Grow From Here

Online Coupons Bringing In New Customers

CBC had an interesting interview recently related to the recent increases in online coupon usage.  They’re in huge demand these days and websites like Red Hot Deals are doing a booming business.  Online coupons can be a great way to attract customers and bring new people in to your location.   People are looking for ways to save money these days, and many are open to trying new suppliers/companies if they can get lower prices.  Coupons can be a great way to entice new customers, and the cost can be extremely low (close to non-existant) if you use online coupons.

Using the internet to distribute online coupons for some retailers has led to a reduction in catalouge production/distribution, saving both the consumer & the supplier money, not to mention lowering environmental impact by reducing paper waste.

Statistics on Online Coupon Usage:

Many retail franchises have traditionally used coupons to bring in new clients, and according to a site called Prospectiv, “Tough times are seeing more people using coupons – 72% of consumers are using more coupons than they did six months ago and three quarters say the state of the economy is the reason for doing so”.  This is strong evidence that using online coupons to promote your product(s) or service(s) is a sound marketing strategy.  When times change and new trends on consumer spending practices surface, they often become the norm for the long term rather just surfacing as a “fad”.

Prospectiv also quotes the following survey stats from polling 1,386 consumers, (August 2008): 

• 80% said they would be very likely or likely to increase their use of coupons if they could be tailored to their interests and delivered online.

• 87% of shoppers said they would be more likely to shop at a retailer that offered coupons.

• And the good news for newspapers: 47% found print and online coupons equally convenient, while just 9% reported online coupons were most convenient.

An article on how to market your coupons can be found at TamingTheBeast.net, where ideas such as; raising standard prices; offering a coupon sign up registry on your site; submitting your coupons to online coupon sites & setting up an affiliate program are discussed.

Creating Your Own Online & Print Coupons:

Other options are to create your own coupon(s) using websites such as MerchantCircle.com (for a fee, their service is to assist you with online advertising), or CouponsReady.com  (design your own coupon for your business website, or print distribution).  Each charges a fee for their service, but make the process of online coupon creation a relatively simple process.  Even better, you can set coupons up for free using Google Coupons.

Get set up with Coupons in 10 minutes or Less With Google:

If you’re not already set up on Google Maps, do that first (5 minutes).  Then go to www.google.com/local/add to create an online coupon for your company.

Google Coupons

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Franchise, Technology, Tips advertising, clients, consumers, creating, Design, distribute, economy, franchises, Google Coupons, Google Maps, ideas, marketing, new, offiliate, online coupons, polling, prices, print, product, promote, retailers, service, statistics, strategy, submitting, trends, usage

So You Want To Franchise Your Business by Harold Kestenbaum and Adina M Genn, 2008

This book  is jam-packed with ideas, suggestions, reminders and information.  It is invaluable for anyone who is thinking about franchising their business.  As a sidenote, I have been interviewing a number of franchisors about their experiences recently, and the most common advice they have for someone thinking about franchising is ‘know what you’re getting in to’ or ‘do your homework about franchising’ or some variant thereon, so this book is a great resource to help you do just that.

So You Want to Franchise Your Business contains four main sections, a useful add-on; guidelines for an operations manual, and lots of good stories – both success stories from franchisors and also warnings from franchisors who got some thing wrong.  The four sections are

1. Why Franchise?
2. Moving Forward (information about advisors, operations and so on)
3. Rolling It Out
4. Keeping it Going

I found Part 1 to be the most valuable.  As I kept reading, I realized I was mentally accumulating a huge to-do list, and it started to feel a bit overwhelming.  This is not a book to try and read in one sitting.  But do read it.

This is clearly written by people who have been through the wars (or, if they haven’t, have spent a lot of time with people who’ve been there!).  I was struck by the phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ – one franchisor I spoke with a couple of days ago was telling me what a disaster one particular attempt to do things with few resources had been for her in her early days.  There is also a good exploration of what makes a succesful operations manual (including a sample table of contents) and a whole chapter on exit strategies.  The exploration of what makes a suitable franchisee is also a nice combination of theory (fit, skills, attitude, funding) and practical (review committee, discovery day, earnings claims, etc).

