Guest Post

​If you’ve ever considered starting your dream business, you’re not alone. Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth Revisited, called it the “entrepreneurial seizure.” I have to admit, I’ve experienced it a time or two as a business owner and actually grew up in what I call a “small business family,” working in my father’s business as a teenager.

In fact, I learned how to work mowing the lawn at home and sweeping the floors of my Dad’s warehouse. He was adamant that I learn a good work ethic, making sure that I understood the right way to both mow and sweep. I didn’t appreciate at the time that there was a right way and a wrong way to do either—those lessons are more meaningful to me now than I think they were then.

Having experienced the act of starting a business from scratch myself, I can share a few lessons I learned along the way. Taking the entrepreneurial leap should be a decision based on rational analysis rather than hope. As much as possible, grasp the sacrifices you may have to make so you can determine if the risk is worth the reward.
Fortunately, in a study conducted not too long ago, 90 percent of the business owners said they would do it again and never look back.

Before you entertain the idea of beginning your own entrepreneurship, here are some points to consider:

1. Beginning a business is hard. Staying in business is harder. I’ve never worked harder or longer hours than I did when I owned my own business. I can’t count the number of times my wife would call at 1 or 2 a.m. to ask if she needed to bring me a sleeping bag (my cue it was time to call it a day). In our survey, two-thirds of those surveyed said they worked over 50 hours a week, nine of 10 put in time on the weekend, and 80 percent of them continued working after leaving their businesses at the end of the day. That’s not to say it stays that way forever, however. If it does—and you’re not happy about it—you should reevaluate what changes need to be made.
2. Is your idea for your business sustainable? Will people pay you for it? Over the years I’ve talked to a number of friends who had what they thought was a great idea for a new business, but their idea didn’t really solve a problem for their potential customers. Before you jump into business ownership with both feet, make sure you have something to offer that solves a problem, makes life easier, or that your potential customers are looking for. What’s even more important is determining whether or not they’re willing to pay for your solution at a price that will be profitable for you. A solution your customers won’t pay for isn’t really a viable solution.
3. Can you identify your competitive edge? Is your product or service less expensive than others? Is it easier to use? Does it last longer? If you can’t describe what makes your product or service better than anything else available, it will be difficult to convince your potential customers to spend their cash on what you’re offering. If you can’t find your competitive edge, work to create one.
4. What will your solution cost? How you set the price for your product or service is critical. Price it too low and not only will you reduce your profit, but you risk giving the impression that your product or service isn’t valuable.

I met an inventor who had broken his arm. To ease the discomfort from itching, he drilled a hole in his cast so he could blow cool air into it with a hairdryer. He decided to make an adapter that could be placed in a cast by a doctor. Although it only cost him about $.30 to make, he charged $25. “Because,” he said, “doctors won’t buy it if it’s too cheap.”
I learned that you can price things too low as well as too high and make it more difficult to sell your product.

1. Do you know your stuff? In my off time, I enjoy maintaining my motorcycle and take pride in doing the work myself. I’m not a real motorcycle mechanic though, and opening up a shop to fix other’s motorcycles wouldn’t be a good idea because I really don’t know what I’m doing. Every new project is an adventure of discovery. I’m passionate about it. It just wouldn’t be a good business idea for me. If you’re going to take the risk of starting your own business, make sure you have significant industry knowledge and can leverage your expertise into building a strong, healthy business.
2. Make it legal. If you’re going to start a new business, even from home, make it legal. Get a business license, register with the state, and be a business. This is important for a number of reasons, but it can make a difference when you’re looking for financing down the road. Lenders want to see a track record (the longer the better), and if you’ve been doing business for seven years, but you didn’t get a business license until last year, you’ve really only been in business for a year—at least as far as the bank is concerned. Get a business checking account and separate your business expenses from your personal expenses. This applies regardless of the business entity you choose, but is something mandatory that you’ll need to do should you decide to incorporate.
3. Location, location, location. Where you decide to do business is every bit as important as your product or service. Retail businesses should probably be in locations where potential customers will find them; it’s a different story for online businesses or industrial businesses. I know of one business that started out working from a storage area. His father owned office buildings and offered him the free space to get things up and running. He eventually wound up a major tenant of the building but started with those humble beginnings.
4. Do you have the capital you need? Many businesses fail because they don’t have the cash flow to support their business. Unfortunately, finding capital is very difficult for new businesses without a record of accomplishment, no revenues, and no credit history. This isn’t the end of the world, but financing will be difficult until you get a couple of years under your belt. This is the time to start small and be patient. If you have a business idea that can scale quickly with the infusion of some extra capital, it might be possible to find an equity investor willing to help you get going. However, an investor will likely be looking for an exit plan and will want some decision-making influence as well as a seat at the table when important decisions need to be made.
5. Cash is great, but creative problem-solving can take you far. Popular media would have us all believe that money solves all of our business problems, but it’s really creative problem-solving. Are there ways you can reduce your costs to get started? Most entrepreneurs are always looking for ways around, over, under, or through problems—I think it’s part of their DNA. Can you look at a problem or other situation from other perspectives and find creative solutions? This is a skill you’ll need to successfully survive your “entrepreneurial seizure.”
6. If you build it, will they come? Not if you don’t do any marketing. You may have the best solution on the market, at a price your customers will be willing to pay, but if they don’t know about you and your business, you won’t make any sales.

