In September we launched a live discussion series that was created to give you–our valued customers–direct access to the experts at Insightly. This month’s discussion will be hosted by Bryan Bagley, Senior Account Manager at Insightly. Bryan will be sharing insights into the oft dreaded cold calling process, providing advice and techniques that will help keep you and your potential clients feeling good about the sales process.
“My goal is to provide a positive area where people can sharpen their skills and become more successful in their profession,” says Bagley. To begin building that foundation of sales success, he’ll be covering core topic areas, including:
Making your Cold Calls Successful — Keep your ultimate goal in mind as you are making your calls.
You’ve Closed the Call – Now What? — Once you’ve closed your call and gotten someone on the line, keep it direct and professional.
Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Customers Closer — After you’ve closed the deal, don’t disappear!
No time, No Problem
Don’t worry. You won’t miss a thing if you can’t attend. Every edition of the Insightly Insider Discussion Series will be archived and available on Insightly.com.
Insightly CRM includes all the tools your team needs to improve collaboration and get more done effectively. Try out all of Insightly’s features by signing up for a 14-day free trial.
There are a plethora of software-as-a-service solutions available today. From project management to customer relationship management, businesses are using these tools to become more efficient. There’s just one problem. Many of these solutions aren’t solutions at all—instead they’re creating new challenges for businesses.
CRM is one of the most necessary and utilized SaaS solutions available today. Still, a 2013 Forrester study found that poor CRM strategies caused significant problems for 40% of respondents, and 42% cited user issues.
While CRM is a powerful tool to help close more leads and encourage repeat business, it will fail without an effective strategy in place. If your business is struggling to reap the benefits of your current system, here are a few tips to painlessly switch to a new CRM and implement a stronger strategy.
Start With a Holistic Approach
Before you can dig into the details and find the perfect new CRM for your company, you need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish.
Questions to consider:
What experience do you want your customer to have with your brand?
What are the current roadblocks holding you back from providing that experience?
How can you overcome those roadblocks? What will CRM success look like?
What are the metrics you need to track using your CRM?
With these answers, you’ll have a better understanding of what you’re looking for and how you will use your new CRM solution.
Craft Your CRM Strategy
With the foundation in place, you’re ready to start defining your CRM strategy. As you pull your strategy together, consider the following:
How will each person use the CRM across the organization to achieve success?
What will the customer’s journey look like throughout the buying cycle and while engaging with different areas of your company?
What are the action items that must happen to make this experience a success?
How will you train your staff on how to use the CRM effectively?
As you implement the CRM, how will you collect feedback?
Who is responsible for maintaining the CRM?
How will you know when you’ve reached a level of success?
There are a variety of levels at play here. From the start of your customer’s journey to the post-purchase follow up and re-purchase nurturing, your company has a variety of touchpoints with your buyers.
Outlining each of these touchpoints defines how each department will engage with your buyer for the maximum success. It ensures no one drops the ball during any stage so your customer has a seamless experience throughout their entire time working with your business.
Next Steps
Ultimately, your CRM strategy is built around your customers and how you will respond to their needs.
Define your customer’s needs.
Map out your buyer’s journey.
Strategize how you’ll use your CRM to compliment that journey.
Define your processes.
Outline the requirements you need from your CRM.
Train your employees on how to use the new CRM to drive their success.
The more you define the big picture, the clearer your strategy becomes. Then, it’s a matter of putting the right service in the right hands of your employees to empower them to make a bigger impact on your buyers. After all, they’re at the heart of everything you do.
At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
In this era of personal service, customers have come to expect you to anticipate their needs and know their history when they call. CRM is the tool that allows you to form personal relationships with people you’ve never seen face-to-face. The data and information you collect gives you insights you could never access before.
In the past, the first impression a potential customer had from your business was either initiated by a salesperson or delivered via one-way advertising. Things have changed. Today, their first impression might be delivered via marketing channels, search results, or social media contacts. You have the unique opportunity to do more than make the sale. You can start a relationship that lasts a long time and leads to a lot of sales opportunities.
