As a business, community outreach marketing is crucial to connecting to your local area.

Developing a community outreach program not only helps to increase awareness for your products and services, but also strengthens your brand. Interacting with the local community gives you a chance to build relationships and nurture relationships with consumers, which helps your business grow.

Focusing on common interests and a well-defined content strategy can further enhance your outreach efforts.

An effective community outreach program can significantly enhance customer relationships and serve as a valuable strategy for increasing brand awareness. Engaging with the community on a personal level can lead to long-term loyalty and trust.

Introduction to Community Outreach

Community outreach refers to the efforts made by organizations, businesses, or individuals to engage with and provide services or resources to a specific community.

This can include volunteering, sponsoring local events, or offering educational programs. Community outreach is crucial for fostering relationships, establishing trust, and cultivating a positive reputation within a community. By actively participating in community activities, businesses can connect with community members on a personal level, fostering goodwill and loyalty.

Whether it’s through organizing local events, supporting community initiatives, or simply being present and available, community outreach helps businesses build a strong, positive presence in their local area.

Definition and Importance

Community outreach marketing involves partnering with other organizations or brands to raise awareness about products or services. It is a way to strengthen a brand by building relationships with people and communities that could benefit from the business.

Community outreach programs are an excellent and unique way to provide services to various groups or causes, increase brand affinity, and maintain customer loyalty. The importance of community outreach lies in its ability to help businesses differentiate themselves from the competition, build a strong reputation, and increase customer loyalty. By engaging in community outreach, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to social responsibility, thereby enhancing their brand image and attracting more customers.

Additionally, community outreach efforts can lead to valuable partnerships and collaborations that further boost a business’s reach and impact.

Benefits of Outreach Marketing

Outreach marketing is a powerful strategy for achieving key business objectives, including lead generation, brand awareness, and business growth. It involves promoting content, building relationships, and finding new clients.

Outreach marketing can help boost business growth by increasing website exposure, promoting products or services, and driving sales and revenue. By leveraging outreach marketing, businesses can tap into new markets and reach potential customers who may not have been aware of their offerings.

Effective outreach campaigns can also enhance a business’s credibility and authority in its industry, leading to more sales and long-term success.

Building Relationships and Collaborations

Building relationships and collaborations is a crucial aspect of outreach marketing. It involves identifying potential partners, such as influencers, businesses, or organizations, and establishing mutually beneficial relationships that benefit both parties. This can be achieved through various outreach strategies, including email marketing, social media outreach, and attending community events.

By building strong relationships and collaborations, businesses can enhance their online visibility, authority, trust, and organic traffic, ultimately leading to increased potential conversions, sales, and revenue. Collaborating with community leaders and local organizations can also provide businesses with valuable insights and opportunities to serve their target audience better. These partnerships can lead to joint marketing efforts, co-hosted events, and other collaborative initiatives that benefit all parties involved.

Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy

Creating an effective marketing strategy involves recognizing the target audience and the purpose of the outreach efforts. This includes understanding the needs, preferences, and pain points of the target audience and tailoring the marketing strategy to meet those needs.

A well-planned marketing strategy should also include a clear purpose, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales. By setting specific goals and objectives, businesses can measure the success of their outreach efforts and make necessary adjustments to improve their impact.

An effective marketing strategy should also incorporate a mix of outreach activities, such as social media campaigns, email marketing, and community events, to reach a broader audience and maximize results.

Recognizing the Audience and Purpose

Recognizing the target audience and purpose of outreach efforts is critical to creating an effective marketing strategy. This involves conducting thorough research to understand the demographics, interests, and preferences of the target audience.

By recognizing the audience and purpose, businesses can create targeted outreach campaigns that resonate with their audience, build trust, and establish a strong reputation. This can be achieved through various outreach strategies, such as social media marketing, email marketing, or content creation, and by leveraging automation tools to streamline outreach efforts and increase efficiency.

Understanding the pain points and needs of the target audience allows businesses to craft personalized outreach messages that address specific concerns and offer relevant solutions. Regular communication and engagement with the audience can also help businesses build lasting relationships and foster customer loyalty.

Work With a Cause Close to Your Heart

While it helps to work with a cause somehow related to your industry, sometimes it is better to choose a cause that’s close to you for personal reasons, or one that resonates with your potential customer base. This approach allows you to build relationships through collaborations and outreach marketing, connecting with diverse groups around shared interests. You aren’t locked into working with one specific cause – you could always create a program that rotates through local organizations that need your help.

For optimal results, align your activities with your target market and brand image. Develop a multichannel approach to reach all the audiences you want to market to, while amplifying your influence and exposure. This not only drives traffic but also serves as an effective strategy for raising brand awareness and maintaining good relationships with your community.

Before making any choices, take a look at your competition and see what, if any, community outreach they are engaging in. You don’t want to double their contribution to the same organizations or sponsor the same events. You’ll want to do things differently to make sure you stand out from the competition. You can find out what kinds of things they are doing in your local community by looking at their website and searching for signs of their presence around your area. This approach can lead to meaningful, positive change for both your organization and the communities you serve.

Sponsor Local Charity Events

There are a variety of local events to host, sponsor, or support in other ways. Contact city officials to learn about upcoming events that align with your interests and make sense for you to sponsor. Sponsoring events provides an opportunity to showcase your brand to a large audience, and coverage by local media can effectively amplify your marketing campaigns.

Our philanthropic efforts include support for the Grossman Burn Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare organization that provides financial aid, education, and safety to individuals who have suffered burns. They provide local and worldwide support.

In addition to our donations, we also donated our services to the Center for Special Needs, a non-profit organization in Ventura, CA. This charity focuses on providing financial support, resources, and other services to families with children who have developmental disabilities or other special needs. Building relationships with new businesses and collaborating with other brands can further enhance our community’s impact.

No matter how you choose to do it, incorporating charity into your business model isn’t just good for community outreach. It’s beneficial for the community you serve by providing assistance to those in need. Just be sure your motivations are in the right place – focused on giving back to the community, rather than doing it for the advertising and the tax write-off. If your audience suspects you’re not operating from the heart and you have ulterior motives, you’ll damage your reputation and hinder positive change.

Get Involved with Local Schools

Partnering with schools or educational programs can help you connect with community leadership by focusing on shared interests and nurturing customer relationships.

An effective strategy to enhance this outreach is to involve local media, which can amplify your efforts and raise brand awareness.

You can team up with local schools to create a program that teaches students about what it is like to work in your industry and run a business. A program like this gets your name in front of the community and spreads awareness of your products and services.