Marketing your business is one of the first and best investments you make toward your eventual success. According to the SBA, investing seven to eight percent of business revenue on marketing is a good rule of thumb. However, if you choose to wait to invest the recommended amount into your business, you can gain some exposure locally.

Participate in your community events by volunteering, setting up at street fairs, holding a fundraising event. Participate in Small Business Saturday® and Shop Small®.  Or, start small and simple with your marketing by sending a direct mail piece that offers a new customer discount. Valpak offers their Blue Envelope full of local business coupons that households anticipate receiving. Invite your community to a grand opening or holiday event with a postcard.

In the very beginning, when my business was very small and we didn’t have a budget for the large direct mail campaign we wanted, my partners and I created our own postcards, addressed and stamped them after work on Monday, and deliver them to the post office. For somewhere around $100 every week we were able to send out postcards to customers and prospects to remind them we were there and introduce our weekly special. Like clockwork, the phones started ringing on Wednesday as our postcard arrived in their mailbox. Eventually, we had the budget for the large-scale direct mail campaign.

Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but you have to do it. Be creative. Don’t be afraid to try something new. And, don’t be afraid to tackle something yourself. I think one of the things that made our postcard so successful was that it didn’t look slick and overproduced. It looked like exactly what it was, something we were doing ourselves.

There’s nothing easy about starting your own business. It takes hard work, determination, commitment, vision, and sacrifice, but it’s also very rewarding. Doing your research and knowing what to expect will help you decide if business ownership is right for you. If it is, get out there and make your dream a reality.

If you’ve decided that business ownership is something you want to make a reality, or you’re already there, Valpak is here to help you grow. With over 145 franchise offices across the United States and Canada, there’s a Valpak marketing expert near you. Download our Media Kit* and contact us today!



Ty Kiisel is a contributing author focusing on small business financing at OnDeck, a technology company solving small business’s biggest challenge: access to capital. With over 25 years of experience in the trenches of small business, Ty shares personal experiences and valuable tips to help small business owners become more financially responsible. OnDeck can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

We take our role as your Marketing Advisor seriously. Here at Valpak of N. Colorado and S. Wyoming, we want to ensure your Valpak campaign engages consumers and motivates them to do business with you. To do this, it is important for our clients (and for us) to understand where their sales and conversions are coming from, and lately, this leads to a discussion about first and last touch attribution.

First Touch vs. Last Touch Attribution
First Touch Attribution gives 100% of the credit to the marketing effort that drove a visitor to your site or store for the first time. Conversely, Last Touch Attribution gives all the credit to the marketing activity that immediately precedes the sale or conversion.

The Misunderstanding
Marketers and business owners tend to rely heavily on built-in tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords to determine where in the marketing funnel their sales and conversions are coming from. Less tech-savvy business owners may even rely on their receptionist to ask a consumer where they heard about the business. These methods usually end up crediting the last piece of advertising served to the shopper before they made a purchase, clicked on a link, or picked up the phone.  

The problem with last touch attribution is that it tends to oversimplify the marketing process and and can undervalue important awareness channels. Awarding all the credit to the last marketing piece served to a consumer before they made a purchase is kind of like declaring the winner of a basketball game the team that scored the last basket, regardless of who had the highest final score!

Our Marketing Advisors appreciate the clients who dedicate time to track their coupons, phone calls and online conversions, but sometimes they fall into the “last touch trap” and end credit other online sources for their transactions while discounting their Valpak print piece.

The Reality
While a customer may tell you they found you online, ask yourself how they decided to choose you. A customer cannot buy from you if they don’t know you exist! So, before you write off any marketing piece not directly correlated to a sale, remember: a lead may interact with your company multiple times before converting. Relying too heavily on the last click or view can discount valuable marketing pieces that helped lead to the conversion!

Ultimately, no purchase or conversion is exclusively attributable to a single advertising channel. Every channel, from direct mail to radio to search or display, needs to work together to move a consumer through the marketing funnel.

For help creating and coordinating your print and online advertising to help get consumers to notice you, choose you, and spend money with you, contact your Valpak Marketing Advisor today.

​

For the 5th consecutive year, small businesses in northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming will have an exclusive opportunity to use Shop Small / American Express branded marketing solutions through Valpak!

Shop Small is a nationally recognized movement dedicated to supporting and celebrating businesses and the neighborhoods they’re part of. Customers look for the Shop Small logo to see where they can Shop Small and support small businesses — like yours, year round!

As an official partner, Valpak has some fun (and FREE) Shop Small swag that we are more than happy to share with you! We also encourage any of our clients who accept American Express to go here to create your own FREE marketing materials to let shoppers know you’re a Shop Small participant and to join you on November 25 for Small Business Saturday.

For more information about Shop Small and how to get some free swag, please let your Valpak Marketing Advisor know.
​

Worldwide, between 2014 and 2016, social media advertising budgets doubled, growing from $16 billion to $31 billion. By the end of 2017, it’s expected to increase by another 26%. According to Forbes, four million small businesses were advertising on Facebook in 2015.
​
As social media’s impact continues to grow it can’t be denied that social advertising is a vital way to support your multi-channel and omnichannel marketing strategies. Social media advertising allows for brand personalization, loyalty, engagement, and data analytics—all important components of a multi-channel and omnichannel marketing strategy.