Capture and Use Information in Real Time
Your CRM offers you a glimpse into your customer’s lives as they happen. When a customer calls, a quick peek at their social media profile can tell you if they recently suffered a loss, are planning a trip, expecting a baby, or celebrating a new job…information that can help you anticipate what they need and help you find a solution to meet their needs.
Before you call your customer, you can check to see when he’s most active and upbeat on social media. Look for a pattern—it’ll show you when he’s most alert and least busy, a great time to reach out. Calling at the time most convenient for your customer is courteous and they’re sure to appreciate it.
Take It to the Streets
You’re no longer restricted to contact via phone, mail, or even email. Your options are wide open. You can engage your customers where they hang out. Use your CRM data to figure out where the largest number of your customers hang out, and join the conversation there. Stay away from private communications unless you’re invited, but do respond to comments and share what they post when appropriate.
Most importantly, take notes. That’s where a lot of CRM users miss out on some of the benefits. By making personal observations on your customer records, you can add intuitive data to your store of knowledge. The true value comes when you aggregate your data—perhaps you’ll find out you have lots of customers who need a good or service you do not yet provide.
Answer the Negative
One of the most important bits of information a company can gather is what’s bugging their customers. CRM coupled with social media is prime listening ground for complaints. Pay attention to find out what you’re doing wrong, why you didn’t make the sale, how a customer service interaction went wrong, and why your product isn’t quite up to par. You can also find out how you stack up to your competition by listening for keywords as well as brand mentions.
It may sound like a lot of work, but integrations can augment social listening. For example, you can set up a Zap in Zapier to alert a social media rep whenever your brand is mentioned on Twitter or Facebook and write the comment to the CRM record.
Negative information shows you exactly where your weaknesses are and what’s holding you back. You’ll be able to spot trends and use the information to develop new products and services. Take the guesswork out of a new launch and release upgrades your customers actually ask for.
Better Understand Buyer Behavior
This is where the data magic really happens. Data offers buying insights marketers could only dream of until now. Paying close attention to your customers and their buying patterns gives you hands-on knowledge of what works, what converts, and what customers ignore.
You’ll be able to spot brand fatigue—that moment when they are so sick of endless emails they send them straight to the trash without so much as a glance. When they stop paying attention, it’s time to change tactics. Target better, reduce the frequency of your emails, and consider what they did open. Figure out what went wrong and make a plan to get it back on track. Integrate your CRM with your email campaigns to keep track of it all…and to better understand what went wrong.
Existing customers are the most valuable component of your marketing. They’re more likely to buy and to spend more money than first-timers. If you pay attention and treat them right throughout your relationship, they’ll reward you by purchasing from you every time, and by telling their friends on social media. They are your street team, your army of volunteer brand evangelists, and your number one source of revenue.
At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips.
Should You Insure Your Business Against Cybercrime?
According to a 2014 report published by the Center For International Studies, the Internet economy generates between $2 trillion and $3 trillion, annually, and that figure is growing rapidly. The same report estimates that cybercrime extracts between 15% and 20% of the value created by the Internet – a very sobering statistic.
So what should you do to keep your data secure? Cybercrime experts say you should start on the home front by first instituting strong cultural controls that will mitigate this type of fraud making it past an initial email or phone call. The next step is to consider purchasing a cybercrime insurance policy. Is it worth the investment? Yes and no, say the experts. Depending on your industry, premiums can range from as little as $649 for $500,000 of coverage for a doctor’s office (for example) to $84,000 for $5 million in coverage for a $4 billion pharmacy benefits management company.
Industry leaders further emphasize that there really is not “one size fits all” policy, so it’s important to work with a knowledgeable agent who can assist you in custom-tailoring a policy that makes sense for you.
At Insightly we take data security seriously. Whether you’re a new Insightly user or a veteran, practicing good internal controls starts on your business home front. The System Settings feature in Insightly gives you control over providing the appropriate permission levels to your user base. Broken down into three levels, the following types of account access allow for various functions:
Administrator (paid and unpaid accounts) – Can change system settings and permissions, add/delete users, and access billing functions, such as changing credit card information or viewing invoices.
