user's Blog! – Page 32 – Just another WordPress site

September 5, 2016

Content Tracking: Tools to Find Your Top Performers

Content is essential to your online success, but it’s clear that slapping a few sentences together on the page isn’t going to cut it. Your content should focus on these seven rules for compelling and high-converting copy. Your content should:

Focus on the benefits, rather than the product. Show your customers what your product will do for them.
Speak to your readers – people (and search engines) want genuinely useful content.
Be supported by a killer headline – that’s what draws people in. Make sure the headline is on topic, though. Readers hate clickbait that doesn’t deliver.
Be simple. Easy readability matters.
Be supported by facts, stats, and resources for more information.
Include a call to action that tells your reader what you want them to do.

When you put these elements together, you’ve got a stellar piece worthy of publishing and tracking performance. If the post doesn’t do as well as you expect, it’s time to go back and adjust your strategy. Here are some tools to help you improve your content.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo allows you to find the most shared content on any website, any topic, or by any author. A free account is limited to five searches per day. Paid accounts, with prices starting at $99/month, offer additional features. WIth it, you can find topics doing well on major websites, see how your competitors are doing, and even find top influencers to help you promote your content. Once your content is published, you can use BuzzSumo to keep an eye on how well it’s doing.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is prehaps most well known for its link shortening abilities, but it does more than save space. Beyond getting your own vanity link shortener, you can share the shortened links and get analytics to show you how well your links perform. For each link you create and shorten with Bit.ly, you can get a report of how many clicks it received, down to the hour. It also will show you the platforms people used to share the link, so you can tell where your traffic is coming from. Plus, you can get a geographic distribution of clicks, which is helpful in optimizing and targeting your content on a global level.

You won’t get as many details as you would with Google Analytics, but multiple data sources can help you better adjust your targeting strategy.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free, highly robust tool for tracking content, and various other metrics, such as time on site, bounce rate, and more. With it, you can see which pages people visit when landing on your website, which pages they are on when they leave your website, the keywords they find your website with, and more. Each URL on your website will have traffic data available for it, so you can easily track which pieces of content are doing well. Plus, you’ll be able to see referrals from social media, so you can get a basic idea of how well your content is doing on social.

To enhance your experience with Google Analytics, you can integrate with a customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Insightly. Integration allows you to take the analytics data a bit further. You’ll see what content is bringing in leads, and follow leads through the sales funnel to determine if the content is playing a role in conversions. A native integration isn’t available at this time, but you can use tools like Zapier or Cloudpipes to automate integration.

Parse.ly

Parse.ly is a predictive analytics tool that allows publishers to track author performance or topics. It makes it easy for your business to capitalize on current web trends, promote in-demand content, and get recommended topics to expand your content empire. With it, you’ll get plenty of audience insight to help you see how your readers respond.There are three plans to choose from, and pricing varies based on audience size. All come with a trial.

Simplereach

Simplereach is a tool that collects real-time data to help track the impact of digital content. Users can gain insight into the direction they should be taking their content strategy to improve performance. Publishers can use it to promote their best content to attract a larger audience, and improve their native ad campaigns. Marketers can use it to measure and amplify their best content to increase brand awareness and bring additional profit. Pricing information is not available, as a demo must be requested.

Using any or all of these tools can help you see how your existing content is performing, and provide insights into how to make adjustments to your future content strategy to improve performance results. The more information you have about your audience and what they’re looking for, the better targeted your strategy can be.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

September 1, 2016

Beyond Keywords: How to Own Your Business’s Name on Google Searches

SEO is a venerable and often-discussed topic among SMB owners, and while SEO is still a critical endeavor, ranking for keywords alone is only part of the battle when it comes to managing your presence on search engines. That’s because while SEO is designed primarily to help your business’s web page rank highly for certain keywords related to your industry, it often does little when it comes to managing searches for the actual name of your business – or your personal name, if you don’t operate under a DBA.

If you think optimizing a term like “Bob’s Plumbing” doesn’t matter, you might be surprised. While the data vary from business to business, any enterprise is likely to find that a substantial portion of incoming traffic is based on searches for their actual business name. Consider for example the retail coffee business. Web searches for the term “coffee shop” are absolutely dwarfed by searches for “Starbucks.” Even though it is trivial for searchers to type “starbucks.com” into their browser, they frequently rely on sites like Google to shortcut things and make the process even easier. And why not? Google has maps, menus, reviews, and more, all at the ready, which give the search more context.

