Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Business – Twitter Style |  |
- Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Business – Twitter Style
- You Can Use These 5 Steps to Negotiate a Personal Guarantee
- You Should Consider These Things When Choosing Who To Follow On Twitter
- Take a Peek Inside the Mind of Super Affiliate Mike Allen #AMDays
- How to Create Charts And Visual Data Using iCharts
- You Can Now Enjoy Real-Time Commenting and Collaboration on Podio
| Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Business – Twitter Style Posted: 14 Feb 2013 01:00 PM PST
No longer is it just the “big” holidays. Groundhog Day, Columbus Day, Flag Day — all are being used as marketing hooks. Holiday marketing is not just limited to businesses that sell to consumers, either. Even companies that sell to other businesses now routinely offer Thanksgiving specials, Columbus Day sales, and Independence Day promotions. On February 7, 2013, we partnered with FedEx Office on a Twitter chat to crowdsource tips on ”How SMBs Can Take Advantage of Consumer Holidays.” Members of the small business community jumped in to share advice and tips for other business owners in response to questions posed by FedEx Office (@FedExOffice), the host. Below is a recap of highlighted tips: Q1. How common is it for businesses to use a holiday such as a Valentine's Day as a marketing theme?
Q2. What is the most unusual example of a holiday marketing technique you’ve ever seen?
Q3. Let's focus on restaurants for a moment. What techniques can they use?
Q4. What about ecommerce and retail? What should they be doing for holidays?
Q5. What about holiday flyers?
Q6. Can you take holiday marketing too far?
Q7. Can businesses work together to give a bigger bang?
Q8. How can you use online techniques to support offline marketing?
Q9. What other things can you do to prepare for the holidays?
Thanks again to all the participants who joined us to discuss holiday marketing tips for small businesses. If you saw a holiday marketing tip that resonated with you, why not follow/connect with that participant on Twitter? And be sure to check out @FedExOffice on Twitter, and the Business Edge on the FedEx Office website. See the full chat transcript. Please remember this recap is not a complete transcript. We’ve removed hashtags and other repetitive information for better readability. Disclosure: FedEx Office compensated me to participate as a small business expert during the FedEx Office Tweet Chat program and write this post. FedEx Office also provided the gift cards given away in this chat. The ideas in this blog post are mine and not ideas or advice from FedEx Office. The post Holiday Marketing Tips for Your Business – Twitter Style appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| You Can Use These 5 Steps to Negotiate a Personal Guarantee Posted: 14 Feb 2013 11:00 AM PST
While this is often the price of doing business, what does a personal guarantee mean to business owners, partners and even family members? What, if anything, can be done about them? While they are nothing new, PGs have become commonplace as tight credit conditions have forced banks to become increasingly conservative in their lending practices. A PG is a note signed by a business owner, partner, investor or family member – also known as a loan guarantor –– that puts up personal assets in addition to business assets as loan collateral. If the loan defaults, the bank can then go after things like homes, bank accounts and investments – and they don't even have to wait until the business assets have been liquidated to address the outstanding debt. As a PG being called can have grave consequences, small business owners owe it to themselves to develop a PG negotiating strategy before sitting down in front of a loan officer. The following five steps are a practical guide for walking through the negotiating process in order to get the best deal possible while lessening the risk of losing hard-won personal assets. How To Negotiate a Personal Guarantee1. You Need to Know What You're Signing There can be a wide variance in the terms of a PG. For instance, they may permit the bank to go after personal assets even if there isn't an outright loan default. Triggers can include a technical default, additional borrowings, sale of assets, death or incapacitation. Other times, the PG can allow the pursuit of additional collateral on demand if the lender believes the loan is under-secured. While many business owners mistakenly believe incorporation acts as legal protection that prevents a lender from pursuing personal assets, this is not the case when a PG is in force. 2. Know Who You Are Signing With In partnership scenarios, each person usually signs a "joint and several" PG agreement. You might think that this spreads the risk out evenly among the partners, but that is not the case. In fact, the lender is free to pursue whichever partners it wants and those with the most liquid assets are usually the most vulnerable. As a result, a partner can find himself in the difficult position of pursuing relief from other partners – who are often friends or family members – on his own. 3. Determine an Acceptable Level of Risk As a business owner or partner, you need to determine your own acceptable risk threshold, both on a business and personal level, before approaching the bank. This means calculating the assets you would need to satisfy the PG. You also need to bear in mind the fact that if the business is challenged – more than likely the case if the loan is being called – its assets will be worth much less than book value. Based on this assessment, you can calculate how much of your personal assets to risk on the loan and still sleep at night. 