Account Owner (paid accounts only) – Can perform all administrator functions and will receive invoices via email.
Non-administrator – Cannot make system settings changes and can only view and edit records that they have permission to see.
Note: If you are the account owner/Insightly administrator, you can give other users administrator privileges on your account.
This setting is located on the System Settings > Users page. Click the Profile icon > System Settings > Users to access the user settings.
Click the Administrator checkbox to enable or disable the admin option for each user.
An Eye on Teamwork
Mention team building exercises (e.g. a Karoake sing-along or building a human pyramid) and your staff may want to run straight to the nearest exit. If done with finesse, however, academic research shows that team-based events really can help increase employee engagement, alleviate stress, and make your employees feel more valued.
When selecting a team building event, team building coaches encourage employers to focus on activities that help put employees at ease and create a sense of time well spent. Here are a few top choices:
Volunteering–The best activities are those that the entire team feels proud to participate in.
Field trips–Casual trips such visiting a park or museum or going to a baseball game.
Professional development activities—Quality workshops give teams the opportunity to stay up to date with education and develop professional relationships in new settings.
Shared meals–This allows for casual conversation in a comfortable environment, letting team members get to know each other outside of work.
Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.
Send Us Your TipsWould you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.
About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
CRM has a reputation for being a “soft” business endeavor that can’t easily be measured. How do you numerically quantify something that has “relationship” in its name?
That’s outmoded thinking. CRM can be measured and, if you’re serious about your business, it has to be measured.
So where do you start with measuring CRM? Here are some of the most essential facets of any CRM program that you should start quantifying and tracking today.
Outbound Sales Calls Made
The lifeblood of every company is sales, and the key ingredient of any sales organization is the sales call. Depending on the specifics of the enterprise, some companies may operate by undertaking only a handful of sales calls each day. Other companies may undertake hundreds or thousands of them. Either way, it’s important to know how many calls your sales staff is making, and – more importantly – how that number is changing over time. Track sales calls on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and watch for trends. Daily calls going down over time may be a sign of trouble – or it may be an indicator that salespeople are spending more time and care to close each prospect.
Inbound/Passive Sales Inquiries Received
Not all inquiries come from the efforts of your sales staff. Sometimes the best leads come from passive inquiries that come in via visitors engaging with your website, social media, or other brand-building efforts. Track these inquiries – not just the overall number received, but the origin of each inquiry, as well. If they’re going down over time, you may need to redouble your social media efforts, freshen up your website, or consider some SEO tactics.
Sales Closing Rate
One of the most critical metrics to understand is how often prospects are being turned into actual customers. This is a simple calculation that measures how successful your sales force is at closing deals. Naturally, you want this number to be as high as possible – and to increase over time. If you want to get more detailed, you can look at this metric on a salesperson by salesperson basis, and by the channel through which they became a lead.
Marketing Campaign ROI
Your marketing campaigns, be they paid advertisements or more grassroots outreach programs, will likely have a primary goal of generating sales. Every campaign should be measured: how many leads did it generate, how many leads were converted to customers, and how much money did those customers generate for the company in relation to the cost of the campaign.
Customer Retention Rate
It’s commonly said that it costs up to 30 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an old one. There’s value in ongoing, sustained customer relationships, and it’s important to measure whether you’re doing a good job of keeping existing customers in the fold. This rate is calculated as such: subtract the number of new customers you acquired during a period from the total number of customers you had at the end of the period. Divide this number by the total number of customers you had at the start of the period. That’s your existing customer retention rate. Ensuring this number remains high is especially essential for businesses that operate on a subscription basis, like fitness centers or many online services.
Length of Sales Cycle
Measure the time from when a prospect is first identified to the time when a sale is closed. That’s your sales cycle. Some companies may be able to close sales in the same day, but in many businesses closing a sale can take weeks or months. This can be tracked through your CRM system and, as with other metrics on this list, measured over time. The goal at most businesses is to shorten the sales cycle, as this allows your sales force to spend more time cultivating new leads.
