Tag: management

7 AI Tools For Email Inbox Management

If you are drowning in a sea of emails, email inbox management may be the answer.

Trying another life hack may not be enough. As soon as you get to your inbox to zero, the emails keep pouring back in.

To fight the chaos, AI email tools give you a leg up by acting as your personal email assistant to keep your inbox organized.

Each email inbox management program has different features and benefits, so consider what you really need in an AI email tool before getting distracted by all the bells and whistles.

Here are a few questions to stop and consider before making a decision:

  • What am I spending too much time on?
  • What do I not have enough time for?
  • Which tasks would help me reach my marketing goals?
  • What do I dream someone else could just do for me?

These questions will help you stay focused on which options will save you time, rather than just adding more tasks to your daily routine.

1. SalesHandy

SalesHandy focuses on helping those with sales jobs or sales goals to hit those goals faster and more consistently.

The primary offering of SalesHandy is email tracking, which you can access in their unlimited free version.

AI Tools for Email Inbox Management - SalesHandy

With email tracking, you can find out when people open your emails. You can even set it up to give you a little notification on your desktop, so you don’t have to go back and check. You’ll start to learn who is most interested and if people are opening right away, or maybe later in the day or week, etc.

You also mute or turn this feature off temporarily. This is especially helpful if you are on a sales blitz and focused on a campaign for a period of time. You can put your energy in, get the notifications, and then turn it off when you are ready to focus on other tasks.

You can also create email templates, so you spend less time drafting emails.

As mentioned, this service is free, but you can upgrade to $9 a month per person to get access to features like link tracking to see what people are clicking on and mail merge. There are further upgrades for teams that offer access to additional features.

SalesHandy provides a Gmail Chrome extension and Outlook integration.

2. Front

Get your team involved with your email inbox management with Front. Front gives you the power to assign labels and team members to your emails.

Even better, you can use various integrations and workflows to automate the process so you spend less time processing emails as they come in.

AI Tools for Email Inbox Management - FrontApp

According to Front, this can help your customers feel like VIPs by increasing response time and relevancy.

Commenting internally within your email inbox allows other team members to collaborate before putting out an official response, and assigning means it goes to the right person to send the response.

Pricing starts at $19 a month, per person, for teams of 10 or less. This allows you to connect your email, as well as social media and SMS messages with your team. You can also use its basic assigning and commenting function, create rules, and integrate other tools.

Upgraded plans provide customized options, including more integrations, rules, and data tracking, so you can see how well your systems work.

3. Drag

Drag brings team collaboration to Gmail inboxes. With this app, you can create a unique email address to serve your customers and work together as a team to keep up with it.

For instance, you could set up an account for customer service or help desk. It could also be useful for sales teams or CRM. This keeps your email clear by sending crucial emails to one inbox that multiple people can help manage.
AI Tools for Email Inbox Management - DragApp
Drag brings a host of tools to the shared inbox. Your team has access to emails as they come into your account and then can jump in and provide responses as necessary.

Drag also serves as a dashboard of its own. From here, you can assign emails to team members and set labels or due dates. You can add notes or tasks associated with emails as they come in. There’s also an internal chat feature for team members to speak in real-time about projects or issues.

Within this dashboard, you can create various lists and move emails between lists as they are processed. Automation features can improve your efficiency further.

Other features of note include email templates, data tracking and analysis, and to-do lists.

You can get started with the basics with Drag’s free option. You’ll gain access to most of their features, although you can only have one inbox, and your emails will be labeled with a “Sent by Drag” watermark.

To remove the little ad in sent emails, unlock more inboxes, and other expanded features, paid features start at $8 a month, per user.

4. EmailAnalytics

Are you ready for more Gmail AI email tools? EmailAnalytics promises to help you wrangle your emails and get those responses out faster.

AI Tools for Email Inbox Management - EmailAnalytics

The EmailAnalytics dashboard uses data to provide a better picture of what’s working with your email systems and highlights opportunities for improvement across the board.

See an overview of your email activity, including who sends and responds the most, what time most emails come in, and your response time. You can also monitor the number of emails by certain categories.

This serves as a monitoring tool to keep an eye on how things are going throughout the team, and you can create reports for the team to help them get on board with improved systems.

You can try EmailAnalytics for free for 14 days. That gives you enough time to get familiar with the product and see if the data is useful for your team.

After the trial period, individual plans start at $5 a month. By definition, this plan is for personal users who want to track their use. You can also go “Pro” with more features. For team pricing, you will have to contact the company directly for a quote.

5. Clean Email

So many email inbox management tools have features to get you on track or improve your sales or customer service processes, but sometimes you need help keeping your inbox organized and lighter.

Clean Email promises to help you clear your inbox of the emails you don’t need so you can focus on the ones you do.

AI Tools for Email Inbox Management - CleanEmail

How does it make this magic happen? Through bulk actions and automated organizations, you can make large sweeps to improve your inbox. For example, you can filter and collate emails into groups, such as from certain senders or a certain number of years old or larger themes such as social media notifications. Once they are labeled, you can delete them in bulk.

To make it even more magical, you can automate these actions.

In addition, Clean Email offers unsubscribe and data protection features.

Plans start at $9.99 a month for a single account.

6. Smart Assist

Are you ready for a digital assistant to take care of email management for you? Smart Assist is here to help.

Smart Assist breaks its process down into a few steps. First, you train your assistant to recognize certain emails, such as flagging specific senders or subject lines.

Then you tell it what should happen to those emails. Do they need to be deleted? Or sorted? Or do you need to respond to them? As your assistant starts to work, you’ll need to check in periodically and make any changes to improve the workflows.

Pricing starts at $4.99 per month per user for basic features. To bring these features to a team, you’ll need to pay $14.99 per month per user or $24.99 per month per user for organization or corporate level support.

7. SaneBox

SaneBox promises to do just what the name implies: to keep you (and your inbox) sane. It’s a simple concept. By filing emails into folders by category, you can stay focused on the most important emails, so you aren’t distracted by the ones you don’t need.

SaneBox creates folders and then files emails. The filing action has already happened wherever you check your emails, such as mobile, desktop, or in an app.

In other words, you don’t need to use a separate app or software. SaneBox works natively.

sanebox email inbox management AI

Utilizing AI email tools technology, SaneBox learns your behavior to categorize where new emails should go. The more it learns about how you interact with your emails, the more useful the service becomes.

SaneBox has three different pricing levels. The first at $7 a month is available for one email account and you can choose one optional feature. For $12 a month, you can use SaneBox on two email accounts and get five optional features. For $35 a month, you can use it on four email accounts and get unlimited features.

Frequently Asked Questions About Email Inbox Management

How Is AI Used in Emails?

Artificial intelligence for email inbox management learns how you interact with emails, how you want them filed, or what action to do, and can categorize them appropriately. This helps you focus on the most important and urgent emails.

How Will AI Change Email Marketing Strategy?

AI email tools can keep you focused on interacting with customers and driving sales. These tools can also help delegate emails to team members and collaborate before a response is sent.

How Do I Manage My Email Inbox?

You can file emails by sender, by priority, or by other categories so you can devote your time to the emails that drive the most ROI. Integrating AI email tools can automate this process, so you don’t have to handle email inbox management manually.

What Does Email Management Include?

All AI email tools offer different features. Look for basic filing, labeling, delegation, and clean up, along with features to collaborate with the team members.

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Email Inbox Management: Conclusion

Email marketing is still one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. Taking the time to craft personal emails, with real responses to people, is valuable.

However, it is easy to get bogged down if your inbox is out of control. Integrating one or more of these inbox management solutions can free up time so you can focus on getting work done.

Which AI inbox tool are you going to start using first?

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Article URL: https://www.finleycms.com/careers/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28229152 Points: 1 # Comments: 0 The post Finley (YC W21) is hiring fintech experts to transform debt capital management appeared first on Get Funding For Your Business And Ventures. The post Finley (YC W21) is hiring fintech experts to transform debt capital management appeared first on Buy It At … Continue reading Finley (YC W21) is hiring fintech experts to transform debt capital management

The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Campaign Management

We’ve all seen Google Ads. Whether you call it Google AdSense, AdWords, or Ads, they’re the ads displayed in the search results on Google. Learning how to set them up is important, but learning how to manage and maintain their performance is a whole different ball game. 

In this guide, we’re pulling back the curtain and looking at what steps you’ll want to take after you have the ad set up. Whether you have a high or low-performing Google ad, you’ll want to do these things regularly.

What Is Google Ad Campaign Management?

Setting up your Google Ads campaign is an important and essential piece of the puzzle, but the work doesn’t stop there. There’s no such thing as “passive income” when running and managing Google Ads campaigns.

Those who have successful ad campaigns spend a lot of time on the backend evaluating the performance of their ads, looking at different keywords, switching up the designs and copy, and testing everything against key metrics to see how they perform. These are the necessary steps toward building a campaign that can pay you for months and even years if you hit the nail on the head.

It’s worth the work in the long run, but you need to get your Google ads campaign management right if you expect to have those types of results.

Good thing Google provides us with some simple ways to track everything in the backend. First, you can set email notifications to alert you whenever something happens with your campaign.

