Business Resource, Growth Prompts, Membership Only, Tutorials

How To Plan Your Marketing Budget With Four Free Templates

The following information and templates was originally by CoSchedule [How To Plan Your Marketing Budget With Six Free Templates]

Your marketing budget is the driving force behind your team. The money that is invested is meant to be funneled into the right projects that allow your team to create the most meaningful results for the company as a whole.

Setting budgets, however, can be a hassle. So, that’s why we built these half-dozen free marketing budget templates (and wrote up this detailed guide on how to use them).

By reading this post, you’re going to learn:

How to prioritize projects that will make a real difference (and get the budget for them).
How to understand how much budget you have available (and avoid going over).
How to plan budgets easily and efficiently (with six free templates).

You’ll be able to keep a clear understanding of what your team will be doing (and how much you can spend to get it done).

Download Your Free Marketing Budget Templates

The six different templates that you’ll receive when you download this bundle include:

Social Media Marketing Budget Template: the social media budget template allows teams to break down their budget spend on everything from boosted posts to video production.
Content Budget Template: the content marketing budget template allows teams to break down their various types of content, agency fees, and more.
Advertising Budget Template: The advertising budget template is an all encompassing template that allows teams to record spend on both traditional and digital ads.
Annual Marketing Budget Template: The annual marketing budget template is an all encompassing, all in one budget tracker that includes every project breakdown that is in the previous five templates.

Get Your Free Marketing Budget Template Bundle

Why Does Your Marketing Budget Matter?

Your team is dealing with multiple projects that need to be prioritized. Having a marketing budget allows your team the clarity they need to funnel your budget into projects that will make the most meaningful impact on for your company.

There are three main reasons that your team needs to care about your marketing budget:

1. Use it or lose it. If you can’t justify the cash flow that your team needs, your organization will spend it somewhere else.

2. Prove your projects are creating growth for your company. Knowing how much you’re spending on marketing as a whole can help paint a clearer picture around how much return on investment you’re generating, too.

3. Provide reasoning for your allotted budget. When your company’s finance department turns to your marketing heads to determine how much investment you’ll be getting for the next year, having a document outlining your needs can help build a case and show where all that money is going.

How Can You Align Your Marketing Budget With Your Business Goals?

Another big step in your marketing budget is trying to invest your budget into the right projects that will create the most 10x growth for your business.

High priority projects would receive more money from your projects than projects that don’t contribute that same amount of growth.

For example, say that one of your overarching business goals for the year was to increase the amount of traffic that is going to your website. It would make more sense to funnel more money from your budget into projects that contribute to that goal than say events.

To do this, first, work with your team to come up with a list of overarching marketing goals that are going to contribute to your bottom line.

Then decide as a team which marketing projects will contribute the most growth to those goals.

Those top projects will be where you contribute a majority of your budget.

How To Not Go Over Budget

So you have your projects set, your budget is approved, and you’ve started investing your allotted money.

But then you start to realize that one of your projects is about to go over budget.

Yikes, right?

There are ways that you can avoid all of that.

Accurately Estimate How Much Your Project Is Going To Cost

The biggest step your team can take to avoid going over budget is to accurately estimate how much your top projects are going to cost to complete. There are two ways that you can do this:

If the project is a repeat of last year, look at how much your team spent to finish the project. Base this year’s estimate off of what you spent last year.
If the project is new, calculate every small step of the project that needs to be completed and how much it will cost to complete those steps. Use those step costs to formulate an overall project cost.

Keep Track Of Where Your Money Is Going At All Times

If your team decides to spend 15 dollars on a Facebook ad, record it right away. It could be in your template, or in a separate document, but do not let those small purchases sit unnoticed.

So let’s say that you’re working with your social team and they get a series of receipts from boosted posts on Facebook that total up to 256 dollars.

In your social media marketing budget template, scroll down to the section labeled boosted posts:

Update the budget template with the money your team has spent:

Keep repeating the process as often as your team needs to keep the budget up to date.

How To Use The Templates You Downloaded

Remember those templates that you downloaded earlier? They’re pretty awesome, right?

But there’s also a lot going on with them. Let’s walk through how to use them quickly.

Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Breakdown

In your template, you’ll see that your budget is broken down into three pieces:

Monthly spend
Quarterly spend
Yearly spend

You can see monthly spend on each of your projects by scrolling down the vertical monthly column. You can also see what percent of your budget you have spent in that month as well.

Your quarterly project spend is broken down horizontally across your screen:

To see the total that you’ve spent for the month and the quarter, scroll down to the bottom of your template:

You can also see a monthly breakdown in the chart below each quarter. These will automatically populate for you:

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-quarter-chart-example

Your yearly breakdown can be found by scrolling to the left to the last column in your template. The pie graph at the end of your spreadsheet will also automatically update as the numbers change in your template.

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-total-spend-video

Entering Data

Bolded Numbers mean that there is a formula attached to them. These are total project costs and will usually feed the graphs and total budget numbers throughout your template.

Numbers in plain text are usually contributing to the bolded numbers above it. These are breakdowns of what amount of money is being spent on a project.

Whatever you do, do not type over the bolded numbers that have contributing pieces to the overall total. This action will break the formula.

“Okay, but what if I do break the formula?”

Hitting the back button won’t always work, so here’s the quick fix:

Select the box that used to contain the function
Type =sum in the box
Select Sum from the popup menu
Highlight the columns or sections you want to be totaled in the box
Hit enter

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-fixing-functions

This process applies to every function that is part of the spreadsheet. To see if a box has a function attached to it and which boxes are contributing to the total check out the following video:

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-finding-functions

What To Do If You Need To Add More Rows To Your Spreadsheet

So let’s say that you have a project that needs more rows added to the category. For this example let’s say that you wanted to add Snapchat into your social media column:

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-adding-additional-rows

How To Edit Your Bar And Pie Graphs

The last part of today’s instructions are going to show you how to edit your bar and pie graphs in case something breaks:

Wistia video thumbnail - marketing-budget-template-editing-graphs

Once you get going, the templates fall into place easily.

