But before we can dive into any of that, we often need to take a step back and look at ways to optimize and improve the company’s website. After all, what good is sending traffic to the website if it’s not adequately positioned to drive leads and sales?

Oftentimes, companies make critical website mistakes they don’t even realize. In those instances, it’s fairly easy to tell when a site needs to be overhauled.

But, other times, it might not be so immediately apparent. Running the site through a battery of analytics and testing can help us uncover how well the site is performing in a variety of areas and help us determine what areas to test, tweak or perhaps even overhaul.

Website Performance Analysis Tools

If you want to make sure your company website is up to snuff, here are some tools you can use to test and analyze website performance.

1. Analytics

If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, do it now. The tool is free and it helps you uncover all sorts of useful data about your website.

Here are just a few of the things Google Analytics can help you discover:

• Number of Pageviews
• Number of Visitors
• How long visitors stay on the site
• Traffic sources (how people get to your site)
• Top content (which pages people are visiting most)
• Search terms used to find your site
• Conversions based on goals you set

If your site uses WordPress, this simple guide walks you through the process of setting up Google Analytics.

2. Heat Mapping

While Google Analytics is an amazing tool, there are some gaps in what it offers you. For instance, Google Analytics will tell you how many people visited your “About” page from the home page of your website. But, it will not be able to tell you which of the three links or buttons people clicked to get there.

That’s why tools like Crazy Egg are so valuable. It uses heat maps and click mapping technology help you see where people are clicking on your website, how far they scroll down the page. It also segments your site by visitor type so you can see how different users are experiencing your site.

I’ve been using Crazy Egg for my site, along with several client websites and it’s been incredibly useful in uncovering ways to optimize site design to lead website visitors down the path you want them to go.

3. Speed Test

Have you ever been to a website that took far too long to load so you abandoned it and went somewhere else?

Yeah, me too.

That’s why testing website load times is important. In fact, here’s a great graphic that shows how load times impact your bottom line.

If you’re not sure how fast your website loads, use Pingdom’s Website Speed Test. It’s a free to use. Simply enter your website URL and it will give you the load speed and a performance grade for your site.

If you want other options, here are other free speed test tools you can use.

Bottom line – if your site is taking longer than 2-3 seconds to load, you need to explore ways to improve the speed of your site.

4. Readability Test

One of the biggest problems I see on company websites poorly written copy laced with industry jargon. Although there’s not a website jargon detector (that I’m aware of, anyway), you can use a simple tool to test the readability of your site.

The Readability Test Tool can tell you the average reading level for any given web page. Most websites should fall between 6^th and 9^th grade reading level, but this will largely depend on your target audience. This is just one tool to help you see how well your website can be understood by visitors.

5. Usability Test

Usability testing is another way to get feedback about website performance.

Certainly, one way to do this is through surveys. This can either be pop-up surveys you see when visiting websites or you can send a separate survey to your clients and customers to get their feedback on your website.

However, if you’re more interested in feedback from prospects and first time web visitors, there are a number of low-cost usability tools that you can use.

For instance, Feedback Army allows you to submit questions and get feedback on your site. For $20, you can get responses from 10 website reviewers. If you want even more detailed feedback, UserTesting.com will give you a video of someone visiting your site and sharing their feedback as they go. This service is $49 per reviewer.

5. A/B Split Testing

A/B split testing is a fantastic way to find ways to improve conversions on your site – whether it may be email subscriptions, lead capturing forms, sign-ups or purchases.

What this allows you to do is to test two versions of a web page to see which one  achieves a higher conversion rate. You might test elements like page layout, sales copy and headlines, images, buttons and calls-to-action. Doing this takes the guesswork out of which design is better and helps you see which one gets better results.

There are a number of tools that can help you do this. Here are a few:

• Visual website optimizer
• Google analytics experiments – this is formerly Google webmaster tools and now lives inside of Google Analytics
• Optimizely

6. Mobile Website Test

More and more people are using their smart phone or tablet to navigate the web, it’s important that your site is compatible on these devices.

To see how your website stacks up on mobile devices, there are a few tools you can use to test that. MobiReady and W3C MobileOK Checker score your site on a variety of factors to help you see where it works and where it doesn’t. Mobile Phone Emulator actually shows you what your site looks like on a mobile device, which is also very handy.

7. SEO Reports

If you want to know how well your site is performing with search engines, there are a few SEO tools that can help.

