Quantcast
Channel: crowdspring Blog
Viewing all 521 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

How Routines and Habits Can Empower Wildly Successful People

July 30, 2018, 8:45 am
$
0
0

Have you ever wondered what separates those who just get by from those who are truly successful?

Luck may play a small role, but until someone figures out how to package and sell good fortune, there must be other secrets to success.

Ask any successful person how they did it, and chances are you’ll hear a combination of luck, network connections, and hard work.

But nearly all successful people also rely on specific routines and rituals. These routines and rituals may hold an important clue to why some people succeed while others fail.

Routines build great habits and help people succeed.

 



A great example is famed investor Warren Buffett, who has shown himself to be a creature of habit and routine.

In addition to his daily morning breakfast (which is always picks up from a McDonald’s on the way to his office and buys with exact change), Buffett has one other routine to which he credits much of his success. Here’s how Buffet explains it:

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.

Another example of a highly successful person using routines to their advantage is dance choreographer Twyla Tharp. She talked about the power of routines in her book The Creative Habit:

I begin each day of my life with a ritual; I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st street and First Avenue, where I workout for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.

It’s a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it — makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less thing to think about.

Are you asking yourself:

  • What are the habits of success?
  • What should your morning routine be?
  • How should you start your day?
  • How do you become a successful person?
  • Why is it important to have habits?

If you’re wondering about these questions, you’re on the right track and we can help.

Let’s look at tips and strategies to help you integrate daily routines into your life. After all, if you’re chasing success, you want to do everything reasonably possible to achieve it, don’t you?

 

How to establish routines

Creating a routine and doing it every day turns it into a habit.

Once your routine becomes a habit, it’s more effortless to maintain. An established routine is so ingrained that you end up doing it on autopilot; the effort to remember to do it falls away.

One essential step is to think about what you want to add to your daily routine. Each day can be roughly divided up into three distinct phases: morning, daytime, and night. Certain routines work best at specific phases.

For example, if you want to exercise more, you may want to do this at a specific time of day where it gives you the most effect. You’ll need to carve out time to exercise, and make sure you’re prepared in the time leading up to then: drinking water, for example, or making sure your gym clothes are clean and packed.

Twitter and Medium founder Evan Williams exercises every day, but he does it closer to noon instead of in the morning like most people. Williams elaborated on why he chose this time on coach.me:

I used to go to the gym first thing in the morning. Exercise is, of course, great for energy levels and I believe it makes me more productive no matter what. But energy and focus naturally ebb and flow throughout the day.

My focus is usually great first thing in the morning, so going to the gym first is a trade off of very productive time. Instead, I’ve started going mid-morning or late afternoon (especially on days I work late). It feels weird (at first) to leave the office in the middle of the day, but total time spent is nearly the same with higher energy and focus across the board.

Here are some ideas for how you could split up your day and schedule your routines.

 

Morning

The morning is the start of a new day, and how you kick off the day can affect the rest of your day.

Many famous entrepreneurs and business owners swear by an early start.

Apple CEO Tim Cook famously starts his day at the ungodly hour of 3:45 am. Many others get going around 4 am.

That many people start their day at 4 am is no coincidence. A report in the Wall Street Journal said that 4 am may be the most productive time of the day.

“When you have peace and quiet and you’re not concerned with people trying to get your attention, you’re dramatically more effective and can get important work done, so they have that part right,” says psychologist Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute. “By waking up at 4 a.m., they’ve essentially wiped a lot of those distractions off their plate. No one is expecting you to email or answer the phone at 4 a.m. No one will be posting on Facebook. You’ve removed the internal temptation and the external temptation.”

As mentioned earlier, many people exercise in morning.

Here are a few other things you should consider adding to your morning routine include:

Daytime

The daytime is when most of us get the bulk of our work done.

Staying productive throughout the day (especially close to the dreaded 3pm slump) can be a challenge.

Here’s what you can add to your daytime routine to help maintain your workflow:

  • Take regular breaks (consider adopting a time management method like the pomodoro technique) ,
  • Start tracking how you use your time. Apps like RescueTime can help you figure out where you spend most of your time,
  • Corral distractions: block off time every day where you do nothing but work. Turn off notifications and don’t take meetings during this time,
  • Go for a walk to clear your head, and
  • Stay hydrated: use apps like Plant Nanny or WaterMinder to make sure you’re drinking enough water.

 

Make your evenings quiet and relaxing to allow yourself time to decompress.

Evening

The end of the day for some people is just another time to get work done.

While this may work for you, it’s worth considering a change to your evening routine.

Famed composer Beethoven understood the power of a quiet, work-free evening. He rarely wrote music in the evenings, choosing instead to take long walks and reading or visiting with friends.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung sought out the company of his family at dinner time. “I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same, is a fool,” he said.

The evening is also an excellent time to reflect on the day and think about what went right, wrong, or just plain weird. Use the evening to wind down from work and carve out self-care time for you to pursue other interests or company.

Whatever you end up choosing, think about how it will help (or hinder) you the next day. Some people may love exercising at night, but if it ends up keeping you awake afterward, you may need to reevaluate.

 



Theming and Singletasking

Jack Dorsey is possibly one of the busiest founders today, working as CEO for Twitter and Square, two prominent companies.

How does Dorsey juggle the responsibilities of two companies? He gives each day of the week a theme.

The way I found that works for me is I theme my days. On Monday, at both companies, I focus on management and running the company…Tuesday is focused on product. Wednesday is focused on marketing and communications and growth. Thursday is focused on developers and partnerships. Friday is focused on the company and the culture and recruiting. Saturday I take off, I hike. Sunday is reflection, feedback, strategy, and getting ready for the week.

While most of us aren’t in Dorsey’s position running two large companies, the idea of breaking up your time into themes can still work for us, too.

One way of implementing this is to think about single-tasking.

Many studies, including this famous one from Stanford, have shown that attempting to do more than one task at the same time is not only inefficient, it can adversely affect your ability to make right decisions.

The example to the right shows how one company manages time. Email is only checked three times a day, with each day dedicated to completing a maximum of one to three tasks. “Maximize single-tasking,” it says, and “minimize chat.”

Theming your days, and incorporating single-tasking into your routine can help you turn a disorganized, hectic day into a much more streamlined and effective one.

Journaling

Another powerful tool you can add to your daily routine is journaling.

Many successful entrepreneurs have discovered the power of the journal, and use it to write down their experiences, reflections, and ideas before they get lost in the bustle of a busy week.

Writing about your day is an excellent way to clear your head, reduce stress, track your progress toward goals, and incorporate gratitude as a way of improving your mood.

Journaling can be as simple as keeping a daily log, but there are also many different ways you can structure your journals to get the most out of them.

 



One very popular method is the five-minute journal.

It has a simple structure: at the beginning of the day you write for roughly five minutes about what you’re grateful for, what would make the day great, and an affirmation to start things off on a positive note.

That evening you write down three awesome things that happened that day, and one thing you could have improved, and how you could have done it.

 



Another popular system is the Bullet Journal. It’s different than the five-minute journal in that it’s less about capturing what happened in the day and more about organizing what’s to come.

No matter which system you adopt, the act of writing is a compelling thing to add to your daily rituals. Make journaling a part of your routine and chances are you’ll notice benefits that spread throughout the day.

Habit tracking

If there’s one word that goes hand-in-hand with routines, it’s habits. After all, a routine is nothing more than a habit you repeat on a daily basis.

What’s the best way to establish a habit? We wrote about this in our look at productivity apps:

One of the best techniques for establishing a good habit came from an unexpected place: comedian Jerry Seinfeld. His process works like this

  • Choose the thing you want to do.
  • Get a big calendar.
  • Every day you do that thing, mark a big X on the calendar.
  • Your goal is to keep filling days. As Seinfeld said, “don’t break the chain.”

There are a number of apps that help you track your habit-building progress and we mention some of those in that article. A couple of others worth looking into include:

Momentum Habit Tracker
Available for iOS
Free, with in-app purchases

Habit-bull
Available for iOS and Android
Free, with in-app purchases

Habitica
Available for iOS and Android
Free, with in-app purchases

Wrapping up

In 1892 William James gave a lecture about the power of personal automation, routines, and habits.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

The word “routine” is funny in a way because it tends to bring to mind something dull and repetitive.

Routine may be repetitive. However, it can also be a potent agent of change for people looking to improve their productivity, mental agility, and creativity.

Adding something to your daily routine doesn’t need to be a massive shift in how you approach your day. It can be a small, seemingly insignificant act that, repeatedly done over time, can create substantial positive change.

Are you ready to make success part of your daily routine and take your startup or small business to the next level? Our team of over 210,000 creatives is ready to help you with custom logo design, web design, naming your business and more – everything you need to build a great brand. Get started now and request a free, no obligation design consultation with one of our design experts today. 

 

The post How Routines and Habits Can Empower Wildly Successful People appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
Search

7 Proven Ways to Increase Customer Engagement on Social Media

August 1, 2018, 8:34 am
$
0
0

Not all social media marketing is created equal. Some strategies and tactics are better than others.

And, some strategies might be great – but are entirely the wrong fit for your business.

So, if your social media marketing isn’t living up to expectations what can you do?

There is no one answer for every small business. But, it never hurts to take a step back and examine what you’re doing now.

What’s working and what isn’t? And, more importantly – why?

Once you know, move forward guided by your fresh perspective. And, do it with intention by developing a strategy based on what you know about your business and your unique customers.

Consider these 7 proven ways that will help you rise above the social media noise and better engage your audience on social networks.

 

1. Get Your Timing Right

Successful social media engagement relies on many factors. You need to set the right tone, communicate the right content on the right platform at the right time.

Imagine if you showed up for your friend’s bridal shower at 3 am instead of 3 pm. You’re probably not going to have a successful social interaction. That artfully constructed cake made out of diapers you brought isn’t bringing anyone joy at 3 am.

The same is true for your social media efforts.

If you’re posting when no one is looking, it doesn’t matter how good your content is. No one will see it.

So, figure out your business’s “Goldilocks” time to post (when the most eyes will see your content).

Many studies purport to tell you the conventional wisdom about the best times to post. But, don’t rely on those studies exclusively. Alfred Lua from Buffer, explains:

They can serve as a great starting point, especially if they suggest plausible explanations for those best times to post. For example, if you are working on an entirely new social media profile and do not have any data of your own to work with, some studies can come in handy. But they are not a copy-and-paste blueprint for success.

Lua recommends doing as much original research with your social media audience as possible. He suggests creating a consistent posting schedule and gathering 3-4 weeks worth of engagement data to see which time slots perform the strongest.

Your Takeaway:

If your social media content is playing to an empty house, test to see what times you should be posting. You may be failing because you’re posting at times when nobody is looking.

 

2. Post on the Right Platforms

Not all social media platforms are created equal.

And, the best social media platform for your neighbor’s business might not be the best platform for yours.

This might mean giving Facebook a pass. Or skipping Twitter. Who knows?!

Well… truthfully, you should. And, if you don’t know, it’s time to find out.

Start by considering your goals. What do you hope to accomplish with your social media presence and how will you measure success?

Are you looking to build a loyal brand following? Or are you hoping to drive online sales? Or, maybe you’re trying to reach a brand new audience?

Your business goals will help to determine what platforms will be the best fit for you.

Here are some of the most popular social media platforms you might want to consider:

  • Facebook- allows you to post longer text-based content as well as infographics, gifs, photos, and video.
  • Twitter – short text posts (280 characters or less) and images, gifs and video.
  • Instagram – a mobile platform for sharing photos and videos, and Instagram Stories.
  • Linkedin – a networking website for professionals, can post written articles, infographics and video.
  • Pinterest – a photo-based SM network used to research and organize images that often link to link to longer content.

Which social media platforms will deliver the best return on your investment?

Consider the kind of stories you will want to share and, what content you will use to tell those stories. Then, find out where your audience spends their social media time.

That’s where you need to be.

After all, marketing to the social media generation is quite different than what companies did in the past.

For instance, an interior design firm may find more success on photo-centric platforms like Instagram and Pinterest than on Facebook. New home-owners, or those looking to remodel their current home, frequently troll Pinterest and follow designers on Instagram for design ideas.

And remember to leverage influencers and micro-influencers to extend your reach on social networks.

Your Takeaway:

Finding the right platform relies on knowing where your potential customers spend their time and what you want to share with them.

 

3. Be Present

It’s not enough to have a social media account.

It’s not even enough to have a social media account that posts regularly (although that is very important).

You need to be present and available to interact.

This means that you need to respond to social media comments. When complaints inevitably appear in your post comments instead of in your customer support channels, answer them.

If you want social media engagement (particularly positive social media engagement) you have to engage back.

Nike has their very own customer support profile on Twitter (@NikeSupport) that they use to solve customer issues separately from their regular @Nike Twitter handle.

Your Takeaway:

Don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk. If your customers reach out via social media, engage them there.

 

4. Create Content That Invites Engagement

This may sound obvious – and it should be! But, sometimes the obvious needs to be stated…

If you want people to engage with your content, your content must invite engagement.

Questions invite engagement. Games invite engagement. Unique and novel topics invite engagement. Strong points of view and pictures of adorable bunnies and babies wearing sunglasses invite engagement. Video marketing invites engagement.

You get the idea.

When crafting your content, make sure that you’re offering your audience a true invitation to engage.

Sure, you could say “Check out our great new article about plastic widgets!”, but you’ll get a stronger response if you post, “What do you think of these crazy new plastic widgets we’ve made?” Include a picture of the aforementioned crazy plastic widgets and link that pic to your new article and you’re off to the races.

John Rampton, entrepreneur and marketer, advocates for high-engagement techniques like game posts, giveaways or contests.

What’s great about these tactics is that it boosts engagement on the social media platform of your choice because people usually like receiving a prize of recognition.

The promise of that recognition can be a strong motivator. Everyone likes to feel heard.

Benefit Cosmetics does a great job of asking questions and “quizzing” their audience as you can see above.

And remember to keep your branding consistent and sharp across your social media efforts. That means ensuring that your company’s logo is crisp, readable and visible on the content you share, using complementary colors that reflect your brand, and speaking in a consistent voice across channels.

