by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts
If you want more customers to grow your small business get more clicks to your website. The easiest page to drive more clicks to your website is to focus on getting more clicks to your blog. If you don’t yet have a blog, just ask your webmaster to add one to your navigation bar. Your website is an essential tool to attract, engage and convert more customers. It even works 24/7 for you, 365 days a year. The main pages in your website typically serve as a brochure that talks mostly about you and your services. Your blog however, is all about your visitor and helping them solve their challenges. Your blog is where you can showcase your expertise by sharing your knowledge, answering common questions and educating your consumers. Let’s assume you have populated your blog with lots of great, high quality content. Great content helps you to stand out among your competition. Publishing new blog articles to your website is key to helping you engage and convert new customers. But, if you are getting very little traffic there just won’t be enough visitors to convert. Here’s 5 simple strategies to helping your get more clicks to your website and blog:
1. Start with the right keyword phrase.
Choosing the right keywords is a big factor in helping you get more clicks. What most people don’t know, is when it is referred to as an SEO keyword, it can actually be a keyword phrase. As a matter of fact, you’re better off using a phrase instead of just one word. By using just one word as your keyword (also known as a vanity keyword), your search is going to be too broad and your site will get lost in the mix. By making it more specific, you will have a greater chance of showing up towards the top of the search. Not sure what keywords you should use? Start capturing the exact language your prospects and clients use when they ask you questions. Jot down your top 10 most commonly asked questions and you can pull 2 word and 3 word keyword phrases to start blogging about.
2. Brainstorm compelling headlines
A headline’s main job is to get people to click the article. If your title is boring or reads exactly the same as everyone else’s headline, it’s more than likely that person will pass your site over for the more interesting sounding one. Writing headlines is a lot easier when you know your audience. You want to know what types of words and phrases would grab their attention. Two quick tips to keep in mind when it comes to coming up with compelling headlines to help you get more clicks to your blog and website: First, people love list articles. It has been researched that headlines that use odd numbers outperform and gets more clicks than even numbered ones. Use the digit instead of writing it out. (i.e.: 7 instead of seven) If you want to get more bang out of your headline, make sure you use your keyword phrase at the beginning and also use power words, such as smart, critical, powerful, and surprising. Second tip: people are motivated by fear of loss or desire to gain. You can get more clicks to your site when your headline identifies a very specific benefit or loss.
3. Decide on a great title tag
Your title tag is how your blog post will appear in a search result. Often times, your title tag is the same as the headline for your blog article. Occasionally, you may decide to alter the title tag slightly from your blog title. Keep your title tag under 55 characters as anything longer will get cut off. To get more clicks, your title tag should include your keyword phrase. Here’s an example of one of mine where my keyword phrase was “LinkedIn Marketing Tips”. I decided on a headline that speaks to the fear of loss:
4. Get more clicks with a meta tag description that sells your content.
There is another important tag that should be utilized in your site’s optimization. Meta tags are important in search results. They add a description to the site/page under the link on the search page. When writing the your description, make sure not to mislead your readers. If it is not what was described, they will use that back button to get out of there and go to another site. Mainly, you want to use the meta tag description to your advantage as a short sales pitch. And even though you might be tempted to utilize your keyword or keyword phrase in your meta tag, don’t stuff keywords in there (use multiple times). Search engines are smart and will see exactly what you are doing. Also, make sure you keep your sentences here under 155 characters because if it goes over that character count, the description will be cut off. I like to use a free tool called “Letter Count”. It makes it fast and easy to confirm whether it’s too short or too long. 
5. Choose an attention-grabbing image.
It’s important to have an image that goes along with your blog post. When you share the blog post link in your social media having an image that was published with the blog will have it appear in your network’s feed. The image helps your blog post take up more real estate than just a link. Here’s an example of how it looks on social media: 
Remember, people are visual, so you want to choose an image that relates to what you talk about in your blog post. Also, try to choose an image that evokes some type of emotion. Just as we spoke about earlier, people are motivated by fear of loss or desire to gain. Look for images that project the negative emotions your target audience would like to escape as well as images that convey the positive emotions they are pursuing.
