Entrepreneur

5 Ways To Get More Returning Customers

July 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Customers

For the typical brand, 90% of the sales it gets is from returning customers. In the remaining 10%, 9% of the sales come from satisfied customers who told others about you (word of mouth marketing) while the final 1% are completely new. With these statistics in mind, the key to a brand’s success is not getting more customers. Instead, getting more returning customers is what allows a brand to become successful. This is the part when brands and entrepreneurs ask how this can happen to them. Here are five tips to help you pull it off.

Create a stay in touch checklist. Is there a customer who really enjoys your brand or comes back? Put that person on a stay in touch checklist. Frequently send emails to that person and interact with that person on your social networks. It is also important to interact in a way that builds a strong connection. Don’t suddenly show up to the people on this stay in touch checklist when you come out with a new product. The connection needs to be strengthened well before the new product comes out.
Get people to subscribe to your blog. Someone who is subscribed to your blog will be more likely to buy one of your products than someone who is not subscribed to your blog. Subscribers see you often in their inbox, and being seen often creates a level of trust. This level of trust combined with valuable content will be sufficient to make people want to buy your products.
Get people to follow you on your social networks. The bigger your social media audience is, the more people will want to join that audience. We have a natural tendency to join the things that are popular. In addition to growing your audience, social media encourages word of mouth and engagement. You will be able to talk with the customers who have already bought your products. Some of my book reviews are only there because I asked my followers who bought my book if they could leave a quick review.
Have your wow factors in place. Your wow factors give your potential customers a reason to buy from you and a reason for customers to come back. Your wow factors are credentials that make people marvel at what you have done. If you do not have any wow factors, then you need to go get some.
Host giveaways, sweepstakes, and discounts. If you can give some of your customers a free prize, those customers will share it with their friends. Word of mouth will allow your message to spread and make the 9% of the customer pie larger. In addition, your product will get some extra exposure, and some of the people who did not win the sweepstakes or get the giveaway award will end up buying the product anyway. In addition to hosting giveaways and sweepstakes, you need to have discounts in place. Lowering the price of your product will result in a higher volume of sales, and some of the customers who already bought one of your products will get attracted by the discount.

If you are able to master the process of getting returning customers, then your brand will thrive. There is no such thing as overnight success, but as you get more customers, the numbers in the customer pie will get larger. Right now, 90% of your customers may only refer to nine people, but if you implement these tactics, 90% of your customers may eventually be able to mean thousands. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips to get more returning customers? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The True Definition Of A Personal Brand

July 19, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

It took me a while before I learned what a personal brand is. I knew I was building a personal brand for myself, but with so many confusing definitions on the web, I got confused about the definition of a personal brand. Some articles say that a personal brand is defined by the logo while other articles say that a personal brand is defined by the size of the audience. The bigger the audience, the better the brand. With all of the confusion, I finally figured out a clear definition of a personal brand on the day I got my 96,000th Twitter followers (don’t make fun of me). To clear all of the confusion that others may be having, here is the true definition of a personal brand:

A personal brand is how people think of you after they see you in action.

That means the definition of your personal brand depends on the individual. If an individual sees you as a hard worker, that is how the individual would define your personal brand. If an individual sees you as a newbie, that is how the individual would define your personal brand.

I hope that clears up any confusion people were experiencing about defining a personal brand.

How To Remove Yourself From The Competition With Blue Ocean Strategy

July 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

It has become an imperative to make yourself stand out from the competition. Removing yourself from the current competition and tapping into a new market is one of the best ways to stand out and get more attention. However, the idea of finding an entirely new niche sounds daunting. Luckily, I had the privilege of reading Blue Ocean Strategy which has been sold over two million times. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about how different businesses were able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of these businesses differentiated themselves with the same rubric. These are the components of the rubric that will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition:

Reduction. What are certain aspects of your niche that can be reduced. Do the people in your niche push out too much content? Do they post too much on Facebook? Find something that you can reduce that your competitors overuse.
Elimination. There will be some aspects of your niche that can be completely eliminated. Blue Ocean Strategy goes into detail about Cirque du Soleil eliminating the need for animals and rings in their performances.
Raising. There are some aspects of your niche that can be raised. McDonald’s and most of the other fast food restaurants do not focus on providing healthy food options. Elevation Burger on the other hand, focus on providing healthy food options, and their slogan, “Ingredients Matter” enforces this message.
Creating. There are going to be some things that no one in your niche would think about doing. This is where the creation process comes into play. In order to make the creating process easier, look at what different niches do and see how you can apply concepts from different niches into your niche.

