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Why Your Company Needs
a Value Proposition

It's no secret the world of business has gotten increasingly competitive, and in these times of COVID-19 and uncertainty, contention in the marketplace makes success difficult. Business owners are constantly wondering how they can set themselves apart from their competition, and oftentimes, the answer can be deceptively simple. Every company needs a value proposition; without one, your company can all too easily be brushed aside by consumers. This value proposition should be at the very core of your marketing efforts and should drive your success, if done correctly.

Value propositions, in effect, are statements that you and your business make to answer the question: "Why should I choose your company over the competition?" Value propositions are statements about what defines your company and why a customer should place their trust in you instead of finding another partner. Consumers enter the marketplace oftentimes knowing exactly what they're looking for - they know what they want, and they're looking for the product or business that can deliver. If there is nothing to differentiate your business from your competition, why would these consumers choose you?

So it's obvious that value propositions can help make customers see why they should choose you, but what does a good value proposition look like? Well, the first step you should take is to identify the best benefits your product or service can pass off to consumers. What will a customer get out of buying from you? Then explain why customers need this benefit; what problems will you be solving for the consumer? Lastly, explain why your company can provide these benefits and solve these problems better than anyone else can: Why can you deliver better than your competition? A good value proposition will quickly cover these points to give you the best chance with potential customers.

Value propositions are one of the most basic and most important things a company needs when thinking about marketing, and every company needs to have a quality value proposition in order to achieve success.

Still confused about your value proposition? It's okay! Marketing your image is critical, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Here at Baer Performance Marketing, we've had years of experience and countless success stories. Let our knowledge work for your business too! Contact us @baerpm on social media or on our website; we'd love to help you get your marketing done the way marketing should be.

Hacking Your Screen Time Consumption

We are bombarded every day with constant demands of our attention: conversations, to-do lists, the latest media, and the pressure to increase work productivity while sustaining some semblance of a personal life. Finding a balance of staying up to date with notifications, responsibilities, and absorbing content can seem like a never-ending struggle.

We have daily tasks we do without thinking: shower, breakfast, commute, work, lunch, socialize, leave work, dinner and a few hours at night of free time-and there is a struggle to squeeze in different rituals to stay connected with one another, entertain ourselves and try to find time to watch the latest Netflix series that premieres tonight so we have something to talk about tomorrow around the water cooler.

And distractions are plentiful in 2020. Assessing your own pitfalls in routines and finding times in the day where you have wasted time is important in making strides towards increased productivity. Be honest with yourself. Sitting down with a pen and paper and physically writing what your day is usually like will give you a great benchmark. Don't lie. If you binge watch a new Hulu series every week, write it down. If you aimlessly scroll social media, jot it down. Device time can be a huge time suck. Screen time usage is tracked by most cellphones. Use that data to understand how long you are using your phone and where your time is being allocated on your device.

In this week's Baer Necessities blog, we're offering up tips on how to hack into your free time and streamline your daily routines. 
 

Notifications

It's tough to estimate how many notifications we receive daily. With text messages, emails, social media interactions and banner notifications, we can find ourselves constantly distracted by the small, red bubbles staring us in our face. There are people who have to constantly click the application or message to remove the notification. There are others on the opposite side of the spectrum with an email icon reading 8,423 unread emails. Both of those people are wrong.

Setting up your phone to have certain notifications for certain programs will go a long way. Obviously, most people want their phone to notify them when they have a text message or a phone call. Understand, in your preferences for certain apps, you can pick and choose what type of notifications you receive. Other notifications you can avoid until you have decided to open the application. Over checking your phone is a trained habit. The best thing you can do is find balance. Balancing is understanding what is important and what is not.

Important is trying to make plans with a family member or friend for later in the day. Not important is refreshing Instagram to see how many likes you are gaining on your most recent brunch outing. Realize the notification will always be there.  You can put your phone away for 20 minutes, and nothing bad is going to happen, outside of an actual emergency.
 