SEOmoz is perhaps the top SEO resource on the web. They have a very robust pro tool that offers link analysis, rank tracking and so much more. If you don’t want to pay for their tool, you can still get benefit from their free offering, Open Site Explorer. It tells you the number of links to your site (and what those links are), the common anchor text used to link to your site and the top pages on your site.

SEMRush is another professional SEO tool, but they also offer a free report that gives some great information. For instance, it tells you organic keywords used to find your site and how you rank for those particular keywords. It also tells you who your top competitors are for those keywords

WooRank is another pro tool that gives you one free search a week. Their tool delivers some basic tips on how to improve your website’s search results.

It’s Your Turn

Once you’ve used these tools, you’ll have a lot more data and insight about ways to optimize and improve your site.

Have you used any of these website optimization tools? Do you have any tools that you would add to this list?

Image credit: zzpza

The post 7 Handy Tools to Analyze Website Performance was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

As businesses have caught on to the power of guest blogging, publishers are receiving increased guest blog post requests. But, the quality of the pitches leaves much to be desired.

For instance, yesterday alone I received five guest post requests, which is a lot for me in a given day. But most of them were absolutely terrible and didn’t get any consideration from me. And, I’m confident they wouldn’t have been considered by other bloggers either.

Blog publishers have high standards. If a blog publisher is going to share their audience with you, your pitch and guest post must be excellent. Otherwise, it will get ignored.

Why Guest Post Pitches Get Trashed

If you want to ensure that your guest post pitch stays out of the trashcan, avoid these common missteps:

• Generic salutation. It’s one thing to not use my name, which is bad enough. But, it’s even worse if you call me “Admin”, “Sir,” or any other generic title that clearly fails to acknowledge who I am. If you can’t take the time to personalize the pitch to show that you have looked around the blogger’s site, chances are good you will get ignored.

• Irrelevant content. There’s no mistake that my blog is about marketing and social media tips. But, it’s crazy to me how I receive guest post pitches for all sorts of things outside of that realm. Yesterday, I received pitches about small business loans and hiring MBAs. Clearly, these weren’t a fit and it seems there was very little attempt to make the content relevant to MY site or MY readers. Make sure you do your research to build a pitch that caters to the blogger’s audience.

• Unoriginal content. Guest blog posts should be new content. In other words, it should be a new topic to my blog and original information that hasn’t been published anywhere else. So often, guest pitches fail to look through the archives to see if I’ve covered a particular topic or idea before. Do your homework first to make sure the site your pitching hasn’t already written about your topic. And if they have, be sure to offer new information or a different angle. And, of course, it goes without saying that the content should not be plagiarized from someone else’s site.

• Poor grammar and typos. If your pitch is ridden with spelling errors and typos, it leaves me little hope for the quality of your guest post. DELETE.

• Overly promotional content. I understand that you want to guest post to get in front of a new audience, but if you’re post is simply a billboard for your product or service, it will get ignored. Find ways to showcase your expertise or mention your product without making it the sole focal point. The post should still focus on helping readers. Leo Widrich at Buffer does an excellent job of this.

• Failure to follow guidelines. I have guest post guidelines for a reason – to help bloggers know exactly how to send guest post pitches to me. Following these guidelines definitely makes my job easier, but it also significantly improves your chances of getting published. Sadly, most people ignore it. Find the guest post guidelines on the blogger’s site and make sure you follow their requests. Anyone who follows a blogger’s guidelines should have a really good shot of getting published.

The Secret to Getting Your Pitch Noticed

Avoiding these common missteps is definitely a good place to start with your guest blogging efforts. But, do you want to know the secret to getting your guest post pitch noticed 100% of the time?

Connect with me first.

Anyone who has taken the time to comment on my blog, share my content or engage with me on social networks will absolutely get consideration from me.

Why?

Because you’ve focused on helping me and connecting with me first instead of pitching me right out of the gate.

I’m also much more likely to publish a guest post from someone that has developed a relationship with me. Remember the adage that we do business with those we know, like and trust? That rule applies to guest blogging too.

Guest Blogging Resources

If guest blogging is key part of your strategy, there are a ton of resources that can help you. Here are a few of them:

• How to Get Your Guest Post Pitch Noticed  - fantastic tips from my pal and superstar blogger, Stan Smith over at Pushing Social.
• Guest Blogging: Seven Tips for Success - the super-smart Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks offers the keys to making your efforts successful.
• Guest Blogging Blueprint - My friend, Joel Widmer, just released this blogging course to help you learn how to boost your website traffic from guest blogging. It’s a great guide to help you with every step of the process. Joel is offering the course with a 25% discount right now, so if you’re interested, hop on over and grab the course before the price increases. Get it here.