Starbucks is probably a lot bigger than your business, but the example is instructive for any SMB. While the company likely optimizes its websites to capture folks looking for “best brewed coffee,” it also has to manage what happens when people simply search for “Starbucks.” The ostensible goal not just that starbucks.com appears at the top of the results, but that the rest of the content on the search results page is relevant to Starbucks and paints the company in a positive light. Starbucks likely spends considerable effort and money ensuring that pages like this, which are completely relevant to a search for “Starbucks,” do not appear on that first page of search results. (This is part of the world of “online reputation management,” and there’s a sub-industry surrounding this that we’ll talk about later.)

Again, Starbucks is a big company that makes daily news, is publicly traded, and is part of the worldwide zeitgeist. What does a much smaller business, let’s say it’s a local plumber called Bob’s Plumbing, do to manage its search engine presence (again, outside of optimizing for terms like “Cleveland plumbing”)? As with the Starbucks example, if a user actively searches for “Bob’s Plumbing,” ideally the company’s website will be the first result. But all too often this is simply not the case. For smaller and newer brands, the real Bob’s Plumbing may not show up at all on the first page of search results, buried under a sea of competitive and/or irrelevant links. In cases like this, a customer will often simply go elsewhere.

SMBs that want to ensure they don’t lose these low-hanging customers who are actively trying to find them need to take a more holistic look at SEO than just optimizing for keywords. That requires leveraging both your website and social media sites to ensure that any search for your business’s name leads to not just the #1 search result on Google, but a flood of relevant results that dominate the entire first page.

Here are some tips on how to do that.

Start with Your Website…

For most businesses, this is the destination you’d ultimately like to appear as the top result for any search for your business’s name, and naturally it needs to be built with traditional SEO in mind, with appropriate keywords, lots of good content, high-quality images, and a responsive, mobile-friendly design. That’s all a given. Things get muddy when considering the title of the page, however. It’s become popular in recent years to pump everything into keywords, right down to the HTML title of the website (the title that Google uses when it figures out what to name a page in its search results). There are two schools of thought on this. In our Bob’s Plumbing example, he has two basic choices:

Name the site using SEO keywords: Something like “Cleveland plumbing plumber affordable 24-hour emergency service,” capturing the most critical of keyword searchers.
Name the site after his business: “Bob’s Plumbing,” so there’s no confusion as to what business the web searcher has found.

These two strategies serve different constituents, and while it would be foolish for Bob to ignore traditional SEO, the needs of people who actually want to find Bob easily should also be served. The optimal title for Bob arguably combines both strategies: “Bob’s Plumbing – Cleveland’s 24-hour Emergency Plumber,” or something of the sort.

Secondary content on the site (like how-tos or industry updates) should be written to include this same phrasing as liberally as possible – in headings, title tags, and body text.

…But Your Website Isn’t Enough

Optimizing your website is a great first step, but as I discussed above, that only serves to improve the quality of that first search result. If the next nine results are all editorials slamming Bob’s Plumbing and recommending other businesses, all of Bob’s optimization work will be for naught.

The catch is that Google only provides one search result per website, so, for example, you won’t get the top 10 spots on a Google search if you publish 10 blog posts. These are all rolled up into one result. How do you capture the rest of the results on the page? The easiest way is through leveraging social media. You surely know by now that there are dozens of social media networks on the web, and many of them rank highly on Google, even if they are only minimally maintained. As long as these networks are appropriately constructed and managed to some degree, they can provide an easy path to dominating that front page of search results.

Start with the big ones: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn are the critical networks. If your business is very small, or a one-man shop, build two profiles on each network (assuming you haven’t already): One for yourself, and one for your company. Company pages should be named identically to the name you use on your website. If you regularly go by Bob’s Plumbing LLC, then all your social media business pages should be named Bob’s Plumbing LLC. Use your personal pages to link to all of these in turn. Your personal Twitter handle should mention @bobsplumbingllc, and your personal LinkedIn page should link to the LinkedIn business page. Crucially, your business website should link to all of these pages as well. Include these social media links liberally on collateral material, including your email signature, business card, and anywhere else you can think of.

With the big four in hand, consider additional social media accounts that your business can own. Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr are all viable networks that businesses can dominate today. Remember though that this industry changes very rapidly. Consider Vine and Periscope, for example, which offer increasingly interesting prospects for business marketing.

