Here’s what these changes mean for business owners and how to ensure your emails are more likely to land in the right place.

Understanding The New Rules

Demanding the Sender to Authenticate

Google and Yahoo will enforce email authentication protocols—like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC—for all sent mail. This is tech talk for confirming your identity to providers and protecting your reputation by showing you are a real company and not sending out suspicious emails. It’s the digital equivalent of an ID check for every message you send.

Zero Tolerance for SPAM

Mailbox providers are battling a tidal wave of spam that erodes user trust. By making authentication mandatory, they provide a shield against scammers, ensuring that the floodgates to user inboxes are managed, not melted.

The Why Behind the Changes

Protecting User Privacy and Experience

The digital landscape demands that providers like Google and Yahoo be the keepers of the gates, ensuring customer inboxes remain pristine. These changes are a direct response to the overwhelmingly negative effects of unsolicited, fraudulent, and pesky emails.

Authentication isn’t just about managing access; it’s about building trust. These initiatives aim to elevate the standards for legitimate senders, ensuring their messages are less likely to be confused with spam.

How It Impacts Your Business

The Line in The Sand: Legitimate vs. Spam

With these new requirements, your email’s ability to reach your audience is at risk. Mislabeling as spam—or worse yet, being filtered or blocked altogether—can devastate your communication strategy and, ultimately, your bottom line.

The Credibility Equation

Your ability to satisfy these demands speaks volumes about how your business is perceived. If you can’t—or don’t—meet these minimal requirements, you might signal to providers (and, in turn, their users) that your email may be suspect.

Optimizing for Enhanced Deliverability

Revising Your Email Sending Strategy

Actively revising your approach to emailing is crucial. From tightening your permission policies to focusing on high-quality content, every email choice matters more than ever.

Technical Compliance

Ensuring your email systems are technically compliant with these new requirements is non-negotiable. This might involve updating your email-sending infrastructure or configurations. Tools like HubSpot can guide and automate much of this process.

Engagement as a Conscientious Sender

Ensuring your audience is engaged with your content signifies to providers’ algorithms that your emails are wanted. Practices like regular list pruning and providing clear unsubscribe options are as important as ever.

Monitoring and Adapting

Will My Emails Reach Their Destination?

You may be left in the dark. If your emails are bouncing or blocked from a recipient, your email provider will notify you. But, if your emails are going to SPAM, it may take you some time to figure it out. Suppose you have a CRM system such as Hubspot or Salesforce. In that case, you can more easily monitor your deliverability, adjust your strategies based on performance, and ensure you stay in the good graces of mailbox providers.

Continuous Improvement

As the email environment changes, so must your approach. Staying informed of best practices and provider policies will help you evolve and fortify your emailing strategy over time.

Conclusion

These new email authentication requirements are significant steps in the battle against spam. They also allow business owners to reaffirm their trustworthiness in the digital space. By embracing these changes wholeheartedly, you’re not just securing the delivery of your emails—you’re also ensuring your place as a conscientious and reputable member of the online business community.

Remember, this is not just about technical compliance; it’s about demonstrating the integrity of your business and the value of your communications. So, take the time to understand and implement these changes. Your customers and your bottom line will thank you.

If you want to learn more about the new email requirements, contact Power Marketing for a free consultation.

The post The New Email “Epidemic”: Google and Yahoo Change the Rules for Email Delivery appeared first on Power-Marketing.

The CEO and founder of the Marketing AI Institute, Paul Roetzer, compares the existing AI tools to a team of skilled interns for any task that can do large parts of the legwork to increase your overall efficiency.

Essentially, digital marketing is too nuanced to be replaced by A.l., but AI can make digital agencies more efficient in executing strategy.

Here are the four significant limitations of AI in the digital marketing space:

AI Makes Mistakes
Artificial Intelligence can make mistakes. Understanding that AI is not perfect and prone to errors is crucial. AI is designed, trained, and maintained by humans who are not infallible. The algorithms used in AI systems are focused on large amounts of data, and if this data is biased or incorrect, the AI will make mistakes. The AI systems also learn from their experiences and improve over time, meaning they are subject to trial and error.