Lifetime Customer Value
One of the often unsung metrics of CRM is the value of a customer. What will your business earn from someone over his tenure as a customer of your company? Based on that customer’s purchasing patterns and the typical amount of time over which a customer remains engaged with your company you can estimate this value. Doing this calculation can often be a sobering math exercise, showing just how much some customers contribute to your bottom line – and how much you rely on some of your biggest clients. Customer value also lets you prioritize your marketing – both in determining where to offer discounts and deals to existing customers, and in identifying the types of highly profitable customers where you may want to focus future lead generation efforts.
Other Metrics
This is just a small subset of the kind of metrics you can generate through your CRM data. As you become more comfortable with quantifying this data, you can start slicing the above metrics more finely (such as looking at the sales cycle by salesperson, location, or whether the lead was active or passive) and adding additional metrics (such as metrics surrounding customer service calls and competitive analysis). The data is at your fingertips. It’s up to you to put it to work!
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
About the Author: Christopher Null is an award-winning business and technology journalist. His work frequently appears on Wired, PC World, and TechBeacon. Follow him on Twitter @christophernull.
Running a small business isn’t easy. And when you’re limited to just one or two people managing the entire thing, cloud-based tools are the perfect solution to increase productivity and improve efficiency. Tools are available to cover the major areas of business operations, and they can scale to grow as your business does. Run your business with tools similar to what enterprises use, at a price that won’t break the bank.
Contact Relationship Management (CRM)
Using a CRM tool like Insightly makes managing client relationships and projects much simpler. Keep track of where all of your customers are in the sales and marketing funnel, send all leads to a central location, assign tasks, identify sales opportunities, and more. Plans start at free and go up with usage and features.
Accounting
QuickBooks Online® lets you manage all your accounting without the hassle of software licensing on your desktop, with plans starting at $10.36 per month. Access it from anywhere there’s an Internet connection, so you never have to worry about forgetting to reconcile your receipts again. Plus, as an added bonus, it integrates with a number of tools, including PayPal™ and FreshBooks.
Due offers online invoicing and time tracking for individuals and teams. It integrates with popular project management software, BaseCamp, and pricing plans start at free.
Office Suite/Document Management
Google Apps for Work™ gives your business access to an outrageous number of tools including: Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets, Hangouts, and more…all for $10 per month or less. Get all the features of Gmail with a branded domain email, plus word processing, spreadsheets, video conferencing, file storage, and more.
Dropbox® is an ideal solution for businesses that need file sharing/collaboration and file backup protection. With free and paid plans up to $15 per user, per month, you can choose the storage space that best fits your needs and upgrade any time. With free automation tools like IFTTT (If This, Then That) and Zapier (free for 5 zaps, premium prices depend on number of additional tasks), you can even set email attachments to automatically save to Dropbox, saving you time and protecting your files.
Productivity and Workflow
Hubstaff is a ridiculously cheap project management time tracking tool that’s particularly useful when working with freelancers who telecommute. Once the software is installed on the user’s computer and the project is started, screenshots are taken are random intervals, without disturbing the user. This ensures the freelancer you’ve hired is actually working on your project, and keeps track of time spent. Hourly rates can be set, and manual time can be added. Multiple team members can be managed on a single project, and multiple projects can run at the same time. Various plans determine the number of staff and number of projects that can be active, so you can scale up as necessary. Premium pricing plans max out at $10 per month.
Trello is a free card-based project management/workflow tool. The card-based system allows it to be adapted to any workflow setup, from customer service and support to freelance assignments. Create boards, share boards with various staff members, and collaborate together using cards on the boards.
Email and Email Marketing
Boomerang for Gmail is an extension that allows you to schedule emails. This is great if you have to work strange hours, and want to be sure your email is seen – but don’t want to forget to send the email at a certain time. You can also set reminders for yourself to follow up on important emails, and keep a cleaner inbox. It’s free for a limited account and goes up from $4.99 per month as you add features.