Facebook
Facebook ads allow you to create custom advertisements targeting specific markets. These ads will appear in the newsfeeds of your target audience or in the right-hand side bar. Facebook Insights allows you to collect data to improve your ads, as well as your targeting, to provide a more effective advertising experience.
​
Twitter
Twitter allows you to choose promoted tweets, which are a good way to build brand awareness. Promoted tweets appear in a user’s timeline and in “Who To Follow” suggestions. In addition, Twitter offers conversion campaigns that use a tracking code for the specific type of conversion you want to track and targets users by keyword. Finally, there are Twitter lead generation cards that allow users to opt-in to sign up to a newsletter, for example, with one click.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn provides the ability to create sponsored updates or text ads, both of which are linked to your website and allow audience targeting options. You can also choose between cost per click (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM) based on whether your goal is to get click-throughs or build exposure. LinkedIn provides analytics allowing you to quickly compare results from sponsored updates and text ads, as well as different variations of your ads.

Pinterest
Pinterest ads are known as promoted pins—they’re really just regular pins that you pay to promote. Pinterest offers three types of ad campaigns. The first is an awareness campaign, designed to help you build your brand. Pricing is based on every 1,000 impressions. Next is an engagement campaign to encourage users to interact with your content by either pinning it to a board or clicking on the link. You pay according to user actions—a closeup, repin, or click. Third is a traffic campaign, designed to increase traffic to your website, priced on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis.

Instagram
Instagram offers three types of ads. Photo ads allow businesses to tell their story and feature products targeting a specific audience. Instagram video ads can be up to 60 seconds in length and allow users to download and share. Instagram carousel ads provide the user with the ability to view multiple images and also includes a CTA that will take users to your website. In addition, since the purchase of Instagram by Facebook, Instagram advertisers now have access to the same analytics available on Facebook.

YouTube
YouTube offers in-stream ads, in-display ads, and in-search ads. The type of ad you choose is dependent on your advertising goals.

• In-stream ads are effective at increasing the number of impressions
• In-display ads are for increasing subscribers or views
• In-search ads are for promoting your YouTube channel in a less disruptive way

The recently launched YouTube Community allows brands to directly engage with the target audience.

Social media advertising offers great consumer targeting options. Knowing the audience you intend to target is integral to the campaign’s success. Discover who your audience is—their lifestyle, behaviors, needs, desires, etc.

1. Choose the Right Social Media Channel
Choosing the best platforms is also important. If your target customer is active on Facebook, but not on Twitter, don’t waste your money on Twitter ads. Base your advertising decisions on facts and research.

For example, if you’re targeting a particular age demographic, it’s important to consider where they’re spending their time on social media. The following chart shows the percentage of users, by age, on four popular social media platforms.

Facebook may be a good choice for reaching all age ranges. However, if you’re targeting an older demographic, advertising on Twitter or Instagram is not likely to achieve a good ROI. If your target audience is younger, under age 29, you may get more bang for your buck by advertising on Instagram. You should also consider similar comparisons of other demographics such as income, education, and location.

2. Stand Out
The best strategy for success with social media ads is to offer great content. On Facebook, for example, ads show up in a user’s news feed based on how relevant the content is to your target audience. If your relevance score is higher, your ad is more likely to appear in the news feed of your target audience than ads of other businesses targeting a similar audience.

In addition, the effectiveness of your ad content is closely tied to how successful your ad will be. Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared. To increase ROI, test various content types in organic posts.

Other social media sites offer advertising that may be more cost-effective than the ones cited above. Tumblr, for example, offers sponsored posts, sponsored video posts, and even a sponsored day which enables brands to pin their logo and tagline to all users’ dashboards for 24 hours. Quora, the question-and-answer site, only very recently began offering advertising opportunities. Ads are non-intrusive, text-based, and priced on a PPC model. Snapchat offers three types of ads, one of which allows you to use its popular geofilter, and has a three-tiered pricing model. Advertising on Reddit allows for audience targeting and engagement opportunity and is priced based on CPM.

3. Keep Mobile Top of Mind
More than 80% of social network users are accessing platforms via mobile. Mobile advertising accounts for 86% of all advertising revenue on Twitter. Your social media ads must be designed with small mobile screens in mind. Also, take advantage of mobile features such as hyper-local ads and the popularity of video on mobile. On Twitter, 90% of promoted video is viewed via a mobile device.

Social media advertising for small business has become an essential part of marketing in today’s business environment. Ensure that you understand which social media platforms are most effective for reaching your target audience, as well the types of ad formats that will work best. Develop a strategy for using the performance analytics from each social platform and modify your ads to improve effectiveness and increase your ROI.

Use These Tips to Develop Social Media Advertising for Your Business Today

• Set your advertising budget
• Define your target audience
• Determine which social media channels relate most to your target audience
• Create great content that will stand out in social feeds
• Use eye-catching visuals and video
• Optimize your content for mobile
• Track your social media advertising efforts
• Analyze your campaign performance and readjust ads when performance wanes to achieve optimal results

​Need help deciding which social channel would work best for your small business? Contact your local Valpak consultant for solid social advertising advice.