Again, when creating these accounts, keep the ultimate goal in mind: To ensure that when a user searches Google for your business name, that the results he receives are nothing but pages that are under your control.

Make Regular Updates

Creating social network accounts is easy. Keeping them updated is the tough part. You’ve heard this advice before, but I can’t make it any easier here. Your website needs to be kept up to date with a timely blog (at least two or three times a month), and your social media accounts all have to be regularly updated (preferably daily). The unfortunate truth is that the more regularly updated your accounts are, the more highly they will rank. At present, it’s especially important to keep Twitter up to date, as Google will surface your most recent tweets and embed them directly into its search results. The more you can tweet, the more you can own that first page of search results.

Naturally, a lot of this comes down to the amount of time you have available to update these social channels. Doing all of this is a full time job, but shortcuts abound, ranging from hiring a credible content marketing firm to help you with your company’s blog to using a tool like Hootsuite to automate your social messaging to as many platforms as you’d like. (I personally use it to manage a whopping 16 social accounts simultaneously.) Tools like the WordPress platform include systems that let you easily funnel new blog posts to your social channels when they are published, and Hootsuite’s “Suggestions” feature lets you discover other people’s content and automate posts based on keywords you specify. With this tool alone, you can create a week’s worth of social posts – all drawn from current content on the web – in about five minutes flat. Supplement this feed with occasional original posts and you should have your social bases covered.

Local Businesses: Leverage Local Search Results

For service businesses with a local or regional footprint (think plumbers, repairmen, auto shops, and restaurants), it’s also essential to “own” your presence when it comes to locally-oriented websites such as Yelp, Google Local, Foursquare, and even sites like YellowPages.com. These sites all rank particularly highly for searches for the name of a business. While these sites aren’t always free (Yelp in particular can be a pricey investment), in a competitive market they can be essential sources of referrals, and having a high-quality presence on these sites (along with positive reviews) can make or break you.

Advice here is in line with anything surrounding local review sites: Encourage friends and regular customers to write reviews and rate your business highly, respond to negative criticism thoughtfully and without anger or vengeance, and make sure all the information about your business is accurate and up to date, including your full and accurate business name, address, hours of operation, and phone number. Adding lots of (professional-grade) photographs will only increase its Google-worthiness.

Crosslink Social Accounts and Media Mentions

One of the key ways to make sure that your business owns its Google presence is to ensure that all of the above sites link to one another. Your business’s web page should have liberal links to “check you out” on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and every other site that you have a (positive) presence on. Use your corporate blog to link to each of these locations periodically, as new content is posted or, say, a particularly good review comes in.

Similarly, if you receive a good review or writeup from a local paper or web operation, link to it from all of your social accounts. This will give that piece of content higher marks in the eyes of Google, which will make it more likely to rank on the front page of search results. Think of content like this as an honorary part of your “first page ownership” – while it may not technically be under your management, it is still a worthwhile page to promote.

You can keep track of media mentions through a handful of web services. While Google Alerts isn’t nearly as effective as it once was, it’s free and can surface some new mentions of your business’s name. Also check out alternatives such a Mention or Talkwalker Alerts, which may be more effective.

Leverage Verification Systems

How do you let customers know certain pages are being managed by you? By using the verification systems that many of them now have built in. Twitter for example lets you verify your identity (or your business’s identity) through a simple process which adds a “verified” badge to your profile. Many local listings like those from Google Local and Yelp are simple to “claim” as well. Verifying your social presence may or may not impact your Google ranking (it’s impossible to know for sure since Google’s algorithm is secret), but anecdotally, verified listings and accounts seem to outperform those that are not verified, so it’s probably worth the minimal effort it takes to verify your account.

If Things Have Gone South

This plan isn’t foolproof. Competitors can wreak havoc with your listings by maliciously hijacking your company’s name or buying ads using your company name as a keyword. One particularly angry customer review can also cause a lot of trouble for you, particularly if the person has a vendetta and wages a sustained campaign against you on Twitter or Facebook. It’s important to remain calm in situations like this and attempt to resolve the problem offline, without involving your carefully groomed social networks. If the overall picture of your business is positive, potential customers may well ignore the rantings of another customer, but they’ll be much less likely to forgive you for a vindictive response.

