 Social Media has changed the way we all do business! It's astounding that we can show up in the living rooms of our ideal clients and connect with them right on their phone or laptop!
You can choose to be frustrated that marketing is always evolving and changing or you can be grateful for the amazing opportunity to leverage what is new and right in front of us! If you haven't cracked the code on making Facebook Ads work for you, you need to purchase my training! I'll walk you step by step through making Facebook ads work for your brick and mortar business. (Hint: it's very different from how online businesses use it.) Before you purchase my training, here are a few things you need to know! Have a Business Page You need a personal profile, of course, to navigate Facebook. But you must also have a Business Page. It's very simple to start a page if you haven't. (Just Google it.) Make sure your header photo is fun and engaging (build a collage here: www.picmonkey.com). For your profile picture, use faces, NOT your logo. Use Facebook ads during your peak response times Spend your money on Facebook marketing at your peak response times. Once you're getting good responses, then you can experiment during your "off" season. But when you first get started, make sure your clients are actually thinking about your product and what you are selling. Be Social Facebook is NOT a place to be "professional." It's for connection. You're going to have to deliberately change your "voice" on Facebook and make sure you are connecting with your audience in a fun, light, social way. Drop the formality. Be casual, just like you would when you're talking to a close friend! Trust me--you'll attract more business. Fill out your About Section Make sure all your contact info is current and filled out on your business Page. Fill out all the sections so people can find you! Change the "button" to say "Contact Us" and link up your website so people will be guided from Facebook to your website. Do FB Live! Video is king right now on Facebook. (Facebook is trying to rival YouTube for videos.) The BEST engagement you can get on Facebook is through Facebook Live. Yes, it can be intimidating to "Go Live" but just jump in and try it! Be fun and interesting and show people "behind the scenes" of what your company does. Get Training on Facebook Ads If you're thinking, "Facebook just doesn't work for me" you're wrong. You just haven't cracked the code yet! Contact me and request my Facebook training for brick and mortar, local business. People are reporting wonderful results. I'd love to help! By the way, Facebook is one of my top referral sources for my school of music! We got 93 new students just from Facebook last year. Does Facebook work for advertising? Oh yes, it does.
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 It's a simple fact: people want connection. They want to know a real, living, human being cares about them. This is such an easy, simple thing to implement into business or ministry, and yet most of us are missing the mark.
Through connection, you can grow your business with 3 simple systems: using your website, email, and Facebook. (Chances are, you’re already using these 3 things! Whoo hoo!) Benefits The #1 mistake that 90% of websites make is not capturing the reader’s attention with BENEFITS for the reader on the home page. Why should people choose your business? What sets you apart from other businesses just like yours? Home page rules The average visit on a website is 1 minute! To make matters worse, between 21-79% of your readers only look at the first page they land on. They won’t even attempt to click through your other pages. You have only seconds to grab the attention of your reader and give them the answers that they are seeking. Are they looking for pricing? Contact info? Directions? Information? Do you have the answers to THOSE questions on your front page? Smart Text If you have sentences like: “Thanks for stopping by our website. We hope you will browse around. Let us know if you don’t find what you are looking for” then you are WASTING an opportunity to connect with your audience! You need to GRAB your reader’s attention with a headline (or a question) that they are already asking. Responsive Theme If you have a very beautiful "cool" website without the pertinent information, you will frustrate your reader. If your website is not on a responsive theme, they may not be able to see anythingbecause your site originally designed for a desktop computer. It’s hard to keep up with all the changing trends! If you haven’t updated your site in the last year or two, it's time for a redesign. The right Pictures Make sure you have pictures on the home page of your site! Your site should reflect your audience, so pick pictures that look like real people (not like fake models or stiff stock photos). Portray the clients you are trying to attract! The best thing you can do is take real pictures of your real clients! Answer the questions they are asking Make sure you have text on your home page. Answer your audience’s questions quickly and swiftly, and let them know why they should choose YOU. SEO Friendly Search engines love text (and can't "read" images with words on them) so this will help when users are searching for what you do. Call to Action The very last item on your home page should be a Call to Action. Do you want them to call? Stop by? Request more information? Make it clear. People are in a hurry and want to be told exactly what to do! Next week we'll talk about email and Facebook!  I was the editor of our school newspaper in high school. It was supposed to be a rotating position, but right away it was clear that I was the one who loved editing, correcting grammar, and cracking the whip on deadlines. I remember sitting in Government class, secretly editing articles and passing them back to my fellow newspaper contributors. It was a position that I loved so much that my plan was to pursue Journalism in college. (Until God made it clear that I should major in music. But that's a story for another day.)
An important consideration for any newspaper team or editor is the article that is "above the fold." You know the newspaper that's folded in half, lying on the stand at the end of the counter at Starbucks while you wait for your grande latte? You scan the headlines, right? You might pick up the paper and look underneath. But the most attention goes to article above the fold. The same is true of your website. First impressions are everything and "above the fold" is valuable real estate. For websites, we want to maximize the first few seconds the reader is on your website. Is it clear what your business is all about? Does the reader know what to do next? Are the pictures visually clear on who the target audience is? PLEASE don't waste the top half of your home page with announcements: "Enrollment ends soon. Hurry!!" or "We will be closed on Labor Day." These announcements are for your current clients. Use email for your announcements, not your website. Your website is mostly for new visitors. Potential clients. You have only seconds to win them over and to keep them reading. Please don't waste those seconds on "insider information." If a reader can't decide in 3 seconds that "this is the place for me," then you've probably lost them forever. Use only 2 different fonts on your page, keep your colors clean and appealing, and use photographs that are happy, smiling, and that draw in your reader. Make sure your address, phone number, and email address are front and center! This is super important for both current and prospective clients. Please don't make the reader search for this important information. Also, be sure to have a link to your Facebook page in the upper right hand corner. (Social Media is how clients can peak into the life of your business and decide if they want to work with you.) First impressions are everything. If you are stuck on how to improve your site, ask a friend or co-worker to give you their opinion. Then listen and make changes!  If you're a creative person, like me, you probably spent hours choosing your business name. You probably asked all your friends and relatives, took a poll, made lists, doodled, brainstormed, agonized, called your best friend, agonized some more and FINALLY the big reveal! You created a logo and the perfect font and announced your beautiful business name! And then people gave you "the look." The look that said, "I don't get it. What do you do? What's your business?"
