So, what is a business plan? Sounds fun, but that’s the plan of your business. And it helps you to grow. Yep, sure, not only the plan can help you, but every step is important, and let it be the first. 

What is a Business Plan

A business plan is a document that changes shape as your business develops, grows, changes, and improves. Don’t forget to check it from time to time several times a year and correct it according to the shifts of your business. Even the best plan in the world needs some changes in a long distance. Generally speaking, most business plans are about 20 pages long. You don’t need to write a scientific work, it just needs structure and content. 

First of all, your business plan should contain your objectives. Saying about your aims is one of the most important past. Any idea is nothing without showing it to the world. If you show this document to somebody, it will be paid more attention than other pages. 

Describe everything that you are going to do, step by step. Mention every way and method that can be used for your target. If we have certain points, it’ll be easier to follow them and as a result, get a good final. 

The next part of the plan should contain major information about the market where your company will realize this business plan. Show how much you know about the industry and how it would apply to the future. List potential growth and areas of your business that could be hard and would look like a problem. It could help to solve a lot of problems before you get into it. For example, if we know that any part of this industry is not very secure, we can mention it and pay special attention to it in the future. Trust me, it’s easier to kill the trouble before it appears than when it follows you day and night in your nightmares.

Also, you can analyze your potential audience and make some predictions: will they stay with you at any time or should we think about new horizons faster? Estimate how many customers we can lose and mention it in the plan. In short, show that your business will bring profit in any case. 

Don’t forget about your competitors. Pay attention to the main questions about them. Who are they? Why do people choose them? Where do we compete with these companies and how do we share the market? Do they have weak sides? Strong sides? How can we use their weakness to reach profit?  Also, compare your strong and weak sides to figure out, where you can use it like some leverage. It’s a good part of the plan to show which points make us different from our competitors and how can we use them in the future. If you work with it well, it can be a perfect “plan for attack”. 

During searching for weaknesses of competitors, don’t forget about your own. For example, you have fewer units of product, but the quality is better in comparison with other participants of the market. Or you are not very good at PR that will create some troubles with communication. If you know your problems, you can sort out them and get profit. Profit, profit, profit. This word will be mentioned thousands of times! 

Useful Tips

In your business plan, you can detail most of the solutions. For example, you can explain that you’ll spend more money on marketing because the market is overloaded. And the only one decision is to make some noise around your product. A good and successful company should constantly have prospects in the pipeline. 

The next step is that you need to explain, what type of corporates are yours? Is it a C, S, or LLC? Or, do you have a general or limited partnership? If there are multiple owners, list them here and give some information about each owner’s background and role in the company. It would show the plan’s viewers more information about people who are responsible for future company deals. Make a list with your employees and describe their responsibilities. If you plan to increase the number of people working on your project, mention it and don’t forget about wasting money on it. 

Describe the place where is your team working. If you don’t have a physical place and prefer to outsource — pay attention to it. Sometimes physical coworking is important for some projects, ‘cause people need to communicate a lot in real life to reach the result. List wasting of money for the office and don’t forget to include there everything. From rent to everything which needs you to tun the office. These numbers will appear in the reports of profit and loss. 

If you plan to make more than firstly thought, write about it. For example, if you plan to make your company wider and capture some aspects from related sectors. Describe your sales strategy and mention goods that will be available to your clients. Maybe call-center 24/7 or personal manager, or contact center software? Maybe insurance and support of the layer? Do you work at the weekend?  Feel free, but don’t forget to write it. 

Marketing is one of the most important things in the modern world. And sometimes good marketing can save an awful product. But we don’t speak about marketing qualities here. Just think about marketing ways in your case. Website, business cards, logo. List everything that you have or even plan to create. 

How do you plan to increase the number of clients? What’s your target market? Describe your marketing strategy (direct mail, social media, blogging, email marketing, print or radio advertising, etcetera). Will you be doing your own digital marketing or buying insurance leads?

Let’s talk about sales, one of the major aims of every business and company. What is your sales strategy? Why it could be more useful than competitors’ strategies? What’s your advantage? Will you hire special people for sales or have you got “local” employees for this task? How will you grow the audience on different targets? For example, if we start from the CIS region and have great plans for Europe, we need to share in detail our strategy for new sales. Also if you want to buy leads instead of getting them from advertising, mention it. 

And the last, but one of the most important parts of the plan is your balance, especially if you are using it for funding or to get assignments. Make sure the amount of money you’re requesting matches the itemized projections in your business plan.

Finally, what do we need: 

• Introduce yourself 
• Analyze market 
• Name targets
• Compare us with competitors
• Make sure that we know for what will we spend money
• Marketing
• Sales
• Balance

Wish you the best of luck and hope that your plans will always be as good as at the paper.

The post How To Create A Business Plan for Your Insurance Agency [2021] appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

As more consumers perform online research before making a purchase, it’s critical to raise brand exposure through social media. Worldwide, the average user spends more than 2 hours on social media every day and has accounts on 8 different social platforms. Despite the extensive usage of social media as a channel, getting noticed might be difficult due to the high level of competition.

What Are The Best Practices for Insurance Social Media Marketing?

