In the fast-paced world of modern business, efficiency is the name of the game. We all know that time is money, and when it comes to marketing, every minute counts. That’s where marketing automation steps in.
Imagine having your marketing tasks streamlined, running like clockwork, even while you sleep. It’s not science fiction – it’s a reality that can transform your business.
So, if you’re a business owner ready to level up your marketing game, keep reading. By the end, you’ll understand how this game-changer can make your life easier and your business more successful. Plus, we’ll also provide a list of popular tools you might want to check out.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is your marketing department’s best friend. It’s like having a tireless assistant who takes care of repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
This technology-driven marvel encompasses tools like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, email marketing automation, social media management, lead scoring, and powerful analytics. It’s the secret sauce behind successful marketing strategies.
Benefits of Marketing Automation
Marketing automation tools offer a number of benefits to businesses of all sizes, including:
Increased efficiency: Marketing automation can help you save time by automating repetitive tasks, such as sending emails, scheduling social media posts, and managing lead nurturing campaigns.
Improved lead generation: Marketing automation can help you generate more leads by targeting the right people with the right message at the right time.
Improved customer engagement: Marketing automation can help you improve your customer engagement by sending them personalized messages and offers that are relevant to their needs.
Increased sales: By helping you generate more leads and nurture them more effectively, marketing automation can help you increase your sales.
Scale your marketing efforts: Marketing automation can help you scale your marketing efforts so that you can reach more people and grow your business.
Choosing the Right Marketing Automation Tool
Marketing automation tools can help businesses of all sizes save time, streamline their marketing operations, and improve their results. But with so many different tools available, it can be tough to know which one is right for your business.
Here are a few things to consider when choosing a marketing automation tool:
Your budget: Marketing automation tools can range in price from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars per month. It’s important to choose a tool that fits your budget and your needs.
Your business goals: What do you want to achieve with marketing automation? Are you looking to generate more leads, nurture leads more effectively, or improve customer engagement? Once you know your goals, you can start to look for tools that have the features you need to achieve them.
Your team’s size and skills: How many people will be using the marketing automation tool? What level of technical expertise do they have? Choose a tool that is easy to use and that your team will be able to get the most out of.
Integrations: Does the marketing automation tool integrate with the other tools you use, such as your CRM system, email marketing platform, and website analytics? Integrations can help you save time and automate even more of your marketing tasks.
Once you’ve considered these factors, you can start narrowing down your choices.
Popular Automation Tools
Here are some marketing automation tools you might want to consider.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a good all-around marketing automation tool that offers a wide range of features, including email marketing, CRM, social media marketing, and website analytics. It is a good choice for businesses of all sizes, but it is especially well-suited for businesses that are looking for a one-stop shop for their marketing needs.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule and publish posts to multiple social media platforms at the same time. It is a good choice for businesses of all sizes that want to save time and improve their social media marketing efforts.
Pardot
Pardot is a marketing automation tool that is specifically designed for B2B businesses. It offers a variety of features to help you generate and nurture leads, such as email marketing, landing page creation, and lead scoring. It’s a good choice for B2B businesses of all sizes that want to improve their lead generation and nurturing efforts.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation tool that is well-suited for businesses of all sizes. It offers a variety of features, including email marketing, landing page creation, lead nurturing, and marketing automation workflows. It’s a good choice for businesses that are looking for a powerful and affordable marketing automation solution.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a marketing automation tool that is specifically designed for e-commerce businesses. It offers a variety of features to help you automate your email marketing, customer segmentation, and lead nurturing campaigns. It’s a good choice for e-commerce businesses of all sizes that want to improve their marketing results.
Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media management tool that is specifically designed for Pinterest and Instagram. It allows you to schedule and publish posts, track your results, and collaborate with other users. It’s a good choice for businesses and individuals who want to save time and improve their Pinterest and Instagram marketing efforts.
Overall, these marketing automation tools offer a variety of features and benefits to businesses of all sizes. When choosing a marketing automation tool, it is important to consider your specific needs and goals.
Most marketing automation tools offer free trials, so you can try them out before you commit. Be sure to take advantage of these trials to see which tool is the best fit for your business.
Final thoughts
Choosing the right marketing automation tool for your business can be a daunting task, but it’s worth it in the long run. By taking the time to consider your needs and goals, you can choose a tool that will help you achieve your marketing goals and grow your business.
If you’re ready to take the next step in your marketing journey, we’re here to help.We understand that you have a business to run, and we can take the burden of automating your digital marketing efforts off your hands.
Schedule a free consultation call with us. Let our team of experts tailor a customized marketing automation strategy that suits your unique business needs.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Marketing-Automation-Streamlining-Your-Marketing-Efforts-for-Efficiency-and-Results.png12602240Kathlyn Angeleshttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles2023-10-25 10:40:502023-10-23 15:53:38Marketing Automation: Streamlining Your Marketing Efforts for Efficiency and Results
The holiday season isn’t just a time for festive cheer; it’s also a crucial period for businesses to boost their sales. With the right holiday marketing strategies, you can tap into the spirit of giving and make this time of year incredibly profitable.
In this article, we’ll explore effective tactics and campaigns specifically designed for the holiday season, ensuring your business survives and thrives during this joyful time.
Understanding the Holiday Market
Before diving into holiday marketing strategies, it’s essential to understand the market dynamics during this season.
First and foremost, let’s talk numbers. Holiday sales have consistently been a substantial portion of annual revenues for businesses across industries.
One of the defining aspects of the holiday season is gift-giving. Consumers are actively seeking gift ideas and meaningful presents. They’re also looking for decorations, festive outfits, and more. As a business owner, this data should serve as a compelling reason to gear up for the holiday rush.
Competition is fierce during this busy shopping season. Everyone is vying for the attention of holiday shoppers, which means your marketing efforts must be compelling and strategic. Standing out in this crowded landscape requires a well-thought-out approach.
Build a Festive Brand Identity
Creating a festive brand identity during the holiday season is akin to dressing up your storefront with twinkling lights and holiday decorations. It’s about making your brand resonate with the spirit of the season and connecting with your audience on a more emotional level.
Start by infusing holiday elements into your brand’s visual identity. This could involve incorporating festive colors like red, green, and gold into your logo or website design.
Consider subtle changes, like adding a Santa hat to your logo or creating holiday-themed banners for your website. These minor adjustments signal your customers that you’re embracing the holiday spirit.
Craft Compelling Content
In the world of holiday marketing, content is your secret sauce. It allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper, emotional level.
During the festive season, people are not just looking for products; they are seeking experiences and connections. Crafting compelling content is the key to delivering just that.
Visual content, such as images and videos, takes center stage during the holidays. Invest in high-quality visuals that showcase your products or services in a holiday context. Whether it’s a festive-themed photo shoot, a video showcasing gift ideas, or visually stunning social media posts, make sure your visuals are aesthetically pleasing and tell a compelling story.
Leverage Social Media
Social media is your holiday marketing powerhouse. It’s where you can directly engage with your audience, create buzz, and drive traffic to your online and physical stores.
Plan a content calendar tailored to the holidays, featuring eye-catching visuals, heartwarming stories, and irresistible offers. Remember to use holiday-themed hashtags and encourage user-generated content to boost engagement.
Stay on top of trending holiday hashtags and incorporate them into your posts. This helps your content reach a broader audience interested in holiday-related topics.
Running Holiday-Specific Promotions
Holiday shoppers love a good deal. Well-crafted promotions attract customers and encourage repeat business and brand loyalty. Consider running promotions such as discounts, buy-one-get-one offers, or gift cards.
Timing and duration are crucial. Start your promotions early enough to capture early bird shoppers, but also consider extending them to cater to last-minute buyers. Limited-time offers create a sense of urgency and excitement, prompting immediate action.
Maximizing Website and Mobile Experience
Your website and mobile presence are often the first points of contact between your business and potential customers.
Speed matters, especially during the holiday rush. Slow-loading pages can drive potential customers away. Optimize your website’s loading times by compressing images, minifying code, and leveraging browser caching.
Streamline the checkout process to reduce cart abandonment. Implement features like guest checkout, one-click purchasing, and progress indicators to guide customers through the steps. Additionally, consider offering multiple payment options to accommodate various preferences.
Remember, a well-optimized website is your digital storefront, and first impressions matter.
Tracking and Analyzing Performance
Track and analyze your campaign performance to determine whether or not your holiday marketing strategies are working.
Use key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, click-through rates, and sales metrics to measure success. Utilize analytics tools to gain valuable insights.
After the holiday season concludes, conduct a comprehensive post-campaign analysis. Evaluate the overall success of your strategies, what worked exceptionally well, and areas that may need improvement.
Post-Holiday Engagement and Retention
Don’t let your customer relationships fade once the holidays are over. Engage with your customers post-holiday by sending follow-up emails, surveys, and exclusive offers. Focus on turning holiday shoppers into loyal, year-round customers.
