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Subscription businesses have made an impact on nearly every industry, from music to beauty supplies. And now, the idea is coming to payment processing, thanks to Fattmerchant.
You can read more about the business and its unique way of serving merchants in this week's Small Business Spotlight.
Affordable rates for quality service.
To overhaul the payment processing business.
Madhani admired companies like Netflix and Birchbox and wanted to bring the monthly subscription-based model to payment processing. However, when she brought the idea to the bosses at her last job, they laughed at the idea. So she left to start Fattmerchant on her own.
Being featured in a major article.
Investing in the platform early on.
Investing in a referral program.
Knowing that your decision-making processes align with those of Zappos and Alphabet is flattering. Realizing you share the same management style as al-Qaida? That's disconcerting — until you learn that American military forces in Iraq did, too.
As General Stanley McChrystal revealed in "Team of Teams," a book I discovered through an HR trends report, al-Qaida proved to be tougher to defeat than suspected. Like swarms of bees, its teams completed missions, dissolved and then reformed again. Although they had fewer resources, they upped their efficiency by bucking the traditional chain-of-command model. So McChrystal did likewise, ultimately batting back al-Qaida in the region.
Before I read "Team of Teams," I'd created a similar system among my staff. Although we've never faced a life-or-death struggle, our small team must do more with less to stay atop changing regulations across the country and globe.
To create additional capacity, I scrapped our hierarchical structure in favor of a network of teams, just like McChrystal's troops in Iraq. This structural shift has turned us into an organization capable of outmaneuvering larger competitors through sheer efficiency and a shared consciousness.
Before we became a "team of teams," important issues regularly stopped at my desk, bottlenecking progress. I realized the process was unsustainable, so I empowered my team to make and implement decisions without me. On their own, members of my team began meeting in groups to address problems, later notifying me of results.
Like Innovative Employee Solutions, most small and mid-sized businesses have more challenges than they have time or teams to face. But few of them have plans in place to pick up the pace. According to CA Technologies, just 12 percent of businesses have implemented agility improvement initiatives. With cross-functional teams, SMB leaders can boost productivity and increase collaboration.
Following McChrystal's advice has another key benefit: new opportunities for employee growth. Seventy percent of surveyed workers are dissatisfied with their company's career development efforts, citing it as the top reason to resign. But in teams — which can be created without massive funds for education and training — individuals who aren't official managers or supervisors can practice leadership skills including delegation, negotiation, and influencing others.
If McChrystal's approach resonates with you, take these four steps toward a nimbler, more team-driven workplace.
1. Identify existing cross-functional teams.
You might already have some cross-functional teams addressing strategic initiatives. We have a data breach team, for example, that reviews our plan for such incidents annually, conducts drills, and meets to discuss suspected breaches, which can happen to small companies if they can happen to sophisticated corporations such as Equifax and Target.
With this small but mighty team, we learned how greatly a "team of teams" approach can extend our abilities. Put your own existing cross-functional teams under the microscope to gather data and determine which company problems additional teams could tackle.
2. Learn about the culture and operations of current teams.
After identifying internal teams, dig into their operations. When and why were they formed? How often do they meet? How do they make decisions? What is their reporting process? How do they resolve challenges? The insights you gather will help you set up future teams for success.
At Zappos, CEO Tony Hsieh announced a move to what he termed "holacracy" – a "team of teams" management style – via email and without previous discussion. Unfortunately, the abrupt change frustrated Zappos employees, many of whom left the organization. Jumping blindly into a new management structure is a recipe for chaos, not collaboration.
3. Secure buy-in and solicit volunteers.
Before switching to a "team of teams" management style, secure buy-in from leadership and everyday employees. Provide an overview of the new mission, and allow employees to volunteer to join teams. For such a radical change to succeed, the whole company must be on board.
We prepared to introduce the shift by first presenting a business case to leadership. We used teams already in place as case studies and created a name and logo for the initiative. Afterward, we unveiled the "team of teams" approach at an all-staff meeting.
4. Seek feedback and monitor performance.
The only path to improvement is through regular feedback. Take complaints seriously but in stride. Openly speak with teams about their accomplishments and sticking points. Track productivity metrics, like "jobs completed," and relay them to the leadership team.
