business growth Archives - Page 8 of 17

What Is a Silent Partner?

If you’re the owner of a startup, you’ve probably heard the alarming statistics about startup failures: for example, around 82% of startups fail due to cash flow problems. So what can you do to avoid being another cash-flow casualty? Well, there’s the usual routes that involve loans, debt, and stepping up your sales, but have you thought about whether getting an infusion of cash from another source might be right for your business? You could look for investors, or you could consider taking on a silent partner, or someone who puts money into your business without having a say in the day-to-day operations. Cash without a say? Sounds too good to be true, right? So how does it really work?

Silent Partners, General Partners, & Investors

If the idea of bringing on a silent partner (or limited partner) sounds intriguing to you, you should first have an understanding of the differences between investors, general partners, and silent partners. Let’s take a look at these what these terms generally mean:

Silent Partners

different partnerships infographic — *There are different kinds of business partnerships to opt into, each offering different levels of involvement.*

Like other types of partners and investors, silent partners put money into your business in exchange for a share in it. Unlike other types of partners and investors, though, they do not get involved in day-to-day operations, or in making major decisions. They don’t attend meetings, oversee finances, or review strategies, instead they leave the daily work to the active partners in your business, and they trust that you will manage the business well.

Why would someone become a silent partner in your business? Well, they usually expect a pretty hefty return on their investment, usually more than what stocks, bonds, and mutual funds can offer. So they get to sit back and (hopefully) get a return on their investment, but their risk is comparatively low: they have limited liability, so silent partners are not liable for company losses beyond the percentage that they invested, meaning if they have a 10% stake in a business, for example, they would only be accountable for 10% of the incurred losses and debts. This limited liability also means that a silent investor’s personal assets would be safe if your business were to face financial difficulties.

And why would you choose to seek out a silent partner? If you simply want someone who gives you money, sits back, doesn’t get involved, and doesn’t have a say in what you do or how you do it.

General Partners

So then how is the above silent partnership arrangement different from having a general partner? Well, the major differences are that a general partner:

Is an active partner in your business, with control over management, function, and spending.
Has full liability for partnership debts, so if your business goes under, they could have their personal assets seized or liquidated to pay creditors and pay off corporate debts.

Having a general partnership is more for you if you’re looking for someone to help run your business with you.

Investors

Silent partners might sound closer to being an investor than an actual partner (especially when compared with a general partner), and that is true. In the case of many startups, though, investors often offer guidance and advice along the way, which silent partners don’t do. So if you’re just starting out, you might want to look out for investors who are willing to be a little more vocal – just be sure to look into how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) classifies your arrangement, so you know how to avoid violations and penalties.

How to Find a Silent Partner

So if taking on a silent partner to get a cash infusion without losing any control over your business sounds like something that could keep your business growing, you’ll need to think about how to go about finding one. Consider the following steps:

Have a solid, professional business plan in place that focuses on revenue projections. Remember, silent partners have no say in your business, so they’re not going to be excited by being part of your new business like other investors – they’ll mostly be focused on their return on investment, so show how you’re going to build up a positive cash flow relatively quickly.
Talk to your friends and family, and see if anyone is interested in putting up some cash for your business. They know and trust you, and should have faith in your business and good intentions – just be sure to be clear with them that their money does not buy them any voting rights or other active role in your business, even informally.
Look for angel investors, or wealthy individuals who fund projects during the early stages of development, who are often open to being silent partners as long as they see a potential for a return on investment. If you’re not sure how to find one, try an angel investor network, which specializes in connecting business operators with angels.
Speak to businesses that are complementary to yours, or that offer things that are related to your business and that may be of use to your customers – they might be interested in helping your business get off the ground.
Work on making your business as desirable as possible by securing investments, developing a revenue stream, or getting some positive media attention.

How to Bring on a Silent Partner the Right Way

When you’ve narrowed down who you’re going to make your pitch to, improve your odds of getting them on board by spelling out your business plan, including all realistic and quantifiable figures, and answer any questions your potential investors might have with a pitch that includes:

Your concept
Product or service samples
Information about your existing competition
Survey results
Marketing plans
Bios of your key personnel
Budget information
How much money you’re looking for
What you’re offering in exchange for their help

And once you do find a silent partner, we need to come back to our point above about avoiding violations and penalties when it comes to business relationships; you need to know how to go about bringing on any type of investor in your business in a legal and beneficial way, including a silent partner.

contract with two hands, one signing the contract — *Before taking on a silent partner, prepare documents that exactly outline the role of each partner in the organization.*

Whoever you choose for your silent partner, you have to clearly define the terms of your partnership, and not just verbally – most states require partnerships to be formalized by legal documents that exactly outline the role of each partner in the organization. These agreements should clearly define the responsibilities and liabilities of each partner. Consider getting help from a securities attorney if you’ve got a silent partner with a big investment, so you can make sure you’re creating an arrangement that’s good for everyone involved, and that there’s no room for disputes or confusion about what everybody is on board with.