Final thoughts
The holiday season is a prime time for businesses to shine. By implementing these holiday marketing strategies, you can maximize your sales and create a memorable customer experience.
Remember, planning and preparation are crucial to holiday marketing success. Start early, stay creative, and spread the holiday cheer through effective digital and social media marketing.
Ready to supercharge your holiday marketing? Start planning your strategies now and make this festive season your most successful one yet. If you need expert guidance, feel free to book a free consultation with us.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Holiday-Marketing-Strategies-How-to-Maximize-Sales-During-the-Festive-Season..png12602240Kathlyn Angeleshttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles2023-09-27 10:17:512023-09-21 15:54:19Holiday Marketing Strategies: How to Maximize Sales During the Festive Season
For many businesses, the majority of their sales come during certain seasons. For instance, a company that sells swimsuits may see a significant increase in sales during the summer months, while a retailer that sells holiday decorations may experience a surge in business during the holiday season.
While it’s normal for businesses to experience fluctuations in sales throughout the year, it’s essential to consider how to turn those seasonal buyers into loyal customers who will continue to shop with you year-round.
Having a loyal customer base can provide numerous benefits for your business. They are more likely to make repeat purchases, refer your products to their family and friends, and even provide valuable feedback that can help you improve your products or services.
In this blog post, we’ll explore strategies businesses can use to turn seasonal buyers into loyal year-round customers.
Analyze Your Customer Data to Understand Purchasing Habits
The first step is to understand your customers’ purchasing habits. Gathering information on when and how customers make purchases can help you identify trends and patterns in their behavior. This can be gathered through customer surveys, sales data, and interactions with your customer service team.
Once you’ve gathered this data, analyze it to understand what drives your customers to make purchases. Do they shop with you more often during certain times of the year? Which products are they most likely to purchase? Understanding these patterns can help you tailor your marketing efforts to meet your customers’ needs and preferences.
Develop Targeted Marketing Campaigns
Now that you already have a better understanding of your customer’s purchasing habits, you can use this information to develop targeted marketing campaigns.
By customizing your marketing efforts to different customer segments, you can more effectively reach out to seasonal buyers and encourage them to continue shopping with you year-round.
You can use email marketing, social media, and other channels to send personalized messages to your customers, offering them special discounts or promotions to encourage them to continue shopping with you. You can also use this opportunity to keep your customers informed about new products or services or to showcase the unique benefits of shopping with your business.
Offer Incentives to Encourage Repeat Purchases
Loyalty programs are an excellent way to incentivize your most loyal customers. It can also be structured in a variety of ways. For example, you could offer points for each purchase that can be redeemed for discounts or special offers. You could also provide tiered rewards, where customers receive more benefits as they reach higher spending levels.
In addition to loyalty programs, you can offer personalized discounts or promotions to encourage repeat purchases. For example, you could email a customer who has purchased during a specific season, offering them a discount on their next purchase. You can also consider offering bundle deals or special package deals to encourage customers to purchase multiple items at once.
Focus on Providing an Excellent Customer Experience
Providing excellent customer service and support is crucial for building customer trust and loyalty. This includes responding to customer inquiries and concerns on time and being available to assist them when they need it.
There are various ways to improve your customer service and support, including:
– Offering multiple channels for customers to reach out to you (email, phone, or social media)
– Training your customer service team to be knowledgeable and helpful
– Providing resources on your website, such as FAQs or product guides, to help customers find the information they need
– Seeking out customer feedback and using it to improve your products or services
Solving Problems and Handling Complaints Effectively
Problems and complaints will inevitably arise from time to time, but how you handle these issues can make all the difference. By solving problems and handling complaints effectively, you can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one and turn a seasonal customer into a loyal year-round one.
Some strategies for solving problems and handling complaints effectively include:
– Listening carefully to the customer’s concerns and taking their feedback seriously
– Apologizing for any inconvenience and offering a solution to the problem
– Following up with the customer to ensure that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction
– Using customer complaints as an opportunity to improve your products or services
Final thoughts
Turning seasonal buyers into loyal year-round customers is essential for businesses that want to maximize revenue and build a solid customer base.
However, it’s important to remember that building customer loyalty takes time and effort. It requires consistent, ongoing effort. But once you do, you’ll be on your way to maximizing revenue and achieving long-term success.
You can’t please everyone, they say. No matter how hard you try, you are likely to receive negative comments or feedback from unsatisfied customers. As a business owner, you know how powerful online reviews are. Consumers rely on them and use them as a guide in making a purchasing decision.
It only takes one negative review to scare off potential customers. Don’t let a negative review stand in the way of achieving your business goals. Show your brand’s dedication to resolving issues with empathy and transparency.
Here are a few tips on how to manage negative reviews on social media.
Respond publicly
You can take control of the situation by resolving the issue privately. But before you move to a private conversation, make sure that you respond publicly. At this point, the public’s eyes are on you. You want people to know that you are willing to resolve the issue, but you want to work out the details privately.
Response time matters
In a world where everything can be achieved with a push of a button, people’s attention span became significantly shorter. They expect to get what they want in a flash. So when a customer makes an effort to express his/her disappointment by posting a review, he/she wants to get your attention. They expect you to respond in the soonest possible time. If you can, try to respond within 24 hours.
Most people feel like they’re being ignored when they don’t receive an immediate response. This is especially true when dealing with sensitive issues. Remember, response time, matters when dealing with an upset customer.
Responding quickly to customers who wrote a negative review is important because it shows that the business cares about their customers and is willing to address their concerns. It also gives the business an opportunity to resolve any issues that may have led to the negative review.
Acknowledge your fault
When you receive a complaint from a customer, saying that they waited for about an hour for their food to arrive, your first instinct is probably to give a reason why. It may be because it has been an incredibly busy day or you’re short-staffed.
It doesn’t matter what the reason is. You failed to meet the expectations of your customers and he/she is upset about it. You need to admit that it’s your fault, say sorry, and offer them a small gift or a discount.
Leave the negative comments and reviews
Harsh comments and bad reviews can negatively affect your business’ reputation. Some of you might be tempted to delete them, but don’t. Deleting the comment will only make it worse. Once the person realized what you did, he/she will come back louder, angrier, and more frustrated.
The only time you are allowed to delete the comment or review is when you have settled the issue and the customer has agreed for you to delete it.
Turn negative review into a positive one
Once the issue has been resolved to the customer’s satisfaction, you can ask them to consider editing their review to reflect the resolution. By showing that you are willing to go the extra mile to resolve customer issues and make things right, you can turn a negative experience into a positive one and potentially turn a negative review into a positive one as well.
Final thoughts
Managing negative reviews and comments on social media is a crucial aspect of maintaining a positive online presence. It is important to remain calm and professional when responding to negative feedback, as it allows you to address the concerns of your customers and show that you care about their experience. By taking the time to listen to their feedback and offering solutions, you can turn a negative situation into a positive one and build trust with your audience.
Remember to always monitor your social media channels and be proactive in addressing any negative reviews or comments in a timely and effective manner.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/How-to-Manage-Negative-Reviews-and-Comments-on-Social-Media.png12602240Kathlyn Angeleshttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles2022-12-28 10:41:532022-12-21 09:00:33How to Manage Negative Reviews and Comments on Social Media
Holidays are undoubtedly the best time of the year to rake in the best profits. It’s that one season when consumers not only shop for themselves but for everyone else who matters to them.
People who usually don’t visit your site may suddenly be on the lookout for a gift for themselves or their family and friends. Either way, they are consumers. The only possible problem is that every brand is vying for their attention.
So how can you ensure that your e-commerce store stands out? Use these tips to boost your sales this holiday season.
Offer bundles
Every business owner shares a common goal: to generate more sales. Product bundling is a win-win for both sellers and buyers. You get to sell more products. Buyers, on the other hand, get a discount for buying multiple products. Plus, they get to save money on shipping.
This was a marketing strategy that Nintendo used years ago. They bundled their gaming consoles and video games, and the sales went up by 100,000.
The key is to find the right mix of your products for your bundled package. If you’re selling cosmetics, you can create a bundle that includes lipstick and a lip liner. They’re complementary products and would make sense for consumers to buy them as a bundle.
Highlight bestsellers
For most e-commerce stores, their best-selling items make up 80% of their sales. These are proven products your customers love. If you’re targeting a cold audience, you want to be sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Showcasing your bestsellers and recommendations on your platform will make it easily accessible for your shoppers. It can hasten their decision-making process. You’ll be doing them a favor by guiding them on what’s best in-store.
Create gift guides
People turn to Google for gift ideas for their loved ones. By creating gift guides, you’re not just doing your audience a favor; you’re also attracting more customers and improving your search engine rankings.
Of course, you’d want to include your products on the list. Be sure to highlight the features and benefits of each product to show people why it would make a great gift.
The more specific the gift guide, the more likely will it capture people’s attention. Consider the demographic of your audience when writing gift guides. Think about their age, gender, hobbies, interests, etc.