In today’s digital age, research shows that consumers are beginning to show signs of digital fatigue. Look at your own email. How many promotional messages and marketing emails do you receive on a daily basis? More than likely, quite a few.

​Use this opportunity to increase your brand exposure and acquire new customers with good, old-fashioned print advertising and direct mail. These advertising vehicles offer very effective ways for your business to rise above the digital noise.

How Print Advertising and Direct Mail Drive Sales

1. Breaks Through Digital Noise
As of February 2017, the Radicati Group estimated that there are 3.7 billion email users worldwide and around 269 billion emails sent daily. The Radicati Group’s research from 2014 showed that business users sent or received, on average, 121 emails daily. Talk about email overload. That number is expected to rise to 141 by 2018. With Americans being exposed to around 5,000 ads per day, up from 500 ads per day in the ‘70s, and a large amount of those being digital, print and direct mail can cut through the digital noise to drive sales.

2. Elicits a Strong Emotional Reaction
With less physical mail hitting the mailbox than the number of emails that hit your inbox, consumers might actually enjoy checking their physical mail as opposed to their email. A Gallup Poll shows that 41 percent of Americans look forward to checking their mailboxes on a daily basis. It’s not just the older demographics, either. In fact, 36 percent of Americans under the age of 30 share this sentiment. Statistics also show that people have a strong emotional reaction to receiving mail. 27 percent of people who enjoy checking their mail have a positive reaction to receiving an advertising card or flyer.

The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General conducted a study with Temple University’s Center of Neural Decision Making that focuses on the responses to digital and physical media in the buying process, which included the intent to purchase. This study found that participants spend more time with physical ads and had a stronger emotional response. They also remembered the physical ads better. The physical ads had a longer lasting impact for easy recall when purchasing, and they triggered the area of the brain responsible for value and desirability of featured products, which can signal greater intent to purchase.

3. Supports Digital Efforts
Print advertising and direct mail can work alongside digital marketing in a supporting role. As a small business owner, you could include your social media channels on your printed materials explaining the benefits of connecting on your social media channels. Mentioning your social channels on printed materials is one way to bridge the gap between print and digital.

Another way you can use print to support your digital marketing efforts is by providing an offer and driving consumers to a high-value lead magnet online. Verizon and Motorola ran a campaign with a call to action on their direct mail promotion that drove consumers to a landing page by scanning a QR code where they could enter to win Super Bowl tickets. The companies then used the entry information to move consumers through their sales process.

4. Strengthens Branding
Given that 70 percent of people who receive direct mail and print advertising open it, and 79 percent of it is read for a minute or more, it’s an excellent method for strengthening your brand and keeps your TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness) high. A business could stay top of mind by sending direct mail to 1,000 people every 2-3 months for 3-4 years. This would be more effective than sending direct mail to 100,000 people one time.

As part of your strategy though, it’s imperative that you keep a few things in mind, like the colors you use on your mailings; a firm understanding of your demographics; and consistency. If you’re mindful of these factors, you will be well on your way to strengthening your brand awareness.

5. Direct Mail is Engaging
With the right content, direct mail can be incredibly engaging. Businesses can personalize a message, share information that’s relevant, and customize it to fit a specific target audience.

Consumers want to feel special and print advertising campaigns can make that happen. While it may be easier to send messages to an audience with a generic greeting, a personalized, targeted piece would garner more appreciation and response. In fact, research shows that 80 percent of consumers are more likely to open a direct mail piece if it’s personalized. That same research shows that 44 percent of people will immediately discard a mailer if it’s not relevant to them.

6. Establishes Trust
Research shows that print advertising and direct mail are perceived as more trustworthy sources. Although we live in a digital-driven world, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people always believe what they read and see in the digital realm. There’s a certain trust that comes along with print. In fact, 88 percent of Millennials find that something printed on paper is more official than digital. To further drive home the point, 82 percent of Millennials view messages printed on paper as more trustworthy than digital messages. It’s also worth noting that half of the Millennials ignore digital ads.

7. Evokes Response and Engagement
Print advertising and direct mail encourage consumers to respond and engage. The response rate for direct mail is 3.7%, while other means lag behind:

• Email: 0.2%
• Paid Search 0.1%
• Other digital channels like mobile and social media display ads: 0.32%

Direct mail drives consumer purchase behavior. Results of direct mail efforts include:

• 55% of consumers visited a physical store
• 54% percent visited a website
• 45% acknowledged that direct mail led to a purchase

As mentioned earlier, the positive emotional reaction to direct mail leads consumers to remember the physical ads better, which have an extended impact for easy recall when purchasing. They trigger the area of the brain responsible for value and desirability of featured products, which can signal greater intent to purchase.

Here are some direct mail offers that are most responded to:

• Buy One Get One Free (57%)
• Gift Card (55%)
• Percent Off Total Purchase (51%)
• Free Gift (38%)
• Percentage of a Single Item (35%)
• Everyday Lowest Price (32%)
• Free Shipping (31%)
• Birthday Offer (28%)

In an age of digital overload, the reasons mentioned above show why print advertising and digital mail still have a big impact on driving sales. There are many reasons to utilize these tactics in your small business marketing strategy to elicit response and drive sales.

