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5 easy steps to identify your target market

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5-easy-steps-to-finding-your-target-marketHi. Welcome to your Marketing Minute. My name is Laurel Lindsay and I’m here to help you identify your target market!

Now why would you want to identify your target market?

Well there’s several benefits to knowing your target market.

It’ll save you a ton of time, money and frustrations spent on your marketing because you’ll know who you serve. And when you know who you serve, you can communicate more effectively to them, attract them to your business, generate more prospects and convert those prospects to sales–which is what we all want, right?

Put that money in your pocket!

So how do you do it?

Well if you have an existing business already then you’ve got a gold mine of data that you can use.

Step One: Analyze the customer demographics that you have:

Ask yourself

  1. How big are the businesses typically that you’re serving?
  2. How many dollars in revenue do they generate every single year?
  3. What’s the position of the person that you’re working with in the company?
  4. Or, is it a micro-business?
  5. What’s the geographic location?

Just start looking for patterns and similarities around your existing customer base.

Step Two: Survey your existing customers:

Ask them:

  1. Why did you come to me?
  2. What problem did you have?
  3. Why did you pick me out of any other business out there out of all the competition?
  4. What value did you get from our interaction?
  5. Did you feel the pricing was good or bad?

Surveying your customers and asking them questions like this will provide you with a ton of data on your value. And you can use the exact same verbage from your existing customers to speak to your perspective customers which is fantastic.

Step Three: Brainstorm

Now if you don’t have any customers yet, don’t worry. Your 3rd step is where you would jump in on brainstorming.

Start thinking about things like:

  1. What do these people need?
  2. What is this imaginary audience that I’m serving?
  3. What do they actually need from me, not what do they want? So for example they need their toilet fixed as opposed to having, say, a cheap bill, right?
  4. So what do they need?
  5. What are they curious about?
  6. What kind of questions do they need answered before they are ready to lay out their cash?
  7. What are they ready for?
  8. Maybe they are not ready to lay out cash, but are they ready for a call with you?
  9. Are they ready for an assessment?
  10. Are they ready for an e-book?

When you start to gather that information together, you get an idea or an “avatar” of who your prospect is.

And the demographic information may not necessarily be the same, but if you get the psychographic information together around what their needs are and who they are or what their personality is like, then that will give you an audience to speak to.

Step Four: Check in with yourself.

Then go ahead and reflect on if that feels right to you.

I know this may sound a little bit airy-fairy but if you already have existing customers, think about the ones who are most profitable that you love to work with. And contrast those with the ones that are a bit of a pain in the hiney.

You want to focus, where-ever possible on working with people that make you feel good and generate profits for you.

Step Five: Test and Refine

And then lastly, test. So you have this hypothesis now on who your target market is, go out and try and market to them and see if that works. And then look at the data that is provided through Google Analytics or any Social Media reporting tools and refine accordingly.

And so that’s how you figure out who your target market is. It’s a bit of a trial and error, a bit of science and a bit of gut-feel.

And if you liked this One Minute Tip, please don’t hesitate to subscribe to my channel. You’ll get a new tip in your inbox every single week. If you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network. And thank you for joining me on how to identify who your target market is. Wasn’t that easy? That was easy!

5 Tips To Save Time On Your Web Marketing

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If you are a business owner and you’re strapped for time but you know you still need to be web marketing, keep reading.

Web MarketingWe are going to cover 5 ways that you can increase your effectiveness and decrease the time you spend web marketing yourself.

Tip #1 Be Strategic

You don’t necessarily need to be engaging in all the web marketing activities out there.
What you do need to be doing is engaging the ones that are most effective. Historically, the most effective web marketing tactics are

  1. Email Marketing
  2. Video Marketing
  3. Blogging

So just focus on what works and what will attract your target audience to your website or to your web property. Work smart, not hard and save yourself some time.

