[Guest Blog]

Blogs are amazing tools for boosting your authority in the industry, generating leads, communicating the values that are important to you and creating a community around your business. However, merely posting content isn’t enough to attract visitors and make your blog thrive.

When you adopt blog-friendly strategies, it will boost your efforts and get the most out of your writing. In this post, we’ll be talking about five simple strategies you should use to attract more visitors to your blog.

Attracting Visitors by Publishing More Often and Consistently

Posting new articles often and on a consistent frequency can be a simple and effective way of attracting new visitors to your blog.

Since Google’s search algorithm loves websites that are updated often, frequent posting can improve your blog’s SEO. When frequent updates to your blog become...

Accepting the Decline of the Big Social Platforms

Remember when having a Facebook business page meant that all of your page followers would see your posts? Or maybe you remember the days when anyone could Tweet anything, as long as it wasn't pornographic? Those were the good ole days.

The big social media platforms are no longer happy places for businesses and some users. Some people claim this is a shift in society. Us marketers know that it all comes back to using the algorithm to control content - forcing businesses to spend money on ads to participate. The Pay-to-Play Model does not serve small businesses. 

ZDNet said it well: Social media has become the stock exchange for public opinion. Investors seeking to capitalize on their association with the most active issues, buy low and sell high.

Niche Social Media Platforms

They have been popping up for years and...

[Guest Blog]

When reaching out to clients on social media, you have more avenues than ever to engage your target audience. Over 246 million Americans use at least one form of social media, including some lesser-known niche social media platforms according to Entrepreneur.com.

These smaller "niche" social media platforms attract individuals who wish to socialize around a particular interest, demographic, or topic. Similarly, some may be in search of smaller, more consumer-conscious platforms that they find more closely aligned with their social concerns than large players like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter may be. Many businesses are curious as to where else their target audiences are spending their time online. Where are they flocking to outside of large, worldwide social media outlets? These are some of the niche platforms with which businesses should familiarize...

Each May, the Small Business Association (SBA), hosts National Small Business Week to highlight the vital role that small businesses play in America's economy.

The goal of Small Business Week (SBW) is to celebrate and support the small businesses in our communities and beyond. While the emphasis is on shopping with these small businesses, it is also an opportunity for professional development. This year's SBW is May 2 - May 8, 2021. 

I'm a small business owner, what should I do for Small Business Week?

The SBA goes out of its way to promote the importance of your business and existence. 

Take advantage of the spotlight! 

1. Remember to use #SmallBusinessWeek in social posts

2. Check in with your local SCORE chapter to see if there are any workshops you can attend.

3. Partner with other small business owners to cross-promote each other....

[Guest Blog]

Conducting sales training is challenging no matter how experienced you are or how long you’ve been doing it. Why? Because according to studies, the attention span of an average person only lasts for about 20 minutes. After that, you will notice that some people in your audience will begin to check their mobile phones, look at their watches, look outside the window, or become restless in their seats. You need more than just professionally-prepared slide decks and engaging icebreakers to prevent any of any of that from happening.

Customizing your sales training essentials is the key to attention-grabbing training. Generic materials will bore your participants. The best way is to incorporate plenty of opportunities for your audience to share their thoughts, experiences, and best practices. Spice up your presentation with engaging activities that will help you...

[Guest Blog]

As a small business owner, you probably don’t have the same size budget or marketing team of a large enterprise. That doesn’t prevent you from reaching your customers and connecting with them on a deeper level. In fact, smaller companies have a unique opportunity to build relationships with loyal customers through more personalized and specific campaigns.

One excellent way to create memorable moments as a small company is to apply an account-based marketing strategy. This approach aligns sales and marketing processes to focus on improving your emotional connection with a specific set of customers.

Account-based marketing is often an appealing choice for smaller companies because we can’t afford to throw money at the wall with broad targeting strategies to see what might stick.

So, how can you use that kind of marketing effectively?

...

If you're shopping around CRM software, then you'll want a checklist of the most important features to include. Maybe our little list of "must-have" CRM features will help you decide which platform is best for you. We've used a ton of different CRM software over the years. Beckmann Collaborative settled on Zoho CRM for ourselves and many of our clients. However, you may find another platform such as Keap or Hubspot is a better fit for your business. 

10 "Must Have" Features in a CRM

1. EASY TO LEARN

Depending on your level of comfort with technology, you and your team may find different user experiences easier than others. For example, people who have previously used Salesforce or SugarCRM in enterprise companies often like Zoho in a small business. On the other hand, if you want something that has fewer features and can covers most basic needs such as...

What is your marketing automation strategy?

We often get requests to automate steps in a sales or marketing process. Sometimes it's because the sales guys don't have patience to "deal with" tracking their leads. It may be to avoid missing updates and details. 

Marketing automation can be a very smart tool for things like updating a field to reflect an update a Lead Status or generate a reminder task to follow up. However, there are the requests that cause me to shake my head and ask, "Is that really a strategic marketing automation? Or are we being lazy?"

This post offers you a few ideas for useful, strategic marketing automations that you can set up in your CRM, email, or marketing automation software. And if you have questions about how to do it, feel free to contact us and we can schedule a free consultation to discuss what you...

Content Marketing Specialist

About Us

Beckmann Collaborative is a growing consulting firm specializing in marketing operations, marketing strategy, and marketing training. We collaborate with business leaders and their teams to improve business performance by defining their content marketing strategy. Then we refine processes and build systems for our clients to implement their marketing efforts. Our headquarters is in the greater Austin, Texas area. However our team works remotely.

Clients describe us as lovingly honest because we are willing to share difficult truths about business and individual pitfalls. We genuinely want client companies to thrive, and that requires both honesty and empathy.

Job Description

This position is ideal for someone interested in marketing strategy, content marketing, and social media planning. The Content Marketing Specialist will oversee at...

[Guest Blog]

Before you purchase a product or service for the first time, you take the time to do some background checks. You ask one or two people who have used the product about their experience. If they speak ill of it, you change your mind about buying it.
Generally, online reviews help other would-be customers make the right decisions. But what if you are not a customer but actually the business owner who wants to see your customers leave reviews to grow your social proof?

Before we discuss how you can encourage users to leave reviews, let’s first establish what social proof is and why it matters.

What is Social Proof?

In this context, social proof is the validation of a product by having it associated with many customers.

It helps if some of the customers who have something positive to say about your product are public figures or celebrities with thousands or...