Business Tips Archives - Elite Vivant

Category: Business Tips

Why your company should have a referral program in place

Referral programs are a powerful marketing tool that small and large companies utilize to gain new customers and sales. Encouraging your ideal customers to share and promote your brand through word of mouth or on social media platforms with their network drives referral marketing. Usually, brands utilize referral programs to spur loyal customers to share referrals or their positive experience by offering incentives, such as company rewards or gifts.

Referral programs provide added value and a variety of strategic benefits for a business to increase growth, profitability, and overall success.

"If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."

Jeff Bezos

5 key benefits of effective referral marketing are:

Builds Community – “Word-of-mouth produces at least 5 times more sales than paid advertising.” Effectively utilizing a referral program builds a community of brand advocates that actively promote your business. Loyal, repeat customers feel personally connected to a business. When they contribute to the success of a brand by bringing in new business and sales, loyal customers recognize that they are an essential part of the community. This sense of belonging increases their drive to see a brand thrive.
Trust – “92% of respondents reported that a positive recommendation from a friend, family member, or someone they trust is the biggest influence on whether they buy a product or service.” ― Paul M Rand, Highly Recommended: Harnessing the Power of Word of Mouth and Social Media to Build Your Brand and Your Business. Word of mouth marketing greatly impacts a brand’s perception and growth. Authentic reviews and experiences via word or mouth from a close connection are more impactful than social media ads. A close friend or family member will share an unbiased review and are less likely to mislead a buyer. Referral programs highlight that loyal customers choose to spend their own hard earned money with a brand and encourage them to share their positive experiences, proving to referrals that the business is trustworthy.
Improved Conversion Rate – “According to B2B marketers, the average conversion rate for referrals is 11%. For comparison, the average conversion rate across all industries is 2.35%. Referred leads have a 30% higher conversion rate than contacts acquired by other marketing means.” Properly leveraging referral programs connects more ideal customers to a brand. Conversion rates from referrals versus leads from other marketing strategies have a higher rate of conversion.
Increased Cost Savings – “Referred customers increase profit margins by 25%.” Referral programs are a cost effective strategy for gaining new business. By establishing an effective incentive program, businesses will see a higher ROI versus marketing campaigns on social media.
Boosts Engagement – “55% of people share their new purchases on a social network.” Referral programs drive traffic to a brand’s website and social media accounts. By increasing engagement, brand’s improve their overall online presence through retweets, shares, and more sales.

Referral programs provide added value for any company through increased conversion rates, improved online presence, and a higher ROI. Want to join a strong referral network to increase your business? Watch the video below to learn more about Elite Vivant’s Referral Program, how to join our network of go-getters, and discover solutions for your brand.

We hope that these top 5 benefits of referral marketing help you elevate your own referral program strategies!

Quotes and data taken from:

https://review42.com/resources/referral-marketing-statistics/

15 JanBusiness Tips

How Market Research Can Help You Reach Your Goals

Market research can be one of the most useful tools that you implement into your business routines. These regular checkups can provide valuable data that helps you better understand your audience and their expectations of you.

How can you improve if you do not know where to begin? It can be difficult to grasp what your audience needs and expects from you solely based on comments they leave on your social media channels. This is often the most consistent form of communication that you’ll have between yourself and them. So, in order to open the door for more feedback, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves a bit. Market research can help you achieve just that. Whether you’re already established or just starting out, it’s important to collect this data from your customer or client base. This way, you can identify the obstacles that are in your way and use the data you gather to move past them and towards your goals. Additionally, your market research can help you paint a clear picture of your buyer persona.

The Methods

Now that we’ve established why market research is so important to your business, you’re probably curious as to how to implement them. Here are some of the most commonly used ones:

Surveys are incredibly popular because they’re easy to conduct. They can be conducted online or by telephone. But…let’s be real! Who sits through telephone surveys these days? Online surveys are quick and user-friendly.

Workshops help get a diverse look into your demographic. Focus groups work similarly. These days, technology allows for digital workshops and focus groups to be held at a fraction of the cost. This format helps with broader questions, whereas surveys only get you a slice of the pie.

Facebook’s Audience Insight tool gives you an in-depth glance at your demographic in a way that you may not be able to get elsewhere. Analytics on social media are a useful gadget that tells you who your audience is. This helps you build your buyer’s persona, so you can plan your campaigns accordingly. Facebook’s insight tool shows you everything from age, gender, and interests that are shared by your audience. You can find this tool in the “tools” menu of your Ads Manager settings.