As long as you understand the risks and rewards of a silent partnership, and take all necessary steps to bring this type of investor on board the right way, you could end up with a relatively low-stress way to bring cash into your business, and keep it growing. So what do you think? Would you prefer an investor who can guide and advise you, or one who offers up the money, then steps back and lets you take full control?

Could Guerilla Marketing Lead to Surprising Sales for Your Business?

What do you think of when you see the word “guerilla?” Probably guerilla warfare, right? Not exactly what you’d have in mind if you were trying to come up with a new and innovative marketing strategy! But think about it in another way: guerilla tactics generally involve some sort of ambush, or – more relevant to the business world – the element of surprise. That type of thinking can lead to some seriously surprising marketing campaigns – ones that can catch people off guard and really get their attention. So what exactly is guerilla marketing, and what are some examples of how you can use it to grow your business?

What Does Guerilla Marketing Mean?

The term “guerilla marketing” was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same name. Although marketing looked very different in the 80s, his ideas are surprisingly relevant to a 21st-century business landscape where companies are all competing for the attention of consumers who can often be immune to traditional advertising. His strategy was to use surprising and unconventional interactions to cause an emotional reaction in potential customers, or a buzz around a business, but the basic purpose is the same as for any type of marketing strategy: to get people to remember you.

Probably the best thing about guerilla marketing? The bang for your buck. Generally, these types of surprise-tactic campaigns are pretty budget-friendly, but there is a catch: they require a lot of resources other than money, namely time and creativity. Ideally, you’ll use your audience’s own everyday environment and directly connect with them there (hence the relative low cost). But you’ll have to find ways to repurpose that environment (whether it’s digital or IRL), which is where the investment of time and intellectual powers come in.

So, if you’re wondering where to even start, let’s take a look at some different types of guerilla marketing, as well as some examples of how you can implement them for your business.

Types of Guerilla Marketing

To get more of a feeling for what we mean by using your audience’s own environment and repurposing it in a surprising way, check out the following types of guerilla marketing that businesses have been engaging in:

Outdoor or street guerilla marketing – This type of guerilla marketing refers to any type of surprising marketing action taking place outdoors, and can involve adding something interactive or creative into the existing urban landscape. Think changing up statues or putting some large-scale artwork onto the street itself.

Indoor guerilla marketing – Similar to outdoor marketing, but usually takes place in big, public urban spaces like train stations.

Ambient guerilla marketing – This is a type of marketing that interferes with the flow of things in people’s environment, usually by placing ads in unconventional places.

Event ambush marketing – With this type of marketing, you hijack (so to speak) the audience of an event already in progress, like a concert or sporting event, to promote your business. Be careful with this one: you usually do it without the consent of the event sponsors in order to make it truly authentic, so be careful of any legal issues!

Viral marketing – This is a tough one, because, ultimately, it’s the decision of the audience whether a video or other marketing campaign goes viral, but if you think you can come up with something creative and smart enough, go for it!

Guerilla projections – Again, if you’re willing to risk some legal issues, you can try this type of marketing, in which you install hidden projectors and project advertisements for your business on high-rise buildings in high-traffic areas.

Experiential marketing – Also known as participation marketing or live marketing, this type of marketing involves getting the public to interact with your brand, usually in some sort of pop-up, immersive experience.

Real-World Examples of Guerilla Marketing You Can Try

The above are some general ideas for how to incorporate low-cost, high-impact guerilla marketing tactics into your marketing strategy; below are some other specific ways you can use creative guerilla marketing tactics to boost your brand.

Supreme sticker decal in different pastel colors — *Stickers are a great way to get your business’ name out there.*

Stickers

Did you know that the creators of Reddit have only ever spent $500 on marketing? Seems amazing, doesn’t it, considering that they have over 36 million user accounts and 169 million unique monthly visitors! And do you know what they spent most of that money on? Stickers. Stickers can be a very affordable and memorable way to market your business, as long as you have a solid design, and an interesting way to distribute/place them.