That is the rubric you need to create something that stands out from the competition. This plan will allow you to get out of the red oceans and go into the uncontested blue oceans. If you want to learn more about leaving your competition and creating an uncontested market space, then Blue Ocean Strategy is the right book for you.

Five Things You Need To Keep Track Of

July 16, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Keeping track of statistics and data will allow you to identify what happened on the good days as well as what happened on the bad ones. You can track your results month by month and identify which months were your best and which ones were your worst. These statistics allow you to take action based on past results so you are able to optimize your future results. In a world with more statistics and data than ever, few people know which of those statistics and data are the most important. Here are the five statistics and pieces of data that you need to keep track of.

Your earnings. You will be able to identify the growth of your revenue. Some months will be good while others will be bad. There will be rises and drops in your earnings. In order to figure out why and how those changes take place, you need to record your earnings. In addition, you need to record which sources of income made what amount of money. While this allows you to identify and solve problems, it also allows you to look back at what you have accomplished and envision yourself making a stronger income as well.
Follower growth. The growth of your social networks has a big impact on your blog’s traffic, your sales, and your credibility. When you see a big growth in your followers, you need to identify what you did on that day to see the big change. Then, continue doing what you did on that day to see that “big change” become common.
Your blog traffic. With these statistics, you can keep track of views, visitors, clickouts, referrers, and more. You can identify which social networks are bringing in an abundant amount of traffic as well as the social networks that are not creating the same results. You can use these statistics to identify the best strategy for your blog and your social networks.
One competitor. I know what some people are thinking about this one. It is more important to differentiate oneself than it is to focus on the competition. The truth is that no matter how much you differentiate yourself, competitors will do everything in their power to catch up to the new change. Ford’s Model T was innovative, but now there are numerous car companies. Those car companies caught up to Ford just like competitors catch up to each other in their respective niches. By looking at the statistics from one of your competitors, you will be able to identify that competitor’s good days and bad days. If you look deep enough into the statistics and what that person did for the day, patterns–patterns that you can use to your advantage–will emerge.
Returning customers. One of the pieces of data most people forget to record is the returning customers. If your customers returned once, then they tend to return multiple times. By having the names and contact info of your returning customers, you will be able to contact them. Three great ways to contact a returning customer are to tell them about a big discount just for them, thank them for being returning customers, or ask them to leave a testimonial/review and that you would be honored if they did so.

By keeping track of these statistics and pieces of data, you will be able to identify where you need to improve and where your strengths are. This analysis will allow you to identify where you are lacking and where you have everything under control. This knowledge will allow you to take a different, better course of action that you may have never taken if you did not have this knowledge. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional statistic or piece of data that you track? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

You Can’t Do It All By Yourself

July 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I am not the person to use pessimistic headlines to get people’s attention, but I knew that I needed to make an exception in order to make my point.

For a very long time, I believed that I would be able to do everything all by myself. I believed that I would be able to publish books without anyone’s help, create training courses without anyone’s help, and optimize my social media presence without buying any tools. The problem was that I was giving myself too many things and not enough time to do those things (this comes from someone who writes 20 blog posts and 5,000 words for his books on a typical day of high school).

I thought I could quickly send out queries and respond to everyone on HARO. I was wrong. In my defense, I was able to quickly send out the queries, but responding to everyone was the difficult part. Then, I got sidetracked from all of the work I put in for HARO and the book I was writing because nothing seemed to be working.

