Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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How are you using QR codes with your customers? Or with marketing? I recently did a blog post on how we use in PB for vendor events, but I would love to learn more from everyone else! https://www.projectbroadcast.com/m/2023/01/24/blog-qr-code-project-broadcast-vendor-event-success/ submitted by /u/ProjectBroadcast [link] [comments]

Hey there fellow marketers ✌🏼 How are you all doing? Times can be pretty tough out there at the moment, marketing and growth budgets are getting cut, and at the same time, you’re supposed to acquire customers even more efficiently. We talked to a lot of founders, marketers, and growth leaders who are facing the same problem and realized that only a few folks know how to tap into their existing customer base to drive growth for their company. And even fewer are able to do so in a repeatable and scalable way. That’s why we want to present you with a strategy that can help you tremendously in this situation: community-led growth. Maybe you’ve heard of it before, or maybe it’s a new concept for you. Whatever may be the case, here’s a quick introduction to what it means: Community-Led-Growth is a strategy that leverages the power of an active, supportive user base to drive customer acquisition, retention, and reach. This approach enhances customer engagement and deepens brand-customer interactions. The community becomes a powerful force for driving word-of-mouth and referral marketing, which can lower your customer acquisition cost (CAC). That sounds great and all, but where should you begin? 🤷‍♂️ 🎯 It’s the same answer that is almost never wrong – focus on your customers first and foremost. Think about what drives them. By incentivizing your existing customers with meaningful rewards you can transform them into your proud advocates. 🥑 Advowhat? Ad-vo-cates. An advocate is someone who speaks or writes in support of a cause, product, or idea. They use their influence to promote the cause, product, or idea and encourage others to do the same. Advocates are passionate about their cause and have the power to influence and motivate others. 📈 How do you know if you’re doing the right thing? To measure the impact of your community-led growth strategy, you’ll need to set up key performance indicators (KPIs). Some examples of KPIs that can be used to measure community-led growth include community size, engagement, retention, and referral rates. Our digital handbook gives a more nuanced overview of what to consider when choosing and tracking your KPIs. All of this sounded interesting to you and you want to dig deeper? 👀 Find more in-depth tactical advice on how to nail customer acquisition in a tough market with community-led growth and download our digital handbook 📖 Have any of you already made some experience with CLG? What were the biggest challenges that you faced when implementing it into your growth strategy? submitted by /u/drniklas [link] [comments]

 

 

In an increasingly competitive eCommerce world, there are some dos and don’ts when it comes to encouraging customers to buy from your business. This act is called a conversion, and it’s just about the most important metric you’ll need to watch as you plan on building your business and increasing revenue. In eCommerce, conversion means the percentage of website visitors who purchased something from your online store in a set period of time. As with all marketing metrics, conversion rate is something you can—and should—work on.  

But what are the top ways to optimise your conversion rates?

 

Gather valuable customer data for a personalised approach

 

Use zero-party data to help personalise the website

 

In the modern eCommerce world, personalisation is a must. Amongst the variety of ways to personalise content delivery, there’s one standout: whole website personalisation. The latest AI and automation technology, used by a modern Customer Engagement Platform (CEP), is able to create real-time personalisation that responds to website visitor activity, allowing you to replace generalised offers with ones tailored to each unique customer. The result? A substantially reduced bounce rate.

For this to thrive, it’s about collecting, managing and actioning zero-party data that provides that all important insight into the needs, wants and desires that customers are willing to share about themselves. By using this data to create a more holistic and rounded 360 customer profile, website personalisation can be enhanced to its optimum.

 

Two-step newsletter sign-in

 

Employing a two-step newsletter sign-in form is another handy tool for brands to develop their client databases more coherently. The newsletter operates a two-step approach: the first step asks for an email address and the second offers the chance for clients to provide more useful details, such as preferences and location, if they so desire. Through this approach, brands can also gather detailed data on their more active and valuable users.

Utilising this solution shortens the conversion path and allows brands to gain more declarative customer data. By pinning the majority of your efforts on the engaged users, it increases the likelihood of converting them into customers quicker. It’s a hub of zero-party data that can then be fed back into the website personalisation process.

 

Convert the anonymous

 

People often like to stay anonymous, browsing your website multiple times without feeling any urge to create an account or reveal themselves. But there are various incentives at hand that can encourage visitors to register. Even if users maintain their anonymity, you can still get straight to conversion and offer that nudge towards completing the purchase.

