Top 3 Tasks to Outsource for Your Small Business

Retaliate1st grew through hard work both internally and externally. We spent most of our first year using freelancers and a team we had to outsource to. We wanted to share some of the critical elements we chose to outsource.

Bookkeeping and Invoicing

Nothing can eat up the time of a small business owner quite like keeping the books, crunching the numbers, and invoicing.

Chances are you started your business because you had a talent or passion for your product or service. Unless that passion was accounting, hand the books to someone else.

As you grow, keeping the books will only become more complicated and time consuming. Instead of letting record keeping eat up a huge percentage of the time you could be putting into pulling the big levers on your business, outsource the task to a CPA. If you need help with the day-to-day numbers, tracking, and invoicing, you can easily find and train an employee or intern to do this for you.

Graphic Design and Your Website

If there’s one area where small business and solo entrepreneurs make a huge mistake it’s in doing their own graphic design and website building.

  • Learning a “little about SEO and websites” will give your business a site that looks terrible, is extremely time consuming to build, generates no sales, and projects a very unprofessional image.
  • Free site creators give you a website that looks like it was made for free.

Doing your own HTML or CSS usually looks like an amateur did the site… at best. Remember that designers and developers go to college for 4+ years to learn coding. This is not something you can become an expert in by reading a For Dummies book over the weekend.

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Doing your own graphic design in Photoshop or Paint will take time and give your ads, brochures, and other marketing materials an unpolished, unprofessional look.

We’ve all seen these pieces. Someone is trying to sell us a high-end product (like a new car) and their flyer features a blurry, askew image, hovering above a mass of text set in huge block letters in all caps (and in multiple colors).

  • Do you want your clients and customers to see your business as being a two-bit amateur operation? If you sell services or quality products, hire someone to do your site and your graphic design.

Don’t Outsource To Family

And no, getting your nephew who “knows all that computer stuff” to do your site is not the answer.

Your business website is part of your physical business. It’s no different than building a brick-and-mortar property. Would you hire someone to build a structure simply because they know how to use a shovel?

  • You can find amazingly high quality designers overseas through outsource sites like Upwork and Elance. They work cheap, they’re fast, they’re incredibly effective.

And, using their services allows you to keep a designer “on staff” without having to pay a full-time employee.

You’ll need to do some research and try different designers before bringing one on to do a big project like your website.

  • Ask for their portfolio and references
  • Give them a small task to start (a logo, label for a new product, a one-sheet flyer)
  • Then, find a back-up designer. Having two designers at your disposal is always a good idea for emergency situations (you have to present something to a new client by tomorrow morning and you just found out about it). If one isn’t available, you have your back up read to roll.

Reception and Appointment Setting

IF you are selling products, you may be able to hire a virtual assistant to hire your phone calls and email responses.

Same goes for appointment setting.

Do you want to have to find the leads, set them yourself, then go sell them?

Do you want to be on the phone all day because your customer’s delivery arrived at 5:15pm when the tracking told them it’d get there at 5:00?

If you’re uncomfortable going virtual, hire someone to do this for you. You may even be ablet o score an intern. There are a lot of talented people looking for work. Put in some effort to find someone competent to handle your appointments, customer service calls, and general reception. This will not only free you up to do more important tasks, but it projects a highly professional image for your business.

How Do You Get Your Site Featured in Google’s Snippet?

Getting to the top of Google’s search pages is no longer enough to dominate your completion. While good SEO keeps your site on the first page, and well-written ads keep you atop the PPC results, there is a newcomer in the search world: Snippets

Snippets

Google wants to help searchers. It’s what launched them to become the dominant search engine that they are today. Anyone who remembers the frustrating search results on Yahoo, Lycos, or Dogpile will attest that Google simply delivers better search results.

With mobile and “question” searches rising, Google has changed the game again.

In almost any search you’re now bound to find a snippet of info, often enumerated, in a small box between the final PPC ad and the first organic listing. Below is the snippet that appears for the search “How to Get More Leads:”

Snippets Are Quick Answers

Google puts up snippets with the best info available. This allows users to get the answers they’re looking for without clicking the link. However, since the snippets tend to display only part of the info, the links inside of the snippet box tend to be clicked a lot.

