February 2022
Newsletter Pro Officially Turns 11 Years Old! 11 Business Lessons That Will Allow You to Create the Business of Your Dreams
and your employees. Don’t overlook things like nurture campaigns, CRM software, a new customer welcome campaign, a good sales process, etc. These are a few of the basics every business needs. Don’t Get BoredWith Your OwnMarketing. So many are wooed by the next shiny object in marketing. I get it, I have been as well. But I’ll let you in on a little insider secret: All those new shiny objects and marketing techniques typically only enrich the guru selling them. By the time they’re teaching them, the tactic barely works anymore — or it never even worked at all. You wouldn’t start tearing out the walls of a bedroom on the east side of your house to build an addition on the west side, would you? Of course not, so stop draining your marketing budget because you’re bored and someone has a good sales pitch. If you can’t afford this new thing without gutting your existing stuff that is working, then you better hustle until you can afford it. Continued on Page 2 ...
On Jan. 25, 2022, Newsletter Pro turned 11 years old. It’s crazy to think about how much has changed since 2011. I spent some time reflecting on everything that has changed since the first day we opened our doors and came up with 11 lessons that have had the largest impact on my personal and professional success. Start Small But Think Big. Too many entrepreneurs think way too small when starting out and even goal setting or annual planning. They get stuck in what they’ve done in the past or what they feel are the industry norms for growth and profits. Don’t live in someone else’s box. Just because this is the way things have always been done doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Build a Strong Foundation. You have to put in foundational systems, processes, and marketing if you want to have any chance of scaling and thriving. Of course, this is all the “boring stuff,” but if you don’t have an amazing foundation for your business, it will suck for you, your customers,
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Get a Mentor. One of the best decisions I made was to join a group coaching program when we first started. Find someone you can trust, someone who has real-life experience running a business, and join their group. Once you implement what you’ve learned from your coach or
Don’t live in someone else’s box. Just because this is the way things have always been done doesn’t mean they have to stay that way.
mentor, you’ll see huge returns. Stop Trying to Be Right.
In business and life, the goal shouldn’t be to be right — it should be to get to the right answer. Check your ego and be willing to humble yourself when you’re wrong. Do you want to be rich or do you want to be right? Pick carefully. When Someone Shows YouWho They Really Are, Believe Them. I don’t care if the person is an employee, vendor, contractor, customer, or friend. Once a person shows you who they really are, if you don’t like what you see, remove them from your world. Hire Experts and Outsource. Your job is to manage and lead. You should set the vision and work on new revenue-generating activities. You should be focused on content creation and inspecting what you expect, and outside of that, it should be delegated internal or outsourced. Get Out of the Way as Fast as Possible. As your business grows and scales, you MUST let go as much as possible. You’re the bottleneck in most areas in your business, I promise. Don’t remove yourself entirely from the business, but let the people you hired do the jobs you hired them to do. Be Prepared Because It’s Going to Rain. I love cool toys, trips, and luxury goods
streams of income, have savings both personally and professionally, and limit debt when possible. Build to Sell. You should be building your business like you’re going to sell it, even if you never do. If you build your business as if it was going to be sold tomorrow, then you will have built a business that is growing and profitable. But this isn’t easy to do when you’re starting out. If you haven’t already built out killer foundational systems, that’s where you should start. Create Killer Content if YouWant More Leads, Referrals, Upsells, and New Customers. The simplest way to do this is to create one or two core pieces of content each month and break it up into smaller bite-size pieces. This helps you create a steady stream of content that’s easy to enjoy while being informative for your customers as well as encouraging any new prospects to consider buying your product or service. If I had to start over tomorrow, these would be the lessons I would surely look to when rebuilding my business. Some of these I fought and resisted. I thought I knew better — I only wanted the newest shiny thing. Once I realized that I was being a fool, my business took off almost overnight and grew into something that, 11 years later, is bigger and better in all ways than I dreamed it would be. –Shaun
as much as the next guy, but if COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that there are going to be rainy days. Live below your means, create multiple
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling ...” – Philippians 2:12 ESV
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3 Steps to Develop Your Annual Marketing Plan A Quick Guide Built for 2022!
