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Client Building Strategies for Tech-Savvy Event Planners

Finding new clients is one of the biggest challenges for many novice event planners. Aside from having a relatively thin portfolio, they also have to market themselves in a very competitive space. This is also true even among experienced planners, particularly those who have not adapted to modern technology. But for many tech-savvy event planners, there’s no limit as to the number of new clients they can generate using sales and marketing automation and building an online presence.

We’ll go through some of the ways you can grow your clientele much faster by adopting a technology-driven approach to building your events business.

Combining Web Presence and Automation

Event planning websites are a game changer in the events industry. Clients can quickly make decisions based on the information found on your website – events you specialize in, services, price range, hourly rates, event planning packages, and so on. You can also schedule a call or meet-up with your prospects any time of the day through your website.

Phone calls are pretty much a part of the business, even in this digital age. But by using sales and marketing automation, you’ll only have to deal with prospects who’ve been through your website after providing you with a little bit of information. Let’s take Small Business Dream as an example.

Say you have a visitor who had gone through your event planner landing page and you want to be able to categorize your prospective client according to event, budget, and tentative dates. Typically, you’re going to need a separate service for your questionnaires and emails. However, Small Business Dream is a complete system that comes with its own survey builder and email autoresponder to automate a number of tasks for you.

For instance, you can set your questionnaire to segment your visitors according to their chosen events and set a priority for each one based on their tentative dates and budget. This becomes especially important when you’re dealing with multiple clients. You don’t want spending a lot of your time on a low-budget client who is months away from the scheduled event if you have a high-end prospect who has an upcoming event in two weeks.

Small Business Dream simplifies the task by prioritizing each contact to make sure you don’t miss out on a big break or big opportunities to grow your business.

Building Your Credibility Online

Event planners spend hundreds of hours crafting the best experience for their clients. They understand the value of establishing a good name – not only to impress their clients but to turn each one into brand advocates. Customer referrals and word of mouth advertising still rank as some of the most cost-effective marketing tool to this day.

Experienced planners usually have the advantage over new ones when it comes to credibility. But there are workarounds for those who are still struggling to grow their client base. People are now moving towards online search and social media, so it only makes sense that we spend more time building traffic to our site and be able to network with other businesses.

First, you need a stunning website to showcase your previous work. If you don’t have a large portfolio and want to attract more clients, you can make your own templates by taking photos of your mockups in your front yard or lawn. Play with different angles and lighting conditions. You might also want to invest in a professional high-definition camera or take short online courses in photography and photo-editing software (preferably, you have someone on your team who can handle this task).

Next, connect with other businesses through LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Small Business Dream’s social connect allows you to find potential partners for your event planning business such as hotels and accommodation, resorts, catering services, florists, and ticketing services like Eventbrite. Network-building will help grow your business much faster than trying to do it on your own, especially if you need a little boost from long-established companies.

Adopting a Mobile Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Mobile marketing has shown a lot of promise for many businesses, thanks to the rapid growth of mobile users in the past few years. Business directories and mobile apps such as Small Business Dream business finder app enable small businesses to become more searchable. The likelihood of having new clients increases as more people download and use the app. We’ve figured out a way to encourage mobile users around the area to come to you after downloading our business finder app.

Aside from getting more eyeballs, it can also help establish your credibility for being top of the line in terms of aesthetics and quality service. Clients can rate their experiences with you as their event planner and help attract other users who might need your expertise. And finally, you can make use of Google and Apple’s push notification service to send messages on your clients’ phone screens in real-time. For instance, you can notify your prospect about your scheduled call or meet-up and ask for confirmation.

Conclusion

Finding new clients is a lot easier these days through sales and marketing automation. Small Business Dream can save event planners hundreds of hours for more productive and creative endeavors by doing most of the heavy liftingfor them. Learn more on how to get more clients at Smallbizdream.com and become a tech-savvy event planner today.

Keys to a Successful Dental Practice in this Digital Age

Are you spending a lot on traditional advertising to promote your dental practice only to find you’re constantly having too much empty space in your calendar? Did you know there’s a much better way that would enable you to grow your dental practice faster? Believe it or not, you can grow a successful dental practice that can earn you twice or even three times your current income by adopting a more tech-savvy approach to market yourself.

