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Melody Jennings Bowers

April 8, 2019 - Melody Jennings Bowers

If you have your own business and you’ve been learning best practices on how to market yourself, chances are you’ve heard the term “marketing funnel” quite a bit. But what exactly is it?

When done correctly, a marketing funnel will take your potential customer from first discovering you (via YouTube, your blog, your social media efforts, etc.) all the way to buying your products or services on a regular basis. It helps them go from being aware of your business to being repeat customers.

IN SHORT, A MARKETING FUNNEL IS A BASIC REQUIREMENT OF A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BUSINESS.

IN THIS BLOG, WE WILL DISCUSS:

 Who will be going through your funnel stages
 What those stages are
 The four basic steps of a marketing funnel
 How to collect, track, and measure data through each stage
 How to set everything up

SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS A MARKETING FUNNEL?

A marketing funnel is a series of steps that a customer needs to go through in order to reach your conversion goal. A conversion is a particular action you want visitors to make on your website. That could mean they make a purchase, add an item to their shopping cart, sign up for a newsletter, fill out a form, etc. Basically, any measurable action that moves potential customers closer to feeling comfortable enough to buy what you’re selling.

FUNNEL STAGES

f you were to Google “marketing funnel”, you would find a mixed bag of resources and a variety of marketing funnels that serve different purposes within industries.

We’ve narrowed this post down to focus on a basic funnel that a small business looking to generate more leads and customers would benefit from taking the time to implement.

It’s important to be aware that there are a few hoops that an anonymous user has to jump through before they are interested enough in your brand to become a customer. The marketing funnel stages are not random. They are based on tried-and-true customer behavior patterns that have kept business school professors busy researching for decades. The thinking goes like this:

1. Awareness attracts VISITORS who actually visit your website, click around, engage with your content, and maybe check out your products.
2. VISITORS who show enough interest become LEADS by signing up for your newsletter, downloading your free content, or submitting a question through a contact form. Now you have permission to communicate directly with them.
3. Desire is the motivation for LEADS to become a PROSPECT. A prospect will do everything except hit the “submit” button to place their order. For example, they’ll put items in their checkout cart but not complete the order. They’ll request a discount code, but not use it right away. They want to buy your stuff so badly they can taste it, but they aren’t quite ready (or able) to commit yet.
4. Once a PROSPECT is ready to take action, they then become your CUSTOMER. You’ve passed all their tests, and they are convinced that what you’re selling will solve a problem they have.

Just be sure that all that hoop-jumping is worth it! This means you need to be providing a product or service that actually does live up to or exceed their expectations—because once somebody makes it through all those stages, you have more than a customer. You have converted an anonymous user into a believer!

THE FOUR BASIC STEPS OF A MARKETING FUNNEL

Now that we know who will be going through our funnel stages, let’s talk about the four basic steps that make up a marketing funnel: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

This step is the very top of the funnel. You’ll reach the most amount of people during this stage, which is why some companies refer to this as your “wide net”. The goal for this step is to turn people into website visitors. You can do this through social media activity, press coverage, local events, word of mouth, third-party partnerships, influencers, etc. During this step, you should be measuring the following:

 Website traffic sources (where are these visitors coming from?)
 The most-visited website pages
 Social media clicks (what posts receive the most engagement?)
 Blog post engagement (are people reading the full blog?)
 Which site links are users clicking on the most?
 What devices are people using to visit your site?
 Where do these visitors live?

Once you’ve built awareness with your visitors, the next step in the funnel is to generate interest. An easy way to gauge interest is with your email list. You can create email campaigns to get people closer to conversion, or you can produce an email newsletter with different types of content and ways for your leads to interact with your brand. The interest your visitors are showing is measured by the following:

 Email open rates or click-through rates (are your leads opening and reading the emails you’re sending them?)
 Social media click-through rates
 Product views
 Completed contact or intake forms on your website

As you work your would-be customers through the funnel and closer to conversion, you will be able to see how much desire they have to be converted into paying customers. During this stage, your leads turn into prospects. You will know they are prospects by tracking:

 If they have added items to their checkout cart
 Whether or not they used the promo or discount code when adding items to their checkout cart
 If they have responded to emails in your email series
 If they have shared their contact info with you at a live event

Yay, you have a customer! Your visitor turns into a lead, then a prospect, and now you have a paying customer and new data you can use to create new funnels to increase your profit (or your email list, or your wholesale client list).

