We Are Back!

We are back from a long hiatus and ready to continue providing insights on how businesses can grow. Our goal is to help businesses leverage the tools and strategies available while maximizing return on investment (ROI). We will publish our blog calendar shortly; however, if you have topics you would like us to explore, feel free to send to us!


Thank You!

Team dTc

Finding Your Customers - Market Analysis

Prior to promoting your business to customers, you should know who these customers are, where they are located and how to reach them – target market segmentation. A market analysis will provide information that is vital to understanding your customers. Using the Five W's and H will help you in this effort

• Who are your customers – age, income, gender, interests & etc.
• What products, services or features interest your customers?
• When your customers are most likely to purchase?
• Where your customers are located?
• Why your customers purchase from you?
• How do your customers behave (lifestyle)?

If you are an existing business, you likely have good data stored in your customer relationship management database for a market analysis. If not, Mike Kappel recommends the following sources to gather additional information.

• Bureauof Labor Statistics and Economics& Statistics Administration
• State and local commerce websites
• Articles in trade journals
• Interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and surveys from your target market and trade associations
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses

Learn More: http://bit.ly/2jpivjl

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Social Media And Your Business - Snapchat

Attracting new customers to address churn and grow revenue is a challenge faced by all businesses. It is important to understand the respective social media platforms in regards to the audience, how you can leverage and the potential negative impacts. Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Periscope and etc, it’s extremely important to develop a social media strategy prior to posting. By doing so, you will promote a consistent message aligned with your brand, target the right audience and establish metrics to measure performance. According to LeilaLewis, Snapchat has moved from personal use to business where you can engage your customers using Geofilters for events, behind-the-scene looks and more.

 

Learn More: http://huff.to/2jRrTbX
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How To Determine Return On Investment (ROI) For Services

Many small businesses struggle with the decision to purchase new services that will generate revenue through marketing and promotion solutions or reduce costs through business consulting & automation of operations. To properly make this decision, business owners must understand the fixed costs (FCs) and variable costs (VCs) associated with the purchasing of any service/product and how it will either increase sales or reduce costs. The FC & VC are part of the Break Even (BE) formula along with unit sales price (USP). The BE formula enables a business to identify the number of units that must be sold to recover all costs associated with the selling of a product/service.

The BE formula can be written as: BEU = FC/(USP - VC).

1. FC = $500; the monthly fee for the service
2. VC = $10; includes all costs per unit to include: selling, production, fulfillment, fees & etc
3. USP = $30; the price of the unit (service/product)
4. BEU = Number of units to be sold in order to recover all costs
5. For this example, this is a monthly calculation based on the information stated above

Now, let's work through the example. Using BEU = FC/(USP-VC) by plugging in the values as: BEU = 500/(30-10) = 500/20 = 25. In order to pay for the $500 a month service, you must sell 25 units monthly at $30 price per unit & $10 variable cost per unit. We can check the work by laying out the numbers.

1. FC = $500
2. VC = $10 * 25 = $250
3. Total Cost = FC + VC = $500 + $250 = $750
4. Revenue = $30 * 25 = $750
5. BE = Revenue - Costs = $750 - $750 = 0

Hopefully, this information will help you assess the value of a new product or service pitched to help your business grow. We are available to help you through this process. Contact Us Today! http://bit.ly/dTcContactUs

What’s Your Business First Impression?

In Today’s dTc Buzz, I want to talk about your business presence Your image is critical to your success personally and we see entertainers, athletes, business professionals and politicians spend significant time and effort in keeping up a great image. The image of your business is just as critical to drive revenue and grow your business.

