Should you bother with email marketing for your business?

Email is one of the oldest social media platforms, but it’s still in regular use today. Many people aren’t convinced that email marketing is the way to go, thinking their emails will just get lost amongst all the everyday email chaos, but we have three great reasons why emails are the right choice for your business.

Keeping it professional

social media marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Snapchat all have their place and each of them can work wonders when used appropriately for your business, but none of them can hold a candle to a good, sleek, professional email. Everyday, 269 billion (Redacti) emails are sent and it’s still the preferred method for businesses to communicate – either with other businesses or their customers.

You get to show your personality through your social media accounts, but your email is where everything comes together in one professional piece of communication.

Bringing in sales

Emails have come a long way in the last 20 years and despite all the new social media platforms and complicated marketing techniques, email marketing still comes out on top with a conversion rate of 66% (DMA). Not only can you provide your customers with email-only deals, you can send them wherever you want them to go through interactive links in the body of your email.  These direct links mean that customers never get lost or distracted in the tangled, interwoven web.

The biggest advantage to email marketing is your ROI – for every dollar that you spend, you get $38 in returns (DMA). Considering that most email newsletters are free or extremely cheap to create, the ROI is next to none.

Staying in touch with customers

Facebook and other social media platforms can be daunting – plenty of people expect you to be updating daily and that pressure can be a little overwhelming. Email is a little less demanding – you can send out an eNews as little or as much as you prefer. You might feel like you don’t have enough updates to include on social media each week or day, it’s almost certain that you will have enough business news to share at the end of the month.

It’s a great way to keep in touch with your customers, remind them of your deals and just update them with your wins and, considering emails have three times more users than Facebook and Twitter combined, it seems like a no-brainer (Kissmetrics)

How have you seen email marketing boosting your business? If you’re still not sure that email marketing is worth your time, consider joining one of our networking groups to find out more about how other business owners are using emails to create more opportunities for your business. Visit http://bxbusinessnetworking.com.au/

Set Your Business Up For Success With the Right Systems

Set Your Business Up For Success With the Right Systems

At Bx, we are huge fans of systems, both for our own businesses and for our clients. Systems allow your business to run more smoothly and provide the foundations for growth. They improve the experience of working in your business for employees and provide the best conditions for outstanding customer service. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of systems, what can and should be systemised, and how to create systems for your business.

The benefits of systems

Systems enable businesses to grow beyond the owner or founder of the business. The right systems create an environment that is better for the business, its employees and its customers. Having clearly communicated systems can:

Website, Lead Magnet, Email, Details, Bx, Matt Alderton, Business for life, success with systems

– Improve employee performance
– Help employees feel that they are contributing more within the organisation
– Reduce mistakes
– Prevent tasks from being forgotten
– Help convert a higher percentage of leads to paying customers
– Increase average spend per customer
– Increase the number of services customers use

What to systemise

Essentially, if a process, task or undertaking is completed more than once in a business, it should be systemised. This allows the process to be carried out by anyone within the organisation. It helps to speed up the induction process for new team members and can help team members to operate effectively if other team members are absent or busy.
Here are just a few examples of repeated processes that you can and should systemise:

– Answering the phone
– Greeting a customer
– Filling a drinks fridge
– Collecting the post from a PO box
– Setting up your company email signature
– Locking up the office or shop at the end of the day
– Using EFTPOS/credit card facilities
– Using CRM systems
– Inducting a new employee
– Using the photocopier
– Company email procedures/etiquette

How to set up and implement systems

It is no use having systems if no-one knows where to find the information. That’s why in my businesses, we use Google Sites to create our Operations Manual and I highly recommend this option to the businesses we work with. Google Sites gives you the ability to control access to the overall manual and to specific procedures. It has the functionality to add users, collaborators and team members to the site. As it is online, it can be easily shared internally with staff, as well as with outside parties, like your bookkeeper or outsourcing partners for example.

As well as making sure information about systems is easily accessible and shareable, it is important to have a process in place for creating new systems and procedures. Most businesses are constantly evolving and needing new or updated systems as a result. This is another reason why an online repository such as Google Sites is fantastic, as it allows the Operations Manual for your business to be a regularly updated living document.

