4 reasons to discover the value of email marketing

Whether you’re selling a product or service, working from a home or corporate office, starting an email campaign can be incredibly beneficial.

Sending consistent newsletters to your followers gives you the ability to develop a “Know, Like and Trust” relationship with them that will dramatically increase your brand’s visibility and market reach.

However, many business owners and entrepreneurs pass up this golden opportunity to build relationships and increase sales. You are one of them?

In this week’s blog, I’m going to share some reasons why your small business should create an email marketing campaign and offer some tips to help you increase open rates.

What is the value of email marketing?

Let’s start with 4 reasons why your small business should send out a newsletter.

1. Remind people that you are there. As much as you’d like it to happen, your customers aren’t sitting in front of your computer daydreaming about your brand. Sending them relevant content can keep it on the mind of your target audience.

2. It can get truly personal. For example, greeting someone by name or even using data from their previous purchases to suggest complementary products or services can be very beneficial. In fact, open rates for personalized emails average 18.8% compared to 13.1% without personalization.

3. Increase your website traffic. Links within your newsletter drive traffic to your website and social media platforms, which means increased brand awareness, leads, and sales.

4. It is profitable advertising. By using a service like Constant Contact to create newsletters, you can easily design a newsletter to send out to thousands of people. From segmenting your audience to managing unlimited marketing lists and campaigns, you can do a lot within a platform like Constant Contact.

Check out our recommended newsletter providers for more information. And remember, while it may be tempting to use a newsletter template, hiring a professional web designer to create a unique one that reflects your brand is best for your clients.

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Read: How to target your ideal customers with digital newsletters

Regardless of the size of your business, ezines are an effective way to reach current and potential customers and easily measure the results of your efforts.

But before sending newsletters for digital marketing purposes, you need to make sure you are targeting the right people with the right messages. Here are 5 ways to get started.

Read more on our website.

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4 email basics to increase open rates

Your open rate is the percentage of the total number of subscribers who opened your newsletter.

While open rates vary by industry, statistics show that the average is about 17.80%. So if you want to get that number even higher, here are 4 things to do when creating an email marketing campaign:

1. Determine your goals.

Like any page on your website, your newsletter must have a purpose. Here are some common goals for digital newsletters:

To???? To drive traffic to your website

To???? To increase brand awareness

To???? To build your authority in your industry

To???? To increase leads and / or sales

To???? To promote a product, service or event.

As I mentioned in my last blog, you need a compelling CTA. What do you want your visitors to do on a particular page? Every page on your site should have a call to action that encourages your potential customers to do something.

2. Create a compelling subject line.

The subject line is the first thing people see and it is what encourages people to open your ezine. It should be short and eye-catching, and tell your audience what to expect when they open the email.

Obviously, you can’t cover every topic in your newsletter in the subject line. Focus on the most important and important message that you want your target audience to receive.

3. Give people a reason to sign up.

With so many messages flooding your customers’ inboxes, it’s hard to ignore the noise. Instead of just saying “sign up for my newsletter,” offer your website visitors a discount, free content download, or something more attractive.

It is also essential to remember that the purpose of sending your ezine is to inform, engage and entertain your audience. It is NOT a place to push for a hard sell. If you do that, expect to see your newsletter subscribers go down.

4. Learn from your data.

It is not enough to send email newsletters with the content you to think your target audience wants to see. To ensure the value of email marketing, you need to measure your efforts.

You should check your email newsletter metrics to see:

To???? Who opens your emails

To???? What links people click on

To???? Who unsubscribes

Once you have a few numbers around your emails, you can better tailor them to meet the needs of your audience.

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The value of email marketing cannot be argued! Sending out consistent newsletters is one of the most effective marketing tools for your business and can increase your brand visibility and sales in a big way.

If you don’t think starting an email campaign is the best use of your time or energy, find a professional marketing team like us who can handle the writing, marketing, and technical components. It’s the ideal way to further increase open rates, leads, and sales!

For the success of your business,

Susan

In the second quarter of 2020, Apple It was the third largest smartphone supplier in the world, with 13.5% of the global smartphone market, slightly above the first quarter. Today, Apple is a follower, not a leader in that market. The company follows a strategy of anticipating customer needs and wants and producing high-quality products to satisfy them. Stay close to customers and provide useful and fun products and services for customers.

