Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

3 Marketing Updates You May Need to Check In On

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3-Marketing-Updates-You-May-Need-to-Check-In-OnThis morning I was thrilled (please note the dripping sarcasm) to see that Mailchimp has decided to completely restructure their billing and their plan offerings. The good news if you already have an account –  you’re safe. But if you need to move to a paid plan (which based on what your automation and list needs are, you might) you are going to probably pay more. I’ve seen a few changes to marketing technology lately and I wanted to share 3 marketing changes that you may want to check in on for your business.

  1. LinkedIn Showcase Pages – I was talking with a client today about how great the LinkedIn Showcase pages are as a compliment to your business page. Then I clicked on mine to show her and the page was in need of a major update. SO – if you’ve had a business page setup on LinkedIn and added featured pages for specific products – it’s time to jump over and make sure it still looks as good as you hoped!
  2. Google My Business – With Google+ gone what’s a small business owner to do to promote their content on Google? Luckily if you have a Google My Business Page setup (and if you don’t stop now and do that first) you can add a post to your account. With G+ you could schedule these out like other social media posts, but with Google My Business you have to manually go in to add in a post. However, I appreciate that GMB will alert you when your post is about to expire so you can go in and post something new. Which you should…
  3. Mailchimp’s Update – If you have Mailchimp take a look at the email they sent out today with their updated terms of use and their new snazzy pricing structure. Reminder – if you already have an account – you’re safe!

Software and marketing tools are constantly changing. These are 3 that just happened to be talking about TODAY that I thought I’d make sure you’re aware of. What software has changed recently that small business owners need to be aware of? Please share in the comments…

April Pop Culture Round Up

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april pop culture round upApril has been a whirlwind – including a great trip across the PNW visiting family and celebrating a 2nd birthday and a 50th birthday (neither were mine). That also meant time to read a book on those flights around the region! All that and the return of Game of Thrones means April is a great pop culture month…

Reading

I thoroughly enjoyed On the Come Up by Angie Thomas. Thomas wrote The Hate U Give a couple of years ago, which I also loved. I love that she has kept her books in the same neighborhood (and I heard her 3rd book will do the same). I also appreciate that while referencing events between books, the characters don’t cross over (yet…)

I have another flight soon that I’m hoping will allow for some time to read ANOTHER book, not sure which one it will be yet…

Listening

Thanks to my amazing client Bronwyn I discovered The Dropout which is about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It was CRAZY. I sort of knew the story but WOW Holmes is a piece of work. I read a great follow up piece in Wired about how we expect this kind of behavior from men in business but rarely do we see a woman lie, cheat and steal millions without any sort of guilt. Fascinating…I can’t wait for the miniseries.

I am a woman so obviously a lot of Homecoming: The Live Album is happening around this house. And I am so grateful that my Monday morning workout class has been including a different version of the Game of Thrones theme song…

Watching

Winter is Here. I am so excited that Game of Thrones has returned and sad that it’s the final season and almost over. I was thrilled to see every character at least pop up in the season premiere. We seem to know where everyone is, and now to see who makes it and who ends up on the throne…

I finally finished Broad City. What a fantastic and hilarious series. I am sad that it’s over but excited to see what Abbi & Ilana have in store for their own future creative endeavors. I also really loved The Other Two, if you didn’t catch the series and need some funny and ridiculous summer TV, start here.

This final season of Jane the Virgin  has all the telenovela tropes I was hoping for from the final season (amnesia!?!!)  I am going to be so sad when it’s over. The final season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was good and I like how it ended but I may need to rewatch that finale. I felt the live musical special after was more memorable. Just me?

I did LOVE Schitt’s Creek and that penultimate episode was FABULOUS. And the latest season of Queer Eye was just what I needed.

What pop culture is keeping you sane this spring? Have you seen Endgame yet? (no spoilers – I may be a couple weeks…)

List Size Matters

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I was listening to Pod Save America the other day and they were discussing Joe Biden’s imminent 2020 run. Dan Pfeiffer mentioned that one concern the campaign may have is the size of Biden’s list. The BIG news out of 2020 is that when Bernie Sanders launched his campaign and Beto O’Rourke they both had HUGE first day donations. And they were a lot of small donations adding up to insane amounts of money. Biden is concerned he doesn’t have the list. He hasn’t run since 2008 and he didn’t run after 2016 so he hasn’t had to work on building his list in over 10 years. And 10 years ago fundraising was VERY different than it is today.

On top of that, one of the rules of entry into the Democratic Primary Debates is to “Meet the grassroots fundraising threshold, which requires obtaining 65,000 unique donors and a minimum of 200 donors per state in at least 20 states.”

Writing a big check from a couple of donors will no longer cut it folks. So why do I think you as a small business owner should care about this?

Your list matters

Continuing to cultivate your list matters. Biden is in a pinch because he ignored his list for 10 years. If you had something big to announce (a new program, book, service, etc,) would you have the list to get your version of 65,000 unique donors?

So what do you do?

  1. Have a Welcome Series – give people something when they join your list & welcome them to your community
  2. Talk to Them Regularly – don’t let them forget who you are (I feel like I say this every time I have a blog post about lists but it obviously needs to be repeated)
  3. Don’t Just Ask for Money – In politics this is common. The daily donation request. But in business I see this happen all the time too. Your newsletter is just a sales pitch for your latest product or service. Educate me about your awesomeness and then down the line ask me for money. Don’t start out like this.

Your list, and your communication with that list, is an important piece of your marketing tool kit. Stop ignoring it.