Building meaningful and engaging connections with the audience is one of the main goals of any insurance social media marketing strategy. These connections are built on a foundation of trust. How can you win trust? Deliver high-quality content, think about your platform’s audiences, engage with your audience, and take advantage of online reviews.

What Should Insurance Companies Share On Social Media?

While it’s important to advertise your business on social media, it shouldn’t be your main message. Your posts on social media channels should be interesting, helpful, or educational. 

The following are some examples of high-quality social media content for any insurance company:

• Company’s policy coverage explanation;
• Important FAQs with short and simple answers;
• Types of insurances available;
• A guide on how to select insurance;
• Posts on how to save money with insurance; 
• Links to expense and investment calculators;

Which Social Media Platforms Should An Insurance Company Use? 

There are many ways to contact a potential consumer, which is why you should market your content in a variety of ways to appeal to the different audiences on each social media platform.

Here are the best social media platforms for insurance marketing.

Twitter

With more than 200 million active daily users, Twitter should be a part of your marketing strategy. Finding marketing success on Twitter, like any other social media network, needs strategic planning and dedication. At first glance, it may appear that tweeting is the only way to use Twitter. However, this is not the case. To succeed with Twitter marketing, incorporate it into your social media content strategy, use Twitter hashtags and trends, engage with your followers, schedule tweets and post regularly.

Youtube

Youtube is a must-use medium for insurance social media marketing. This is due to the fact that videos have the best engagement these days and the platform has over 2 billion monthly active users. YouTube is also the most powerful social media platform for changing customer behavior. 

People can find videos on YouTube in a variety of ways (for example, by searching on the YouTube search page, clicking suggested videos on the watch page, or choosing a video from the homepage feed). You may use YouTube to sell your product or brand more successfully to people who are looking for it.

Facebook

A Facebook account is also required for your insurance company, because advertising on Facebook is extremely effective. With over 2 billion monthly active users, you might be wondering if Facebook advertising is the best way to help your business expand. That means you can reach out to present and potential consumers, as well as others who are interested in your company or business.

One of the most appealing features of using Facebook for insurance social media marketing is the ability to share any type of content. Unlike Twitter, long posts are permitted here, Facebook encourages to share videos and photos too.

Paid Social Ads For Insurance Social Media Marketing

The best part about the three social media platforms we discussed above is that they all offer paid social ads. To find ad cabinets for each platform, check the following links:

• Facebook
• Youtube
• Twitter

Facebook 

Facebook offers a wide choice of ad possibilities. The following types of ads are available on Facebook: image ads, video ads, poll ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, collection ads, instant experience ads, lead ads, dynamic ads, messenger ads, stories and augmented reality ads.

Youtube

You can utilize numerous ad formats on YouTube depending on your goal. These ad formats are skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper ads, video discovery ads, masthead ads, and responsive display ads.

Twitter

According to the study, people spend 26% more time viewing ads on Twitter than on other leading platforms. Apart from automated ads, Twitter offers the next ad formats: promoted tweets, promoted accounts, and promoted trends. When you pay to promote tweets on Twitter, you only pay when your marketing goal is met. Whether it’s website conversions or Twitter engagement (any additional organic impressions and engagements are free bonuses). 

Social Media Posting Best Practices for Insurance Companies

Do you know that you should stick to a certain time and day when posting? Marketers discovered a link between the time you post and user engagement. When it comes to content posting, timing is everything.  

The best time to post on Facebook is 11:00 AM, 1-2 PM on Wednesdays. Sunday is the worst day to post. On Wednesdays and Fridays, 9 a.m. is the optimal time to post on Twitter. Saturday is the worst day to post.  

While it’s important to be aware of the best days and times to publish on social media, use your audience as your guide. Observe when your audience is the most receptive. If they react to posts at a different time than the statistics suggest, then post when your audience is the most responsive.

Conclusion

Insurance social media marketing is critical for businesses looking to raise brand awareness, grow their audience, and establish an online presence. Our goal is to raise understanding of various social media and tools among insurance agencies. Using the information above, create the most useful content and the best marketing cases in your industry.

The post Social Media Marketing for Insurance Agents [2021] appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

And although we are still far away from full-fledged androids on which you could “offload” the entire routine, it is possible to automate some tasks with the help of technology even now.

And the same applies to working with LinkedIn, the best social network for professionals. Whether you’re a recruiter, a CEO, or a marketing manager, you need to be on LinkedIn. After all, over the years, this platform has become one of the best tools for achieving both career and business goals.

To make the most of this social network, you need to use it not just frequently but constantly — posting content, finding new business contacts, posting job openings, researching competitors, and more. And if you want to keep up with all this and other work tasks, you should think about LinkedIn automation. And in this article, we’ve decided to look at the top 10 solutions for that. But first, let’s figure out what LinkedIn automation is.

What is LinkedIn automation?

LinkedIn automation is the use of various tools to automate the part of the work that would normally have been done manually. These include sending out messages to potential clients, requests to add new contacts, posting, etc.

And that’s exactly what all sorts of LinkedIn automation tools can help with, which we’ll talk about next.