If negative social networking problems develop that you don’t feel comfortable managing – or if they get worse – consider a professional online reputation management service such as Reputation.com or Reputation Defender to get you out of the jam.

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.

August 31, 2016

Start-Up Stats: How Your Start-Up Can Succeed

The perhaps not-so-shocking reality is that nine out of 10 new businesses fail. And yet, this statistic isn’t stopping new business growth. Why? Because even though the odds are against startups, success is attainable – if you have a plan, and know what you’re doing.

Having a Plan

And by having a plan, we mean more than, “I’m going to take this $1,000 to the casino, turn it into $50,000, and then start my car dealership.”

Do your homework and create a plan for everything. Figure out what you want to do, and how you’re going to do it. Think about how much money you need to do it, and how you’re going to raise that capital. Consider everything from setting up your legal business structure, building prototypes/inventory, to marketing and advertising.

Need help? Turn to the Small Business Administration (SBA). They have a variety of resources to help with everything from writing the business plan to securing funding through grants and loans.

Preparing for the Pivot

Sometimes even the best laid plans don’t work out the way we want. That doesn’t mean it’s time to give up, it just means it’s time to change course. Several businesses have made successful pivots to go on and become household names – Twitter, Groupon, and even Nintendo. (Did you know Nintendo used to run a chain of short-stay hotels?)

It’s a good idea to have a plan B, or even a plan C in your back pocket. Pay attention to what your audience is doing and how they respond to decide which plan to pivot to – and you may even need to create a plan D on the fly to match up to what your audience wants… but it can be done.

Take for instance, Justin.TV. It launched in 2007, and you may or may not have heard of it. Chances are, you didn’t. It launched to turn the co-founder’s life into a reality TV show. And it sucked. Instead of going down with the ship, the founders realized they could use the technology to answer a demand – the ability to live-stream video game play – and they pivoted to Twitch.TV, which has become a widely popular service since Amazon purchased it for $970 million. They didn’t set out with that in mind – but they saw an opening and took it. It paid off, don’t you think?

Never go into business with the idea that your brilliant idea is going to be your million dollar ticket – as is. Adjustments will need to be made to keep it on track.

Arming Yourself with the Right Tools

It’s entirely possible to write a completely separate article focusing solely on tools for startups, as there is no shortage of options, but here’s a quick rundown of some basics.

Keep track of contacts and projects with Insightly. It’s a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that also includes project management features so you can keep your entire team on the same page. It integrates with a number of other tools so you can funnel your web leads right into the platform, to make it easier to follow up.

Wrangle your data with Cyfe. Data is a critical part of your business – it helps you see how things are going, and helps you see which path to take next. The problem is, data is everywhere – your website, your social media accounts, your sales and inventory, etc. Cyfe is a platform that feeds data from multiple sources, both online and off, so all the information you need is in one place. You don’t need to waste time logging into and out of multiple platforms, and you can share the information with people on your team on an as-needed basis.

Get a better handle on your content curation with Post Planner. The premium versions of this platform make it easy to curate content and schedule posts for Facebook. You can search for content based on keyword, post questions to spark fan engagement, and find a number of funny memes, all designed to help offset your promotional content.

Increase your productivity with Zapier. Zapier automates a number of tasks for you, so when something is tedious and repetitive, you only have to do it once. It integrates with a bunch of different apps, and there’s a free version available for startups on a budget. You can:

⦁ Save Gmail attachments to Dropbox
⦁ Tweet posts from a Facebook page
⦁ Save Twitter mentions to a Google Sheets document
⦁ Send a PayPal customer an automatic thank you email
⦁ Automatically subscribe PayPal customers to a MailChimp list (Only when people know they’ll be added to your mailing list!)

Save time on social media with Buffer. Schedule posts for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest in advance to make it easy to do more with social in less time. You’ll still need to spend time actively engaging with your community, though, so don’t rely on complete social media automation.

Startups are stressful and require a lot of work. But, with the right plan, the right tools, and the ability to pivot at a moment’s notice, you have a much better shot at success.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

August 31, 2016

Increase Profit Margins: 4 Tips for Small Business Owners

In a company’s early days, founders are primarily focused on getting the venture off the ground. Once up and running, owners should get into the habit of thinking strategically about ways to increase profit margins and cash flow by improving how the business operates. Many small and midsized business owners look to maximize profits by minimizing the costs of goods sold (COGS). Sure, strong revenues with low COGS can help boost margins, but there are other factors to consider. Be warned, however: digging into the details of your business may likely uncover things you need to change in order to improve performance.