For example, if you want to receive alerts for possible policy violations you can do this from your Google ads account under setup and preferences. Determine what you would like to trigger an email notification. Some people only want to receive an email for critical issues while others want to stay up to date on every little detail.

Step 1: Check Current Google Ad Performance

Before you can determine what you need to change, you need to first look at your ad performance and see what’s working and what isn’t. There are five key metrics to pay attention to:

  • impressions
  • clicks
  • cost
  • conversions
  • click-through rate (CTR)

Let’s break each of these down a little more.

Impressions

An impression occurs each time your ad is displayed and seen by someone on Google. The best way to increase your impressions is to increase your campaign budget. This can push you higher on Google, thus giving you more visibility. Budget plays a role here but ad quality and relevance are ultimately the most important factors.

If Google decides that your ad isn’t relevant to the audience you’re targeting, Google won’t display your ad high enough and you will end up with low impressions and poor performance.

Clicks

This is the bread and butter of a Google ads specialist. Everyone wants more clicks. A click happens when someone sees your ad and then clicks it. Ideally, you want as many clicks as possible but if your ad isn’t getting clicks, you may want to rethink your copy or ad targeting.

Cost

Cost is the amount of money you spend, simple right? What’s more important is your “cost per click,” or CPC.

The way talented advertisers are able to scale ads is by determining how much money they need to put in to get a click or conversion. If you can determine that spending $2 on Google ads results in you making $5 for every click, it’s simple math at that point. Spend $4 and you’ll make $10, and keep building it up from there.

It’s not that simple, though. Your bid, quality score, and ad rank will impact how much you need to spend. Your bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for a click. The quality score is a rating Google provides from 1-10 based on how relevant your ad, landing page, and keywords are. The ad rank is Google’s value to determine where they will place your ad in the SERPs.

Conversions

A conversion occurs when someone takes the action you want them to take; this happens off the search engine results page and on your landing page or website. For example, if you’re running an ad for an e-commerce store and you want people to see the ad, click it, and then buy a suit on your landing page, each time someone buys the suit, that would be a conversion.

Google provides ways for us to track this using conversion tracking as discussed in the video above.

Click-Through Rate

Your CTR is the best way for Google to measure the relevance of your ad. It also allows you to determine if the ad is resonating with the audience you’ve chosen. A high click-through rate means that a lot of people are seeing the ad, clicking it, and converting. That’s a high-performing ad.

If you get a lot of impressions or clicks, but little conversions, it could mean your ad copy is good but the product or service you’re selling doesn’t align with the ad. Your CTR is a percentage based on the number of clicks and impressions.

Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

The standard in most industries is five percent but you can still have success with a lower click-through rate.

Step 2: Reevaluate Your Ad Targeting

With every type of digital marketing, targeting is an important factor. You want to understand the buyer intent of your audience and if you don’t have a solid buyer persona drawn up, you’ll want to start there.

What does your ideal customer want? What do they look like? Where do they live? How much money do they make? What are their interests? What upsets them? Think about all of these things when determining your ad targeting because you need to get inside their head if you can expect them to click on your ad and convert.

Here are some examples of the metrics you can use for Google ad targeting:

  • Demographics: targeting based on location, age, gender, and devices
  • Affinity: reaching your audience using search and display networks
  • In-market: showing ads to people with a history of searching for products just like yours
  • Custom intent: choosing keywords related to the people who have engaged with similar content
  • Remarketing: targeting people who have interacted with you in the past but might not have converted

Step 3: A/B Test Ad Copy and Design

Now let’s take a look at your ad copy and design. It’s broken down into a few different segments:

  • your offer
  • your headline
  • your description
  • the URL
  • zny extensions

If any of these factors are hurting the performance of your ad, test them up against something else. The most important thing to learn is you only want to change one thing at a time. That’s the only way to figure out if that was the culprit.

For example, if you find yourself getting a lot of impressions but you’re not converting well, you might want to change the headline because it’s not enticing people to click. If you find that you’re getting a lot of clicks but little conversions, maybe your offer isn’t relevant enough.

Dynamic ads are a great way to work around this because they pull content directly from your site to ensure that the headline and description are relevant to the offer. This takes some of the thinking out of it and it’s worth testing up against a custom ad.

Step 4: Dig Into Negative Keywords

No need to complicate this: Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to display your ad for. There are many reasons why someone would do this but one of the big ones is you’re letting Google make a lot of the decisions for you. In that case, you might want to use negative keywords for things such as brand names, competitors, or other keywords that you know won’t lead to a conversion.

To add negative keywords, you’ll go into the Google ads campaign manager, select keywords, Negatives, and add the keywords to the proper ad group.

Step 5: Optimize Your Landing Pages

Remember that a big part of Google ads campaign management actually happens off the SERPs. It happens on your landing pages as well. If you have an ad that is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but you’re still not converting, chances are there is something wrong with your landing page. You’ll want to fix this quickly before Google finds out and drops your ad lower due to low relevance.

Optimizing your landing page requires you to take a look at the overall offer, the headline, structure of the page, CTA, and placement of buttons and calls to action. The best way to identify the problem is to A/B test.

If you think that you don’t have enough CTA buttons on the landing page, create a duplicate page and add a few more to see what happens. Doing so will require you to get a high-quality landing page builder and optimization tool like Unbounce and Convert.com. Convert is a great tool with A/B testing and it allows you to really pinpoint certain steps to take to improve the performance of your landing page.

Step 6: Consider Switching to Automated Bidding

When you create a Google ad, you have two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each has its pros and cons.

Automated bidding allows Google to decide how much you’ll pay per click based on a few key metrics.

  • Increase site visits: If you’re trying to increase visitors to your site, you can choose to optimize your ad based on clicks.
  • Increase visibility: Target impression share sets bids with the goal of showing your ad as high on the page as possible. You may end up getting less clicks this way, but you can quickly spread awareness.
  • More conversions: If you want more conversions on-site, you’ll optimize for your target cost-per-action. You may pay more per conversion but you’ll convert more visitors.
  • Target ROAS: If you want to meet a certain return on ad spend, you can allow Google to pay what it thinks you should based on how you value each conversion.

Keep in mind that choosing manual bidding requires you to figure this all out yourself. You won’t have the luxury of picking a “blanket” goal and having Google optimize your ad spend for you. However, manual bidding does give you more control.

Step 7: Avoid Common Google Ad Mistakes

There are a few critical Google ads mistakes that can kill your ad from the get-go. Here are a few examples:

Using the Wrong Keyword Match

We’ve all heard of keyword match: broad match, phrase match, and exact match, right? Choosing the wrong one will make it more difficult for your ad to reach your audience.

For example, broad match will display your ad when someone searches for a phrase similar to your target phrase. This can work well in the beginning when you’re experimenting and gathering data. If you don’t know a lot about your audience, you wouldn’t want to use “exact match” because you don’t have the data to back it up.

Bad Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the key to the mint essentially. If you know how to write great copy, you shouldn’t have a problem converting as long as your audience, ad match, and everything else is in place. Be sure you squeeze in every character Google allows. The goal is to make your ad stand out.

Not Having Clear Margins

Keep in mind no matter what you do, Google isn’t looking out for your finances. You’re the only one who knows what you can spend to break even or profit from your ads. If you don’t have this figured out and established ahead of time, you can end up spending way too much on ads and having to play catch up later on.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Campaign Management

What is a campaign in Google ads?

A campaign is simply a set of ad groups that share a budget, targeting, and other settings. You can have multiple ads within the campaign you’re testing.

How do I run a successful Google Ads campaign?

The best way to run a successful campaign is to try and try again. Don’t be afraid to test a lot of different factors, too. You never know what will work.

What is a good daily budget for Google Ads?

If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 per day until you see how everything is performing. In the beginning, the goal is to gather data so you can optimize your ads. If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 dollars per day until you see how everything is performing. Don’t expect to hit a home run right away.

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Google Ads Campaign Management Conclusion

Remember setting up your ad and hitting start is only one piece of the equation. The steps you take after that will really determine the success of your ad. You can start out with a low-performing ad but take steps to optimize, test, and change the ad, and end up with a highly successful campaign, resulting in a lot of money in your pocket. If you need help getting your ad off the ground, we can help.

What do you think is the No. 1 thing that kills a successful ad campaign?

The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Campaign Management

We’ve all seen Google Ads. Whether you call it Google AdSense, AdWords, or Ads, they’re the ads displayed in the search results on Google. Learning how to set them up is important, but learning how to manage and maintain their performance is a whole different ball game. 

In this guide, we’re pulling back the curtain and looking at what steps you’ll want to take after you have the ad set up. Whether you have a high or low-performing Google ad, you’ll want to do these things regularly.

What Is Google Ad Campaign Management?

Setting up your Google Ads campaign is an important and essential piece of the puzzle, but the work doesn’t stop there. There’s no such thing as “passive income” when running and managing Google Ads campaigns.

Those who have successful ad campaigns spend a lot of time on the backend evaluating the performance of their ads, looking at different keywords, switching up the designs and copy, and testing everything against key metrics to see how they perform. These are the necessary steps toward building a campaign that can pay you for months and even years if you hit the nail on the head.

