The Great Gatsby is considered an American classic. Its recent film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio has only increased its popularity. Few students in North America made it through high school without reading the book, and the film only helped to bring the images of decadence to life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story takes place on Long Island during the 1920s. A mysterious millionaire named Jay Gatsby holds luxurious parties on a regular basis, all in the hopes of drawing his old lover, now married to another, to his home so he can rekindle the romance. Over the course of the novel, it becomes apparent that Gatsby has made his money participating in illegal activities, such as bootlegging, and has surrounded himself with an unsavory crowd of people who seem to care only about where the money for the next party will come from.

In the end, all the money in the world can’t save Gatsby from an untimely demise.

What we can learn from The Great Gatsby

Networking

Gatsby understood the importance of networking. He used his connections to build a reputation among the people of the fictional town of West Egg. His network even managed to bring him into contact with his old love, which was the ultimate goal of his parties and wealth.

Every business professional should leverage networking to build their company. It’s impossible to do business in a bubble. Networking will put you in touch with others in your industry who you might end up working with, as well as potential customers and clients.

Goals

Gatsby’s entire career was focused on reconnecting with his past love. He kept his eyes always focused on this prize and strategically worked to achieve it. From building his wealth to throwing his parties, his life was centered around this key goal.

Hopefully, your long-term goals are more business-oriented than Gatsby’s, but even so, it’s still important to keep your eyes focused on achieving them. Don’t get distracted or caught up in some new fad if it doesn’t help your company achieve its goals. Goals can change and adapt, but it’s important to always keep your eyes forward.

A strong foundation

Gatsby managed to build a wealthy empire for himself. However, this empire had a horrible foundation. He had built everything on an illegal enterprise and associations with people of questionable character. While he may have had good business sense, he still tried to take the easy way out — to build his wealth without having to develop an honest business.

When building your business, focus on establishing a strong foundation around a network of reputable business associates, strong products and services, and outstanding customer relations. Don’t take shortcuts. They’ll only come back to hurt you in the end.

The Great Gatsby is a classic novel that explores the world of the roaring twenties. It can be tempting to dismiss the moral lessons as products of a bygone era. For those of us in business, however, there are many things we can learn from Gatsby’s triumphs and failures. No professional should overlook them.

The idea of saying ‘no’ to a client can seem counter-intuitive. You’re trying to grow your business, after all. But there are times when speaking up and turning down a request or deciding not to work on a particular project might be good for your company’s long-term growth. The key is learning how to gauge these situations so you can successfully focus on growing your business without worrying about problematic clients or requests. Here are three situations where you should definitely consider the benefits of saying no.

You know the client’s idea won’t work

Clients come to you because they know you’re an expert in your field. That means they trust you to know what you’re talking about when it comes to the industry. Sometimes, having that knowledge means you have to point out to a client that their grand idea isn’t as great as they thought.

Speaking up can be difficult, especially when dealing with a new client. You have to worry about feelings and trust. Consider the alternative, however. If you say nothing and complete the task precisely how the client requested it, and then the initiative falls flat on its face, who do you think the client will blame?

Protect everyone involved and carefully lay out your opinion and thoughts about a project before you even get started. Hopefully you and your client will be able to develop a plan that will be more likely to deliver results. In the process, you’ll protect your reputation while also sharing your industry wisdom, and any client worth working with will respect you more for it.

What the client’s asking for isn’t worth the money

These types of traps are easy to fall into for inexperienced newcomers to any industry. Thinking that some work is better than no work, it’s easy to get talked into taking projects that don’t pay nearly enough for the time and effort needed to complete them. But instead of accepting this type of project, try to negotiate a better rate, outlining exactly how much time and effort the project will take. If the client refuses to accept a more reasonable wage, let them go. Chances are, your time will be much better spent working on building a stronger portfolio, marketing, or any other task that can help you find new, well-paying clients. Have respect for your industry and for your own work, and refuse to work with people who don’t share that regard.