Technology – Integrated Throughout

I have read a lot of books about franchising, and since I run a company that uses technology to help build businesses, I am always curious whether technology is even mentioned.  Often not.  With So You Want To Franchise Your Business, I was intrigued to find ways to benefit from technology running through the various sections:

• Chapter 6 talked about website and marketing tools, including how to provide branded sites to franchisees
• Chapter 8 talked about training tools and how beneficial automated or online training programs can be
• Chapter 9 was all about the website, including how it can support and strengthen branding, sales, quality assurance and lead generation
• Chapter 10 talked about advertising, building buzz online, internet marketing, public relations and electronic coupons
• Chapter 11 talked about online support; including internet training, the convenience of web access, the advantages of a strong audit trail, the benefits of communications tools and how to advance your branding.

This type of integration of technology into core business strategy can be a huge competitive advantage for franchises that see the value and implement it.  One franchisor said to me that technology had been her source of greatest expense & irritation, but had also provided opportunities for revenue and company growth that she would never have had otherwise.  So thank you to the two authors for including the technology thread in their exploration of how best to franchise your business.  And guess what?  You can find Adina Genn online via twitter at http://twitter.com/AdinaGenn (no real surprise there, right?).

Words of Wisdom/Quotes:

“For starters, not every business is franchisable.” (p. 10)

“Most franchisors agree that moving into the business of selling franchises is a tough transition….  So the more you know about the difficulties, the better equiped you may be at overcoming the challenges ahead.” (p. 21)

“If you have franchisees but do not have the appropriate infrastructure to handle them, it can lead to disaster.” (p. 34)

Past Book Reviews

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

The Franchise E-Factor by Greg Nathan

What No One Ever Tells You About Franchising by Jan Norman

Book Review, Franchise, Technology

There are lots of online technical tools out there. I’m not a fan of tools that just let me play with technology, but the ones that actually forward business purposes are the gems. One good one (and free) is the Press Release Grader from HubSpot. Improve the quality of Press Releases that you send out & make them more effective by getting direct useful feedback before you release them.

“HubSpot’s Press Release Grader evaluates your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score. This score is based upon basic factors from public relations experts including the language and content of the release, plus advanced factors from Internet marketing experts such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.” (from the Press release grader website).

To test the press release grader, I submitted a sample press release. The results were returned instantaneously, with a follow up email of the full report. The first screen returns a clear and concise analysis along with suggestions on how to improve the press release.

Main page

Some of the suggestions made on how to improve our press release were:

· The anchor text of the link did not seem to match any words in the page title of the target page. For Search Engine Optimization (SEO), use keywords in the anchor text that describe the page being linked to

· Press releases should contain 3 or more links to get the maximum SEO benefit.

· A standard practice when authoring press releases is to include an About section at the bottom of the release. Following this convention makes it easier for those interested in information about the organization mentioned in the release to find it.

· For a press release to have maximum value from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it should contain a hyperlink to the main website of the company.

· It is a standard practice of press releases to include special text at the end of the body of the release. This is usually ### (three pound signs) at the end of the text. This can be either ### or -30-. This special text is used by press release submission software to recognize where the official release ends.

· It is usually a good idea to get a link to your website earlier in the release than I had done in my sample

· (Love this one): This content contains 0 words that are considered gobbledygook (they are overused and lack specific meaning).

The report also offered two additional resources to assist with writing a press release: Which of these rookie mistakes are you making? and a link to join the Pro Marketers Group on LinkedIn

Even though my “grade” came back at a respectable 78/100, it is good to know which tweaks would make it even more effective. After all, the whole point of sending out press releases is to have them be noticed & generating PR for your business.  Five more minutes to know I’m not wasting my time sending it out is definitely a winner.

Past Technical Tips

Keyword Analysis Tool – Write Content that Works for You

Google Keywords Selector – Help the Right Customers Find You

Google Maps – Let Customers Find You

Google Alerts – Keep an eye on the Competition

Technology, Time Savers, Tips

I’m sure most people hold this truth to be self-evident: that technology is not always the solution.  Let me repeat that – technology is not always the solution.  And yes, I am the CEO of a technology company.  But before you even worry about your technology, you want to nail two key questions:

a) What am I trying to accomplish?

b) What do I have to offer?  What’s my value?