Of course, it isn’t just enough to point your team in the direction of the Operations Manual and leave them to it. Take the time to train your team on the systems and processes that are critical to their role. And don’t forget to encourage your team members to provide feedback if they feel any systems aren’t working well and could be improved.

Do you use systems in your business? What benefits have you experienced as a result? If you haven’t got clearly communicated systems, what is the biggest roadblock to developing these processes?

We’d love to speak about how we could help your business to improve its performance. Contact Bx – info@b-x.com.au

Find and Attract New Clients in 5 Quick Steps

How many of us are so busy doing a fantastic job for our current clients, that we find we don’t have good systems for getting new clients?

Here you will learn how to: Find and Attract New Clients in 5 Quick Steps

The key to a sustainable and scalable business is the implementation of systems to grow our business. Good systems allow us to spend more time delivering to our clients and less time chasing new business.

New business is the lifeline to building a business. Below are five quick steps you can implement in your business straight away to grow your business by finding and attracting new customers.

1. Remember the saying, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail? Yes, I know it’s cliché, but many of us have very limited time, so we often are light on in the planning stages of marketing. I have found that even a rough plan of the next 3-6 months of strategies can give you a timeline of success and actually take a bit of pressure off. If you don’t have any marketing in place, just get 3-5 things that you can do over the next 3-6 months. Then, commit to getting two of them off the ground in the next 30 days.

2. Social Media and Online Marketing – if this is alien to you and freaks you out a bit…don’t worry, most people are in this boat. The rise of the internet and social media over the past decade is phenomenal and to most is now the norm. However, start talking social media marketing, and the majority are still fairly vague on this.

Where to start? That’s the question to ask yourself. Firstly, there are plenty of companies that can help you on this, and if you think you may need some help…get help. They are usually very cost effective.

There are three main (and easy) way to advertise online:

 

  1. Google Adwords
  2. Facebook advertising
  3. LinkedIn Advertising

If you haven’t done either, start with Facebook advertising, as these are easy to setup and are relatively low cost. Google Adwords and LinkedIn Advertising are also great options. Start with Facebook and once you’ve mastered that progress to the others, or hire in help to get you started.

Follow these three key rules of thumb:

  1. Start with a low budget and do cost per click (CPC)
  2. Always use a leads page (like Lead Pages.net), don’t direct the straight to your website
  3. Build your client list/ database, don’t build your likes.

3. Get to where they are! There are hundreds of ways to get face to face with your potential customers – whether you’re in retail, service based or otherwise. Here are my quick tips:

  1. Cafes/ fast food – do your customers catch the bus or train? Often potential customers are racing past your shop and boarding buses and trains. Stand up at the station or bus stop and hand out some compelling offers to entice them in
  2. Trade Shows – there are tradeshows for everything these days, go online and find out where you customers are looking for the next big ticket to help them…and make your business that big ticket!
  3. Sporting events – when the sporting event ends…thousands file out of the event. Make them head to your business with a limited time only compelling offer.
  4. Set up a temporary stall/ information booth in a shopping centre – let’s face it, most people shop. So, make yourself visible and available to you potential customers by either selling your products, giving away samples, or providing information on your business/ services to those that show an interest.
  5. Strategic partnerships….read on to point #4!

4. Strategic Partnerships – these are a great way to align yourself with the right similar but not competing organisations. Here are the quick action steps for creating a strategic partnership:

  1. WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) – do a quick list of what YOU could offer THEM. Strategic partnerships only work when both parties feel like they are getting value out of the partnership.
  2. Identify your potential strategic partnerships – create a profile of who your perfect strategic partner may look like. Now list 20 potentials that match this
  3. Contact your top 20 – book a meeting with each and discuss your strategic partnership. Make sure you have a list of the top benefits for THEM. The more you focus on THEM, the stronger the partnership. Remember you listed them as your top 20, so they will be able to deliver to you, make sure you can deliver to them.
  4. The next steps are all about implementation and follow-up:
    • Lock in 2-3 opportunities with you SP
    • Communicate to your team and the SP’s team – excite and entice both sides to the opportunities.
    • Develop systems to help you manage and review the partnership
    • Have a tool to measure the results. Systemise this.
    • Review the partnership and the results and iterate as required

5. Direct Marketing – okay, I know this is old school, but sometimes old school works. I will give you an example. One of my business is an IT/web-based business. We have an awesome app for hospitality businesses that allows them to place their supplier orders for all their suppliers. It has been hugely popular. We had inside information that a huge multi-national chain was changing one of their suppliers and we wanted to provide our app to this chain. We didn’t have email addresses for these businesses, phone calls would have been time consuming, and we couldn’t drive around the country doing face to face meetings. The best option was a direct mailout through the post. With postal addresses widely available, it was easy to create the mailmerge and pump out the advertising, directly mailed to each business.