Also, remember that ChatGPT’s data was cut off in 2021, meaning the knowledge database doesn’t include news or events that have occurred since then. Therefore, ChatGPT doesn’t know about specific events, news articles, scientific advancements, or real-world developments after this date. Bard’s cutoff date is unknown, but current information is not in the knowledge database. Eventually, up-to-date information will be part of the model.

Expertise
AI will make digital marketing agencies leaner. Estimates are between 10% and 33% of knowledge-based workers will be displaced by AI But, GDP should increase by 7%. The digital marketers who are left will be able to put out more work more efficiently. Digital marketing agencies are staffed with specialists who have honed their skills in various areas, including SEO, Email Marketing, Content Development, CRM Management, Hosting, and Social Media.

AI can create an SEO plan, write and schedule social media posts, and help website developers with coding. Still, AI doesn’t understand the importance of trends in social media. For example, AI can’t keep up-to-date with the SEO algorithm, which is adjusted daily, and significant changes occur annually. AI can streamline some aspects of CRM management, like data entry and analysis. But building customer relationships, addressing complex issues, and strategizing for customer retention requires a human touch. In addition, developers need to review code on websites as there can be mistakes (see previous section).

Creativity and Emotion
Over-reliance on AI technology can lead to less collaboration and creativity among marketers. AI can create efficiencies in the development process and create images and content from only a prompt. But working with people gives a human touch to creativity that AI doesn’t have. Humans are unique in their capacity to feel complex emotions and translate those feelings into connections, an area where AI still needs to improve.

Ethical Concerns
There needs to be increased transparency in how AI gets its information. The creators of these services need to tell us how their models make decisions, which algorithms it uses, and how it processes data to create marketing strategies. This secrecy can lead to issues of accountability and trust.

The overuse of AI can lead to the potential misuse to manipulate emotions. For example, AI could deliver tailored messages that feed off a person’s insecurities or fears to convince them to buy a product or service. As a result, digial marketing companies depending on AI without human oversight may unknowingly operate deceptively.

The post With the Rise of AI, Do I Need a Digital Marketing Agency? appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic of discussion even before predictive text made it easier to write emails. As a society, we’ve been fascinated by the idea of machine learning. As a result, countless books, movies, and television shows have centered around AI.

ChatGPT, or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is the most recent example of artificial intelligence that has made massive waves in the news. And soon, Google will publicly release their answer to ChatGPT called Bard. These chatbots go far above anything you’re used to interacting with on a retail website. These bots have been relatively rudimentary in the past, leaving them unable to answer anything beyond basic questions. ChatGPT caused quite a stir when users saw an incredibly advanced ability to respond to questions.

These tools are fun to mess around with, but at the same time, be very powerful. They can have massive implications for how we approach essential industries like customer service, healthcare, scientific research, and even search results. Let’s explore what these tools are and how they work.

Open AI: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is trained on a massive amount of text data and uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses.

The model can be used for various tasks such as text completion, conversation generation, language translation, and more. ChatGPT works by using a type of deep learning called Transformer-based architecture. Transformer is an open-sourced neural network that Google open-sourced in 2017.

The model is trained on an extensive collection of text data to learn patterns and relationships between words and phrases.

Users write text in a chatbox and give directions on how they would like the response formatted. ChatGPT then generates an answer based on available information. Internal rules restrict these responses to avoid offensive topics and materials.

The output is generated word by word, where each word is selected based on the training data and the context of the prompt. The model uses an attention mechanism to weigh the importance of different input parts and generate a more coherent output.

The results are awe-inspiring. Users can ask ChatGPT to expand on previous points, reword the responses, and even include sources.

Google: Bard Chatbot

Bard is Google’s answer to ChatGPT. It is a conversational AI service that their Language Model powers for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) language generation technology. LaMDA was designed to be versatile and can be fine-tuned for a variety of language generation tasks. It can also generate text in multiple modalities, such as text, images, and sound—making it a powerful tool for creating dialogue-based applications.