An image that immediately resonates with your ideal target market grabs attention and get more clicks. Start implementing these 5 simple strategies. By employing these ideas, you can start seeing more traffic coming into your blog and website. Remember, sales is first a numbers game. If you want more customers, you need to generate more leads. If you wants more leads, get more traffic to your website. If you want more traffic to your site, get more clicks to your blog.
QUESTION: What is your biggest challenge or question when it comes to getting more customers from your website?
Want to achieve FASTER results from your website and marketing efforts? Book a complimentary discovery coaching call with me here:
ABOUT YOON CANNON, Founder, ParamountBusinessCoach.com My mission is to encourage, equip and empower entrepreneurs to help you grow a thriving business and life you love! For the past 25+ years I have started 6 different businesses and sold 3 of them (both B2C and B2B), so I completely understand the struggles you go through whether you’re starting from zero or growing a 6 and 7 figure business. I invite you to book a free sales growth strategy call with me below. https://stage.paramountbusinesscoach.com/coaching/coaching-call-sign-up/
by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Attract More Customers, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts
How do you stand out from the competition? What is your strategy to win new clients? Do you have one? We all know that the best prospects to focus on are the people who are already looking to hire someone like you. But, all too often when I search on the Internet for various professionals – whether I’m searching for a photographer, an electrician or a chiropractor, I see very few businesses (if any) whose message truly stands out. If you managed to land on page one on your prospects’ Google search, you can celebrate getting to first base. But, you still need to get to second base. Before you can win the customer you have to first win the click. The key in winning the click is standing out among the competition. Here are 5 simple steps you can implement today:
1. How to stand out from the competition? Communicate the outcome that your customers or prospects would like to achieve when working with you or buying from you.
It’s not enough to simply tell people your occupation or industry you’re in. If you want to stand out among the sea of sameness go further and tell people what specific problems you solve. For example, one of the members in my Marketing Coaching program is a registered dietician and nutritionist. Understandably, that’s what she wrote on her LinkedIn profile. But, what was much more effective at helping her stand out from the thousands of other nutritionists on the Internet was simply communicating the key problems she solved and who she solves it for. Her tagline now included “weight loss specialist for busy entrepreneurs”. This immediately got the attention from the right people she was looking to reach on LinkedIn. Her specific outcome message distinguished her from thousands of competitors who simply stopped at stating their occupation.
2. Offer a result based guarantee.
Offering a guarantee takes the risk out of doing business with you. At the same time, having a unique guarantee that competitors do not offer is a great way to help you stand out and differentiate. The restaurant chain, Olive Garden, offers the 45-minute pronto lunch guarantee. If your lunch is not served in 45-minutes it’s free. One of my private clients is the leading expert in sports facility construction. In their industry the standard warranties for installing running tracks are one to five years. My client differentiated among his competitors by offering an unprecedented level of protection with their ten and fifteen year warranties. This level of guarantee is truly unheard of in the sports construction industry and is one of the factors that make his business stand out. What are some guarantees you could offer that no one else in your industry would dream of doing?
3. Communicate the difference.
When I work with small business owners to help position them as the go to experts I often hear my clients ask things like, “How do I stand out when we all really do the same thing?” One dentist told me, “Teeth cleaning isn’t rocket science. I’m sure all the other dentists in town are competent at cleaning teeth.” We didn’t focus on the service. Instead, we focused on the experience – specifically, taking the fear out of the experience by making a visit to the dentist fun! He turned one of his storage closets into a small, cozy game room that fit 3 full size arcade games. Kids now loved coming to the dentist since their reward was unlimited free games in the arcade.
4. Leverage your past experience.
One of the members in a mastermind group I lead is an IP attorney. She is also a former competitive cellist. One of the niche markets she serves is the creative community. Musicians, artists and other creatives instantly bond with her because of her past experience as a trained musician herself. Although her market has access to a dozen other IP attorneys she is the clear stand out because of her past experience helps her understand the unique needs of their creative businesses.
