Safety Nets Unfurled: Catching the Dreams of Small Business Owners

The Pre-Production Stage 1
In this week’s installment of creating a promotional video (commercial), I will cover the first of the three steps of video production. This tutorial will take the stages of production using simple tools such as a smart-phone camera and your business computer. The three Stages of Production are 1. Pre-Production (Planning), 2. Production (Shooting Video), 3. Post-production (Editing).This week I will cover stage 1.
These videos will consist primarily of photos and possibly some short video clips.

Pre-Production — The planning stage of your shoot occurs before the camera starts rolling. By creating a plan, and figuring out the budget ahead of time, your video will be free of unnecessary worry.

Define Goals (Strategy) — Goals are general statements about the direction that you would like to take your business. Example: 1. Expanding into a new market, 2. Reaching a new customer base, 3. New product or service.
You can use these general goals, supported by specific objectives, as a platform for creating a marketing action plan that targets the growth of the business.

Objectives (Tactics) — Once your goals are set, refine them with measurable, concretely defined objectives. These are the steps that you will take to meet your goals.
Example: Each goal should have a set of associated objectives that allow you to logically and effectively work toward the growth you need.

Audience (Target Market) — In advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or marketing message of a product is aimed. The target market and the marketing mix variables consist of Product, Place (distribution), Promotion, Price. These are the four elements of a marketing mix strategy that determine the success of a product in the marketplace,

Outline (Pre-script) — Break it into transitions. Prepare an outline of the points you want to make. If you’re promoting a business, your outline may consist of identifying the mission, background, products or services provided, how you can help solve your audience’s problems or meet their needs, testimonials from satisfied customers, costs, distinctions between your products and the competition, and any other factors that will convince your target audience to patronize your company.

Goals and Objectives —Describe what you expect the ad campaign to accomplish. Be specific and tailor statements to the focus of the campaign. For a sales ad campaign, set a goal of increasing sales by 10 percent within six months.

Script — Make sure your commercial’s script times out to 30 to 50 seconds (interest wanes at 54 seconds). Use short sentences that grab your potential customer’s attention. You’ve got a very limited time frame to capture your audience and you need to get your message across quickly. Don’t get wrapped up in long sentences. Keep them short and punchy. Your audio should also tell the customer what your advertising confirming what they are viewing.

Storyboard & Shot-list — I have combined both the storyboard and shot-list into one form. The storyboard follows the chronology of the script in a pictorial form. It helps you visualize the sequences of your video. You can use pencil sketches in the form when creating the chronology.
The shot-list is under the sketch boxes on the form. The shots are determined by what action is happening within a given scene and how to best capture that action.

You can download the forms previously listed in this blog from Dropbox. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p62v52g4pf31y0s/AADlql9m66CnvWoUxyzAsEeIa?dl=0

If you have any marketing questions, please feel free to contact me at Keystone Business Brokers.
Nick Santarone, Marketing Director nick@kbizbrokers.com

Next week’s blog will discuss stage 2 producing the video.

Video Marketing for Small Business
The internet has democratized advertising strategy making it cost-effective. In the past, only large companies could afford the huge expenditures charged by advertising agencies and mass media such as television commercials and print ads. Today, small business has access to digital marketing on their websites and through the many social media sites.

Approximately 90% of individuals have internet access and most people are computer literate. If you’re a B2B marketer it’s safe to assume that practically all of your viewers have computer skills. The best way to engage your customers is to tell your story by using an entertaining video.
Videos also can be used for presentations to clients, trade shows, training, and direct email marketing. Your viewers can watch your videos 24-7. Marketing research has shown that consumers are more likely to make purchases after viewing a recording as opposed to print ads.

There are various levels of producing promotional videos, ranging from a simple slide show to a full-blown commercial using actors. During the next few weeks, I will go through the process of creating a business video using very basic methods that most people have the skills to produce.

If you have any marketing questions, please feel free to contact me at Keystone Business Brokers.
Nick Santarone, Marketing Director,  nick@kbizbrokers.com

“5 Steps To LinkedIn Advertising Greatness.”

Yesterday, I viewed an excellent Youtube video on LinkedIn Advertising. This blog post is a brief synopsis of the video-cast. Below, please find the link to the YouTube video.
Presenter: John Linka with Ignite Visibility
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/-cfMv5hGZYk

Thinking about advertising on LinkedIn, but you have no idea if it’s good or not for your business.

LinkedIn advertising is a great place to be. LinkedIn is used for personal branding, posting, and getting exposure, but also the advertising can be great as well, but you need to know how to use it.

There is a benefit to advertising on LinkedIn. It’s important to know that over 75% of the population on LinkedIn makes $50,000 a year or more. LinkedIn has an excellent demographic with amazing targeting abilities.

Step 1. Sign up for the campaign manager.
The campaign manager will provide you with a dashboard that will give you a look at clicks and interactions of your ads. Also, it will show you the demographics of your advertising audience.

Step 2. Choosing an ad format.
The Ad format is sponsored content that posted it through a LinkedIn business page.

You can use a LinkedIn lead generation form that will pull the information from LinkedIn and be submitted directly to you. This is a seamless and easy process to capture a prospect’s information.

LinkedIn can do video ads through sponsored content allowing you to get way more views on your video content.

The second format is sponsored InMail you can send an InMail to somebody as an advertisement.

Another option is standard text ads so you can have a text ad that shows on the right-hand side of the page on LinkedIn.