Bard was released on a limited scale to testers on February 6th, 2023. It is expected to be released to the general public within a month. It builds its responses from information gathered from the internet.

The initial release will be powered by a lightweight version of LaMDA to save on computing power. Bard’s responses will be assessed for quality through user feedback as well as internal testing.

Bard functions much like ChatGPT in that the user enters a prompt into a chat window, and the AI answers instantaneously.

It’s still unknown how Bard will measure up to ChatGPT, as it is in the very early stages of release. We expect a large amount of feedback to be used to improve the service over time, but we won’t honestly know its potential until Bard is made public.

What Does All This Mean?

The ways ChatGPT and Bard will be used aren’t fully known. They are still very new to the market, and users are in the early phases of learning how to maximize their potential.

However, we know that AI has the potential to bring about significant changes in many areas of society. For instance, healthcare services could be revolutionized by enabling earlier and more accurate diagnoses of illnesses. In addition, customer service can be improved with 24/7 support that provides much better answers to questions/problems. Efficiency can also be enhanced for many industries, including manufacturing, transportation, and finance.

However, not all of the implications of AI are considered to be positive. It has the potential to automate many tasks and jobs, which could lead to individuals being replaced in their positions. While these improvements will help maximize the returns of a business, they might not necessarily be suitable in all circumstances. The efficiency capabilities of AI could lead to the automation of many tasks and jobs, which could result in job displacement and economic restructuring.

However, ChatGPT and Bard are used; they represent a massive step forward in technological capabilities.

The post Understanding ChatGPT and Bard: The Future of AI Chatbots appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Acemoglu, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been challenged on his premise. But, some important aspects need some unpacking. Real wages for workers have barely increased since the 1980s. Before the 1980s, the % of individuals with advanced business degrees who ran companies was 25%. Since then, workers’ wages have struggled to keep up with the inflation rate while the number of people with “MBA-like” degrees running companies has increased to 40%.  

Don’t get me wrong; I think advanced degrees are beneficial. My wife has an M.B.A., and it has served her well. So, I am not disparaging individuals with that degree. I am more annoyed with companies adding unexplainable fees or using overly complicated contracts to increase their bottom lines without adding value. 

One of the most common and regular offenders is AT&T. AT&T cable, phone, and cellular services have settled multiple class action lawsuits over the last ten years, totaling hundreds of millions in fines. I realize major corporations are often the target of class action lawsuits. But, the examples by AT&T get to my point. In August 2022, AT&T agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for adding a $1.99 monthly administrative fee to its phone customers for each additional phone line. Consequently, AT&T agreed to pay $14 million, which, let’s face it, doesn’t even qualify as a slap of the wrist for the mega-corporation. Other settled litigation against AT&T includes charging customers for unauthorized third-party services, advertising unlimited data plans, and slowing customers’ service as data usage increases.

Signs of M.B.A. Disease in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is complex. That’s why it’s easy to charge hidden fees or wrap them up in long-term agreements without a customer’s knowledge. If you are considering starting a digital marketing project or strategy (e.g., web development, SEO, Google Ads, etc.), here are a few items to help you avoid working with a company suffering from M.B.A. disease. 

Ownership of Your Website and Hosting: The issue I harp on the most is ensuring you own your website. I’ve met with potential clients who believed they owned their website, and when they attempted to move it to another company, they found out they didn’t own the website. So, if they wanted to leave, they had to build a completely new website or pay an additional fee to buy the website.   

Usually, the company building your website will also host your website for a monthly fee. With some digital marketing companies, if you attempt to move the website to another platform, they will add a fee. Since they host your website, they may hijack it and take it down if there is a dispute. Another covert tactic occurs when you try to move your website to another provider, and the company charges you to pack up the files and send them to the new company. Always ask:

1. Will I Own the Website?
2. If I move the website, how much does it cost?
3. What is the process for moving the website?

Fees for Payment Online: Not all online payment fees are bogus. However, a digital marketing company should have already factored that into the overall cost. So, if you are paying by A.C.H. or credit card, ask if there will be additional fees before you sign your contract.

