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How a Personalized Customer Experience Can Lead to Explosive Growth

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 07:00 PM PDT

  • Segmenting customer personas will help you create targeted marketing campaigns. 
  • Product recommendations are used by some of the biggest businesses ever to exist. 
  • Personalized marketing can help you reduce cart abandonment. 
  • Reviewing your data is an essential step for continued growth. 

When you're shopping online, are you more likely to click an ad if it seems like it was tailor-made for you? If so, you're not alone. Recent studies show that a stunning 63% of consumers expect to see personalized offers and content when they are browsing online. 

The term for this type of marketing is called personalization. Personalization marketing is a strategy used by business owners and marketers to reach their target audience by displaying relevant content at the right time. You can create personal messages and adverts from your website, email, or social media. 

If you're thinking about implementing this tactic with your company, stick around. We are going to examine several tips you should keep in mind if you want to see explosive growth after implementing personalization. 

Segment your customer personas

We are going to start by talking about segmenting your customer personas. Essentially, customer personas are demographic and personality-driven representations of the customers that frequent your site. Depending on your niche, you could have anywhere from two to 100 different personas. As a general rule, you'll likely have at least five fictional profiles that represent your real target audience. 

These people are all likely interested in different aspects of your brand or online store. For example, if someone operated an online sporting goods store, they would build personas for people that use their various equipment. You would expect to see different ads for baseball players versus those who have purchased hockey equipment. 

Understanding the personalities of the people who visit your website is an essential first step in implementing personalization. You can learn about your target audience by looking at your website and social media demographic insights. 

Personalize website UX 

Marketers and developers are also finding exciting ways to implement personalization within their website design. The goal here is to show customers that you understand their needs and want to make your website as easy to use as possible. 

For example, if you have a store where you sell clothing for men and women, you could personalize your homepage. After someone visits your store for the first time, they will likely either browse male or female clothing. Whichever they pick will become the new default when that customer lands on your homepage. 

Now instead of browsing through your catalog to get to the page they want, customers will get greeted with a homepage that shows them the kind of content they are interested in seeing. 

Building a robust user experience (UX) is important when you're growing your business. Once you've established your foundation, you can start implementing personalization to fine-tune UX for each of your unique visitors. 

Reduce cart abandonment 

Odds are, you have an active email marketing campaign that you use to send your customers promotions and content. But here's a question, do you use your marketing campaign to reduce cart abandonment? 

Cart abandonment is a term used to describe consumers that visit your website, add items to their cart but don't complete the checkout process. Your goal should be to convert as many of these people as possible. Maybe they are still on the fence, or perhaps they got distracted while placing their order. 

Regardless of why they didn't finish the checkout process, a personalized cart abandonment email can help you convince people to come back and complete their purchase. 

There are several ways you can personalize your emails for these consumers. The first way is to offer a limited-time promotion that features a product they added to their cart. When they see that they can get an even better deal than the first time they checked, there's a good chance some of those people will become customers. 

Another smart trick is to use the consumer's name in the title of your email. Remember earlier when we said people are likely to click on promotions if it features their name? This is a perfect example. A simple headline that lets them know that there are still items in their cart and that addresses them by name is an excellent way to generate more sales and grow your business.  

Research shows that cart abandonment emails work too. One study found that by sending three cart reminders within 24 hours can help business owners see 69% more orders! 

Recommend products and services

If you're a fan of Amazon, you're probably extremely familiar with recommended products and services. Imagine going to Amazon to buy a new hoodie, and seeing sandals as a recommended product with the hoodie. You would probably scratch your head and think, "Someone's a little off today." 

The same can be said for streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. These programs analyze consumer behavior and create suggestions based on other things that individuals watched recently. You wouldn't expect to see a bunch of documentaries on a Hulu account most commonly used by a child, right? 

You can take the AI route like Amazon if you have enough products and services worth computing. However, you can create your own recommended products without implementing AI by simply understanding your target audience. 