A social proof feature on a CEP provides the means to provide healthy pressure on unidentified website visitors. The module is able to display in real-time the number of customers currently watching a product, helping to make it all the more attractive and incentivise the user to buy it. The feature also has the capability for bespoke notifications that fit the brand image and display design.

 

Personalise messages to anonymous clients

 

Through acquiring zero-party and real-time website data, you can personalise messages not only to existing customers but to potential ones as well. Dynamic web push notifications from a CEP provide the means to send wholly personalised content and notifications with site and product recommendations. The options are there for either a mass sendout or a personal 1-to-1 level message.

 

Communicate at the optimum moment in the best way

 

Getting creative and personal with your messages is a proven method of reeling visitors back onto your website and converting them into customers. But the countless messages consumers receive can take them over the borderline into the irritable and annoying category. So how can brands avoid crossing this border?

Through a CEP you can utilise the customer preference centre to ask customers about the frequency with which they wish to receive offers and promotions. So, instead of spamming customers, this enables you to provide only tailored and wanted information by the visitor. This can also be set up to match their desired channel, be that by email, web push or SMS.

 

Retain clients’ interest in watched products

 

Just because they’re gone, doesn’t mean they should be forgotten. Visitors can be reminded about the products that caught their eye on the site through the implementation of real-time intelligent product recommendation powered by AI. This not only widens the campaign range but is sure to boost conversion rates.

Visitors may also leave a trail of information about preferred price range and size, for example. Recommendation frames can then be used to suggest similar products that fit these requirements.

 

Use live chat software to help visitors answer questions

 

This is a mutual two-way benefit. Live chats help visitors answer their queries while you gain an understanding of how they are interacting with the website. Live chat consultants can also be prepped with customer profiles and preferences and develop a direct communication channel between a potential customer and the brand.

If you don’t have capacity for a live chat, don’t do it. Not being available to respond to questions gives off a bad look and it’s better not to have it then not be around. But if you can, you definitely should.

 

Rescue abandoned carts with a two-step process

 

If anything needed to highlight the importance of conversion rates, it’s the fact that more than two thirds of online shopping carts are abandoned, meaning 7 in 10 customers are failing to complete purchases. This is faltering one step from conversion.

However, through using the recommendation system, the purchase(s) can be saved. The feature will be activated when a cart is abandoned. It will send the user an email not only with a list of the deserted items, but also recommended products picked out by AI that match the recommendation frames.

If this fails, the system has a second trick up its sleeve: the final step is to deliver a follow up message containing a discount coupon. It’s a two-step model that can provide incentives at crucial moments in the user decision process and purchase journey.

 

Small margins, big gains

 

The small margins in nailing the act of conversion can have big business outcomes. Failure to capitalise on such opportunities can result in significant missed revenue. But by adopting the latest technology and data to offer tailored, targeted and personalised content, you can dramatically increase your eCommerce conversion rate and completed sales.

Customers want to buy the best products for them – if they like what you are offering and how you are communicating with them, they will be happy to share data as a result. And this creates the knock-on effect of better subsequent communication.

By converting your eCommerce processes to suit the modern customer, you can revolutionise your conversion rate and enhance those all important relationships between the brand and customer. It’s small margins, but big gains. 

 