Maximize email marketing
With an average of 24% Click Through Rate and a 6% Conversion Rate, email remains to be the most cost-effective way to speak to your buyers at a personal level. This is where you build relationships with them way before the holidays.
To make the most out of the holiday season, you need to plan ahead. Send out teasers to build excitement for your upcoming sales. So when the day comes, your subscribers will be ready to click the “buy now” button.
Make sure that you personalize your email campaigns. There’s a good chance your competitors are also sending out emails. The last thing you want is for your emails to be lost in an inbox full of similar offers.
Redesign with a festive theme
Want to capture the attention of your potential buyers? Ensure that your E-commerce site, particularly your landing page, is in line with the festive theme of the season.
Choose a theme that resonates with the mood and the spirit of your target market. Changing colors, adding graphics, adding a dedicated category for the holidays would call better attention to your online store.
Make mobile shopping easy
It’s no surprise that the global population is attached to their mobile phones. Make sure that your mobile site is easy to navigate and that checkout is a breeze.
The more user-friendly your mobile site is, the more likely shoppers would do business with you. Support thematic searches (i.e., gifts for men, gifts for her) and give leeway for misspelling for an easier search. According to research, 25% of shoppers leave their cart because navigation and checkout are too complicated. Be mindful not to do that.
Offer limited-time discounts
To encourage buyers to complete their shopping, highlight any discounts on their existing items in the cart. A scarce offer for a limited time frame may also induce a sense of urgency to complete the process. Remember that competition is tough out there. The better your offer is compared to others, the more likely that consumers will stick with you.
Automate as much as you can
Incorrect orders and delivery delays are two of the many things that can completely turn away a customer for good. With the influx of orders during the holidays, automate as much as possible to reduce errors and mistakes.
Final thoughts
The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year for both retail and e-commerce business owners. But let’s face it. Increasing sales isn’t something you can achieve overnight. It requires careful planning and a robust marketing strategy.
If you need help with your holiday marketing campaign, please feel free to reach out to us. Schedule a free 30-minute call with us, and we’ll help you create a marketing strategy that will boost your conversion rates not just on the festive days but the whole year-round.
In the last decade, social media became the most influential marketing tool. Every business, big and small, has incorporated social media into its marketing campaign.
While the practice of social media marketing has evolved over the years, there are still a lot of myths and misconceptions around it. Worse, a lot of people are still holding on to them simply because they find it hard to stay up-to-date on what’s really going on with social media.
To help you separate facts from fiction, we listed down some of the most common social media myths you need to leave behind in 2021. Believing these myths will only cripple your marketing campaign.
Social media is only for young people
Some people think that social media is just for millennials and the younger generation. That’s not really an accurate picture of social media users today. In fact, studies suggest that a huge majority of the U.S. adult population is on Facebook. 52% of adults aged 55-64 have a social media account.
Almost everybody is on social media. Having a business account will help you reach your target audience. If you don’t already have one for your business, then you’re losing a lot of great opportunities.
Set up an account in every social media channel to maximize reach
We all know that social media makes it easier for businesses to connect with their audience. But that doesn’t mean that you should set up and maintain an account on every platform. If you do, you’ll only be wasting your time.
In order to yield great results, you need to know which platform your audience frequently uses and then focus your marketing efforts there. Maintaining a presence across different platforms can help your business, but if it isn’t helping you out, just cut it loose.
You need a lot of followers to succeed
Most people think that more is always better. Sure, having millions of followers is great. It means that people are familiar with your brand. But more than the number of followers, what’s more important is the type of followers you have.
Let’s say you have 100,000 followers. Sure, that’s a great thing. But it won’t benefit your business if the majority of these people are not reading or responding to your posts. What you need to focus on is interaction. It doesn’t matter if you only have 1,500 followers, just as long as these people are actually interested in what you’re selling. Having lots of likes is only valuable if you have the right people following you.
It’s okay to use the same posts on all social media platforms
Most businesses publish the same content on all their social media platforms to save time. That’s understandable. However, you also need to understand that different platforms cater to different types of audiences.
LinkedIn, for instance, is a professional platform. The majority of LinkedIn users are business owners, executives, and professionals. That said, your posts should be tailored to appeal to this group.
Instagram, on the other hand, caters to younger audiences. Since it’s a visual platform, you need high-quality images and a strong brand message to succeed on this platform.
Ignoring and deleting negative comments is the best way to get rid of them
Social media is an open platform where your target audience can give you direct feedback after using your products and services. Whether you like it or not, you’ll receive some negative feedback at some point.
It might be tempting to just delete the negative comment, but this will only make the situation worse. Instead, contact the person directly and deal with the problem. It will show your audience that you care about them.
Talking about your business all the time
Social media is a great place to connect with your target audience. But that doesn’t mean you should bombard them with posts about your business.
Social media’s main purpose is to engage with your followers. Talking about your business all the time won’t do you any good. Post content that your audience will find valuable and interesting to capture the attention of your audience.
Keep the 80/20 rule in mind when creating social media posts. That means 80% of your posts should informative and entertaining, while only 20% should be about the products or service you’re offering.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/6-Social-Media-Myths-that-Need-to-be-Busted-blog-2.png1200800Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2021-09-29 21:01:022021-09-28 16:10:536 Social Media Myths That Need to be Busted
In this podcast episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Eickhoff, the founder and creator of the SHiFT program.
Kim really stresses how important it is to be present in the moment and to become more aware of your own feelings, patterns, and fears.
Where are they showing up in your life?
When are you feeling sad and why?
When are you feeling frustrated and why?
Taking responsibilities for our own feelings and actions
The one really key point that Kim made was understanding that a lot of these feelings and fears that you have come up from past experiences, whether that be from childhood, young adulthood, things we may not even be aware of on a conscious level.
Now, you may be wondering what does this have to do with business, right? Have you ever felt stuck in your business or feel like you are running in circles? Becoming aware of your fears and how you handle each situation with your clients and colleagues can help you move forward in your business and start creating the life you want.
When we make decisions and take action from a place of fear, or from feeling “less than”, these are not usually the best decisions or actions to take. We have to shift to a place of power, or freedom.
The SHiFT process easily teaches you about your patterns that keep you stuck in the same problems; then how to disrupt those patterns; and finally how to take the right action to move beyond the problems, have better control over yourself and your life, and fully create the life you envision.
Once you learn SHiFT, you can apply it to many challenges in your life and be able to adopt new patterns that put you in the right mindset for growth and success.
00:01 Amber Irwin: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m your host Amber Irwin and I am so excited for our guest today. Miss Kim, please introduce yourself. Let us know a little bit about who you are, and this is a… I am so excited for this podcast because this is a subject that I’m very passionate about and I know you are as well, so let’s share with our audience a little bit about who you are and what they’re in store for today?
00:29 Kim Eickhoff: Very cool. So, my name is Kim Eickhoff. I have been a business coach for the last 10 years. I love helping entrepreneurs and small business owners learn how to make money doing what they love. I have a lot of clients that are really passionate about what they do, really good at what they do, but they don’t necessarily understand the business side. So, that’s where I come in to just kind of help them with that piece. I also have been a life-long learner of kind of my own personal development, looking at myself, trying to understand why I do what I do [chuckle] and say what I do and get better hopefully at life in general; relationships, business, whatever it is.
01:10 KE: And yeah, I have learned a lot of different tools over the years and so I have now moved my business in a direction of where I still help entrepreneurs a lot, but now I’m also just trying to help people more on a personal development side to become more aware of themselves, what makes them tick, and then how to basically disrupt some of those patterns they get stuck in and make better decisions and create the life they really want versus sort of stuck in a life that they don’t necessarily really want. [chuckle]
01:40 AI: Right. So tell us a little bit about this SHiFT process and why did you create this program?
01:48 KE: So I keep seeing over and over and over again with people, as well as watching myself trying to grow my business, that if I am not working on my own personal issues and I’m not aware of them, that’s what keeps my business stuck or plateaued at a certain level. And as I was seeing this with my clients, a lot of them hadn’t done some personal work and didn’t know about different tools and that sort of thing. So it just kind of dawned on me one day, I have systems to teach them around business so I thought, “What if I had a system to teach them around how to become more aware?” That was fairly simple to learn, can help them see things in a non-judgemental way, so they don’t go into a place of defensiveness or trying to make excuses, but it’s more, “This is really just my reality. This is what I do. This is what I say. This is how I think and feel.”
02:39 KE: And then something that would then help them move out of that. Some tools I could teach them to help them move out of that. So I just started playing with that idea, came up with the idea of SHiFT, started playing with different words that seemed to fit. And then I would say, for the past two years now, it’s evolved slowly and changed a little bit over time to what it is now, to where I think it’s pretty solid. So I’ve been using it consistently for probably the past year the way it is.
03:06 AI: And how do you think that this process has helped you in just your life and business and maybe with your clients as well?
