What Is Competitive Analysis | How Analyzing Competitors Can Help You Win Big!

Analyzing Competitors to Improve Your Go to Market Strategy

By Stewart Swayze

Conducting a competitive analysis is one of my favorite consulting services. I love digging into competitive intel and generating tactical steps for my clients to beat the competition.

There's nothing worse than getting your ass kicked by a competitor. Your sales team always says, "We lost because of our price." The marketing team says, "It's not our pricing, our sales team just sucks."

As a leader, how do you know who's right? Beating competitors is always on your mind.

How does it feel to get blind-sided by a competitor releasing a disruptive product? 

Well crap! 

Your R&D and product management teams start scrambling. Emails are flying … conference calls scheduled … but nobody has an answer. 

Analyzing competitors is an essential tool for growing your business. The competitive analysis process helps differentiate your go to market strategy.

You can stay on top of innovative product developments. And you develop market-based pricing. 

Your content marketing will be laser-focused. And you make informed and data-backed business decisions.   

What is competitive analysis

The definition of competitive analysis is the process of gathering specific information, data, and insights from your competitors. Then, analyzing that competitive information against your business competencies, products, services, or functions.

Competitive analysis aims to identify gaps, trends, and insights to improve your strategic decision-making.

How is competitive analysis related to market research

When you conduct competitive analysis and market research, you gather market information using primary and secondary research. Both types of research help companies improve.

However, we define market research as the process of gathering insights on your target market by using primary and secondary research on/from potential customers.

In contrast, competitive analysis is a research process that focuses on your competitors. You're comparing a competitor's products, process, and strategy against your own.

To simplify: Market Research gathers information on your customers (and the overall market). Competitive analysis collects information on your competition.

How competitive analysis gives you a step up on the competition

1. Identify service or product gaps that you can fill to adjust your marketing strategy or multi-generational product planning 

2. Determine how your competitors are winning and losing customers so you can adapt your go to market strategy

3. Identify how your competitors are attracting prospects so you can differentiate your lead generation strategy

4. Identify your competitors' product marketing and sales strategies, so you can develop, and promote your unique selling proposition

5. Conduct a gap analysis so you can improve your strengths and weaknesses versus the competition

6. Analyze the market's reaction to your competitor's content marketing strategy to enhance your content and communications

7. Determine your market position, so you can make strategic and tactical decisions to improve your positioning

8. Determine market share, so you can identify emerging competitors and create strategies to increase your market share 

Gathering competitive information

 

Although collecting competitive information is generally legal, there are compliance requirements and laws you need to understand. The Strategic & Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) website is an excellent resource for compliance-related information. 

Compliance issues are a significant reason many organizations engage external partners to conduct their competitive analysis.

• 70% of large enterprises believe having competitive intelligence would have increased the effectiveness of previous campaigns

You can use primary and secondary research to analyze your competitors. For example, you can conduct primary research by interviewing customers and former employees of your competitors. 

But, be careful when conducting primary research for your competitive analysis. Don't ask for any intellectual property information or proprietary information.

For secondary research, collect competitive information through publicly available sources. The internet is the most critical source of competitive intelligence.

Sources of competitive data

There are plenty of sources to analyze your competition. Your competitive data sources depend on the ultimate goal and the kind of competitive information you're trying to gather.

Primary Research for Competitive Data

• Customers - interview customers 

• Former employees - interview former employees of competitors 

• Industry analysts and domain experts - interview industry analysts or domain experts

• Field employees - interview your customer-facing and field employees (sales & field marketing)

Secondary Research for Competitive Data

• Competitor website - copy, keywords, and search traffic (SEO)

• Competitor social media - company page, leadership profiles, and advertisements 

• Competitor content - content shared on the internet and social media (white papers, brochures, case studies, and others.)

• Email marketing - newsletters and marketing emails

• Press releases - PR releases and announcements sent to news agencies

• Competitor support sites - reviews, Q&A, and customer support requests

• Financial reports/disclosures - annual reports, analyst presentations, call transcripts, SEC filings, and others.

• Patents and patent applications - US & global patents and applications

• Product/technical information - product and technical specifications from the internet or inside the product packaging

• Investment websites - Morningstar, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, PitchBook, and VentureBeat 

• Industry analysis websites - Industrial Info Resources, IBISWorld, Nielsen, Forrester, and others.

• News/Magazines - your choice of news sites and magazines

• Trade journals - niche and market vertical trade journals and magazines

• Third-party review sites - independent product, service, and company review sites

• Forums - internet forums that discuss products, markets, trends, and people.

• Trade shows and events - competitor booths and speeches

• Academic research - is often overlooked - research that cites companies, provides case studies, examines products, strategies, and other research.

• 98% of companies agree that a competitors website is a valuable source of competitive intelligence

Tools for competitive analysis

Since every competitive analysis has different goals, it’s hard to know which tools for competitive analysis are beneficial for your project. Plus, there are a ton of “paid” tools out there. However, I’ll list a few of my favorite free tools that you probably haven’t thought about.

• SpyFu - is a competitive analysis seo tool. The tool identifies the keywords that your competitors are buying on Google AdWords. When you use this tool, you can determine who your competitors are targeting and how they are using ads to drive lead generation. Once you have this information, develop a content marketing and advertising plan to “steal” leads from your competitors.

• Google Advanced Search - You might be thinking, wait what? C’mon. But, hear me out. You can use Google Advanced Search to find your competitions public documents. Go to Google advanced search. Type in your competitor’s name. Then, scroll down to “file type.” Now you can search for pdf, excel, powerpoint, etc. Another way to use google search as a competitive analysis tool is to do a specific site search. In the search bar type site:competitorsurl.com, then a document type (PDF) or any other keyword. Don’t put the http or www. If I were doing this for GE it would look like this - site:ge.com PDF

• G2 - Use G2 as a competitive analysis tool to determine market position. This site is a peer-to-peer review site. You can gain valuable information from verified users of software and services. Basically, you can collect “voice of customer” about competitive products.

• Facebook Ad Library - I love using Facebook’s Ad Library as a competitive analysis tool! You search for your competitor’s ads. Then, you reverse engineer your competitor’s funnel. Seriously, you can figure out the step-by-step process they are using to generate leads. You’ll also find out their target audience. Like SpyFu, you can create a GTM strategy to beat your competitor’s lead generation process. This works for all products including large capital industrial equipment.

• LinkedIn - You might be saying, “no way” again. But, you have no idea how much competitive data and insights you can gather from LinkedIn. Go to your competitor’s company page. Look at the documents, presentations, videos, and posts. Or, do a LinkedIn search for people that use your competitor’s products or former employees. Send an invite asking for a quick 15-minute call. Lots of people will say, “Sure, happy to help.”

Give these competitive analysis tools a chance. Test them out. I bet you’ll be surprised at the competitive analysis you can pull together using these simple tools.

Example of a competitive analysis

Project Goal: Improving GTM Strategy With Competitive Analysis

Recently, I worked on a competitive analysis project for a global industrial equipment manufacturer. I cannot reveal the client information, but I can provide an overview of the project. 

The equipment manufacturer considered itself a top 3 provider in the market. 

However, the industrial company noticed that competition was getting stronger. They were losing more projects, and their market share was decreasing. 

The company wanted to conduct a competitive competitive analysis to understand the competitive landscape and improve its go to market strategy.

The competitive analysis focused on 5 competitors across 7 regions: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. 

Competitive insights were gathered on:

• GTM strategy

• Market positioning

• Market share

• Product development

• Brand awareness

• Pricing strategy

• Organizational structure

• R&D strategy

For this competitive analysis I used primary and secondary research to triangulate and analyze the data and insight to ensure accuracy. 

Project Result: After a full competitive analysis, the client was provided with the research. Interestingly, the company found out they were no longer a top 3 provider. And a competitor they didn’t consider a threat, had overtaken my client’s position in the market.

Using the competitive analysis, I was able to provide GTM strategy recommendations to win back market share, adjust pricing, and develop innovative products.

•  69% of organizations that used an external partner to gain better insight report positive results from that decision

A competitive analysis helps you anticipate your competitor’s activities. It supports business leaders with data to make informed decisions and develop strategies to beat competitors. Just ensure you gather data legally and ethically.

If you need support with your next competitive analysis project, reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you think through and execute your project. Click here to learn more.

What is Market Research? (W/ Real Project Examples)

Understanding the Market Research Process

By Stewart Swayze

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information on market trends, needs, and preferences. You can conduct market research on your brand, product, customers, prospects, or competition.

The market information gathered helps you make informed business decisions, remove distracting noise, and focus on the market information that matters most.

Why is market research important

The market is rapidly changing, product life-cycles are shrinking, and customer preferences continue to shift. Researching the market helps your business keep on top of the changes and remain ahead of the competition. 

