Super Digi-Bowl I, Small Business Video Challenge

Super Bowl kicks off in 19 days with the first outdoor, cold-weather super bowl in New Jersey. Super Bowl XLVIII will also be the first time two states, New York and New Jersey, proudly co-host the game. A 47 year tradition of NFC and AFC rivalry, Super Bowl has opened the doors to quite a few American “largest” facts including:

● Second day of highest U.S. food consumption

● Most watch television broadcast

● Most expensive commercial airtime

According to USA Today, FOX is charging around $4 million for 30 seconds of commercial time and that does not include production costs. For many small businesses, spending that much money for 30 seconds is unthinkable. Yet for companies like Coca-Cola, millions of consumers watching and the social media buzz is worth it. Small businesses are also looking to create buzz and what better way to do this than social media? So let the games begin!

Affinity Express welcomes you to the first “Small Business Digi-Bowl!” Submit  your 15-30 second commercials for your company to Affinity Express by kick-off on Super Bowl Sunday, February 2nd  and watch as we air them beginning February 10th on our NEW website and social media sites including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. You can earn the title of “Digi-Bowl Champ” and/or “Fan Favorite.”

Producing films can be done at very low cost and even from your cell phone. Here are a few tips to get you started:

        ● Get close and shoot horizontally

        ● 5 Tips for Creating Video

        ● Make Marketing Videos with your iPhone

Best of luck and we can’t wait to see what you share!

7 Tips to Increase Profitability by Retaining Customers

Pareto’s principle is that businesses get 80 percent of business from 20 percent of their clients, meaning that retention of these customers is crucial to success. According to a study conducted by Harvard Business School, “The high cost of acquiring customers renders many customer relationships unprofitable during their early years. Only in later years, when the cost of serving loyal customers falls and the volume of their purchases rises, do relationships generate big returns. The bottom line: increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.”

Research conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration revealed: “Businesses could greatly improve their customer base if they focused more on retaining customers than spending marketing budget funds to get new customers.” Numerous studies have shown it takes more money to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current client.

Here are some additional statistics:

• The average U.S. business loses 50% of its customers every five years.
• It costs six to seven times more to find new clients than it does to keep existing clients.
• Bain Co. states; a 10 percent increase in customer retention is equal to a 30% increase in company value.
• You are four times more likely to do business with an existing customer versus a new customer.
• The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70% versus 5 to 20% to a new customer.

To help you improve customer retention, we’ve compiled the following seven tips for small businesses to identify, engage and retain valuable customers.

1. Set expectations early

Businesses should build strong and trustworthy relationships from the start. For example, when your team delivers faster or more than promised, you build a foundation of excellent service delivery. You can reinforce this by responding quickly to questions, maintaining a record of communication and commitments and exceeding expectations. You should go even further with the quality of your after-sales service and support.

2. Involve your customers in all decisions

Many times, just involving your customers before going ahead with decisions saves time and effort required later to make fixes. Any change in operations or strategy is likely to be more successful when it is accepted and endorsed in advance by your clients. So why not involve them and get their input while planning? Surveys are one of the best tools to measure your clients’ satisfaction levels if used properly. Here are some tips to design survey questions that lead to actionable insights:

• Define customer satisfaction parameters and ask questions around each. To illustrate, a voice call software application provider needs to ask questions on the quality of calls, bandwidth issues, call packages offered, etc.
• Measure satisfaction by using the appropriate scale for each parameter.
• Make inferences from data by studying all aspects and related context.

3. Share your business values

All established brands have a set of values for which they stand and their clients typically identify strongly with them. While developing your brand, work to establish unique values rather than copy from other companies. Your brand has to work itself into the hearts and minds (especially hearts) of prospects and customers and you can’t do this by being like everyone else in the segment. Companies like Google, Apple, Coca Cola and Walt Disney are distinct and a customer who buys Microsoft is very different from a Mac fan. Know your potential customers priorities and communicate values that match.

4. Reach out to customers regularly

As explained by Kelly in her earlier post, “today’s email is different than the blanket campaigns of the past. It’s precision marketing, not blasting. It’s a campaign to market products or to market your customers’ products. It’s email marketing.” Once, you understand what is important for a particular set of customers; tweak your messages and campaigns. Provide them information that will empower them to live their lives and conduct business in a better way. Blogging is another powerful tool that lets you share your knowledge and passion, leading to two-way communications. Social media spreads the word about your brand and gives your customers an opportunity to share opinions and give feedback.

