Daisy Quaker is a Badass

The Secret to Getting Your Prospects to Listen

Two words: Speak up!

Being humble is overrated. Too many small business owners don’t give themselves enough credit for having knowledge that others would want to learn or read about.

But if you think about it, how many times have you given advice, or given your opinion to help your customers? Probably quite often. So why not put this advice on the web?

It’s the best way to get people to listen. And listeners are more willing to buy from you than a business they have never heard of because you become more familiar.

Start with the Basics

What are some of the things you wish your customers knew when coming in to your store?

Your first few posts could be as simple as:

10 things to know before you buy <blank>
Questions to ask when shopping for <blank>
What your might not be telling you

Starting with basic information could be the building blocks to your blog’s success.

Do a quick poll around your store about questions customers often ask, or even set up a fishbowl near the register where people can submit questions or ideas.

Chances are if they are asking you, then other potential customers out there are also typing it into Google.

And that’s your chance to really build a following (and its no secret that regularly updated sites get ranked higher on Google and other search engines).

Make the Content Digestible

Once you start writing, make sure your content is easy to read, understand and put into action.

Avoid writing long elaborate essays that show how wise and all-knowing you are, but rather short and simple tips friendly advice that customers can digest. Think of it as elementary level writing.

If writing is not your strength, then perhaps a great copywriter can help.

Blogging does not have to be complicated, and it will help you gain better search results. But the best part of all of it is, when you do sell, people will be listening.

Image credit: Flickr atelierpompadour

Professional Development

How to build an online presence that sells

Nasty Gal, is perhaps an interesting choice of name for an online retailing store that targets women, but it is the brainchild of what was then a young twenty-something woman who decided to open up an eBay shop selling vintage retail finds. Unbeknownst to her she would be creating her own business empire.

We all know eBay, have shopped there, or at least browsed and considered the good deals. But the lessons the founder, Sophia Amoruso, learned there helped her carry through to set-up her own online store, Nasty Gal, now its way to sales of $128 million.

Now you don’t have to set-up an ebay shop to create success for your own business, but you can apply some of the marketing skills that helped create a strong following to spark commitment to your own business.

Online First Impressions Speak Value

Ebay taught Sophia a powerful lesson that she applied to her business in the years to come. Sellers are only allowed a few pixels of the screen to convince the customer to click on their product, while competing with other sellers on the same page. So she learned how to give the best first impression of her clothing through thumbnails, and that taught her a powerful lesson:

Online first impressions can build your business

It’s all in how you present it.

Great visuals is what helped Sophia sell cheap thrift-store finds for hundreds of dollars and can also be applied to your online marketing strategy. Ask yourself how do you present your business? Is your website in the right colors? Easy to navigate? Read? Or is it cluttered and frustrating for your customers? If it’s a retail venture do you give the best possible image quality of your products? Or are they blurry? In an ugly background? Or to small to really see the details?

If the first glimpse of the business does not convey the quality you want to communicate, then you are loosing out on making a winning first impression on your audience and prospects. Quite simply, you decide what your offering is worth by how you present it.

Turn “Likes” Into Sales

Nasty Gal used a combination of social media savvy Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook from sparking interest to creating sales.

How do you tell your story on these platforms? I am a strong believer in picking the right platforms for your business and crafting the right story, so that at the end of the day, your audience knows what you are about even without you preaching it.

The best way to know if you are communicating the right message is if your target audience can easily describe what you are about, that’s your brand. And it’s how you create a bond that turns from more than just clicks to ambassadors and referrals for your business.

And if you have created a list of followers, how do you turn those into sales? What do you offer that leads them to your website or storefront? It’s not enough to toot the number of people liking you or following you, but also to manage those likes and turn them into sales.

Having trouble? That’s where a digital marketing strategist might come in handy to help you transform the ideas into tangible results, click here to contact me and we can get the conversation started.

Content marketing

Stop Doing, and Start Loving Your Business

This is not a fair world we live in.

As a small business owner, one expects mountains, if you are to compete with the bog box stores, you are expected to give exceptional customer service, great prices, be flexible, reachable, deliver on quality, and provide choices, choices, choices.

All this could be setting yourself up for failure, don’t get it? Here’s an illustration: Continue reading “Stop Doing, and Start Loving Your Business” →

Content marketing

You paid what? -Rethinking Value

Oftentimes to compete with the big box stores, small businesses take to lowering their prices to bring in those customers. After all a lower price is linked with a higher value.

While this is true, there is a link, it is not the end all to competing on value.

There is a missing element to this equation that can mean a whole different ballgame completely.

Continue reading “You paid what? -Rethinking Value” →