What am I trying to accomplish?

I recently met with Bob Garlick (a marketing mentor) for coffee, and he asked what makes our company different from other companies.  The answer was easy; we use technology to further business purposes and when we meet with clients, what we want to know first is what kind of business purpose they are trying to accomplish – not what technology they are looking for. 

After all, most franchisors and business owners don’t care much about the underlying technology – what matters is whether the final solution accomplishes the right purpose; be it increasing sales, generating leads or building the brand.  When clients know the answer to this question before we ask it, we know that they will be a pleasure to work with.

If you are looking at developing/purchasing any kind of software solution, make sure you know what you’re trying to accomplish with the software.  That answer will form the basis of how you evaluate and rate potential solutions that are presented to you.  If you don’t have that, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest cool thing (if you’re a technology person) or the most features (if you want to have lots of options later) or the best marketing materials.  But none of those help much if your core need is not being addressed.

What do I have to offer?  What’s my value?

Just the other day, I signed up for a webinar.  It was offered by a reputable organization, and the topic looked good.  The content was dreadful; lacking substance, poorly thought out, and delivered in a soft meandering voice.  Having recently had conversations with a couple of clients about webinar delivery, I was struck again that even if the technology is all great, if the content is lacking, the webinar won’t build business – and in fact, may drive it away.  I would certainly not want to do business with the person who hosted that webinar.

Content creation and generation is one of the best ways to add value to customers, but it needs to be substantive first, and then delivered professionally second.

So remember, before you even think about the technology, know what you’re trying to accomplish, and know what you have to offer in terms of value.  Once you have those two, the technology will be easy…

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Technology

To Twitter or not to Twitter?

I have been hearing all the arguments for Twitter for a while.  Even though I run a software / website development company, I tend to be slow to adopt new technologies.  I don’t want the latest version or the latest fad and I’m too busy to try the latest great toy out unless I see value from the getgo.  If it’s not going to grow our business or our customers’ businesses, then I probably don’t want to know.  Fortunately our Creative Director, Jeff, just loves all the new stuff and raves to me about all the possibilities for this and that as it comes out!

We had a great conversation yesterday about Twitter – pros (mostly Jeff) and cons (mostly me).  Jeff says it’s important to be part of the online conversation and a great way to come in contact with people you would never have come across otherwise.  I was trying to figure out how to find anything useful (there’s so much information out there – I find information filtering more of a need than how to get more information) and whether it would take a lot of time or whether it would actually bring value.

The Experiment

Being experiential and empirical, I decided to try it out and see what happens.  Is all the Twitter buzz true, or are the people I know who say that it’s just a big time consumer right?  Will it actually add value to our company to have a Twitter account?

I already had a twitter account created, but had never done anything with it.  So yesterday I went in, found a couple of people I know & a couple of people I don’t know but who are in our industry (franchise and franchise services) and set it up to follow them.

For those like me who have trouble finding anything useful in the default twitter search, Jeff sent me a link to a good search tool; search.twitter.com, which allowed me to find some conversations that I found interesting.  I also uploaded a picture, set up my basic profile, and changed the background image.

Day Two

This morning I was surprised to find that I had acquired some followers – some of them the people I had chosen, but also a couple of others.  Note that at that point, all I had was a profile – no tweets, nothing.  I did do a couple of tweets today, and found some very interesting links to a variety of websites and articles that are useful and/or interesting. 

Time spent so far:  probably 2 hours (some of that figuring out how it all works, some of that browsing the tweets & profiles).

Questions so far:  with so many tweets coming out, do most people just browse the most recent ones from the people they follow, or do they really go through them all from when they last checked in (even skimming)?

ROI: aside from the interest factor, nothing so far, but I have learned about some interesting people out there & seen some good websites….

Communication, Technology, Twitter Experiment

Why Analyze Keywords

One of the first steps in Search Engine Optimization is determining what keywords people will be searching for to find your product.  Two weeks ago I wrote a post about using the Google Keyword Selector to get the right people finding your website – people who are actually looking for your products and services.   They’re the best ones to have coming to your site because they’re the most likely to actually buy from you.

