This phrase may sound familiar to you: “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” There have been countless psychological studies that have shown how important it is to put your best foot forward when you first meet someone if you want to leave a positive, lasting impression.
Business has always been something that benefits from a close professional relationship. A relationship like this can be challenging to accomplish, however, as it usually requires some deliberate and meaningful action by the business. There are some methods that you can use to encourage this kind of relationship between your clients and your business.
As an MSP, your company sells your products and services to other businesses - the typical nature of the business-to-business sector. And, as a business yourself, you probably understand this concept: time is money. You don’t want to waste this valuable resource in any way.
If you speak to the owner of any business, they will tell you that they’ll accept referrals that come their way. Most likely, they’ve already done so if they’ve been around long enough and are keeping their current clientele happy. It makes sense - what business would turn down a potential lead that they didn’t have to spend their marketing dollars toward trying to acquire in the first place?
As a company with a business-to-business delivery model, your marketing is very different than that you see on television. You may feel as though you’re speaking different languages - and yet their messages are the ones that stick in your head. Don’t worry, there’s a very good reason that this is happening, and a way that you can give your own marketing a boost with it as well.
Small businesses are an integral part of the local community’s economy: they hire local people, and pay those people a wage that allows them to make purchases from businesses in the area. They serve the local businesses, and help them function through the products and services that they provide them.
You probably recall back in 2010 when BP’s oil rig failed, discharging what was estimated to be 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, affecting somewhere between 2,500 to 68,000 square miles of water and coastlines. In addition to the financial burdens placed on the company (the EPA temporarily banning BP from seeking new contracts with the US government and a whopping $18.7 billion from fines - the largest corporate settlement in US history), the company’s reputation suffered - and, continues to suffer - due to poor reactions from management after the spill occurred.
The hugely popular series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire - and more pertinent to this blog, HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones - aren’t exactly full of the best role models. However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t some lessons to be learned about leadership, and presenting yourself as someone to be followed and trusted. One character in particular presents these lessons especially well, and should be emulated (well, to a point) as you embrace your role as leader.
If you want long-term success for your business, you need to foster brand loyalty among your clients. The final part of our three-part blog series will walk you through doing just that, by turning your satisfied customers into delighted ones.
In the previous part of this three-part blog series, we discussed the levels of customer satisfaction and how to identify customers who are at the dissatisfied stage. In this blog, we will go over how to turn a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied customer.
A business is made up of people. And, people make mistakes. Further mistakes can result when technology issues start to arise on your end. There’s not too much you can do in regards to stopping all mistakes before they happen. But, there’s a lot to be said about what you do once that mistake reaches your customer base.
Whether these mistakes are recognized and addressed or not after affecting end users, they can result in a disgruntled customer base. How you attempt to mitigate what occurred can make or break your company: you DON’T want true customer dissatisfaction to occur.
In the competitive atmosphere that surrounds the world of managed services, it can be hard to get ahead of your competition. Sometimes, it’s not enough to just differentiate yourself through your marketing efforts. To get clients through the door, you have to “wow” them by going the extra mile.
In order for your business to be successful, there needs to be an incoming cash flow, and in order to draw in this cash flow, your audience has to be both aware of what you have to offer them, and have communicated their willingness to make an exchange with you. This outcome will be much more likely with help from two key components of any business’ team: sales and marketing.
You’ve been nurturing this lead for months now. You’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and money trying to convince the business decision maker of this company to start doing business with you. But, just as you think they’re about to convert, they disappear. After you do some further research, you find out that another local managed service provider snatched them up.
You’ve probably noticed that when you search for a particular business using words like or similar to “near me,” Google will display three business options at the top of your search results, and then will load additional businesses once you click “More places.” Remember - businesses in your area that are in need of a managed service provider will probably be doing exactly that. How can you make sure you are in those top three results?
GDPR was introduced by the European Union, but it applies to businesses all over the world, especially if you could potentially collect personal data from a person residing within the EU. We feel, as a business, it’s important to safeguard personal data of your prospects and customers, and think the GDPR is a big step in the right direction to provide transparency and understanding to your users.
When it comes to your business’ marketing, there’s one group who knows what works (and what doesn’t) better than anyone else: your audience. As a result, their feedback is some of the most important for you to hear. The best way of finding out what this group is thinking is to ask, and it just so happens that there are many ways for you to do so.
In our January newsletter, there was an article entitled When Rebranding your Company Might Be a Good Idea, outlining a few warning signs that signified when and how to go about a company rebrand. We discussed a few reasons that a rebrand may be considered necessary and recommended a few strategies that would be helpful in determining if a rebrand was in the cards.
Today, we’re operating under the assumption that you are, in fact, gearing up for your rebranding activities, and so we wanted to offer some advice on how to actually go about doing it. Make no mistake, a rebrand is not an easy process, and a formidable adversary will be fighting you every step of the way: your former brand identity.
As the old saying goes, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” However, it may sometimes seem that your clients could use a refresher course in this virtue, especially while they provide feedback into your services. However, if you put it to the right use, even the harshest criticism can be used to help out your marketing efforts.
The marketing term “brand” has very literal roots, as it comes from the long-antiquated practice of branding livestock with a symbol that signified who owned that particular animal. Nowadays, however, “brand” implies much more than just a company’s ownership in its name or logo--it also suggests the personality and culture that a company exhibits and embraces. A brand, by design, is meant to shape how a company will be perceived by the public and is therefore a precious and fragile thing that requires careful maintenance. However, once started, developing a comprehensive brand identity and corresponding activity is fairly simple.
