MINDSET OF A READY-TO-SCALE LEADER

Welcome to “3”…three insights in about three minutes. Today we’re speaking with Jolien Demeyer, the author of Think Big Scale Fast. It’s a book on one of the most challenging obstacles that face startups and established businesses when they want significant growth. Jolien, you’ve outlined the requirements for successful scaling and call them The Four S’s. Give us a quick overview.

Jolien Demeyer: That would be the STRATEGY, so where do you want to go, and is your business capable to grow your business? The second one would be SYSTEMS in place, and do you really have that – the capabilities to grow your business with the right system processes, technology? The third one would be that SCALEUR mindset. Being a scaleur, but also an entrepreneur at the same time, and really having that mindset to and the desire to grow and scale your business. And the last one is a SUCCESS panel. It’s your dashboard; like, you know, where do you want to track you main KPIs on a daily basis? And, are you performing good or not good? And, I think overall, I think you already can guess it, but the hardest one is having that scaleur mindset.

Drew: Oh, mindset is a challenge. When it comes to getting a better understanding, I think I would get more clarity by hearing what the wrong scaling mindset sounds like. Can you give us an example?

Jolien: Wrong is always a hard word, right? So I would say, rather, weaker mindsets. But if I would think about three things, I would think about being set in your comfort zone. You want to grow, but, in fact, at the same time, you don’t want to take any risk. The second one I would think about is not letting go, not delegating, not taking ownership, and just doing everything on your own because you don’t trust anyone. And, then the third one is all about, you know, not willing to do what is required. For instance, laying off people. And in a scaling phase, you need to sometimes let go of people because they’re not in that scaling culture.

Drew: Oh, I’ve seen that play out with an employee that was part of a startup and as the company grew, the employee became more and more out of place. The founder said, “I can’t get rid of him. He’s like family.” My response was, “I’ve seen your children work here; you don’t let them get away with that kind of stuff.” Enough with the negative. Jolien, tell us what does a great scaling mindset look like?

Jolien: So if I would think about it as well the three things, I would think about being positive, but also very realistic. You know, you can be very positive, but you also need to stay with the feet on the ground. And for instance, simple things like celebrating the small successes can always help. The second thing that I’m thinking about is, you know, understanding the worst case scenario, and if that would happen, you know, still you would be comfortable living with that. And a third one, being open-minded, doing new things, and seeing failure, you know, as a kind of a learning. So that is all about a great positive mindset. And I think a lot of owners or business scaleurs, however you say it, they see that scaling a business is all about the rollercoaster, so you really have to be set for that ride.

Drew: Those are great points, Jolien. Mindset is critical to business, to life, to everything! But especially when you’re looking for fast growth. That’s it for this edition of “3”. I’m Drew Dinkelacker, President of MarketingAccelerator.com, where we provide Chief Marketing Officer resources to business leaders and their marketing leaders.

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

Social Media Predictions 2022

Your target audience is available for a window of this average duration on the social media platform every day. The way you make them feel during this timeframe will reflect on what they think of you.

In Buffer’s 2019 survey, 73% of marketers agreed that their efforts on Social Media Marketing (SMM) were ‘somewhat effective’ to ‘very effective’. Because of these intriguing concepts of marketing, Social Media Today reports that 90% of users try to reach out to brands via these platforms.

Along with the bent of the audience towards social media, this year has also seen the rise of technological innovations. With the inclusion of IGTV, TikTok, Advertising Tools on social media; future strategies look anew to the experts and the brands.

Calculated Predictions for Social Media in 2022 Marketing

While the marketing decision-makers around the world are brainstorming to find the best way to level up their game in 2022, here’s what we think of as a boutique digital marketing agency about the upcoming year’s Social Media Marketing trends:

1. The New Screen for You – IGTV

An amalgamation of video features with an influencer platform like Instagram is a huge opportunity for marketers to grow their network and position their products & services organically. Wondering, how IGTV can be useful for your business?

• Utilize Your Previous Content

Posted videos that were a huge hit previously? Great! No matter if it was a Facebook or Insta video or live-streaming, you can now put a long-format video content back there.

• Convert Written Content Into Video

This trick has been used for many years now. As YouTube grew to its ultimate best, bloggers started to capture their audience by converting the written content into videos. That’s the route to take as a brand now. Convert your manufacturing procedures, how-to guides, product info, services, etc into easy-to-understand videos.

• Start Your Own Series

With the freedom to publish long-format video content, you can create a series about your brand that could be shared at regular intervals. For your convenience, IGTV videos can now be organized under titles- a great tool for video creators around the Internet.

2. Build New Partnerships- Social Influencer Marketing

Find advocates for your brand. 2022 is going to be big for Influencer Marketing. Reason? With ample competition, your biggest challenge will be gaining the trust of your customers. With trust comes loyalty. Creating partnerships with influential people on the Internet should be the next thing on your mind.

Looking for influencers? Think beyond celebrities and go niche! Search for YouTubers, Instagramers with 100K+ followers, or social celebs who have created a community through their content. You need to capture:

• Mega-influencers: 1 Million+ followers
• Macro-influencers: 1,00, 000 to 1 Million followers
• Micro-influencers: 1000-1,00,000 followers
• Nano-influencers: Less than 1000 followers

3. Predictions on Next Giant of Social Media- TikTok

Debuting in September 2017, TikTok is the platform to watch out. Why?

• 1.5 Billion+ App downloads
• 41% of TikTok users are between 16 and 24
• It is strictly fun and creative

In 2018, Guess partnered with TikTok to create the Hashtag Challenge- #InTheDenim where users had to share the best look in their Guess Denim. To get featured, Millennials and GenZ gave a roaring response to this campaign.