4. Negotiate the PG Terms While nearly every term in the PG can be negotiated, you need to figure out which ones are most critical to you as well as which ones the lender will not likely want to change. Armed with this knowledge, you can map out your strategy for negotiating both the PG and the loan documents. Here are a couple negotiating tactics to consider: Limit the guarantee: Banks will always want an unconditional or unlimited guarantee, but you can ask that it be limited either in terms of actual dollars or based on a percentage of the outstanding loan. In a partnership situation, you can ask the lender to limit the amount of exposure based on the size of each partner's owner ownership stake. Suggest terms of relief: Ask to be relieved of the PG after a certain percent of the loan has been repaid. You could also suggest that it be reduced as a key financial metric improves, such as your debt-to-equity ratio. Another option could be to ask that the amount or percentage of the PG be decreased after five years of issue-free loan payments. 5. Keep the Door Open to Future PG Negotiations Even after the PG is signed, you can always approach the bank to reopen negotiations of loan and guarantee terms based on changes in your situation such as improved financial performance or increased collateral. Having personal guarantee insurance can also allow you to seek loan/PG concessions. Conclusion While it may not be possible to completely avoid a PG, given credit conditions in the current economic climate, business owners and their partners do have options. Take advantage of good counsel from advisers like your attorney or accountant and develop a carefully planned approach for negotiating the terms of your PG and loan. Negotiate Photo via Shutterstock The post You Can Use These 5 Steps to Negotiate a Personal Guarantee appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| You Should Consider These Things When Choosing Who To Follow On Twitter Posted: 14 Feb 2013 09:00 AM PST
Why does this matter? We’ll get to that in a bit. But first, those new to Twitter sometimes automatically assume that someone with large follower numbers, meaning the number of people that follow a Twitter user, could be someone they need to follow. In some cases that is true – and in many cases it is not. Who to Follow on Twitter?First Ask Yourself, “What Are You Using Twitter For?” If you are using Twitter to find good information for your business and industry, than you may want to only select a few people to follow. If your goal is to get a lot of Twitter followers for whatever reason, than you could follow a lot of people and see who follows you back. Figure out why you want to use Twitter and what your goal is. If you are looking for entertainment, than using Twitter can be fairly simple. But if you are looking to follow people that can offer you the type of information and ideas you are looking for – then you need to choose people to follow carefully. Check Follower vs. Following Numbers There are a lot of folks out there with tens of thousands of followers, but they also follow tens of thousands of people. It is fairly easy to get a lot of followers when you follow a lot of people. Therefore, having a lot of followers doesn't automatically mean that the person has good information to share or can offer you any value. If you check out someone like @dannysullivan, a man deeply respected in the SEO industry, you will see that as of right now he has 295,049 followers and he follows 3,186. It is quite obvious that Danny didn't follow a lot of people to get this large number of followers. He has a large following because he offers great information, he is respected and he is who most of us consider to be one of the "top dogs" in our industry. When Danny tweets, talks or writes – we all retweet, listen and clip to Evernote. If you see that someone has 5,000 followers, but follows 200 then you can assume that a good number of people believe that person has something valuable to offer on Twitter. You can follow them and see if they do. If they don't you can just unfollow them (give them a week before you decide). There are many people out there with less than 5-10K followers with great information to provide. Normal people don't have "celeb follower" numbers. A Tip on Finding Great People to Follow When I first started using Twitter, I had about 40 known industry writers that I immediately followed. That obviously wasn't a lot, but I didn't want a lot of junk I had to sift through. I wanted great information that would give me what I was looking for. So I watched the Twitter stream and observed, for months, who the people I followed spoke with – and also who they followed. This is how I found some of the best people out there to provide me with the information I really need and want. In April of this year, I will have been on Twitter for 5 years. I have met a ton of people in those 5 years and have made a lot of industry friends at conferences and online. However, I don't follow them all on Twitter because I use Twitter for a specific purpose, to get information. Above I mentioned that I only follow 285 people and this