Alternatively, you can set up a scholarship fund for students who are enrolled in programs related to your business’s field of work. This can boost your link-building efforts because you can get links to your website from .edu domains to boost your website’s SEO. Here at Sachs Marketing Group, we offer an annual scholarship to individuals enrolled in a general marketing program at an accredited college who are making a positive impact within their community.

Start Mentorship or Internship Programs

If you’re a startup on a budget, recruiting the right talent can be difficult. Internships allow you to build relationships with fresh faces to join the company and help your business grow (and if you can afford to pay, that’s even better!) Students will learn how the business operates in a hands-on manner and gain experience that they can apply later.

Creating an internship program gives you the opportunity to put your business in front of a younger generation that may be interested in working in your field. This is an effective strategy for a new business to connect with potential future employees and expand its reach. When you create a great experience for them as an intern or by being their mentor, they will champion your business with the people they know, driving positive change.

Invest in Swag

When you sponsor events, another way you can increase brand awareness and start building relationships with potential customers is through promotional products. This helps boost your efforts to foster loyal customers. Options are nearly limitless and really only dictated by your industry and budget. It’s a good idea to create branded items that people use every day, such as pens, cups, and tote bags. If it’s not something they’ll use, it’ll end up in the trash.

Marketing campaigns that include promotional products can effectively attract new customers. Even if someone doesn’t need your services now, the recognizable branding will help you maintain a consistent message, so they’ll remember you when they need your services or when someone they know comes to them looking for a recommendation. When the number of people who use your brand grows, you’ll be able to create brand ambassadors who are out there working to spread the word about your company.

Leveraging community events, in addition to other traditional marketing strategies, provides a great way to promote your brand to people who may not have otherwise heard about you. Adding community outreach initiatives to your overall strategy will attract new leads, drive sales, and ultimately, increase the number of people who will love your brand. Make community outreach a continuous part of your effort, and you will create a steady stream of new relationships and brand awareness that will keep you growing until you become a permanent beloved fixture in your local community. Collaborating with social media influencers can further enhance your reach and engagement.

Community Outreach Marketing at Sachs Marketing Group

A well-executed outreach campaign helps boost your lead generation efforts, especially during the initial phase of your outreach activities.

Effective outreach involves reaching out to local media to cover your events and initiatives, which can significantly enhance your visibility.

Building strong community ties can turn local supporters into loyal customers, and integrating marketing campaigns can further amplify your reach.

Utilizing marketing emails and establishing more authority in your communications can nurture potential leads and build trust.

For a new business, community outreach is a cost-effective way to acquire new customers and establish a market presence.

Collaborating with other brands and other entities can expand your reach and create mutually beneficial relationships.

An outreach campaign, particularly an outreach marketing campaign, can connect you with potential clients and influencers across various platforms.

A well-planned outreach marketing strategy, combined with a personal touch, can significantly enhance your engagement efforts.

Community outreach initiatives can drive positive change and help you build a comprehensive prospect list for targeted marketing.

Raising awareness through outreach can improve your response rate and overall engagement.

For a small business, leveraging social media influencers can enhance your online presence and reach.

Utilizing social media platforms and word-of-mouth marketing can further amplify your community outreach efforts.

If you’re ready to elevate your brand through meaningful community engagement, Sachs Marketing Group is here to help. Our team specializes in developing and executing customized community outreach marketing strategies that build trust, boost visibility, and foster long-term customer loyalty. Whether you’re looking to sponsor local events, launch outreach campaigns, or forge impactful partnerships, contact Sachs Marketing Group today to start creating real connections that drive measurable growth.

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Email marketing It’s been over 50 years since the beginning of what would become the digital mail, or email, and it’s probably not going anywhere anytime soon.

One of the oldest pieces of digital infrastructure on the Internet, the email remains the tried-and-true way of sending and receiving both personal and commercial information. With that undying relevance comes the similarly immortal relevance of email marketing.

That’s right, email marketing still matters in 2021. And it probably matters more than ever, as digital marketing techniques took center stage for many industries surviving the pandemic and using emails as one of multiple ways to advertise products and services online amid an e- commerce boom.

But just because email is near ancient (in Internet terms) doesn’t mean you can rely on the same old techniques that might have worked with commercial emails in the 90s and 00s.

Major email providers, including Google, Yahoo, and AOL, have gotten much better at recognizing and flagging spam over the years, protecting consumers from trillions of unwanted messages year after year. Here’s how you set yourself apart from the bots and make the most out of your campaign.

Focus On Quality, Not Quantity

This goes for emails and subscribers alike, but it’s arguably even MORE important for subscribers.

There’s going to be a threshold for how often you can send your subscribers something before they start to get fed up with the rate at which you’re pushing content, sales, or other marketing media, and following your metrics closely to observe jumps and drops in click-through and opening rates can help you figure that out for your audience. But cultivating a quality audience is even more important.

One way of making sure that you’re getting subscribers who are actually likely to care about the content you put out (or the product you sell, or the services you provide) is to make it even more of a privilege to follow your newsletter and receive promos and updates. You can do this via a double opt-in function.

Instead of just typing their email into an annoying pop-up window, and getting a piece of unread mail every day of the week until it eventually lands in spam automatically, giving readers of a post or potential buyers the option to provide their email during checkout for new updates or products, or new blog posts, gives you the ability to send them a confirmation email that requires them to click a link or tick another checkbox on your website to make sure that they’re interested in your marketing campaign.

Remember, you’re not trying to trick people here. Email marketing has legitimate value as one of the easiest ways to update and notify subscribers about new products and content they genuinely care about. But if you try to just get your emails out to as many people as possible, regardless of what they really want, you will eventually end up in the spam folder.

A double opt-in function makes sure that most of the people who sign up for your emails end up opening them, and even clicking through to your website again.

Sanitize Your Database

It’s not enough to cultivate an email list or database of emails that want to read your content or receive your news and marketing. You need to make sure you’re keeping that list updated. Various email marketing tools help you ensure that your emails aren’t being sent out to dead emails anymore, but beyond that, give subscribers the option to opt out of your content (or stop sending it after a certain point) to avoid ending up on a deny list.

Furthermore, it’s really important that this is YOUR email list. What this means is that probably the easiest way to get flagged as spam is to buy email lists or use shared lists. Even worse would be scraping for emails using automated tools. These types of bots and third-party email list sellers are often going to be a sure-fire ticket to the spam folder.

Why bother throwing money out the window? You might not have as big of an email list if you grow it organically, but let’s remember that it’s more important to prioritize quality over quantity, even when working through your list of recipients.

