Webinar: Grow Your Business With Simple Marketing Strategies

Hi everyone.

My name is Natalie Goreal and I'm the online Media coordinator for the U.S. small Business Administration. I'd like to welcome you to today's webinar. This webinar is made possible through a public private partnership with Microsoft and Constant contact. We are really excited to work with these organizations because public private partnerships allow the government and the private sector to come together in support of the small business community. It also allows us to hold free webinars like this on a variety of business topics. In just a moment, I will turn it over to Helene Cohen from Microsoft. But before I do that, I want to say a little bit about why SBA is so excited about this partnership. We know that as small business owners and entrepreneurs, you need more of two things, time and money. Our mission at the SBA is to provide the nation's 28 million small businesses with the support they need in a world where time and money are both short. We do this through what we call the three Cs. First, SBA provides capital to small businesses in the form of a guaranteed loan to start, expand, export, or recover after a disaster. Second, we help small businesses with government contracts, which is a $100 billion market. And finally, what brings us here today is that SBA provides counseling services, often at no cost. Many of you might be familiar with the SBA resource partner network, including small business development centers, SCORE mentors, women's business centers, veterans business centers, and our SBA field offices. I encourage you to visit SBA.gov to learn more about what services and events you can find in our resource podcast Partner Network. In addition to the SBA Resource Partner Network, we work with private companies to bring in expertise in high priority areas like marketing. When you're running your business, marketing might be one of those things you put off doing if you don't feel like you have the skills or time. We know small business owners have a tight budget and that hiring a PR company can be expensive. So through this partnership, we'll offer you with some marketing strategies to help you succeed. So let's get started. I'd like to now turn it over to Helene from Microsoft.

Thank you, Natalie. And we too at Microsoft really appreciate partnership and look forward to lots of things to come in the future. So good morning and afternoon to some of you. My name is Helene Cohen and I'm a marketing manager for Microsoft in the United States Small Business division. I was also an entrepreneur for over over eight plus years. So I am very passionate about small and medium sized businesses and their success. So I wanted to thank you for taking the time with us today. I'm going to spend the next five to ten minutes giving you a brief overview of a study that was done objectively by the Boston Consulting Group on the economic impact of technology and small businesses. Next slide please. So over approximately a two year period, the Boston Consulting Group was actually hired to do a survey of over 4,000 small and medium sized businesses in five of the world's largest and most diverse economies. These countries included the United States, China, India, Brazil and Germany. With the economic downturn over the past several years, the study was meant to be objective research about really how technology can help or hinder the small and medium business in our economies. Like I mentioned, the actual study was international in scope and in very diverse countries to see how in fact technology can help or hurt our economy. So it was independently conducted. It was done through a number of different means, including Internet and phone surveys, actual interviews with SMB owners, and secondary economic research as well. The industries that were surveyed included agriculture, manufacturing, education, IT and many others to make sure that the study in fact was diverse. Next slide please. So what they found from this study was that small and medium sized businesses actually fell into three levels of IT adopt. They included laggards, followers and leaders. And if you see the chart on the right hand side which shows the laggards, follower and leaders and then on the left hand side you'll see the level and the type of technology that was adopted. So in terms of technology leaders, they tended to employ the full range of available tools, everything from productivity software all the way to Internet connectivity and also to cloud. If we looked at followers, you'll see that followers made a wide use of many of the technologies, but in fact were not typically using cloud based services. And then the laggards are actually defined by the lowest level of technology needs and technology adoption, with only 60% of laggards actually even using computers. So if you're in the laggard or followers category and you're new to social and email marketing, this webinar will really help you move from a LA into a follower and a leader category, hopefully being able to assist your businesses. So some key findings of this data are on the next slide. If we can move to the next slide please. Was that it enabled small businesses so these businesses that truly use technology in many different ways actually outperformed in both sales and job growth. We did see that silver SME businesses were able to increase their revenue 15% points faster and create jobs almost twice as fast as other businesses that did not in fact, use technology to take them to the next level. SME revenue has the opportunity to actually grow close to $770 billion in the five countries if in fact, technology was. And then also the ability to create new jobs. 6.2 million new jobs are actually able to be created through the use of using technology. So if you're a small business and not currently hiring right now, you might not find this relevant to you. But we wanted to let you know that Microsoft is working with mayors and cities and business organizations at the local level across the United States, really, to help partner and educate on how technology can assist you. That we partner with companies like Constant Contact and also with organizations like the SBA so that we can help educate. Next slide. So, of all of the countries surveyed, approximately 25% of the survey was done in the United States. And this slide will basically show you that if 15% of folks that are in laggards and 30% of followers were actually to utilize technology, engage in cloud services, use social media and social email marketing, the SME space would be able to actually hire 2.1 million more employees and would be able to inject an additional $357 billion into the economy. So, as you can see, this study, which will be available to you online, and we'll show you that in one moment, really indicates the need and the opportunity to use technology to actually bring yourself to the next level and to allow small businesses to actually compete against businesses that are potentially much larger than them. Next slide. So getting things done. 95% of all technology users use Microsoft Office. If you are familiar with it, there are lots of great things that can be done. There are Microsoft retail stores across the country that also offer free classes and education on our Office products. Using cloud services allows you to work from anywhere. You're no longer tied to one physical location. And this is very important for the small business owner that is, in fact, mobile most of the time and doing multiple jobs. So using technology can really help propel your business. It can help you grow your profit, extend your reach, and help you meet a lot of changing needs. Next slide, please. The slides actually will be available, made available to you after this webinar. So this slide actually just shows a bunch of different support and resources available to you, both from Microsoft and Constant Contact. There are a lot of amazing resources through both of our companies as well as the SBA to help you to help assist your businesses in getting to that next level with technology. And next slide, please. And finally, this is the link to access the BCG or the Boston Consulting Group study.