The benefits are obvious: 

• The automation of LinkedIn allows you to publish content on this social network at a given time while increasing your audience reach.
• Connecting with customers becomes much easier and faster. Obviously, it’s impossible to keep in touch with customers 24/7, and LinkedIn automation tools are excellent for streamlining this process and making it as personalized as possible.
• Many LinkedIn automation tools can do “smart” work. For example, they can update a chat with your client before your offline meeting.

What are LinkedIn automation tools? 

All LinkedIn automation tools can be divided into three categories:

• To promote your profile on this social network
• For collecting data
• For maintaining your LinkedIn account (to publish scheduled posts automatically, increase engagement, etc.)

Now that we know everything about LinkedIn automation let’s move directly to the tools themselves.

PromoRepublic

Our first favorite, PromoRepublic, belongs to the latter category of tools.

PromoRepublic is a universal platform for working with LinkedIn and other social networks. This tool has many useful features for automating LinkedIn. You can create content and schedule its publication, track its effectiveness and get detailed analytics on it. This is a handy tool because it allows you to develop your LinkedIn profile organically. Among the most significant benefits of PromoRepublic are, for example, built-in photo stocks to create interesting publications and a library of content ideas with over 6 thousand templates ready to publish. PromoRepublic also helps optimize your content publishing, suggesting the best time to do it based on analytics for your industry. This way, you have a better chance of increasing your audience reach, as many more users will see your post in their newsfeed.

In addition, PromoRepublic is a white-label product. This means that all the reports you create (which, by the way, will be very clear and straightforward) for clients will be designed with your brand identity. 

Prices:

• Standard — $49/month
• Professional — $99/month
• Enterprise — custom pricing

Expandi

Expandi is a very handy tool for automating LinkedIn because it runs on your computer 24/7 (or at certain times depending on the parameters you set) and is extremely easy to set up. 

Among its benefits:

• Webhooks that you can use to link Expandi to your other marketing tools. You can even add Zapier to the mix to create a powerful multi-channel sales growth tool with an ultra-high degree of personalization.
• Smart Inbox. It will increase customer engagement and ensure that you never miss any chat conversation again.
• Dynamic personalization, where you can send people messages based on custom variables. 
• Security — Expandi’s developers take it seriously and give you a dedicated and local IP address that Expandi will use. 

Expandi is explicitly designed for growth hackers, agency owners, and people who manage multiple LinkedIn accounts. This tool adds a handy dashboard with the ability to switch between different accounts quickly.

Prices:

• $99/month per account 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

If you’ve been using LinkedIn for lead generation for a while now, you’ve probably had a question at some point: Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator really something worthwhile?

Now it’s time to answer it. First of all, what does this tool offer?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides the following key features:

• Advanced Lead and Company Search. You can find new contacts and companies that suit you with a well-developed search that brings up more relevant leads.
• Lead recommendations. With this feature, you can find the right people with the help of personalized recommendations.
• Advanced filtering, CRM, etc. With such features, this LinkedIn automation tool can save leads you contact, add them to your CRM, etc.

Sales Navigator could be a worthwhile option for those looking to connect to LinkedIn, populate their sales pipeline with relevant leads, and close more deals. Plus, when combined with other LinkedIn automation tools, you can get some serious results.

Prices:

• Professional — $64.99/month
• Team — $103.33/month
• Enterprise is a customized plan

Phantombuster

Phantombuster is a data extraction and social media automation tool that requires no programming. It helps companies generate leads, collect data about target audiences and automate company growth.

Phantombuster can automate most of the actions you take on the Internet, chain automatically performed actions, and many more.

This tool can work with LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Google, Twitter, and Instagram.

But we’re only interested in LinkedIn.

So let’s take a look at what Phantombuster offers for this platform.

Phantombuster is based on so-called “phantoms,” which can retrieve data and perform specific automatic actions.

Key LinkedIn features:

• Network Booster — automatically sends invitations and connects to a list of LinkedIn users.
• Profile Scraper — a feature to collect all the necessary data (name, job title, etc.) from your LinkedIn profile list.
• Message Sender — automatically sends personalized messages to first-level contacts.
• Auto Commenters/Likes — automatically interacts with specific posts of your first-level contacts and posts of other LinkedIn users.

Phantombuster offers a great variety of different LinkedIn automation features and hacks. But it’s best to use this tool with the LinkedIn automation tool of your choice.

If you are looking for new growth hacks and want to save time when collecting data from profiles, you can use Phantombuster to collect data on your prospective clients and then use the LinkedIn automation tool to connect with them.

Prices:

• Free Forever — $0 
• Growth Hacker — $30/month
• Business — $70/month
• Enterprise — $200/month
• Premium — $900/month

Dux-Soup

Dux-Soup is one of the most popular LinkedIn automation tools, allowing you to easily make contact with your potential clients and interact with them. But at the same time, Dux-Soup is an extension for Chrome. That means it is located in your browser, and for it to function, LinkedIn must always be open there in the background. Nevertheless, Dux-Soup is an extremely simple tool, with a lot of focus on supporting LinkedIn beginners.