What they’re asking for is outside your expertise

There’s something to be said for expanding your skills and knowledge, but know when to say when. If a client asks for a job that’s too far outside your area of expertise, resist the temptation to try ‘winging it’ for the extra money. Otherwise, you’ll risk your professional reputation and the client’s trust. Instead, work with the client to find a trustworthy professional who can work with you to complete the project for the client. The client will appreciate your help and honesty. As an added bonus, the professional you referred the client to will appreciate the extra business and (hopefully) reciprocate down the line.

When struggling to grow a business, nothing is more tempting than finding as many clients as possible. Often this type of desperation can lead to accepting work you’d otherwise never do or agree with. To keep your business moving forward, it’s important to know how to correctly gauge and balance requests and be willing to sometimes say no. Use the above three instances as a starting guide to improve your client relationships and grow the business.

For those who like to believe all the hype, it’s easy to think that outbound marketing is dead. After all, it’s rare to hear about marketing experts extolling the importance of direct mail. Instead, they’re usually talking about website conversion rates and developing content that will appeal to the reader. Don’t fall into this trap.

While outbound marketing has lost some of its glamour in recent years, it remains as viable as ever in today’s digital world. It’s role has just changed. Understanding those changes and how to integrate outbound marketing with your inbound efforts is a challenge well worth undertaking.

How the role of outbound marketing has changed

Before the digital era, outbound marketing was the primary means of finding new customers. Everyone in sales remembers doing ‘cold calls,’ which basically involve picking up a phone and trying to convince someone new to buy a product or service. Often, that phone call represented the first real contact between the company and the prospective customer. In other cases, cold calls were used to follow up on a direct mail campaign.

While cold calls are still necessary in some circumstances, the whole idea of just reaching out randomly, blindly, trying to find new prospects has largely gone by the wayside. Such practices are now more often used to complement inbound and other outbound marketing efforts.

For example, say your marketing team has been running an online promotion that allows people to start a free trial of your service from your website. After the free trial is over, many customers decide to continue, but others don’t register for the paid version. This is where a follow-up phone call or email can help. When contacting these prospects, ask them about their experience and what in particular might be preventing them from making a purchase. This kind of outbound marketing follow-up can provide you with valuable feedback and help convert more leads into paying customers.

Similarly, when customers complain or compliment your company on social media, use the opportunity not only to address their concerns right away with an immediate follow-up, but also to provide a tangible means of letting them know you appreciate what they have to say (good and bad). Once you’ve done what you can to alleviate any issues your customer has raised, follow up with special coupons and a thank you note. This simple gesture can help reinforce to a disgruntled customer how much you really care, while at the same time encouraging those who offer compliments to keep spreading the word about your company.

As inbound marketing continues to change the way many of us communicate with our customers, we must be careful to avoid thinking that outbound marketing is dead. It’s not. But its role is changing and will continue to evolve in the future. Understanding the new role outbound marketing plays can help all of us adapt our efforts and get the most from our marketing campaigns.

When it comes to writing marketing content for a company, few things are more frustrating than working hard to develop pieces only to have them largely overlooked. We’ve all been there: you write something you think is fantastic and eagerly watch your site statistics, only to see your content fail to give you the expected boost.

If you’re frustrated with your website traffic stats, here are five tips you can use right away to start drawing more attention to your website and get people interested in what you have to say.

Answer questions your customers actually have, rather than what you think they want to know

This is a common mistake. Many companies develop content based on what they find interesting rather than what their customers actually want to know. A great source of content ideas is your FAQ page and questions you’ve received through customer email. Also consider what customers ask you personally when they start working with your company or what people ask you when they learn what industry you work in.

Use humor

People are naturally drawn to what entertains them, so consider making a lighthearted joke, especially at the beginning of the piece. This will encourage people to read on to see what else you have to say. Once you hook the reader, you’ll have a much easier time getting your point across.