What questions do you have about guest blogging?

If you’re a blog publisher, what causes you to hit the delete button on guest post pitches? If you’re a guest blogger, what tips have worked for you?

Image credit: Trisha Wang

The post 6 Top Reasons Your Guest Post Pitch is Getting Ignored was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

But, it’s true.

And, I have plenty to stories to tell about it! But, we’ll save those for another day.

Now that spring is here, my family is making preparations for planting season and getting the crops in the ground. In fact, just last night my family was tilling the garden, spreading fertilizer and planting seeds for loads of yummy vegetables.

Marketing lessons from farmers

In talking to my mom and listening to my family work in the garden, it made me realize that there is a lot that marketers can learn from farmers. Here are few key lessons that farmers can teach us about marketing.

1. You must plant the right seeds (and in the right place).

Successful farming relies heavily on choosing the right seeds for the right location. Different hybrids of seeds will perform better depending on the type of soil and how much moisture that location gets.

With marketing, we too must think about planting the right seeds. In other words, we must consider the most fertile ground for our marketing efforts and selecting the tactics that will do well in each area.

That’s why marketing strategy is so important. It helps you figure out which marketing tactics will produce the best results. 

2. There are many things you can’t control.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things about farming is that there are so many variables you can’t control – especially, the weather. Everything from too much rain, too little rain, devastating winds and flooding can wreak havoc on a crop. Last year, much of the country suffered a severe drought. And, there was very little farmers could do about it.

Although most businesses don’t have to contend with the weather, there are still plenty of variables that can affect your company’s success. For the past couple of years, we’ve had a struggling economy. Businesses have had to learn how to innovate or adjust to survive tightening budgets. Marketers must determine how to do more with less and find the efforts that will pack the biggest ROI given the circumstances around them.

You won’t always be able to operate under perfect market conditions, so figuring out how to overcome challenges and adapt to changing variables will help you be successful.

3. You must have patience.

Perhaps the best lesson we can learn from farmers is patience. After all, seeds that you plant today won’t be ready to harvest until the fall. Sure, there is plenty for farmers to do in the meantime. But, they won’t see the results right away. It takes a good six months before they see the fruit of their labor.

Marketing works much the same way. Oftentimes, it takes six to 12 months before we begin to see the results from our marketing efforts.

For instance, the other day, I received a call from a prospect who was given my name by someone who heard me speak at a conference almost nine months ago.

When it comes to marketing, there are very few tactics that will get you an immediate return. The best marketing strategies often focus on creating a long-term path to growth. That’s why you must understand that your efforts won’t always pay off right away.

4. You must understand the market.

So much of farming is not about the technical aspect of getting seeds in the ground and harvesting them, but instead about marketing your grain and learning when to sell it. Certainly, there’s as much art as science to this.  Farmers must understand what’s happening in the global economy and how that’s impacting supply and demand.

What factors impact your customer’s ability to buy? What is happening in your community, your state or country that’s affecting your business?

Understanding the outside factors that may impact your company can often be critical to your ability to be stay in business. Don’t lose sight of the competitive marketplace or what’s happening in your industry – doing so could have extremely adverse effects.

5. Success requires hard work!

Perhaps this goes without saying, but farmers are some of the hardest working people I know. When it’s crunch time during planting and harvest season, it means getting up with the sun and staying in the field way past dark. It means rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty (literally). It means eating on the go and working through meals.

I certainly don’t advocate for working like this all the time, but I think marketers and business people of all stripes can learn a lot from farmers’ ability to push hard during crunch time to get the job done. That kind of work ethic separates the wheat from the chaff in the business world.

Do you know any farmers? If so, what lessons would you add to the list?

Image credit: Erin McKeage – This is a photo my sister snapped of my grandparent’s farm a couple of summers ago. 

The post Planting the Right Seeds: What Farmers Can Teach You About Marketing was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

* * *

Conducting proper market research is vital to optimizing your company’s marketing strategy. By conducting marketing research, you can ensure that your marketing campaigns are placing your brand in front of potential customers in the most efficient way possible.

With the vast amount of information available for your business, performing research is easier than ever. Whether you are unsure of where to start or looking for ways to streamline your existing marketing strategies, these tips are sure to help.

