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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire world. Business owners have had to scramble to find ways to stay afloat even as they’ve had to work from home and halt in-person sales and services.

It’s a lot for anybody to deal with at a time that’s already stressful.

The solution for most business owners is to find ways to offer more value to customers to keep them on board and ensure they’ll stick with your company in the long run.

That sounds great, but what’s the best way to do it? As you might suspect, the answer’s both easy and complicated.

The Pandemic by the Numbers

Let’s start with some statistics that help to paint a picture of what your customers might need during this difficult time.

• Record numbers of Americans have filed for unemployment benefits, meaning that many are living with financial uncertainty and stress. Over 6 million people filed in the week ending March 28^th.
• Between 1.4 and 2.1 million small businesses are at risk...

Video marketing is still the king of the hill when it comes to driving clicks and sales.
The numbers don’t lie. According to Social Media Today:

• 72% of consumers prefer to watch a video to learn about a product or service.
• 78% of consumers watch a video online at least once a week, and 55% do so once a day.
• Viewers retain 95% of a video’s message after watching it.
• 93% of businesses retain a new customer when they post a video on social media.
• Companies that use video in their marketing experience 49% faster growth than companies that don’t use video.

The song says, “I don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation.”

Those lyrics sounded fun and rebellious when Joan Jett sang them but taking that attitude when it comes to your online reputation can be disastrous to your business.

Not caring about your online reputation is a mistake. And your online reputation consists of more than your carefully-thought-out website and social media pages.

Most importantly, your online reputation is something you can control – for the most part. Here’s what you need to know.

The Elements of Your Online Reputation 
Your online reputation is the total of everything shown or said about your company online. That means that all of these play a role in creating your reputation:

• The quality and design of your website
• Your blog
• Your social media pages and posts
• Your online reviews
• Your testimonials and professional credentials
• Your online business listings

In other words, you can have the best website in the...

You’ve got a big following on social media.

So what?

Unless those followers are paying you for products or services, they don’t mean much. I’m not saying that social media followers aren’t important in some ways. Having a lot of followers sends a signal to potential customers that you have a popular brand. It can help you get more traffic and attention.

That said, sales and profits are the name of the game. If those followers aren’t buying from you, they’re not doing anything for you in real terms.

The solution? Take those fans and followers and convert them into paying customers. Here’s what to do.

Get to Know Your Audience 
As the owner of a small or medium-sized business, you may not have given a lot of thought to what makes your customers tick. And yet, customer analysis is the key to turning casual fans and followers into customers.

Creating a detailed customer persona can help you understand your audience. Your persona should...

Email marketing is one of those topics that keeps coming up – and for good reason.

Email is still one of the most cost-effective ways to connect with your customers, nurture leads, and build your business.

Arguably the most important time to engage with subscribers is when they’re new.

By subscribing to your list, they’ve indicated a serious interest in your company and what you have to offer. It’s the ideal time to start building a relationship with them.

That means you’ve got to create an autoresponder series that will grab your subscribers’ attention and give them what they need to take the next step – paying you! Here’s what you need to know.

How Long Should Your Autoresponder Series Be?
Autoresponder series can have as few as two emails and as many as 100. There’s no one magic number that works for every business.

The best way to figure out how many emails to put in your relationship-building sequence is to start by looking...

How much value are your customers getting from your products or services?

If you don’t know the answer to that question, you might be putting your customer retention at risk.

And, considering that it can cost up to 10 times as much to win a new customer as it does to retain an existing one, ignoring customer retention is – simply put – a bad idea.

Of course, the key question here is understanding how your product affects your customers. One of the best ways to do that is to track customer success metrics. Here are 6 you should be paying attention to.

I talk a lot about local SEO and if you’ve recently updated your site, you may roll your eyes at the appearance of another article about local SEO.

I get it. Believe me, I do. I don’t want to sound like a broken record.

But…

The truth is that local SEO is changing all the time. It’s hard to keep up – and I’m a professional marketer! 

I know it can be hard for small business owners to stay abreast of changes and keep their sites optimized for local search.

To keep things simple, I’ve put together this local SEO resource for you to use to get the new year started right. I’ll focus on the quickest and easiest things you can do to ensure that your local SEO is up to scratch – and that the people in your target audience can find you.

Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
I’m not going to go into detail here about Google My Business because I’ve written about it extensively before. That said, please don’t...

The world of marketing is constantly evolving.

What worked in the past may not be effective now – and if you never update your methods and tools, the chances are good that you’re missing out on opportunities to engage your audience and grow your business.

Since we’re at the beginning of a new year, this is the perfect time to update your marketing toolbox and add some new tools to the mix.

Without further ado, here are my picks for the top marketing tools that should be in your toolbox for 2020.

When deciding what type of lead magnet will attract the most signups (leads) for your business it’s natural to want to go right to your best offer – the thing that’ll convince first-time visitors to your site to dive right in and hire you, retain your services you or purchase your product.

There’s just one problem with that – it’s not enough. And if your primary (or only) lead magnet is a free consultation, there are some things I’m willing to bet you’re doing wrong.

If your free consultation offer isn’t blowing up your calendar, there are things you can do to get it on track.

Why Offer a Free Consultation? 
Why offer a free consultation at all? The short answer is that if you are someone who’s an expert in your field, time spent talking to you is valuable. People will want to take you up on your offer.

Some businesses are naturals for the free consultation offer. I’m talking about:

• Marketing firms
• Life...

Before automation was possible, people had to do everything by hand.

It took a long time – and once we realized that we could automate repetitive tasks, we never looked back.

So, the question I have for you about automating your business is a simple one:

What are you waiting for?

The numbers don’t lie. Here’s what we know about automation:

• 60% of all occupations could save 30% of their time with automation
• It’s estimated that the average CEO spends 20% of their time on tasks that could be automated
• Businesses lose an estimated 20% to 30% of their profits due to inefficient processes

You can see that there’s time (and money) to be saved with automation. Here are 8 ways to power your business with automation – and boost your bottom line.

#1: Marketing Emails
This one’s obvious, but I’m always shocked at how many small businesses don’t have an active email list. Since one of the biggest excuses business owners make is a lack of time...