Dux-Soup primarily focuses on basic lead generation techniques and lead networking opportunities. For example:

• Managing potential customers — leave notes and tags directly on those LinkedIn profiles that you think are your target audience and automatically contact them.
• Upload profile details — easily find LinkedIn profiles and the information in them. You can also upload profiles to your CRM so you can easily manage leads.
• Contact matching (outreach) and automation — automatically visit profiles, send personalized messages, approve first-level contact skills, and so on.

Basically, this tool will suit teams and individuals who are looking for a simple and easy-to-use LinkedIn automation tool that sits right in a web browser.

In addition, to support its users, Dux-Soup regularly publishes new guides to help users better manage their automation settings.

Unfortunately, Dux-Soup does not offer many advanced networking and security-related features.

Thus, this tool uses the principle of WYSIWYG — “what you see is what you get.” For the most part, Dux-Soup is suitable for beginners who want to start by automating their basic LinkedIn activities.

Prices:

• Starter Dux — $0/month
• Pro Dux — $11.25/month
• Turbo Dux — $41,25/month

Zopto

It is an outreach automation solution that is primarily focused on helping sales teams improve the effectiveness of their lead generation efforts.

Among Zopto’s features are:

Customer Filtering. Zopto allows filters by location, company and industry size, skill level, etc.

Interest Incentive Levels. By setting the necessary filters and selecting your TA, you can use opportunities to stimulate the interest of your potential customers — invite first-level contacts, send free InMails, etc.

Lead Management. This platform’s handy dashboard allows you to track all your leads in one place. The dashboard not only provides all the statistics and information you need, but it is also updated in real-time and which will provide you with detailed information and statistics.

Zopto is suitable for those who want to increase the efficiency of lead generation and expand their audience — especially for startups and sales departments. But to be as effective as possible with this tool, you need to understand all the intricacies of LinkedIn automation.

Prices:

• Personal — $215/month
• Grow — $395/month
• Agency — $895/month

MeetAlfred

MeetAlfred is a pretty good and handy LinkedIn automation tool that handles all the tasks of social media promotion campaigns.

This solution is great for you if you want to design LinkedIn campaigns more effectively and automate your social networking contacts.

You will find the following features in this tool:

• Campaign Manager, which allows you to create and manage LinkedIn message sequences using personalization tags.
• Alfred CRM. This feature allows you to manage your leads and first-level contacts on this social network using the built-in CRM.
• Streamline email marketing campaigns. By connecting your GSuite account, you can keep in touch with potential customers via email outside of LinkedIn as well.
• Data analytics dashboard. You’ll be able to get all the analytics and statistics on your performance in real-time.

Prices:

Essential — $29/month

Advanced — $59/month

Professional — $199/month

GrowthLead

This is a cloud-based social media branding tool that helps populate your sales pipeline with new leads while scaling your outreach.

Features of this LinkedIn automation tool include:

• Identifying and searching for leads with advanced filters.
• Outreach automation.
• Scheduling consistent messaging sessions and viewing analytics for each of your campaigns.

Like the previous LinkedIn automation tool, this one will suit those who already have a well-rounded marketing strategy in place.

Prices: 

• Basic — $67,35/month per user
• Pro — $101,61/month per user
• Advanced — $147,30/month per user
• Done-For-You — $489,85/month per user

LinkedHelper

This LinkedIn automation tool is excellent for promoting on this social network. Being cloud-based, LinkedHelper helps you generate leads without spending a lot of time or money. 

The functionality of this solution includes the following options:

• Tracking pages visited
• Creating notes on visited pages without the need for manual entry and tracking of mailing stages
• Export notes to CSV file tables with the ability to track interactions with each of your potential clients

This tool will fit perfectly for those who need to automate the process of making contacts, confirming skills, sending messages, and more.

Prices:

• $15/month
• $40/3 months
• $60/6 months
• $99/12 months

LeadFuze

LeadFuze is an effective tool for generating leads and running marketing campaigns without the use of additional automation or bots. LinkedIn is known to often block automation programs within this social network, so a tool like this immediately becomes a trump card.

Key features of this tool include:

Contact details of professionals from more than 14 million organizations

Search for potential clients using advanced filters (e.g., technologies used, location or size of the company, etc.)

Fuse with AI and more

This tool is also suitable for developing lead and contact search campaigns.

Prices:

• Starter — $132,3/month
• Scaling — $447,3/month
• Custom — depends on features

To sum up

We hope this article has helped you and that you are now ready to get on the path to LinkedIn automation with complete confidence.

However, despite the way we lauded all of these automation tools above, it’s important to remember that you need to keep security in mind when automating LinkedIn.

Ideally, your tool should provide quality security and growth while mimicking the behavior of a real user. If you send hundreds of messages to different users over the course of a few minutes, LinkedIn will pick up on you and may block your account. So it’s also important that you have a separate IP address in your arsenal that allows you to evade LinkedIn’s all-seeing eye.

If you still have questions after reading our article, we’ve put together a short FAQ with valuable information about LinkedIn automation just for you.

FAQ

What is message automation on LinkedIn?

It is the automation of the LinkedIn messages that you send to your contacts and other LinkedIn users: requests for additions to your contact list, employee searches, and other messages that you send to LinkedIn users.