The first step in helping these customers find you is determining what the right keywords are – what are your best customers actually searching for?  The second step is writing content that:

1. Provides value
2. Uses those keywords
3. Is unique

Writing Content that Provides Value

I am going to assume that you can write content that provides value.  If writing is not your strong point, I know a number of companies that have succesfully found either professional writers or students who are passionate about language or other types of communicators who can write up the information.  One company I know hired a great communicator/online networker and has established a place as an industry leader in their field in less than a year – huge ROI.  But that’s a topic for a different post…

Check Keyword Usage

Once you have the content that provides value, the next step is to see how it stacks up in terms of keyword usage & attracting the right traffic via search engines.  Always remember that you need to write the content for users, not search engines (and in fact, too high density can get penalized or be very hard to read).  But real language keyword density that makes sense and provides value is the lodestone you are aiming for.

A great tool for determine your keyword density (=how much you use your selected keywords) is E3 KWD Check - it’s a nifty little tool that you install on your computer.  You can then load into it web pages or local documents & it will tell you the keywords used in those web pages/documents, along with how many times each is found & what the keyword density and prominence of each keyword is.  Once you have a draft of the content, run it through E3 KWD Check & see whether the keywords you selected in step one are actually reflected in your content so they bring the right customers to your site.

Is Content Unique?

The unique factor is mainly a list of Do Not’s

• Do Not use content that has been posted elsewhere on the internet
• Do Not  post the same article/blog posting to multiple different blogs
• Do Not  copy someone else’s content
• Do Not post the same content multiple times throughout your site (you won’t actually get penalized for this, but the duplicate content will be ignored).

Or, to put it another way, do post original valuable content that was developed only for/by you.  The closer your site gets to being considered an ‘expert’ by Google, the more valuable the search engines perceive your content to be.

Helping The Right People Find You

As I said in my post on Tuesday, don’t make people think! 

Make it easy for them to find you when they are looking for what you offer.

Make it easy for them to buy from you.

Make it easy for them to keep coming back.

Then keep adding value and repeat.

Communication, Search Engine Optimization, Technology, Time Savers, Tips

Why Keywords?

The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to have the right people find your website – people who are looking for your services or product.  Keywords are the words that people are likely to search on.  If you are have a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, then maybe they will search on ‘Chinese Food Vancouver’ or ‘Chinese Restaurant Vancouver’.  If you sell franchises especially to new immigrants, then maybe they are searching on ‘Canadian Business Opportunities’ or ‘Franchise for Immigrants to Canada’.

Step One – Know Your Keywords

The first step in getting your site optimized is learning what your best prospects are actually searching on (as opposed to what you might think they are searching on).  How do you find this out?

1. Ask your current customers how they found you
2. Make a list of all the words that you think people might search on to find you
3. Put yourself in the headspace of a prospective customer and brainstorm what you would look for
4. Test & verify with Google’s Keywords Selector

Google Keyword Selector

You can find Google’s keyword selector at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.  Once you have your list of words that you think are likely the ones people are searching on, go here and type in the words that you think are the most likely.  The tool will show you how many people search on those keywords and suggest alternatives. 

Business Growth, Communication, Technology, Time Savers, Tips

What do You Think of My Website?

This is probably the question I get asked the most.  It’s a hard question to answer for two reasons.  First, because people have often put a lot of time and energy and thought and care into the development of their website.  They want to hear positive feedback, but as a professional, they don’t hire me to be warm and fuzzy – they want a website that works.  Secondly, and more important, because I can’t tell from looking at their website whether it meets the most important criteria of succces for a website:

Does it Meet Your Business Objectives?

In other words, does it do what it’s intended to do?  Which is the most important question of all in rating the ultimate success of your website.

Websites can be a source of good feelings, pride, visual appeal, professional image, and more.  But, above all, they must move your business forward.

You may need your website to do one (or many) of the following:

• Lead Generation – getting potential customers interested enough that they will contact you, or providing enough value that they will give you their contact information
• Closing Sales – actually getting people to buy something (usually a product) from your website
• Building your Brand – being an effective representative of your unique differentiator and value proposition in the marketplace, bringing people back, starting a conversation or an online buzz
• Internal Tools – letting your clients / distributors / suppliers / employees / franchisees log in to a secure area where they can conduct company business from anywhere easily and efficiently
• Stakeholder Communications – especially for public companies and franchisors, this may mean providing a great deal of information in a well organized, easy to navigate, easy to update structure

Ideally, you don’t want your website trying to do all five of the above.  You need to know which one is the key to growing your business, and then orient your website around that particular goal, because each goal has different tactics, strategies, content and workflow management that will make it the most effective.