CONVERSIONS

Let’s talk more about conversions. Conversions will look a little different for every company, and even every stage of your company. If you’re just starting out and your main goal is to generate interest, your conversion would probably be to grow your email list. Or if you have a new product coming out and you want to generate traffic and sales for that specific product, your conversion would be the sale of that specific product.

It seems kind of obvious that your conversion goal should be sales, but don’t forget about email signups. Your email list is the most valuable data you can get. Why? Because you have full control over this channel, and you can measure the outcomes of what happens with your email subscribers clearly.

WHY DO YOU NEED A MARKETING FUNNEL?

Because every online business needs an automated, measurable system that will guide potential customers from the process of learning about your brand all the way to making a purchase.

People probably are not going to just randomly stumble across your website and immediately make a purchase. That would be great, but it’s not likely. Instead, they need a bit of nurturing, educating, and convincing before they get to that point.

Think of these funnels as a “get to know you” process that explains to people the different reasons why they should make the leap and become a paying customer.

The most effective way to communicate directly with people who are interested in your brand is via email campaigns. Once you get people to opt in to your email list, you can deliver content directly to their inboxes and track how they respond to that hand-picked content. Trust us, it’s much easier to adjust your content once you can see what your prospects are most interested in and engaged with.

NEED HELP GETTING STARTED WITH A DATA COLLECTION PLAN?

KNOW YOUR DATA, KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER IS A COURSE DESIGNED JUST FOR YOU!

If the thought of collecting, tracking, measuring data from a sales funnel makes you nervous, fear not. We have created a quick list of some basic things you can start thinking about before you dive into learning how to set up your data collection dashboard.

HOW TO COLLECT, TRACK, AND MEASURE DATA DURING EACH STAGE

Use a tool like bit.ly and add some unique, trackable links to your blogs, email campaigns, and social media. Even if you’ve never looked at Google Analytics before, you can get your feet wet by seeing how many people clicked on these links, and which channel they were on when they clicked.

Your email platform will have some sort of reporting that will be super user-friendly and will give you great insight into how your prospects are interacting with your content.

In a basic MailChimp report (even with a free account), you can see what kind of “open rate” a specific email had, how many people opened it, and—even more interesting—what time they opened it. It’s important to take a peek at which links they clicked on, too.

If you have intake forms (contact forms, newsletter signups, wholesale applications, etc.) as part of your marketing funnel, you should have a notification set up to get an email anytime someone fills out the form. This is data, and all data is golden! Just from those few interaction points, you can get a good feel for how your community of potential customers is interacting (or not) with the content you have created.

The data starts to get a little more tangible at this stage, which means it’s easier to track and measure. A few examples of tangible info you should pay attention to at this stage are:

 The “abandoned cart” percentage rate. If users are adding items to their checkout cart but not completing the purchase, you should make sure everything is functioning properly, then test out the process to see if you can make it any smoother. The abandoned cart rate is a statistic that can be found in your e-commerce platform.

 When a wholesale contact asks you to send them some sample products. This is a huge indication that they have a desire to purchase your product. Make sure you have a system to log interactions so that you can copy the things that worked next time.

 A contact collection system for when you are hosting a booth at events. If you’re going to be at a trade show or pop-up, it’s very important to have a signup sheet that will help you follow up and nurture those interested parties.

All of these are actions are measurable! They can provide valuable insights as to what your potential customers like and don’t like. Collect and leverage these free clues to validate whether or not you’re on the right track.

This one’s easy! Have your prospects done the thing you’ve been guiding them to do? Have they been willing to part with their hard-earned money because they believe that your brand offers a trustworthy solution that will help them solve their problem?

Even without Google Analytics, you can get an idea of where your funnel is and isn’t working. If people are “stuck” in the lead stage and are taking forever to become a prospect, then you can start adjusting your offers. It could honestly be as simple as changing some of your wording or the image you’re using on a landing page.

But how cool is it to have a way to identify what needs to be fixed, and to be able to pinpoint exactly where you might be able to try new strategies to increase engagement?