Oh beautiful creative people. WE know the meaning behind all the words and the beautiful journey we took to arrive at this amazing name. But other people don't. Other people (yes, sad, but true) are logical and literal (but don't get down on them too much--they do our bookkeeping and we love them!). They just don't understand our amazing creative ways. (That's why they need us in their lives! To make all the beauty appear!) The problem is when our clients are actually the more left-brained, logical type. They are the ones that need to understand our brand, our logo, and our business name, and yet that's who we are confusing! Story time: When I named my company a million years ago (OK, 20 years ago. But feels like a million years ago) I agonized over the name. I had lists and ideas and doodles--the whole works. I finally landed on Signature School of Music. Because duh--time signatures and key signatures and just like our signature, we are all unique and individuals. Except all that inference was lost on everyone. So I was continually asked, "Why Signature? What does that mean?" So I would explain and expound they would look at me like, "OK, yeah. Sure." So I finally resorted to saying, "A teacher of mine suggested it. I liked it." Response: "Oh." Fast forward 15 years. It's time to get serious about growing my little music school. I'm tired of make ZERO money. I'm tired of working super hard but never moving forward. So I hire a business coach. And he -GASP- suggests I change my name to the name of my town. Here's the dialogue that ensues in my (freaking out) mind: "I can't! I'm so attached! I love my name. I've always been Signature School of Music. I live in ROGERS. Rogers is a terrible name for a music school! I can't do it. I won't do it. I can't do it." Oh the drama. After a year or two of hemming and hawing, I finally decided that I wanted to be THE music school in my town. I wanted the town to have ownership of my business. I wanted my clients to definitively know where my business is located. I wanted the surrounding areas to know where my school is located. So I did it. I filed a DBA (doing business as) and changed my business name to Rogers School of Music. No one died. I didn't flip out. I cried a little (and saved the sign in my garage for the next 3 years) but you know what happened? My business GREW. People started exclaiming, "I didn't even know this school was here!" (What?? With all my advertising, you didn't know I existed? But I change my name and NOW you notice??) Yep. The fall that I changed my name (and made a big to-do about it on Facebook and in our newsletters and emails and even got in the paper and invited the Chamber of Commerce to do a ribbon cutting) we got more noticed than ever before. And we GREW. And I've never looked back. No one (except friends in other parts of the United States) asks me why my company is named Rogers School of Music. Nope. It's clear. It's not clever, it's not beautiful, but it's clear and I've gotten so many new clients because of it! If I can do it, you can too. Sure, you'll cry a little. But then it won't matter because you'll be so happy about all your new business. (And people will find you more easily online because your city name is in your business name! Boom!) When I finally threw away my old sign that I had stored in the garage for 3 years, I chuckled a little. Besides the day that it came down, I've never looked back. I've never regretted the decision. I only have one regret--I should have done it sooner.  I love organizing. And I love finding tools that will make running my life and business easier. I know every business has very specific, unique needs and it really depends on what you need, but here are a few that I just had to share!
Formstack.com I love Formstack for building forms. I place the HTML directly into my website so it looks like a seamless part of my site. I use it to build forms for Request Info forms, employee and contractor applications, and front desk communication. Formstack will email you the data (you just tell it which email addresses to send the data to) and the info is also stored online in a database. Super helpful for my business! Evernote.com I use this alllll the time. Literally every single day. Because I am always interviewing and hiring contractors to work for me, I have to keep track of a million resumes, interview notes, availability notes, etc. In Formstack, I can keep notes and easily search for what I am looking for in the search bar. (And even though I'm a pretty organized person, I don't have to be organzied in Evernote! I just throw my notes in there and I can easily search for what I need to find later!) Evernote is synchronized with my computer and my phone, so I can get to those notes from where ever I am. I can also share specific notebooks with my staff, so they can access the notes of mine that I need them to. My front desk staff has a notebook to track client notes, waiting lists, cleaning lists, etc. We literally use it for a million things. For my home life, I store recipes in Evernote, homeschool notes about my kids, Christmas gift lists, and so much more. Weekly planner My paper calendar goes everywhere with me. It's not too fancy, but I love that the hours in the day are listed, so I can easily put in appointments. The To Do list on the bottom of every day keeps me on track so I know what I should be prioritizing and doing for that day. Google Calendar My Google calendar is essential for keeping my whole family on track. I prefer paper, but my husband is a digital-only guy. Every Sunday night, I make sure our calendars are the same (adding appointments onto my paper calendar or vice versa). When someone emails me a date, I can click and BOOM it's added to my Google Calendar. I especially love the reminders on my Google calendar. My phone will buzz or beep telling me I have a phone call or that I have to leave to take my kids somewhere (you can build in travel time for driving--AWESOME). I know everyone has favorite tools for running their business and their life. And I love discovering new ones! If you have more to add to this list, please do tell! |
About the AuthorHi, I'm Jen Hickle! Archives
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