5. Make a unique offer.
You want to put yourself in the shoes of your own customers. Imagine them trying to compare and choose between you and five of your competitors. Take a look at what others are offering. (You’ll be surprised some of your competitors aren’t making any offers!) By you making a unique offer you are helping your business stand out among your competition. A memorable unique offer I came across was of a CPA – 100% refund tax guys. Clients receive 100% refund on their tax preparation when they refer 4 new clients to the firm. Once you’ve developed a list of what makes you stand out among the competition you want to articulate that message into short sound bytes that you can use as headlines and sub headlines on your website, print brochures and business cards. For specific tips and tricks to helping you get the click from Google search results, check out this related post on “How to Get More Clicks.”
6. Get Published in a Magazine
Whatever your industry, find a magazine that caters to your businesses niche. For instance, Lawyers have Super Lawyers. These magazines already have a built in audience that you can cater to. Contact a niche magazine and ask about advertising or having an article written about your business.
QUESTION: How do you communicate your difference when you explain what you do? Share your elevator pitch here:
If you want expert help in re-positioning your brand, crafting your wow factor and building a lead generation machine, I invite you to book a complimentary discovery coaching call with me here.
https://stage.paramountbusinesscoach.com/coaching/coaching-call-sign-up/
by Yoon Cannon | Build Your Dream Team, Business Growth Tips Blog, Create Your Dream Business, General
One significant trait that stands out with successful businesses is the simple factor of having the right teams behind them. It means that they take their recruitment process seriously. They use well-thought strategies to evaluate carefully each individual who applies to work with them. They do these tasks to ensure that they get the right fit to join their teams not just in terms of skills but character as well.
Why is it necessary to have the right team in place for your business? Well, having the right team will positively transform your business in many ways. If you have always been in haste with your recruitment process, here are six reasons why you need to slow down and ensure that you hire the right people for your team.
Reason #1: Time-saving elements
Managing your team takes a lot of your time. A workforce that is dedicated to offer their best and display a good performance will facilitate your work. People who are self-starters don’t need you to remind them of what they need to be doing. The right fits in the team will collaborate well to ensure that they meet deadlines and drive results. It means that you only put a little time into managing them, giving you a chance to focus on growing your business the rest of the time.
Perhaps what can save you even more time is leaving the recruitment process to the professionals. If your business’ location is in Canada, for instance, you can partner up with a Canada PEO to help you find the best candidates in Canada. With their extensive network across the country, you can be sure that they can find the best fit for you in record time and compliantly. This strategy will save you the tedious recruitment task, allowing you to channel that effort to other elements of the business.
Reason #2: Maintains your good name
Building a business reputation is very crucial for any business. If you are to attract people to your service and turn them to return customers, you need to be mindful of the experience you give to them. Your employees act as the middlemen between you and your business. If you have the right people in place, they will portray professionalism when dealing with your customers. They will offer quality service that will leave the customers delighted and spreading good words about your business. This factor will grow your reputation significantly, drawing more people to your business.
Reason #3: Builds strong teamwork
Teamwork, communication, and collaboration are very crucial keys for any team to be successful. These aspects are important because team members have to work together in harmony towards a common goal. However, for this to happen, all members need to feel connected or at least be they should be able to work together in solving problems and completing projects. These results can only happen if all individuals fit well in the company’s culture.
When every team member feels at home with the rest of the team, working in that environment becomes pleasant. They can find happiness and job satisfaction, which are essential in growing employee engagement in the company. And when employees are engaged, you can be sure of increased productivity, sales, and profits for your business.
Reason #4: It is economical
How does hiring the right people save you money? Posting job ads needs money. Communicating with new prospects takes money and time. Training new employees requires money. The list can go on and on. When you hire the wrong fit, it is only a matter of time for them to leave your company. Once they leave your company, that will mean lost sales as you try to replace them, as well as spending additional money in recruiting a replacement.
