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Archives for November 2015

5 Reasons We’d Be Crazy Not To Be Thankful This Year

This has been a banner year for Jen Smiga and Shannon Winning.

We have learned, lost, worked hard, pitched our hearts out and grown beyond what we could have imagined when we partnered up officially in January. Together we have won and lost clients, produced websites, garnered press and written something like 213 blogs, email newsletters and press releases. I thought when we added it all up we’d be tired, but truly seeing the ground we’ve covered this year only leaves us with one thought: Gratitude.

We’re thankful to God for our partnership and for you who read our updates every week (or at least receive them. No one reads everything of anybody’s. Just this week I ignored a presidential tweet and a reminder from my mom to get the kids’ Christmas lists together. No shame. That’s life.)

If you’re feeling grumpy today with the holiday rush, or want to get that Friyay feeling early, allow me to throw some good will at you before you get elbow deep in that turkey (or in Jen’s case, that Tofurkey).

Go with me as I explain, listicle style, why we as a team are so thankful this year.

1. We’re better together

For years Jen and I worked quietly alongside each other, her in PR and social media, and I in journalism and marketing, wondering how we could team up. It was a logical step, but like couples who file their taxes separately, it always seemed that we could make more money apart. Then one day (like a day that lasts three months) we said, “Heck with it. Let’s team up to pitch comprehensive all-out marketing services to national companies.” The move allowed us to scale up the business from a partnership to an agency model where we can take on big projects, while still giving love and care to our small business client crew. Win. Win.

2.We’ve got some fine people behind us

We welcomed back git-er-done Danielle from maternity leave last month in the nick of time as projects were coming in the door. In less than a day she was back to killin’ it on social media and Constant Contact. Stephanie came on this year to cover for Danielle, which was like starting your first day as a Toys R Us cashier on Black Friday. Stephanie did a little bit of everything from pitching and social to writing and presenting. If you came to one of our small business events with SCORE you know that she can rock a crisis communications plan. Our newest designer/developer Ali came out swinging for three new web projects over the last several months (including Marketing Rival’s site) and he KO’d that CSS, making beautiful websites with his “sure, no problem” attitude. Having him as my go-to HubSpot guy enabled me to do better, faster work with less headaches. Designer Maryann once again consistently turned out beautiful work with an intuitive knack for what the clients really want out of that graphic, even though they can’t articulate it. Developer Shane also turned out gorgeous, slick sites for us and jumped in at a moment’s notice, on more than one occasion, to make back end changes that we needed, “RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.” Jamie our Brand Specialist, or the image whisperer, made our images sparkle with life and developed a brand concept for an elusive product while moving and taking pictures of tiny animals. We are thankful for them ALL.

3. We’ve got clients who trust us

That was not always the case as we found our groove in who is the right client for us. The client relationship is like dating where you need to get to know one another over coffee a few times and make some assessments about how your goals line up. So do you want kids? Do you really want to grow this company through content marketing? (So obviously similar these questions are…). I’ve heard more “That’s a great idea” “I like it” and “I’ll let you run with this” in the last month than in the whole year. It’s glorious. And we are thankful for our clients who entrust us with their precious businesses.

4. We didn’t compromise

When you love PR and social media (as Jen does) and writing and marketing (as I do) you can get behind almost any product or business and do good work and have fun. But there are some projects that just aren’t YOU and this year we turned down two of them. Turning away money is not easy, let me tell you. But when taking it feels like a moral compromise, you’re better off leaving it on the table. I’m so grateful we gave each other the freedom to do that. (I know you’re curious. It was a furrier and an adult, ahem, “enhancement” product.)