Tip #2 Multi-task

Your smart phone has the power of a large computer so why not use it?
When you’re on the road, stuck in traffic, you can actually get your phone to type your blog posts for you. Use the voice mode tool and get those audio files transcribed or you can write an email to yourself and with the microphone icon, when you speak it will actually transcribe and write those blog posts for you. Talk about a handy tip.

See above- the microphone icon on the bottom left will type as you speak - (iphone 6s)

See above- the microphone icon on the bottom left will type as you speak – (iphone 6s)

Tip #3 Automate Where Possible

Take advantage of automating tools especially when it comes to social media.
One of my favorite tools is Buffer for a couple of reasons. It helps me by suggesting content that I can then post to my network. As well it lets me schedule my post in advance. So it helps me both curate content and plan my posts in advance.

Tip #4 Delegate

And don’t be afraid to delegate. You don’t necessarily need to be doing all of your web marketing activities yourself. If you take a little bit of time and create a to-do-list with detailed instructions, you can then delegate that to an assistant, a part-time worker, an admin assistant or a an agency that specializes in offering done-for-you marketing management . Investing the time up front will allow your future self to have a little more time to do what you’re best at.

Tip #5 Repurpose Your Content

Make your content work hard! If you’re creating videos or blog posts, you can literally repurpose one piece of content into up to 10 pieces. That translates to more content for less effort, more clicks to your website and more sharing on social media.

How do I repurpose my content?
Summarize a blog post into a video or transcribe a video into a blog post.
Save your video as an audio file and upload as a podcast. Create an image with a quote or an infographic highlighting key points of your blogpost . And you can repurpose that content and get a lot more bang from your bucket than just using at once.

That’s your One Minute Tip. If you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network and don’t ever miss a tip if you subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thanks so much for watching.

5 Proven Ways To Increase Blog Post Engagement

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blog post engagement

1. Evaluate your blog post’s headline.

Is it catchy enough?

If you’re struggling with catchy headlines or coming up with something that rolls off the tongue or piques your viewers’ interest, go to BuzzFeed.com and check out some of the headlines there for inspiration.

Is it Catchy Enough?

(above- Buzzfeed.com encourages readers to spend hours on their site, clicking headings that pique our curiosity)

You want to pique reader interest so ensure your headlines play on our curiosity.

Pay a lot of attention to your headlines. About 50% of the effort you’re putting into your post, you should be putting into your headlines.

2. Pay attention to your formatting.

Make sure that your posts are easy to scan, not necessarily read.

  1. Use short sentences.
  2. Use lots of white space
  3. Summarize key points in bold headings
  4. Bold key points
  5. Italicize sparingly
  6. Use bullets and numbering
  7. Provide at least 3 links to resources you mention in the post

Pay attention to your formatting

(this post from LinkedIn has all the right ingredients to encourage me to keep reading)

3. Use images and multimedia.

Historically, posts that are shared the most are the ones that have up to 15 images.

So at least use one image. If you can include a video as well, absolutely go for it.

People want to see photos and they want to see videos more than they want to read a big wall of text.

The most successful posts used images to show someone exactly how to do what they’re describing in the post, not just what to do.

Tips on using images:

  1. Take pictures using your smartphone or screenshots
  2. Pay for stock images
  3. Use free images found on the internet – search Creative Commons licence on Flikr.com for example.

HOT TIP on images:

See the eyeball heatmap image below. For any of you unfamiliar with a eyeball heat map, it tracks the amount of time people spend looking at various parts of a webpage. The longest times are red, followed by orange, yellow and then green.

According to KISS metrics, having an image of either a baby or a lady looking at the text you want someone to focus on, will encourage them to do so.

Hot tips on images

4. Longer blog posts are actually better

Recent studies show that posts over a thousand words are getting shared more and more often because they provide more value.

Instead of just skimming the surface of your topic, dive a little deeper. Provide a little bit more information and details to your audience and you will get rewarded.

5. Ask for what you want.

The very last thing a lot of folks forget to do is ask for interaction.

