November 27, 2014 By Carrie Gallagher

Should Your Company Send Holiday Cards to Clients?

(Disclaimer: this was posted several years ago and I’m now my own boss. Not nearly as grouchy now, but I still stand by these tips for holiday card giving!)

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It seems I’ve developed a reputation for being the office Scrooge. In my defense, I’ve been managing our holiday gift giving and cards for so long that I never gave it much thought — it’s just another thing I put on the calendar and auto-pilot like every other December obligation.

When I started to wonder why this time of year makes me so grumpy, I realized it’s because the holidays are the most outboundy time of the year for marketers. Regressing to traditional, intrusive holiday marketing tactics, when Inbound works so well, makes me sick to my stomach.

E-cards are a topic all their own — I have a love/hate relationship with them because a few companies knock them out of the park, while most use them as a seasonal SPAM outlet.

But the paper cards you might consider ordering for your sales team to send to clients are another beast. As someone who’s been sending and receiving holiday cards at the same company for over a decade (not by choice), here are my thoughts on how to make client card giving more lovable.

Your Sales Team Must Hand-Write Them

Cards delivered to me at home or the office with a printed address label are usually tossed into the trash without being opened. A printed address label means one or more of the following to the person on the receiving end of your holiday card:

you were in a hurry to get cards out the door
you’re having an assistant do it for you
they’re just another contact in your CRM

Once you get sales to buy into the fact that they have to hand-write envelopes, they’ll pare down their list (next section). They’re also responsible for writing a salutation inside the card and signing it (no signature stamps allowed!). Even better if they go the extra mile to include a longer personal message.

Only Send Cards to People You Know

Do you like getting mail from people you don’t know? Every year my husband and I get a card from the law firm that handled our mortgage closing five years ago. They clearly spend a lot of money on high quality cards, but it goes straight into the garbage because it means nothing to our family. The lawyer we dealt with doesn’t even bother to sign it, so why would I put it on our mantle?

Maybe if they had kept in touch and tried to nurture a relationship with us outside of Christmas I’d feel different about it, but now I think they’re lame (marketing snob, my husband says) and wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.

So before you put someone on your list, ask yourself a Seth Godin question: would this person miss my card if I didn’t send it?

Invest in Quality

Every year, marketing departments are inundated with stacks of uninspiring holiday card catalogues. The fact that those printing companies stay in business tells me that a lot of people are simply phoning it in and ordering crap. If you’re reading this, hopefully you want to be better than crap!

Here are some of my favorite places to order high-quality holiday cards online (I don’t have relationships with these companies, but I’ve ordered from each of them in the past):

Before you place an order from any of these retailers, make sure you Google coupon codes — I’ve gotten some great deals during the holidays that way.

For God’s Sake, Skip the God Stuff

Unless your company is a religious organization, you’re likely sending cards to people of many faiths (or none at all). You probably don’t put your religious beliefs all over your LinkedIn profile, so keep your holiday cards agnostic and “wintery,” especially if you want clients to proudly display your card at their desks.

Don’t Put Envelopes Through the Office Stamp Machine!

If you’re liking this advice so far, then I’m sure you’ll agree it just wouldn’t look cool to have a handwritten envelope accompanied by a big ugly machine stamp. So mosey on down to the post office or your local Costco, and get some holiday “forever” stamps.

Bonus Points if You Lick the Envelopes

I’ve been known to lick my way through a stack of business envelopes. And then I saw that episode of Seinfeld where George’s fiance dies, so I don’t do that anymore. But those envelopes have to get closed somehow and you’re not putting them through the stamp machine, so get a sponge or something and close those suckers personally.

November 26, 2014 By Carrie Gallagher

How My Company Outranks Competitors on Google With No Budget

I’d like to share a little story about how my “day job” went from page 13 to page 1 on Google for our market three years ago, and how we continue to outrank competitors with no advertising budget. I’m not an SEO expert, but I’ve learned a few things along the way.

In late 2011 I stumbled upon HubSpot, because I needed to know how to create a Facebook business page. I went to Google with my problem, and HubSpot had a great blog post on how to get it done. I didn’t even need to talk to a sales person … it was fast and perfect.

I started devouring HubSpot’s ebooks, and they emailed me helpful information (as if they could read my mind about what was going on with my job at the time) about business blogging and making sense of B2B social media. In February 2012 they called and asked if I wanted to know what our “marketing grade” was. My heart started pounding because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know — I hate being graded!