Simple, Cheap Outdoor Installations

You don’t have to spend a huge amount on an installation like Volkswagen’s experiential, interactive piano staircase in a Stockholm, Sweden subway station (seriously, check it out: they made a working piano staircase in a subway station!). Consider how the makers of the movie It gained massive social media traffic and views of their movie’s trailers by simply tying red balloons to subway gratings in Sydney, Australia. The tactic creeped people out and got them interested enough to learn more.

Reverse Graffiti

If you’re not into the idea of spray painting public property to get your name out there, you can try a unique take on the idea of graffiti: use a stencil with the message you want to get across, and then power wash the area in the stencil (instead of spray painting it). You’ll have a unique-looking bit of branding, and hey – who can complain about you washing away dirt and grime?

Counter-Campaigns

We’ve all heard of reverse psychology – but have you ever thought about using it for an inventive – and effective – marketing campaign? Yes, you can take a chance and literally argue against your business to try and get people to take notice of you. For example, when a library in Troy, NY was facing a vote to close it down for financial reasons, an advertising agency devised an ingenious campaign to get people to vote against the closure, which was backed by a local anti-tax organization. They made up another organization, and pretended that this organization agreed with the anti-tax group – but this fake group was arguing to close down the library so they could have a book-burning party the next day. People were disgusted, they sat up and paid attention, and then voted to keep the library open.

Clever Product Placement

two boxes wrapped with string and a heart tag — *When sending freebies to a potential customer, incorporate something unexpected.*

It’s always a good idea to send free stuff to potential customers, right? But not super unexpected, right? So consider finding a way to add something unexpected to your freebie, like when an advertising agency working with the makers of the TV show, “Prison Break” sent beautiful cakes to members of the media and hid files in the cakes promoting the show.

Beautifying Something

Your guerilla marketing campaign shouldn’t disrupt people’s environments in an unpleasant way (well, unless you’re promoting a movie about a super creepy killer clown) and, in fact, you can really get people’s attention by making their world a little bit brighter. For example, furniture store IKEA has been known to unexpectedly spruce up spaces like bus stops and train stations with some cute, cozy furnishings, pleasing passers-by – and keeping IKEA’s brand in the top of their minds.

Using Social Media in Unexpected Ways

Sure, you can post standard content on your social media platforms, like updates and notifications, but have you thought about starting some beef online? Brands, like Burger King, have been known to get on platforms like Instagram and create whole sagas of relationship drama with their brand at the center, grabbing them thousands or even millions of views. So maybe it’s time to channel your inner soap opera writer…

There are so many ways to market your business, and a lot of them will help you to grow, but if you feel like some of those avenues have become a bit stale or pricey for you, you might want to start thinking outside of the box and getting a little more inventive. Sure, it’ll take some time and brain power, but if you take a bit of a gamble, you might find that you’re the talk of the town, and that you’ve got a whole lot of new interest in your business.

Measuring Up: Vanity Metrics Vs. Actionable Metrics

What gives you a thrill when it comes to your business? Are you totally excited about your product, or do you love spending time with customers? Or maybe you’re a numbers nerd, and nothing gets you going like checking out your analytics and seeing all sorts of metrics skyrocketing – and hey, there’s nothing wrong with that! But before you get too worked up about things like how many visitors, subscribers, or followers you have, stop and think about what these numbers actually mean. Are they things that just make you feel good, or are they truly things you can act on to reach your business goals? In other words, are you focusing too much on what’s known as “vanity metrics”?

What Are Vanity Metrics?

Vanity metrics are based on likes, comments, and traffic to your site without conversions.

Eric Ries introduced the term “vanity metrics” in his book, The Lean Startup, describing them as metrics that make you feel good, or that look good on paper, but that don’t actually do anything for your business: they’re not actionable to business health or business growth.

Ries also describes vanity metrics as dangerous. Why? Because they distract you: let’s say, for example, that you’re focused on the traffic your site is getting, but you’re not paying enough attention to getting the right traffic, which is more important. So if you’re focused on a vanity metric like traffic for the sake of traffic, you’ll be wasting your time on something that doesn’t matter all that much because:

If you’ve had a big spike in traffic, for example, the spike on its own tells you nothing about why you’re getting more traffic – it could have been something you did, or some outside attention you received, so there’s no way of knowing how to replicate what’s working for you.
It doesn’t ultimately matter how much traffic you get if you’re not seeing conversions; to put it more bluntly, traffic doesn’t make you money, only paying customers do!