Your Takeaway:

Regularly post content that directly invites engagement. End your posts with a question, hold a contest, or share an amazing eye-catching visual.

 

5. Post Visually Attractive Content

People (including your social media followers) tend to like things that look pretty.

Want proof?

Smartphone addicts are encouraged to turn the color off on their phones. Simply making their phone look less appealing makes it less fun to engage with.

And, according to this content preferences report,

...91% of consumers now prefer interactive and visual content over traditional, text-based or static media.

If you want strong engagement, post visually-appealing content that catches the eye.

The internet is a primarily visual platform. If you want your content to compete with all of the other posts and content vying for your audience’s attention, it’s got to look polished, professional, and aesthetically pleasing. And you’re going to need a lot of it.

For tools to help you create your visual content, click here for our previous article: 12 Awesome Visual Marketing Tools That Will Help Grow Your Small Business.

Your Takeaway:

Regularly post eye-candy for your audience and they’ll be more inclined to pay attention, enjoy your content and engage.

 

6. Develop a Voice Worth Engaging With

When you’re conducting business, you should behave professionally.

Obviously.

But, what isn’t obvious is why some businesses equate professional with boring.

Social media should be social. Formal, stilted, corporate communication will not endear you to anyone. And, it certainly won’t motivate viewers to engage with your business.

So, develop a voice (consistent with your brand) that is worth engaging with!

Internet marketing expert John Rampton reminds us:

Your followers and audience want to see that there’s actually a person or people behind the logo.

And, they want to spend their social media time interacting with people and brands with whom they can connect and have fun.

So, be that brand with whom they can connect and have fun.  Reveal authentic, interesting details about your employees. Write in a conversational tone. Be witty. You know… use your social skills.

Your Takeaway:

Develop an authentic, social voice that is consistent with your brand. Keep that voice the same throughout all of your posts and your audience will begin to know and trust you.

 

7. Monitor Your Social Media Engagement to Make Informed Decisions

We can make all of the blanket suggestions that we want. But, the truth is that every business is unique. And, the technique that works like gangbusters for one business may be a total flop for another.

So, the most valuable tactic that we can offer you is to monitor the results of your social media marketing efforts.

Track your social media engagement and sift through the data to find what works best for your business.

When is your best time to post? What type of content gets the strongest response? And, what platforms deliver the best ROI?

You can only answer these questions if you track your social media activity and results.

Rampton recommends a number of free social media monitoring tools worth checking out here.

Your Takeaway:

Track and monitor your social media engagement data. Then use that data to target the times, platforms, and types of content that perform best for you.

 

Your Quick Guide to Social Media Engagement Tactics

Let’s recap. Here are 7 proven ways that will help you rise above the social media noise and better engage your audience on social networks:

  1. Test to see what times you should be posting. Then post at those times.
  2. Find your best SM platforms by getting to know your audience’s social media preferences and determining what and how you want to share.
  3. Be present and engage with your audience on social media when and where they want to engage with you.
  4. Post content that directly invites engagement like questions, contests or quizzes.
  5. Prioritize posting content that is visually appealing.
  6. Develop a fun, authentic, relatable brand voice for your social media posts.
  7. Track and monitor your social media data to target your business’s best social media platforms, content strategies, and posting schedule.

If your social media marketing efforts aren’t taking off the way you’d hoped they would, it’s time to take a different approach.

 

Need help developing an awesome social media presence? Let crowdspring’s community of over 210,000 creatives help you develop content worth engaging with – without breaking the bank. You can get started on a social media assets project, infographic project or any other design project here, or request a free design consultation with one of our design experts.

The post 7 Proven Ways to Increase Customer Engagement on Social Media appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
↧

Twitter Link Roundup #342 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers!

August 3, 2018, 7:28 am
$
0
0

Hiring and onboarding employees are both challenging for a high-growth company.

For example, employee onboarding can make or break the success of a new hire. Without solid guidelines and a structured process, otherwise gifted hires can drown in a chaotic introduction to their new jobs.

But when a company is growing quickly, it’s not easy to create guidelines and change processes. Yet this is the precise time you should be making the necessary changes to be sure that the new people you hire don’t destroy your company’s culture or your business.

Here’s a good read on hiring and recruiting efficiently and effectively.

Now, we hope you enjoy another great set of links and articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdspring Twitter account (and on Ross’s Twitter account). We regularly share our favorite posts on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, logo design, web design, startups, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Enjoy!

smallbusinessblog

startupsblog

socialmediablog

designblog

logodesignblog

otherblog

 

The post Twitter Link Roundup #342 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers! appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

7 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Redesign Your Small Business Website

August 7, 2018, 8:18 am
$
0
0

Is your small business website helping or hindering your business?

If you’re like most small businesses, your website is outdated, and not helping you to increase revenues and sales.

Even worse, your website might be completely disconnected from the brand you’ve been building.

Here are 7 key reasons why you should consider redesigning your website.

  • You aren’t getting the results you want
  • You updated your brand or marketing strategy but not your site
  • Your website is designed for you, not for your customers
  • Your site isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly
  • You want more effective content
  • You want to incorporate a design trend or best practice
  • Your site is slow or suffers from bad usability

Let’s look at each of these in detail to help you assess how you can make your website design work for you, rather than against you.

 

1. You aren’t getting the results you want

Probably one of the most straightforward reasons to revisit your website’s design is that it’s just not working the way you’d like it to.

Perhaps your site’s e-commerce performance isn’t living up to expectations, or you’re not getting as many conversions you’d like.

A redesign or revamp might be the thing you need to fix these issues.

Often you don’t need to redo the entire site to boost performance or address an issue. Redesigning just a section of your site, or reevaluating how your customers get from point A to point B (also known as a “user flow”) might be all you need.

A famous example of how a small change can have a considerable effect is Jared Spool’s “$300 million button”. Jared explains:

It’s hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year.

Here’s the design change that shocked the business:

The designers fixed the problem simply. They took away the Register button. In its place, they put a Continue button with a simple message: “You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”

The results: The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.

What “fixes” the problems on your site might not such an easy fix, but you won’t know unless you try.

If your site’s issues are more fundamental, you may need to do a complete overhaul or refresh of the design.

Keep in mind that the potential effects of a website redesign on your conversion rate are unknown without testing the changes. It’s not enough to redesign – you should also consider how you’ll test the new elements to ensure that they’re performing better.

Marketers and business owners usually go into a website redesign without a process in place to test the page templates and landing page elements that are being changed. For more about website design testing, we recommend you read How A/B Testing Can Help Your Small Business increase Conversions and Revenues.

 

2. You updated your brand or marketing strategy

Brand and marketing strategies are fluid, living things.

It’s important that they adapt to changes in the business environment and shifts in your audience’s demographics or desires.

If you’ve changed your company’s logo and branding or overall marketing strategy, it is critical to update your website.

Many small businesses assume that brands start and end with their business name and logo, and overlook all of the other important marketing content that is a part of any substantial branding effort.

As we wrote previously:

A brand is more than logo design. But marketing efforts can fall flat if you lose credibility with your marketing collateral. You must keep an eye on branding (easier for the world’s biggest brands – they can spend billions building their brands) because it’s too easy to make a branding mistake that can cripple your small business. For example, if your branding is inconsistent or consistently poor in email and content marketing campaigns, people will notice.

Your website is a critical component of your brand, and as your marketing strategy evolves, your site should as well.

After all, your website and your brand should work in tandem. A misalignment can damage not only your brand but also your customer’s trust.

BrandExtract, a branding firm with over a century of experience, explains the importance of maintaining consistent branding:

A consistent brand helps increase the overall value of your company by reinforcing your position in the marketplace, attracting better quality customers with higher retention rates and raising the perceived value of your products or services….In contrast, erratic, inconsistent behavior quickly leads to confusion and mistrust.

Make sure consumers see consistent branding in every interaction with your website. It provides them increased familiarity with your brand, which inspires confidence and trust in your brand.

 

3. Your website is designed for you, not your customers

A common issue for many sites is they were designed with the company’s needs first.

You can see this in sites where the website’s navigation uses vague internal terms like “Back Office Services” or the names of your company’s various divisions.

This visual structure of your company might make sense to you, but it’s often bewildering or confusing to your customers.

Another example of misguided site design is ones that prioritize company information over the products or services you sell.

If you’re looking for a way to display information about your business that is important, but not relevant to your customers, try putting it in a less prominent place.

One of the reasons many companies stick their corporate info at the bottom of the page is so it’s out of the way of the main content but still accessible.

Amazon puts all of their corporate information in the footer of their page. This allows their products to take precedence but keeps the links on the page, so they’re still accessible.

Your customers expect your site to clearly show them how to get to the things important to them. If your company’s forte is information, your site should be structured and designed to get customers in front of that information quickly.

If you sell products or services, your site should be optimized so customers can access these things with as little friction as possible.

Try to look at your site as if you were the customer.

Think about your customer’s goals and the reason they use your site. How many clicks does it take for a customer to achieve their primary goal? Consider whether they are buying an item, signing up for an account, or reading an article.

A redesign of your site can adjust the priority of the layout so what’s most important is easier to find.

A good first step is to talk to your customers – both existing ones as well as potential ones. Find out what’s important to them, and get them in front of your site to offer their opinion.

As we wrote, customer interviews will help you identify your customers’ wants, needs, and motivations.

When you interview customers, you foster a direct line of communication that will give you valuable insight into their feelings about their experience with your product and branding. This information can help you identify any pain points, and will allow you to explore exactly how to update your website.

 

4. Your site isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly

According to research by comscore, mobile users spend more than double the minutes online than desktop users.

If your website isn’t “responsive” – that is, if it doesn’t adapt its layout for screens of many different sizes (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.), you may be presenting your users with a subpar experience.

You’ve probably experienced it yourself, where a site you’ve visited required you to zoom in and painstakingly pan around to get to what you were looking for.

If that’s your site, it’s time for an update.

The amount of work required to rejig an existing site to be mobile-friendly often means a complete redesign is more effective.

Need another reason to go responsive?

Consider how people search for something.

According to Google, over 48% of all users started their search for something on a mobile device.

This fact is in itself not a reason to be alarmed until you take into consideration Google penalizes sites that are not mobile-friendly in its search results. As the company stated:

…we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

With the number of customers using a mobile device as their primary way of accessing the web continuing to go up, having a site that works just as well on a desktop computer as it does on a mobile device is critical.

 

5. You want more effective content

Content is king.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of the surveyed B2B marketers say they are creating more content this year than in the prior year.

To execute a successful content marketing strategy, you need to be very familiar with your target audience. Developing user personas is a great way to do this. As we wrote,

Personas are helpful. Whether you’re marketing, selling, creating, or providing customer service, these fictional characters help businesses relate to customers as actual people, rather than anonymous numbers.

When you know your target audience, you can connect with them better by offering targeted, relevant content that will lead to significantly better conversion rates.

But most websites were not designed to showcase content. Even if you have a blog, it might be lost in your website navigation and might look like it was designed in 1997.

If you want to take advantage of content marketing, you should be sure that your website design can support the content you plan to create and share.

 

6. You want to incorporate a new design trend or best practice

No one wants to be seen as out-of-date or behind the times, and leveraging design trends can be an excellent way to refresh the look of your website.

As we said in our look at this year’s web design trends:

A dated or poor looking website design can make even the best businesses appear non-professional and unreliable.

If you want your business to thrive, you have to stand out and one good way to do so is to take advantage of hot website design trends to give your website or landing page a sharp, contemporary feel.

Adding a trend to your site isn’t as clearcut as dropping it into your layout. Whatever trend you choose and how you integrate it into your site should be tied directly to your brand and your marketing strategy.

It’s also vital that you weigh the benefits of a particular trend against the understanding that trends change. What may seem fresh and of-the-moment today could look ridiculous a couple of years from now (we’re looking at you, legwarmers).

Trends may be a great way to keep your site looking current, but adding one means committing to updating your site when the trend moves on. This isn’t a bad thing: you want your site design to stay fresh, after all.

 

7. Your site is slow

A site that plain doesn’t work or works terribly is one of the most critical reasons to redesign. You don’t want a poorly working site to weigh down your brand or lower your customer’s trust, do you?

According to studies by content distribution network provider Akamai, a two-second delay in webpage loading time increases “bounce rate” (the number of people who immediately leave a site) by a whopping 103%.

Not only that: 53% of mobile site visitors will leave if a page takes longer than three seconds to load.

With attention being the most important currency customers spend online, losing site visitors due to poor performance can put a big dent in your company’s fortunes.

Just ask Amazon.

The company once reported that a 100-millisecond increase in site speed resulted in a 1% increase in revenue.

Google created a tool for web developers to test the speed of their pages. It’s called PageSpeed Insights and it’s very easy to use. You simply enter your site’s URL in the form and press the Analyze button.

The results are quite technical but should give you an idea of how well your site performs.

A redesign is an excellent way to improve site performance. Think of it like moving homes: the change allows you to reevaluate what’s important enough to keep, and what can be removed.

Use a critical eye to go over all of the elements on your site’s pages. Make each one fight for its survival: does it help your customers achieve what they came to your site for? If it doesn’t, removing the element may help speed things up.

At the very least, “cleaning house” is a great way to optimize your site for your customer’s goals, and ultimately that’s what your site exists for in the first place.

How your business website looks and works reflect on your business. It can either help or hurt your revenues and profits.

Your website may not be working as well as you’d like now, but you’re only one redesign away from one that does.

 

The post 7 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Redesign Your Small Business Website appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Twitter Link Roundup #343 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers!

August 10, 2018, 7:29 am
$
0
0

If you’re like most people, you own a smartphone.

And if you’re like most people, you use it. A lot.

Full-time access to a smartphone has obvious benefits but comes at a price: that nagging feeling that maybe we should be spending our time doing more than just staring at a screen.

If you’re seeking a healthier relationship with your favorite inanimate companion, take a look at what your habits are and precisely where you’d like to make some changes. Need some suggestions on where to start? Read more to get some ideas on how you can choose a more balanced approach to your phone use.