5. We’re just getting started on the fun stuff

I’ve written about many different industries, restaurant, law, pharmaceuticals and I always find a way to get into the subject matter where the writing is fun. But sometimes it takes a little more “getting into” to get to the fun part. This year Jen and I moved into the design industry where we’re helping a Canadian stone company grow their online presence and market a new product. Architecture and design are two of our shared loves, which makes the work a pleasure. We also signed on to develop a lifestyle brand focused on telling stories of ordinary Americans pursuing life, liberty and happiness. For a Charles- Kuralt -Lisa-Ling wanna be like me, that is like candy. This is on top of Jen’s continued work in the pet industry, probably her chief love. We’re thankful to have these projects in our daily work, and promoting what we love is encouraging us to get more like-minded clients in our pipeline.

I know if I continued to write I could come up with five more things we’re thankful for, but this is a nice handful to give you a sense of what a great year it’s been and how excited we are for the future.

Full disclosure: I almost skipped this Thanksgiving greeting because I can’t stand canned holiday business messages. I wanted to write a blog for our business audience entitled, “Nobody Wants Your Holiday Message. They Want You To Help Them Solve Their Problems.” Though I stand by the sentiment, Jen talked me off that ledge, and I’m so glad she did. Because consciously detailing the things for which we’re thankful has doubled my gratitude and energized me for the work that still needs to be done. And there is a lot.

So from Jen and I, I wish you our clients, friends, partners and community members, a sincere Happy Thanksgiving. May you give yourself a few minutes to catalogue the five things you’re thankful for and double your gratitude too.

Forget Facebook. Click Send.

Hop in the car kids, because today we’re heading to Boston to learn how one startup made it stupid easy for followers to give them free press (and how your company can do it too).

We’re talking about how to reengage your dormant contact database with email, the most underrated social media engagement tool.

Let’s dig in.

At some point in your marketing efforts you realized it was important to gather email addresses from visitors, maybe to deliver company news or perhaps your blog. Maybe you’re even gathering them for lead tracking and nurturing (high five!).

You’ve amassed a fat, juicy list of contacts. Fantastic. But if you don’t use it to connect with those people socially, you are missing an opportunity.

Today I’m going to show you how Grove Labs, a Boston-based startup uses email get its supporters to promote it on social media.

First, a little about Grove Labs. The company, founded by two then MIT students developed an in-house aquaponic growing system powered by a mobile operating system that enables people like you and me to grow organic kale with LED lighting and fish poop. I know. Amazing. A little icky. You totally want to try it. You can learn more here in this 3-minute video.

Now a little about me. I’m fan and follower of the company, though I don’t yet own the product, which is still only in the homes of early adopters in Boston. It’s also a little out of my reach financially as all my money is going to build a home that could one day house a Grove ecosystem. And that’s important to note because: Even though Grove has yet to make a dime off me, I promote them on social media, liking and sharing their news and giving shout outs when I’m doing organicy garden things. All my friends know what the Grove system is. (I posted the above photo on Facebook last year. Does this kale make me look organic?)

Recently the company launched a Kickstarter campaign to take the product nationwide. The results were over-the-top with the campaign more than tripling its $100,000 goal – and the campaign isn’t over for 20 more days. Instead of just sending a nice “We did it! Thank you!” email, those Grovers, powered by organic super foods probably, did something very different.

They asked their contacts for more.

“With your help over the next 28 days,” Grove said, “we can prove to the media, to our investors, and to each other, that the future of food starts now. Here are a few things you can do to help:”

I’ve broken up and enlarged Grove’s beautiful markeing email to show you why each point is so effective and how you can apply it to your business (especially if you’re a startup or are using crowdfunding).

Did it work?

A week later Emily Malkin, spokesperson for the company said, “Since sending that email we have 59 new backers, 11 of which were $1 contributions, and 21 of which were $10 contributions.”

That’s $221 of their $323,886 raised so far. A pittance if it’s only dollars you’re after, but clearly from the tiny ask, it wasn’t.

“The point of the email was first to excite and inspire confidence based on our success so far, and secondly to provide immediate and easy action items for the segment of our community that is excited to contribute but can’t commit to the investment of a full Ecosystem,” Malkin said. “Remembering to include our entire community as we move forward is extremely important – we are starting a movement and everyone counts!”