is why. I choose carefully and I believe that the people I follow offer me fantastic information daily. I do add people from time to time, but if they are not educating me – I don't have an interest in their Twitter stream. I add friendly folks that I have personally met to Facebook and I engage there. But Twitter is a business and education tool for me. In Conclusion Don't be fooled by some people claiming they are hot shots on Twitter because they have a lot of followers. It is easy to get – and even buy – followers. Choose people that provide you with what you need and find people that others respect. You can see who gets respect in the follower / following ratio. I also want to say that there are some people/businesses out there that have an almost equal number of followers / following that offer fantastic information. They sometimes put everyone they follow into defined lists that educated them or meet their needs. I am not saying to rule out people with an equal ration. I am just saying – don't be fooled by those with large follower numbers. Make sure whoever you follow meets your goals and wants on Twitter. Twitter Photo via Shutterstock The post You Should Consider These Things When Choosing Who To Follow On Twitter appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Take a Peek Inside the Mind of Super Affiliate Mike Allen #AMDays Posted: 14 Feb 2013 07:00 AM PST Welcome to an exclusive interview with Mike Allen, a well-known affiliate marketer, recipient of the “Affiliate of the Year” 2009 Pinnacle Award and Founder of Shopping Bargains. At the Affiliate Management Days SF 2013 conference (April 16-17, 2013), Mike will be participating on the “Inside the Mind of the Super Affiliate” panel and here, I’ve decided to pick his brain before the conference. * * * * *
Mike Allen: One size does not fit all. In many cases, affiliate managers would benefit by being more creative and flexible in how they evaluate and interact with affiliates. For instance, the 80/20 or 90/10 (or perhaps even 98/2) rule suggests that the vast majority of affiliate channel sales will be attributed to a small minority of the total affiliate pool. On the surface it looks like only a few affiliates are success stories while most are either absent or weak performers. However, a clever affiliate manager will drill down into the numbers for all affiliates and find some jewels. It could be, for example, that a majority of new customers are coming from small affiliates while the top 3 performing affiliates, due to great search engine rankings, are mostly intercepting previous customers. Other variables to consider when evaluating the individual impact of affiliates are average order size, click/sale conversion rate, and the commission rate paid to each affiliate. Once these values are known and evaluated in light of the program’s internal numbers, an affiliate manager is better able to reach out with incentives and customized offers to maximize the effectiveness and growth potential for each affiliate within their program. Question: What do you see as the main areas of opportunity for online (and affiliate) marketers in 2013 – 2014? Mike Allen: This is a difficult question to answer without first noting a major challenge certain affiliate channels (especially coupon and deal affiliates) are facing today. In many ways, I feel the Google Panda update of 2 years ago made things much more difficult for most small and medium-sized affiliate marketers. As I understand things, this update was different from a routine algorithm change because it is a filter that excludes specific websites that the algorithm would have otherwise allowed within the results. Put in economic terms, the “middle class” of affiliate marketing was severely impacted as many medium affiliates saw their search engine rankings evaporate. The resulting shakeout left only a relatively few, larger affiliates, within the field who were then rewarded with even greater search rankings and, therefore, traffic. Because Google only has room for 10 “free” spots on their first page. The rich get richer as premium placements translate into enhanced exposure and sales. Regarding any keyword, if an affiliate doesn’t rank on the first page – then for all practical purposes they don’t exist. What does this mean for affiliate marketers? I believe it means everyone else not found on this coveted real estate must work differently than they did a few years ago. As one who lives in a small town, this post-Panda environment reminds me of the typical small town grocery store’s response to Walmart’s arrival within their market. How the small grocer responds determines whether or not they survive. They can either fold or nimbly innovate by offering quality and services that are outside the scope of what Walmart can offer. In light of these changing circumstances, what’s an affiliate to do? I think there are even more options now as search engines are not the only gatekeepers in 2013. Social media and mobile channels provide amazing potential for niche and smaller affiliate marketers and here is why: Most smaller affiliates have the ability to touch and interact with their customers on multiple levels. These affiliates are often the face of their company and trusted as an expert. As such, they provide credible information in the form of opinions, comparisons, commentary, photos, product reviews, how-to articles and more via videos, blogs and curated data. They