Rule of thumb – find out who your target market is, and if you can’t get in front of them, snail mail, ain’t a bad option!

Do you have a story to share about how you have found new clients? Or are you struggling to build your business? We’d love to speak about how we could help your business to move beyond this blip into success. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or email us info@b-x.com.au 

Want to Accelerate Your Business? Outsourcing Could be the Secret.

It’s a common problem that all business owners face at some point – how to get everything done in a limited amount of time without sacrificing their own quality of life. When your business is growing and you have more to do, but not necessarily more team members to help to do the work, it can be easy to become overwhelmed.

The answer to this problem is simple. As soon as your attention is being consumed away from sales and customer service, pause and think about where YOUR time is most valuable. For any business owner, that time is best spent on growing your customer base and nurturing leads. Any tasks that distract you from that focus are prime targets for outsourcing.

Outsourcing also allows business owners to manage growth in a scalable and cost effective manner. When a task – say bookkeeping – is taking your time away from more valuable tasks, but you don’t have the need for a permanent internal resource, outsourcing is the perfect interim solution to manage this in-between period of business growth. After all, the cost of an employee is more than just their salary – you also need to factor in additional costs like insurance, superannuation, office space and IT infrastructure. Suddenly a contractor’s hourly rate can become a lot more reasonable! Then once your business has grown further, there may be a tipping point when it makes sense to create a dedicated internal role. Outsourcing allows you to dial this capacity up and down in a scalable way that meets the unique needs of your business.

What to Outsource

Essentially, you should consider outsourcing any function that distracts your attention from sales and growing your business. Here’s a list of a few ideas to get you started:
– Bookkeeping
– Graphic design
– Data entry
– Rostering and payroll

– Email and calendar management
Social media management
Marketing

Depending on the skill set required, you can find excellent outsourcing solutions both within Australia and internationally. There are a number of websites, such as Upwork, that can connect you with a range of freelancers with different skills, as well as companies that specialise in managing these relationships for businesses. As well as searching online, don’t forget to ask your network for any recommendations and referrals.

10 tips to successfully manage outsourcing relationships

1. Define what you want to achieve and the required skills and resources

2. Know your desired results
3. Complete due diligence: ask to see portfolios and samples, check references and so forth
4. Know your budget, but don’t select only on price
5. Clearly communicate expectations – use written contracts to document scope of work and expected standards
6. Set realistic timeframes
7. Regularly monitor performance and set agreed performance milestones
8. Ensure copyright for any original work, such as design work, writing, computer code and so forth, is passed on to your business upon payment

9. Get legal advice to protect your business from any wrong doing by contractors
10. Start with small projects and increase the scope when your outsourcing partners have proven they can satisfactorily deliver

Have you used contractors to outsource non-core business functions? What benefits have you experienced as a result? If you are reluctant to outsource, what are the concerns that are stopping you? We’d love to speak about how we could help your business to improve its performance.  Email info@b-x.com.au or phone 1300068229

How to be more decisive in your business

How to be more decisive in your business

Everyone struggles with making decisions. There can be a lot at stake, especially when it comes to making business decisions but these high stakes are exactly why your business needs someone decisive at the helm.

The 3 traits of a decisive person

Focused – A decisive person has their eye on what’s best for the business in the long-run, not just what will benefit them tomorrow or what will be best for them personally.

Confident – Once they make their decision, they stick by it. This doesn’t mean they can’t admit that they may have chosen the wrong path, but they are confident that they were convinced their choice was the best decision at the time.

Well-prepared – They are ready for the consequences of their decisions, whether they are positive or negative. They’ve thought their decision through completely.