To prevent LinkedIn from blocking your account, don’t send too many messages in a small amount of time, or it will consider them spam.

How many contact requests can I send on LinkedIn?

This number depends on the type of account you have. Here’s information on each:

• LinkedIn Free — up to 50 requests per day.
• LinkedIn Premium — 100-125.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator — 200-225.

Don’t send out requests to everyone at once. It makes much more sense to do it throughout the day.

How many connections on LinkedIn are worth making to reach my business goals?

That’s a complicated question. Your success on LinkedIn depends primarily on the quality of your contacts, not the quantity. All of your contacts (or at least most of them) should be valuable. Don’t rashly add everyone. You should get more relevant contacts, but the number can also positively impact the reach of your LinkedIn posts.

How can I get over 500 contacts on LinkedIn quickly?

Various LinkedIn automation tools can help you do this. But, as mentioned above, don’t send too many requests to be added to your contacts at once so that the social network doesn’t block you. You need tools that have these features:

• Filtering leads to improve their quality
• Random requests to add contacts with simulated human actions

The post Best LinkedIn Automation Tools 2021 appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

PromoRepublic + Verizon Small Business Essentials

Verizon Small Business Essentials helps business owners launch and scale their ideas online-from creating a website to promoting a brand. We are proud to announce this partnership between PromoRepublic and Verizon Small Businesses Essentials. This all-in-one solution will assist in empowering small businesses to grow and succeed online. Through this new partnership, Verizon Small Business customers will have access to even more industry-leading solutions to meet their different needs.

New Possibilities

Being a part of the Verizon Small Business Essentials ecosystem means that from now on, PromoRepublic services will be available via the company’s one-stop-shop platform for small businesses: Business Maker. Business Maker is an all-in-one platform that helps small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs start, run, and grow their own businesses. More than a marketplace, Business Maker curates specific tools and services based on where a small business is in its lifecycle. 

This can lead to significant changes for your small business, even if you are not tech savvy. “Launching a business can seem daunting, and the volume of different solutions available to entrepreneurs makes starting and managing a business even more challenging. Having a curated list of the best services to leverage for different aspects of business management can be a game changer. We are thrilled to expand the Verizon Small Business Essentials through the new partnerships,” says Chris Wayne, Managing Director for Verizon Small Business Essentials.

“We are excited to have Verizon Small Business Essentials as a partner onboard. We will provide the unique service and pioneering mindset to establish new standards for the ecosystem of the Business Maker platform,” says Nazar Begen, CMO, Product Owner at PromoRepublic.

The post PromoRepublic and Verizon Small Business Essentials: New Partnership for More Industry-Leading Solutions appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Even if you are sure that you have a great product or service, it’s not a one hundred percent guarantee that customers will find your store, website, or social media page. The reason that people will need your product or service isn’t good enough. You have to go out and find your potential customers and clients. In fact, customer acquisition needs to be a continuous process for most businesses. Even successful companies will have customers or clients who stop buying for one reason or another. Those customers have to be replaced to keep your business alive and kicking. In this article, we’ve gathered 10 best ways how to find new clients for your business. Check it out!

Use your existing customers

No matter how big or small your company is, customers are always your number one biggest asset when it comes to bringing new people to your business. If you don’t have existing customers who love you, it will be harder to find new fans. Creating a customer base that will add tremendous value starts with going above and beyond— truly surprising and delighting the customers you’ve got. Maintaining high customer satisfaction doesn’t take an incredible marketing budget. You can achieve it by going out of your way for your customers and hiring people who will do the same. Some people will naturally talk about you online, some might need a little nudge. Treat them right, provide help, and you’ve got an invaluable resource at your disposal.

Develop a plan for customer acquisition 

The secret to creating a successful acquisition plan is to know your ideal customer. If you are b2b, consider what department is most likely to buy your products or services and the specific purchase requirements. Determine how long the buying journey is. Is buying your product or service a decision that can be made quickly by a single person, or is it something that has a long buying cycle? Also, think about how people normally find your products or services. Are they active in social media? Who are they likely to listen to, or where do they look when they want to buy from your company? How can you get referrals and recommendations from those sources? 

Try offering free trials

Another practical way for acquiring new customers is to offer them a free trial of your product. Free trials are a great way to grow your customer base as they attract new people and garner good reviews and testimonials. They also allow you to get more feedback on new products or services to make improvements. By offering free trials, you can show people the value of what you have to offer and convert them into paying returning customers later. Instill the value of your product, and make it clear that it’s truly exemplary. Do this, offer great service, and you’ll likely be able to convert customers into loyal brand advocates.

Use the power of Social Media

When it comes to social media, the benefits are too huge to ignore. Most of us can easily handle Facebook and Instagram, but how exactly reach your target audience? A surefire way to tap into a fresh new group of people is to explore new social media sites and apps. Joining anything from Twitter to Reddit to Tumblr will increase your brand’s online presence. The audiences on social media are very different from site to site. Do your research, find your market, and talk to your people!

Also, try websites like Groupon and Living Social to add a ton of value to your business. You can offer a discounted price while they promote it to their deal-loving audiences. Daily deals sites are great for getting first-timers and show them who you are. They are much more likely to try something new when it’s a steal, giving you the opportunity to turn one-timers into repeats.