On the other hand, when you hire the right people from the word go, you avoid going back to the drawing board for a very long time. Hiring the right people right from the start saves you employee turnover costs. But it also saves you the time you could otherwise be using going back and forth in the recruitment process.
Reason #5: Cultivates the best customer service
Hiring the right people will foster the best customer service experience. Employees who possess excellent interpersonal skills are the best fit for this section. And undoubtedly, giving the best customer service means growing your business success overall. The candidates must be aware that the top priority of your work delivery is keeping your customers content and pleased.
Reason #6: A trusted team gives you peace of mind
Think of all the data that you possess, the passwords, Slack channels, social media accounts, even customer contact information, would you trust all that info to someone that will later leave? When you hire someone, you are immediately trusting them with all this data. Hiring the right people means you won’t have to worry about what you are sharing with them.
Conclusion
Many say that your employees are the facets of your business to the outside world. In this case, you need to have individuals who are motivated to invest in your brand. These are individuals who are willing to grow their roles as your business grows. Their dedication and engagement are essential to transform your business positively. If you have been hiring following a hunch, the above points should give you a reason to be mindful of who you bring into your business.
QUESTION: What is your biggest challenge when it comes to finding the right person for your team? Share your comments and questions below.
by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Create Your Dream Business
Starting out in any business can be a challenge, and striking out to realize your dream as an entrepreneur can be even more complex. You have probably spent months coming up with the perfect idea to build your business around and taking the necessary steps to turn your goals into a reality.
Once you have the basics in place regarding what your company will sell and the work culture and policies you will put in place, it’s time to get clear on some of the most important aspects.
How you approach your financials is a big part of whether or not your business will succeed. For the best possible outcome for growth entrepreneurs, be sure to leverage the speed and ease of financial technology we have available today. These newer developments are the future of business and will help you get started on the right path.
Streamline Your Sales Platform
Generating sales is the main function that will determine how successful your business becomes. You will need a good plan in place to reach a broad customer base to showcase the appeal of the products or services that you offer.
You can get the help you need in manufacturing sales growth by using a software program to conduct all aspects of your marketing and sales functions. Consolidating all of your data and activities in one place will reduce time waste and increase revenue by offering support and resources to your team. This will help them to communicate with the right people while out on the road, have access to the information they need, and reach more potential customers.
It’s also a great way to store your customer data and track sales trends so you can make informed decisions on what products to promote. Your customers’ opinions and feedback give you insight on what is working and any areas that need improvement, so you can continue to expand in the right direction.
Use Mobile Banking
Every business needs to conduct many financial transactions. Mobile banking will make this easier and more time-efficient. Instead of carving time out of your day to get to the bank during business hours, mobile banking frees you from time restrictions and lets you choose when is most convenient for you. By using an app or website, you can make deposits, transfer funds to another account, issue payroll by direct deposit, and pay your invoices.
Beyond saving you a lot of time, mobile banking can reduce stress and confusion by keeping your financial transactions in one place. You can easily log in to your account at any time to print reports and review your current assets without the risk of misplacing any important information or tracking paper records.
Offer Mobile Payment Options
Mobile financial transactions aren’t just convenient for you, they also appeal to your customers. Give your clients the option to make mobile payments when they make a purchase. They will appreciate that this form of payment is simple, fast, and offers a greater amount of safety for their sensitive financial details.
Stay on Top of Your Profit
You don’t always need a certified accountant in order to track your profit and loss statements, especially if your business is just starting out. There are simple ways to track your profit every month, or quarterly, whatever your preference is. You do this by subtracting your expenses from your sales and there are plenty of apps or software that do this for you. A popular one for small businesses is QuickBooks. It’s even quite simple to set up your own formula in excel or google sheets if that’s your preference.
Stay Organized with Apps
I mentioned QuickBooks before, which is great for keeping track of your money, including receipts and other business write-offs. If you’re not familiar with accounting software, you might find it a bit confusing, but it’s nothing that you can’t learn. If you prefer a more hands-off experience, Bench is an app that keeps track of your expenses, categorizes them every month, and sends you reports to better understand your finances. What’s really important is that you find a method and supporting software that fits your needs and keeps you organized.