Let's go back to the example online sports store again. If you were the owner of that site, you could put recommended products for baseball players under each individual listing for a product with the baseball tag. When someone comes by to browse your products, they might see other items in the same category and add it to their cart. 

It's also possible to use retargeting pixels on your site to display relevant ads to users who have visited your site on social media. Imagine someone was browsing your online store, then later, they see an advertisement with a discount on social media. You might convince them to come back, which makes this aspect of it similar to cart abandonment. 

However, when you consider that most social media users spend two hours and twenty-two minutes on social media each day, these platforms are a fantastic choice for personalized product offers and promotions. 

Once you start implementing personalization marketing, it's vital that you review your analytics data from your website, social media channels and email accounts. As a starting point, you're going to want to focus on tracking your conversion rates, website traffic and total sales volume. Understanding how these figures have changed over time will help you make smart decisions about your marketing campaign and customer personas.

If you don't see immediate growth, don't fret. Each business has a different target audience with unique interests. You're going to spend plenty of time working on new ways to forge personal connections with your audience. The surge of online storefronts over the past decade has forced many businesses to start thinking about how they reach the people who can benefit from their brand. It's no longer enough to sell a good product if you want to see explosive business growth; you have to focus on personal, individual experiences. 

How to Self-Promote Your Businesses

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 01:00 PM PDT

Promoting your business can be tricky. Even more so, if you are in a startup making its first steps across the media landscape. How do you pick from the variety of media channels? How do you create a promotional strategy, especially being on a tight budget? Where to start, what to focus on, and what are the common pitfalls you should steer clear of? 

Based on more than 12 years of experience in the field of PR, I've compiled this simple guide to help you build up a media image, as well as communicate to your target audience which benefits your product or services can bring them.

Analyze and prepare

1. Write a statement

The statement of your business' purpose, goals and values will help you stay on course, make the right decisions, motivate your team, and much more. It's always best to put it in text than just to keep it in your head: it will be extremely useful when you finish with the analysis and switch to action. 

To do so, answer the following questions: What is your project about? What are your key values? What kind of product/service do you offer? How do they help your clients? Which of them are most important to you at the moment? What are your strengths and weaknesses? 

2. Set the goals of promotion

What is your current goal? To increase brand awareness? Build up market presence? Showcase your expertise? Boost website traffic? 

This step will help you understand what to focus on. For example, if the goal is to become an influencer in your field, one of the key tasks will be picking relevant industry media where you can be featured as an expert. Boosting website traffic may require more work on your website, including but not limited to advertising and SEO optimization – and so on. 

4. Identify your customer

Study your target audience. Who are your clients? What age group do they belong to? How big is their income? Do they have a hobby? What is their marital status? Which websites do they visit most, and which social networks they use? What do they like to do in their spare time?

When you answer these questions, you will have a better understanding of what kind of media they read. This way, you can focus on these media in your promotion and better reach your audience.

5. Study competitors

Make the list of your 3-5 closest competitors. First, study their websites: what information do they share, how do they position themselves? How do your strengths and weaknesses you listed in your statement correspond with their image? Second, analyze their media presence. Which media channels do they use to gain more visibility? Where do they publish promotional articles and ads? 

The main idea of this audit is to find out what works for your competition, so you can use these tactics to your advantage, and, at the same time, create a unique image for your business which will make you stand out from the crowd.

Promote your business on social media

Choosing the networks

The first step in your own promotion is to develop social networks of your company. First, select the most relevant network for your business. If you offer consulting services or you are a lawyer, Facebook and Linkedin will be your best choice. If your business is related to goods and services – choose Instagram.

It's good to have a presence in all popular social networks, but choosing the one to focus on most will help you get the best of your social media promotion.

Building a good image

Pay attention to how and what you post on your personal page: you are the face of your company. When you will be working with media, journalists will be checking your social media account, as well as accounts of your top managers. 

My advice is to suggest your employees keep their personal pages up-to-date with their current position listed, and connect them to your company's page. This will contribute to transparency, media and client trust. 