Tracking progress toward goals makes them more likely to come to fruition, according to a long-term analysis by the American Psychological Association. The analysis discovered that people who monitored progress toward a personal objective increased their likelihood of attaining that objective.
You needn't adopt a military mindset to realize the benefits of a "team of teams" approach. In fact, your teams might already be in place; you simply need to acknowledge and empower them. Take a page from McChrystal, and you'll discover just how much ground your small team can cover.
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Let's start this off on the right foot — your website is really important.
Once a customer chooses you over your competition in search, it's extremely important that your website provide all the information and deep facts about your business in a way that's easy to navigate. No argument.
However, if you aren't in control of your digital knowledge — all the facts about your brand (like name, address, phone number, hours of operation, products and services) that live online for customers to search — then your website needs to take a back seat for a moment.
Consumers are on average 3x more likely to make a decision about your business on sites like Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, Apple Maps, and hundreds of other sites — without ever clicking over to your site. More on that here.
Once you've got all those important facts about your brand (i.e. your digital knowledge) under control, then we can talk about what you need to do to ensure your website offers a positive customer service experience — before customers even walk through your door.
The following is broken down into a few sections: Table Stakes, Mastery, and Super Juice. You can think of these website building basics as good, better, best — or as novice, intermediate, and expert. If you want to crush your competition, set your goals at Super Juice.
These are the basics. Don't even consider building a website or hiring an agency without these website building basics in place. A lot of them may seem obvious, but it's important to have a sturdy foundation.
There are some universal categories of information that are going to be relevant to all your customers. These are the backbone of your digital knowledge. Where are you located? When are you open? How should customers get there? What do you offer? It's important that these pieces of information be prominent and easy to find on your website.
You probably know what you want a customer to do when they come to your site. But do you know what they want to know first, before they take that action? Think about the customer path. Just because they came to your site, does not mean they are ready to transact with your business or even give you their email address. Make sure the information they want most is the easiest for them to find. For example, if you're a restaurant, hours and menu are super important. Put them at the top.
Don't make people guess. Are you a CPA, a clothing store, or a dry cleaner? Put that at the top of your site and make it easy to find. Include with that a description of what makes you different.
If you're a CPA who focuses on small construction, include that. Does your clothing store only sell imported New Zealand wool sweaters? People want to know. My dry cleaner is organic and offers pick up / delivery. It's right at the top of their site. Be like them.
Please hire a photographer. 93% of all human communication is visual. Showing a great picture of you, your services, or your products is going to do way more for your business than text, or worse, a terrible photo. Make them big and easy to see on your site and include a brief description.
I'm not about to book a party with you for my kid's birthday if I can see that what you offer looks unpleasant. If there is cake on the floor, kids crying, and the room looks dark, I'll go on about my googling. You would too!
Make sure you have a good web hosting service. There are a number of well-known providers who can guarantee you great service.[Curious – do we have any relationships with GoDaddy or is this an unbiased opinion?] The last thing you want is for people to click to your site and then not be able to see anything because it doesn't load, or worse, loads slowly.
Take your website to the next level. The following are items that you can include on your website that will optimize your business's online experience — putting you beyond your competition and helping to build a better customer-oriented experience.
Search engines are looking for fresh content. What does that mean? The more frequently you update your website, the more relevancy the search engines will award to you. Since most business details don't change that often, the best way to do this is a blog. By creating new content to share on your website, you'll also become more relevant to your customers.
How often should you blog? Once a month is good enough to appease the search engines. But is twice a month better? Yes, so is once a week, once a day, etc, etc.
What are the steps that a typical consumer goes through before they conduct business with you? How do they go from first searching for your business to actually spending money? That's the customer journey. It doesn't matter if it's a new customer or a returning one — everyone has a path. You can make it that much easier by building a clearly defined path for them — by telling them what you want them to do.
As an example, if you are a lawyer and you know that your highest rate of conversion is after they've had a free consultation, put a big "free consultation" button right at the top of your website.