5. Think and act beyond actual sales

In order to make a relationship last beyond the immediate sale, think beyond it! Instead of concentrating on one transaction, try to know each person or company better. Dig deeper to know learn their processes and systems, their pain points and ways to help them. In a consultative style of selling, you should offer advice, let them know about complementary products and provide tips for maximizing the value of their purchases. Your clients can benefit from your products but they should also be able to leverage the relationship with you. Once there is trust in you, they will ask for help openly; resulting in long and fruitful relationships.

6. Provide value with automation

Automation converts time-consuming tasks into standardized processes which greatly improve efficiency. Businesses who automate are able to distinguish themselves from competitors. One example from our company is the Affinity Express Service Bureau 4.0 (AESB 4.0), an innovative, cloud-based workflow solution that enables publishers to evolve into complete marketing resources for their advertisers, while increasing profits, lowering costs and improving productivity.
Some of the advantages of AESB 4.0 are as follows:

• Supports a complete range of digital and print products
• Increases the profitability of orders by making the process faster and easier
• Provides extensive business intelligence on an enterprise level
• Integrates the entire process from sales to billing
• Allows salespeople to access from anywhere and using any device
• Stores past campaigns, proposals, contracts and other details

As we have seen with AESB 4.0, automating and standardizing processes increases customer loyalty and pays off with improved customer retention rates.

7. Get Personal

If a restaurant manager remembers me from my last visit and suggests a new dish or drink that is close to what I preferred on my previous visit, I feel valued enough to visit again and share the incident with my friends. Customers like attention without someone getting in their way. Small tokens of appreciation like emails with customized offers, thank-you notes to returning guests and personalized greetings on special occasions are good practices. Involving your business in community events is a special way to give back to your patrons and customers. These small but very critical steps can become deciding factors when you are compared to competitors.

Are you paying attention to what’s important to your customers? What else have you done to improve retention rates and build loyalty?

Multi-Channel Retailing Today and Tomorrow

When I attended the National Retail Federation conference a couple of weeks ago, there was a session on “Exhibitor Big Ideas”  dedicated to what global consumers say they really want in a multi-channel world, based on a 2012 study by NCR. The research was very enlightening about the current state of retail and the preferences of today’s consumers.

The study mapped what consumers look for and like with against retailers are actually offering and there is a lot of room for retailers to improve. In fact, retail will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 20 years.

1. Personalization and target marketing

When it comes to personalized coupon offers:

• 69% of consumers worldwide would welcome them.
• 73% of shoppers said the availability of electronic coupons is a must-have for them.
• 27% of grocery retail locations provide personalized offers.
• 46% of favorite grocery retailers offer electronic coupons (“favorites” were a specific sub-set of retailers cited by respondents)
• Overall, 35% of U.S. retailers offer them but 80% of American consumers want them.

2. Buy anywhere, get anywhere

Shoppers expect a connected or converged experience. They want to feel like they are dealing with the same business in-store, online, in mobile apps, etc. Brick and mortar stores must embrace that consumers are using technology. For many, the internet has become the shopping channel of choice. Retail has gone from a B2C to a C2B experience.

For each company, all of the pricing strategies, policies and procedures have to look and work the same. The best way to accomplish this is to put the right platforms in to manage the entire ecosystem versus managing all of them individually.

• 78% of shoppers in North America want to purchase anywhere and get merchandise shipped or picked up anywhere.
• 82% of favorite retailers in North America offer the option but 26% did not.

There are some interesting developments happening. Retailers are creating multiple channels for returns. It’s good they are doing this because expensive or lengthy return policies and procedures were reasons for not making purchases for 76% of consumers.

Retailers have to think about getting creative because there are many opportunities to think outside the box. For example, Sears had a drive-through window for returns after the holidays.

3. In-Store Self-Service

Most grocery stores have some self-service options but there is opportunity to incorporate this approach across all retail categories. Even in grocery, many retailers have self-service in the front lanes but not enough help around the store. Consumers want independence and control of their shopping experience.

• Nearly 20% of retailers provide in-store self-service
• However, 44% of North American consumers desired increased in-store self-service options.

Apple consumers can walk in, buy accessories and walk out without speaking or engaging with store associates.