Benefits of Market Research

Marketing research offers a number of ways to help you develop the best marketing strategy for your brand or business. Key benefits include:

• Improved efficiency: Whether the cost is time or money, most marketing campaigns come at a significant cost for your business. By improving the precision of your target audience for each campaign and utilizing the best possible marketing platforms, you can reduce costs while improving conversions and ROI. By conducting research before launching your marketing efforts, you can create a more focused and comprehensive plan for your product, brand or service from launch to long-term support to ensure that you are always sure of what the next step will be.
• Connecting with your audience: Market research once involved relying on third parties to gather data and interpreting pages of data. These days, market research is more accessible to the average business. Thanks to social media and other online tools, it’s easy to connect with your audience, ask questions and get information directly from customers. In addition to getting valuable information, this helps you build a relationship with your audience as well.
• Discovering hidden potential: Analyzing trends and research can shed light on possible marketing strategies or opportunities that might not have been immediately obvious. From tweaking your start up or product launch to expanding your business into a new market, these discoveries hold obvious benefits.

Market Research Tips

Once you have determined the need for marketing research, the next step is to create a plan and get started. These market research tips can help you to make the most of your research plan.

1. Set goals.

One of the most important and neglected steps to establishing a market research plan is to establish goals. Whether you are simply looking to get to know your target audience better or want to uncover ways to expand your products or services, setting goals provides a simple way to keep your research focused and helps to quantify results.

2. Use the appropriate platforms.

With so many options for how to conduct market research, it might be tempting to just use them all. This is an easy way to get lost in the process. There are many inexpensive ways which you can conduct effective market research:

• Google’s Keyword Research Tool is a free tool that can help you figure out which keywords you should be targeting with your marketing strategy and give you an a better idea of untapped keywords that competitors in your industry might be using.
• Social media is great for interacting directly with customers to get instant feedback. For instance, Twitter works well for quick questions and real-time communication while Facebook excels at visual media and on-going discussion.
• Polls and surveys are great for gaining information from an existing audience.
• Google’s New Consumer Surveys are a great free tool for gaining insights from people outside of your network.

3. Never quit optimizing.

Once you have conducted market research, continue to analyze it and refine your methods. Even the best methods will need tweaking as trends and markets change over time.

Market research offers powerful tools to help your brand develop a marketing strategy. Through market research, you can reduce costs, improve results and connect with your market with greater efficiency.

What about you? Have you conducted market research as part of your strategy development? How has market research helped your marketing efforts?

Author Bio: Ray Nelson writes about qualitative market research and market research geared toward women.  Ray enjoys writing on a number of different marketing and branding topics as well.

The post Using Market Research Develop a Strong Brand Strategy was written by Ray Nelson and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

Yet, that same survey revealed that 61 percent of small businesses owners are not seeing a return on their investment in social media.

What gives?

Why is social media on the rise if two-thirds of businesses are not getting results from their efforts?

But, perhaps here’s the bigger question for small businesses – is social media really worth your time?

It depends.

Social media can indeed be an effective tool for small businesses. It can help you build awareness, engage with your customers and yes, social media can even help generate more business.

But, here’s the problem – many businesses jump into social media without a clear strategy or realistic expectations about the time or resources needed to make it successful.

That’s why so many businesses fail with their social media efforts.

Checklist: Before starting social media

If you want to be one of the small businesses that DO see a return on your investment, there are a few steps you should take before even getting started with social media. Following these tips will help your social media efforts be far more successful:

1. Develop an overall marketing strategy.

Social media is just one of many tools you can use to help grow your business. Before diving into social media, build an overall marketing strategy that will help you define your ideal customer, how you are different from your competitors and why someone should choose you.

Once you do this, you can determine the tactics that will help you reach your business goals. You might just find that there are far better ways to spend your time and money than social media.

And even if social media is still on your list, building a strategy first will help your efforts be more focused and effective.

2. Take time to listen.

A key component to the strategy development process is customer research and social media listening. You must take the time to discover where your customers hang out online and what they are talking about. Understanding where the conversations are taking place online will help drive the rest of your decisions about your social media and marketing efforts.

You also need to pay attention to what people are saying about you. It can uncover useful information about what customers value about your brand or improvements you may need to make with your business. These are valuable insights that can help make a huge difference for your business.