03:15 KE: Well, you know, we’re all human [chuckle] and we all we all get triggered by different things. And what I know for me is I have always been highly emotional. So growing up, I would overreact to stuff. Somebody would say something, it hurt my feelings, or I would get mad about something, I would completely overreact, lash out in a way that was not very helpful, usually. And I mean verbally, not physically, [chuckle] but I would get angry and get mad at somebody, blame somebody else for stuff. And then that never really helped, though. It never really made the situation better. It never really improved or really got me where I wanted to go with whatever that issue was. So for me, what happened was I started practicing this… Well, all the tools I’ve been using over time in various ways.
04:03 KE: Over the last couple of years, once I created it, I started practicing it regularly and I sort of made it my practice when I got triggered about something, something happened, caused a pretty strong emotional reaction, whether it was frustration, or anger, or fear, anxiety, whatever that was, and this could be a cash flow problem in my own business, it could be a cash flow problem with one of my clients because I get worried about them. It could be interactions with people, communication problems, that sort of thing. So not having misunderstandings and getting upset about it, that sort of thing. So I started really using it religiously just to practice it, just to see if it helped. And what I noticed was it the more that I did it, one, I saw really similar themes in how I reacted to certain situations. And so that when it happened the next time, I was much more aware of it and I realized “Oh, I am going into this triggered place.” And when I’m triggered, or somebody is triggered, we don’t usually make the best decisions because our brain goes offline, right?
05:02 KE: Our emotions flood our brain, and so we can’t really make good decisions. So what it does is it helps clear that out so that you can make better decisions. And so, I started practicing it regularly, started seeing the themes, and then at the same time, because I was clearing out all these old emotions, the triggers weren’t as powerful. I wasn’t getting triggered as much in the future. And that was a big… A cool part of it, I thought. Because I was like, “Wow, so now I’m actually releasing a lot of this stuff and what used to really trigger me doesn’t trigger me anymore.”
05:32 AI: Right. You kinda let it roll off your shoulders at this point. You worked through whatever that pattern was.
05:37 KE: Yeah. And the emotions, what I’ve learned is that a lot of these emotions that we have that do kind of come up in these really strong ways, they’re old things. They’re things that happened as kids. Maybe our parents didn’t validate how we felt or we were ignored or whatever, not that parents meant to do these things, but they’re human too and they treat us the way that we probably were raised. And so, we create issues in other people. And so, yeah, when I started to release a lot of that old stuff, because it wasn’t there anymore, the trigger just wasn’t as powerful. And I was like, “Oh that’s really cool, actually. I’m not upset about this anymore.”
06:17 AI: Right, so once you worked that through, like your personal life, how did you see your business grow from letting go of those emotions and not letting those triggers happen anymore?
06:29 KE: Well, so actually, what started me practicing a lot was my business had grown a lot. So I got to this point in my business where I was making more money than I’d ever made, I had a ton of clients, I was really, really busy, but all of a sudden, all this fear was coming up because it felt like, how in the world can I sustain this? Am I really worthy of this kind of stuff? Is this something that I’m gonna be able to keep going with and how do I get to the next level? So all this fear started coming up, and that’s when I started really using shift to work through the fear. What it taught me too was that, yeah, these were old fears that were happening, but at the same time, my intuition was telling me that there are other things I really wanted to be doing and not necessarily what I was just doing so I was just focusing on the business coaching which was fine, but I really felt this desire to move more in this other personal development region as well.
07:29 KE: And I had been pushing that aside because it’s like my intuition kept telling me and I kept shutting it off and I kept… But I’m making money doing this, so why would I change anything? But all this fear, really made me stop and look at that, and when I did, I was like, “Oh.” One, I really wanna get more clear about who I work with ’cause I want clients who really wanna work on this stuff so that helped me see that. And then at the same time, just get clear that this is what I really wanted to be teaching as well as the business coaching.
07:56 AI: Right, yeah, ’cause they go hand-in-hand.
07:58 KE: Right.
08:00 AI: And how have some of your clients that have gone through the SHiFT program, how have their lives and their businesses changed by doing that?
08:08 KE: In lots of different ways. So one client that I have, she’s a photographer and she sells fairly large projects that can range from $10,000-$30,000, so they’re big, bigger size price tags. She would have a lot of fear come up around doing her proposals, because these were big prize tags for her and this was really different SHiFT for her, as far as what she was trying to promote and sell and she just wasn’t ready. A lot of times we’re not emotionally prepared to do something that we know we’re supposed to be doing [chuckle] in our business just ’cause we’ve never done it before, so we have to practice it and get better. So, what I taught her SHiFT and what happened with this was, she would do the process before she actually went into a sales call.
08:54 KE: And so what would trigger her in the middle of the sales call was bringing up the money part. She was able to sort of work through that on the front end and get more comfortable and understand why she was getting triggered and it was all about her own old money stories, really, that’s where she would go with it. And so when she saw that, she learned some tools on how to release that anxiety and those old fears, and then actually just gain more confidence and become more aware that she was worthy of asking for the price that she was asking for. So her business went from… I think the first year we worked together, she sold a couple of projects, so probably $20,000-$30,000 in revenue, around those projects. She did a lot of other things for her business at the time, but she really was moving into this. And this year to this point, I think we’ve sold five, or six already. And so she’s…
09:44 KE: Yeah, she’s really turned a corner with how she presents herself, her confidence and not all that obviously is about SHiFT, but a lot of it helped and she would probably be one of the first ones to say that so. And she uses it now, and she’s in the middle of a meeting, if she starts to feel that anxiety pop up or any of those strong emotions, she knows how to sit there and go through it and feel it and release it and then come back to, “Oh, this is what I’m here to do and this is what I’m confident in,” and then you’re more authentic and you’re more kind of connected, so you’re not just faking it.
10:19 AI: Right. Yeah, and that’s a such an important piece is just being able to notice, when you have that coming up in yourself and not pulling the fingers, but being able to take note and say, “Okay this is what frustrated me,” or, “This is what made me sad,” or… Especially as adults, because you can’t, “You hurt my feelings,” but if you recognize that in yourself, then you can go back and use this practice. So let me ask you this, is this practice easy to learn?
[laughter]
10:52 AI: I mean, we’re talking about a lot here, we’re talking about our emotions. So is this practice easy to learn for everyone?
11:00 KE: It is actually, just because I think that the way it’s broken down. I purposefully made it into a system that is easy to follow. Now what’s hard about it, is to practice it like anything. Like, you can get a gym membership, but if you don’t actually go to the gym, it doesn’t do any good. So, it’s the same idea. You can have tools, but you have to actually use them. But once I lead somebody through it, they’re pretty much on their own from that point, they can always go through it for themselves. The practicing on the back end of the tools that will help you kind of release this stuff and move through it, I find needs a little more hand-holding.
11:37 KE: So what I normally do is I sell this in a few different sessions, like a package, because I teach it to them, they practice it. They come back and see what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, and we talk through the tools that they’re using. If they used them correctly, what could they do better that sort of stuff, not, there’s really wrong or right way but… And then we tweak it, and for me, is about me finding what tools work best for different people, ’cause sometimes something might work for somebody that’s super easy. If you’re very aware of your body and how sensations sort of show up in your body, that’s an easy tool to use. For other people, that’s a really brand new concept. They don’t understand that every emotion they have shows up somewhere in their body physically. And that’s a big piece of this process. And so there’s some teaching and training and practicing, that we’ll do around that, but yes, it’s easy to learn. It’s just not easy to practice, necessarily.
12:30 AI: About consistency, stick into it.
12:32 KE: Yeah, totally.
12:34 AI: And so with this… It’s so about your mindset. So you had said that you were focusing on the business coaching, and you were noticing your patterns in changing [12:47] ____ and those emotions, but then, there’s still that fear and that feeling, your intuition was telling you, “This isn’t what you’re supposed to do.” So that shows that money can’t buy happiness in every single way, but that you may think that you’re doing the right thing, but there’s still that fear and listening to your intuition. So is that a big piece of the program, as obviously, you’re looking at where… Like those sensations, how is that fear or anxiety or whatever we wanna label it as, coming up, and then how to deal with it. And that’s what they’re practicing, is how to notice those emotions?
13:25 KE: Yeah. So there’s several components to it, but the main components are your feelings. So if something happens that triggers you, whether it’s making a lot of money, let’s say. So let’s say you have… You made more money in a month than you’ve ever made, you’re excited on one end, but then some fear starts to pop up. It’s just like, “How in the world am I gonna repeat this? Is this possible? Is this sustainable?”, all this stuff. And so, when the anxiety or fear pops up with that, the key you start to look at is the… Are the thoughts that are connected to the feeling. So a lot of times, if the thoughts are about, “I’m not worthy,” about… It’s a lot of deep, deep thoughts. So it’s like, “If I’m not worthy,” or, “If I don’t believe I’m worthy,” these are all beliefs, “to actually make this amount of money and to be successful,” then you will end up sabotaging yourself.