The benefits of market research are only limited to your goals, resources, and budget. Hinge Marketing found that companies that conduct market research — at least quarterly — grow almost 12X faster and are practically 2X as profitable as firms that do no research.

Primary vs secondary market research

When conducting research, there are two methods of research — primary and secondary. 

Primary market research is original research conducted by you or someone you hire. The information you gather comes directly from the source. Primary research includes surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. Your research participants could consist of current customers, former customers, prospects, industry experts, and influencers.

The information you collect is raw, unanalyzed, and specific to your project goals.

Secondary market research is gathering information that's already published and publically available. Secondary research includes analyzing studies, reports, statistics, and data that answer your market research questions. 

Often, the secondary research data you gather was already analyzed or interpreted by a 3rd party — not specific to your goals. 

Qualitative vs quantitative market research

There are two types of market research, qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative market research is gathering non-numerical data or insights. The insights are subjective such as feelings, attitudes, and concerns. Marketers use qualitative insights to add depth and perception to the overall research. Often, it helps market researchers understand the "why" or to develop a hypothesis for further study.

Examples of qualitative market research include:

• Interviews

• Focus Groups

• Open-ended survey questions

Quantitative market research is the collection of numerical data. The data is objective and measurable. Quantitative market researchers analyze the data to find correlations, determine causations, conduct regressions, and perform other types of market analysis. Often, quantitative research helps you identify "what" is happening in the market.

Examples of quantitative market research methods include:

• Polls

• Questionnaires

• Surveys

Market research objectives

You can conduct market research on almost anything. But, before starting a market research project, you need clearly defined objectives.

Below are a few common market research objectives:

• Buyer personas - Build profiles that represent your ideal customer based on research

• Market segmentation - Divide your customers and prospects into specific segments based on demographics and psychographics

• Marketing message testing - Create or adjust your marketing messages to match what your target audience wants to hear, read, or see

• Market sizing - Understand the total available market and serviceable available market

• Competitor analysis - Analyze your competition to determine your market position or conduct a gaps analysis to improve your go-to-market strategy

8 Common market research mistakes

Many marketers jump into the market research process only to find themselves overwhelmed. Before you start your next market research project, avoid the most common mistakes. 

1. Not clearly defining market research objectives

2. Dumping too many research objectives into one study

3. Allowing confirmation bias to skew your research

4. Analyzing data without context

5. Thinking correlation is causation

6. Not spending enough time collecting and analyzing data

7. Believing your customers and prospects are telling you the truth

8. Thinking your too big to worry about the competition

Examples of market research

I support large companies and startups. My clients use research to improve their products, services, strategies, and operations. Below I'll list 3 examples that I've worked on for my clients. One of the critical components of a successful marketing research project is the ability to tie and apply the results to a specific goal. For each example, I always provide recommendations based on the uncovered information. I'm able to deliver these recommendations because of my depth of expertise in B2B strategy.

1. A global B2B industrial equipment manufacturer wanted to understand its competitors and improve its go-to-market strategy. I conducted a competitive analysis using primary and secondary research. Using qualitative insights and quantitative data, I presented my client with a detailed gap analysis, competitive positioning, and GTM strategy recommendations.

2. A domestic O&G distributor wanted to improve its sales strategy and key account management program. I used voice of customer (VOC), quantitative analysis of market & sales data, plus competitive benchmarking to recommend improvements to their sales strategy and key account management program.

3. A global B2B company wanted to redesign its sales performance management strategy. Using primary and secondary research, I conducted a market and competitive benchmarking project, plus analyzed its current sales performance management process to recommend a new and innovative strategy.

Can you conduct market research yourself

The short answer, Yes. There are certain aspects of marketing research that you can conduct yourself. But, be careful to consider the mistakes above.

Creating a non-biased market research questionnaires takes skill. Even if you’re only gathering secondary market research. Your confirmation bias can creep into your results.

Your internal marketers have a story they want to tell or not tell. It's easy to find insights and data to confirm that story unintentionally. 

You're going to collect a lot of information. Unless you have marketers with specific expertise in analyzing market research, it could be best to hire an outside resource. Plus, think through the opportunity cost of allocating full-time resources on market research. Are your investment dollars better spent elsewhere?

Last, and more importantly, your customers and prospects are more likely to open up, share thoughts, and provide truthful insights to a third party — especially when the market research is blind. If you conduct primary research interviews yourself, those customers might be reluctant to be critical of your company or products. And give you the juicy information on your competitors. You want the critical and juicy information, that's where you can make the most of your research.

Everything starts with market research. When you need to develop a content strategy, you need to conduct research. If you want to improve your GTM strategy, you need market research. When you want to build a new product or service, you need to gather research. 

If you'd like an expert to help with your next market research project, reach out to me. I'd be happy to support your company. You can learn more about my market research consulting by clicking here.

What is B2B? + Examples of B2B vs B2C

Understanding the Difference Between B2B vs B2C

By Stewart Swayze

B2B meaning

B2B is shorthand for "business to business." Business-to-business (B2B) is business conducted between one company and another.

It refers to sales you make to other businesses rather than to individual consumers.

B2B vs B2C

B2C is short for business to consumer. So, instead of conducting business with another company, with B2C, you're conducting business with a consumer.

B2B marketing means your marketing activities focus on another business. B2C marketing is targeting the final consumer.

Same with B2B vs B2C sales. With B2B Sales, your sales team focuses on business buyers. B2C sales teams are selling to consumers. 

Some companies are B2B and B2C. Think about Amazon. Amazon is selling directly to businesses and consumers. 

B2B examples

Here are a few other examples of B2B businesses and transactions. 

B2B transactions happen directly or along the supply chain, where one company will purchase raw materials from to support the manufacturing process. 

Aircraft Engine Manufacturers

• Aircraft engine manufacturers, such as GE Aviation, market and sell their engines to aircraft manufacturers, like Boeing.

B2B Services

• Attorneys represent business clients, accounting firms that help companies do their taxes, and B2B marketing consultants, like me, who help companies increase revenue, generate leads, and build their brand.

Toy Manufacturing

• Toy manufacturers are B2C companies. However, to build and sell those toys, they conduct business to business activities. For example, a toy manufacturer buys raw materials from suppliers.

Another example would be wholesalers that sell their products to retailers who then turn around and sell them to consumers. 

Supermarkets

• Supermarkets are a perfect example of this activity. They buy food from wholesalers then sell it at a slightly higher price to individual consumers.

What is B2B? Lead the different between B2B and B2C from Stewart Swayze

Summary - What is B2B?

• If you're transacting with another business, that's B2B

• If you're transacting with a consumer, that's B2C

• If you're marketing is targeting another business, that's B2B

• If you're marketing is targeting a consumer, that's B2C

Do you want more clients? Reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you think through and execute your marketing activities. Click here to learn more.

How to Increase Market Share + 13 Tactics to Beat Competitors

Increasing Market Share to Beat the Competition

By Stewart Swayze

What is market share

The definition of market share is the percentage of a market that a company or product controls. How to calculate market share - you take sales of a product or service and divide it by the total available market.

Market share example

Let's say Alpha Industrial Equipment sells low voltage switchgear. Alpha's annual LV switchgear sales are $12B, and the total available market is $60B. That means that Alpha's global market share is 20%.

How to increase market share

On a high level, there are 3 ways to increase market share:

1. Take market share from a competitor

2. Convince inactive prospects in the market to purchase your product or service

3. Acquire a competitor

Taking market share from competitors

You take market share from your competitors by beating them in sales and marketing. You convince people to switch from your competitor's product to your own. 

The value of the total available market remains the same, but the value of your overall sales increases. Using the market share example above: Alpha's sales increase from $12B to $15B. Therefore, its new share of the market is 25%. 

Convince inactive prospects to purchase your product or service

You can increase market share by converting inactive prospects into customers. 

Many organizations forget to include inactive prospects when calculating market share. But, companies not participating in the market are a part of the total available market. And, they are your hardest competitors.

Using the original market share example above: If the total available market for low voltage switchgear is $60B, a portion of the market is inactive. Maybe the inactive companies are using old equipment and haven't purchased anything in 10 years. Or, the inactive prospects - for some reason - only buy medium and high voltage switchgear. 

But, you work your sales and marketing magic to activate and convert these prospects to purchase your low voltage equipment. The value of the total available market didn't change, but your sales increased - your market share grows.

Acquiring a competitor

You can increase your market share by acquiring a company and combining its sales with yours. 

The value of the total available market remains constant, but the value of your total sales increases. You own more of the market share.

Adapting from the original market share example above: Let's say Beta Industrial Equipment sells $10B of low voltage switchgear annually. Alpha decides to increase its share of the market by acquiring Beta. Alpha + Beta’s sales are now $22B ($12B + $10B). If the value of the total available market remains the same ($60B), Alpha's market share is now 36.7%.