Now, we hope you enjoy another great set of links and articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdspring Twitter account (and on Ross’s Twitter account). We regularly share our favorite posts on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, logo design, web design, startups, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Enjoy!

smallbusinessblog

startupsblog

socialmediablog

designblog

otherblog

 

The post Twitter Link Roundup #343 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers! appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
↧

13 Powerful Ways You Can Manage Customer Expectations Better To Grow Your Business Faster Than Ever

August 13, 2018, 9:06 am
$
0
0

“…it looks cold in there…”

A prospective customer looks to your business to provide something they need or want.

This is the beginning of a very important story for your business.

And, starting with your very first interaction, this story can develop in one of three ways:

  1. You fail to meet their expectations.
  2. You meet their expectations.
  3. You exceed their expectations.

The first scenario will lead to an unhappy customer and poor word-of-mouth marketing.

Scenarios 2 and 3 will likely lead to a loyal new customer and positive word-of-mouth marketing.

The tricky part is that each customer supplies their own expectations. And, they won’t necessarily tell you in advance about their expectations.

Psychologist and professor John A. Johnson Ph.D. explains:

My research on moral psychology tells me that expectations among people are often based on an implicit social contract. That is, without actually verbalizing expectations about give-and-take in a relationship, people construct stories in their heads about legitimate expectations of each other. So, people in a relationship have a “deal” in which the specifics of the deal are never really talked about.

Having worked in both retail and customer service (among other fields), I can tell you that people apply this logic to their interactions with businesses as well as with people.

So, it’s in every marketer’s and business owner’s best interest to learn how to effectively manage customer expectations.

But, if this were truly as simple as it sounds, there would be a lot more happy customers in the world.

So, let’s examine the science of expectation… and explore 13 ways that you can better manage your customers’ expectations, create loyal brand followers, and grow your business faster than ever.

First Impressions Set Subsequent Expectations

We’ve all heard that first impressions are important.

Why?

When it comes to setting expectations, a first impression is powerful. This is because we tend to make snap judgments, whether we’re aware of it or not.

Your judgment about a situation becomes the expectation the next time you find yourself in a similar or identical situation.

And, those initial judgments tend to stick around because expectations are not just a state of mind. According to Loretta Breuning, Ph.D. (professor, author, and founder of the Inner Mammal Institute) expectations become a part of your physical being:

…expectations are surprisingly resistant to adjustment. Expectations are real physical pathways in the brain. Past experience built these pathways but new experience does not easily modify them.

Once a pathway has been established, it requires repeated exposure to new information to alter that pathway.

Moreover, it’s harder to improve a negative first impression than to tarnish a positive first impression.

A study by Nadav Klein and Ed O’Brien at the University of Chicago investigated how difficult it is to reach what they call a”moral tipping point”. This is the point at which a person goes from being viewed as a good person to a bad person – or vice-versa. They explain:

…this moral tipping point is asymmetric. People require more evidence to perceive improvement than decline; it is apparently easier to become a sinner than a saint, despite exhibiting equivalent evidence for change.

In other words, it’s hard to rebuild a positive reputation when people already have negative expectations. And, it’s easy to gain a negative reputation even in spite of people’s positive expectations.

We expect businesses to be “in it for the money.”  And so people are naturally inclined to be suspicious of businesses’ intentions.

So, if your business makes a poor first impression, most people won’t stick around to give you a chance to fix it.

Not when their hard-earned money is at stake.

Actionable Tips For Your Business

  • Focus your marketing efforts on creating a positive first impression. Work with your marketing, sales, and customer support teams to make sure that they fully understand your efforts and can deliver on your marketing promises. The positive expectations generated from this first impression will prime your consumers to see your subsequent interactions in a positive light.
  • New businesses without a known brand reputation have to work harder to help their customers identify and recognize them. So, (much like a television pilot episode) provide enough background information to generate a good first impression. Be sure that your branding (including your company name and your company’s logo design) are clear, visually interesting, and memorable. And be sure your branding is consistent.
  • Work hard to maintain your positive impression. Always deliver on your brand promises. It’s easy to lose your good reputation and negative expectations are very hard to overcome.

 

Magical Thinking – And What it Means for You

Magical thinking sounds fun.

And, in some instances, it can be. But, magical thinking’s implications for your business may not be so fun.

Magical thinking is the false belief that something will happen just because you expect it to.

Children subconsciously imbue their thoughts with the power to directly affect the world in a tangible way.

Many adults continue to believe this is possible to do. Dr. Johnson points out that:

…many normal adults continue to engage in various forms of magical thinking. Prayer can be a form of magical thinking. Witness the huge popularity of The Law of Attraction, which says that our thoughts attract events into our lives. For many of us, it is difficult to let go of the idea that expecting something to happen will make it happen.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to suggest that your thoughts have no power to affect change – they do. Your thoughts can directly impact your actions.

However, your thoughts cannot make a bad product or service great or deliver the specific product you’re seeking at your perfect price.

But, that doesn’t stop people from reacting negatively when their expectations go unmet.

In fact, these negative reactions are unavoidable. According to Professor Wolfram Schultz, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, dopamine levels are depressed in the brain if our expectations are not met.

Unmet positive expectations make people feel bad.

Consumers bring their own set of expectations with them, and when those expectations go unmet, disappointment and displeasure follow.

Actionable Tips For Your Business

  • It’s best to manage expectations for customers from the beginning of your interactions with them. This will help you to control the dialogue instead of scrambling to react to unrealistic consumer expectations. Be sure you understand the difference between empathy and sympathy.
  • Make your marketing offers as clear as possible. Don’t make vague assertions that can be easily misinterpreted and lead to flawed expectations that work against you.
  • Don’t make implications in your marketing that you can’t or won’t deliver. If you claim to have a 100% money-back guarantee, deliver that refund every time it’s requested.

 

Negative Expectations Lead to Negative Perceptions

We’ve discussed how magical thinking can lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment.

So, is it better to encourage customers to set their expectations lower so that you’re more likely to meet them?

Yes, but be careful.

While it is good to create realistic expectations that can be reasonably met, it’s important not to lower expectations too much.

If you lower consumers expectations too much, instead of creating an easy-to-hop low hurdle, you may find yourself stuck in a ditch.

It turns out that people who approach a situation with a negative expectation often find their negative bias confirmed. You may have heard of this phenomenon – the self-fulfilling prophecy.

A team of Columbia University students confirmed this in their research study, “Try it, You’ll Like It: The Influence of Expectation, Consumption, and Revelation on Preference for Beer.”

The study revealed that participants who were warned in advance about an unpleasant “secret ingredient” (balsamic vinegar) in a beer showed the lowest preference for that beer as compared to other participants who were not warned in advance.

It turns out that the anticipation of a negative experience delivered a more negative experience. This is because our complete experience of an event is determined not only by our physical senses but by our psychological perception of the experience.

The Columbia research article makes this very clear:

The quality of an experience is jointly determined by bottom-up processes, which reflect characteristics of the stimulus impinging on the perceiver’s sensory organs, and top-down processes, which reflect the perceiver’s beliefs, desires, and expectations.

So, it’s important to consider the entire customer experience – sensory and perceived – to create the best possible results.

Actionable Tips For Your Business

  • Use your marketing language and visual design to set positive, realistic expectations whenever possible. For example, positive business taglines perform better than negative taglines.
  • Lead with the good news. Highlight tangible product or service benefits early on and feature special discounts or offers prominently.
  • Use customer testimonials and reviews to create anticipation for new customers that they’re about to have a great experience.
  • Review your website design to remove friction that might make customers cranky before they get to the check-out page.

 

The Power of “Surprise and Delight”

So far, we’ve focused on the downsides of expectations.

But, don’t get discouraged – expectations aren’t all bad news.

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, meeting your customer’s expectations is a good thing.

And, if you manage to exceed your customer’s expectations, the positive impact is even greater.

Cambridge’s Professor Schultz found physical evidence of this.

We already know that his research revealed a drop in dopamine levels (that neurotransmitter that controls the pleasure center in our brains) when our expectations are not met. But, he was also able to confirm that dopamine levels increase when we are pleasantly surprised by what Schultz calls a “positive prediction error.”

A positive prediction error is simply a fancy way of saying “surpassed expectation.”

This is why the concept of surprising and delighting your customers is so powerful. By surpassing their expectations, you are creating a physical reaction that makes your customers feel good.

That kind of experience will make customers take notice, remember your brand, and keep them coming back.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that leads to habit-forming and addictive behavior. People are driven to seek out ways to trigger their brain to release dopamine. Dr. Breuning explains:

Expectations are the core of our brain’s strategy for making sense of the world. Your brain is constantly generating an expectation and then comparing new inputs to it.

When our experiences match up with our expectations, we’re rewarded with a happy dopamine reward. When our expectations are disappointed, we lose our happy dopamine and receive the stress hormone cortisol instead.

Our biology controls our reactions. And, it’s hard to fight biology.

Actionable Tips For Your Business

  • Set clear and attainable brand promises – and meet them every single time. Consistent, reliable, good service over time is surprising in and of itself.
  • Find creative ways to go above and beyond. Provide a surprise free add-on gift with their purchase. Design a fabulously fun “unboxing” process to make your product’s arrival even more special. Send a handwritten thank you note for their purchase along with a discount coupon for their next purchase.
  • Try to anticipate related customer needs and do your best to satisfy them. For example, if a customer purchased several packs of diapers in the largest available size, consider sending an invitation to try out your new pull-ups with a coupon code for a nice discount.

If you want to create the best possible customer experience, your marketing has to play a proactive role to define and then meet or exceed your customers’ expectations.

If interacting with your business regularly produces pleasurable reactions, you’ll see customers coming back again and again.

 

The post 13 Powerful Ways You Can Manage Customer Expectations Better To Grow Your Business Faster Than Ever appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Why Social Media Stories Are a Big Marketing Phenomenon (And How To Use Them to Market Your Business)

August 17, 2018, 8:51 am
$
0
0

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that everyone touted Facebook’s newsfeed and Instagram’s feed as the new world for marketers to go forth and conquer.

How quickly times change.

Initially dismissed as the playground of Millennials, “stories” have grown to become a viable media format in their own right.

Not bad for a format that mostly consists of photos, pithy text overlays, and concise videos that sometimes disappear within 24 hours of being posted.

Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox predicted at this year’s F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference:

The increase in the Stories format is on a path to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends sometime next year.

This is a surprising admission from a company that has put an incredible amount of effort trying to make its newsfeed as sticky as possible.

It’s even more surprising when you consider that Instagram (also owned by Facebook) only added Stories two years ago, in 2016. The addition of Instagram Stories was mostly seen as a “hey us too” catch-up move to SnapChat.

Today, Instagram Stories has more than double the number of daily users than SnapChat, based on numbers announced in June of 2018:

The company, owned by Facebook, announced on Thursday that more than 400 million people use the popular feature each day, up from 250 million one year ago. That makes Stories more than twice as popular as Snapchat, which saw 191 million active users in the last quarter, according to the most recent earnings report from parent company Snap.

Stories matter.

Let’s take a look at how some popular brands are using Stories and then we’ll discuss best practices and tips to help you get started with Stories for your own brand.

Examples of brands using Stories effectively

Brands have flocked to Stories, and there are many examples of companies using the format to great effect.

Converse

Shoe company Converse integrates Stories tightly with its other Instagram posts, as they’ve done here with the recent launch of a new shoe collaboration.

Nordstrom Rack

Nordstrom Rack is another fashion brand that uses Stories effectively to highlight products and promotions.

They don’t merely just post photos of their products. They include behind-the-scenes clips from photo shoots and boomerangs (short looping video clips) of their clothes in action.

The fact that Stories are consumed as tiny, fleeting bursts of content makes it easy for a brand like Nordstrom Rack to get a lot of product in front of its followers quickly.

And the fact that Stories are visible for just 24 hours before disappearing means that brands can keep up a steady stream of new content without creating a massive backlog of posts for customers to wade through.

Nike

Nike is one of the most popular clothing brands on Instagram with almost 80 million followers.  The sporting company leverages this popularity well with savvy, well-designed Story posts that (appropriately) encourages customers to “just do it” and participate.

A recent example: the sports brand recently launched a design competition for its new Air Max shoes. Through well-designed videos and slideshows, the brand inspired followers to involve themselves in the production process for this new product. This gave followers a reason to keep coming back to vote for their favorites and submit ideas.

By making its customers’ ideas a key part of this campaign, and taking advantage of Story’s frequently updated nature, Nike was able to create a contest that made customers feel like the brand valued their ideas and creativity.

National Geographic

Stories aren’t just for clothing brands. The venerable publisher is renowned for its stunning imagery and its deep commitment to environmental and humanitarian causes.

This reputation has led it to become to one of the most popular accounts on Instagram, with nearly 90 million followers.

The publisher uses Stories to educate its followers through the use of beautiful photos and videos.

The stories don’t end on Instagram, though. @NatGeo takes great advantage of the ability to “swipe up” on Stories, which sends users on to more in-depth reporting and articles on its website.

This is one of the most potent differentiators between Stories and regular Instagram posts. As of now, you cannot create a call to action or “next step” from a regular Instagram post. Each Story post can have its own “swipe up” destination, which creates even more opportunities for marketers to engage with customers.

New York Times

The long-running newspaper uses Stories in exciting ways. One particularly smart way is the section they call “Good News”.

The paper puts together brief slideshows with overlaid text that gives followers a quick burst of good news, with a call-to-action at the end of each one to read the full story on the main site.

This is just one of many different Story “sections” @NYTimes has on its profile. It’s a smart way to take advantage of Story’s 24-hour lifespan to transform the format into social media versions of the daily newspaper.

How to leverage Stories to market your business

If you’re considering using Stories as a marketing tool, we wanted to share some best practices and tips.

Our advice is specific for Instagram success stories, but there are more similarities than differences between Instagram’s version of Stories, SnapChat’s, Facebook’s, or WhatsApp’s [which are called “Statuses”]. Most of the best practices and tips we’ve assembled here apply on other social networks as well.

Integrate your Stories and Posts

Even though Story’s short lifespan can be a big plus, it does mean that followers might miss a particular story if they don’t happen to check out your profile while it’s available.

For Stories you don’t want followers to miss, do an announcement as a regular Instagram Post letting people know ahead of time when the Story will go up.