Authenticate Your Sender

What this means is to ensure that the IP sending your email is authenticated via a list of IP addresses allowed to send mail from your website domain, via your DNS records.

Most email marketing tools help you do this and will walk you through the setup (and remind you if you haven’t done it yet). This is important. It’s a clear red flag and a sign of phishing if an email is sending mail from your domain but hasn’t been authenticated through your DNS.

Aside from authenticating your sender, remember to check for real-time address validation (to avoid sending mail to dead emails, which can be a red flag for a lot of email providers).

Obey the Law

The best way to prevent emails from going to spam is to obey the laws in place relating to email communications. Did you know that there are more than a few pieces of user privacy legislation that govern commercial emails targeted towards some of the biggest markets on the planet, including the United States, Canada, and the EU? CAN-SPAM, the GDPR, the CCPA, and the CASL all have clauses dictating what does and doesn’t count as spam, and privacy laws around the globe are booming in general.

While following their guidelines isn’t guaranteed to keep your emails from landing in the spam folder, they can be an additional hurdle to worry about. These are hefty pieces of legislature, but thankfully, there are plenty of articles online giving the quick gist of them, as well as more lengthy breakdowns that avoid pouring over every last detail.

A few tips you can gleam from each of these laws are as follows:

• Make it easy to unsubscribe from your promotional mail.
• Authorize your senders.
• Be transparent about your sending practices.
• Give users control over how their personal data is stored and used by you (and, in turn, by your email marketing). More importantly, give them the clear option to opt out of any user data being stored.

Provide Options and Control

If your website already provides login functionality and allows users to create and adjust their profile, even if it’s just to keep track of their orders, browse personalized suggestions, and cash in promo codes, you can take things a step further by providing mailing preferences in the user settings page.

These could be anything from letting users control how often they receive mail from you, to controlling what kind of mail they want to receive (just product info, general sales, specific discounts, other newsletters and content), and so on.

If you want to make the most out of this feature, be sure to tell your users about it when they’re signing up for your newsletter. Remember, one of the most important factors behind whether or not your content ends up in a spam folder is whether people are bothering to open it. Giving them the option to opt out of mail that doesn’t interest them reduces the likelihood of your sender ending up in a deny list.

Email marketing is a world in and of itself, and these are just a few simple tips. But it’s often the fundamentals that count the most.

There’s a lot more to running a successful email campaign: from writing beautiful copy, to keeping your emails light and relevant, personalizing your marketing material automatically, reviewing your email performance metrics, making the relevant adjustments, and more. Get in touch with us if you want to step up your email marketing game.

The post How to Prevent Your Emails from Going to Spam appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

With the rise of the internet, new marketing practices are developing at a more rapid speed than ever before. Keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends is important to any business that wants to remain relevant and competitive. One trend that has been used consistently to deliver positive results is influencer marketing. In this practice, companies collaborate with individuals known as influencers to promote their brands in creative ways that resonate with potential customers.

Influencers can help your business to create a buzz, reach a wider audience and increase engagement. All of these things have the potential to help you reach your marketing and sales goals. In order to connect with relevant influencers, your best bet is to connect with an influencer marketing platform. These platforms can provide a number of resources to assist you in getting the most from your work with influencers. Along with matching you with the right influencers, a quality platform can also provide campaign monitoring and measure return on your investment. Keep reading below to some of the top influencer marketing platforms to tap into in order to make your collaborative efforts run more smoothly and  become more successful.

IZEA

IZEA is one of the originators in the influencer marketing sphere. They’ve been around since 2006 when they began paying bloggers to create content on behalf of brands. Because of this long history, IZEA is a platform you can trust. They have perfected the art of creating and managing influencer marketing campaigns. They can also help you to analyze and amplify your campaigns. IZEA’s platform allows you to connect with influencers within your preferred demographics. They also give you a convenient dashboard to manage every aspect of your campaign, from influencers to payments. You’ll love that you can measure influencer performance in real time across various social media platforms.

AspireIQ

AspireIQ seeks to help businesses identify influencers relevant to their niche. They ease this process with their recommendation engine that helps you connect with influencers similar to ones you’ve already engaged in campaigns with. In addition, they offer a unique feature that lets you see which influencers have been successful in other campaigns. Through the AspireIQ platform, you can also manage your communities and track how your campaigns are performing. Task automation for things like making payments, content reviews and product tracking is also possible.

Upfluence

Upfluence is powered by AI, artificial intelligence. It has the unique benefit of allowing you to search for influencers based on social media platform. You’re able to check out the accounts of individuals on the channels that are most relevant to your audience and customers. In addition, Upfluence pre-screens their influencers in order to determine the quality of their engagement and reach. Those wishing to work with global influencers are in luck, as Upfluence’s database contains professionals from 150 countries around the world. They have an extensive filter system that lets you search by various demographics and performance indicators, including engagement rates and geolocation. You can measure your ROI, obtain real-time updates and send bulk emails with their software.

Tapinfluence

Tapinfluence was founded in 2003 working specifically with brands and bloggers. They now connect with various types of creators and tout themselves as the world’s first Influencer-Generated Content Engine. This platform provides you with in-depth information on potential influencers of interest. You can check out such stats as their audience reach and the real-time cost per engagement (CPE). Their system can assist you in such aspects of influencer marketing as campaign briefing, content creation, communication, promotion and review.

Tidal Labs

Tidal Labs is a platform that automates workflow related to your influencer marketing campaigns. They have a robust AI-powered database that gives you the power to filter results in order to find the perfect influencer for your campaign. Automation is the name of the game. You can get so much more done in less time such as information gathering, product distribution, amplification of influencer content and payment release. Also, it’s easy to edit  and rate influencer content quickly through the use of this system.

Grapevine

Grapevine is a marketing platform that lets you tailor your campaigns in ways that best reach and engage your targeted demographic. You can find popular and well-performing influencers in your niche, scale your influencer programs as needed and measure your most relevant analytics. Grapevine staff have already vetted the influencers they promote, so you can feel secure in the quality of your relationships. In addition, Grapevine gives you a direct line to influencers to ease the negotiation process.

Captiv8

Captiv8 claims to be “revolutionizing how brands connect with the world.” And they give you the tools to do just that. First, they help you connect with the influencers who can best promote your business in the most relevant ways. A particular advantage of this platform is the ways in which it helps you track advanced metrics like sentiment analysis, EMV and deep engagement data to give you a broader picture of your ROI.