Select Your Templates

For this post, there are six different budget templates that different sections of your marketing team can utilize.

Social Media Marketing Budget Template

The social media marketing budget template is a place for your team to record different expenses that social media can accumulate including content development, graphics, and videos as well as boosted posts and ads:

Content Marketing Budget Template

The content marketing template is a place to record any expenses that come along with creating original content for your company including different content creation costs, freelance costs and even space for agency and tool costs:

PR Marketing Budget Template

PR professionals are going to love the PR template because it records all those smaller detail pieces that go into public relations including but not limited to content production, sponsorships and a detailed space for recording event planning costs:

Advertising Marketing Budget Template

Advertising can make up a huge part of marketing budgets and can easily get out of control if not tracked correctly. This template contains sections to record your budget spend in areas like digital, social and traditional advertising:

Event Planning Marketing Budget Template

This next template is every event planner’s dream. Packaged all in one place, event planners can keep track of venue, catering, decorations and other miscellaneous fees:

Annual Marketing Budget Template

This last template is an all encompassing budget tracker that will allow your marketing team heads, higher ups and clients see exactly where you’re spending your money. This template includes budget tracking for all of the projects that were included in the previous five templates:

Keep Your Spending On Track With Your New Budget Templates

Now you have the knowledge and skills to organize your marketing budget. By having the right information and the right plan you can funnel money into the projects that are going to grow your efforts by 10x.

Get Your Free Marketing Budget Template Bundle

September 25, 2017/0 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald

Email Marketing, Membership Only, Tutorials

A MailChimp Tutorial: Best Practices to Engage your Email List

Email marketing is overrated for businesses, right? Wrong!

Years ago, digital marketers began moving away from email marketing as social media began gaining steam. We told our clients that social media was how we should connect and build a tribe and that open rates on emails were decreasing. We pulled out stats that showed how much more likely someone was to buy from a business if they were connected through social media. And yes, this is still the case that consumers are more likely to buy from a business they follow on social media, but the problem now is that businesses need to pay to have their message shown to their followers. Taking Facebook as the forefront of this movement, a business may only reach 3-5% of their Likes on any given post if they decide not to boost it.

Because of this, email has risen again to the best way to monetize your digital marketing. When an individual gives you their permission to correspond via email, don’t hesitate to send them an email! They have agreed that you are providing them information they need to be more educated or better a specific aspect of their life of business.

Email marketing allows you to:

Stay connected with your tribe
Reach customers in real-time
Measure real return and results
Provide targeted messaging to specific groups of people
Build brand awareness
Educate and sell your services and products
Automate your communication with your tribe

In this blog post, I’ll be taking a deep dive into MailChimp, specifically the resources available within the Free account, that you can implement immediately in your business to monetize your digital marketing efforts.

Why MailChimp?

MailChimp, just like Constant Contact, My Emma, Convertkit, SalesForce, Zoho, and all the other email marketing providers out there is intuitive, easy to customize, and provides the ability to:

Segment lists
Personalize to/from fields and the email content
Match your brand colors
Measure ROI

The main benefit of MailChimp, especially as you are just starting to build your email list, is that the Free account offers marketing automation through workflows. MailChimp is no longer just for sending email blasts, but now you can send tailored messages to an individual that directly relate to the information requested or downloaded from your website. Automation through creating workflows is the secret sauce to saving time and energy as you monetize your marketing.

Let’s get started – a MailChimp Glossary

Assuming you have already created your MailChimp account, you will see across the top navigation, four options: Campaigns, Templates, Lists, and Reports. Let’s take a quick look at these one by one for context before we jump into the tutorial for setting up your automation sequence.

Campaigns: This is where you Draft and Published emails and workflows exist. The Campaigns tab is where you will design and send your emails.

Templates: Templates are where the layouts of your emails are stored. When you create a campaign, you can save the email design as a template or use a preexisting template from MailChimp.

Lists: Lists are what MailChimp calls the place where you collect your subscribers. You can have numerous lists and within each list you can create different segments to ensure the right message goes to the right person every time.

Reports: After you click send on a campaign, MailChimp starts collecting stats. Here you can see open and click rates, unsubscribes, and other valuable data for your business.

Getting Started with MailChimp Automation

Now let’s go through the process together of setting up your complete automation sequence. Below I will take you step by step through:

Setting up your List
Creating and embedding a form into your website
Customizing your Welcome Email for new subscribers
Creating an automated sequence of emails to help introduce yourself and services and to convert new subscribers into paying customers

Step 1: Setting up an Email List of Subscribers in MailChimp

As mentioned above, lists are where your email subscribers are housed. You may decide to have a list for your clients and one for website leads or you may have multiple lists for conferences you attend and folks interested in very specific segments of your business. To start, we are making one list that is specifically for individuals who download a lead magnet or content upgrade from your website.

Click Lists from the top navigation then Create List.

From here, if you are just getting started, you will want to Create a New List. There is also the option to create Groups within an Existing List, which is how we will segment leads for specific content downloads where you will want messaging targeting their interests being sent their way. Groups allow basically create sublists with overlapping subscribers.

For now, just click to Create a List.

Here enter in your:

List name (Website Subscribers)
Your Default From Email Address (Where you want replies going)
Default From Name (Include your actual name here and if needed your business name, too)
And remind people how they signed up for your list (each list will most likely have a different reason why the
individuals are on the list).

Additionally, you will see your contact information. A physical address or PO Box is required by law to meet the Anti-spam requirements of the US CAN-SPAM Act. If you work from home, I recommend as you implement email marketing into your business, setting up a PO Box. Unless your list is only made from family members, you don’t want everyone knowing where you live!

Click Save to continue.

Step 2: Create a signup form.

Now that the list for website subscribers is completed, you can go ahead and create a Signup form to embed on your website.

First we will want to customize the form fields and options. Afterwards, we can embed a form into your website.
Click Select next to General Forms.

On the next page, we are going to edit the fields for the contact form. Here you can add fields, or hide fields. The default is Email, First Name, Last Name.