Vanity metrics can ultimately lead you down the wrong path, and make you think that everything is great with your business, when, in fact, you should be tweaking certain strategies. So how do you know what metrics are more important?

Vanity Metrics Vs. Actionable Metrics

If vanity metrics are all glitter with no actual substance, the antidote to being sucked in by them is using actionable metrics, which are tied to the goals of your business. These metrics are specific, replicable, provide you with insights on how to make better decisions for your business, and, well, actionable. How do you know if you’re looking at an actionable metric? Well, business growth experts suggest you make sure your metrics can help you answer questions like the following:

How do we gain or lose revenue?
How do we gain or lose customers?
Why are people coming to us?

In addition to using these questions to determine if the metrics you are using are actionable, you’ll also need to ask yourself what your business goals are – remember, actionable metrics are tied to your business’ specific goals, so one business’ actionable metric might not be as relevant to another business. Try using the SMART method to create goals that are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

For example, when it comes to marketing goals, think of it this way: improving social media visibility is a marketing goal, while social media engagement is a metric. Other examples of marketing goals might be things like:

Improve brand awareness
Improve content quality
Improve SEO
Having the right goals, with the right actionable metrics pointing the way to reaching those goals, will put you back on the right track and keep you from focusing too much on those feel-good vanity metrics. So let’s take a closer look at some examples of how you can replace these impressive but substance-free vanity metrics with more useful actionable metrics.

What to Focus On

Below are just some examples of some common vanity metrics and the more important actionable metrics that correspond to them; remember, your business might have different goals that require looking at different actionable metrics, or you might even want to look at both the vanity metrics and actionable metrics, depending on your aims. Consider the following vanity metrics versus their more goal-tied actionable metrics:

Number of social media likes vs. number of social media referrals

Number of social media followers vs. engagement rate

Time on site vs. time on page or scroll depth

Number of newsletter subscribers vs. email opt-in conversion rate or acquisition path

Pageviews vs. social shares or bounce rate

Number of customers acquired vs. customer acquisition cost

Monthly recurring revenue vs. customer lifetime value

Email opens vs. email clicks

Free trial sign-ups vs. free trial usage

Focusing more on the above actionable metrics will help you to build a process for tracking the health of your business, not just the health of your website or your social media accounts. If you’re not sure where to start, pick out up to five actionable metrics, perhaps that focus on revenue, like customer acquisition cost, recurring revenues, or customer lifetime value, and use analytics tools to see if your numbers are aligning with your goals. Then add in other metrics to get a fuller picture of how your customers are getting to you, how engaged they are with you, and how you can improve in all aspects of the health of your business and its online presence.

You’ve only got so much time, energy, and money to put into your business, right? That means you don’t have time to waste focusing on things that make you feel good, but aren’t necessarily telling you anything about your business, or helping you to grow or get closer to your goals. Don’t get sucked into a false sense of security – or success – or you could end up hurting your business; instead, take the vanity metrics with a grain of salt, and invest your precious resources in actionable metrics that will help you make the best decisions for your business that you can.

Can a SWOT Analysis Help You Grow Your Business?

At some point in the history of your business, you’ve probably conducted some sort of market research so you could gain a better understanding of your target audience. But have you ever taken a good, hard look at how your business is running so you can better understand what’s going well and what needs work? If not, you should consider doing what’s known as a SWOT analysis, or an analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Asking honest questions about your business can help you to pinpoint inefficiencies and highlight your strengths, so you can improve productivity and increase sales.

The Why and How of SWOT

Why conduct a SWOT analysis? Well, doing so will give you a better understanding of the internal workings of your organization, as well as a better understanding of how you compare to your competition. It can be easy to get bogged down in all the little day-to-day issues at your business, meaning you could be missing out on the broader view of what’s going on in your organization, or the bigger picture of how it occupies space in your industry – and a SWOT analysis will give you a bird’s eye view, so to speak, of all of this.

And the great thing about a SWOT analysis is that it focuses on your business in a real-world context, so you’ll end up with actionable steps you can take to make improvements, or capitalize on your strengths. So where do you start? Before we get down to the specifics of examining your strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats, let’s take a quick look at how generally to put a SWOT analysis together:

Get a team together – If you’re a bigger business, with multiple employees in different departments (or even if you have any size team), gather representatives from every department and team to get a variety of perspectives. If you’re flying solo in your business, you can still try and get perspectives other than your own by being creative: try involving your customers, friends and family who know your business, vendors you use, or even people you outsource tasks to, like your accountant.