Once you get one funnel flowing, then you can start using more funnels to create other unique customer journeys. You might have a few marketing funnels working at the same time because you may have different target customers. You aren’t limited to using your funnel strictly for signing up and/or purchasing. You can put funnels all over your website to see how visitors move through a specific website flow.

Marketing funnels have helped us narrow down and prioritize how much money and time we spend each month on our marketing efforts. You won’t be able to do it all at once, but sometimes as a “solopreneur”, or small business owner, you have so many things going at once that you won’t be sure what needs your attention most at any given moment. But once you establish a marketing funnel and stick with it for a few months, you’ll be able to tell what’s working and what isn’t within the boundaries of that funnel—which is such a relief if you’ve been trying to implement and refine everything, everywhere at all times.

So now that you’re sold on the whole marketing funnel idea, are you wondering how you set up the damn thing? We’re not going to leave you hanging! You can follow the eight easy steps listed in the infographic below to set up and track your very own marketing funnel.

Marketing funnels have helped us narrow down and prioritize how much money and time we spend each month on our marketing efforts. You won’t be able to do it all at once, but sometimes as a “solopreneur”, or small business owner, you have so many things going at once that you won’t be sure what needs your attention most at any given moment. But once you establish a marketing funnel and stick with it for a few months, you’ll be able to tell what’s working and what isn’t within the boundaries of that funnel—which is such a relief if you’ve been trying to implement and refine everything, everywhere at all times.

So now that you’re sold on the whole marketing funnel idea, are you wondering how you set up the damn thing? We’re not going to leave you hanging! You can follow the eight easy steps listed in the infographic below to set up and track your very own marketing funnel.

TO DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION OF THE INFOGRAPHIC BELOW

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SUMMARY

As you can see, having a marketing funnel is a critical element to any online business. It may seem daunting at first, but once you begin to see what’s working and what needs tweaking, it’s pretty exciting. Why? Because you’ll be seeing your business take shape right in front of your eyes. Having a measurable way to know what makes people want to buy what you’re selling is nothing short of thrilling after all your hard work.

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March 5, 2019 - Melody Jennings Bowers

MEET GILLIAN STOLLWERK-GARRETT

We met Gillian Stollwerk-Garrett during our crowdfunding campaign on iFundWomen. She had launched her campaign a few months before us and quickly became our go-to resource for all things crowdfunding, as well as, one of our biggest cheerleaders. Her authenticity and “don’t wait until things are perfect, just go for it” attitude have encouraged us more than she knows. We’ve kept in touch virtually and when she was in Nashville several months later, we met her for lunch and found her to be even more smart, supportive, and gorgeous in real life!

In a few short years, Gilly has taken her homemade beauty product business, Gilly’s Organics, from just an idea to a successful online brand, and she’s seen her products go up on shelves in multiple Whole Foods stores around the Northeast. Plus, she’s done it all while raising her three young children (though she does credit yoga and an amazing therapist for helping her stay sane!).

We were excited to catch up with her on all things life and business. She was, once again, very generous with her time and willingness to share her insights with us. Now, we’re excited to share them with you so you can apply them to your own business!

Q: YOU HAVE SUCH AN INTERESTING STORY. COULD YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT HOW GILLY’S ORGANICS CAME TO BE AND WHAT YOUR GROWTH HAS LOOKED LIKE OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS?

A: After working for a few years freelance writing for Estée Lauder, I was getting tired of writing “fresh, crisp, summery” for their fragrances … plus I had started to live a more natural, organic life. After meeting my husband in an organic cafe, we began eating and shopping much cleaner. Also, the VP feeding me consulting work got let go. I had two (of three) babies at the time, and we were living in NJ. My husband asked me what I wanted to do, and I just answered, ‘I’m gonna make a product!’ And then … I did! I made a sugar scrub called “Hey Sugar, Lookin’ Good!” and that’s how it all began.

Q: YOU DEFINITELY HAVE A BRAND BUILT AROUND YOURSELF. WHAT HAS THAT EXPERIENCE BEEN LIKE?

A: At first, I didn’t like it. When I made the name, I didn’t envision it in the future and having to promote myself and my name all the time. It took getting used to, but I do embrace it now that we ALL buy products and services because of the owner (or salesperson or face of the brand) and if we relate to them! I know I do. Once I embraced this, I put my genuine self out there and decided to remember that you cannot market to everyone! Not everyone wants what I’m selling, and that’s cool! There are billions of people out there and plenty who want what I’m making. Plus, when you market to everyone, you market to no one (I learned that one from Marie Forleo’s B-School)!