BTW, I have updated that al totnumber raised three times in the last day. Something is working up there in Boston.

Next Grove asked supporters to leverage their networks on its behalf. And, as I said in the beginning, they made it stupid easy for supports to share by giving them the message to share.

If just one supporter shared that message on social media with a few hundred friends or followers the potential for exposure is huge, like compounding interest.

Bonus: They controlled their brand messaging. I’m telling you, those leafy green eaters are onto something.

Next they asked for feedback – the simplest way to get buy-in and market research.

If your clients, customers, users, are anything like me, they looove to tell you what they think about your product or service including obstacles to purchasing that they encounter.

Point four in their email is more of that social media love they asked for in point two. Since you’re already on Twitter….might as well.

Finally, they gave supporters, who have probably been loving them from afar on the web, a chance to see and touch their product (and perhaps the founders) in actual life. Seeing the calendar of live events across the country gets the contact excited (OMG, they’re coming to Brooklyn!) and gives her a sense that the brand is now, as Malkin said, a movement. And oh look, there is a clear call-to-action to register.

Emily at Grove, who sent the message, gave her contacts, not one but five, chances to engage with her company. (More here on who should send your company’s emails.) She also increased her chances of engagement by removing obstacles and objections:

  • I don’t have any money to give – Just give a dollar and get updates!
  • I don’t have time to compose a social message – Here, use this one!
  • Wait, where do I register? – Right here on this shiny orange button!

If your company is relying on Facebook generated requests like Marketer Maggie invited you to like a page: Sprockets Are Us, you are missing the most direct, personal and actionable channel for social media engagement. Instead of using your email marketing for newsletters, billing or blog delivery only use it to leverage your best asset: your supporters’ social media influence.

Protect Your Business Street Cred Through Online Reviews

The day has come. A one star review has hit you hard. It may not be affecting your businesses’ bottom line yet, but it sure has been a blow to your entrepreneurial spirit.

How could this happen to you? You’re on a first name basis with your customers. They always come to you first with any concerns. Right?

Even with the best customer service a bad review is inevitable, and it’s something you must address directly. We live in a digital world where peer reviews are influential and abundant, and information moves fast and furious. Reputation management is part of running and growing a successful business.

Take a look at stats:

  •  Nearly 9 in 10 consumers have read online reviews to determine the quality of a local business and 39% do so on a regular basis.
  • Businesses should have at least 10 reviews to satisfy 85% of potential customers.
  • Trust is dependent on the reviews being authentic. Quality is equally as important as quantity.

 (source: 2014 BrightLocal study)

If you’re suffering from bad review shock  there is a ray of light  – a little goodwill goes a long way.

According to a Harris Interactive survey of the customers who received a response from a company after posting negative feedback, 33 percent turned around and posted a positive review of the brand, and 34 percent deleted the original negative review.

If you remember anything from this post let it be this: Don’t ever ignore a bad online review.

Let’s dive into the five steps of how to respond to a negative review you can take right now.

Step 1: Regroup with your team

Before typing away, meet with your employees to discuss the complaint, hear from key staff involved in the incident, and draft a response that takes the reviewer’s concern or complaint into account.

Step 2: Respond thoughtfully (and with help)

Address the complaint politely and with facts. Keep it short and sweet. People can become overwhelmed by a long response. Have someone review your response for grammar, punctuation and tone before posting.

Step 3: Reach out directly

If possible, attempt to contact the reviewer by email or phone if you have their information and offer them a reimbursement or ask about how else you could rectify the situation. They may even be appreciative enough to remove the negative review.

Step 4: Resolve privately

If the comment is unfounded, try and resolve the issue through private messaging. If you feel a public comment is necessary, present your case as simply and politely as possible. Do not attack the reviewer. Remember, potential customers will be reading your comment and you want to leave them with a good impression.

Step 5: Reward with a sincere thank you

Responding to a positive review is as important as responding to a negative review. Thank people who leave positive feedback. A simple “thank you” and “we look forward to having you back soon” suffices. Many sites advise against giving a gift to a reviewer. However, what you do offline will be appreciated by your loyal customers.