Don’t discount the value of social media

Many smaller companies tend to overlook social media, assuming that with their small size, it won’t be worth the effort. Social media, however, is where the conversation takes place. Putting your content on social media is a fantastic way to attract some attention to new blog posts and articles. You should also include share buttons at the bottom of each article. This will make it easy for readers to share the piece on their own social media channels should they find it interesting or informative.

Make the content memorable

The easier it is for customers to remember key points from your content, the more likely they’ll be to share it. There are several techniques you can use to enhance the memorability of your content. For example, studies have indicated that telling stories in your content makes it easier for people to remember your key facts. Try incorporating fun stories into some of your posts to entice readers to get to know you. You can also use classic techniques such as including shocking or attention-grabbing statistics in your titles and in the opening lines.

Say “thank you”

When was the last time you thanked your customers? People like being singled out, especially for a thank you. Write posts that occasionally highlight particular customers who’ve been with your company for a while. Thank customers who speak about your company on social media. And thank people who read your blog by offering them a special discount available only to those who open the post to find it. When customers feel appreciated, they’re more likely to develop positive associations with your company and reciprocate by working to develop a relationship with you.

When you set out to develop content for your company website, you want to develop pieces that people will read. Sometimes, however, it can feel as though unlocking the mystery to enticing readers is easier said than done. Keep these five tips in mind, and you’ll have much greater success. If you’re interested in kicking off your marketing campaign, give us a call today to find out how we can help you get started.

Well-baby checkups are one of the most important health precautions new parents can take to ensure their child is growing properly and remains in good health. At these appointments, vaccines are administered, growth charts are established, and the overall health of the child is monitored. Within the baby’s first year, new parents will bring their child in several times, with fewer appointments after that as the child ages.

Even as a child grows older, however, regular checkups remain important. Schools will require them for sports teams. Camps and similar activities want records that show the child is up-to-date on their shots. And parents don’t want to wait for something to go wrong before bringing their child to the doctor.

As a business owner, you should think of your marketing campaigns like a child. Just as a child needs regular checkups, your company’s marketing will benefit from regular ‘checkups,’ too, even if nothing is actually wrong.

Why are checkups so important?

Yearly physicals can help doctors and parents stay on top of a child’s overall health, even if everything seems to be going well. Doctors can address minor annoyances that might not seem to warrant visits themselves, while also watching for potentially unnoticed signs of problems. This kind of preventive care allows doctors to keep their patients in better health.

It works the same way with your marketing campaigns. When things are going well, it’s easy to put off running diagnostics and doing checkups. However, even if a campaign is bringing in customers, regular checkups are still important. Breaking down the campaign piece by piece and examining it can help you find potential weak spots where customers are slipping through the cracks, so you can repair those rough spots and improve your conversion rates.

Diagnostics and regular checkups can also provide a warning if something is about to go wrong. For example, if you find during your examination that most of your customers are coming through a particular channel, you can devote the time and energy necessary to make sure that channel continues running smoothly, while also investigating what might be holding up the others channels you’ve been targeting.

What should you look at?

At a child’s physical, the doctor will listen to the heart and lungs, examine the nose, throat, and ears, and perhaps administer shots. A marketing campaign checkup should also look at the bare bones of the process. This includes looking at where customers are coming from and where they are being lost. Start by breaking down the sales funnel and determining who is leaving at each stage. See if any aspects of your marketing campaigns are attracting so few customers that they’ve become a waste of money. Determine if they can be improved or if they should just be scrapped.

Research what competitors are doing and try to improve even the strongest aspects of your campaigns. Survey customers to see what they wish could be improved about the process.

Yearly physicals are important for monitoring and improving the health of all children, and regular checkups are important for your marketing campaigns, too. Regularly get out your data, sit down with the marketing team, and break down campaigns step by step. Yes, such checkups will require time, but they can help make your campaigns more efficient, improve conversion rates, and help your company grow.

Imagine walking into a room. You hear the buzz of people talking, laughing, and calling to one another. Yet, somehow, you can’t seem to understand anything they’re saying. You might catch a word here and there, but in general the subject the people are speaking about is lost to you.