In one such campaign attempt, McDonald’s in Malaysia launched #BigMacTikTok. Another TikTok partnership asked for reimagined musical videos by users using the tracks released by McD for this campaign. People earned Free Big Macs and Cash prizes as gratification.

With evidence of success, this platform is ready to be swirled over by strategies. And within a year, we will see how TikTok is the priority platform for targeting the youth.

4. The Face of Content v.2022 in Social Media

Content needs to be localized and personalized. If you want your message to go across your target audience then you need to speak in their language and produce content that relates to them.

Brands like Coca-Cola have accentuated the importance of local taglines all through their advertising strategy including the product packaging. Even, Netflix had to integrate local languages into their application so users can curate content based on their native spoken language.

To support the thought, 75% of users agree to prefer buying products marketed in their native language. Hence, in 2022, find your paid ads performing better with the help of localized content.

5. The New Fad- Social Listening Tools

Imagine getting into the brain of your target audience. Isn’t it what every marketer ever wanted? With Social Listening Tools, you can actually find what your customer wants based on their online activities.

What difference can the Social listening tools bring into your strategy this year?

The Internet is a complex marketplace. Though it offers you an oyster of possibilities; you really got to break into these platforms. This is where these tools come to your rescue. Expect them to do:

• Social media management
• Sentiment analysis
• Keyword Search
• Detect Plagiarism
• Monitor mentions that could potentially be converted into backlinks
• Customers’ predictive analysis
• Market trends and needs and much more

Make no mistake when this year unwraps and brands start to pour witty strategy up for everyone’s delight. For monitoring and staying relevant throughout the year, look out for social listening tools according to your requirement.

6. Marketing Technology Stack- The Futuristic Approach

Talking about MarTech is essential. Market research and data analysis have upscaled the marketing approach as being eloquent while maintaining ROI through campaigns is the prima facie of today’s marketing.

Marketing Technology Stack which automates your research, shows the predictive mapping of your audience, and generates profitable plans, has taken the front seat. According to Marketing Whizz, Neil Patel, Hootsuite, Salesforce, Slack, Crazy Egg, and others are some of the must-haves on the list.

With gazillion bytes of information flooding around the Internet, an application that brings marketing and technology together is of paramount importance to garner and present data according to your requirements.

As a MarTech Consulting firm, we can’t emphasize enough how substantially you can make your strategies talk to your audience using the right set of Marketing Technology Stack.

We believe predictions that are calculated have substantial importance. Hence, let’s get into what experts from the giant companies have to say about social media marketing in 2022:

• What COO of Strategem Ventures, Syed Laeeq Peeran thinks of social media strategies?

“Companies need to focus on the WHY of strategic marketing, not just the HOW and the WHAT. A holistic approach is a key to sustainable business growth.”

• What Marketing Head of Alyce, Daniel Rodriguez thinks of Campaign Engagement?

“It’s not enough for a brand to put something out there in the world and measure impressions, you need to demonstrate people cared about your marketing campaigns enough to engage.”

• What Director of Product Management of Papa John’s, Bernie Fussenegger thinks of Personalized and Localized Content in 2022?

“For 2022, companies must focus on their data and how they will use that data for more personalized and relevant content.”

Thinking Out Loud?

Now when you understand what holds for 2022, let us help you to put two and two together. We declutter heaps of ideas and hand-pick the best ones for your business. To embrace this opportunity, we need to start with a visit to Jelloow.com now.

Let’s sail through some great marketing tactics and ideas. You’ll know that half the job is done seeing the expertise we bring to the table.

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

The article below is just a small glimpse into our new book. If you want to learn a lot more about how to create content with old content, click here to check out the book now. 

Leading marketers devote a portion of their practice to strategically defining best-practice programs, layouts, templates, and more so automation is not a laborious process. As the number of marketing solutions continues to grow, process and program sustainability will be an increasingly important consideration. At the same time, as a business scales, the marketing team will naturally be challenged to keep up. This is a good sign and as long as the team is organized and skilled, they’ll rise to the occasion. 

Take a critical look at the number of systems required to deliver your multi-channel marketing strategies and seek out platforms that can integrate scalability while delivering personalization throughout the buyer’s journey. 

If your team is feeling stress from campaign execution, ask for them which tasks are repetitive and don’t add value. And as the need for fresh content grows, try taking creative approaches to existing content for a quick solution rather than starting from scratch. 

You can do lot with words on a page. Here are 15 ideas for recycling your written content. 

1. Turn blog posts into podcasts.

One of the simplest ways to repurpose your content is to convert text to audio. Try giving some of your blog posts a second life in the form of podcasts. All you need is a device to record your voice.

Start by reworking your blog post into a script. You probably won’t need to change a lot — just make sure the piece flows smoothly and a listener will be able to follow it easily. If you tend to write in a formal tone, adapt the language in your script to be a little more casual.

Record yourself reading your script aloud, or hire someone to record it for you. Upload the finished podcast to SoundCloud, BlogTalkRadio, or another hosting site. Don’t forget to promote your podcast on social media! 

2. Turn blog posts into white papers.

White papers make great marketing materials, and you can build them out of blog posts. This is an especially good way to repurpose posts that go into detail about how you solved a problem.

Depending on how in-depth your blog post is, you may need to tweak its structure or add more details to convert it to a white paper. Write a summary for the beginning, and make sure to flesh out the middle with plenty of data to support your points. Once your white paper is done, you can use it as a lead magnet on your site.

You can also choose the best-performing posts on your blog and create a roundup white paper out of them. For instance, with Beacon, you can create a white paper or an eBook from any blog post. The company even claims to have a WordPress (WP) plugin that automatically creates eBooks out of your WP posts. Another great tool that allows you to turn a blog post into a white paper in a matter of minutes is PrintFriendly. It has a Chrome extension that allows you to create a PDF out of any blog post that you read to it.