MailChimp is a free email marketing platform. Create and manage one or more email marketing lists, keep track of who’s opened your emails, etc. Emails can be personalized and automated, and sent at any time. The free-forever plan allows you to send 12,000 emails to up to 2,000 subscribers.
Sales
Quote Roller is a proposal tool starting at $19 per month that helps automate sales documents. Automate quotes, project proposals, and contracts. Spend time getting all the documents created now with the flexibility send them in a matter of minutes later. Follow what happens after you send the documents to clients, and even address their concerns with real-time comments.
For an extra efficiency boost, integrate these tools with your CRM. With a central location for these core areas of business operations, your processes will run smoother, making you more productive in less time. Who says you have to be a corporate giant to look and run like one?
At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips.
Winning the Paper Chase
Image courtesy of freedigitalimages.net
Paper is so prevalent in our daily lives that it’s easy to forget how much of it goes to waste.
Before you click the print button, ask yourself if you really need to have a hard copy of that meeting agenda. Why not make it part of a slide presentation, instead? Better yet, share it over email. If you want to get a cleaner picture of just how much paper you’re consuming, GreenPrint and EcoPrint2 are two software programs that identify areas of waste in printing and recommend ways to improve consumption.
You can also conserve paper and create a more eco-friendly footprint in your office environment by purchasing chlorine-free paper or paper that’s made with more sustainable substances like bamboo, hemp, or organic cotton. Another paper-saving technique is to keep your mailing lists up to date to avoid sending out unnecessary letters or other marketing materials.
You can further curb paper usage by double checking the default settings on your photocopier and printer. Make sure each device is set up so that it reverts back to printing single copies after each use. The alternative is to set up your printer so that it prints double-sided copies by default.
Setting Up Teams in Insightly to Prepare for Future Hires
If employees are wearing multiple hats in your business–but you hope to expand your team and simplify the roles–you should plan ahead for that now by creating “mock” teams.
You can create teams in Insightly with as little as one team member (user). Instead of adding specific user names, include the name of the job title that you will eventually want to hire out. While you are still filling all of those positions, you can assign yourself to those teams in order to set up and monitor repeating tasks.
When you’re ready to hire out that position, change the team member from yourself to your new hire. This will simplify needing to reassign each repeating task and activity set task when you hire your new employee.
With admin access, setting up teams and/or individual users in Insightly can be accomplished in a few steps:
Select System Settings from the drop down menu
Click the Add Team button
To add a new user (job title) to the list, select the drop down menu and choose User Details
Include the name of the job title in the user details Name Field, then click Save User Details
(Tip compliments of Insightly power user, Erin Mathie, of Business Made Simple.)
Follow the Sunrise
A good night’s sleep is a precious commodity when you’re running a small business. In fact, sleep studies reveal that feeling chronically sleep deprived due to lack of sleep or trouble falling asleep (insomnia) are directly tied to the artificial light (e.g. television, computer screens, tablet readers) we subject ourselves to daily. It turns out, those attractively glowing screens are confusing our internal (circadian) clocks. Mother Nature to the rescue!
Scientific research confirms that nature has created the ideal alarm clock in the form of natural sunlight. And, the best way to avoid bouts of insomnia and improve overall sleep quality is to seek out exposure to natural sunlight. Easier said than done, however, as waking up to the sun shining on our faces is wishful thinking for those with predawn work schedules. Couple that with shorter days of winter, and uninterrupted sleep may seem like a pipe dream.
Image courtesy of Freedigitalimage.net
Thanks to modern science, you can bring sunlight into your bedroom anytime with specialized alarm clocks called wake up lights. Designed to mimic natural sunlight, wake up lights are designed to pull us out of sleep by slowly increasing us to the exposure of light rather than jarring us out of sleep with a loud noise.
Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.Send Us Your TipsWould you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.
About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Search engine optimization is one of the most vital marketing channels for local businesses these days.
