Every client we start with asks, “What if Facebook won’t work with my business? What if I’m an exception?” In this list we have everyone from a lunch box maker to a bank to an insurance agency. Every example is from a different industry.

In each example, I’ve listed three things that I like about that page. If your serious about improving your Facebook page, take some time to go through a few of the things that I listed on the actual Facebook pages and look at how those business owners are executing the things that are making them successful. You’ll come away with several ideas you can take action on immediately!

Pennsylvania Macaroni Company

Pennsylvania Macaroni Company is an Italian foods store that specializes in pasta, cheeses and other Italian foods.

Why we like it

• Love the company’s voice in every post. Each one is interesting and personal
• Keeps posts engaging with trivia, recipes, photos, questions about a variety of local and food related topics
• Each post is open-ended to encourage engagement

Thanks to Maya Grinberg for sharing this page!

Riffraff

Riffraff is a lifestyle clothing boutique based out of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

https://www.facebook.com/RiffraffFayetteville?sk=wall

Why we like it

• RiffRaff uses a dead simple approach to showcasing their products via the wall. They use Facebook galleries for showcasing products and store employees for models.
• Keeps customers coming back for coupons and sweepstakes
• Use Facebook tabs for showcasing photos on Instagram and Pintrest as well as a store finder and easy ways to get in touch.

Thanks to Chance Chapman for sharing this page!

The Woods Coffee

The Woods Coffee is a family owned coffee shop with 12 locations around Whatcom County in Washington.

Why we like it

• Excellent use of both local and product photos keep the wall interesting
• Responds quickly to fans and encourages interaction
• Keeps a local feel by including other local businesses in their content

Thanks to Jeff Widman of PageLever for sharing this page!

Baseball Roses

What’s in the Bible?

Easy Lunch Boxes

Tillamook Cheese

BMW of Minnetonka 

Missouri Bank 

Banez Insurance 

Idea Paint 

La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre 

Diamond Candles

Jackson Mountain Homes, Inc. 

Naples Botanical Garden 

Start Me Up Sportfishing

Testimonials have the power to win prospects and and used in a million different ways. But the toughest part is usually remembering to collect them. This week I’m going to show you a few tweaks I made to my testimonial process that have helped me land some of my best clients.

At the first meeting, after you’re finished going over the details of the project, include a reminder for yourself to simply ask, “If we achieve the goals outlined in this meeting and your 100% happy with the work we’ve done, would you mind writing a testimonial at the end of this project?” The client will always say yes, and I tell them I’ll remind them at the end of the project.

Then go straight to your calendar and create an appointment to make sure you don’t forget!

At the end of the project, ask the client in-person or over the phone if they would still write a testimonial for you. If they agree, tell them you’ll remind them by sending an email or Linkedin request for recommendation. The key is to make it as painless as possible for them to complete it so do this immediately!

Don’t be afraid to ask your client to be specific when writing your testimonial. A vague recommendation is like a limp handshake. It makes for a terrible first impression.

Always make sure to thank the client after they’ve written your testimonial. And if you really enjoyed working with them, don’t hesitate to return the favor!

How do you make sure you don’t miss valuable testimonials?

Image by quacktaculous

I’ve included a screenshot of the $22,487 campaign we launched on November 3, 2011…

We sent one core email to 7 segments but tweaked the copy to engage each segment.

How We Set The Campaign Up For Success

One of the first things we did before we made any tweaks to the email campaign was to dive into the email list. We sliced and diced the list so many ways, we felt like we knew everyone on the list personally! The more you know about your audience, the more educated tweaks you can make, which ultimately results in less tweaks and quicker success.

The Two Tweaks

The secret behind these tweaks was persistance. Most people (who complain about their lack of success) make one tweak and move on. What they don’t realize is that you must continually tinker with your campaign with the insights from your list. At some point you NEED to ship. Don’t tweak and tinker so much that you never get your email out the door but always look back at past campaigns for insights on what you can improve on this time. For this campaign we looked at the past 5 campaigns for things we could improve on. I’ve outlined a few below in the two tweaks we made:

1. We Stopped Selling

If your idea of ramping up your marketing is to include more sales copy, hopefully this will change your mind. We found that by including less sales copy and more interesting content, we were able to ultimately make bigger sales and increase revenue.

