When we last left our marketing/business plan for 2020, we had partially set up our daily goals by calculating our close rate. Don’t forget at anytime, if you start feeling overwhelmed, I can always meet with you in person or over the phone and answer any questions you have!

Phone: 843-469-0216
Email: sslappey@creativeconsulting.marketing

Today we are talking about your Impression Conversion Rate or your ICR.  ICR is the amount of people that you have to talk to, have to see your business, or have to be told about your business to want to gain more information. 

In online marketing this is mainly used to denote the amount of people that have to see your ad or post before clicking on it to want to learn more about your business. Marketing professionals have to also factor in click through rates and other percentages before they can figure out the exact impression conversion rate, but for the sake of this lesson we are trying to figure out the overall ICR - so don’t worry about that until you call us for help on next week’s lesson.

Across all industries in the US, the ICR is 2.35% which means to get one person to actually pay attention to your business you have to get in front of 43 people. Now again, let me be clear that DOES NOT MEAN that if your social media ad has 43 impressions that you should have gotten a phone call. Once click through rates are added in, it is more likely to be around 4,300 impressions but like I said this isn’t about marketing yet. This is about you. 

So to finish out our example from before, if your goal is to get one new client a week. You need to set up four meetings. To set up those four meetings you will need to get in front of 172 new people per week. So, drum roll please……..

This means working Monday through Friday that you need to talk to a total of 35 new people every day about your business. Please note this is the amount based on the example above not what you or your company should do. Your numbers should be different based on your goals from the previous lesson.

“Stephen, that isn’t possible. There is no way with everything else I have to do each day that I can talk to that many people per day.”

 I completely understand but don’t worry, you don’t have to do this alone. You do however have a choice to make. Either you are going to do it by yourself and you may need to readjust your goal (see I told you last week) or you will have to sit down with a marketing firm (I know a great one you can contact by clicking here) and decide what you will be responsible for bringing in and what your marketing should be helping to bring in.

Please also understand that this doesn’t just mean your online marketing but all of your business’ marketing.

Pretty simple right? Fantastic! As long as you're still with me, tune in next week as we take your and your marketing’s daily goal and create a daily actionable plan to achieve that goal.

As always this has been Stephen Slappey, owner of Creative Consulting. The #1 Marketing Firm for Graphic Design, Social Media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization. Have a great day! 

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Now when we last left our marketing/business plan for 2020, we had set our ( most likely going to be changed) yearly goal. We identified our busiest and slowest seasons, used math (sorry for putting you through that), and broke our yearly goal up into monthly goals based on the ebbs and flows of our year. We then left it off by breaking our goal even further down from a monthly goal to a weekly goal. Everything fresh in your mind? Great! Let’s move on to the next part. 
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Don’t forget at anytime, if you start feeling overwhelmed, I can always meet with you in person or over the phone and answer any questions you have!
You can contact me via:
Phone: 843-469-0216
Email: Sslappey@creativeconsulting.marketing

Your daily goal should encompass everything that you (key word # 1) AND your marketing (key word #2) should be trying to reach together (key word # 3) to make sure that statistically you are doing everything you need to so you can reach your weekly, monthly, and yearly goal. So how do we know what our daily goal should be? Well, first we need to understand what our close rate and impression conversion rate is. For this year, both of these percentages will most likely be guesses, as you won’t have the hard data that you need to accurately plan. In the last part of this series I will outline the important information that you need to record. Not just personally but to hold your marketing firm accountable for their part as well. For today we are going to touch on the first part, the close rate.

For those of you not in sales, your close rate is the amount of meetings you have to go to before you close a new client. You may hear people boast about excessively high close rates but don’t worry, this isn’t about raising your close rate, it is about understanding it. If your close rate is lower, then you think it should be, however, let me give you a little pick me up.
 
A lion, one of the world’s most amazing predators and touted as the world’s best hunter, has a close rate of 25% so if you have better than that good for you! Hopefully you know where I am going with this. Your daily goal must factor into all of the meetings you are going  to have before you actually close a sale. So, as an example, let’s say your weekly goal is one new client a week. If you are using the close rate of a lion of 25%, you have to attend four meetings a week to reach your goal.

Now we are done right? Not quite - because now you have to decipher and understand impression conversion rate. But that is for next week.

Pretty simple right? Fantastic! As long as you're still with me, tune in next week as we take you and your marketing’s daily goal to the next stage as we discuss your ICR or your Impression Conversion Rate. As always this has been Stephen Slappey, owner of Creative Consulting. The #1 Marketing Firm for Graphic Design, Social Media, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization. Have a great day! 

Those annoying popups of the early 2000s are back and better than any of us ever imagined. The next time you're using a website for your job or you're doing some online shopping, take advantage of those online chat boxes. You might be surprised that more often than not, you'll be talking to an actual person! 

Happy September friends! We are happy to see it inching closer to what might be cool fall weather here in the Lowcountry. But we're  also excited for the future fall decorations and any excuse to drink more coffee. With all these new exciting flavors, who doesn't love a cup of hot goodness with a splash of pumpkin? As we are ushered into a new month, it means a new blog! For this blog, we will be talking about the benefit of online chat boxes and how they could help businesses and its users.  