3. Make an infographic from content from a blog post.

Do you have any blog posts that are full of shareable statistics and graphs? Pull out those visual-friendly tidbits, and make them do double duty as infographics.

You can make infographics on your own with online tools like Canva, Visme, or Animatron Studio for graphics or video. Another option is to hire a professional designer to do it for you. Keep in mind that whatever route you take, you may want to stick with a single designer so your visual content is consistent. 

4. Update old blog posts with new information.

Skim over your blog archives to look for posts that could benefit from some updates or additions. If you’ve been blogging for a while, some of your posts probably contain old, outdated information. Expanding old posts with new material is another way to add value without writing whole new posts. To avoid any confusion after you make your changes, add a note to the top of the post letting readers know it’s been revised.

You might have blog posts that are a bit dusty but still very valuable. Update those posts, change them according to the latest numbers and current situation, and you can use them to boost traffic on your blog again. You also could use concepts about national topics and change them to reflect local numbers and data — or vice-versa. 

5. Make a video based on a blog post.

Sometimes video is a better medium than text for explaining things. If some of your blog posts explain complex topics, consider turning them into videos for the visual learners in your audience.

It’s hard to go wrong with any type of video, as long as it’s well made. If you’re new to videos, though, consider creating a videographic, a whiteboard-style video, or an animated video. These videos are easy to make, and you won’t have to get in front of a camera yourself. A tool like wave.video or Lumen5 can help you get started easily.

Many people don’t like to read long texts anymore; they want to learn quickly. Videos can showcase complex ideas, products, or services using easily understandable models. For an example, go to Scaleurs.com for the how-to video “Scale in Less Than Two Minutes.”  

6. Hold a webinar based on your blog content.

Want to attract more leads and interact with your existing audience in real time? Holding a webinar is a good way to do that. If you have a back catalog of blog posts, it’s easy to come up with webinar content by turning blog content into presentation slides. Mix things up by combining information from a couple of posts that are related to each other and add a little brand-new content.

At CHD, we decided to hold a webinar for the European market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The market was changing and so was the industry. We wanted to inform our customers what they could expect from us in the future. By first conducting a survey in three countries, we asked for feedback on consumer habits — specifically, if and how they will change post-COVID when visiting restaurants. It should be easy to gather 150 to 200 people to chat about your industry — and delight them further by including them in a conversation. 

7. Publish your writing on LinkedIn and Medium.

Why confine your best writing to your blog when it could reach thousands more readers on big sites like LinkedIn and Medium? The more places people can discover your content, the better. There’s a catch, though. If Google thinks you’re posting your content in multiple places to game the SEO system, they could penalize you, so it’s important to republish your work the right way. Here’s how you can avoid incurring SEO penalties:

• Be selective about which pieces you publish on sites other than your own blog. Broadcast the ones with the most mass appeal as widely as you can, and keep the more-niche pieces on your own site.
• Publish only an excerpt from each post. Add a link to your own blog for people who want to read the whole thing.
• Avoid posting the same content word-for-word. Make some changes to the text before republishing on Medium or LinkedIn.
• Wait at least a couple of weeks before reposting any content, so Google has time to index the original version on your site.

At InnagrisMarketing Scaleurs, we decided to work with Medium as a reference point — a good source for being seen and getting information.

8. Answer questions on the web through live chat. 

On discussion boards like Quora and Reddit, your blog posts can double as answers to people’s questions. Keep an eye out for questions and conversations that are relevant to blog posts you’ve written, and publish excerpts of your work that address those topics — but only do this if your content is actually applicable. Whenever we publish a new blog post, we search Quora for related questions, submit a helpful answer, and add a link to our new blog post if it’s relevant and brings more value.

This tip works in reverse, too: If you’ve written any original, cogent answers to people’s questions on discussion boards, see if you can expand those pieces into full blog posts.

Both CHD and Lantmannen decided to implement chatboxes on their websites so visitors could get what they want: answers right away without having to wait. You can do the same.

9. Combine multiple blog posts into an eBook.

Have you written a lot of blog posts on related topics? Put some of those posts together, and you might find that you’ve got most of the material for an eBook.

Don’t run to Amazon to self-publish your book quite yet, though. Take the time to make your eBook truly high-quality. Sequence your posts in a way that makes sense, and edit them to improve the book’s flow. Add some fresh, exclusive content, so your current readers have an incentive to download the book. Add illustrations, photos, or original research. If you don’t know how to format an eBook, hire someone to do it for you. Services like Beacon are great for creating eBooks, even if you don’t have a designer.

As discussed previously, you want to nurture customers via a marketing funnel. One way to nurture your customers is to create eBooks to grab their interest. This can work as part of your ladder of value. 

10. Make an audio version of your eBook.

Like blog posts, eBooks are easily converted to audio. You’ll have to invest more of your time into recording the book (or spend more to hire a voice professional), but otherwise, the process is mostly the same. Audio content is popular because it lets people multi-task. If your average reader tends to be busy, it’s smart to provide an audio alternative to your text-based content. Just as with podcasts, head to sites like SoundCloud or BlogTalkRadio to host your audio eBook. It’s a great way to leverage your content. 

11. Fill out your email newsletter with content from your blog.

If you send out a weekly or monthly email newsletter, add some excerpts or highlights from your latest blog posts. Include links so people can read the full posts if they’re interested. You might see your blog traffic and your email open rate go up with this tactic. Moz is a great example of repurposing content in such a manner. Whenever they have a great new post to share, they post all of it in an email. So much for shorter emails!

You have already so much valuable content in the form of blog posts and your website. At the same time, email marketing is still one of the most-valuable tools for generating leads. Use valuable existing content you know is working. Just tweak your blog or web posts, and put the result in an email. It’s a great way to keep up the momentum of your contact with customers.