It’s worth the work in the long run, but you need to get your Google ads campaign management right if you expect to have those types of results.

Good thing Google provides us with some simple ways to track everything in the backend. First, you can set email notifications to alert you whenever something happens with your campaign.

For example, if you want to receive alerts for possible policy violations you can do this from your Google ads account under setup and preferences. Determine what you would like to trigger an email notification. Some people only want to receive an email for critical issues while others want to stay up to date on every little detail.

Step 1: Check Current Google Ad Performance

Before you can determine what you need to change, you need to first look at your ad performance and see what’s working and what isn’t. There are five key metrics to pay attention to:

  • impressions
  • clicks
  • cost
  • conversions
  • click-through rate (CTR)

Let’s break each of these down a little more.

Impressions

An impression occurs each time your ad is displayed and seen by someone on Google. The best way to increase your impressions is to increase your campaign budget. This can push you higher on Google, thus giving you more visibility. Budget plays a role here but ad quality and relevance are ultimately the most important factors.

If Google decides that your ad isn’t relevant to the audience you’re targeting, Google won’t display your ad high enough and you will end up with low impressions and poor performance.

Clicks

This is the bread and butter of a Google ads specialist. Everyone wants more clicks. A click happens when someone sees your ad and then clicks it. Ideally, you want as many clicks as possible but if your ad isn’t getting clicks, you may want to rethink your copy or ad targeting.

Cost

Cost is the amount of money you spend, simple right? What’s more important is your “cost per click,” or CPC.

The way talented advertisers are able to scale ads is by determining how much money they need to put in to get a click or conversion. If you can determine that spending $2 on Google ads results in you making $5 for every click, it’s simple math at that point. Spend $4 and you’ll make $10, and keep building it up from there.

It’s not that simple, though. Your bid, quality score, and ad rank will impact how much you need to spend. Your bid is the maximum amount of money you’re willing to pay for a click. The quality score is a rating Google provides from 1-10 based on how relevant your ad, landing page, and keywords are. The ad rank is Google’s value to determine where they will place your ad in the SERPs.

Conversions

A conversion occurs when someone takes the action you want them to take; this happens off the search engine results page and on your landing page or website. For example, if you’re running an ad for an e-commerce store and you want people to see the ad, click it, and then buy a suit on your landing page, each time someone buys the suit, that would be a conversion.

Google provides ways for us to track this using conversion tracking as discussed in the video above.

Click-Through Rate

Your CTR is the best way for Google to measure the relevance of your ad. It also allows you to determine if the ad is resonating with the audience you’ve chosen. A high click-through rate means that a lot of people are seeing the ad, clicking it, and converting. That’s a high-performing ad.

If you get a lot of impressions or clicks, but little conversions, it could mean your ad copy is good but the product or service you’re selling doesn’t align with the ad. Your CTR is a percentage based on the number of clicks and impressions.

Click-through rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

The standard in most industries is five percent but you can still have success with a lower click-through rate.

Step 2: Reevaluate Your Ad Targeting

With every type of digital marketing, targeting is an important factor. You want to understand the buyer intent of your audience and if you don’t have a solid buyer persona drawn up, you’ll want to start there.

What does your ideal customer want? What do they look like? Where do they live? How much money do they make? What are their interests? What upsets them? Think about all of these things when determining your ad targeting because you need to get inside their head if you can expect them to click on your ad and convert.

Here are some examples of the metrics you can use for Google ad targeting:

  • Demographics: targeting based on location, age, gender, and devices
  • Affinity: reaching your audience using search and display networks
  • In-market: showing ads to people with a history of searching for products just like yours
  • Custom intent: choosing keywords related to the people who have engaged with similar content
  • Remarketing: targeting people who have interacted with you in the past but might not have converted

Step 3: A/B Test Ad Copy and Design

Now let’s take a look at your ad copy and design. It’s broken down into a few different segments:

  • your offer
  • your headline
  • your description
  • the URL
  • zny extensions

If any of these factors are hurting the performance of your ad, test them up against something else. The most important thing to learn is you only want to change one thing at a time. That’s the only way to figure out if that was the culprit.

For example, if you find yourself getting a lot of impressions but you’re not converting well, you might want to change the headline because it’s not enticing people to click. If you find that you’re getting a lot of clicks but little conversions, maybe your offer isn’t relevant enough.

Dynamic ads are a great way to work around this because they pull content directly from your site to ensure that the headline and description are relevant to the offer. This takes some of the thinking out of it and it’s worth testing up against a custom ad.

Step 4: Dig Into Negative Keywords

No need to complicate this: Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to display your ad for. There are many reasons why someone would do this but one of the big ones is you’re letting Google make a lot of the decisions for you. In that case, you might want to use negative keywords for things such as brand names, competitors, or other keywords that you know won’t lead to a conversion.

To add negative keywords, you’ll go into the Google ads campaign manager, select keywords, Negatives, and add the keywords to the proper ad group.

Step 5: Optimize Your Landing Pages

Remember that a big part of Google ads campaign management actually happens off the SERPs. It happens on your landing pages as well. If you have an ad that is getting a lot of impressions and clicks but you’re still not converting, chances are there is something wrong with your landing page. You’ll want to fix this quickly before Google finds out and drops your ad lower due to low relevance.

Optimizing your landing page requires you to take a look at the overall offer, the headline, structure of the page, CTA, and placement of buttons and calls to action. The best way to identify the problem is to A/B test.

If you think that you don’t have enough CTA buttons on the landing page, create a duplicate page and add a few more to see what happens. Doing so will require you to get a high-quality landing page builder and optimization tool like Unbounce and Convert.com. Convert is a great tool with A/B testing and it allows you to really pinpoint certain steps to take to improve the performance of your landing page.

Step 6: Consider Switching to Automated Bidding

When you create a Google ad, you have two choices: automated or manual bidding. Each has its pros and cons.

Automated bidding allows Google to decide how much you’ll pay per click based on a few key metrics.

  • Increase site visits: If you’re trying to increase visitors to your site, you can choose to optimize your ad based on clicks.
  • Increase visibility: Target impression share sets bids with the goal of showing your ad as high on the page as possible. You may end up getting less clicks this way, but you can quickly spread awareness.
  • More conversions: If you want more conversions on-site, you’ll optimize for your target cost-per-action. You may pay more per conversion but you’ll convert more visitors.
  • Target ROAS: If you want to meet a certain return on ad spend, you can allow Google to pay what it thinks you should based on how you value each conversion.

Keep in mind that choosing manual bidding requires you to figure this all out yourself. You won’t have the luxury of picking a “blanket” goal and having Google optimize your ad spend for you. However, manual bidding does give you more control.

Step 7: Avoid Common Google Ad Mistakes

There are a few critical Google ads mistakes that can kill your ad from the get-go. Here are a few examples:

Using the Wrong Keyword Match

We’ve all heard of keyword match: broad match, phrase match, and exact match, right? Choosing the wrong one will make it more difficult for your ad to reach your audience.

For example, broad match will display your ad when someone searches for a phrase similar to your target phrase. This can work well in the beginning when you’re experimenting and gathering data. If you don’t know a lot about your audience, you wouldn’t want to use “exact match” because you don’t have the data to back it up.

Bad Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the key to the mint essentially. If you know how to write great copy, you shouldn’t have a problem converting as long as your audience, ad match, and everything else is in place. Be sure you squeeze in every character Google allows. The goal is to make your ad stand out.

Not Having Clear Margins

Keep in mind no matter what you do, Google isn’t looking out for your finances. You’re the only one who knows what you can spend to break even or profit from your ads. If you don’t have this figured out and established ahead of time, you can end up spending way too much on ads and having to play catch up later on.

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Ads Campaign Management

What is a campaign in Google ads?

A campaign is simply a set of ad groups that share a budget, targeting, and other settings. You can have multiple ads within the campaign you’re testing.

How do I run a successful Google Ads campaign?

The best way to run a successful campaign is to try and try again. Don’t be afraid to test a lot of different factors, too. You never know what will work.

What is a good daily budget for Google Ads?

If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 per day until you see how everything is performing. In the beginning, the goal is to gather data so you can optimize your ads. If you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than $10-$20 dollars per day until you see how everything is performing. Don’t expect to hit a home run right away.

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Google Ads Campaign Management Conclusion

Remember setting up your ad and hitting start is only one piece of the equation. The steps you take after that will really determine the success of your ad. You can start out with a low-performing ad but take steps to optimize, test, and change the ad, and end up with a highly successful campaign, resulting in a lot of money in your pocket. If you need help getting your ad off the ground, we can help.

What do you think is the No. 1 thing that kills a successful ad campaign?

The post The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads Campaign Management appeared first on #1 SEO FOR SMALL BUSINESSES.

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How To Use Business Credit Wisely to Help With Sound Cash Flow Management … So Your Cash Flow is Always Strong and Never a Headache

Cash flow management is essential to running a successful business.  This is true for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons are obvious, and some are more subtle.  

5 Steps to Building a Cash Pool for Better Cash Flow Management 

First, you need to understand exactly what cash flow is. Investopedia says:

“Cash flow is the net amount of cash and cash equivalents being transferred into and out of a business.”