If you have a brick-n-mortar, your potential customers will judge your service based on your storefront, your store’s interior layout/design and the quality of your customer service. In the digital world, your presence includes:

• Your website
• Your social media properties
• Your online directory listings
• Your organic search ranking
• Your customer reviews

To reach and covert more visitors:

• Your business information should be accurate across all properties
• Your business should be listed on the properties where your customers are
• Your business should rank on the first page of the local results
• Your main service/product offerings should be communicated across all properties
• You should manage your business reviews and engage your customers
• You should personalize your business with employee bios (it’s about relationships and customers want to know who they are dealing with)
• You should keep your content rich and fresh promoting special offers to engage your potential customers

According Yext:

• 4 in 5 consumers search for local businesses online
• 73% of consumer lose trust in a business when they find incorrect information
• 40% of businesses have incorrect online information
• Incorrect or incomplete information causes businesses to lose potential customers at a cost of $10B annually

I would suspect most business owners will indicate cost as the major challenge to address their respective business digital presence or the business owner would indicate they are doing just fine with business revenues. My counter is:

• Review your traffic for your digital properties to determine your conversion rate (if you don’t know, that’s problem and $$$ out the door)
• If you know your conversion rate, calculate the increase in revenues with 1%, 5% or 10% increase in the conversion rate
• If your increase generates more revenue than the cost to enhance your digital presence, I believe you have an easy decision to make
• Additionally, another option is to assess your cost model or ad spend to redirect dollars to your digital presence.

Hopefully, I have provided some good insights into:

• The importance of your digital presence
• What steps you can take to improve your digital presence
•  How you can justify the investment

If you would like to discuss your respective challenge(s) in more detail, feel free to contact us for a FREE consultation and learn more about solutions to promote your business across the digital ecosystem!

Contact Us Today!

Check Your Online Presence

What Is Presence Management

Small Shop, Big Dreams!!!

After working with a few clients over the past few weeks, I believe my first post should be on how best to handle all the important business tasks while growing your business. Now, where do I start?! Let's assume you have done the basics such as having a solid strategic plan. 

To make the most of your time, you should focus on automation, setting priorities & focus. Let's look at setting priorities first. 

Prioritization

1. You don't have to complete all tasks in one day
2. You should assess the value of each task ($$ generated or cost reduction) with required completion date (incorporate lead time)
3. Once you have the above information, you can list "in order" the tasks that will return the greatest value to your business
4. Following the 20/80 rule, 20% of your tasks will yield 80% of the value. This is the focus area.

Now, how to focus. Here are a few points from Roxann Roeder's 5 Habits that will get your 30% more productive. 

Focus Management

1. Each day, you should focus on activities that move your business forward - things you must do!
2. To best do this, take time each day to get yourself going. Do something for your health at the start of the day without checking email or other busy activities. Healthy Body = Healthy Mind
3. Prior to jumping into the day's work, take time to identify your priorities based on the model listed above. You will be able to identify 3 projects and 5 tasks that can move the projects forward.
4. List the people who you must reach out to before end of day no matter what 
5. List the people you need to hear from or need some something to get your day's work done
6. List any import activity you can complete by end of day. (small tasks)
7. After completing steps 3 - 6, you can create 3 blocks of 50 mins where you will focus on the work identified uninterrupted. After each 50 min block, take 10 mins to refresh with a break to clear your mind / recharge
8. Lastly, make sure you take a hour break to get away from the desk/office for free thought

Lastly, how to automate for growth.

Automation

1. Once you know what you should do and the value of the tasks, you should look to automate what you can or find tools to help you better manage what you do.
2. My recommendation is to use a tool like 17 Hats that will help with lead capture, contact management, quotes, invoicing, payment, bookkeeping, customer interaction, project / workflow management, to do list & more while automating tasks and integration with other features.
3. Another recommendation is to automate your sales and marketing functions. Depending on your business and where you are, Constant Contact or Act! CRM will help with automating customer interactions that can be programmed based on customer actions. For example, you can automate a response to a customer who sends in an inquiry or response to a newsletter using Act! CRM. These tools frees up the small business to focus on tasks that require human interaction and are unique in nature.

Hope this post was helpful and if you have a unique concern or question, feel free to contact us @ 

dTc Buzz! 

Blog Introduction

Are you looking to grow your business? Improve your operation efficiency? Improve customer engagement and more? Make sure you keep coming back to dTc Buzz for the latest advice to help drive growth for you business. We are looking forward to discussing your challenges and working together to move your business forward! Small Businesses are the backbone of the US economy and we are dedicated to helping businesses grow! Your Success Is Our Success!!


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