Trackr

As with other influencer marketing platforms, Trackr offers solutions to help you with a multitude of tasks. They stand out from the pack in a couple ways, though. You can get a look at the audience insights of individual influencers in order to determine which ones fit your most important campaign requirements. In addition, Trackr lets you track online conversations so you can validate the ways in which influencers engage with their followers.

Ambassador

Ambassador considers themselves to be a referral software platform. Their system can help you with referral marketing, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and partner marketing. So, this platform is a fabulous choice when you’re looking for a comprehensive all-in-one solution for your marketing needs. Ambassador allows you to conveniently track all the advocates you partner with in one simple dashboard.

You have a lot of choices when it comes to services to help with your influencer marketing campaigns. These are simply some of the best influencer marketing platforms around. Check them out to see which one might be a good fit for your needs.

The post Top Influencer Marketing Platforms to Tap Into appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

For marketers to get the most bang for their productivity buck, it’s crucial to use a number of outreach tools that make the various facets of the job easier. And perhaps what’s even more important than the tools themselves, is creating an efficient (and when possible, automated) workflow to make things move a little faster.

Content marketing is a huge part of the job these days. After all, the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach their customers, and 86% of those in the in the B2C sector consider content marketing a key strategy.

Outreach Tools

If you find that a lot of your time is spent reaching out to tons of people through email and relying on a lot of tools to get the job done, I’ve got some good news for you. There’s a better way – and I’m going to share it with you. This method should help you save time and allow you, provided that you already have the necessary details you need, to email more than 20 people every hour.

Some of the tools I cover here are paid, but the great thing is they all have free plans to use. I recommend sticking with the free plan until you have your workflow nailed down, and upgrading to paid plans for the tools that require it to meet your workload.

Gmail

Chances are you’re using this already, but if you’re not, it is the best email platform. I’ve tested several, and nothing beats the integrations Gmail has. Integrations are the key to building smooth workflows without having to constantly run with 75 open tabs – so it’s much easier to use Gmail than other email platforms.

If you use the free version, you’ll have an @gmail.com address that may hurt your credibility, but Gmail for Business is only $6/month/user so you can have @yourdomain.com with all the Gmail features plus Google Drive and other apps. If you are a non-profit organization, you can get a free account.

Insightly CRM

Insightly CRM has a free forever plan for up to two users. For small operations, that’s a good option. Alternatively, you could use the free version of the Hubspot CRM. Both are easy to set up and use, and both integrate with Gmail. Once integrated, you can set up templates so instead of constantly copying and pasting things, you can use the templates so the bulk of the work is already done for you.

Clickup

Clickup is a collaboration tool so you and everyone else on your team gets a clear overview of everything that’s in progress, reducing the need for conversations between you and other members of your team. As with Trello, you can create boards and customize them to your workflow. Clickup provides a better overview of all the tasks that are assigned to you or team members. It also makes it easier to define and block tasks, but Trello is still a good backup solution.

For example, if a colleague has to do something before you can reach out to a certain person, when that colleague marks the task done, you get the go ahead to complete your task.

Using Clickup or Trello will allow you to quickly and easily see who emailed whom, why, when, and so on.

Your workflow could look a little something like this:

One advantage to using Clickup over Trello is that it allows you to zoom out to see the big picture of all your tasks, along with all your colleagues tasks so you can more easily manage everything.

Ditto

Ditto is a Windows tool for advanced clipboard management. In a standard workflow you’ll need two windows open – one with the email and the other with the details you need for emailing the target. You’ll be going back and forth between two or more windows to find everything you need to paste in the mail.

Using Ditto means you can mass copy all the details one by one, then in your email tool, press Control + and you’ll get a small window with all the details you’ve copied will appear. Click on the one you need and Ditto pastes it into your email.

And for my Mac enthusiasts, I’ve got the alternative for you – CopyQ. If there’s one thing I dislike, it’s a tool that’s available for one OS but not the other. Windows is a good product, but not for everyone. CopyQ is available for Windows and Linux, too, in case you decide you don’t care for Ditto. CopyQ has a searchable and editable history, with support for image formats, and more. You can store just about anything you want, save items in tabs (groups), and more.

If you need help building your email list and target audience before you start your email outreach, you can use tools such as the SimilarWeb Chrome extension to help you identify potential prospects and Hunter to help you find email addresses. And while we’re at it, you can use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail to personalize your emails with LinkedIn data for your recipient right inside your Gmail box.

Though it’ll take you a bit of time to create and setup all the accounts you need to make this workflow function well for your email outreach, after the initial legwork is done, you’ll be able to move much faster. This way, you can focus more of your efforts on the personalized follow up and reminder emails.

The post How to Simplify Outreach for Your Business appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Some say email marketing is dead, while others maintain it is alive and well. I’m in the alive and well camp, because data shows email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent, giving it an astonishing 3800% ROI, which means it remains one of the most effective marketing methods available. After all, active email accounts were expected to hit 5.6 billion by 2019.

Understand the 3 Types of Messages You’ll Send

There are three types of messages you’ll send to your list over the course of their time as a subscriber. Understanding which ones to use and when will help you develop a better strategy.

Marketing

These emails are promotional or informational messages you send to people who’ve asked you to keep them updated. These are often prospects, clients, affiliates, vendors, or reporters. Marketing emails may include a variety of content, but are generally used to send sales promotions, newsletters, press releases, announcements, surveys, and follow-ups.

Transactional

These emails are automated and triggered by customer activity. These include welcome messages, order received/tracking, received payments, registration confirmation, etc.

These messages have great potential because if a customer gets one, that means they’ve done at least one action on your website, and are likely to engage with you again. These are trusted emails meaning they generally have higher open rates. As such, there are plenty of opportunities for cross-selling and engagement.

Operational

These emails contain important information about your business, such as maintenance plans, holiday hours/closures, or changes to your service availability. You may be tempted to skip sending an operational email if you think it won’t have an impact on your sales, but for the sake of trust and engagement, it’s important to be consistent.

Though these messages may come across as strictly informative, they can be created in a way that improves your sales and image. For instance, if your service will be down for maintenance, taking the time to describe the updates you’ll be doing is a wonderful way to remind your clients of the value you provide.

Make Messages Personal

Write each message as if you were talking to one person only in your email. This strengthens the emotional connection between you and your list members. The majority of email marketing tools allow you to use shortcodes to indicate where you want to refer to the subscriber by name, which can help.