webinars), direct marketing (email, direct mail), public relations (press release distribution, PR agency), research (focus groups, surveys, marketing reference books), and social media. The components you choose for your annual marketing plan will depend on your business, industry, and marketing budget, but the most important thing is to account for all components you want to include and ensure your budget is properly allocated. Then, when you put it to work, make sure nothing is left behind. No. 3: Define your strategy for each component. There are multiple ways to execute your campaign for any component.
Although marketing should embrace creativity, it should also embrace solid, defined goals and positive ROI to be properly self-sustaining — and one of the best ways to achieve this is by setting up your annual marketing plan! But before you feel overwhelmed, let’s talk about what a good annual marketing plan needs. No. 1: Before planning, ask yourself the right questions. Reflecting on the past is always a great place to start planning for the future. Even if you didn’t have a structured marketing plan in place, you should still review your past marketing activities. Did you achieve your past desired results (e.g., improved brand recognition,
X number of leads generated, sales/ revenue figures)? Which marketing activities were most effective?
Whether it’s direct marketing or advertising, you want to make sure that you’re doing it
This helps you answer the hardest questions: Which areas of your marketing budget do you need to cut costs? What areas do you need to invest more in? No. 2: Develop the essential components
right. For example, if you want to send out a print newsletter to educate, entertain, and retain your clients, you might want to
include a healthy blend of personal and professional content in your newsletter’s front- page article.
to your annual marketing plan. Every car needs
One of the best ways to ensure your marketing
strategies and tactics are working is to hire professionals to educate and guide you (such as
parts to run. For your marketing “car” to run, you need components, including but not limited to advertising (print/
Newsletter Pro for direct mail marketing!). However, no matter who you have on your side, an annual marketing plan will make sure
online), branding and graphics (promotional giveaway items, photography, video and/or graphic development, etc.), events (trade shows,
your marketing dollars are well-spent.
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“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” – Matthew 6:34 ESV
What Does Marketing Look Like in 2022? 3 New Marketing Trends Marketing revolves around staying one step ahead of your competitors and making sure you are meeting the needs of your clients. If you have any experience in the world of marketing, you know that with online resources, everything moves and cycles at a very fast pace. Consumer tastes are always changing, and keeping up with the current times is tough. New TikTok trends, viral YouTube videos, popular Twitter hashtags, and breaking industry news present a constant need for change in your own marketing strategies. You can’t go through a pandemic and not expect a dynamic shift in marketing ideas. However, marketers and change are not quite strangers. Marketing professionals have always known that as the consumers’ needs and desires shift, they have no choice but to adapt. As some economic recovery begins in 2022, your marketing team may find themselves with dollars to spend while they aim to get back on track and embrace the new normal. But what are the best marketing strategies to focus on in the new year? And what techniques can we expect to see a lot of in the near future? What will the marketing world even look like as we dip our toe back in? Let’s take a look at 2022’s hottest marketing trends and how to implement them. Content Personalization
How to Build a Great Company Culture Company culture is everything. Productivity and morale live and die by it. It impacts whether or not new employees want to join your business and existing ones want to stay. And job seekers rank it highly among their requirements for a new job. In a Glassdoor survey, 56% of workers said company culture is more important than salary. Your company already has a culture — the question is whether it’s the best it could be. We’ve compiled some expert tips on making yours stand out. Build positivity. No one wants to work in a negative environment, and nothing will sink your company culture faster than fear. Make your team eager to come to work by offering compliments at least as often as criticism, publicly recognizing strong performers, and implementing policies that benefit your employees. It can be as simple as taking more time to talk to individual team members, speaking honestly yet optimistically about the business’s future, and providing flexible work arrangements. Hire the right people. When interviewing job candidates, focus on more than just their existing skills. Your hires also need to fit in with the rest of the team and share the company’s values. Choose wisely by asking behavioral questions, getting input from multiple interviewers, and being willing to hire someone who needs a little training. But be careful not to fill every role with copies of yourself — diverse perspectives eliminate blind spots and make your company stronger. Request and accept feedback. Receiving criticism is hard for most people — especially for small-business owners who have built a company themselves. But management that solicits and implements feedback from their employees creates a culture of trust and openness. When your team can discuss problems and provide suggestions, they’re more likely to be happy in their work and feel like their contributions are valued. A strong company culture makes for satisfied employees, increased output, and happy customers. Invest in your culture today to create a more loyal and adept team that’s eager to help your business grow.