It is.

AKA Ms. Bcgstudy. I'll say that one more time. Those are forward slashes. A K E A Ms. Bcgstudy. So I wanted to thank you for giving me this few minutes to talk to you about this incredible study that was done. And I'd like to now pass this over to Ron Cates from Constant Contact.

Hi, my name is Ron Cates. I'm the director of Digital Marketing Education for Constant Contact. The press has been really kind to.

Me the last few years.

They've called me the grandfather of email marketing, social media pioneer. But a lot of you didn't realize.

That I am the person that created social media.

Way back in 1964, I was tweeting.

On paper way before Twitter was created.

Before Al Gore invented the Internet, before.

There was WI fi.

And I figured I might have some skeptics watching, so I bought some photographic evidence. This is me in 1964 tweeting on paper.

OMG.

Rode my bike today without training wheels. That OMG thing. I also invented that.

I did Photoshop this. This is really me in 1964 though.

And I look at this and think, oh my gosh, what a serious young man.

I'm really worried about what he's going to be when he grows up. That's probably a future serial killer.

It turns out I'm a social media guy, so I think we all feel a lot safer.

Quick tip right away.

On the lower left, you can see.

My handle on Twitter. Is my name Roncates?

Let me give you a quick tip. Even if you haven't signed up for every social media platform yet, I want you to go out and do that today.

If there's a platform out there you've heard of, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, even if you're not using it yet, you might use it in the future. I want you to register for it because they're all free.

I want you to grab your name or your business name before it's taken by someone else. Now, how many have tried to register a dot com in the last five years? If you have, you realize that almost.

Every word and phrase is taken. I don't want this to happen to you, so go out and register today.

I learned this the hard way.

That's why I'm real sensitive to it.

I had to use my real name, Ron Cates.

I wanted to use my street name, but it was already taken. Gangsta666 is already gone.

I don't want you to experience the same thing now. We're going to start out talking about email marketing, social media marketing, and how.

To combine the two.

We're definitely going to demystify social a little bit. Now, when I say email marketing, I.

Wouldn'T be surprised if some of you.

Thought, well, wait a minute, why bother? I read that email is dead.

Five years ago.

I read that everywhere.

It was a quote picked up by every bit of press.

Ironically, it was sent to me in an email.

It was a quote from Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.

So I think there was a bit.

Of a conflict of interest. A few months later, Facebook came out with an email program.

So you can have a Facebook email address. If they want to contact you, they.

Do it via email. The one requirement to join up for Facebook is an email address.

So maybe it's not quite dead yet. And if I was to ask the people viewing this webinar, how many have tweeted today? How many have posted to Facebook today? How many have checked your email today? I know that almost every hand goes up when I talk about email. It is our preferred method of communication.

In the United States, 95% of us.

Do email between the ages of 18 and 64.

We do it every day, multiple times per day. We're pretty obsessed with it.

We check it on the average seven times per day. Small business owner, 14 times a day. Small business owner while traveling 24 to 44 times a day. If you're a fine print reader and you think you got me, it says 18 to 64. Well, what about 65 plus? Because maybe a lot of your prospects.

Or customers are senior citizens.

It turns out that's the fastest growing.

Demographic by a huge margin over any other age group. In fact, in most cases, email is the sole reason they went out and bought a computer.

Now, think about it. At 75 years old, you probably didn't hop out of bed and say, I.

Want to master PowerPoint today. I better go buy a laptop.

At 75, you probably didn't hop out of that period. But the reason you got a laptop is so you can communicate with your friends and family. And email is how we do that today. Now, under 18 is the lowest adoption of email.

But out of the group under 18, the number one reason they get an email address in the first place is not to join a social network, but it's to buy stuff online.

So they're a totally golden group for a small business.

Now, in 30 minutes or so, I'm going to show you how to do email marketing better than some of the world's most famous brands. I know that's kind of a lofty goal, lofty promise, but I'm going to pull it off.

I have dozens of examples of huge companies that do email marketing very poorly. And you can do email better than they do today. Now here's the neat thing.

Last year, the average return on investment on email marketing was the highest of any form of marketing.

The average return was $39.40 for every dollar invested. Now, to put that into some real common sense sort of scenario, let's say.

There was a bank in your town.

Having a special promotion today. And for every dollar you turn into.

Them, they were going to hand you $39.40 back.

Where would you be right now? I mean, I'd be in line with you in the longest line in the.

History of the earth. And when we finally made it up to the front, we would take our.

New money, go to the back and.

Do it all over again.

Now that's the average return on email that I would ask you what's the.

Average email you get in your inbox? Is it fantastic?

Is it sent on the right time.

Of day, the right day of week.

The right number of characters in the subject line?

No, the average email is kind of weak.

It's kind of poor. So even though the average email has.

A phenomenal roi, what happens when you.

Do email really, really well? Then the return on investment is phenomenally.

Astronomically, almost incalculably high.

So we're not going to talk about average very much. We're going to talk about how high is high and get there.

Now, out of the dozens of examples.

I have of big companies still doing.

Email poorly, I brought you one because we don't have a lot of time. It's one of my favorites. And as we dismantle it, you're going to learn about how to do email. Well, this one is from Audi.

I got it a few years ago and they still do their email marketing.

