Customer retention has become more important than ever in the wake of the pandemic. Customers today seek convenience and a seamless experience when it comes to the businesses they interact with, and improved customer retention can also help boost a company’s overall profit. A company that increases customer retention by only 5% can see anywhere from a 25-95% increase in profit, according to recent data from G2. For organizations involved in economic development, business retention and expansion (BR&E) is very similar to customer retention for companies. BR&E programs, often created by economic development organizations, connect and grow businesses within communities and can rely on business intelligence to inform strategy and address challenges. While business intelligence on its own is a powerful data solution, it can be greatly enhanced with location intelligence. Based on human mobility patterns, location intelligence can provide economic development agencies with the information they need to understand how current consumer behavior is impacting the businesses within their individual communities. Let’s take a look at how location intelligence can be used to support business retention and expansion programs by strengthening market analysis, providing deeper insights and ensuring accurate decision-making. Strengthens traditional market analysis Following the creation of a BR&E program team, a market analysis is organized providing the team with additional understanding of how businesses in the selected area are performing. The data collected includes existing or potential customer characteristics as well as further details about the trade area. Afterwards, surveys may be used to gather additional information. By adding location intelligence to this process, it can enrich the original data collected for market analysis by including behavior patterns of real-world consumers. Foot traffic data from consumers is handy here as it can provide analysts with additional insights into any changes in community business activity, consumer preferences or trade areas. These consumer trends can then be mapped out for local, regional and national areas of interest. Provides deeper insights for BR&E strategy After the data analysis is complete, the BR&E team can reach out to businesses in the relevant communities. Additional qualitative data can be collected through interviews with business leaders from these communities. Economic development agencies can then present a deeper, data-driven BR&E strategy to help provide insight into any challenges when meeting with these businesses. One example of this would be a business that sees high online sales, but low foot traffic at its brick-and-mortar location. Leaders from this business can work with their local economic development organization to discuss alternate sites in the city that might work better and align with known customer preferences. Location intelligence would help these organizations conduct site selection analytics that include the additional information they need. For example, let’s say the business mentioned above is one store in a small home improvement chain that currently operates in a low-traffic area of a strip mall. An economic development agency could work with the business to find out if an available storefront in the new shopping mall across town is a better choice. The resulting data analysis might confirm that consumers at this new mall are interested in home improvement and sometimes travel to a different location to make their purchases. Without this information, the business might have chosen to close down its retail store location and rely on online orders instead. Assuming that the business sees success at the new location and wants to expand its retail footprint further down the line, it can again work with the BR&E team to conduct another site selection analysis driven by location intelligence. Ensures accurate decision-making Consumer trends, now changing more quickly than ever, will continue to have an impact on overall customer retention, business retention and expansion. Companies are more at risk of falling behind in their industries (and their competitors) when they fail to meet current consumer expectations. An updated approach to data collection and analytics is needed to create effective BR&E strategies today. Location intelligence provides the timely data required, as well as the additional insights that economic development agencies need to work more effectively with local businesses. This can enrich market analysis and provide the insights needed to come up with ways to overcome challenges, such as choosing sites for new development projects or acquiring customers, as well as ensure more accurate decision-making. Source: https://www.business2community.com/ Image Credit: Pixabay.com | mohamed_hassan
0 Comments
People Love Playing Games. Use These 4 Psychological Hacks to Keep Customers Coming Back for More.1/10/2022 A buzzword in recent years, 'gamification' leads users to make the decisions businesses want them to make. Most of us love playing games. Whether it's a sports game like baseball that we play in a stadium or a digital game on a computer, games have the potential to become a vital part of our lives. But games also have implications beyond the realm of pure entertainment: They can influence user behavior and help companies hit critical milestones. Gamification is the technique of using game design elements within non-game contexts. The term "gamification" became a buzzword in the last few years. Today, many startups and enterprise companies introduce gamification in their products to influence user behavior. Gamification helps achieve a crucial business goal — it leads users to make the decisions businesses want them to make. Why do businesses introduce gamification? User emotions play a tremendous role in how users think and feel about products. A positive emotional response from using a product is likely to lead to better user satisfaction. Gamification works because it engages users emotionally (it triggers user emotions and feelings). Well-designed gamification triggers dopamine; it makes people feel happy and excited when they interact with a product. These feelings make users continue using products and positively impact user retention rates. Users return to the product to receive a new portion of positive emotions. The psychology of gamification Psychology is present in any activity that influences user behavior, and gamification is not an exception. When gamification is introduced naturally in a product, it doesn't force users to make a decision: It guides them towards it. Users don't think they need to complete routine tasks, but instead think they play a game where tasks are a natural part of the product experience. Here are four psychological drivers that can help you create good gamification. 