The reason that many brands see major success is because their content is specifically tailored to their individual user or consumer. They offer a very specific experience to their user, and consumers naturally gravitate toward content that they feel listens to them.
Think about when you log onto Hulu or Netflix as you scroll through choices. You pass by multiple sections geared toward your interests, like “Because You Watched” and “Picked For You.” These companies are using a specific algorithm to find content you’ll enjoy. Other companies that successfully personalize their content are Facebook, Spotify, and Amazon. The user experience is personal, and their clients feel more comfortable and engaged.
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Make Your Products ‘Addictive’ With ‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’ What makes Facebook “addictive”? There’s a good reason why “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal made waves in the tech scene and beyond — it’s a well-researched guide that helps readers build better products. If you want to understand how products influence our behaviors, look no further.
But first, how are habits formed?
Before we start learning about the famous “Hook Model,” you must first consider where your products are within the “Habit Zone.” To determine your product’s habit-forming potential, begin by plotting two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (how useful and rewarding the behavior is in the user’s mind — over alternative solutions). Once a behavior occurs with enough frequency and perceived utility, it enters the Habit Zone, becoming a default behavior. However, if either of the factors lie below the threshold, it’s more likely that the desired behavior won’t become a habit. Note that there are exceptions to this, as some behaviors provide minimal perceived benefit but become a habit simply because it occurs frequently, such as eating red M&Ms first. The Hook Model There are four phases when a customer experiences a new product or service. Each phase forms new habits, and once the phases are complete, the habits have been reinforced, and the product grows in value to the customer. These phases include: Trigger What triggers your customers to use your product? Is it external (a prominent button or paid advertisement) or internal (emotional, a pre- existing routine, or intangible)?
Action Here, companies leverage a customer’s motivation and ability to use their product or service to increase the odds of a customer taking action. Reward This is where the Hook Model is unique in its ability to create desire within customers. The “reward” is likely the most important step to this entire model. Investment Now that the user is experiencing dopamine rushes from the anticipation of rewards, it’s time to ask users for a little investment, whether it means investing time, data, effort, social capital, or money. If you want to learn the intricacies of these phases and how you can make it work for your business, give “Hooked” a try — we dare say you’ll be obsessed!
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How Creamalicious Stands Out From the Pack We All Scream for Ice Cream
According to a study on Hubspot, roughly 74% of users are dissuaded when content fails to align with their interests. With content personalization, you can fix this! Conversational Marketing IBM recently conducted a series of studies revealing that 70% of product users expect an instant answer to any questions they have about your product. That’s tough to keep up with! Conversational marketing essentially is marketing that speaks to customers. Whether it be through chatbots, live chat, voiceboxes, or other forms of conversational artificial intelligence, engaging immediately with your clients is an important key to earning their business and maintaining their trust. But wait, this feels like it’s more geared toward sales. How is this a marketing trend? Marketing that speaks to its users is fairly new to the party. Essentially, via conversational marketing, you can make interactive, old-school marketing materials, which will easily boost engagement. By implementing conversational marketing to your website content, paid advertising, and e-commerce, your conversion funnel will quickly fill up. New Video Social Media Trends Livestreaming and video marketing via social media channels are no longer novelties. Live video has forever changed the way that brands interact with their customers, and as TikTok continues to blow up, video and livestreaming are continuing to gain traction. Even on Facebook and Instagram, brands have the ability to turn social media into an e-commerce platform and sell products directly on social media sites. It’s no secret that videos are more likely to inspire interaction and even be shared on social media outlets. In fact, studies have shown that 80% of potential consumers would rather watch a video than read about a product, and market research has proven that 87% of people rely on social media to help them purchase items. So, why not implement social media trends into your business? You’d be silly not to. Stories, live videos, and reels all make marketing a product on social media possible to fuel engagement — and since results can be tracked in real time, it’s a no-brainer!