Ask for people to share your post with their network. Ask for comments and you will receive!

That’s your One Minute Tip. If you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network. And if you don’t ever want to miss a tip, subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly tips in your inbox. Thanks so much for watching.


Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l9RXALzJyY

The 7 Step Guide to Managing Negative Customer Feedback: A case study in consumer fraud, social media & the power of reviews.

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If you’ve ever been the recipient of a bad online review of your business, you may find yourself frustrated by the apparent lack of control we as entrepreneurs have over things being said about our business – especially if they’re not true.

What proactive steps can you take to protect your business, and how do you best handle a peer review gone wrong?

1. Adapt your mindset.

The worst thing you can do is tell yourself this article isn’t relevant to your business and click away.

Seriously.

We need to adapt in order to survive and thrive, and today’s consumers have more power than they’ve ever had to affect our success.
70%  of Canadians online trust consumer reviews. (BDC, 2013)
Negative sentiment can go viral, quickly – as exemplified by the Applebee’s social media nightmare – and can be very difficult to manage.
Understanding the change in buyer behaviour and accepting that it’s not going away, frees you up to take in the following information to help protect your business.

2. Get informed:

Increasingly Canadian consumers such as you and I, rely on the web to make our purchasing decisions.

social media

1. Canadians spend on average 2.5 hours a day online; on social media, watching videos, & researching products and services. ComScore, 2014
2. Nine out of 10 consumers claim to use their smartphone for pre-shopping activities BDC 2013
3. 70% of Canadians online trust consumer reviews. (BDC, 2013)
None of this is particularly surprising.
The widespread adoption of web connected smartphones is not a new phenomenon.
In fact many older and wiser of us lament the pervasive nature of these devices and their impact on social connection –  and more practically – our ability to walk down the street without literally running into people distracted by their smartphones.

social media
Beyond being a mildly irritating obstacle to efficient walking, this change in how we as a culture interact has widespread implications for today’s business owner.

The constantly connected state of today’s consumer – specifically – your customers – means your customers shape your brand’s reputation.

Customers and the public at large (reasonable and otherwise) can seriously impact your ability to acquire new customers and maintain your reputation.

3. Know that negative sentiment goes far beyond review sites:

You may have heard of “reputation management” in the context of managing reviews of your business, or even been approached by a less than integrity based business offering you positive reviews of your business, for a price.

But beyond the formal review channels, people can leave negative sentiments on your Facebook page, in response to a post on social media…and almost anywhere else on the web.

4. Start listening:

Google your business name to see what comes up. You may be surprised at the places it’s listed and what people are saying about your company.

If you are surprised, it’s a sign to implement some practices internally to start monitoring your company’s reputation.

You can either manually conduct a search regularly or implement an automated solution to alert you immediately of any new conversations about your business.

Here’s a handy list of 5 tools to help you monitor your online reputation from Social Media Examiner.

5. Address any and all reviews.

You may be tempted to ignore bad reviews or complaints, but believe it or not it makes you look worse if you don’t reply publicly.

Here are 5 tips to responding to reviews from Google My Business.

Tips for responding to reviews

Business owner responses allow you to build relationships with customers, but they’re also public. When replying to your customers, keep the following guidelines in mind:

  • Be nice and don’t get personal. This isn’t just a guideline–it’s also a good idea as a business owner. It’s difficult to win an argument with a frustrated customer, and you want to avoid burning bridges. Keep your responses useful, readable, and courteous. In addition, responses should comply with our local content policy.
  • Keep it short and sweet. Users are looking for useful and genuine responses, but they can easily be overwhelmed by a long response.
  • Thank your reviewers. Respond to happy reviewers when you have new or relevant information to share. You don’t need to thank every reviewer publicly, since each response reaches lots of customers, not just one.
  • Be a friend, not a salesperson. Your reviewers are already customers, so there’s no need to offer incentives or advertisements. Tell reviewers something new about your business, or share something they might not know from their first visit.

