Reviews have been an important for online businesses since the beginning, but they're even more important now.
Consider:
- Consumers require an average 40 online reviews before believing a business’s star rating is accurate (up from 34 in 2017)
- 85% of consumers think that online reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant
The authors propose mulitple strategies to use to get more reviews for your business, here are their best:
1. Deliver an Outstanding Customer Experience (if you're not, don't bother with getting reviews)
2. Ask Every Customer
3. Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews
4. People Have their Preferences, Select Sites Customers Use
5. Make Leaving A Review Simple
6. Time Your Request
7. Automate Requests
8. Play the Long GameAnd finally, when creating an online reputation management program, it's important to understand the important difference between 1st and 3rd party reviews
- 1st-Party Review: Feedback or testimonial given directly to your business by a customer. The business owns the content.
- 3rd-Party Review: Feedback given to a 3rd-party review site like Google or Trip Advisor. The site owns the content.
Read the full article at: gatherup.com
Research is a cornerstone of any marketing plan - just ask one of the Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, Cheryl Grace. Her commitment to using multicultural consumer segment data has helped propel her beauty brands forward with informed marketing strategies that speak to a much broader audience than her competitors. Find out what data types can be relevant to your business, and how to leverage that data in your own marketing strategy, in the full article.
Read the full article at: beautymatter.com
“Humaning” is not a word meant to be used by real people in real conversations. It’s just the latest of many ungainly terms from the world of marketing, where language is often twisted into new shapes with a certain goal in mind: persuading you to buy things.
How up-to-date are you on marketing buzzwords? Check this collection out to see.
Our fav: Thumb-Stopping!
Read the full article at: www.nytimes.com
The Young Entrepreneur Council has some advice for service businesses and how they don't have to sit on the sidelines during the holiday shopping season.
It's no secret that product based businesses can get a lot of attention and extra sales during the holiday season. Because of that, service-based businesses can often overlook the opportunities for a boost in revenue during the shopping season, but there are different tactics and strategies to implement that can help them get a "piece of the pie" too. Read on for some examples offered by Entrepreneurs that service-based businesses can implement for the holidays.
Read the full article at: smallbiztrends.com
Many consumers will do most of their shopping with local retailers. Small businesses need a digital plan to stay close to customers amid coronavirus pandemic.
Nearly seven in 10 small businesses see the winter holiday season as a top sales opportunity for their business, according to The Visa Back to Business Study – Holiday Edition. Small businesses have already faced unprecedented challenges in 2020, and the holiday season appears set to bring plenty of its own, amid a shaky economy and continued concerns about another wave of coronavirus infections. Read more to learn what all small businesses should focus on to ensure a successful 2020 holiday sales season.
Read the full article at: www.cnbc.com
This year, with so much uncertainty due to the pandemic, many marketers are wondering how to evolve their strategies for a holiday season that will be like no other. The marketing strategy that was right just a couple of months ago isn’t anymore.
Results from a new Adobe study of 1,000 consumers aims to help marketers understand how to prepare for what buying habits are ahead:
- 75% of shoppers are keeping with their holiday traditions but there'll be less demand for new brands
- 40% of consumers are looking for “distraction marketing" - messages that take them away from Covid realities; especially for Gen Z & Millennials
- With few places to go, 70% of consumers are saving more than they did pre-pandemic and most are looking for marketing that helps them find a good deal
- Buy online/pickup in store continues to grow at a staggering rate: 259% in 12 months
Read the full article at: blog.adobe.com
Businesses Turn to Sales Renewal to Create Strategies that Drive Success
Concord, Mass.—Oct 20, 2020—Sales Renewal, building on the success of its outsourced marketing offering, the JointSourcing Solution™, is pleased to announce the launch of its new, standalone Strategic Marketing consulting practice.
Since its founding in 2009, Sales Renewal has been offering JointSourcing (“joint venture” + “outsourcing”), a unique, one-stop marketing solution that shares risk & reward and provides everything a small business needs to grow its revenue and brand. This includes a fractional CMO for marketing strategy, a VP of Marketing for day-to-day marketing management, and all the people and technology required to create their custom marketing plan and then implement and manage it under...
Sales Renewal is often asked to help clients wrestling with challenging strategic decisions, whether it’s adjusting their business and marketing strategies to their new Covid realities (something that has unfortunately become way too common), reducing their time-to-first-dollar from prospects in their pipeline or devising a go-to-market strategy for a new product or service they’re considering.
This video, for example, discusses Sales Renewal’s work with Eno Martin Donahue & Roth LLP, a 130-year-old law firm with offices in MA and NH, that needed a go-to-market strategy for a new service idea that had three ambitious goals:
- Changing the way small and midsize businesses think of, and engage with, their attorneys.
- Growing the firm’s outside general counsel business
(lawyers...
Signs of life in the economy and an increase of business activity has led to an increase in confidence of small and midsize business CEOs. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index rebounded to 82.8 in Q3 from 62.5 in Q2.
Source: myvistage.com
Factors that contributed to the rebound from last quarter include (#5 is a double edged sword):
- 32.5% improvements in revenue expectations
- 29.2% improvement in profitability expectations
- 28.3% increase in investment plans, largely driven by a significant decline in contraction
- 25.4% improvement in workforce plans
- 10.1% improvement in expectations for the U.S. economy - from 93% of CEOs being pessimistic to 83% (still a worryingly high number)