fill in the blanks and answer the questions that customers often have. They serve the more difficult and picky customers. They provide information that is often missing from “big box” retailers and even the manufacturer. In short, they provide solutions – which is always welcomed by buyers and, I feel, remains affiliate marketing’s strongest opportunity. Question: If you could go back 3 years, what would you do differently in your approach to online marketing? Mike Allen: It’s too bad that experience is something we get after we need it. If I had the ability to go back, I would make sure we diversified our traffic streams instead of relying primarily on organic keywords in Google. What Google (or Bing) gives they can take away. If we build a good email list or forum or a loyal Facebook or Pinterest following, then we have largely Google-proofed our endeavors. Therefore, if I could go back, I would make sure we were well invested in social media and other eyeball-rich environments. I would also blog more. It’s a very effective and interactive way to share our expertise and provide solutions to customer needs. Question: Running an affiliate website that targets frugal consumers, what have been some of the more interesting observations of online buying behavior? Mike Allen: In December 2012, during a local television interview I said that based on the unusual volume of 40% off coupon codes that remained beyond the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period, I suspected that many retailers were not hitting the internal numbers they needed. I also noticed that average order sizes for many retailers were not as strong as seen in a typical Q4. This made me fear that our economy was not nearly as strong as the government wanted us to believe. Sadly, about a week ago the government’s own numbers showed my suspicions were accurate as the economy actually shrank. Over the years, I’ve found it surprising how closely trends I’m seeing in affiliate marketing correlate with macro trends in the economy. It makes me wonder if real time affiliate marketing data could be used to accurately predict macro economic activity months before government reports are published. Question: We often hear that coupon affiliates are seldomly adding value. What do you say in response to such statements? And if an affiliate website that’s distributing coupons and discounts can indeed add value, can you give us 3 ways how an affiliate manager can enhance this arrangement? Mike Allen: Just like we can eat well or badly, a retailer can coupon well or poorly. Certain foods, like eggs and butter, often get a bad rap while the real problem is likely an out-of-balance lifestyle. The same can be true for coupons. Coupons can encourage higher order sizes or shrink them. Coupons can erode profits or expand them. So what’s a retailer to do? There are many options but here are three things that can make a significant difference: Instead of banning coupon affiliates, I suggest retailers embrace them when possible: As long as coupons exist, coupon sites are not going away. If a retailer does not affiliate with a coupon site, that doesn’t mean their coupons won’t end up being posted there. Instead, it means that coupon site is not governed by any affiliate agreement so they can post anything – including unauthorized coupons and even bogus ones. So, my suggestion is to embrace as many reputable coupon sites as possible to control or manage the space. A merchant’s affiliate agreement should clearly lay out the terms for coupon posting and, if they want to work with you and earn commission, the coupon site will have to follow your rules. It’s win-win that way. Carefully plan your coupon strategy: Plan it just as customers carefully plan their shopping cart size to maximize coupon discounts and free shipping thresholds. You know your average order size so don’t coupon any minimum below that. For example, if your average order size is $80 you might consider a $10 off $100 coupon. That means you and your customer both give up $10, but bottom line, you grow your average order size by $10, which, now $90, represents a 12.5% improvement. If you had discounted just $5 off $75 then you would likely end up with a lower order size than before. That would cannibalize your sales numbers and would be a poor coupon strategy. That would be a lose-lose strategy for you and your affiliates. Make sure you can control the coupon box in your shopping cart: If possible, auto-populate the coupon code there and automate the discount displayed in the shopping cart when an affiliate link is clicked from a coupon site. If a coupon link wasn’t clicked, consider suppressing the coupon box altogether. If you cannot do that, then create a generic “placeholder” coupon and message it as your everyday low price or similar. The goal is to discourage your customer from leaving the shopping cart to search for a coupon - you don’t even want them to think of that option. You also don’t want them to have any doubt in the back of their mind that they are getting a good buy or your best price. * * * * * The upcoming Affiliate Management Days conference takes place April 16-17, 2013. Follow @AMDays or #AMDays on Twitter. Early bird registration runs until February 22, 2013. When registering, make sure to use the code SBTAM250 to receive an additional $250.00 off your two-day (or combo) pass. You can read other interviews from the interview series here. The