Setup Fees: Setup fees will occur on almost every SEO, Google Ads, or email marketing campaign. In some cases, companies will charge exorbitant amounts for setup fees since the potential customer has no idea how much work goes into the elements of SEO, Google Ads, etc. Ask upfront if there will be a setup fee and what is involved. It’s also important to shop around and determine how much other companies charge for the same setup fees.

Auto-Renewing Contracts (A.K.A. Reading the Fine Print): Most companies use one-year or two-year contracts for services like SEO or hosting. Some digital marketing companies will have clauses buried in the legal agreement stating the contract will automatically renew without written notice. Auto-renewals can be a massive headache if you have to pay for an extra year or two of a service you don’t want because you didn’t send a written notice before the term ends.

Adding confusing legal language and unexplainable fees to agreements at some point became acceptable. Of course, every business has to monitor the numbers to maximize revenue. But more focus should be on retaining customers and expanding the product/services rather than deceiving people. 

The post What is M.B.A. Disease? Know the Signs appeared first on Power-Marketing.

This is where SEO has traditionally come in. Websites have been trying to manipulate the algorithm that determines these search results since we learned about the algorithm in the first place. Initially, this led to articles crammed with keywords, hoping they’d act like internet lighthouses, bringing in visitors.

Google has continually updated their algorithm for search results, sending SEO experts scrambling to stay ahead of the curve. Recently, Google has tried to reward useful content over robotic keywords simply peppered throughout headlines and paragraphs. This effort has just taken another huge step forward with Google’s new Helpful Content update.

We’ll dig into the specifics of this new update so you know exactly what to expect and how you can make it work for you.

What is Google’s Helpful Content Update?

As we said above, the purpose of this new update is for Google to get better at returning articles, videos, and other content that is actually beneficial to users. Content that it deems to have been written for search engines will be downgraded.

As stated by Google themselves:

“Google Search is always working to better connect people to helpful information. To this end, we’re launching what we’re calling the “helpful content update” that’s part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

The rollout of the Helpful Content update is set to begin the week of August 22nd, 2022 and could take up to two weeks to fully implement.

Users have become frustrated with articles that are obviously written with the sole purpose of ranking high in search results. These articles don’t offer value to readers or visitors, only serving to frustrate them as they continue to look for answers to their questions. This new update looks to correct that, which means many websites will see some drastic changes to their search rankings.

How Does the Helpful Content Update Impact Search Results?

Google’s system will automatically begin scanning websites, webpages, blogs, e-commerce listings, and more. They’ll be looking for content that is unhelpful to the user. Anything that doesn’t offer value will be negatively impacted, reflected by a much lower positioning in search engine results.

“Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content,” said Google.

Websites that have well-researched, informative articles that offer immediate value to users will be rewarded.

If you’ve spent a lot of time writing with SEO practices in mind, it’s well worth the effort to update your content. This classifier will run continuously. New websites will be assessed, as will existing websites. It might take a little time to regain your positive standing in search results, but it can be done by replacing unhelpful content geared toward the old algorithm with new, quality information.

How Can You Use the Helpful Content Update To Drive Traffic to Your Website?

In short: Write better content. That might sound reductive, but it’s the most straightforward way you can raise your search result rankings. Offer content that will satisfy users–the days of writing to please a computer are long gone.

Google provided some questions you can ask yourself to determine if the Helpful Content update will reward your website. Every time you answer “yes” is another step toward advantageous search result rankings.

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
• After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
• Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

This new update will greatly improve the experience of every Google user. And if you want to be there for the ride, you need to be sure your content provides value. Audit your existing content and update or delete anything that doesn’t clearly and sufficiently answer the question it is supposed to answer. Contact us to discover how we can help you with your Helpful Content.

The post What You Need To Know About Google’s Helpful Content Update appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Google Analytics has become the standard web analytics service used by companies worldwide to gain valuable insights into how people interact with their website.

First introduced in 2005, Google Analytics allows you to track a wide variety of metrics to assess the success of your website. These metrics feed into sales funnels and buyer personas and can direct strategic changes.

This is why Google’s announcement in October 2021 of a major overhaul sent shockwaves across the internet. Google Analytics 4 is the newest iteration of this longstanding and widely-used tool, introducing some considerable changes to its use and understanding.