Try Print Advertising & Direct Mail Today
Now that you’ve learned about how print advertising and direct mail can help your business drive sales, it’s time to put this information to work.

• Download the free “Small Business Guide to Building an Effective Marketing Strategy.”
• Set the target audience you desire to reach with your print advertising and direct mail
• Plan your campaign and ensure your messaging, branding and all creative aspects speak to the target audienc
• Develop a strong call-to-action which incorporates digital engagement with the consumer
• Personalize your message to capture the consumer’s attention
• Track and analyze your efforts to determine success and effectiveness in driving sales

Valpak has been an industry leader in direct mail marketing for over 50 years. If you need help establishing a print and direct mail campaign for your small business, be sure to contact your local Valpak representative and let us introduce you to your neighborhood.

How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing? Perhaps you’re measuring engagement, shares, page views, and unique visitors to your website. Measurable data is a vital part of understanding whether your campaign is working and which parts of it are having the most impact on ROI.

But in our digital “everything” world, you may be overlooking an important metric that can provide valuable insight into how well your marketing campaign is performing: call tracking. Tracking inbound phone calls can provide valuable data on conversions and can help with keyword research and improving website performance. Call tracking works by assigning a unique phone number to each of your campaigns, allowing you know exactly which keywords, channels, and ad formats are working best.The call is automatically forwarded to your business phone number, allowing you to track which channel generated the call.

Call Tracking is an Effective Business Tool
If your business depends on phone calls for leads and customers, call tracking is an important marketing tool. For dental offices, law firms, real estate agents, plumbers, and other businesses that are heavily dependent on inbound calls, knowing which of your advertisements generated the call is essential.

Call Tracking Benefits

• Call tracking allows you to track the sources of your phone calls and conversions, so you know how the caller became aware of your business and which specific ads prompted them to contact you.
• By assigning each channel—organic, PPC, retargeting, and offline ads—a unique call tracking number, marketers can tie leads and conversions back to a specific campaign.
• Without call tracking, it’s hard to know which ad or channel generated the call. Call tracking allows you to avoid the awkward “How did you hear about us?” inquiry, which can result in vague and nonspecific information.
• Call tracking provides a number of ways to optimize lead conversion. Calls can be automatically routed to a salesperson. Analyzing call tracking data enables you to optimize PPC campaigns. Analysis of call transcripts provides an effective way to research keywords.
• By incorporating call recording into your call tracking program, you can gain useful insights about the effectiveness of your sales staff. Find out if they are asking the right questions and using the right tactics to turn a caller into a customer. It will help you understand areas in need of improvement so you can develop training programs to address deficiencies.

Specific Benefits for Marketers

Call tracking allows you to set specific, measurable goals for your advertising campaigns, and track the efficiency of advertising channels, whether it’s a print ad, billboard, or PPC ad. Call tracking can provide greater accuracy in measuring both expenses and ROI for your campaigns, and helps you optimize your marketing budget.
Should You Consider Call Tracking?

• Does your business receive leads from inbound phone calls?
• Are you looking for ways to improve lead conversion?
• Could your business benefit from optimizing your ad spend?

Call tracking provides a number of benefits that can help your business more accurately measure the success of PPC ads and determine marketing ROI. Particularly for businesses that rely on inbound phone calls, call tracking is a good way to improve customer service and lead conversion.

Get Call Tracking for Your Business Today!

• Start by taking a look at your current ad campaign and how you are currently measuring the success of those ads.
• Analyze your customer service and lead conversion data to determine areas that could be improved with call tracking.
• Research options for call tracking programs and perform a cost-benefit analysis.

Valpak is an industry leader in direct mail and digital marketing. Want to learn more about how call tracking can work for your business? Contact your local Valpak consultant today.

It’s been quite some time since “Mobilegeddon,” when Google and other search engines forced businesses to take mobile users into account in a meaningful way. Given the very real consequences to your business, you’re undoubtedly already mobile-friendly as a result.

It may surprise you to discover that mobile-friendly marketing is no longer enough. Now your business needs to be mobile-centric.

The terms may not seem all that different at first glance, but that’s where the similarities end. In today’s post, we’ll take a look at why an approach that’s mobile-centric is vital to effective business marketing and how you can begin to position your business with mobile consumers in mind.