Creating a Medium account

Medium is a social journalism platform, with 60 million active users posting articles on literally every topic. Anyone can create an account and publish their pieces absolutely for free. The best content gets selected by the curators and gets recommended to the users interested in your topic. This way, creating your company's Medium blog is another great way to reach a wider audience.  

I recommend you create a Medium account for 2-3, or better, 6 months before entering public space. Start writing your story in advance. The goal is simple: when a journalist or editor searches for information about you, he will find your Medium. And it will already have a backstory, list of readers, comments – this all will create more trust for the project.

Keep the conversation going

Comment other people's posts and always reply to the comments others leave to yours. Share your experience, ask and answer questions. It is an easy way to build and support native connections with your clients, partners and other professionals in your field. 

Talk to your followers: engage them whenever possible, post polls and questions. If you are a bit lost on what to write about, don't be afraid to ask your audience them what kind of information they would like to see on your page. In other words, keep the conversation going. Tag others in your posts where relevant. This way their readers will likely see the post too. 

Get promoted in analog and digital media

The next step is exploring one of the most important promotional mediums: general and specialized media, e.g. news websites, industry magazines, media platforms and so on. At the moment, there are hundreds of titles covering a wide variety of topics. In order to choose those most relevant for you, rely on your research of the target audience and competitors. 

Is the media right for you?

How to determine if the media is right for your business? It is quite simple: examine it! Read the materials that have been published there previously.  

Have you found any articles on your topic? Are there any important aspects or angles which haven't been explored yet? Who is the audience of the media, does it belong to your target group? Answer all these questions – and you will see if the media is a good fit for your project. 

Evaluate your resources

And, at last, estimate your budget. How much money are you ready to spend on promotion right now? What will the scale of your campaign be?

Who will be in charge of it? Are you going to hire a PR manager, or give this task to any of your current employees? With a larger budget, you can outsource this task to a professional communication agency. Although, if the budget is a bit tight at the moment, you can start on your own.

 

There is no way I could cover all the aspects or PR or tell you about all promotional channels in a single article. However, this should be more than enough not just to get you started, but make you feel more comfortable about promoting your business.

There will always be more to learn and analyze. Be persistent, keep your finger on the pulse, and remember: your success is in your hands. Good luck!

What Questions to Ask on Your Franchise Discovery Day?

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 05:00 AM PDT

The exciting journey from franchise candidate to franchise owner will include lots of time gathering valuable information about franchising opportunities. With more than 3,000 franchise brands available today, a thorough understanding of how a given franchise system matches up with your applicable skills and lifestyle design is crucial to your success.

For most franchise candidates, that process goes into hyperdrive during your discovery day.

A Franchise Discovery Day is a candidate's greatest opportunity to take a deep dive into the inner workings of a franchise system. It's a face-to-face meeting, often held at a franchise's corporate office, allowing franchise candidates the chance to meet with the franchise officers, marketing, operations and real estate teams and learn the system at a deep level. Candidates are able to get a genuine feel for whether or not the franchise culture is a match for them. 

Not everyone goes to discovery day. It's one of the final steps in a candidate's franchise journey, often taking place once the candidate has gone through an in-depth process to learn more about the franchise system. That process includes several calls with their franchise development representative to learn what the franchise is all about before being invited to a discovery day. 

Franchisors make sure all necessary executives from the franchise are available to meet the candidate on their discovery day. Franchisors recognize how important this day is, so they only invite candidates who are serious about opening a franchise unit and a good fit for their system. Just as it's a vital opportunity for franchise candidates to learn about the franchise system under consideration, it's crucial for the franchisor to learn more about the candidate as well. 

That's why franchise consultants like me place so much importance on ensuring that franchise candidates are thoroughly prepared to maximize their discovery day. We'll spend lots of time determining the right questions to ask and the best ways for them to present themselves. A discovery day is a one-time opportunity for a franchise candidate, so they need to be certain they've done their due diligence to get the most out of their visit.