I also thought I could create my own book cover and learn how. However, spending $25 to get a Kindle eBook cover and a CreateSpace book cover is much easier than learning how to create the covers and create the images.

Do you want to know why big companies are successful? It’s because they are big. WalMart is run by the CEO, but there are millions of people who allow the WalMart stores around the world to function properly. The people who founded big companies realized that they couldn’t do everything by themselves. C. Douglas McMillon can’t be in every WalMart store at the same time.

It is okay to ask for help. It is okay to hire virtual assistants to help you with the things you cannot do or simply don’t have the time for. If you have to read this blog post multiple times before you are convinced that you can’t do it all by yourself, then go for it. You don’t want to learn this lesson after you lost time because you thought you could do everything by yourself.

Get a marketing team. Get a support team. Hire assistants. If you don’t have the money to hire assistants yet, look around for assistants anyway and hire them when the money comes in. Whatever you do, don’t do it alone.

7 Reasons Why You Need To Be On Squidoo

July 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Squidoo is one of the most popular sites on the web, and it continues to grow as the days go by. A website that once got over 1 million daily visitors went down to 200,000 daily visitors once Google changed its search engine policy. However, Squidoo has proven to be a very resilient website. After consistently bringing in 200,000 U.S. daily visitors, Squidoo’s U.S. traffic increased by over 30% in one month. Squidoo’s traffic has seen anywhere from a 10-19% increase every week which means Squidoo is growing. Squidoo can end up getting to 1 million daily visitors again by the end of the year. It got there before, and there’s no saying Squidoo can’t get there again, but by joining Squidoo now, you get to become a part of the movement. While joining a movement is nice (who wouldn’t want to do that), these are seven reasons why you need to be on Squidoo.

Being on Squidoo boosts your SEO. Creating Squidoo webpages (they call their webpages lenses) and adding a link to your blog on those webpages will boost your SEO and make it easier for people to find your blog. In addition, some Squidoo webpages get hundreds of daily visitors which are hundreds of daily visitors that you would have never had…and those visitors can also visit your blog.
You can make revenue with Squidoo. Not only do you get more visitors on your blog, but you also make revenue based on Squidoo’s tiered system. There are many people who make over $100 every month on Squidoo while others are making thousands of dollars every month while growing their blog traffic.
You can write about (almost) anything. No matter what your niche is, you can write about it on Squidoo. I decided to create some Squidoo webpages about getting a targeted Twitter following, a targeted Pinterest following, getting more eBook sales, and reducing bounce rate.
Squidoo has a great community. Remember how frustrated you were when you were struggling to find a way to contact Google, Amazon, PayPal or any of the other big sites? That does not happen on Squidoo. All of the members interact with each other, and the people in charge (yes, the people in charge) actually respond in under 24 hours. If you have a question, it is okay to ask, and you will get an answer.
You can use their Amazon and eBay links to make a commission. If you are not an Amazon Associate or eBay Affiliate, you can use Squidoo’s Amazon and eBay links to promote products and make a commission. You get a little more than 4% of each Amazon sale while the eBay Affiliate links range between 2-4% (that depends on the product that gets sold on eBay).
Squidoo was founded by Seth Godin. Seth Godin happens to be the #1 marketer in the world, so if you were wondering if Squidoo can really make a comeback (and get 1 million daily visitors again), just know that Seth Godin is the man with the steering wheel. He also does some interaction in the Squidoo community.
You get to donate your earnings to charities. Unlike other websites similar to Squidoo, you can donate your earnings to charity. Whether you feel like donating all of your earnings to charities or 7% (basically, you can choose any number), donating to charities will further strengthen the thinking process that you are making a difference. Imagine being able to make money for yourself and then have Squidoo donate some of that money to the ASPCA (that’s what I do).

Squidoo is going to be back to getting over 1 million U.S. daily visitors (and over 2 million globally) by the end of the year, and you can be a part of that movement while helping out in a charity’s movement. If you want to be on Squidoo and be a part of the movement, join now.