Do Not Disturb

Media Content

Your Commute

Free Time at Home

Our culture has a constant need to digest information. Whether the content is for personal usage, educating ourselves more in school or our careers or watching an Amazon Video documentary your cousin told you about, we have the desire and access to keep gaining knowledge.

By applying personal rules, setting boundaries and finding different times and ways to consume information, you become more efficient, less distracted and will start to feel more content about what you are not missing. Take inventory of the medium and large chunks of time where you are not being productive. However, we all need time to recharge our batteries and zone out for a while. For more tips from Baer Performance Marketing on digital trends and media content, visit BaerPM.com/blog.

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The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

Everybody has a story and different experiences they face throughout their lifetime. The current world population is over 7 billion, and that means billions of stories-from various backgrounds, cultures, and religions-are waiting to be heard.

Storytelling can be an effective way to teach and help bring a sense of unity. When people share their stories, it helps others see life through a different lens-what many call "walking in someone else's shoes."

When a company gives details of its history, day-to-day operations, or customer experiences, perhaps even including hardships the organization or its employees have faced, it helps it grow closer with the audiences with whom it is communicating. Conveying a more vulnerable side of the brand and sharing stories with customers, prospective customers, and business partners will create more of an emotional connection and build trust.

Studies have shown the human brain responds to stories on a much deeper level than facts or data. This is called neutral coupling and can lead to a "mirroring effect," promoting connection and empathy. These emotions can then, in turn, drive buying behavior. Plus, when consumers feel like they have things in common with a brand, they are more likely and willing to support a business.

Using research reported in the New York Times, Neil Patel wrote about the science of storytelling at KISSmetrics: "The human brain responds to the descriptive power of stories in deeply affecting ways, influencing both the sensory and motor cortex. To read a story is to feel an experience and to synchronize our minds with the subject of the story."

Airbnb is a great example of a company that believes in the power of storytelling. To help them differentiate their brand in the industry, they introduced the philosophy of "belonging anywhere."  The company explained that many people believed they were just focused on "renting houses," but Airbnb aspires to be a company with customers who feel a sense of belonging wherever they go in the world. To that end, they launched an experience-focused campaign encouraging customers to share their personal travel stories with one another. Through the stories being shared, people see and feel that Airbnb wants to ensure its customers feel like they belong and can be themselves wherever they travel.

We encourage you to share a story related to your business on the Baer Performance Marketing Facebook Page or your own social media pages. You never know who you might empower, teach, and inspire to do the same.

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The 3 Best Video Conferencing Apps for Teams

With it sometimes being a challenge to hold meetings and conferences in person-especially in 2020-there are many tools that have been developed to allow people to connect virtually. Video conferencing software provides many benefits:

• It allows for "face-to-face" communication.
  • Many studies have shown that communication is much more effective when you can see the person you are talking to. This allows you to see mannerisms and the facial expressions that are being used.
  • Maintaining virtual eye contact can promote the same level of engagement as speaking in person.
• It's environmentally friendly.
  • A recent study conducted by George Mason University found that driving an hour in a car to attend a meeting uses the equivalent electrical power of 1,000 hours of video conferencing.
• It connects teams and allows collaboration regardless of where in the world each team member is located.

Some of the top video conferencing apps include Zoom, BlueJeans, and Microsoft Teams.

Zoom

BlueJeans

Microsoft Teams

With so much uncertainty in the world right now, many businesses are trying to find ways to be innovative with communication to keep staff, clients and partners safe. With the help of video conferencing software, teams can continue to collaborate and support one another. However, each video conferencing tool has its own unique qualities, and businesses should identify what they wish to accomplish during their virtual meetings and conduct research to find the software that is best suited for their culture and goals.

If you're looking for help pinpointing the right video conferencing software for your company, contact Baer Performance Marketing today.

