Tag: growing your business

Paralysis By Analysis

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analysis

Paralysis by analysis – guilty as charged?

Today, we continue our new Entrepreneur Series by discussing the issue of paralysis by analysis.

I’m sure we have all been guilty of this at one time or another. We have an idea, create a plan and get all the back end prepared, and then? We do nothing with it, or shift views, or something…

What makes us do this, and how can we avoid it? Join Frank Thomas and me as we explore this aspect of human nature and talk about ways to avoid falling into this trap.

Watch our video here or on YouTube.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

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Entrepreneur Series – Intro Podcast

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entrepreneur success

About a month ago, Frank Thomas and I launched our new series for entrepreneurs,

and I posted the introductory video here, on our website.

As a reminder, the series is focused on helping small business owners and entrepreneurs to be successful. The first video is an overview of what to expect in the series, as well as a discussion on roadblocks on your path to success and how to overcome them.

We are back on track with our schedule (at least for now) and look forward to presenting Part Two of our intro to the series on Thursday.

Meanwhile, as a refresher, you can watch the video by checking our earlier article or listen to our podcast of the episode.

Listen to our episode here, or listen to the podcast.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Give ‘Em What They Deserve!

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client experience

How do you take care of your clients and prospects?

There are many facets of running your own business that can be challenging. But one of the most important aspects is to ensure that you are giving a great client experience. After all, without customers you have no business.

You spend lots of time hiring the appropriate support staff, creating the perfect products and services for your ideal customers, developing and promoting your brand, etc.

However, the preparation is simply the prelude to the success of your business. Once you have laid the foundation, it is essential to capture and retain your market share in order to run a profitable business-and to stay in business!

Now, I do not believe in that old adage “the client is always right”. While the vast majority of your customers have reasonable expectations, you will always find the rarity who either believes they deserve special treatment, or will never be satisfied with what you provide no matter how hard you try. So don’t focus your time and energy on these few bad apples; instead focus on providing the best experience to the majority of your clients and you will have success.

There are three key ingredients that will help you define and deliver quality service to your clients, ensuring loyalty. Let’s break them out.

1. Provide good quality to your clients and prospects.

Okay, that’s easy to say, but what is good quality? The key factor here is for you to define what good quality means to you. How do you want your product or service to look and feel? What guarantees or warranties do you provide for your product or service? Do your employees represent you and your brand in a way that is consistent and matches your values? Do you have proper policies and procedures that are easy to understand and easy to follow?

2. Evaluate your products or services regularly.

The secret here is to continually monitor your product or service to ensure that you are delivering something of value to your clients. Consider sending an email survey to your clients on occasion, asking for feedback. Invite them to express comments or concerns they may have during delivery of your product or service. If you’re working on a project that has deliverables over time, evaluate each step of the process. Take the time to follow up personally with clients on a random basis. Make sure that you address any issues that are brought to your attention immediately. This doesn’t mean that you have to change your product or service, but ensure that the client feels that they have been heard and understands why things are done the way that they are.

3. Never underestimate the value of a testimonial or review.

Remember to ask your clients to share their experiences with your company. Nothing is as effective as a positive review or positive feedback on the experience you have provided to a client. Expressing why they prefer to do business with you, instead of one of your competitors, can be one of the most compelling reasons for new prospects to choose your business in the future. These reviews and testimonials can be provided by the written word, an audio file, or video testimonial. Think about making it a policy to send a follow-up email or make a follow-up phone call with each and every client, asking them about their experience with your business, and then asking for the testimonial. Be sure to get permission to share this information, and post it on your website, social media profiles, and any other appropriate place.

It truly doesn’t take that much effort to ensure that you are providing a quality experience for your clients. Following these three simple steps will help provide the foundation to build a client user experience policy that will give your customers that loving feeling and help you grow a successful business.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

7 Reasons You Should Be Using Video To Market Your Business

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video marketing

There are many reasons why you should be using video to help market your business.

But for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the top seven:

1. It works!

Those of you who have been following my articles and post page for the past year have seen me struggle with video. Like most of us, I’m not the biggest fan of the camera and was concerned about getting my face out there in front of everyone. But the reality is, video works! So it’s important to “get over yourself” and start integrating video into your marketing plan.

2.  It’s powerful.

Video is clearly one of the most powerful ways we have to deliver our messages to our clients and prospects, and to ignore it is to miss out on a huge opportunity to market your business and get in front of more prospects.

3. It’s social.

Video has also become much easier to integrate into the major social media marketing platforms. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram… All these platforms allow you to incorporate video to share with your friends and followers. And you’ll find that many people are willing to share video content with their network.

