Chipotle has more than 80x the followers that my page has and as you can see, I beat them for engagements. To be fair, I did have 10x the posts that they did for this snapshot in time, but there should never be a time that a company page with that many followers should be out done by my tiny Facebook page (40,000 compared with 3+ million).
So what went wrong? Chipotle does post a good amount of content but where they lack is getting that high interaction. Post after post is about the food, pictures of the food and cute fonts, but they rarely give their audience a chance to interact with them. What works best on Facebook is having a healthy mix of push and pull content. For example, posting a picture of a burrito in a soccer net with the words Burritooooooo is push content. Posting a burrito with 5 toppings laid out asking, “what would you include in your burrito”, is pull content, as it requires audience interaction. A Facebook page should include both types of content, but when you primarily only have push content, you will lose engagement and not be as relative with your customers as you could be. This is a short post, but highlights something you need to think about.
Even if you have no clue what the answer is but you showed up or responded quickly, you are 80% of the way there. This may seem obvious but next time you put off answering a question or delay that meeting where someone has to talk with you, think back to what the outcome may have been if you had no clue how to fix the issue but you literally just showed up. More times than not, I do not have the answers to questions that come up in my business. However, I am very quick to answer that email/text, or sit down and talk it out and show that person that I am all ears and here to help. This way, that person knows they are not on their own to solve an issue, but that I am here to provide resources and ask the right questions where that individual ends up with the answer, with little help from me. When you are hard to reach and don’t get back to people, that is where the rumors begin and you are seen as a ghost that swoops in from time to time but are never really present. Now, all you have to do is lock down that 20% and boom, you are in the 100% club! In order to be competitive in today’s landscape, small businesses must have a presence on social media and know how to be dangerous. Building a brand has changed from 20 years ago when you could just take an ad out in the local paper and hit 60% of the population. Now, if you want to interact with your customer base and spread your brand in your community, it is much more work and on top of that, the platforms are evolving and changing all the time. Just posting an update every couple of days and showing some of your products from time to time isn’t going to cut it. Here are the 5 guidelines I follow that have directly impacted my business, grown our customer base, and increased sales.
1. Consistency- It is not the customer’s job to think of your brand when they need your product/services, it is your job to remind them and stay top of mind. This means posting every day on the platform that the majority of your customer base is on (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, you name it). This way you are always in the “news feed” and staying relevant with your customers and customers-to-be. Once you pick that platform, make sure you post in the other social media sites as well at least 1-2 times per week. 2. Not posting S***- In one of my previous posts, I talk about having a social media calendar (read here) so when you post something, it is thought out and not just another picture of your store telling customers what you sell. Each post should be either engaging, informative, interactive, or all three! Take yourself out of the owner’s shoes and think from a customer’s point of view. What would you want to see/ learn from a local business? 3. You don’t always have to do the heavy lifting- Most social media platforms are built around a “pay to play” model. This means that in order to reach a large percentage of your customer base you have to put some dollars behind it. Unless you post something mind blowing that gets shared over and over again, it is very difficult to go “viral” without paying. So what’s the secret here? Find an already trending post out there that is relevant to your industry and just share it on your page. For example, with my business, Bellies to Babies, I often share posts that feature cute baby videos or funny pregnancy memes that may get 300 likes and hundreds of shares when I did basically no work to get that reach and now my brand is associated with that viral content. 4. There is still arbitrage when it comes to social media ads- Where print ads may cost thousands of dollars for no guaranteed results, ads on Facebook for example can cost a fraction of the price for results you can track and measure! 5. Retarget- By retargeting customers, you can stay front and center across multiple websites without having to capture any information on the front end. Installing this code onto your current website helps close the loop for customers who bounce from your website (learn more here :https://retargeter.com/what-is-retargeting-and-how-does-it-work). There is not a magic sauce to being a leader. What really matters is how your leadership impacts those who follow you.