Apple’s smartphone strategy
Steve Jobs’ Apple produced the Macintosh computer in 1984 for use by ordinary people, not experts. Later, Apple ousted Jobs and developed the Newton in 1993, an outstanding PDA ahead of its time. I have two working Newtons, which could have announced the iPad years earlier if they continued.

When Jobs returned to Apple, he removed many irrelevant products, focused on Apple, and began Apple’s revival with the iPod in 2001. And in one of the biggest product launches ever, Steve Jobs launched the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007.

Then came the iPad in 2010, and perhaps the biggest addition to the healthcare device market, the Apple Watch in 2014. Meanwhile, Apple continues to introduce laptops, desktops, and is working on a self-driving car.

Apple was undoubtedly a leader in the smartphone market before. So effective were the early days of the iPhone, Blackberry (To form Research in motion) did not recognize the power of the iPhone and later Blackberry went bankrupt after dominating the smartphone business market.

Where we are today Apple is a follower in the smartphone market, a strategy it seems to have adopted. This approach seems to be working. Although you are making big profits from your services, smart watch, and other products, the iPhone will be a centerpiece of your business for some time to come. So what should you do to stay competitive in the highly competitive smartphone market?

Differentiate yourself in the smartphone market

1. Stay close to customers and don’t follow Samsung or other leaders. Apple must foresee needs and wants of customers and provide products to satisfy them. Following Samsung or other smartphone leaders means that Apple would use their assumptions and market intelligence, which may or may not be good in the long run. Strategy is about options: what to do and what not to do. Apple must choose the markets it will enter and the markets it will exist in, always with a long-term vision.
2. Provide superior customer service, but put employees ahead of customers. Empower employees, empower them, avoid bureaucracy, treat them well and fairly. Adopt South west Y FedEx ‘ Getting closer: Employees first, customers second, shareholders third. When we treat employees well, employees will provide exemplary service to customers. It’s about customers!
3. Stay within core competencies and focus the company’s resources in those areas of competence. Is the adventure in the autonomous vehicle market a distraction? Before the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, Apple diversified in many areas and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Steve refocused the companies to a few products in their areas of expertise. With so much cash at its disposal, it could tempt Apple to shy away from its powers. Money should never lead decisions! Money is the source of funding for decisions, nothing more. This is a crucial consideration for companies like Apple, with excess cash. Apple should not diversify because it “can” and distract from its competencies. It must diversify because it “should”.

The smartphone has become a commodity and it will be difficult to create a niche market. Chasing a The product differentiation strategy is the only viable approach to remain competitive.. Having a faster iPhone that takes better photos will not be enough. Apple must transform the iPhone to perform functions that we cannot imagine today, otherwise a commodified iPhone will become a lower-margin product, diminishing market share with other smartphones.

There is often a lot of confusion surrounding the definition and use of the various metrics: KRA, KRI, PI, and KPI. In this article I’ll try to clarify the difference between each and how they apply to dashboards and dashboards.

First, let’s review the difference between a dashboard and a scorecard:

The main difference between the two is that dashboards monitor the performance of operational processes. [events and transactions] while dashboards show progress towards tactical and strategic objectives. In addition, a scorecard is based on a management methodology, such as the balanced scorecard. They are a direct indicator of how well the corporate strategy is being executed.

Quick metric definitions

KRI – Key result indicators indicate what you have done in key result areas. [KRA’s]. These are general result areas where the overall performance metric, KRI, is the result of many actions.

Pi – performance indicators tell you what to do. These are more focused on specific areas smaller than KRIs, but less powerful than KPIs.

KPI – Key performance indicators tell you what to do to dramatically increase performance. They are the result of an action and are directly linked to a strategic objective.

KRI

KRIs are indicators of how well the organization is governed, and the board measures and uses them to gauge the effectiveness of overall management decisions. For an effective KRI board, there will be no more than 10-12 measurements.

KRIs include:

• Financial measures * such as return on capital employed, NPBIT, EBIT
• Customer measures, such as customer satisfaction and customer profitability.
• Internal measures such as employee turnover, employee satisfaction

These measures are broad, covering long periods of time, such as quarters or years.

* Generally, all financial measures are from KRI, as they are historical and are contributed by a number of contributing factors. When a focused financial measure is directly related to a strategic imperative with a financial result, then in some cases, a financial metric can also be a KPI for a defined period.