4. SEO value.

Video is extremely effective for SEO. Indeed, video ranks higher than any other online communication method. And although SEO, and its attendant algorithms, continues to morph, it is still an important factor in being found online. We all know that YouTube is owned by Google, and we all know that Google is still the world’s number one search engine. But did you know that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. With over 1 billion users and many billions of views every day, YouTube actually reaches more people between the ages of 18 and 49 than any cable network in the United States.

5.  It’s a preferred medium.

Video has quickly become a preferred marketing tool because it delivers information in a way that is easy for our brains to process. It has the benefit of demonstrating, not simply outlining, how to do, use, or implement a product or service.

6.  It’s personal.

Another benefit of video is that it humanizes online experiences for people. Through the production and delivery of video to your clients and prospects, you are no longer the faceless entity behind a website. This experience helps people engage more personally, increasing loyalty and cementing your brand in the minds of your viewers.

7.  It’s entertaining.

And let’s not forget about the entertainment value of video. Even if you are providing a demonstration video, your message will be accepted much better by your audience than the written word. Through the active stimulating the visual and auditory senses of your viewers, you are able to engage them in a much more significant fashion. Additionally, providing an entertaining, educational, or informational video can reach huge audiences on a global basis, increasing your reach and your authority in ways that were previously prohibitive.

Until recently, most people obtained their visual and auditory stimulus through the television. Big brands bought commercial timeslots, which are expensive to produce and expensive to deliver to the viewer. But now, and in ever increasing numbers, people are choosing to stream their visual content, and are able to pick and choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. So why not start to create your own visual content and get in front of your preferred audience.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

What A Difference A Year Makes!

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rebranding

One year ago this month, I rebranded Agapi Marketing & Consulting and launched our new website.

Prior to April 2015, my website was old, not mobile responsive, and I was marketing like I had been 10 years earlier.

Some of you know that I started the new millennium by doing things a little bit differently. Although marketing was always a key part of everything that I have done, I branched out into a couple of other areas. From 2002 to 2006, I was taking advantage of the changing real estate market in Calgary and was working with the company who invested in, and then flipped, houses. I became a licensed financial planner, and focused much of my marketing on the financial services industry. From 2009 to 2013, I worked with a company that focused on taking businesses public.

And then I decided to become less dependent on individual contracts and get back to helping business owners from all verticals learn how to effectively and efficiently market and promote their companies.

But there was a bit of a learning curve involved. After being out of the marketing mainstream for many years due to focusing on individual and specific contracts, I had to rebuild my network and my reputation. At first, I tried to run my consulting business as I had prior to 2002, providing planning and fulfillment services. This proved to be a challenge; when you’re busy doing fulfillment, you can’t be taking care of the myriad of responsibilities required in the running of a business.

So I re-branded my business. I decided to focus on my core strength, which is helping people develop their strategic marketing plan. After all, without this foundation, your marketing will cost you more, be less effective, and be inconsistent.

I met and worked with business owners who could provide fulfillment services that met with my high standards. After all, if it’s not good enough for me, it’s not good enough for my clients.

I rebuilt my website and re-branded my Corporation, honing my focus to better deliver that message.

I began participating in webcasts, podcasts and interviews, and began writing articles for various publications.

I wrote a couple of books which are now sold on Amazon.

I developed and built out my corporate, as well as my personal social profiles on twitter Facebook and LinkedIn.

I began providing our “Expert Interview Series” to our newsletter subscribers.

And I got over my intimidation and fear of the camera, launched a YouTube channel and began posting videos.

And the result?

The response has been great! More and more people are watching my YouTube videos and connecting on my social profiles. My web statistics show that people are not only engaging with, but are expecting my twice-weekly posts. People are spending time on my website; approximately 10% of all visitors to my site are spending a minimum of an hour there. I have successfully built a following, authority, and a solid group of experts to assist me with fulfilling the needs of my clients.

So thanks for being a part of my phenomenal growth over the past year. It has been an experience – and sometimes a frustration – but always fun and always a privilege.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

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influencer marketing

Are you taking advantage of influencer marketing?

Heck… do you even know what’s meant by that phrase?

We are bombarded every day with ads, and they hit us from everywhere; billboards, print media, buses, elevators, email, and the internet.

Yep, that’s a lot of money being spent every day to capture the attention of prospects. And more and more people aren’t trusting these ads.

So, how does a small or mid-sized business reach that sweet spot; the perfect balance of delivering your message while obtaining the most important, yet often elusive element of trust? Influencer marketing has the advantage of offering potentially huge benefits to the small business owner, at little to no cost.

What is influencer marketing?

The President of Word of Mouth Marketing Association, Suzanne Fanning, defines influencer marketing as the practice of contacting a small group of individuals to reach out to the rest of your prospects. The concept is that if you effectively reach ten percent of your prospective clients who know, like and trust you, they will spread the word to the other 90 percent on your behalf.

True, this is not a new concept, but has been largely overlooked by many business owners.