  • Google can source simple, direct answers from their own knowledge base.
  • But, most business or product related queries are sourced from third party sites, i.e., your web site.

Imagine the potential traffic that would result in an SEO strategy that lands you in the top 3 of the PPC ads, with a featured snippet, and then the top organic search result.

How to Get a Featured Snippet

The problem is that getting your site featured isn’t easy. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And, with snippet results being so new, we’re not even exactly sure how Google pulls the info. Or, if they will rotate results in the future.

But, we can speculate and improve our business sites so that we have the best possible chance of being featured. At worst, you’ll improve the content of your site and make your customers very happy. An informative, easy-to-read site will almost always bring in more leads, clients, and sales.

Step 1:

  • SearchEngineLand recommends the following tactic for your first step:

Identify a common, simple question related to your market area. Provide a clear and direct answer to the question. Offer value added info beyond the direct answer. Make it easy for users (and Google) to find the information

The advice is solid. Their answer is actually the featured snippet for the search “how to get a featured snippet.”

Step 2:

  • Answer Questions

Research the most asked questions about your product, service, or industry. Create pages and blog posts that answer this question.

Be direct

– title pages and blogs with the exact question wording. Then, answer the query with as much info as needed. Use numbered lists and bullet points.

Break up info to make it both easier for your customer to absorb (or skim), and for Google to pull the best bits.

Step 3

  • Make your snippet-worthy information easy to find

This requires some basic SEO housekeeping:

  • Giving each article or blog a strong title that uses the question
  • Using the question and its variation in the content
  • Adding pictures or video, with proper tagging, as needed
  • Over deliver on info. Don’t skimp on the answer. You can provide long copy while also using bullets and numbered lists.

Do You Really Want More Clients and Customers?

If you’re running a small business, or are a solo entrepreneur, you probably spend much of your time thinking about how great life would be if you could only get a few more clients, get a few more customers, or land that one big account.

But, before you go big time, you should take a moment to make sure you’re ready to scale your small business up.

From Barley in Business to Busty to Death

It happens all the time.

A small business is doing ok, but the cash flow isn’t exactly overwhelming. When you run an online or service based business, especially if you’re running the show alone or with a small group, this can be a frustrating time.

Then, all the work, all the banging your head against the wall, and all of the planning takes a turn. You hit the tipping point. Whatever you want to call it, your business goes from scraping by to breaking through.

Now, it doesn’t have to be breaking through to super-stardom. Even if your business grows 20% suddenly, that can translate to a lot of extra income.

And a lot of extra work.

Are You Ready to Grow Your Business?

Take a minute to assess your current work load, productivity, and efficiency.

If you have a few customers or clients and you’re behind on orders or fulfilling service agreements, you’re probably not ready to grow. Getting more contracts might help your bank account, but it will not magically cure your productivity issues.

However, if you are consistently knocking your work load out of the park, you might be ready. If you work with a team, make sure everyone is on board. Having a key employee bail during a growth surge can leave you and your customers frustrated.

Think Big

When you’re ready to grow, start thinking big. If your firm normally handles 10 clients per month, or 20-customers per week, start to think about how it will be to take care of 100 clients a month or 200 customers. Then, think a little bigger.

This isn’t an exercise in daydreaming. It’s actually part of the planning process. If you’ve planned how you’ll handle the extra customers, you’ll be ready when it happens. Sure, no plan is fool-proof, but you’ll be in a much better position if you know where you’re going vs winging it, failing, then losing your new customers.

Find Financing

If you’ve bootstrapped so far, it may be time to consider financing or investors.

If you’re a solo-business, this can be intimidating. But, if you want to jump to the next level (and the levels beyond), finding funding may be necessary.

Before you panic and lose your nerve on this one, understand that funding can mean as little as a few thousand dollars to invest in equipment, marketing, or anything that will help you service more customers.

Concentrate on What You Do Best

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber talks a lot about how most entrepreneurs have one area of expertise, i.e., the baker who opens a bakery. But, most small business owners don’t just do the baking.