3. Build a strong foundation.

Social media won’t help you if you haven’t built a strong brand first. That means developing clear and consistent messaging about who you are, what you do and why customers should buy from you.

This also means making sure your website, your digital storefront, is up to snuff. Social media should not be a replacement for a website. With social media, you want to send people to an online property that you own and control. Not only does that make you more credible, but it also gives you better ability to drive revenue for your business and makes you less reliant on social channels that may dry up down the road or change the rules on you.

4. Create compelling content.

Social media needs content to be successful. Sadly, many businesses have done this backward. They’ve built out profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest, but have yet to develop interesting, original content to share.

Without content, your social media efforts will be thin on value. After all, people want to hear from YOU. If you want to be successful on social media, spend time creating compelling content first. Then, you can focus on using social media to share that information with the world.

Are you struggling with social media? What questions do you have about it? If social media is working for you, what has been the key to your success? What items would you add to the list?

A version of this post originally appeared as a guest article on the Nashville Business Journal.

Image credit: Stephendl

The post 4 Key Steps for Small Businesses to Succeed with Social Media was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

Once I told her, she asked this:

“How do you get business?”

It’s a question I often get when I tell people I own a marketing company.  I find it funny that people ask that question. After all, as a marketer, attracting new business IS my line of work.

Yet, I think it’s the crux of what most frustrates many business owners. If you’re a doctor, lawyer or accountant, you know how to do your work. But, the prospect of attracting new customers is downright perplexing.

Many entrepreneurs went into business not because they enjoy marketing and business development, but because they love the work they do.

Yet, if you want to stay in business, you have to get good at attracting (and keeping) your customer base.

Laws of Customer Attraction

So, how do you attract new customers?

Research.

In other words, you must get really good at understanding your target audience.

Sadly, many businesses forget this very important step. Instead, they jump right into implementing a variety of marketing tactics and hoping something sticks.

Not only can this be a waste of time and money, but it’s unlikely that it will get you results.

Instead, if you take the time to better understand your current customers and the kind of customers that you want to attract, you’ll be better able to find out what they value about your business, what their pain points are and what makes them tick. From there, it becomes much easier to determine the best ways to reach out to more people like them.

Uncovering Customer Preferences

If you want to learn more about your customers, here are examples of some questions that you should ask:

• How did you hear about us?
• Why did you decide to do business with us over our competitors?
• What do you value most about doing business with us?
• What can we do to serve you better?
• What product or service do we not provide that you wish we did?
• What are the problems and issues keep you up at night?
• What the biggest challenges you are facing in your business right now?
• What if our company died – what, if anything, would you miss?

This is just a sampling of what you could ask, but this should give you an idea of what kinds of questions will help you better understand your customers and why they have chosen you.

Once you’ve nailed down what you want to learn about your customers, you can then determine the best way to gather this information.

Here are some ideas on how to get customer feedback:

• Conduct a survey. Sending out a short survey to customers is an excellent way to uncover their preferences. Tools like SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo make it easy to create and distribute online surveys.
• Talk to customers. Perhaps the easiest way to get feedback is to ASK! Pick up the phone and ask your best customers for candid feedback, talk to people at the check out counter and really listen to what your clients are saying during meetings.
• Listen on social media channels. If you’re active on social media, pay attention to what people are saying about your brand. What do they say when they give you a shout out? What are they complaining about? Pay attention to the language they use. Sometimes, the things they comment on and value are very different than what you think.
• Reviews and recommendations. Look at the reviews and recommendations you’re getting online through LinkedIn, Facebook, Yelp and Google. What are people saying? You can often find great nuggets that will clue you in to customer preferences.

Once you’ve collected the feedback, it’s important to do something with it. What insights did you uncover? What did you learn about your customers that you didn’t know before?

Then, you can use this information to build a marketing strategy around what you’ve learned. You’ll find that once you’ve taken the time to better understand your customers, it becomes much easier to sell to them and others just like them.

How do you uncover customer feedback and preferences? How has this helped you get better at attracting new customers?

Image credit: Explain That Stuff

The post The Secret to Attracting New Customers was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

Why?

Because so many websites do a poor job of telling the company’s story and, ultimately, driving leads and sales for their business.

And no, I’m not just talking about aesthetics. There are plenty of sites that look good, yet fail to hit the mark.

Why are they so bad?

I often see businesses make four critical website mistakes.

Common Website Mistakes

1. Bad navigation.

If visitors can’t quickly find information they need, they’ll move on to a site that can deliver.