14:13 KE: And that’s how people stay in the pattern, so they’re like, “No, I don’t believe I’m actually worthy, and this is what I’m gonna do to kind of bring myself back down to this amount of money that I feel comfortable at.” So it’s looking at what those thoughts are, and then it’s learning how to challenge those old beliefs and change them, and so the tools around that become one. If it shows up in the body as a sensation, that’s old emotions that are stuck in there, and so you actually have to heal that, and that is about just feeling it. And I don’t mean thinking about it, I mean really feeling it. And this is a process that’s hard for a lot of people, and so I’ll walk them through how to do this and walk them with an issue that they’re having. We’ll actually go through the practice of feeling sensations or as I call it, surrendering to them, ’cause you actually just wanna be present with what’s really happening in the moment and allow it to come up and out.
15:05 KE: And then once the emotions will dissipate, and they always do, you just have to pay attention to them, then those feelings go away. The thoughts go away, and you can actually make some choices on what you wanna do. What I find is, if the fear is showing up over and over and over consistently, and you keep doing this, that’s usually your intuition saying, “Hey, listen, this is not right.” And that’s… ‘Cause fears can mean different things, but that’s… What I’ve learned is like, “Oh, if this keeps showing up all the time, and I keep releasing it, but it keeps showing up, then it’s something deeper trying to tell me something else.”
15:40 AI: Yeah. Oh, I love it.
15:41 S?: [15:41] ____.
15:42 AI: So what is the number one takeaway from this process, and why is it so important in your mind?
15:51 KE: I think the number one takeaway is that we are completely in control of ourselves, and if something happens that… Whether it’s somebody or it’s a situation, somebody says something or does something, and we get angry or frustrated or fearful, all that stuff is our own stuff. It has really nothing to do with what has happened, with what this person has done, with what the situation is. What we do is we take that, and we make it into a much bigger problem, because we’ll ruminate on it, we think about it. I call it “habitual reaction”, so we will constantly think about it and constantly cycle through it, and your body will just get more and more stressed or more [chuckle] and more anxious or whatever it is. But that’s the biggest takeaway to me, is like, “Oh, if I can actually understand what issues of mine are being triggered around this, then I’m in complete control of my life,” because I can actually deal with those, and I can change how I respond to somebody, or what choices that I make.
16:53 KE: If I don’t know what’s happening, and I continue to make other choices, because I’m making choices to get rid of those feelings, I don’t want the feelings, they’re uncomfortable, but if I don’t even know that they’re there because of my stuff, then I’m gonna stay, keep doing things that are gonna keep me in these patterns that aren’t super-healthy for me. And so, becoming aware of that, giving yourself control back, taking full responsibility and ownership of where you are and what your response is, in some way, to me, is huge, ’cause then you’re in the driver’s seat, right? You can make choices, and you can do different things. So that’s, to me, what the coolest part of this is.
17:31 AI: Yeah. Taking responsibility, owning it and making a change. I love it. So tell us how can people work with you? Do you do, obviously, individuals? Do you do group? Do you speak at events? How can people sign up for SHiFT?
17:47 KE: Yes, I do all those things. [chuckle] So I love speaking at events, and I do sort of a 30-minute, big picture overview of what this is, why it’s important, that sort of thing; I don’t necessarily teach it, but I give a lot of information about it. I do one-to-one sessions with people, so I can do them through Zoom, I can do them in person if they’re here in the Denver area. I’m gonna start doing some more kind of group coaching things, but in corporations, that sort of thing, or small businesses. I work… I’d use this a lot with teams, so teaching teams how to do this individually helps them communicate better, because a lot of times people… I mean, you’re interacting with people, so you get triggered by something somebody says on your team, and then all production stops, ’cause you’re mad or whatever, and they’re mad at you, so nobody wants to work anymore.
18:37 KE: Well, this helps you kinda realize that and work through it, so with teams. And then I’m also working on… I wanna do a class, but it would be all video series, so it would be, you get maybe three to five videos in your email, and each one will teach you pieces of it; it’s much more self-directed. Obviously, you do it when you want, but you’ll learn the basic concepts. And with the others, I usually lead you through whatever specific issue you have, in those other programs, so it’s a little more hand-holding, that sort of thing than the other ones, but on the videos it’s like you just learn it, and you do it.
19:15 AI: Okay. And where can I find this information?
19:18 KE: Oh, [chuckle] on my website. What is my website?
19:25 AI: And you’re on Facebook, so they can connect with you on Facebook.
19:28 KE: Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, I’m on Facebook. So Coach Kim Eickhoff, E-I-C-K-H-O-F-F, is my last name. And then…
19:36 AI: And I’ll put the links below in the comments as well.
19:39 KE: Oh okay, cool.
19:40 AI: And then I’ll put your website in there too.
19:42 KE: Okay, coachkimshift.com, so that’s a good place. And then I have a YouTube channel, Kim Eickhoff, if you just put that in there, it should pop up.
19:53 AI: Awesome. Wonderful. Well, I’m so excited. Thank you so much, Kim, for being on with us today. Be sure to subscribe below, everyone. And if you are ready to make some serious changes in your life and take control back, call Kim, and let’s get to work.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Understanding-How-Your-Mindset-Plays-a-Huge-Role-in-Creating-the-Life-You-Want-Blog.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-07-30 08:00:462019-07-24 16:40:16Understanding How Your Mindset Plays a Huge Role in Creating the Life You Want
For more than 10 years, Deb has worked with professionals to optimize their use of LinkedIn. As the founder of Wise Women Communications, a full-service marketing agency, she sees LinkedIn as a vital marketing tool for professionals at any level.
Throughout her career, Deb has worked with corporations and nonprofit organizations developing and maximizing their marketing and public relations efforts. However, senior executives often don’t see themselves as something that needs to be marketed.
Deb developed “LinkedIn for C-Suite” to provide the assistance busy executives require. By spending a minimal amount of time, professionals work with our strategists to create and optimize their LinkedIn Profiles.
With more than 20 years of experience, Deb also has a Master’s Degree in Marketing as well as a Master’s Degree in Communication Management. She has the experience and knowledge to help busy executives make an impact with their LinkedIn Profiles. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
In this interview we discuss:
Current trends for businesses using LinkedIn for marketing in 2019.
Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
The top 3 things that a business owner or marketing team should be doing on LinkedIn to see a return from their efforts.
The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get it wrong.
To learn more about Social Speak, please follow our podcast on iTunes https://apple.co/2GPs1bt
Listen to Amber and Deb’s LinkedIn Tips and Tricks Interview:
Or watch the LinkedIn Interview:
Read the transcript:
Podcast with Deb Krier, LinkedIn Marketing Expert
Hello, everyone. I am Amber with the Social Speak Network. I’m really excited for today’s podcast, we have Deb Krier on with us.
LinkedIn in is something that clients ask us a lot about, and I feel like it’s one of those platforms that’s been around for a long time, but they’ve been in my opinion, in and out of the social media trends and I feel like in 2019 is something, it’s a kind of an untapped gold mine in a way, if you know how to use it. So Deb is an expert in LinkedIn, and we have some great topics we are going to talk to you today about.
Amber: Deb, tell us little bit about who you are and your background in digital marketing.
Deb: Amber, thank you so much for having me on your program. This is going to be so much fun. We actually know each other from Colorado and now we’re Southern girl so that’s very fun.
But I’ve been on LinkedIn, since I believe 2006. so it was one of the first platforms and I… Actually, it was the first digital platform that I got on some of the others didn’t even exist yet, but I got on LinkedIn because I was, I’m looking for a job. So you need to be on LinkedIn type of thing and then other things have come along. I don’t do tons because we can get overwhelmed, right?
You and I have business owners that come up to me and they say, “Oh well, I should be here and here and here and here and here and here and then their head goes.
I was like, No, no, no, pick one or two and go from there. I mean I’m still not on Instagram, I do really, but it’s just… I’m on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and that’s it. Those are the only digital platforms that I use. Because you can get overwhelmed or if you’re like me, it’s not overwhelming, it’s very distracting.
And I think that is one of the reasons why more and more people like LinkedIn or they’re coming back to it, because we can get so distracted on some of the other platforms. Looking at the pictures watching the cute cat videos that all of a sudden we’ve lost an hour and done nothing on LinkedIn at least if you’re getting distracted in you’re reading business articles you’re reading articles about your industry, you’re learning about people that you are networking with and so it’s not really a distraction, right? And so with LinkedIn, what are some trends that you see businesses going after in 2019, when you see more relevant with linen?
Well, I’ve seen just an increase in people using LinkedIn and especially the people who use Facebook a lot and yeah, I’m still one of those people that use this Facebook a lot, so but at its… It’s getting more and more divisive especially in the world of politics as there’s just so many things that are on Facebook whether it’s sports, where there is politics, religion, whatever it is that we don’t want to be there, and we certainly don’t want to be there trying to conduct a business. So then we don’t go at all.
And on LinkedIn, it is something where we’re back to focusing on business there and I think that’s why more and more people are coming back to LinkedIn, and they are adding new features in a… And they’ve got… They recently added being able to do live video as a… They’re just rolling that out to some folks. I have only, I have 4 5000 contexts on LinkedIn. I only had two that currently had the option to be able to do that and I do and people love it, on Facebook.