Tactics to crush the competition and increase market share

As a B2B Marketing Consultant, I've provided a few good examples of how to increase market share below. The list is not exhaustive. I include marketing strategies and tactics I've used as a marketing leader or recommended as a consultant. 

1. Niche Marketing Strategy - You improve your B2B marketing strategy by employing a highly contextual and niche marketing approach. You generate qualified leads from customers wanting to switch from competitors and convince non-participants to join the market. 

2. Competitive Intelligence - You conduct a competitive analysis to understand why you're losing deals. You perform a competitive gap analysis. Then, use the insights to develop a go to market strategy and take market share from your competitors.

3. Product Marketing - You conduct market and competitive research to improve your R&D and product development activities. You put a better product on the market, but at a competitive price.

4. Sales Training - You implement a sales training program. Your sales team gets better at identifying, persuading, and closing deals.

5. Sales Force Effectiveness - You use competitive intelligence to adjust the location, reach, and frequency of your sales team.

6. Contracting T&Cs - You offer better terms and conditions (T&Cs) than your competitors. For example, your competitors ask for payment within 30 days—you off customers 60-day payment terms. 

7. Contracting Risk - You find a way to assume and manage more product or operational risk than your competitors.

8. Marketing/Pricing (Special offer) - You create a special and limited time offer for customers to switch from your competitors or participate in the market.

9. Pricing Strategy (Price at cost) - You price at cost or negative margin. This pricing strategy is risky and only works in very specific cases. You sell the "product" at cost or negative margin, knowing you will make up the revenue through aftermarket sales & services. 

10. Pricing strategy (CAPEX to OPEX) - You switch from a CAPEX to OPEX transaction, almost like SAAS. Instead of paying full price - a capital expenditure - for your product, your customers pay through an operating expenditure over time. Example 1 - You hold the product on your books. Your customer pays a fee to use the product. It could be leasing or lease to own. Example 2 - You sell the product to a financial institution or partner. That financial institution holds the product on its books. The customer pays the financial institution for the use of the product. 

11. Performance Contracting - Your product reduces the customer's cost. The customer pays you based on the cost reductions each month. Your performance contracting continues until the product or service is paid off. Or, your product increases the customer's revenue. The customer splits the increased revenue with you until the product or service is paid off.

12. Joint Technology / Collaboration Agreements - You partner with your prospects or customers in joint R&D. You lock them into your products b/c you are sharing costs, profits, intellectual property, etc. And, you build stronger relationships.

13. Master agreements - You sign master agreements, simplifying the contracting process. You lock customers into long-term contracts. Or, reduce your customer's negotiation costs by agreeing on T&Cs and pricing. You offer discounts or rewards programs within your master agreement. 

There are many more ways to increase market share and beat the competition. Almost too many to list. But, with these ideas, there's no doubt you'll develop a great strategy crush the competition. 

If you'd like to discuss how you can gain market share, click here to set up a free 30-minute strategy session. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Expert B2B Marketers Create Kickass Lead Magnets Using These 6 Steps

How to Create a Lead Magnet in One Week

by Stewart Swayze

Website visitors are great. But there’s no point if you aren’t converting your traffic into leads.

Are you using lead magnets as an asset to grow your email list? If not, you should. 89% of marketers claim email is their principal lead generation channel (Juvion).

Asking website visitors to "sign up for my newsletter" no longer works. You know this, right? People are tired of handing out their email addresses without receiving an immediate benefit.

What is a Lead Magnet?

Simply put, a lead magnet is an exchange of value for value. You’re providing valuable information through a lead magnet in exchange for receiving your lead's email address and permission to send them emails.

Do I need to say "value" again? Nope. You get it.

I like how honest SEM Rush describes a lead magnet … b/c it's true. They call it a "Bribe-to-Subscribe." 

Seriously, I love when people say it how it is…No reason to sugar coat shit when you're Grade A, Willy Wonka.

Why Create a Lead Magnet?

People buy from brands they know, like, and trust. Your lead magnet helps build your know, like, and trust. Hell yes!  

• Lead magnets are opt-ins. Unless your audience lives under a rock - they know - by choosing to opt-in - you're adding them to your email marketing. Opting-in is their choice!

• Lead magnets allow you to engage and interact with your audience. You can develop relationships and build trust. People buy from those they know, like, and trust.

• Lead magnets build your brand. Your audience remembers that you provided value or helped them solve a problem. They appreciate your support. 

• Lead magnets are shareable. Your audience can share your lead magnet with other people, creating more leads. 

• Lead magnets help your market positioning. You're solving a challenge, showing your expertise, and positioning yourself as an expert or the best product in the market.

• Lead magnets allow you to automate your funnel. You build the asset once, then automate the lead nurturing process. You can nurture and segment your leads throughout the buyer's journey. 

10 Types of Lead Magnets

The type of lead magnet you choose will depend on your audience and goals. I've seen blogs that list 50 different kinds of lead magnets. Whoa! 

Let's keep things simple. Below you'll find 10 examples you can build this week. 

1. Content Upgrades - Provide bonus information that expands upon the content the person is already reading or watching.

2. Quizzes - Create interactive quizzes that are fun or provide valuable information.

3. Live Demos - Conduct a live demonstration of the benefits of your product or service.

4. Webinars - Find a challenge or opportunity customers are facing. Host a value-packed webinar on that topic. 

5. Checklists - Design a useful checklist that your audience can apply to their business.

6. Free Trials - Give away a short free trial of your product or services. Let them experience the benefits.

7. Calculators - Build a calculator to help solve a quantitative problem. Don't get worried about the "tech." A downloadable excel with pre-populated formulas works great. 

8. Free Email Courses - Write a 5-day email sequence that teaches a topic of interest.

9. eBooks - Write a short "How to" ebook. Yes, you can “write” an eBook in one week.

10. White Papers - Conduct research and develop a white paper that covers a topic in great detail.

How to create a lead magnet in 6 steps

If you know your audience, creating a lead magnet is easy. Read through the general process and real life example below. You may need to adapt the process based on your business and audience. 

1. Identify a broad challenge or opportunity your audience is curious about. 

2. Divide the broad challenge or opportunity into subtopics. 

3. Turn each key subtopic into a question.

4. Take a step back. Pick on question your audience would die to have answered. You're going to answer that specific question using your lead magnet.

5. Choose the type of lead magnet that's most appropriate.

6. Build a lead magnet that answers that question in detail.

Don't hold back. Give as much information as possible. Show your expertise in the topic. Help your audience solve their challenge or seize an opportunity. 

Creating a lead magnet in one week (Real life example)

Recently, a consulting company hired me to create a quick lead magnet. They wanted to provide value and generate new business. Many of their customers and prospects were struggling with supply chain management due to the Coronavirus (broad topic). I used the 6 steps outlined above to create the lead magnet.

1. Identified supply chain management as a broad challenge.

2. Divided supply chain management into subtopics.

3. Turned the subtopics into "how to" questions.

4. Picked supply chain resilience as the topic by evaluating the consulting firm's core capabilities, market challenges, and keyword research. 

5. Decided a short white paper was the best option.

6. Wrote and designed the white paper in one week (usually takes 4-6 weeks).

BAM! In one week, the consulting firm had a valuable lead magnet to generate new business. You can view this white paper by clicking here. (No opt-in required)

Next Steps

Find a challenge or opportunity your customers want to learn about and build your lead magnet. Then, create a plan to market across social media and your website.

Do you want to grow your email list? Want to increase your revenue? Click here to have a professionally written and designed lead magnet.

Increase your Coaching Facebook Page Likes for Free - 1 Sneaky Trick (Video)

Increase your Facebook Page Likes for Free

In today's video, I'm going to show you one sneaky trick I'm using to grow my Facebook business page. How many of you want to grow your Facebook Page Likes? As a pure consultant, I focused on LinkedIn. Now I’m a hybrid Coach & Consultant. My goal is to organically grow my Facebook Business Page as much as possible.

I’m Stewart Swayze of stewartswayze.com. I release new videos every week on those topics, so if your interested in growing your coaching business, subscribe to my YouTube Channel. 

Hit Play or Read the Text Below

VIDEO SUMMARY:

Why is it important to have likes on your Facebook business page? As a consultant or a coach, you're producing content. Facebook makes it harder and harder and harder for you to reach your target audience organically. Organically meaning free.

They're trying to drive you to pay for advertisements. That makes sense. They’re business themselves, right? So, the more likes you have on your page, the more opportunity you have for your content to be seen by potential prospects that can turn into a customer.

