How a SaaS Platform Allowed This Tech Startup to Turn Customers into Advocates. This story first appeared in the August issue of Entrepreneur. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Influitive, a Toronto-based marketing technology startup, helps enterprise companies identify and mobilize their strongest online advocates to encourage referrals, references and product reviews. In 2013 Influitive was growing quickly, and execs wanted to follow the company’s own playbook by converting customers into advocates. To pull this off, Influitive “had to provide a phenomenal customer experience,” says Chad Horenfeldt, vice president of customer success. Easier said than done, since the budget-strapped, 20-person company had just two people on staff handling customer service requests through lengthy email chains.
The Fix Influitive moved its customer service department onto the Freshdesk platform. “We also needed a support system that could be embedded into our internal Salesforce platform, and Freshdesk does it tightly,” Horenfeldt says. The Results A Second Opinion. Creating Blog Graphics for Non-Designer's. 10 Ideas To Speed Up Your Business During The "Slow" Summer. For most businesses the summer season means a little slowing down. Less customer requests, less projects and deadlines are a little further ahead. This gives us time to lean back, take a breath and relax ourselves. And time to start something we always wanted to do, but somehow there was never enough time. Now with business slowing down and more time for you to use on something new or different, here are our suggestions for what you could do: 1) Start a Blog Starting a blog with the complete setup, design and the first few articles: It can be overwhelming when your plate is already overly full. Here is a short description for one possibility to easily set up a blog: Book hosting on BlueHost.com (we recommend BlueHost, you can of course use any other hosting provider of your choice)Choose your domain when setting up hosting on BlueHost – If you have a web presence – integrate your blog into it.
Now it is time to start creating some content – have fun! 2) Start marketing 3) Go networking. 10 Single Mom Entrepreneurs Share Their Best Business Advice. Running your own business is no piece of cake. Neither is raising a family. These 10 single moms, all of whom have built successful companies, manage to do both with a mix of intelligence, creativity and sheer determination. For some of these mompreneurs, starting a business was a means of creating a better life for their kids; for others, the kids themselves inspired the business idea. All of them have learned critical lessons along the road to success. Related: Mastering the Juggling Act: 4 Successful Moms in Tech 1. Image credit: Angela Benton Angela Benton is the founder and CEO of NewME. Her advice: "Being a single mom is NOT a setback. Don't get me wrong, entrepreneurship is a ton of work. 2. Image credit: Lisa Stone In 2005, Lisa Stone co-founded BlogHer. Her advice: "Ban toxic people from your life. 3.
Image credit: Lauren Thom Lauren Thom founded New Orleans-brand Fleurty Girl using $2,000 from her 2009 tax return. 4. Image credit: Karla Campos 5. Image credit: Lauri Levenfeld 6. 7. Top 5 Tips for Startup Marketing. Attracting customers is one of the top challenges for startup businesses, especially if you do not have any marketing background yourself.
However, the principles of marketing are common sense and can get you a long way without excessive expenditure. 1. Know Yourself Time spent on working out what makes your product or service special (its unique selling proposition) is time well spent because it helps you differentiate yourself from the competition. Clarifying your mission and values will provide you with a framework for positioning your business. 2. Know your Customers Who is supposed to buy your product or service? Be clear about who you want to sell to. 3. 4. 5. How to Use Facebook and Google Analytics TOGETHER to Monitor Fan Traffic. How to Start a Business With Less Than $20. If I were to start a new business right now and had no experience, no connections, no specific idea, and very little money, here’s exactly what I’d do. Step 1: Find an idea I think everyone has something they can build a business around.
Where do you find this idea? It lives in a curious place between something you’re passionate about, something you know something about, and something you’re willing to put effort into. Notice I didn’t say “find your passion.” Grab a piece of paper and make a three-column list. The three columns to fill out for Thrusness are as follows: 1. 10 things you like doing that involve some form of work (example: painting, writing, singing, building furniture, coding websites, helping old ladies cross the street, etc.). 2. 10 ways you could put your work out into the world (example: online course, in-person class, e-commerce website, retail store, series of books, videos, etc.). 3. I want to be crystal clear in this next point. Step 2: Read a few non-fiction books 1. How to Grow Your Business with Live Events. As a business owner the whole point of events is to grow your business and this means growing your contact list or email list subscribers.