Think about how many people walk around a city each day and will search on their phone to determine where they’ll eat lunch, meet a friend for coffee, or pick up flowers on their way home.
Three years ago, Google reported that 50% of mobile searches were local. At the time, that number was increasing, so by now that number is likely much higher. This search engine land article reveals some heavy statistics about consumer behavior with local search.
In a more recent study, Greg Sterling found that 96% of all PC owners, 79% of mobile phone owners and 81% of tablet owners use their devices to regularly conduct local searches. In addition, the study found that the top reason for these searches was for a specific business, and the second most common reason was a “category search.”
Basically, these were searches looking for a business within a specific product or service category, without a specific business in mind.
As a small business owner, why wouldn’t you try and take full advantage of making sure your business is there when those searchers are looking for your service? The advertising methods of old are precisely that, old. It is time for small and local business owners to upgrade their efforts in order to enhance their bottom line in today’s marketplace.
However, as we all know, it is much tougher to implement an SEO strategy than simply saying that every local and small business owner SHOULD capitalize on search. Therefore, let’s break down the process for local business owners into some simple steps that will completely change the online visibility of their company.
Commit To It
If you’re committed to being known in your local area, you have to be found first.
This is not as simple as just having a Facebook account. Yes, a complete local marketing strategy needs things like social media and email to engage with people who know your business. But, the search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or even YouTube are where new customers can discover your business for the first time.
This is where you can truly distinguish your presence as a business.
Luckily for all of us, search engines are quite literally robots. They are extremely smart and thorough machines, but they have simple needs, and can even be predictable.
Optimizing your small or local business in the most effective way can come down to such simple steps as being consistent and thorough as you list and promote your business information on the web. Please the robots by giving them exactly what they want, simple and confirmable data, and they will please you with the results.
This step seems simple, but it takes a large commitment from companies. A company has to make the conscious decision to create and maintain consistent information, and be thorough enough to promote this information properly throughout the internet.
By simply maintaining this commitment level, your company will have a leg up on the majority of small and local business owners.
Keep Your NAP Consistent
Your business’ NAP (Name, address, and phone) is some of the most basic, but crucial information for search engines to identify your business. Moz calls NAP “the thumbprint of a business online.”
Search engines will cross reference the mentions of your NAP as they each individually appear with any additional mentions over the web to determine validity of your business.
Think of it this way: if a business has its NAP listed identically in 30 locations on the web across a number of websites (which could be business directories, articles, press releases, social media, etc), then Google will deem that a more valid business compared to a business with inconsistent or fewer listings.
This gets back to our main issue, make the search engine robots happy. Keep your company information clean and consistent, and the robots are happy.
In order to ensure you are in compliance with this rule, first start by making sure your NAP is always listed correctly on your site. Make sure it’s correctly listed on each page it appears on, and if you have multiple locations, have those listed separately on correlating location pages under the same site.
If you’re moving your business, you need to make sure all of your business information is updated so that you can maximize the clarity of your NAP to search bots. If you moved and failed to update your NAP information online, you’ll confuse search engines, and that leads to an unhappy robot.
Image courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net
Don’t Get Involved in “Black Hat” Tactics
Realizing that utilizing relevant keywords to increase your ranks can make black hat SEO tempting. When people say “black hat,” what they generally are referring to are tactics that boost a page’s ranking while violating a search engine’s terms of service.
Some of the more common black hat tactics are keyword stuffing, hidden text and sneaky redirects. All of these techniques were once popular but since have been deemed detrimental to the industry as a whole and so, have become penalized by search engines.
At this time, and especially as a small business, employing “black hat” strategies or trying to outsmart search engines to get on the front page of Google is just not worth it. If you gain any relative momentum from trying to do something sneaky, you will be noticed and stopped by Google.
Have Positive (and Relevant) Content
Another critical element of having successful SEO as a small or local business is having positive content on your site. The more interesting and relevant information you have on your website, the more likely search engines will be to able to find you.
Write up some blog posts or how-to’s that are related to any problems that your good or service solves. Make your site engaging for visitors, and keep the content relevant to searches by having page titles influenced by keyword research specific for your business.