Exactly the same way. The reason I was put on their list is because I had just bought two new his and her values. Now, I'm not married, but if you saw my picture, you realize that to get a date I have to show up with car keys, cash and usually a car. So I got both. That's why I lease.

Also, I got put on her list and this is the email I get in my inbox. Now, you already know this, but most.

Email clients, and when I say email client, I'm talking about the software you use to read your email. So Outlook is an email client by default.

Some email clients block images, and so.

The recipient says it's okay to see them.

So, number one, best practice on email, don't make your entire message rely on.

An image to convey the message.

If the images are blocked for some.

Reason, would the email still make sense?

And you can see these two red.

Diamonds in the upper left.

These are where the images are, and.

When they're blocked, I see almost nothing but the fine print at the bottom.

That's back to number two. If you're using an email service like Constant Contact, we actually allow you to.

Put text behind your images.

And when images are blocked, they can see what you wrote there. So, Audi, put nothing.

So behind your header logo, don't put the words header logo, put your brand so they know where it's coming from. This should say, this is from Audi. Please download images.

Even the fine print at the bottom is done poorly. Reading speed on a computer screen is 30 to 40% slower than print. We have to do everything we can.

To make this as easy to read as possible.

Last year, more than half of your recipients read their email on a mobile device, so it's even more difficult to read. So we need to use high contrast, like a black or dark font on a white or light background, not black on gray. Much more difficult to read, especially on a mobile device.

Almost impossible. The font's going to have to be a little bit larger.

Even the font type matters. The fonts with serifs like this one.

This is Times New Roman with the curlicues, Those are slower to read on a computer screen, more difficult to read than a Sans. Three, fund like Ariel or Tahoma.

So essentially, they've done kind of everything.

Wrong that you can do wrong.

But let's go ahead and okay the image.

I'm sure it gets better. Wow, this is beautiful.

It says, ron, you should come in.

And buy this new car.

One, this isn't the car I bought. And two, I don't buy a new.

Car every three weeks.

Sometimes I wait like six or seven.

Months before I buy a new car. So this is where they really fail.

Really underutilize the power of email marketing. Email marketing, by the way, is a form of social.

It's the original form of social.

More importantly, it's how you monetize other forms of social.

We tolerate almost zero content that's promotional via social.

If you tweet out, buy my stuff.

Buy my stuff all the time, you're not going to have very many followers on Twitter or Facebook.

But we do tolerate some promotional Content via email. So this is how we come back.

And monetize the other pieces of social media and the two together amplify each other.

Now where they really fail is they send the exact same message to everyone.

The reason I'm on their list is I just bought two new cars. They take every email address they collect, they dump them all into one bucket.

They should have a lot of lists. People who bought a sports car, people.

Who bought a luxury car, an suv.

People who came in and didn't buy.

Anything, people who bought two cars.

And the message should be tailored to those individuals.

And that's easy to do. With email you can have as many lists as you want.

It even doesn't cost you anything extra.

To have people on multiple lists.

It deduplicates automatically.

If I'm on five lists and you.

Send to all of your lists at.

Once, I don't get five emails. So this should be tailored and targeted.

You already know that targeted marketing works.

Better than any other kind in the bar. The consumer's expectation has risen.

They expect it to be targeted and professional looking. When you send something that's not tailored and it's off target, they opt out.

Delete, unsubscribe or report you as spam immediately.

Now make it easy for people to connect with you to join your email.

List, to join your social network.

So with email, they can text to join, you can email out a link if they like you on Facebook. We even have a gadget you can put on Facebook so that you can.

Start to send them email.

It will collect their email address on.

Your website on every page. Now, for those of you who sell.

Something on your website, I would ask you what's your conversion rate, how many.

Visitors buy on the spot?

And I know that no matter how great you are, that's not a high percentage.

It's not a high number. I'm real interested in you.

I come to your website, maybe you.

Pay for search engine optimization for SEO.

To make you get better found on search sites like Bing, I find you.

And maybe I'm just not ready to buy. Today I visit your site, I'm impressed. I go away.

Well, we get 6,000 marketing impressions per.

Day per person in the United States.

And I can love you and forget.

About you because I get distracted. So if you put the sign up link for your email newsletter or list.

On your website on every page and.

I sign up for it, you now have permission to make this a two way street. You get to come back out to me. So we're going to make it super.

Easy to join our email list.

They can text to join QR code.

To join, join on your website or on Facebook. Any place we connect with people, we're.

Going to make it simple on our website, on every page in a prominent location, I'm going to a sign up link for my email list.

Now, when I say every page, the reason for that is today when people search for you on Bing, people don't.

Come to your home page as often anymore. It's less than half the time.

They come to a more relevant, more targeted page. So it needs to be on every.

Page of your website.

Now, prominent location, upper left gets more.

Attention than anywhere else.

So whatever is most important to you goes there. I would even give them an incentive.

To sign up right now. Now, this is for a tennis store because I'm a serious tennis player.

I'm not real good, but I am very serious.

And if you sign up for the.

Email list right now, you get 10.

Tennis tips from Rafael Nadal, the man who just won the French Open.

And there's an automatic email that goes.

Out when people subscribe.

It's called a welcome email.

You can have those 10, 10 tips right in there.

It's a nice incentive to sign up on the spot and motivates people to sign up immediately.

Like I said before, every page join.

Our email list, they click on that, they can automatically sign up for your.

Email list and even in advanced best.

Practice, archive some of your emails. And we can actually do that for you with constant contact. Make web pages out of your emails.

So people can see what it is that you send.

People are more likely to subscribe if.

They see what you are going to send first.

So by adding that archive feature, they.

Actually get to see a little archive, a listing of the emails that you send out.