I recommend reordering the fields and removing last name. For forms like a content upgrade asking for just a bit of information is great. You don’t need to inundate the new subscriber by asking them everything about themselves!

The next tab, the Design It tab, allows you to customize your colors to match your brand standards. Click through the different options here to customize each element. As you work through the Signup form settings, the customizations will automatically save to your account.

Once your form is customized, it is time to customize the response emails.

Step 3: Your Confirmation and Welcome Emails

Now, the flow for MailChimp, and this is fairly common for all email sequences, is that once an individual fills out their information, they need to confirm their email address in order to be added to the email list or to gain access to a resource. The email confirmation and welcome email are all customizable within the General Form Settings.

Let’s go step by step through these options.

First, select Signup thank you page from the Forms and response emails dropdown.

Here, we will customize the form someone sees directly after they enter their name and email in the form. We will want to change a few elements on this page. Conversely, you could also create a thank you page directly on your website. At this point I do NOT recommend providing the lead magnet link. Within MailChimp, you need to first have the subscriber confirm their email address and then you can continue marketing to them in the future. If they don’t confirm their email, you won’t be able to send follow up emails.

On the Build It tab of the Sign Up Thank you page, use the Drag and Drop editor to add a branded image as the header of the page. Hover over the form title and click Use Image to upload and select a header image to use.

I also recommend editing the text on the page to be more specific about your Lead Magnet information.

At this time you can also change the colors to match your brand standards.

Please note, the header image and some design elements carry throughout the entire customization process. For example, if you load the header image in the form settings rather than the thank you page, the header image should automatically load in other settings.

The next element of the sign-up sequence is the Opt-in confirmation email.

Select Opt-in confirmation email from the Forms and response emails dropdown.

From here you will see the standard text for the opt-in email.

All of these elements within the email, as well as your Subject line can and should be updated.

Subject line – The Default is: *|LIST:NAME|*: Please Confirm Subscription. Please change this . Something along the lines of Claim your Free Resource or in my example, Confirm your Email to Receive Free Download
Within the body of the email be sure to reference your Lead Magnet.
To adjust the “Yes, Subscribe Me To This List button text, select “Translate It”.

Click Save Translation Settings to save your new button text.

Hint: all button text is in the “Translate It” settings

The next part of the MailChimp sequence is the Confirmation Thank you page. Select this from the Forms and response emails dropdown.

As the subscriber has confirmed their email address, it is now alright to share your lead magnet with them. I recommend at this point, adding the resource as a PDF onto your website. If you use WordPress, Click Media > Add new and upload the PDF. To actually design this content upgrade, you can use powerpoint, word, Canva, or really any other tool that you feel comfortable with. What you will need to do once you load the PDF to WordPress is copy the URL of the resource.

Copy this URL and then Paste it back in MailChimp in the setting for “Instead of showing this thank you page, send subscribers to another URL,” then Click Save.

The last step in the Mailchimp sequence is to create the Final Welcome Email.

Select Final Welcome Email from the Forms and response emails dropdown.

The Most Important element on this page is to select the checkbox for Send a final welcome email.
Items to update in the Final welcome email:

Select the checkbox for Send a final welcome email
Edit the subject line (default is: *|LIST:NAME|*: Subscription Confirmed)
Edit body of email to include the link to the Lead Magnet PDF.

PHEW! That was a lot of steps! But now you are all set to embed the form on your website!

Step 3: Embedding your Form on your website.

Now we’ll grab the code we need to embed the form into your website. Click the link for signup forms again and this time, select Embedded forms.

Here you can customize the Form which will be embedded on your website. Within the Embedded forms, you can choose from a variety of layouts. I recommend collecting BOTH the name and email address of your subscribers as personalized emails not only have a higher open rate, but also a higher conversion rate. Sure you could argue that there may be fewer signups, but I would take a more engaged audience any day. Due to this, I recommend utilizing the Classic Form rather than the Super Slim or Horizontal layouts.

Here, Edit the Form Title so it clearly identifies what will be downloaded or what action will be taken once someone provides their information. The example below has “Download your Ultimate Guide to Email Sequences” as the title.

At the bottom right of the page you will see the embed code. This is the actual code that you can then copy and paste onto a page of your site! Mailchimp does have a plugin that you can use to easily embed forms using shortcodes on your site, but below I walk through embedding this form on a webpage using the full code provided.

When you are editing a page on WordPress, click the “Text” view to insert html.

Scroll to where in the content you would like your form to exist and paste the code that you copied from MailChimp. Once you click Publish, your page and form will be good to start collecting leads!

And the published page!

What next, you ask? Creating the automated email chain!

The automated email sequence in MailChimp or a workflow is the perfect way to introduce yourself, your brand, a course or promotion, and educate your new subscribers before you add them to your newsletter or broadcast campaign.

You may be asking why you need to now add the subscriber to an automated email workflow after sending them multiple emails to confirm their email address and then send them an offer. Think about the first time you meet someone and learn from their business or the first time you sit down with a coach, counselor, or educator. You want to understand who they are and why you should trust them.

Creating a relationship online should follow that same process – you need to earn the trust of your contacts. The average consumer requires 7-14 touches before they are open to making a buying decision. Social media and writing meaningful blog posts is one way to continue building a relationship with your tribe, but emails are another way. By adding someone directly to an email sequence in MailChimp, you are putting your best foot forward in the process of converting a free download into a paying customer. These initial emails should look just like the initial conversations you have with prospects. You need to introduce yourself, educate, explain your services, educate some more, and close the deal.

A complete guide on structuring your Welcome email sequence along with prompts to write your own emails are available for download below!

Ultimate Welcome Series Checklist [FREE]

Are you ready to make a lasting impression? Let’s jump in.

Step 4: Creating an Automated Email Campaign.

At this point we already have our List created and our opt-in and welcome email structured. Now it is time to create the MailChimp Automation Campaign. Just like other campaigns in MailChimp, automation campaigns live in the Campaigns tab of your account.

In the upper navigation, click Campaigns > Create Campaign > Create an Email.