Get your ideas out there – Once you’ve got a team together, take a little time to brainstorm, perhaps by having everyone write down ideas on sticky notes and then sticking them all up on a board when they’re done, grouping similar ideas together.

Get your ideas together – Prioritize the ideas that come out of this session, whether you allow everyone to vote or you simply choose what you think is most actionable.

Once you’ve done all this, you can create your SWOT analysis, which will look like a square divided into four quadrants, headed “strengths,” “weaknesses,” “opportunities,” and “threats,” with the finalized ideas in the appropriate category.

The Categories and Questions

If you’re wondering where to even begin brainstorming for your SWOT analysis, the best way to get going is by asking questions related to each category, so you can focus on how your business is performing in or reacting to them.

We say “performing in” or “reacting to” because the four categories are actually broken down into two subcategories: internal and external factors. Your strengths and weaknesses are considered internal factors, because they are things having to do with the performance of your business, or things that you can control, like who’s on your team, your location, or your intellectual property. Your opportunities and threats are external factors, or things that you can’t control and that you must find a way to react to, like competitors, vendor pricing, or trends in consumer behavior.

So what does each category look like, and what should you be asking?

Strengths

Strengths are the internal, positive attributes of your company and, again, are things within your control. To determine what you and your analysis team think are the things you’re performing best at, ask questions like:

What do your customers love about your products or services?
What makes your business unique?
What assets do you have, either in manpower (knowledge, skills, education, reputation) or physical (cash, customers, technology, equipment)?
What competitive edge do you have, or what do you do better than other businesses?
What has been your business’ greatest achievement?

Weaknesses

Another internal set of attributes, your weaknesses are things you need to improve upon to become more competitive. To figure these out, try asking things like:

What have you received negative feedback or reviews about?
Do you have customers who are canceling on you, and why?
Are there assets that you are lacking, like money or equipment?
In what area do you or your employees need more knowledge or training?
Are there areas in which your business is not competitive?

Opportunities

Now we get to the external factors in your SWOT analysis – these might be a little bit harder to figure out because they are the ones that are beyond your control, and it might require a little more effort and reliance on data to determine. But, you can start by asking yourself questions about your opportunities like:

Is your market growing and are there trends that might mean more people will want your product or service?
In what ways can you take advantage of any changes affecting your industry?
What new business ventures can you afford to take on in the next 6 months?
Are there gaps in the market that you might be able to fill?

Threats

exclamation point with a red triangle around it — *Ask questions to find out what kind of threats there are for your company.*

There are always going to be external threats that your business faces, but doing a SWOT analysis can help you be proactive in tackling them. Ask questions like:

Are there competitors entering your market?
Will suppliers be able to offer you the same materials for the same prices for the foreseeable future?
How might changes in technology affect your business?
Is consumer behavior changing in a way that could affect your business?
Are market trends changing?

How to Use Your SWOT Analysis

Ok, so by now you’ve gathered a whole lot of facts about your business – but creating a SWOT analysis is not merely a fact-finding mission. You have to take what you’ve learned and convert it into a real strategy, with actionable steps and goals with a specific timeline.

To do this, look at each quadrant of your SWOT analysis; start with the strengths quadrant and compare it with your opportunities and threats quadrants. Decide how you can use your strengths to take advantage of the opportunities and help combat the threats, and then make a list of actions you can take – write them down on a timeline, giving yourself goals or milestones to meet each quarter, month, etc.

Next, it’s time to move to the weaknesses quadrant – hopefully you’ve been very honest about them! You’ll need to think about ways to convert your weaknesses into strengths by focusing on what you can do better, and by analyzing what external opportunities could possibly combat your weaknesses. In addition, think about how working on your weaknesses could possibly help ward off any external threats that might be coming your way, and, again, create an action list that you can prioritize and schedule.

Once you’ve done your SWOT analysis, you’ll find not only that you have a more comprehensive understanding of your business and its place in the market, but you’ll have gone a long way toward creating a strategic, actionable plan for your business. All of that can add up to achievable growth goals and a big boost in sales – so gather your team together and get analyzing!

A Sea of “C”s: Some of the Best Ways to Focus Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is nothing new. Brands have been telling their stories to customers for hundreds of years; in fact, did you know that one of the first known examples of content marketing is Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, which he published annually starting in 1732 in order to promote his printing business? So, business owners have known for centuries that telling their brand’s story in a compelling way can boost growth; in fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers surveyed use content marketing in some form or other.