Influencer Marketing, simply put, is word-of-mouth. And we all know that a referral is the best kind of business you can obtain. To have someone who already trusts you, recommend you to their circle of influence, will provide you with more real business, not just ‘tire-kickers’.

Be smart about your marketing. Never assume that spending large amounts of money will reap huge rewards. Imagination, creativity, and demonstrating trustworthiness beats out a large advertising budget every time.

So don’t overspend on advertising. Yes, advertising is important, and yes, you will have to spend some money. But without a strategy, a budget and a workable plan, you will spend more than is necessary. And by introducing influencer marketing into the equation, you are inviting engagement.

Every single person you reach is a potential influencer. Therefore, make sure that you are participating in meaningful exchanges with everyone, and never overlook anyone. And don’t get hung up on how many followers or likes you have on social media platforms. The more important thing is the conversations and the engagement you are having with these folks.

Find out what people like about your products or services. How do they use them? A happy, satisfied customer is the best influencer available.

Consider a giveaway, such as a coupon or a sample, to encourage organic growth of your brand. Use humor when appropriate, and make sure your information is sharable. Deliver an authentic experience to every person who comes in your door or visits your website. By offering something of use to your target audience, you help build authority and trust, making it easier for them to do business with you or refer you to someone they know.  Gain valued advocates of your services or products.

As you can see, influencer marketing can be the most effective, yet least expensive, form of marketing. And it has proven itself to be the best way to grow a small business. In fact, according to a Nielsen report, 92 percent of men and women trust the advice given by friends and family over all other types of advertising. All you need to do is deliver products and services that result in happy customers, and ask them to reach out to their friends and family.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Doing It Write

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writing

Communication is at the core of everything we do in life.

And writing is at the heart of all communication.

From very early times, humans have striven to tell stories in a way that is preserved for future generations. From cavemen drawing images on walls, to hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, to manuscripts and books, and now to abbreviated conversations through the technology of texts, we have told our stories.

Now, I’ll admit that I’m a bit old-school. I’m a bit of a stickler for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I prefer telephone conversations rather than text messages, especially for any conversations of length. And, if I’m looking to memorialize something, I am more likely to rely on email than on a text message.

But I also am a realist.

I recognize that technology has changed the substance of communication, if not the inherent value of it. Probably half of our current population has grown up in a world that doesn’t know what it was like before the age of computers. Although most of the younger generation can type faster than I can, none of them grew up with the experience of learning the keyboard on a manual typewriter.  These are the folks who can text nearly as fast as they speak.  Which is probably why I still prefer telephone conversation.

Typos and Auto Correct are the bane of my existence!damn you autocorrect

In so many ways, technology has improved our ability not only to communicate, but to communicate with people at great distances from us. And this communication happens in an instant.

So, how are you communicating with prospects and clients?

The art of writing is not lost. If you are not already providing a newsletter – or at least regular email updates – to your clients and prospects, I urge you to consider starting this immediately. Yes, in a world of messages of 140 characters or less, people still like to engage at a deeper level.

Don’t stop doing your short posts on social media, and don’t stop making and uploading videos and podcasts. But don’t forget the art of writing. There is something permanent about the written word; something that strikes to the core of all of us.

And although I admitted being a stickler for proper spelling, etc., language continues to evolve. Many words that were abbreviated for the purposes of text messaging have now become normal in many areas of our language. Who hasn’t included “LOL” in something that they have written?

So my final thoughts for this article are to encourage you to keep writing, in whatever form makes you comfortable. Just keep doing it!  And  100 years from now, people will have an indication of how we communicated, just as we look back in history at others.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Are You Content With Your Content?

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content is king

The English language is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Many words, depending on their pronunciation, have different meanings. The word “content” in the title of today’s article is a great example of this.

To be content is to be satisfied, or happy with the current state of things. And content is also the substance of something, such as a book, website, etc.

So, back to my question: are you content with your content?

We all know that to attract prospects and clients, we have to engage them. One of the best ways to engage them is through content. But not just any content. You have to provide something of value to them, something that stirs emotion and reaction and stimulates their desire to know more.

Many business owners, although great at delivering their product or service, don’t really understand the value of providing good content on a consistent basis. Keeping your clients and prospects interested is the key to keeping them engaged.

Now, I understand that as a small business owner you may not see the correlation between the service or product that you sell and simply writing about it on your website or blog. But just think about this for a minute; if you can provide insights and help educate your client or prospect, what would you expect the result to be?

Consider your own behavior as well. If you are researching something online, do you simply find a provider and run out and purchase from them, or you check out a few different sites and interact more with those sites that are providing a more personalized experience?

We all like to do business with people we like, know, and trust. In our current world of electronic communication, it can be difficult to establish and build that relationship. Therefore, it helps your prospects and your clients understand and trust you and your business by learning about you through your content.