Did you just walk into a conference room on a business trip to a foreign country, or did you walk into a marketing conference center?

For those who are new to the world of marketing, especially online marketing, either scenario might seem realistic.

How is being thrown into the marketing world similar to landing in a new country?

When a person first moves to the United States without knowing English, the language gap can feel insurmountable. Basic tasks, including banking, buying groceries, or even returning other people’s greetings while walking down the street, can become extremely difficult (if not impossible). Many of those who don’t know English when they first arrive spend a considerable amount of time and energy studying the language. In doing so, they begin to make sense of the sounds they’re hearing, including what the new vocabulary means and how to use the words. As their language skills improve, new residents find their confidence rise as well. Suddenly, when they walk into a room buzzing with chatter, what once seemed like overwhelming noise now begins to make sense to them.

Similarly, marketing comes with its own defined principles and vocabulary that those who are unfamiliar with the industry might find confusing. There are a range of rules that tell people how to use and be successful with the various platforms, along with industry-specific (and even platform-specific) vocabulary that doesn’t make sense anywhere else. As the newcomer becomes more familiar with the language and nuances of the marketing world, they also find the chatter in the room starting to make sense.

How succeed in learning a new language

Whether studying the language of marketing or a new foreign tongue, there are some constant principles for mastering the new form of speech.

1. Practice, practice, practice
Anyone who has ever learned a new language will tell you how critical it is to practice. Reading all the lesson books in the world will mean nothing if you don’t put those lessons into practice every chance you get. This might mean talking to yourself while making breakfast, but whatever the case, practice those vocabulary words.

2. Immerse yourself
Immersion is always the best way to learn a new language. For foreign languages, this might mean seeking out a few people who speak the new language, or even moving to a country where it’s spoken. For marketing, it might mean a steady diet of marketing blogs, webinars, and similar primary sources for instruction.

3. See if you can find a tutor
Sometimes, a tutor can make all the difference in the success of a language learner. A tutor can help you pinpoint your language weaknesses and practice them with you. In marketing, a tutor can help you become well versed in a variety of marketing platforms and their uses faster and easier than trying to go it alone.

Learning a new language is a difficult proposition, whether you are trying to master marketing speech or a foreign tongue. Both have specific vocabularies, along with rules that govern how the language is used. Keeping these ideas in mind can help you learn the new language and become increasingly successful in the world of marketing. If you’re interested in getting acquainted with the ‘language’ of marketing and want to learn more about how to reach customers, contact us today.

Imagine you are walking down the street and see a group of people trying to get volunteers for a taste testing. In the cups before them they have two identical-looking colas. They ask you to try both cups and pick which one you prefer. You will then need to try and identify which is Coke and which is Pepsi.

Do you think you would be able to tell the difference? Do you think you would actually pick the flavor you usually drink (in other words, if you usually drink Coke, would you actually select that one as your favorite)?

Shockingly, many people don’t. A number of different experiments have shown that many people are unable to correctly identify which cola is which. Even more surprisingly, in double blind taste tests, Pepsi often wins. It was this phenomenon that led to Pepsi steadily encroaching upon Coca-Cola’s lead in the market in the 1970s and 1980s. In an effort to win back customers, Coca-Cola introduced the debacle that was New Coke. The new formula was quickly rejected by consumers, and the company worked to gain back the trust of their loyal customers.

Coca-Cola managed to transition out of their problematic campaign and back to their original formula, but this left them in an interesting position. They still used the original formula, which customers said they wanted, but this formula was the one that often lost to Pepsi in taste tests. In the twenty years since this fiasco, Coca-Cola still manages to lead the market and has been holding steady.

According to what many people view as the unwritten rules of marketing, this should not be happening. Coke has two major points working against it.

1. Coke’s formula is often deemed inferior by the consumer base in taste tests.
2. The company completely alienated much of its loyal consumer base when it introduced New Coke without adequate market research.

Yet somehow Coca-Cola remains ahead.