To me, I subscribe to the following 4 rules to being a leader that I found are the most effective and fit my personality the best. 1. Leaders eat last- Simon Sinek has a great video on this (link here). Being a leader does not mean physically stepping in front of everyone and leading the people to the promise land. Leading is letting people talk and have a seat at the table where all ideas can be put forth. If a leader of an organization is holding a meeting and lays out their agenda first, then asks for opinions, the waters have been muddied and instead of getting real opinions and ideas you will just get people agreeing with you even if they do not think you have the right approach. Instead, a leader should open a meeting going around and asking the opinions of everyone first. This way, no one feels as though they have to side with the person in charge and as a leader, you get the full picture and can choose a path that is best for the company. 2. Be a resource manager- When I am meeting with my general manager at Bellies to Babies, I primarily ask what resources can I give for her to do a better job or solve X issue. I am not saying use this, use that, blah blah blah, I am asking questions on topics we need to discuss and asking what I can give to make that happen. Through this process the manager gets to really own the problems and the successes and is equipped with the right tools to do their job. 3. Show up and be present- Showing up is 80% of the job. Be as responsive as possible and be present when interacting with your team members. 4. Delegate and give ownership- You hate when someone is standing over your shoulder so instead of breathing down someone’s neck, let team members own their responsibilities. If they mess up, talk it out and let them swim to safety instead of throwing in a life vest right away. Are these the magic bullets to leadership, yep, no questions asked. NOT. Everyone has their own leadership philosophies and what works for you and your team is the secret sauce. Now go out there and lead it up! You know how your mom and dad told you to never quit… well they were wrong! That may be a little harsh but I view quitting (talking about in business) as an important trait that is right up there with winning and drive. Over the last year there have been two important times when I threw in the towel that were key to our growth and frankly, our existence.
#1. I had a competitor 10 minutes from one of my resale maternity clothing stores and one day that owner came in to my store and asked if we wanted to buy them out. Of course I wanted to know why and she told me that sales were down due to my store sucking up their traffic since we had a larger space, better inventory, and much better marketing, they just couldn’t compete. Since I am all about expansion, I put my offer together and ended up acquiring that competitor and brought it into our Bellies to Babies brand. The business came with no employees so I hired a manager and staff and we were off to the races. I knew going into this that the sales for this store were low but my plan was to turn it around just like I did the the other store I owned. In hindsight, I never should have bought this store and should have just put them out of business, but I was blinded by “expanding”. 6 months into it I could not turn around the store and now both stores were suffering because I was taking cash from our good performer and funneling into the lower performer. This went on for several more months until I took a step back and saw that if I didn’t make a change we would be out of cash in 3 months. My gut and checkbook told me that it was time to cut my losses so I made a deal with the landlord and shut her down. Literally, the week after this store closed my other store had a boost in traffic and sales were trending up, telling me that with 2 stores I was saturating the market seeing as the stores were so close to one another. Closing that store, i.e. quitting, saved my company and allowed me to put the effort into the higher performer. What would have happened if I wouldn’t have closed and tried to be a superhero? Well, I would be much more in debt or would have dug myself into an endless hole. #2. We had a popular program called a Monthly Maternity Club, where pregnant women could order a box of previously loved clothing, where they would keep what they want and send back what they didn’t and only pay for the items kept, like a Stitch Fix. The program went very well and had a strong subscriber base but wasn’t making money. Additionally, since all of our items are one of a kind (used clothing) we had too many pieces of inventory being shipped out and not enough in store for customers to shop through so that issue along with the shipping both ways and customers not keeping enough items for us to make money, put us in the red for this program. After running at a loss for several months, I decided to cancel the program and stop the bleeding. The above are just 2 real life examples of when quitting was the right thing to do. When you think about your business, what are you doing that is just spinning the wheels and not giving you traction. What can you quit tomorrow? In order to be happy and excel in your career, you must fit into one of these categories, entrepreneur or intrapreneur. Entrepreneur, as most of us know, is someone who starts and builds a business. This is quite the buzzword nowadays and is widely seen as a “sexy” title, even though in the early stages of entrepreneurship there isn’t anything sexy about almost running out of money and cleaning the bathrooms to save on costs. So what is intrapreneurship? This word is not a buzzword and is rarely ever talked about, but is just as important as the E word. An intrapreneur is someone who does not own a company but works inside of one and goes above and beyond, treating the business as theirs and thinking of innovative ways to grow and expand. One is not more important than the other but you must subscribe to one of them. One big pet peeve of mine is when I am reading a blog, at an event, or watching a speech and the speaker is telling their audience to quit their job and start something on their own. While I am all for starting a business and taking that jump, this is not a one size fits all situation. Intrapreneurship needs to be talked about more, especially to young people just entering the workforce.