It also helps to segment your list so you can send more personalized messages to each part of your audience. For instance, you’ll want to send different messages to current clients than you would be sending to prospects, and you’ll send yet another message to people who have recently left your company, or abandoned their shopping cart. Segmentation ensures everyone gets the appropriate message for their place in the sales funnel.

In working to create a personalized email experience, it’s important to also consider your audience demographics. Promotional emails were the most effective method in influencing millennial purchase decisions – with 68% saying promotional emails impacted their purchase decisions on at least a few occasions.

Encourage Readers to Respond

In each email message you send to your list, encourage the readers to reply to respond to the email. They can use the reply to give you feedback about your products or services, express concerns, ask questions, etc. The key is to make sure people know you’re using email as the two-way communication channel it is intended to be.

Whether you personally reply or not is not the issue – just make sure someone in your company takes the time to craft a personal response to each message. Ideally, your customers will be thrilled if the response comes directly from you, so make sure you are ready to reply to the messages if you ask people to engage. If people take the time to reply to the message only to have it ignored, you can bet they won’t continue to engage with your emails.

Focus Efforts on the Subject Line

The subject line is what is going to capture your reader’s attention and entice them to click the message to open it. And while you want a good open rate, it’s important to remember that a good open rate won’t necessarily mean a good conversion rate. People will open your email and read it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll take the time to buy whatever it is you’re trying to sell them, or go on to your website to learn more.

Your email subject line should use power words and pique curiosity. There’s no need to follow meaningless stats about the optimal length of a subject line. Everyone’s audience is different, so what works for you may not work for someone else. Don’t be afraid to experiment to learn about your audience response.

Keep Things Mobile-Friendly

One of the keys to keeping your email list actively involved in your messaging is to ensure it’s designed to be mobile-friendly. Mobile opens accounted for nearly half of all email opens, and 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device.

Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

It may feel like cutting off conversation by giving your readers the chance to opt out, but if a user wants to remove themselves from your list, and cannot do so easily, they’ll simply flag your email as spam. This will cause problems for you in the future because your messages could skip people’s inbox and end up in spam, even if they have subscribed to your list. Plus, this is an FTC requirement for compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which outlines regulations for email marketing.

Test, Test, Test

Test various elements of your email marketing campaign with split-tests. You can test elements such as subject line, send time, copy, placement of images, and more. The more testing you do, the more you learn about your audience and how to elicit the response you want.

Provide Value

Most importantly, whatever you’re sending your list must provide value. If you’re not providing value to your subscribers, there’s no reason for them to stick around. You must provide information that sticks with them to keep your business in their mind, whether it’s educational, marketing messages about the products you offer, or operational messages about your service.

The money is in your list. Plan your content in advance, and continue efforts to grow the list no matter what else you have going on. Your email marketing strategy should fit right into the rest of your digital marketing alongside social media, SEO, paid advertising, and more.

The post Tips to Help You Get the Most of Your Email Campaigns appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

If you own a business, online reviews are part of the territory. Unfortunately, no matter how you conduct your business, some of those reviews will be negative. After all, it’s impossible to keep 100% of your customers happy 100% of the time. Because online reviews are such an important part of local SEO, it’s important to know how to handle the negative when it comes along, as it’s an essential part of online reputation management.

Years ago, an episode of Kitchen Nightmares aired on TV and created a social media frenzy. The owners of Amy’s Baking Company did exactly what you shouldn’t do. They became defensive, accusatory, and even called people names. After a failed attempt to clean up their image, the bakery remained open for a short time before closing its doors.

The Power of Customer Reviews

If you think reviews are no big deal, I’ve got some news for you – they affect your business more than you realize. Nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making purchases. The majority of buyers (88%) are influenced in their buying decisions by reviews. Reviews produce an 18% increase in sales.

Unfortunately for you and all other businesses, people are much more willing to share a negative experience with their peers than they are a positive one. That means working hard to provide quality products and customer service and going above and beyond when and where possible to ensure everyone has a great experience with your company.

Part of handling negative customer reviews means you must distance yourself emotionally, working hard not to take things personally – even if you know what the reviewer says isn’t the full story. Ignoring negative customer reviews can also backfire, because there’s nothing you can do to remove them from your profiles. That means potential customers will see the bad reviews and take note of the fact that you’ve done nothing to respond. Here’s what to do.

Reply to All Reviews

You should be taking the time to reply to all reviews, both positive and negative. When someone leaves a positive review, at least thank them for the time it took to leave the review. When it comes to a negative review, you’ll have to spend more time crafting the appropriate response. Replying to all reviews is better than only acknowledging the positive ones, only acknowledging the negative ones, or worse, never acknowledging any review.

This means monitoring all your review profiles online – not just the ones you’re most familiar with, or your favorite. You’ll want to spend some time looking for any profiles you may have on review sites and directories, claiming the listings when you find them, so you have more control over the information that’s presented.

Listen Carefully

Pay close attention to what the reviewer is saying. This type of feedback can help you see ways to improve your business operations, whether it be through improved customer service, additional products and services, or another strategy. If you notice a pattern in the complaints, then you know you have a much larger issue at hand to fix. Ignore the quality of its presentation – as many people are quick to vent anger from behind a keyboard, and focus on what’s actually being said. The reality is few people are able to articulate criticism in such a manner that makes you comfortable accepting it and learning from it.

Even if you know the person is wrong, don’t try to prove it to be so. That approach isn’t helpful for anyone, even if you can prove it. You must listen to the other person without planning your reply in advance.

Listening can help you determine the root cause so you can prevent it from being an issue for other customers. For example, if you have a client who is refusing to pay for the promotional flyers you produced for them, look at why:

Why? The delivery was late, so the flyers couldn’t be used.

Why? The job took longer than it was supposed to.

Why? Because the printer ran out of ink.

Why? Because we used all the ink on a large, last minute order.

Why? We didn’t have any left in stock, and we couldn’t order it fast enough.

Solution: Work to find an ink supplier who can deliver on short notice.

Apologize for the Issue

After you’ve read the review and understand the key issues the reviewer mentions, take time to apologize for their experience. Let them know you heard them, and you’re taking the necessary steps to prevent the issue from happening again in the future (then make you sure you have a way to do so.)

Most of the time when someone leaves you a poor review, they want to be heard and acknowledged. Taking the time to understand where they are coming from and apologize can go a long way in repairing the relationship.

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and imagine how they feel. Even if you can’t deliver a solution, you can deliver empathy. Even if you didn’t do whatever it was that upset them to the point where they left the review, you can still genuinely apologize for the way the customer feels.