You are going to put your best ones there. I look at it, I go, these are great.

And boom, they join your mailing list.

It is that simple and that powerful and that fast. And it is really easy to do. Now even emails can go viral.

I want them to forward it to their friends.

So we are no longer marketing to individuals. We are marketing to people and their entire network. I have got a big email list. On the average, we have 244 friends on Facebook. So I want them to share it with everyone. I want them to forward their email to a friend. I want them to like me on Facebook. I want all their friends to see my content. I want to maximize the viability of today's communication.

So forward email. I'm going to put that up at the top where people are more likely to see it.

Most people have it at the bottom, and it's unlikely I'm going to make.

It all the way down there. Even a polite command works better than something generic like this forward newsletter.

Something like Please forward two, three friends.

Can double your forward rate.

Putting it up top can double it again.

Now, a good forward rate is only about half a percent, but by doing all these things, I've had months as high as 4%.

And if that isn't exciting to you.

Once your list gets big, that's huge growth for free.

It's something that only takes you about 30 seconds to do. I did everything to grow my list with putting the tag everywhere, just like.

I told you to. And I have this number memorized.

Eight years ago, when I sent out to my personal contacts, when I first started working for Constant contact, I had 1,055 subscribers. Now I've got more than a million. So this 4% forward rate, or even if it's only half a percent forward.

Rate, that's a huge number. That's a huge list growth without much.

Time investment, and it costs you nothing.

The from line. Well, who cares?

It's from me, right?

Well, 60% of your recipients decide whether to open the email or not based on the from line. And there's two pieces to the from line.

There's the from name and there's the from email address. If you use an email client like.

Outlook, you see both of those.

You see my from name, Ron Cates, and then in brackets, my email address. Now, not every email client functions the same way. America Online webmail, for example, is still incredibly popular.

It drops off the from name.

It only displays the email address.

Other email clients do the opposite.

So if I'm sending from my really big company, but my email address is ron1958ahoo.com and that's all they see. They're not going to open that. By the same token, if my business name, my from name isn't something they.

Recognize, they're not going to open that either. So both pieces of this have to clearly indicate who you are.

Otherwise the recipient is not going to open it.

And they might only see half of that, either the from name or just.

The from email address. By the way, something that comes from a real name@something.com gets opened a lot.

More than anything generic.

So listat or Newsat isn't going to.

Get opened nearly as much as if.

It comes from Ron catesomething.com even if you have no idea who the person.

Is.

The subject line more challenging but important. 30% decide by the subject line. And today a lot of people are.

Taking action just on the subject line without even opening the email.

My favorite tennis store sent me an email last month. The subject line is 30% off clearance shoes.

This weekend. I didn't even open the email that I was in line on Saturday.

So sometimes we're finding when we survey people, we know about 31% of them.

Are taking action even without opening the email.

So within 14 days they're coming in, they're making a purchase or taking action. They didn't even open it.

They only went by the subject line.

So I strongly recommend you never clean out your do not opens because they.

Can still have big impact.

Now, the ideal subject line is a bit challenging today, but not impossible. And you might not hit ideal. But let's get as close as we can.

The ideal subject line is short. It's concise, 30 to 35 characters or less.

And that includes spaces today. Sometimes subject lines are getting truncated, shortened.

Because of mobile devices.

Make sure if it's shortened it doesn't become something silly.

Make sure all the important words are up front.

And I do have my favorite example. This was a year ago in November. It was from Neiman Marcus and the subject line is winter fashions you can't afford to miss. In my browser, in my email client.

It said, winter fashions you can't afford.

That might be truth in advertising for.

Me, but it's not the message they intended.

So I see this happening all the time.

Today, more than half of us are reading our email on a mobile device.

If the subject line is shortened, does.

It still make sense? The ideal subject line will also have a call to action. Why should I open this right now?

The ideal subject line will even have the brand in it again, if you can fit it. So this isn't going to always happen.

You can't always make it work, but sometimes you can with some ingenuity.

I used to do all the marketing for YMCA the USA and their emails used to go out and they said YMCA News. I changed it to YMCA News, colon.

Three spring swim tips and the open rates went up by quadruple.

So the ideal subject line, the one.

That gets the most, opens every single time. Here's the big secret rule.

They're the ones that tell exactly what's in the email. If you tell exactly what's in the email, that is more likely to get.

Opened than anything else.

Let's talk about Social media.

And why even bother?

Some of us are like, well, that's.

Just a lot of noise.

I love Facebook. I just connected with somebody from college.

Who I haven't seen since college. That's 1976.

I put up a picture of my dog. I did a video of my cat doing a trick. That's a lot of fun.

But that's not marketing. So how do we use these platforms.

To move the dial for our business? Last year, more than half of us.

Made a purchase based on an online recommendation.

Today, only 14% of US trust advertisements. 78% of US trust an online recommendation.

Even if I'm a stranger, I travel a lot, and I use Yelp to figure out where I'm going to go eat.

90% of Yelp users decide where they're.

Going to eat based on the reviews on Yelp.

And I don't know any of those.

People, but I trust them more than I trust traditional marketing.

Traditional advertising.

We've become very smart consumers.

We know that traditional marketing exists just to sell us something.

We kind of tune it out.

So 78% of us trust an online recommendation. 84% if it's from someone that we know.

So when someone on Facebook likes us.

And our network sees that, that has.

A huge impact on engagement and sales.

And bottom line, if they hit the.

Facebook like button, they are 91% more likely to buy from us again, 93%.

More likely to refer us to friends. So it's fantastically powerful, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen and in the.