They do the baking, the ordering, the marketing, the cash register, the clean-up, and the book.

When you’re ready to scale, you’re ready to hand off some of these jobs. Stick to baking and you’ll have the best baked goods in town. Leave the marketing to a marketer, the books to your accountant (or bookkeeper), and the minutia to your employees.

Everyone wants free traffic. Organic traffic is the best traffic. It is free and it is natural – like the food and its good for you. There is a way to further benefit from organic traffic and that is to optimize the targeting on your organic reach on social media. If the targeting is laser focused then there is a much higher chance of converting that free traffic into a paying customer and making money. Savvy marketers are increasing their organic traffic, but optimizing the targeting on their organic social media reach. Retaliate1st provides our guide to growing your organic traffic.

Targeting To Grow Your Organic Traffic

  1. Better Targeting on Organic Social Media Reach

Much like you can target your ideal audience with paid facebook ads, you are now able to do something similar with organic posts.

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This could help you reach much more of your audience through non-paid ads. It’s still not going to reach everyone, but it will expose your messages to many more people than are seeing them now.

Not everyone who follows your page will want to see every post you make, nor will the be interested in all of your news and events. But, when you target your audience for your posts, you can reach those who have:

  • Liked, shared, or commented on similar posts in the past
  • Took action on similar posts in the past
  • Have interests that match your news/event/post
  • Are in the demographic you’re targeting

While it’s important to target the best possible audience, the best part about this is that you can now leave out those who won’t be interested in what you’re saying this particular time. This increases the juice of each post, gaining more engagement with your audience.

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  1. Paid Engagement Posts

These do cost a little money to boost, but for next to noghitn you can boost yoru paid and non paid engagement. First, make sure you use this on your best posts.

Content Is Key For Organic Traffic

A little research will show you clearly that some of your posts or post types are in the top 1 – 5% of yoru best interatcions – likes, shares, clicks, etc.

Forget the stuff that gets very little recognition, stick to only our best content.

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Now, after posting your best stuff, you can reach more people by boosting post-engagement. Yes, it will cost you $5 – 20 per post. But, you help your organic reach as well because you are almost guaranteed that:

  • This top-quality post will get likes, their friends see these likes and can interact with your page
  • This post will be shared. More shares = a ton more organic views (which leads to likes, further shares, etc.), thereby boosting your organic juice for each of these posts
  1. Use More Video

The rise of video content on Youtube, Vine, Snapchat has lead to less text-based posts being viewed on Facebook.

If you want to overcome this hurdle, simply post more video content. Producing video is easier than ever, with the iPhone and top android phones shooting super high quality video. Video, quick edit, post. Use a good Call to Action and your post engagement will soar.

Studies show that Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites in the world. Almost 3,500 pins are posted every minute. And, not only does Pinterest have a huge, active audience, it also has consumers with a buyer’s mindset:

  • They’re 10% more likely to buy than users that come from other social media sites
  • Pinterest drives more than 300% revenue per click than Twitter, and nearly 30% more than Facebook

So, why aren’t more of use utilizing Pinterest as a lead and sale generation source? Usually it is a misunderstanding of the power of Pinterest.

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How To Use Pinterest For Lead Generation

  1. Profit from User Generated Content

Some clothing retailers are putting user generated content to great use by utilizing contests. Before and after’s, or “favorite products” for the holidays.

Users take pics, turn them into pins, and share them on their boards along with their email address.

  • One company saw a 23% increase in re-pins, and that led to an increase of 44% in revenue per click
  1. Pins as Social Proof

Your business can never build too much credibility online. Reviews, testimonials, and awards go a long way to helping your business’ reputation.

But, what’s even more powerful is user generated content.

Many companies are using pins of their customers using or wearing their favorite products. What a beautiful way to use “live action” testimonials of people just like you…

 pinterest3

The company then re-pins, using a “shop now” call to action. This has led to click increases of 25% or more.

Encourage your customers to pin pics or videos of themselves using your products or enjoying your services. This is powerful social proof, and allows your product to be displayed in the real world, by real people.

  1. Reward Referrals

Create custom welcome messages for traffic that you drive to your Pinterest home page.