Direct the Conversation Offsite for Resolution

To keep your review profile as clean as possible, in your response you should provide contact information. Encourage the reviewer to reach out to you via email or by phone so you can discuss the particulars of the situation in more detail and come to an acceptable resolution. This way, the reviewer knows you’re willing to work with them but want to protect any sensitive data such as account numbers, payment methods, and personally identifying information. And most importantly, the people who will be reading your customer reviews in the future see that you are making every effort to rectify the situation, regardless of whether the reviewer actually responds to you or not.

When the person contacts you to resolve the issue, ask questions. This can help clear up communication so you understand the core message better.

Customer experiences have a lasting impact on whether or not someone is willing to continue doing business with your company. By being willing to accept that no one is perfect and take responsibility for your mistakes while also looking for a way to resolve them and prevent them in the future, you have a much greater chance at salvaging the relationship.

The post How to Handle Negative Customer Reviews appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Reviews are essential to your business success for two reasons: one, people’s buying decisions are influenced by online reviews, and two, reviews on Google especially, are a major part of local SEO because they influence search rank. Because of this, it’s important to make sure you’re doing all you can to encourage people to leave honest reviews of their experience with your products or services.

Before you get started, make sure you have claimed your Google My Business listing, along with business profiles on other relevant review sites. The more options you have available for your customers to choose from, the more likely they will be to leave a review. Don’t forget niche specific review sites such as TripAdvisor for restaurants, hotels, and things to do, and HomeAdvisor and Angie’s List for various home repair businesses.

1. Ask Politely

Some sites like Yelp have policies against directly asking for reviews, but Google is okay with promoting the option for customers to leave reviews for you. For service businesses, this can be as simple as asking the customer to leave you a review once you’ve finished the job. For others, it can be as simple as following up via email within a few days after the purchase. It’s likely at least some of your customers will leave a review in response to your asking for one.

That said, you can also use your social media channels to ask people in your audience to leave reviews for you from time to time. Facebook has its own review/recommendation system that can also be useful to you.

Restaurants and hotels don’t even have to ask outright. Instead, they can print signage to put on each table or the checkout counter to catch guests’ attention. In addition to signage, there are promotional stickers you can put on the door to remind people you have a profile on various review sites.

Managing your social profile can take a lot of time and effort. If you want to build momentum quickly, and gain reviews on social media platforms, consider working with a team of digital marketing professionals specializing in social media development.

2. Make it Easy

The more effort a customer has to make to leave a review for you, the less likely they are to do it. For in-person asks, you can always hand customers a card with links or QR codes for the review sites you want to use. In your follow up emails, always include links to the review sites you want them to use. The easier it is for customers to leave reviews, the better it is for you.

3. Provide an Incentive

To encourage your customers to leave reviews, you can always provide a discount code on a future purchase if they decide to leave a review, or a referral program where people can earn cash, gift cards, or free product for sending new customers to you…rewarding them for something other than the review.

The key is to not offer something in exchange for a positive review, because you want the reviews to be honest. Many review platforms have banned fake paid reviews to boost business. Amazon, for one, has been cracking down on the issue because of websites that offered discounts on products in exchange for a review. While there are some customers who will leave reviews without any kind of incentive, it certainly won’t hurt your chances of getting people to leave them.

4. Provide Options

If you want people to leave reviews on Yelp, but they don’t actively participate in the community, chances are they won’t take the time to create a profile there for the purpose of leaving you a review. Yelp, for instance, won’t show reviews from people who’ve created profiles for the sole purpose of leaving you a review, whether that review is good or bad, so you if you get a sudden influx of reviews there from your efforts, it could actually come back to bite you.

By providing a variety of options, such as Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, FourSquare, and so on, your customers are free to choose where they want to leave a review, based on where they are already active. Every review counts – and while you may want them to help you build a strong review profile on a single platform, you don’t always have that control.

A few reviews on a variety of profiles looks way more natural than a ton of reviews on a single platform anyway. Even if you don’t promote a certain channel for reviews, people who really want to share their experience will do so where they choose.

5. Respond to All Reviews

An important part of online reputation management is to pay attention to any and all customer reviews, on any website. Taking the time to thank people for their kind words can go a long way toward encouraging people to leave their own reviews. And while it may be tempting to ignore bad reviews, it’s just as important, if not more so, to respond to those as well. People want to do business with companies they know are paying attention to what people have to say.

Even if they see a bad experience on your review profile, they are more likely to forgive it if they see that a business representative has taken the time to respond. One of the best ways you can do this is to apologize for the experience and direct the reviewer to email you or call you so you can get more details of the situation and take it offline to resolve it.

Ultimately, the best way to make sure your customers are willing to leave reviews for your business is to ensure the best experience possible. Stressing over getting the reviews themselves will create a slew of issues for your company, and may even cause your staff to try so hard it becomes off putting. Place emphasis on providing quality products and services to those who need them, and the customer reviews will follow.

And when you get those positive customer reviews, use that social proof to your advantage. Share the reviews on your social channels and on your website, so that more potential customers see them and keep the cycle going.

The post 5 Tips to Get Customers to Leave Business Reviews appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), sometimes called corporate citizenship, is an umbrella term that refers to any effort a business makes to give back and improve society in some shape or form. It can involve donating to charity, making an employee-friendly corporate policy, making an environmentally-friendly one, and more. It has a number of benefits for your business, and even though it typically requires monetary investment to develop and implement the programs, it can often yield a strong return on investment that helps grow your business.

Gives Your Company Purpose

Developing social responsibility programs gives your company a greater purpose than making sales. In fact, it can provide more motivation to do well as a company because the better you do in terms of sales, the more you can do for society. When you feel good about what you’re doing, it makes it more fun and enjoyable to do. And when consumers know they’re contributing to the purpose, they’re more likely to continue doing it…which brings me to my next point.

Builds Loyalty with Customers

Today’s customers are more conscious about who they spend their money with and want to do business with companies they know are working toward something better. According to Double the Donation, 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for products from socially responsible companies. Data from Cone Communications shows that 87% of consumers say they’ll purchase a product because the company advocates for an issue they care about, while 76% say they’ll refuse to purchase products if they determine a company supports an issue contrary to their belief.  CSR is now one of the consumers’ purchasing criteria alongside price, quality, and convenience, but their view of responsibility continues to evolve.

Reduces Employee Turnover

The team is happy when you’ve got CSR programs in place aimed at your staff’s overall well-being. And when the team is happy, they’re more productive and much less likely to leave their position with your company. Double the Donation reveals nearly 60% of employees who are proud of their company’s CSR are engaged at their jobs.