But what does that mean practically for your business? Basically, cash flow relates to the actual, liquid cash flowing in and out of your business. Strong, positive cash flow allows you to have the funds you need ready and available. You can use them at any given time to do the things you need to do to run your business effectively and efficiently.  Why is this important? Because you need cash to: 

  • Pay the bills
  • Pay salaries
  • Buy supplies and stock 
  • To be able to take advantage of growth opportunities

None of these things are possible without cash.  You need a cash flow management strategy.

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit. 

Step 1: Understand Profit is Not the Same as Cash

This is one of the most common misconceptions when it comes to cash flow management. Many think  if you have a strong bottom line, you have cash.  Some business owners are surprised when they find their business can be doing quite well, but they still struggle to pay the bills.  This is because sales do not automatically convert to cash. It can take time to collect payments from customers. Also, if you run a seasonal business, certain times of the year are going to find your business shorter on cash than others. Even non-seasonal businesses have times when they aren’t making as much money.

Step 2: Knowing Why Just Enough is Not Enough

It’s possible that you may have all the cash you need for day to day business operations, but you still need more. For example, if you  have an investment opportunity, like a bulk wholesale deal on inventory, or a growth opportunity, you need to be able to act fast. The more cash you have immediately available, the faster you can act on these opportunities with confidence. A sensible cash flow management system will take this into account. 

Step 3: Develop a Plan for Building a Cash Pool for Cash Flow Management

A cash pool can help you manage your cash flow effectively. It’s a way to make sure you have access to the cash you need, when you need it. A cash pool is an aggregate collection of three different types of cash.  

It includes cash on hand, cash available to spend on vendor accounts, and cash available to spend on business credit cards. How do you build a cash pool for your business? How do you do so and keep business expenses off your personal credit accounts? You need to build business credit. Using business credit to build a cash pool is key to cash flow management.

Cash Reserves and Vendor Accounts

Cash reserve is simply cash on hand. This is the money you have in your business bank accounts that you can spend. Vendor accounts are accounts that you have with vendors that allow your purchases on credit. These are typically net accounts rather than revolving. Net accounts have to be paid off completely within 30, 60, or 90 days, depending on what terms you get with that lender.

Cash Available on Business Credit Cards

This is the total of all available credit you have on business credit cards. Business credit cards can serve your business well in a number of ways. First, they can help protect your business by limiting exposure when making purchases online. This is because most credit card companies have fraud protocols. These protect you from having to pay for fraudulent charges on your account. 

In contrast, if you use a debit card connected to your business bank account and it gets hacked, you could easily lose all of your available cash with potentially very few options for recovery. 

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit.

Step 4: Start the Process by Building a Fundable Foundation

It sounds easy, and essentially it is. However, you can’t just go out and apply for vendor accounts and business credit cards and expect to get credit that is only related to your business and does not affect your personal credit report. 

This is the tricky part. There are specific steps that you have to take in a specific order to build a separate business credit profile and score. It starts with how your business is set up. It has to have a foundation of fundability. Then, you have to get accounts reporting initially, which can get interesting. 

If your business isn’t set up right and you don’t apply for the right types of accounts in the beginning, you will be denied every time. 

How to Build a Fundable Foundation

The first step is to make sure your business has a fundable foundation. The includes a number of things such as:

  • Having a physical business address where you get mail
  • A P.O. Box or something similar will not work
  • You need to incorporate as an LLC, S-corp, or corporation
  • An EIN is essential  (get yours from the IRS)
  • A D-U-N-S number from Dun & Bradstreet
  • You need a separate, dedicated business bank account

This is only the beginning, but it is a good start. 

5: Get Accounts That Report

Once you have a fundable foundation, you can start applying for business accounts. The key is, you have to start small by applying with starter vendors first. These are vendors that will not do a personal or business credit check. Rather, they will extend net terms to your business based on other factors.

These factors may include:

  • Time in business
  • Revenue
  • Average balance in business bank account
  • And a lot of other things

Vendors may look at one, all, or any combination of these factors to verify the creditworthiness of your business. Then, they will report your payment on these accounts to the business credit reporting agencies. 

This brings up another issue. Unlike personal credit accounts where pretty much all creditors report your payment to your personal credit profile, only about 7% of business credit accounts actually report payments.  Of course, the other 93% will not hesitate to report defaulting payments. 

As a result, it can be difficult to find vendors that will both extend credit without a credit check and report payments. They do not make this information easy to find. Still, having accounts that report is vital to building a strong business credit score. Without that, you will not be able to get the accounts you need to build your cash flow pool.

Getting Started

We have a list of vendors that we know do both of these things. They include vendors like Uline and Grainger, among many more. Start building your credit pool with these and other starter vendors by applying for accounts, and buy things like packaging, cleaning products, and office supplies that you will use in the course of your business anyway. 

Once you get enough of these accounts reporting, you will be able to apply for more vendor accounts and business credit cards and get approval.

Of course, you need more than just a few vendor accounts to build a strong business credit score.  The next steps include applying for credit with increasingly harder to meet requirements. If you do things in the right order, you will have no problem getting approval.  That is, assuming you handle all accounts responsibly.

You can apply for accounts like Quill and Office Depot that are a little harder to get, but apply with starter vendors first.  That way, you’ll be closer to meeting their requirements. 

Keep the Ball Rolling

After that, you just have to keep the ball rolling.  You should be well on your way to building your cash flow pool. You can apply for higher limit cards with more rewards. Remember to keep using all of your accounts responsibly, as It does no good to build a cash flow pool if you have no cash available on any of your accounts. 

Bonus: A Top Secret Tip to Help You Get Started

It is not easy to start the ball rolling on your own. It is much faster, cheaper, and easier in the long run to get expert help to build your cash flow pool. A business credit expert can help you evaluate your current fundability. Then, they can get you on the right path to building and improving fundability if necessary. Furthermore, they can point you toward those initial business credit accounts that will open the door to many more, 

With a business credit expert, you will not waste time applying for accounts you do not qualify for. You won’t waste time and money on accounts that do not report to the business credit reporting agencies. You will know exactly what step you are on and what needs to be done to move on to the next step in the process, so you can build your cash flow pool effectively and efficiently.

Check out our best webinar with its trustworthy list of seven vendors to help you build business credit.

Once your business credit is strong, a business credit expert can guide you toward even more accounts that may be great additions to your specific credit pool.  These may not be accounts that report, but rather may be more suitable for the type of business you run. Once your business credit profile is strong, you can use non-reporting accounts to continue to grow your business long into the future. 

What Does This Mean for Cash Flow Management? 

It means you can run your business without worrying about cash flow gaps. You can take advantage of wholesale deals when they come along.  It will be possible to apply for larger jobs, knowing you can get the tools and equipment you need to get the job done without depleting cash reserves.

You will be able to quickly take advantage of investment and growth opportunities with confidence, knowing you have the cash available to do what you need to do.  In addition, you can limit your exposure to fraudulent charges when making online purchases. That is sensible cash flow management.

The post How To Use Business Credit Wisely to Help With Sound Cash Flow Management … So Your Cash Flow is Always Strong and Never a Headache appeared first on Credit Suite.

The art of effective market risk management during a period of transformation

This white paper takes a current view of market risk management, its growing complexity and how it can be transformative to institutions as the industry is widely recognising what are the right approaches to addressing evolving risks. 

The post The art of effective market risk management during a period of transformation appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.

Best Contact Management Software

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

When you’re trying to make the sale, you want to be as tactful as possible. You want to talk to your customer at the exact time they want what you’re selling.

This means going beyond storing their basic contact information and tracking points of contact, rebuttals, and previous sales deals.  

That’s where contact management software can be one of your most valuable sales tools. It helps you streamline your sales process so that you can close sales faster, keep your most valuable customers, and grow your business.

But how do you find the right contact manager to integrate into your sales system?

In this extensive guide, I review five of the top contact management tools on the market and walk you through the best features as well as their price points.

Let’s get started. 

#1 – HubSpot Review — The Best Free Contact Management System

HubSpot stands alone as a powerful free contact management system with tons of accessible tools to enhance your sales cycle from beginning to end. 

That’s because HubSpot gives away a free version of its award-winning CRM (customer relationship management) software. Contact management is one of the foundational services included with this suite, but you will find tools for sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

For a free product, it’s unbelievably rich.

Focusing in on just the list of contact management tasks you can do for free with HubSpot’s software still gives you a long list. You can keep track of contact website activity, deals, company insights, manage ticketing, manage ads, email tracking and notifications, and even messenger integrations.

HubSpot’s free contact management software is an excellent stepping stone toward more varied and growth-oriented contact management as your business grows since you can always upgrade to one of their paid CRM plans without having to migrate.

If you’re getting started with contact management and want to do more with your contacts in terms of sales strategy on a budget, I recommend you start onboarding HubSpot’s free tools for a strong beginning. 

Start using HubSpot for free here. 

#2 – Bigin Review — The Best For Simple Contact Management

A small or mid-sized business doesn’t always have use for tools built with enterprises in mind. Bigin takes the prize for a simple yet reliable contact manager you can easily start with. 