Understanding why this happened and what companies today can learn from it can help you revolutionize your advertising campaigns.

Branding

Coca-Cola’s advertising works to develop a certain mentality in us. When we see the brand’s familiar script logo, we connect to the company’s rich history. We see small children walking up to drugstore counters to buy a Coke. We also connect with the company’s familiar advertising icons (its polar bears, for example) that are often featured in various advertising campaigns. Of course, Coca-Cola’s friendship ads help us feel connected to other Coke drinkers around the globe, as well.

The key here is the brand. Coca-Cola is now an iconic brand. It has become such a staple in our culture that in some regions, the word ‘Coke’ is used to mean any soft drink.

So what are you doing to develop your brand? Creating and maintaining a strong brand should be at the center of all your marketing. Customers make decisions based on the subconscious associations they develop between a company’s brand and its intangibles, including its quality, reliability, and history. Successful marketing helps to encourage positive associations in consumers’ minds.

Thinking about the entire customer experience

Taste tests often show that Pepsi is the preferred brand, especially considering it is slightly sweeter. While this might be better for short-term tastes, many people drink soft drinks in vast quantities. They don’t just drink a sip or two. They drink large bottles. Given the entire customer experience, it’s easier to see why the slightly sweeter brand seems to be less preferred in the long run.

Branding and considering the entire customer experience have both had an enormous impact on Coca-Cola’s ability to hold onto its lead over Pepsi, despite taste tests and marketing troubles. When you keep these criteria in mind for your company, you’ll also be able to boost your success. So grab a soft drink, sit down, and work with us to begin determining how you can better market your company.

When it comes to successfully nurturing leads from your marketing efforts, you already know you need to stay on top of email with potential clients. Email is a great way to stay in touch with customers, reach out to them periodically to see if they’re ready to buy, and even just remind them about your company. While email is undoubtedly a useful tool in the world of marketing, it isn’t the only way to successfully turn a lead into a sale. Here are a few other tools you should keep handy as you work to nurture new leads.

Understand who your customers are and where they are in their purchase journey. Then use that information appropriately.

A buyer’s journey includes all the research and decision-making steps they take as they prepare to buy a product. Some customers are just starting out. They’re looking for general information about their options and what factors they should be considering. Other buyers have narrowed down their search to just a few options and are looking to be convinced why one is superior to another. Still others are just about to make a purchase but just want to verify the product information. Understanding the buyer persona and where people are in the buying process will allow you to create targeted ads, messages, and content for customers at every step of the journey, increasing the odds they’ll make a purchase.

Make sure your website makes it easy for customers to move through the buying process.

Your website should be designed to encourage people to move through the sales funnel, exciting them about your products and making them eager to complete the transaction. Personalization is a fantastic way to accomplish this. Have your website greet people by name, especially if they’ve visited before.

Use retargeting ads

Retargeting ads can be extremely helpful for bringing customers back to your website, especially if they’ve left items in your site’s shopping cart. Customers have a tendency to visit pages while they’re doing research, but then leave the page because they’re not ready to make a purchase yet. Retargeting ads can help bring customers back to the page and remind them about your products and why they’re superior. Even better, have your page remember the customer the next time they return. Remember what items they looked at or what they seemed interested in. Customers will appreciate the extra effort and the added ease in finding what they’re looking for.

Make the most of social media

Keep an eye on social media for mentions of your company. This will alert you to customers considering your company or investigating your industry. You can then swoop in and make contact as they’re beginning their search. Social media is also a great tool for remaining in contact with potential buyers and past buyers. Like people’s status updates, retweet interesting things they have to say, and generally show interest in them. It will make them see you and your company more favorably, while also helping you remain in the forefront of their mind as they prepare to make a buying decision.

Nurturing leads is critical to persuading customers who are considering a purchase. While follow-up emails certainly play a role in bringing customers to the checkout button, they’re not the only factor. Use some of the ideas above, and begin improving conversion rates quickly.

