ImagesMagUK_September_2020

74 images SEPTEMBER 2020 www.images-magazine.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT KB 7. Content that is directed at the wrong audience It’s great that you just received a shipment of shiny new frames or some triple durometer squeegee. Thanks for posting. Your customers don’t care or even understand that. Instead, connect the dots for them with the information they can use. Or at least be entertaining. 8. Buying followers C’mon. The number of people that follow you is a vanity metric. I’d rather have a lower number of followers that buy from me than a thousand times that number that won’t ever spend a dollar. Engagement is what you are after here. 9. Inconsistent posting When shops connect with me, I usually look them up. Their website and all the social media channels. Here’s a tip: if you want social media to work for you, posting on the channels is a must. Use an app like Buffer and make it easy to schedule things out. I normally have two to four weeks of posts scheduled at any given time. 10. No lead generation strategy Social media for your business shouldn’t be about sharing pretty images or funny posts about cats. It’s about sales. Getting new customers into your lead generation pipeline. Activating older customers to buy from you again. Keeping current customers engaged and happy. What are your goals here with what you are doing? Have you mapped that out? Why your drip marketing isn’t working First, what is drip marketing anyway? Imagine a leaky tap. It is slowly dripping water droplets, one at a time, into a bowl in the sink. Over time, if left unchecked, that bowl will fill up with water. Now pretend that the water droplets are automated marketing messages that are constructed to go out to your customer base or other lists. Got a new customer? Great! They get added to the list. The first sequence of the drip marketing starts without you doing anything. You can be communicating to your customers automagically. Are you doing this? Most shops are not. Top 10 drip marketing posts you need right now 1. New customer on-boarding Did you just take a new order with a customer? Before you get started, shoot them a message about the expectations of what happens next. This can be built to automatically go out with the information or even a video. 2. Lead-nurturing campaigns This is an automated sequence of information emails that are sent to your list on a constant basis. Every month, or maybe every six weeks, they get a new message from you or your company. Show off a skill or an aspect of your business that helps solve a problem for them. They get these until they buy from you, and then they are moved into a different drip sequence. 3. Welcome new contacts In business, we meet people all the time. Some become contacts with your company along the way. Build out a welcome sequence that starts them understanding what you do, and how you can help them resolve a pain point they are having. 4. Engagement with your best customers We all have our VIP customers. What are you doing for them that constantly engages with them and makes them feel special? 5. Educational content Start a ‘Did you know?’ campaign. Maybe introduce your customers to the team members on your staff. Use video and illustrate the processes in your shop. 6. Abandoned cart Did someone go to your website and not complete the order or transaction? Get them to finish! There are plenty of tools to use for your website to help with this function. 7. Reactivation of customers I’m sure you have customers that ordered from you a few years ago, but you haven’t heard from them in a while. You can automate the process of getting them fired back up by sending them messages and asking them some questions. Marshall Atkinson is a production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting and co-founder of Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with Tom Rauen. He focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. www.atkinsontshirt.com Customers want to hear from you! Make them feel special. If they don’t re-engage, you can move them to another list, or purge them. 8. Cross-sell and up-sell products Are there complementary products or services you offer to what someone just ordered? Your customers need to know about it, and having a drip marketing campaign that focuses on this is one tried- and-true method of increasing sales with related items. Ask for the sale! 9. Follow up after the order was delivered You know when things are shipping and when they will be delivered. Target your customers with a ‘Hey, how did we do?’ campaign and ask for feedback. 10. Ask for a review or referral Have the campaign built to sync with your Google or Yelp account so they automatically can leave a review. Make it easy for them. There also is software that redirects anything less than a stellar review to the company owner so you can resolve it quickly and quietly. Marketing is about creating customers The act of marketing is creating customers. Branding is creating an emotional link to your customers. For most shops in the decorated apparel industry, they spend the majority of their time actively producing the work. Not much thought or effort goes into the sales and marketing processes. As sales are the lifeblood of your business, this needs to be a priority, especially these days. You can build this out for your shop by simply writing out your goals on what you want to happen. What’s important? Develop the strategy that you want to create to better your business. Your marketing plan serves that. Improving this takes effort and the willingness to change. You can do it.