Successful Startup 101 Magazine - Issue 9

by Tabitha Naylor

  2. KissMetrics

  Is your site generating a decent amount of traffic, but failing to produce the conversions you're hoping for? If so, you should look into KissMetrics and its analytics suite. While a service like Google Analytics can show you how many people are coming to your site and how long they're staying, KissMetrics can offer you even more detailed insights into user behavior so that you can identify where your traffic is falling off and fix those problem areas.

  3. Bounce Exchange

  Yes, website traffic is great, but unless you are able to keep your visitors on the page and engaging with your brand, it's almost worthless. Thus, you should place emphasis on new user retention, and with a tool like Bounce Exchange you can gain a better understanding of your visitors' actions and discover why they are bouncing from your page. With detailed insights on behaviors like mouse movements, you will be able to make any necessary adjustments to your site and improve the user experience to keep visitors on your page longer, and completing your desired action.

  4. Marketing.ai

  Team members need to stay in contact at all times and know what's going on with each other. Marketing.ai helps you manage your content marketing calendar for everyone on your team. You can task and assign projects to team members and track and measure performance.

  5. Intercom.io

  Successful content marketing often boils down to creating tailored content and distributing it effectively to your audience. With Intercom.io, you have access to data and organization tools for various aspects of your content strategy, ranging from your email marketing messages to customer engagement metrics. Intercom.io is one of the most unique, comprehensive growth hacking tools out there--an undeniable necessity for content marketers and growth hackers.

  6. Social Mention

  An integral part of content marketing is social shares and social mentions, and with this tool you'll be able to find out exactly who is talking about your brand and what they're saying on various social networks. From blog mentions to social media sites, Social Mention can give you an in-depth look into your brand's social traction and help you develop better strategies for social media.

  7. Crazy Egg

  At the end of the day, you create branded content to provide a valuable user experience for your customers. With Crazy Egg, you get a detailed map of your customers' on-site behaviors so that you can better understand their experience and improve on the areas that are driving customers away. With its unique visual read out, Crazy Egg can provide you with all of the information you need to convert more of your visitors into paying customers.

  With all of these tools in your arsenal, it's time to go forth and start building your brand's fan base. Have growth hacking tools that you'd like to share? Let us know about them in the comments below.

  About the Author

  Murray Newlands is a startup adviser, investor, and entrepreneur. He's written for many major publications, such as VentureBeat and Entrepreneur.

  * This article originally appeared on Inc.com

  How to Close a Sale: The Only Thing You Need to Know

  By Jill Konrath

  Have you ever heard the phrase "detach from the outcome"? It’s a tenet of Eastern religions. For many years it was a concept that I found totally unfathomable. After all, sales itself is about outcomes. Our income is at risk. We need to get the business.

  But over the years, I’ve learned the wisdom of that message. In fact, the more I wanted to close a sale (or should I say – needed to close a sale) the less likely I was to get it.

  Why? Because my focus was on me, not my prospect. And, whenever you need something that much, you push too hard for it. You short-circuit the process and go for the close before the time is right and your prospect is ready.

  Do they feel it? You bet. They lean back, put obstacles in your path and don’t return your calls or respond to your emails. Then, you get desperate and your neediness shows – and you become even less desirable to do business with. All because you're so eager to get the sale.

  I’ve learned that the only cure is to detach from the outcome.

  To be willing to say to yourself, “I know I need this sale, but I’m going to put that aside and focus on helping my prospect make a good decision.” Sometimes, you have to say it over and over to yourself.

  When you stop focusing on closing a sale, everything changes because your prospect’s needs become your driving force.  And, paradoxically, that’s the best way to get what you want. Go figure.

  About the Author

  Jill Konrath is an internationally recognized sales expert, keynote speaker and author of three bestselling books: Agile Selling, Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling. To accelerate your sales, check out all the free resources on her website: https://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-resources 

  * This post originally appeared on Jill Konrath’s website and is republished here with permission. 

  Cash Today – Losses Tomorrow!

  By Richard Weinberger

  What’s a killer for many small businesses? It is the need for cash, which can be an overriding factor in many business decisions dealing with customers. The attitude of “make whatever I can today regardless of the consequences tomorrow” can affect future sales and long-term customer relationships. No business can satisfy the needs of every customer all the time. A business should be prepared to let a sale “go” when the timing is not right, so the customer can be secured for a future sale. Once a customer is dissatisfied, it is highly unlikely that the customer will ever return. Once lost – lost forever!