Use giveaways

Nothing attracts consumers more than a freebie. Whether it’s a free trial of your product or service, branded merch, or something else creative, offer people something for free, and they’ll be banging down your door. Remember that your products and services are awesome, but you need to get people trying them. Free giveaways help to engage a lot of customers, create a sense of connection between people and the brand, and instill a feeling of indebtedness to the company.

Also, everybody loves good old contests. Ask your customers to do something for your brand better than the other customers with a contest, and it will work. For example, have them “Like” your Instagram post, follow your account, make a purchase, or even refer someone new. It is an amazing way to get all the benefits of free giveaways without financial compromises.

Build a relationship map

A relationship map will match your strongest relationships with the areas where there is the greatest need for your product or service. This map will lead you in the direction of who you need to reach out to tap into potential customer bases.

Find partners

If reaching your audience feels like a heavy load, find someone to help you. Teaming up with another business opens up a whole new range of options for finding new customers. Cross-promotion helps you dive into the existing customer base. Make sure to choose a company whose customers are in your target market.

Show that you care about your customers

In most industries, consumers want to know that you take care of them. They want to feel safe, valuable, cherished, and cool. A reliable way to attract new customers is to show them how much you love your current customers.

Remember that there is no one right way to build your customer base. Different customers can react differently to the same marketing campaign. The most important thing is to use a variety of channels and tactics to reach your target audience. Casting a wide net is the best way to find as many new customers as you can. The easiest way to combine different marketing tactics is to use both on- and off-line strategies. Experiment with email, social media, events, word-of-mouth. Find out which channels work best for you and use them. Make sure that you are consistent across platforms and use analytics & metrics to track your success on different media. That is the key. Good luck! 

The post How to Get Customers for Your Agency Business: Best Ways appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Contents: 

1. Mentor
2. Safety Net
3. Portfolio
4. Business Growth
5. Team
6. Delegation and Automation
7. Automation Design
8. Process Documentation
9. Output

You Need a Mentor

No matter what stage you are at in building a business or an agency, having someone around who’s been there before and can support you along this journey can help you professionally and mentally. Find some expert or at least an experienced practitioner who can lead you on your way and give you some useful advice so you don’t make a mess from the very beginning.

Don’t Leap Without a Safety Net

If you are transitioning into freelancing from a 9 to 5 job, there is a good chance you may find yourself in a pickle, so here are some simple tips to consider for a smoother transition: 

• Set money aside. Don’t get yourself into a situation where you depend entirely on your clients. Besides, your rate may be relatively low at the very beginning, so it’s a good idea to have an emergency fund.
•  Drink up as much knowledge and skills as you can in your current job. That way, when you quit, you will be ready for the change.
• Launch your business as a side hustle first. Just test things out and get ready to go it alone without stress. 

Build a Portfolio 

• Start a blog to test different content marketing strategies and to build authority. 
• Try everything until you find your niche. 
• Your side hustle clients can become your first case study and/or testimonials. This can persuade more clients to hire you. 

Hiring Help to Grow Your Business

The second stage is the transition into a full-time business. Shortly after, you will probably come to an understanding that you can’t do everything by yourself; you may have sick days or want to go on a vacation. Business success is best achieved in a team, and NOT alone.

Hiring help means increasing MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) while you focus on things that you are uniquely good at. 

Build a Team to Scale Your Business

• Virtual assistants – key people to hire at the very beginning of your business: help with administrative tasks, design creation, research, etc. 
• Writers – can support your business with unique content on diverse topics. 
• Editors – they make sure that your content is of high quality. It could be a good idea to create a unified style guide so your writers and editors can stick to it freeing you of constant supervision.
• Account\Project Managers – they can help you with communication with clients and help move your business forward, in general. 

What to Delegate or Automate:

• Time-consuming tasks. For example, SMM. Hire content writer who can create content, a content plan, and take care of your social media profiles. Make sure that your marketing is in constant motion. It’s very easy to neglect your own marketing while you are working on your clients’ marketing.
• Low-value tasks. Sit down and examine what is considered “low-value” for you. It may be managing your writer’s work, checking off everyone’s tasks, and so on. It can be crucial for your business but, at the same time, not your top priority. Specialty\Occasional Services. When specialized knowledge would be needed, for example, bookkeeping or setting up a workflow. 
• Data entry\Transfer. This will help not only save you time but eliminate any chance of human error. 

Taking your business from freelancing to agency requires implementing the best project management tool. And the tool is not as important as how you set it up and use it. Here are some features to consider while choosing a process management tool:

• Task Management – check if you can leave comments or view relatable tasks.
• User Interface – simplicity is key with the least possibility of headaches!
• Chat – check if you need it as an inbuilt or a separate tool.
• Time Tracking – a handy feature when working with a lot of independent contractors.
• Document Management – check if you can easily save, transfer, use, and share your documents. 

How to Design Automation for Scale

What’s the process? It’s a series of steps that can be easily followed and repeated by a qualified user. Process documentation involves written documents with annotated screenshots or screen recordings that walk you through user interfaces. There are many useful apps and services that will help you automate your agency’s working processes. Here are some examples.