We’ll explore these essential aspects of Google Analytics 4:

• What’s Different About Google Analytics 4?
• How Do I Set Up Google Analytics 4?
• How Do I Use Google Analytics 4?

What’s Different About Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a new property aiming to evolve digital measurements further. A property “is a set of Google Analytics reports and data for your website and/or app.”

The current form of Google Analytics focuses on a user’s sessions. GA4 is focused on users and events by processing each interaction as its own event. This provides metrics on usage instead of just traffic.

Universal Analytics is the engine that drives the current version of Google Analytics. This is being replaced by GA4, which allows administrators to get metrics on both websites and applications.

GA4 provides a more well-rounded view of the behavior of users.

The reports dedicated to sessions will still be available, but now you can dive deeper into specifics like engagement metrics.

The new insights provided by GA4 go beyond something as simple as page views (even though this is what we’ve been taught to value for years). But along with this learning curve, there will be more actionable metrics.

How Do I Set Up Google Analytics 4?

Universal Analytics will still be available until July 1st, 2023. There’s no need to panic and ditch all of your current analytics reports. However, setting up your GA4 account as soon as possible is recommended so you can get used to the new interface and start seeing the potential of the new functionalities.

Luckily, it’s straightforward to set up your GA4 account.

1. Log into your current Google Analytics account and click “Admin” in the lower left-hand corner.
2. Select your desired account and property.
3. Select “GA4 Setup Assistant”
4. A Setup Wizard will come up where you can click a button that says “Get Started.”
5. Click the “Create Property” button, and you’re all set!

How Do I Use Google Analytics 4?

Your new GA4 homepage will provide a quick overview of some important metrics:

• Where new users are coming from
• Your pages that are getting the most views
• Your campaigns that are performing the best

Use the search bar to ask specific questions such as “How many visits this year vs last year?” You can also search for specific reports, configurations, or functionality queries like “how to create a new report.”

Use the Realtime Report in the navigation bar to see events that occurred within the previous 30 minutes. You can even click “View user snapshot” to see where your current visitors are located and the devices they are using.

Life Cycle Reports explain how users enter the funnel and what they do once they are there.

The Analysis Hub is where you can get the truly impressive metrics of GA4. There are various techniques to choose from, which then automatically create their reports.

Numerous types of analyses can be run, including:

• Exploration
• Funnel
• Path
• Segment Overlap
• Cohort Analysis
• User Lifetime

The information gathered from these reports will provide a much clearer view of your users’ behavior.

The flexibility and expanded metrics make Google Analytics 4 an essential tool in any marketer’s toolbox. It might take a little bit to get used to the new interface, but take some time to explore the various reports and functionalities, and you’ll be better equipped to maximize your website and application to suit your users best.

Call Us to Get Prepared!!

The post Everything You Need to Know About Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Power-Marketing.

We can’t tell what will be coming in the future. But we can explain everything we know at this point. Arming yourself with up-to-date knowledge is the best way to calm nerves while also giving yourself the best chance at remaining healthy.

The Symptoms

Any possible symptoms of COVID-19 should be addressed with a self-quarantine. Keep yourself separated from friends and family. The symptoms evolve as the sickness progresses, but these are the initial symptoms of the virus, as stated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• Fever
• Cough
• Shortness of breath

These symptoms can arrive anywhere between 2 and 14 days after someone is first exposed to the virus. However, a person can still be contagious and spread the virus to others even if they haven’t started experiencing any symptoms.

The more advanced symptoms of the virus are:

• Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
• Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
• New confusion or inability to arouse
• Bluish lips or face

While these are the main symptoms associated with COVID-19, they are not the only symptoms. Call your medical provider if you experience any severe or concerning symptoms.

It’s important to know that this virus doesn’t affect everyone the same. There are groups of people that are more susceptible to severe symptoms of the virus. These groups include:

• Older adults
• People who have serious chronic medical conditions like:
  • Heart disease
  • Diabetes
  • Lung disease

Visit the CDC for further information on COVID-19 here.