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Local SEO: How to Improve Your Local Search Ranking

If you're the owner of a small to medium-sized business in Green Bay, WI or elsewhere, you're probably not looking to target a global customer base (yet). It's the surrounding communities that fuel your business, and having your business show up at the top of local search results is the best way to ensure exposure to potential new customers.

Below, we've compiled a list of the best practices to help you get on the fast track to boosting your local SEO:

1.) Conduct Keyword Research

Publishing regular blog posts to keep website content "fresh" and position your team as industry experts is a great foundation to improving your SEO. However, incorporating industry-, service- and/or product-specific keywords and locality can make your content writing more valuable and results-driven the next time someone uses a search engine to find your field.

For example, if you're a restaurant, incorporating keywords and phrases similar to "Sunday brunch buffet in Green Bay" clarifies your service offerings for search engines and verifies your location-which can help better your rank in "near me" searches.

Google's Keyword Planner is a quintessential resource for keyword research. It can help you discover new keywords and identify which keywords generate the most traffic.

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Why Your Company Should Be Blogging

As technological progress becomes less and less optional for businesses, many business owners and operators are left wondering what steps they should take to improve their digital presence. Though there are countless ways for companies to start expanding their online footprint, one of the best options continues to be the use of blog posts - like this one!

Blogs aren't anything new: short for "weblogs," blogs have been around since the mid '90s and have been consistently used since. The fact they've been used for nearly 25 years now doesn't mean they aren't on the cutting edge of technology - nearly 77 percent of people who use the internet also frequent blogs. Companies that blog pull over 55 percent more website traffic. For these reasons, among others, blogs provide companies an invaluable resource to draw people to their website and provide quality leads that otherwise might have gone untapped.

Blogs don't just represent words on paper; (though they are a great way to keep people up to date on your business) the inclusion of a blog on a website opens doors to SEO and to internal linking on your website. In short, blogs can help your company show up higher on the list of search engine results, which is an easy way to place yourself over your competition. Additionally, a good blog that uses links is a simple way to keep people on your website and nudge them in the direction of products or services you'd like to show off. Companies can also share their blog via social media, creating engaging, personalized content.

This unique content, created specifically for your company's website, can be about whatever you want it to be. The most useful and effective content is almost always the most engaging and informative content, so make sure to focus on aspects of your company that your clients will likely find exciting! Use seasonal and holiday posts to take advantage of certain times of year, or post lists of your business' important offerings or key benefits. Share testimonials or recent projects on which your business has been working. Excited and informed customers are better customers, and statistics prove it! Small businesses that blog, on average, see their leads increase by 126 percent, and nearly 80 percent of those who read a company's blog say they trust a company more if they have a blog. Blogging on your website has definite positives and is highly recommended, if not necessitated.

For those about to blog - we salute you! We know it might be intimidating and a lot is riding on updating your website with a blog. Here at Baer Performance Marketing, we want to help you maximize your marketing efforts.blogging included! If you think you need help setting up your business' blog, or just making sure your current blog has quality content, find us @baerpm on social media, or on our website!

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Why Should Small Businesses Use Social Media?

Businesses are most likely to succeed when prospective customers can easily connect with them and learn about their services. Promotion and marketing are crucial to success, and small businesses are no exception to this rule. However, these businesses typically have smaller marketing budgets and fewer dedicated marketing specialists, which raises the question: "How can small business marketing stand out among such fierce competition?" More and more often, the answer is social media.

Especially in today's digital world, small businesses must stay on the cutting edge of technology to stay competitive. Social media, when used effectively, can be one of the strongest and most important tools that a business can have in their marketing repertoire.

Your business's image is important, and social media can be daunting. We'd love to use our knowledge and experience to help you make the most out of your online marketing. Contact us or find us on social media @bearpm to take the first step into creating or polishing your business's social media strategy!

