Fast-Track Trust: How to Win Customers Quickly
Trust is the cornerstone of customer relationships, driving sales and fostering loyalty. Yet, building that trust swiftly, especially in a competitive landscape filled with countless options for consumers, can be hard. Establishing credibility and rapport takes time and effort. (It’s the one thing you can’t buy at Costco.) But strategic actions can accelerate trust building. By focusing on transparency, communication, and consistently exceeding expectations, you can cultivate trust quickly and effectively.
Christina Metcalf
Feeling Stuck? Try These Content Ideas for Small Businesses.
Content helps you connect, right? It gives insights into your business, your personality, and your culture. But boy, can it be draining. And as awesome as AI is there are only so many times you can ask it for blog ideas for the exact same audience before it starts to sound the same. So where do you get new content ideas and inspiration to attract and retain customers? And how do you keep your content fresh and relevant? Let’s dig into some sources and strategies to generate, curate, and hybridize content
Christina Metcalf
Digital Etiquette Tips
Internetting ain’t easy. There are all sorts of digital quagmires we get ourselves into putting words onto a screen and hitting send or post. It’s a tricky time navigating communication across the digital world. Since Emily Post is busy sorting out which fork goes where, it’s time we turn to her predecessor “Emily Posted,” your digital etiquette guru. Here are her top suggestions for better relationships in the virtual world.
Christina Metcalf
15+ Creative Partnership Ideas to Boost Customer Engagement and Sales
In my town, businesses of all types and industries are getting into the event business. They’re offering how-to demos, social gatherings, night outs, and a lot more. Best of all, they’re collaborating with some unlikely partners.
Christina Metcalf
The Time-Crunched Business Owner's Guide to Maximizing Your Chamber Membership ROI
Hey there, busy members! We see you. You're juggling inventory, payroll, marketing... the list never ends. And we keep sending emails about events you don’t have time to attend, right? While these events can be incredible opportunities to learn and grow professionally, we understand that “getting together” isn’t in everybody’s calendar. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get solid return on investment when it comes to your chamber membership. Even if you're busier than an internet troll during election
Christina Metcalf
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Create a Loyal Following with a Facebook Group for Your Business
Beginning marketers often think a Facebook group is an ideal way to bring their target market together. And while we’re not discounting the truth behind that, most novice businesses make a critical mistake when creating a Facebook group for the first time.
Christina Metcalf
Are You Worried About Inflation?
For the past two years or so, it feels as if economists have been avoiding the words recession and inflation. No one wants to hear those terms. They’ve been pointing to economic equations and data to show we’re not “technically” in a recession because unemployment is low or the inflation rate is lower than it was this time last year.
Christina Metcalf
15+ Questions to Identify Your Ideal Client
If you are in a client services business (especially one where your clients might return over and over), one of the best things you can do to set yourself up for success is to understand who you want to work with and who aligns with your skills and talent. If you’re just starting off, or you’ve fallen on hard times, it’s tempting to work with anyone and everyone. But you’ll end up sabotaging yourself in the long run when you chose to work with the “wrong” clients. After all, there are limited hours in
Christina Metcalf
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Sizzling Summer Strategies to Boost Sales
Whew! Can you feel it? The unofficial start of summer is here. Summer is a season of change for many small businesses. School's out, vacations are in, and customer behavior shifts as people embrace the warmer weather and longer days. For some businesses, it’s a time of enormous revenue; for others, it can herald a long dry spell. But with a bit of planning and creativity, summer can also be a season of growth and opportunity no matter what type of business you are in (except maybe snow plowing). Here are
Christina Metcalf
Are You Selling What Your Customers Need?
Years ago, I worked with a client who used a term I had never heard before. She wasn’t selling to NASA or some market ladened in acronyms. It was a common audience, albeit somewhat younger than me. But when she insisted she was the leader of this term, setting the pace for this term, I had to ask her what it was. She gave me a very simple explanation. So I, in turn, asked her a simple question—“Is that what your audience calls it?” Not yet, she answered. I understood what she was doing—she was trying to
Christina Metcalf
