These past twelve months have been challenging, exciting, and humbling…

  • We set aggressive sales and marketing goals and even achieved some of them;
  • We expanded our footprint into new markets and welcomed a few new teammates;
  • We tested several hypotheses in our business plan, marketing strategy, and how we work.

In short, we learned a lot.

Here are some important things we learned last year…

1. Good customer service is your best form of marketing.

There’s no substitute for outstanding customer service and its ROI. Consider the following customer service facts:

  • The cost to acquire new customers is 4-6x higher than the cost to keep customers happy.

In other words, the cost to support your sales and marketing efforts is 4-6x more expensive than the cost to simply provide good customer service.

  • Roughly 80% of a company’s future revenue will come from 20% of its existing customers.

Take care of your customers.

2. Forget your competition. Focus on your customers.

There’s never going to be a shortage of competitors—especially in digital marketing. So, don’t worry about them.

Why?

In addition to being time-consuming, competitive research is expensive (especially, if you outsource it).

Instead of worrying about your competitors, focus on your customers and provide more value.

  • “Businesses don’t die from homicide—they die from suicide.”

When it comes to competition, mind your business.

3. The days of organic social media are over and a solid social media strategy is more important than ever.

Social media is one of the more time-consuming forms of online marketing for small businesses.

In order to see significant results, you have to invest a lot of time, marketing budget, and energy developing a solid social media strategy—with meaningful, measurable goals. You must also invest the time and energy executing your social media strategy (through social media tactics).

Last year, we spent too much time and energy on social media tactics, and not enough time/energy on social media strategy. 

What’s the difference?

  • Social media tactics: sharing, liking, commenting, and re-tweeting.
  • Social media strategy: understanding why (and how) you’re sharing, liking, commenting, and re-tweeting.

But, in order to understand why and how to use social media, you must first figure out how it supports (and impacts) other areas of your business.

Rank the ways social media supports your business by priority. Then, focus on the top 3 (because everything can’t be a priority) and re-visit your social media tactics.

4. Your customers don’t see or use your website the same way you do.

If you don’t have website analytics setup on your website, you’re missing out. Website analytics (aka, Google Analytics) gives you some very valuable info, but most businesses don’t know how to understand and/or use that info to make better business decisions.

Not sure what all your website analytics data means? Relax. We’ll tell you.

Please use the form on this page to contact us and include your website, and we’ll send you a free website audit (no strings attached).

5. Never put all your eggs in one basket.

This rule also applies to how you share and store information.

Perfect segue… if you want 7 more small business lessons we learned in 2017, please use the form on this page to contact us, and we’ll send ’em your way!

(Be sure to include your website URL on the form, and we’ll also include your free website audit.)

Thanks for your time and Happy New Year!