History of the world.

Let me give you my view of.

One of the most important, yet most.

Underlooked components of social media. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I.

Have a favorite grocery store. It's called Safeway. It's a pretty big chain.

You might have one in your market, you might not. But if you don't, it's a grocery store. Now, I like Safeway a lot because.

It'S close to my house.

They have lots of stuff. The people are real friendly, the store is clean. And Safeway actually spends a lot of.

Time and money, resources, investment, to create this impression, to turn me into a fan.

Every one of you on this call.

If you've done your business more than a year, you could take the entire call and tell us all these tales.

Of when you've bent over backwards to.

Make a customer happy, to turn them into a fan. As a small business owner, you do that every day to survive. You create these huge fans. But then what? How do you harness that? I mean, they want to become advocates on your behalf, but there really didn't used to be an easy way for.

Them to do that with Safeway. I mean, what's going to happen 10 years ago, I like them so much, I'm going to do what, go in on my day off and stop their.

Shelves for free as a payback. That's never going to happen. So the most they could hope for a few years ago was I was.

So impressed with them that I would.

Go to a party and I go to super dull parties. So there's a circle of people talking.

About groceries and I go up and I tell them, oh, look, I love Safeway.

Here's why.

How many people could I possibly impact and how often is that going to happen?

I mean, it's almost nothing social is that cocktail party circle on steroids.

The viability is unlike anything in the.

History of the world.

You have fans that want to become.

Advocates on your behalf, get them to do it on social media, work the two together.

Email and social work together incredibly well. So with constant contact, we actually have.

This tool where people can share your.

Email when they receive it on their social networks just by clicking on a.

Button up at the top of the email. So I receive your email. I love the content, or maybe it's a really strong promotion. I want to share it with my network.

I can click a button and like.

It on Facebook or share it on Facebook or or on Twitter. We're seeing up to 60% increase in reach of email by adding this social share bar.

So again, I can't think of any.

Reason you wouldn't want to include this every time.

The average return on investment on email.

Is phenomenally high, increasing it by up.

To 60% just by adding a button. I'm going to do that every single time. Now, some of you have some concerns.

About social and I'm going to eliminate all of them right now.

So first you're worried that it's about big numbers. You need to have a million followers.

On Twitter for it to work. And that's just not true. I know some of you don't have a Twitter account yet, but let's say after this session that tonight you go and you create a Twitter account and.

By tomorrow you have one follower.

Just one lonely, one sad.

Probably has no impact at all, right? Wrong.

What if that one follower is me.

And you post something to Twitter and I like it? It takes me less than a second.

To click on a button and repost.

Or retweet that to my followers.

I've got a pretty good number of followers, but some of my followers really have a lot of followers.

And the variability of this is unlike.

Anything in the history of the world. A year ago I had about 1500 followers.

But those 1500 followers created more than 5 million mentions of my name last.

Year on Twitter because they, they have a lot of followers who have a lot of followers who have a lot of followers. And if you post something and they like it, they're going to retweet it.

They'Re going to repost it on Facebook.

The whole world is going to see it.

Maybe it's because you're not a writer, maybe that's why you're not doing social yet. And I totally understand this. Most of us didn't get into our business to write.

Now I have a confession.

I am a pretty good writer, but.

I'm also a perfectionist. So I will fret over every word.

And sentence and phrase and at the.

End of the month I don't have a paragraph done. So it's kind of pointless.

Social is not about being perfect. Perfection is the bane of social.

It's about being real, authentic, transparent.

We want to connect with a real human being.

The power of social media. It's a bit ironic to me, the fact that it's digital, because I view.

It as a backlash to our digital age. We don't know our neighbors names anymore.

We buy from the cloud.

Digital entities arrive into our inbox.

We want to connect with a living, breathing person, but we're not willing to.

Get rid of our laptops or our Surface Pro.

So we're doing it now via social networks.

It's real important you decide up front.

What is the Persona of your business. If your business was a living, breathing.

Human being, what language would it use? What words would it use?

What words would it not use? That's how we communicate via social and email. It's not taking your print marketing stuff.

Copying and pasting it into a Facebook post. It's a whole different form of communication. It's more concise, it's less formal, it's more human.

The other good news is that more than half the content on social isn't.

Something that you wrote, it's something that.

You found and shared. Hey, I found this really great article. Click here to read it. It's real easy to copy a link and share that link and be the.

Expert by being the arbitrator of what.

Other people should read. Time wise, I don't have time to come up with this content.

I'm going to show you some examples where you can come up with content literally in seconds. I'm going to tell you right now.

You can invest 10 or 15 minutes, two or three days a week and.

You can have a big impact on social media. And where should I be? What platform should I be on Facebook, LinkedIn? What about MySpace?

I heard that was really huge.

Well, it was eight years ago. Now there are about seven people there.

So there are new platforms all the time.

I will bet you real money that five years from today there is going to be a platform more important than Facebook that hasn't even been thought of yet. The growth of niche sites is phenomenal.

I didn't know this a few years.

Ago, but I definitely know it now.

There is a social site, a network for nones, that's more important to them than Facebook is.

Last year, for fun, as an exercise, I created my own social network.

It's for stand up comics.

It's called standupshare.com.

It'S had zero marketing. It has 60,000 members already. So here's the point. You need to create a social presence.

I would recommend you at least create.

A Facebook account and a Facebook page because then your followers can let you know if there's another platform that's become more important.

That can't happen if you have zero social presence.

So pick one or two of the.

Popular platforms, do those really, really well and then your followers will let you know.

They'll give you an idea of what's.