Or, for someone to see your content, share it with their network, and then someone from their network either likes your business page or becomes a prospect as well. Trying to grow your Facebook page organically is extremely hard. This sneaky trick to increasing your facebook page likes is going to help you out a lot.

SAY HELLO ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Marketing Strategy vs Business Strategy

How is marketing strategy related to business strategy? 

I originally answered this question on Quora, but wanted to share it with you as well. It's a quick explanation. 

To keep this answer as simple as possible, your marketing strategy is a piece of your overall business strategy.

The steps below would depend a lot on your company size & structure. However, the steps below provide an example you can use and adapt to your situation.

1. Company X develops Goals & Objectives for the next 3–5 years (G&Os)

   1. What do we want to achieve for the next 3-5 years? Where can we improve or grow?

2. Company X plans how to achieve those goals (Business Strategy)

   1. This is your overall plan and strategy from a corporate perspective

3. Company X divides the overall business strategy into specific functions, cross-functional teams, or business units.

   1. This is your plan from a functional / cross-functional perspective

   2. Sales, Marketing, Branding, IT, Human Resources, Product Management, R&D, etc.

4. Company X executes the strategy, tacks progress, and adapts to “feedback” & data.

I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions.

Stewart 

Sales vs Marketing - What's the difference?

Updated: Oct 20, 2019

Often as a small business owner, you ARE the sales & marketing department. You may not have a lot of employees within the sales and marketing functions. 

However, knowing the difference between sales and marketing will help you develop a systematic approach to growing your business.  

The easiest, but not perfect, way to understand the difference between sales and marketing is to consider "Customer Touch." 

1. Are you speaking directly with the customer? (Sales)

   • Examples: Phone calls, in-person meetings, events, etc. If so, you are likely engaging in sales. I'll explain the "likely" in the next section. 

2. Are you indirectly interacting with customers? (Marketing)

   • Examples: Creating Content, Building Facebook Ads, Sending a Newsletter, Surveys/Polls, etc. 

Now, let me explain why I used the term "likely" above. Sometimes you'll engage directly with customers, but purely for marketing purposes. The best example of this would be interviewing customers and prospects to gain insights. 

Developing a Sales and Marketing Strategy

Once you understand the difference between sales and marketing, devote time to design an integrated sales and marketing process. 

The goal of your marketing efforts is to create the appropriate materials and resources to generate leads, enable selling your products and close deals, plus, retain customers - Block off time to develop your marketing resources.

The goal of your sales efforts is to convert leads to prospects and prospects to customers. A secondary goal is to collect any feedback that will improve your marketing efforts - Block off time to execute your sales efforts.

Try not to combine the two efforts. If you do, you'll risk confusing your customers and potentially upsetting them as well.

As you think through your sales & marketing strategy ask yourself, what marketing tactics do you have to:

• Qualify to understand your ideal customer profile (buyer persona)? 

  • Market & Competitive Analysis or Buyer Personas

• Market to attract leads aligned to your ideal customer profile?

  • Content Marketing, Lead Magnets, Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, etc. 

• Sell to convert your leads into prospects?

  • Sales Call Scripts, Product/Service Presentations, etc.

• Close to acquire your customers? 

  • Sales Call Scripts, Custom/Personalized Proposals, Common Objection Answers, etc.

• Delight to retain your customers and generate referrals?

  • Reward Programs, Content Marketing, On-Going Support, Cross-Selling, Up-Selling, Down-Selling, etc. 

My Last Piece of Advice

You need to establish a process to review your sales and marketing strategy. Win or Lose:

• What went well?

• What can you improve?

• What feedback will you consider?

• How can you increase efficiencies and decrease costs? 

My Monday's are blocked off to build my marketing resources. I've devoted Tuesday – Thursday to Sales and client calls. Fridays, I review all of my business systems, process, strategies, and tactics. This includes analyzing my sales and marketing tactics to find incremental improvements. Small steps lead to massive action.

Stewart Swayze

"Become the Cause" of Your Life, Career, and Success

www.stewartswayze.com



How to utilize your network contacts to promote your business

Utilize your network to promote your business

This is a different type of network marketing. It’s primarily developing a strategy to use your established network of contacts to market your business, find clients, and cultivate prospects. But, it needs to be a mutually beneficial strategy. If you use your network, provide them value as well. Below are a few tips on using your contacts to find new business.

Turn your family and friends into your evangelists!

The first place to start is with the people that know you well, your family and friends. They all want to see you succeed. Turn them into your word of mouth marketers.

When you share content on social media, have them like and share it too. Sharing creates a significant impact on your social media and local marketing. They have friends that have friends that could be potential customers. Use them. Choose 5-10 people and ask for their help.

Before you ask for something from your contacts, give them something of value

When marketing your small business, tell everyone you interact with on a professional level about your business. This includes your accountant, attorney, banker, barber, etc. Let them all know you are open for business and seeking customers.

Ask if you can give them your business card, maybe even leave a few extra cards for them to hand out if they come across anyone.

Let them know you’ll send people their way too and do that! If you do, ensure that they know you’ve sent them a new customer. This referral exchange creates an informal referral system.

If you don’t have an office, find a Co-Working space

Get out of your home or office. Network at a Co-Working facility. Take part in their events. Don’t be the jerk that’s only trying to sell your products and services all the time.

Develop relationships first. Help solve a few of your co-workers' problems for free. Then, find an opportunity to offer your services for a fee.

Download your Outlook contacts into a workable excel

I’m going to assume you have Outlook contacts. You can download both into a .csv file, then convert it to Excel. Inform your contacts about your business and service offerings.

There are a few schools of thought here. You can be direct and try to sell them immediately. Or, you can provide your necessary information (website address, service offerings, etc.) and let them know you are producing content they may find valuable.

Get them engaged with your content, build a relationship, and then sell.

You’ll need to be the judge on the approach to your network.

Segment and prioritize your contacts to develop a Network Marketing Strategy

My recommendation is that you review your contacts and segment them into different groups. Then, develop different approaches for each group.

Segmentation will help you create a Network Marketing Strategy.

As an example, Segment 1 you meet in person, maybe buy them lunch. They are mentors, advisors, or potential prospects. Segment 2, you call on the phone (if you have their number). They are people that can introduce you to other contacts or live outside your state. Segment 3 you send a personal email. These are people you respect, maybe don't know as well, but want to develop a relationship.

If you are starting out, don’t spam anyone with a generic mass email. Take the time to email them with a personal note.

A few other words of advice

• Don’t always ask a network contact for advice without ever offering to pay for it.

  • Example: If you keep asking for legal advice from a contact that's a lawyer. It might be different if this person is your mentor. If not, you should pay for his/her advice.

• Don’t have alternative motives.

  • Example: Scheduling a meeting with someone in your network for advice, but then using the meeting as an opportunity to sell him/her something.

• Make introductions for other people in your network

  • Reciprocity goes a long way

If you use your network strategically, it will go a long way to helping you grow your business. As you do this, introductions will happen, and your network will grow. Keep track of those too. You never know where your next customer will pop up.

Also, you may end up with a tremendous opportunity, but don’t have the full resources to tackle it on your own. If you have a reliable network, they can help and support you with resources. 

Stewart Swayze

Feel free to reach out and connect with me on social media.

Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses

Social media marketing is important to small business marketing strategy

As a small business owner traditional marketing and advertising can be costly. Social media marketing is important to your client acquisition strategy. Plus, you can do social media marketing for free. You might not have to pay money, but you will have to put in the sweat equity.

Build your relevant social media business profiles

If you don’t have social media profiles for your business, build them. Build business profiles on the most relevant social media profiles for your business. Your audience preferences are diverse.

Where they consume content online will be different as well. Some will prefer to receive content on LinkedIn, while others on Facebook. Depending on your audience, it might be Instagram (follow me) or Pinterest. You’ll need to determine the best place to provide your valuable content.

First, I have a recommendation. Instead of building profiles on every single social media site, start with 3-4. Luckily, you’ll be using marketing automation tools to help. Buffer and Hootsuite automate distribution across different social media sites. 

Ensure your social media profiles are completely filled out

Only create profiles that you will keep up to date. If you don’t keep your profiles active, then your audience won’t follow you. Think about it this way, would you bring a client into a messy, outdated, and unorganized office? It’s the same concept.

Your social media presence is an external office that prospects and customers are visiting. These profiles help them determine if they should conduct business with you.

Your contact information is one of most important parts of your social media profile. Ensure it is complete, accurate, and visible. The goal is to convert your audience into customers. It's simple; they need your contact information. Use the exact same contact info for each profile. There are a lot of businesses that list different addresses or phone numbers on each profile. It’s easy to forget an area code or suite number. This can screw up your SEO or worse, confuse your potential clients.