Using even a few of these financial technology solutions can help you to create a solid foundation for your business. Technology is a great way to save time and make your business practices safer, faster, and more lucrative.
by Yoon Cannon | Attract More Customers, Business Growth Tips Blog, Lead generation
Do your contacts engage with your emails the way you would expect them to be? How many of your readers do actually open the emails and reply to you?
While no magic wand can help you convince everyone to open your emails and reply back, there are some tips that you can implement to improve your email campaign results. But, before implementing the tips that we have prepared for you in this email, you should start by creating clear goals for your email marketing campaign.
The most popular objectives for email marketing campaigns are the following:
- Increasing the email open rate
- Personalizing the customer’s experience
- Establishing a connection with the email subscribers
- Improving the emails click-through rate
- Succeed in retaining the target customers and turn them into valuable brand advocates
Now that you have more clarity on the ways email marketing can help you, are you ready to find more about the 12 clever ways you can use to get a response from your recipients?
Tip #1: Create intriguing subject lines
You compare your subject lines with the movie trailers. Would you be curious to see a movie if the trailer is dull and unexciting? Most probably not! The same happens with the subject lines.
For example, the scarcity tactic seems to be working very well these days. A subject line that looks like this: “4 HOURS ONLY! 75% off ALL Jackets in Stores. Go!” would make any “fashionista” grab a cab and go to your store immediately.
Another successful tactic would be adding punctuation and questions directly in the subject line. By using this tactic, you start a conversation with your prospect directly from the subject line. For instance, if you ask a question in the subject line, you intrigue your prospect to give you an answer.
Take the example of Sephora, which sends an email with the subject line “Rough Day?”. In other words, the brand sends an invitation to dialogue and intrigues the recipient to immediately open the email and find more about the company’s proposal.
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Tip #2: Keep your content readable
Imagine that your reader opens your email after an exhausting day in the office. Would he/she be impressed by an email that includes phrases highlighted with red, yellow, green, while others are written in italic or bold? Or would he/she like an email that is easy to read and includes different bullet points that make it easier to understand the main idea?
Instead of using special fonts or different colors, you can win the readers by keeping the content clean and using bold or underline to highlight some important words. Also, you can improve your readability by maintaining the contrast ratio at 4:5:1 for normal text and 7:1 for large text. Besides, you can use tools like Color Contrast Checker or Colorzilla to improve your contrast ratio.
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Tip #3: Personalize Your Emails As Much As Possible
Personalizing your emails and subject lines can significantly improve the response rate. According to studies, a subject line personalizer will improve the response rate by 26%. According to a study developed by Experian Marketing Services, personalized emails can generate six times higher transaction rates.
You can take the example of Uber that uses this powerful strategy very often. For instance, the company sends an email to its users after the first month of using its services. The email usually starts with the phrase “You’re doing awesome, [recipient’s name].”
In the emails sent by Uber, the company includes details according to the recipient’s habits of using their services. Therefore, Uber’s emails include advice on what their prospects can do to improve their statistics to benefit from the company’s special offers. An email like this will automatically attract the recipient’s attention and obtain a reaction from his/her side.
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Tip #4: Carefully proofread your text
An email that contains grammar or spelling errors will be immediately considered unprofessional or spam by readers. You shouldn’t forget that your emails speak about your professionalism and attention to detail. So, if you want to make a good first impression, you should take proofreading seriously. It may seem a tiring job, but it’s helpful for your professional image.
Tip #5: Use segmentation to get the best results
When you send the same email to your prospects, they see you are not interested in their personal needs. Depending on your business profile, you should address your messages to different categories of customers. As each client category has different needs and expectations, the emails should reflect these aspects as well.
You should segment your list and personalize your emails to target the right type of customers. You can filter your clients based on gender, age, or product interests. For instance, if you choose to segment your audience based on age, you should know that the difference between the prospects born in 1996 and 2010 is an 8-second attention span.