6. Go above & beyond:

The tone and speed of your response to a bad review is where you can really make or break your reputation.
In this CTV news clip, I was asked to comment on what appears to be a fraudulent sale of goods by a household brand.


This would never have become a news story if the response to the customer’s complaint on their facebook page hadn’t been a canned response to call their 1 800 number – where the customer didn’t get a response.
In the case studies above, with Winners & Applebees, both responses to the negative sentiment were woefully inadequate and appeared completely disingenuous.

Because customer sentiment can so powerfully and permanently affect your reputation, if you are in the wrong (like I believe Winners was ) you need to go above and beyond-
1.Get the customer’s information
2. Make an effort to get in touch with them right away.
3. Work to resolve the issue to their satisfaction
4. Once you get agreement on a solution, ask if the customer will then update their post with details on how you came through for them.
5. Going forward – work with your social media manager to create a policy for addressing unhappy customers in a way that shows you actually care.

7. Be proactive

By actively soliciting positive reviews- and incentivising your customers to do so, you can combat any negative and unfair reviews with a steady stream of positive reviews.

Copy and paste this templated email and send out to all your happy customers;  ( just replace the links with your Facebook & Google Plus page links before you send )

Dear customer,

Thank you so much for your business.

Please- tell us how we did!

Would you be so kind as to post a review for me on my Facebook page or my Google page?

I really appreciate you taking the time to give me your feedback!

Find your ideal customers on social media with these 3 tips

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social media marketingToday we are going to answer Jeff’s question, who writes, “What are three tips for finding the right customers on social media?”

That’s a great question. And if you are wondering that yourself, keep reading for the answer.

Identify your ideal customers:

If you know who your right customers are, you’re two steps ahead of many of your competitors.

The next step is to typify them in an archetype or in a demographic.
So for example, maybe your customers are typically affluent women in their thirties and forties.

Now you have concrete data you can use to research what social networks that particular demographic uses the most.

In this case of our example, that would be Pinterest. Doing a little bit of market research in the beginning will help you create the bare bones of a social media strategy and save you a lot of hassle and time making mistakes through trial and error.

Identify target location:

The second thing to do to find your ideal customers on social media, is narrowing your target down to a geographic area. Again, this provides you with a concrete benchmark, from which you can conduct more market research.

Specifically, there are hashtags that are used for each specific geographic area. Do a little bit of research and find out which are the most popular ones for both your geographic location, as well as the interests of your demographic so you can capitalize on their interests by getting involved in conversations about trending topics and more.

Pay for it:

Another thing you can do to get in front of your ideal networks is advertise.
The social media networks we participate in have amazing data collected on all of us. Thus, they’ve got very specific demographic information available for you to advertise and get in front of an audience that maybe isn’t part of your existing community.

Solicit Reviews:

The last thing that you can do is solicit referrals and recommendations on all your social media properties by having people endorse you. Endorsements not only provide new customers with a level of trust that you’re a reputable business, but this activity also provides exposure to your recommender’s network, who are much more likely to buy from you than a total stranger.

How have you found your ideal customers on social media? Share with me in the comments below.

And, if you found this valuable, please consider sharing with your network!

You can also watch this one minute tip as well as others on our Youtube page!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8uCMBTCKZ8

3 Tips to Grow and Enrich Your LinkedIn Network

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building-your-linkedin-networkHaving a strong LinkedIn network is very beneficial to your professional career. It can help you land a job, learn new things and make new connections that you never thought would be possible. Although many professionals have a LinkedIn profile, many are still not taking full advantage of the social network. The following are three proven ways to grow and enrich your network on LinkedIn:

1. Go to Events & Take People for Coffee (Add people in the moment)

The most fundamental way to grow your LinkedIn network is also the most old school, but going to events gives you a chance to meet unique individuals with many different backgrounds. Instead of bombing out random add requests on LinkedIn, make real human connections first, before adding anyone. Once you’ve made the initial interaction, consider taking the new connection for coffee. Even if the individual doesn’t work in your field, bring a list of random questions as there is still likely something to be learned or another networking opportunity may present itself. An under-utilized strategy for events and coffee meetings is bringing out your smart phone and adding people with the LinkedIn app on the spot. That way you won’t forget, or have to remember cards or emails.