It’s also possible now to save a particularly good Story as an image or a video slideshow and repost it to your regular feed. Use this feature judiciously, as it’s a good idea to keep some separation between your regular posts and Stories to differentiate them.

This flexibility means you aren’t stuck having to invest time and effort in a powerful Story only to have it disappear into the ether 24 hours after you post it.

Cheerios users Instagram Stories to send positive personal messages to its followers

Get your @ On

Just like regular posts, you can @-mention users in your Stories. So use it! Part of the power of social media is making connections and lavishing attention on others, and your followers will love being mentioned in your Stories.

Once again, the temporary nature of Stories is a big plus here as it not only means you have lots of opportunities to @-mention followers, it also means the mentions won’t persist as they do on your regular feed.

This makes @-mentioning safer (because it’s not a permanent connection), and means you can rest assured that your brand will not be permanently tied to a particular follower.

Just as with any other social media feature, however, it’s best not to overuse this one. Make it count, and make it special.

Interested in other ways of increasing your customer engagement on social media? Read 7 proven ways to rise above the social media noise and better engage your audience on social networks.

Effortless creation

You could, if you wanted to, spend a ton of time on your Story posts. Because they live for such a short period, however, no one expects that you do.

This opens up the possibilities. You might want to invest time to get your regular Instagram posts right, but all you need for a Story post is a good idea and some creativity.

The New York Times “Good News” posts we mentioned earlier are a good example. They tend to reuse existing imagery from the newspaper with a short blurb on each one that briefly tells the story.

It probably didn’t take very long to assemble each story, but the payoff (via the call-to-action to read the full story at the end of each one) is big enough that putting a few minutes here and there makes creating them worthwhile.

You can do the same thing. Reuse imagery you already have (such as catalog photos, or clips of existing videos) and take advantage of the built-in editing and text tools to quickly add text to them.

It’s okay to have the occasional Story that doesn’t quite land right, knowing that 24-hours later is another chance to try again.

But remember to connect these stories to your brand. It might be fun to share various photos and videos, but if they are completely disconnected from your brand, how would this help you to market your business?

Be sure that the name of your company and your company’s logo are visible in the stories you share. And consider your brand’s colors to maintain consistency with your website and other social channels.

Consider Stories like a channel

Just because Stories don’t stick around for very long doesn’t mean you can post without giving it too much thought.

One way to use Stories effectively is to treat the feature like it was a TV network. You might want to “schedule” certain Stories or types of Stories to appear on specific days, or try grouping posts into themes or recurring “episodes.”

Think in advance about how your Stories will flow together, and how they relate to other marketing events or campaigns so that there’s a cohesiveness to what you’re posting.

Repost from other channels

As we mentioned, Stories tend to be very similar from social media network to network. Nothing is stopping you from cross-posting a Story you’ve created for SnapChat on Instagram, or vice-versa.

Facebook even has built-in Story sharing from Instagram, which makes cross-posting easy and painless.

Even with Instagram’s 1 billion active users (!), there are still many people who are only on Facebook, so posting Stories on multiple sites isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s also possible to save a SnapChat post as a video that you can then repost on Instagram and Facebook. So if you wanted to share Stories between those sites, it’s also easy.

Another benefit of reposting your content on other channels is that you are certain to maintain consistency in your posts from one network to another.

Consistency is vital if you want to build consumers’ trust.

As we wrote previously:

Customers can’t get to know (and trust) your business if they don’t have the opportunity to experience your brand in a consistent manner. Here are some compelling ways that consistent branding ban strengthen your business:

  • Easy brand recognition leads to positive associations.
  • Consistency provides an advantage over the competition.
  • Increased perceived value leads to higher sales.

Inconsistent messaging inevitably leads to confusion about your brand’s identity.

Making sure each story posted has a similar look and feel will help build your branding voice into one your customers know and trust.

Include a call to action

As we mentioned earlier, the “swipe up” feature in Instagram’s Stories is a powerful way to direct traffic off of Instagram to your site.

When you post a story, consider where you might want to send followers. If you’re posting about one of your products, for example, send users from that Story to the product page on your site.

Another effective way to use swipe up is to stick it at the end of a sequence of Story posts. Then you can use the posts as a way of building up interest or give followers a reason to swipe, so by the time they get to the end they’re more motivated to continue to wherever you want to send them.

An example of how a poll can be integrated into a Story post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get interactive

There are a lot of different features you can integrate into a story post to make them more exciting and more engaging.

Besides tagging and @-mentioning others, Instagram has new features like polls and questions that you can add to a Story post. Ask followers to vote for their favorite, or get them to send you a short text reply to a question.

You can also tag stories with a location, repost other Instagram posts as a Story (which sends followers to that post if they swipe up), and get followers to send you a direct message in response to a Story.

The latter is a great way to solicit feedback from followers, and also make your Stories more interactive.

MeUndies uses text-only stories to not only make shout-outs to followers, it also uses them to promote hashtag campaigns such as #MePlusWe.

Text-only Stories

Instagram recently added the ability to have text-only Story posts. This is a great way to integrate more text content into a sequence of Story posts to help tie them together or to tell a brief story in words rather than pictures.

Many brands are using text-only Story posts with #hashtags and other links to help propel a narrative forward, explain a new technique or teach followers something, and many other things.

Story highlights

Did we say that Stories are ephemeral? This is true, but if you have a particular Story that you want to stick around for longer, now you can!

Story highlights stay on your profile as long as you want, which gives you a lot of flexibility. Besides “pinning” a Story so it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours, you can use Highlights to create simple story categories similar to what the New York Times has done with their “Good News” Stories.

You’ll probably want to use this feature strategically, and not overwhelm your profile with a lot of highlighted stories. A large content creator like the New York Times can get away with more highlights, but most brands should highlight fewer stories. Make them count.

Use Micro-Influencers

Want to expand the reach of your Story audience?

If you are a small business and don’t have the budget of a larger company, consider working with a micro-influencer (people who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers).

As we wrote:

With high engagement rates and lower fees, micro influencers are an excellent choice for businesses just starting to expand their brand’s reach.

Micro-influencers give smaller businesses another great advantage by allowing those businesses to target smaller, more unique audiences.

When you ask brands and marketers for the best platform for influencer marketing, the vast majority of them will answer Instagram. Many surveys support this view – they are frequently citing Instagram as the No. 1 platform for 92% influencers.

That makes it a great choice to integrate into any Story-related marketing outreach.

Wrapping up

Stories represent a new and exciting way to present content, run marketing and advertising campaigns, and interact with your social media followers.

Social media is all about connection, intimacy, and storytelling. It’s no surprise that Stories have taken off the way they have.

Whether you’re a small business, a start-up, or an established brand, Stories are quickly becoming the de-facto way to reach your customers with quick, easily-digestible bits of content.

After all, marketing and branding are all about telling the story of your business. Stories are a powerful, accessible way to do just that.

 

Need help developing an awesome social media presence? Let crowdspring’s community of over 210,000 creatives help you develop content worth engaging with – without breaking the bank. You can get started on a social media assets project, infographic project or any other design project here, or request a free design consultation with one of our design experts.

The post Why Social Media Stories Are a Big Marketing Phenomenon (And How To Use Them to Market Your Business) appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Twitter Link Roundup #344 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers!

August 17, 2018, 9:51 am
$
0
0


You probably know plenty of middle children. Maybe you’re a middle child, yourself.

Middle children, the long-suffering sibling stuck with a bad reputation and a number of complexes, are experiencing an increased appreciation in popular opinion.

Regularly regarded as jealous, overlooked, and attention starved, middle children are indeed a misunderstood and underappreciated group. This, however, has begun to change – ironically, and possibly because, the number of middle children is decreasing in number across the country.

Interestingly, there now exists a “revisionist school of middleness” describing middles as natural innovators, free of the weights shouldered by their older and younger siblings; they are natural diplomatics standing as a mediating bridge between warring brothers and sisters.

To read more about how Middle Child Syndrome is becoming less syndrome and more strength, read this fascinating piece from Quartz. Middle children everywhere, you’ve been seen.

Now, we hope you enjoy another great set of links and articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdspring Twitter account (and on Ross’s Twitter account). We regularly share our favorite posts on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, logo design, website design, startups, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Enjoy!

smallbusinessblog

startupsblog

socialmediablog

designblog

logodesignblog

otherblog

The post Twitter Link Roundup #344 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers! appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
Search

How To Market Better and Grow Your Small Business Faster Using The Psychology of Reciprocity

August 20, 2018, 7:38 am
$
0
0

“Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

You may call it paying it forward, quid pro quo, or just returning the favor, but science has a word that describes this trait: reciprocity.

What is reciprocity?

Our need to return a kindness given or shown to us is deeply ingrained in our psyche. Psychology Today explains the science behind reciprocity:

This tendency has survived and been present throughout human history because it has survival value for the human species. The noted archaeologist Richard Leakey describes the essence of what makes us human is this system of reciprocity. “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation.”

One of the best-known books on the subject is Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In it, Cialdini looks at the Principle of Reciprocity and how even the smallest gestures can often have a powerful effect.

In one example, Cialdini observed that when waiters gave diners a mint at the end of a meal, the average tip amount increased by 3%. If two mints were given, tips increased by 14%.

And if the waiter left one mint with the bill, but then quickly returned to give a second, the tip increased by a whopping 23%.

Examples of reciprocity in action

Reciprocity, when used correctly, can be a powerful tool to inspire action. Marketers have used the principle of reciprocity in many different ways, and to significant effect.

Dunkin’ Donuts turned wins by the Philadelphia Eagles into free coffees and huge mobile downloads.

Dunkin’ Donuts 

Dunkin’ Donuts ran a campaign that leveraged reciprocity and the idea of “giving to getting” effectively.

Called “Eagles Win, You Win,” the campaign offered Philadelphia area customers a free coffee the day after the Philadelphia Eagles won a game. The free coffee was redeemed via the Dunkin’ Donuts mobile app.

The campaign was a big success, with the donut chain reporting over a quarter million customers taking advantage of the free coffee offer every week after an Eagles win. This drove huge downloads of the mobile app, which exposed customers to carefully targeted promotional messaging and incentives.

Sales and general foot traffic increased because of the free offer, which demonstrated the power of reciprocity.

Morton’s Steakhouse

Morton’s Steakhouse also used reciprocity to gain lots of free publicity and advertising.

They used a method commonly known as “surprise and delight.” The basic idea is to surprise customers with something that delights them, in the hopes that the principle of reciprocity will kick in.

Multichannel Merchant explains:

One of the most viral examples of the “surprise and delight” strategy came from a rather traditional, old-fashioned brand: Morton’s Steakhouse. In 2011, a traveler jokingly tweeted Morton’s, requesting for a steak to be waiting for him when his plane landed. So Morton’s went ahead and sent a tuxedoed staff member to the airport to wait for the traveler with a big, juicy Porterhouse – free of charge! A positive, memorable experience is a win-win for everybody: it makes customers happy, drives word-of-mouth, and keeps them coming back to your store.

Zappos

Another company that uses surprise and delight to great effect is Zappos, whose customer service exploits are legendary for encouraging deep customer loyalty and viral word-of-mouth.

One great example is the time a traveler to Las Vegas checked into her hotel, only to discover she had forgotten her favorite shoes at home. She went on the Zappos’ site to buy a replacement, but the site was out of her size. So she called customer service. The company didn’t have her size in stock, but it found a pair at a Las Vegas mall not far from the company’s headquarters.

Someone from Zappos went to the mall, bought the shoes, and then hand-delivered them to the customer at her hotel, all free of charge.

Practical Ecommerce looked at the benefits Zappos got from this “act of customer service heroism”:

It almost certainly cost Zappos money. So why is this one of the secrets to online retail success? To get the answer just imagine how the customer felt. No doubt, she’ll shop Zappos again. She probably told lots of friends, who told their friends. And the goodwill that the company generated most certainly did more for the business than any advertising or marketing program Zappos might have spent those dollars on.

How can you use reciprocity to grow your business?

Here are ways you can use reciprocity in your own marketing initiatives, and some things to keep in mind.

Be authentic

The principle of authenticity goes hand-in-hand with the principle of reciprocity. As we recently wrote,

Authenticity is a significant factor in increasing your customers’ trust in you and your business.

In a global study completed a few years ago, The Age of Authenticity revealed that 63 percent of consumers would choose to buy from a brand they perceived as authentic over less-authentic competitors.

Customers will see right through any attempts at currying return favors or actions if they don’t come from an authentic place.

Studies have found that it’s less about what is being given or when it was given but more how it was given.

By focusing on how actions are exchanged, each type of authenticity determines the symbolic value imputed to the benefit and that value directly influences the party’s decision of whether to repay the benefit and the determination of what an appropriate repayment would be as well as indirectly influencing exchange behaviors toward their partner.

Also be sure that your customers and prospects are aware that when you give them something special, it came from you. This means finding creative ways to incorporate your company’s name and business logo so that the customer knows the source of their happiness.

Saying thank you

Saying “thank you” to a customer can seem like a small, mostly insignificant act, but it can have a noticeable effect on a customer’s behavior.

A study that looked at restaurant tips found that when the server wrote thank you, included a happy face, or added a tip about an upcoming special to the back of a bill, the amount of tip left by customers increased by 17-20%.

Writing a thank you note or email to a customer can leverage the same reciprocity that restaurant servers used on customer’s bills.

Three ways you can say thank you include:

Thank you pages
Create a thank you page for downloads, registrations, purchases, and other customer actions. You can also include on this page details of what the customer did to help tie their action to the thank you.

Thank you emails
Similarly, send customers a short email thanking them for a recent transaction. You can provide them with the information they may need or be looking for regarding the transaction as well.

Handwritten thank you notes
These may take more effort and time, but they can be very effective. Companies like Stitch Fix include handwritten thank notes inside all of their clothing shipments, which not only act as a seed for reciprocity, they also help increase the authenticity and personalized nature of the service.

Make customers feel unique

Stitch Fix’s personalized notes demonstrate something that helps increase the possibility of reciprocity: the customer should feel like whatever is being offered is being individually provided to them.

Besides personalized notes, you can also help increase the sense that a gesture is for that specific customer by using demographic or geographical targeting (give them something specific to who they are or where they live), or by offering a set of things and letting the customer choose.