Now, we do remember those annoying chat boxes from our early days of the internet. They were able to maybe answer two questions before directing you to a FAQ site that led to more confusion and frustration than when you started interacting with the chatbox to begin with. But today, the chat box is back and better than ever before. And this time, there are actual people behind the keyboard to help with your questions and concerns faster and more efficiently than ever before. 

In this age of social media, people expect answers and information right away. If it's not received in this timely manner, you could likely lose a customer. On average it takes almost ten hours for businesses to respond to social media comments and 12 hours to emails. For today's standards, that's just too long. Live chat boxes let you have in the moment conversations with your customers while they're visiting your website. The rate of 10-12 hours is cut down to an astounding 1-2 minute response! How amazing is that? But live chat boxes go above than just response time, there are so many incredible assets these little boxes can do for you. 

• It will help you get sales. Since there is someone right there ready to answer questions, it eliminates doubt and allows you to answer questions right away. 
• You can handle more customers at one time with these chat boxes instead of being weighed down by answering a ton of emails over a long period.
• You have the advantage of keeping customers who aren't comfortable with calling on the phone. We get it, sometimes you just want a simple question answered and don't want to call with the chance of reaching a recording.  
• These chat boxes give you a human connection, forming a line of trust between you and your customer. 
• It can lead to getting the reputation of having wonderful customer service and providing your customers a great experience while they're online. 
• You can gain their information faster and avoid having customers fill out forms to gain all of this information. Even if they don't buy something or don't need your services at this time, this provides you with the information you need to stay in touch with them and offer an opportunity to them in the future. 
• Not a lot of companies out there are using this tool to their advantage. Using it now will put you ahead of your competition, and help draw a following. 
• These chat boxes allow you to get to know your customer's wants and needs by gathering a lot of information at one time. Make note of repeated questions, worries, frustrations, and other trends. This information can help you interact with your future customers better, and build a website designed better for their use. You can also use this knowledge to focus and drive your Ad and Social Media campaigns.
• Chat boxes allow you to be proactive in fixing issues for or with your clients. 
• It can provide better analytics. You can know how many people are visiting your website, what times they're visiting your website, how many chats are received, how long the wait times are, and the performance of your employees on these chats, etc. 

You have the choice of hiring a company to operate these chat boxes for you, or you can do it within your company. It just depends on how much you'd like to invest in this service. 

The great news is that even if you don't have an actual person behind the chatbox, there are now intelligent bots that can be installed into the systems when you're away. You can program them to help with basic questions in such a way that will keep your customers interested and informed, and lure them back to talk with a human once you're back to answer their questions. These bots aren't the annoying and unhelpful bots that were originally created, thankfully. They are now offering quick, insightful, and engaging info while your customers wait.

There is a ton of chatbox software out there, you just need to decide what version is right for your company. Some are free and almost all of them offer a quick and easy setup and they are easy to customize. Some examples to look into are Intercom, Drift, Influx, Autopilot, Olark, LivePerson, and SnapEngage. 

It's been interesting watching this technology make its comeback, and we are very intrigued to see where it will go. With smarter AI growing and the opportunity to connect faster with one another than ever before, this could transform the way businesses are run and how efficiently money is made. Follow this trend with us and let us know how you feel. If you've experienced a chatbox recently with these attributes, share your experience below! 

Have a great week, friends! We will see you next time! 

Content creation is a huge part of our business, and a huge part of staying at the forefront of the Social Media Business world is paying attention to new and exciting trends to use in our work! 

There is a lot of creativity that we use in our work every day. A lot of the images, logos, and designs that we use for our clients are created in house and we are very proud of that. But we also love learning and following new trends when it comes to graphic design - and we wanted to share some of the biggest Graphic Design trends that you will be seeing this year if you haven't noticed them already! Because who doesn't love a little inspiration? 

We know that you need to stay on top of the latest graphic design trends no matter what medium you use or don't use. There is nothing wrong with a little extra knowledge! Keep your work fresh and competitive. Don't hang onto the idea that "this is how it's always been done." That is SO dangerous! You want your designs and work to stand out and be able to offer the same if not more to your clients than any competition out there. 

1. Isometric Design 

This sounds a lot more difficult than it actually is! But this simple method is just that of drawing a 3D object in two dimensions. Its a simple and clean affect that is far superior to flat designs. You will find this trend primarily in icon designs. The effect draws users in and makes them want to use them more! 

2. Powerful Serifs 
The rise of the serif font is at its height in 2019! I'm sure you've noticed the trend of illustrations getting lighter and the fonts getting bolder and much stronger. This year has gifted us with new, bold, ad beautiful serif fonts and they will just continue to grow and become more gorgeous. Custom type is becoming the rage for any company that wants to stand out and be noticed by their dream clients and put them ahead of the competition. The gift of these beautiful new serifs are perfect for the job, and if you're designing for a company that wants to brand or rebrand itself these new fonts will also come in handy! Check out some of these beautiful examples: 

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