Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | October 24, 2016 | Worcester Business Journal 23 10 T H I NG S I know about... ONLINE MARKETING By Hans Riemer Hans Riemer is president of Market Vantage Internet Marketing Specialists in Groton. Reach him at hjr@marketvantage.com. 10) Think beyond Google. There are lots of other ways for your customers to find you. Too much dependence on Google and your business could tank after an algorithm update. 9) Start with a modern, well-designed website. If yours looks like your nephew built it in 2003, then investing in traffic is a waste of time and money. 8) Conversions are key. Get your website to convert twice as many visitors into sales or leads as your competitor. Then you can spend twice as much on generating traffic. 7) Analytics helps you eliminate waste. Google Analytics is free, but you need to set up campaigns and goals, connect to your other online marketing platforms and filter out noise like your own website visits. 6) Not all content is king. Make sure yours is well-written, nicely designed, useful and interesting to your target audience. 5) Focus on social media. LinkedIn is great for finding salespeople but not great for selling sunglasses. Yelp can sink a restaurant but not a company that sells enterprise software. Pick the few that matter to you and become a rock star on those. 4) AdWords and Bing Ads are about more than search. Both have wide-ranging display networks. Plus, you can target by device – laptop or mobile – demographics, user interest and even prior behavior. Those ads that seem to follow you everywhere? Yeah, they can do that too. 3) Keyword rankings don't matter so much. They vary based on the user's device, location and past behavior. Key performance indicators like year-over-year or month-over-month organic traffic, referred visits and conversion rates are way more meaningful. 2) Clicks, likes and followers are not revenue. Sure, every store needs shoppers, but it's easy to obsess over leading indicators and get distracted. 1) Targeting your competitor's brand doesn't work. Makes you feel good to know your ad comes up every time someone types the name of your competitor into Google, right? And it ticks off your competitor, too! So much so that they'll click on that ad as many times as it takes to kill your budget. K N O W H O W A smile can go a long way Y ou can spend tens of thou- sands of dollars marketing your business, but if once you acquire that customer you don't deliver excep- tional service, that customer will find somewhere else to go. I stop for coffee every morn- ing before work. There are four of the same coffee franchises all within about a half mile of my house. Although I have visited them all, I frequent the same one every single morning. It is probably the least convenient commute-wise, but the ladies who work there greet me with a smile every morning, they are friendly and they are also effi- cient. This is consistent across all shifts. It's easy for a business like a drive-thru or a grocery store to get complacent and caught up in the production belt style of service, but taking the time to show kindness to your custom- ers is key and is what will set your business apart from the rest. It is your responsibility as a business owner or a manager to make sure that your employees are the ultimate reflection of your brand, and that they are delivering the type of service that you desire. So how can you increase customer satisfaction for your business? Here are a few important tips for businesses both big and small. 1. Address every customer complaint or concern with the utmost importance. Whether it is an employee you have had problems with in the past or your hardest worker, customer complaints need to be addressed and they need to be taken seriously. What was the situation? How did you handle it? What would you do differently next time? "I'm having a bad day" is not an excuse. This is your brand that you need to protect; if your employee doesn't think that he or she will be able to perform up to the preferred stan- dards, it's probably best to excuse themselves home, or, as my father would say, "Snap out of it," and contin- ue on with their work day. 2. Have periodical trainings and work- shops with a trained customer service professional for new staff, and for sea- soned staff. Go beyond the: "How can I help you today?" mentality and really delve into different scenarios your employees may experience on a daily basis. It's not only a great learning experience, but it can also be a great team building exercise. 3. Initial interaction can set the tone for the whole customer expe- rience. It is so important that your front desk staff or receptionist looks up from their computer within sec- onds of a customer's arrival. Nothing gets to me more than feel- ing invisible when I walk into an office or business. 4. In this day and age, more than ever, it is so important to teach our younger generation coming up in the workforce how to interact with customers. Eye contact and a smile can go a long way. Don't hesitate to observe your employees and their interactions with customers, and use the oppor- tunity for one-on-one coaching or recognition. 5. Be a good example for your employees. Be visible, greet your customers and spend some time on the front line. But overall, create a friendly environment for your employees. If you do this, it will carry through to your business, and to your customers. Caitlin Lubelczyk is the marketing manager for Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where she developed programs on the basics of customer service in the healthcare industry. W e change our vehicle's oil, our toothbrushes and our seasonal decorations. But what about looking at potential chang- es in the way our team collaborates at work? Is it enough to keep plugging along and say the system is working well? Here are a few questions to ask and tasks to implement to ensure you and your colleagues are working together as productively as possible. Figure out if the team has become too isolated. Colleagues in a certain department or working on a certain project need to bond, of course. But they also must connect adequately with partners in the rest of the organi- zation as well. Mario Moussa and Derek Newberry say smart managers don't ignore water-cooler talk. "Ninety percent of the information a top team uses to make decisions comes through informal channels rather than formal reports," they say in an article at Entrepreneur.com. Folks in other departments just might have winning perspectives on an issue where your team is operating with a blind spot. You have to communicate and then pay attention to reap the benefit. Eradicate motivation killers. Inc. com's John Boitnott lists these as: a lack of worker appreciation, toxic people, abrasive personalities and autocratic management styles, among others. There are many ways to cope. Policies against toxic behavior can be estab- lished, for instance. And there are many creative ways to show employee appreciation, one in particular won't cost you a thing — just visit their cubi- cle and say, "Thank you." Don't ignore modern work trends. Companies are losing valuable knowledge and talent by ignoring a need for mobility, flexible hours and evolving technology, says Tony Lopresti, CEO of Intellinote, at Wired. com. "Having the most successful and flexible tools and policies for the future workplace will become increasingly important for staff retention and for keeping those employees happy, collab- orative and productive," he writes. BY CAITLIN LUBELCZYK Special to the Worcester Business Journal BY SUSAN SHALHOUB Special to the Worcester Business Journal 10 1: F I G H T S T A G N A N T P R O D U C T I V I T Y W W W Caitlin Lubelczyk, Saint Vincent Hospital

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