Offer something of value

Give customers something they find valuable outside of the existing relationship or services you already offer them. Coupons and deals are always an excellent way to encourage repeat business, but inspiring the customer to return the favor often requires something above and beyond.

For example, don’t just give your customers individual discount codes, but also give them codes they can share with their friends or family.

Meal prep services like HelloFresh uses this technique extensively by providing new customers with free meals they can send someone else as a gift.

Free gift inside!

A great strategy is to add in an unexpected gift to customer’s orders. Gameklip does this in a very simple and low-cost way: they include a package of candies (specifically Smarties) with every order.

As the social media posts show, this small surprise is something that people love, and they return the favor by sharing it with their friends and network.

Suggest how customers can reciprocate

Once you’ve provided your customer with a nice gift or surprise, give them some ways they can pay it forward. Make it easy for them to do something of value for you.

If you’re looking to build word of mouth, make it easy for customers to pass along your business to others. Give them simple ways to share content with their social media contacts.

The referral process is a great way to encourage reciprocity because it makes it obvious to the customer that they’re receiving and giving value when they pass along the gift to a friend.

Make your customer feel special, and they’ll return the favor and help your business grow.

 

The post How To Market Better and Grow Your Small Business Faster Using The Psychology of Reciprocity appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
↧

A Simple Thank You Can Be Very Powerful

December 18, 2008, 12:50 pm
$
0
0

Technology has transformed the way we communicate. Email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, and other forms of  communications have allowed people who would not have “met” ten years ago to develop social relationships.

We get many great emails from people every day thanking us for what we do. Those emails put huge smiles on the faces of our entire team. We feel good when we learn that in some small way, we’ve helped another person.

Yesterday, we received a postcard and a handwritten note from a creative who works on crowdSPRING – Audree Rowe. It’s a wonderful note and a great postcard. We posted it on our refrigerator door.

Our team was really moved that Audree took a few minutes to send us her kind note. It’s pretty amazing that a little handwritten note can be so powerful.

We are very fortunate at crowdSPRING. We love our community.

[I asked Audree if we can share her note here and she graciously agreed.]

The post A Simple Thank You Can Be Very Powerful appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

crowdSPRING’s Inaugural SPRINGY Awards

November 9, 2009, 8:10 am
$
0
0

What a difference a year makes!  We’ve had a pretty amazing year here at crowdSPRING – we’ve seen some amazing company’s making the switch to the crowdsourcing platform, we’ve paid out $2.5 million in awards to our more than 40,000 creatives and we’ve expanded our office personnel.  We’re feeling pretty darn loved and lucky and because of that, we want to share the love! We really appreciate everyone and everything you guys are doing and have done and to show our appreciation we are pleased to announce the inauguration of our annual Springy Awards! These awards will take place at the end of each year and include four different categories for you to win:

Most Winningest Designer of the Year – The word may be made up but it’s the only word that’s able to capture how much you do for us as designers. crowdSPRING will award the designer who won the most projects this year.

The Community Award – This is awarded to the designer who contributes the most to our crowdSPRING community, whether it’s through the blog, our forum or feedback on projects themselves – we appreciate your mouthiness.

And here’s where you guys come in – the following are crowdSPRING’s People’s Choice Awards:

crowdSPRING Buyers:
Speak up!  We need you to nominate the designer you think deserves the Frenchie Award, named after our French customer service representative, Jerome. This is awarded to the designer that demonstrated their own customer service to their potential client – the designer that gave the most and best feedback.

crowdSPRING Designers:
It’s your turn to speak up and nominate the buyer you think deserves the Buyer of the Year award, which is given to the buyer who you love working with the most.

If you are a creative or a buyer in the crowdSPRING community or even just a friend of one, we would love to hear your nominations to find the best buyers and creatives that deserve an award this year (don’t be afraid to nominate yourself! We’ll never tell.)

Please submit your nominations no later than November 20, 2009 to springy@crowdspring.com.

Simply email us the crowdSPRING username of your nominee and a quick reason why you believe they should win the award. Put the award you’re nominating for in the subject line of the email.

The Winners will get a special crowdSPRING winners package complete with award!

The post crowdSPRING’s Inaugural SPRINGY Awards appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Saying “thank you”– why startups and small businesses should listen to mom.

June 14, 2010, 4:00 am
$
0
0

In these recessionary times, all of us who operate startups and small businesses struggle to meet our bottom line, pay our monthly bills, retain our great employees, and grow our businesses in spite of the challenges presented. What to do, what to do? Well, one time-proven marketing strategy that increases customer lifetime value, cements loyalty, and drives word of mouth, is simply doing what your mom tried to teach you to do always: say “thank you.” It is a truism that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and this simple strategy goes a long way towards this.

According to a survey of small businesses by American Express, only one third of businesses gave year-end bonuses or gifts to their employees last year, down more than 10% over the prior two years. Recession, ugh. Yet many small businesses continue to build customer loyalty and increase sales by giving gifts to their customers. The gifts can be anything from swag like tee shirts and coffee mugs, to discounted services or merchandise. Studies show that this works, and the credit card industry is a good example of this. For instance, in a study by the consulting firm Maritz, credit card holders who participated in loyalty programs increased their number of transactions by 53 percent and the value of  those transactions by 51 percent!

How can your business say thank you to your customers? Experiment. That’s right – try lots of different things to see what works best. Try a loyalty program; my local pizza place does it – every time I go in they stamp my card. Ten stamps and I get a free pizza. Yum. Or try an A/B test: offer one group of your customers a discount on their next purchase, and offer the another group a tee shirt. Then track the results – which group came back more often and spent more money? Or try a different experiment; offer some customers a gift card for a successful referral of a new customer and an equal number a small cash bonus. Which group responds best? The answer to this question could define your strategy for your next round of “thank-yous.”

Here are a few tips for thinking through your approach to gifting your customers:

  • Segment. Look hard at your customer base and consider what type of incentive might be valuable to what type of customer.
  • Communicate. Ask for feedback when you give a gift or say your thank you. If you ask them what they like and why, many of them will actually answer you.
  • Analyze. Don’t just send out gifts without paying attention to the results. Track the data and be ready to dispense with the gifting that doesn’t work and beef up that which does.
  • Get buy-in. Make sure that all of your key departments or employees are involved, from the front-line customer service folk to the marketing and sales departments.
  • Provide value. If you are looking for insight into hat makes your customers tick and what increases their lifetime value, only they can tell you. And they will only tell you if the thank you provided is of value to them.
  • ROI. Make sure that the payouts you are offering are generating more than the cost. It would be silly to offer every customer a $100 gift card if the increased value of that customer were only $50. Be careful here and make sure you end up profiting on these efforts.

So, dangle the carrots and see if they nibble. And, like mom said, “Be polite. Or I’ll smack you.”

 

Photo credit: Michael Newman

The post Saying “thank you” – why startups and small businesses should listen to mom. appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Labor Day! Let’s Celebrate the Workers

September 3, 2012, 11:05 am
$
0
0

“The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.” ~ Samuel Gompers 

Most of our posts on the crowdSPRING Blog focus on managing businesses and startups; we often write about best practices, and offer plenty of practical tips for managers. Today is a little different, because in the US, today is Labor Day. Every year on the first Monday in September, we celebrate workers and everything they do for our country and our economy. Parades are held, speeches are given, and workers across the country take an extra day’s rest from their labors to picnic, play with their kids, and (often) shop the sales that businesses love to offer on the last official day of summer.

Samuel Gompers, (see his quote above) was an early leader of the 19th-century labor movement in the US, had it right: businesses owners and managers have a distinct and profound responsibility to the people who work for us. It is incumbent on management to create and sustain an environment that leads to hiring, encourages quality work, rewards effort and accomplishment, treats workers fairly, pays an equitable wage, provides for basic welfare, respects families, supplies adequate work flexibility, and, importantly, celebrates the work itself.

As part of this, I also think it is important to say thank you to your workers as often as you possibly can – without them you have no business being in business. So, I want to thank our team here at crowdSPRING – for their hard work, for their collegiality, and for the fun we have together every day. To do this well, I am taking a few minutes to write an appreciation for each member of our team. Thanks, guys!

John (Shuo) Yang is our Senior Software engineer and one of the smartest people I have ever met. It took me a bit to realize this, because until you get to know him, John tends to be kinda quiet; he listens, he synthesizes, he analyzes and then he acts. Always productive and efficient, John gets things done in a way that doesn’t call attention to himself, but rather to the work product itself. He can be bitingly (though subtly) funny, and I have never seen such a relatively small person eat such massive quantities of lunch. Thanks, John!

Chris Detmer is our UI Developer (the guy who codes and polishes the user-facing parts of the site) and has been with cS longer than any other employee. Chris first came aboard as a consultant back when we were building the site in 2007 and became employee #2 in January 2008, 3 months before we launched. Chris is focused, loyal, flexible, and kind to everyone around him. Not to mention that he is a talented composer, musician, and performer. Plus he likes Legos. Thanks, Chris!

Adriano Marques is our wonderful Brazilian Software Engineer, recently immigrated to the US. He is one of the most dedicated and hardest working people I have ever known and also one of the most caring people around. He is always ready to jump in to help solve a problem or fix a bug, but he is also keenly focused on the big picture and is constantly working to strengthen our site and streamline our product. He is strongly opinionated, but in such a sweet and non-confrontational way that you wouldn’t even know it was the case. Thanks, Adriano!

Diogenes Herminio works for us as a Software Engineer, but does it from his home in Brazil. Diogenes has worked hard in his short time with us to learn the complexities of our software and has successfully mastered that complexity and made some meaningful contributions to the company. He is always there (on Skype) with a smile and a kind word, and his talent grows every day. Thanks, Diogenes!

Audree Rowe Started as an experiment. A successful crowdSPRING, Audree approached us one day and asked to come work for us directly. She had this crazy idea that someone who had actually worked on the site, might provide value and insight to the community that we couldn’t give ourselves. Well, Audree was right – from her first days as our Community Liaison, she has provided help, comfort, advice and expertise to both Creatives and Buyers on the site. She is as knowledgable about our business and our community as anyone and she does her job with as much grace and good humor as I have seen in 30 years in management. All that and she also has a beautiful family! Thanks, Audree!

Bianca Jayanty is more to us than just a “Customer Service Wonder Gal.” She is a tough, funny, sharp individual who gives her total effort to everything she does. She is one of the fastest learners I have ever worked with, and she is never afraid to try something different, develop a new skill, or put herself in an unfamiliar situation. As a matter of fact, as I write this, Bianca is traveling with her sisters (did I mention that Bianca is a triplet?!) in Cambodia, exploring temples, caves, and unusual foods that I can’t wait to hear about. I might also mention that she is a budding stand-up comic working the mic at clubs in Chicago and San Francisco. Cool. Thanks, Bianca!

Dylan Samson started his life at crowdSPRING filing the paid bills and other boring paperwork into folders and drawers. He did it so well and with such a smile on his face, that we started adding on more responsibilities, ultimately putting him in charge of our IP violations process. From scratch, Dylan designed a new system and a new process that helps us to deliver a fast, fair, and and friendly method that allows us to keep our promise to the community to respect and protect their intellectual property. He is friendly, efficient, and always ready to help his team in delivering great customer service. Not to mention that he has a scary knowledge of music old and new and is the Music Director and DJs a fantastic show on WIUX, FM! Thanks, Dylan!

Amanda Werner is a freaking Valedictorian of her college class and helps out around here with marketing and PR. If you are fortunate enough to receive those cS discount offers in your email, it is becaue of Amanda’s hard work. And if you are interested in some of the small businesses that post their projects on crowdSPRING, then you have probably read her weekly “Small Business Spotlight” columns in our blog. Amanda is from Minnesota, which means she is good, smart, and above average in all respects! She also is a cook who is always ready to discuss what we each made for dinner last night and even (on occasion) will let me taste her leftovers at lunch. Thanks, Amanda!

Giuseppe Ribaudo joined us last winter as a Customer Service agent and has shone since day 1! He is an actor who appears in productions at theaters around Chicago and is always ready to discuss so-and-so’s [erformance in a movie we’ve recently seen. He is a generous and thoughtful person and this manifests in the dozens of conversations he has with our users every day. He also speaks Italian and is an accomplished quilter! How cool is that? Thanks, Giuseppe!

Heather Appleman (AKA, “Red Velvet”) came to us via Austin, Texas to become a mainstay of our Customer Service team. She is so reliable that she will sometimes text me to let me know that, for instance, her subway train is on fire and she has to help rescue some people so she may be 2-3 minutes late starting her shift. Seriously. I kid you not. Heather is as steady and responsible as they come – always friendly, ever-smiling, and an attentive presence on our Help Desk who users have come to count on to get speedy and accurate answers to their questions. Heather is currently studying film-making and we look forward to saying that we knew her when… Thanks, Heather!

Brittany Williams is a rock. She indeed a Wonder Girl in our support team and is a person you can count on to be unflappable, calm, and levelheaded no matter what the emergency. Brittany is a wonderful writer and film-maker and is working to establish herself as a producer and production manager. She has a quick and easy smile and an amazing ability to make people feel comfortable and cared for. Thanks, Brittany!

Diego Frausto has the ability to deliver customer service in multiple languages and with equal charm in each! Diego is a full-time student at Loyola University studying business and marketing and has the ability distill complex ideas into simple sentences that any customer can understand. I sometimes read his help desk tickets just to remind myself how effective email support, when done right, can be. Diego is a world traveler and has promised to one day invite us all to his family’s ranch in Mexico! Thanks, Diego!

A couple other folks work with us a great deal as contractors or vendors and they, too, deserve a special thanks: Kona Horler has been doing our books, managing our accounts, and generally lifting our spirits for more than 2 years now; Marko Bijelic is a talented web designer in Bosnia and Herzogovina who helps us maintain the look and feel of the site and contributes every day to our user’s experience on crowdSPRING; Lauren Russ has been handling our PR for the last 3 years and it is because of her efforts that we have been so fortunate to grace the pages of some of the most important media outlets in the world.