More important out there and you can.

Decide where to spend your energy and time.

Now, I talked about coming up with content and it's about being real and authentic and transparent.

So this is from a farmer's market. This is real.

And when we think farmers market, we usually don't think high tech social savvy, but they're incredibly smartly profound when it comes to posting.

Here's one of my favorite posts. It's 2:00am do you know where your fruit is now?

That took about five seconds to type. If you say so what?

Well, within minutes there were likes and comments.

Within a week there were more than.

1000 comments and more than 700 likes.

And when you scroll down the comments.

As the business owner, you learn invaluable.

Information about your prospects and customers.

They love my fresh watermelon.

They wish we had peaches.

Parking is a real pain in the neck on Saturday.

Think about all the things you learn as the owner.

So pages and pages and pages of content they're creating for you.

Think about that.

The very best stuff you can post on social passes. Two rules. One, are they going to want to.

Share it with their friends?

Two, will incite them to comment. I want to incite them to comment.

Often because as they comment, they're creating.

New content for me on my behalf.

Pages and pages of content that's invaluable.

That I didn't even have to do.

It's almost like getting Tom Sawyer to.

Get his friends to watch the fence for him.

Now, this took about five seconds. How many of you don't have five seconds in a day to do this? I do this in front of big.

Rooms and I see people squirm. They all want to raise their hand.

I was a small business owner also. I know that five seconds in a day could be my whole bible break for the day. So how about one second? Don't tell me you don't have one second.

Click post.

Watermelon cut in half.

Click post, you say, so what?

Within minutes there were likes and comments.

Within a week, more than 700 comments.

More than 500 likes.

This reminds me of summer.

Boy, I want to go buy this right now. It's making my mouth water. So anytime you have an authentic moment of enthusiasm, even if it's about a product. I just got this new thing in, I'm so excited.

It's fine to take a picture of that and post and talk about it. I have a friend that owns a.

Hobby store in San Diego. They sell radio controlled airplanes and cars and boats.

He has nine employees.

And when the UPS person brings in.

That new super cool thing, the employees fight over each other to be the first to unbox it.

Now what would have bigger impact? He could hire a videographer, spend 30.

Grand, do an infomercial about his products and put it on YouTube.

Or he could pull out his smartphone.

And tape that 30 seconds of real.

Unbridled, authentic enthusiasm and put that in.

A constant contact email or on YouTube.

Or on social night and day difference.

Because it's real. Customers come in all the time and they're excited. Record that or quote them, take a picture of them with the product. The questions you get asked every single day, answer those on social. Show off your expertise and your experience. The reason your customers ask you the.

Same thing every day is not because they're not smart.

It's because you're an expert. You've become an expert and you need to show that off and not shy away from that. When it comes to social media, I know in this country, at least we're brought up to be kind of humble.

But I Don't want to buy from.

The 9th best in the zip code.

I want to buy from an expert. So don't be afraid to use that.

Word and brand yourself in that way. Show off your expertise and your experience. It's a relative term and you certainly have it. You qualified.

Lastly, we're going to do another one.

Of these in two weeks on the 24th.

Same time, same place. It's going to be supercharged.

Your word of mouth.

It's social media marketing made simple.

So we're going to go a lot deeper into social, a lot more prescriptive. Where to post, when to post, how many times, what the content should be.

It's going to be a blast, so.

You don't want to miss it.

Please mark it on your calendar or register today. I made sure we had some time for questions.

Shoot. Do you have your questions?

We do have questions here. So I'm going to start here. My business isn't open yet. Should I start my social media account.

Now or how far in advance should.

I start creating buzz?

I would create my Facebook business page today. It doesn't matter how many people find.

It today, some people will.

I would start promoting that to my personal email list. The fact that I'm opening a business that they can like my page comment about the business I'm going to be creating, my past business practices, I could.

Create word of mouth now. And social is word of mouth. There is no such time as too early.

There is a big product launch in.

Europe three years ago.

They actually started promoting it before it.

Was available for sale 18 months in advance. And when it was finally available, it went through the roof. Unbelievable. Because of all the buzz created. So there's almost no such thing as too much lead time.

Okay, some social media questions here. Do social media tools sync together so one post is shared on multiple platforms?

Some do.

So for example, you can have your Twitter feed show up on your Facebook.

Page and vice versa.

And there are tools out there that.

Are free that allow you to post to multiple sites at one time.

Some even allow you to post in the future. I'm going to mention two of them.

One is called hootsuite. That's H o o t s u I t e. There's a free version and a paid for version. The free version is very robust.

You can find it@hootsuite.com the other is called Tweetdeck. That's tweet D E C K found@tweetdeck.com, free version. Both of them allow you to create posts that go out in the future.

Now, I love this.

So, one, you login to a free.

Account and you can see all your.

LinkedIn stuff and your Facebook stuff and.

Your Twitter stuff all in one page.

So you don't have to log into.

All of those platforms separately.

Two, I can create a post and say, I want this to go to all these platforms right now, or I.

Can create a post and I want.

This to go out to Facebook Tuesday at 10:30am Or I want this to go out to Twitter Friday night at midnight. So even if you only had 10.

Minutes a week, you could do it all at one time. And rather than all your postings go at one time, it would be spread out.

So anytime in the future.

I love this feature.

I'm 55 years old.

I've got four kids.

I've got tweets going after them 40.

Years from now just to scare them.

I'm still watching you.

I'm very disappointed.

I know some of you are laughing.

And you're thinking, that's ridiculous.

That's not true, because you've seen my picture and you realize I couldn't possibly be 55.