Look, if Google tells you it's good for SEO and then builds you a tool to use it, that's what they call a "signal." If you were bringing a large tanker ship into harbor late at night you would rely on a lighthouse to bring you in. Well, think of this the same way. These tools will help you understand how Google (and other search engines) see your site and give you the tools to index your site for search. Plus, it gives you some great insights about the activity on your site.
With Google Webmaster tools, you'll automatically be informed when you update your site, find out how people are reaching your website, and learn which internal and external links generate the most traffic for your business.
There are two types of reviews. A review that lives on a site that the business does not own or control, like Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, etc., is a third-party review. Typically these sites allow business owners to claim their listing and manage replies and contact with customers. According to research by Convince and Convert, 80% of Americans trust at least some ratings and reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family members.
The second type of review is first-party reviews. They are reviews that a business asks customers for directly, and which live on a business's own website. Yes, you read that correctly, you can collect your own reviews and add those reviews to your website.
The best part? Google will add these star ratings from your first-party reviews underneath your business name in organic search results. Businesses with star ratings in organic search get 153% more clicks than those without.
In 2011, Google, Bing, and Yahoo got together and created a standard vocabulary that webmasters can use to give signals back to the engines to let them know what kind of content is on a web page. That standardized code is known as Schema.org (or just Schema). Using this language on your website lets the search engines know what kind of business you are and can also tell them what kind of content is on that page.
If you use them, you are basically laying out a welcome mat, opening your door and offering a lovely afternoon tea and snacks to the search engines. They will be happy to stop by and tell others just how nice and easy you made their visit. The truth is, they don't care how nice your proverbial house is or how good the tea is — they just want to know that it's a tea parlor, offering afternoon tea, and that it's wheelchair accessible.
That's a really simple explanation of a really complex solution, because c'mon, who has time to learn the ins and outs of Schema code?! Thankfully, there are a number of different ways you can do this with your site. The easiest (and best in my opinion) is by using Yext Knowledge Tags. Once you have access to them, you just put a simple code into your website, update the Tags, and that's it. Let the good tea times roll.
Want to convince prospective customers to choose you? Testimonials have tons of power. Customers who have had an outstanding experience, seen amazing results, or just really love your business will be more than happy to give you a testimonial.
While testimonials won't put star ratings beneath your business name in search results (that's what first-party reviews are for), you can control how testimonials live, look, and deliver on your site. Give potential customers the social proof they need to know that you are the right business for them in that moment.
If you incorporate the above website building basics into your website, it's likely you'll be crushing your competition in terms of traffic and customer service. Good luck!
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Why Are Microsoft's Business Product Names So Confusing?
As far as I know I've never done anything to anger the Microsoft corporation, but it seems to insist on punishing me. It punishes all of us, really, with its skillfully obtuse and, what I can only assume are, intentionally confusing product names.
Sometimes I imagine the lady or gent who is currently locked away on a Microsoft campus, slurping down a coffee drink while devising another sinister way to combine the words Microsoft, Office, 365, Business and Premium. Who are these unsung copywriting anti-heroes, and where did they come from?
It seems like it would be easier for Microsoft to consolidate some of their packages into a centralized, tiered system (or even offer a la carte features), so business shoppers could clearly see what each package includes rather than cull facts from different pages and figure it out themselves, but then, perhaps, I'd be out of a job. After all, if business people who don't spend all their time reading spec sheets and testing products could easily discern between Microsoft 365 Business, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business Premium, I might have to learn a trade, or worse, start selling terrible crafts on Etsy and then guilting family members into purchasing them.
On a serious note, though, Microsoft isn't doing itself or is clients any favors by piecemealing together multiple product bundles and then pushing them out at different times. In fact, Microsoft can't even keep up with their own product lines. I have, multiple times, heard Microsoft reps get tongue-tied over the different product names, pause and then correct themselves. There are so many similar packages and products that this even happens on the Microsoft site.
I knew this statement couldn't be right because I'd heard about Microsoft Invoicing at an event for Microsoft 365 Business, and, sure enough, when I continued searching, I eventually found a side-by-side comparison of the two products (Office 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Business), which confirmed that Invoicing comes with both. What's even more puzzling about all this is that Microsoft doesn't make the same mistakes with consumer products. The three consumer versions of Office 365 are Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Student. It's easy to discern from these names that Home is for families/households, Personal is for individuals, and Student is, well, for students.