For instance, image-based navigation looks really cool, but if I have to hunt around to determine which image takes me to the next page, I’ll move on in a heartbeat.

That’s why your navigation menu should be clearly labeled. In other words, call your “About” page just that instead of “The Inside Scoop.”

You can still be creative with navigation, just don’t make it too hard on your visitors. Include a search bar and other navigational cues to make it easy. Traditional navigation works for a reason; people know where to look.

2. Poorly written copy. 

Businesses pay a lot of attention to how their corporate website looks. But sadly, the copy gets left to the back burner.

I’ve seen all sorts of problems in this area:

• Empty pages or “coming soon” messages throughout.
• Pages laced with corporate jargon and industry lingo.
• Too much French content (saying “we” too much).
• Unfocused copy that doesn’t succinctly explain what you do.

Your website needs to tell your story. It’s your one chance to show how you can solve your customer’s problems and answer their most pressing questions. It’s your opportunity to show why they should pick YOU.

If you don’t have the talent on staff to get this right, hire someone to help. After all, well-written copy is just as important as the design. Don’t skimp on this.

3. Zero personality.

A website is the digital storefront for a brand. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, inject some personality into your website and give me a reason to take a look.

Don’t try to mimic everyone else. You need to show your special sauce and what makes you different.

That means you should use images of your company and your team instead of stock photography or cartoons. I want to see your smiling faces and the people behind the business.

Or, integrate video into your website content by interviewing members of your team, offering how-to guides answer questions as Gini Dietrich does with Facebook Question of the Week.

Dare to be different and give people a reason to connect with you and your brand. It will pay off.

4. No calls-to-action.

What do you want people to do when they visit your site?

If you sell products, you want them to buy. It you are a service-based business, you want them to contact you or sign up to receive your premium content, such as an ebook, white paper, or other lead-nurturing content.

But most websites do a poor job of leading you down that path.

Each page of your site should have a call-to-action. Make it easy for the visitor to know exactly what you want them to do on that page.

This requires both strong call-to-action copy and design that draws attention to the button or design element.

You’re in business after all, so make sure the corporate website is helping you drive the results you’re after.

This list doesn’t even come close to scratching the surface of problems with company websites, so I’ll turn it over to you.

What are the biggest problems you see with business websites?

A version of this article first appeared as a guest post on Spin Sucks.

Image credit: Beckytekkie

The post 4 Critical Website Mistakes That Kill Your Business was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

After all, what I can share about my experience that I haven’t already said before? What else could I possible learn?

Apparently, way more than I thought.

On the day of the race, it was practically a monsoon. It poured non-stop for hours and there was zero chance that it was going to let up during the race. Although I’ve run in the rain plenty of times, it certainly wasn’t an ideal race condition.

Yet, thousands of people still laced up their shoes, threw on trash bags and ponchos over their gear and ran anyway.

Despite the rain’s best efforts, it couldn’t dampen the determination of the runners and the enthusiasm of everyone who was supporting them.

Scores of people still lined the streets and cheered on their friends, loved ones and complete strangers. Hundreds of drenched volunteers cheerily handed out water and supplies to the runners and rain-soaked police offers still patrolled the route to ensure our safety.

But, the most inspiring sight of all was some of the amazing participants I encountered along the way.

Stories of determination

In the first mile, we saw a man with leg and arm braces using fierce determination with every single step he took on the course.

Although the man had a team of three coaches walking along side to encourage him, this man received way more support than that. All the racers – including us – gave him a round of applause as we passed by. I still get chills thinking about it.

Mid-way through the race, we spotted an amputee running on blades. As we were running along side him, we passed by his house. His family and friends erupted into cheers.

It was such a moving experience to see this man, who had clearly overcome so much, run with tenacity and get encouraged by his supporters who were so very proud of him.

It made me realize that if these two courageous men can get out there and run a half marathon in the torrential rain, why can’t you?

If 20,000 people – of varying skills and abilities – can run 13.1 or 26.2 miles in the pouring rain, why can’t YOU?

What’s holding you back?

Every time I’ve run a half or full marathon, I get lots of comments that sound something like this…

“I could never do that.”

“That’s crazy! How do you run that far?”

And, you know what? Four years ago, I said the same things.

That it was too far.

That I hated running.

That I couldn’t possibly do it.

But then, something changed – my mindset.

I decided I wanted to tackle this challenge and that I would find a way to make it happen.