What To Do If You Get Sick

Your first indication of becoming ill is going to be your own feeling of being sick. So you need to be aware of the warning signs and pay close attention to any changes in your health.

And if you do notice a change in your health, you need to sequester yourself away from your family and pets. Take a room of your house and set up some bedding, changes of clothes, and anything you’ll need to occupy your time.

But even if you do this, you will still need to access shared areas. This can be done as long as caution is exercised. Wear a mask. Cover any sneezes or coughs. Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly and instruct anyone in your house to do the same.

Seek medical attention if the symptoms get worse and it becomes difficult to breathe. But until then, try to treat your symptoms at home. Hospitals and doctors’ offices are going to be very busy so you shouldn’t add to that unless it’s totally necessary.

But if it gets to the point where medical attention is needed, be sure to call your medical provider before leaving your home. Tell them you are coming in and are showing the symptoms of COVID-19. This gives them the opportunity to take protective measures for the staff as well as other patients.

How To Protect Yourself

The best thing anybody can do at this point is to avoid large groups. Work from home if possible. Don’t visit restaurants or bars. Avoid using public transportation if you can. This is why most professional sports leagues have suspended play. The virus can be transmitted fairly easily from person-to-person so limited exposure to others severely limits the chance of contracting the virus.

Those in a high-risk group are suggested to stock up on at least two weeks’ worth of medications and food. This will limit the necessity to go into public.

But when you do have to go into public, take precautions such as avoiding touching your face. An infected person can sneeze or cough on a public surface, then you can touch it, and infect yourself by introducing the germs into your system. Avoid this possibility by washing your hands before wiping your eyes or mouth or nose.

Leave a buffer zone of at least six feet between yourself and others in public. This way, an infected person has a smaller chance to spread the virus to you.

Strict attention to hygiene can give you a much better chance at remaining healthy.

Maryland Resources

Maryland Department of Health main website for COVID-19 information

Maryland business information from Business Express

Announcement of Medicaid expansions

Resource page from University of Maryland – Baltimore

The post Addressing COVID-19 in Maryland appeared first on Power-Marketing.

#10. Proper Marketing Leads To Your Business’ Credibility

Promotion is imperative to the validity and trustworthiness of your product or service.

#9. Strategic Marketing Allows You To Target Your Ideal Audience

Marketing enables you to strategically focus on the exact demographic most likely to require your goods.

#8. Marketing Keeps Your Audience Aware Of Your Goods & Services

Keeping your business front and center in the mind of the public increases customer recall.

#7. The Competition Is Continually Marketing Their Product

Your competitors are also vying for consumer attention. Failure to offer your alternative solution actually promotes the profitability of your rivals.

#6. Shine A Spotlight On Your Offerings

Proper marketing focuses consumer awareness on everything your company offers as well as your own unique selling proposition.

#5. Marketing Enables You To Educate Your Customers

Provide continual information to your audience, transforming potential clients into satisfied customers.

#4. It’s More Profitable To Retain Your Current Customers

Strategic marketing is able to retain valued clients, saving valuable funds when compared to strictly acquiring only new customers.

#3. Marketing Techniques Are Constantly Evolving

All growing businesses are constantly evolving. Neglecting to adapt your marketing strategies with these changes can leave your company exposed and outdated.

#2. Marketing Helps You Focus On Achieving Your Business Goals

Well-constructed marketing actually promotes an overall understanding of what your business is attempting to achieve.

#1. Delegating Your Marketing To A Professional Team Permits More Time For What You Do Best

Partnering with a professional marketing agency creates more time for business operations. You are no longer tasked with driving clients to your door, allowing more effort to be spent on best servicing the ever-increasing demands of customers.

Are you ready to learn more? Contact Power Marketing today for your FREE, no obligation consultation!

You can even call 301.416.7861 or email Scott Piper directly!

The post Top Ten Reasons You Must PROPERLY Market Your Business appeared first on Power-Marketing.

Republished from Infusionsoft blogger Matt Egan, April 4, 2016.