Whereas each system has unique questions franchise candidates need to ask at their discovery day, here are several that should always be considered.

What does a day in the life of an owner look like?

This is an important question not only for the franchise executives but the franchise owners as well. By this point in the process, candidates and their franchise consultant will have explored exactly what a candidate wants their life to look like as a franchise owner. Are you at work at the crack of dawn, or do you get to have breakfast at home with your children before going to the office? Are you expected to be at the office during all business hours, or will you have a management team handling the day-to-day operations? What is your daily role in the business? Do you spend most of your time working on back-of-the-house operations, or are you heavily involved with customer engagement? Are the hours flexible or set? Are you expected to work on the weekend? Holidays? How much of your work needs to be done on location?

All of these types of questions should be asked when learning about the day in the life of an owner. Someone who values being at their children's sporting events probably doesn't want a franchise that requires them to work evenings and weekends. Someone who likes being hands-on may feel restless with a system that expects a manager to do most of the work. A candidate who values a lot of personal time may feel trapped in a business that requires his presence during all operational hours. 

What traits make a difference between the top and average performers?

Notice an important difference in this question compared to, "What do you look for in a franchise owner?" Asking what separates the good from the great makes the franchisor think about the question deeply, and may unearth some interesting answers. You might discover that the best franchisees in a given system spend a lot of time getting engaged with their community through sponsorships and charitable outreach. You may find out that the most successful franchise owners have a knack for making lots of sales calls. Perhaps the top performers are the ones who go the extra mile when it comes to customer service. Whatever it is, knowing what the cream of the crop does in order to stay on top allows you the opportunity to self-examine and decide whether or not you exhibit the necessary traits.

What are the challenges or frustrations I should be prepared for as an owner?

No matter how perfect the fit a franchise system offers a candidate, there are going to be challenges. Perhaps the customers for a given business are generally very needy and require lots of attention from the owners. There may be a seasonality issue with the business that forces owners to work in booms and busts throughout the year. Staffing and turnover in many businesses is a constant issue that requires regular attention. Determining a marketing plan to reach specific markets could be difficult. Generating repeat business may be an obstacle. Whatever it is, discovery day is the time to learn what those challenges are and make sure you're up for dealing with them.

How will I be trained?

One of the most important reasons that candidates decide to select the franchising route over an independent startup is to have the unparalleled support system franchises offer. Ensuring that the training program of a given franchise matches your needs is crucial to your success as a franchisee. Is training only offered at the corporate office, or does the franchise offer training on-site? Is training entirely at the launch of your franchise, or is it an on-going program? What are the resources available to you as a franchisee? Does the corporate office have 24-hour support team availability? Are there local franchise officials in your region, such as an area director, regularly available to offer support? What kind of peer support can you expect from other franchisees? When a new product or service is launched, what does the training program look like? Which areas of managing the franchise do you support initially? Which ones regularly?

A franchise candidate with a strong background in accounting but no experience in marketing may want a system with a good advertising plan in place. A business that thrives on a good location will want to make sure a real estate selection team is strong. Candidates who like the feeling of constant support may want a more established brand with lots of processes in place, while a candidate with a more entrepreneurial streak may be happier with a franchise that allows their franchise owners more input. 

What is the vision for the company?

Ever been asked where you see yourself in five years? It's reasonable to ask the franchisor that as well. What is their growth plan? Is the franchisor in it for the long haul, or are they hoping to sell the franchise to another company in the near future? What steps are they taking to ensure that their franchise stays relevant? How are they incorporating technology to stay ahead of their competitors? What's in place to protect the company from an economic downturn? A new competitor? The online marketplace?

Franchisors should have a big picture in mind and be able to explain their vision easily when asked. They should be able to recognize their company's strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 

Following your discovery day, you should have a clear picture as to whether or not a franchise system is the right fit for you. Planning to ask questions like these, along with the company-specific questions provided by your franchise consultant, ensures your discovery day will give you all the information you need to make that decision.
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