A single dashboard unifies all your data points so you can make strategic decisions at a glance and manage everyone on your roster. It helps to think of it as your own personal yellow pages except for ten times more useful.

You can do things like adding your preferred tags to contacts to find what you’re looking for quickly, glance over at your expected revenue numbers, and see all your pending tasks.

Bigin makes it easier for you to close deals by scheduling follow-up activities and then closely monitoring results, all on an intuitive dashboard. 

Bigin’s simplicity bleeds into its pricing structure, too. Here’s a quick overview:

Free

  • Single user
  • 500 contacts
  • One pipeline

Express – $7/user per month

  • 50,000 contacts
  • 5 pipelines
  • Add 10,000 additional contacts for $1/month
  • Up to 20 custom fields per module and 10 custom dashboards

It’s that simple. One user with one pipeline can manage up to 500 contacts free, forever. And the paid tier isn’t tough to stomach, either.

Get started with Bigin here to go beyond managing a simple list of contacts.

#3 – Pipedrive Review — The Best For Visual Contact Management

Pipedrive is loved not just for the wide array of CMS tools it offers but because it makes the whole contact management and sales process straightforward and visual. It’s been used by over 90,000 companies in more than 170 countries and business giants like Vimeo, Amazon, and Re/Max. 

Pipedrive is a highly intuitive system that easily updates and automates contact tasks and sales calls. The easy drag-and-drop features and their clean and approachable interface make them an easily adaptable and usable system. 

With a visual dashboard in mind, they don’t falter in the features department, as it offers plenty of tools for powerful contact management like task automation, lead pipelines, and smart lists that track the last time you contacted a prospect. 

You can always try Pipedrive free for 14 days. It doesn’t hurt to spend a few days trying out the software’s ins and outs to see if they’re a good company match. Otherwise, the ricing plans break into four tiers:

  • Essential – $12.50
  • Advanced – $24.90
  • Professional – $49.90
  • Enterprise – $99

#4 – Zendesk Review — Best For Reporting and Analytics

Zendesk is a dynamic CMS that emphasizes the analytical and reporting aspects of contact management. 

The last thing you want is to grow a robust list of leads and then have no idea what to do with them due to lack of data. Zendesk’s analytics make it possible for you to engage in better conversations with your prospects with their pre-built analytics features.

With them, you can track rep activities, call response times, and live chat interactions. Their rich reporting features ensure you keep a finger on every touchpoint of your sales cycle. This makes it easy to increase the ROI of each sales rep on your team. 

Zendesk’s price breakdowns can get specific depending on the solutions and features you’re looking for. The contact and relationship management tiers start at $19 per seat. 

Here’s a quick overview of the pricing tiers:

  • Team – $19 per seat per month
  • Professional – $49 per seat per month
  • Enterprise – $99 per seat per month
  • Elite – $199 per seat per month

Get started with a free demo of Zendesk here.

#5 – Salesforce Review — The Best Scalable CMS

Contact management software that scales with you and offers powerful tools to take you beyond the basics? There’s a tool for that. It’s called Salesforce.

The point of a CMS is to increase the efficiency of your daily operations, so you’re never blindsided by lost sales or missed relationship-building opportunities. 

Salesforce does that by offering the tools to build a good contact management base. This means contact history, survey answers, and email responses. But they take it a step further with their social data tool to keep track of what your customer is saying about products and services. 

Not only that, but Salesforce makes it easy to collaborate with everyone in your business. You can share documents, comments, analytics and insights, sales history, and any other information relevant to your ROI. 

On-the-go contact management is also possible with its mobile app. You can hop on a call armed with plenty of preemptive information about your customer from anywhere. This awesome array of tools makes Salesforce not only a contact management tool but a sales closing system, too, which is why it’s made it on my top five picks. 

Here’s a breakdown of each plan they offer:

  • Essential – $25
  • Professional – $75
  • Enterprise – $150
  • Unlimited – $300

Each plan comes with:

  • Account, contact, lead, and opportunity management
  • Email integration with Gmail and Outlook
  • Access to the Salesforce mobile app and all it’s features

The higher the tier, the more access to customizable features and tools you’ll have. Thankfully, you don’t have to jump right into a plan without testing how they work first.

Salesforce also gives you the option of testing any pricing tier first before committing. 

Try Salesforce for free first here and see what plan fits your contact management needs the best. 

What I Looked at to Find the Best Contact Management Software

Choosing the best contact management software goes beyond making sure they provide the standard contact management software (CMS) tools like sales tracking, customer notes, emails, and sales history.

Your business is unique, which means your CMS needs are also unique. Because of this, it’s hard to pinpoint a one-size-fits-all CMS that you can use in any given sales scenario or industry. 

You also have to consider the size of your team, your plans for scaling and revenue growth, and what functionalities are non-negotiable in your given industry.

Beyond that, there are a few specific key factors to think through when trying to make the best choice in a sea of software. Use these criteria to ensure you’re making the best contact management investment possible. 

Reporting and Analytics Capabilities

Some contact management systems put more emphasis on sales reporting and analytics than others. This can prove to be a valuable asset or just an extra feature to your team, depending on how you handle your sales process.

These days, contact management software is increasingly robust in terms of the analytics it can gather to help you make the best sales decisions. Some of them can measure everything from live chat interactions to sales calls, email responses, and even what you’re prospective customers say on social media about you or your competitor’s product or service. 

Deciding how deep you need your contact management analytics to go will ultimately depend on your sales goals and budget. Consulting with your sales team can be a sound idea in the process of making a final decision. 

Sales Process and Software Fit

The sales process you use to sell printers isn’t necessarily the same one you’d use to sell premium car parts. This also means you’ll want to find a CMS that fits every unique point of sale your team goes through continuously.

If done right, this can mean higher ROI, shorter sales cycles, and more revenue. This is where it’s a good idea to take the time to test drive every prospective CMS that looks appealing to your sales team. Most of them have the option for a demo or a 14-day free trial.

These trials exist for a reason. I highly recommend you take advantage of them before you commit.

User Experience

The more scalable integrations and features a CMS has, the more likely it is to have a big learning curve. This is important to take into account when thinking about onboarding your sales team to the system successfully. 

Besides that, the user experience for both your front-facing customer features like contact forms and chatbots and the backend features your sales team will have to interact with daily is also a crucial part of the process as far as ease of use goes.

An array of powerful features is pretty much useless if your sales team continually runs into trouble using them, or if integrations prove too clunky to operate properly. 

This also raises questions about what support features your preferred CMS provides and whether they offer any accompanying training options like forums, live chats, or even training webinars.

Summary

Finding the right contact management system can make the difference between constant sales, shorter sales cycles, and more efficient business growth all around.

But it starts with figuring out what your sales needs are, how you go through your sales strategy, and what you need to optimize for higher ROI. Once you’ve figured out your key needs, you can start narrowing down your list of prospects.

My recommendations are all excellent products, but they each have their strong suit:

  1. HubSpot – Best free contact management software
  2. Bigin – Best for simple contact management
  3. Pipedrive – Best for visual contact management
  4. Zendesk – Best for reporting and analytics
  5. Salesforce – Best scalable contact management software

My top choices for effective contact management are HubSpot, because of their extensive list of free tools, and Salesforce, because of how versatile and adaptable they are. Make sure to use this review as a roadmap to make your final decision. 

The Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management

The Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management

There are a lot of misconceptions about online reputation management. Some people think it’s just social media monitoring, while others believe it has something to do with public relations, and still others have no idea the impact it can have on sales.

In this guide, I’ll explain the role of online reputation management in today’s digital age, explain why it matters, and outline 10 tips for improving and protecting your brand’s online image.

Why Does Reputation Management Matter?

Just a few years ago, the internet was very different. Companies didn’t engage customers, they just sold (or tried to sell) to a passive audience People could not express their voice in a powerful way, and the overall communication landscape was very “top down.”

The situation has radically changed. Today, websites are no longer static brochures. User-generated content is a must. And regular interactions on social networks are vital to any business success.

No matter the size of your business, people are talking about you, including prospects, customers, clients, and their friends. They are tweeting about your latest product, leaving a comment on your blog, posting a Facebook update about their customer experience, and much more.

If you think you can skimp on reputation management, or if you think you can make it without taking into account people’s voices, opinions, and reviews, think again.

Today’s Brands Need to Be Transparent

One of the most important business commandments is “Be transparent.” Opening up to criticism and feedback seems beneficial for companies that embrace this new communication mode with their audience.

What does being “transparent” mean? Here are some examples:

  • allowing employees to talk about products and services publicly
  • establishing a 1-to-1 communication channel
  • asking for feedback
  • not hiding criticism, and addressing it publicly

Easier said than done! Most small and medium sized companies do not invest much on communication, and they struggle with this concept. As a result, their efforts usually are incorrect or inconsistent.

Being transparent is risky. But in the long run, not being transparent is riskier.

Online Reputation Management “Failures”

Being open does not come without a price. If you and your brand accept feedback, customer opinions, and so on, you also must be ready to face them promptly.

Consider these scenarios:

  1. What if your product/service sparks too much criticism?
  2. What if your employees are not social media savvy?
  3. What if your competitors take advantage of this?