Create two primary objectives and two secondary objectives for your social media profiles

You’ll need to determine your social media goals & objectives. Keep these simple. Limit yourself to the 3 or 4 goals. Maybe have two primary objectives and two secondary objectives. Examples few would be:

• Brand Awareness

• Thought Leadership

• Generate Leads

• Customer Retention

• Generate Traffic

• Answer Questions

• Competitive Positioning

• Build Trust

Use owned and curated content to share value with your social media audience

Let the audience know your plan to provide them value on social media. Clearly communicate the plan and give them a reason to follow you. Adding photos or gifs to your content increases interaction such as sharing, liking, commenting, and purchasing.

Share social media content on a consistent schedule. If you plan to share your blog post on Mondays, share it every Monday! Automated scheduling tools allow sharing even when you’re on vacation, traveling, or in meetings.

Ensure you engage with your audience through comments, social sharing buttons, and connections

Make it easy for your audience to add comments, share your content, and connect with you. If someone leaves a positive comment, give thanks. See if you can get them to write a full customer review. Share the review with the rest of your social media following. If it’s a negative comment, respond appropriately and take action.

Be human, not robotic, and develop social media relationships. Don’t be afraid to ask for social proof or reviews. Social proof and product reviews are a powerful marketing tool!

Schedule time to interact with your audience

You have limited time and resources. Schedule 15-30 minutes a day to respond to comments, answer questions, and give thanks. We’ve also only established 3-4 social media profiles. You should be able to engage on all sites if you keep up with it daily.

Once you scale and grow, you can hire people to manage your social communities. Until then, start small, remain focused on a few objectives, and have fun!

I hope this post helped. As always, I welcome feedback and comments. If relevant, please share it with your friends and network. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Stewart Swayze

Effective Email Marketing in 7 Steps

Effective Email Marketing in 7 Steps

It’s time to develop an email marketing strategy. Combining social media and email marketing allows you to add a personal touch. The combination will enables you to offer value, products, & services in both locations. I’ve listed 2 email service providers below. 

• MailChimp

• Constant Contact

• Drip

1. Showcase your personality

Use your email service to automate sharing original and curated content with your contacts. You want to establish yourself as a content creator and 3rd party filter for your audience.

Provide value via regular emails containing your blog or a more formal newsletter. You can use email templates, add your content, and schedule the release.

When you publish a new blog post, add it to your email marketing and/or newsletter campaign. Always include a link back to the post on your website. Add a short descriptive “teaser” sentence and the title of the blog to increase clicks back to the post.

But, most importantly, show some personality! Make your emails an extension of you.

2. Encourage engagement from your audience

Ask questions. Link to your blog ask for comments on your on your website. Determine a consistent email or newsletter frequency. I’d recommending emailing at least once a week.

3. Provide email social sharing buttons

Include social sharing buttons within your emails. Add a footer with an opt-in to your newsletter or ability to download exclusive content. If you provide exclusive content to your email contacts, your audience will look forward reading your emails.  

4. Your audience is your friend. Personalize your emails and build trust

Skip the generics. Write your emails as if you are speaking to one person, based on your ideal customer profile. Your email contacts are people you respect. Your audience is a friend and you want to help them.

Develop trust with your audience. Provide a clear opt-out option. Don’t be sneaky with your sales pitch. Be upfront when you are selling them something.

Show empathy and compassion for their challenge. If you provide value and build trust, selling them will be much easier.

5. Spend time developing good subject lines; there are tools that can help

Craft subject lines that reveal exactly what your audience will learn if they read your email. Numbers and text that provoke emotion work well.

• Free Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule

• Free Social Sharing Link Builder from Ryan Solutions

You can also read this post from Digital Marketer.

6. Keep your emails short

Keep your emails short, sweet, and to the point. Don’t send a novel. Make the text scannable. Break up your content, provide short subheadings and images. This helps guide your audience through the email. Your audience is busy … make it easy for them read.

• Free Copy Analyzer to from Hemingway Editor to analyze & simplify your message (this thing is awesome!)

7. Know your metrics

Most email marketing services like MailChimp offer reports and analysis. Look for trends. What’s working, what’s not working, and adjust to the data. There will be patterns, try to understand those patterns to develop and improve better campaigns. 

Your email marketing technique will take some time to develop. Start out by using templates from your email-marketing provider.

Edit your text via the Hemingway Editor, and write catchy subject lines. Always provide value to your customers and gain feedback. If you use these tools, you’ll be well on your way to a great email marketing system.

I hope this post helped. As always, I welcome feedback and comments. If relevant, please share it with your friends and network. Looking forward to hearing from you.

 Stewart

A Small Business Owner's Guide to Content Curation

What Is Content Curation?

Content curation is the process of finding and providing 3rd party content to help with your small business marketing strategy. You, the “curator”, find the best and most trusted content from sources on the Internet. Then, you share it with your followers on social media platforms or via email marketing. 

Why Is Content Curation Important to a Small Business Owner? 

First, as a Small Business Owner, you might not have a marketing department full of content creators. Typically, you ARE the marketing department. To have a well-rounded Content Strategy, you need to use Content Curation.

Curating content reduces your workload. You can provide value to your audience without spending hours generating 100s of blogs. 

Second, content curation helps build your Brand. As a content curator, you become the filter and expert resource on specific topics or themes that add value to your prospects and customers.

You find content, read the content, and write a few short insights on why it’s relevant to your followers. Then, share it with them. By providing small and relevant insights on the curated content, you can build brand authority over time. 

Third, you learn! By curating and reading the content, you stay abreast of all the trends, topics, tools, and news within your area(s) of expertise. It’s a win/win scenario. You learn, and your audience learns. 

Fourth, it breaks up your sell, sell, sell strategy. People are tired of getting slammed by sales pitches all day. If you over-promote, your audience will unfollow you, ignore your emails, and stop visiting your site. 

Where Can You Share Curated Content?  

Content Round-Up Blog Posts – Pick a theme relevant to your audience. Let’s use “Email Marketing.” Now, find five good, but different articles on Email Marketing. Read each article. Write a short paragraph summarizing the article with your twist on the key insights. Hyperlink the articles and provide the correct attributions.

Boom, now you have a value-add blog post that you can share with your audience on social media as well.  

Weekly Email Newsletter – Just like the Round-Up Blog Post, first find relevant content. Then, organize the content within your newsletter. Next, provide context or your insights. Last, send it off to your email list. You can include curated content alongside your content. Or, you can send this as a separate Content Round-Up email. The option you choose is up to you.

(Note: Your “theme” doesn’t have to be as narrow as “Email Marketing.” Just make sure to organize the curated content around a topic and not a random slathering of unrelated articles.) 

Social Media – Of course, you’re going to share curated content on your social media platforms. Social Media is the obvious one! As you curate the content, share it with your social media followers. Don’t forget to add your insights as well. One more thing, highly consider tagging the author or company in your post.

What Tools Can Help Me Curate Content? 

• Pocket:Install Pocket’s browser extension and app for easy curation. As you read an article, save and tag (categorize) it for future sharing..

• Twitter Lists: Twitter can be horrendous. Create Twitter Lists to organize the accounts that you follow. By using Twitter lists, you can save or retweet great content provided by those you follow.

• Scoop.it: Select a topic and Scoop.it not only generates the most relevant articles to view and share, but also includes complementary topics and other Scoop.it users to follow

• Feedly: Use Feedly's free option to aggregate news and articles to share with your audience on social media or email.

• ContentGems: ContentGems scans hundreds of thousands of articles from the best online sources and presents a stream of relevant content

Now that you have the basics of content curation down, get out there and start sharing awesome content! 

Pricing Strategy for Small Business

Setting rates is a personal decision, but I’ll provide insights into my process

 If you google “what’s the average rate of an ABC123 you'll find all sorts of recommendations and information. Determining your rate can be extremely difficult. It's a gigantic “depends burger” with a side of fries (the market) and a shake (your competitors).

You'll have to sort through the plethora of information, test, and decide what the market will accept. You’ll have to look at your knowledge, skills, experience, and unique selling proposition. You’ll need to find comparable competitors to analyze. When I started, I spent hours researching rates specific to consulting.

Then, rates specific to sub-categories of consulting. Next, I spent more time adding in factors such as my education, experience level, and all that jazz. Finally, I built an Excel with segmented rate and financial models. None of it held up. The depends burger strikes again.

For me, my rates as a Coach and Consultant are different. However, I've gone through a lot of trail, error, and analysis to come up with my rates. The exercise below will help you determine the rates that are appropriate for you. 

At first, you might think the next few pages are more personal finance advice versus a pricing strategy. You are correct! Personal finance plays a central role in setting your rates. Stay with me. It will make sense in the end. Let’s cut to the chase and try to simplify this process a bit. 

I’m going to provide an illustrative example. The math is NOT intended to be perfect. Instead, it’s designed to help you think through your rate-setting process from a holistic perspective.