So I think that’s one of the things that LinkedIn is thinking about. Plus we… It’s fun because you could do say, a conference or a speech, or you and I could be doing this as LinkedIn also, so I so I think video is a big thing and businesses are starting to really figure out that they can have the business pages there.
Well, they catch on. They did a Facebook. Maybe… Maybe not, but I think, again, people are moving away from Facebook, but they know that they still have to be in that digital world.
So, where are they going to be?
And I think they’re training back towards LinkedIn in an… Now, do you think as a business owner, as a…
I know that one thing that our clients had struggled with Facebook is that personal business life balance. And so, we had a client that they just wanted their personal profile to be their personal profile, not to post any business, in business, just to be business and nothing personal, but I feel like those ways are changing now. People you want that authentic brand. Do you think with LinkedIn, the business pages and the profile that… What’s that combination of costing ARE YOU PUTTING… Obviously, you’re not putting your cats and your kids on LinkedIn as as much as you would face to but you still fill with that personal profile that you should be implementing personal and business. And where does that business page, we come in?
Yeah, I definitely think that we need to include some personal things on LinkedIn because as you mentioned is about being authentic to… We all know that we work with, people we know like and trust and… And so we get to know them. I-E… Why those little personal tidbits?
So it’s okay to have a little bit of that on LinkedIn I… And again, like you said, we’re not posting our cat pictures, we’re not posting things like that, but there’s little ways that you can still put that in there, so maybe it is a little bit about maybe if you were at a networking event, what personal thing would you drop in a…
Oh man, I… So maybe it was Han on a vacation. And on Facebook, you’re going to post the 900 pictures on LinkedIn, you might post a picture of your vacation, and maybe something business, I so I-I-I-E-B-A-book. You read what?
Right, right, yeah, yeah, recently went on vacation. Here’s the book that I read. Some things like that.
The art maybe it was you had a great customer service, the example that while you were on vacation or something like that.
Yeah, I, he and I, I, I… People look for those they really… Again, they want to connect with people on that personal level. That’s why I say we always want to include on our LinkedIn profiles, so what we do to volunteer at a past and present, and our education alumni groups are some of the greatest ways to network on LinkedIn. There’s something about it doesn’t matter when you graduated alumni. I want to help other alumni.
So you want to have that in there? But the volunteer is also another great place to be able to put that on LinkedIn to show that you are involved in your community that you’re not just business. All of these various things. Yes, definitely. Well, that kinda goes into… What are the top three things that business owners or marketing team should be doing on LinkedIn to see a return from their efforts?
Well, the first thing is on your personal profile, especially to really make sure that it is current and that is fully optimized.
I see so many people’s profiles, who still look like what they posted four, five years ago when they were looking for a job, so they cut and paste in their resume and then, they never went back and updated it.
We have to have as much content there as possible because people are really researching people before we do business with them.
So you want to have all that content, you really have to have some of the biggest, like a current photo which is always fun, for women because we change our hair styles, you all these various things and it needs to be a current picture. I tell people if I’m meeting someone for the first time, I need to be able to look at their LinkedIn photo and walk up to them in a crowd, and find them to a… A professional headline that needs to not just say President of founder of You need to take full use of the 120 characters there and then really fill out your summary. That’s where I see so many people have, like a sentence to sensing your summary is where you tie it all together.
Yeah, that… So someone doesn’t want to read about the specific experience that you had an X-Y-Z company, or what you did here there. Even when you went to school.
They will read the summary, and then the cool thing that that LinkedIn added I believe it was last year maybe even two years ago, is the Banner background, that goes behind your picture, and it’s kind of an ugly blue default. Right now it’s an… And so people need to take advantage of that. It’s a billboard behind your head. So, why wouldn’t you want to have that there?
So that really is one of the first steps. And I really just make sure that that is current that you’re updating it and then you want to post consistently. We all win.
So you’re comparing say Facebook and a line.
We go on Facebook, and we post 20 times a day. Maybe… Yeah, that’s too much on LinkedIn, yeah, but because people aren’t really posting on Linked-In A… When you do post something that is good content, the it will stand out to because it’s just one of those things where it’s not something that people are using. So when you post and have it great, stuff, you’re going to become that thought leader, right?
And then the other thing is, consistency. It’s always fun to go look and see when with somebody’s last post, so I… Yeah, I only was it yesterday, was it last month was it last year? We can accomplish a lot on LinkedIn in 15 minutes. A day to…
I just felt in utero.
So, I’m on LinkedIn while I’m eating breakfast, that’s kind of my 15 minutes I can do pretty much everything I need to do. I might check in a little bit later in the afternoon, but I don’t spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and you can still really make it beneficial.
I love that. And going back to the first… So the first thing you said about the summary, you also put videos in what you’re carrying right?
You can put video you can put work samples so say you’re a graphic designer, or you can show examples of your work, because you can have files that are uploaded. If you’re, say, a copywriter, you can have things like that, you can have your brochures, all these various things PowerPoint that’s always great. And obviously if you work for a company, you need to make sure that you have their permission to be able to post those things, but in most cases, you do a right, so I… Yeah, you give people those examples of your work rather than doing get the message you contact them, and then you might remember to email it just have it there so that people could go and see it and then make sure that you’re linking to your website A… So that’s the other thing that people forget is they don’t put their own website in there so he… And you can put three so you’ll put your website links in there.
Yeah, so, yeah, that contact information because the best a going to go and try to find you, but they can’t connect with you, they can’t contact you and made in “opole and… Well, and I tell people, put that information in your summary.
So yes, it is in other places in LinkedIn.
The attest a C, you want to make it easy and simple to find. Yeah, I want to open it and see, Oh, there’s the contact information, a back… Don’t put it in your headline.
I see people do that all the time.
No, no, don’t put your contact information there. Don’t waste that valuable character, right, but you put it in your summary so that people… And it’s the old marketing call to action. Hey, contact me at… If you’re interested, here’s all those various things because it’s right there, it’s right in front of them.
because again, we get side tracked. If I have to click another button to find your contact information that I might click out of your profile and do some definitely. So we work with a lot of health and wellness and companies in the helmet, and one thing that we get asked is, we have the let’s just say it’s a chiropractic office that has five locations and 10 chiropractors it and there is a line in business page and then each of them have their only “dipoles that they’re proactive. ENT, I go Really Franco pan. Are those individual people posting to the business page or the sharing content from the business page to their personal profile? How does that work with… Like I…
Oh yes, I it. And because you want as much content out there as possible, right, so I… You so the first thing you need to make sure is consistent messaging.
So, when the doctors, the office manager, whoever it is, they need to say the same thing about the business.
So for example, you wouldn’t want it to one profile to say, we have five offices: another profile to say, we have 10 offices another profile to look like it’s a stand-alone office.
Yeah, yeah, to come up with just a little bit of messaging that has the statement about them. So, it might say here at X, Y, Z, chiropractic. Our philosophy is so again, you’ve got that consistency because people look at multiple ones is… So in essence, it would be like them looking at several different websites and they get confused, right?
The one in the sea, they go somewhere else, so yeah, I… But then posting their own content and… And so it is a little bit on A… You need to develop probably a social media policy as to what is appropriate content, and in a… It is, especially if you’re on your personal page, it is your personal page, but if somebody’s posting content and this doesn’t happen nearly as often on LinkedIn as it does on say, Facebook.
Wait, I think want to have consistent messaging, so you want… But it’s okay to post it on both places or an or be sharing from your other offices, too. So say you and I are doctors in two different locations, right?
You’ve got great content. So I’m going to share it on my page also, yes, so it’s just kind of about sharing those resources because we only… I always tell people, We only have 28 hours in our day, and right, so… And it’s so, I too… So I don’t want to have to spend a good chunk of my time just looking for content, so ran, I can borrow from someone else or share their content, that’s where it really comes in. And so it might be that there’s one person that manages the business page.
Oh, and then people share from there but then they also are seeing from their own personal pages too.
Yep, and do you think that sharing strategy is still as in porn on… And LinkedIn is it as our platforms, I think it is because we see a is a LinkedIn runs on the algorithms just like the other platforms. So the more interaction there is, the more LinkedIn goes. Hey, this is somebody that is very active that they’re very authentic, that they’re, they’re a big power user. So, sharing, liking all of those various things are just as important as they are on the other social media platforms. Okay, and what… And we’ve talked a lot about the business pages and personal profiles and the top things that business owners or marketing team should be doing, but what is an ideas strategy behind LinkedIn, what I think, whether you’re using it as a business owner or as a business. It does help to develop what I would have called a PR calendar or something like that. So maybe a less… It helps you when you’re thinking, “What the heck am I going to post today?
Yeah, so maybe Monday you’re posting an industry article Tuesday, you’re posting something that’s going on in your community Wednesday, you’re posting something about an industry trend Friday, you’re posting something about your office, whatever it is, and then you kinda stick with that, that editorial calendar.