Trying It Out

I highly recommend determining what you are trying to do with your website, and how it will help your business grow.  Then take a look at your website from that point of view.

If you are trying to generate leads, go to the website as if you’ve never been there before.  Remember that most users will spend only seconds deciding whether your website fits their needs and feels right to them before either leaving to look elsewhere, or deciding to go a little further.  Would you, as someone who doesn’t know your company at all, want to spent time on this site?  Does it answer the key questions:

• What do you do?
• Why should I care?
• What’s in it for me?

If not, you will lose a large percentage of people right away.

Next, look at the website and see whether you have an appealing offer of value in exchange for people’s contact information.  If your site is to generate leads, the most important thing it can do is get people either contacting you directly (which takes effort on their part) or leaving you their information so you can contact them.  What value are you offering that would lead them to provide this information?  Be creative about what you can do.  Make sure you have clear calls to action, and an EASY way for people to sign up.  Look at the trade-offs between asking for a lot of information (will your customers be hesitant to provide too much detail) vs getting more people’s contact information but with less detail. Would you want to sign up on the site?

Next Steps

Obviously, we can keep going here, but I’m sure you get the picture.  The other easy way to decide whether your website is a success is metrics.  Are you getting the number of leads you want from your site?  If not, then to be blunt, the site is not working.  At that point, you may want to get in touch with Open Box and we can work together so you know that your website IS contributing to the success of your business.  At that point, you won’t care what I think of your website, because you’ll know that the people it was built for think it’s great.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Technology

Will You Be Found?

Do your locations show up when customers search in your area?  One easy way to let customers come to you is to make sure your company shows up on Google Maps. 

Spend 10 minutes and claim your business, put in basic company information and then site back and watch.  Even better, add coupons or get your customers to write reviews.  Make it easy for potential customers to know what you do and how good you are.  For franchisors, you can even manage multiple locations through the Local Business Center.

Getting Set Up

1. Go to Google Maps & type in your company address
2. Click on the letter for your location
3. Click on ‘Claim your business’ and put in the information requested
4. Add your hours of operation, company description, website and other relevant information.
5. Google will add links to web pages that mention your company

 Advanced Options

You can invite your customers to write reviews of your company – just ask them to search on your company & then click on the ‘Write a review’ at the top left-hand side.

Add coupons by going to www.google.com/local/add (where you can also manage information about multiple business locations).  There is no charge to set these up.  Consumers then see your special offers and can download them, print them off, and bring them in to your location to redeem.  Another easy component to a comprehensive online advertising strategy…

Technology, Time Savers, Tips

Google Alerts – What Are They?

Google Alerts are one of those nice little Google offerings that is super easy to set up and lets you automatically keep up to date on information online that may be important to you.  You can create Google Alerts on any topic that is valuable to your business and get instant, daily or weekly updates.  For example, I get Alerts on ‘franchise software’ since anything that relates to both franchises and software may be of interest to me.  They come in as small daily digests that I can skim.

A Competitive Edge

As a franchisor, or a rapid growth entrepreneur, you need to know what’s going on in your market.   You also need to know what’s being said about your company and products in the online world.  And you need to do all this without a large time investment.  Google Alerts let you keep in touch either by email or via RSS feeds, and setting them up is a matter of minutes.

Set up a Google Alert

 To set up a Google Alert, just go to www.google.com/alerts and type in the terms you are interested in,  what type of information you want to know about (I recommend Comprehensive, but you can limit your alerts to the web only, to video only, to news only, to blogs only or to Google groups only), how often you want to receive the alert, and your email address.

Next,  go to your email, and confirm the alert (Google sends an email with a link that you can click on for confirmation).

That’s it – you’re all set & good to go, and every day (or week) you’ll get a great digest of what has been happening online related to your chosen topic, with links so that if any of them are valuable to you, you can go directly to the original article.

Franchise, Technology, Time Savers, Tips