These are just a few reasons you need to have a proper online reputation management plan in action before embarking on a transparency journey.

Here are three famous cases of reputation management failure in the digital era:

  • Dark Horse Café received a tweet criticizing their lack of electrical outlets for laptops. Their response was something like: “We are in the coffee business, not the office business. We have plenty of outlets to do what we need.” Needless to say, defensive/aggressive behavior doesn’t work in the online world. Many blogs reported the fact as a negative public relations case.
  • Nestlé received negative comments about their environmental practices a few years ago, and they did not address them. People started becoming aggressive and posted altered versions of the Nestlé logo, forcing the company to close its public page. Takeaway? Do not pretend people are not talking, and address criticism as soon as possible.
  • Amy’s Baking Company fought fire with fire against a one-star internet review. Their insults against the reviewer eventually were picked up by the local news. Negative attention is not good publicity.

The lesson here? Pay attention to your online reputation and respond–kindly–to poor reviews. Don’t let your ego get in the way of being professional. Remember, you aren’t just responding to the person who left a review, you are showing everyone else online who your brand is.

The Key to Online Reputation Management: Listen To What People Are Saying About Your Brand </p>

What are people saying about you? Good online reputation management is not just reacting well to what people say about you, your brand, or your products and services, but also about whether to react at all and, if so, when.

Sometimes a reaction is not necessary, and sometimes a reaction that is too late can cost you millions.

A proactive approach to the matter consists of monitoring your public reputation regularly, and not just when you come to know about a specific event to deal with.

How do you do this? By using social media monitoring tools that keep an ear on what people are saying about your brand.

Social media monitoring allows companies to gather public online content (from blog posts to tweets, from online reviews to Facebook updates), process it, and see whether something negative or positive is being said affecting their reputation.

Social media monitoring can be both DIY (Google Alert is an example of a free web monitoring tool accessible to anyone) and professional, depending on the size of the business involved.

Watch for Online Reputation Bombs

In the online reputation management scenario, companies should be aware of two types of harmful content. One is represented by complaints on social networks. They need to be addressed properly, but unless your company has serious problems, they do not pose a real challenge to your business.

The other is what I define as “online reputation bombs,” which affect your reputation and sales long term and can severely damage a business. They are very powerful because, unlike social network content, they are prominent in search engine results.

What if someone Googles your brand name and finds defamatory content? Let’s see what they are:

  • Negative Reviews: Review sites allow users to express their opinion on your brand. Did they like your service/product? Would they recommend it? Negative content can affect your sales, and addressing the criticism on the site may not be enough. Websites like Ripoff Report and Pissed Consumer provide the perfect platform for this kind of negative content.
  • Hate Sites: Some people go beyond simple negative reviews and create ad hoc websites with their opinions, some of them containing illegal content. So-called “hate sites” sometimes address companies and public figures with insults and false information. Needless to say, a search result like “The truth about NAMEOFYOURCOMPANY” or “NAME scam/rip off” will make your potential customers run away!
  • Negative Media Coverage: Phineas T. Barnum used to say “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” That may be true for controversial public figures, but unfavorable TV, print, and online media coverage negatively impact companies and brands.

What do you do if your business is the victim of a smear campaign?

What To Do if Your Company is Subjected to an Online Reputation Smear Campaign

The first thing most companies wonder is “Can we call the cops?” I get it; being unfairly targeted feels illegal. But in most cases, online comments are not a legal matter.

Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Everyone has the right to express their voice about your brand. There are, however, certain boundaries that need to be respected. Some of the negative content online actually is illegal. Why?

  • It uses defamatory language
  • It reports false information
  • It is aimed at damaging the company’s reputation

How do you react to all of this? How do you defend yourself or your company from this kind of illegal behavior?

Depending on the scope of the problem, several paths can be pursued in order to restore your online reputation:

  • Aggressive SEO: Ranking on pages one or two of Google for your industry and brand name is one of the best ways to push down bad publicity. The first thing that you or your online reputation management company should do is devise a search marketing strategy that increases the ranking of positive content, owned by either you or third parties. The search engine game is too important to be ignored, and it is the first step in restoring your image.
  • Review Removal: Did a user claim something false about your company? Is that review clearly aimed at destroying your reputation rather than providing feedback? Does it contain improper language? Legal liaison and speed of reaction will make it possible to remove the negative review.
  • Online Investigations: In case of serious attacks on your brand image, it may be necessary to hire skilled online analysts to investigate untraceable threats and attackers via email tracing, data cross-indexing, and other information collection techniques. Cyber investigations are the definitive path to get to the bottom of the most difficult reputation management cases.

These strategies are only required in the most extreme cases. Most businesses can manage their online reputation by following these 10 tips.

10 Online Reputation Management Tips

Calling it “online reputation” really is redundant. Your online reputation is your reputation. In the digital era, nothing protects your brand from criticism. This is good from a freedom of speech perspective; bad if your company has been defamed and attacked.

To help you stay on top of your reputation, here are ten practical tips that sum up what we have covered in this guide. The world of brand reputation will change in the coming years, but following these simple tips will help you keep your name.

1. Become Well Respected

Trust is a perishable asset and it is hard to gain. Working to build respect work is more important than any other online reputation management commandment.

2. Be Radically Transparent

After years of hiding critics, McDonald’s publicly forced egg suppliers to raise hens’ living standards according to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals request.

Being transparent about shows you care about your customers and are willing to make changes when things go wrong.

3. Monitor What People Say About Your Brand

In addition to all the reasons to monitor your online reputation, social media monitoring also can increase sales. These days, lots of people ask questions via Twitter and Facebook because they evaluate whether or not they should buy from you. Showing you are responsive makes your brand look reliable.

4. React Quickly and Politely

In case of a customer complaint via Twitter, for example, a prompt and simple “Thanks for making us aware of the problem. We are working on it and will get back to you as soon as possible.” is better than a late reply with more information.

5. Address Criticism

In 2009, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed on Obama healthcare reform, which caused a controversy among WF customers. Two days later, the company published a written statement recognizing there were “many opinions on this issue, including inside our own company” and invited people to share their opinion about the article and health care changes. They didn’t just ignore it and hope it would go away; they addressed the issue head-on.

Responding to negative feedback shows you care and are working hard to fix any issues.

6. Pay Attention to Your Google Results

First impressions count, and we do judge many books by their cover. If the words “scam” and “rip off” are associated with your brand, then that is something you should worry about.

A strong SEO strategy is your best defense against negative press, reviews, and false reports.

7. Learn From Your Detractors

Criticism can be the chance to learn more about your audience and craft a better message in the future. Motrin’s controversial “baby-wearing moms” commercial sparked a lot of criticism. It did not come from competitors or illegitimate attackers, but from people in Motrin’s target audience who felt offended by their promotional content.

If the online responses to your brand are legitimate, it might be time to reconsider your marketing strategy or responses.

8. Attack Your Illegitimate Attackers

Sometimes we simply have to fight illegal behavior. In 2009, Domino’s Pizza employees who posted disgusting videos of themselves playing with food were fired and arrested. Another example is people who post false information on the internet. Sometimes, if you don’t sue them, they might do it again.

9. Learn From Your Mistakes

Sony certainly learned a reputation management lesson back in 2005. The company placed copy protection (XCD) on its CDs which created computer vulnerabilities that malware could exploit. Instead of being upfront about their mistake, Sony stonewalled criticism and lost millions in class-action lawsuits.

If you’ve made a misstep, own up to it and take action to fix the issue.

10. Ask For Help If Necessary

If your online reputation management efforts are not enough to protect or restore your brand image, you have the choice to request help from a professional. Working with an online marketing company or reputation management firm may be your only resort.

Time needed: 5 minutes.

Here are 10 tips to protect your online reputation management

  1. Become Well Respected

    Building and maintaining trust in your business can protect you from online smear campaigns.

  2. Be Radically Transparent

    Share the good — and the bad– about your company to build trust.

  3. Monitor What People Say About Your Brand

    You can’t protect your reputation if you don’t know what people are saying.

  4.  React Quickly and Politely

    A prompt “Thanks for making us aware of the problem. We are working on it and will get back to you as soon as possible.” is better than a late reply with more information.

  5. Address Criticism

    Don’t ignore criticism, responding quickly shows you care about your customers.

  6. Pay Attention to Your Google Results

    If the words “scam” or “ripoff” are associated with your brand, it is time to take action. A strong SEO strategy can protect your brand by pushing down negative feedback.

  7. Learn From Your Detractors

    Criticism can be the chance to learn more about your audience and craft a better message in the future.

  8. . Attack Your Illegitimate Attacker

    Sometimes, if you don’t sue or push back against detractors, they might do it again.

  9. Learn From Your Mistakes

    If you’ve made a misstep, own up to it and take action to fix the issue.

  10. Ask For Help If Necessary

    If your online reputation management efforts are not enough to protect or restore your brand image, you have the choice to request help from a professional.

Conclusion

Managing your online reputation starts with listening to what your customers have to say and finding ways to connect with them. Replying to online criticism is crucial and building an SEO strategy is crucial, but it might not be enough to protect your brand from smear campaigns. In those cases, it might be time to get professional help.

