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Rocket Fuel Your Business with Employee Retention Credit

According to JP Morgan-Chase the #1 challenge facing small to medium size businesses is a shortage of cash on hand. The average small business in the U.S. usually only has enough cash on hand to see it through 27 days of operation. Having access to borrowed capital and streamlining operations are both ways to deal with this challenge. Post pandemic the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) is an often overlooked solution. (ERC) will get working capital back in your pocket and the best part is that it is NOT a loan. This is your cash to spend how you please.

The Employee Retention Credit, which was enacted as a part of the CARES Act in March 2020, was created to keep small businesses operational and staff on the payroll as businesses navigated pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions. Businesses that kept W2 employees on their payroll during the pandemic can claim a credit on their qualified wages.

Under the CARES Act legislation, eligible employers can claim a refundable tax credit that is equal to 70% of the qualified wages they pay employees. ERC credit maxes out at $7,000 per employee per calendar quarter, for a total of $28,000 per employee in 2021 alone. Most businesses qualify in spite of taking on PPP loans and the average return is around 380k.

The easiest way to get ERC credit is to utilize a company like ERCbee™. ERCbee™ is the ERC filing expert. They are the best bet for maximizing your return and ensuring compliance in all filed documents. The Employee Retention Credit was designed to be a short-term fix to help business owners through the pandemic. The credit has already been extended twice since it was initially enacted. There is still time to act and and that time is now.

Using Tags to Personalize Lead Generation

To personalize lead generation via automation is one of the most important growth strategies any business can use. Any time that you can automate a process like that, you’re able to save both time and money. You can grow your business and expand your customer base by doing more with less! It frees up your best employees to do more of the work that machines can’t.

Why You Need to Personalize Lead Generation

Long gone are the days where a business could expect to grow by cold-calling a list of random people. Customers have much higher expectations for their service providers now.

They are rather picky, in fact. We’re living in an age of online reviews for everything and computers in every pocket. It’s easy for customers to do their homework and figure out whether a purchase is in their interests or not.

It’s important to personalize your lead generation so that you can get ahead of that game. Not that you want to sell customers anything they won’t find useful. In the long run, that’s a way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Personalizing lead generation means not wasting time. You don’t need to appeal to those who won’t ever enjoy your product or service. It’s about finding the people who are or could be most interested in what you’re selling.

How You Can Personalize With Tags

The process of personalization depends a great deal on the benefits of automation. Some initial setup is always necessary. Once the process is ready to run, though, it will save thousands of hours of work.

One of the ways such a system can work is by using tags within your CRM software. These tags record data gathered from users as they interact with your online content.

As a user goes from casual visitor to browsing more content, the software notices.

Some visitors may go as far as indicating an interest in buying, but end up abandoning their cart. Others do go on to buy, and may even come back for more.

Your CRM will take note of these differences. It assigns a tag to that prospect’s file based on them. That allows you to create campaigns to market in an appropriate way for each type of visitor.

This is instead of having to figure out what emails to send to which customers. It avoids the worse problem of sending out a blanket message regardless of interests. You can reach out to each prospect on a personal level.

Boom Demand Lead Generation Solutions

It’s one thing to have a strategy in place to personalize lead generation. It’s another thing to actually do it. The process we’ve described here seems simple, but setting it all up can get technical.

Relying on sales enablement solutions like ours can be a lifesaver. Our experience makes it easy for us to set up personalized campaigns. That’s how we drive business growth in a smart way.

Shifting to Digital Marketing Lead Generation

Something big has happened in the world of marketing in 2019. For the first time, spending on digital marketing is now greater than it is for traditional media. That means that all forms of digital marketing lead generation are the new focus of spending. Print ads, TV, billboards, and radio commercials no longer dominate the marketing industry in any meaningful way. It’s like how newspapers appear to be succumbing to digital publication. It seems that digital marketing is taking over everywhere.

The Rise of the Machines

On the one hand, none of us should be surprised about this development. The internet and other digital channels offer greater possibilities for efficiency in marketing.

Why spend millions of dollars on a TV commercial? Sure, it’ll be seen by millions of people. But only a tiny fraction of them will end up buying anything because of it.

In the past, that might have been an effective ad spend.

Now, though, online advertisements cost a tiny fraction to produce compared to a TV spot. They can be designed to display only when somebody searches for specific terms relevant to the ad and the company producing it.