How a Dental Practice Turned into a Multi-million Dollar Business

Dr. Williams is a pillar in the community and one of Atlanta’s most sought-after practitioner, management coach and marketing guru in the dental industry. In one of his interviews, he revealed some valuable insights into the dental practice – how he grew from running a well-paying dental practice to building a five million dollar business.

He started out just like any other dentist. As time went by, his practice grew and became one of the best in providing care and quality service to people in the community. At that time he was averaging one and a half million dollars per year. But it wasn’t until he decided to move and start over that he saw his income grow by more than double.

His secret? Making his presence felt and taking an online approach to marketing. His website took off at the height of internet adoption in the late 90s and he became known to people as the tech-savvy dental practitioner in the area. It enabled him to expand his reach and quickly grow his client base, basically from scratch.

One proven technique he used which gave him 150 new patients per month was to build a sales funnel. Ninety percent of people who came to his practice became regular clients. It was effective because it allowed people to get to know him even before they met him. We’ll get into the specifics of funnel-building later in this article using Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation software.

Sales and marketing automation coupled with email, social media, and content marketing helped grow his dental practice from zero to five million dollars per year, much quicker than using the old school methods of traditional advertising. You too can become greatly successful by adopting a modern approach to promoting yourself and your dental practice.

Here are the keys to building a successful dental practice in this digital age.

Become a Perpetual Learner

Dr. Williams describes what he called “alpha dentist” as someone who’s eager to learn more and has that inner drive to be the best. A well-rounded dentist equips himself with all the necessary skills to become a competent hygienist, general dentist, pediatric dentist, orthodontist, prosthodontist, periodontist, and endodontist.

Learning these skills takes time and a lot of patience. But by being more versatile, as opposed to just doing basic dentistry, you’ll be serving a much broader audience and hence,bigger income for your dental practice.

Being a perpetual learner also means acquiring managerial and marketing skills necessary for scaling up, e.g. setting up additional operatories, hiring more staff, acquiring new customers, and so on. This includes creating systems (working on the business), and becoming a tech-savvy dental practitioner. Having these skill sets helps build your reputation as an expert on the subject and bring your dental practice closer to the community.

Grow Your Audience Online

Having a blog or website for your dental practice will set you apart from all other dentists who don’t have an online presence. People nowadays spend most of their time on the internet and social media. When they need a root canal, tooth alignment, or high quality veneer, they search the web for answers.

It also increases your credibility. People can see your track record online such as special trainings, before and after photos, and be able to find useful information about oral and dental health.

You can use your spare time setting up a website or blog, especially during slow months. People who are new to web design can benefit from sales and marketing automation software that comes with its own web editor like Small Business Dream. Choose a template specific to your industry and customize it to your heart’s content. However, if you don’t have much time for it, you can reach them and have it set up for you.

Promote Your Practice through Automation

Sales funnels and autoresponders is a big thing in the business world right now. They can be used in so many ways and in many different situations. For instance, you can use sales funnels to lead your visitors into your practice after signing up on your mailing list. For best results, we recommend that you have a website and/or micro-site, and a landing page.

Small Business Dream allows you to build your own funnel and automate certain actions based on a given response from one stage to the other. In your Introduction page for example, you can have them choose between getting more information on maintaining oral and dental health, and availing of your dental services. One of those responses can either build traffic for your site or lead to an immediate sale.

Autoresponders helps keep in touch with your clients, particularly on procedures requiring follow up such as root canal or tooth alignment. For instance, you can set up an email autoresponder to remind them about their schedule a day before the appointment and ask for confirmation. You can book your clients who answered “yes” ahead of time. This makes them feel important and cared for. You can do the same for other clients who only want checkups once every six months. Set up an autoresponder to remind them that they should have one already.

Establish Good Relationship with the Community

You’ll grow your dental practice twice as fast if you become a pillar of the community. Reach out and network with other people in the community. Offer free dental checkups in schools or free dental services for athletic teams. Make your presence felt and get involved as much as possible. Take this as an opportunity to market your skills and your dental practice and set yourself as a valuable asset to the community.

Conclusion

The digital age opens up a world of opportunities for practitioners in the dental industry. The future of marketing is here. We offer a much better way so you won’t have to settle for expensive ads that doesn’t guarantee a return on your investments. Get more ideas on how you can use sales and marketing automation at Small Business Dream and start growing your dental practice like never before.