There is one question that I ask almost every customer: “Where does the majority of your business come from?” The answer is consistently: “From word of mouth and referrals.” Of course it is, that is the easiest way to get business, sitting back and doing nothing except being a rock star at what you do and letting your results speak for itself. What’s great about this is that it doesn’t require doing any difficult marketing, SEO, pay per click, or re-vamping the website. All you need to do is sit back and hope your customers tell their friends about you and sit back and watch the referrals come in. Right?

So my next question to prospects would be: “OK, so what are you doing to actively stoke the flames to the fire and get more referrals and more repeat business?” The answer is typically: “Nothing.” I’m always shocked by this, however it does lead to a great discussion on how to improve effectiveness in this area. If you want to hit your target of more customer referrals and upsells, you need to A.I.M.

ASK. INCENTIVIZE. MAKE IT EASY

1. Ask

The first and most obvious step is to ask. Most business owners ask some of their customers for referrals once or maybe twice. They don’t want to make it awkward after winning the business. There is power in asking. When you ask, you speak energy into existence because it requires action. I remember when I bought a home here in Arizona three years ago, I worked with a great real estate agent who was awesome. I couldn’t tell you his name, because I never heard from him again, but boy was he great at the time. Here’s the problem: Soon after we bought a home, I convinced my parents to move to Arizona so they started looking for a home. They asked if I knew any good real estate agents and I said yes, I do have a guy… what’s his name again? What was his number? I told my parents I would dig it up and get back to them. I never did. They found another real estate agent and bought a beautiful big home. Fast forward a few months and my brother decided to come to Arizona for physical therapy school and wanted to look at homes. He asked me if I knew a good real estate agent. Same story, I couldn’t remember my guy and meant to pass along his info but couldn’t find it and it wasn’t top of mind. So my brother got his own agent that he worked with and bought a home. The moral of the story is that if my real estate agent had followed up with me and asked for referrals occasionally, I would have given them. He would have sold two more homes. It never hurts to ask.

2. Incentivize

What is your cost of acquiring a new customer through traditional methods? Do you pay sales reps to make calls and run appointments?  Do you pay for SEO and website optimization that drives traffic and leads? Do you advertise or sponsor events to get leads?  When you add all of that up and apply it to your actual cost of acquiring a new customer you might be shocked just how much you spend to get revenue. So why on earth wouldn’t you give a small incentive for customers to prompt more referrals? It costs you much less for customer referrals than all other lead sources, so don’t be stingy—be intentional.

I’ve seen a lot of things work really well over the years:

1. $25 gift card for closed deals
2. Each referral gets a ticket for a drawing to win an iPad
3. Contents for whoever refers the most in a given month wins $1,000
4. Refer a friend and receive 10 percent off your monthly membership
5. Tickets to sporting events
6. Saying thank you for a referral that closes with a gift basket

And the list goes on and on. Get creative, have fun with it. Reward them. It’s a very small price to pay overall compared to the other things you do to acquire new business. The problem with most referral incentive programs is that nobody knows about it. This is where marketing automation comes in very handy to follow up with customers automatically and make them aware of your incentive program whenever possible.

3. Make it easy

A couple months ago I consulted with an HVAC business that was trying to figure out how to get more referrals. He would ask for referrals, he had a way to incentivize customers, but when I looked at how a customer would submit a referral, it was a mess. They had to fill out a web form that was as tedious as the day is long. Then, the majority of the time it went into a black hole and he never saw the referral anyway. We worked with him to create an automated funnel for capturing customer referrals that were based on customer surveys that went out after the sale. There was a question in there that stated “Would you be willing to refer others?” If they answered yes to that question in the survey, an automated email would go out two weeks later to let them know about the customer referral program. Then, a few days later an email would go out that asked them for anyone they could think of that they might refer. All the customer had to do, was click on a link on the email, fill out a very brief form of first name, e-mail, and phone number, and BAM! Problem solved. The referrals came pouring in from that time forward.