12. Put your presentations on SlideShare.

Have you given a presentation or hosted a webinar lately? Don’t just let your slides languish in a dark corner of your hard drive — they can keep working for you. Go over your deck and make sure all the information they contain is evergreen (timeless). Then upload the deck to SlideShare where anyone can find and view it.

13. Use visual content on Pinterest and/or Instagram.

To really extend the life of your images, put them on Pinterest. Most social media posts fade away within a few days or even a few hours, but “pins” can last for months. Infographics, image-based how-to guides, and photos that represent your brand are all good choices for Pinterest. Instagram is another visual social media platform where you can repost your images, although Instagram posts don’t last as long as pins.

A lot of end consumers are using Instagram, but if yours is a B2B company, I would recommend putting more effort and budget into your LinkedIn channel rather than your Instagram channel. Also, Instagram stories tend to be more successful than Instagram posts. Decide on the main channels where you want to be found, and make sure the content is relevant. 

14. Create an online course based on your old content.

If you’ve ever created a series of how-to articles, videos, or webinars, consider repackaging them into a course. Online courses are a perfect way to scale up your business. As with eBooks, you’ll probably want to sprinkle in some new content so longtime readers will want to sign up. Even a short, free course can help you get more email subscriptions. Platforms like Udemy allow you to host your courses for free. Other options include Stepik and Teachable. You can even host your course on YouTube! Just create a separate playlist for that, and get ready to grow your audience.

15. Use your data.

If you’ve done any kind of original research or testing, don’t discard the data when you’re finished. Turn the results into an infographic, a case study, or another type of content that highlights your findings. Gathering and making sense of original data is a fantastic way to provide real, unique value. 

Conclusion

You can decide to use all of these methods, mix and match a handful of options, or try only the strategies with the highest conversion rates. Give yourself deadlines for exploring each tool to determine what works best for you. 

You probably have more content than you think. With a little creativity, you can turn a single article, blog post, or video into several different pieces of content to use across the web. Repurposing your content isn’t effortless, since you may have to make some edits or add fresh content to what’s already there, but it’s a lot easier than starting from scratch.

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

The article below is just a small glimpse into our new book. If you want to learn a lot more about how to delight your customers, click here to check out the book now. 

In today’s marketing and sales, it’s not enough to achieve customer satisfaction. Standard practice is to aim for delighting customers. This means that instead of just meeting expectations you are exceeding their expectations. And going above and beyond to help them. 

We aim to delight customers because of the outsize reputation it can generate. it’s really hard to beat excellent word-of-mouth marketing from loyal fans. When one customer tells their colleagues, friends, and family about how great their experience was. 

To delight customers, you need to listen to your customers and understand their needs. Then take this insight and systematize it into your workflows. So that customers are regularly delighted no matter how big your business grows. Delighting customers can easily become one of your strongest strengths and differentiators. 

It will take time to identify your ideal customer, but this step — and its inevitable mistakes — will move your business toward sustainable growth and devoted customers.

Attract, convert, close, and delight: We know from Hubspot that these are core pillars of the traditional inbound marketing strategy (https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing). It’s easy to get caught up in the “attract” stage, creating content for lead generation. It’s important to attempt to reach the “convert” and “close” stages and see those leads turn into customers. But are you remembering the importance of the delight stage in your marketing strategy? Success in scaling is not just about customer satisfaction, but about creating a powerful emotional reaction that results in happy customers. Who wants to continue using your company and become your best promoters.

Do You Understand Your Customers’ Needs? 

When developing content, for your website, your blog, or through social media networks. You have to listen to customer needs, so you must design this content with the customer in mind. Social media and blog content comprise the “attract” stage of your marketing strategy, leading to the ability to convert leads. Delight should be present in each stage, beginning when they are still visitors through the customer stage and never-ending. Social media networks and blogs allow you to interact with your visitors. Delighting them through multiple channels, ensuring that visitors view you as a trusted advisor.

A delighted customer is a customer who would circle a “totally satisfied” option on a survey. Did you know that “totally” satisfied customers have a repurchase rate that is three to 10 times higher than “somewhat” satisfied customers? A delighted customer will be happy to reuse your business and to recommend it to their family and friends. Referral leads convert roughly 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels. Focusing on delighting your customers in your marketing strategy can increase your revenue and improve your relationship with your customers, which leads to referrals and social sharing, as well as an increase in customer retention and loyalty.

When I was an export manager at Unibake, one of the key things we did to scale the department was to focus on delighting the customers. The customers in this case were not individuals but foodservice distributors, retailers, and sister companies, but even though we were working with high-budget entities, individualized attention was just as crucial.

Build a relationship with your customers

We had three bakeries mass-producing baked goods in Belgium. We would give customers tours of the factory (including a chat with the chef), followed by dinner in the evening. Over several days, we’d spend a lot of time with representatives of the companies and get to know them on a personal level. 

We also repeated this approach in our visits to customers on their home turf. For example, we were persistent in pursuing Ledo Croatia as a new client. To woo them, I visited Croatia several times. I got to know the point person there on a personal level. As time went on, she told us about her wedding and later sent a notice about her pregnancy. Clear signs that although we had a business relationship. There was an undercurrent of friendship that helped us seal the deal. 

These kinds of “delight the customer” practices are enormously helpful in scaling a business or its marketing department. They helped bring in more business and deeper loyalties. The personal touch is not scalable — you may need to meet with each individual customer in person — but you can automate and standardize the process of how many customer visits you make through the sample selection, agenda, or presentation. Doing so will win time by making it easy and efficient to repeat the processes. Once in a while, you could enhance the personal aspect by holding a group customer demo. 

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

Perhaps the most common mistake in marketing is thinking that the objective is to describe your product. But that’s wrong. The objective is to describe the solution to the problem your ideal customer is having. And how do you know what the solution is? By understanding the problem. And how do you understand the problem? By understanding your customer, really getting to know your ideal customer, who they are, what their hopes and dreams are, and what makes their lives easy and what makes them more difficult. 