 High-level steps to determine rates

1) Determine how much you NEED to make in a year to survive

2) Add a small, but "wants" amount (vacations, entertainment, dining out, new furniture, personal electronics, etc.) 

3) How much for your contingency "oh crap" fund? 

4) How much do you want to add to your savings and retirement accounts?

5) Add a tax estimate on top of that. I use a conservative number of 30%

Let’s use an illustrative example with round numbers to see where we stand: 

1) NEEDS: Rent/Mortgage, Clothes, Utilities, Food, Car Payment, Credit Card Payments, Student Loans, Healthcare, and any other needs = $120,000 / year

2) Wants ($7500): $120K + $7.5K = $127,5003) Contingency ($7500): $127.5K + $7.5K = $135,000

4) Savings & Retirement ($10,000): $135 + $10K = $145,000

5) Tax Estimate (30%): 30% of $145K = $43.5K; $145K + $43.5K = $188,500

Again, let’s keep it simple and round up to $200,000. You’ll understand why I added another $11,500 in a second. 

 How does this illustrative calculation help you? 

Now, you have a goal that you can use to determine your rates. “Whoa, wait! I’ll have to generate $200K in revenue to cover what you need, savings, contingency, wants, and taxes … Yes. This example isn’t to scare you. Instead, it’s to make sure you think through and plan for the reality! Now let’s talk about that extra $11,500. 

 We are missing something in this pricing strategy

The amount could be large or small about depending on your business. Within the 5-step process, we didn’t calculate your startup or operating expense. Enter the extra $11,500. I have no way of determining your startup, monthly, or yearly operating expenses. Keep them as low as possible. $11,500 could be extremely high. You’ll have to estimate and factor those expenses into your rates at some point. For now, let’s use extra $11.5K as your startup and operating expenses and keep the overall revenue goal of $200K to continue the example.

How do we translate our above calculations into rates?

If we need and want to generate $200K in revenue, we can determine our “desired” rate. If you do a little research, you’ll find there are approximately 260 working days in a year. Now let’s do some calculations:

•    $200,000 / 260 = $769 dollars per day

•    $769 dollars per day / 8 hours = $96 dollars per hour 

Great! So, if your goal is to generate $200K in revenue, you just calculated your rate. Your rate is approximately $100 per hour.  

Sorry to do this again, but wait, this is an illustrative example. More than likely, you won’t have 40 hours of work every single week of the year. So, you’ll need to mitigate the potential for a variable workload. To do this, consider increasing your rate to $150 — $200 per hour. 

What if you plan on charging a per project or flat fee rate? How do you calculate that rate? We’ll discuss that next. 

Wait, I don’t charge per hour. I provide a flat rate per project

Hmmm…this might be true. But, if you aren’t calculating hours within your flat rates, you could be charging too much or too little. When I charge on a per project basis, I estimate how many hours the project will take. Then, I multiply the number of hours by my hourly rate. This calculation provides me with an estimate for my flat rate. 

Example: 30 hours to complete Project A. Hourly Rate of $200. Flat fee rate of $6,000. 

At this point, I may add or subtract from that number. Here comes the depends burger again. If it’s a new client with the potential for on-going projects, I might reduce my project rate. If it’s a rush project, I might increase my rate. There are other factors to think through as well. Will the “market” accept your rate? Or, is closest comparable competition charging less or more?  

Where do people make the biggest mistake? 

Let me be frank and excuse my language a bit. You WILL get kicked in the butt if you don’t KNOW your NEEDS and set aside money for taxes. You’ll be rolling along, having a great year, thinking, “Damn, I made $120K this year! Freaking amazing. I’ve covered all my needs.” 

Then, boom! It’s tax season. You needed $120K. You made $120K. But wait, you forgot about taxes. “I owe what in taxes? Oh crap! I’m short. My cash flow is crushed. My bank account is sunk. Mom, dad, friend, brother, sister … can I borrow some money?” 

Your mistake, you generated a “pre-tax” gross revenue of $120K. THIS IS NOT NET INCOME! If you don’t plan, set up your accounts, and automatically set aside part of your revenue for taxes, this can literally put you out of business. Done and dusted. 

This happens all the time when someone switches from a position within a corporate environment over to solopreneurship. When you’re working for a company, your taxes, retirement, healthcare, and everything else is automatically deducted from your paycheck. It just happens. You don’t do a thing. You know your take-home pay and budget based on Net Income. 

Now you’re in charge, and it’s a whole new ballgame. Don’t make this mistake. Talk with your financial advisor and accountant. Set up a bank account that, if possible, automatically transfer a certain percentage, for taxes, into a separate account. 

The moment revenue drops into your business account, transfer funds into separate accounts for taxes, savings, retirement, etc.

This article is an excerpt from my Free Guide: “Going Solo – An Introductory Guide to Service Based ‘Solopreneurship.” If you found value in this article, feel free to download the guide here. It provides a ton of information on the fundamentals of starting and marketing your business.  

Simple SEO Tricks

So, you're a small business owner. Or, you're an early-stage startup with some traction. You might be asking yourself, does search engine optimization (SEO) matter for me? The answer is YES! It does. 

You can't ignore SEO.

Plus, the earlier you build SEO into your standard operating procedure, the better. SEO comes in two different forms - on-page and off-page. On-Page SEO is your website, coding, and content. Off-page SEO links back to your website from your social media, reviews, etc. To help with your SEO strategy, you'll need to tackle both. 

I'm not going to get super complicated and technical. When we're just starting out, simple is best. As we scale, we can add more complicated SEO techniques.

Keywords within your content and website are one of the easiest and most important aspects of SEO

Take a little time to research keywords or key phrase development (long-tail keywords). Proper SEO can ensure your company appears on the first page of Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

Use high-ranking keywords specific to your industry, topic, website, etc.

The keywords you choose depend on your customer's challenge, audience, strategy, etc. Put yourself in their shoes, what would you search for on Google? The unaware population will search based on the problem, not a specific product. 

Research and use keywords that rank highest around the problem you are trying to solve. There are plenty of free tools to find keywords. There are plenty of free keyword tools. I'll list a few below:

• KW Finder - https://kwfinder.com/

• Google Trends – https://www.google.com/trends/

• Ubersuggest – https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/

Don’t overcomplicate keywords

When you’re starting out, don’t overcomplicate your keyword usage. Find a relevant set of keywords. Add them to your website, blogs, and content - on-page. Continue to refer to this set of keywords as you develop new content or update your website.

Start a blog and produce high-value content

As we’ve touched on before, content is king! Blogging with high-value content is essential to SEO. Use keywords in the body, titles, headlines, and subheadings. Share your content on social media (off-page).

Search engines crawl your website and the contained content. They determine if the information is useful. Create original content that answers questions your audience types in search engines. Ensure that you create content on a regular basis.

Use SEO Website Tools

Use free website analysis and content performance tools. The free version of the Varvy SEO Tool provides website and content performance information. It will also list the domains linking back to recent social media mentions.

Sign up for Google Analytics and create custom reports. You can choose many different variables and metrics.

SEOCentro SEO Analyzer is a tool that analyzes:

• Social media ranking

• Site usability

• Online reputation

• Meta tags

• Site speed

It even gives information on top performing keywords.

Link the content within your site (on-page) and back to your site (off-page)

Your content might reference items located in other content within your site. Use hyperlinks to connect the two pieces of content. Remember to promote your content on social media. Always provide links back to the content on your website. This helps SEO, promotes traffic back to your site, and increases your authority rankings. If you’ve heard the term “backlink,” now you know what it is.

Use the free version of Moz Link Explorer. This tool helps tracking links coming back to your pages - https://moz.com/link-explorer.

Consider using free PR Services

You might be thinking that PR doesn’t exactly sound like SEO strategy. Think about it. Your press release will spread across the World Wide Web and shared on social media. It will contain keywords and links back to your site. This creates buzz, awareness, and traffic! SEO heaven.

If you are a local or more regional business, you’ll want to create local business pages

You’ll need to create local business pages. Plus, claim your business on Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Google, Yellow Pages (YP), etc. In SEO world, this is called local citations. When someone types a search for Dog Sitter Springfield, MA ... your business comes up. You can read more about this on Moz Local.

Provide complete and accurate information on each page

Ensure your contact information complete and the same across each business page. Your phone number, hours, address, website, etc. Add several photos of your location. Chose the correct business category. You can select more than one category if applicable. I’ve listed a few tools below that will help you find and claim your business on various local sites.

https://moz.com/local/search - Moz uses data to score your business

Ask for customer reviews. Don’t be scared, just do it!

Social proof goes a long way. Ask for customer reviews on TripAdvisor, Yelp, Foursquare, etc. Search Engines look for customer reviews. Not only will this help with SEO, but also with increasing local traffic. 