It was 23 out of 100.

Clearly this wasn’t acceptable, but I explained that I had no marketing budget — our trading software division had been sold to Thomson Reuters two years earlier, and I was left with nothing. I’m not even allowed to expense my Adobe Creative Suite.

But I was determined to fix that grade, so I scheduled a meeting with our CEO, downloaded HubSpot’s “how to convince your boss” PowerPoint template, and spent the weekend customizing it (making it a LOT shorter). He was indeed convinced that we needed to transform our marketing, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

The HubSpot CMS & Keyword Tool

Our old website was a piece of crap built in Dreamweaver. It was ugly, and I’m sure the source code was giving Google a headache. Not that Google ever had a reason to come back and index our site, since nothing was happening and there were so few pages to crawl.

Once our contract was signed, HubSpot’s migration team moved us to their content management system (CMS). The look didn’t change much, but it was a lot easier to change page layouts and add a variety of “modules” to sidebars and footers.

When we went live on the HubSpot CMS, I went straight to the Keywords tool and entered the phrases we wanted to be found for in search engines. With this done, the software was able to point out “low hanging fruit” SEO fixes to help improve our rankings: page titles, URLs, meta descriptions, heading tags, image ALT text, and body content.

Evergreen Blog Posts

Anyone who uses HubSpot knows their training is outstanding. For me the most valuable section was on blogging, because I learned that when done right, business blogs are the most cost-effective and best sales person you’ll ever have. They educate website visitors 24/7, never take a sick day, and they’ll never ask you for a raise (I hope it goes without saying, please pay your content creators well!).

Blogging also has a huge effect on search rankings, because the more often you post, the more content you give Google to index. The more pages Google can index, the more they think you’ve got going on. The more they think you have going on, the more often they’re going to come back to your site.

As a one-person marketing department, I knew we needed as much “evergreen” blog content as possible — content that would keep working for us during the weeks and months that I was pulled away for other projects.

So we started an “Ask the Super Recruiter” campaign. It was a simple call to action (CTA) with a masked/caped recruiter that when clicked, job candidates were directed to a form where they could ask for advice on anything.

We made up our own questions for the most part (always related to our target keyword phrases), but we did get a few good ones from real job seekers. The point is that every blog post was posed in the form of a question, which is how people search online.

The Results

My boss didn’t think we would generate revenue from HubSpot or blogging. After all, candidates don’t pay the bills, so how could blogging about them help generate client traffic to our site?

We did reach the clients. When we started out with that embarrassing 23/100 grade from HubSpot, we were on page 13 of Google for IT staffing firms in NYC. Within six months we moved to page 1, and we’re still there today. Oh, and in the same amount of time our marketing grade went from 23 to 85.

I haven’t had time to blog lately, but our posts are so evergreen — how to write an IT resume summary is one that’s viewed every day around the world — that I can be pulled away for a project and know that our search ranking is safe.

We regularly get cold calls from hiring managers who say they found us on Google, and we’re outranking some of the biggest staffing firms in New York City, all of whom have marketing budgets that I can only dream of. But that’s not all …

Within 6 months of using HubSpot, we generated enough new business from organic search traffic to pay my full time salary for the year.

HubSpot is the gift that keeps on giving.

October 30, 2014 By Carrie Gallagher

Be the Wikipedia of Your Industry

In May 2013 I attended a HubSpot webinar hosted by Marcus Sheridan, the former owner of a Virginia-based in-ground pool company and now a TED speaker and content marketing specialist. The webinar, titled “The Honest Economy & Instructional Selling,” centered on Mr. Sheridan’s story about how trying to make payroll when the economy tanked in 2008 shifted his marketing strategy forever.

With homeowners suddenly upside down on their mortgages and skittish about luxury purchases, he had to do something drastic to see his pool company through the recession. He and his partners started a blog full of honest answers to every question they’d ever received from prospects — even laying bare the negative aspects of their products.

By adding this educational value to their website, they were able to cut their annual $250,000 marketing budget by 90% and generate over $2,000,000 in sales. The idea that transparent, educational content could yield results like that fundamentally changed my view of marketing, and the line that pulled it all together was “be the Wikipedia of your industry.”

marcus-and-me

October 23, 2014 By Carrie Gallagher

Is Your Marketing the Definition of Insanity?