From here, select Automated and in this case we will want to select the Welcome New Subscribers option.

Within the Welcome new Subscribers automation within MailChimp, there are currently 3 selections: Welcome message, Onboarding services, and Educational series. Honestly, each of them works the exact same, they just are preloaded with different sample emails.

In this tutorial, just select the Welcome message option, name your Campaign, and select the list you just created. As you will see in the next few steps, each of the campaigns are customizable to act however you wish and to include however many emails you want to build!

I’ve found that having a blank template at times is easier to set up instead of editing the information that already exists.

After you Click Begin, you can start your customization of the MailChimp Workflow.

Step 5: Customize your Welcome Email within the Automation workflow.

We are almost there! Kudos for following along.

The first step is to click Design Email on the first email that has been already created in the flow. Once you click Design email, you can edit the name of the email, your subject, the preview text, and your from name and email.

Tip: Email subjects are the key to getting folks to read your email. Don’t be afraid to jump in and test a new subject line if you think something may lead to more opens. Most important, however, is to be descriptive. People don’t like feeling as though they’ve been tricked into reading something. Questions also work well, as do tips, tutorials, personal stories, etc.

Once you’ve filled out this information, click next and select your Template. MailChimp has a lot of wonderful templates that are drag and drop, or you can make your own. I recommend using a simple template for all of your email marketing. This makes the branding very straight forward and aides in brand recognition. If you already have a campaign created for a newsletter broadcast, you can jump back over to that campaign and click to save the email as a template.

Because it is a simple layout, this time I selected the “Follow Up” layout.

From here you can design your email!

Now remember, just like when you are first meeting with someone, you want to know a bit about their background and story. This is the perfect place to add that information. MailChimp’s intuitive drag and drop email builder makes it fairly straightforward to add content and images.

As you can see below, I’ve added a logo, deleted the image block from the template, and updated content. Once this is complete, you can click “Save and Return to Workflow.”

Step 6: Building Out Additional Emails and Workflow Settings!

Once you’ve completed your first email in the MailChimp Automated campaign, I recommend adding a handful more to ensure you are providing the absolute best content right when you are starting a relationship with the new subscriber.

So I’ll leave you to creating those emails. Again, you want to be as educational as possible, but to really start seeing sales quickly, there need to be some prompts to either learn more about your services or products. The complete guide to creating your emails and monetizing your site is available for download below.

Ultimate Welcome Series Checklist [FREE]

As for the additional settings within your workflow, we have the Trigger, Schedule, Segment, and Action.

Trigger: In this case, you’ll want to adjust the trigger for your additional emails. It is okay if you would like to send an email out every day, but this may be a little overwhelming for a new subscriber. I recommend setting the Trigger to 2-3 days for your follow up messages.

Schedule: This great feature allows you to specify which days of the week and time ranges you would like to send your follow up messages. Perhaps you always want to refrain from sending emails on Sundays, or between the hours of 11pm-5am, you can adjust that here. Take a look at reports from your industry about the best days and times to send emails – you may find some results surprising!

Segment: If you’ve created segments within your list, here is where you can specify what segment the email should be sent to. This feature is helpful for future offers once you’ve learned more about your audience. Maybe some people are just getting started whereas others are experts in your field. It works well to send a different message to each group.

Action: You can also specify something to happen after an email or email chain is sent to an individual. More advanced features here are available in the paid accounts.

And with that… You know can create a list in MailChimp, structure and optimize a form, as well as the opt-in and welcome emails, embed the form on your website and create your Welcome Series automation email chain in your Free MailChimp account! In the comments section, please share your link for your forms and Lead Magnet so we can take a look!

Best of luck!

September 16, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Instagram, Social Media

Which Social Media Channels Fit Your Target Audience [PLUS Tips for Writing the Perfect Instagram Caption]

You may have amazing products and provide great services. You also spend time creating good quality content. No matter how engaging or persuasive your content is, you won’t be able to achieve great results unless it reaches your target audience.

Most business use social media to engage with their fans and followers and even build a relationship with them. Considering there are several social media channels out there, do you ever wonder if you’re reaching the right audience?

Which social media channels fit your target audience? Keep reading to find out.

Twitter

Twitter makes use of hashtags that allows businesses to target people who are talking about and engaging with topics related to their business. This social media platform is ideal for sharing real time information, timely trends or live events, and will result in high levels share and engagement.

Use this social networking platform if your target audience is young adults. 24% of internet users log in on their Twitter account on a daily basis. Younger, more educated crowds aged 18 to 29 uses Twitter. 29% of college grads use Twitter and lots of it.

Facebook

Facebook is the biggest socal networking channel, with over 1.86 billion monthly users. Yes, Facebook is crowded, but it gives you the ability to narrow down that 1.86 billion users by gender, age, location, interests, marital status, employment, and income; thus, making it easier for you to reach the right audience.

Majority of the entire adult population is on Facebook. In fact, 88% of milennials and 62% of adults aged 65 and up use Facebook. As such, this would be a great place to start with your social media campaign.

Instagram

Instagram is geared towards younger millennial users. A hefty 38% of female internet users use Instagram. To make the most out of your social media campaign, make sure that you provide attention grabbing photos and high quality videos to your audience. Remember, content is king on Instagram.

People tend to use LinkedIn for interacting with clients, influencers and other professionals. This is a great option for business whose products or services are highly specific to professionals. It is also ideal for B2B marketers.

Just like Facebook, LinkedIn allows you to target users based on gender, location and age. In addition, it also allows you to filter based on field of study, company industry, company size, degrees, job title etc.

So let’s say you find Instagram to be the way to market your business…

Tips for Writing the Perfect Instagram Caption

Instagram may be all about compelling visuals. When it comes to gaining followers, the quality of your photos will be the differentiating factor. But if you want to capture the attention of your target audience, you need the perfect Instagram captions. It can be the key to having your posts seen by more people. This will improve engagement and lead to more likes and comments. Plus, it will help you build a strong online presence.

Here are some tips for writing the perfect Instagram caption.