But I swear I am. Next question.

How can a Facebook page translate to sales? And we've had that question a few times now.

Yeah. So it keeps you top of mind. It creates a relationship. So two real important things. One, we get a lot of marketing impressions per day, and even if we.

Love you, we forget about you sometimes. So by seeing you show up on.

My Facebook feed, I remember. I mean, how many of you have.

A restaurant that you really love and.

You just forget to go there sometimes? We all do.

But if I got an email from.

That restaurant once a month, as soon as I see the logo, I'm going to salivate and go over there and buy something to eat.

Or if I see them, show up.

On Facebook or my Twitter feed.

Now, even more important than that, by being connected on Facebook or Twitter or.

Email, it creates the perception of a relationship.

Harvard Business School says people will spend.

More, 67% more if they perceive they have a relationship with you.

Not only because they shop with you more often.

They'll even pay a price premium.

Now think about that.

If you create the perception of a relationship, you're not competing on price anymore. That's fantastic. Now, this is from Harvard Business School. I read it. I'm a bit of a skeptic.

So I said, well, I would never do that.

I guess that's everybody else.

But then I thought about it, and.

I do it all the time.

I'm a tennis player.

There's a tennis store in my town called All About Tennis.

I'm in there all the time.

They know me by name. They string my rackets on the spot.

They know what kind of shoes I wear. Now I could drive around town and.

Save money on shoes and string rackets. I could buy online and save even more money.

And I don't do it because I.

Feel like I know those people.

You all have a place like that, a destination like that, and you want.

To become that type of destination where.

The people feel like they know you.

And have a relationship and even something that's tennis and it's very personal.

But even something as mundane is gasoline.

We'll go to a four corner intersection.

There's four gas stations. We'll decide which one to shop at, not based on the price of the.

Pumps or the colors, but who works behind the counter. And if we feel like we know them, that's where we shop.

Social media, email. They allow you to build this type.

Of relationship perception that really generates sales.

And allows you to no longer compete on price.

Great. How do you separate your business Facebook page from your personal page?

So when you first create your Facebook account, you are creating a personal profile and that's for you, your family, your friends. Separate from that, you create a business.

Page and that's where you communicate with business stakeholders, customers, prospects. So you can definitely separate the two.

By creating a Facebook page.

Now you can find how to do that at Facebook by clicking on the help button.

There is also a site we created.

That walks through all these things in detail. It is called SocialQuickstarter.com I will repeat that. SocialQuickstarter.com actually walks through every major platform.

How to set it up, how to create your business page, etc.

With a lot of detail. And that is free to the entire world.

Socialclickstarter.com.

Okay, we have a few email questions here. How do I add a like button into an email?

So two different things. One, when I send out my email.

I want to have all the icons of my social platforms in there to.

Make it easy to follow me. So if I am on Facebook and Twitter, I'm going to have the Facebook.

Icon, the Twitter icon. If you happen to be using Constant Contact, we actually have those built in. So you just click on a button.

And it's kind of automatic. Now I can also make it set things up so that when people receive.

My email, they can like it or.

Share it on their social networks.

But that happens to be a constant, contact, exclusive thing.

It's called the social share bar.

And we even report on it so.

We can tell you how many people liked it, shared it, what platforms.

I'm sure there's some way, obviously there.

Is some way to code that, but.

I'm a good coder and it's beyond me. So if you're doing this on your.

Own, I'm not sure how you would create that.

Okay, is a once a month magazine style, I'm not sure magazine style email or a shorter email once a week, better.

So the number one reason people opt out of email stop following you unsubscribe.

Is too much communication from you, too many emails from you.

Now, if the content is really good, you can send a bit more often. So really, this is the number one reason I love email, is because you can have multiple lists and how often.

You send and how much promotional content you dare try to get away with. Those two things vary directly with the strength of the relationship.

So let's use the tennis store as an example. If I went into the tennis store.

Once ever in my life six weeks ago just to buy some tennis balls.

And I start getting email from them.

Every week, and it's buy these strings.

Buy these rackets, buy my stuff. I'm going to opt out in a second, I'm going to hate them, I'm.

Going to think they're a spammer.

So they should really have more than one list. A regular customer, someone like me, I would love to get that promotional email every week. But someone who just went in there.

One time, I'm going to send once a month and it's going to be more educational content like how to improve your forehand.

Now, I'm always going to include some promotional content related to the educational content. So I might have that entire article.

About how to improve your forehand, but.

Maybe there's a sidebar that says, hey.

By the way, did you know that.

The type of strings you use can.

Have a big impact on the power of your forehand? Click here for string specials.

So the stronger the relationship, the more.

Often I can send, the weaker it is. That's probably once a month. And if it's a weaker relationship, prospects.

Weak relationship, more educational content, maybe completely educational content.

Never be afraid to give away a.

Lot of intellectual property when it comes to marketing today. We're smart marketers, we're smart consumers. We know that our attention is valuable.

We know that that's what you want.

But we're willing to give it to you. If you give us something in return, and I want intellectual property, I want.

That more than I want money.

So intellectual property will get you attention.

More than a discount will.

Show me what makes you an expert.

Show off your expertise, your experience.

You all have lots of that to share. And don't tell me you don't, because I've been challenged on this, the toughest one ever. I was in California, a lot of.

People in the room, and a woman.

Stood up and she said, ron, I get it.

I really do.

It's about sharing content and my expertise.

Because I have nothing to talk about. I said, of course you do.

Everyone does.

What do you do? And she said, I sell commercial plastic sheeting.

And I thought to myself, wow, did I just really mess up in front.

