www.facebook.com/laurelastark/reviews
On Google + here: https://plus.google.com/b/103038386465762180741/+ThenewmediagroupCa/about
Or LinkedIn here: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/laurellindsay – following the steps below:

Recommend someone from their profile:

  1. Go to the profile of the 1st-degree connection you’d like to recommend.
  2. Move your cursor over the Down arrow next to the button in the top section of the profile. The button name may vary.
  3. Select Recommend.
  4. Follow the steps to write the recommendation.
  5. Click Send.

If you could comment on:

  • The Problem You Had
  • How I Helped
  • The Outcome You Received
  • What You Would Tell Others Considering Hiring Me/ Would You Recommend Me.

That would be so appreciated!
Have a wonderful rest of your week, and we’ll be in touch!

The Ethical Way to Grow Your Email List

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The Ethical Way to Grow Your Email List


“The money is in your list”

If you’re marketing yourself or your business online, you’ve probably heard this saying by now.

Your list is your database of prospective customers and qualified leads.

And, the bigger your list, the better your sales prospects.

Today I am going to show you exactly how to grow your list, quickly and ethically.

Why Grow Your Email List?

More Control:
In addition to building trust with your qualified leads, your very own list gives you more control over how and when you market to your prospects.

So, when social media sites like Facebook change their algorithm so the people who like your page can no longer see your posts, you have a backup plan to get in touch with your community.

Marketing To Older Consumers:
Many people prefer to receive communications from companies via email.

By adding email marketing to your toolbox, you ensure you’re communicating with your prospects and customers the way they want to hear from you.

More Cost Effective:
It’s a lot easier to market to people who are already on your list than try to market to people who don’t know you at all.

Your list is made up of warm leads as opposed to cold leads..

How to grow your email marketing list?

Step One: Identify your target market.

Know your audience and what their pain points are.

Step Two: Create a freebie offer.

By creating a freebie offer, you’re creating an ethical bribe or a lead magnet.

You’re going to trade your prospects a free copy of whatever you’re about to create in exchange for their email address.

It goes without saying that your freebie needs to be irresistible for people to give up their email address.

Tips to creating a freebie offer:

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer when they are shopping for what you sell.

  • What questions do they have?
  • What objections do they have?
  • What should they be looking for when they’re comparing providers?
  • What maintenance costs should they be aware of?
  • What do they need to prepare for before they buy?

Spend some time with these questions and answer each one.

The answers you provide are a first draft of your freebie.

From there you can flesh your freebie out a little bit more.

Take what you’ve written, and add a cover page and an “About the Author” page.

The next thing you know, you’ve got a three-page document that’s a valuable resource for your prospects!

You can call this document an ebook, a report, a whitepaper, a freebie, a guide or a download.

Spend some time on creating a headline that piques curiosity, some examples are:

Step Three: Collect Email addresses.

So once you have your freebie or your guide created, then what?

Well, you’ll need to get an email marketing software that provides you with a Sign Up Form you can add to your website.

I like MailChimp.com.

They’ve got a really easy way set it up.

As soon as someone gives you their email address, they get the freebie in their email newsletter box automatically.

(HINT: Ding what you said you would is a great way to build trust with folks that you are trying to sell to. )

So, the heading above your signup form should be worded something like:

Get Your Free Copy Of the Report Instantly (title of the report) when you subscribe to our newsletter.

Spend some time on this heading, so as to make your freebie IRRESISTIBLE

Please note: If you’re based in Canada, this practice will also cover your bases with the Canadian Anti Spam Act, as the prospect has actively given you permission to market to them via email.

That’s it! Those are your 3 easy steps to growing your email list ethically!

Bonus Tip: The Follow Up Sequence.

To be effective in converting your list members to customers, you need to have a follow-up sequence.

Be sure to send out emails to your list of qualified prospects on a regular basis.
But remember, you want to provide value and not spam your list.
The general rule of thumb is for every ten or eight emails you send, one can be selling.
If you found this video helpful, please like it and consider sharing with your network.

How to Repurpose Social Media Posts to your WordPress Blog

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This Clever Tactic Will Cut The Time You Spend Blogging in Half

Blogging is time consuming.

It’s because of this that so often blogging gets put on the back burner.

However, Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website – (Source Hubspot)

I’m going to show you exactly how to slash the time you spend on your business blog- by 50%.

By repurposing and summarizing posts you find on social media you can:

  1. Cut the time you spend blogging in half
  2. Attract more links to your website
  3. Piggyback off popular content to get more likes and shares.