Indicators of performance

These are metrics that represent performance in a particular area and can be both strategic and tactical. They represent a more focused area of ​​performance than a KRI, but may not necessarily be critical to overall strategic execution. For example, PIs can include measures such as:

• Profitability of the top 10% of customers
• Net profit from a particular product group
• Percentage increase in sales in a particular region
• Percentage participation of employees in the training scheme

KPI

KPIs are direct indicators of management decisions at the strategic level; that is, they are the most critical metrics of the company in terms of achieving a significant improvement in performance.

KPIs are the result of an action that contributes directly to a strategic objective and they are measured in very short periods of time: hours, days, weeks and months.

An effective KPI dashboard can have more measures than a KRI dashboard, but never more than 18-12. The selection of measurements will be determined by the purpose of the board. For example, a department dashboard may have only 8 KPIs, while a department balanced scorecard will generally include a combination of PIs and KPIs and may include between 18 and 20 measures. Remember that the difference between a dashboard and a scorecard is that a scorecard has a methodology attached to it.

There is no ideal list of KPIs for all companies, not even for all companies within an industry. The reason for this is that two competing companies may have totally different strategic imperatives. A strategic imperative is that overriding strategic objective that all other strategic objectives serve. It is the dominant focus of the company.

Therefore, two manufacturers may have similar IP and strategic objectives, but one manufacturer may focus on expansion to gain a dominant foothold in an emerging market and see this as the most critical objective to sustain its competitive future. The other manufacturer may be more focused on reducing its number of customers and increasing the annual sales value of each customer.

However, KPIs share common characteristics that include:

1. They are future-oriented because they have a significant impact on meeting a strategic objective.
2. They are linked to responsibilities of teams and individuals.
3. They generally affect all other performance measures and more than one BSC perspective.
4. They are non-financial
5. They have short measurement cycles and must be constantly monitored

Therefore, these measures have a direct link from the strategy established by the senior executive team to the people throughout the organization. It is imperative that everyone has a good understanding of the importance and impact of these measures, and the corrective action required if performance is not meeting targets.

For example, if meeting manufacturing deadlines is a KPI that contributes to the strategic imperative, then if there are indications that deadlines are being missed, immediate action will be taken to attract more staff, improve throughput productivity, resolve any production issues. supply and identify and correct any other contributing factors. This metric will have an impact on other measures, such as customer retention rates, order values, customer satisfaction, production capacity and process efficiency, etc.

Companies in the media and advertising industry for which our CRM is applicable

Advertising agencies
Directory and listing companies
Event management companies
Magazine publishing companies
Marketing agencies
Advertising and media companies
Newspaper publishing companies
Outdoor advertising companies
Advertising companies in print media
Other businesses in the media and advertising industry

How can our advertising and media CRM help you?

Dquip Media CRM Features: –

Approximate return on investment of an advertising and media CRM
Decrease sales cycle time by up to 22%
Improve customer retention by up to 37%
Increase Lead Conversion Rates
Reduce sales and marketing costs
Revenue growth per seller
Increase sales efficiency

Important modules of Dquip Media & Advertising CRM

Sales destination module

Set, track, and monitor sales goals for your business and sales reps individually.
Monitor your financial growth with the capabilities of dquip media CRM.
Know and manage the sales performance of your company and sales troops.

Things you can do in the Sales Goals module

You can set sales targets based on revenue for any desired duration by completing the fields on the current form.
You can set sales staff goals for any period of time.
You can see the goals achieved and pending with the exact number of days left to complete the tenure.
You can edit and delete a respective sales target in the Sales Target Based on Revenue and Sales Target modules for sales staff.

Main module

Add numerous leads in team media and advertising CRM.
Stay up-to-date on lead status, track feedback, and prioritize leads for more deal closings.
Club and assign leads according to your desire.

Things you can do in the leads module

You can add basic lead details based on the current form fields provided.
You can add the lead source and the product / service that the lead has requested.
You can assign leads manually or automatically.
You can categorize leads and add tags.
You can prioritize leads and also add comments.
You can insert leads directly from your website into the CRM and automatically assign the leads to the respective salespeople on a rotating basis.
You can have custom labels based on potential customers.
You can have custom stages and priorities.
You can assign leads to sellers in terms of products / services.
You can view the leads assigned to the sales staff for the product / service.

Tracking module

Track sales from a single dashboard through calls, emails, text messages, and meetings.
Optimize follow-up calls, emails, sms and meetings with potential clients.
Set reminders for follow-ups, calls and meetings using dquip media and CRM advertising.