Technology is Changing How Real Estate Works – Here’s What to Do for Agents and Brokers

If you’re a realtor and you believe that the business will never change you’re in for a real shock. Technology is seeping into every facet of our lives and work and it’s changing the way we do things – even buy and sell property.

Beginning August, real estate agents and brokers in Toronto can collect data from sold listings databases from multiple listing service (MLS) to attract homeowners and buyers within the area.

This is big news for real estate, considering the fact they have the largest real estate board in the country. This could very well mean the rest of Canada will be on the same route and we’ll be seeing more websites like 99 Acres, One Flat Fee, and Nobul jumping into the scene for Canada’s real estate business to bring the real estate business online.

Sold Listings Are Now Considered Public Information

Homeowners and buyers are now able to make their own research online from past data such as price, location, specifications, photographs, and other relevant information about the property, as well as the real estate companies who listed them. This would help spur competition and innovation in the country’s real estate business .

Century 21 and Nobul are a few examples of online real estate marketplaces in Canada, the equivalent of Redfin and Zillow in the U.S. (Note: It’s possible to search for active listings in Canada in websites like Realtor.ca but they don’t include information on sold properties). Real estate companies can present sold data however they wish and continuously improve user experience.

Homeowners and buyers will still be in need of agents and brokers in ironing out specific details even with for-sale-by-owners (FSBO) transactions. So really, being able to search sold listings online shouldn’t worry people about downsizing or going out of job. They just have to be more creative and rethink their strategies.

How This Will Impact Real Estate in Canada

Sold listings is probably the most crucial piece of information about the real estate market because it helps us get a better picture of what’s going on in the industry. Which types of properties are mostly sold this year and at what price? How long have these properties been on sale? Which areas/provinces have the most number of properties sold? Is renting a more viable option to buying this year?

Looking at the charts, we can see why such need for transparency in the real estate business is more important than ever. It gives us some useful insight about, say, the recent decline in provinces that enjoyed spectacular gains in recent years (Greater Toronto with 2 years slump in home sales since 2017, and Greater Vancouver with home sales dropping by 31.6% last year).

It also helps address the issue of competitiveness in the real estate business by establishing a price point based on supply and demand (people will know which ones are easily sold and which ones take more time at a certain price level), eliminating a lot of guesswork and arbitrary pricing. This is key in provinces like Toronto and Vancouver where the cost of owning a home is “off the charts.” Compare that with Ontario and Greater Montreal where competition in the housing market is in full swing.

The Need for an Online Solution

Technology coupled with greater access to sold listings creates a perfect environment for competition and innovation to thrive in the real estate business. Here’s what you can do to stay in the game.

1. Maximize your online presence

According to a 2017 data from a NAR Research and Real Trends Report, 92% of buyers and sellers start online, with 70% of the buyers and 75% of the sellers finding their agent online, and it’s been going up ever since.

Much of your clients’ activity will be spent in online searches than office visits. Consider using online real estate marketplaces to fast-track your sales. More and more people are going to these sites to compare prices and find competent real estate agent or broker without physically going to the brokerage.

Alternatively, you can set up a micro-site as an independent licensed agent where you can offer listing in the MLS using a flat fee. Or you can market properties for sale by yourself through social media and have clients come to you directly. It’s easier to do using sales and marketing automation with site-building capability and social media integration such as Small Business Dream.

2. Use automation to stay in touch

The length of time it takes to convert a client from initial contact is way much longer than it used to – around 3 to 18 months. This is particularly true among millennials who are more receptive to customer education and whose number two priority is to own a house (the first and last priority according to survey is to save for retirement and getting married). Hence, you’re going to need a system to keep track of your clients even when you’ve stopped thinking about them.

We’ve had a similar experience before when we made a $30,000 sale with a client 12 years after making an initial contact with him through our Small Business Dream suite of tools. Same thing can happen in real estate. Having a system like Small Business Dream helps real estate agents and brokers stay in touch through email autoresponders, newsletters, and semi-automated messages and phone calls from the initial contact to the final sale and beyond.