Sometimes people water down their message. They make it generic to appeal to everyone and play it safe. Be it their packaging or their social media, every brand has a voice. Once I figured out that that voice was my own voice, I decided not to apologize for it, and whoever it resonated with became my customers because the product inside does have a broad range of appeal. The product inside is good for all ages and all skin types, so it’s really more about the brand message. I suppose I’m still figuring it out, but it has gotten much clearer over the years. This has made it easier for me to promote Gilly’s Organics.

Q: WHAT KIND OF CONTENT AND MARKETING STRATEGIES HAVE WORKED BEST FOR YOU?

A: Good one. It’s a daily decision-making process. All caregivers have this. “What is the most important element of my day today?” I will ask it and then schedule it. Some days it’s science fairs and Halloween parties, other days it’s trade shows, panel talks and admin work. Every day I will work, but as I get older and wiser and do NOT want to burn out, I will often be very realistic with people about deadlines — like with this lovely article. I knew my time and when I could deliver. I try not to apologize for my life choices. Working out is usually a must. It’s my anti-anxiety drug because entrepreneur life can be stressful!

Q: TELL US ABOUT YOUR BLOOMING RELATIONSHIP WITH DATA AND WHY IT’S FEELING MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU. WHAT STEPS ARE YOU TAKING TO COUPLE YOUR STRONG INTUITION WITH A MORE SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT’S WORKING?

A: It’s definitely a work in progress, but I am starting to track SEO and see who clicked and who bought which products and getting to know who my primary customers are.

Q: WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AND GILLY’S ORGANICS IN THE NEXT YEAR?

A: New, clean, upgraded packaging; more stores and boutiques; and a team!

Q: WHAT ARE A FEW PIECES OF ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE A WOMAN WHO IS JUST STARTING OUT GROWING THEIR BUSINESS?

A: Start NOW. The kinks will iron out. You don’t want to wait. There are resources everywhere! Use them to:

  Raise money on crowdfunding sites like iFundWomen.com

  Attend networking events

  Join online groups and chats to learn more about your customers

  You can teach yourself so much these days online!

  You can keep your day job and start your dreams on the side!

  Also, ask for help! We can’t do it all alone.

Do you know how many friends have offered me help and I haven’t taken it? Don’t do it all alone. Get an intern. Find a mentor in your field. Or even not in your field. I have a few, and they have been so instrumental in my growth, mostly because of the confidence I have gained and seeing that it can be done.

Don’t not take the chance because it’s hard and you might fail. Lots of businesses fail. What it’s really all about — and I still need to remind myself this too — is the journey. Make sure you are passionate about your endeavor because money can’t be the only reason to work hard! I have frequently worked side jobs to support my dream because I’m willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.

The trick is to view everything as an opportunity to learn and grow while having fun.

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January 8, 2019 - Melody Jennings Bowers

How to Get Started Using a Content Calendar

It’s a new year, which means it’s the perfect time to get organized!

One of the tools that we use to stay on track throughout the year — and can help change the way your business performs — is the content calendar. Maybe you aren’t quite sure how to leverage the use of a content calendar for your business, or maybe you’re thinking it just sounds like more work than it’s worth. Trust us when we say that the return on your investment of time and planning will be 10-fold.

Read on to find out how crucial creating — and abiding by — a content calendar is to running an efficient business. We’ll teach you how to create your content calendar, explain why it matters and, of course, teach you about the most important factor of all: measuring the response (i.e. data!).

This is a good data project to start with to get your feet wet, and when you’re ready to dive in whole-heartedly, we’re ready to help you level up your data collection skills by signing up for our Know Your Data course. There’s a reason people are spreading the gospel of Virtual Collective — the proof is in the data!

Intro to Data Collection Course Button | HerDataMethod.com

Content is King Queen

There is a reason Seth Godin calls content marketing “the only marketing left.” Content is the most authentic, useful and affordable marketing for the internet age today. In 2019 consumers and followers are expecting you to know what they want to see on their feeds and in their inboxes. The busier (and more distracted) everyone gets, the less time they have for content that provides zero value. The responsibility is on the business owner to not only understand intimate details about your target customer but to consistently deliver information that will get them to engage with your brand … AND buy your stuff.