So, what is it that makes the business product names so annoying to navigate and so difficult to remember?
As you can probably tell, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the root of this naming problem (I'm really fun at parties), and I've concluded that there are two main culprits. The first is that Microsoft creates dozens and dozens of products that do very similar things (I'm looking at you SharePoint, OneDrive and Near Share), and then call them different things and group them into different sets, rather than integrate them into existing products as new features. The second problem is the approach to differentiating names.
Despite this fact, when I read "Office 365," my brain automatically thinks "Microsoft Office 365," and when I read "Microsoft 365," I instantly add an "Office" in the middle. Now, when I see a lone "365," I think "Microsoft Office 365." The irony is, of course, that there isn't even a product called Office 365; that's just the family of products under which there are business and non-business solutions (with six subscription options, each with its own name that also incorporates the term "Office 365").
Basically, what is happening with Microsoft's product names is a perfect microcosm of what will occur when we're on the third generation of married couples who decide to hyphenate. I fear that at some point there will be a New York Times marriage announcement that reads: Mr. Davis-Xian-Ellis and Ms. Hopper-Gordon-Marquez will marry this June. The Davis-Xian-Ellis-Hopper-Gordon-Marquez family will continue living on the Upper West Side where Mr. Davis-Xian-Ellis works in sales for Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium Online with Teams and Ms. Hopper-Gordon-Marquez works as a developer for the Premium Business 365 Online Office Business Center division of Microsoft.
It's going to be chaos.
Why Are Microsoft's Business Product Names So Confusing?
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These days, just about anyone can create and send out email campaigns to their list of prospects. But just because it's nearly push-button simple to do, doesn't mean it always gets the results you want.
And if your beautifully-designed, precisely-formatted and succinctly-written email went over like a lead balloon, it doesn't mean the end of the world. It just means that you should take a step back and consider making some changes to your approach.
The thing is, you know your email marketing isn't working as well as it could. The results you're getting are tepid at best and engagement levels are plateauing, or worse, falling. You're just not sure what to do to fix it.
The good news is, you're about to learn. And even better, it's easy to implement these changes and start seeing a measurable increase in all the email engagement metrics that matter — opens, clicks and conversions.
Much like a doctor diagnoses your symptoms to determine the best course of action to make you better, you've got a sick email campaign (and I don't mean that in a good way!) and you've got to find a remedy.
One of the key signs of a floundering email campaign is that the list just isn't growing. People may subscribe, but they also leave just as quickly — if they even subscribe at all. The rate of growth for your list has slowed, plateaued, or worse, reversed.
Take a look at what you're offering your prospects in order to get them to join your list in the first place. Oftentimes this is an eBook or a video. But how old is it? Is the information you're sharing outdated or no longer applicable?
Try creating a new offer — a new ebook, a new video, or something completely different. Things like templates that your prospects can just "fill in the blanks" with or roadmaps that outline different strategies in a step-by-step way are always popular no matter what industry you're in.
Maybe you've got a sizeable email list, but the open rate barely registers as a blip on the email marketing radar. And the click-through rate is even more abysmal.
If you only send emails out when you want to sell something, and you don't take the time to get to know your prospects and their goals as they relate to what you're selling, no matter how great your sale is, it will find itself squarely in the recipient's trashcan.
The best email newsletters don't just sell — they go much further. They share stories of the people behind the company. They ask subscribers to share their own stories. They go behind the scenes and share insights about their product — where it comes from, who makes it, why people love it.
And they don't do this once or twice, but consistently. They establish rapport with their subscribers so that the subscribers actively look forward to receiving the company's messages.
One of the easiest ways to start building an email strategy like this is through the use of an email marketing calendar. Just as you schedule out sales emails now, look for ways to fit in emails about other things your customers value.
Are there any new laws that are going to change your industry? Any big developments on the horizon that customers should know about? Any interesting stories about where their product comes from or how it got started? Schedule these into the calendar as well. It's a different type of marketing — one that fosters open communication and mutual respect between subscriber and sender.