FREE PRINTABLE

Use a consistent brand voice

Brand voice is one of the most important parts of any good Instagram caption. If you are a small business owner, who is looking to engage with your audience on Instagram, we recommend that you develop a brand voice and use it on all your posts. Practice consistency. Your Instagram caption should sound and feel like the rest of your marketing channels.

Use hashtags

Hashtags aren’t mandatory in your Instagram captions, but they do help. They provide an effective way of connecting with your followers, gain more Instagram followers and even build a relationship with them. Proper use of hashtags will make your posts more effective.

Think outside the box when adding hashtags. Instead of just saving the hashtags for the end, try incorporating them into the body of your caption. Also, use relevant hashtags to boost your engagement and get new eyes on your Instagram content.

Consider length

Although Instagram have a caption character limit of 2,200 characters, followers will have the option to “view more” for longer captions. You should stay within 125 characters to ensure that your entire caption will display in your follower’s feeds with the image. Make sure that every word is integral to the message you’re trying to convey.

For longer tweets, make sure that the most important part of your message is at the beginning of the caption.

[clickToTweet tweet=”For longer posts, make sure the most important part of your message is at the beginning of the caption. #Instagram” quote=”For longer posts, make sure the most important part of your message is at the beginning of the caption. #Instagram”]

Always include a call-to-action

Your captions are a great way to inspire people to engage with your business. As such, we highly recommend that you include a call-to-action to your Instagram caption. You can encourage them to comment, answer questions, use your hashtags, click the link in your bio etc. Your followers will be happy to engage with your business, you just need to prompt them to do something. Inviting them to like or comment can go a long way towards driving more engagement to your posts.

September 6, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

How to Leverage User-Generated Content in Your Marketing Strategy

Users today are bombarded with ads. We see them on TV, on our way to work, even on social media. Because of this, people learn to tune out these advertisements. What they value, however, are the opinion and feedback shared by your clients and customers.

People who had great experience with your company are likely to share this with their family and friends. People value these feedbacks. In fact, they can affect the buying decision of prospective customers. If you are looking to attract potential customers and increase your sales, we recommend that you use user-generated content to your advantage.

Here are some tips on how to leverage user-generated content in your marketing strategy.

Run a contest

Running a contest is one of the easiest ways to capture the attention of your target audience. This encourages people to share their story or upload a photo of themselves. In return, you get free endorsements from previous customers.

Through a contest, you can gather some valuable insights from your customers while building a relationship with them. This increases brand visibility and can help you build trust with potential customers.

Advertise with reviews

Instead of flooding your social media accounts with advertisements and company blurbs, why don’t you just share photos or screen shots of customer reviews. This is a great way to show people who happy your customers are with your products. Plus, customers trust customer reviews more than branded content because they come across as honest and reliable.

Encourage engagement

To build a relationship with your target audience, encourage them to share user-generated content. Starbucks had one of the most successful user-generated content campaigns.

A few years back, Starbucks encouraged its customers to decorate their iconic white cup. As expected, people came up with their own unique designs and shared them on social media. They received over 4,000 entries in just 3 weeks. The coffee chain used the winning design on their reusable cups.

August 28, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Hacks for Better Marketing

As marketers, creating compelling content through social media is the key to our internet success. But, without the ability to reach a large audience and attract followers, our content can be easily lost and forgotten. The world of social media is constantly changing, and staying on top of the latest tips and tricks to help make sure you stay present is crucial to your success. For many businesses, Twitter is the go-to platform for attracting customers, promoting products and services, and making sure people are actually noticing their content. Here are some useful hacks to make sure your Twitter posts are reaching the right people and attracting more customers.

Pinning Posts:

Pinning your Twitter posts can be used to highlight AND pin your key tweet. This is a great way to make sure your richest content has a longer lifecycle and is visible to newcomers. How do you pin a Twitter post? First, find a tweet you want to pin on your Twitter profile. This could be a post that received the most favorites, had the most comments, a retweet from someone who mentioned you etc. From there, click the three-dot icon that appears at the bottom of the tweet, next to the favorites account. From the drop-down menu, select “Pin to your profile page.” This can also be done through your mobile device! When you refresh your page, your pinned tweet should appear at the top of your most recent tweets.

It’s important to note that pinning the tweet does not add the tweet back to your follower’s newsfeed. Only people who look through your profile directly will see the pinned tweets. Pinning your tweets is affective because it helps direct newcomers to the content you feel grabbed the most attention. This leads to even more retweets and favorites with new followers, and overall more exposure to your Twitter profile.

Twitter Cards:

Major brands have been jump-starting their Twitter posts by using Twitter Cards. A Twitter Card allows you to decide how you want your content to be displayed within tweets and helps you stand out amongst the clutter. This leads to increased likelihood that customers will click on and retweet your posts. There are 7 different types of Twitter Cards that help your posts stand out and drive more traffic to your website.

One of the greatest Twitter Cards for marketers is the Twitter Summary Card. This allows marketers to customize the content description that appears in the summary before it’s posted. Whether you want to share your opinion, provide a short overview, or ask a question, the Summary Card makes it easy to eliminate the sometimes off-message default lines of text that appear with a particular link.

How To Enable Twitter Cards for Your Site:

Using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, enable Twitter card meta-data from the Social>Twitter menu.
Visit the Twitter Card Validator and enter the URL for your blog.
Once your site validates, request that your url is added to the beta program. Twitter will likely have you validated in just a few days.

Organize Weekly Twitter Chats:

Twitter chats are directly tied to specific and original hashtags through which tweets are organized and tracked and are great for your overall Twitter marketing strategy. To have a successful Twitter chat, set a date and time when most of your followers will be online, then choose a hashtag. Keep your hashtag short and concise, but also memorable and unique. Before starting your Twitter chat, make sure you have staff to keep things running smoothly and to prevent your hashtag from being hijacked. There are various tools to help organize your chats such as Twubs, Nurph, and ChatSalad.