Friendly Versus CentricWhen it comes down to it, the difference between being mobile-friendly and being mobile-centric is that one is an SEO tactic and the other is a fundamental approach to operating online and strategizing digital marketing.
Your business website needs to be mobile-friendly. Google has defined certain criteria that must be met in order to maintain satisfactory rankings in mobile searches, and it’s something that can easily be tested on a page by page basis.
On the other hand, a mobile-centric approach to marketing will encompass much more than whether or not you have a responsive layout and thumb-friendly design; it extends to how you handle customers that have a mobile-heavy path to purchase or even a mobile-only sales cycle.
Why Mobile-Centric Is Front and CenterIn the modern market, you need to fight for customer attention across various touchpoints in a fragmented path to purchase. Google calls these “micro-moments,” and it all stems from how multiple devices in general and mobile devices, in particular, have caused consumer behavior to evolve.
You see, mobile phone consumption has increased 90% between 2013 and 2015, and even tablet consumption has grown by 64%. More than that, however, is how smartphone owners are using those devices. Namely, mobile makes up 51% of the time consumers spend with digital media.
Where this can be seen most clearly is search. As of 2015, more searches were happening on mobile devices than on computers, and 40% of people will actually turn only to their smartphone to conduct a search that meets immediate needs on an average day. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, attention to mobile is even more vital because of its power for local search: “near me” Google searches from a mobile device have grown 146% year over year to represent 88% of all searches of this type. In fact, 82% of smartphone users are going to turn to their device to help them make purchase decisions while they’re in store, offering hefty influence in that moment.
Quite simply, consumers have made mobile devices central to how they research, search, and shop. That means your business needs to have a mobile-centric strategy, otherwise, the odds are very high that you won’t be there and your competitors will. (Remember, mobile already represented nearly half of all digital ad spend, and that’s expected to reach more than 70%, or roughly $66 billion, by 2019.)
You need to be mobile across all digital touchpoints within your marketing funnel. For instance, when the customer is at the awareness stage, you need mobile content to position your brand with the answers to their questions. Develop mobile ads and take such options as geofencing into account in order to serve those ads at the right moment.
More than half of branded emails (54%) will be opened on a mobile device, so the email creative should be designed to display correctly on a mobile phone screen. Digital marketing must be developed with a mobile-first mindset.
Tips for Implementation

• Stay on top of your data. Do your best to discover and track the way your audience and customers uses their mobile devices. Are you meeting their mobile needs?
• Consider Google’s mobile-friendly design instruction and consider how that might be reflected in your creative. Images should fit easily on phone screens and text should be easy to read. Make sure it’s designed to load and capture attention more quickly. This is especially true for email marketing strategies.
• Not every social media app is right for every business, but it’s time to take a good look at some of the mobile-only social apps and determine whether you can leverage any to your benefit. For example, Instagram is incredibly popular, and thanks to Facebook’s targeting techniques, it can help you increase reach to a qualified audience in a powerful way.
• Video is valuable because it’s often a preferred format for content. While it should be featured on your site, social media apps are also a good way to host video content and ensure that it reaches the right audience. Use videos for how-to videos, Q&A sessions, and even behind-the-scenes type moments to humanize your brand.
• Don’t be afraid of streaming live video. Live video steps up user engagement to proper interaction and it can be a great way to capture leads in addition to consumer attention.
• Take a look at how much it’s going to cost for your business to implement store beacons and if they aren’t feasible now, keep tabs on the technology. This can be a great tool for reaching customers with personalized information and offers at the point of their purchase decisions.
• Remember that mobile pay isn’t just about a customer being able to pay with their mobile device in-store. If they’re making a purchase online through their smartphone or in your mobile app, they want the experience to move as smoothly as possible. Businesses that can accept Apple or Android Pay, or similar mobile payments such as Chase Masterpass or PayPal, instill confidence and build trust while ensuring a frictionless checkout process.

At the end of the day, becoming mobile-centric is vital to your marketing and every way that you engage with customers digitally. You can no longer afford to “wait and see” because you aren’t going to be where your customers are now. A mobile-centric strategy will keep your business at their fingertips and help keep you top of mind, too.
Move to Mobile-Centric Marketing Today!

• Review your current digital strategy. Are you giving mobile the weight it deserves?
• Start by ensuring everything about your digital marketing is mobile-friendly. Hopefully, you’ve done this already, since it’s the baseline for being able to realistically operate today.
• Review our tips. Are there any you haven’t already done? Are they netting the results you expect?
• Make a plan to transition your business to a mobile-centric strategy and implement as many of the above tips as possible.

Need help going mobile-centric with your small business marketing? Let Valpak help! Contact your local Valpak marketing coach for information.

​In today’s business environment, online reviews play a critical role. People rely on reviews to help them choose among products and brands and to feel confident in their purchasing decisions. In fact, 63% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase from a website that has user reviews. For most buyers, an online review can be as important as a personal recommendation from a friend. For a business, managing online reviews and appropriately handling the negative ones is vital to gaining new customers and growing sales.

Online reviews can make or break a company. Statistics show that for more than 88% of online shoppers, online reviews are a part of their purchase decision process. Forty percent (40%) of consumers will form an opinion of a brand or product by reading just one to three reviews. Online reviews have become an important part of building trust with consumers, with 68% saying that positive reviews cause them to have more trust in a business. In addition, online reviews are an important way to drive traffic to your website. Forty-eight percent (48%) of consumers say they will visit a company’s website after reading online reviews.

Of course, no one wants negative reviews—and companies need to have a plan for dealing with them—but paradoxically, a few negative reviews can actually boost the credibility of your online reviews. 95% of consumers say they suspect that reviews are being censored or faked if they don’t see any negative reviews, and 68% say they trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative reviews.
That’s in no way to suggest that bad reviews are a good thing. For 67% of shoppers, reading as few as one to three bad reviews is enough to prevent them from making a purchase, and 86% of consumers hesitate to purchase from a brand with negative reviews.