Of all these people? But I'm good at this. So I stalled. I fibbed a little bit. I said, wow, that's fascinating.

How many kinds of commercial plastic sheeting do you sell?

26 different kinds. Wow, really? What's the difference? And now you couldn't stop her from talking.

Oh, if it's this kind, if you're.

Doing this project, you'd want this one.

It's this permeability, it's this sickness.

But if you're doing this outside, you want this other one. It's antibacterial. It's more permeable.

That's why I'm going to buy from.

Her instead of going to a big box store and picking out on my own. You have expertise at your business.

Don't think that that's not invaluable to people. And don't think that it's not interesting, because it is. That's the reason we shop with you.

Instead of somewhere else.

Awesome. Should we buy email marketing to get new customers or new contacts?

So I'm going to have to try to interpret that. I think they're asking, is it okay.

To buy a list of contacts for email?

That's how I interpret it.

And the answer is no.

Now, intuitively, it makes all the sense.

In the world, but this is where.

Digital marketing and traditional marketing are so different. With traditional marketing, I can buy a.

List of physical addresses and I can mail to you.

You got your mailbox. It's still a junk mail. You don't get mad.

You just throw it away.

We're way more protective of our email inbox.

So if you buy a list and you send to me without permission, even if I gave you permission at some point but forgot, or if you send to me too often, or if I don't love your content. To me you're a spammer and I.

Can'T even say it and make it nice.

I'm not going to do business with a spammer.

I'm going to tell my friends not to. So don't become the accidental spammer. A lot of small businesses buy lists and it backfires. I've never seen a positive return on.

Investment on a purchase list and I've done this for 25 years.

I am the grandfather of email marketing.

According to the press.

I'm not sure if that's a compliment or what. Never seen a positive ROI from a purchase list.

You can build your list organically, naturally.

Very quickly and very productively just by.

Putting the sign up link everywhere you connect.

I think we have time for one or two more questions.

Do it.

Our company had to create a brand new Facebook page. So our new page has a sad amount of likes. How many likes should I get on the page before starting to include the Facebook page in my emails?

Oh don't wait.

Start now so it doesn't matter. You can say you are relaunching it and you are not really relaunching it.

But when they don't see a lot.

Of likes they are not going to be unimpressed.

You can even give them an incentive.

To hit the like button. We have a tool at Constant Contact.

Called Social Campaigns and it creates what is essentially a like gate for Facebook.

So when I go to your Facebook page, if I hit the like button.

It unlocks something, some content.

It could be a discount, but we find that expert content, insider information is more valuable. So people are never going to hit the like button if they don't truly.

Like you because they are putting their reputation on the line.

But giving them an incentive to hit the like button makes it more likely they will.

But the results are the same.

91% more likely to buy from you. Again, 93% more likely to recommend you to friends. So check out the Social Campaigns tool. In constant contact they hit the like button, it unlocks.

It could be a video. It could be something they download. It could be 10 calligraphy tips if you're a calligraphy store, this this insider.

Content is incredibly valuable to consumers today.

Okay, how can I get lists when previous customers didn't give out their email addresses?

If they didn't, I would try to.

Connect them with them in a different way then 1.

I'm always going to make it easy.

I can put a sign up book right on my counter. I can put a poster in my store that says Text to join or or scan this QR code to join every page on my website.

If they are previous customers and I have some kind of contact information like.

A physical address, I would email them a postcard and say, hey, we are launching this really neat new email system.

Where we are doing newsletters and coupons and all kinds of valuable information.

Go here to sign up for it and it is likely that they will.

Again, don't make it a buy my.

Stuff promotion, but more about insider information.

And how you ask really matters. I know that on the average 57%.

Of us when shopping will give up an email address to a clerk at a store.

And that sounds great, but the average ask when I go to shop, it's like, hey, you don't want to give.

Me your email address? Do you train your staff? They're not asking for something, they're giving something of value away for free. They just need the email address to deliver it. If you gave them chocolate cake and.

They were allowed to give chocolate cake.

To all the customers, I don't think they would miss one. They would offer to every single one. The email sign up.

It's like giving away chocolate cake. I'm going to send valuable information, tips, resources, maybe even discounts on occasion. I'm giving away this really cool thing.

But I need the email address to deliver it.

That's how your staff needs to look at it.

They need to ask every time.

We see businesses that are very strict about they have to ask every time.

Getting 92% of call in traffic and 98% of walk in traffic to give up an email address just by asking every single time.

If you don't ask, you don't get.

And then Helene, I'm not sure if you're still on the line.

Just one question. Where can I find free Microsoft classes?

And then that will be the last question.

Hi, yes, I did not show.

Okay, great. Can you hear me?

Okay, I did respond through the instant message there. But as well you can look@microsoftstore.com and find your local store. If you have a local store in the area. And down below on the screen you'll see events and things that are hosted at the store. In addition, office.Microsoft.com has many, many free tutorials on how to use Microsoft Office.

Hey, one quick question that I want someone to answer.

So sue asked online, how do you.

Sign up for the next one? Are invites being sent out for the 624 webinar? So we have a lot of our.

Listeners who want to sign up for the next one. How do they do that?

Yes, we will be sending out a thank you email for attending which will have the link. And we'll also send out another email letting them know how to Register for.

The 5th 24 webinar.

Great. Everybody on here will get.

I want you all back.

I want you to bring your friends.

So I think that's all the time.

We have for questions.

Excellent.

Thanks so much for having me, everyone, and for listening. I look forward to talking to you.

Again in two weeks.

It's going to be even more fun.

Than today, as if that's even possible.