Offer discounts, coupons, free shipping, free estimates, etc. to reward referral traffic.

This gives you a great opportunity to make that new traffic stick, and to increase opt-ins and follows.

Plus, giving things away for free is still one of the most powerful ways to create trust and loyalty in your customer base.

Email is still the number one channel for driving sales for e-commerce business. For many years marketers have touted the decline of the channel, but it is still here. It is still getting strong. With new tools such as AppBoy, Marketo and HubSpot, the abilities for customizing and refining campaigns is endless. However, the original principals of email marketing still hold true. Retaliate1st list their guide to increasing your open rates.

How To Increase Your Email Open Rates

  1. Don’t Send Unnecessary Mail

As business owners and growth hackers, we subscribe to a ton of mailing lists. We consume info at an amazing rate. Some of the lists are better than others, and though we love to learn, we all know that there are those businesses that send garbage email blasts. It annoys us, but we stay subscribed. Then they do it again. We unsubscribe.

They lost a warm lead.

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Don’t be like them. Keep your mail marketing messages to the most important. Do not simply send out blasts because you think you should.

New product, really exciting news, a big re-cap of the latest info, discounts, sales, or free stuff? Send it.

Short emails pushing half-hearted promotions because you either feel you haven’t emailed enough, or you want to generate a few extra sales? Don’t send it.

  1. Personalize Your mail

Yes, we all know that it’s auto-generated, and most customers realize that at this point.

However, seeing our names in the subject is a powerful attention grabber.

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Dear Customer, or Hey Business Pro are horrible ways to start an email. Hi Jennifer or Good Morning Darryl are going to get your email opened, and will get your first few lines read.

  • You can further increase your open rate by adding “Re:” before the personalization, even if it’s the first email in the chain. This can be used in your personal and intra-office communications as well, though over-doing it will diminish it’s power.

Personalization and Targeting

You should also personalize your “From.” Use your name or Name + Business. Jim at WidgetCo or Domenica from SalesBooster gives your list a warmer feeling than an email from SalesBooster.

  1. Write Powerful Headlines

We’re talking about email marketing. Remember that every word you write for your business is marketing. And, email subject lines are pure copywriting.

Weak subjects don’t get opened.

If you are doing a lot of email, it can be fatiguing to come up with killer headlines consistently. The way around this is to split test subject lines, and parse your list so that you can use variations of the same subject for multiple parts of your audience.

  • The words Free, Incredible, Sale, Deal, and Discount are always powerful
  • Name + benefit is still a great lead
  • Re: Name + benefit is even better (save this for your most important email)

emails

While it can be tempting to write “weird” subjects to get higher open rates, please remember that they have to relate to the content of your email, your product, and your brand. For example, one large personal training and fitness related business was famous for sending out emails with salacious subject lines that had zero to do with their product:

“Weed, whores, and whiskey”

“Re: A duffle bag full of guns”

“Re: Are you in the mafia?”

They’re now out of business.

Instagram is still considered by many in the pay-per-click marketing word, to be the new kid on the block. With newness comes a bit of fear, so many small and medium businesses have been hesitant to stray from using only Google and Facebook PPC.

instagram

But, it can be a huge lead booster if utilized properly. Here’s why?

Using Instagram To Create Leads For Your Business

  1. Visual Marketing is a Dominant Force

Content marketing rules, and will continue to be the most useful form of marketing for years to come. As the internet becomes more available in non-PC forms, phones, tablets, watches, etc., the need to turn to non-text content will be essential.

You can do this with visual content, and Instagram is the perfect place to put your best visuals to work.

Simply, visual attractiveness in an ad or in any piece of content that has the goal of increasing conversions, leads to more opt-ins, engagement, leads, and sales.

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It will also get you more shares, and that increases each campaign’s reach exponentially at no cost to you.

Using high-quality, bright pictures, you draw the attention of your followers, and can help lead them on the path to purchase.

Instagram Videos

Now with videos in the Instagram feed, you can really skyrocket your leads and sales through the social media site. Video content on Instagram gets more views, shares, and likes. It stops scrollers in their path. Once you become known for putting out good video, you’ll be well on your wall to dominating your market online.