How we did it

• We engaged readers by putting more interesting content than sales pitches in the emails. We also included links to read more on the website. That way the subscribers were familiar with clicking through to the website and more willing to click through when we sold them something through the website.
• We promoted other things that aligned with our brand and encouraged subscribers to take action but weren’t hard sells. One of the things we promoted was our events and other community events around town. Again, we were focusing on getting our subscribers familiar with clicking through and taking action.

2. We Created Smarter Segments 

One of the tweaks we made was specifically for new subscribers. After doing a little research, we found that we were sending too many sales focused emails to new subscribers that weren’t ready to buy yet. So we focused on earning their trust with valuable content. One of our first segmentations was to remove all of our new subscribers from the promotional email campaigns. This one tweak also reduced the unsubscribe rate for new subscribers.

How We Did It:

• We not only tracked new subscribers but also where they subscribed to us from. Some subscribers were ready to by immediately because they signed up specifically for deals. We didn’t include these subscribers in our “New Subscribers” segment. It paid off because many of them bought immediately through the email campaign.
• We focused on multiple segment. If you notice the screenshot above, we segmented the list seven ways which meant we sent out seven different marketing emails. The key was that we tweaked the email copy to resonate with each of the audiences. The more your audience can relate to your marketing message, the less they’ll see it as a sales pitch and the more they’ll see it as a resource.

Want More Free Marketing Tweaks?

We put all our best email marketing strategies in one place!

This Free Email Marketing Guide covers:

1. How to increase your email open rates
2. How to schedule your emails for success
3. Ways to segment your email list for a better response rate and more!

DOWNLOAD HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS

We’ve just created a brand new marketing guide called  7 Ways To Boost Your Email Marketing Performance. It’s a no-nonsense guide packed full of email marketing strategies that are easy to take action on and will help you build a more profitable email list.

What you’ll learn:

1. How to increase your email open rates
2. How to schedule your emails for success
3. Ways to segment your email list for a better response rate

All you need to do is click here to download the ebook and enter your email address. Then right click and choose “Save As” to save the ebook to your computer. That’s it!

If you enjoyed the ebook all I ask is that you share it with a friend who might find it helpful too.

Click here to download 7 Ways To Boost Your Email Marketing Performance (PDF)

Enjoy!

Did you know the number of people accessing the internet on their mobile phones is expected to overtake personal computers as the most popular way to access the web by 2014!!

Next time you’re out in public, try to count how many people are on their phone. I just left Starbucks and from the back of the store to the front I counted 17 mobile surfers. Is this just a coincidence? Clearly not.

So what am I getting at?

As the population of people begin to move towards this mobile platform, you will need to be ready for the opportunity. Having a mobile site is no longer just be the hip thing to do – your visitors will expect it.

The main difference between your website and your mobile site is location and usability. You are limited to what you can offer and you might only have your audience’s attention for 2 minutes in line at Chick-fil-a.

I’m going to explain the two key areas for you briefly:

Location: Mobile users are always on the go and need your mobile site meet their hectic lifestyle. If you have a physical location, it needs to be front and center on your mobile site so mobile users can easily pull up a map to find you.

Usability: The flow of your mobile site is much different than your website. The navigation needs to be simplified, the descriptions need to be brief and the graphics should be kept to a minimum. Simplicity is the goal!

If you have a WordPress blog, download the WP Touch plugin which automatically makes your blog mobile ready. If you want to create a mobile website, check out WixMobile, a free mobile site builder that allows you to create easy free mobile websites.

Now let’s get to work!

Photo by The Pug Father

Welcome to Episdoe #6 of the Fluxe Digital Marketing Podcast!

The word “Branding” is one of the most overused and misunderstood terms in my world. Luckily for us, we have guys like John. John is one of the best branding guys around. I say that cause

I’ve worked with him on several occasions and he’s blown my socks off every time! On this episode we discuss John’s new first book (and a few things he couldn’t put in the book). How about I just get to the good stuff?