If you are hyper-local or hyper-regional, use long-tail keywords that include your location

Ensure you have local or regional keywords within your content. This will help search engines associate your business with your exact location. Example: You are a photographer in Austin, TX. You scatter "photographer Austin, TX throughout your content. When someone types “Photographer Austin, TX” into Google, you have a higher likelihood showing up in the first page results.

Focus on these few SEO tips in the beginning. They are easy to do and free. As you grow, consider hiring an employee responsible for SEO or third party provider. 

I hope this post helped. As always, I welcome feedback and comments. If relevant, please share it with your friends and network. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Stewart

How to Create Multiple Revenue Streams for Your Small Business

Creating Digital Products for Small Business Owners

As a Small Business Owner, growing revenue strictly from providing services is flat out tough! 

You have limited time and resources. Maybe you have a few contractors or employees, but:

• You can only increase your rates so much before you’re priced outside the market and start losing clients

• You can only take on a certain number of clients before you have ZERO time to work ON your business or live your life

• Or, maybe you just want to MAKE MORE money!

How do you solve for this challenge?

Creating Digital Products.

 Look, if you’re already solving a problem for clients, big or small, then you know there are people out there happy to pay you for it. 

 With digital products, you develop new revenue streams that you can up-sell, down-sell, cross-sell, and increase the life-time value of a client.

You can add the digital products to your established services. You can use your digital products as a loss leader. Now, you’re not only your original services, but also selling digital products. 

Once you build a digital product, you can go to sleep and wake up with more money in your bank account. Without lifting a finger.

Shoot, you can even go on Upwork and hire someone to build your digital product for you (at low cost).

Your digital products can take on many different forms. You know what works best for you and your clients and your life.

 You are the author of your business. Create digital products that grow your revenue and compliment your current services.

DOWNLOAD your guide to 9 PRODUCTS TO GENERATE MULTIPLE REVENUE STREAMS for your small business. 

WANT TO ATTRACT MORE CUSTOMERS FROM YOUR MARKETING:

• Click here: Services

SAY HELLO ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

What is Market Intelligence?

What is Market Intelligence? Let’s keep this quick and easy, outline style! If you can fill in the information from this outline, you’ll have a tremendous amount of Market Intelligence. I’ve also provided links to relevant articles that I’ve written.

Customers

• Voice of Customer (Read More)

• Purchasing Habits

• Preferences

• Needs

• Challenges

• Demographics & Psychographics (Customer Personas)

• Answer to: Why are they buying your products / services, etc.

Prospects

• Voice of Prospects (Read More)

• Purchasing Habits

• Preferences

• Needs, Challenges

• Demographics & Psychographics (Customer Personas)

• Answer to: Why aren’t they buying your products / services etc.

Competitive Intelligence (Read More - Using Open Source Intelligence to Analyze the Competition)

• Who are your top competitors?

• Communications Intelligence - gathering and analyzing publicly available marketing, communications, and sales resources

• Technical Intelligence - gathering and analyzing of publicly available technical and product information

• Financial Intelligence - information gathered from analysis of publicly available financial history

• Human Intelligence - gathered from a person on the ground (sales, field marketing, etc)

Risk – A Simple PEST analysis should help

• Political – Risk that political decisions, events, or conditions will impact the profitability of a business or value of an economic action

• Economic – Risk that macroeconomic conditions such as exchange rates, government regulation, or political stability will impact an investment or business entity

• Social - demographic and cultural aspects of the company's market

• Technological - technology issues that impact delivery of product or service to the market

Product

• Pricing

• Promotion

• Cost structures

• Features, Benefits, & Outcomes (Read More: How to develop brilliant customer centric outcomes)

• Channels

• Supply Chain

 Market

• Product Market Fit (Read More: How do you test and determine product market fit)

• Partners, Influencers, Distributors, etc

• Total Available Market (TAM)

• Serviceable Available Market (SAS)

• Un-addressable Market(UAM)

• Trends & Forecasts

• Segmentation & Targeting (Read More: Want to know how to uncover your own golden $3B segment?

I'm also running a "You ask, I'll Answer" campaign. So if you have any questions on Marketing, Sales, or Strategy, let me know. You can shoot me an email at stewart@stewartswayze.com

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to tag me in a comment or connect with me via social media.

Stewart Swayze

Questions about marketing, sales, or strategy? I'll answer.

Photograph by Grant Sweetwood Photography

I enjoy writing. I also enjoy challenges. I want to engage with you, answer your questions, and have conversations.

What would you like me to write about? What questions do you have on marketing, sales, or strategy? Submit your questions in the comments of this post or via email: stewart@stewartswayze.com

I’ll read through the submissions and pick questions to write about. Leave me your twitter handle as well. When I answer, I’ll tag you in the tweet.

I look forward to hearing from you. 

You Ask, I'll Answer: How do you determine & test product market fit?

Photo by Grant Sweetwood Photography

This question came in pretty quickly via email. I’m up late writing this post (1:15am when I'm writing this), so you can see I’m very excited about it. Thanks David!

First, I’m going to propose a few questions and provide some thoughts on determining if you’ve reached product market fit. Second, I’ll provide some ideas on how to test.

Please remember, there’s a reason why we have new iPhones 1-2 times per year and constant software updates. Apple is testing product market fit. The software and hardware iterations are tests. These tests provide feedback. The feedback provides data. The data allows Apple to innovate and adapt to the market … Kind of scary, but reaching product market fit isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. You have to constantly adapt to the market and competition. Test, iterate, preserve, pivot, test, iterate, etc.

Lack of sales, lack of or mixed feedback is … feedback. You just have to listen to it. Dig deep. Talk to your customers and prospects. Get them to reveal what you need to know.

On a side note … one of the best ways to do this is via awkward silence. Ask a question, have them answer, then sit in awkward silence. Most humans hate awkward silence. Most humans will break the awkward silence and a lot of times reveal what they are really thinking.

Yes, it takes time to reach that sales hockey stick, but there are early indicators that you haven’t reached product market fit.

Question: What would your customers say if you asked them to describe your product? Could they tell you the features and benefits? Could they provide you with accurate outcomes on how it will quantitatively help them? Ask them what they are willing to give up (cost, data, time, etc) to use this product?

Thought: Find a small business owner that handles credit card transactions. Hand that business owner a product from Square – The Credit Card Processing system. Ask this business owner to answer the questions above.  Could they do it?

Question: If you are wondering if you have reached product market fit, aren’t you answering your question? (Adapted from Erie Reis).

Thought: There is a reason why you are questioning if you’ve reached product market fit. Maybe it’s not selling well. Maybe you’ve received mixed customer & prospect feedback.  They think it’s cool. It might work, sounds interesting, and is very innovative. Yet, only limited numbers are purchasing.

Question: If you’ve launched and promoted your product, are your customers & prospects calling to discuss more? Or is it just the press or tech enthusiasts?

Thought: Think about the lines when a new iPhone comes out. That’s a little extreme, but it serves as an example.  If you’ve had a well-planned launch and marketed it properly, is anyone calling? Even just to find out more information? If your customers, prospects, press, and techies are calling … you’ve probably reached market fit. If it’s just the press and techies, but no customers or prospects, then you might want to re-visit your product. Or, are you still “pushing” information down your prospects throats only to find they don’t have the best gag reflex?

Question (if applicable): Is it an easy sell to your own company? Is your own company using it? Are they readily adopting the product and it’s producing great results? Or, are they forced to use it? 

Thought: There are cases when companies build products that could be used within their own organization. Yet, they don’t use them. This can happen for various reasons. But, it could be a leading indicator that you don’t have product market fit.

Question: Are the customers that purchased your product willing to become product evangelists? Sure, some customers want data privacy and confidentiality. Yet, they can still provide you generic recommendations. Maybe even voice of customer, anonymized case studies, or other social proof. 

Thought: Again, there could be a lot of reasons for customers not publicly going on record for your product. Try to dig into the root cause. Determine if it’s confidentiality or if the product isn’t up to expectations. If it’s not at expectations, this could be preventing them from recommending it.

How do you test product market fit?

1. Surveys: Well duh, right? But, are you asking the right questions? Think of these surveys like an NPS. Keeping it simple, I’ll provide 3 questions below.

a. How likely are you to recommend this product to a colleague? (adapt the term colleague to the right audience, Ex. Another business owner)

 i. Sliding Scale 1 – 10

ii. Provide area for commentary – Ask why?

b. How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?

i. Very Disappointed, Slightly Disappointed, Not Disappointed (it’s not useful), & I no longer use this product

ii. Provide area for commentary – Ask why?

c. What type of impact is this product having on your organization?

i. Very Positive, Somewhat Positive, No Change, Somewhat Negative, Very Negative

ii. Provide area for commentary – Ask why?