So where does one begin?

Step 1 - Get Strategic

The first step in getting strategic about your content is to make sure everyone on your team knows your customer persona(s) inside and out. (Do NOT skip this step! If you do not have a customer persona figured out yet, please stop and go read this blog post and this one too before doing this exercise, then come back and learn more about content calendars. It will make your life a lot easier, promise!) Once everyone is clear on your customer persona, it’s time to create content that you know your customers will find valuable and that is in line with your brand. After all, if you are going to persuade people to buy your stuff, then you are going to have to do more than schedule a few random posts and tweets on any given day; you need to show that you’re an authority on whatever topic your business deals with, and you need to establish that level of trust with your customers.

To ensure that you’re creating content that your customers find relevant, we recommend you create three or four different “buckets.” These buckets are essentially categories that help you stay focused on the content you create. If you’re considering writing a blog post or scheduling something for Facebook if it doesn’t fit within one of your pre-established “buckets,” then it’s likely not 100% relevant to your brand, and therefore, it’s not relevant to your customer base.

Content Calendar Blog Post Definition | Her Data Method

To be clear, “content” is any type of material you publish, whether it’s an article on your blog, a post on Facebook, an e-newsletter, or even a retweet that you find relevant for your audience. With that understanding in mind, it’s important to organize all of the content you plan to publish, whether created or curated, in one central location where you can organize all these moving parts. That is what is called a content calendar. Think of it as a blueprint to organize and map out every single piece of content you intend to publish for any given period of time — from Instagram posts to blog posts. Create a content calendar for each month, quarter or even year, and you’ll quickly see a common thread weaving together your brand’s message. It’s actually quite spectacular to see it all come together.

Step 2 - Get Organized

Okay, so we’ve established what a content calendar is, but how do you go about organizing it?

There are any number of ways to skin this cat. There are paid tools, marker boards and everything in between. At Virtual Collective, we use a shared spreadsheet in Google Drive that is available to all of our team members who create content and contribute to content planning. Since the spreadsheet lives in the cloud and we largely work remotely, this approach allows us to be collaborative while providing a repository for any plans and ideas. By using tabs, we can organize by month, and within each tab, we can organize by day, allowing us to map out and account for all social posts, blogs posts, newsletters and the like. This calendar will help you establish a consistent publishing rhythm, and eventually, you will be able to determine what is working and what is not — when do people most respond to your posts, and when do you hear crickets. And why is that important? Because in order to capture the largest audience for the message you’re looking to send to your audience — sales, promotions, special announcements, etc. — you’ll want to make sure you’re publishing at the most well-read time based on the data you’re collecting from previous publishing times.

[icon name="arrow-circle-right" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Here's an example

If you have planned out your week’s worth of content, and you have your weekly newsletter coming out on Thursday, you’ll want to plan a social post a few days earlier encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter. That way you’re letting your audience know you have something they’ll want to receive.

[icon name="arrow-circle-right" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Here's Another Example

If your business deals with women’s health, then wouldn’t it make sense to publish something on National Women’s Health Day, thus showing your hip to the awareness day, your a relevant member of the women’s health community, and you have important, on-topic information to share with your followers?

Those are the things that keeping a content calendar will help you prepare — and plan — for.

Before You Start Building Your Content Calendar Blog Post Image

Identify your audience.
According to Entrepreneur.com, “Reaching out to people who are more likely to be interested in your brand is not only more cost-efficient; it’s also more sustainable and less time-consuming. Consumers do not want businesses to gloss over them; they seek legitimate trust and genuine relationships.” Gone are the days of half-assing your content. Your customers are expecting content that speaks to them. They shop with brands that understand who they are and where they are in their life. Before you can plan out your content, you have to understand who is digesting. When you define your customer persona, you will not only get the basics like gender, age, location, but you will also get to know their beliefs, their fears, and their buying habits. Now think about what type of content will motivate them to buy what you are selling.