Ice cream has come a long way, and every supermarket now has shelves packed to the brim with different brands and flavors. It can be difficult for a brand to differentiate itself in that market and get retailers to give them a chance, but Creamalicious has done that by using authenticity to connect with consumers. Entrepreneur and restaurateur Liz Rogers launched Creamalicious in 2020. Then, the products began appearing on shelves in early 2021 at Walmart and Target, among other retailers. Proud of their success and quick progress, Rogers has created the U.S.’s only Black-owned national ice cream brand. Rogers reports having trouble getting retailers and brands to take her seriously. “I’ve sold a few million pints in a short amount of time, and I’m still having
Have you ever caught yourself wishing your team knew just a little bit more about science, AI, marketing, analytics, sales, or even effective leadership? We’ve all been there. The best practices in business change every day, especially when it comes to tech, and it takes a highly skilled employee to keep up. Sometimes, folks are left a little bit behind the curve. So, what’s a manager to do? In our view, you have two options: Find and hire a more skilled employee or invest in training the workforce you already have! According to a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) report, filling an open position costs an average of $4,129 and takes 42 days — so leveling up the skills of your current team is definitely a shortcut. That’s where Coursera comes in! It’s a training and development platform specializing in upleveling
2022 is sure to bring some changes. Now is the time to get your marketing strategy in place if you haven’t already. Be sure to enter the new year geared up and ready to roll out some game-changing strategies. 2022 is your year to harness potential. You know what worked last year, now unlock success this year too!
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Get Inspired
trouble getting investors,” she says. Though many supermarkets turned her down, Rogers refused to give up, saying, “I’m not going to allow anyone to tell me that I can’t make my dream come true.” That perseverance paid off when Walmart decided to give her a chance. Creamalicious has used two main strategies to stand out in a crowded market. Firstly, in a world where more “light” and reduced-calorie ice creams abound, Creamalicious is unapologetically “decadent and indulgent.” The products contain 14% butterfat, and that richness is part of the brand. Secondly, Creamalicious has used storytelling to capture its customers’ attention. The current assortment consists of seven flavors with names like Aunt Poonie’s Caramel Pound Cake, Slap Yo’ Momma Banana Pudding, Porch Light Peach Cobbler, and Uncle Charles’ Brown Suga Bourbon Cake. The ice creams are named after real family members and aim to bring consumers back to a different time. “Think about peach cobbler and when you were a kid having dessert after dinner,” Rogers says, “or that scoop of banana pudding with your mom and dad, just sitting on the porch.” Though she’s already accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time, Rogers has much more she wants to achieve. She hopes to continue expanding into more stores and start a foundation to help other entrepreneurs achieve success. She has already presented a road map to help them connect with consumers.
The Shortcut to More Skilled Employees
Resource of the Month: Coursera employee skills in areas ranging from software engineering to management, digital marketing, innovation, and finance. Coursera offers more than 4,500 courses, specializations, and guided projects created by top universities like Yale and influential companies like Google. According to Coursera, its classes can help your employees build critical skills that move your company toward your goals, ensure you get the most out of the tech you already have, and create a more “data-driven, digitally fluent workforce” that will keep your company on pace with the times. Coursera for Teams costs just $399 per user for a full year of self-directed coursework — much, MUCH less than the $4,129 cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a new employee. You can choose specific content for your team and track and measure their skill development along the way. You can learn more at Coursera.org/business/teams.