4. Consumer Mobile

Retailers have to do mobile right and consumers love it when they do. The experience should be clean, fast and positive. Furthermore, it has to be timely. When it works, the adoption rate will be strong and fast. From mobile apps and offers to research and payment—there is no end to the trend.

Regarding  mobile scan and pay:

• 52% of consumers want mobile scan and pay
• Only 12% of their favorite grocery stores offer (because it is tough to implement and there are operational considerations).

Retailers who drive this feature early may actually get consumers to switch their loyalties. Even if retailers decide they want to hang back and join this trend late, they should start soon in the next one to three years because consumers will demand this feature.

Mobile can be a win-win.

• Consumers are using technology for faster checkout and personalized offers. They also use it to monitor spending.
• Retailers get valuable insight into purchasing behavior, store utilization/traffic patterns and can influence shoppers at the point of decisions with targeted offers. On top of that, scan and pay is a huge opportunity.

Stepping back to look at the big picture, time is the biggest problem retailers can solve for consumers. And they are getting more impatient. They digest technology really quickly. So if “Big Brother” is smart, he will be successful.

Ultimately, retailers have to remember that the consumer is in charge. Purchasing used to be a straight line of activity. Now there are lines all over the place in the C2B experience. The best advice for retailers is to think of all the points of contact, look at their technology architecture and centralize to deliver what consumers want, as well as how and where they want.

What makes certain retailers “favorites” for you and what multi-channel options do you value most?

Restaurant Website: How to Serve It Nice and Hot?

Despite the fact that 89% of US consumers research a restaurant online before dining there to check out menus and other information (AIS Media), I found some astonishing figures about restaurants:

• 95% of independent restaurants do not have a mobile website
• 40% do not have menus that can be read online
• 50% do not even have a standard website

(Research conducted by RIMS)

According to the National Restaurant Association, 50% of all full-service restaurants that have a web site use it primarily to offer consumers information about the restaurants and provide location details. This, I believe, is insufficient for customers who want to do everything online, from looking up restaurant locations on maps, checking out menus, reading customer reviews to booking tables online. With that in mind, here are some tips for restaurateurs planning to develop their websites to attract a lot more foodies online.

1. Make the website simple and logical

Keep the design simple, without any clutter. The information should be easily available to customers to help them make a quick decision.

Customer Satisfaction Sets You Apart as a Retailer

What makes customers think of you when they need something “special” and brings them back to you repeatedly to spend more and more? What does it take for them to recommend them to their family and friends? Most would say “customer satisfaction”. Talking about it is one thing but delivering it is a different matter and one that makes all the difference in success levels.

So what are the key things you should do to build a solid base of satisfied customers? Here are some approaches that I believe play a key role in changing a one-time customer into a profitable, repeat customer.

Work on forming a relationship

It is important that you talk to your customers, and by talking, I really mean listen to them. People like to buy from those who are friendly and approachable, who share information and give them time. I have often asked my father to move his account to a bank that has a wide network and offers seamless online services. But he refuses to change from his current bank. This used to be a topic of discussion during every visit home until he took me to his bank. I was amazed to hear everyone address him by name. People had time to have a cup of tea and also ask about his recovery (after a recent surgery). I could never expect that kind of attention from the multinational bank that I use.

Assist but do not sell

You might put off a customer by trying to push merchandise that he is still thinking about buying.

Channels of Communication for SMBs to Engage Customers

A common ability that many successful businesses share is strong communication. Communication empowers individuals, motivates teams, aligns strategy, sets standards, sells potential consumers and retains existing customers. As more and more companies work on their online presence, they sometimes fail to evolve their communication style so it works in new channels. To effectively reach your audience today, you need to build value for your followers, share content from other sources and get involved in conversations. At the same time, you can’t forget the reason you’re there—to sell.

An entrepreneur connecting with her audience through digital media

Here are the vehicles for small- to medium-sized business that will help build your brand online and keep your customers coming back for more!

Website

While building your website, small things can improve your visitors’ experiences. Think of the homepage as your shop’s show window. This is where most of your visitors come in and decide whether to explore further. Instead of confusing them, simple designs help customers navigate while highlighting your products/services, testimonials and samples. Informative and informal copy keeps interest levels high by talking in customers’ language. When you legitimately use keywords searched by target customers on your pages and in the tags, you improve your ranking in search engines results. You should also make the Contact Us tab easy to locate so customers can reach you.