  Many small businesses do a great disservice to themselves with the philosophy of make a buck today and worry about tomorrow, when tomorrow comes. From a practical standpoint, taking this type of short-sighted approach to business acquisition means:

  Over promise and under deliver - Some businesses are notorious for promising customers the moon - whatever the customer wants to hear – knowing they will not be able to provide what was promised.

  Customer service - here today - gone tomorrow – During the typical “sales pitch,” the presentation is all about customer service. You probably get the picture. Whatever the customer needs or wants, it can all be accomplished until the sale is made or contract signed. Oh, how the service situation changes after that point in time!

  No need for details in writing, we’re all about ethics – It is such a hassle at times to get all the details of a sale or service engagement written in a finely worded document. While many customers think that they have verbally agreed on the details of a transaction, they later find to their dismay that the business did not consider “this or that” as part of the sale, especially when the small business realizes that the profit margin is much less than originally estimated.

  These situations and many similar ones accomplish two things for a small business – immediate cash and the loss of future business. Customers are savvy today and competition is intense for the same dollars. Few businesses have a monopoly on the market in which they do not have to worry about customers seeking to do business with competitive rivals.

  A loyal customer can be equated to an annuity. The dollars roll in year after year. A satisfied customer will, hopefully, recommend a business to others, but a dissatisfied customer will most certainly tell a multitude of associates and acquaintances about their unpleasant experience with a business.

  So, there is a compound effect on revenues and profits when businesses look only to the short-term to make a sale without considering the long-term effect of turning a current advocate into a long-term adversary. This is not a technique to promote business!

  Long-term success relies on steady growth. If a business does not plan for customer retention, then it is a revolving door of securing customers, losing customers, and trying to secure new customers – wasted effort and wasted dollars!

  The solution for this dilemma can be quite simple and the reverse of the above points:

  Under promise and ove
r deliver – Customers want to feel that they received the benefits expected and what was promised. They want value for the money they paid. And, when a business over delivers what was promised, customers are pleasantly surprised and loyalty is developed.

  Customer service always – Customers do not forget bad experiences. They remember what was promised and what they received after a transaction is completed. Customer service cannot be provided only up to the point of sale and then ignored.

  Attention to detail and follow-up – These two factors make it is easy for a business to ensure that all sales commitments are made whether previously agreed upon verbally or written. When other businesses are forgetting about the fine details of a sale, strict attention to detail and follow-up allows a business to springboard past its competition.

  Business success is not only about today, but tomorrow, as well. Today’s sale should be viewed as an installment for tomorrow. When customers are properly taken care of, they will follow a business into the future. In contrast, once a customer is dissatisfied, that customer is probably lost forever. When a business is proactive about customer retention, (1) under promising and over delivering, (2) customer service always, and (3) attention to detail and follow-up automatically fall into place.

  About the Author

  Richard L. Weinberger, PhD, CPA, has over 30 years experience as a financial and management consultant for small businesses. An esteemed thought leader, speaker, and former college professor, he is CEO of the Association of Accredited Small Business Consultants. His latest best-selling book, Propel Your Small Business to Success: Accelerated Actions to Maximize Profit, (www.aampapproach.com) gives small business owners an easy, step-by-step, logical method for reviewing and analyzing all aspects of their business to ensure survival and success.

  Getting Clients from Social Media: 4 Things You Need to Fix

  By Michelle Nickolaisen

  Most of the time, when social media marketing is discussed, it’s in reference to larger companies. But I often hear freelancers lamenting that their social media strategies don’t seem to be working for them, and they aren’t sure why.

  Here are four common reasons that you’re not getting clients from social media — with fixes for each one, of course:

  1. You Don’t Have a Distinctive Voice or Brand

  Social media is noisy. We all see hundreds of social media posts a day, in between LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest… the list goes on. To stand out and be memorable enough that people will hire you, you need to have a distinctive voice and brand. You need to make sure you don’t sound like a personality-less robot.

  There’s a line here — you don’t want your Twitter feed to be all jokes about whatever TV show you’re currently watching, or commentary on your local nightlife. But at the same time, expressing personality is important. I always think it’s interesting when I see business gurus encouraging a strict separation of personal and business accounts. It might be a generational issue, but I’ve never bothered to do that, and I’ve had clients who specifically said they sought me out because of the personality that shines through in my social media accounts.

  But it’s not just about personality, it’s also about differentiating your business, too. Mike Tielemans, co-founder of Meraki Marketing, says:

  Create a brand for yourself on social sites by understanding your unique proposition to the market. Don’t try to become everything to everybody. Instead, find one thing that hits the sweet spot between demand and your capabilities/passions.

