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…

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.

Ask Yellow Dog: Do Drip Campaigns Delay a Sale?

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Do Drip Campaigns Delay a Sale_I’m starting to work with a new client and we’ve discussed adding a welcome series of emails with an opt-in offer to their website. This is something I often talk about with clients when we’re getting their newsletter setup. Do you have an opt in offer and should we have a series of welcome emails about it? The answer is usually:

  • Yes
  • No but I can
  • No, hard pass – please don’t make me.

Here’s the specific question from my client:

I know we’ve talked about doing a four part series. In theory, I’m fine with that, but I have been wondering if continuing to drip useful information to potential clients may inadvertently prevent/delay them for reaching out because they know more information is coming… I definitely want them to have that “whoa this is a lot we should probably just pay them to help us” feeling but not the “well this is manageable I’ll just keep waiting for these emails” feeling.

I LOVE this question.

It’s how we all feel about our opt in and any drip campaign series. Will they wait to buy or will they buy now? Here’s my response…

Good question…Downloads are a funny thing. Some people will download the list because they want something for free and never really plan to hire you – they just want the DIY. And some people download but never look at it. And then the 3rd group download it, use it and realize that yeah, they need you.
SO – I don’t think someone who needs to hire you NOW will wait the whole 4 weeks (or however long we make the series last) to call you if they need you. AND at the bottom of each email we can add a button to “schedule your initial consult” or whatever we decide to do.

Most Importantly?

What you measure matters. Make sure that you’re tracking where your leads come from. Did this person download the opt in and then schedule a consult a week later? Did they schedules 3 months later once they were on the newsletter list and started to get a better feel for how you work? Did you meet them networking and they checked out your website so were already warmed up to your awesomeness before they opted in?
The right clients come along when THEY are ready, not when you want them to be ready. The purpose of your opt in is to have a healthy sales pipeline continuously growing so the right people come in on their timeline and you aren’t panicking about where that next piece of business is going to come from.