Could Outsourcing be the Secret to Accelerating Your Business Growth?

January 06, 2016
blog, Operations, Outsourcing
1 Comment

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 mana
ge 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. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.

Creating A Lead Magnet

November 24, 2015

Lead Magnets

Want more email subscribers – and more leads? The single best way to get them is to offer a lead magnet – a free incentive for joining your email list. Lead magnets are also called “sign up incentives”, “sign up offers”, “ethical bribes”, “freemiums”, “content upgrades”, and many other terms. They can be a report in PDF format, a series of emails (aka an autoresponder), a coupon, or even a free half hour of consulting – though we’ll get into all that in more detail later. For now, just know

Lead magnets can come in many forms and formats
Adding a lead magnet can double your opt-in rate
Lead magnets don’t have to take a month to create

The more, the merrier

Already got a lead magnet? Don’t stop reading! For those of you who already have a lead magnet on your site, the next best way to grow your email list is to add a second lead magnet. You can use the second lead magnet to test against your current lead magnet, or use your second lead magnet near related content. For example, say you have a lead magnet about the best tools to use near a blog post about tools, and you have a lead magnet about strategies near a post about strategies. Relevancy is everything in marketing, especially online marketing, so adding these related lead magnets can significantly increase your opt-in if you do them right.

How to choose the topic for your lead magnet

The first thing to do is to choose the right topic for your lead magnet. Get that right, and half the battle is won. There are three essential questions you have to answer to choose a topic for your lead magnet.

What topics do your ideal customers or clients want to know about?
What topics would be easiest for you to create a lead magnet about?
What content format would be the best way to deliver that information?

Figuring out what your customers really want to know about is a big topic, but don’t let that scare you. It’s actually pretty easy. You can find out what your ideal audience wants to know by asking them with surveys . Or you can see how they behave on social media (what they like and don’t like) with tools like BuzzSumo. Or you can visit forums and LinkedIn groups and other places online where your audience gathers. Even one or two hours spent listening in on what your ideal audience is saying about your niche will give you plenty of ideas for great lead magnet topics. Look for problems they’re really struggling with, common questions, new areas of interest, or topics that are controversial.

BuzzSumo will show you which pieces of content have been post popular, either via a keyword search or for a website.

The next step is to take that list of potential topics, and choose just one that you can easily make into a lead magnet. Many of you will immediately think of writing this lead magnet, but if you’re not so big on writing, I’ve got really good news: Lead magnets don’t have to be written. They also don’t have to be long.

Longer is not better

Some of us have made the mistake of thinking that hundred-page ebooks or detailed, lengthy online courses would work best as a lead magnet. Often, they don’t. I once spent nearly six months working on a detailed, highly valuable research project that I later used as a lead magnet. It did not do any better than a different lead magnet I wrote in two days. Ugh. Spend no more than a week creating your lead magnet. Don’t get sucked into making it into a massive, month-long project. Give yourself at most a week, and just knock out that lead magnet in a week (or better, in 2-3 days). It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to get done. This also definitely applies to those of you who have a lead magnet, but aren’t getting the conversions you want. If your opt-in rate for your site is less than 5% (and you’re using a pop-up, aka a “lightbox”), then it’s time to test a different lead magnet, or to try adding one or two content related lead magnets, as mentioned above. Anything less than a 5% opt-in rate on your site means you either need a better lead magnet, or you haven’t added opt-in boxes in the right places.

The best lead magnets deliver value

Follow the value. That’s often what makes for a high-converting lead magnet. What can you show, teach or give to your potential subscribers that will give them unbelievable value – an piece of information or something else so good they will rush to finish typing in their email address? That’s a winning lead magnet.

Be specific

Don’t promise something general like “How to Make More Money”. That’s not specific enough to make someone’s heart skip a beat. But “5 Ways to Make $500 This Weekend With No Upfront Costs”? That’s specific enough to stop people in their tracks. The #1 place to be specific is in the headline of your lead magnet. Don’t buzz by this: Spend at least 15 or 20 minutes writing several different headlines. Then go with the one that is the most specific and the most emotionally compelling. To get a score on how emotionally compelling your title is, try the Emotional Marketing Headline Analyzer.