There are many ways that you can provide content as well. Consider sending an online newsletter to folks who subscribe to it on your website. Think about writing articles about topics that are pertinent to your business and posting them on a regular and consistent basis to your website. Determine which social media platforms your clients and prospects use, and post updates and interact with them regularly there. If you are camera shy, get over it and make a few short “how-to” videos, explaining certain processes on a YouTube channel that you set up and link to your website.

These are just a few examples of simple ways to interact and build trust with your clients and prospects. If this is an area that you aren’t comfortable with, consider outsourcing this service. You will find that you will gain a huge advantage from that small investment.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

Entrepreneur Series – Episode One

Nancy Boisvert Video Blog , , , , , , ,
entrepreneur

Welcome! Today we are posting our introductory video for our new series for entrepreneurs.

As you know, I am a regular co-host on the Small Business Tips Show with Frank Thomas. We have developed a number of podcasts and webinars designed to help small business owners build a successful business. Out of this process, we discovered that many of you were looking for something that would help identify and walk through the steps required to build, maintain, and grow your business. Our answer was to create the Entrepreneur Series, and today we start with the ‘Jumpstart” video.

In this first video, we do a high level overview of the issues we will be presenting in the series. We discuss how roadblocks jump into the way, and how to overcome them. In our future videos, we drill down and dissect each component, so enjoy this video today, and be sure to check back as we publish the rest of the series.

Watch our video here, or watch on YouTube.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

How To Market Your Financial Services Business

Nancy Boisvert Newsletter, Video Blog , , , , , , , , , , ,
financial services business

To those of you in the financial services business, welcome to our “How To…” series!

This series will provide some marketing tips and strategies for different business sectors.  Today, we start this series by giving some ideas to the financial services industry.  If you work in any of the areas of this industry, you will want to watch it; if you work in another niche, you will still benefit.

Watch our video here, or watch on YouTube.

Transcription of video:

Hi, Nancy Boisvert of Agapi Marketing & Consulting here and I wanted to talk to all of you professionals out there in the financial services industry today.

I know there are some you who are independents, but the larger portion of you do work under the umbrella of a larger corporation, and I do know that many times you folks tend to defer your marketing to the larger corporation. And that’s fine if that’s working for you. But I guess my question to you is, what is setting you apart from all the others? That comes down to branding. So what I’m going to discuss with you today is ways to set yourself apart from your competition.

I wanted to address just a handful of ideas, give you some tips and some ideas that perhaps you can implement.

Now, one of the things that we all know is that people like to do business with people that they like, know and trust. So, assuming that you’re getting a large portion of your prospects from a pool out there, and not necessarily from referral business, how do you get people to like, know and trust you?

Well, that boils down to, first of all, being seen as an expert in your field. And how do you do that? Well, there’s a handful of ways that you can look at doing that.

One of the things that you can do is set up your own YouTube channel. I’m doing this video here in my home office just to show you that you don’t need to be fancy, you don’t need a lot of expensive equipment, and you don’t need a studio to do it. What you need to do is shut your door, turn off your phones, get in front of your Webcam and share a little bit of your expertise and your knowledge with the people who are your target audience. So you can do that.

Another thing you can do is write a book. Now, don’t get intimidated; I’m not talking about writing “War and Peace”. I’m talking about putting together a 30 to 45-page book that you can sell on Amazon – or just give it away to your clients and prospects. But what I am suggesting is that if you do you have it published, that also helps enhance your reputation as an expert. If you don’t have time to do that, consider ghostwriter.

Another thing that you can do is send out newsletters on a monthly basis. Now, I know you’re governing company probably does have some sort of newsletter, some sort of monthly communication that they can provide, but again loses all that personal touch. If I know that you’re just one of 400 agents under the umbrella of specific Corporation, what is it that makes me want to stay with you or do business with you, instead of somebody down the road who has the same shingle? So, set yourself apart from your competitors.

Do “lunch and learns”. Bring in a handful of people once a month. Invite a dozen different people, bring in a guest speaker and present something and give people something that they’re going to remember. They’re going to have a lunch, they’re going to get some information, they’ll have some one-on-one time; a really, really great way to get people to build that trust factor with you.

So that’s just a handful of things that you can do.

What I’d like you to do is connect to my website. I’ve got a link here on this video. You can connect connector there. I’ve got a transcript of this video on there in case you wanted to print it off or some of the ideas. But what I’d really like you do is give me a call or drop me an email. No obligation. Let’s just explore what it is that you’re doing and let’s see if there’s some way that I can help you build your business and become more popular to your target audience out there.

So I’ll leave you with that. Thank you very much for watching the video and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Bye for now.

Until next time…

Are you ready to grow your business now? If you’re ready to take the next step and make your business more profitable, contact us today.

If you like the information you are receiving, please consider forwarding this post.

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