2. Engage with Your Network (comment, like, share, endorse or recommend)

Similar to all other social networks, you cannot expect anyone to engage with you if you aren’t engaging first. More active members of your network will likely share original composition posts which are great for commenting on with your thoughts, or sharing the post with your network. These posts will allow you to get your profile out to more people, in a shorter amount of time. Less active networks will share trending articles, memes, videos or inspirational messages and liking or commenting on these types of posts will show your support for the author but it can also open up the opportunity for other LinkedIn members to see your profile and connect. If you’ve worked directly with a connection for some time, consider endorsing one or a few of their skills and if you’d really like to show your support, write a personal recommendation. These are all ways to ensure your profile stays active and relevant.

3. Share Original Content

Once you feel comfortable with the size and engagement of your network, it’s time to start
sharing original content. The best way to share your ideas is with LinkedIn’s publisher feature. Don’t focus on the length so much as the content on the page. Write about topics you have first hand experience in and do your best to provide real world value that can be applied by anyone who has the drive. Adapt your content overtime as you may notice that some topics tend to be more popular than others. Interviewing a colleague or friend is a great place to start if you can’t come up with any unique ideas to write about. If you already have some writing experience, you can use these posts to showcase your knowledge, expertise or unique skills, all of which will show well to your network.

In a world where “who knows you” is often more important than “who you know” growing and enriching your LinkedIn network can take you a long way professionally. With a few simple steps, you’ll see your network grow exponentially and over time the engagement will increase and the possibilities for the future will be endless.

“There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.”
– Jeff Bezos

Optimize your Marketing Strategy with this Free Web Tool

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marketing strategyAlthough the entry barrier to online businesses such as e-commerce is lower than for their offline equivalents, making a success of your enterprise is far from guaranteed.

Fortunately, there are countless web tools that you can use to help you get your business where you want it to be. Not all of these tools come cheap though, which can be off-putting for a fledgling project unsure of how much they can afford to spend on something that might prove unnecessary.

Thanks to the people behind our favourite search engine however, one of the most powerful tools available to help you optimize your marketing strategy is completely free.

Google Analytics is available to everyone, easy to set up, and gives you insights into where your traffic is coming from and what they are doing once they arrive, helping you to study the following data and make the tweaks that will improve your conversion rates.

Preferable referrals

Google Analytics allows you to see where your traffic is coming from, including those being sent there by way of referrals. This category tells you which websites are directing traffic back to your website, how much they are sending, and what it’s doing when it’s there.

If you’re paying for any online advertising as part of your marketing strategy, perhaps from the big yellow book company or other directory sites, this data can help you decide if this is money well spent or not.

If after analyzing your referral traffic you feel the amount is too low, or that the bounce rate is too high, you may want to consider dropping some of the referral services you are currently not getting value for money from and concentrating on the ones that you are.

Social engagements

Getting the most out of social media is a key part of any good marketing strategy, and Google Analytics can help you see how well your own efforts are faring.

By looking at the statistics in the Social tab, you will find exactly which of the various platforms you’re posting on are performing well, and which aren’t.

Are you getting more traffic from Twitter than from Facebook? Does your traffic from Instagram stick around longer than those who came from Pinterest? Do those coming from Google+ or LinkedIn look at more pages? Who makes the most comments? Who bounces?

And now that you know, what are you going to do with the information? Will you concentrate more on those who already perform well, or try to bring the others up to speed too?

The choice is yours, but at least now you have the data to help you decide.

Content with your content?

If you’re regularly paying for or writing your own blog posts, producing videos, creating infographics, or any other type of content as part of your marketing strategy, it needs to be hitting its intended mark if you’re to be successful.