Baseball has been an important part of our cultural fabric for more than a century. It makes sense, therefore, that baseball has many lessons it can teach us about managing a business. One of those lessons has to do with managing reputations.

Over the years, baseball has survived scandals and strikes that could have easily crippled it: the 1919 Chicago White Sox throwing the World Series; the strike-shortened 1994 season, when there was no World Series at all; the steroid scandals of more recent times. While the sport hasn’t escaped completely unscathed, it does remain a popular pastime for many who enjoy playing and watching it throughout the summer and fall.

Fortunately, most of us will never have to deal with issues as powerful as those that have hit baseball throughout its history. Even so, managing a company reputation in the digital area can be a very tough responsibility.

Customers can spread information, positive and negative, about your company instantaneously. While it might seem tempting to just bury your head in the sand and hope such criticism goes away, you can’t afford to just ignore what is said about you online. Fortunately, the lessons from baseball tell us that people generally tend to overlook occasional slip-ups or poor experiences if the overall impression of the company is one of value.

The primary step in relationship management should always be to offer customers outstanding value and products. Here are three additional steps you can take to build and maintain an overall positive reputation.

1. Become an important part of the local community.
   Get in front of customers by sponsoring youth sports teams, having a table or booth at local fairs, or sponsoring charity sporting events. Show customers you care, and give them the chance to interact personally with employees to begin building relationships.
2. Listen to customers online and in market research, and address complaints sincerely and quickly. This might mean offering to replace defective products, providing coupons or discounts after a poor customer service experience, and issuing refunds when necessary. That might sound like an expensive proposition, but earning a poor reputation online will cost you far more.
3. Pay close and careful attention to the experience of your customers. Make it easy for customers to contact you and easy to find resolution to their problems when they do. Too often, customers get passed from person to person or find themselves dealing with frustrating automated systems that are little to no help. Customers want to know they’re more than just an order number. Show them you care about their experience far after the sale.

Just as baseball has discovered over its long and storied history, managing a reputation can be a difficult proposition. But doing so is essential to the continued growth and viability of any organization. Reputation affects marketing success and whether or not people are interested in what you have to sell.

Fortunately, reputation is not always cut and dried. People are often willing to overlook particular problems in favor of value and an overall positive experience. Following the above advice should make it easy for your company to do just that.

The language you use in your marketing materials has more of an effect than you may realize. In fact, something as simple as your choice of pronouns can end up having an influence on your potential customers and the likelihood of them purchasing your products.

The value of the first person

In general, customers respond better to marketing materials, especially websites, that use the first person. This might include buttons that say “create my account” instead of “open an account,” or “start my free trial” instead of “start your free trial.” Making this simple transition can provide a noticeable jump in conversion rates and higher click-throughs. Potential customers will spend more time on your website, learning about your company and what you have to offer. Even if they don’t buy during their initial visit, they’ll begin to feel familiar and connected with your brand, and therefore more likely to return to you when they are ready to buy.

Why do first person pronouns matter?

It all comes down to the power of psychology. Using first person pronouns helps potential customers feel as though they already “belong” — that your company truly cares. That’s something many companies struggle with when trying to reach customers online. It’s much easier to develop close relationships when interacting with customers in person. However, switching to first-person pronouns on your website can help to produce this same kind of connection with customers whose only interactions with your brand take place online.

Making the switch

Effectively incorporating first person pronouns as a part of your call to action must be paired with quality marketing materials. You cannot simply switch your pronouns and expect to see a change if your copy still requires a considerable amount of work. Focus first on developing quality advertising, whether on your website, in social media, or on a traditional advertising platform. Once you have the ad itself set, rather than wrap up your message with a standard call to action, make the switch to the first person and prepare to be amazed at the influence such a simple change can have.

Developing a quality call to action can play an important part in finding new customers and encouraging those who see the advertisements to convert. Incorporating first-person pronouns in that call to action can have a profound effect on your bottom line. If you’re interested in learning more about these different advertising techniques, give us a call today. We’d be happy to help you get started growing and finding new customers.