So how do you identify your ideal customer? What goes into defining who will want to buy your product or services and how do you determine not only who will want to buy them but which types of customers are the best suited to buying your offerings? These four principles below will help you identify your ideal customer. 

1. Provide real-time support 

Have you ever thought about how your customers feel about spending time waiting on hold in a phone queue?

Does it really have any worth to say, “Your call is important to us”? An American Express survey found that the maximum amount of time customers are willing to wait is 13 minutes. Your customer expectations align with reality when your business adopts new technology to provide real-time support to your customers. That puts customer experience on pace to exceed price and product as the number-one differentiator for companies.

Great customer experience can be achieved by using live-chat software and engagement tools that boost customer satisfaction rates. Live chat has been found to be preferred over other communication channels, such as phone and email — the real-time support it delivers to customers makes it popular. Ecoconsultancy reports that 79% of customers prefer live chat because of the immediacy it offers compared to other channels. Consumers just want answers as quickly as possible and are often too busy, or even too lazy, to navigate your website. 

Live chat connects you with your customers instantly and lets you address their issues in real time. It triggers proactive chat messages to guide customers in their buying journey and improve their experience with your business. 

2. Analyze customer feedback 

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” 

Customer feedback is the core of any business and one of the main factors in growth. It is the one thing that gives a business a clearer view of how it is doing. Collecting feedback requires asking customers to share their opinions about the product, service or overall experience with your business. The right moment to ask for feedback is right after a customer service conversation. You are already in a conversation with the customer, so it feels natural to ask for feedback.

CHD operates in the foodservice industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the landscape of this industry totally changed, and so too did customer interests and demands. It was necessary to conduct a survey asking about the inconveniences brought about by the disruption of the pandemic. Surprised by the results, we had to change our direction. What really counted was that our customers appreciated that we took their pain and hardship into consideration. 

You think you know your customer because you speak with them and their colleagues regularly, but do you truly understand their needs? During these turbulent times, CHD made an effort to understand the main problems our customers were experiencing — without trying to sell them our products. That resonated with them.

To do this, we called or emailed our five top accounts and asked, “What will be the main pain your company will see after the COVID?” We did this without linking it to a company offer. Based on the feedback, we created a survey that incorporated their responses to gauge the impact on the rest of our customers. As a result, we discovered we had to go back to our foundations. Instead of selling an advanced lead-scoring model, we had to return to the basics: just data. 

3. Personalize your communications 

Today’s customers expect business interactions to be customized to their needs and preferences. Because they get frustrated when they receive information that doesn’t resonate, especially when it comes from trusted advisors.

With the right technology to collect customer data and turn it into actionable insights, you can personalize each customer interaction. And provide unique messaging for each of your clients regardless of their preference in channels.

Start with the basics: Make a list of your top 10 customers and your prospects to create dedicated emails to send to those groups. That way, you avoid sending products or services to customers who are already buying your products or services.

If you know that 20% of your top customers drive 80% of your revenue, it’s good business to send them something special. At Unibake, we took the time to do the little things that can set a company apart in a crowded industry; efforts such as sending customers “hygge” socks during the holidays (a tradition in Belgium) or a thank you postcard can achieve miracles. It shows customers they are genuinely appreciated. An old-fashioned gesture of gratitude never goes out of style. 

4. Solve one problem for one customer

People don’t buy products; they buy solutions to problems. Startups can’t hope to solve all the problems for a whole market — and they shouldn’t want to. For a startup, the opportunity to narrowly focus on one specific problem and build the perfect solution to that problem is an advantage that must be exploited. 

Startups have the ability to zero in on one problem for a very specific, small, and defined audience. Don’t try to “boil the ocean” right out of the gate with a mass-market product (unless, of course, you think competing with massive companies on a level playing field is a good strategy). 

Remember: 

• Facebook started by focusing on one dorm at Harvard. 
• Mailchimp was created to design emails for the clients of one design consultancy. 
• Shopify started as a shopping cart solution for a snowboarding website. 
• Groupon was created for one office building in Chicago. 

If you’re aiming small, your laser-focused launch is only going to require one rocket — but that rocket has to showcase one awesome attribute. Trying for more than one product or service will drain important resources and will distract from the necessary process of perfecting your number-one offering. Such a lack of focus is also a tell-tale warning sign for investors.

Perfecting your one killer rocket means ensuring it has something that lifts it far above your competition, so you’d be smart to focus on giving one product something special. In the beginning, you are better off doing one thing really well and focusing on that one thing; later, you’ll be able to use customer feedback to add new features and broaden your market reach. 

Case in point: Most people think that consumers want choice. The reality is consumers don’t want choice; they want freedom from choice. If you can solve one problem proficiently for a customer with one simple feature, those consumers telling all their friends is the only marketing you’ll need.

One thing I learned over the years is that you not only have to sell one thing at the same time; you have to sell a solution rather than a product. CHD, the global foodservice database provider, doesn’t sell data. We sell the solution that companies can increase their market share. In addition, by accessing the database, they have access to millions of new leads they can start targeting, so their market share will increase as well. 

Conclusion

Using these four principles above, you will be well on your way to identifying your ideal customer. The concepts of being responsive to your customers’ inquiries, analyzing the feedback they give you, customizing your interactions to make them feel appreciated, and solving the customer’s real problem will bring you a long way towards a successful, scalable marketing plan. 

Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, your next step is to build a marketing funnel that orbits around your needs as a business (i.e., a prospect fills out a form on your website, your marketing team immediately schedules a demo, and the prospect becomes a customer), study your buyer’s behavior. Would your demos be more effective if you had a discovery call first? Is a 90-day sales cycle more realistic for your buyer than 30 days? Consider these things as you’re building your funnel.