This week I “kind of” fired a freelance client I’ve worked with for 12 years. Not because I don’t like him — he’s quite likable — but because he’s stuck in a mindset of outbound marketing and afraid to embrace change, even if it would be easier on his budget.

He’s mentioned the challenges of his evolving industry many times over the years, and I’ve offered inbound suggestions that he was excited about, but there’s never been any movement.

The work I’ve been doing for him over the years has mostly included designing email invitations and blasting them out a few times each month via MailChimp. They’re pretty much the same formula each time, with little variation. The information in the emails is also added to his website, but there’s nothing else to it — no blog, no expert advice, nothing interesting to offer the hundreds of people that click through to his site when they purchase tickets to the events advertised in his emails.

His list has declined steadily with each mailing, and what my (former) client has always said he wants to be known for is not what he’s being found for on Google — something that could be easily corrected through blogging and social media. He also has people lined up on LinkedIn wanting to connect, but doesn’t see the value in the platform or accepting their invitations.

I say I “kind of” fired him because I offered two options to give a final nudge toward Inbound:

a modest retainer which includes the usual email campaigns plus a simple blogging strategy — which I explained in detail with a current Google Webmaster Tools keyword report, and a snapshot of his website against his main competitors using the HubSpot competitor report
or the status quo at a much higher premium starting in January

He said he was sorry, but he was electing to go with a local company that actually uses the term “saturation mailings” on their home page.

So his marketing insanity — the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result — will continue, but I feel relieved because my insanity is ending. Doing those repetitive emails the last year or so, I felt like I was betraying the Inbound movement. I think a small part of me thought I’d eventually convince him to come along for the ride and see how transformative it could be for his business.

The funny thing is, not an hour after he let me know his decision to go with the “saturation” people, another opportunity landed in my lap that looks like a really good fit.

October 17, 2014 By Carrie Gallagher

How to Turn Parents Into Your Best Marketers

Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that the parent of a child you teach is recommending your enrichment program to another parent, telling them how absolutely wonderful, nurturing and inviting it is for their entire family.

Unable to resist the nirvana described by this parent, the friend registers their own child for a class, and they have the same incredible experience, finding it unlike anything offered by other programs in the community. So they tell a friend or relative and they can’t resist trying it either, so they register their child. And on and on it goes.

Of course it’s not as simple as that, right? Exceptional experiences with businesses are so rare that nobody tells just one person; they tell anyone who will listen, including strangers on social networks. What could this free marketing mean for your business? What financial milestones could you hit?

Open another location? Hire more teachers? Retain a marketing agency? Invest in better marketing technology?

It’s all within reach, and it’s as easy as delighting the families in your database right now — the ones that come through your doors every day with their precious cargo in tow. A little business savvy plus a dash of personalized automation, and you’ll have an army of community evangelists on your hands so unstoppable, that your biggest problem will be hiring fast enough to keep up with the waiting list.

We’re All Just Looking for a Tribe That Wants Us

When a parent searches for an art, music or other type of enrichment program for their child, a lot of things go into the decision, but the most important is the feeling that you really want their child to be in your class.

As your business grows, it can be easy to lose touch with the families that come and go with each week’s classes, and the only contact families may have for months at a time could be just a few minutes here and there with their child’s teacher. If you’re looking to make an impact on parent’s emotions, they need to feel connected to you, your teachers and your entire brand, and not like they’re just a “faceless mom with a credit card.”

How to Nurture Your Tribe

So how can you make parents know you like them, really really like them (as Sally Field would say)? It starts at the beginning, with how you register families for classes. Website signups should be easy, and email confirmations should be quick, fun and full of helpful information, like links to course-relevant blog posts written by your teachers. Right off the bat this positions your school as an expert in the field, making parents feel like members of an exclusive club, and lucky to be part of it.

Email Automation is a Tribe Builder’s Best Friend

Remember that parents are busier than ever, so send email reminders a couple days before classes start. If the child is attending an art class, include an introduction from the teacher and mention that art is messy business, so they might want to leave the Burberry pants at home. Tell a funny or embarrassing story. Engage them, make them laugh. If they’re starting a music class, embed a video of the teacher introducing him/herself with a silly song!

A few weeks into classes, consider doing what traditional schools do, and have a “back to school night” (or morning/afternoon). An informal reception is a great way for parents to get to know the teacher and director, meet other teachers at the school, see their child’s work, and ask questions about what they’ll do for the rest of the course. It also provides an opportunity to meet the parents of their children’s new friends and set up playdates.