And it’s no wonder that content marketing is so popular: when used correctly, it can help you cut through the “noise” of traditional marketing, which most consumers are now able to completely disregard, and build brand awareness and gain loyal customers. But in order to get to this point, you need to know how to create content that is engaging and that calls potential customers to action! Marketing experts offer a variety of “C” words to keep in mind when creating your content; these “C”s can help focus you and keep your content marketing strategy on track, so which are the best ones for your brand?

Content Marketing by the Numbers

Content marketing is important: it engages your audience and answers their questions, and can deliver resounding success for your business. Take a look at these statistics, which were compiled from research done by Coshedule:

Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing
Content marketing converts 6 times more often than other marketing methods
61% of online consumers have made a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog
Content marketing produces 3 times more leads per dollar spent than other marketing methods
Businesses that publish 16 or more blog posts a month can see 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish 0-4 posts a month

Why the impressive numbers? Because content marketing packs an impressive punch! Its benefits include:

It captures your audience’s attention and compels them to keep coming back for more
It can help you gain traction on social media, and make the most of the followers you do have
It helps you interact with your potential customers and build a relationship with them
It can generate leads, especially if you place strong calls-to-action in your content
It can improve conversions even more if it is original content; for example, using original images rather than stock photos can mean a 35% increase in conversions
It will make your business more visible online and help you rank higher in search engines, thus boosting your SEO efforts
It can make your audience see you as an expert in your field
It will build brand awareness, and help you gain loyal brand fans

So how do you do content marketing right, get on the radar of your target audience, and reap all of the above benefits? Well, marketing experts agree that you need a well thought-out strategy, but many of them offer different buzzwords to guide you in the right direction; funnily enough, they all begin with the letter “C.” Let’s take a look at three of these strategies, and how they can get you to your goals.

The First Four “C”s

Old school marketing experts sometimes point to the four “P”s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion, but newer schools of thought, which take into account our hyper-digital, social media-driven world, focus less on the product and more on the consumer themselves. Those who focus on the consumer-centric model suggest that you take these four “C”s into account when planning your content marketing strategy:

Consumer – There is no one single content audience out there, and so no cookie-cutter content marketing strategy will work! You’ll need to tailor your content to your specific target audience, as well as constantly adapt it as trends, tastes, or your audience itself changes.

Cost – You can use content marketing to get your customers interacting with your brand, which will help you shape how your customers perceive the value of your product/service. Once you do this, you can truly price it with the consumer in mind.

Convenience – When it comes to your product or service, you know that your customers are always looking for convenience, and the same goes for content. You need to deliver content to them in a way that fits their lives; after all, most customers won’t go out of their way to find your content – you have to bring it to them!

Communication – Targeting your content and making sure you’re choosing the right mode of communication, channel, and style, will open up the lines of communication with your audience, and will build a consumer confidence that will boost your sales.

The Second Four “C”s

Other marketing experts that work with content marketing strategy focus their four “C”s on the content itself, and suggest that you make sure everything your target audience is seeing is:

Clear – Know exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it! Don’t be afraid to make a detailed outline before you create your final product, and always remember to check your facts – there’s nothing that will make you lose your customers’ trust faster than shaky, inaccurate information.

Compelling – Your audience needs content that is geared towards them, but you can’t stop there – you need to compel them to act once you’ve got their attention! Give them a benefit over your competition, and get them to call, click, or seek more information.

Concise – Did you know that the average attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to around 8 seconds today? In comparison, scientists believe that goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds! That means you don’t have a lot of time to hook your audience, so get to the point with punchy tweets, headlines, bullet points, and brief press releases; once you’ve got their attention, they’re more likely to want to find out more.

Consistent – A consistent message across social media platforms reinforces your brand: the more your audience sees your message, the more ingrained it becomes. Not only that, but delivering a similar content message in multiple ways also supports SEO.

The Third Four “C”s

different conversation bubbles — *People are more interested in conversational and interesting headlines.*

Finally, some marketing experts are adamant that content marketing should take into account the way that we have become used to consuming content, and zero in more on our fast-paced, diverse, and often youth-focused world with the following “C”s:

Conversation – We know that you need to hook your audience quickly with effective headlines, but what are considered the best headlines to do that these days? Well, it turns out that headlines that are considered “conversational” in style tend to get the most clicks, so try interacting with your audience in this way. Some of the most effective headlines are:

The Best of…

Why X People Do X (i.e. “Why the Healthiest People Don’t Follow These Trends”)

The Scientific Fact (i.e. “Sex Can Help You Live Longer, and We’ve Got the Studies to Back it Up”)

The Listicle (i.e. “10 90s TV Shows You Completely Forgot About”)

The Open-Ended Question (i.e. “So You Think You Know What Success Looks Like?”)