Another great idea that I have seen from savvy business owners is making the referral process easy by putting up a link at the top of your website that says: “Refer a Friend.” That link will direct to a landing page where they can enter the quick info for their friend. Marketing automation can then send an email to the customer thanking them for their referral and ensuring that there is an easy place for your customers to go whenever they have someone to refer. This is also great because you may have prospects who aren’t a good fit for what you do, but they have someone in mind who they could refer over to you. This gives them an easy way to do that.

Getting customer referrals is easy when you are good at what you do. Creating a great customer referral funnel is not as difficult as it might seem. No matter how good or bad you think it’s going with your customer referrals, it’s never too late to fix it—just remember to A.I.M. at your target.

The post Three Keys To Creating A Customer Referral Program That Works appeared first on Power-Marketing.

When it comes to home builder marketing, different is radical! Being better is simply boring.

So many of our home builder clients attempt to outgun their competition by incrementally improving their product, service or workmanship. Folks, it simply doesn’t work. One-upmanship is the slow road to mediocrity and the fast path to ‘who cares.’

Although permission-based marketing automation has become very popular and effective, interruptions are still crucial for marketing success. The term ‘pattern-interrupt’ is used by psychologists to address the ability to distract or interrupt our brains, forcing us out of autopilot mode. You may not recognize it, but your brain runs on autopilot more often than not. In order to preserve precious energy consumption levels (your brain consumes nearly 20% of all the energy you use) our brain maximizes efficiency by putting many of the things we do on autopilot. We all like to believe that we are highly thoughtful and give careful consideration to most decisions; unfortunately, we really don’t. Much of what we do is literally on autopilot.

Our autopilot mode happens so naturally and without any mental energy, it’s hard to recognize it even if you’re looking for it.

I recently visited my daughter in England. The drive from Heathrow Airport to their home is roughly 200 miles. That 3.5-hour journey became a personal case study in my brain’s autopilot capabilities. Here’s the deal: any typical trip, in a typical car, in a recognized location allows my brain to stay comfortably in autopilot. But this trip was anything but typical and my mind was instantly jolted out of it’s comfort zone.

I immediately found myself in serious cognitive overload. Everything was totally new and my mental abilities were immediately tested. In autopilot mode, I can navigate a route, drive, listen to music, talk to my wife, contemplate our destination and even take a call. But I suddenly found myself redlining! Anything more than driving was overload.

I had to get in the car on the wrong side. I had to drive on the wrong side of the road – through over 50+ round-a-bouts (going backwards according to my experience, I might add)! My vehicle was a manual so I had to steer with my right hand and shift with my left!  None of the sign graphics made any sense. My phone navigation wasn’t working. My wife tried to navigate… yikes! It was getting dark and my stress level was at an all-time high. My brain was in total attention mode… no autopilot at all. When everything is unknown, your brain has to work extremely hard to process the incoming data. WHY??

The answer is simple: my mind was forced out of autopilot into full, lockdown, cognitive overload. What does this have to do with marketing new homes? Your buyers and prospects are going about their day in autopilot mode. In order to get them to pay attention, you need to interrupt their autopilot pattern. Do that and you can be certain they’re listening; otherwise they’re paying as much attention to your pitch as they do during a typical drive to the super market. Zombie-like they’re ignoring most of what we say.

If you really want to get someone’s attention, be different. Offer something different. Do something different. Simply being better than your closest competitor will never get your brand noticed. Do something legitimately different and they’ll listen and pay attention. Here are two ideas to consider in your messaging:

• Be unique: The brain loves something it doesn’t see every day. As a matter of fact, your brain is prewired to open the conscious door wide open when something truly unique is encountered. Better isn’t unique; only true differences, not the ‘same old same old”, can reach that level.

• Share a story: Tell a tale that resonates with your audience’s shared values. Stories are highly capable of reaching beyond your subconscious thoughts. Understand your client, discover what they value, then convey your message in story form; your audience will love you for it!

My 200-mile expedition in England helped me realize how powerful my own brain’s autopilot can be. Once you are operating totally outside of your subconscious comfort zone, you can really see how much energy it saves. You and your clients are the same. If you want their attention and truly want to be compelling, difference is a powerful tool. Use it and win.

The post Better is Boring—Different is Radical! appeared first on Power-Marketing.