  1. Young, Money-Spending Graphics

In Television, for years the most coveted demographic was 18 – 54 year old males.

Now, it’s men and women 18 – 34 (with 18 – 54 being not far behind). Instagram is custom made, literally, for those in that demographic. Build a strong Instagram following, and you’ll be tapping into the most lucrative market in the world.

  1. Build Brand Awareness

Instagram allows you to use visual content to reach more customers. Facebook is similar in this respect, but Instagram actually gets more shares.

Post a good video or picture, and promote it. Your target audience sees the cool content, wants to show their friends, so they like and share it. Now, for the price to reach your target audience, you’ve reached them plus the friends they’ve shared with. It extends the life of your ads, exposes your products, services, and your brand to a large, warm-audience. This is key for growing your business, especially if you don’t have an unlimited ad-buy budget.

Landing pages are still the most important pages on your website. They are the funnel that allows you to convert your ad traffic and social media traffic into paying customers. landing pages are the pages that showcase your value proposition, your product and close your leads. These landing pages are the life blood of your business. At Retaliate1st, we specialize in developing landing pages that convert, that achieve their goal. We want to showcase the landing page mistakes we continually see, so that your business can thrive.

Why Your Landing Pages Don’t Convert

  1. Too Many Options

Barry Schwartz wrote about the paralysis that sets in in many shopping situations in his book the Paradox of Choice. He uses the example of a man shopping for shampoo at a grocery store. He is faced with hundreds of choices – for dry hair, for brittle hair, for oily hair; olive oil base, coconut oil base; flower scented; and just about every color imaginable. This leads to frustration, and often people with either simply leave the store, or buy the closest option and later be unhappy with it.

landing pages

Now, take a look at your landing pages. Are they leaving your customer in the isle frustrated because there are so many options they’re not sure which to choose?

If so, narrow it down to one choice (two, maximum).

What’s the goal of your landing page?

Email opt-in? Make sure the opt-in form is easily accessible, easy to read, and has a strong, clear call to action.

Do you want phone calls? Make your number big and visible and clickable.

landing-pages-2

Would you take either a phone call or a web form opt-in? Make it clear that either option gets them the same result: contact, free estimate, discount, services, etc.

  1. Too Many Visual Distractions

It can be tempting to overwhelm your visitor with slick graphics. You may think you’re helping them find their way to your CTA.
But, there is a point where the graphics cause confusion.

When using infographics, pictures, video, or graphics, make sure they are absolutely essential to achieving the page’s goal. If they’re not, cut them. You can use them elsewhere (Thank You page, in email marketing, on blogs or pages).

Customer Centric Landing Pages

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. They’re asking “What am I supposed to look at?”

If your landing page is littered with graphics, it will confuse them. This includes going overboard with exotic background colors, text colors and fonts, and headline sizes. Keep it simple… white background with black text is still the best option because it’s easiest to read.

  1. Entry Pop Ups

Pop up windows upon entry are, unfortunately, overused. Some sites will display the pop-up every time you refresh the page, visit a new page on the site, and every time you vist the landing page, even if you’ve already opted in. IT can be frustrating for your user, especially if they’re viewing your content on mobile.

Responsive landing page development vector template illustration

Your better option is to use an exit pop-up. At this point, on a true landing page that you’ve driven traffic to, if they’re leaving, they’re gone. An exit pop-up is a last-ditch effort to salvage the lead. It can work fairly well, and will increase your leads significantly over time.

SEO is the perfect tactic to optimize to drive free traffic to your website. While organic traffic is fantastic and can be created through optimizing web pages, this organic traffic can be amplified by using SEO extensions. Here Retaliate1st list our favorite SEO extensions to boost your organic traffic.

The 6 Best Extensions for Your Site’s SEO and Adwords

Google Tag Assistant

IF you are running your company’s SEO without help from a professional firm, or if you just want to check up on your SEO investment, Tag Assistant can help you verity that Adwords and Analytics are up and running properly. The best part about this extension is that with one click it lays out everything you need to see without digging around in the minuteau of Adwords (and it’s oft-lugubrious interface) or analytics.

