How Small Businesses Can Stay Engaged When They’re Closed

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The Coronavirus pandemic is awful, no question. But if we look around, we can find a lot of positive, creative things happening as people continue to try and connect with and inspire others. Likewise, while many small businesses are unable to open or have lost clients, they still want to engage with their customers and stay top of mind for the future. But how?

We’ve seen a lot of really creative things happening in the art world, such as virtual museum tours, online Broadway shows, musicians offering free concerts, and more. But small businesses don’t always have the resources that these larger organizations or celebrities do. However, they can get creative with social content. As a Top 100 Champion in the Small Business Influencer Awards from Small Business Trends and Smallbiz Technology, we thought we’d share a few simple ideas to inspire small businesses to keep engaging their audiences.

Partner up with other SMBs to create unexpected, resourceful content. Ex: record a Zoom video call between you and another small business owner. Make it fun and memorable; be light-hearted and humorous. Imagine a candy shop owner and a wine shop owner together, and the candy shop owner holds up different types of candy while the wine shop owner recommends wine to pair with it. Not two things that generally go together, which makes it interesting and inventive. Besides, we all know we’re eating more candy and drinking more wine than normal right now.

Get creative with what you offer, even if you can’t sell it right now. A jeweler might offer a customer contest to virtually help design a ring, or vote to choose a “stone of the week” that the jeweler then uses to create a new piece and names it after the customer. Once the jeweler can open again, they can offer the piece at a special price to that customer. Or, a florist might invite followers to name 5-10 flowers on its Facebook page and then create a bouquet of those flowers and share images. When they can reopen, they can offer that bouquet at a special price.

Involve your fans. It’s been well-known for quite some time that fans love being involved and noticed. Provide them with new ways to do so. For example, an artist can have fans nominate what his or her next piece of art should be; a pizza shop can let fans pitch in on ideas for new toppings or a weekly special to encourage takeout orders. Here in Boston, the New England Aquarium is doing #virtualvisits videos so fans can watch along as they care for the animals. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles challenged art fans to post photos of themselves at home, recreating their favorite works of art.

We’ve also seen some innovative ideas from local small businesses in our community. One popular sign company created a “Signs of Hope” campaign, which consists of various heart-themed designs of door signs, sold both online and at self-serve kiosks around multiple towns. They are selling on the honor system, something you don’t see much anymore, which is a vital part of establishing the feeling of a trusted community, support, and, well, hope. People remember how you made them feel and evoking positive emotion in your campaign can make a lasting impression.

Another great example we’ve seen is the Front Steps Project. Local photographers are offering families in their communities highly discounted or free (although you can donate an amount you think is fair and which you can afford), family portrait sessions on your front steps or in your yard. They’ll drive to your home, keep a safe distance, and take your photos. My family is having ours taken this weekend, and the photographer is offering us five pictures at an extremely reasonable price. We get to support another small business and do something unique together in this time of home isolation.

As a small business ourselves, we understand the anxiety and frustration taking place as a result of the economic fallout from the pandemic. But if you can, keep marketing and try some creative campaigns that you might not otherwise have explored when things were “normal.” Think about your expertise and what you can offer to others besides products and services. How can what you do tie into helping people through this unprecedented situation while keeping your business top of mind? As long as campaigns are respectful and socially-minded, most people will applaud your efforts and want to support you the best that they can in this uncertain time and as we all recover in the future.

If you need additional content ideas or social media training, give us a shout. We’re currently offering free one hour consulting sessions to hear about your business, your current challenges, and your long term goals – and to provide a few ideas for content and positioning.

Stay mindful, but more importantly, stay hopeful and stay home.

Branding Lessons From Political Slogans

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What does a “Great America” mean to you? 

A generic political slogan like Trump’s “Make America Great Again” can be so appealing because you get to define it for yourself, vs. a politician telling you very specifically what to think. It opens up possibilities for everyone. Trump fan or not, like many celebrities and artists, he’s a great marketer.

Take, for example some of these less generic presidential campaign slogans. They don’t leave a lot of room for interpretation:

  • “Who but Hoover?” – Herbert Hoover
  • “Forward with Roosevelt” – Franklin Roosevelt
  • “I like Ike” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • “Win with Warren” – Elizabeth Warren

It may be surprising that Trump did not use his name in his slogan like many candidates. Meanwhile, his 2020 presidential campaign slogans used to-date are not as open but do play on the successes he’s had: 

  • “Keep America Great”
  • “Promises Made, Promises Kept” 

What can your brand learn from examining these political slogans? We extract several lessons to keep in mind when branding your next marketing campaign:

  • Identify your target audience – are you trying to appeal to a niche, or open up and appeal to a wider population?
  • What can you learn from your existing fan base to shape your next slogan or tagline? Ask your customers what they like best about your product or service and use this feedback to shape words and images that appeal to them.
  • Know the pain points and use a little FUD – Trump played upon pain well, appealing especially to voters across the US who felt like their place in the world was being threatened. He played upon this fear and made them feel like he understood them better than any other candidate.
  • Keep it simple – Trump uses very simple language and leaves a lot up to interpretation. When your audience can easily understand what you’re saying, their brand recall will be stronger.
  • Puff your chest – there is no doubt that Trump is a positioner. He is practically the epitome of “fake it ‘til you make it,” given his reported financial background and history. No matter. He says what he wants people to hear and believe, and for him, it works. Now, in the “real world” we have to be more careful – false claims and failed promises will come back to bite you. But take a look at what you’ve done for customers, what declarations you’ve fulfilled, and use them in your campaigns and tag lines. Better yet, let your customers do the talking for you by having a campaign slogan or tagline contest. Often, our customers open our eyes and have the best, most practical viewpoints of what our products or services really do for – or mean to – them.