Photo – Labor Day New York 1882 Wikimedia

The post Labor Day! Let’s Celebrate the Workers appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
↧

Small Business and Startups: Give Thanks (and Coupons)

December 8, 2013, 10:05 pm
$
0
0

Holidays are upon us, folks and it’s time to give thanks. every business large and small owes a debt to those who have helped over the year and there is no better time to gift than now: your investors and lenders deserve a note, a bottle of wine or other small token to show your appreciation  for their trust, their support, and (hopefully) their advice.

Your employees deserve thanks for their hard work, their productivity, their energy, and their all around contribution to your success. Typically this form of thanks might include a year-end bonus, a holiday bash, and some little swag, maybe a company tee shirt, pin, or jacket. Hey, even a company-branded Gulfstream may be appropriate for some od you out there!

Finally your customers. Ah yes, them. Without this group of people, your business would have no business being in business. How to thank them? Lots of ways great and small and the ideas are endless: for companies with a relatively smaller customer base, you might shoot them a card, send them a small gift, or even invite them down to your company party. For larger companies an email is probably in order, but a little gifty can be nice, too.

One solution that many companies turn to when thanking their customers for their all-important support? Discounts, baby! Airlines offer additional miles to frequent travelers; hotels send out lists of marked down rooms at posh resorts; restaurants will often sell discounted gift cards; car companies inundate us with end-of year offers typically accompanied by shiny bright, ribbon-festooned models.

What you do for your customers is up to you, but consider using coupons and price reductions as a dual-purpose strategy. First, what better way to say thank you then to reduce or even exclude your margin on something that they would purchase anyway? Secondly, why not find ways to increase sales, cement loyalty, and spread-word-of-mouth at the same time? Couponing is a great way to do this, because it is in your control, allows you to gather valuable data, can increase traffic to your store or website, and helps to develop the all-important relationships that businesses and their customers desperately need.

Here are a few ways you can use coupon discounts to reach your customers and deliver that valuable “Thank You!”

1. Via email.

Mailchimp, Constant Contact, JangoMail and the like make it easy to create and manage email  campaigns and special Thank You’s can be sent using any of these or other services. Import your list, modify one of their templates (or create your own design), input your content, and away it goes, delivered to your customer’s virtual doorstep through the internet tubes. An added advantage of using email campaigns to say thanks is the data you’ll receive in return. These services allow you to look at customer behavior that can help when you send your next mailing: you’ll easily view how many of the recipients opened that email, hw many of them clicked through y=to your site, and how many of them actually took you up on the offer. You can easily add tags such that data can be tracked using Google Analytics; you can A/B split your mailing to test different subject lines or different customer segments to gauge  performance; and you can better understand your customers and what maked them tick.

2. Via the Post Office.

For companies dependent on local customers (talking to you Mom & Pop retail store) the US Post Office offers a fantastic product that allows you to target customers (existing or potential) via their zip codes, their streets, or their addresses at a very low cost. For as little as 15¢ via the USPS Every Door Direct Mail service, you can send them a postcard segmented by age, household income, or household size. Your mailing can be tracked as it passes along it’s route and you’ll know exactly who received your coupon, when they received it and (if you plan your design and coding well) who redeemed your coupon and who did not. Naughty or nice, you’ll gain a better understanding of which content and what demographics are working for you to increase response rates on your next mailing.

3. On your site.

With a few simple lines of code, your dev team can generate pop-up or banner offers on your site that will deliver your gift to visitors when they arrive. This strategy can be as simple or sophisticated as you like. Returning customers can receive one offer while new visitors can be offered something different. Browser cookies and retargeting strategies work well to help understand who the visitor is, if they’ve bought from you before, even the frequency of their interactions and this can help you to segment visitors further allowing you to deliver the most special Thank You to the most special customer.

4. Pay-per-click

Google and the other search engines are invaluable resources for helping customers (especially new ones) find you. Well executed SEO/SEM campaigns can yield meaningful results, though be careful as it is not difficult for a business to spend more acquiring customers through these channels than those new customers might contribute to your bottom line.  PPC campaigns can also be used to deliver discounts to customers; create a campaign that offers anyone who finds you through the search results a coupon for the first (or next!) purchase whether that takes place on-line or off. Be sure to carefully code these offers so you can track whether the offer is effective in attracting sales, and whether customers are interested in or appreciative of the “thanks you” offered.

5. Circulars ads and promotions.

A circular is simply a leaflet or pamphlet that is distributed via mail, as an insert in a print publication, or directly at your place of business. The sheer number of  these that you find in your mailbox or when you open the Sunday paper will attest to their popularity as a marketing tool. Their efficacy is arguable and you may choose to distribute these only in your brick-and-mortar store as opposed to paying for distribution via a newspaper or through the mail. Circulars can be used to promote specific products or as a generic Thank You, and can be tracked using QR or other tracking codes to collect data on user behavior and conversion rates.

Image: Ticket for free glass of Coca-Cola, believed to be the first coupon ever, 1888, Wikimedia

The post Small Business and Startups: Give Thanks (and Coupons) appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Small Business and Startups: How Do I Thank You?

December 15, 2014, 4:05 am
$
0
0

Mom taught us well. She raised us to be polite and she raised us to consider other’s feelings. For many small business owners saying thanks to your team is a head-scratcher. Performance-based bonuses can be a powerful incentive for individuals, and profit-sharing plans can reward great teamwork, but saying thank you can and should rise above those. Besides, not every business can afford meaningful bonuses for the team and not every business has profits to share in the first place.

People (read, your team) have a very basic need to be appreciated. Simply saying, “Thank you” for a day’s work, for a solid accomplishment, or for a record of loyalty can go a long way towards job satisfaction and can act as a motivator by reinforcing the behaviors, productivity, and creativity that we all value so much. In fact, studies have shown measurable gains in productivity when positive interactions outweigh the negative ones. The scary thing is that a recent poll showed a very high percentage of workers reporting that they had not received a single affirmation for the good work they had done over the past year. Yikes.

So, small business manager can take simple steps in the way of “Thank You’s” that carry meaning, that are sincere and thoughtful, and that act as a reflection of the culture of the company. Affirming (with consistent regularity) the hard work and contribution each person makes to the team is the low-hanging fruit. Showing your love for your employees is never a bad idea, so here are 6 simple (and free to inexpensive) ideas for special occasions, or even for no occasion at all!

1. Say it! Stop at an employees desk. Sit down next to him. Smile to let him know that this visit is not about a project or a meeting or a deadline. Look him straight in the eye and say “Thank you.” That’s it. Done. (PS – this can also be done  at the lunch table or on the phone or in the elevator. Duh.)

2. Write it. Sadly, the art of the hand-written note is a dying one. Very few people take the time to write a card or  note even on the most appropriate occasions. So what better way to surprise and delight an employee than with something so simple, so unexpected ad a thoughtful, hand-written note or card telling them how much you appreciate something they did, something they learned, or simply that you appreciate having them on your team.

3. Surprise them at surprising times. Paying close attention to the people around you and listening to what they say can lead to wonderful moments to say thanks and these don’t have to be for someone’s birthday, or anniversary, or at the holidays. At any random time during the year, something as simple as a $25 gift certificate to a restaurant you heard a worker mention can show her not only that you appreciate what she does, but that you respect her as a person. People like to know that they are heard, whether the context is a meeting or a water-cooler discussion about great places to eat. Plus, people love surprises and when they receive a gift (even a tiny little one) at a time they wouldn’t normally expect one, the impact is magnified and the value of that thank-you is greatly increased.

4. Shout it out! Recognizing a team member in front of the rest of the team can be a powerful motivator and there are plenty of opportunities to do it. At crowdSPRING we have a bulletin board crowded with printouts of tweets and emails from our customers complimenting this or that team member  and when a new one arrives, the shout heard around the office is “Put it up on the board!” There are lots of other great venues for recognizing folks: a team meeting is a great time to give a shout out and tell the story of an individual to let everyone know about their big accomplishment or their stellar effort. If you publish a newsletter, this is also a wonderful way to acknowledge someone’s contribution.

5. Help them learn. People value opportunities for personal growth virtually as highly as they do monetary benefit. Google recognized this with their “20% time,” which allowed employees to take one day a week to work on side projects (with great results: Gmail being one). Everyone who works for you has their own hobbies and special interests  and these should be not just celebrated and shared, but you should enable your team to pursue what interests them. Training and development programs can also be a great way to say thanks while building capacity and skills for your company; sending your folks to conferences, seminars, and professional development courses go a very long way to showing how much you appreciate someone.

6. Do stuff together. Lastly, time together doing fun or interesting things is a great way to say thanks while providing the chance for team building and personal bonding. Do outings together, eat lunch together, share movies and books with each other, and plan time away from work where you can just have fun with the folks from work. At cS we have had events as different as company outings to a day at Lallapalooza to after-work beers, to movie nights in the home theater and to a team kayaking trip (the photo at the top of this post was taken this past September on the Chicago River at dusk!).

The post Small Business and Startups: How Do I Thank You? appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
Search

5 Best Canadian Cities For Startups and Entrepreneurs

June 20, 2018, 8:06 am
$
0
0

What are some of the things that come to mind when you think of Canada?

Hockey?

People who say “eh”?

Celine Dion?

Our neighbors to the North carry a lot of stereotypes on their broad but polite shoulders. One that you probably want to add to that list is “start-up powerhouse.”

Yes, the country north of the 49th parallel may have 1/10th the population of the United States, but when it comes down to pure entrepreneurship it punches far above its weight class.

There are a number of reasons for this.

Canada boasts a well-educated population that draws its heritage from all corners of the globe.

It’s rich in natural resources and has a number of renowned universities and technology institutions.

And it boasts some world-class cities that routinely place on top ten lists of the best places to live in the world.

There is also excellent support for entrepreneurs, both home-grown and imported.

It’s true that there’s less access to VC funding compared to the leading U.S. cities, but the Canadian government remains at the ready to attract and assist new startups.

There is an ample selection of government aid that small businesses are encouraged to take advantage of – some of which include grants that require no repayment.

The roster of the country’s best-known business successes confirms this reputation for excellence.

Companies like Hootsuite, Shopify, Slack, 500px, and Kik call Canada home, and there are some premier innovation centers like Toronto’s MaRS Innovation and Vancouver’s 312 Main.

Over the past decade, crowdspring has helped many Canadian startups with everything from naming their business, to logo design, packaging design, product design and more.

Many major companies have taken notice of Canada’s virtues and set up offices there.

Google has a sizable presence in Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo area. Amazon and Microsoft have large engineering offices in Vancouver and Toronto.  And gaming companies like EA, Ubisoft, Bioware, and Capcom are either based out of Canada or have large operations in the country.

It’s no surprise that in 2017, Canada was rated the 7th best country in the world to start a business by Business Insider.

We’ve previously looked at the best cities in the US to build your startup, and we’ve even looked at some of the best cities globally. Let’s turn our attention to our neighbors to the north, and look at the best and brightest cities in Canada for startups and entrepreneurs.

Vancouver

This rainy city on the west coast is one of the biggest and best-known startup centers in Canada. World-famous startups like Hootsuite and Slack are based there.

The Global Startup Ecosystem Report put Vancouver as the 15th best city in the world to start a tech company and for good reason. The study calls out Vancouver’s:

[…]highest concentration of visual effects and animation studios, two of the top six video game franchises, and its ranking as one of the world’s top 20 Global Financial Centers.

The report details some of the high profile success stories in Vancouver:

In the early days Slack’s founder estimated the market for the software to be $100 million, which they exceeded in just three years—and have now become the fastest growing business software of all time. Broadband.tv is now the third largest video streaming site in the world after Facebook and Google, while dating app Plenty of Fish sold to Match. com for $575 million.

Vancouver leads PeoplePerHour’s Startup City Index.

The bustling Canadian seaport has been ranked the best place in the world to start a business, topping the Startup City Index with a high quality of life, good access to office space and relative ease of getting a company off the ground.

The city’s close proximity to major business centers like Seattle and Silicon Valley is another notable benefit, enabling a vibrant flow of talent between cities up and down the west coast.

Vancouver has aggressive provincial and federal tax breaks in place, a concentration of skilled labor and talent, and a year-round climate that is both temperate and pleasant. It’s no surprise that companies like Amazon and Microsoft have set up offices in the city, with many more to come.

It doesn’t hurt that Vancouver routinely makes the top five of “best places to live” lists (like the Economist).

Add to that the fact that it an equally beautiful place (being nestled in-between the mountains and the Pacific Ocean) and you have quite the compelling case for Vancouver as an entrepreneur’s dream.

 

Edmonton / Calgary

Alberta is home to two cities that may share a province, but bring different benefits to those interested in starting a new business.

Edmonton is a leader in Canada for a number of industries, from biotechnology and digital media to oil and gas. There are a handful of respected incubators operating in the city, including Startup Edmonton and TEC Edmonton.

Edmonton also has a number of high-quality post-secondary schools that continually add many highly-skilled employees to the job market.

The city may enjoy its status as the province’s capital, but its larger neighbor to the south is probably better known as a place where business gets done.

Calgary is Canada’s fourth-largest city by population and is well-known as a center for entrepreneurship and business related to the energy sector.

Incubators like Startup Calgary and Innovate Calgary give entrepreneurs the support they need, and a wide selection of coworking spaces bring them together.

 

By Christian Raul Hernandez

Toronto

As home to 230 different nationalities and with a population of 2.8 million, Toronto has been declared the most diverse city in the world. As we wrote,

Toronto is also one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with half the population of foreign origin. This makes for a wonderfully diverse, compelling population; it also provides critical ingredients for a startup business foundation. The undeniable correlation between immigrants’ willingness to relocate (and the inherent intrepidness behind that) and entrepreneurial activity is notable and evident in the broad cultural blend of Toronto.

Toronto reigns as Canada’s largest city, and it’s no coincidence that it also serves as Canada’s tech, commercial, industrial and financial hub.

As home to between 2,500 and 4,100 active tech startups, and boasting the world’s largest innovation hub (which covers a daunting 1.5 million square feet), Toronto earns its place as a phenomenal startup city for entrepreneurs of all kinds.

It’s an especially friendly place for minority entrepreneurs, notably women: 12.5% of partners at venture capital firms in Canada are women, which more than double the US rate of 6%.

For entrepreneurs seeking assistance in R&D, Toronto is a great bet.