If Coursera doesn’t seem like the right fit for your team, try exploring other skill-building options like MasterClass, Skillshare, or LinkedIn Learning. There are plenty of options out there!
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Inside Celebrate Our Birthday With 11 Business Lessons 3 Steps to Develop Your Annual Marketing Plan 2022 Marketing Trends How to Build a Great Company Culture How Creamalicious Ice Cream Broke Through a Dense Market Resource of the Month: Coursera
Why Kids and Adults Love Parchie’s Timepieces Analog Watches Are Making a Comeback — For Kids!
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“really limited” today. “So I thought, let’s come up with something new,” she says. Learning to tell time on an analog clock is a tough task to teach kids at times. However, giving them an
In a smart technology-based world, you might assume that the most successful, innovative technology products would be able to play video games and YouTube videos. People in the watch industry have assumed the same thing. How do you get kids to wear analog watches without the bells and whistles? A fair amount is at stake for the industry if this question goes unanswered. In Switzerland, the export of watches
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attractive watch can encourage them to learn. That’s why the design really mattered to Barrett, and she used her five years of experience at watch portal Hodinkee, as well as a design agency, to create a simple, timeless look. Simplicity, after all, defines most great watches. “When you look at the big brands, the most successful are the ones with the simplest designs,” Barrett says. “I wanted to implant longevity into Parchie to make it timeless.”
valued at less than 500 Swiss francs (or $538) has declined by 7.5 million units a year between 2015 and 2019 — a third of the
Most kids’ watches aren’t timeless for one main reason: They incorporate other brands or appear toy-like. Oliver Müller, a consultant of the Swiss luxury watch industry consultancy LuxeConsult, told The New York Times in an email, “There are many gimmicky kids’ watches, and most of the time, these are just accessories of a toy brand. Parchie takes the angle of being an instrument for the child to teach them to measure their day. That’s the right approach, but compared with Flik Flak, the learning element is very thin.”
total, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. However, one entrepreneur has accepted the
That’s because Flik Flak denotes the amount of minutes (for the small hand) next to the hours. However, because Parchie Pal watches are analog, timelessly vibrant, and waterproof, kids can bring their Parchie Pals anywhere and grow up with them. Other experts think that Parchie watches are exactly what kids need. William Rohr, the former managing director of the TimeZone online watch forum and founder of Massena LAB, a high-end watch startup, says, “Parchie watches are everything a child needs in a wristwatch — a solid tool that is comfortable to wear and easy to understand.” You might be wondering how Barrett funded this unique endeavor or how she convinced her investors. She didn’t; Barrett put in her own money and is not looking for investors. She sells her watches through her website and WhatsApp. However, she has been in talks recently with retailers, like Hodinkee, which has evolved from being just a watch blog and forum to also selling timepieces. The future of Parchie is bright, as Barrett has attracted plenty of customers all over the world. However, she remains realistic about the future of her business and brand recognition: “I would love Parchie to be a household name globally, but I’m well aware that takes time.” So far, the quality of Parchie watches has remained as timeless as they look, so we’re sure they’re certainly on their way!
mission to encourage the next generation of watch collectors. Enter Cara Barrett, founder and CEO of Parchie Pal watches, a brand of colorful analog watches designed for kids. Barrett told The New York Times, “Parchie was the name of my imaginary friend growing up. I want kids to bond over shared appreciation and parents to bond with their kids. That’s the genesis of Parchie.” But why should a stylish $50 watch encourage kids to love watches? She says that for many people obsessed with watches and collecting, their stories start with their first watch at a young age. However, most watches for kids are
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