The good news: 95% of unhappy customers will return to a business that acts quickly to resolve complaints.

Best Practices for Handling Negative Reviews
By properly managing online reviews, a company can mitigate the effects of negative reviews.

1. Acknowledge the Problem Quickly and Publicly. Take ownership of the issue by writing a short reply that demonstrates you are aware of the problem. Don’t be defensive. Don’t make excuses. The purpose of your reply is to regain the customer’s trust.
2. Apologize. Offer a sincere apology aimed at getting the customer to consider giving you another chance. Accept responsibility for the customer’s negative experience even if it wasn’t your fault.
3. Make Things Right. Thank the customer for their feedback and describe the specific steps you are taking to fix the issue or how the issue has been resolved. Consider how your response will be perceived by prospective customers.

Additional Tips

• Take the Discussion Offline. Contact the customer in a private message or provide them with contact information for a customer service representative. If you want to offer the customer a free meal, discounted services, or a gift certificate, it’s best to do so offline to avoid having others try to take advantage of an opportunity to leave a bad review in hopes of getting something for free in return.
• Offer to Make Things Right. Depending on the business in which your company is engaged and the nature of the customer’s complaint, offer ways to satisfy the customer. You could offer to replace the product, offer a refund, provide a certificate for free services, or offer a credit as compensation.
• Encourage Them to Try Your Product or Service Again. Ask your customer to give your business a second chance and encourage them to come back by offering a discount on a future purchase.

A Note About Positive Reviews
While it’s important to respond to negative reviews, it’s just as important, if not more so, to respond to positive reviews. If someone gives you a compliment in person, you always say “Thank you.” A positive online review is no different. Here’s why:

1. It’s the Polite Thing to Do. Show the public you are gracious and appreciate that a customer took the time to leave you a positive review.
2. Almost Everyone Will See It. 92% of consumers read online reviews. Your reply will be seen by potential customers, and it’s a good opportunity to subtly include a bit of marketing.
3. It Can Improve Search Rankings. When you reply to an online review, it can improve the ranking of the review which can increase the chances that it will show up in search results.

How Should You Respond to Positive Reviews?

1. Start With a Thank You. Then, respond to something specific the reviewer said. If they complimented an employee or how your product resolved a problem they were having, specifically mention that in your response.
2. Use Specifics About Your Business in Your Reply. When you specifically mention the name and location of your business, it helps improve brand recognition for potential customers and search engines.
3. Do a Little Marketing. Remember that online reviews will be read by prospective customers, so mention something that makes your product or service special and what distinguishes your brand from your competition.

Another idea is to mention special offers, such as a loyalty card or other promotion. Just be careful that such offers aren’t subject to time limits since you can’t be sure exactly when a consumer may be reading the review.
Online reviews are a fact of life in the 21st-century business environment. Properly handling both negative and positive reviews is critical to the success of your business. This is important both in keeping current customers happy and providing prospective customers with confidence in doing business with you.
Get Started Today

• Develop a plan for monitoring your online reviews. There are several tools available to help you do this, but one of the easiest ways is to set up a Google alert.
• Make a plan for dealing with negative reviews. Time is of the essence, so it’s important to have a strategy ready to go when a negative review is posted.
• Assign someone to respond to reviews in a timely manner and to ensure continuity and consistency of your messaging.

Need help with reputation management for your business? Contact your local Valpak marketing coach today!

​Digital coupons in general and mobile coupons specifically have reached the point where businesses can’t really afford to continue a wait-and-see perspective. 36% of coupon users increased the use of paperless coupons so far this year and 32% of consumers prefer to receive offers via smartphone. Furthermore, discounts received on mobile devices influenced 67% of consumers’ decisions about where to shop.

What’s more, 72% of consumers look for coupons on their smartphone while inside a store. That percentage jumps to 90% for Millennials alone. Nearly 60% of consumers would have a more positive opinion of a retailer that started sending coupons and other offers that could be saved on their smartphones.

Of course, the uptick in use isn’t the only reason you should consider adopting a digital coupon strategy. It provides convenience, not only to the customer but to you as well. Digital coupons are easy to distribute and accept, and they’re much more affordable to create. It can be considered environmentally responsible because you aren’t printing a host of coupons. Digital coupons can help your business meet increasing customer expectations for cross-device digital engagement, and often fit snugly with your other digital marketing efforts.

For instance, both Android Pay and Apple Pay feature options for coupon redemption at POS. When managed correctly, especially in conjunction with an app, these coupons can also unlock insights about consumer spending and interests. That also means you’ll give yourself a competitive edge in the market and with new customers.

Beginning a Digital Coupon Campaign

If you decide to use digital and mobile coupons, remember to start by developing them the way you would develop any coupon offer.

Nearly a third of coupon users (31%) want a specific dollar amount off of their purchase. You still need to focus on the three key parts of a coupon as well:

1. Headline
2. Image
3. Offer

The offer is especially important—you don’t want to create an offer that sacrifices revenue to the point that you can’t pay operational costs.