Check out this video for exact, step-by-step instructions for how to repurpose social media posts on your blog.

Write a blog for your business in only 5 minutes:

Step One: Open Your WordPress Blog

If you’ve got a WordPress site, make sure that you’re logged in and you’re in the posts section.

What I want you to do is click on “add posts”.

Step Two: Go to a Social Media Site

Now, I’m going to go to Facebook, I’m going to take a look at an article that I want to share with my website visitors. For example, I’ve got one here that talks about the Remembrance Day ceremonies in the Calgary Herald.

Step Three: Repurpose The Media

First, I’m going to open this up in a new tab.
I’m going to click the link; open it up in a new tab.
I’m going to save this image as well.
I usually need to click on it first. Click on this, and right click “save image as”. I’m going to call it “post1”. Now I have the link and the image.

So, add new post. I’m going to call this Remembrance Day Ceremonies in Calgary.

Here what I’m going to do is I’m going to copy a little bit of this text here, then:

  1. I’m going to paste it into the blog.
  2. I’m going to write this text that says “Click here to read entire article.”
  3. I’m going to select this text here and click the link button.
  4. Here is where I’m going to copy the link of where the article actually lives.
  5. I’m going to paste it in the URL.
  6. I’m going to click “Add link”.
  7. Then, I’m going to add the image. Click “add media”, upload files, and then it’s in my downloads–post1.
  8. Select the image that you saved from the article itself and then click “insert into post”.

Step Four: Add your two cents worth:

What I need to do is add my two cents worth, so it’s not complete plagiarism.

I’m going to format it so it’s like a heading. Because this is regarding Remembrance Day, I want to make sure that it is published on that date, which is a little while ago.

Step Five: Publish

You can post this anytime in the future or in the past as well. Click, “okay” and “publish”. And we’re done.

Isn’t that easy?

If you liked this post, please share it.

I’d love to hear your blogging for business challenges and what your thoughts are on repurposing social media posts!

New Website Launch: Hawthorn Interiors

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Hawthorn Interiors - Website Launch
We are so pleased to announce a new website design for Hawthorn Interiors!

Hawthorn Interiors is a high end interior design firm located in Calgary,
Alberta.

Specializing in window & floor coverings they are known for decorating
stunning show homes for Calgary’s most prestigious builders.

Hawthorn Interiors needed a website that would reflect the gorgeous
interiors they are known for.

Minimalist in design while captivating with subtle animation, their new
website looks great on every device.

This is the third website we’ve created for Hawthorn Interiors in the
decade or so we’ve worked with them.

We are so pleased to have the opportunity to help them stay competitive and
looking great online.

Check out their new website at www.hawthorninteriors.com

The Real Cost of A Digital Marketing Plan

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The Real Cost of A Digital Marketing Plan

I’m actually going to flip this on it’s head a little bit and talk to you about the costs of not having a marketing plan.

I’m actually going to flip this on it’s head a little bit and talk to you about the costs of not having a marketing plan.

Here are 5 ways that having a marketing plan will save you a lot more time and money in the long run.

 

Number one reason to have a digital marketing plan: confidence.

Having a marketing plan gives you more confidence.

Why?

Because you’ve done the numbers and you are making informed business decisions.

Let’s face it, most businesses out there actually fail.

So knowing what your market is, knowing that there’s demand for it and you have some odds of success will make you more confident in your business.

And you’re not risking a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of time on a guess. You are making informed decisions.

 

The number two reason to have a digital marketing plan: control.

Imagine, instead of reacting to every new shiny tool that comes out online, you’re calm, collected and in control.

By creating a digital marketing plan based on numbers, you would be proactive instead of reactive. Imagine- no more wondering – “Geez, should I be on Periscope?”

If you have a plan in place that’s backed by numbers, it will make you much more confident to ignore things that come up that may not be right for your business.

 

The number three reason to have a digital marketing plan: increased effectiveness.

As an entrepreneur, your time is limited, so being effective is critical.

If you have a digital marketing plan, you can then figure out what elements of it you are going to delegate.

As entrepreneurs, we’re super busy and we wear many, many hats. So we need to be able to delegate repetitive tasks that don’t necessarily require our immediate attention or constant attention.

 

The number four reason to have a digital marketing plan: staying competitive.

If you are creating a plan and reviewing it at least once a year, that will make sure that you stay competitive.