2.    Ask for customer testimonials

a. Social proof is a sign of product marketing fit

b. Will your customers go on record and recommend it? That’s a test

3. Give it away for free! (Kind of…): If your product provides a financial benefit, give it to a TBD number for free, then share the financial benefit (Basically, set up performance contract pricing with a test group of customers)

a. If you are stating your product will reduce costs, then benchmark your customer or prospects current costs

b. Then find an agreeable value for them to pay you in based on the % reduction in costs

c. If your product will increase revenues, repeat the above but with a split in increase revenues

I’m open to feedback and more questions on this subject. This is one of the hardest questions to answer for startups and new product launches. There are many thoughts, theories, and experts chiming in on the Product Market Fit discussion.  I hope I’ve at least provoked thought, if I didn’t fully answer the question.

Thanks again for the question. I'd enjoy answering more. 

Stewart

Want to know how to uncover your own golden $3B segment?

Want to know how to uncover your own golden $3B segment?

Have you ever conducted a full-scale Customer Profitability Analysis?

I’m not talking about simple revenues or contribution margins by customer. I mean a full-scale analysis that includes “Cost to Serve.” This analysis will determine the full profitably for each customer. Many times we push this report onto the accounting or finance departments. I wholeheartedly disagree with that. Your marketing team should conduct it. A Customer Profitably Analysis is one tough cookie to complete, but it will be worth every effort.

I once led a team working on a giant Customer Profitability Analysis. First, we had to gather and clean detailed data from 4 different databases. These databases spanned across finance, sales, operations, and marketing. Each department tracked unique customer information and called the same data something different. Next, we had to normalize or harmonize the data into one large excel. Last, we had to analyze the data to present a clear picture of customer profitability. You want to have an excel that you can manipulate and view data from all different angles. Once we completed this process, the Customer Profitability Analysis was a treasure-trove of information.  

Why should your marketing department conduct the Customer Profitability Analysis? 

They will uncover more information than just profitability. I’m willing to bet once you’ve completed the analysis; your previously defined value props, customer personas, market sizing, and segmentation will all change. In fact, they will improve. The marketing department will find more “ah-ha’s” in this analysis than any other piece of market information. 

You might think your most significant or key accounts are your most profitable. I’ll challenge that assumption. They’ll bring in the most revenue, but won’t be the most profitable. You might also think your smallest accounts would be least profitable. Again, I challenge that assumption. Once you determine your cost to serve and full customer profitability, a lot of assumptions will fall apart. 

You’ll find new opportunities and alternative ways to serve your customers

If you conduct an in-depth analysis like this one, you’ll be able to find new opportunities. Plus, identify alternative ways to serve your customers and cut wasteful spending. In fact, from the analysis my team conducted, we identified a new $3B segment. The segment was sitting there right in front of everyone for years. You are probably asking yourself, “How can a $3B segment be overlooked?” Great question. All eyes were on the traditional and significant revenue streams. The group we were consulting missed the combined mass of smaller, non-traditional revenue streams. It only too minor tweaks to capture these customers. 

The other important factor, they could capture this market through less costly sales channels. They already had the skeleton for inside sales team and e-commerce. We recommended a small tweak to the current portfolio, a few marketing materials, some messaging, and bam, market activation.

Here’s the not so fun part

As I mentioned above, your company will have it’s own way of collecting, storing, and analyzing customer information. You'll find it spread across different departments and databases. As you start pulling together the data from each department, you’ll find discrepancies.  Don’t dismiss these as just a data quality or data input issues. Find the root cause. Search for the workarounds.

Challenge your team to ask, “why?” Why are we tracking it this way and is there a better solution? Why aren’t these departments working together? Why are there workarounds? What you’ll find are gaps and workarounds that are causing two major problems. One, your organizational nightmare is negatively impacting your customers. Two, this nightmare is raising your internal costs to serve your customers.  

Add Voice of Customer to your analysis

I’d also recommend conducting Voice of Customer (VOC). Conduct VOC once your marketing team develops an in-depth understanding of the quantitative numbers. Launch your VOC campaign as you move into the qualitative demographics/psychographics. Sure, conduct an NPS study, but also call a decent sized sample of customers and prospects. You should include old customers that you may have lost and disgruntled ones too. VOC will only add another layer of data to your analysis. 

Define goals outside of understanding profitability 

Yes, the primary goal is to determine customer profitability. Through centralizing customer data into one place, I guarantee you’ll find your golden nuggets. Enough to make this problematic analysis worthwhile.  I’ll list a few goals below to challenge your team to answer by the end of this analysis. 

Customer Profitability

• Are your Key Accounts your most profitable?
• Can you reduce your “cost to serve” through adjusting your channels?
• Can you identify new Cross-sell and Up-sell opportunities?
• Segmentation & Targeting
• Can you identify any new segments?
• Are you targeting the right customers & prospects?
• Can you serve a “prospect” segment through lower cost channel?

Customer Personas

• By analyzing the data, did your customer personas change?
• Do you need to adjust your value prop(s)?
• Look-Alike ProspectsCan you identify prospects that are currently considered low on your list with attributes that look-alike current profitable customers?

Customer Satisfaction

• How can we improve customer satisfaction through cross-functional alignment?  (Sales, marketing, finance, and operations teams)

Work with a cross-functional team to develop the strategy and tactics needed to increase profitability.  Go out and capture the newly identified opportunities.

Have you ever uncovered a golden nugget through a profitability analysis? I’d like to hear from you. 

Stewart Swayze  

Creating Customer Personas To Beat Your Competition

Customer Personas

Consider your resource restrictions and requirements

First, you have limitations to consider when defining your target customer. Don’t try and service the entire market if you are just starting out. Find a solid niche. Prepare to target and serve them well. If you succeed in a niche, you can expand into larger markets with more offerings at a later date.  

Growing your customer base beyond your capabilities sounds like an awesome scenario. Your company and product are so damn good that you have too many customers. I wouldn’t want to stop or slow anyone down from growth. However, there’s a fine line here. If you cannot serve your customers, they will likely leave or the competition will swoop in to save the day. Also, if your product cannot handle the load, it may crash. You can do some early testing and forecasting to help prepare for future growth.

Beat your competition by developing your customer personas from an alternative perspective

The more unique a persona, the easier it will be to differentiate yourself from the competition. Your competition might define customers using demographical information. If this is the case, create a customer persona based on psychographic data.

For example:

Competition’s Persona with demographic driver - Millennials, based in NYC or the Bay Area, working in the tech industry, highly educated, w/ high disposable income. 

Your Persona with psychographic driver - Individual contributors and managers in high tech, that enjoy autonomy, value personal growth, have limited time, but use e-based offerings to continue their education and learning. 

Look at your customer’s behaviors, values, & beliefs. Where do they purchase (Channels)? When do they purchase (Seasonal, Quarterly, Inspirationally)?

Who are they (Managers, CEOs, Mothers, Fathers, etc.)?

Create Customer Personas from your Customer / Market Challenge, Competitive Analysis, Voice of Customer, and any other data

You will tailor content based on your customer persona and position within the marketing funnel. We’ll discuss content strategy in a later post.

To create a customer persona, fill in the information below. 

• Background – General Background information

• Demographics – Age, Sex, Location, etc

• Psychographics – Behaviors, Beliefs, Level of Organization, etc.

• Pain Points/Challenges – What are the pain points and challenges they are experiencing?

• Goals and Objectives – What are their G&O’s? How will they use or consume your offering?

• Needs, Wants, Desires – Based on your VOC, what are their needs, wants, and desires?

• Quotes – During your VOC, did you capture any good quotes? Do they fit a potential persona? Or, can you create a descriptive quote that generalizes the persona?

• Product - In general, describe how your offering will help the persona

• Outcomes – What is the measurable result a customer will experience when they purchase?

• Marketing Message – Take your description from above and turn it into marketing messages. More formal and a bit longer than the description of how your product will help. How would you describe your product, service, or offering to your target customer?

• Elevator Pitch – What’s your 30-second elevator pitch to get in the door?

• Common Objections – Brainstorm, list out any common objections and how to overcome them. If you don’t have any yet, try to find a few you think might come up. As you gain more information, fill this out. Begin creating FAQs with answers.

Create a descriptive name and share each Customer Persona

Create a name for the persona. Add a profile picture that helps visualize each Customer Persona. Share each Customer Persona with a small, but cross-functional set of colleagues. If you are just starting a company, share these personas with friends, family, or a mentor.

Gather feedback and refine your Customer Personas

Once you’ve shared your Customer Personas, ask for feedback. Determine if you need to refine anything. Try not to overcomplicate the process. Prioritize the feedback and only refine as required. 

Stewart