Yeah, so… And they can be, again, it does make it simpler because you’re thinking, “Okay it’s Wednesday. I need to be posting about X now. Clearly, if something comes up, because we want to take advantage of situations in the news a lot of those things. You and I were talking off the air, about Al tribe, and his cancer diagnosis. A lot of times, chiropractic can be involved in something like that, so… So you wouldn’t want to wait until the next time you’re supposed to post an industry article because you’ve missed that curve, so it’s okay to change things up, but kind of plan out your strategy on Monday. I post this and A… And to me, it doesn’t really matter time of day.
I mean, you know, they have a tether, so we really don’t see those. Well, Tuesday, at two is the best time to post strategies anymore because then it was everybody posts a Tuesday to… And then it was overwhelming. Just post whenever, but like I said, I’m on in the morning, so that might be when I post, but don’t get caught up in that and in it, and I think that’s the thing people are like, “Well oh my gosh, I have to be on LinkedIn at 9 o’clock in the morning. I have to post an article, I don’t have an article, I’m going to not go to and then the next day, they find another reason to do it to… Not the other is a Tibetan it is, it still has to be fun because if it’s not fun, if it’s not enjoyable, we’re not going to be there.
Yep, yeah, you still need to give that value, to your audience. You want them to… But now I know with other platforms, sometimes there’s tools like butter or hope to be able to schedule those folks about… Do you use any of those tools for LinkedIn, or are you just having your strategy, and then posting manually?
I do both, I use Buffer to post some things that I know are going out all the time and one of the things that I do is a business quote.
Actually, it doesn’t even have to be a business quote. When I did last week was from cookie monster so so to… But it’s kind of just cute little pithy quote.
I do three a week, so a variety of places. So I create the image and I go into Canvas.
Love Canvas, and so I create those images and then I schedule those in Buffer, so I can do a month at a time, but… And as you know I also have a podcast so we have some images that we schedule for that.
So that’s just kind of one of those things that’s done so to…
I’m a firm believer that if you can schedule something it gets it out of your way.
So then again, you’re not subbing. They only got his Wednesday. And I’m supposed to have posted this, I… You know I schedule it out, I post for my clients a lot of times scheduling things out because I’ll get a lot of things from them, a lot of content and… And now, I don’t want to have to remember to do something on Thursday, so I schedule it.
So I love the scheduling programs and LinkedIn likes the scheduling program here. A, A, A, A, A, A thing with Facebook doesn’t… It is A, I like it doesn’t care LinkedIn, just like content. And it was great. We talk about these things like their people a… But yeah, linking content, content, it doesn’t really matter where it comes from.
So I was on that. I “asanso I have been… This is all that LinkedIn has really been around that to building your business brand identifying your business voice and not once did we mention that LinkedIn was just for jobs?
Because that is what we all think a ritually like you said, the beginning a new… That’s what I was started for but it comes so far. So this is really a place that business owners can conduct business connect with their ideal target market. And really, in my eyes, LinkedIn can really be a really big lead generation tool, right, I… Yeah, and it’s all about developing your personal brand.
Yeah, I can and I…
LinkedIn is great for that, because when you change jobs or careers, whatever you still have your identity on LinkedIn and you’re not having to start over with whatever it is, so it’s a great place to really make sure that your personal brand is going to rock and the other big guy on the block. Google likes LinkedIn A… And so if you look for someone’s name, you’re right. I’m going to meet with you this afternoon, so I’m just going to Google your name to find a little bit about you. If you’ve been very active on LinkedIn, it comes up very high, in a Google search. So, it’s all about creating that personal branding that will transition for years to come, and go with you.
Yeah, I love that, thank you so much that… Tell us a little bit more about the services that you offer on how can people connect with you, your podcast?
So the easiest way talk about personal branding is to go to Deb queer dot com Deb I-E-R dot com, and there are links there to my podcast, which is the business Power Hour, which is a ton of fun and a lot of good business tips there, but I also focus a lot on linked-in trading and so we have LinkedIn, for C-Suite, which is a program or program services that we provide for executives, but you and I are executives also whether we have a company of one or two or a company of thousands, we’re leaders in that company, and so LinkedIn, for S-C-suite, it’s one of those mornings we just as a LinkedIn for C-suite is all about how we create that personal brand and we have that great profile and we got several different services that we provide here.
Whether you want to do it yourself, because it a… We can do that. Or if you’re so busy that you just don’t have time we can create that profile for you. So I love it, awesome, at I-E-career dot com.
Awesome, thank you so much for your time. I E-Go.
This has been wonderful yes, and guys I highly recommend connecting with her podcast are great. And I just think, again, LinkedIn is such a growing platform that the most of us raise your hand if you have a profile, you haven’t updated it, and over a year go to your LinkedIn profile, today, take these tips and update it today.
So I think you have a line.
And with both of us on like a… Please do, I have a great day,.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Deb-YouTube-Podcast.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-04-10 09:23:522019-04-11 16:06:55LinkedIn Marketing in 2019 an Interview with Deb Krier of the Business Power Hour
John is a technical SEO expert who’s deeply engaged in the local and national SEO community. With over 15 years of web management experience, John has led digital strategy for many enterprise healthcare companies such as Epic Health Services, Aveanna Healthcare, Cornerstone Healthcare Group, and more!
Founded in 2009, Cardinal Digital Marketing has been ranked the #1 fastest growing agency in the Southeast (The Agency 100). In addition, they have been consecutively named on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately-held US companies in 2014 and 2015. The agency has also been a multi-year recipient of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter Awards as well as selected as one of the 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For®.
Cardinal keeps pace with rapidly shifting trends in Digital Marketing, and develops engagement strategies that are not defined by a platform or a category, but leverage the best marketing vehicle to solve every unique challenge. They approach every situation with the client’s customer in mind and measure success not by increased traffic or impressions, but instead higher client profits.
Services offered include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Social Media Management, Web Design & Development, Mobile Marketing, Online Reputation Management, Web Analytics, and more. What are your specialties?
In this interview we focused on SEO and search marketing for health and wellness businesses. We covered:
The difference between SEO and Search Marketing and how this differs from other types of digital marketing.
Current trends are you seeing for wellness practices with SEO marketing in 2019.
Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
The top 3 things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts.
The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get it wrong.
Marketing strategies your team is currently testing that you don’t think many other agencies are implementing for their clients.
Please be sure to subscribe to the Social Speak Podcast for more interviews with experts in digital marketing for health and wellness businesses.
Podcast Transcript:
Hello my name is Caitlin McDonald, and welcome to the most recent episode of the Social Speak podcast. I am so excited, today we are joined by SEO expert John McAlpin. Now, John works for Cardinal Digital Marketing. Founded in 2009, Cardinal digital marketing has been ranked number one of fastest growing agencies in the South East. In addition, they have consecutively been named on the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in 2014 and 2015.
Cardinal keeps pace with the rapidly shifting trends in digital marketing and develops engagement strategies that are not defined by a platform or a category, but leverage the best marketing vehicle to solve every unique challenge. They approach every situation with the client’s customer in mind, and measure success not by increased traffic or impressions, but instead, higher client profits. Services offered include search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, mobile marketing, online reputation management, web analytics and more.
Our guest, John is a technical SEO expert, who’s deeply engaged in the local and national SEO community. With over 15 years of web management experience John has led digital strategy for many enterprise healthcare companies such as Epic Health Services, Cornerstone Healthcare Group, and more so let’s give a warm welcome to John.
Caitlin: Welcome John, we’re so excited to have you on the show today.
To kick things off. Tell us a little bit about your background in digital marketing.
John: Sure, it actually started way back when I was 11. I started building websites when I was 11. I found it interesting and saw my dad doing it So, I found W3 schools and started teaching myself how to do all that. But at a professional portion of my career I started in the corporate side, mostly in a tech field, international e-commerce, and then I moved into healthcare and fell in love immediately. I was doing full digital strategy for a healthcare company, and then from there, I transitioned to a agency life and never looked back really. I love agency life. It’s nice to get a little mix of everything.
C: Yes, it definitely is. There’s always a new project to be working on … So John a key aspect of Cardinal digital focuses on SEO and search marketing. Can you describe how this differs from other types of digital marketing?
J: Sure, on it’s own this is a really interesting topic. A lot of people get confused about the actual true definition of SEM. I even heard people consider Social media as a part of SEM and so I think it’s really important to know the difference. Search engine marketing is any type of marketing that has to deal with a search engine. Specifically people refer to it with paid search, like PPC or CPC however you want to refer it to, or SEO. And so that’s essentially search engine marketing. While things like social media channels, have a search box that’s different than a search engine. It is important to note. And so search marketing really is just another form of inbound marketing and what’s unique about it compared to other things, is you’re catching both people during the discovery phase, where there’s no intent to purchase, and during the intent to purchase phase.
C: Great, great thank you for diving into that. So what current trends are you seeing for wellness practices with the SEO and SEM in 2019?