Consistently asking customers to leave reviews is also a good practice. Sometimes a simple ask is all it takes to motivate someone to take action. Just don’t run after them with your iPad asking for the review. You will look aggressive and desperate.

 The most important way to ward off  bad feedback is to be proactive. Be consistent and positive at all times. People want to hear from you and know they are spending money on a business that cares. There’s nothing worse then visiting a business’ Facebook page to find no one’s home with no posts or pics shared for weeks on end.

“Cater to your customers’ lifestyles. It will create instant rapport and a lasting sense of “I belong here.” ― Marilyn Suttle

You can build your brand’s reputation with these next steps:

Listen and learn from your customers. They have something to teach you and you don’t have to hire a market research company to do the work.

Three ways customer feedback and engagement can help you grow your business:

  • Social media comments can inspire new products or services.
  • Questions on social media can be used to create a FAQ’s page for your website.
  • Social media photo contests and hashtag campaigns can enhance your reach and make people feel good about your company.

In the long run, the advice we give when dealing with a negative review is no different than what we would tell the client with the best reviews in the world – be courteous, responsive and proactive. Just like you would in your offline business.

Photo by Moazzam Brohi

9 Signs You’re Wasting Money on Marketing

There are plenty of ways to spend your marketing dollars. Staff, software, ads, agencies. But have you ever taken a holistic view of all your marketing efforts from digital to pr?

If you haven’t done it in a year (or ever), you’re surely spending out of habit, rather than intentionally investing in growing your company. And I’d put money (and your pet monkey) to bet that you aren’t happy with the results.

When we meet with prospective clients about digital marketing or social media, we find that mid-sized companies are facing the same challenges and pitfalls, across all industries. Marketing is often an afterthought, sometimes a revenue suck, and probably living in a silo far away from sales. If that sounds like your company, read on for nine indicators that you’re wasting money on marketing.

1. You’ve never gotten a client or customer from your website.

If your website is a static brochure your prospects are coming to your site with no clear direction. You wouldn’t let a prospect come into your headquarters and start wandering around aimlessly. No, you’d hook that guy up with your best salesperson and introduce him to your most knowledgable people, get to know his needs and showcase the products and services right for him. Your website can do that too if you’ve created downloadable offers for each prospect’s lifecycle stage – a stranger getting to know your business, a lead looking to qualify you and a marketing qualified lead ready to purchase.    


2. You’re spending a small salary on advertising and you have no idea if it’s working.

Before you sign on for one more expensive ad campaign with that trade journal or PPC company, add up all the dollars you are spending there and weigh it against all the new business and new talent you can directly link to it. Is the investment paying off? Yes? Great, keep at it. If the answer is no, what if instead of pushing out your message to an audience that may not want to hear from you, you focused that investment on attracting the people who are already searching for what your company does best? At Rival our clients find us through organic search and social media because we are regularly writing about the things that matter to them most: digital marketing, social media and pr.

3.You fired your marketing director.

You weren’t seeing the new client bases open up or brand awareness grow, so you cut that overhead, but now you’re patching it together with staff who really don’t know what they’re doing because they’re actually trained for design/fashion/sales/human resources.

The truth is, digital marketing is meant to be practiced by professionals, with an end goal in mind. (You wouldn’t let your brother-in-law who’s been watching a LOT of HGTV come into your kitchen with a SawsAll and just, “Try out some ideas.”)