5 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing Results

1: Turn a Pinned Tweet Into a Feature Box

The Feature Box is an email form you place at the top of your homepage, which offers your website visitors a freebie in exchange for signing up for your email list.You can add a similar feature to your Twitter profile page by combining two of Twitter’s native features: a lead generation card and a pinned tweet. Simply create a Lead Generation Card that includes an incentive for people to opt in. Offer regular email updates, a special freebie or a subscribers-only discount. Pin the tweet to the top of your Twitter profile and you’re all set.

2: Communicate Less and Tweet More Links

A recent study by Dan Zarrella looked at the “reply rates” of about 130,000 random Twitter users and discovered that highly followed accounts tend to converse less. Keep in mind, the study results don’t suggest that Twitter conversations have a negative effect on your following, just that conversations aren’t what motivate people to follow you on Twitter. According to another study by Dan Zarrella, the way to get more followers is to invest more time tweeting relevant links to your followers, rather than communicating directly with them.

3: Ask Twitter Influencers for Help

According to BuzzSumo who recently studied the share counts of more than 100 million articles, when influencers share your content, the reach increases substantially. If one influencer shares a piece of content, it will get 38.8% more social shares. Three influencers double the social shares and five influencers quadruple them. It’s crucial to network with influencers and develop relationships with them. Then, when you have an important piece of content you’d like to get seen, you can ask the influencers you know to share it.

4: Use Twitter’s Recommend Feature

Recommend is a new feature of Twitter’s tweet button that many people don’t pay attention to. After a visitor tweets an article from your blog, the window recommends they follow you on Twitter, if they don’t follow you already. This is an excellent way to grow your Twitter account, since people who just tweeted your article are likely to want to follow you. Look at the code of your tweet button and make sure the recommend field contains your Twitter username. To double-check you’ve set up the feature correctly, ask a friend to unfollow you on Twitter and then tweet an article from your blog. If the recommend field contains your Twitter username, you’re all set.

5: Repeat Article Tweets

According to a study by Wisemetrics, the second tweet of an article gets as much as 86% of the performance as the first tweet. Clearly the performance will fade with each new tweet, but considering your followers are probably in different time zones, you still need to tweet your most valuable content more than once. Your new followers will appreciate it, since the content will be new for them.

And finally! Here are some Tips for Writing Great Tweets!

Composing the perfect tweet isn’t easy. With only 140 characters at your disposal plus million of users from all over the world generating more than 500 million tweets a day, it can be extremely difficult to get through the noise.

While there is no such thing as the perfect tweet, there are some guidelines to follow for writing one that will capture the attention of people.

Tips for writing great tweets:

Get to the point

According to studies, tweets with less than 100 characters get 18% more engagement. When writing tweets, make sure you keep it short, concise, and interesting. Get to the point. Make every character count. If you have a longer message to convey, we suggest that you include a link to a blog post.

Start interacting

If you want to reach more people, make sure that you interact with them. This can be done in many forms – by asking a question, retweeting other’s posts, responding to other users, following interesting people, engaging in conversations or sharing valuable information.

Command action

Recent studies show that tweets that command action receive better engagement and retweets. When writing tweets, make sure that you include a call to action. Whether you want people to follow you in other social networks, retweet your posts or enter your contest, you need to be clear about what you want people to do.

Use hashtags

A hashtag provides a way for new followers to find you. It is how you identify your content as relevant to a certain field or group of people. Make sure you include hashtags in all your tweets, but don’t overuse it. You can use an existing hashtag or create your own.

Proofread

As a business professional, you want to make sure that your tweets are free from grammar and spelling errors. Your tweets will only be composed of 1 to 3 sentences, so make sure that you get them right. Avoid slang and abbreviations.

August 21, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Branding, Membership Only

How to answer the question, what do you do?

Picture this, you walk into a room of other business owners who immediately turn to you and ask, “So, what do you do?” As a freelancer, do you know how to respond? Do you always say the same answer or do you try and switch it up depending upon with whom you are speaking?

More often then not, business owners and freelancers who aren’t purposeful about how they approach the answer to “what do you do” try and encompass every aspect of their expertise within one answer. They are so interested in making sure the listener sees the breadth of their experience and offerings that the messaging becomes convoluted and lost.

I did this for months as I kicked off my marketing agency and it wasn’t until I attended a workshop on networking skills that I realized my short comings. In fact, it was so bad that I even switched my service offerings from PPC management to social media management for small businesses because I confused other networkers so much that all they got out of our conversations was marketing businesses online > social media is a type of digital marketing > Oh, she must manage social media accounts. Recognizing that this appeared to be low hanging fruit, I shifted to social media and blogging, but that’s another story for another day.

So, to give yourself the best possible chance of actually providing the freelance services you set out to, there are a few techniques that can completely transform your messaging and ability to concisely explain what you do to your tribe. In this blog post, I will be providing the actual steps you can take to answer the question “What do you do?” as a freelancer.

What do you do?

Tip 1: Think about the following questions

What makes you unique?

Is there anything that sets you apart from your competitors? This can include your skills, your experience, or even your personality and values. Especially as I was growing my business, I found so many clients who had been screwed over by other freelancers. They were hesitant to even have a conversation about their marketing needs because of previous experiences. To overcome this objection, I used my values and the fact that every new account that I managed was set up in the client’s name rather than linked to my personal/business accounts, so my client retained complete ownership of their marketing and business materials. This unique proposition isn’t as unique now, but it absolutely helped prospects feel at ease when we talked specifics about projects.

What is your ideal project?

Here, I mean to think about short vs long-term projects. It is alright to have a combination of the two, but very clear about what services constitute as a short term vs long term project.

Example 1: Web designer. A front-end designer may really emphasize their website build-outs, which are short term projects. For more robust offerings and to provide more passive income, the same web designer could also offer maintenance plans through the web hosting company.

Example 2: Copy writer: In copy writing there are always both short and long term projects. Creating blogging packages, for example, can create monthly recurring revenue for your business, but a full website rewrite or manual creation could command a higher hourly or per word rate, though it is a short term project. You may prefer to get in and get out, but be available for future short term writing needs for your clients, or you may find you excel more at really getting to know your clients through writing multiple blogs and newsletters for them each month.