Understand Your Cost Structure

A smart place to start is to understand where you spend your money. You can work with your accountant or bookkeeper or take advantage of cloud-based accounting solutions to analyze your cost structure. This will give you visibility into how your money is spent. With that, you can then see where and how you can save. There are likely alternatives to a number of your current processes that can help reduce costs, which can, in turn, increase margins.

Replace Expensive IT Staff With Outsourced Service Providers or Programs

Consider replacing full-time information technology (IT) staff with less expensive outsourcing firms specializing in on-demand services. These firms often provide live Internet-based desktop connection support to small businesses. If you’re comfortable with your tech skills, you may want to troubleshoot IT issues on your own and call in a professional for the tough cases.

Optimize Your Footprint

Real estate and equipment are two significant expenses for businesses of any size. Many small business owners begin with a home office, which can help reduce many costs right from the start (e.g., rent, utilities, IT/phone equipment). As a business grows, however, moving out of the home office is sometimes necessary.

Before committing to renting or buying a space, it’s wise to think through a potential interim solution. Consider temporary space first, which often includes administrative support, internet access, meeting and conference room spaces, and even office equipment.

Never forget the cardinal rule when renting or purchasing real estate: Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate! Make sure the location makes it easy for your clients to access your business (i.e., is there adequate parking, good visibility from the street and curbside appeal?). If renting, might you consider subletting a portion of your space to help defray costs? Might you barter by offering the landlord your service or product in lieu of payment?

To further help maximize your footprint and reduce pressures on your margins, also consider buying used equipment for your office. There are many suppliers that offer gently-used furniture, equipment, and tools for businesses of all kinds.

Increase Pricing Through Increased Value

Cutting costs addresses just one side of the profit margin equation. Don’t forget about increasing your revenue through increased prices based on enhancing the value of your products and services. To do this, consider these three steps:

Evaluate your pricing — How does your profit margin compare to your COGS? Are your goods or services priced appropriately for your target customer segment? Depending on your target segment, you may be able to increase profit margins by increasing the price of your goods and/or services. Reach out to your earliest clients and ask for candid feedback on your pricing.

Research your competitors — How much do they charge? How does your pricing model compare to theirs?

Offer premium solutions — By offering premium products or services, you can gain more share of your customers’ wallets. Can you offer different bundles or packages that include higher value offerings? If you offer premium features and service, you can charge a premium price.

There are many ways to increase profit margins, but they all involve boosting sales and revenue while reducing costs. Take a careful look at your own business to find opportunities to do both. Remember, this might be hard to do because you have to fix things you did not even know were broken.

About the author: Chris Rush is the Division Vice President of Strategy & Business Development for ADP® Small Business Services.

August 30, 2016

A New Life for Your Spare Smartphone

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Embrace Your Inner Insightly Hero
	Here’s a hot tip. Join the Insightly Heroes program and spread the good word about your Insightly knowledge. In return, you’ll be recognized and rewarded for your contributions. Here’s what you need to become a hero: Posess a thorough knowledge of the Insightly product Have a willingness to share CRM and business best practices Be an advocate of Insightly Here’s how you’ll be rewarded for your efforts: 35% off existing paid Insightly plan or any paid Insightly plan Insightly badge that can be displayed on your website Insightly Heroes tag that’s recognized in the community Quarterly 1:1 sessions with an Insightly Customer Success Specialist, Product Manager, and Community Team member And a whole lot more
	A New Life for Your Spare Smartphone
	If you have a spare smartphone or tablet, you can use it as a free Internet-enabled security camera. Just install one of the free apps that use your device’s camera – such as Presence (iOS), Manything (iOS) or Salient Eye (Android) – and leave it plugged in, turned on and pointed towards something you want to keep an eye on. Now, from your primary phone or tablet, you can see what your older device sees, or set up motion alerts so you’ll be notified if any movement is detected.
	Virtual Vegas at Your Fingertips
	If you are on board for the Vegas adventure, but aren’t sure which experiences outside of gambling you might like to try, there’s a new virtual reality app (appropriately called the Vegas VR app) that transforms your mobile phone into a canvas for experiencing things such as a helicopter ride over the strip, an urban zip line ride, and more. Learn more at: itb.vrtv.vegas.
	Exercise Your Inner Confidence
	Confidence is key in sales. A salesperson who isn’t confident is like a lawyer who isn’t competitive. But confidence doesn’t come easy when you’re constantly dealing with rejection from prospects. Be prepared Doing the work to be prepared for a presentation is one of the best ways to become more confident. Speak assertively Speak confidently and assertively and you will feel that way yourself. Sell a product you love If you truly believe in what you’re selling, the confidence will come naturally. Change your posture Studies have shown that you can actually boost your own confidence by changing your body language. This week’s sales tip is provided by Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro Technologies. Spiro’s mission is to help salespeople make more money using artificial intelligence.