Product / service module

Add and manage numerous products / services.
Mention your specifications, attach documents and specify additional charges.
See your sales in real time.

Quote module

Prepare and send multiple quotes.
View quote status, closing dates, and store versions.
Share quotes among other CRM users in your company.

Client module

He included all the contact details of his clients.
Assign, categorize, and communicate seamlessly with your customers via calls, emails, and SMS.

Calendar module

Have a homework calendar.
Mark off the top dates relevant to your business, staff, prospects, and clients.

Contact module

Store, modify and delete customer contact details.
Save important dates related to purchased products and services.
Set reminders for payments, etc.

13 key features of DQuip Media & Advertising CRM

Grow your media and advertising business with Dquip CRM software

Centralized data storage for customers, sales, and leads
Weekly, monthly, quarterly, biannual, annual sales forecast
Track and capture leads – online and offline
Streamline sales tracking processes
Monitor the goals of sales people
Assign leads to sales teams
Close leads faster
Create quotes and get approvals faster
Increase customer loyalty through constant communication via telephone, email and SMS.
Make sales people more productive
Identify greater sales opportunities.
Multi-device access on desktop, tablet and phone
Dashboards and reports for a panoramic business view

Google ranks first among all search engines, as a large volume of internet users are using it to search for relevant websites that Google returns for a particular keyword or keyphrase being used. So if you really have to make your website very popular, attract a large volume of potential customers, then it is important that you follow certain established SEO techniques.

Keywords are the key to your website’s success

You need to find the keywords that are relevant to the type of topic or theme that you choose to promote products and services on your website. You have to find keywords that find a good number of queries through the Google search box, but there are not many websites that actually deal with that keyword.

Now if you examine the websites that show up on the first page of a Google search for that keyword, you may find that there is not enough content to shed light on the keyword or phrase used. Here you can explode, making inroads.

Highly informative content rich websites

Get started writing rich content that is highly informative and helpful to the type of visitors who click through to your website. Also, keep your website updated by writing more content, twice a week. Google loves fresh, spicy, and crunchy content. Not outdated, they contain articles that most websites have already tried over and over again, and regular visitors have memorized them and no longer need them.

In fact, Google is concerned that many quality visitors will deviate from Google and instead prefer other search engines to Google, such as Bing, to search for websites that have rich and very different content than usual. Naturally, the loss of quality visitors will mean less revenue for Google. That is why Google is hungry for new content from relevant websites, catering to a particular market segment or group.

Satisfy Google’s hunger for new content

This is why it is important that it is not enough to satisfy the requirements of a particular market segment or target group. You should also look from Google’s point of view. Therefore, write or outsource new articles, which are rich in relevant information and also in the context of the keyword, based on which you want to establish yourself as an established website to be reckoned with.

The importance of backlinks for your website for a high Google ranking

Now you also need backlinks for your website. According to the PageRank algorithm (Page stands for the name of Google’s co-founder, Larry Page), backlinks are very important if a website wants to climb the greasy post to the Google search results page. The more backlinks a website has, the better it will be. However, quality backlinks count too. In other words, if a highly established website has a link on one of its pages that points to your website, then the website, according to Google, has the merit of occupying the first few spaces of the first page for a keyword. / specific search phrase. .

Writing articles

Article writing is one way to make your website popular as writing to established article directories helps you get more links pointing to your website. The other places are, of course, specialized forum sites, where you can regularly contribute your useful ideas in discussion threads related to your field of expertise and niche. That way you can send more links to your website and therefore send more quality targeted traffic from the forum as well.

Blogs

To get more backlinks, you can maintain blogs that are also rich in content and have a backlink to your websites. In this way, you can increase the number of backlinks. Of course, this is all hard work, as you need to make sure the blog is regularly updated with relevant keyword-based content.

Stop using Flash and graphics on your website

Don’t waste your precious time and money sprucing up your website with flash and graphics as Google Spiders doesn’t track codes. So there is no point in adding those codes that Google hardly pays attention to.

Avoid making your website slow and sluggish

Google doesn’t like websites that are slow and irritating to open fast. So, don’t use too many videos and graphics that weigh down your website and make it open quickly.