Let’s face it, marketing especially in the digital age is chasing a moving target.

One of the laws of physics is that order descends into chaos very quickly.

So in order to stay competitive you need to keep on your marketing, checking in on it, and evaluating your efforts to make sure that they’re working – which is what you want.

 

The number five reason to have a digital marketing plan: Being empowered.

Lastly, having a digital marketing plan will empower you.

How?

You will be much more empowered because you’ll have an automated sales funnel in place which will actively work to reduce the cost of your leads.

By creating a sales funnel you’ll first find out how much each lead costs, and then what your conversion to sales ratio is, and finally, you can work to optimize your ratio and decrease your costs.

What are these five benefits worth to you?

Can you see the cost to you and your business of not having a digital marketing plan?

I would be very excited to hear what your experiences or how this helped you in the comments below.

Also, feel free to share this amongst your friends and family if you feel that this was valuable.

Thanks so much for watching!

How Pro Social Media Marketers Create Posts That Get Shared

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How Pro Social Media Marketers Create Posts That Get SharedThe sound of crickets may be peaceful, but it’s not the response you want from your social media posts.

Getting your social media posts shared can provide a huge credibility & exposure boost for your business.

If you’re taking the time to create content, you want it to be as effective as possible.

3 ways shared posts help your business:

If your objective is to get more exposure build credibility and generate leads for your business, creating shareable social media posts is a super effective way to meet those objectives.

Three benefits you get every single time someone in your network shares your post:

  1. You have just been implicitly endorsed by that person.

    This means that regardless of what else is being said users who see that your post has been shared believe the person sharing it knows likes and trusts you.

  2. You get more exposure to a network that you cannot access on your own.

    The person who does the sharing is getting you exposure to their network.

  3. Increases the views for each post.

    Each time your post is shared, it provides an indicator to that social site that social network that your content is popular.

    Popular content will stay on the timeline for longer and take up more real estate.  This gets you a lot more mileage out of each post.

What makes a post “shareable”

There are two factors to take into consideration regarding getting people to share your posts.

First is the people themselves and how they feel about you and the second is the post itself and how they feel about the post.

Remember: what you post is far less important than the quality of your networking on social platforms.

By engaging with people on social media you make them feel seen, acknowledged and important.

Each notification appeals to our ego & triggers our dopamine receptors to receive a notification of engagement.

So by engaging regularly with others on social media they begin to like you!

In the seven habits of highly effective people Stephen Covey states one of the habits is making deposits in other’s emotional bank accounts.

“The more you engage with people on social media by commenting and sharing on their posts, the more likely they are to reciprocate.”

 

The 3 ingredients to a sharable post:

Assuming you are actively nurturing your community by engaging on social media, there are 3 ingredients that influence whether or not your post is “shareable”.

  1. Ability to catch their attention and the ability to keep their attention
  2. It’s relevance to the person seeing it
  3. It’s value to the person.

Ways to catch attention on social media:

As you may have noticed multimedia does really well on social media sites.

Videos and images take up more space on the timeline and they also stay for longer on the news feed.

If you’re not posting multimedia or photos with each text update, start now.

5 Tools I use to create videos and images for my social media posts.

To create the ever popular Inspirational quotes, you can use tools like:

  • canva
  • com
  • The Insta quote app.

Any content you produce that shows behind the scenes at your company will also be well received:

  • Take photos using your smart phone
  • Use your iPhone to take videos on your device and direction we upload to YouTube

Other tips for creating video for use on social media:

  • You can do product demos, interviews and summarize your blog posts.
  • You can use Google hangouts and interview people or have a group conference. These interviews will automatically be saved and uploaded to your YouTube account.
  • You can also do quick teaser videos on Instagram

You are only limited by your creativity!

Ask yourself – Is your post relevant?

Remember the context of social media.

People are there to be social and to be entertained.

There are three rules of thumb for the types of content to post.

  1. Entertaining
  2. Informative
  3. Inspiring

Ask yourself – Does your post provide value?

To answer this question, you want to refer back to your customer profile or your avatar and reflect on what their pain points are, what matters to them and what they struggle with.
Content created around these things will always be more effective and content that isn’t.
If you don’t know what your customers struggle with then survey them.

You can also do analysis of what people are typing into Google, or check out what your competitors are doing.

What has your experience been with creating social media posts? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

If you found this post valuable, please like it & consider sharing with your network!