Agency process automation tools:

• Process Street
• Zapier

Connected Apps:

• Slack
• Notion
• Clust

Scale Your Agency With Process Documentation 

A very intuitive process can help your business evolve in the future. Once you start, it will build over time. Here are a couple of good examples:

• Style Guide
• Hiring Documentation
• Onboarding Steps\Training

Doubling Output

The Automation process can significantly increase your earnings. It helps you avoid human errors, saves time and effort, and allows you to step away from being the information gatekeeper. Your business will steadily grow, and retainer agreements paid in full before work will create this growth predictability. Forecasting your earnings will give you a better understanding of how to move forward and also anticipate how many new clients or team members you will need. 

The post How to Automate Your Agency and Double the Clients You Serve appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Every agency dreams of having a long-lasting, successful, and fruitful relationship with its clients. Every client wants a solid agency partnership too. So, how to build loyal and long-lasting business relations? 

What should you look out for?

• ⅔ of brands work with three or more digital agencies simultaneously. It means that there is a lot of competition around there and your clients have a lot of choices.
• One of the main problems of new agencies is that they are working with anyone who comes their way, and that’s the reason for poor relationship quality. To choose your client correctly, you need to think of how they make you feel when you communicate. 

First of all, communication is a significant part of the client-agency relationship and it’s important to communicate with clients regularly. Nothing makes a client uneasy more than not hearing anything from their agency. Try to keep your clients in the loop with the status of their projects or campaigns, involve them in the process, let them ask questions, and request changes early on, rather than when you’ve completed most of the work.

Also, be sure to set expectations at the start regarding how clients can contact you and how frequently you’ll talk. It can involve weekly calls, emails within a set time, or sending monthly reports. Clients must understand what level of contact to expect and what you’ll need from them to keep things moving forward.

Good clients:

• Good communication, you are excited to work together.
• Have all of the resources needed to help you.
• Have an understanding of marketing “not always needed.”
• You’ve had success with similar clients before.

Bad clients:

• Have burned through multiple agencies.
• Don’t respect time or boundaries. 
• Always calling the shots.
• Paying little, expecting everything in return.

You have to be crystal clear about who you want to work with and what you stand for s an agency.

Remember that both parties play a crucial role in a successful relationship and the best partnerships have complete transparency on both sides. 

Tell your client all about things like your agency’s approach and compensation arrangement while clients should be candid about their objectives and budgets. Some topics may be challenging but discussing them ahead of time ensures both parties are on the same page and prevents misunderstandings from happening later down the road.

When it comes to communication, honesty is the best policy for all times. For example, don’t be afraid to tell a client if you think that something doesn’t align with their overall vision, or if it’s challenging to execute. It’s better to let them know everything during planning than telling them further into the process. The same goes for clients, they should feel comfortable expressing disappointment or happiness with a project result. Keep the lines of communication open.

How to create and maintain successful relationships?

You need to set yourself up for success from the very beginning. Successful cases are only 50% of good agency-client relationships. The other half is the client’s comfort in communicating and working with you.

To make everything right from the very beginning, the thing about this:

• What’s your client onboarding experience?
• Is it clear and well-defined?
• Is it automated?
• How could you improve it?

To make things even more smooth you can create a so-called expectations agreement. It’s a document with information about what an agency can expect from its client and what the client can expect from working with an agency. 

Also:

• Invest time, money, and energy into your backend systems and tools.
• Aim to create a systemized and repeatable workflow.

If you are running a Social Media Marketing Agency, it could also be a great time to consider using a tool such as PromoRepublic to support your Workflow. 

Then, of course, you need to deliver excellent service as you promised…

Keep on top of how your clients are feeling and how your agency is performing with NPS scoring.

The post How to Establish Successful Client and Agency Relationships appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.

Undoubtedly, this situation affects digital marketing agencies as well. But don’t worry — the chances of agencies not being needed tomorrow are slim to none! Nevertheless, it’s harder for those who want to open their own digital marketing agency than ever to choose a niche. How can you be sure that another pandemic won’t cause your industry to any longer be profitable in a month? That’s why today, in this article, we decided to cover the topic of how to choose a niche and what the pros and cons are. So read on!

Reasons why you should choose a niche

Some of you may have wondered at this point — why pick a niche at all rather than working with everyone? There are a number of reasons for that. First of all, of course, it will be much easier for you to set up processes and find clients there. In addition, it is obvious that there are so many digital agencies these days, and it is impossible to take the leading position among all of them at once. But it is pretty possible to become a leader in a particular industry!

Other less obvious advantages also include:

• Roadmap. If you’re working with everyone in all niches, it’s very easy to stop understanding what you’re even doing and where your agency is going. You’ll have a more challenging time convincing clients why it’s more profitable to work with you than your competitors because you won’t have enough clear examples. Having a niche will allow you to look for specific pain points of potential clients and make your services more personalized.
• Understanding your competitors. Choosing a specific niche allows you to start really analyzing and understanding your competitors, as well as their services, advantages, and disadvantages. It will be easier for you to convince clients why your approach is unique and more profitable.
• You will be able to anticipate external risks and possible impacts. Having a niche allows you to adapt quickly to them and position yourself better.
• Having a niche gives you growth opportunities. You can better understand your target audience, your objectives, and your services. Thus, you get the chance to develop faster and more steadily while having a high ROI.