post Take a Peek Inside the Mind of Super Affiliate Mike Allen #AMDays appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How to Create Charts And Visual Data Using iCharts Posted: 14 Feb 2013 05:00 AM PST People like charts. They like to see ideas and data in a visual form which is what drives the popularity of infographics. The real power in visual information is that people can share it via email or social media. iCharts makes the process of taking data into a visual form easy for the small business owner. iCharts is a cloud-based chart application that can make your content creation efforts better. Let’s be brutally honest here: When we write a blog post or share something on Facebook to promote our business, our thought leadership, we want prospects to see it. The flip side, for the consumer or business prospect, is they want educational, informational, non-sales type content. The iCharts platform provides a code-free interactive charting template that will allow you to compile the data to create what Hugh MacLeod, creator of the famous Gaping Void cartoon, calls a “Social Object.” Here is a quick visual that I created in a free level account to showcase how it works:
You can see some of the tabs on the right, which allow a very granular level of detail and data. You can import datasets (think spreadsheets and databases) or just manually enter some basic numbers as I did to create this simple fictitious pie chart. You can do some of these things in a spreadsheet, of course, but iCharts lets you import from Microsoft Excel, or Google Spreadsheet, or even data from the web with services like SurveyMonkey. You can save that dataset and use it again, too. What I really like:
Chart: When consumers will start holiday shopping. Four in 10 (41.4%) of Americans say they will begin holiday shopping before Halloween. Description: Tags: retail, holidays, shopping. Author: charts powered by iCharts.
What I would like to see:
If you are going to create a visual, make a point. Don’t toss numbers onto a chart. Yes, people like to share visual data online, even charts, but you must make them memorable and make sure you keep consistent with your own brand message. You can’t make data interesting because of a pie chart alone. The iCharts service can help you make visual documents and make them more shareable, but you still have to do the hard thinking and heavy lifting. They offer a limited free level plan that allow for unlimited charts, then paid plans start at $10/month. Charts Photo via Shutterstock The post How to Create Charts And Visual Data Using iCharts appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| You Can Now Enjoy Real-Time Commenting and Collaboration on Podio Posted: 14 Feb 2013 03:00 AM PST
The ability to see who is viewing a page or document can be useful to business owners and employees collaborating on projects by giving them the ability to know who they can reach at that moment about their particular project, especially with the ability to update comments in real-time. The photo below shows a comment stream, where team members can add new thoughts, tag other users, and see who is viewing and following that particular page.
Previously, users would need to refresh the page in order to see new comments and updates. So the real-time updates could help the platform become a little more interactive and could help users save time when checking for new interactions. And while liking comments might just seem like a small social update without a lot of real practical purpose, it could potentially help users gauge interest in certain ideas or even just let other team members know that you've seen important updates. The Podio app allows workers to organize their work into social activity streams rather than constantly switching back and forth between email and various documents in order to collaborate and update projects. Features of the platform include task management, meeting calendars, lead tracking, and more. Other apps and services like Basecamp or Google Docs offer many of the same collaboration and project management functions to workers. But the Podio offering, especially with the latest updates, does give businesses a functional and fairly inexpensive option for collaboration and project management. The service is free for up to five employees, and then $9 per user per month for organizations with more employees. Podio also offers iPhone, iPad, and Android apps so users can collaborate from their mobile devices. Podio was acquired by Citrix in 2012. The platform first launched out of beta in 2011 and now has more than 200,000 organizations signed up. The post You Can Now Enjoy Real-Time Commenting and Collaboration on Podio appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
Holiday marketing has become ever more popular with small businesses. Just look around at how frequently you see the words “sale” or “specials” combined with a holiday name such as Christmas or Mother’s Day.
” @DeftonesGirly81
Twitter is huge and we all know it. For me, Twitter has become the ultimate place for me to get the best information out there for my industry. I only follow people that provide information that will educate me along with perhaps, 5 friends. I only follow 285 people.
Question: If you were to emphasize one important issue that every affiliate manager should be paying more attention to, what would it be and why?
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