That’s exactly what these two men did – and the thousands of others who got out there on Saturday.

They decided to do something they may have thought impossible and worked their butt off to cross that finish line.

You may not want to run a half or full marathon.

And, that’s okay.

But, don’t say you CAN’T.

And that goes for all the other challenges that you may be facing in your life, your job or your business.

What’s standing in your way of accomplishing big things? What’s keeping you from achieving that big hairy audacious goal?

Chances are good that it might just be you.

Yes, you CAN do it

Trust me when I say that you are capable of great things.

Each of us on this earth was given amazing gifts. Don’t let them go to waste. You can do way more than you can possibly imagine.

But, you can’t let that nagging voice of negativity inside your head win. You have to dare to believe that you can achieve the impossible. You have to give yourself permission to dream.

Reaching your goals isn’t going to be easy. But the hard work pays off when you finally cross that finish line.

Don’t just sit on the sidelines and wait for great things to happen.

Be bold.

Take action.

Do something that scares you.

You might just be surprised at what you can accomplish.

What’s holding you back? What’s the big, hairy audacious goal that you’re running from?

Image: That’s what my friend, Zach, and I looked like after running for a couple of hours in the rain! And, despite the difficult conditions, I managed to get a personal best with my time!

The post Lessons in Perseverance was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

Although those tactics can be very beneficial to businesses, what many companies really need is marketing strategy.

Strategy is not just a fancy word. It’s a process that defines your approach to reach your business goals.

Without strategy, it’s easy for businesses get caught up in shiny object syndrome –chasing the latest marketing trends or switching tactics every week or month. Not only is that an exhausting way to do things, it also means you could be wasting time and money on tactics that will produce little results.

Why Businesses Need Marketing Strategy

Let’s say you own a law firm and you want to build a new website. You could easily build a website that talks about your practice areas and your attorneys.

But, after conducting some research, what if you discovered most of your new business comes from referrals? Would you still invest the money into a new website?

Maybe you would. But, if you have a limited budget, perhaps you would focus on a creating a strategy around building a program to increase referrals instead.

Or, let’s say you do decide to build a new website. But, if you don’t take the time to understand why your clients like doing business with you, how can you build a site that communicates what makes you different than the hundreds of firms you’re competing with?

Do you see why stepping back and determining your strategy is so important?

Building an effective marketing strategy

To develop an effective marketing strategy, you must take the time to answer a lot of questions:

• What are your goals? What do you hope to accomplish?
• Who is your target market? Who is your ideal customer?
• What problem are you trying to solve for your target market?
• What do your clients and customers value most about your services?
• How are you different from your competitors? Why should someone choose you?
• What do you want people to think of when your company comes to mind?
• What kind of experience do you want your clients to have?

What happens when tactics trump strategy

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re not ready to start implementing tactics. Doing so can cause all sorts of problems:

• Lack of clear and consistent messaging. For marketing to be effective, you must create a consistent brand message that communicates what makes you different and why someone should hire you. Without a strategy in place, it makes it much harder to determine compelling messages that will speak to your ideal customer.

• Difficulty achieving goals. Surprisingly, many businesses don’t have well defined goals. But, even if you DO have specific goals and business objectives, it will be difficult to accomplish them without a strategy. Businesses often see where they want to go, but have trouble connecting the dots on how to get there. It takes research, creativity and strategic thinking to build an effective strategy. But once you do, your likelihood of success is that much greater.

• Wasted budget. If you don’t take time to build a strategy, you could be wasting time and money on the wrong tactics because you’re just guessing about what will work. Taking the time to build a marketing strategy and tactical implementation plan on the front end will ensure your budget is being spent most effectively.

• Unfocused efforts. All of your marketing tactics should flow out of a marketing strategy. It helps guide your decisions and makes it easier to determine where to spend your time. Without it, your efforts will be weak and unfocused. And, it’s a whole lot easier to get caught up in the marketing tactic du jour.

Before jumping into social media, deploying a digital advertising campaign or yes, even designing a new website, take a step back to build a marketing strategy first. I guarantee that doing so will make your efforts a whole lot stronger and far more effective.

Need help with marketing strategy?

As a businesses owner, one of the hardest things to do is pulling back to objectively look at your company and building a strategy that will help you get results. If this is something you need help with, drop us a line. This is what we do every day for businesses just like yours and we would be happy to help.

Image credit: Konstantin Lazorkin

The post Why Marketing Strategy Must Come Before Tactics was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.

