Have you reached your full potential yet?

One of the most important things that all business owners need in order to have success is to set goals.

One of the most common pitfalls in business is to lose focus on what you are trying to achieve.

aka: getting stuck

The end of the year is a good time to clear your thoughts and set some time aside to assess your business.

First start with your long-terms goals/vision of 5-10 years. Where do you want to be? Write down 3 goals on what you would like to achieve. Dream Big & Bet on Yourself!

(write your goals down - this is important!)

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago but you can still start today”

Next, break your goals down into smaller segments. For example: if your goals are increase your income to $500k/year within five years, figure out how much additional income you’d need to bring in. Let’s say that equates to 100 additional clients in five years, therefore you’d need to bring in 20 per year/1-2 each month.

Lastly, invest in yourself and your business in 2019. Treat yourself like you are one of your clients. Take the time to produce content, work on your goals (uh, see above), improve your skills, etc.

Have a great holiday season and let’s head into 2019 with a plan for success!

the biggest mistakes with email marketing

Fact: by the end of 2017, there were over 4.9 billion email accounts worldwide*

Fact II: 86% of business professionals choose to use email as their preferred method of communication**

But not everyone is doing a great job. Here are three of the biggest challenges that small businesses have with email marketing:

#1 - Not following up - most of us are ultimately in sales and we should always be looking to build relationships. After you meet a new business contact, it’s easy to shoot someone an email and tell them how nice it was to meet them, but many people drop the ball here. You should continue to follow up with them, by providing value and offering help. Your email marketing campaign will help you do that. You’ve done the hard part by making the connection, don’t let it fall away!

#2 - Create compelling subject lines - Once you’ve established your email marketing program, the biggest challenge is getting people to open your message. In most industries, open rates are under 35% - that’s a 65% failure rate! So you need to be doing everything you can to maximize your open rates. Try a personalized headline with a specific benefit in the subject line like: “Customers calling you? I can help you with that”

Furthermore, if you use words like “donate”, “free” or “buy” your message might get blocked by your email spam filter and your audience will never see it (and never read it)

#3 Make sure you’re delivering value - make sure you communicate to your audience what’s in it for them. Your customers are only interested in themselves, so every message can’t be a sales pitch. Try to educate, inform or entertain people with your emails. If you are helping people and providing valuable insight and information, it will help develop trust with your audience, as well as distinguish you as an authority.

If you avoid these mistakes, your email marketing program will be much more successful in getting people to know you, developing a relationship and ultimately lead to more sales

*Radicati Statistics Report

**Hubspot, 2017

video marketing tactics

Now that you’ve invested in a high-quality branding video, here are some tactics to help you leverage it.

Post your video to social media:

Your video can be posted to Facebook and Twitter page (plus you can pin it to the top of your page for long-lasting visibility).

LinkedIn now allows you to post media, including video to your LinkedIn profile

Add it your your Instagram profile as a Highlight

Share your awesome video with the world!

Edit a short snippet of the video of 7 seconds or less, you can use it as your Facebook Profile or Page pic or use a shortened version as your Cover Photo

Include your video into your email marketing campaign in the introduction portion of your sequence

Embed your video into your email signature

Bonus tip - if your email program does not allow you to embed a video in your email signature, create a screenshot of your video, add a “play” button icon making it appear like an embedded video. Insert a link into the image (you can use a bitly or other masking link to track clicks) to where the video is posted (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo, etc)

Advanced:

Post it to your Facebook Page (you can pin it to the top of your page: see above). Run a Facebook ad optimized for video views. After 3 or 4 days, create a custom audience based on people who viewed your video (0:10 seconds of your video or 50% or whatever makes sense for the video and your goals), then run a Facebook re-targeting ad to those who have already watched your video, thus bringing your audience further down the buying process.

The importance of video in your online marketing strategy

There are a few important reasons why you should be making video a central part of your online marketing strategy:

According to Hootsuite:

“organic traffic on Facebook has dropped by 10% since last year”,

However, the highest engagement rate is with posts that include a video. Furthermore, a Facebook video gets 135% more organic reach than a photo, 500 million people watch Facebook videos every day for a total of more than 100 million hours. Those are some heavy numbers!

Therefore the best way to get organic (non-paid) is with video. In addition, Facebook Live videos drive 6X more interactions than non-live videos!!

A key part of your branding strategy should include video. A video will help display your uniqueness, differentiator and help convey your personal, honest and authentic brand.

Lastly, once you’ve posted a video to Facebook, you can run a re-targeting campaign to people who have watched it. A Facebook re-targeting campaign is a great, and cost-effective way to run a targeted campaign to people who are already aware of your brand and are more likely to re-engage and ultimately become a customer.

[http://mediakix.com/2017/03/facebook-live-statistics-video-streaming-to-know/]

Marketing to Millennials

Here's three tips to you can apply to almost all of your online marketing

No one wants to buy your product or service!

In this video, I will tell you why no one wants to buy your product/service.

But I will let you know what they really want

Here's why you should be utilizing an email marketing campaign

According to a recent article (https://neilpatel.com/blog/the-social...), 86% of your customers want to hear from you (about your promotions, offers, sales, events) via email each month. So why aren't you emailing them. To learn more about email marketing, hit me up at kayshiftmarketing@gmail.com

The Two Biggest Mistakes

When I speak to small business owners and entrepreneurs, the two most common mistakes I hear are:

Not knowing who your customers are

Not having a specific offer

These are two of the most central aspects you need before you can effectively start your marketing campaign.  Firstly, you need to know who you serve, who is your service/product for, whose pain point are you trying to solve.  If you don't know who your ideal customer is, how are you going to find them?

Secondly, you need to a specific offer, something that a customer can become aware of, consider and "say yes" to. 

"I offer marketing services" is not specific enough!

Let's try that again: "I offer a consulting package where I will teach you how to run your Facebook account and generate leads"  This offer is much more specific and gives the customer a clear picture of what they are purchasing and the direct benefit.

Make sure you have a specific offer and you know who you are marketing to.

Jamie Kuperman is a 2-time entrepreneur and lifelong marketer.  Currently he is offering coaching packages focused on social media, Facebook Ads, and email marketing.