This efficiency and specificity are what’s making digital marketing lead generation so powerful. While there may still be a place for some forms of traditional advertising, we can expect this trend to continue into the future.

Digital Marketing Lead Generation Strategies for Every Business

Even taking into account these marketing trends, it’s not enough to place all your bets on one type of digital marketing. Every business is different. Different marketing platforms will work better for one type of business than another.

Say your company focuses on selling physical products via Amazon. It’s clear that Amazon’s ad platform is where you should direct the majority of your ad budget. In most other cases, Google’s AdSense service yields the best results. Having a presence on Facebook can provide great support. Other platforms exist too, but these are the biggest players.

Text advertising is the simplest to produce. It’s the most likely to engage customers for any purpose. Customers don’t like video ads as much, but that doesn’t mean you should write off video completely.

It’s also important for your company to determine what types of content will work best for your brand.

Content Considerations

Almost every company needs to be generating some type of searchable written content. It helps customers find your products when they’re looking for information using keywords. Both long- and short-form content are useful.

We mentioned that customers don’t engage as much with video ads. Many customers do find video content much more helpful than text, though. It’s gotten easier to create and publish video content. At the same time, it’s gotten easier for customers to access it with mobile devices.

Whatever your brand’s values, you should consider producing video content for your customers. It can deliver thousands of times more information than written content. Your customers are also more likely to remember the important aspects, too.

It may seem like we’ve gone full circle. Video is good, but creating a television ad is almost pointless these days. The difference is that online content is easier to target towards the customers it’s most likely to help.

Boom Demand helps companies implement customer outreach efforts. Our human action-based digital marketing lead generation solutions make it easy for companies to grow in the digital landscape. Make sure to reach out to us today for consultation on how to take the next steps after integrating your content and advertising!

Personalized Lead Generation Benefits

Marketers the world over know how much their customers hate an irrelevant bombardment. Some still do it anyway because it’s what they’re best at doing, so the highways are still lined with billboards. There does exist a better way, now, though, thanks to the evolving technology of the internet. Personalized lead generation is more real and more effective now than ever before. Companies can and should target their customers on an individual level.

Why The Need for Personalized Lead Generation?

Nearly two-thirds of consumers express dissatisfaction with traditional marketing methods. They don’t like getting repetitive and generic messages blasted at them. They especially dislike it when they have nothing to do with their needs or interests.

On the flip side, customers do express significant receptiveness personalization in marketing efforts. In a survey by Epsilon, four out of five working-age consumers indicated that they would be more likely to do business with a brand that offers it. 90% said that they found personalization appealing in general.

So this idea of personalized lead generation is more than a new strategy that works. it’s something that people actually want. It’s a valuable part of the experience that you can provide with your product.

The Basic Tools Marketers Need

The reason that personalized lead generation and marketing weren’t used in the past is because it was simply impossible. There was no way for a billboard marketer or a TV spot producer to appeal to the individual interests of every single person who might be exposed to the ad.

The internet changed the universe for marketing. The internet itself caters to the individual. People visit the websites they want to visit. Often, they get there by searching for specific terms related to a problem they have.

They don’t have to wait for a company to assault them with intrusive advertising. Those old messages may not have anything to do with what they need, so they can go straight to the source, instead.

Companies can function well in this environment. But just as the internet provided new opportunities, it also requires that you use new tools. Analytics and data management platforms are indispensable. Social media tools also provide powerful information. To tie it all together, you need solid customer relationship management software, or a CRM.

Of course, learning how to use all these tools comes on a bit of a curve. If you’re just getting into business, or you’re expanding, the extra time that it requires to master may be more than you have.

That’s the benefit of using a powerful sales enablement service like Boom Demand. We can help you put a comprehensive personalized lead generation strategy in place and act on it, too. Get the customers you need by serving them with what they want, all the time! Be sure to contact us today for a free consultation! We’ll discuss how we can serve you and get you started as fast as possible!

3 Common Identity Mistakes

Be Somewhere

There may be no more important and yet more easy to forget principle than this. Your customers need to know that you’re real. Even if your business is operating out of your suburban garage, customers want to be sure that you are exactly what you say you are.

A P.O. Box and an 800 number could be anything, and these days, they smell like a scam. Toll-free numbers are no longer status symbols. In fact, they seem downright inauthentic. On your website, provide the physical address where you do your work, and a local phone number. Lastly be sure to setup a free Google My Business account. Yes we live in a world of remote workers but the business itself should have some stake in the ground somewhere.