The Promise (i.e. “You’re Guaranteed to Go Crazy Over These Skateboarding Dogs”)

Community – In this world of digitized everything, people actually crave seeing or hearing from real people, even if they’re paid influencers. Getting an influencer on board with your brand and content can make all the difference in getting it seen.

Change – While you do need to be careful in this area, supporting causes that are important to your target audience can help you to make a deeper connection with them.

Culture – Know the pop culture references of your target audience, and sprinkle some light-hearted, humorous, eccentric, or nostalgic gifs, memes, videos, or stories into your content, if it’s appropriate to your brand.

Content marketing is all about optimizing your brand, and it takes more than just posting to social media now and then. You need a clear plan, and that plan should include checkpoints like the “C”s above, which can help you step back and really think about what you’re creating and posting. Using these checkpoints to find your target audience, your voice, your style, and your message can make all the difference in getting your brand recognized, and getting your business growing!

Is Your Pricing Strategy Helping You Grow?

You’re confident about the product or service your business is offering, right? But how confident are you when it comes to pricing what you’re selling? Deciding how much to charge customers is about more than just calculating the cost of the resources you’re putting in, adding a markup, and hoping for the best. It should actually take quite a bit of thought on your part; after all, there’s a very delicate balance when it comes to pricing: set your prices too low, and you won’t be maximizing your profit potential; set them too high and you could end up driving away customers. So where do you even start? Well, you need an understanding of your target audience and competitors, but also an understanding of different pricing strategies, so you can decide which pricing strategy is best for your business.

What Is Pricing Strategy and Why Is It Important?

price tag with a checkmark next to it — *A good pricing strategy will help your business grow by building trust with your customers.*

As with a lot of complicated ideas, there is a simple definition behind the term “pricing strategy”: basically, it’s the method that businesses use to determine the best price for their product or service in order to maximize profits. Ok, sounds easy enough, but how do you land on that “best price?” Well, you not only need to consider consumer and market demand, but you also need to remember that however you choose to price your product will give signals to your customers about how much you value your product, brand, and the customers themselves.

In fact, the whole thing is really all about perceived “value” and tapping into the things that drive consumer behavior: according to Eric Dolansky, Associate Professor of Marketing at Brock University in Ontario, “How much the customer is willing to pay for the product has very little to do with cost and has very much to do with how much they value the product or service they’re buying.”

So, a strong pricing strategy should both build trust with your customers, as well as help you work towards your business goals. If you get it right, your pricing strategy will:

Represent value for your customers – Think about the word “cheap”: it can mean either “lower priced” or “poorly made,” right? Your pricing strategy should not simply be making your product as “cheap” as possible while still scraping by with a profit; a slightly higher price will give the impression that your product or service is of higher value, while a price that is too low can send the wrong message.

Convince people to buy – While a price that is too low can mean that your product or service will seem “cheap” in the wrong sense of the word, a price that is too high can also drive people away. Your pricing needs to be competitive, and not be more than your target audience is willing to pay.
Target the right customers and make them feel more confident in your product – Your pricing strategy should take into account whether your customers are seeking value or luxury, so you can price your product or service accordingly, and will make your customers feel that they are making the right choice.

All of this can add up to measurable changes in your revenue and growth rate: some studies have even shown that small differences in pricing can raise or lower revenue by as much as 20-50%, and pricing your products or services correctly can be up to 7.5% more powerful than customer acquisition. Pricing is indeed a big deal for growth, so it’s important to get a handle on which strategy is right for you; that means studying up on popular pricing strategies and deciding which is right for you!

Top Pricing Strategies to Consider

So we know what pricing strategy is, and why it’s important for the growth of your business, but how do you choose the strategy that is right for your business? First, look at different pricing strategies; there are multiple options you can choose from, so let’s take a look at the major ones; they all have different strengths, meaning it depends on what you’re selling, and who you’re selling to.

Value-based pricing

With this strategy, you set your prices according to what consumers think your product is worth; in order to set value-based prices, you must have a deep understanding of your target audience, as well as your brand’s own reputation, and you’ll need to take into account how the state of the market affects how people perceive value.