3. Follow up on your clients

Creating a good impression on your clients goes a long way on your ratings as a real estate agent and will help you get more exposure over the long run. Touch base with them from time to time about their purchase and provide some useful tips on how they can keep it in pristine condition. It’s also a good way to stay top-of-mind to your clients. Watch the video to see some little-known secrets used by successful real estate agents.

Same applies for your clients investing in real estate who might be interested in getting more property within the area. You can sell more to your existing clients by simply following up on them after the initial sale using sales and marketing automation like Small Business Dream.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your real estate business at SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

How To Use CRMs For The Changing Auto Body Industry

The body shop industry has been adapting to the changing times driven by the recent growth in the electric car market, and the push towards “greener”, safer transportation around the world. For example, electric car sales has nearly doubled in Canada with close to 35,000 units sold by the end of September. European countries have also seen an uptrend in hybrids last year.

With so much going on in the auto industry, shop owners are scrambling to stay current with their customers. Let’s look at some of the factors that will change the way we do business in the auto body industry and how a customer relationship management software can help better serve your customers.

“Green” Cars Are on the Rise

Green cars are becoming more popular over the years, and we might see an influx of buyers and customers in the not-so-distant future. Technology is starting to mature on these high-tech vehicles with significant improvement in speed, acceleration, range, and power efficiency compared to their predecessors.

Hybrids and fully-electric cars have come a long way, and now we have Plug-in Electric vehicles (PEV) like Tesla Model 3 leading the charge (no pun intended). Major companies like Toyota, Ford, and BMW are also digging in to get their share in this emerging market. We could see more adoption in the near future as competition grows and PEVs diversify to meet various needs (Think Nissan Leaf hatchback, Jaguar I-PACE SUV, and Rivian R1T pickup truck)

Its Impact on the Auto Body Industry

Working with hybrids and electric cars is in many ways different from conventional methods. Body shops will have to work with aluminum more often which requires specialized training and a separate facility for aluminum collision repairs. Same applies to gas-driven cars by Ford and GM which are also using much lighter aluminum over conventional steel to increase MPG.

Body shops will also need an entirely different skill set for dealing with electrical components like the induction motor, inverter, battery pack, electronic sensors, etc., as well as OEM certification when servicing these parts. The question is, would it be worth putting the extra time and money? Note: electric vehicles also requires maintenance despite having less moving parts.

The Solution: Be Quick to Adapt to Customer’s Needs

Regardless of how big or small your business is, your ability to quickly adapt and stay current with your customers is the key to surviving a fast-changing environment. Here’s what you can do to help prepare your auto body shop business.

Research the market. Check the stats in your area. Do you have a large enough market to justify the cost of upgrade, or are they pretty much a niche market as of this time? Looking at the charts, we can see, for example, how electric vehicle sales in Ontario grew by 209 percent last year, followed by British Columbia and Quebec at 151 and 131 percent, respectively.

Given these numbers, there’s a fair chance of customer demand for maintenance and collision repairs in hybrids and electric vehicles (EV). However, this may not be the case in countries on the other side of the world, where people might actually buy good old gas-driven cars to take advantage of price cuts as demand for oil starts to dwindle. Either way, always be ready to take action when opportunity presents itself.

Invest in technology. Whether you’re dealing with older vehicles or high-tech EVs, it is worth investing in technologies that will help increase efficiency and productivity for your business. You can either choose to upgrade your auto body shop to serve a broader range of customers or increase throughputs by adding more bays and introducing IR curing systems. You can also improve other aspects of your business such as keeping track of your customers’ job order, in which case, you’re going to need a CRM to help you stay on-schedule.

Let people know you’re in business. After spending considerable amount of time and resources upgrading and improving your services, people need a way to know about it. Small Business Dream suite of tools helps business owners by offering a cost-effective way to reach out potential customers in multiple channels using automation (email autoresponders), semi-automation (email templates and phone script), social media marketing, and other useful features such as client acquisition (landing page and sales funnel), A/B testing, survey builder, and so on.

Stay in touch with your customers. Your current customers are an important source of information to help push your business forward. Throw out a survey from time to time to get into your customers’ head. Are they keen to have an electric vehicle in the future? If so, which model and make are they most interested in? Would they prefer to have both types (legacy and EV) for specific purposes? You can get a lot of useful feedback by just using Small Business Dream’s survey builder. Or, you can have them sign up to your auto body shop newsletter to keep them updated with your latest upgrades and services so they never miss out on anything and keep your business top-of-mind.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your auto body shop business at SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.