To show you what the difference between an intrapreneur and a punch-in / punch-out worker looks like, I broke down how each one sees their responsibilities. For this example, this would be an employee at a fast casual restaurant. Punch-in / Punch out worker
As you can see from this list, none of these are blatantly negative or malicious towards the company, it is just black and white, show up, do the minimum, and collect your check. So what does an intrapreneur look like in the same company and position? Intrapreneur
If you are currently working in a company that you do not own, how can you be more of an intrapreneur and on the flip side, if you are an owner of a company how can you foster an environment where intrapreneurs can thrive in your company? I got a haircut last week and the place I went made a HUGE mistake. No, they didn't cut off my ears or give me a bad cut. What they did was far worse.....they didn’t lock down my information! A haircutting business to me is the perfect model for repeat customers. Your hair grows and you need to cut it generally every x months. It’s a simple equation and it lasts...FOREVER. The LTV (lifetime value) for someone like me at a $19.99 haircutting establishment is thousands of dollars. However, in 3 months when I am looking to get a haircut again I will probably not remember which place I went since I was just looking for the cheapest option near me at the time. Yes, I know most of these places have a rewards program and offers that are emailed or texted out, but I don’t know of any that ask you the simple question of, how often do you get your haircut? This is crazy to me that a predictable customer like me is not being capitalized on. If I owned a haircut shop here is what I would do with each customer:
These simple steps could be a game changer for a business like this and it baffles me that they are not already doing these things. If you own a hair salon establishment, reach out to me! Let me explain. I used to have just 1 main revenue source to my business and that always was a concern to me because if that dried up for some reason we would have to close the doors, so I decided we needed another strong revenue source ASAP. In this business, I sell previously loved maternity clothing and the model is like a resale / consignment shop. Naturally, we just had our in store revenue source as that is how all of the resale stores operate. But, for me, I didn’t want to be like everyone else and I wanted to stay ahead of the curve. That’s when I opened our online store where we would take items in the store and post them online to sell. Once this was up and running it started to account for 30% of sales just 6 months in. Recently, however, our online sales tanked because our in store sales have been growing rapidly. Now, for most businesses this would be mutually exclusive but seeing as we are a resale shop, every item is unique and if we sell an item in store it is taken off our online store and vice versa. To me, I am not worried about this at all because our overall sales are growing and that growth is cannibalizing our online store, which is fine by me! If any competitor is going to take business away from me, why not have that be me. Where there would be an issue is if a competitor moved in town and sales were drying up because of that, then we would have a problem, but when I am kicking my own butt, I am all smiles.
When I look at my business, I am always thinking of ways to “put myself out of business” to stay ahead of the competition. This forces me to think of new ways we can increase our top line and cut what fat we can to maintain a healthy profit. Now, cannibalizing your business is nothing new, most retail stores that have an online channel, i.e. Target, Walmart, and the 5,000 others, have been doing this for years. The ones that have sat idle that are not in a strong niche category are the ones that fall behind and become history. Up until about 3 months ago, I didn’t use a scorecard for my business, but now that I have one, I have a grasp on the key metrics of my business and operationally, everything is 2x smoother.
First, what is a scorecard? A scorecard, for me, is a Google Sheet that compares metrics from this year and last year with a goal in place to easily see if you as a company are on track or not. (see image below). When a scorecard is in place and updated every week, you and your team can see from a high level what the positive and negative trends are in your business. Sure, you can dig into your P&L, but this is a quick snapshot that helps you understand if you are healthy or starting to get sick. As an example, you can see from my scorecard that “Customers added to member list” is red the majority of the time. Without this I may have noticed that we had fewer customers signing up for the mailing list, but it wouldn’t have struck me like seeing the bold red squares week after week in our scorecard. So, this was a conversation I had with our General Manager to see why this was the case and what are the steps we can do to get into the green. It is a lot easier to visually see and aim towards just getting in the green then saying, we need to get 15% more signups every week, which is hard to imagine and doesn’t resonate. In your business, how can you incorporate a scorecard into your meetings and catch negative trends before they hit you in the face! What is a clarity break?
Definition (by me, not Mr. webster)- Taking time out of your day to work on the business, not in the business. For me, 3-4 times per week I grab a snack or cup of coffee and take a mile walk where the whole time I am thinking about my business and how I can improve or add value. During that time I am taking notes and basically talking to myself. At the end of my clarity break, I have several action items to research or deploy that I wouldn’t have otherwise had if I was just in my office fighting “fires”. Now, I am not saying it is not important to be in your business figuring things out and working through issues, but getting out of the muck is key to expansion and frankly, sanity! |
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Who is this guy?Hi! I am Dan Canfield, a born marketer that thrives on pushing the boundaries in my industries. I am currently a business owner, consultant, and employee, so I have a diverse perspective in the business world. This site is an outlet for me to share what I have learned and give you a piece of my mind. |