About three quarters of the way through courses, an email should come from the director checking in with parents. The following can easily be accomplished with marketing automation software and workflows that use personalization tokens (in bold below):

Hi Jane,

I just wanted to check in with you about Matthew‘s painting class. Teacher Jessica tells me he is doing great, so I’d love your feedback about the program. We’re always looking for ways to improve our curriculum and keep our kids and families happy.

By the way, we have a few new blog posts on our website with easy at-home painting projects (the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting another rough winter, so maybe they’ll come in handy!):

Blog post 1
Blog post 2
Blog post 3

If there’s anything we can do to make Matthew‘s last few weeks of class extra special, don’t hesitate to email or call.

Carrie Gallagher
Director Lady
555-1212

Of course, those blog posts we just sent to Momma Jane are going to have calls-to-action advertising next season’s classes, winter camp programs, and how to book a birthday party (smart, eh?).

Remember, Kids Suck at Details

This is how a typical after school conversation goes in my house:

Owen, what did you do at school today?

Played with my friends.

Thankfully, his kindergarten teacher a few years ago was on to this, and the first day of school she sent a lovely personal email describing how “content” he was, how eagerly he contributed to class discussions, and that he tried to finish his lunch (because mom said he had to). It was a special email to receive on a special day for our family, and she did that for every parent in the class.

Keep Parents Updated With Weekly Newsletters

A personal email to each family after each class would be a lot of work, so consider sending a weekly newsletter. It will help them feel connected to your school and what their child is doing in the classroom, because I can assure you, they’re getting the “I played with my friends” response at home.

To produce a successful newsletter, simply ask your teacher to write a letter to parents each week describing what happened in class. Any specific anecdotes or clever “overheard in class” quotes that will make them laugh or go “awww” are great things to include.

If you run an art program, for example, consider having your teachers take photos each week of the students artwork, even if it’s a photo of a wall gallery (although it would be cooler if it were an online gallery!). If possible, include each week’s lesson plan recreating how parents can do a project at home with their child. It will give them something familiar to do on a snow day or during a school break, some of the longest days of the year for parents!

If you run a music program, consider filming a short video of the end-of-class song. It doesn’t take much effort to make parents’ eyes water and love you for loving their child so much that you would do that for them. They’ll send the video to friends, grandparents, anyone who will watch it. If you use HubSpot for your marketing platform, this is simple to film, upload and password-protect. You’ll even get detailed reporting on how many people watched it. All you need is an iPhone, free Wistia, a tripod and these lighting tips.

The newsletter should also include a “From the Director’s Office” section with any notable updates on programming — people love feeling like they have the inside scoop on an organization. If you’ve signed to open a new location for example, announce it first in your newsletter so that families have an opportunity to spread the word in the community. Free publicity is a great thing.

Turn Your Clients Into Your Muses

As often as possible I use real conversations with potential clients as inspiration for blog posts. The reason is twofold:

If the topics are real, you know they’ll be relatable to at least the person you had that conversation with, but probably many more
It makes people think you’re magically on the same page as them, when really you were just listening carefully (maybe that’s the same thing?)

When you run a children’s enrichment program, you’re uniquely positioned to do this on a massive scale, because you have so many questions coming at you. Let’s say you have an open house or “back to school” type of event mentioned above. You could expect to field at least 25 unique questions per program that you offer. That’s 25 blog posts, which in most cases can be split into 50.

Take the most intriguing questions — the ones that require the most thought to research and turn into blog posts — and after they go live, reach out to the parents that asked them. Send them the posts and thank them for inspiring such thoughtful material to include on your website.

Remember, great blog ideas don’t just come from parents! You’ll really wow mom and dad if you blog a great answer to one of their kid’s trickiest questions. Consider putting a special “question chalk board” in each class, where the best child queries can be recorded throughout the week. At the end, consider which ones can be turned into blog posts, and run with it. Make a point of giving credit to the child that asked the question (first name only) and add it to your weekly newsletter.

Big Bucks, Fragile Egos

Remember, parents have the money and they need nurturing as much as children do. If they don’t feel connected to your whole brand, one negative experience with a staff member could be all it takes to sour them from returning. And heaven forbid they tell a friend or vent on Facebook, and it turns into an ugly telephone game slandering your business. That would be the opposite of how this post started.

So go now … take these ideas and delight a parent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Fo3k8jfqI