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

In early-stage companies resources are limited, so employing the right people with the right skill sets is absolutely crucial to be ready for scaling. As they say, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This article will walk you through how to get your team ready for scaling. From assessment to strategy, to action, you’ll be ready to build an ace team that can really keep up. 

Assess Your Team

Start by looking at your current workload and responsibilities. Is your current team equipped to handle a ramp-up in projects without neglecting current customers, products, and services? If your marketing coordinators are also supporting other departments (such as PR or customer service) while analyzing performance data and implementing new marketing tools, they’re doing too much. Go back and streamline efforts and processes so your team has the bandwidth to be ready for scaling — or consider adding staff to balance your team’s workload and responsibilities. 

Next, ask yourself: Does your team have the expertise needed to launch successful campaigns in the new regions or industries you’re targeting? If not, you should hire new staff now, or contract out until you have a better idea of the kind of expertise your team needs. Evaluate your current team to identify each member’s strengths and expertise, identify where your talent gaps lie and hire for those roles. 

If you need to hire, employ generalists. Marketing is a broad, multifaceted area, and you might need someone who can do PPC, SEO, and content at the same time. Instead of hiring three different people with expertise in each field, you can hire jack-of-all-trades. While this may seem like a loss in quality, it’s going to help you long-term. A generalist can set up the framework for company operations and lead the rest of the team when you end up hiring for individual roles. Outsource remaining specialized tasks to a third-party organization or freelancers.

Invest in Your Team 

Some companies, notably big tech companies like Google or Zappos, invest a great deal of money in their employees for good reason: It helps them grow by retaining and attracting top talent. When employees feel valued, they’ll passionately share your vision and dig deep within themselves to help your business thrive. Surround yourself with the best people you can and give them an opportunity to do what they love to do best. 

Talk to employees and find out what resources they need to work better and more efficiently. Invest in the resources that will help them today, and be ready for scaling with operations as your business grows.

Next, you need to train new hires rigorously. Your first new marketing rep should go through the same training process as your fifth or tenth hire. You can of course tweak your approach to onboarding over time, but your new hires should all have the same opportunities to settle into your marketing process. Rushing or cutting corners in your training will only hurt their performance. 

Finding the right scaleurs — a sample interview for your scaleur A-team

When recruiting your A-team, it’s important that each candidate have the right fit for your company. You want to find people who are hungry, eager to learn and adapt, and have the positive energy to go the extra mile. Having a solid résumé is fine, but you really need them to have a growth mindset. 

Here are five of the questions I like to ask:

1. What do you want to achieve in life? Where do you want to stand in five or 10 years? When you retire? This lets you see how ambitious they are. 
2. How would you measure your success?

   This shows you how they value their achievements and failures. 

3. On a scale from 0 to 10, how happy are you, and what would it have been last year?

   I like to be surrounded with optimistic, positive people. It’s OK to feel dissatisfied, but you don’t want to waste your energy on hiring someone who complains too much. Everyone gets stuck in traffic jams, but not everyone honks the horn. 

4. What is the most spontaneous thing you did in the last three years?

   I want to understand how people feel about going outside their comfort zones. 

5. What makes you happy?

   Here, I want to understand their energy drivers. 

Overall, these questions relate to me as a person, and I want to have these kinds of energized people around me. Everyone has to make their own questions for the hiring process, but the Gingerbread Tool will help you understand who you are and which kind of people you need to lift you up — and help your business scale for growth and innovation.

Outsource Strategically 

One way of assembling your A-team might involve hiring a marketing consultant, which could save you lots of time and money. Since these professionals have mastered the skill of engaging audiences, they can help you scale your marketing efforts quickly.

Outside consultants may have the staff and investment in systems that enable them to be much more efficient in handling a particular function than your company. Trying to replicate that function internally may take too much time or money. Instead, find a reliable partner to outsource this aspect too, which should position your business to scale better, faster, and cheaper.

However, don’t go overboard — “too much of a good thing” can be counterproductive. Find the right balance between in-house vs. outsourcing. When you outsource, it is never a bad idea to tell the team why you need outside help and for how long. 

Conclusion

When building your team to be ready for scaling your business, you can’t do it as many businesses do, organically and without real consideration. Instead, you need to assess your current team’s strengths, weaknesses, and capacity, and assess what your needs are and will be at different increments of time. Once you have that clear, you can then invest in your team to ensure they’re trained, supported, and happy. Finally, don’t be afraid to bring in outside experts as needed to keep things moving along! 

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

Every entrepreneur wants more of two things: Time and money. We want time so that we can find some semblance of a work-life balance. To allow us to spend time with family, friends, and on outside interests. All work and no play will drive Jack crazy. And we want more money so we can keep feeding our business. What it needs to grow (ads, marketing operations, rent, contractors, the list is endless). 

Having more time and money would, of course, be great. But they’re both wasted if you don’t make the most of them. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that the time and money you put into your business. Are used carefully, strategically, and with a clear roadmap. This is where the concept of differentiating between freelancer and entrepreneur is so important. The marketing icon Seth Godin has covered this concept at length and it’s worth reading if you haven’t already. Freelancers provide a service to clients and they do it themselves. This, by definition, cannot scale. Entrepreneurs create systems that serve clients. This, by definition, must scale. 

Business Scaling “To scale, build systems, not products.” 

A simple way to look at it is to ask the question: If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, what would happen to your business? If your answer is that it would come to a screeching halt (unlike that bus), then you, my friend, are a freelancer. 

This is not to say freelancing is of lesser value, but if you want your business to truly scale, you need to build a business that can more or less operate autonomously. You need to build systems, not a product. You need to build more than a job for yourself, you need to build a business. 

In fact, many successful entrepreneurs are so busy with daily operations that they don’t have the time or energy left to grow and develop the business. Entrepreneurs launch their own businesses to have freedom, but does that sound free to you? 