1. Rewards Nir Eyal, investor and behavioral economist, developed a methodology called Hook Model. The model describes the creation of habitual behaviors via a four-phase looping cycle that consists of a trigger, an action, a reward and ongoing investment. At its core, the Hook Model is about creating a user habit. However, it's possible to create such a habit only when the user receives a valuable reward. So It's important to understand what drives customer behavior and what is important to them. One simple example of a habitual behavior cycle can be seen in many coffee chains. Customers receive a new stamp every time they buy a coffee in a particular chain. Customers know that they will receive a free coffee when they collect a certain number of stamps, so they become loyal to this chain. In digital products, it's possible to use similar mechanisms — add loyalty points in products that users can exchange for discounts or introduce a different level of membership for different numbers of tasks completed (for example, bronze, silver and gold) that will give users relative rewards (i.e. 5%, 10%, 15% discount). 2. Sense of accomplishment Sense of accomplishment is one of the most powerful psychological driving factors of human behavior. The Zeigarnik effect, named after Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, states that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. By gracefully reminding a user that they still have some task in progress, you motivate them to accomplish this task. One good example of the Zeigarnik effect in digital products is a progress bar that visualizes user progress in a task they've started. For example, it might be progress in learning a new skill or language. Learning a new language is a huge task. By breaking it into steps, showing users their progress towards the goal and adding playful intention, you motivate them to complete the task. Another example is introducing milestones of achievement in product design. For example, a product can have a system of levels users go through (start with level one and move to level 10). When every next level is more challenging than the previous one, it motivates users to work even harder to achieve the next goal. Every time users reach the next level, they experience a positive sense of accomplishment, which creates a positive habit of using a product. 3. Competitive spirit Humans are competitive by nature — competition is baked into our DNA. Competition with other people can increase our motivation and improve productivity. Psychologists often call competition an "extrinsic incentive" because the motivation to complete a particular task is sourced externally rather than internally. In other words, when people see how other people perform in specific activities, it motivates them to work harder to achieve better results, but as soon as the competition is over, they might stop doing that. Leaderboards are one good example of this driver from the real world. The leaderboard helps us determine who performs best in a specific activity. But it's possible to integrate leaderboards in digital products to motivate users to complete particular tasks. For example, by introducing a leaderboard in a fitness-tracking app, you encourage users to improve their training results. This technique can drive users to achieve mastery in a particular exercise. As players master the game and achieve better results, they also receive positive feedback from the community. Gamification is also rooted in social influence. People need to see the results of their work so that they can share it with their circle. It's possible to motivate users to complete particular tasks by giving them a badge, a visual representation of achievement, that they can show to their friends and family. Badges become virtual status symbols because they indicate how the users have performed in particular activities. 4. Social relatedness Humans are social animals, and we enjoy being a part of particular communities. This psychological aspect translates well to gamification. It's possible to improve user engagement if you can make users feel like part of a community when interacting with your product. In digital products, it's possible to develop social relatedness by adding membership in particular groups in exchange for some activities. For example, users have to complete X activities before receiving an invite to the top members' area. Gamification is a powerful tool that, when used correctly, can have an extremely positive impact on a business's bottom line. Psychological drivers like reward, sense of accomplishment, competitive spirit and social relatedness can help you create a more enticing user experience. When people feel good about interacting with your product, they are more likely to be motivated to use it again and again. But like any other design technique, the true magic of gamification lies in detail. When you design a new product and want to introduce gamification, you should always start with identifying core drives (activities that users want to complete using your product). Only after that should you introduce game elements that will reinforce those activities. If you achieve this goal, you will create an experience that feels natural. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/ Image Credit: Photo by ELEVATE from Pexels