Don’t link to Social

It looks cool to have a bunch of social network links on your page, especially if they are new and rising channels. What do consumers think, though, when they click through to your Instagram account and see that you haven’t posted anything since 2011, and that was just an older version of your logo?

They’ll be disappointed, that’s what. And that’s a terrible first impression to make. If your website links to any social media profiles, make sure that you’re using them to provide regular updates and interaction. Don’t feel pressure to use ALL social media. Does anyone really want to follow a Doctor’s office Instagram account?

Web Evolution

In this day and age of Squarespace, Wix, and Shoppify there is really no excuse for having a dated website. All too often we are laser focused on growth via SDR but we fail to realize that our (virtual) storefront looks like something from the 90’s. Updating your website can me a minimal expense with maximum ROI.

Top 3 Simple Lead Generation Tools

Business owners often wonder what are the best ways for them to find their next customers. We’ve all heard of lead generation before, but in some cases, you may not know how to focus your efforts. Certain lead generation tools help you sort ordinary visitors from interested potential customers.

Opt-in Forms

Opt-in forms are one of the simplest forms of lead generation that you can include on your website. They cut right to the chase! Do you want to receive information or contact from us, yes or no? Anybody who fills out one of these forms is definitely interested. They want to learn more about what your company can do for them!

Email Marketing

Sometimes people don’t want contact from a salesperson right away. More than sometimes, it’s most of the time. Email marketing helps break down those barriers. In exchange for contact information, you provide valuable content on a regular basis. If the content is useful enough, and it proves the value you offer, subscribers convert from leads to customers.

Pop-Ups

Those of us who have been on the internet since the 90’s think of popups as a dirty word. We remember the dark days before ad blockers. Loud and obnoxious pop-up advertisements would appear. They would obscure the content and try to trick you into clicking them.

Modern pop-ups are not like that. In this case, we’re referring to the ones that appear as part of a website user experience. These pop-ups keep your attention on the page that you’re on, rather than distracting you from it. They can be effective lead generation tools because they provide a second chance. Pop-ups integrate with the other tools we’ve highlighted here. They include opt-in forms or email subscription links before you leave the page. They can also be a call to action right when you arrive. With that, you know from the start what the purpose of the company’s website is.

Each of these lead generation methods has advantages and disadvantages. Not all will be right for your brand. At Boom Demand, we can help you carry out a plan that works best for your business. Contact us today to enjoy all the benefits of our sales enablement solutions!

3 Uncommon Ways to Find Growth: The Law of Reciprocity

What is the Law of Reciprocity?

The law of Reciprocity states that an individual or group will tend to return a favor to an individual or group that has helped them in the past. In the business world the Law of Reciprocity helps demonstrate the effect altruism can have on a business’ future growth.

While it can be difficult to measure the ROI on goodwill, we believe helping others is it’s own reward and while you may not see immediate profits from your generosity we know it will ultimately help you get ahead of the pack.

Get Help from an Industry Leader

Reach out to the industry leaders your product is designed to help and ask permission to interview them. Veteran’s in the industry are often willing to share insights with newcomers. Perhaps because they are already familiar with the Law of Reciprocity, and they know a little assistance can pay dividends in the future.

Start your search with current clients, then expand to businesses you have interfaced with previously. This can include companies you met at conferences, former professors or mentors, and those who are part of your Linkedin network or Linkedin connections. Cold calling or Cold emails are also an option, but tend to see lower success rates. No matter how you approach these individuals, be straightforward with your request and be respectful of their time.

Once an industry leader has consented to an interview, ask if they will also agree to be recorded. While this step is not necessary it is advantageous to be able to refer back to the video or audio for insights and you can derive a great deal of content from their recording in the future.

During the interview, ask questions about the specific strategies and practices that led them to success in your vertical. Inquire about pitfalls they have seen their competitors fall into in the past. Finally ask them about what they feel like you and your competitors may be missing in the services they provide.

This interview has three purposes. First, it will help you discover best practices to implement in your operation. Second, it will help you discover what industry leaders expect from companies in your field and may reveal areas of opportunity for your growing business. Finally and perhaps most importantly it will help you cultivate relationships with giants in the industry.

Get involved in Community Service

Providing service as a company might seem counterintuitive to growth; however, service can often open up doors that you didn’t even know existed.