The significantly lower cost of R&D, compared with other major startup cities like Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston, makes  Toronto an alluring choice. It’s nearly irresistible when you take into consideration that the Canadian government provides refunds on R&D investments. Refunds can be as high as 65% of the R&D cost.

Toronto has obvious and dedicated support and enthusiasm for startups and entrepreneurs, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs.

Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE), a government creation, supports over 130 not-for-profit organizations throughout Ontario. It aims to support businesses through their varying stages – starting with researching new ideas and assisting all the way through to a company ready to launch their product.

The ONE places a high value on developing an entrepreneurial culture. It makes a point of nurturing innovation and hopeful newcomers looking to get their start.

The ONE recognizes that whether or not any given startup succeeds is less important than their underlying goal: to truly foster a spirit of entrepreneurship that will promote a thriving community of intrepid minds.

As of 2017, the ONE has helped an impressive 5,600 Ontario entrepreneurs open new businesses.

It’s clear that a move to Toronto means you’ll be at the center of a community that truly values innovation. In fact, Toronto was named one of the world’s most innovative cities.

If you’re looking for an example of one of these successful Toronto based startups, you don’t have to look much farther than FreshBooks.

FreshBooks is an accounting platform for small businesses, has more than 10 million users. It has a 43,000-square-foot office in the city housing 245 employees. Mike McDerment, Founder & CEO of FreshBooks, is full of praise for Toronto:

I think it’s an attractive place to come for talented people, it’s a huge market for creative people and I think there are some companies emerging that give people hope that it can be done here…Tell every smart person you know who’s interested in technology to move to Toronto as well and then start your damn company.

In addition to FreshBooks, Toronto is also home to Fortune 500 corporations and hosts the Canadian headquarters of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

by Victor Vucicevich

Waterloo

Waterloo, a small city with a population of just 550,000, is located sixty miles west of Toronto.

In contrast to its small population, Waterloo is home to a massive 1,100 new ventures, making it a region with the highest startup density of any area globally aside from Silicon Valley.

It’s no wonder why Waterloo acts as such an incredibly fertile area for startup growth. A recent report from research firm Compass details many of the advantages of starting up in Waterloo (factors like growth, performance, funding, and exit values were all considered), ranking it the No. 25 best startup ecosystem in the world.

Waterloo hosts a significant portion of Canada’s tech talent. Similar to San Francisco and the Bay Area, Toronto and Waterloo together form a corridor hosting a surplus of startup innovation between them.

Because of this, the Toronto and Waterloo corridor is frequently referred to as “The Silicon Valley of the North.”

Waterloo is home to the University of Waterloo, which has been an outstanding resource for startup ecosystems looking to attract new talent.

The University of Waterloo has over 30,000 undergraduates and boasts an internationally admired engineering program. Students are welcome to participate in their co-op program (graduating with one or two years of work experience, which is of high value to many companies).

Many companies, some of them well known and established, count on the University to snatch up new employees. It’s telling that, after the University of California, Berkeley, graduates from the University of Waterloo are the second-most-frequently hired in Silicon Valley.

“If you ask around Silicon Valley, all the top companies will have had an intern from Waterloo,” says general partner at SV Angel Kevin Carter.

Startups in Waterloo further benefit from institutions like the Communitech coalition and the Accelerator Centre. Both of these provide in-house mentorship from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, educational courses, and funding access.

Communitech is one of nine North American tech hubs in the Google for Entrepreneurs network. They describe themselves as a thriving community that: “enables tech hubs by providing them with technical content, business tools, and infrastructure upgrades so that they can support increasing demand from developers and startups and help grow their local economies.”

The Accelerator Centre is an award-winning startup accelerator that has a mission statement of helping entrepreneurs with “building and scaling sustainable, globally competitive companies and giving startups the highest probability of long-term success.”

 

Montreal

Montreal has been rated as one of the top 20 startup ecosystems in the world by Startup Compass.

This isn’t surprising.

Montreal boasts a tightly knit community bolstered by unique startup events like Startupfest, a highly regarded, much anticipated annual event that brings in a couple thousand of the world’s groundbreaking innovators, entrepreneurs, and prominent speakers.

Montreal is further bolstered by supportive non-profits and incubators like Montreal NewTech and Notman House.

PwC Canada and CB Insights have released their MoneyTree report which takes a close look at Canadian VC activity from 2017. Canadian companies raised $4.4 billion CAD total – and impressively, Montreal raised more funds than any other city on the list.

This substantial amount of funding is in large part because Montreal has become a globally recognized AI hub over the past several years.

Montreal-based artificial intelligence (AI) company Element AI raised $102 million (USD) in Series A funding as of June, which goes down as the largest ever amount for an AI company.

Facebook’s announcement that McGill professor Dr. Joelle Pineau would be leading Facebook’s fourth Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (FAIR) amplified this activity in the AI arena and has lead to a domino effect of other related activity in the Montreal scene.

Another major advantage of starting out in Montreal is a surprisingly affordable real estate market.

When local startups don’t have to worry about the cost of living and are able to keep their costs lower, it’s an enticing prospect to many would-be entrepreneurs. Currently, the average house price is $238,000, which is significantly lower than in other cities in the North American region.

Montreal’s strong talent pool is helped by the numerous universities and technical institutes that populate the area.

There are outstanding business graduates flocking to make a living in the city after graduating from Concordia’s John Molson School of Business. Local technical schools further strengthen the startup ecosystem, providing an adept, motivated engineering workforce.

It’s clear that Canada knows a bit about creating a great culture for startups and entrepreneurs to succeed.

It might be time to pack your parka, grab a coffee from Tim Horton’s, and start planning your next brilliant startup business.

Are you ready to launch your startup or take your existing one to the next level? Our team of over 210,000 creatives is ready and waiting to handle your business’s package graphics, logo design, web design, and more – everything you need to build a great brand. And, our outstanding customer service team is available to guide you through the whole process. Get started now and request a free, no obligation design consultation with one of our design experts today.

The post 5 Best Canadian Cities For Startups and Entrepreneurs appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Twitter Link Roundup #338 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers!

June 22, 2018, 7:37 am
$
0
0

According to a recent Pew Research study, in a field of 72 countries, American 15-year-olds placed 39th in math scores.

You don’t have to be great at math to know those numbers are not good.

Math anxiety is a real issue – and a contagious one. When a parent exudes stress and frustration while helping Junior with their algebra homework, Junior internalizes that anxiety as a fight-or-flight response – and no one can do mental math in that state of mind.

To read more about this phenomenon, and what we can do to help mitigate and prevent the damage, read this piece on Medium.

Now, we hope you enjoy another great set of links and articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdspring Twitter account (and on Ross’s Twitter account). We regularly share our favorite posts on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, logo design, web design, startups, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Enjoy!

smallbusinessblog

startupsblog

socialmediablog

designblog

logodesignblog

otherblog

Are you ready to embrace your inner entrepreneur? Learn to lead and manage your business like a pro. Download our free ebook by crowdspring CEO Ross Kimbarovsky, Stand Out: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting, Growing and Managing a Successful Business.

The post Twitter Link Roundup #338 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers! appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
↧

Essential Facts and Statistics Every Entrepreneur Must Know

June 25, 2018, 8:16 am
$
0
0

Starting a business can be terrifying.

Many startup myths threaten to hold back even the best-intentioned entrepreneurs.

The statistics don’t do much for confidence: 20 percent of new companies fail in their first year, and only 50 percent survive through their fifth year.

In spite of those sobering numbers, today, there are close to 400 million entrepreneurs worldwide.

Many people looking to start a business hesitate because they’re don’t know what it will take to get started. They wonder, for example:

  • What percentage of entrepreneurs are successful?
  • What is the average age of an entrepreneur when they start a business?
  • What is the job outlook for an entrepreneur?
  • What is the average salary of an entrepreneur?
  • How often do new businesses fail?
  • What is the main reason that entrepreneurs fail?

Let’s look at the essential facts and statistics to help you understand what being an entrepreneur really looks like, how you can increase your chances of success, and what you can expect once you start living that startup life.

We’ve curated important statistics and separated them into five categories:

  • General facts and statistics
  • What are the best locations to start a business?
  • Where does the funding come from?
  • The profile of the average entrepreneur
  • Living the startup life

1. General Facts and Statistics

How many new businesses fail?

A little more than 50 percent of startups fail in the first four years. 19 percent of startups fail because of too much competition, and another 18 percent fail because of pricing or cost issues.

You’ll want to do everything you can to foster the success of your new business.

Start by making sure you build a great business brand, including a strong business name and a memorable logo design.

As we explained in Powerful Branding Lessons From The World’s Best Brands:

A brand is the sum total of the experience your customers and customer prospects have with your company.

A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and at the same time, establishes trust and credibility with your prospects and customers.

Your company’s brand is, in many ways, its personality.

Your brand lives in everyday interactions your company has with its prospects and customers, including the images you share, the messages you post on your website, the content of your marketing materials, your presentations and booths at conferences, and your posts on social networks.

While the failure rates for new startups are high, business failure rates are actually in a pattern of long-term decline. According to Entrepreneur, the rate that entrepreneurs in the US have failed has fallen by 30 percent since 1977.

If you’re looking for some thriving industries, consider:

  • Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR),
  • Medical Marijuana,
  • Financial Technology, and
  • Biotechnology.

 

2. Ideal locations to start a business

Where can you find cities with great environments to foster startup success?

The United States provides a phenomenal environment for promoting startup ecosystems, ranking 1st out of 138 countries using the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index.

In fact, 6.02 percent of the US adult population owns their own business as their primary source of income.

Not sure where in the US to start your business?

We’re partial to Chicago.

Chicago is home to many successful startups, including crowdspring,

Chicago boasts a thriving startup scene, an incredible 10 times a return on investment, and pretty outstanding hot dogs.

KPMG’s survey backs us up, with more than 800 tech leaders ranking it in the top ten tech innovation hubs worldwide.

Beyond Chicago, there are many other great cities in the US for startups and entrepreneurs.

For a nearby global perspective, Canada has rated the 7th best country in the world to start a business by Business Insider. Take a look at five of Canada’s best startup cities.

If you’re feeling especially restless and adventuresome, embrace your inner globetrotter. Here are 11 cities worldwide where startups are flourishing.

 

What if you can’t afford the rent?

Not sure you can afford an office in one of these fantastic, but expensive, cities?

Consider a coworking space.

Co-working spaces tend to provide businesses with savings up to 30 percent, which can be huge savings for new companies with a lot of expenses to contend with. Such spaces offer a great solution for affordable office space and for networking.

At the end of 2017, nearly 1.2 million people all over the globe had spent time working from a co-working space. Co-working spaces have grown an impressive 89 percent in the last 12 months, and 300 percent since 2010.

Here’s a good look at coworking spaces in Chicago.

3. Where does the funding come from?

80 percent of entrepreneurs funded their business out of pocket.

The remaining 20 percent?

Ah, the kindness of strangers… or Mom, Dad, and Aunt Susan. These entrepreneurs benefited from the generosity of family, a bank, or interested investors.

 

The profile of the average entrepreneur

What does the average entrepreneur look like?

It’s typical to picture the “average” entrepreneur as a twenty-something, but this is a myth.

According to a First Round survey, the number of startup founders in their twenties falls somewhere around 20 percent. A paltry 3 percent are between the ages of 21 and 25.

Founders of the companies with the highest growth clocked in with an average age of 45.

Also contrary to the popular myth, the average entrepreneur isn’t an unwashed college dropout living in his parents’ basement.

While it is true that 51.6 percent of businesses started out running from someone’s home, many of those entrepreneurs were well educated.

39 percent of business owners have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In a survey run by the Kauffman Foundation, 95 percent of the business founders surveyed had at least a bachelor’s degree, and 47 percent had even more advanced degrees.

Stay in school if you want to be successful.

When you think of an entrepreneur, you probably picture a man, right?

While startups are still dominated by male entrepreneurs, women are starting to grow their presence.

In fact, it’s a great time to be a female entrepreneur.

While only 40 percent of new entrepreneurs in the United States are women, the rates of female entrepreneurship are increasing. At an average of 10 percent across 51 different economies, the growth rate for women as entrepreneurs hit ten percent, higher than the comparative five percent growth rate for men.

For more about this, read about 5 key traits that make women successful entrepreneurs.

 

Does having experience matter?

Company founders were 125 percent more successful if they had worked previously in a similar industry as their new companies.

Tellingly, when 51 percent of entrepreneurs were asked, “What’s the best way to learn more about entrepreneurship?” they answered with a decisive “Start a company.”

Entrepreneurs who began their careers working for someone else before venturing out on their own benefited significantly from their industry experience. Armed with experience as the best teacher, these entrepreneurs had about a 30 percent chance of success in their business venture.

Compare that to the first-time business owners with a comparatively meager 18 percent chance of success, and you might want to sit things out until you get to know how the industry sausage is made.

Don’t beat yourself up if you do try and fail, though. Entrepreneurs with previous failures increase their chance of success the next time 20 percent.

What should you study to be an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneurship education might mean an actual entrepreneurship degree.

You might find more versatility – and more interest – in a broader category of business education. The well-rounded approach might better prepare you for the challenges you’re bound to face in an entrepreneurial career.

While no straightforward path in education will lead you to startup success, a business-related degree can’t hurt. Combine any education with something directly related to your field.

For instance, if you want to open a restaurant, having some kind of hospitality training is essential.

If you’re looking to create an app for the financial tech world, having education in finance and technology is pretty important.

For an idea of where to start, take a look into any of the following:

  • Business management
  • Business analytics
  • Economics
  • Accounting
  • Marketing
  • IT/Software Engineering/UX or UI Design
  • International business
  • Hospitality management

Looking to improve your education level to strengthen your odds of success, but not sure you have the time to travel all the way to your nearest university?

There are many online programs that can help you improve your business skills.

 

4. Living the startup life

Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy, and it takes a certain personality type to truly be successful.

Problem-solving, self-discipline, and flexibility are all critical components of successful entrepreneurs, and will come in handy when tackling the challenges – and rewards – of the startup life.

What is the average annual salary of an entrepreneur?

According to a study from American Express OPEN, the average entrepreneur pays himself or herself an annual salary of $68,000. According to the same study, 15 percent of entrepreneurs feel that they need to work a second job to help make ends meet.