How To Create Effective Facebook Ads

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How To Create Effective Facebook Ads
Over the past few years Facebook has gradually reduced the organic reach on business pages to what some insiders believe to be less than 1%. This means that less than 1% of your followers are likely to see your post unless it has rare viral qualities. The main reason Facebook has made these changes is because they are trying to encourage more business owners to try Facebook ads. If you haven’t created a Facebook ad or are considering whether or not you should advertise on Facebook, keep reading. In this article I will explain how to create effective Facebook ads that will achieve big results for your money.

Objective:

The first thing you must decide, what is the objective of your ad? Here are the different types of ad objectives you can create:Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 1.19.29 AM

Boost your posts: Use the Page post engagement objective to boost your post.

Promote your page: Use the Page likes objective to promote your Facebook page.

Send people to your website: Use the clicks to website objective to send people to your website.

Increase conversions on your website: Use the website conversions objective to promote conversions on your website.

Get installs to your app: Use the app installs objective to get people to install your app.

Increase engagement in your app:  Use the app engagement objective to increase engagement in your app.

Reach people near your business: Use the local awareness objective to reach people near your business.

Raise attendance at your event: Use this objective to get more people to see and respond to your event.

Get people to claim your offer: Use the offers claim objective to promote your offer.

Get video views: Use the video views objective to get people to watch your video.

The three types of ads that have been most effective for me are Boost your posts, Reach people near your business, and Get video views.

Boosting new blog articles, sales/promotions, and product videos will generate strong results. Measure the effectiveness of your boost on the amount of shares and comments you receive, especially when someone tags a friend in the comments section. 

Use the reach people near your business objective to instantly get the word out in your local area. My favourite call to action button for these ads is the “get directions” button. That way you are able to know exactly how many people got directions to your business.

Get video views is perfect for short commercial spots, new product videos, educational videos and interviews. Try and keep your videos short and remember that Facebook counts a “view” as 3 seconds so you’ll need to capture your viewers attention within that time frame to keep them watching the whole video.

Creative:

There are a few things to keep in mind when designing the creative elements for your ads. Always go as highly visual as you can. Every ad should have a clear image and remember that you must keep the text to 20% or less. Use this tool to determine if you are using too much text in your ad. For videos, make sure they are HD and avoid using popular music for more than 30 seconds. If you overuse popular music Facebook may permanently mute your ad or disapprove it. Finally, double check the sizing parameters of the ad to ensure your image will look great. Here is an example image:

100 healthy recipes

Audience:

Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 11.15.06 AM

The audience can truly make or break your ad. You don’t want to be too broad or you risk showing your ad to individuals who won’t engage. First determine the city or cities you want to target and the distance around that city. Choose your age demographic and gender. Next you can target users by interest. It’s critical that you think about what your customers are interested in. Interests are determined by Facebook analyzing a users interests, activities, the Pages they have liked, and closely related topics. Here are some examples:

Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 11.17.11 AM

Budget:

If you are newer to Facebook advertising I would recommend starting with a smaller budget of $10 per day for 7 days in order to determine how effective the ad is and whether or not it’s worth increasing that budget or simply pausing the ad early. You can pause an ad at any time if you feel that it’s not working or you don’t want it to run during certain hours or days. Continue adapting your ads over time until you start to achieve higher levels of success. Then you’re ready to increase your budget and drive specific numbers for your business.

Facebook ads are a proven way to reach new and existing customers for your business. When done correctly, Facebook ads often see much higher click through rates than Google ads as well as a lower cost of acquisition (meaning you pay less to reach more people on Facebook).

If you have had success with Facebook ads, tell us in the comments section below and if you have any questions about how to create a successful Facebook ad, don’t hesitate to contact us.

New Website Design For Retail & Wholesale Fireplace Business

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About the client:

Diamond Fireplace has been serving Calgary in a retail and wholesale capacity for over 30 years. They needed a website that would accurately reflect their professionalism and success.

Objective:

Redesign their website to make it easier for customers to use, more up to date, mobile friendly and easier for the client to maintain their online inventory.

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 12.03.27 PM

Solution:

New website designed to reflect the needs of their changing audience – less text, more visual. The design scales no matter what device is being used.

The product catalogue was enhanced to offer the ability to link directly to the manufacturer’s website, thereby reducing the data entry load on the client.

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 12.03.47 PM

Diamond Fireplace New Website

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Launching just in time for 2016, we’re so pleased to partner with Diamond Fireplace on enhancing their online credibility.