This systems and road mapping mindset of the entrepreneur is where we need to start. But it also needs to carry through strategy as the business grows. When you get to the stage of scaling, this mindset will again be the key to scaling successfully and becoming part of the less than 1% of startups that make it to scale. 

Just as there is a crucial difference between freelancing and marketing, there is a parallel difference between growing and scaling. Many entrepreneurs often confuse the two, but it’s important to get it right. 

Growing means a department or entire business adds new resources (capital, people, or technology), and its revenue increases as a result. For instance, a marketing department may gain $50,000 in new revenue, but to do so, they have to hire a new marketing person with a $50,000 salary. The company’s gains and losses are equalized, so although the company is growing — by one new employee and a corresponding uptick in revenue — it really hasn’t gained much value. At least, not at first. 

Scaling, on the other hand, is when revenue increases without a substantial increase in expenditures. Processes can be “scaled” in a cost-effective manner. Scaling is the process of growing exponentially. A marketing department that spends $5,000 on automation tools to allow more-efficient marketing to a wider audience — gaining $50,000 in new revenue as a result — is scaling. The company’s gains outpace its losses, allowing it not only to grow but also to scale. 

So, do you want more time and more money? Do you want your business to grow while you sleep? Well, here’s our unabashed pitch: We can help you do that. Get in touch below!

Become a Successful Scaleur

Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is a dedicated learner and considers real-time business priorities. I hope the article above has helped! Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company that helps entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. We’re experts in growth marketing, product development, and more, creating custom growth plans for startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. 

If you want traffic, leads and sales, get in touch and you’ll start getting results in no time! 

To have a growth mindset means being an entrepreneur who also has the perspicacity, confidence, and dedication to scale their business. The scaleurs think differently about their own business: they don’t merely want to expand by working proportionally harder. Instead, they look for smart processes that allow for a huge bump in productivity and profit with a comparatively smaller uptick in labor and resource expenditures.

We can divide these scaleurs into two groups, the ones with a fixed mindset vs. the growth mindset.

Focusing on the growth mindset entrepreneurs, they see the bigger picture of the journey, are more resilient, and have a better chance for a long-term success. Here are a few ways to emulate this mindset:

1. Give up control and delegate

It’s understandable to maintain a tight grip on everything in the beginning stages. Most of the work is done by you, your co-founder, and maybe another team member. Processes are not documented, so you’re used to overseeing everything closely. But when it’s time to scale, you have to find a way to delegate appropriately. Not leaving the scene but learning to trust and build your people up. Giving them the right tools to execute without you and helping them realize their potential, too. Don’t micromanage. Having a dashboard to follow your KPIs is immensely helpful for this. Dash IQ can help you with this

2. Embrace challenges as growth experiences

The easiest way to do this is to simply ask yourself in the face of difficulty (or as a matter of fact in the face of success too): “What might be the opportunity here?” This will help you approach a given situation from a more open, optimistic perspective and offer you different angles of how to solve the problem.

I often encourage entrepreneurs to ask themselves this simple question: “What’s the worst that can happen?” Often, we subconsciously exaggerate the gravity or risk of a challenge just because it’s new or unfamiliar. When you really think through what might occur, you often discover that the worst plausible outcome is in fact not that bad.

3. See the bigger picture by breaking it up into tactical steps

It is time to build necessary systems and most importantly to work on your strategy. As much as the creative side and the experimental phases are fun, scaling needs more structure. Instead of immediate gains, seek ways to implement tactical steps to follow a long-term strategy. Setting this in place will allow you to free up more time so you can get involved in solving the harder problems.

 4. Take ownership

Take ownership of your attitude and leave your ego behind. Having a growth mindset is about being open to admit you can and will fail. Failing is a part of the learning process and the more you get used to sitting with these experiences and growing from them, the more your identity will develop.

Adopt a perspective of being in a constant state of becoming and evolving. Everything that happens serves as a test to teach you what works and what doesn’t. You must be versatile and embrace change as inevitable and beneficial. You don’t have to be the best in everything, but curiosity and being open to learning new things constantly will help you connect the dots and see the big picture. It is important to understand how things fit together, so you see the opportunities for connections inside and outside of your company.

5. Celebrate the success of others

Noticing and validating the success of other people and validating partnerships and collaborations will shift your mindset to a more positive and abundant perspective. There is enough pie to go around for everyone. Once you understand this and practice it, you can enhance your collaborative relationship with your team while also maintaining space to pursue your own individual goals.

At the end of the day, you need to think big to achieve big results. Scalability has to do a lot with your mindset and building from that place makes a difference.

Become a Successful Scaleur

I hope this blog will prove to be helpful in your endeavor. After all, Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is an ardent learner and considers real-time business priorities.

Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company helping entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. To accomplish this, we help businesses strive and succeed with growth marketing, product development and more. How do we do it? We create custom growth plans to startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. If you want traffic, leads and sales, send an email to Marketing Scaleurs today, and you will start getting results in no time

Just as it takes a certain entrepreneurial way of thinking to embark on the challenge of founding a business, scalability is a mindset, too. You need to think big to become big. Having a scalable business means that you are free to unleash your dreams, make a lot of money, and have fun doing it. Once you get your mind in the game, scalability becomes way easier.

Being a scaleur means being an entrepreneur who also has the perspicacity, confidence, and dedication to scale their business.

In the early stages of an incipient marketing business, most owners are focused on growth—growing your lead base, increasing revenues, and bringing on more employees to perform various functions.

Growth in marketing can take you from one lead to 100, but to get from 100 to 100,000, you’ll need to scale. Growth depends on individual decisions made in the moment, but scaling is built on predictable, repeatable processes designed with efficiency in mind. If you have strong processes, you can hire a new employee, provide instructions on how to perform a task, and get consistent results within days instead of months.