Marketing inspiration is all around us. Today’s political climate is no exception and can offer a lot of lessons – and raise some questions – about how to best connect with your audience. Examine them in the light of what you need to accomplish and you may breathe some fresh air into your messaging.

Collaborating With Male Leaders

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Our CEO, Christine Perkett, will be speaking Tuesday, December 10, at the National Association of Women Sales Professionals (NAWSP)’s “Break Out of the Girls’ Club” event. Joined by fellow panelists Jay Green and Rabih Shanshiry, they will discuss the importance of women in sales leaning on male mentors as well as other female leaders. Learn techniques on how to seek out the male collaborators, mentors, and connectors who can offer you a leg up.

  • Tuesday, December 10, 2019
  • 4:30 PM  7:30 PM
  • Toyota Regional Offices440 Forbes BoulevardMansfield, MA, 02048United States (map)

Register here.

Together For Safer Roads Launches Accelerator

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Our client Together For Safer Roads has announced its third annual Global Entrepreneur Program, a unique accelerator focused on early stage startups in transportation and road safety.

The 2020 Program is focused on addressing problems and building solutions in three core areas:

  • Intelligent Transportation Services: Creates new, safer road usage patterns and options to create more seamless, safer connections across modes of transportation, transportation infrastructure, and/or road user communities
  • Commercial Transportation Safety: Improves the safety outcomes of commercial drivers, commercial vehicles, and/or road operators critical to commercial transportation
  • People-First Transportation Solutions: Focuses on putting people and their road safety vulnerabilities at the heart of product design, thereby reducing the exposure for all road users simultaneously

Startups interested in the 2020 program can read details and apply online until September 30. A GEP Pitch Night event is slated for early December, where the cohort will be announced.

Together for Safer Roads’s Global Entrepreneur Program is connecting early-stage companies with road safety experts at multinational companies and universities to reimagine solutions that reduce crashes and fatalities on the world’s roads.

Can Tech Make Safer Drivers?

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Client Octo Telematics has partnered with ICBC for a one-year tech pilot project, recruiting as many as 7,000 drivers to see if technology can improve their driving and make B.C. roads safer. Octo will provide the telematics platform to track driving behaviors, monitor distracted driving, and provide an overall driving score.

“Participants will use a small smart tag that communicates with an app installed on their smartphone. As an incentive, participants will receive rewards in the form of gift cards to popular retailers and restaurants. Drivers will complete various driving challenges to increase their chance at rewards. The safer your driving, the more rewards you can earn.”

The pilot results will help determine how ICBC might use telematics in the future. Other insurers may also find interest in the results and how insurtech can make better drivers.

To sign up or read more details, visit http://bit.ly/OctoICBC.

Top 25 Expert LinkedIn Tips From The Pros

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When used properly, LinkedIn is a platform for establishing your credibility with like-minded professionals, giving you the ability to form business connections and build brand awareness. To help you make the most of your membership on the work-oriented social networking platform, FitSmallBusiness asked experts, including our CEO Christine Perkett, to share their LinkedIn marketing tips to help grow your business.

There are plenty of smart points in this article to help you leverage the platform for career growth, branding, sales, marketing & more.

Put Some Spring Into Your Marketing

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Happy Spring! It’s hard to believe we’re already rounding the corner to Q2. Here are a few quick tips to breathe new growth into your marketing:

1) LISTEN to your customers – what value are they seeing? What else could you offer to them? What do they need in 2019?

2) ENGAGE – beyond promotion of your own content, how is your brand talking with – not just at – key audiences?

3) EDUCATE – certainly your team has a wide array of knowledge across a variety of business or industry topics. Share resourceful content with your audience that educates or helps them – vs just sharing your own branded content about your business.

4) ANALYZE – measure what’s worked well in Q1 so far. Are your images and messaging aligned? Do traffic and leads indicate your marketing content is working? Has the buyer’s journey changed at all? Pivot accordingly.

Octo Telematics Named an ICTA 2019 Award Finalist

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Congratulations to our client Octo Telematics on being named a Technology Provider finalist in Insurance-Canada.ca‘s #ICTA2019 awards for their work with CAA South Central Ontario. on Canada’s first “pay-as-you-drive” insurance offering, CAA MyPace.™

CAA MyPace is a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) insurance program offering Ontario’s CAA policyholders a way to pay for, reduce and manage auto insurance premiums if they drive less than 9,000 kilometers per year. Octo provided a customized solution and flexible mix-and-match service selection for CAA to build a new customer experience for policyholders.