Who is your ideal client?

Have you ever heard yourself say that you work with anyone and everyone? Do you really want to? When you think about your ideal client, it can be broken down in terms of business size (large corporations, small startups, or family owned businesses). One tactic I’ve found to work well is if you think of what specific service applies to which ideal client. So when you are talking to a soloprenuer, for example, you are only focusing on the one or two freelance services that really speak to their needs and budget.

What is your ideal target audience?

In addition to considering the size of the business, it is also important to consider the types of industries you want to focus on. Are you passionate about health and wellness, SaaS providers, consultants, etc? When you focus on one niche, you can start to optimize your efforts more effectively. You may find some processes work well for one industry in particular, which aides in building your expertise and loops back around to allowing you to articulate what makes you unique.

Tip 2: Use the Who, What, Why, How framework

Once you have taken the time to work through what makes you different and which services are most appropriate for your niche target markets, you can start constructing your answer to the question “what do you do?”

The Use the Who, What, Why, How framework is broken down into:

WHO you are: By answering Who you are, you are providing your job title. Many answers to the question of what you do fizzle down after this is answered, but I urge you to keep going.

WHAT you do: This is where you can add context to your job title. What does it actually mean?

WHY you do it: Have you ever told someone why you are freelancer? It is okay to incorporate this into your answer for what do you do. You can focus on flexibility, challenges, making personal relationships with your clients, really whatever your story is for why you are on this path. You’ll find that your story can open the doors to more in depth conversations.

HOW you do it differently: This is where you can explain your unique value proposition. How do you run your business different than the next guy or gal? Are there any case studies you can highlight?

Bringing the Who, What, Why, How framework together.

Now that you have your who, what, why, and hows thought through, try explaining what you do. For me, this comes down to:

I own a digital marketing agency that focuses on social media management for soloprenuers and small businesses. We help our clients create consistent content so they can better connect with their target audience online while freeing up their time to focus on their business.

Tip 3: Have different answers ready for various situations

It’s all good and well that you have your answer outlined to what do you do as a freelancer, but what if you are spending time talking to very different tips of people. The questions below are prompts to get you started down the path of accurately positioning yourself as a freelancer.

What are three pain points you can help to resolve?

Having a list of three pain points allows you to mention just one for each niche market or type of project. Through highlighting a pain you can draw people in, and then you can explain your solution to the issue. Rather than focusing on the ‘features’ of your services, try to emphasize how working with you made your clients feel.

What example project can you discuss that truly made a difference for a client?

This example project that made a difference can make a mini case study that you can use to highlight what you do, how you are different, and why someone should hire you. Telling stories is a way to help your prospects understand what it would be like to work with you.

Have you ever…?

Ask a question back to the individual as a way to describe what you do. An example could be, “have you ever started to write a enewsletter only to get frustrated with the program you were using? I help my clients optimize their ability to communicate directly with their tribe through Mailchimp email campaigns.

Do you have a special offer or promotion such as a free consultation?

Free consultations are one way to get people in the door. An example of how you could use this is: I work with small businesses to make sure they can be found on Google. If you would like, I offer a 30 minute free consultation where we can actually walk through your website and see if there are any areas for improvement to make sure you can be found online.

It can be daunting to answer the question of what do you do, especially as you are just getting started, but being able to do this can transform your messaging and ability to open the doors to new introductions and conversations. As you create your elevator pitch, recognize that you don’t need one pitch or commercial for every situation.

Each conversation can fully depend on the individual with whom you are discussing your business. If you sense yourself trying to explain every detail of what you do, take a step back. Did the other person’s eyes just glaze over?

Take a deep breath.

You’ll have another chance to explain what you do in the next conversation!

August 16, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Branding, Social Speak

What should every entrepreneur have in their business?

We are so excited to have had Russ Barnes on our radio show August 12th, 2017. He is such a remarkable person! Here are just a few topics we covered:

1) Customer, customer, customer – without the customer you are out of business. Listening to the customer will help you improve your product or service.
2) Message, message, message – in order for customers to find you, they must believe that you can solve their problem in such a way that they are willing to pay for the solution.
3) Value, value, value – the more value you can deliver, the less resistance you will experience when acquiring customers.
4) Target market – be a big fish in a small pond. The idea that EVERYONE can use your product or service positions you as a tiny fish in a huge ocean. When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
5) Decision making – successful business is certainly what you do, but it is more effectively achieved by how you think about what you do. Resource management is critical.
6) Progression – understand what it takes to get from where you are to where you want to be. This is your growth strategy.
7) Advisors – build your team of advisors carefully. No one develops a successful business alone. Cooperate and collaborate, but compensate. No one wants to work for free.
8) Earn money to hire experts. Focus on what you do to make money and then pay experts to do what they do best to help you maximize your time and rapidly achieve outcomes. Know the calculation that will tell you whether you can hire an expert and when you can hire the expert.
9) Don’t get complacent. Never stop learning. Perhaps we can talk about books, magazines, webinars, libraries, incubators, or other educational resources that business owners can access for little to no money.
10) Love, love, love what you do or find a way to transition into something that you do love.

Here is a little bit more about who Russ Barnes is:

Russ Barnes, USAF Colonel (retired), MBA, MS

Colonel Russ Barnes is the CEO and Senior Business Advisor to Entrepreneurs and Executives at Systro Consulting, an organization design firm specializing in small business development. He has more than 30 years of experience in organization development drawn from military service, franchise ownership, academic programs, and strategy consulting, specifically with small businesses.

As an aviator, Russ flew combat missions during Desert Storm and later held senior leadership positions in several higher headquarters staff organizations which include Air Combat Command Headquarters, the Pentagon, Strategic Command Headquarters, European Command Headquarters, and Central Command Headquarters. He has received the Legion of Merit, Air Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal and more than 20 other peacetime and wartime decorations.

After retirement from the military, Russ grew his franchise territory from zero to profitability in less than three years. His growth was based on a clear vision, building an effective network, consistently delivering a quality product and maintaining a relentless focus on customer service.