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Tip #6: Choose the right moment to send your emails
Many marketers make the mistake of sending emails when their target audience is too busy to read them. When you create your emailing strategy, you should first analyze the metrics delivered by your emailing software. Based on your customer’s behavior, it will tell you when most of your readers open your emails.
Many marketers send their emails three times per month. This is a good strategy as long as they choose the right time to send it. Studies show that the perfect time for sending emails should be between 8 am and 4 pm. Besides, some specialists consider it better to send emails during the weekends when people are more relaxed and open to reply to a personalized email.
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Tip #7: Optimize your email’s format for mobile devices
Studies show that approximately 46% of all emails are opened on mobile. Also, 35% of business professionals prefer to open their emails from their mobile devices.
This means that you should format your emails to be easily opened from a desktop or mobile device. Such a strategy will help you improve your response rate and tell your readers that you care about their comfort.
Tip #8: Calls to Action are important
When you want your readers to do something, you should be clear in explaining what they need to do. If you add a clickable button in your email, support it with action words and highlight the button with a different color. Instead of writing “Click here” it’s more efficient to name the button as “Get a free sample now!”. This way, the reader will have a clear reason to perform the action you expect them to.
A successful call to action should meet the following conditions:
- include an appealing image that follows your brand’s vision and mission
- keep the wording clean and clear, and try to have less than five words in your CTA
- use words that trigger emotions such as free, new, proven, easy
- place the CTA in the place where it makes the most sense in the context
- use a different color for your CTA than the rest of the text
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Tip #9: Help your subscribers contact you easier
Receiving emails from “no-reply” addresses is one of the most annoying things for any reader. How can the client get in touch with you if your email address starts with “no-reply”? One simple example would be that such an email address cannot be added in the contacts list.
A more successful strategy would be creating a shared inbox and sending your emails from addresses such as blog@yourdomain.com. Thus, you encourage your prospects to reply to you. Apart from showing your recipients that you have dedicated resources to reply to their emails, setting up a separate email address will also help you separate your business emails from messages from prospects.
In case you lack resources for organizing an adequate customer care service, you should encourage your prospects to save “no-reply” emails that include confirmations, reminders, or transactional messages. Besides, you can use autoresponders and reply back to your prospects with contact resources such as an email address and phone number.
Tip #10: Show your recipients that you understand their needs
It’s clear and obvious that when you email to your prospects, you want to turn them into your clients. But why would someone prefer you over your competitor? First off, email recipients should feel they are important to you, and you understand their expectations. Instead of presenting the service features, focus on highlighting the benefits that the service can bring to your prospect, including the emotional side.
Tip #11: The first sentence is highly important
The first sentence will tell your reader whether he/she should continue reading your email or skip it. It’s not enough to convince your recipient to open the email with an intriguing subject line. He/she should also read it until the end.
For example, you can open your email with a quick question that targets the reader’s needs. Or create a last call to make the reader understand that he/she should take advantage of your offer.
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The example presented above follows the AIDA model. AIDA stands for Attention Interest Desire Action. The first lines start by grabbing the recipient’s attention with an intriguing question. Then it continues by making the prospect get interested in the service. Also, these first sentences make the recipient want and buy the service right away to save the extra 10 hours each week.
Tip #12: Don’t forget about emotions
Your readers receive hundreds of emails daily from different companies that want to sell them something. A winning strategy to improve your response rate would be to include emotion in your emails. Statistics show that the emails that expose emotions (not necessarily positive ones!) tend to draw out between 5 to 15% more reactions than those written in a neutral tone.
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Final Tips
Getting your recipients to open your emails and respond to them takes you closer to finalizing a sale. While building a successful email marketing campaign might seem a big deal, you shouldn’t get discouraged and keep testing your strategy until you meet your response rate objectives. With each response that you get, your brand, content, and services become more relevant and better known by your target audience, don’t you think so?
Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a copywriter and blogger with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services. You can check her last review of TutorDoctor.