Marketing Isn’t Free

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It’s 2019 and there are a lot of free things out there: free apps,  free tools, free help. But there’s one thing that isn’t completely free: effective marketing.

By free, we don’t just mean a monetary cost, although if you really want good marketing, you will eventually need to invest some dollars. But you’ll also have to invest resources – your time, your thought, your team. While it isn’t necessary to dedicate a huge marketing budget to execute some basic marketing – especially for small businesses and startups – there are still costs associated.

As much as we’d all like marketing to be a “set it and forget it” prospect, it simply isn’t. There is not just one magical thing you’ll do – digital advertising, content, PR – that will keep the machine running. The world moves too fast and thus, so must your marketing.

Understand What You Need

Marketing is an oft misunderstood element of business. Many people don’t know where it fits in or what it should support. They’re not sure what programs it entails, and there are a wide array of different types of marketing agencies out there: content specialists, SEO, digital marketing, advertising, social media marketing and more. Disagreements often abound about what equates to a marketing qualified lead (MQL), what marketing’s responsibility should be, and even how much to invest in it. We’ve had prospects inquire about marketing help, only to find out that what they really want is appointment setting services. These are not the same thing.

There are certainly opportunities to execute effective marketing campaigns on small budgets. Neil Patel shares 23 affordable and smart marketing techniques in this blog. But you’ll note that he points out there is still a cost – your time.

Set Expectations Based on Reality

If you do not have the time to invest in marketing efforts, you cannot expect success. If you partner with or hire a marketing consultant or agency but do not participate in the campaigns, they will fail. They simply cannot be successful working in a vacuum. As a brand’s CMO or Director of Marketing – or even a small business or startup owner – you have to be involved to some degree. Even if the agency creates brilliant content, you need to approve it. If the agency secures a speaking opportunity, you or someone at the company must accept it and do it. Perhaps the marketing consultant brings in a qualified lead but you can’t come to an agreement on the working contract with the prospect. Or, maybe your agency creates a compelling landing page with downloadable content but no one follows up on the form leads. These all take time, and without your investment, it can look like marketing has failed when in fact, they have not. If the marketing campaigns bring prospects and opportunities to the door, but you and your team don’t have time or resources to follow through, it is not a marketing fail.

Track Success and Understand Attribution

Which brings us to another point – understand where marketing ends and hands the baton to sales. Track and be clear where leads generate, how long deals take to close, and where prospects fall off if they don’t close. Too often, a MQL will fail to come to fruition in the sales process – so is that a marketing issue or a sales or product issue? Again, it will take an investment of your time and analysis to track and measure results.

At the end of the day, nothing is free. In this day and age of paid, earned, shared and owned (PESO) content, there are certainly more opportunities than ever to execute cost-conscious marketing campaigns, which is great. Be sure to set realistic expectations and clear boundaries and assignments – for yourself, for your boss and for any executive or agency with whom you are working.  Only then will you truly reap the benefits of your investment.

 

PerkettPR Is Now Mindfull Marketing + PR

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When I started PerkettPR in 1998, I was really focused on filling a void in the PR industry. Times were good, with tech PR especially booming, and I kept meeting startup founders who wanted and needed PR help but couldn’t get agencies to call them back. Agencies were busy, indeed, but I recognized this overflow as a prime time to break out on my own and pick up the business that wasn’t being addressed.

Here we are 20 years later! We’re still filling the void for clients seeking unique, measurable and effective marketing and PR campaigns. Sometimes I can’t believe it, but after serving hundreds of clients across the world – from Boston to San Francisco and many states in between, as well as Australia, Europe and APAC – we are still an award-winning, thriving and creative agency that’s been doing much more than PR for quite some time now. As PR is only a slice of an integrated marketing campaign, our services have expanded to include content marketing, digital media and advertising, social media management, sales support, training, events and even fractional CMO services, allowing us to work intimately with clients who need an experienced marketing lead as they start out, or are in transition.

Learn about our full scope of marketing & PR services

What better way to celebrate than a makeover? We wanted to recognize how we’ve grown with a fresh brand that better reflects what we do for global companies today. We’re excited to announce our new name, look and feel. While PerkettPR has served us well, it was time to emphasize the expanded scope of marketing services that we’ve been providing for years now. We also wanted to give a nod to the reality that marketers are trying to reach audiences who are more connected, distracted and impatient than ever. Their minds are full and their attention is whittled – with constant media and social media in front of them it’s harder than ever to stand out and raise awareness. It takes an aggressive and thoughtful team to help brands break through the clutter and engage their target audience. It takes understanding that marketing is no longer speaking at, but speaking with, constituents in a mindful manner.

See what some of our clients have had to say about working with us. 

It’s all very exciting! We like a challenge. In the same manner that we boldly founded an agency in 1998 that had an unprecedented business model and has since garnered national recognition, celebrated numerous accolades and awards, successfully weathered two recessions, and employed amazing individuals from coast to coast, we will continue to pave inventive paths for our clients under the Mindfull Marketing brand. We will refocus on growth opportunities, expanding our team as we continue to service clients in Europe and the U.S.

We hope you’ll join us for the next innovative 20 years.

– Christine