Step 3. Ad creation.
If you do not have the correct ad format you’re going to get terrible ROAS (return on ad spend).

Recommendation: You get the attention of your audience and then nurture them through your lead generation process.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to choose your selection criteria. You can choose to select people to advertise by location, the company where they work. Within the specific company, you can advertise to them using their title specifically CMO, director of marketing, and marketing managers.

Step 4. Re-Marketing
Introducing re-marketing as part of LinkedIn that is going to make it a platform that a lot more people are going to be using so definitely give LinkedIn a try don’t quit on it yet. I believe in almost all cases if you put in enough time you can make a channel work for you.

Step 5. Your budget.
LinkedIn has a couple of different ways of budgeting. You can do cost per click, cost per send, and in your mail option cost per impression. Pick the one that’s the best for your business. In most cases, you will be choosing the cost per click or the cost per send.

Interesting stats to think about.
80% of b2b social media marketing leads come from LinkedIn. Also, 92% of b2b marketers use the LinkedIn platform over other platforms.

You can create a great lead generation channel on LinkedIn so keep at it.

Using Focus Groups to Acquire Marketing Research
(a cost-effective research technique)

Many small businesses don’t take advantage of using marketing research techniques to determine the needs and wants of their target market. Before starting a promotional campaign it is wise to get feedback from customers. The focus group is the first step in gathering qualitative data for your research.

Basics of Conducting Focus Groups
Focus groups are a powerful means to evaluate services or test new ideas. Focus groups are interviews, led by a moderator with 6-10 people at the same time in the same group. One can get a great deal of information during a focus group session.

Preparing for the Session
1. Identify the major objective of the meeting. 
2. Carefully develop five to six questions.  
3. Plan your session.
  4. Call potential members to invite them to the meeting. Send them a follow-up invitation.  5. About three days before the session, call each member to remind them to attend.

Developing Questions
1. Develop five to six open-ended questions – Session should last one to 1.5 hours — at this time, one can ask at most five or six questions. 
 2. Always first ask yourself what problem or need will be addressed by the information gathered during the session, e.g., examine if a new service or idea will work, further understand how a program is failing, etc. 
 3. Focus groups are basically multiple interviews. Therefore, many of the same guidelines for conducting focus groups are similar to conducting interviews.

Planning the Session
1. Scheduling – Plan meetings to be one to 1.5 hours long. Over lunch seems to be a very good time for others to find time to attend.  
2. Setting and Refreshments – Hold sessions in a conference room. Configure chairs so that all members can see each other. Provide name tags for members, as well. Provide refreshments, especially box lunches if the session is held over lunch.  
3. Ground Rules – All members must participate as much as possible. Implement the following three ground rules: a) keep focused, b) maintain momentum and c) get closure on questions.
  4. Agenda – Consider the following agenda: welcome, review of agenda, review of goal of the meeting, review of ground rules, introductions, questions, and answers, wrap up.
  5. Membership – Focus groups are usually conducted with 6-10 members who have some similar nature, e.g., similar age group, status in a program, etc. Select members who are likely to be participative and reflective. Attempt to select members who don’t know each other.
  6. Plan to record the session with either an audio or audio-video recorder. Involve a co-facilitator who is there to take notes.

Facilitating the Session
1. The major goal of facilitation is collecting useful information to meet the goal of the meeting. 
1. Introduce yourself and the co-facilitator, if used. 2. Explain the means to record the session.
  3.  Carry out the agenda.   4. Carefully word each question.  5. Allow each panel member to carefully record their answers. Facilitate discussion around the answers to each question.  
6. After each question is answered, carefully reflect a summary of what you heard.   7. Ensure even participation. Consider using a round- table approach, including going in one direction around the table, giving each person a minute to answer the question.   8. Closing the session – Thank members for coming, and adjourn the meeting.

Immediately After Session
1. Verify if the recorder worked throughout the session.  
2. Review your written notes clarify any notes that don’t make sense, and ensure pages are numbered.     
3. Write down any observations made during the session. For example, where did the session occur and when, what was the nature of participation in the group? Were there any surprises during the session?

Moderating focus groups YouTube link: https://youtu.be/xjHZsEcSqwo

Email Marketing

The benefit of email marketing is a cost-effective method of sending your message to your customers or potential customer whose names and email addresses you have amassed. This treasure trove of prospects can be contacted regularly with a monthly newsletter, periodic promotional announcements, and special offers.

Email marketing can create stronger awareness for your business, products and customer relationships.

Top 5 email platform providers

1. Drip Ecommerce CRM (www.drip.com) Drip-powered brands are using E-commerce CRM data and marketing automation to build personalized marketing experiences, drive meaningful engagement, and earn long-term customer loyalty.

2. Mailchimp (www.mailchimp.com) Bring your audience data, marketing channels, and insights together so you can reach your goals faster. With Mailchimp, you can promote your business across email, social, landing pages, postcards, and more — all from a single platform.

3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud (www.salesforce.com ) Reach individual customers through hundreds of features to help you create tailored, relevant content — from basic email marketing tools to sophisticated cross-channel campaign functionality.

4. Campaign Monitor (www.campaignmonitor.com) Create beautifully branded campaigns with this simple email builder.
Editors can spend more time doing what they do best—engaging people through email. It’s all the builder you need and then some.

5. SendInBlue (www.sendinblue.com) Promote your brand and grow your business with beautifully designed emails