It’s such a paradox for business owners that more success often means more stress. At least, that was the case for me. When I started working on Shorty’s Pizza Shack in 2010, my wife and I did everything. We welded the tables, we built the fence, we tested pizza recipes endlessly until we landed on the perfect one. When we opened our doors to customers, this mindset of doing as much as possible myself continued: I hired, I fired, I cooked, I cleaned. I worked open to close most days and would go weeks without taking a single day off. To say it was exhausting is an understatement, but it was manageable for the first few years as we grew slowly. But everything changed when we started offering a great drink special on Thursday nights. Suddenly, we became the go-to spot for local college students, and those nights were total mayhem. We were making a ton of money, but my mental health started taking a nosedive. I wasn’t eating enough and started drinking more than normal. I was lightheaded all the time—like that feeling right before you pass out—and different muscles would just start twitching randomly. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was having near-constant panic attacks. All I knew was that I felt like I was going to drop dead at any minute, and it was truly terrifying.   There would be busy stretches during which the only thing that would get me through the night was knowing that, if it all became too much, I could just lock the door and quit. At that point, it became clear: Something had to give if I wanted my business to survive and to take better care of myself along the way.Today, eight years later, I am so much happier. And, although I had to make some sacrifices to make it happen, the business is still thriving—in fact, we’re about to open our second location. Here are the changes I had to make to take care of myself while also taking care of my business.I gave up money in the short term to thrive in the long termWhen my to-dos at the restaurant started becoming overwhelming, I should have hired more support immediately. But I kept feeling like the success was just a farce—that the sales wouldn’t last or that we would have to raise prices to pay our staff and then customers would stop coming and everything we had built would crumble.It was a kismet moment that finally convinced me to bring on more serious help. A good friend came into town, mentioned he was looking for a new opportunity, and asked if I’d consider letting him buy in as a co-owner. He’s a much more extroverted person than I am, and he loved the thought of being in the energy of a busy restaurant all day. The idea was we’d run it together for a year so I could train him, and then I’d hand the day-to-day over to him. This was scary for a few reasons. First of all, it meant giving up control, which I’ll talk more about in a minute. It also meant giving up money—50% of the business, to be exact. Plus, we decided that instead of sending me a paycheck, we’d put my income back into the business so we could grow it without taking on debt.  But between closing down entirely—which I was on the verge of doing at that point—and bringing on a partner and making less, the latter felt like the better option. Plus, I knew that this move would give us more capacity to expand in the future. I may be bringing home less in the short term, but there was potential to grow more sustainably and meaningfully in the long term. This is proving to be true as we work on opening our second location, something that never would have been possible when I was running things on my own.I let go of responsibilities I wasn’t suited forOf course, bringing on help does no good if you can’t let go of control as a business owner, and that’s something I had to learn how to do. Many of my problems came from micromanagement and not coming to terms with the idea that every tiny thing didn’t have to be done exactly how I would do it.The mindset shift that helped me delegate was realizing that continuing to do the tasks I don’t enjoy or that bring me stress is not only harmful for me, but for the business as well. If I’m a miserable human being around customers all day as an introvert, then that’s going to affect everything, from the atmosphere at the restaurant, to my employees’ satisfaction, to the quality of the food.So, I worked on fully handing over the day-to-day operations to my partner. First, my life almost immediately got better. Knowing that I could theoretically step away for weeks and the business would continue running was so valuable for my mental health and work-life balance, especially as I started caring for my grandparents and my wife and I decided to have a kid. Plus, getting to fill my days with tasks I actually liked—such as working to improve the food or thinking of creative ideas for business growth—dramatically increased my enjoyment of the work. And the business was better for it, too. Since my partner took over, our revenue is up 80 percent, and we’ve maintained a 4.6 Google rating.I remembered that life is so much bigger than my businessAnother thing that really helped my mental health was remembering the other aspects of my life that are truly important and intentionally creating time for them.For instance, I’m often in charge of caring for my daughter. While that can create some additional stress at times, it also really motivates me to create real boundaries with work. No matter what is happening in the business, at 5 pm I have to pick her up from daycare and she gives me a huge hug and a lot of things just wash away, if only for a brief period of time. I’m not perfect, and I do still think about work after hours, but she helps me keep it in check.I’ve also been working on creating more time for exercise and creative projects outside of my business. I used to be a hobbyist potter and haven’t had much time for that lately, but I find even doing toddler crafts with my kid relaxes me. And working out as little as 1-2 hours a week has been one of the best things for my mental health, whether it’s taking my daughter for a bike ride or getting to the gym.I recognize that carving out time for “unnecessary” activities like this during times of stress can seem ridiculous or downright impossible, and I find I either have to put these things on my schedule as a non-negotiable or get creative about how I squeeze them in (such as combining creative time with parenting time). Being intentional about fitting them in has been so beneficial, both for my own wellbeing and for my business. Not only do I come back to work happier, but I find that solutions to the biggest problems tend to pop into my head when I’m distracted by something else.I learned to better manage my stress (because it doesn’t go away)Dealing with my panic attacks didn’t just mean making changes to the business—it also meant making changes within myself. This is especially important because, as a business owner, the stress never fully goes away. There will always be busier periods and unexpected challenges, and learning how to take care of myself through those has been vital. Talking to a professional who helped me identify that what I was experiencing was panic attacks was the most helpful step. Naming what was happening helped me feel more in control of it, and she also gave me tools to cope, like doing a few rounds of box breathing or giving myself a few minutes alone during a busy shift. Realizing I really could spare five minutes for myself and the world wasn’t going to end was a big step. My panic attacks still happen, though much less frequently than they used to. And when they do, I know how to take care of myself. Giving up control and making less money as a business owner was a scary leap, and a lot of my peers questioned what I was doing. But being on the other side—happy, with more time for myself and my family, and with my business thriving—is so incredible that I know it was the right move for me.