4. You bought an expensive marketing tool and it’s gathering dust with no ROI in sight.

The tool promised marketing automation, leads, and maybe even industry specific content, but no one’s using the tool and you’re looking at the hefty bill. Marketing automation software amplifies and accelerates strategic marketing plans. Back to your kitchen, you wouldn’t let a contractor (and definitely not your brother-in-law) start without the drawings of the architect and designer. If you’ve got the fancy tool, pay someone with some experience to use it effectively and according to a strategy tied to your sales goals. Which leads us to our next point…

5. Your marketing department isn’t generating qualified leads for your sales team

Or you don’t have a marketing department to feed leads into your pipeline. If there is a disconnect between marketing and sales, it could be that your marketing team doesn’t know what makes a qualified lead or that they don’t have the tools to capture and nurture leads. Equip your marketing team with the skilled writers it needs for clickable content and a team trained in inbound marketing to capture and convert leads. Add to your team someone fluent in social pr and social selling to make connections with prospects via social media. Together, those experts will help you produce and distribute the content that will attract your ideal prospects, and then nurture those relationships before turning them over to sales.


6. Your blog content isn’t capturing leads.

If your blog is well-written and packed with industry knowledge and helpful tips for your target market, congrats. You’re 90 percent there. But if your blog is missing a call-to-action, an opportunity to convert that stranger to a visitor, you’re climbing all the way to base camp and forgetting about the summit. Blog content (and social media) should be actionable. Give me a tipsheet, a case study, a free trial, anything that solves my problem and shows me I can trust you. It’s the kickoff for a relationship, the top rope to the summit. If your blog doesn’t have a call-to-action you’re missing out on valuable conversions.


7. You’ve said, “People aren’t searching for what we do online.”

First of all, let me challenge that. Maybe YOU aren’t searching for firms that provide interior design for yachts, but your prospects surely are. Discovering the volume search and the specific keywords around your niche industry is critical to your sales and marketing strategy. What’s more – if you’re relying on referral business and you aren’t producing unique, relevant, helpful content for your audience, you’re missing out on highly qualified referral opportunities. When your clients and followers share your helpful content with their contacts in the industry you’re nurturing prospects you haven’t even met yet. It’s like they’re going to the networking event for you and you get to stay home in your jams and drink wine.


8. Bigger companies are snatching up the brightest new talent.

We’ve said it before (and we’ll say it again and AGAIN) it’s not the size of the company that gets the message heard, wins the leads, gets the customers, but the power of the message and the knowledge of where (and how) it’s shared. The same is true for attracting and retaining talent. We believe (and we’ve got some pretty hefty analytics to prove it) that thriving mid-sized companies can stake their digital claim alongside the big guns with a simple formula:

Thought leadership + social relationships + lead generation = Digital Market Leader

Realizing and showcasing your company’s thought leadership (which is what we do) and then sharing it where the brightest new talent is hanging out digitally will attract human capital like moms to a Taylor Swift concert. And when that new talent takes root at your company, their thought leadership can attract the business you’re looking for.

9. Your company is on social but your CEO is not part of the conversation.

According to various studies gathered by HubSpot, a market leader in the digital space, CEOs who leverage social media make for a more trusted brand and happier employees.

Take a look at these stats:

  • 82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage on social media. 
  • Half of consumers believe CEOs who don’t use social will lose touch with consumers. 
  • 78% of employees want to work for a CEO who engages on social media. 
  • 81% of employees consider social CEOs better leaders.
  • 93% of employees feel social CEOs are better equipped to handle a crisis. More on crisis here.

If you’ve read this far you’re either congratulating yourself on your effective use of marketing dollars or thinking, crap, now what do I do?

First step is to take an honest inventory of your marketing. Ask yourself: Does my company goal match up with my marketing strategy? If not, identify where the breakdown has occurred. Not sharing your goals with your marketing team? Have you deprived the team of resources? Has past referral success made you lax on prospecting for new business?

Next take an assessment of all your marketing: ads, website, blogs, social, email, pr, lead generation. Lay out what you’re spending where and which are bringing you new business and helping you to retain clients or customers. Crack open the Google analytics and see what pages are driving the most traffic. Dive into the email open rates and pinpoint the topics that move readers to click. Rate the quality of your followers and engagement and see if your content is relevant and timely. Look at your last month of sales and see where those relationships were started in marketing. With these answers you’ll know where to cut spending and where to invest for the growth of your company.