For example, say you own a local basement waterproofing company, write an informative post titled “Basics of a Healthy Basement,” or make a demonstrative video titled “5 Household Tools That Can be Used to Waterproof Your Basement”. These would help your business’ SEO by directing people on the internet that need waterproofing services to your business site.
Build On-Going Citations
Building strong citations is one of the best ways to signal to search engines that your website is relevant to a specific location and for a specific line of work or subject. They’re the perfect place to get your NAP out there and give your business a strong catalog of listings.
You can claim your listings on Google Plus, Yahoo, and Bing for free, and if you haven’t done that yet, stop reading now, go do that, and come back for the rest of this article.
Seriously, having your business listed on Google Plus is giving Google your NAP info in the clearest way, which the search engine will appreciate and reward you for. Same goes for Bing and Yahoo.
Most people know about Yelp or Angie’s list, but there are literally dozens more business directory sites you can take advantage of by claiming your online citations and keeping your NAP listed consistently across the web. You can try claiming as many of these as you can, or you can simply hire a local SEO service that already has an expert methodology to build out your citations properly.
Local citations are specific, as they have a focused target audience, and therefore they tend to be more effective in communicating to search engines.
There may not be one singular method for best employing SEO as a small or local business, but there are definitely steps that every company and business owner can take in order to properly and effectively implement SEO into their business. The trick, as always, is finding good advisors and following through with your efforts.
And, as always, keep the search engine robots happy.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
About the Author: Luke Harsel is currently an SEO apprentice at I’m From the Future studying content and outreach. When not on the Internet, he enjoys riding his bike and playing musical instruments, but not always at the same time.
Scope creep. A concept that strikes fear in the heart of every project manager. Content can be a slippery slope when you’re racing against the competition to build your brand, show your expertise, and earn the trust of your customers, you may find yourself sacrificing quality to post new content more often.
Your challenge is to produce enough quality content to keep your brand in the public eye. Without a clear strategy, it can get out of hand. Here’s how you can stay on budget and still deliver the goods.
Brainstorming and buy-ins
You want your blog to be informative and have an insider feel, and the best people to produce that kind of content are your employees. Asking your employees to blog has benefits them by making them feel more valued and valuable. But, let’s be honest, not every employee is a writer.
That’s where brainstorming comes in. Schedule a meeting every two weeks to brainstorm blog content. Invite stakeholders from each department, especially those on the front lines: customer service and sales.
You’ll also want to hear from the back end – whoever is monitoring your analytics. If you’re using a CRM with comprehensive reporting features, you have a wealth of data at your disposal. You’ll be able to spot trends, find out what customers are discussing on social media, and develop a comprehensive customer persona.
Using input from all departments, develop topics based on questions customers ask and problems they encounter. Your blog calendar should include a nice mix of informational topics, interaction, and personality.
Employees who don’t have blogging skills (or the time) can contribute ideas and knowledge by way of bullet points to be sent to a writer.
Be sure to appoint an editor who can fact and quality check everything posted, make sure enough content is submitted, and ensure that sensitive company information doesn’t accidentally go public. An experienced editor will help protect your online reputation.
Stretch your most valuable assets
Buzzsumo analyzed thousands of posts and found that the most shared content is long…really long. More than 3,000 words. Professionally written content of length can be very costly, and your customers might not actually read it.
To make the most of an expensive piece of content, you can:
Break points into shorter blog posts and discuss one concept at a time in more depth.
Make a slide presentation with bullet points from a report.
Schedule dozens of tweets and social media posts with snippets of information.
Discuss the information in a video.
Create a how-to teaching viewers to apply the information you’ve presented.
Schedule a livestream webinar with Q&A to discuss your findings.
Create eye-catching graphics to tweet and post.
Curate content
The beauty of curated content is simple: you don’t have to produce it or pay for it. Curation allows you to provide a lot of content, even if you don’t have a lot of resources. You can add value with commentary and your own insight in just a few sentences.