The title or headline for your lead magnet is really important. Use a tool like the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer to see if you’ve got a title that will get people’s attention.

Optimize your opt-in button copy

You want something better than just “Subscribe” on your button. The copy on the button is called a “call to action”, and it’s super important. Get the button copy right, and you could see twice as many subscribers than if you just use “Subscribe”. Ideally, you would test the button copy, but if you’ve got less than 2,000 unique visitors to your site a month, you may not have enough traffic to test. The next best thing is to just give the button copy your very best shot. You can try the classic copywriting trick of repeating the headline copy on the button; this can work very well. Or you can shorten it a bit and have the button say something like “Download the report” or “View the video” or “Get tickets”. Basically, the construction here is verb (“view”, “download”, “get”, etc) plus the short name for your lead magnet (your “report”, your “video”, your “course”, etc). That’s a great start until you can get enough traffic to run an A/B test.

Which format will they love?

Now that you know enough to be dangerous, here are 19 different lead magnet formats. You don’t have to pick just one (because it’s good to have more than one lead magnet, remember?), but do pick the format you think your ideal audience will like best. Some audiences are words, some like videos. Others tend to want to printable cheat sheets and checklists. Hopefully, your research has given you some clues about what formats your audience will respond to.

19 different kinds of lead magnets

1) A video course that can be accessed all at once.

2) A video course delivered via autoresponder, say for 10 days.

3) An infographic so useful they’ll want to tape it to their refrigerator or their office wall.

4) A calendar (like a gardening to do list calendar).

5) A gear list.

This one is great for affiliates. If your niche is almost entirely online (like SEO services, for example), your lead magnet “gear list” could be an “essential tools” list that includes plugins and other online tools. Resource lists are similar to this, but work better in some niches. For example, a resource list of your favorite freelancers or Fiverr gigs. Buyer’s guides are another twist on this type of lead magnet.

6) A checklist for how to do something that needs to be done more than once, or that seems complicated. Cheat sheets are also very popular, as are flow charts or process charts.

7) A how-to ebook in PDF format (this is the classic lead magnet. I’m sure you’ve seen them online). If you offer something like this, make it more valueable than a blog post, even a really, really great blog post. Offer something just barely good enough to believe, like how to do something everyone in your niche wants to do, but how to do it for less than half as much money as they think it will cost, or how to do it in less than half as much time.

8) A half hour consultation with you. This one is excellent for coaches.

9) A coupon (if you’re a retailer or a local business, this is for you). Coupons can be for 10% off, for free shipping, for a free cup of coffee… you get the idea.

How Lucky Brand promotes it’s email list. Though, if you’ve read other posts of ours, you know they’re probably asking for too much information in this opt-in form.

10) Free tickets to a special event (best for local businesses).

11) Free samples. This isn’t for everyone, but if you can affordably ship a small sample to people, (like a guest soap bar, or a packet of seeds, or golf ball tees), this can be a great way to get people’s email address AND their mailing address.

12) Give access to a free membership site, or to a private Facebook group.

13) Have a quiz or poll on your site. Only give people access to the answers or the results if they give you their email address.

14) Offer a free trial. This one’s for all you software as a service folks.

15) Offer a giveaway or let people enter a contest or sweepstakes.

16) Offer access to a webinar, or a recorded webinar or workshop (or any other audio file).

17) Create an online tool, and require email registration to use it. Online assessments can also qualify as free tools.

The very popular online keyword research tool MajesticSEO requires registration (ie, an email address) to use it.

18) Create a plugin and require an email to download or install it.

19) Offer a “swipe file” – a collection of templates that people can tailor to their own use. For example, an email marketing swipe file, a query letter swipe file, or an affiliate’s advertising swipe file. Swipe files were traditionally kept by copywriters, so they could keep track of what competitors were doing, and save samples of great ideas to reuse later.