Here’s a few things you’ll learn:

• Why being different isn’t enough for businesses
• Why your customers actually don’t want you to be transparent
• What makes us able to name some companies and forget the rest
• How big brands can keep their personalities without being stodgy and boring
• Why it’s more important than ever for brands to listen to their target audience
• And wayyyyy more!
• Buy John’s Book HERE
• Visit John’s Website 

Yesterday we had the honor of hearing Guy Kawasaki speak at Belmont University here in Nashville, TN and took away a bunch great insights. We couldn’t keep them to ourselves so we thought we’d share a few of the best nuggets!

**Bonus Tip – Don’t let the Bozos grind you down. Guy used the example of being offered the CEO position at Yahoo and saying no because it was a long drive to work. Estimated 2 billion dollar error that he jokes seriously about.

What we got out of the talk: Guy talks in his point about “Get Going”, that you need to get your product out in the social wave. Use Facebook, Twitter, Google + and any other network that allows you to spread your brand. Something we always like to hear from leaders is using social to increase your brand awareness through various social channels.

Kawasaki mentions that brands need to Polarize People, even it it makes them upset. He uses the example of the Scion xB and how Toyota can create a car that is perfect for the 26 year old, with a golden retriever and a set of skis but at the same time gets the 57 year old with kids say, “How impractical is that!?”.

Lastly, Guy talked about how to hire within your organization. Typically a company will hire someone who is less educated then themselves so that they hold power of knowledge over that employee. For example; “A+” People  hire  ”A” people. “B” people hire “C’ people and “C” people hire “D” people until you get all the way down to Z and suddenly you wonder why your business is failing. The right way to do this is for Type A people to hire Type A+ people. This will be the first step a business takes in creating a brand of influence and leadership.

I’d definitely recommend hearing him speak if you have the chance!

How well do you really know your customers?

I’m not talking about demographics or where they live. What about those things they are too afraid to admit? Or those questions they’re too afraid to ask?

I wanna show you one of my favorite tools for uncovering those questions. It’s called Quora.

Quora is a website that contains a TON of questions and answers on every topic imaginable written by curious folks like you and me. It’s similar to its older rivals Yahoo Answers and Linkedin Answers but much easier to peruse in my opinion.

(I’ve also found that Google ranks answers in Quora and the people who answer them pretty well in their search engines.)

But Quora isn’t just a place to ask questions, I’ve found myself using it quite a bit for marketing and have been really impressed. Here’s a few ways I’ve been using it that you can easily implement too.

One of the easiest ways to use Quora beyond asking questions is to use the questions and answers as content marketing material. When I’m getting ready to write a blog post or even one of these emails, I jump over to Quora and search for the topic I want to write about. Then I find what the most popular questions are on the topic and use that to target my content.

I’ve found that usually the people that ask the questions on these Q&A sites are a representative of a much larger group of people who have the same questions but are just to scared to ask them!

Another great way to use Quora for marketing is to find the questions related to your industry and start answering a few! Your not only helping the person out by answering, but you are establishing credibility (if you have a good answer) and learning the perspectives from the other people who answer (Who are probably your competition… HINT HINT)

When I first started using it, I only answered 2 or 3 questions and had 30 people following me within a week. It’s definitely a great place to attract prospects so don’t forget to fill out your profile.

So here’s what you need to do. Visit Quora.com, sign up with either Twitter or Facebook, start searching topics in your industry and find what types of questions are being asked over and over. Then, once your ready, start answering a few of them!

Whenever a client approaches me with a new idea, I always start with the same question: “How does this fit into your big picture marketing strategy?”  If that’s not the question your asking yourself and your team before each new project, chances are your leaving money on the table.

It’s the difference between having an online presence that’s just a bunch of pieces and having a structured online strategy that leads prospects through a very intentional path to conversion. One way achieve that structure is cross channel marketing.

Cross channel marketing is a single campaign run across multiple channels with a consistent message. Those channels can be a combination of online channels such as email, social networks or mobile and it can be offline through radio, tv and print.  Cross channel marketing is a combination of any of these channels and it’s rapidly growing in popularity among marketers.