The content you pull into your site should be relevant to your industry, interesting, and new.
Ask for guest posts
Most blogs have a “write for us” page with guidelines about what they are willing to post. As your blog grows in popularity, writers will likely contact you to offer guest posts. Accept only quality posts, and make sure any links are to authoritative, high-quality sites.
You can also invite execs from partner industries to share their expertise.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Invite your readers to participate
User-generated content (if appropriate) can be a fun and interesting way to get your customers involved:
com asks users to submit designs, which users them vote on. The most popular designs based on pre-order sales, are printed and delivered.
Long before your content budget spins out of control, you can create a strategy to contribute, curate, and invite. Done well, you can provide a wide variety of content to interest and entertain your customers, even on a limited budget.
At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life.
Making a Digital Move
Have you ever given any thought to what it means to make a “digital move?” By my definition, making a digital move is about upgrading the way you manage your business-related data. If you find yourself in need of an upgrade, take the time to prepare a strategy.
As you begin a digital move, your first task should be to ask yourself, “what do I move and what do I toss?” Insightly CRM makes that part of the decision making process a bit easier because it allows you create custom fields that I find to be useful for organizing existing data. For example, before I migrate data over to Insightly, I like start be creating a custom field called “met date.” I also create a field called “met where,” which helps me put the initial meeting into context, particularly if and when I see that person again.
Even with the best of planning, organizing data can feel like heavy lifting. The good news is that there are specialists who are adept at organizing data. Consider working with someone who can help you think through some of the nuances of what to toss, how to stage the move, and how to get familiar with your new digital data home. Also, talk to friends, colleagues, and others who share your industry or profession.
If your needs are going to be changing in the upcoming 3-5 years, be sure the system you move your data over to will be able to grow and adapt. You wouldn’t want to be moving your home every year, and the same is true with your digital home. Give yourself some time to adjust to your new digital digs. Be patient and congratulate yourself—moving isn’t easy.
One of the most powerful features of the Insightly + Xero integration is having the option to create draft Xero invoices right from your Insightly account. To create an invoice for a particular contact or organization, begin by logging into your Insightly and Xero accounts.
From your Insightly account you then:
Click the Xero subtab on an opportunity or project that’s linked to a Xero contact.
Click the Create Invoice Draft button.
Enter the name of the contact, project, or organization to bring up the associated record, then click the Create Invoice Draft button. If the correct Xero contact does not appear in the Contact list, cancel the action, then create a new contact using the Create Xero Contact button on the previous page.
After the Create New Invoice Draft in Xero pop-up window appears, simply click on the Create Invoice Draft button and the invoice, including the balance due, will be automatically generated.
Don’t Forget to Remember
Remembering faces and names is one of the most gratifying aspects of being a truly engaged business person. It can also be pretty challenging. You likely meet dozens of people in any given year, yet the chances of recalling every single person’s name are slim. Still, we all feel a deeper sense of being appreciated when someone we’ve met briefly not only remembers our face, but also remembers the name to match.
Fortunately, there are a few tricks–using a well tested technique called mnemonics–that can keep your memory for recalling names sharp. For instance, when you meet somebody for the first time, say their name back to them when they introduce themselves. Next, repeat the name in your head over and over. To help solidify the memory, continue to use their name in conversation as much as possible. If you’re still having trouble, make up a rhyme about their name: “Lisa with the Mona Lisa smile,” for example.
Creating a personalized trigger is also very effective. You can do this by associating names with things people tell you about themselves (hobbies, world travels, etc.) that will, in turn, trigger the sound or association of that person’s name in your mind. “Kevin finds the sport of fishing heaven” or “Judy likes to drink fruit punch.” You get the gist.
Playing the naming game may feel a bit silly, but it’s an easy trick that really works.
Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.
Send Us Your TipsWould you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.
About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
In this era of personal service, customers have come to expect you to anticipate their needs and know their history when they call. CRM is the tool that allows you to form personal relationships with people you’ve never seen face-to-face. The data and information you collect gives you insights you could never access before.