Start by asking your team what are some good volunteer ideas. It is likely they are already aware of several charitable organizations and community service events. By involving your team in the service search you can quickly find a cause or group to support. More importantly, if they can pick the service opportunity your team will approach your volunteer project with genuine excitement and passion that is impossible to fake.

These volunteer experiences have a lot of potential benefits. First there may be press opportunities gained at even the smallest community service events and you may even forge business relationships with other companies while volunteering.

Second, volunteering opportunities are an excellent opportunity to energize your team, focus on team building, and get out of the office. Bonus points for closing the business for the day and letting your customers know that your team is out for the day providing community service.

Finally, companies and individuals are becoming more socially conscious and people are looking to partner with companies dedicated to bettering their community and world. Remember the law of reciprocity? As you and your company are seen serving the world around you potential clients are more likely to reward you with their business.

Don’t ask for someone’s email address.

This is the most daring and counterintuitive of this list. John Booth, a VP of Marketing at Cipher Systems writing for impactbnd.com, points out that you don’t need everybody’s email. You need the emails of people who are likely to become customers.

Prospects are getting tired of surrendering their email to download content that doesn’t turn out to be so valuable. They also really dislike having to unsubscribe from mailing lists that aren’t actually helping them, either. The solution is to pivot to chat, and other methods of providing value and solving prospects’ problems before asking for anything in return.

The law of reciprocity remains in full force here. Customers will be grateful for your orientation towards providing a service, rather than just mining them for data. This will generate higher levels of loyalty and increase the probability they will recommend your company to others.

As Booth put it,

At the most fundamental level, my goal as a marketer is to build trust and establish credibility with my prospects.

I do this by sharing my company’s perspective, experience, and intelligence in a way that is educational and designed to answer their questions and help them solve their problems.

Doing all of this without asking for an email address is a very effective way to build trust and credibility, and it makes great business sense.

IMPACTBND

The Law of Reciprocity in Business: Grow like never expected

Countless businesses struggle on the edge of obscurity never gaining the trust, loyalty or customer base they want and that is because they don’t understand the Law of Reciprocity. Many business owners fail to see beyond the mere dollar and cents of running a business and never learn that the key to business growth lies in serving others. While there are countless ways the Law of Reciprocity could apply to business growth we hope these three examples have helped you gain a greater understanding that the more you and your company gives the more you will grow.

The Next Big Thing in the Future of Lead Generation

We talk a lot about lead generation here at Boom Demand. It’s the core of our business, so that makes sense. We may not be talking enough about where lead generation is going in the next few years, though. There are big changes on the horizon. They’re going to impact more than marketing and outsourcing companies like ourselves. What does the future of lead generation hold, and how will it make us all better off?

Lead Generation is Everything, and Everything is Lead Generation

Do you know what Uber is? That may seem like a condescending question, but think about your answer. We know that you’ve already heard about and used the world-famous ridesharing app. It represents one of the biggest changes in business and transportation history.

But we ask again, what is it? Is it a better taxi service? Nope.

It’s a lead generation platform.

This may come as a surprise at first. We don’t usually think of lead generation in the context of services like what Uber drivers provide. And yet, that is exactly what it is.

Uber gives service providers (drivers) leads. Those leads are people willing to buy their service at the right time and place (riders). It’s very different from trying to hail a taxi. It’s a targeted lead generation service. The market knows what people want, and it knows who can provide it. Drivers want riders and vice versa. The app knows where the closest and best ones are, so it provides the bridge.

This is important because it’s turning into the way our entire economy operates. It’s not only Uber, and similar apps like AirBNB, DoorDash, Science Exchange, Recharge, and many, many others. It’s the proliferation of the “gig economy” where most workers are now freelancers. The future of lead generation is relevant to everybody.

The Future of Lead Generation is Freedom

Many commentators bemoan the rise of the gig economy. They complain that it makes it harder to earn a living. In many ways, their arguments have merit. You could say that successful freelancing takes a certain kind of determination. It’s quite different from holding down a lifelong factory job.

The flip side of that is the freedom to move where the market moves. Workers’ fortunes are no longer so tied to the ups and downs of a single country or industry. With powerful lead generation solutions, they can find the right clients, faster. Likewise, clients can find better services faster, too.

The future of lead generation is its central role in the economy. It’s like the bioelectrical impulse that keeps a heart pumping thousands of times a day for decades. Every act of lead generation is a contribution to the prosperity of the entire world. And that’s why we’re so proud to do what we do.