  Design a sexy one-page website with the vision for your company and how you aim to wow everyone you choose to work with. Then validate your idea (see Noah Kagan’s work on validating a business idea in 24 hours) and target from there.

  2. You’re Not Sharing Your Expertise

  People want to see that you have a personality and a unique viewpoint, but they also need to know that you have expertise and real-world know-how to back that up.

  One way to do this is by freely expressing your opinions on industry matters — even if it seems like you might drive clients away by doing so. Seth Knapp, CEO at GetChitter, says, freelancers can’t be afraid to be a thought leader:

  Often times freelancers fail to establish themselves as a thought leader on social media. This is a critical error because businesses automatically carry a certain amount of trust in the eyes of consumers, whether it’s deserved or not, but freelancers lack this natural trust.

  They need to use social media to establish themselves as thought leaders by posting relevant, insightful commentary, sharing high quality articles, and engaging with other thought leaders.

  As Knapp touches on, another way to do this is by sharing high quality content. Ideally, this is content you’ve created yourself, but you can also share content from other sources. In fact, sharing industry news with commentary can work just as well, says Vishal Srivastava, co-founder at Trainedge Consulting:

  The key to getting high quality work through social media is sharing lots of relevant content. You need to understand that you cannot generate all of this content yourself, and nobody expects you to.

  If you share good content created by others, that is also valuable. It also tells your followers that you are active in your field, have an intellectual interest in improving yourself, and are in touch with the latest news in your area.

  3. You’re Not Balancing Your Activity

  There are two sides to this problem:

  You’re not being proactive enough

  You should be sharing opinions, industry news, and useful content (whether it’s content you’ve created or not), as we’ve already covered above. But at the same time, you need to be proactively engaging with people one-on-one to see real results from social media.

  You might remember this being mentioned in the list of unconventional ways to get clients we published a few weeks ago:

  Using Twitter and tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can set up searches for specific keywords such as “web designer” or “WordPress developer”. Check in on it a few times a day and see what questions people have about your field of expertise or what discussions are going on about working with freelancers in your field. Chime in where you can, always with the goal of being helpful, not salesy.

  William Kinirons, president at BMK Media, summarizes the problem as being two-sided:

  One of the biggest mistakes I see other developers make in promoting is a lack of a true call-to-action, or one that is so broad that it totally fails to engage the viewer. Posting “Busy doing X for client Y” or “We can handle all your development needs” doesn’t really move anyone towards retaining you.

  The second biggest issue is lack of deal-closing follow-through; a friend or follower asks a question and the responder fails to reply in a way that allows them to immediately set up a meeting or retainer.

  And this article at FastCompany (How Startups (And Everyone Else) Should Handle Social Media) isn’t 100% developer focused, but gives another example of a way that you can be proactive without being pushy.

  Being too pushy or ‘broadcast-y’

  On the other hand, if you think of social media as strictly a sales tool, your efforts will probably be doomed from the start. John Turner, CEO of UsersThink, says:

  One of the biggest mistakes a freelancer can make trying to get clients via social media is treating the medium as late in the funnel (the “close” point) when it’s much earlier in the buying process, closer to discover and education. Use social media to prove your abilities, knowledge and skill, not to close.

  Think of it as a balancing act: Your personality, intelligence, and engaging conversations will draw people in, and the call-to-action or promotional posts sprinkled throughout your social posts can help turn people into potential clients. You wouldn’t walk up to someone at a networking event or party and immediately pitch them on your services, but you probably would proactively start conversations, and mention your services if it became clear th
at they (or their friend, or colleague) could use them.

  4. Last but Not Least: Are You Getting an Accurate Perspective?

  You may think you aren’t getting any clients from your social media, and wonder what you need to change. But the problem may not actually be with your social media — it could be with your analytics or sales-tracking processes. Brian Carter, author and consultant, notes:

  The lack of good analytics makes it look like you aren’t getting clients from social media, but that may not be the truth.

  The number one reason it may appear that you don’t get clients from social media, even if you do, is that usually when we reach people in social media, they aren’t yet ready to buy. We may get them to become fans, followers or email subscribers, and later when they contact us, the original social media referral information is not attached.

  In the research I’ve seen where prospects were tracked long term, and credit was given to the original referrer — the first interaction — it was often social media.

  For a thorough guide on setting up your own tracking efforts to make sure you’re getting an accurate picture of your results, check out How To Really Measure the ROI of Social Efforts.

  Your Client-Getting Social Media Checklist

  Do you have a memorable brand? When interacting with you on social media, are the differentiators of you and your business clear?