Identify your channels.
Not all customers are on all social media channels. Some people are only on Instagram, or some decision makers only keep up to date with LinkedIn. And what about Pinterest? And don’t forget about Facebook — love it or hate it, you still may want to be present in that play space. You still need to put a minimum amount of effort to make sure your business page is up to date with current and relevant content. However, you can’t ignore the power of Facebook’s algorithm. That being said, you can schedule out your FB and Twitter channels with relevant articles and blog posts that are informative and still speak to your customer, but you might want to spend your creative energy on keeping your Instagram account the main point of social contact. In order to know what channels to focus on, you have to pay attention to the data. There are tons of articles you can refer to that will tell you the demographics for each channel.

Identify your “buckets.”
What can your audience expect from you? Based on our customer persona and what posts have had the most engagement over the past couple of years for us, we have identified the following “buckets” into which every single piece of content we create should be able to fit:

Content Buckets Blog Post Image | Her Data Method
  • Online courses/digital services
  • Women in business
  • Small Business
  • Organic Sales Marketing
  • Data collection/Use

  Schedule, publish, promote, track, and tweak your content.
Now that you think you have the right content for your customer and are posting to the right channels, now you can test your efforts. Try publishing at different times of the day, and measure the response. Try being direct with your call to actions for some posts, and see how your audience reacts. See how your customers respond to different content types and don’t forget to play around with video. When you know what you are looking for, reading the Insights and reports gets a lot less intimidating.

Step 3 - Build Your Content Calendar

  Monthly Planning Calendar
Planning your social media posts and paid campaigns, email campaigns, blog publishing schedule, and events is a lot for one person to keep up with, let alone keeping a whole team on the same page. That’s where the Monthly Planning Calendar comes in. Your calendar will give you and your team a snapshot of everything going on with your brand in order to plan out your content accordingly.

  Blog Repository
If you have been blogging at all, you are probably sitting on a lot of content that can be repurposed and republished. We like to have a repository of all blogs with the publish date to review each month. If a previous post feels relevant to the type of content you are pushing in that given month, this list allows us to decide if enough time has passed so we can repromote it.

  Article Repository
When reading articles throughout the week, any blogs or posts that are relevant for our audience go into the article repository. We have our articles organized based on our content themes, or “buckets,” so we can space out our content consistently across all channels.

Now can you see how a content calendar is incredibly useful?

We really believe in this strategy and have seen it become a valuable tool not only for us but for our clients as well. So, we have done a lot of the work for you and created a FREE template for you to download and fill in for your brand! (Woohoo!)

Be sure to take the time to fill in the content on all of the tabs. After you use your calendar to strategize and organize your content (and actually follow said plan for a couple of months), you’ll be ready to start looking at the data your strategic planning has generated.

Sign up below to receive our Content Calendar Template for FREE!

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Check your stats - image

Time to Review Your Stats

Have you ever downloaded a report from Mailchimp or actually looked at the Insights on your Instagram account? Well, those numbers can tell you a lot more than just who liked what. Those metrics matter. Once you get more strategic about delivering your content, you will increase your odds of engagement with people who have a high likelihood of becoming customers.

But… Why are They leaving?

If you start to notice people unsubscribing from your various accounts, don’t panic. Believe it or not, this is actually a good thing because it means your audience is aligning itself to your message. You don’t want people around who don’t care about what you are publishing because they aren’t ever going to buy what you are selling, right? A more targeted list is way more valuable than a large number of followers and subscribers. The cliche is true: “It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.” You want to clean out the naysayers and invest in building out your community of believers in your product or service. It’s okay to lose some followers and email subscribers if it means that the ones who choose to stay are more willing to like, share, tag and talk about your brand. THOSE are the people who are worth your time and attention.

Once you have set up your content calendar and are publishing content according to a schedule, take a look at those reports and pay attention to your likes, engagements and new newsletter subscribers. On the posts that are getting the most engagement, what time were those posts published, and who was engaging with them? This is data that you can use, even if only a few clicks here and there, to help you discover clues about your customers and how to provide content that will help them the most. Oh, and by the way? Now you can call yourself a data collector. Yep! When you pre-plan your content, ensure it’s in line with your brand, publish regularly and measure the response, you’ll soon be able to get a very clear picture of your audience, and you’ll also be able to tweak accordingly.

Calendar Schmalendar

The bottom line is this: you can do all this work, but if you don’t have a deep-rooted understanding of your company’s value proposition and a solid understanding of your customer persona, it’s a futile effort — you’re just sending random information into cyberspace. So do the foundational work first. Sign up for our introductory course, “Intro to Data Collection,” and we will walk you through all of that. When you’re ready to begin your journey into data collection, you’ll quickly (and finally!) see the power of understanding your audience and measuring what matters to your business.