J: What people are in healthcare are starting to do is find alternative ways for people to book appointments. Traditionally it starts with a call then developed. Now we’ve got great technology to book appointments on the website, but now it’s gonna find alternative way to give people more options, to book appointments.
Something that we’re doing is Google My business is actually having features to help integrate their platforms truly need to visit your website, to book an appointment, you can even text or even other direct links. There are some other third-party industry sites like if they’re a directory that we can book appointment straight from there. For example, in the restaurant space Yelp, you can order straight from Yelp. And so, the future is hoping to get voice functionality working out. So all you’re a home assistant, such as Alexa, to help book appointments, that’s a future hope. I don’t know if you were gonna get there, in 2019, but it’s definitely in pain that see a lot of people going towards.
C: That’s pretty incredible. So I’d just be able to say “Alexa, schedule my appointment with this center,” and to be able to do it.
J: Right. I predicted to see a specific company, not a healthcare company, but a technology company developing an application. There’s a lot of partners with it, who are trying to work together to develop this type of technology, so I see it being… You signed up with a partner and they will add you to their list, of preferred vendors, and then you would be able to use their system. That’s the place I see this going.
C: That is incredible, that’s wonderful. Now, in a previous podcast episode, and this isn’t something that we talked about previously, but in a previous podcast episode one of our guest Abby was talking about how interactive websites is actually really helping out with SEO because people have more time on site. A lot of health care centers, direct people off-site to do the scheduling and booking. Is it better to have the scheduling tool actually embedded on your website, rather than directing someone off-site?
J: So, that’s an interesting topic because there’s a couple of things that you wanna think about here. Not just your SEO interactivity, but also how you track conversion. A lot and people who have booking on their site or using an Iframe, which means that your analytics may not be able to track.
And so, really it gets to the point where Google is aimed more to the user experience and that’s where people get that time-on-site type of metric, and technically it’s better to have people to book on your site versus off because it’s less steps to take an action, but in a perfect world we be able to develop software to have booking on our site, and have our own proprietary thing. But, not everyone has those kind of resources. And so it is really however you can get the job done. An Iframe will work. Just be careful about what you’re tracking. As marketers, it is hard for us, so we don’t always have the ability to track it. Cardinal specifically does a good job of working with a whole lot of vendors to make sure that we can get the information that you need, but a lot of agencies don’t have that reach or those resources so be careful.
C: Alright, so let’s jump to the next question, are there any tactics that were expected for well or had a lot of hype, but failed to really take hold in 2018?
J: Voice. I think, voice is gonna be a big one. It’s not the future. It’s now. Some data scientists are predicting that 50% of all searches, are gonna be voice by next year. And I think this is a little confusing because people are getting confused between Voice Search and Voice Assistance.
Asking for the weather, asking certain time or something like that. It’s just those are voice assistance not voice search. And so right now we don’t really have a good way to track search. Also, it is important to note that your Search Console data, a lot of these queries can be voice and Google won’t be telling you which are voice.
I’m sure they will, but they’re not telling you right now. It’s also important to know that as far as asking questions that come from your website, all answers are first position featured snippets. They wanted to be voice focus on getting those featured snippets ranking high. And it’s important to know that feature snippets can appear anywhere in the search and only 30% are in position one.
C: Is there any way to be able to do research about how voice searches and the phrases and terminology that people are using and search differ from me typing into a search engine for something?
J: So as far as tracking or as far as optimizing?
C: As far as optimizing.
J: Sure it’s really just answering commonly add questions that you can relate to your business. Anyone can really get a question answered, but that doesn’t really lead to a conversion or help your branding at all.
So if you really wanted to optimize for voice, currently, before the future hits, it’s really answer the questions as quickly as you can. One of two sentences, the question needs to be answered. A lot of people will try to think about word count, not word quality. So they add all of these filler words. Work to really answered the question directly, in a first two sentences. The rest of that page can be or filler content.
Yeah, and those first two sentences, then you can work your brand name and according to Dr. So and So, at whatever your business name, is, the flu can be treated if caught earlier.
That was a the brand recall there. They can go and search that later or if they just are searching that question online at all, on the paper knows your name at the features on it. Oh, the that’s who I heard that from. And they can follow group.
C: I assume that that’s going to be one of the answers to this next question, but what are the top three things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts?
J: Actually, it’s not one of the three in a lot of the…
There a more important foundational things that people need to worry about. A as far as voice, yes. One of the things I focus on Q+ A answer format. Include all of your services include all of your conditions on separate pages and have a way to inter-link them, Focus on your internal in-between them, so that they can relate and people can learn more information.
One of the first things they need to do is focus on having clean citations and for people that don’t know is a caption. That’s just your directory listing thing about Google My Business, Yelp. And then also think about your industry-specific citations.
Rate My doctor and things like that.
These directories have a huge impact on voice search and how business appear – having a consistent citations in.
So there’s a lot of tools that help it is or you can do it manually, but a lot more work, but you can pay more to have is, will do it for us if a lot of out there for it so I think the biggest factor that wellness centers and we really need to focus on is the user experience.
You can do SEO to a crap site. But if it doesn’t convert and people are turned off by it, they can’t navigate through it, it doesn’t mean anything that is so important.
Yeah, you can put a Band-Aid on it. But it’s not going lead to the results that you need in the end. And I feel as though Google with its algorithm, says, “Well it’s ranking site’s higher that have that positive user experience. People are staying on the site longer, they’re going directly to it.”
C: And then, let’s see, what is the top strategy that should be followed but often marketing teams at these health and wellness centers get wrong or other agencies, just get wrong?
J: So SEO, technical SEO, that’s the first thing I noticed that it’s wrong, but really the biggest missed opportunity is having a holistic digital marketing strategy and having your teams to silo doing their own things, not so picking on the same goals or focus or when teams are working on different ways to achieve different tactics towards the same goal.
Specifically, they need to be blending to the technical side of SEO, PPC, social media and their content. Repurpose your content for different channels.
C: That’s great, that’s great. You work for Cardinal digital, which is a full service agency and one of the top-ranked inbound marketing agencies in the US. Tell us about your company and your services, because you do really merge all of those different silos together for work with your clients.
J: As a strategy partner, we use the term partner, because it really is a relationship that we try to build, we try to build long-term collaborative relationships with national enterprise healthcare companies, because not one company is the same as the other, and everyone deserves a customize strategy. There’s no recycled formula for everyone … See what works best for everyone. We also have a really strong paid media team, and extremely simple track or record merging all of our tactics that blended to re-All full welcome out strategy.
C: Are there any marketing strategies that your team is currently testing that you don’t think many other agencies are implementing for their clients?
J: Sure almost doing a lot of the same one-off tactics and traditional SEO things, and payments paid media, but one of the things that we do is that I’ve seen that I have not seen other agencies really focus on is develop cascading edge tracking software.
We’re trying to use every tool the book to make sure that we can unlock the most insights so we can do the best action because really we put the data in the hands of our clients.
This is what we’re seeing our recommendation and this is how we collaborate with our clients, so, but they are fully aware of every step and they can make the best position possible because we give them the best information possible, and that to be anything from, not just keyword tracking, but also heatmap tracking it seems… How users are actually interacting on their site, so we can have the full holistic US experience.
C: Definitely, definitely, that’s great. And then, John, is there anything that I should have asked but I didn’t?
J: Yes, a lot of questions, I don’t know. I think you have a great job…
C: Awesome, well thank you so much for joining us, has been such a pleasure learning about your experience, your take on SEO and SEM and some of what Cardinal Digital is doing for their clients. So thank you again for joining us today.
J: Thanks so much for having me.
C: Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you to John for joining us today. He shared such wonderful information and it’s no wonder Cardinal digital is such a top-ranked agency with talent like John.
We spoke today about optimizing your directory listings, including both services and conditions pages on your website, as well as how to increase your exposure for voice search by having an FAQ section on your website. All of these are simple tips that you’ll be able to implement on your wellness website to help out with SEO and SEM.
Thank you again for tuning in, thank you to our guest, John for joining us today, and I will see you on the next episode of The Social speak podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Social-Speak-Podcast-John-McAlpin.png312820Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-03-13 09:43:112019-03-04 20:57:50Search Engine Marketing vs Digital Marketing - Interview with John McAlpin of Cardinal Digital
In this interview with Gabrielle, she had her heart and mind set on one direction in college, and little did she know after taking one marketing class, how her world would change. Sometimes you have to just trust your gut and take the leap of faith. Gabrielle has created a life around something she has found a passion for, allowing her to create the freedom and flexibility she was looking for. While still having a passion for animals her path has taken her in a different direction. Listen and see how.
More about Rielle Social Media
Gabrielle Crumley is the social media expert and digital marketing strategist behind Rielle Social Media.
I am passionate about helping business owners overcome their branding and social media challenges to see real success online.
Do you stress about what to post, or spending way too much money on ads that don’t convert? Whatever your specific business goals may be, I can help you achieve them. Learn more about her and her services at https://www.riellesocialmedia.com/