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Builtwith

Builtwith works with Google Chrome, and Is an excellent way to see what your competitors are up to by letting you know what they’re using to build their site. You can see

PageRank for Firefox

This is a great tool for evaluating other sites when it comes to building links, guest posting, forming joint ventures, etc. The best part is, you don’t have to dig at all – the site’s Page Rank is displayed right in the toolbar at the top of your browser.

Further SEO Extensions

Majestic SEO Backlink Analyizer

If linking building is part of your SEO strategy, you need to make sure those links are not coming from bad neighborhoods. Further, you want the best quality links possible to your site. You can check out anchor text, site reputation, as well as Page Rank and a few other key indicators.

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Boomerang

This isn’t so much for SEO as it is a productivity tool. Boomerang for Gmail allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, schedule follow ups. IF you are dealing with multiple clients, and working with people in different time zones, this tool is a life saver. No more worrying that you’re emailing your Japanese clients at 4am Tokyo time… just schedule the emails to hit their offices during work hours. This can cut down on a lot of back and forth.

For any sales pro, follow ups are essential. Boomerang will do all of these for you.

Keywords Everywhere

This Chome extension can cut down on your keyword research time dramatically. When you search something in Google, it will display the volume of searches for this term and gives you the average cost per click for that keyword or phrase. This will help you cut out a lot of groundwork when searching for perfect keywords and phrases, and you’ll get a quick idea of what you’ll need to invest in Adwords to make them work for you.

Facebook reviews are now driving e-commerce. Customers are always looking for reviews and validation from fellow customers before completing the purchase or the desired action. Any business must be smart enough to manage the Facebook reviews, and shrewd enough to use the positive reviews to amplify business. Here Retaliate1st list their tactics on amplifying your positive Facebook reviews.

3 Ways to Profit from Facebook Reviews

  1. Facebook Comments Can Be Deleted

If you are receiving negative comments, you can either:

  • Respond to them (positively – fighting in your comments section will harm your reputation)
  • Delete them

The main advantage to getting a negative comment is that you can remove it and block the user. If it’s a legitimate bad review, you should respond.

If it’s a former employee, competitor, or just a whacko who loves to troll, then delete.

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  1. Reviews Can Not Be Deleted

Anything left in the actual review section of your Facebook cannot be deleted. This is done to protect the consumer, as every business would simply delete all non-positive reviews.

But, don’t fret, this is actually a good thing, especially if you have overwhelmingly positive reviews.

If you don’t, then ask your customers to review you on Facebook. Everyone and their mother (literally) has a Facebook account, so getting them to leave a review doesn’t take much action on their part. You should link them to your page to make it as easy as possible. Ethical bribes are ok in this situation, too.

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The more positives you have, the less impact the negatives hold.

What do you do when someone drops a 1-star review plus negative text?

Respond to the review. Publicly invite them to contact you. You don’t have to admit mistakes. A simple, “We’re sorry to hear you are having an issue. Please contact us at 888-888-8888 and we’ll help you.”

Why Facebook Reviews Are Critical

It’s simple, direct, doesn’t admit that you’ve done something wrong, and most importantly, it shows other customers that when there’s an issue, you jump on solving it. No matter how web-savvy we become, there is still a pervading fear of being ripped off online by a business that takes our credit card payment and skips town.

Responding with an invitation to contact helps quell these fears.
What about if the negative review keeps on the offensive?

Continue to remain calm and invite them to resolve the issue with you. If they continue to push, they end up looking bad while you show yourself to be a trustworthy business that handles even the harshest of your critics with grace.

  1. Cultivate More Reviews

The best thing you can do is cultivate as many reviews as possible. As discussed above, link your page in email to your customers and ask for a review.

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Offer them a gift card, discount, free info, or something they’ll like in exchange for a review. Note: in exchange for a review, not a positive review. This is an important distinction with the FTC.

With most experts predicting that Facebook reviews will soon surpass Yelp as the go-to review site (Yelp’s bizarre strong-arm tactics are becoming well known to consumers, they were even parodied on South Park recently), now is a great time to start the review building process.

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