With the rolling over of the calendar, many people are taking a moment to reexamine their lives and make changes in the form of New Year’s resolutions. While some common resolutions involve personal health and well-being, they don’t have to be strictly personal. The new year can be an effective time to reevaluate what did and did not work for your business in the past year. If you didn’t meet the goals you hoped to achieve, it might be time to reexamine your business’s content marketing strategy. But before you start on your marketing vision board for 2022, it’s important to acknowledge some of the pitfalls that come with resolutions. After all, a staggering amount of these declarations end in failure. In this article, I review best practices for creating lasting changes in the coming year both for yourself and for your business. Building The Scaffold For An Effective Content Marketing Strategy When it comes to setting your goals, it is especially important to have accountability checks in place. It might be helpful to think of the changes you want to make to your content marketing strategy as constructing a building. Before you begin putting in the floors and walls, you must first have a blueprint for what you want to achieve. It can be tempting to start with the end goal first. Perhaps you want to grow your audience, sell a certain amount of product or sign a specific number of clients. But to follow the construction metaphor, this is like putting in wiring before setting up your foundation. Goals are an important part of making significant changes to your business, but those same goals need a framework on which to stand. If you want to build an effective content marketing strategy, my suggestion is to do away with the traditional resolution entirely. Instead, it might be helpful to consider a New Year’s theme. This idea was popularized by YouTube creator and podcaster, CGP Grey. A helpful video describing the topic can be found here. To summarize, a theme can act like a compass, pointing you in the direction in which you want to take your business. In contrast to a resolution, as long as you continue to move in the direction of your theme, you have not failed. This can be helpful because marketing for your business is a process that takes time. In fact, you may go months without seeing results. However, with a yearlong theme to guide you, you can be confident you are still making progress. So, what are some marketing themes that might work for your business?
But what if these three marketing themes aren’t the right fit for your business? Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you come up with your own theme.
Even if you do have a clear idea of what your theme will be for next year, taking some time to answer these questions can go a long way toward building up your content marketing strategy. Now that we’ve established a strong foundation on which to grow your business, we can address the topic of goals. Crafting Effective Goals For Your Content Marketing Strategy By no means do I think that goals should be done away with entirely. If constructed in a mindful way, they can be effective tools for accessing motivation and acknowledging personal achievements. When marketing for your business, an objective can also ground and specify what might otherwise seem like a broad theme. Not all goals are created equally, however. To make sure your goals are in service to your content marketing strategy, it’s important that you be S.M.A.R.T. about it according to Indeed. S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
With this acronym to help guide your goals, you are much more likely to see them through to completion. Now that you have your theme and your goals, it’s time to get started! Three Strategies For Your Content Marketing Strategy Theme Meet your audience where they are with your content creation and you will see results. Whatever theme you choose for 2022, here are a few strategies to keep in mind to help make this year the most successful one yet. 1. Keep your audience in mind throughout the content creation process. The kinds of content that will work for one audience may not work for another. As you move through the content creation process, ask yourself if the content you’re creating is something with which your audience will want to engage. It might be helpful to follow content creators that your audience follows. Immerse yourself in the topics and language that your potential audience uses. 2. Create content in a timely, consistent fashion. Even if your theme is not consistency, your content marketing strategy should include a consistent time that you will post your content. Having a regular schedule not only trains your potential audience when to expect content but also helps with search engine optimization and driving more traffic to your business. 3. Engage with your audience. Part of building a successful social media account involves showing your audience that you care. Ultimately, people don’t come to social media to make a purchase. People come to social media to pass the time, have fun and interact with like-minded individuals. If you want people to interact with the content you’ve created, you need to show them that you are there. When people do interact with your posts, take some time to respond back. Show them that you are more than just a business. Source: business2community.com