So how do we cultivate those traits?

  • Be educated: know everything there is to know about your business so that you know how your decision will affect every department. Be across the money, the sales, the administration, even if you don’t usually dabble in those areas.
  • Speak to others: you are not the first person to ever make a difficult decision. There is no need to pour your heart out to everyone you meet, but speaking to fellow business owners and finding out what they decided in similar positions can help you to discover the pros and cons to your possible decisions.
  • Explore your options: write down a list of pros and cons for your decisions, conduct ‘what if?’ scenarios. Do what you can to explore every option fully, leaving no stone unturned. There’s no need to overthink it and create mountains out of molehills but being thorough is essential.
  • Have a long-term goal: sometimes, decisions can cause setbacks in the immediate future but will actually benefit your business in the long run. Having the ability to look past the ‘immediate’ to work towards a bigger goal can help you to make the right decision, rather than the easy one.

Whatever you choose, be committed to your choice. Your business needs someone who is decisive and committed to making the right, and sometimes difficult, decisions. You can guarantee that you will make mistakes; it’s part of the process of decision-making.

If your business has some difficult choices ahead of it, we find it’s better not being done is isolation. Like-minded peers can be great sounding boards, have you thought about joining one of our supportive business networking groups?  Visit http://bxbusinessnetworking.com.au/

 

Small Steps For Big Goals

Small Steps for Big Goals

How often are we told to ‘dream big’, ‘reach for the sky’ and ‘make your dreams a reality’? These overused phrases may stir up motivation for some people, but even with the inspiration, it can be hard to know where to begin and how to tick off those big goals on our list. For many of us, our goals dissolve into failures. So how can we stop this cycle of dreaming big and failing big?

The Problem?

It is natural to be scared of big goals. Seeing them written down on a piece of paper is scary – because you’ll actually have to try and do something about it. We become unlikely to achieve the big goals, because we don’t want to start. We’re all lazy – it’s a common trait. Big goals require a lot of work and we shy away from that.

Most of all, we’re scared of failing. The bigger the goal, the bigger the failure and the more we will have to go back to our family and friends with our tail between our legs.

Despite our fear of failure and our laziness, we continue to write down big goals and we continue to ignore our most obvious path to success – small goals.

How do we fix it?

Most big goals will have obvious smaller steps you can take to start moving towards success. Think of your big exams at the end of high school; no one in their right mind would have walked into the exam room with absolutely no knowledge of what they were about to face. There were preliminary exams to prepare you, study days and classes, not to mention the 13 years of schooling prior to putting your pen to paper on that day, leading you towards the big goal of passing your final exams.

Each day you came to school, ready to learn, was a day that you moved closer towards that goal. It seems simple – that’s because it is.

Many of us tend to get in the bad habit of performing one big push at the end to try and get our goals over the line. Unfortunately, most of us fail when we do that. It’s actually a lot easier and more effective to do a lot of little things more often.

Smaller goals also work in favour of our fear of failure. The possibility of failing a small goal is much less daunting than failing a big one and there is always the option of trying again tomorrow. When we do succeed, which is more likely since these small goals are attainable, we celebrate our wins and gain the momentum we need to tackle the big goal.

Write down your big goal and then spend some time breaking it down; what can you do over the course of a year, a quarter, a month or a day to keep moving towards that goal.

A new mindset

At the end of the day, our big and small goals need to work together to get us where we want to go. Our big goals may not get off the ground if we don’t put the work in and get momentum but our small goals won’t get us to where we want to go if we don’t have a big goal so we can see where we’re going.

One of the major ways to achieve your business goals is to ensure you’re kept accountable. It can be informal – such as with a peer in your networking sphere – or more structured through a mentor. Start achieving your business goals, get in touch with Bx on 1300 068 229, or find out more about what we do here http://www.businessforlife.com.au/ProgramFindOutMore 

 

Time to Ditch the Fear of Failure

Time to ditch the fear of failure

Everyone views failures differently – what might be a triumph for one could be a major disappointment for another. You may have experienced this in school while your classmates shielded their results from one another, knowing that everyone’s standards are slightly different. Failure has a lot of negative connotations but perhaps surprisingly, it can be taken positively too.