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How to Pivot Your Advertising Strategy in the Cord-Cutting Era 

As technology progresses and attention spans grow smaller and smaller, companies find themselves constantly scrambling to stay in front of their audience. Consumers are cutting ties with expensive cable packages, accessing music in different formats while demanding the freedom to consume what they want, when they want, wherever they want.  

Over the past few months, screen time has increased even more with the unprecedented lockdown our world has experienced. Instead of picking up a newspaper or tuning into the evening news for updates, the population has become more reliant on their devices. As a marketing agency, we've seen an increase in social media interaction and email marketing open and click-through rates. This has also led us to further research and embrace music and video streaming services as an additional digital advertising option.

Streaming services are an online provider of entertainment (music, movies, etc.) that delivers the content via an Internet connection to the subscriber's computer, TV or mobile device. (via PCMag.com) There is a large abundance of services in the streaming space: Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube, HBO GO, Amazon Video and Music, Google Play Music, Disney Plus, etc. 

With more people looking to engage with media at their convenience, businesses have found themselves with the need to pivot how they are allocating advertising budgets. Not only can a budget often be stretched further with digital and streaming service advertising, but ads are being placed directly in front of a user's face on his or her cellphone, tablet or laptop.

To help determine which streaming services may best fit your digital advertising strategy, we've identified the unique selling points of the most popular platforms:

Streaming advertising is generally a more affordable way to advertise than traditional media. It doesn't eliminate traditional media buying, but it can be integrated into a full marketing strategy with other tactics. Baer Performance Marketing can walk you through streaming advertising options and assess your budget and audience to find the services that are the best fit for your company's goals. To get your ads placed in front of the "cord cutters," contact Baer Performance Marketing today.

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The Next Normal: The Future of Retail in a Post-Pandemic World

The retail industry remains remarkably resilient, despite a large amount of adversity experienced in the past 15 years. Through economic downturns-and mandatory shutdowns due to stay-at-home orders-businesses have displayed the ingenuity and determination to adapt and overcome on the macro level.

Retailers will, however, feel the impact of the coronavirus crisis long after the pandemic begins to ease and eventually ends. Americans have changed how and where they shop in a commerce market irrevocably changed by COVID-19, and their shopping behavior is unlikely to revert back to pre-pandemic form. Businesses must adjust now to address the needs of their target market and to capitalize on trends that have accelerated in the era of the coronavirus.

This post lays out five trends retailers should monitor to thrive in a post-pandemic world:

Safe, Clean Environments

Consumers are likely to maintain a heightened sense of health consciousness while out in society. These inward expectations will manifest in the retail locations they frequent, as they seek locations with high levels of cleanliness and plenty of room for personal space. Shoppers are now conditioned to avoid crowded spaces, and retailers must adjust layouts and point-of-sale areas accordingly.

E-Commerce

The rise of e-commerce was well documented before the advent of the coronavirus, but it has served to fast-track the departure from brick-and-mortar retail. New data from IBM's US Retail index indicates the shift from physical stores to digital shopping has been accelerated by roughly five years. Much of the increase in e-commerce preference can be attributed to once-resistant older shoppers who made the switch to online shopping.

To reach and retain the increasing number of potential customers online, retailers must be meticulous in the care they put into their e-commerce platforms. If it isn't easy to use and intuitive for all customers who make a digital visit, a competitor's site is nothing more than a Google search away.

Consider adding these features to improve the user experience:

• A search bar to make it easier for customers to find items in your digital inventory
• A chatbot to quickly answer basic questions a customer may have
• A 'related item' feature to close additional sales

Contactless Payments

If they do decide to shop in-store, some consumers opt, if possible, for contactless card and mobile payments instead of using cash or point-of-sale terminal keypads. Businesses have moved quickly to capitalize on the demand for this new way to pay. Mastercard reports 78 percent of all of its transactions across Europe are now contactless. In the U.S., Walmart expanded the ways in which it provides contactless services, offering a "Scan & Go" feature  through its app. Many supermarket chains have also sped up their scheduled transition to accept contactless payments.