Just like giving away a free eBook or report to increase your email list. But, live events can attract a lot more people, a whole lot faster than promoting a free eBook. If you think about it, live events are often a lot more personal in nature, giving people a chance to interact with one another and the movers and shakers within your niche, to speak with experts and to get personal attention. Somehow live events are just a lot more effective and personal than a pdf type report. Hosting Teleseminars and Webinars You can literally reach hundreds of people at one time with a live webinar, all while you’re sitting in your home or even a hotel room at the beach.
You can host them free, or for a fee; it’s up to you and depends on your goals. Join with Others Give It Away Free This is mentioned above, but it is important enough to bring up again. Replay Events. How to Market Your Latest eBook. Traditional print publishing deals are hard to come by, and today’s reading public are as comfortable with tablets and smartphones as they are with paperbacks.
So many independent authors are taking the self-publishing route and releasing their work as eBooks. Independent or not, authors still have to eat – and that means making money. From eBook sales, preferably. Getting a book out there is only the beginning of the story; you have to let people know about it. Finish The Book. It sounds obvious, but the first part of your journey hinges on a complete work. Which requires you to write the damn thing.
Before You Publish… It’s an eBook, so you’ll be looking to sell it, online. You should have a website or blog set up already. Interact. Here’s an approach that combines elements of all these approaches – and one that can help you finish your book: As you develop the material, post sample chapters on your blog or website. Keep a Conversation Going. You can go further, by adding incentives. How to protect your online reputation and grow personal brand - SMALL GIGS MARKETINGSMALL GIGS MARKETING. There are very few people who do not have some sort of an online profile. Even those who avoid social media, with perhaps the exception of LinkedIn to publish their professional resume, will find themselves at the mercy of employers or associations who will list their accomplishments, their ‘latest’ headshot and bio somewhere online. Not to mention all the friends of said individuals who snap photos at events and post to social networks.
Having an online footprint seems to be an unavoidable fact of life. As a professional whose reputation is paramount to personal and professional success, the best option is to be in control of what is shared about you so that you can effectively manage your online reputation and grow your personal brand. Your online reputation is a valuable asset that you should and can influence. “You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to go.” If you are serious about creating a professional online profile, here are some basic tips to help you out.
Anna P.S. How to Have Massive Success With Your Blog. Your blog is like your baby. You spent months getting it up and running, your design is just right, you’ve created the most enticing opt-in and you’ve been perfecting your content. You’ve put some darn hard work into making it is what it is today yet you STILL don’t feel like you’re where you thought you should or could be. You aren’t getting your desired results… It’s SO frustrating right! She’s also got an online business and had been told that she needed to be blogging. Like most people online today they haven’t been taught how to implement blogging into their overall marketing strategy so that they can start having success with their blogs. Never fear though, Adrienne is here…. Where Most People Go Wrong Back in May I wrote a post titled How To Rediscover Your Desire For Blogging. Maybe it’s not the desire you’ve actually lost but if you’re not having the success that you had hoped or even thought you would be having by now, frustration starts to set in.
Why are you blogging? 10 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs (2012) Almost three years ago we posted “10 Blogs Entrepreneurs Need to Be Reading” and to this day it has remained the most popular post on the Grasshopper blog. While it’s an excellent list, we feel it’s time for an update. We bring you the 2012 version, 10 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs. 1. For Entrepreneurs Link: About: Run by serial entrepreneur turned VC David Skok, For Entrepreneurs is exactly what the name implies; a place where entrepreneurs can get solid advice from someone who knows what they are talking about.
Awesome Factor: Looking for an in-depth post that will make you really think? 2. Link: About: Just about everyone is familiar with Forbes Magazine. While the blog is not quite as old as the mag (by about 80 years), it’s done a great job of staying relevant, up to date and staying true to it’s audience. 3. Link: 4. Link: 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Everything I Needed to Know About Negotiating I Learned Watching My Dad Make a Huge Buck on Some Old Furniture. My father, Bernie, passed away a couple of years ago, and yet he lives on in so many practical life lessons that he taught me over the years.
While he couldn’t spell "banana" (he always spelled it “banna” on his grocery lists), he could negotiate a mean deal. Sometimes, his method of choice was annoying the hell out of the other party, but in this example, it was something quite different. In the early 1990s, my parents got divorced and my father had to sell our house. Because the lawyers ended up with a good chunk of what was a fairly small asset pool to begin with, that meant downsizing. Related: This Strategy Will Make Negotiations Less Painful One of the pieces was a “gorgeous” wall unit from the fine French furniture company “The House of Tackee.”