A business website is an important and essential way to establish your company’s digital presence, share your message and display your brand. However, designing a website from scratch requires a lot of planning and consideration. As successful business leaders, many members of Young Entrepreneur Council have experience creating effective business websites from the bottom up. Below, 10 of them shared what they believe should be the first considerations you should make when designing a new website for your business. 1. Your Ownership The single most important thing to do when creating a new website is to make sure there is one, very important sentence in your contract: "If at some point I want to take ownership of the content of my site and move it to another company, I will pay you X amount, and my website and all of the content within it will be mine completely." I was in a situation where I tried to switch website companies, and they wanted to hold my website and all of the content hostage. I am so grateful I penciled in that one sentence before I signed the contract! - Sheila Nazarian, Nazarian Plastic Surgery 2. Your Call To Action What is the call to action (CTA)? Every website should usher the visitor toward a single point of action that represents the next step in the buyer's journey. If your website isn't prompting the reader to take that next step, it's incomplete. At several points, but especially at the end of the content layout, you should gently encourage the reader to proceed to the next phase. The key is to emphasize that doing so is for their benefit, not yours. Make it clear that there's something they can learn or use by moving forward with your CTA. - Tyler Gallagher, Regal Assets 3. Your Mobile Experience Focus on the mobile experience first, then worry about the desktop experience. For most businesses, your customers will be visiting from their phones more often than their desktops. Cut down on what isn't necessary. Look at your current analytics and consider the features used. Do users care about the live chat feature? Are people not scrolling down the page to see your lead form or main call to action? If not, get rid of the chat feature and move the call to action up on the page. - Chase Williams, Market My Market 4. Analytics And Tracking SEO, UX/UI and user journeys should all be top priorities when designing a new site, but one of the most important aspects that you need to consider at the start of building out a site is analytics and tracking. You can make informed decisions when building out a site, but ultimately, you won't know how your users will navigate your site and the type of content they gravitate to the most until you get the site in their hands. Analytics and tracking data are crucial in order to understand your users and allow your team to make data-driven decisions to improve your site. Your customers should be what drive your site improvements and changes, and without a robust data-collecting system, you will be spending money on content and features users won't even look at. - Ryan D Matzner, Fueled 5. User Experience User experience is everything. UX/UI is so often overlooked. People just want to sell and feature their services or products and fail to take into consideration the thought process and mentality of new eyeballs on their site. They assume people know what and who they are, what they offer and how it works, etc. Design for people as if they know nothing about you, your services or your products. Don't make them search for it or try to figure it out. It should be in their face. They should be able to ascertain within seconds of hitting your site what you're all about. - Scott Levy, Fuel Online 6. The Platform You Choose When designing a business website from scratch, it is important to consider how user-friendly the platform it's built on will be long term. Unless your company has a web designer on staff full time, having a website that's easy for anyone on your team to edit will be the difference between a current, up-to-date website and one that sits around with outdated info waiting for someone to make changes. - Rachel Lipson, Blue Balloon Songwriting for Small People 7. How Pages Are Named A seemingly simple yet extremely important consideration when first building a business website from scratch is how the pages are named, including the URL slug of the pages. These items impact how search engines will rank each page, so they should be well-researched and planned. The page title and URL slug both indicate to search engines what the main topics and types of information are on the webpage, which the search engines then use to compare with the content within the page. When these items don’t seem to match up, search rankings can suffer. So, it’s wise to use an SEO tool, freelancer or agency to help with planning your page titles and URLs when launching a new business website. - Richard Fong, SecurityForward.com 8. Your Website’s Purpose It is vital in the world of the internet to have an online presence, whether you have an e-commerce business or a brick-and-mortar store. Websites increase your brand’s credibility, convey your brand’s message to the user or consumer and make your business discoverable in search engine results. The first thing you should do before you dive into the technical aspects of building a website or having one built for you is determine what your website’s purpose is. Why do you need a website? Who will your primary users be? How will your website meet your customers’ needs? Once you have the answers to these questions, you can determine how to best meet their needs and relay the information in a clear, concise and aesthetically appealing way. - Ian Sells, Rebate Key Inc. 9. Your Content And Message A major factor in the success or failure of any business website is communication. You have to ensure your website has a clear and unified message for visitors, as this is what drives sales and inspires them to do business with you. When designing a website, it is crucial to write high-quality, original content that is relevant to your company and customers as everything from the quality of your content to the keywords used affects your site's ranking in search engine results. - Chimezie Emewulu, Seamfix Limited 10. Your Branding And Theme When designing a business website, it's important to consider your branding and theme. If your site's appearance isn't cohesive, it'll appear unprofessional and few visitors will take your business seriously. It's crucial to create a clean, cohesive design that's user-friendly and leads visitors where you want them to go. This ensures they can easily navigate your site and engage with your content. - Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms Source: forbes.com Image Credit: Pixabay
|
Membership is open to businesses and organizations interested in increasing visibility and brand awareness in Westchester County and surrounding areas.
Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|