Unfortunately most brands cross channel marketing strategies look more like they’ve gone to the marketing tactics cookbook, chose 5 recipes and made a mess trying to combine all of them into one campaign. Their audience is more confused than convinced and we both know a confused audience doesn’t buy.

Here are 5 essential rules for executing a successful cross channel marketing strategy. Make sure to read over each one carefully.

1. Define Your Goals and Communicate Them

Let’s get one thing out of the way. “Building Brand Awarenesss” is NOT a goal. Neither is saying your going to “build your email list” or “increase conversion”. Don’t worry, I won’t get off on a tangent about goal setting (Not right now at least) but if you aren’t clear on how to create an effective goal, I’d encourage you to start with the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

The purpose of setting goals is to give meaning and focus to every strategy and tactic in your marketing plan. But your goals have another big job to do. They need to manage expectations. If your marketing goals aren’t clearly defined in the beginning and communicated to your team, your marketing campaigns will fall apart before they have a chance to work.

2. Measure What Matters

When tracking performance across multiple channels

Be careful of converting metrics when measuring from channel to channel. Not all actions are created equal. A Facebook fan can’t be compared directly to an email subscriber. Their intentions are completely different. Instead use tracking system such as Google analytics if your tracking online behavior to measure conversions across multiple channels.

In every cross channel marketing effort, don’t forget to measure the conversion of your audience as they move from channel to channel using things like tracking codes or tags inside Google Analytics. That way you can measure prospects behavior across multiple channels rather than giving attribution to the last referring channel only.

And again, get everyone on board with the metrics you plan to use to measure the campaign. Your goal is only as good as the metrics you measure it by. Vanity metrics like website visitors and Facebook fans are part of a much bigger picture and should be viewed as such. Taking them out of context of your overall marketing strategy may result in a temporarily happy CMO but it will end in a failed campaign.

3. Keep Clicks Down

How many clicks does it take your prospect to get what they want? I remember one client I worked with on a cross channel strategy made their prospect click 10 times over 4 different channels and enter their information twice! Needless to say, their conversion rates weren’t very high until we simplified things.

Cutting down on clicks is a simple way to reduce friction is between your prospect and the desired action. You don’t need to pre-qualify them by making them jump through hoops and fill out long forms. Wait until you actually get them into your funnel first!

Dont’ try to pick up a Facebook fan, then get an email address, then get the consumer to fill out a survey. You wouldn’t do that to someone you just met in person, would you? You can’t lose if you keep your focus on the prospect’s experience. Remember to always ask yourself, WIIFM. What’s in it for ME?

4. Understand Audience Behavior Across Each Channel

Do you know how the demographics differ across each of your marketing channels? We used to only need to know our website demographic but market fragmentation has split our audience up into much small segments. Prospects in each channel tend to communicate differently. Pay attention to those differences and use them as opportunities to connect with your customers.

Your email list might not care to add you on Facebook. That’s ok! Focus on giving them what they do want. Experiment to find out what calls to action they are interested in and adjust if you need to.

5. Limit Your Calls To Action

if you give someone 8 options on what to do next how quickly do you think they’ll choose compared to giving them the best option?

every page and platform and post should be intentional. Your customer wants to be told what to do next. Stop giving them a buffet of options and limit it to one primary call to action.

“But we need to brand our web presence by including links to every channel, site and sign-up form we have…” WRONG! If a customer is already signup up for your email list, they’ve told you what they want. Give them what you promised when you signed up. When you include a call to action, make it relevant to the content your providing.

If your reading this and realize you have some work to do, don’t worry! There’s always someone doing it worse : ) In this case I stumbled upon Sony’s Facebook Page. Not only is their landing tab the length of 3 computer screens but every red arrow I threw in there is a call to action. They’re trying to get users to attend events, enter contests, take photos and tweet them, become a fan, follow them on Twitter and we could keep going! What do you think their audience is going to do? Probably nothing.

How do you optimize your cross Channel Marketing?

Now it’s your turn. Share what you’ve learned marketing across different channels. What have you noticed or done that has improved the effectiveness of your marketing?

Photo Credit: squacco