Intro to Data Collection Course Button | HerDataMethod.com

I have completed the first few lessons, and oddly want to savor them! I learned so much in the first hour, and am motivated to invest the time to apply these steps to my own business.

– Angie Li, UX Specialist + Researcher

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: How To Guides

December 3, 2018 - Melody Jennings Bowers

Customer Segments vs. Customer Personas

What’s the difference?

Whether you’re in the earliest stages of planning your business or you’re going through a relaunch of a company you’ve been running for years, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the market you’re hoping to serve and the people you’re trying to convert to clients. And all of that starts with determining your product or market fit. Once you have established that there is indeed a need for your services, then you’ll want to hone in on your customer segments and the customer personas within those segments. Here’s what you need to know to get started — and how it all works together for the betterment of your business.

Determining Product / Market Fit

Product/Market Fit is just a fancy way of saying you can find enough people with the pain point that will jump at the chance to pay for the solution you aim to provide. These are your people.

Figuring out how to find these people to get an accurate headcount can be daunting. If you start with trying to pinpoint a “market,” it’s going to be too broad and vague. If you start with defining a single customer persona, that will be too narrow to determine if there are enough of these customers to warrant launching a business created to serve their needs. The sweet spot you are looking for is a customer segment.

When we started Virtual Collective we thought our ideal customer was:
A small business owner who needed digital services.

Any guesses as to what might be wrong with THAT definition?

That describes a very broad, vague, vast portion of the market. What business owner doesn’t need digital services these days?

It wasn’t until we drilled down into our existing customers after we launched that we figured out that one small business owner was NOT the same as the other. What emerged were two distinct customers who each needed the same services, but they each needed to be communicated within very different ways. This impacted our ability to effectively market to either of them, and it indicated that we needed to do a little more research to help us find the customer segments within the small business owner market in which each of our unique customer personas existed.

And we needed more of them if we were going to stay in business.

How do you find these Mythical customers?

For this post, we are going to assume that you:

  have identified a problem that needs to be solved
  know there are enough people who WANT to solve this problem to be profitable
  can find more of these people
  have some consistent data points to track and measure

Customer Segments
vs. Customer Personas

Customer Segments are the community of customers or businesses within the larger market to whom you are aiming to sell your product or services. Segments help you to forecast overall market interest for a product or service.

Susan and Theo - Marketing to Everyone is Expensive - HerDataMethod.com

Customer Personas help to understand the emotional and behavioral triggers behind individual customers within that market. We want to be careful not to get too finite into the customer persona before you conduct your actual market research.

Note: It’s always best to clarify your customer segment before you get too focused on your individual customers. You might make some inaccurate assumptions causing you to miss key factors within a segment that might even reveal a customer that you never anticipated.

There are at least four basic factors you need to identify about your customer segment: demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral. These are all characteristics that are unique to your customer’s story. While there are a lot of methods that can be used during the customer discovery process, such as customer interviews, surveys, and focus groups, unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. It’s going to be up to you to figure out through trial and error what works best for your company and your customers.

Customer Segment Factors - Her Data Method Blog

Demographics are concrete facts. These are known truths about your customer that you can pull from customers directly through interviews or surveys, or you can use census reports, articles and past research.

Geographics are also concrete facts and can sometimes be rolled into your demographics if you have an online business and your customer segment isn’t specific to one location. You’ll want to drill into that later when marketing your business but for brick and mortar businesses, location is vital information at the beginning stage.

Psychographic and behavioral factors are more abstract. This information is not as black and white as demographics and geographics. You will need to extrapolate this information in creative ways through your customer interviews and by observing their online behavior and buying patterns.

This is the customer segment description we identified for Virtual Collective:

Customer Segment - Part 1 - HerDataMethod.com

Do you think this is complete? Do you think this segment is defined based on our factors or are we missing anything?

Customer Segment Part 2 - HerDataMethod.com

If we added that last section, would we have a better understanding of what our customer is struggling with and how we can help them?

Yes. Now we have a problem for which we can provide a solution. You cannot effectively define your segment if you are looking at these factors hiding in independent silos.