Customer Relationship Management Tools for Insurance Agents

While the insurance business is generally a traditional industry driven by referrals, more Millennials are investing their money and are demanding a technology-driven approach. As such, the insurance industry is adapting online trends like sales and marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) to get a leg up on their competition and to better serve their clients.

Adopting an online approach to growing your insurance business opens a world of possibilities for your company. We’ll explore some ways you can accomplish the task using Small Business Dream.

First, here’s why you should consider using Small Business Dream as your companion in the insurance business.

Ease of use. Small Business Dream focuses on crucial areas in business such as customer acquisition, customer communication, customer feedback, and customer education. It offers a simple, user-friendly interface and avoids unnecessary clutter.
Small Business Dream enables you to devise your own strategies with as many combinations and customizations as your creativity would allow. It offers a wide selection of themes, landing page templates and email autoresponders which can be customized to fit any kind of business.
Cost-effectiveness. Small Business Dream increases your profit margins by minimizing the overhead cost of acquiring new clients with cutting-edge technology in sales and marketing automation.

Online Customer Acquisition

Our long-held notion of a typical old-fashioned insurance agent is quickly being replaced by tech-savvy mobile users capable of reaching hundreds of potential clients from any place around the world with a mobile app like CRM. It’s not surprising why so many traditional insurance companies are also scrambling to learn CRM just to keep up with the competition.

With Small Business Dream’s Sales Funnel Setup, you can easily set up your first landing page about your insurance company for just an hour or two, or customize our generic sales funnel pages with your chosen theme and start creating traffic through social media, customer referrals, or sales funnel card. The system works whether you have a company owned website or want to have a micro-site right off the bat.

Opt-in Survey Form

Segmenting your leads and contacts from the outset can save you a lot of time sifting out your ideal prospects. Typically, insurance agents will have to qualify their leads based on the following information:

Personal information (name, sex, date of birth, email address)
Health information (height, weight, lifestyle habits, pre-existing condition)
Employment status (type of work, employer, length of service)
Financial information (income, net worth)

However, for our CRM, you might have to skip some of those during the initial opt-in survey and get to them later on after showing more interest. Instead, we’ll be focusing only on the basic information such as name, email address, sex, age, and the type of insurance they’re interested in. This might slightly be different from one type of insurance to another.

If your insurance company offers life insurance, your opt-in survey form may ask for additional information about the specific type of life insurance they’re interested in (term, universal, or whole life), and have them subscribed to a specific email series based on which option they’ve checked off. This method can be used in other types of insurances as well.

The idea is to have your prospects spend as little time as possible on your opt-in survey form and get just the right amount of information for your email autoresponder to work with. Eventually, you’ll be able to get to them via phone, sms, or email after showing up on your Action List. You’ll have a much better experience qualifying your leads using this method than having it done manually by yourself.

Upselling to Your Existing Clients

Insurance upgrades can help increase your income by as much as 30% or higher depending on the number of clients who opted for a policy upgrade. You need a follow-up tool like a CRM to update their knowledge about additional coverage offered by the insurance company through policy upgrades.

Again, Small Business Dream’s survey builder will come in handy. Depending on user response, you can switch them over to an email series about the advantages of increasing their coverage and specific situations where they are considered vital, as is usually the case with health insurance and long-term disability.

You can also upsell to your qualified prospects prior to the sale by showing some of the benefits of whole life over term insurance, or you may follow up on them from time to time for policy upgrades after showing some interest on it.

Offer Solutions through Customer Education

You can help your future clients save money on their monthly premiums by sharing some useful information such as avoiding risky behavior or by maintaining a good level of fitness prior to the insurance exam. You can also educate your prospects and existing clients about the pros and cons of choosing one type of insurance over the other and why people need to have coverage. One way of doing it is through your email autoresponder or through your company website or blog.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways CRM can increase your productivity as an insurance agent. You’ll be able to come with more creative ways and develop new techniques as you gain more experience in the insurance business and with Small Business Dream CRM, or you can reach them on how you can use the system for your industry better.

Learn more on how you can successfully build your business through sales and marketing automation. Visit SmallBizDream.com and start using our suite of tools to increase your sales and profitability like never before.