The importance of HTML / XML sitemap before submitting it to Google and other search engines

Another thing I want to draw your attention to is the importance of a sitemap, preferably an XML sitemap. However, it is preferable to have HTML and XML in the root folder of the website. The reason is obvious as different search engines have their own preferences. Therefore, it is very important that you have a sitemap for each website before submitting it to Google.

You can create a sitemap for free, such as http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp. Once you’ve created your sitemap, you can submit it to Google. You’ll have a good idea if you visit the EzineArticles sitemap, which is ezinearticles.com/sitemap.html

Stop plagiarism by duplicating content from other websites

Plagiarism is illegal and constitutes a crime for violation of copyright and intellectual property laws. Google also hates websites that thrive on duplicate content. Therefore, make sure that your website has content written in original and that no other website has the same content word for word and sentence after sentence.

The content must be at least 250 words

Make sure your article is at least 250 words on each web page on your site. Also, your keywords should be included in the first 250 words, as the Google crawler scans only the first 250 words and, on that basis, checks the relevance of the web page to the search result.

Keyword density: limit this to 2% – 3% of total content. Use only 2-3 keywords

Don’t use too many of the same keywords over and over. Most search engines would find it offensive. It is best to limit it to 3% of the total content. However, it is wise to limit yourself to just 2-3 different keywords.

Niche websites that have very little competition but have a good demand for genuine visitors

Don’t turn your website into some kind of super mall, selling everything from mice to elephants all under one roof. Find your niche that suits a fine segment of the market, say Domain Shift. Make sure your niche is not cluttered with too many players in the market. Try those that do not have too many players and you can be one of them, to fight to get to the top of the Google search engine rankings, serving only a selected clientele.

I hope the information provided to you here in this article will help you start a successful career in internet marketing and website success that makes them profitable using SEO techniques. This is how you can improve your website’s ranking in Google search engines.

The main objective of this study was to determine the specific learning disabilities, the level of self-efficacy, self-esteem, multiple intelligences, the participation of parents and teachers of students at risk with learning disabilities and their relationships with the academic performance of students. high school students at risk with learning. disabilities in order to design a supportive classroom environment for these children.

This study was based on the theory that the academic performance of at-risk students with learning difficulties depends on self-efficacy, self-esteem, multiple intelligences, and the participation of parents and teachers. Self-efficacy includes general self-efficacy and social self-efficacy. Multiple intelligences include linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, body kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, spatial intelligence, and nature intelligence. This study hypothesized that there is a significant relationship between self-efficacy, self-esteem, multiple intelligence, parent and teacher involvement with the academic performance of at-risk students with learning disabilities.

The research design was descriptive using the cross-tabulation technique. The study was conducted at Gingoog City Comprehensive National High School, Gingoog City Division, Region X. Philippines. Study respondents included thirty-four (34) at-risk students with AD. Five (5) sets of questionnaires were being administered to collect the necessary data, such as the Self-Efficacy Scale, the Barksdale Self-Esteem Assessment Index (SEI), the Developmental Multiple Intelligence Assessment (MIDAS), and the Assessment Checklist. parental involvement. Each questionnaire has passed the validity and reliability test. The statistical tool used was the analysis of frequency, percentage, weighted average and cross tabulation.

It is concluded that the majority of at-risk second-year students with learning disabilities have mild dyslexia, mild dyscalculia, and mild dysgraphia. These students have suffered from low general, low self-efficacy and lack of social self-efficacy and all of them have a lack of self-esteem. Each of these students has different types of intelligences and although these intelligences are still low, none of them have linguistic and logical intelligences and most of them have a medium general academic performance. General self-efficacy and social self-efficacy, self-esteem, multiple intelligences do not significantly affect the academic performance of students. However, teacher support plays an important role in the academic performance of at-risk ADs. Although there is a low correlation between parental involvement and general self-efficacy and between parental involvement and multiple intelligences, the type of parental involvement of students does not affect social self-efficacy, self-esteem, and academic performance. of the students.

Building on this conclusion, the supportive classroom environment for at-risk students with learning disabilities consists of the following; knowledge about LD, establishment of learning centers such as reading centers, writing / spelling centers, multiple intelligence centers, parent involvement corner, teacher attitude, academic performance update, reading recovery intervention, adaptations and classroom size. With appropriate reading interventions with the support of parents, teachers, and administrators, these children with AD can be successful in their lives and become valuable people in the community and the country at large.