If you're sending out the same message to everyone, don't be surprised if your open and click-through rates are low. This happens because not everyone is at the same stage in the customer journey or the sales cycle.
Some users are simply looking for more information, while others are ready to buy. Still others may be somewhere in between. By sending the same message to all of them, you're mistakenly assuming that they're all starting at the same place. As a result, readers will find that your sales announcement or any other message you send them isn't really tailored to their needs — and that your product may not be, either.
Most modern email marketing platforms allow you to segment your list, and it doesn't cost you anything except a little time to make it happen. The great thing about segmentation is that you can segment by nearly any criteria. Want to segment your users by demographic? By product purchased? By whether or not they even bought in the first place? Provided you have that information, you can do that.
And if you're looking to convert people from prospect to customer, you can put together a drip campaign that overtime builds prospects interest to eventually getting them to convert.
And if you don't have that information, it may be time to upgrade to a platform that collects it for you, like Kissmetrics.
If you haven't segmented your list yet, but you've just sent out a campaign and are seeing a surprisingly high response — that's great!
Was it the subject line? The design? The offer?
Wouldn't it be great if you could find out? You can.
Just like with ab/b testing your landing pages and other areas of your site, so too should you be a/b testing your emails. This works even better when paired with list segmentation since you can determine what, precisely, encouraged customers to click or convert.
What resonates with one group of people (for example, customers just looking for information) may not necessarily "click" with people who are ready to buy. By segmenting and a/b testing your emails, you'll see exactly what energizes each segment of your list and propels them to convert.
It could be that your open rate or click-through rate is good, but you're not getting that all-important conversion. People just aren't buying. And while the reason could lie in your site itself — that's a topic for another post.
For the purpose of this article, we'll assume that your site is also converting at a steady clip, but conversions from emails directly aren't getting the results you'd hoped for.
Most prospects come to a site, look around, and leave. You've worked hard and spent money getting them this far. Are you just going to let them go so easily?
No! Which is why it's a good idea to get started with retargeting campaigns. Retargeting can show your customer a relevant ad for your site across a wide range of other web properties — even those you don't own. What if they could be reminded of a product they looked at yesterday while browsing the morning's news or weather?
This is just one example of what a retargeting campaign can do. Done correctly, it serves to not only remind customers of your product or service, but also capture their attention again — essentially giving you a second chance to make that connection.
As you can see, an email marketing makeover doesn't mean slapping up a fresh coat of paint on your existing email design. It means digging below the surface to find out why users aren't acting when they receive your message.
You want every email you send to be something a user looks forward to receiving – and when that happens, you'll discover that it wasn't so much a makeover, but a rebirth — of email that's more relevant, more social, and more compelling than before.
Google offers businesses the opportunity to advertise on their search pages. This is Google's exclusive advertising platform where advertisers bid on specific keywords in order for their ads to appear in the search results when people type them in.
Since advertisers pay for these clicks, Google makes money from these campaigns – known as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Depending on the relevancy of the keywords to conversions for your business (and the competitiveness of the keywords), this type of campaign may need to be tweaked to suit your specific needs, ensuring that you don't spend money on the wrong content and keywords.
Once the user clicks on your ad, you will need to pay a specific cost based on Google's cost per click for that particular ad.
Once you're able to keep track of customer demand, you'll be in a better position to deliver a successful Google ad campaign.
What is the outcome you're looking to achieve from your ad campaign?
You must always be aware of the specific call to action you are trying to get your targets to perform so that you can create a clear ad campaign that directly reflects your goals. Never go live with any campaign until you've identified your goals clearly and know what you need to measure results.
It can reduce the time customers spend on price comparisons, especially if you're offering something unique.
The best way to create a strong USP is to understand your customers more intimately, so you solve problems and give them what want. When you pay attention to their shopping behavior and patterns, you're in a better position to create something that adds value to their needs.
Once you're able to optimize your Google AdWords campaign, you'll start to see greater traction for your desired call to action – which, in turn, is beneficial for your business in the long haul.
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Jamie Foxx Perfected His Jay-Z Impersonation!!!
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