The ease of contactless payment options will likely make it a consumer expectation long after the pandemic is under control.

Curbside Pickup

From restaurants to bookstores, curbside pickup has helped sustain countless businesses during the pandemic. Consumers benefit from it, too. Through curbside pickup, shoppers get their purchases same-day without having to step out of their vehicle. New parents or those with a physical disability have found the service to be especially valuable.

And data suggests demand for curbside pickup is here to stay, with 75% of consumers saying they will likely continue to opt for curbside pickup-even after the pandemic subsides.

If you're a retailer looking to attract more local customers, curbside pickup is a must-have. To ensure a seamless experience, display signage and utilize email and text communication to confirm orders and provide pickup times.

Virtual Offerings

Social distancing measures have forced many businesses that used to depend on drawing a crowd into expanding or launching a digital strategy. Performing arts centers and fitness studios, for example, have quickly learned the value of livestreaming and offering virtual classes and events through online services like Zoom.

While it's still uncertain when the U.S. will be getting back to "business as usual," the demand for virtual offerings is expected to endure well into the future.

Even in a post-COVID-19 world, virtual events and services-providing geographical and scheduling flexibility-will likely expand your customer base.

Is your retail business ready to embrace the "next normal?"

COVID-19 disrupted the retail industry and brought about revelatory changes to the way consumers shop. The sudden arrival of these trends was unanticipated and challenging to embrace, and there's still plenty of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and its long-term impact on the economy. But, businesses who embrace the waves of change will be better positioned for success in a post-pandemic world. Is your business ready for life in the "next normal?" Get the resources you need from Baer Performance Marketing:

• Local SEO: How to Improve Your Local Search Ranking
• 5 Common Misconceptions About Customer Service
• Four Trends Transforming Customer Experience

Tips from Entrepreneurs

The well-known phrase "high risk, high reward" could not be a more apt description of what it's like to try and run a small business today. The national economy has proven to be extremely unstable in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and entrepreneurs of all stripes face increased competition for consumers' stretched dollars.

History is replete with success stories of those who saw an opportunity, faced the ample risks of branching out on their own, and made their mark on the business world. While no two paths to success are identical, their experiences could be invaluable to the next up-and-comer.  Will it be you?

Anna Koark
Author and Entrepreneur 

In a Ted Talk, Anne Koark says "successful people learn from others' mistakes." Throughout her talk, she shares valuable lessons about the different failures she's faced throughout her life. Many believe you learn more from personal mistakes, because the experience sticks with you. However, observing how others have failed, and not repeating their error, can be just as beneficial to a burgeoning business. For many people, it's difficult to be frank about what you've done wrong, but selfless transparency can build up confidence in others and motivate them to keep trying.  Learning from others not only prevents us from making the same mistakes, but can sharpen our decision-making in the future.

Jeff Bezos
Founder, CEO, President of Amazon

Elon Musk
Engineer, Industrial designer, Technology Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

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5 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Agency in 2020 

You know the old saying, "Hindsight is 20/20." No one could have predicted the business, economic and financial trials of the first and second quarter of 2020. However, with these challenging times, businesses need to be turning lemons into lemonade by pivoting their marketing approach now that businesses are allowed to open their doors. Hiring a marketing agency is a great start. Whether a small business or large corporation, implementing strategic marketing tactics now and in the future months of 2020 will keep your business first in the minds of your core demographic. 

The benefits of outsourcing your marketing: 

Outsourcing enables small businesses to leverage broad marketing knowledge and effective solutions in a short period of time. While you focus on your main business initiatives, the agency will focus solely on your marketing initiatives. Other advantages include:

1. Efficiency for short-term and urgent projects
   Most agencies will provide you a specialized, dedicated team ensuring timelines and expectations are met and measurable results are produced. Many digital marketing tactics provide you with analytics and reports that give you a tangible measure of the results you are getting through their services. Businesses can expect regular communication and support with prompt responses to questions.

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