The generation recognized as Baby Boomers, particularly in the United States, was born and raised between the late 1940s and early 1960s. They are called boomers because they are used to a time of abundance, both financially and materially. It was also a time of protest with many Baby Boomers who saw the need for a change from established tradition. They often see themselves as a special generation where events were going well, even during the Vietnam War. After all, the war was not at home.

Going back to today, Baby Boomers are now retiring or about to retire. This suggests that they will have less income and will need to live off financial savings, financial investments, or pension plans. If they have not been sufficiently conserved, this massive segment of the population in each nation will depend on the younger people still working. Are you prepared for retirement life?

The authors on Wikipedia explain some characteristics of Baby Boomers. “” As a group, they were the richest, most active and fittest generation up to that point, and among the first to genuinely grow up hoping the world would improve over time. They were also the generation that received maximum levels of income; therefore, they could reap the benefits of abundant levels of food, clothing, retirement programs, and sometimes even “midlife crisis” products. The growing consumerism of this generation has been regularly criticized as excessive. “

This seems to suggest that this generation will not be as prepared as even their parents were. In reality, they haven’t conserved much and assume that situations will improve a lot to ensure that pensions and automatic benefits continue to exist on a consistent basis. With the United States racking up massive debts and the strength of the dollar uncertain, it appears that the future may not be as promising as this mature population seems to suppose.

What can people in this state of events do about it? The typical option is to keep working and not give up until poor health forces retirement. Another alternative is to start an online business. There are people who make a lot of extra money doing this. The advantage of starting an online business is that it can be done with very little initial cost. There is no office to furnish or rent and there are no large down payments like in a franchise business. There are many courses available today that allow even someone new to the Internet to start and run a business. With the addition of a business license and website (domain) name, anyone can be in business. In fact, there are programs that don’t even require a website location.

Another advantage of an online business is that it can be done from home or from anywhere in the world. Now, with fast network links practically everywhere, the business, once established, can be carried on a laptop, tablet, or perhaps a mobile phone. You don’t need to have the cost of a workplace as well as a large amount of equipment. Another benefit is that today’s software programs make it easy to set up and run a site.

Do you need a team? It is very easy to outsource repetitive tasks to others, and the software applications to monitor them exist as well. This is the time to find out if you can make millions too, just like some people do online.

With a few hours of online research and the use of a few trial programs, you may find that a little more money will come in to supplement little or no retirement benefits. It is worth a try as you have little to lose.

The story of your brand sets you apart from others. Otherwise it’s just one more solution to the same old problem that customers can choose from and usually without a prominent differentiator they will base their choice on price. Most of the time, you don’t want customers to choose you based on price alone. You want to be chosen because you are you.

Telling your unique story begins with these questions:

When, why and how did you start?

The best way to show authenticity is to be able to tell your audience when, why, and started doing what you do. If you can tell your story in a way that your audience engages with you, and even roots your success, even better.

How do you want customers to see you?

As you write your story, it is important to convey your values ​​and ideals in a sensible way. While you may be afraid to turn off some people, you really don’t need to worry about it. Those people are not your audience. Your audience is made up of people who can relate to your story, share your values ​​and want to be part of it.

Where do you see your business in the future?

This is where you will try to dream big and let your audience know where you see your business in the future. It also gives you the opportunity to refine consumer expectations towards what you offer rather than what the competition offers.

How you answer these questions is important.

You will have many opportunities to do so through every communication you have with your audience, be it on your blog, social media, or even through the types of products you offer.

With the answers to these questions, you can begin to build your story and weave it through everything you do.

Share through storytelling

Using an honest, unfettered communication style to tell your story, your customer stories, and the story of your products is a good start. Use in-depth relatable case studies, interviews, and blog posts to accomplish this.

Share doing good

Get involved with your community to give back something that is noticed. You don’t want to do this just to get attention, but you do want to choose something that helps people understand who you are as a business owner and what your business stands for.

Share through experiences

You and your audience are likely to share common experiences that should be discussed. The more ways you can relate to them, the more ways they will see your offerings as unique and different.

Share with the truth

Don’t overdo it and don’t “blow the smoke.” Consumers are smart today. They want the black and white truth of the matter. If it takes you 20 hours a week to do what you do and you are teaching them, tell them the truth. If you’ve had to stay up all night to work on the children’s schedules, say so.

Share everywhere

Don’t just “tell” your story on your blog in the “about” section. Tell your story everywhere. Use infographics, memes, blog posts, guest blog posts, articles, testimonials, good deeds, and every possible way to spread your story. Be your story by your actions.