When you consider the cost of employee turnover, on average, is 16% of the annual salary for anyone earning under $30,000, you’re spending $3,328 to replace an employee who earns $10/hour. It averages 20% for midrange positions, or that earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. And for a high-level position? You could be spending up to 213% of the annual salary. Plus, there are many things that aren’t tracked and are intangible, such as the cost of hiring a new employee, the cost of onboarding, the lost productivity, training costs, and the impact on company culture.

Building CSR into Your Business Strategy

Your CSR approach needs to be unique and customized to your business industry and goals. To help you decide which initiatives you want to begin with your organization, answer these questions:

How Does Your Business Impact the Environment?

Are you using products and services that are harmful to the environment? Can you switch suppliers to use more eco-friendly products? If not, could you start a carbon-neutral program to offset what you cannot reduce? Maybe you can host an annual tree planting event. Consider adding recycling stations throughout your office to make recycling easy for employees. Change the light bulbs in your office. Even small actions can add up to make a big impact.

Take for instance, Lush Cosmetics. The international health and beauty company makes various products, such as shower gels, shampoo and conditioner, and makeup. Many of the products are “naked,” meaning they do not have any kind of packaging. There is a recycling program with customer incentives to promote recycling the plastic pots that hold products that must have packaging.

Their ingredients are sourced with fair trade practices from sustainable sources. The company also donates to a variety of grassroots organizations with a focus on human and animal rights.

How Can You Improve Your Labor Practices?

What do your employees need to make their lives easier? Could you allow them to work remotely? This not only helps reduce the carbon footprint because there is no need to commute and you can downsize or even eliminate corporate office space but also gives employees more freedom and flexibility.

Maybe offer a more flexible paid vacation policy? You don’t have to go all out like Netflix and include unlimited vacation with a year’s paid salary for new parents, but providing benefits to cover sick days can take some pressure off your team and foster a healthier work-life balance.

While Starbucks doesn’t offer unlimited vacation, they do provide college tuition for their employees and are committed to hiring veterans and refugees. They have a number of environmental elements to their program, too, including 99% ethically sourced coffee, farming partnerships for responsible agronomic practices, and more.

What Do You Believe In?

What causes do you support personally that you can rally the rest of your company to support? What charities and causes make sense to include as part of your CSR program? While you may be an animal lover, if your business has nothing to do with animals, you may have difficulty convincing everyone to get on board. Generally, for the program to make sense, it has to improve the way your business operates or contribute to a cause related to your business. It’s why companies like Purina donate food and supplies to animal shelters and why Lyft has a carbon offset program to make every ride carbon neutral.

Ultimately, after you’ve built your corporate responsibility program, you must be prepared to promote it. If people don’t know about it, it won’t be the tipping point in what could make them decide to become one of your customers. And if you don’t keep people up to date with what kind of impact your program is making, you can’t expect people to remain dedicated to your brand as a result.

If you want help developing a program, contact my team of digital marketing professionals for more information regarding how you can create a program, develop your reputation, and help your community.

The post How Corporate Social Responsibility Can Grow Your Business appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Updated 2023

The holiday season goes like this: December Holidays, New Year, football playoffs through to the SuperBowl, and then Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is a bit weird in that even though it is already on store shelves, it isn’t as prevalent in advertisements until February 1st.  That means you have about a week or so to make sure your Valentine’s Day campaigns, if not already started, are ready to be heavy hitters for this super-short and fast-paced greeting card holiday. Here’s a few useful suggestions to help you get ready faster.

BOGO Deals for Couples

Tis the season for couples, right? Offering some sort of BOGO (buy one, get one free) deal appeals to couples of all ages, no matter how long they’ve been together. You don’t necessarily have to make your BOGO a “buy one, get one free” deal if you don’t have the budget. You can do a “buy one, get one 50 percent off” or some other special; the key is to ensure it’s financially appealing to your potential clients.

Polish Your Email Campaigns

Make sure your email campaigns are on-point. The subject lines need to be especially clear, and they need to tease at the inside content, too. Do your best to make it clear that you have amazing Valentine’s Day specials inside.

The inside content needs to be visually appealing, too; this is especially important for Valentine’s Day. Tweak your backgrounds and imagery to match the holiday – you don’t have to be all about the red and pink, but you should try and get creative. Hearts, different colored roses, great photos of couples together with your products, and other visual mixes will appeal to the eyes and earn you clicks through to your website.

Related: 10 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Attract Local Customers

Greeting Cards

You have an existing client database, we’re sure. Put your graphic designers to work designing a special Valentine’s Day ecard you can send to your existing list. It can be a simple greeting, or you can include a special, limited-time coupon code just for them.

People who have purchased from a company in the past love feeling like they’re getting something special or exclusive in return.

Promote Matching Products

Sometimes, one gift doesn’t seem like quite enough, but choosing a second gift seems daunting. Run some sort of “matching” campaign that suggests complimentary items to go with base purchases. For example, if someone purchases a necklace, you should be featuring matching earrings or bracelets as separate items and/or as bundles. If someone is buying a pair of running shoes, you should show running socks or cute themed running tanks. The idea is to increase the value of each order while offering great suggestions or add-on deals.

FREE Shipping

Valentine’s Day is a great time to show your customers how much you love them with free shipping deals. Offer free shipping on any purchase or on purchases over a certain dollar amount. This works out well for two reasons. Some people will buy because not having to pay for shipping is a major motivator. Others will be happy that they don’t have to pay for shipping and will use it as an excuse to buy more product!

Engage Your Fans

Valentine’s Day is a great time for simple brand awareness campaigns. The makers of Sour Patch Kids ran a really cute campaign a few years ago. They used Wattpad to connect with their younger teen fans by having writers come up with some cool “sweet than sour” romance stories and celebrated not Valentine’s Day, but “Singles Awareness Day.” They then opened it up as a contest so their fans could submit their own themed stories, complete with a branded hashtag, of course.

User-Generated Content

Create a special hashtag and ask your audience to share something special about their relationships. Don’t specify that they have to be romantic relationships, though; they can be, but it’s okay if they’re about friendships or families, too. Ask your fans to submit their stories and a photo (with a photo release) via a specific email address or via a contest platform where they can also earn entries for a special prize.

You’ll end up with tons of great stories to share and you’ll be able to collect additional email leads for the future. You may even want to consider offering a small discount code to all participants who provide an email address.