Russ is a graduate of the Referral Institute Certified Networker program where he received extensive training in referral marketing. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Manhattan College (NY), his MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and his Master of Science degree in Strategic Studies from Air University. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Organization Development at Benedictine University.

Contact Info:
Email: Russ@systro.org
Website: www.systro.org
Social media: www.linkedin.com/in/rcbarnes
Phone number: 813 520-5770

August 12, 2017/0 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald

Business Advice, Business Management, Internet Marketing

Tips for Creating a Successful Online Business

Not too long ago, people would visit the local stores and endure the long lines just to get the things they need. Today, however, people prefer to shop online. In fact, studies revealed that consumers make 51% of their purchases online.

With the growth on online retail and shopping, many of you probably have an existing e-commerce business or looking to start an online business.

Here are some tips for creating a successful online business.

Bring your products to life

Product photography can mean the difference between losing customers and making a sale. High quality product photos are a must when trying to persuade people to buy your stuff.

Internet users are bombarded with ads, emails and news stories. With so many businesses vying for their attention, you only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your target audience. Unique and visually appealing photos can help you do just that. If you’re selling clothes, we recommend that you hire a model. This way, people will have an idea how the clothes look like when worn.

Clean and user-friendly design

A professionally-designed and user-friendly website can go a long way in the success of your online business. It also adds credibility and will help increase trust in your company.

According to studies, 42% of online shoppers base their opinion of a business based on the overall design of their website. Majority of consumers didn’t push through with the sale because the site has poor aesthetics.

Fast loading time

An average person has an attention span of 8 seconds. Yes, you read that right. They want to get things they want fast. This is why we’re in the age of fast – fast cars, fast foods and fast websites.

Survey revealed that people expect websites to load in 2 seconds. They would leave the site if it doesn’t load within 4 seconds. Slow loading time can drastically affect your sales. People aren’t going to stick around if it takes a while for your website to load.

Easy payment process

Most people prefer to shop online because it’s more convenient. As such, you want to make the shopping process easier for them. The more methods of payment you offer, the more likely a customer will buy.

Credit cards and Paypal are the quickest and easiest ways for customers to pay. You may also offer cash on delivery, money order, personal cheque, direct deposit into your bank account.

August 7, 2017/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

3 Types of Social Media Content to Help Increase Engagement

#1 VIDEO:

A study by Animoto asked 1,000 consumers what they want to see with regard to social video. It also surveyed 500 marketers to determine whether they are fulfilling those expectations.

Highlights from the study were compiled into an infographic, which includes the following findings:

39% of consumers are more likely to finish videos that have subtitles. (The infographic reports that, according to Digiday, 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound.)
Preference between pre-recorded video and Facebook Live was split nearly down the middle, with pre-recorded video having just a slight edge (52% vs. 48%).
81% of marketers optimize their social videos for mobile.

#2 GIFS:

GIFs are the newest, coolest trend on social media and getting a lot of attention because not only are they easy to view, they also usually offer a call to action. Fun Fact – We may think that GIFs are a recent phenomenon in the world of digital marketing, BUT animated GIFs have been around for more than two decades!

Here are just a few ways how to incorporate GIFs into your digital marketing strategy:

The attention span of your audience is very low. GIFs are a smart way of reaching your target audience with a living picture of your message.
GIFs are an easy way to get engagement from your target audience and show them how something works.
Another way to use GIFs is through your email marketing, blogging, and other digital materials. It has been reported to raise the click through rate as well! GIFs are fun to watch, easy to find and easy to upload.
GIFs can be about a new process you have, new products, telling a story, explaining a situation, tell a joke etc.
GIF format can be done through Boomerang, GIF Keyboard, and GIPHY. There are tons of options out there for you!

#3 Infographics:

Remember last week we talked about ‘Stopping the SCROLL’? Great article by B2C:

6 Step Process to Amazing Infographic Design

Step 1: Choose your topic and research your audience.
Step 2: Take a look at your data and consolidate it.
Step 3: Craft the copy.
Step 4: Design!
Step 5: Review, review, review.
Step 6: Publish and promote.

August 4, 2017/0 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald

Social Media

5 Social Media Tips You Need For Your Business

Social media can be overwhelming and daunting as a business owner, some even tend to avoid or do the bare minimum when it comes to social media marketing. We want to help break through that confusion, frustration and make it easier for you as a business owner to be successful with social media marketing!

Here are 5 of our favorite tips when it comes to social media:

Have a purpose and goals:

What are you wanting out of social media? What is your purpose and goals ? Is it for brand awareness? To drive people to your website? To position yourself as an expert in your field? Whatever it is, write it out and make sure each and every post moves you towards that goal and purpose.
Have a plan:

Once you know why you are on social media, create a laid-out plan and a content calendar. The content calendar can be weekly, monthly, or even quarterly, whatever works best for your business. This one tool will make social media so much easier for you. Think about it, if you know the topics you are going to write and talk about on social media, the content will flow! Think of different causes you are a part of, websites you visit, company news, events, myths, trends, etc.
Choose 1 platform and grow from there:

This is KEY! Yes, we want you on all the social media platforms but don’t worry about being on all of them all at once. Select 1 – ideally, it should be the social channel where you can find the bulk of your target market or niche. Get to know this social channel inside and out so it becomes second nature to you and your business. THEN, and only then, move on and grow from there.
Always provide value:

What’s in it for me (meaning your audience) Steer away from the selling mentality, we all want more business, but just selling on social media without value isn’t the correct move. If your audience will not benefit from the post, it may be time to re-think your message.
Measure your results:

Make sure that whatever you select as your purpose in tip #1 it has the ability to be measured. If you can’t measure your results, you will never know if you are on the right track or if you need to pivot and adjust your messages.

BONUS TIP: Your main goal with social media marketing should be STOP THE SCROLL!!! Remember to make each social media post, image, graphic and video compelling enough to stop people from scrolling on by. Keep your followers intrigued and offer something unique to keep them engaged with your social media account.

July 29, 2017/0 Comments/by Caitlin McDonald