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around.

Would 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.

August 29, 2016

How To Take Your Customer Service Beyond Your CRM

If you’re in any kind of business, customer service is an important part of your team’s daily responsibilities. And in today’s demanding market, answering the phone is no longer enough. Businesses are expected to communicate on every level, from extensive informational content on their website to responsive social media.

Trend-Spotting

Taking your customer service way above and beyond calls for fast, intuitive response to questions and issues, and that means knowing what they’re thinking before they even think to ask. One way to predict what your customers will ask is to analyze your data and find questions customers have already asked.

Predictive analysis is great for customers stalled in your sales pipeline as well. If leads hit a certain point and drop out, you’re failing to provide what they need to make the decision to buy. To figure out what you lack, look at what customers consistently ask. If your staff is well trained in CRM use, a keyword search should turn up all the information you need to fix the problem – and plug the hole in your funnel.

Trends can include anything from seasonal buying patterns, related items, or the desire for updates to existing products. Learning from your customers requires two things: staff who are well-trained to record and tag input from customers, and the ability to retrieve and use the data to your advantage.

With Insightly’s custom reporting features and built-in search functions, gathering the data you want is easy. Then all you have to do is figure out how to use the information. The answer might be in providing additional information on your website, allocating targeted web ad spend, or sending a timely email with the information that will land the sale or anticipate a complaint.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a software with a learning curve, and your data shows that customers inquire about more features 90 days from purchase. That probably indicates it takes 90 days to get comfortable with basic operation, and after that, they are ready to learn more advanced use.

Adequate customer service is training your staff to walk customers through the features when they call.
Good customer service is a tutorial on your site.
Great customer service is a video or interactive slideshow delivered to their inbox 90 days after purchase. Hit it just right, and you’ve delivered exactly what they want, exactly when they want it.

Be Everywhere Your Customers Are

Part of stellar customer service is fast responsiveness. Whether they have a problem, a random question, a request, or a compliment or comment, they want a fast answer. Social media helps you connect with your customers and answer every mention as fast as they are posted.

The key to efficient social media is not trying to be everywhere, it’s being where your customers are. Using their emails, Insightly attaches links to your customers’ social media profiles into their customer records, making it easy for you to determine how many customers you have on each of the major platforms. With that information, you can decide where you need the most active presence.

Personalize Your Contact

Before CRM and the web, personalization was almost impossible. Now you can send out emails with the customer’s name and a personal message – maybe a happy birthday and a special gift or deep discount. Who doesn’t like to get an email that says “Happy Birthday, Lisa! Since you recently bought a stand mixer, we’d like to help you celebrate with a cheerful set of rainbow mixing bowls. Click here to collect your free gift.”?

You can also personalize your customer service calls with knowledge of past history and last contact. With information stored in your CRM, your CSRs can say, “I see the last time you called, you had trouble logging into your account. Did we resolve that for you?” or “Looks like you haven’t had an update in a while. Have you heard about our new services?”

CRM integration lets you carry on a conversation right where it left off, even if a call is dropped and another rep picks up the callback. Everybody hates having to repeat a story. Comprehensive CRM records save your customers from telling their story again when they are transferred to a manager or another department.

Passive customer service just doesn’t cut it anymore. You no longer have the luxury of expecting your customer to call in and leave a message, then getting back to them when you feel like it. You have to be available, responsive, and proactive to stand out from your competitors. Your growth depends on your brand reputation…and your brand reputation depends on what customers say about you.

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around.

August 25, 2016

Additional Fields in Advanced Reporting

You requested it, so we considered it and added it! With this improvement, you can now use our standard advanced reports with a ton of new fields so you can better see how your business is performing. To use the new fields, simply navigate to the appropriate report and drag the field into the columns.