Oftentimes, that means focusing on how to retain the customers that you already have. After all, in many industries, it is far more expensive to go out and get new business than to keep the customers they have.

That’s why customer service is so darn important.

Creating remarkable experiences for customers not only helps reinforce the messages from the marketing team, but it also ensures that your customers will come back time and time again.

What is remarkable customer service?

I talk a lot about the importance of delighting and surprising customers, but what does that mean? How can businesses create memorable experiences for their customers?

Outstanding customer service means something a little different to everyone. So, to help illustrate what this looks like, I’m sharing four stories of how remarkable customer service made the difference between a good buying experience and a great one.

1. Fix problems.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I visited Jeni’s Ice Creams, which is seriously the most heavenly ice cream on the planet!

As I was checking out, the cashier gave me my total, which was WAY less than it should have been. I asked if they had some kind of special or discount running that day. He said “no” and again told me the price.

It just still didn’t seem right. I was about to pay him, but I asked again about the total price. He finally realized that he had only charged me for one bowl of ice cream, not two.

I joked that if I just kept my mouth shut, I would have gotten one heck of a deal!

The cashier apologized and thanked me for being so honest. As he was giving me my receipt, he pulled out a card from the register and handed it to me – it entitled me to a free bowl of ice cream on my next visit.

The lesson?

Although this wasn’t a huge blunder, it’s clear that Jeni’s gives their employees the power to make things right. He didn’t have to ask for a manager or get permission to fix a problem. He just did it.

This was a very small misstep, but by going out of his way to correct it, the cashier ensured that I didn’t leave with a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, it made me an even bigger fan and guaranteed that I’ll be back.

2. Be Responsive.

When attending Social Slam a couple of weeks ago, my friend, Jon Moss, showed me this awesome iPad keyboard he was using.

Called The Brydge, it looked like the perfect solution for me and I was eager to get my hands on one before traveling on a cross-country flight the following week.

When I got into the office on last Monday, I noticed that three-day shipping was their fastest option. I was hoping to get the product before my Thursday morning flight and that shipping option wasn’t going to work.

They didn’t have a phone number, so I sent them an email. When I didn’t hear anything right away, I took my chances on sending a message via Twitter.

@lauraclick Yes! DM me with your shipping address and email and we’ll work it out, if we act quick it can go out today.

— The Brydge (@The_Brydge) April 8, 2013

Within minutes, the folks from The Brydge responded via Twitter and told me they would work to find a shipping solution to get me the product in time.

Over a series of quick emails, we had the product ordered for guaranteed delivery on Wednesday. And, they even threw in a 10 percent discount for “being awesome”.

I was amazed.

Had their team not been so responsive, I probably would have found another solution and would have never purchased their product. As a relatively new company, they understood the power of responsiveness – especially when someone is making a buying decision.

3. Reward Loyal Customers.

One of my favorite customer service experiences was with Dunn Brothers Coffee. Longtime readers of my blog have heard this story before.

If you haven’t heard about this story, you can watch me talk about it today in a video on Adam Toporek’s blog.

I won’t give away the whole story, but let’s just say it involves receiving an impromptu kit to make my on vanilla iced nirvana (my favorite drink from their shop).

They went out of their way to reward and thank me, a regular customer of their store. And, their small gesture has paid off because I have told the story countless times, wrote about it on my blog and continue to recommend this fine coffee shop.

4. Get to know the regulars.

8^th & Roast is quickly becoming my go-to coffee shop in Nashville. Yes, it is a mere two blocks from my house and I can easily walk there. But the real reason I love it is that the coffee is superb and the service is even better.

What impresses me most about 8^th & Roast is that they go out of their way to remember your name and get to know you.

It feels good when Brent the Barista high-fives you when you walk in and asks how things are going in your world. The owners, Lesa and Brad, have shown me around the place and excitedly talk about their new offerings and what they have planned down the road.

Their whole team makes me feel part like part of the family, which makes me want to come back again and again.  (And, I do.)

What’s your favorite customer service story?

Certainly, there are a lot of other characteristics that make good customer service. These are just four examples of what I’ve experienced.

So, I want to hear from you!

What’s your favorite customer service story? What do you think makes remarkable customer service? Let me know in the comment section.

Image credit: Waqas Mustafeez

The post 4 Remarkable Customer Service Stories You Don’t Want to Miss was written by Laura Click and first appeared on Blue Kite Marketing.