There are many, many sufferers of atychiphobia – the fear of failure – but we can safely bet that, if you’ve embarked on your business journey, you are not one of these people. Those who are scared of failure often don’t even try at all, in case failure rears its head.

Realistically, failure is rife in the business world. Running from it may mean that you miss out on a lot of opportunities for your business to grow. It’s also not healthy to run head first into every opportunity recklessly, without considering the implications. As with everything, approaching failure is an art and requires a great deal of balance.

You will fail…..get used to it.

It’s undeniable! Growing a business comes with its own unique set of risks, meaning that failure is definitely on the cards.

In 1955, two men created a type of putty which was intended to be wallpaper cleaner. They seriously misjudged the demand and ended up with a product that seemed to be a huge failure. By chance and a few convenient connections, the product ended up on the table at a nursery school where it was an instant hit. The children loved it and found it a much better material to use when they were moulding their imaginations into something physical. The product became a huge success, so much so that there isn’t anyone alive who doesn’t know the name Play-Doh and associate the brand with happy memories.

Failure doesn’t always directly lead to a major success as it did in the case of Play-Doh and you can’t always physically use your failures. You can, however, always use the things you learn from your failure.

What doesn’t kill you……

We’re sure you’ve heard every failure cliché under the sun. We all know that failure is supposed to make those successes even sweeter. We know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and we know that failure is just another word for experience. The most frustrating thing about these clichés? They’re all true, to some extent. So, how do we start taking them seriously?

The best thing you can do for your business is to take failure as it comes and not get knocked down and permanently defeated. There’s no need to glorify failure – we all know that failing is disappointing and demoralising – but there is a need to treat it like the lesson that it is. Dusting yourself off from failure means that you’re giving yourself another chance to get it right, maybe not next time, or the time after that but at some point down the track. It takes time to look at failure as a positive, but your business will thank you for it.

There is no denying that failure is scary, but using the failure to grow your business is a true art. If you’re ready to master the art, we would love to hear from you. Call Bx on 1300 068 229, or find out more about what we do here http://www.businessforlife.com.au/ProgramFindOutMore

Does Rejection Make Your Business Stronger?

Does rejection make your business stronger?

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’ll know that having clients choose your competitors is part-and-parcel of the job – even the biggest and seemingly successful businesses in the world come up against clients who will choose someone else over them. So what happens when you come up against rejection and what do you do next? Let’s find out:

A few bad apples don’t need to spoil the bunch…..

Rejection needs to be expected. It happens! Maybe it’s a fault in your business or maybe it’s a hang up on your potential client’s side. Either way, expect there to be a few bad apples along the way and don’t get too hung up on it or take it personally. It’s important to have long-term goals too. Coming face-to-face with rejection can be debilitating if you’re not sure where to go from here. If you have a goal to acquire 20 new clients this year, it becomes easier to look beyond the one rejection and move on to achieve your goals.

Keep the conversation open…..

Just because your potential client has said no this time, it doesn’t mean they’ll say no next time. Any number of things could happen in between now and then causing them to return to you, so you want to make sure the relationship you have begun stays positive and isn’t terminated just because they choose someone else. Acting negatively towards the client and rejecting them in return significantly slims down the chance that they’ll return to you next time. Treating them mean to keep them keen might work in the dating world but it won’t go down well in the business world.

Ask for feedback and take it on board…..

Perhaps it was your pitch that didn’t quite hit the mark or maybe your competitors are simply offering something better. You’ll never know if you don’t ask. There’s no need to be overbearing; a simple, kind question to see what their decision was based on can be very telling, even without pressing for too many details. If there’s something you can change or improve upon based on their feedback, take note and take action. It could mean you come up against less rejection later on.

Celebrate your successes…..

Rejection comes around often, but so do successes. Remember your successes often and feel free to pat yourself on the back without shame! Note what works well and keep it all in mind when you do encounter rejections. The rejection shouldn’t defeat your drive in your business, so have a collection of success stories on hand to draw on and boost your morale.

Rejection might seem like a door is slamming in your face but it may actually push you in a different direction, toward more success.