This is a very common, and often recommended pricing strategy, especially for businesses that lean more towards offering service as opposed to a product, like SaaS businesses, although you can see it being used in cases like a wedding dress being worth thousands dollars more than a prom dress. This strategy can boost customer loyalty and sentiment, but it does require that you really stay on top of who your customer base is, and their buying behavior.

Competitive pricing

competitor websites on a computer screen with "your website" getting in between — *Constantly tracking your competitors prices can help you create a price to beat theirs.*

This strategy basically means that you’re constantly tracking what your competitors are charging, and setting your prices in order to beat them. It can be very useful if you’re just starting out and trying to attract customers with low prices, if you’re operating in a highly saturated market and need to stand out, or if you want to build a loyal base of customers who are price-conscious. But this strategy can also be hard to sustain, especially since it requires that you have low production costs and don’t have to worry too much about your costs.

Price skimming

Businesses should be cautious about using this strategy, which dictates that you set your prices as high as possible, and then slowly lower them over time. While it can attract higher-end customers who consider themselves trendsetters, and can help you break even more quickly, this strategy can end up annoying customers who paid premium prices only to see them lowered later on, and drive them to your competitors.

Penetration pricing

Similar to competitive pricing and on the opposite end of the spectrum to price skimming, with this strategy, you’ll set your prices very low to begin with and gradually raise them – it’s almost like offering a free sample to get customers interested. The issue with this strategy is that you’ll need to make sure you build a very loyal customer base that is sure to stick around when you eventually raise your prices to start increasing your revenue.

Premium pricing

This is similar to value-based pricing, but more focused on customers who are looking for a luxury experience and are willing to pay more for something that they perceive as high-end. This strategy requires you to build brand awareness, and a reputation as selling something that is luxurious, rare, and exclusive – or even just seen as higher quality than a more generic brand (think drug store products like painkillers).

Freemium pricing

a green tag with a money symbol on it and a blue tag with a discount sign on it — *Freemium pricing is a combination of free and premium costs for your products.*

A combination of the words “free” and “premium,” this pricing model is used by businesses (especially those selling software or subscription services) that offer a basic version of their product in the hopes that they will upgrade to a higher-priced product with more features. You can use this strategy to build customer trust in your product, but you need to be careful that you don’t make the price jump to a premium version of your product unrealistic.

Cost-plus pricing

This is probably the simplest of all pricing strategies; with this model, you focus solely on the cost of your product, and add a markup in order to make a profit. For example, if you sell handbags that cost $25 to make, and you want to make $25 profit on each, you would simply price the bags at $50. This strategy really only works for physical products, and only when your competitors are using the same model, so make sure to conduct a pricing analysis (see below) to see if this model will work for you.

Dynamic pricing

You might also know this strategy as “surge pricing,” a model that allows for fluctuating prices based on demand. You’ll probably need to use an algorithm to keep up with this type of pricing, so you can take into account things like customer demand and competitor pricing in real time. This strategy doesn’t work well for subscription products, because customers will expect consistent monthly or annual payments.

Psychological pricing

Products are priced at $9.99 instead of $10 for a reason! You can use human psychology to your advantage with strategies like the “9-digit effect” (charging $99.99 instead of $100), placing a more expensive item next to the one you’re more focused on selling, putting the original price next to the sale price (“anchor pricing”), offering “BOGO” deals, or changing the font, size, or color of your pricing information. If your strength is knowing your customers’ motivations, and knowing how to appeal to those motivations, especially if these motivations are price or value-based, this strategy can be a big boost to sales.

After you’ve chosen a strategy and have begun to think more specifically about how you’re going to price your product, conduct a pricing analysis to evaluate your pricing strategy against market demand. You should do the following four things:

Calculate the true cost of your product or service by looking at all of your fixed and variable costs, and then subtracting them from what you plan to charge for your product or service.
Conduct market research, perhaps by using focus groups or surveys, in order to understand how your target customer base responds to your pricing strategy.
Examine the prices set by both your direct competitors (businesses offering the exact same product or service), and your indirect competitors (those offering alternatives to what you’re offering).
Make sure you’re following the law and being ethical, paying special attention to the ideas of price-fixing and predatory pricing.

Growth takes work! Nailing the right price for your product or service can be tough, but by thinking about what pricing strategy is right for your business, and by conducting a little analysis to make sure you’ve hit on the right one, you can boost your profits, revenue, and sales volume.