In the Scrum method of agile software development, user stories are how work is expressed in the backlog. How a team decides to write their user stories is a matter of preference, but the user story should always be written from the end-user perspective. That is, team members are encouraged to view their work from the point of view of the consumer who will use it (hence the “user” story). A team can articulate a story as a noun or, more specifically, a feature that will be embedded in a product, such as a “text message” on a cell phone project or a “speedometer” for an automobile manufacturer. Or the story could be expressed in a sentence or phrase, like “debug GPS tracking system.”

Many Scrum teams have adopted Mike Cohn’s user story template, in which a single sentence identifies who the end user is, what the end user wants, and why. This user story model is usually written like this: “How [end user role], I want [the desire] so that [the rationale].

As an illustration without placeholders, consider how a user story for a developer working on a PC calculator application might express work. First, you would need to know who you are coding the application for: a PC user. Second, you’d want to determine what the PC user would want to use the app for: to have a convenient calculator app prepackaged. Finally, I would like to indicate why it is important for the PC user to have this application. This is perhaps the least clearly defined information, but it can be assumed that the developer could claim that the reason would be to add, subtract, multiply and divide, or simply add value to the product. So the end-user story might read something like this: “As a PC user, I want a calculator with basic functionality on my PC so that I can conveniently perform basic math operations and improve my overall experience.”

In conclusion, user stories are a way to document requirements from the end-user perspective. Although stories can be written in a number of ways, Mike Cohn’s model is of particular value to Scrum development teams because it provides the most information about the story, including who it is being built for and why. By orienting the story to reflect the wishes of the end user, user stories help developers stay focused on what the customer wants.

Independent hotel brand

In the 1970s, Holiday Inn revolutionized the concept of homogenizing the hotel experience in the United States. Increasingly, travelers wanted to know exactly where they were going to stay when they got tired. Thus was born the brand hotel as we know it today, the same here, there and everywhere. Holiday Inn created an expected level of value and experience that was solidified in its new 1975 motto, “The Best Surprise Is No Surprise.” His was a promise of low prices, consistent quality, and convenient locations for a generation of Americans heading to the highway for business and pleasure.

Fast forward 35 years, we can see the relative benefits and challenges that a world of branded hospitality has brought to the world. Hyatt, Hilton, Westin, Doubletree, W and Holiday Inn have consolidated their own brands and extensions of those brands so that everyone knows exactly what they will get when they walk into the lobby anywhere in the world. There really is no more surprise to the millions of travelers who expect and demand the attributes these brands consistently deliver.

It could be concluded that this evolution of branded hotels would have resulted in the absolute destruction of the independent hotel market. Not so. In fact, over the past 15 years, growth in supply for the independent segment has lagged the branded segment by only 4-5%. Additionally, what independent hotels could lose to brand-name hotels in total occupancy, they typically make up for in the average daily rate (ADR).

So what is the real challenge for the independent hotel in a world dominated by brands? It is imperative that an independent hotel owner take branding as seriously as their branded competitors. That means developing a brand strategy plan long before hiring the architect, interior designers, food and beverage experts, ad agency, and hotel staff. The independent hotel must specify exactly who it will serve. They must define that audience (person) from a demographic and psychographic perspective. It’s critical, because that’s exactly what branded hotels do.

When you check into a Westin, you know exactly what kind of guest is going to be there. What you want as an independent may be a very different guest, one who is looking for a unique hospitality experience, one that they cannot get at a brand name hotel. This is the great opportunity to deliver this new expectation of value and experience that is unique to your offering. Doing it the other way will create an undefined and adrift hotel property. Marketing becomes enormously expensive and ineffective when you don’t know exactly who you are targeting. Once your transient and group goals are defined, you can create a branding strategy around them.

An independent boutique hotel that has done a great job of creating a unique experience unmatched by any brand name hotel is The Ellis Hotel in downtown Atlanta. Well-defined guest personas are articulated across all brands, marketing, food and beverage, as well as in-room amenities. It is difficult to do it well, and they have done it well.

Once you’ve created a branding strategy, you can call back to the architects, designers, and folks at f & b. Now you have a brand, now you can build, now you can fill the rooms with the confidence that you have done your homework and you can contribute something that branded hotels cannot, because sometimes the best surprise is a well thought out and unique one. surprise.