So it’s pretty obvious that choosing a niche is a very profitable and correct decision. Now let’s figure out how to choose it.

How to choose a niche

The short answer to this question is to do very meticulous research. 

In truth, however, there are simply no shortcuts in this case. Therefore, it is worth going consistently, using the following five points. 

1. Brainstorm

Start by brainstorming with a couple of trusted people you want to work with who have enough experience and knowledge. The goal of this process is to bring in new ideas. But these people will also help you conduct your research. 

First of all, determine what your strengths and weaknesses are. Then make a list of niches that you could quickly enter, given your strengths. Are you good at running PPC campaigns? Do you have a successful track record in SMM? All of this will be a plus for you!

2. Get to know your competitors 

At the end of the previous step, you already have a list of niches that suit your skills. And this has both pros and cons. The cons are that, most likely, almost all the niches you selected are already too “crowded,” and there is stiff competition. Pros are that further research will go much faster since your competitors have already conducted all possible market research. So fill your boots!

Start analyzing each selected niche and research your competitors. Compare the company’s size, staff, rates, social media, and how they position themselves in the mass media.

Carefully analyze the information you receive. A large staff and more than one office of your competitor’s agency may mean that it is indeed profitable. Audiences on social media can tell you if there is interest in this niche and how great it is. If your competitors have many good reviews, then we have bad news for you — the competition will be really tough. 

With this kind of analysis, you can cross off niches that are “overcrowded” or unsuitable for you. This will leave you with a few options for niches where you have a real chance of success.

3. Conduct an industry research

Now we’re going to contradict the previous point a bit: you shouldn’t completely trust your competitors — they may not be the best indicators of the situation in a given niche. 

It could be anything. Maybe they bought subscribers and likes from special agencies. Maybe the reviews were left by employees or the management themselves — with fake accounts. That’s why it’s a perfect time to analyze the industry at this point. Essentially, you take the information you’ve already found and check it against more reliable sources. 

Don’t forget to analyze the findings. Will you be able to keep up in a niche like this? Do you have enough budget? Will you be able to stay trendy? Discuss your findings with the group of trusted people mentioned above. At this point, your list of niches will shrink again.

4. Get to know your potential client 

“Creating avatar” is not only about James Cameron’s creative process but also about analyzing your potential client. You have to understand your market segment and its content — the people you have to deal with. So before you choose a niche, it’s worth getting to know them. This is where the avatar of your ideal client comes in handy. It’s important to remember: we’re not talking about your target audience here, but about an individual — your ideal client. And when you speak to your audience, it is in them that your words resonate in the first place. 

5. Conduct a survey among small businesses

There’s not much left to do! By now, you have undoubtedly identified the niches that will be most profitable and successful for you. You also know in person not only your competitors but also your potential customers. Now it’s just a matter of getting the feedback that will confirm or refute your decision.

Whether you succeed or your niche breaks you depends on the quality of your research, your skills, and, of course, your luck. So you have to be sure that your services are relevant, in demand, and that someone will want to buy them at all. Based on your customer avatar research, make a list of 12-15 questions for your target audience. Their purpose is to validate your niche choice. If you are going to open a digital marketing agency for social media marketing for accountants, your questions, for example, might look like this:

• Have you heard about the benefits of having a corporate social media profile?
• Have you ever considered creating one?
• Would you like to get a new influx of customers through, for example, Facebook?

Post your questions on social media or send them out to former clients. Even cold calls will work. Your goal is to get as many responses as possible from people who fit the title of your ideal customer. 

Analyze the responses. If you see that people want these services and can afford them, you’ve come to the finish line. Your niche has been found.

Pros and cons of choosing a niche

Of course, by this point, it is clear that finding your niche has many advantages. But there are also disadvantages. Let’s define them.

Pros

• Fast and confident launching in the market. After choosing a niche, you already have a marketing strategy, you know your client and their needs, and networking and attracting new clients only gets easier.
• Easier selling. When you work in one niche, it’s much easier to confirm and improve your reputation. It’s also easier for you to generate leads and prove to them why you’re their best option. 
• Targeted marketing and high conversions. You can create more personalized content for different target audiences by addressing your customers’ pain points directly.

Cons

• Smaller market capitalization. Choosing a niche means a much smaller number of potential clients, as well as the risks of oversaturation of this market.
• The need for more in-depth expertise. If you have not had experience in a particular niche, you will have to earn it very quickly. 
• Fewer leads. Choosing a niche means that even if you are doing well now and the conversion is going great, you may soon reach its limit.

We have listed all the main pros and cons and covered the main steps. Now it’s up to you. You can look for your niche or work for several industries at once. The main thing is to do quality research! If you want some more detailed instructions and help from experienced practitioners, check out our webinar on this topic. 

The post How to Choose a Niche for Your Agency. Pros and Cons appeared first on PromoRepublic Blog | Insights for Franchise & Multi-Location Marketers.