With these new fields, some of the things you’ll be able to know are:

The most or least common source of your leads using the “Lead Source” field
The most or least common industry of your leads using the “Industry” field
The first organization linked to any contact

And, using this additional information in the report, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions on things like where you get the majority of your leads or how many people from a specific company are interacting with your business.

The complete list of fields that we’ve added are:

Tasks

Added First Linked Contact Name
Added First Linked Organization Name
Added First Linked Linked Lead Name

Contact Report

Changed ‘Salutation’ to ‘Prefix’
Added ‘Created by User’ field
Added ‘Background’ field (missing)

Contact Activity Report

Added Primary Linked ‘Organization Name’
Added ‘Date Completed’ for tasks
Added ‘Date Reminder’ for tasks
Added Contact Title
Added Contact First Linked Organization Name
Added Contact First Email Address

Organization Activity Report

Added ‘Date Completed’ for tasks
Added ‘Date Reminder’ for tasks

Leads Report

Added ‘Title’ field

Leads Activity Report

Added ‘Industry field’
Added ‘State’ field for current Lead State
Added lead ‘Organization Name’
Added ‘Lead Source’
Added ‘Lead Rating’
Added ‘Date Completed’ for tasks
Added ‘Date Reminder’ for tasks

Opportunities Report

Added ‘Date Updated’

Opportunity Activity Report

Added ‘Date Completed’ for tasks
Added ‘Date Reminder’ for tasks
Pipeline Name (for Tasks)
Pipeline Stage (for Tasks)

Project Report

Added linked contact name

Project Activity Report

Added ‘Date Completed’ for tasks
Added ‘Date Reminder’ for tasks
Pipeline Name (for Tasks)
Pipeline Stage (for Tasks)

If you like this update, be sure to like and share it on social media! Just use one of the buttons below!

August 25, 2016

Contact Info from Opportunity Now Appears in Documents

It’s been few months since we announced our integration with Insightly, which naturally means it’s time for an update!

After launching and gaining some valuable feedback from our customers, we’ve made a revision that is sure to make the user experience even better. Now, when you link a contact to an opportunity, you can pass that contact data seamlessly into a document.

How is this possible? Information is passed from Insightly to PandaDoc via a piece of code called a token. A token captures information from contact fields such as first name, last name, and email address and autofills that information into your document. Keep in mind that you’ll need to create any tokens relating to your opportunity or contact when you build a template. You can find a list of sample tokens here.

Previously you could create a document from a contact, account or opportunity using only the information that was available in each one of those objects. Since most Insightly users work out of opportunity objects, we are now making it easier than ever to send out a quote, proposal or contract with the appropriate contact and opportunity information within seconds.

Here are the necessary steps to close more deals faster:

In the photo above, we’ve linked a sample contact with an opportunity.

Voila! There you have it. Ian Insightly’s contact information will appear when you generate your document via the PandaDoc integration.

If you already have an Insightly account and a PandaDoc account, you do not need to take any action to utilize this new feature. Simply link your contact to your opportunity, make sure the appropriate tokens are in your template, and start sending out your documents.

In case you need help installing the integration check out our FAQ here. Any other support questions relating to Insightly should be directed here.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

Bethany Fagan is the Partner Marketing Manager at PandaDoc. When she’s not promoting one of their integrations or amazing partners, her time is spent exploring her Oakland neighborhood with her husband and two French Bulldogs, Tater Tot and Pork Chop.

August 24, 2016

Why CRM Needs to Be a Priority Item in the Budget Plan

Most small businesses need to keep a tight budget across the board. So it may not be a surprise to some readers that implementing tech tools is a line item that often gets crossed off early on in budget planning. We conducted a survey of small businesses owners and found that more than half of the respondents consider CRM to be too expensive (Tweet this!). This is one of the biggest misconceptions about CRM and why many SMB owners will opt to use spreadsheets or a pen and paper to track customer details rather than making the investment in implementing CRM. We’re here to breakdown the top three reasons CRM deservers to be a priority line item in the company budget.

It will change the way you interact with customers.