If you’re ready to start bouncing back from rejection and turn it into a success, we’d love to hear your business story and help you to move forward from here. Call Bx on 1300 068 229, or find out more about what we do here http://www.businessforlife.com.au/ProgramFindOutMore

 

How to Network Without The Icky Factor

How to Network Without The Icky Factor

Matt Alderton, Bx, Business for life, networkingDoes the idea of “Networking” conjure visions of eating bad canapés and lurching from one uncomfortable and superficial conversation to the next?

Have you ever attended a “Networking” event and felt like everyone was just in a big race to see who could hand out the most business cards first?

I have. And that is just plain “Icky.”

In fact, a scientific study recently featured in the Harvard Business Review has proven that professional networking actually makes people feel dirty.

Yep, seriously… it makes people feel physically dirty – like they want to take a shower afterwards!

Researchers suggest this is because we generally think about morality in terms of cleanliness and most of the time, professional networking feels very “contrived” and it increases people’s feelings of inauthenticity and immorality (hence the whole “feeling dirty” thing).

That’s why, even though we HerBusiness gives members loads of opportunities to connect with others  – we are definitely NOT about that kind of “Icky” Networking.

We showed that kind of networking the door years ago. What the same study DID find is that Networking had a positive association with job performance.

That means, whilst it can be great for your business in terms of winning new business, making useful connections and expanding your reach, most of the time you’re going to feel pretty uncomfortable with it.

So, how can you get all the benefits of networking without the “icky-ness” factor?

Look for organisations that offer alternatives.

Instead of hyped up, short term meet and greets, seek out interactions that have depth, authenticity and a good dose of practical advice and humour thrown in.

You’ll be creating relevant and vibrant connections with other business owners who will be good for your business – either as valued clients, suppliers or cheerleaders.

I like to think of the word network means “support team”.

Look for networks low on “Icky” and high on real conversations, solid advice and wholehearted support.

I like the way that Corryn Barakat of Milk and Love explained a meeting that she really liked…

“It’s the most grounding and invigorating forum I’ve attended as a Small Business Owner. All of the attendees provided useful points of view I hadn’t previously considered, and the size of the session means it felt intimate – like a group of your best friends getting together over coffee!”

So, look for a community where you can get real, valuable support from like-minded business owners.

Suzi Dafnis is the CEO of HerBusiness, which teaches women business owners how to market, operate and growth their business. Learn more at herbusiness.com/about

What Kind Of Influence Do You Have?

In business, as in the wider world, there are two main groups of people: those who are positive influencers and those who are negative. It’s often easy to assign those labels to people we know – there are probably faces swimming in front of your eyes right now as you think about all the different influencers within your business – however, it’s just as important to be considering which category you fall into.

Top 5 characteristics of a negative influencer:

  1. Has a passive aggressive attitude
  2. Only does what is required, never going above and beyond expectations
  3. Focuses on the negative aspects of any/every situation
  4. Is easily (and vocally) jealous of the opportunities others receive
  5. Is looking to bring others down or pick holes in their achievements

Negative influences in your business – whether the attitude is coming from you or someone else – can greatly decrease the productivity of your team. Negative attitudes are almost contagious, and by letting them inside your business you’re inviting crankiness, unhappiness and discontentedness to run riot. Everyone has their bad days, but when those bad days turn into weeks or months, it might be time to get to the core of the issue, re-evaluate and work towards turning the attitude around.

Top 5 characteristics of a positive influencer:

  1. Is looking to inspire and enable others to reach their goals
  2. Supports people through the exciting times as well as the difficult times
  3. Helps others to correct mistakes and has encouraging words
  4. Comes in with a positive attitude and a smile
  5. Goes the extra mile whenever they can

Much like negative attitudes, positive attitudes can also be contagious. We all feed off each others’ energy in business, so it’s important to have an energy that is conducive to getting work done. A positive attitude can lead us to have better strategies when facing challenges and making effective decisions.

If you’re a positive influencer – good news! You get to keep doing what you’re doing. If you’ve discovered some hater characteristics within yourself, it might be time to get to the root of the issue and work towards becoming a positive influence within your business.

In business, attitude is everything. Through our Business for Life program, we help business owners from across Australia build a toolbox of skills that they can use to grow their success. We’d love to chat about how we could help you. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.