3 Ways to Get Better Lead Generation Data

Every growing business is in a constant fight for new customers. You’re competing with other service providers. You have to keep existing customers happy. It’s not easy. If you stop moving forward, you don’t stay put; you start to slide back down. You need a constant stream of new life to keep the business moving. Getting better lead generation data is key to that effort. The age-old question, though, is how?

1: Organic Lead Generation

It’s no secret that the absolute best source of leads is always an organic one. What does that mean? It means that customers come to you because they know they need what you have. They might not know they’re looking for your specific company. But they’re searching online or in-person for the type of products you sell.

Helping them find you is essential. That means having a good website design, with lots of useful content. It means putting out ads and networking. It means making it as easy as possible for them to find and contact you. Whatever other tactics you’ve been using to get new leads, this one should be your top priority. No prospects are more likely to become customers than the ones who come to you as organic leads.

2: Scraping Better Lead Generation Data From Public Sources

Of course, you cannot only wait for organic leads to show up. You have to be proactive, which means putting your brand out there with some cold outreach. But outreach to who? Well, there’s a lot of loose data out there; lots of contact information waiting for a call or an email.

How do you know who to call, though? Say you crack open an antique phone book and start at the beginning. You’re going to spend an absurd amount of time talking to voicemails and people who will never, ever buy your stuff. Not worth it.

No, what you need to do to get better lead generation data is search smarter. You can use your competitors’ own platforms to find your own leads. Find people who are interacting with them on social media or online forums, and reach out. If you can address their complaints, concerns, and unmet needs, you can win them as clients.

3: Results Analytics

Once you have better lead generation data in the first place, is the work all done? No. You can keep improving and tightening your focus.

Keep careful records of all your data sources; how, where, and when you got them. The leads that become prospects and then turn into customers are a gold mine in more ways than one. Analyze that success. Discover what’s been working best for you, and iterate on it!

Always leave some room to experiment and try to find even better ways of doing business. But don’t leave your best niches without serious attention.

Boom Demand helps companies use strong sales development strategies to their advantage. Contact us today if you want to see better sales sooner!

Cartoon Drawing of Business Growth Chart

Top 3 Lead Generation Trends Affecting Your Sales Cycle

Sales and marketing roles are overlapping more and more. And if there’s anything that marketers and salespeople can agree on, it’s that they want more leads. The processes of lead generation are like a heartbeat for any business. If it stops, everything else stops pretty fast. What makes it exciting, besides that, is that it’s not a static process. Certain lead generation trends are changing the way organizations find new customers.

Selling B2B Like it’s B2C

One way that lead generation trends are moving is in the direction of the individual. Consumers have come to expect exemplary service when buying individual products. They notice how salespeople treat them when they walk into an Apple Store. They want that in all their business relationships.

B2B sales can’t be content with playing a numbers game without considering the people. Success in B2B sales in 2019 and beyond means getting to know your prospects on an individual level. You have to do that before even thinking that they’re going to buy something from you.

Keeping it Simple with Web Forms

One of the ways that marketers can gain that knowledge is by focusing on simple tools that work well. Web forms are one of these tools. They’re an excellent way to gather relevant user data that you can turn into viable leads.

The key to success with these forms is to keep them simple. Don’t ask for too much information all at once. They need to be convenient and have a compelling but non-threatening call to action. The trick is to focus on what’s relevant to what you’re selling and how it will help the person filling out the form. Your call-to-action may include a promise of something in exchange. Make sure they don’t have to jump through any hoops to get it.

Blending Forms and Chat

Now, the last of these lead generation trends is the most intriguing. Remember how we were talking about personalization? Well, how does a web form that asks the same information of every single user reflect that? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t… Unless the web form is part of a live chat feature.

That’s right: personalization, simplicity, and the latest advances in artificial intelligence, all together. You no longer have to ask all your website visitors to fill out a static form. You can have them interact with a chatbot that records their answers. Soon, future versions may even be able to ask different questions based on those answers. No two prospects would have the exact same experience on your website! That’s nothing if not personalized! And it still gives you all the information you need to be able to work with that person and help them become a buyer.

These lead generation trends are exciting, and we’re excited to see how they’ll play out. There’s still a lot of work to do, though. To give your organization a lead generation boost in the meantime, give us a call. Boom Demand makes lead generation easy for all kinds of clients. We’ll customize a plan for your business!