Customer contact details and personal preferences can be logged in a single platform and easily accessed by any user. Customers receive a fluid experience, no matter which person they speak with, since you’re no longer digging through emails to figure out when you or a colleague last spoke with a customer and what the conversation consisted of. It can also track personal details like birthdays and anniversaries, which gives customers an even more unique and pleasant experience when interacting with your company. CRM gives users the ability to show customers that they understand their needs and preferences. Even better, CRM allows users to do so in a scalable way – now you can simultaneously remember these important details for hundreds or thousands of customers.

Your sales pipeline will always be full.

Tracking leads and moving them through the pipeline in an efficient way is key to business success. CRM helps sales people to efficiently handle lead management by keeping track of where leads fall within the customer journey and making it easy to follow up at the appropriate time and with the most appropriate content. For example, when a potential customer is interested in purchasing a product but isn’t quite ready to sign on the dotted line, a sales person can make a note to follow up on a particular date or share relevant educational materials that will help the lead to make a final decision.

It won’t break the bank.

CRM has been historically considered to be a tool that only enterprise companies can afford to use, and that it’s not a tool that is well suited for smaller businesses. Clearly, this isn’t the case, and there are plenty of plan options that can fit into even the smallest of budgets. Even better, CRM solutions that have been specifically designed with small businesses in mind, not only offer low price points, but also the features and functionalities that will address SMB business owners’ specific needs. So rather than wasting time trying to figure out how to use clunky platforms that have hundreds of features that you’re likely to never use, a CRM designed specifically for SMBs can start to show ROI almost immediately.

The benefits that a CRM will have on your line are worth any upfront cost. Your customers will be happier, your employees will be more productive and your bottom line will increase. During the next budget meeting, remember these factors when considering how important it is to the allocate funds needed to implement a CRM – the benefits will surely outweigh any costs.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

August 23, 2016

Get Hopped Up in Oregon

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

	Creating a Custom Report to Track Tasks in Insightly
	If you are a business owner want to check on tasks completed by your team members, try creating a custom report for yourself showing recently completed tasks by others. It works great! This week’s tip was provided by Insightly user, Nate Derby. Thank you, Nate! Your Amazon gift card is on its way.
	Shared Space
	Single entrepreneurs often work long hours interacting with nothing more than their laptops and smartphones, which can be a recipe for isolation. A new trend in coliving can provide an alternative to feeling as if you have nobody around to share ideas with other than a houseplant. California-based PodShare is one of several coliving initiatives popping up around the US. With several locations in the greater Los Angeles area, PodShare provides access to bunks, bicycles, and coworking tables. More information is at: podshare.co.
	Hop on the Road to Bliss
	If you find yourself on a business trip in Central Oregon and have a few hours to spare before heading up, check out Hop in the Spa. You can begin your experience with a pint of beer from a local microbrewery, then head over to the spa for a soothing soak in a cedar tub brimming with hops, barley, and minerals. If that doesn’t send you into a complete state of relaxation, you can top it off with a hop oil massage.Word on the beauty beat is that hops offer a variety of benefits to both skin and hair. Soaks start at US$75 and massages start at US$65. Learn more at: hopinthespa.com.
	3 Easy Ways to Build Consensus With Your Prospect’s Organization
	Know Your Customer’s Goals Knowing your customer’s goals and anticipating their needs is the most crucial element in closing big deals. But, how do you do that? Simply put, you need to work to align yourself with what the company you’re selling to is trying to achieve… and more importantly you need to show the various buying influencers how you can help them fit into this goal. Align Yourself with the Leader You don’t have to have a sociology major to know that in most groups, a leader emerges, and the rest follow. Another option to building consensus is to identify the leader and work your ass off to align yourself just with them. Go Rogue Once I had been working a big deal between two departments, and it was stuck in negotiations forever. The problem was, it had started out as a small deal, and then grew into this huge elephant that had multiple decision makers. What I should have done is put into play strategy number three – going rogue. If I had stepped back and gained some perspective, I may have seen that the smaller, original deal was pretty much a sure shot. The best solution would have been to break off a piece of the bigger deal that we were now proposing and just sell that. *This week’s sales tip is provided by Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro Technologies. Spiro’s mission is to help salespeople make more money using artificial intelligence.*

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around.

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.

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Embrace Your Inner Insightly Hero

A New Life for Your Spare Smartphone

Virtual Vegas at Your Fingertips

Exercise Your Inner Confidence

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Creating a Custom Report to Track Tasks in Insightly

Shared Space

Hop on the Road to Bliss

3 Easy Ways to Build Consensus With Your Prospect’s Organization