What do you do to protect your online reputation?

Best Business Process Management Software

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There’s a constant war between growing a business and keeping an operation lean, mean, and agile.

How does a company stay efficient, even as they are trying new things and bringing on employees?

It’s actually quite simple: business process management (BPM) software. Rarely are answers this easy.

BPM software helps organizations of all sizes streamline operations and minimize waste.

Visualize every process from end to end. Find opportunities for efficiency and automation. Get more done with fewer mistakes.

If optimizing your business processes sounds like a good idea, this post will tell you everything you need to know about how to find the perfect BPM software for you.

The Top 5 Options for Business Process Management Software

  1. Orchestly – Best for simple workflow automation
  2. Pipefy – Best BPM software for Kanban
  3. Creatio Studio – Best low-code solution
  4. Tallyfy – Best for automating recurring processes
  5. Zoho Creator – Best for customizable workflows

How to Choose the Best Business Process Management Software for You

These tools are supposed to make life easier, right?

Yes. 100 percent. 

And not just you, but your employees, customers, and potential clients, too.

Any organization can benefit from implementing BPM software. Because of their broad usefulness, these products come in a lot of shapes and sizes. 

Thankfully, you can break your search down into three essential goals. 

You are looking for BPM software that will help you:

  1. Clearly visualize business processes
  2. Automate more business processes
  3. Monitor and improve business processes

Design. Run. Automate. Improve. Repeat.

Once you get set up, it will be that simple. 

Figure out which features you need by considering each product in light of how it will help you visualize, automate, and monitor the daily work of your business.

Process Visualization

The first responsibility of BPM software is to help companies define and document their business processes. 

These platforms have a visual workflow builder that lets you map out every step of every process from start to finish. 

Missing steps and redundancies are plain as day. If there’s a breakdown in the billing process, for example, it will be easy to understand and address with BPM software. There’s a clear picture of how the paperwork is moving (or not) from start to finish.

This is way better than finding out there’s an issue from a confused or angry customer. By providing a full, end-to-end visualization of the process, BPM software is really helpful for diagnosing and treating common symptoms of business inefficiency.

What’s really nice is that you can quickly modify workflows without writing code.

Check out the drag-and-drop workflow builder in Orchestly, where you can see how each stage and transition can be easily defined:

Each product does it a little differently. It’s a good idea to watch their videos to see what the UI is like. This will give you a base-level sense of how each BPM software thinks about process management.

If you are a fan of the flow chart style, Orchestly is going to work well. Tallyfy wants to get away from flow charts and works off what they call a blueprint. Pipefy is designed to work best in board-based and Kanban settings.

Which one looks like it’s swimming in your current?

Process Automation

As elegant and useful as the visualization aspects of BPM software are, the process automation is where you’re going to see the major impact on your operations.

With workflows represented in a clear fashion, you can identify different points and transitions where you can add automation.

In the Pipefy workflow builder, for example, you can make it so one action triggers another. There’s no code to write, just select the option that pushes the workflow along.

This can take an incredible amount of busywork out of people’s day-to-day. A sales rep completes their proposal and it’s automatically routed to the right manager for review and approval. 

Not only is that rep moving on to their next task, the pending approval is queued up exactly where it needs to be for the manager. 

Nothing gets missed or held up.

BPM software is great at automating routine and recurring processes like:

  • Requests for approval
  • Inventory updates
  • Time-off requests
  • Promotions
  • Customer onboarding
  • Training new hires

There’s really no limit to the applications. You can implement uniform policies, keep everyone informed, and ensure that every last lowercase j is dotted.

With regards to automation, you want to choose BPM software that strikes an appropriate balance in your workspace. Something sophisticated enough to handle the job that is still within your IT wheelhouse.

The big edge that the code-heavy platforms have is that they can be 100% customized to fit your situation.

The upshot to the no-code platforms is that non-technical users are going to be up and running in no time. They won’t need help to build out and adjust workflows. This kind of independence is really important, and shouldn’t be sacrificed lightly in favor of a more comprehensive tool.

Process Monitoring

What if you never had to send another “Hey, how’s it going?” email? 

With BPM software, you can monitor your processes in real-time without ever having to bug someone again. No one does.

Users see exactly where they are on all their tasks. Dates and deadlines are clear, and everything they need to do is laid out in front of them.

Supervisors have total visibility of all projects and jobs. With workflows feeding information into dashboards, managers have a clear view of KPIs and bottlenecks can be seen—and avoided—well in advance.

Leadership can leverage your BPM platform to track tons of useful data for measuring productivity, forecasting costs, and further refining processes.

Another nice feature of good BPM software are the collaborative tools that help teams stay on track. 

These aren’t monitoring tools per se, but the ability to comment, @mention, or flag tasks may serve as a critical early warning system.

The Different Types of Business Process Management Software

BPM Software can do a whole lot on its own or it can act as a guide.The type of BPM software you need depends on your goals—visualization, monitoring, and automation—and how complex your desired workflows are.

In some ways, you can think of these four different types of BPM software as a stack that grows increasingly robust:

  1. Business Process Modeling Software: visualization
  2. Workflow Monitoring Software: visualization + monitoring
  3. Workflow Automation Software: visualization + monitoring + automation
  4. Low-Code Application Development: visualization + monitoring + advanced automation

Let’s go in-depth on each type to build a firm sense of how these capabilities help companies respond to different challenges.

Business Process Modeling Software

When you see business process modeling software, think of it as a BPM solution that helps with the visualization side of process management. 

These tools produce clear documentation, SOPs, and visual representations of workflows that can easily be shared throughout the company. 

This is crucial for maintaining consistency of business operations and a boon to new hires who can understand exactly where they fit in.

Workflow Management Software

The next step up in functionality is workflow management software. With this type of BPM software, individuals and teams can interact with the workflows. 

They can mark assignments as done, ask questions about specific tasks, and get all the information they need in one centralized location.

Workflow management solutions have a blend of visualization and monitoring capabilities that are really great for keeping everyone on track.

Workflow Automation Software

BPM software that fits in this category will let you automate repetitive tasks within workflows. Set rules that automatically route tasks, files, data to the right person or team. 

Say a customer fills out a form, for instance. This could trigger a welcome email series and automatically route their contact info to the appropriate rep. 

That’s a simple example, and you can set rules that automate as many steps as you like throughout the customer lifecycle.

These tools tend to connect to a variety of data sources and work well across the organization. Often they come with pre-built workflows and templates for HR, accounting, sales, and so on.

Scope out the solutions on the vendor website to see examples of who’s having success with each product. Are these markets and use-cases that apply to your business?

In terms of automation capabilities, the simpler, lighter workflow automation tools can do a lot. The more expensive premium tools can do a lot more. 

I know that’s an oversimplification, but in the end, the “power” of BPM software lies in how well a team can use it. The heavyweight automation features included with premium products are amazing, no doubt, but they take some time to master. 

Low-Code Application Development

Low-code application development platforms weren’t built for BPM, but they are growing in popularity as a solution.

Low-code application development platforms allow novice developers the ability to whip up custom applications that meet unique business needs. Really, anyone who puts the time in can figure out how to use these intuitive platforms with little to no coding.

Why is this important for BPM?.

The thing is, at a certain point, super-complex workflows can get unmanageable. There’s no one straw that breaks the camel’s back, but if your average user is having to reach out to IT to sort out problems with their daily work, there’s probably an issue. 

Low-code application development comes at the problem from a different angle. Instead of deploying a system and trying to fit it to your needs, why not build a system that’s specific to your organization?

These tools connect with third-party SaaS apps, so you can build out really rich workflows that leverage information from the tools you already use.

It’s a different approach to the same problem as traditional BPM software. If your teams are comfortable with a low-code solution, I’d go for it. They’re really affordable and have few hard limits in terms of what you can do.

#1 – Orchestly — Best for Simple Workflow Automation

Orchestly is built to optimize your everyday business processes.

Say you want to hire a new worker, file an expense report, or request new content. Maybe the marketing department wants a killer post about the best business process management software.

In each case, there are several steps of validation and review that need to be baked into each process. With Orchestly’s visual workflow editor, literally anyone can build out the exact steps required.

Here’s an example of an onboarding workflow in Orchestly.

Each step in the series of tasks is clearly defined in a series of stages (white boxes), connected by transitions (turquoise boxes), and parallel transitions (orange boxes). Drill down into each stage to the set of conditions that need to be followed before, during, and after any transition.

This is a super easy interface to master. 

There are tons of pre-built templates and, once users want to fine-tune their own scenarios, all of the visualization and basic automation is managed with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

Another really nice thing about Orchestly are the monitoring features. There are a host of ready-made report types that give you deep insight into your processes. 

You can drill down into transitions to discover how many requests are at a particular stage, the ratio of approvals to rejections, and other metrics. Plus, you can filter search results to get a real time picture of specific employees, projects, or customers.

Orchestly comes with other features that help you extend BPM functionality throughout your organization:

  • Role-based access control
  • Request manager
  • Form designer
  • Audit log
  • Email templates
  • APIs, extensions, and webhooks

Orchestly offers a free version that is limited to five users and three orchestrations (their word for workflow). The paid version, Orchestly Business, is $7/month per user with an annual subscription.