The core takeaway is there may not be a big payoff at the beginning, but things can still come up roses with more effort and time.

But the hours are good, right?

A survey of hundreds of entrepreneurs revealed:

  • 19 percent work 60+ hours per week,
  • 30 percent work 50-59 hours per week,
  • 33 percent work 40-49 hours per week,
  • 14 percent work 30-39 hours per week, and
  • 5 percent work less than 30 hours per week.

The upside of this is that 73 percent of the businesspeople surveyed said their hours were more flexible now than when they worked for someone else.

The long hours don’t necessarily mean that you’ll be working without breaks, based on the survey results. The same survey found that when it came down to vacations:

  • 44 percent take 16 vacation days or more each year,
  • 26 percent take 11 to 15 vacation days,
  • 19 percent take 6 to 10 vacation days,
  • 11 percent take 1 to 5 vacation days, and
  • 2 percent never take any vacation days.

That last 2 percent may be burning the midnight oil just a little too intensely, but the stereotype of the endlessly hustling entrepreneur is a hard one to shake for some.

Based on these numbers, the idea that a startup will take as many hours as you can give it seems to hold true.

This attitude is changing, however, as people start to push back on the idea that you need to continually be on the move to succeed. Many entrepreneurs have stepped back and reevaluated their attitudes towards work. Johnathan Goodman wrote about this for Entrepreneur.com:

As entrepreneurs with so many hats to wear and fires to put out, it’s all too easy to get pulled in multiple directions and lose sight of what’s truly important and what’s not. It took me a long time to realize that “hustling” every day didn’t get me to where I wanted to be any faster. So, I stopped the hustle, prioritized the most important areas of work and spent my spare time on things that make me happy. The result? More success in business and a higher quality of life.

This approach may not work for everyone trying to start a business, but it’s worth considering. We’ve examined entrepreneur health and wellness before, and work-life balance is a vital part of that.

Even so, you should prepare yourself for long hours. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a short-term payoff until your business gets off the ground.

If you’re looking to improve your mindset and your capacity to put your head down and get it done, check out How Self-Discipline Can Unlock Your Business Success to strengthen your self-discipline skills.

 

Wrapping up

As you’ve seen, the road an entrepreneur travels on is rarely paved with gold, but with effort, discipline, a well thought out business plan, and a little bit of luck, you may find your way.

No matter what direction you may go, knowing the numbers and being prepared is a critical part of success.

But there’s one thing more important than being prepared. As Simon Sinek said, “dream big. Start small. But most of all, start.”

Are you ready to launch your startup or take your existing one to the next level? Our team of over 210,000 creatives is ready and waiting to handle your business’s logo design, web design, and more – everything you need to build a great brand. And, our outstanding customer service team is available to guide you through the whole process. Get started now and request a free, no obligation design consultation with one of our design experts today. Check out these case studies to read about how crowdspring’s talented creatives have helped other startups get noticed.

The post Essential Facts and Statistics Every Entrepreneur Must Know appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Post-Millennial Marketing: How to Market Effectively To Generation Z

June 27, 2018, 8:38 am
$
0
0

Millennials have starred in marketing headlines for the past several years.

But, did you know that Generation Z will make up about 20% of the workforce and 40% of consumers by 2020?

While few agree on exactly where the cut-off between Millennials and Generation Z is, (is it 1995? 97? 98?) everyone can agree that a new generational cohort has arrived on the scene.

Why should you care and how does Generation Z impact your business?

You need to have marketing strategies in place for millennials and their generational successors. Heike Young, Salesforce’s Industry Strategy & Insights Manager, explains:

They may all look young. But Millennials and members of the subsequent Generation Z are markedly different in how they shop, interact with brands, and view money.

If you’re a marketer, you’ll need to tailor your messages to reach a new audience.

If you’re a business owner or manager, you’ll need to figure out what these new employees will be looking for and how to get the most out of your working relationship with them.

Here are 5 key differences between Generation Z and Millennials, and our perspective on how these differences will impact your business.

  1. Generation Z is more entrepreneurial.
  2. Generation Z is more realistic.
  3. Generation Z has a shorter attention span.
  4. Generation Z  grew up with personal brands.
  5. Generation Z has higher expectations.

Let’s examine each of these differences in detail.

1. Generation Z is More Entrepreneurial

While entrepreneurship – a staple element of the American Dream – has ironically been in decline in the US for several decades, Generation Z may be on the verge of turning that trend around.

According to serial entrepreneur and best-selling author Deep Patel:

Generation Z is 55% more likely to want to start a business than millennials. In fact, a full 72% of Gen Z high school students say that they want to start a business.

If Gen Z follows through on these aspirations, they very well may reinvigorate the American entrepreneurial landscape for years to come.

But, what is motivating this trend?

Altitude’s Jeremy Finch writes for FastCompany:

Recent reports have labeled Gen Z the “entrepreneurial generation” and highlighted their desire to forsake the corporate grind for their own startups. We found that while Gen Z like the idea of working for themselves, the majority are risk-averse, practical, and pragmatic. Their supposed entrepreneurialism is actually more of a survival mechanism than an idealist reach for status or riches.

Each generation is shaped by the events that occurred as they grew and evolved.

Generation Z is coming of age, having witnessed the struggles of the 2008 economic crisis. They saw the resulting changes in their world – even if they didn’t understand them at the time.

These events inevitably left their mark and likely explain Gen Z’s desire to control their own economic future.

But, whatever the reason, Generation Z is poised to take their financial future in hand.

And, they’ll probably re-shape the American economy as they do.

Your Take-Away

Gen Z is equally as likely to become your competition as they are to become your employee. Be prepared to offer autonomy, flexibility, and fair financial compensation as part of your terms of employment if you want to have any hope of enticing these workers to your business.

 

2. Generation Z is More Realistic

Millennials, fairly or not, are forever branded as the entitled generation of the participation trophy.

But, Millennials didn’t choose this path for themselves. It was a by-product of their upbringing. Millennials grew up in a time of financial prosperity. As did their parents – the Baby Boomers.

The Boomers were the product of the golden age of American capitalism. In such a positive economy, it was much easier for Baby Boomers to achieve financial security.

Millennials dutifully absorbed the lessons of their parents – and naturally expected that when they followed the same prescribed steps, it would lead to the results they were promised.

Is that entitlement? Or merely a nasty bait and switch?

Whatever the case, as a result, Millennials appear to be more optimistic than Generation Z.

Generation Z is coming to the workforce with a completely different perspective than their predecessors. Altitude’s research reveals that:

On a professional level, Gen Z are hyperaware of the negative stereotypes that have plagued millennials. As a result, they want to be known for their ability to work hard and persevere offline.

Ryan Jenkins, an expert on the differences between Millennials and Generation Z, reveals:

Seventy-seven percent of Generation Z expect to work harder than previous generations.

Millennials became optimistic thanks to their encouraging Baby Boomer parents and growing up in a time of prosperity and opportunity. Generation Z will be realistic thanks to their skeptical and straight-shooting Generation X parents and growing up in a recession. According to Pew Charitable Trusts, during the Great Recession, the median net worth of Generation Z’s parents fell by nearly 45 percent.

Generation Z is walking in with their eyes wide open.

This is not the golden age of capitalism. And they know it.

A booming economy isn’t waiting to support them with open arms and easy paydays.

And they’re ready to work.

Your Take-Away

Give these young employees space and autonomy to shine. They are driven to work hard, so let them do that in their most productive way.

Marketers, Gen Z is pragmatic and careful with their money. Make the value you offer very clear if you expect to make a sale.

 

3. Generation Z Has a Shorter Attention Span

While Millennials grew up as modern technology took hold, Generation Z has been saturated in it from day one. Deep Patel explains:

Millennials are hard to keep engaged, but Gen Z’s attention is even more split. On average, millennials use three screens (and bounce between them intermittently). Gen Zers use five: smartphone, TV, laptop, desktop and tablet.

It’s true that Generation Z tends to bounce from device to device, screen to screen, but it may be too reductive to call them attention-deficient.

With endless options for entertainment, information, and communication, Gen Z has no tolerance for wasted time. Do they have a short attention span? Or a fast filter?

Jeremy Finch opts for the latter:

Gen Z have a carefully tuned radar for being sold to and a limited amount of time and energy to spend assessing whether something’s worth their time. Getting past these filters, and winning Gen Z’s attention, will mean providing them with engaging and immediately beneficial experiences. One-way messaging alone will likely get drowned out in the noise.

Knowing this, it will be essential to capture attention quickly and to be present on multiple platforms to ensure that you make it through these filters. Patel lays it out:

If you want them to click on your blog post, watch your video or like your Instagram photo, you need to help them understand what the content is about, why they should care and how it will help or entertain them.

And you need to do it in eight seconds or less. This is an art, and it’s not easy. It’s why today’s best content creators are in such demand.

Generation Z’s discerning eye is waiting to see what you have to offer.

Your Take-Away

To help pierce the noise, targeted messaging will become that much more important as Generation Z begins to influence the market. Getting the right message on the right platform at the right time will be key.

And keeping those messages consistent will also be important. Consistency starts with strong branding, including the company name and logo design, and continues with delivering on your brand’s promises.

Employers will need to present interesting challenges as well as opportunities to learn and evolve in their roles to keep Gen Z engaged in the workplace.

 

4. Generation Z Grew Up With Personal Brands

Millennials remember Myspace. But, social media has been a part of Generation Z’s lives for as long as they can remember.

As a result, Gen Z approach social media differently.

Millennials tend to splash every detail of their lives on their social media accounts.  However, Generation Z takes more care in curating the content they share and the image they present on social media.

Millennials and Generation Z expert, Jeff Fromm describes this phenomenon:

Through social media, they meticulously curate their personal brand to reflect how they want to be perceived. Unlike the millennial generation, Pivotals [Generation Z] only share specific stories, to specific people, on specific channels.

Generation Z understands the importance of “code-switching” (adapting to the language of the cultural context in which they find themselves).

Their personal brands are reserved for recreational social media platforms. And their professional persona will be managed separately.

This privacy is very important for Gen Z. Ryan Jenkins shares that:

Seventy percent of Generation Z would rather share personal information with their pet than with their boss.

Your Take-Away

Understanding and respecting this desire for privacy will be important when it comes to connecting with and managing Gen Z.

And, if marketers hope to reach this audience, they need to be just as savvy in curating targeted appropriate content for specific channels.

 

5. Generation Z has Higher Expectations

You should know by now that Millennials value authenticity in the brands with which they do business.

This is true for Generation Z as well.

But, Gen Z take it one step further. Like their older cohort, Gen Z is vigilant against ads and being “sold.” But, they also expect to be a part of something bigger. Deep Patel points out:

According to a recent report, 60% of Gen Zers want their jobs to impact the world, and 76% are concerned about humanity’s impact on the planet.

This means that if you’re a big brand with a social responsibility element, it’s really about walking the walk. Whether you’re selling to or hiring Gen Zers, you should realize they are going to know very quickly whether they’re part of something special or are caught in another big-talk campaign.

This new generation is bringing high expectations and a sense of social responsibility with them. And, is it any wonder?

Generation Z  was watching and listening as the 2016 election divided our country as never before.

Serious questions about the direction for our country were raised. Will we be inclusive or divisive? Will we take care of our own through social support and healthcare? Will we take steps to protect the planet on which we all live?

Generation Z has opinions and they want to make an impact. Patel explains:

Gen Z is open minded, and believe there’s plenty of room for everyone to thrive together.

This is important for big brands to note. Now more than ever, consumers are eagerly looking to the big brands and companies of the world to facilitate these major changes…

Your messaging needs to be intelligent, thoughtful and inclusive. It’s not about proving that you’re right and someone else is wrong. It’s about including everyone together.

Gen Z is already tired of the status quo. They want their role to make a difference for the better. And they’re not waiting – they already have a strong influence on purchases:

Your Take-Away

If you’re looking to snag these young visionaries as employees, be prepared to show them how your business is making the world a better, more inclusive place.

And, if you want to sell to them, be ready to create an authentic brand with values they can get behind. For example, if you sell physical products, consider sustainable strategies when creating products and packaging design for those products.

 

The Future is Here

Millennials have already conquered the workforce. And, shortly, Generation Z is poised to make an equally significant impact.

Your business needs to adapt. Or it will become obsolete.

Gen Z is a driven, pragmatic and ambitious crowd.

You can create a welcoming environment for them, or become their competition.

They’re impatient with the choices that have been made for them; and, ready to start shaping the world in their own image.

Gen Zers are your next employees, co-workers, and consumers. If you get to know them for who they really are and what they really want, your business will thrive with them.

If you’re ready to create a more authentic brand, now’s your time to act. Crowdspring’s community of over 210,000 graphic, web, and product designers can help you create a Millennial and Generation Z-friendly brand – without breaking the bank. You can get started on a project here, or request a free design consultation with one of our design experts here.

 

The post Post-Millennial Marketing: How to Market Effectively To Generation Z appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧

Twitter Link Roundup #339 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers!

June 29, 2018, 6:33 am
$
0
0

Ahh, summer. Breezes drifting in and out of windows, the clamor from kids relishing their newfound freedom, and days stretching endlessly ahead, inviting possibility with every sunshine filled minute.

Maybe that possibility includes a picnic?

No picnic would be complete without the perfect drink accompaniment – and we have you covered. From grown-up drinks to non-boozy selections, The Guardian pours out their recommendations for what to bring to your next picnic.

Now, we hope you enjoy another great set of links and articles that we shared with you over the past week on our crowdspring Twitter account (and on Ross’s Twitter account). We regularly share our favorite posts on entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, logo design, web design, startups, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Enjoy!

smallbusinessblog

startupsblog

socialmediablog

designblog

otherblog

Are you ready to embrace your inner entrepreneur? Learn to lead and manage your business like a pro. Download our free ebook by crowdspring CEO Ross Kimbarovsky, Stand Out: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting, Growing and Managing a Successful Business.

The post Twitter Link Roundup #339 – Terrific Reads for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, Marketers, and Designers! appeared first on crowdspring Blog.

↧
Viewing all 521 articles
Browse latest View live
Search