You also need to be aware of the platforms your audience uses, or you’ll essentially waste your marketing efforts. For instance, UK mobile brand Orange (now EE) offered a two-for-one ticket coupon that was only valid on Wednesdays at local cinemas. Customers had to text a code word to an Orange promotional number in order to receive the coupon code. The brand issued 300, 000 coupons each week, effectively boosting ticket sales on a day that didn’t see much business without hurting high-sale days.

You should also learn about and adopt the processes and technologies recommended by standardization organizations, like GS1. This will help you utilize common, secure, and interworking platforms.
Following are a number of specific necessary elements to developing and managing your digital coupon campaign.

​Crucial Coupon Campaign Elements

Create Targeted Campaigns
Targeting always makes consumer engagement more effective, so start with a specific goal, select a specific segment, and tailor your campaign offer and coupon creative specifically for your target audience.

Utilize psychological persuasion tactics (e.g., authority, liking, social proof) and leverage the concepts of scarcity and urgency to improve opt-in and redemption rates.

Coupon management platforms or apps can sometimes help you develop segments, but they can definitely help you design and distribute your campaign, including the creative. Valpak has more than proven its efficacy in targeting based on its direct mail coupons, and our SEO-optimized digital coupons are an equally powerful tool.

Distribute Coupon PromotionsUnlike the coupons you put in the newspaper, you need to promote your digital and mobile coupon offers. Fortunately, this opens up new opportunities for reaching customers in an extremely targeted way.
For instance, if a customer has abandoned their cart for a lengthy period of time, an email or text message reminding them of the cart and offering a discount on their next purchase can diminish churn. In fact, sharing coupons via email is itself lucrative: 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase in response to a promotional email.

Social media is also a strong platform on which to leverage discounts—just remember to follow social media best practices and don’t over promote on those channels. You should also take advantage of partner blogs, specialized landing pages that SEM advertising can direct to, and even website popups for customers whose digital cart reaches a certain dollar amount.

Manage Coupon Fraud
Coupon fraud is no small thing—it’s responsible for $600 million lost annually. Coupons that are utilized online or through mobile devices are just as much a part of fraudulent activity as coupons sent out in newspapers and direct mail.

Fortunately, there are methods you can use to limit fraudulent redemptions. Start by clearly defining date and time restrictions; the expiration window will limit the scope of fraudulent behavior while also enhancing the sense of scarcity. Similarly, dynamic visuals like countdown clocks can prevent most screenshot fraud while increasing the sense of urgency.

On a more technical level, unique URLs help prevent fraudulent discount sites from cannibalizing them while providing brands with the means to shut down access and single-use codes are only capable of working once. Above all, monitor reports regularly and analyze them for strange or non-organic behavior; you’ll be able to note multiples, inappropriate price deductions, and more for investigation.

Engage with Refer-a-Friend
Helping a friend save money is the type of altruism everyone can get behind, but it helps to remember that people are more likely to take advantage of an offer when it’s referred to them by a friend, as well. You can incentivize this by offering additional promotions to the customer making the recommendation if their friend takes advantage of the sale. Take advantage of every channel your customers utilize to maximize impact, especially email, social, and SMS.

Measure Campaign Performance
Like every other kind of marketing, monitoring the performance of your campaign is key. It ensures your targeting and distribution strategies are working and helps to identify fraud before it gets out of hand.
A coupon management system will help you leverage tactics that help you avoid fraud (e.g., unique codes) to track specific customer conversions and further customize what coupons and offers are sent to them.

Inasmuch as it can give a very personalized view, a coupon management system can also provide wide angle views that assist with geo-fenced segmentation, redemption rates, and average time to redemption.

Valpak provides a performance tracking dashboard that allows you to view clicks, calls, responses, and redemptions across each campaign you run with us, including direct mail campaigns.

Developing a digital coupon campaign and setting up the processes to accept mobile coupons doesn’t have to be intimidating. The tips we’ve outlined above should help you to leverage mobile coupons to your advantage and give you an edge over your competitors.

And of course, as a leader in digital coupon promotions and distributions, Valpak would be an excellent marketing partner for you. Let us help you develop your next campaign and take advantage of our performance dashboard to track success.

Go Digital with a Mobile Coupon Campaign Today

• Review your current marketing efforts and determine if a coupon campaign could be right for you. Have you used them before? What worked? What didn’t?
• With consumers turning to their smartphones for more and more ways to shop and pay, mobile is a strong way to reach most audiences. Review your current mobile efforts to determine if a path to digital coupons is already in place.
• Review your digital outreach to determine the best channels for promoting a new digital coupon campaign.
• Put processes in place to monitor and manage your coupon campaign. See our list of the most crucial elements above and ensure these are included.

In a survey of small business owners conducted by Valpak Research Services with Thrive Analytics, it was discovered that a notable percentage of small business owners approached marketing their businesses in an imprecise and therefore, ineffective manner. Many small business owners rely on “gut feelings” to make marketing and advertising decisions and more aren’t particularly sure how to measure the return on their marketing investment. They never really know if their current marketing methods are working and worse, they don’t know how much more effectively they could market their business.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Check out our infographic, “Marketing on the Fly,” then download the full whitepaper for insights and tips on how you can effectively market your small business, analyze marketing results, and still have time for all of your other business activities.