I am sure you are entirely shocked to hear that there wasn’t a lot of demand for this type of furniture (this was before hipsters became a thing), so my dad had to be resourceful. “Why don’t you make me an offer?” “Two hundred dollars?” 1. Welcome to mindmapping.com. 10 People Who Became Wildly Successful After Facing Rejection. Sometimes, you jump out of the gate with a great idea that you can polish and run with. Everything’s going well -- until you get hit with a failure. Failure punches you in the gut, leaving you with throbbing wounds and the inability to do anything but moan about what might have been. But take heart -- failure isn’t the end, unless you let it be. Failure means you’re on the road so many others have taken to success. 1. Image credit: Hersheys.com The man who blessed us with the sweet milk-chocolate treat we all love wasn’t a hit the first time around.
Despite two more failures, he returned to the family farm and perfected the art of making delicious milk-chocolate candy, which we enjoy in the form of Hershey chocolate today. Related: 6 GOP Presidential Candidates Who Are Examples of Overcoming Failure 2. Image credit: WikiCommons This author struggled to write a novel that publishing companies would call something other than “pure rubbish” several times -- 27 to be exact. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Manage your cookies and site data - Chrome Help. You have control when it comes to cookie permissions in Google Chrome.
All cookies are allowed by default, but you can adjust this setting. If cookies have been set or blocked on the page you’re viewing, an icon appears at the end of the address bar. What are cookies? Cookies are files created by websites you've visited that store browsing information, such as your site preferences or profile information. There are two types of cookies: First-party cookies are set by the site domain listed in the address bar.
Adjust cookie and site data permissions Click the Chrome menu on the browser toolbar. Using a Chromebook at work or school? Icons may appear in the address bar to alert you about blocked or set cookies: The icon appears whenever a cookie has been blocked on the page you’re viewing, even if you’ve allowed all local data by default, due to exceptions you’ve made for specific domains. You may need to reload the page for the changes to take effect. How to Launch Your Product Using Facebook Social Media Examiner. Are you launching a new product or service? Want to create buzz and get the word out to the right people? Facebook is a great way to promote the launch of a product or service and generate excitement. To be successful, you need to plan your content, write your posts and make good use of the tools Facebook has to offer.
In this article you’ll discover how to launch a product or service using Facebook. #1: Before Pre-launch: Start Planning Early You’ll want to map out your launch strategy at least two months ahead, and most likely even earlier than that. Plan what types of launch material you’ll have available to share on social media to get the buzz going. Discover how to launch your product using Facebook. Listen to this article: Listen now: Play in new window | Download | Embed If you have an online product, you can use some great freebies to help get people onto your list.
Plan when each piece of content will be released to your email list and what posts will go out to Facebook. Conclusion. Founder's Guide to Basic Startup Infrastructure - Flexport. I bootstrapped two startups, ImportGenius.com and Flexport.com. We grew ImportGenius to 50 employees, 1M monthly uniques and almost 5,000 active paying enterprise subscribers without raising any outside funding.
Flexport is still very early stage but promises to improve lots of customers’ lives in the $2.3 trillion global logistics industry . Below are a few of my favorite tools for building a startup even if, like me, you don’t have anything approaching a degree in computer science. Please tweet us @flexport with feedback and additional tools you’ve discovered, and I’ll update the list.
And if you find any of it useful, please share it widely to help more people escape the tyranny of depending on large faceless institutions for their daily bread. Getting Started: Pick a great name using BustaName.com. Also remember that new top level domains like .app are coming early next year here, so there will be a lot more options. Register your domain for $0.50 by Googling 0.50 domain registration. 15 Resources For Mastering Email Support. 22 Gmail Plugins That All Content Marketers Need to Know About. Learning Resources. GROWTH HACKING RESOURCES: 56 BLOGS YOU SHOULD FOLLOW TO STAY ON TOP. Frontier Investing: The Venture Capital Due Diligence Guide | Startup Grind. Facebook Business Manager: Common Issues Explained. How to Start a Business Without Any Money (book review) The Basics of How I Built a Seven-Figure Business Without Employees. The First Step To Building A Growth Machine. Affiliate Marketing Industry News and Notables 10-23-15. How 9 SaaS Companies Hacked Their Growth.
7 Steps to Converting Your Online Leads into Customers. Top 6 Ways to Earn Money Online with Integrity - Zero To Launch.