Extra credit

This isn’t for everyone, but some marketers have found an elegant way to use their lead magnets as part of their sales funnel. They offer a high value lead magnet that builds a lot of trust in the person who downloads it. Then, after they’ve impressed their prospect with how much they can help them, they offer a low priced product (say, $7) that solves one major problem the lead magnet didn’t address. The promotion for that $7 is embedded at the end of the lead magnet. Then that $7 product leads into a higher priced product, and the prospect continues through the sales funnel, learning and upgrading as they go. Some people also use those $7 products as a way to segment their list. You could, too.

The article has been sourced from October 16, 2014 by Pam Neely on http://blog.getresponse.com/19-ideas-killer-lead-magnets.html

Technology

Technology has begun to rule our lives, yes? My first mobile phone was a Nokia 1610 (in 1996!), there were no apps on it, no Facebook or other social media was around. Get this, email first started being used in the mid 1990’s! Now, I know I am sounding old here, but I’m only in my 30’s and I can still remember being at uni and in the workforce, and not using email, and not having Facebook! I can still remember having an alarm clock by my bed and reading a book before going to sleep!
With the rise of technology, our time is now dominated with an OPPORTUNITY to be connected at every instance of the day and night. To be purposeful and have the best day, week, month, year and life every – you need to be the master of your time, and therefore use technology and NOT let it use you!
Here are my top tech tips:
1. Email – this is a quick communication tool. It is not designed to rule your day.

• Check it maximum twice daily
• Don’t let your inbox be your to-do list. Don’t action items from your inbox, create a task instead.
• Create rules/ filters to file/ archive messages that clutter your inbox
• All actionable items in an email should be created as a task.

2. Embrace the Technology, it should increase your productivity, not take up your time

• Check out my blog on ‘The Top Tech Tips’.

3. Task Management – There are heaps of options for managing your tasks. Without a doubt, the hands-down best app I have seen and used for managing your tasks is…Asana. This has revolutionised our workplace and team communication. And even better at a base level it’s free!

4. Outsource – many people think that outsourcing is expensive, but if you know where to go it really isn’t. Here are some options for outsourcing and an idea of what this may cost:

• Bookkeeping – you may do all your accounts, or have people that do this in-house, but can some of it, or all of it be outsourced? The answer is probably yes. One of my businesses has been providing an outsourcing solution for all your bookkeeping needs, and provides bookkeeping solutions from around $100 per week. You can also check out Odesk, bookkeepers on Odesk usually work on an hourly rate of about $6-$15 per hour (depending on experience).
• Graphic Design – there are thousands of graphic designers on Upwork (formerly Odesk). Don’t pay a fortune, when you don’t have to. If you have a good idea of what you need, artwork can cost you from as little as $20!
• Data Entry – We get all our admin/ data entry work done for many of our businesses through Upwork (formerly Odesk). It’s not only cost effective, but is done professionally and quickly.
• Rostering & Payroll – one of my businesses is an online rostering and payroll company, we serve thousands of clients, who opt for a no-fuss, cloud based solution for their rostering & payroll for their businesses. What used to take them days a week, is approved in minutes and actually saves them money.
• Personal Assistants – one of the best things an entrepreneur or business owner can do is have someone manage their email. There are many options with outsourcing this, from using someone on Upwork (formerly Odesk), or using an affiliate company in Australia, such as Ms Virtual Assistant.

It is important to embrace technology to serve us, not let it distract, delay or reduce your productivity.

Do you have a story to share about Technology? We’d love to speak about how we could help your business to move forward with Technology and have great success. Call Bx on 1300 068 229 or find out about our Business for Life Program.

Find and Attract New Clients in 5 Quick Steps

May 15, 2015
blog, Marketing, Sales
0 Comments

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:

Google Adwords
Facebook advertising
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:

Start with a low budget and do cost per click (CPC)
Always use a leads page (like Lead Pages.net), don’t direct the straight to your website
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:

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
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!
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.
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.
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:

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.
Identify your potential strategic partnerships – create a profile of who your perfect strategic partner may look like. Now list 20 potentials that match this
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.
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 our=t 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 find out about our Business for Life Program.

Your Search For: social media