Customer Types Image - HerDataMethod.com

It’s crucial to know whether you are providing a product or service in a B2B (Business to Business) or a B2C (Business to Customer) role. You may have both kinds of customers and need to determine where to focus your energies on first as you launch your business. Make sure to include this clarifying question whenever you are doing customer discovery.

NOTE: We recommend addressing both customer types in your interviews in order to define both customer segments during your initial research stage so you don’t have to do it all over again at a later date.

IN SUMMARY

Now that you know the order of things and, more importantly, why these steps matter, you are equipped to get started on identifying your Product/Market Fit, your Customer Segments, and Customer Personas. The more intimately you know your target customer, the more efficient you will be at marketing to those who want what you’re selling. And as all business owners know, time is absolutely money. Be smart with both!

Customer Persona Worksheet PDF - HerDataMethod.com

Sign up below to receive our Customer Persona Worksheet for FREE!

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: Because Data Tagged With: customer discovery, customer personas, data collection, how-to

October 2, 2018 - Melody Jennings Bowers

Mission Statement and Value Proposition: What's the Difference?

What are They, and Why Are They Important?

By now, you probably know what a mission statement and a value proposition are—especially if you’re a business owner. But maybe you don’t know exactly what they are, or why it’s so important to have them.

Let’s start with exactly what they are.

Your Mission Statement

Your company’s mission statement is a written-out announcement of its central purpose, goals, and focus. In short, the company mission statement is YOUR WHY. Meaning, it’s the reason that you started a business, invested loads of time and money, and lost way too many hours of sleep! Your company’s mission statement should describe your motivation, your passion, and your conviction.

Here’s a formula to follow when writing your own mission statement:

Mission Statement Formula - Her Data Method

Your Value Proposition

While your mission statement is YOUR why a value proposition is your CUSTOMER’S why. It’s the reason your customer connects with you and believes that you’re going to be able to solve their problems. It’s basically a short explanation of why your customer should notice you.

Your value proposition should ultimately answer the following:

What problem can you solve for your customer?
How are you going to solve this problem?
Who has this problem you want to solve?
Why are they going to care if you solve this problem for them?

How are they Different?

The main difference between a mission statement and a value proposition is that one is for you, and one is for your customer.

Your mission statement is for YOU because it will determine your company’s direction; it will help you stay focused on why you began this journey, and it will help you make decisions for your business. It will also shape strategies and help you keep your core purpose in mind.

Your value proposition is for your CUSTOMER because it tells that person—in a very concise, creative, quick way—what your company is, and why it will solve their problem.

Mission Statement is YOUR Company's WHY
Your Value Proposition is your customer's WHY

Why Do You Need Them?

Having both a mission statement and a value proposition in place is extremely important for your business. Why? Because you can use them to tell your company’s story more effectively. They are also the main cornerstone of your data collection framework.

Your value proposition is very important because you should be using it as the filter that you view everything else through. Creating a strong value proposition in the beginning rather than later will save you time, energy, and money in the long run. It will give you the confidence you need to tell your customers why they should buy what you’re selling, and it will lay the groundwork for all the copywriting that awaits you as you begin to create landing pages, emails, social profiles, and blog posts.

As for your mission statement, as mentioned before, it helps to guide direction, maintain focus, and form strategies. It also keeps you and any employees you have on the same page. It tells everyone what your goals as a business are. In short, your mission statement is an expression of what your company is, what it wants, and why it exists.

Find and Target the RIGHT Customers

And So…

When it comes to writing your mission statement, boiling down your passion and conviction into one or two sentences can be very difficult. As for writing your value proposition, that be even harder! Trying to come up with a quick tagline to grab your customers’ attention can be very overwhelming. But remember, just being willing to start thinking about your mission statement and value proposition puts you way ahead of what most business owners are willing to do.

Let's recap

In order to…

  learn more about how to define both your value proposition and your mission statement
  learn why they are the main cornerstone of your data collection framework
  understand how to use them to tell your company’s story more effectively

Know Your Data, Know Your Customer Course Title Graphic

…check out our course, Know Your Data, Know Your Customer from Virtual Collective!

Do you need more customers but aren't sure where to start? Sign up below to receive the Customer Persona Worksheet for FREE!

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: How To Guides

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