The scaleurs think differently about their own business: they don’t merely want to expand by working proportionally harder. Instead, they look for smart processes that allow for a huge bump in productivity and profit with a comparatively smaller uptick in labor and resource expenditures.

We can divide these scaleurs into two groups, the ones with a fixed mindset vs. the growth mindset.

FIXED MINDSET

“Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you only have a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look deficient in these most basic characteristics.”[1]

This group has a defined identity and often uses labels and affirmations. They see situations and qualities as unchangeable and their skills and capabilities as fixed. The strengths and behaviors that allowed them to successfully navigate the early stages of their business won’t be sufficient for scaling or could even work against them in the process.

As much as fixed mindset thinkers would have you believe that people are born with an innate ability for certain skills and that’s it, you can build your skills and abilities extensively. You just have to dedicate yourself to the process.

GROWTH MINDSET SCALEURS

In this mindset, you possess an inborn set of talents, abilities, and interests, but you have the capacity to cultivate and expand them. Everyone is capable of changing, growing, and learning through sustained effort.

This group is constantly evolving. They never view themselves or their businesses as static, finished, complete. Instead, they’re constantly on the lookout for ways to serve a larger market and innovating and adding to their products or services. Entrepreneurs with a growth mindset seek ways to add to their skillset by not being afraid of confronting a challenging situation.

Data and feedback, negative or positive, is welcomed and only reinforces their intellectual and professional curiosity. That way of thinking enables continuous innovation and improvement. Change delivers more chances to evolve. Growth mindset entrepreneurs see the bigger picture of the journey, are more resilient, and have a better chance for a long-term success. Read more how to emulate this mindset.

At the end of the day, you need to think big to achieve big results. Scalability has to do a lot with your mindset and building from that place makes a difference.

The key to scaling yourself is to understand yourself first. Not just your skills but also your energy! Energy management is the hidden key to getting more done. Energy management is the combination of physical, emotional (how you are feeling at a given moment), and mental energy. What drives you, how do you recharge, what are your ambitions, what do you take from your past, what is going on in your brain, and so on. Get a grip of who you are, what you want to achieve in life, and understand where your energy is coming from. The Gingerbread Tool is a great tool to find your seven main attention points in life. Read it here. 

Become a Successful Scaleur

I hope this blog will prove to be helpful in your endeavor. After all, Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is an ardent learner and considers real-time business priorities.

Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company helping entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. To accomplish this, we help businesses strive and succeed with growth marketing, product development and more. How do we do it? We create custom growth plans to startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. If you want traffic, leads and sales, send an email to Marketing Scaleurs today, and you will start getting results in no time

Many CMOs embrace the idea of scaling their marketing business but overlook something equally important: scale yourself first to strengthen your growth mindset.

If you’re an ambitious person, you’ll inevitably hit a wall. It sounds pessimistic, but it’s actually a sign you’re doing something right. At points throughout your career, you’re guaranteed to feel overwhelmed, burned out, uncertain, and defeated. You’re likely the kind of person who takes on as much as you can in any given role, so it’s not surprising people keep giving you new things to do, new problems to solve. Whether you get to move up, however, depends on what you do next. Time to scale yourself.

The key to scaling yourself is to understand yourself first. Not just your skills but also your energy! Energy management is the hidden key to getting more done. Energy management is the combination of physical, emotional (how you are feeling at a given moment), and mental energy. What drives you, how do you recharge, what are your ambitions, what do you take from your past, what is going on in your brain, and so on. Get a grip of who you are, what you want to achieve in life, and understand where your energy is coming from.

The Gingerbread Tool is a great tool I learned doing my Master’s in management at Vlerick. It will help you find your seven main attention points in life. Some guidance:

• Only drawing is allowed (no words can be written)
• Set your alarm for 5 minutes (as you have 5 minutes to accomplish it, so you don’t overthink)
• Draw the first thing that comes up your mind
• Don’t forget, have fun

Now its’s your turn.

1. Brain -> whats the one thing that pops in your head: eg work – family – getting that promotion – ..
2. Past -> whats the one thing you take with you from the past -eg prize – recognition – a memory of a loved one
3. Happiness: whats the main thing that puts a smile on you? Being surrounded by people, having a drink, working, looking after my kids
4. Hobby
5. Future – where do you see yourself when being retired? Eg a second house – living abroad. – being a teacher – good charity
6. Love Whats the main thing you love the most: your family – being happy – progress
7. Work : whats the main thing you want to achieve? Eg 9 to 5 is fine – new promotion – being an entrepreneur –becoming a scaleur

Done with the test? It is extremely helpful to know about oneself to scale as a leader. Understanding this will help you find greater motivation where you’re already primed to look for it. It also helps to understand those around you. It will allow you to be extremely effective and persuasive in conversations with others when you know which way they’re oriented.

If done right, this role will positively impact your entire (marketing) company. It’s really not just about you. When you’re running a business, it’s easy to forget how many people are counting on you to do your job well and on time. There’s no greater frustration for a motivated team then to be blocked by their CMO. If you scale yourself first, you will get more done than you thought was possible. Then it’s time to scale your marketing business.

Now you can scale your team!

Become a Successful Scaleur

I hope this blog will prove to be helpful in your endeavor. After all, Scaling is a strategy that can only be mastered by a scaleur who is an ardent learner and considers real-time business priorities.

Marketing Scaleurs is a scaling company helping entrepreneurs scale their marketing efforts. To accomplish this, we help businesses strive and succeed with growth marketing, product development and more. How do we do it? We create custom growth plans to startups, entrepreneurs and scaleurs in order to help them gain traffic, generate leads and increase their revenue. If you want traffic, leads and sales, send an email to Marketing Scaleurs today, and you will start getting results in no time