You can try Orchestly Business free for 15 days. If you have never given BPM software a shot, this is a great, low-risk option to start out.

#2 – Pipefy — Best BPM Software for Kanban

Pipefy is winning over a lot of people because of its approachable style. For companies that are already managing processes within a Kanban framework, Pipefy is going to fit like a missing puzzle piece.

This platform has the feel and flexibility of an agile project management tool, yet you’ve got the power of BPM software. 

Switch between calendar, list, and Kanban views. Yes it looks like Trello, but in Pipefy you can use the drag-and-drop editor to add rules, custom fields, and ensure that everyone assigned to the process knows exactly what’s necessary to keep things moving.

Build out completely custom workflows with Pipefy’s easy editor. There are hundreds of plug-and-play process templates available in its free gallery. 

What’s really helpful for marketing and sales is that you can design these workflows to kick off as soon as someone fills out a form, or reaches out by phone, email or SMS.

They’ve really made it as easy as possible for people to configure their workflows without writing a line of code. 

Intuitive doesn’t even begin to describe how helpful Pipefy is for first-time users. It’s always suggesting the next step.

Plus, your customers and clients can create and track requests without being a Pipefy user, which is great for collaboration with clients and other stakeholders. 

Other helpful features include:

  • Reporting dashboards
  • Native integration with Slack and GitHub
  • API access
  • Self-service portals and forms
  • SLA and deadline tracking

Pipefy offers a free trial of their paid plans and a free version for up to five people. To really take advantage of this awesome tool, I recommend one of the paid plans:

  • Business: $18/month per user
  • Enterprise: $30/month per user
  • Unlimited: contact sales

If you like the idea of moving cards through a pipeline, this is a great product. You can start small and gradually automate every one of your processes with Pipefy. 

Easy to build, easy to adjust, Pipefy is perfect for the continuously improving agile workflow. If your teams are happy running Kanban, look no further than Pipefy.

#3 – Creatio Studio — Best Low-Code Solution

Creatio Studio gives you the best of both worlds in terms of power and learning curve. Non-technical users will find the platform just about as easy to use as any popular BPM software, but there’s no ceiling to what they can do if they are willing to learn.

The free version of Creatio Studio works for business process modeling, allowing teams to diagram workflows in a collaborative setting. View, comment, and edit the designs in real time, and save everything to a process library for easy access.

To manage, monitor, and automate processes, you’ll need the Creatio Studio Enterprise. With it, you can design workflows and business applications of any complexity.

Think of building with blocks rather than writing code. Creatio compares it to building with LEGO—you don’t have to make the parts so much as select what you want and snap it together.

There are hundreds of ready-to-use templates in the Creatio marketplace to help you get started. As you design and refine processes within the visual design builder, Creatio automatically generates the corresponding business logic.

It’s a great product that straddles the divide between technical and non-technical users. Creatio is constantly suggesting actions and helping users double-check their work. 

In addition to helping people design exactly what they need, Creatio Studio comes with:

  • Role-based access control
  • Interactive dashboards
  • API access
  • No-code data migration
  • One-click pdf documentation
  • AI and machine learning tools

Creatio Studio is free for an unlimited number of users and Creatio Studio Enterprise starts at $25/month per user.

Shortlist the free version of Creatio if you are just starting to think about business process management. It will help you get off on the right foot at no cost.

If, on the other hand, you are hitting the limits of your current BPM software, Creatio Studio Enterprise is one of the most capable, affordable options available.

Although many low-code platforms are built for general use, Creatio was originally founded as bpm’online in 2011. Every aspect of the design has BPM in mind, which lowers the learning curve tremendously for non-IT users.

#4 – Tallyfy — Best for Automating Recurring Processes

Tallyfy gets away from the idea of flowcharts. Instead of shapes and arrows to guide your design process, Tallyfy keeps everything in something they call a blueprint.

There are pre-made blueprints you can use for marketing, finance, sales, HR, and more. Once you have designed a blueprint, you can use it over and over again. 

In the example below, you can see a blueprint that captures the entire onboarding journey.

Blueprints are easy to customize without code. Point and click to add new tasks to blueprints. Within tasks, you can set required fields and add drop down menus that will pull the names of employees, customers, and projects from connected databases. 

When you go to launch these blueprints, end-users love how easy it is to complete each task.

Managers can view progress at a glance or drill down into specific tasks. Clients who need to approve a request or sign off at a particular step will just see that.

Working off blueprints, it’s incredibly easy to set up and automate recurring processes. Quickly create a library of blueprints that suit your needs, and continuously improve each step. Turn all of your recurring processes into error-free workflows that save time and eliminate stress.

After launching your automated processes, Tallyfy’s process monitoring capabilities help you keep track of all your flows in real time. Some of the highlights include:

  • Powerful search and filtering
  • Custom process views
  • Role-based access control
  • Audit trails
  • Commenting
  • Issue flagging

Having commenting and issue flagging as separate features is so important for surfacing problems quickly. 

How many times does a red alert get buried for a few hours among the constant flow of @mentions and comments? With easy opportunities to flag problems, companies never let an employee, client, or goal fall through the cracks again.

You get two months of Tallyfy free if you sign an annual contract for any of their three pricing tiers:

  • Tallyfy Docs: starting at $42/month, includes 10 members
  • Tallyfy Basic: starting at $100/month, includes 8 members
  • Tallyfy Pro: starting at $100/month, includes 4 members

The way their tiers break down is really easy, though it looks a little unusual at first. Docs lets you create read-only blueprints, Basic lets you launch blueprints as a process, and Pro lets you add automation.

If you need additional users, the added cost increases at each tier, from $4/user with Docs, to $12.50 with Basic, and $25 with Pro.

They offer a free 14-day trial, if you want to see what Tallyfy is all about. I really recommend the blueprint-style BPM software to any business that has repetitive tasks they need to get right every time.

#5 – Zoho Creator — Best for Customizable Workflows

Zoho Creator is a low-code application development platform that can be used to create a wide range of customizable business process workflows. 

Unlike Creatio Studio, Zoho Creator wasn’t born as a BPM tool. Think of it as a blank slate with an intuitive toolkit that allows companies to create everything from serverless apps to full-blown, totally specialized ERP software.

The reason companies are finding success with Zoho Creator in the BPM space is that it comes loaded with tools to build out customized workflows. 

Between the templates and the drag-and-drop platform, everyone with a few weeks of Zoho Creator under their belt will think they’re a developer.

There’s nothing dazzling about the UI, but it’s easily navigable and you can build out really sophisticated apps to automate your business processes.

Zoho is really great at guiding users through each step, whether they are trying to set up a simple payment process, or design a mobile app for their office.

To really handle the complex tasks, users will have to familiarize themselves with Zoho’s proprietary language, Deluge, which is short for Data Enriched Language for the Universal Grid Environment. 

It’s a mouthful to say, but in terms of building out custom scripts quickly, Deluge is a huge step in the right direction.An HR manager with no code experience will be able to automate a recruitment application. A sales rep can build a system to track leads automatically using Deluge.

With other platforms, end-users are at the mercy of their automated workflows and have little ability to make changes to the system. With Zoho, they can keep control and ensure that their workflows are designed according to best practices and current challenges.

For their part, technically gifted users will love Zoho Creator because they can add logic and function to their applications without having to wrestle with conventional tools. 

Some of the other features that help you get off the ground quickly include:

  • 50 ready-to-use apps
  • Schema builder
  • Developer sandbox
  • Payment gateway integration
  • Audit trail
  • Automated application backup

Pricing is remarkable, considering how powerful the platform is. 

  • Basic: $10/month per user
  • Premium: $20/month per user
  • Ultimate: $35/month per user

The Basic tier is quite robust, though you are limited to building 3 apps. You get more apps and greater functionality at the Premium and Ultimate tiers.

You can certainly manage simple workflows with Zoho Creator, but I wouldn’t make this your first pick for that reason. It’s just too powerful to justify using when you have Orchestly and Pipefy available.

Choose Zoho Creator if lighter tools aren’t meeting your BPM needs.

Summary

There is no reason to fly blind. Get immediate insight and oversight of all your business processes with an appropriate BPM solution.

If you are just starting out, I really recommend Orchestly for and Tallyfy.

If you have simple automation and workflow goals, go with Orchestly and see how far it gets you. For many companies, it’s going to be enough to better manage all of their operations.

Tallyfy is going to knock out repetitive tasks really quickly with the workflow automation tools. Blueprint your processes and then manage them with little oversight.

For agile teams, especially those working within a Kanban or Scrum process framework, I would definitely check out Pipefy. It’s built for agility. Make adjustments on the fly and monitor performance to continually evolve better processes.

Between Creatio Studio and Zoho Creator, the two low-code options on this list of best BPM software, the choice ultimately comes down to what your users like. 

Judging from reviews, lots of new users are falling in love with Zoho’s Deluge scripting language. If that’s the case, you may want to consider implementing Creator and other products from Zoho, like their CRM, which also rely on Deluge.

If someone is looking for a more traditional take on highly-customizable BPM software, I’d point you to Creatio Studio.

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