Brand Your Social Accounts

No matter what type of campaign you are running, you should make some updates to your social media platforms. Make sure all of your artwork, including thumbnails and cover images, matches the rest of the strategy. Your overall brand should still be easy to recognize, but with an in-your-face reminder that you have something special going on.

Social media development can require a lot of time and energy. If you need help for your business, consider working with a team of professional digital marketers.

Don’t Forget the Single Ladies (and Gentlemen)

Remember that “Singles Awareness Day” campaign we mentioned? You don’t necessarily have to go that route (and probably shouldn’t), but you should definitely make sure the single people in your demographic don’t feel left out. Either tailor your campaigns so that a single person can still make a purchase or offer something special, just for them. Everyone deserves to feel loved on Valentine’s Day!

Utilize Polls

Just about every social media channel allows you to run a poll on a business page, and some even allow you to add images. Use this space to run a series of polls running up until Valentine’s Day. Bars should show competing themed cocktails or holiday-inspired dishes. Clothing retailers should ask audiences to choose date-night outfits for the big night out. All of these are great way to drive engagement around the holiday theme.

Last Minute Gift Ideas

This one won’t work as well if it will take a ton of time to ship, but local businesses with an online presence should definitely take advantage of last-minute gift ideas. Include products, services, pre-made gift baskets, and whatever else might appeal to those who usually put off shopping until the last possible second. Take some super-appealing photos and consider running some geo-targeted campaigns in the days leading up to the 14th.

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to have a little fun with both awareness and sales campaigns. Just remember to be sensitive of those who may not be in romantic relationships. We can’t wait to hear what tricks you have up your sleeve for February!

The post Fall In Love With These Valentine’s Day Campaign Ideas appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.

Influencers spend a lot of time building an authentic voice that followers can connect with and relate to. The public views them as trustworthy sources of information. These influencers have built reputations for honesty and accuracy in reviewing products and services. It’s very “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” – so to speak.

Partnering with people who are considered influencers is a sure-fire way to generate interest in your own brand. That said, it’s time to review your own influencer outreach strategy and make some changes that will propel it to the next level in 2019.

Having Loose Guidelines

Gone are the days where you should choose an influencer simply because they work in your niche (or even a closely-related niche). You need to take some time to find influencers who have values and voices that closely match your brand. A good influencer isn’t going to do a one-and-done review of your product or service, they’re going to get involved with your brand because they like it.

If you have a strong plan, your influencers will become brand ambassadors that people recognize as related to your brand. Those influencers can’t be just anybody; you need to build relationships with them, as you would with any other business partner or customer.

Caring About Follower Counts

The influencer’s follower count isn’t the end-all-be-all test of their marketing power. In some cases, it’s not even the right measuring tool. What matters is how much engagement your potential influencer gets on their posts, especially in terms of likes and comments, because that’s what drives conversion.

When you take that number and compare it to the total number of followers they have, what percentage of people are engaging? That percentage is the number you should be looking for. Anywhere around five to 10 percent is usually decent.

As for larger followings – sure, they’re awesome. But those smaller micro-influencers are worth investing in, too.

That said, make sure you are taking a close look at the type of engagement. If you see a bunch of responses that are just emojis, or a lot of accounts posting very similar comments, you may be looking at an account that has purchased followers.

Not Researching Your Influencer’s Followers

Yes, you do need to spend a little bit of time analyzing your potential influencer’s followers. It doesn’t matter if they identify with your brand if they’re not old enough to buy your products. Worse yet, imagine setting up an entire influencer campaign only to find that most of their audience is in foreign market- and you don’t even ship there.

Don’t assume a female beauty blogger has a primarily female audience. Don’t assume that all of an influencer’s followers are real (hence, checking engagement rates). Go deeper and tuck in to create a firm persona of who’s following.

Using Cold Outreach Strategies

Cold outreach is like cold calling or cold emailing. It’s likely to get your inquiry tossed in the trash. And can you blame them? Good influencers get several emails per day and they can’t deal with them all. You need to warm your potential influencers up by following their pages, engaging with them, and showing interest in what they do. By getting involved, you become less of a “stranger” when you ultimately do try to pitch your company strategy.

Giving Influencers Exact Instructions

Ok, yeah — you should still give your influencer instructions, but they need to be needs-based in a way that addresses both your preferences and how your influencer gets results. You can’t just send out an influencer kit, give them strict instructions for what they have to do, and hope for results. Even if they agree, the attempt will come off fake and make it seem like they’re reading from a script.

What to do instead? Build better relationships and create marketing plans tailored to each influencer. We guarantee you’ll see a better ROI if your influencer is given some flexibility in choosing how they showcase your product into their own brand’s voice.

Winging It

It’s time to stop flying by the seat of your pants with influencer marketing. Yes, it’s cool to have influencers promote your products, but what’s your actual plan? Are you having them promote your product and run a contest to give a few away for free? Are you giving samples in phase two and then a coupon code in phase three? How are you going to roll out your product in a way that generates interest and creates a trackable end goal for sales and marketing?

Focusing on Instagram Only

Zzzzzz. Instagram is great, but you’re limiting your audience by only focusing on a single platform. It’s time to branch out. You don’t necessarily need to work with influencers who are popular on multiple platforms. You can focus some on Instagram and find others who are strong on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you feel is appropriate. 

Lacking a Solid Compensation Model

How are you paying your influencers? Are you giving away free product or are you paying them for each post they create? Maybe you’re paying for each click your links receive or commission per sale. You have options!

Paying per post may mean you have a lot of upfront costs but little ROI. Paying per click, on the other hand, may land you with a lot of leads, but few real sales (and a big bill due to the influencer). Each of these payment methods can be effective depending on the situation. Experiment to figure out what type of compensation is fair for both of you.

Hiding Your Relationship

Knock it off. Knock it off right now. Not only is it shady, it’s straight-up illegal to not disclose that an influencer has received your product for free or has been paid to review your product. We care about you and don’t want to see anyone go down this path (plus, we know there’s a better way).

FTC endorsement rules (or failing to comply, in this case) could get both you and your influencer into trouble. Your influencers have worked hard to maintain decent relationships with their audiences, which includes not reviewing products they don’t appreciate or want to support. An influencer is more likely to refuse a relationship with you than s/he is to lie to his/her audience or break the law.

Influencer outreach is here to stay for the long haul. Focus your 2019 outreach efforts on building stronger relationships and creating tailored plans for each influencer you partner with. You’ll be surprised at how well these relationships work when it comes to strengthening your brand’s awareness and sales.

The post 9 Obsolete Influencer Marketing Practices to Avoid in 2019 appeared first on Sachs Marketing Group.