Another way of using Google Analytics to help optimize your marketing strategy is to learn what type of content really resonates with your visitors and what leaves them unimpressed.

By measuring what content people like, by noting how long they’re spending on the different types and how often people bounce from them, you can get an idea of what topics people are interested in, whether videos are adding value to your marketing strategy, or if the time spent creating infographics is worth it.

As a free tool, Google Analytics provides priceless insights into the behaviour of your web traffic, helping you to optimize your marketing strategy by understanding where your audience is coming from, how effective your social media is, and what type of content you should concentrate on going forward.

To learn more about Google Analytics, watch our Youtube channel here:

3 Reasons Your Business Needs A Mobile Friendly Website

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mobile content marketingThe sight of commuters on the train, coffee drinkers in the cafe, or employees on their lunch break engrossed in their smartphones or tablets has become ubiquitous through recent years, and is a social trend that should force business owners everywhere to take their mobile content marketing seriously.

However, the single most important aspect for any business with aspirations of engaging with a mobile audience is to have a mobile friendly website that seamlessly resizes all the content to fit whatever screen it is being viewed on.

Not only are those that don’t seen as outdated by visitors, they will also find their Google rankings suffer on mobile searches too. As the internet goes mobile, failing to adapt means being left behind, and all the mobile content marketing in the world won’t help if your website is stuck in the dark ages.

What follows is why your business needs a mobile friendly website.

A mobile friendly public

The days when laptop or desktop internet usage accounted for the majority of time spent online are over, with the tipping point for mobile usage surpassing browsing on more static machines coming in early 2015.

Put simply, more people are using their phones and tablets to browse the internet than are using laptops and computers, and they expect your website to work on their devices.

Responsive websites take all of your content, be that copy or images, sliders, or even products for sale, and automatically resize it to fit the screen it is being viewed on, while menus too are adjusted to enable the user to easily navigate your site.

In truth, the average mobile device user now takes this for granted, and will only notice when it doesn’t happen, at which point they will most likely leave even your best mobile content marketing efforts unread and go elsewhere.

While the obvious benefit here is to the user with the site becoming easier and more enjoyable to navigate than the full web version when viewed on a mobile device, there is a certain search engine giant who will also like your new responsive website more than your old one.

Google responds to responsive

On April 21st, 2015, Google launched a brand new mobile algorithm that rewards responsive sites in their mobile search results.

Those searching for products and services on Google using their mobile device will get results that take into account which sites are mobile friendly, with those that aren’t finding themselves omitted from the search, no matter how good their mobile content marketing.

Google’s new algorithm looks to see whether a site’s text is readable without zooming, if the content is sized so no horizontal scrolling is required, and that links are far enough apart that the correct one can easily be tapped; all criteria that a responsive website should have no fear of fulfilling.

If you want to be rewarded for your mobile content marketing efforts, you will now need a mobile friendly website to rank in mobile Google searches.

Adjusting to fit your market

If you needed any more convincing of the need for a mobile friendly, responsive website for your business, take a look at your competitors.

The chances are they have already made the shift, meaning they have a massive advantage over you when it comes to reaching the ever growing mobile internet user demographic.

As well as providing a better user experience and being more visible on mobile Google searches, your competitors will also be saving time and money behind the scenes that can be put to use in their mobile content marketing campaign.

Before the advent of responsive design, site owners had the option of providing a mobile version of their site, although this meant paying for, maintaining, and constantly updating two separate versions of the same site. If you are still doing this, a responsive website will eliminate the need, allowing you to maintain one version of your site that will function perfectly on any device.

With more people browsing and buying on mobile devices than desktop or laptop, Google rewarding mobile friendly devices to such a degree that those without the functionality are excluded from mobile search results, and your competitors most probably already on the mobile friendly website train, can you and your mobile content marketing afford not to join them?

Check out our One minute tip on Mobile Marketing on Youtube here: