How to Balance Your Business and the Holidays

by | Blog

The holidays are upon us, and while this is generally an exciting, loving, family-filled time for people working a traditional 9 to 5, the holiday season can mean something entirely different for an entrepreneur. For business owners, you have to figure out a way to balance your family and your business without letting either go underwater.

This can easily cause utter exhaustion. 

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Answering emails while cooking green beans. Keeping up with business projects while wrapping presents and decorating the Christmas tree. It’s altogether too easy to become overwhelmed, cranky, and ultimately exhausted by all the family and business tasks at hand.

So how do you balance your business and the holidays without dropping the ball for either?

Check out these 4 Tips for Balancing Business and the Holidays

1. Make Your Business as Lifestyle-Friendly as Possible

Balancing your business and the holidays well depends on your willingness to balance your business and your life well. The secret here is making sure your business is compatible with the lifestyle you want to live.

This might mean something different for different people, different preferences, and different businesses, but for many situations it means making sure you can bring your business wherever you go. Configuring your business so you can work from the comfort of your own home or from Wi-Fi signals so you don’t have to be at the office in order to complete it will save you a great deal of stress and headache.

Achieving a work/life balance might also mean having boundaries set in stone, such as no work after 5pm, on weekends, or on holidays. Set the expectations clear for yourself, your family, and your clients and then stick to them, even if you’re losing a couple of days per week during the holiday season. 

2. Make Sure You Are Generating a Passive Income

If you can’t figure out a way to make money while you sleep, then you will always need to work. This is an exhausting, never-ending uphill climb that could easily be remedied with a few smart fixes. Find ways to automate aspects of your business so you can generate an income without having to physically be working 100% of the time.

In most cases, this means selling classes or products on your website, orders that are automatically fulfilled and don’t require action on your part to earn money. Be it an E-book, deep-dive course, or physical product, finding a means of generating a passive income will give you so much more freedom and peace of mind during the holiday season.

3. Plan Ahead and Prioritize

You know the holidays are coming well before they get here. While you can’t predict everything, you can plan ahead for most things. Identify what needs to be done before the holidays and prioritize these tasks, then act on them accordingly.

Get everything taken care of that can be taken care of ahead of time. Do as much as you can to set yourself up for success on the other side of the holidays. Set your plan so well so that, once it’s complete, you can allow yourself a peaceful, restful holiday. 

4. Avoid Stressing Needlessly

Things aren’t going to go as flawlessly as you may want them to. You obviously want a perfect balance between your life and your business, to thoroughly enjoy your family and the holidays but also to keep your business working optimally. Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen… but it’s okay. Enjoy the season anyway.

Your business will survive a couple of days without you working 100%, just like your family might need to survive you answering a couple of late emails here and there. Spend some time with your family and friends anyway. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. You might come to realize that a small bit of time away from your business allows you to recharge, restore, and  come back to work better than ever!

If you need extra help setting up systems for your business click here and schedule a call with me and let’s see how I can best support you!

Have a great week!

​Robyn

Great Reasons To Give Promotional Gifts

by | Blog, Contributed Post

Promotional gifts are a very popular way to market your brand and gain exposure in the wider world. Many companies create and send out free or paid for gifts to promote a myriad of things. For example, Aldi sells Kevin the carrot toys every year as a celebration of their famous Christmas adverts. If you are thinking about branching into promotional gift giving and aren’t sure if you are making the right decision, let us try and persuade you…

1. Invoke brand loyalty

When building a business and trying to make it successful it is important to think about building an arsenal of loyal followers. This is one of the benefits of sending out promotional gifts from Dynamic Gift as people appreciate companies who invest in items for their audience. By giving a gift to your customer you will make them happy and they will in turn be much more likely to choose you over one of your competitors. It might seem fickle however people are people and this is one of the easiest ways to win over your audience.

2. Build a connection

Offering promotional items can do much more than get your logo out into the world, it can allow you to build a real relationship with your audience. Let’s take an example of this such as KFC. To celebrate the summer KFC created an inflatable pool float shaped like the colonel, and this came complete with a holder for a bucket of chicken. By knowing their audience and what they want, KFC built a clever item that many of their customers will use and enjoy, and therefore build fond memories associated with the brand. By being clever with the items you send, you can build a real life relationship with those who buy from you. This in turn will ensure that they always come to you when in need.

3. Use it to build passion

Another way to make sure that your customers continue to buy from you is to offer products that send a positive message. There are many pressing issues in the world which can be treated, and by creating a product to solve a problem or show that you care, your customers will develop and emotional connection to you and feel passionate about supporting your brand over others. For example, Butterfly Conservation is a trust to support butterflies and moths in the UK, and when they send out monthly magazines, the plastic wrapping is made from biodegradable starches. Instead of throwing away excess plastic you can instead use it to store peelings before placing in the compost bin. This small change to packaging shows the ethical stance of the organisation and will help form an emotional connection to the audience.

4. Reward customers for buying from you

A sure fire way to make sure customers buy your products is to offer them the chance to win something if they shop with you. Mountain Dew is a prime example of this, where back in 2004 they offered customers a chance to collect ‘dew points’ with every purchase, where 500 would allow the customer to receive a limited edition green Xbox. Rewarding your customers by providing tokens or points towards a free product is a great idea and will ensure that people want to buy from you again and again.

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*This is a contributed post

How to Get Your Webinar Funnel Topic in 3 Easy Ways

How to Get Your Webinar Funnel Topic in 3 Easy Ways

by | Blog, Webinar

So, you’ve realized you need to implement a funnel and you’ve decided you want to host a webinar funnel. You’re excited. You’re eager to get working. You have programs in place and an idea of what you’ll use as an incentive. When it comes to narrowing down what you want to talk about however… you are stuck.

You’re definitely not alone, this is pretty common.

Maybe there’s so much you could talk about. There are so many helpful things you could cover to provide valuable content for your list. Narrowing down your options into a coherent, cohesive presentation sounds impossible, even intimidating.

Or maybe you have the opposite problem. You can’t come up with anything to share about for a whole webinar.

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Without a clear topic and goal in mind for your webinar funnel, you’ll be unable to get the conversions you want. You won’t see the audience you’re hoping for since your message won’t be clearly translatable and people’s curiosity won’t be piqued.

If your message is unclear, then your audience won’t understand what you’re offering. Identifying a clear topic for your webinar funnel is crucial to the success of your campaign. If you need help identifying your topic or getting your creative juices flowing, consider these 3 tips for determining your webinar funnel topic.

3 Tips For Determining Your Webinar Funnel Topic

1. Look Over Your Frequently Asked Questions

If you’ve hosted a webinar in the past, then look over some of the questions that were asked there and consider developing a webinar funnel answering the top question or series of questions. If you’ve never hosted a webinar previously, then no worries! Collect common questions you get from your website, Facebook, and in other avenues of life relating to your business and structure it into a valuable course. Make a webinar out of answering your top frequently asked question.

The helpful thing about this approach is that you’re taking a real-life question from someone who has expressed interest in you and your brand previously. That means that this type of question will resonate with other warm leads.

2. Read up on Some Old Content

Another excellent way to get your topic generation flowing is to go back and look at old blog posts you’ve published in the past. Find the ones that got the most attention from your audience and sparked the most conversation, then consider how you can repurpose this content into a valuable, digestible webinar funnel.

If you don’t have a huge personal database of blog posts to work with, do some research and find other blogs, videos, and valuable content from other experts in your field. Use their expertise to inspire you. While you should never take someone else’s content and use it as your own, you can learn from others and gain inspiration from them and what they’re teaching.

Constantly be learning and looking for opportunities to grow and share value. Get a fresh perspective on your niche, look into what your target market is finding the most interesting, and create a webinar on a topic in this area that you know about.

3. Make Sure Your Topic Converts

Keep in mind that just because a topic is interesting to you doesn’t mean it will make for a good webinar topic. If you want to get solid conversions out of your webinar, then you want to make sure your topic fits a few parameters, namely,

  • It offers value to your audience and sustainable takeaways.
  • It’s digestible and understandable enough that your audience will remember, but also complex enough to warrant a webinar-length explanation and leave them wanting more from you.
  • It relates to you, your brand, and your products or services, all while prompting action.
     

Conclusion

The best way to land on a valuable webinar funnel topic is to keep yourself informed in your area of expertise. Stay on top of the questions your target market is asking so you can be the one providing them their answers. Focus on providing valuable information that your clients and prospects can relate to in order to build trust and conversions.

If you’re looking for support for your next webinar or sales funnel click here and schedule a call with me, I have 3 spots left for December and January!

Have an easy week,

Robyn

3 Reasons You Need to Create a Sales Funnel for Your Business

by | Blog, Sales Funnel

So you have all your snazzy products and services prepared. You’ve been working on a new launch or marketing campaign and it comes time to see how it works. You hope it’ll generate a huge impact and you begin optimistically… but when it comes time to track your progress and view your results, they disappoint.

You find that your website isn’t getting the attention you hoped for. People might be viewing, but despite the traffic, you’re not making the conversions you want. Despite the number of people that view your content and read about your offers, they’re not buying. But why?

In order to clarify this dilemma, you have to determine what your sales funnel looks like, if you have a sales funnel at all, and where it’s going wrong.

What Is a Sales Funnel?

When people purchase a product or service, whether online or in person, there’s a process they go through before they make the final purchase. This process looks slightly different depending on the brand, but all of them carry a customer from the initial introduction to the product or service, all the way through to the final purchase. This process helps a customer get to know the product or service, as well as the company, until they are prepared and informed enough to purchase.

Having a website with impressive products or services isn’t enough to make a sale. People need to be aware of what you’re offering, understand the purchasing process, and trust you and your brand before you can generate revenue. This is what a marketing funnel works to accomplish. A marketing funnel is the few steps your audience must follow before they finally click your call-to-action and make a purchase on your site.

 When you talk about your business and share what you do, a lot of people show up to look. This massive amount of people represents the top of the funnel. Gradually, however, as they work through the process you’ve set up (viewing your website, reading about your products or services, learning about what problems they’ll solve, etc.) some of them drop out as they lose interest.

 This marketing funnel is the journey that all of your prospects go through before they convert into a customer. Making sure you have a well working sales funnel that carries prospects as fluidly as possible through will help you get the most conversions.

What Are the Specific Advantages of a Sales Funnel?

If you don’t think your business can be compatible with a sales funnel, then you might want to rethink your marketing strategies. Using a sales funnel has a lot of advantages, regardless of what kind of business you run. Their primary benefits of sales funnel are as follows:

  • Increase sales by organizing and nurturing leads in a personalized and understanding manner
  • Provide detailed insights of the behavior of these leads in order to make closing sales an easier ordeal
  • Save time and effort by making the nurturing of these leads an automated process
  • Create trust amongst your leads by creating brand value and helping them understand what they’re investing in and why
  • Streamline your sales process in order to make it easier for prospects to follow and so you encounter fewer errors

Conclusion

Understanding the fundamentals of a marketing funnel is not difficult. Putting an effective sales funnel into action for your own business can be more difficult. Pinpointing sections of your sales funnel that are poorly planned or clogging up prospects can be challenging if you don’t understand funnels well. If you need help setting up a sales funnel that will help you get conversions, click here to schedule a call with me and let’s discuss how I can help you set up a sales funnel designed uniquely for you and your business!

Have an easy week!

Robyn

The Emotional Challenges Of Business Management

by | Blog, Contributed Post

Business management is stressful, especially if you’re new to the management world. When you’re in the process of launching your own company, you face a long and twisted path of self-doubt, anxiety, and mood swings. It is the journey of every entrepreneur. While you’ve – hopefully – prepared a strategic plan to guide you through your progress, the strategy is no help to your mental health. Indeed, building your first company is an emotional rollercoaster that can make you feel inappropriate. Creating the foundation for your business is a labor of love that takes a lot of dedication and effort. But, more importantly, it’s a path that exposes your vulnerabilities. As an entrepreneur, you have no choice but to go through and try to keep a cool head. Thankfully, you don’t need to let emotional challenges distract you. There is plenty of practical support available to take your worries away.

You wish you had more time at hand
As a solo entrepreneur or the owner of a business with a small team, time is your most valuable asset. It is also the asset that is the most likely to slip in between your fingers. Indeed, you can’t afford to waste your time. However, the resource is limited. You need to prioritize income-generating operations over other time-demanding tasks. As a result, you are likely to fall into the habit of working long hours to catch up with your to-do list. Working against deadlines is stressful, but it’s a lot worse when you try to do everything simultaneously. Outsourcing is the best solution to maintain your sanity: You can’t keep your productivity and concentration for an extended period. More importantly, you are not a superhero. Your days have only 24 hours, and no, regardless of how hard you try, you can’t do everything. Accept your limitations and find an outsourced partner for support.

You wish you were more creative
Bringing a new brand to the market is demanding. Getting noticed doesn’t happen overnight. More importantly, unless you are a professional marketer who understands the challenges of creative visibility strategies, you’re unlikely to make it work. Indeed, as an entrepreneur, you can feel you have to be the creative force within your business. However, unless you are specially trained, you are likely to build unimaginative campaigns that won’t appeal to your audience. There’s an essential question about in-house vs. agency: When should you outsource your marketing? As a rule of thumb, outsourcing is the best solution for companies that struggle to attract their audience.

You wish you knew what to do next
Things change all the time. The market is a moving force that doesn’t stay still for long. In other words, the observations that have driven your strategy may not be accurate anymore. Entrepreneurs need to inject flexibility and adaptability in their day-to-day routines. However, when you’re new to the business world, making sense of a constantly evolving environment is not easy. But don’t let your fear of the unknown handicap your movements. When planning doesn’t show the way forward, knowing, and understanding your audience offers support. You can keep in touch with industry data through Google stats and Census data information to figure out your next move. Additionally, a supportive network of contacts can prove helpful in times of doubt!

Anxiety and stress can drive you to extreme mood swings when you’re launching your company. Nothing can preserve your sanity more than surrounding yourself with dedicated professional support on your way to success.

This is a contributed post

Tips To Connect With Your Customers Online

by | Blog, Contributed Post

There’s a need as a business to be connected with your customers more now than ever before. With so much competition to look out for, a customer could change their minds and go with a different supplier or company without even batting an eyelid. So with that in mind, here are some tips for connecting with your customers online.

Use Social Media 
With social media, there’s a lot that you can be doing to interact with your customers. Most people now have a digital presence, and most of those people with a digital footprint will also have at least one social media platform. Every social media platform performs differently, and therefore, you want to find out where most of your customers are. You can tell this by how much interaction it might already be getting on those social feeds, regardless of whether you are currently on those platforms or not. When creating your social media profiles, make sure the brand logo is being shown off so that your customers know that it’s you. You can use social media to have a more in-depth and personal interaction than you usually would with more traditional formats of communication like e-mailing, or phoning. So find out what social media platform is most popular for your company and then work on improving that platform to get more followers and more interest in your brand. Welcome every person that follows you and provides a mixture of professional and more relaxed content. Be consistent, and always respond to your followers.

Know Your Audience With Data
There are plenty of software platforms available nowadays where you can find out information about your audience. Like user research software, this way of finding your audience data can be extremely beneficial. Audience data is like a gold mine for any business because what can be done with it has the potential to help tailor content and products or services that the business creates. By knowing exactly what your audience likes and doesn’t like will help you, in theory, to sell more of what you’re selling. There are plenty of ways that you can access this data, but be wary that you’ll need to have the right disclaimers in place to ensure that the customer is happy for their data to be used. Data is a powerful thing, so if you can understand it, this will help you become more familiar with your audience, and it can help build relationships. That’s something you really want to achieve when it comes to connecting with your customers online. You want to be able to build relationships so that customers become loyal not just to the business but to the products or services that they’re buying. If you have the perfect product, then why waste your time going anywhere else?

Respond To Concerns Directly
When a customer complains, a business may have ignored some complaints, but now that the online world is here, that’s not possible anymore. Why? Well, because if a customer is going to complain and they’ve not heard back from you over email or phone, then they’re going to express their dislike for your company in the public domain of social media. It’s a space where you can speak freely, and it’s not something that others can delete unless it’s going against the rules of the social media platform. When you do receive complaints or a clear message directed to your company, respond to them directly. Not only does this show to others that’s your responsive, but it also tells the customer what the protocol is when it comes to a complaint. A lot of people like to complain for the sake of it, and this approach might whittle down those who are just doing it to try and get something to those who have been genuinely messed around.

The more you can do for your customers, the better. It’s important to go that extra mile for them when you can and have the ability to do so. It shows commitment to your customers and that you care for them which will be seen by everyone else who’s watching it via the public nature of social media.

Make Your Interactions Less Scripted
It’s important that when you’re interacting with customers online, you’re doing it in a more conversational manner, rather than something that’s scripted. No one likes talking to an automated robot, and the same goes for those who are clearly working from a rehearsed script. So with that in mind, when you’re responding to people via social media or you’re commenting on things that are said about a product or a company, be personable in your response. Make it more about having fun with the conversation, rather than it having to be too professional.

Throw out the script and bring in something more loose and fluid. Obviously you want that professional manner of what needs including, but in regards to what is said exactly, this can be down to the individual who is responding on behalf of the business.

Have Plenty Of Communication Options Available
No customers will like the fact that you only have an email to get in touch with or just the one avenue of communication. It puts out the feeling that you’re not a company that likes communicating with customers or has any decent customer service. That’s probably not the case but you’re not doing yourself any favors by being unapproachable. So provide as many communication options as possible. From email to phone, postal to online webchat. There are many ways you can offer customer service, so use as many of the above as you possibly can. Don’t forget direct messages on your social media handles too!

Connecting with your customers online is what’s going to make them stick around and to spread the word about your company, hopefully. So create those social media profiles, work on customer communication options, and don’t forget to be personable in your approach to talking to customers online.

This is a contributed post