It’s also important to hear from your employees who directly interact with your customers. If you have storefronts, your cashiers and representatives will be the go-to. However, for service-based operations, you’ll want to hear from your sales reps. They’ll be interacting with your clients from the early stages of the sale, so they’ll have an interesting perspective on their needs.

A little bit of healthy competition can’t hurt.

Let’s get this straight—I don’t want you to obsess over your competition. You don’t want to accidentally model yourself off of what someone else is already doing. BUT, you do want to take them into consideration when you’re doing market research. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses can help you paint a better idea of your own.

A few more things to consider…

When you are conducting brand research, the end goal is to get a keen perspective on your audience’s expectations of you. You need to think about the things that make your brand special to them. What makes your favorite brand (other than your own!) special to you? Think about:

Sentimental value – What gets people attached to you/your brand?
Recognizability – Can they set you apart from the crowd easily? Can they name you without thinking twice about it?
Association – What do they associate with your brand? This ties into sentimental value, as these associations are often feelings.

Tips & Tricks

Asking broader questions helps get a more detailed response from your survey group. This leaves less room for basic “yes or no” answers
Understand that each method does not have a way to eliminate bias. Recognize the potential for biased answers in every method that you use. Try to minimize these when you’re creating your research material
Eliminate your own bias. You’ll probably have an idea of where you want the surveys to go. If necessary, let someone else lead the discussions to avoid this issue!

The best part about market research is that there are so many possibilities in completing it. There is no “one size fits all” for any brand! Gathering this data eliminates some of the obstacles that you might not have known were there in the first place!

Ready to build a data supported brand? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

01 JanBusiness Tips

Why Ongoing Website Maintenance Is Essential To Your Business

A living, evolving tool. Your right hand man/ma’am. Once your website has launched, it is not set in stone for eternity, but rather, it needs to evolve with your business.

As a living, ever-changing tool, your website needs on-going check-ups and maintenance to provide essential data and properly function for your business. Since your business slowly changes over time, Elite Vivant can service your website each month by updating and maintaining crucial elements to maintain its longevity and functionality.

Essential maintenance updates for your website include:

Website Changes and Update
Website down recovery
Website data back-up
Virus & Malware Scanning
Spam Protection
WordPress Core & Plugin Update
Theme Updates
Clean Log & Spam comments
Website speed check & optimize
Support request via Support ticket
Monthly Web Care via Report
Quarterly Suggestion for Website Improvement

Maintain the Health of Your Website – In order to maintain optimal functionality and avoid vulnerabilities, it is necessary to update your core and plugins since WordPress offers updates to address security concerns. For instance, hackers can steal data from your website and re-route customers to other websites from your own website. As a result, your business could lose sales and trust from your client base. Maintaining a healthy website with the proper updates ensures a fully functioning updated space for your customers to engage with your business.

Backups – It is important to backup the website each month to maintain the updates and data collected by your website. If your website is not backed up each month and a catastrophe occurs, there is no way to access all the past data.

Updated Graphics and Messaging – Since your business changes and evolves over time, it is necessary to update the messaging and graphics on your page to keep your website fresh for your customers. By keeping your graphics and messaging on your website current, you are extending the longevity of your website instead of having to create a whole new one in a few years to better fit your evolving business; thus, avoiding a much larger expense!

If you haven’t already completed our New Client Questionnaire, get started here to learn how your goals and our solutions align.

28 DecBusiness Tips

How To Prepare for Your Consultation With Elite Vivant

Congratulations! You’ve decided to take action and seek help with the challenges in the way of your ultimate success. Elite Vivant is thrilled to be part of your exploration, and we are honored that you are taking the time to explore working with us. As a partner, our mission is to help you overcome any obstacles you are facing and provide you with solutions to grow your brand – no matter the stage of your business. Let’s dive deeper into the first step in exploring our partnership, a one-on-one consultation.

Elite Vivant conducts consultations to learn all about your brand, whether it’s new, hasn’t officially launched, or is a seasoned brand searching to pivot. We want to know about your brand and its products or services, your vision for your brand, its unique ‘it’ factor, your goals, and your biggest challenges. If your brand is a seasoned business, KPIs are extremely helpful as well. This information gives our team a clear snapshot of your brand and your vision so we can help you build a better business. At the end of our call, we will determine a partnership will be mutually beneficial for both of us. If it is, we will provide clear solutions for your needs and a plan to get there.

Here are some helpful tips of how to best prepare for your consultation with The Elite Vivant Team:

Familiarize yourself with our project prerequisites because all projects start here!

Why we start with a project prerequisite:

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra

Planning sets the foundation for strategy, so we meticulously research and understand all the elements of your brand. Through this research, we are able further hone in on our strategy we discussed in our consultation as well as make any additions or pivots necessary! With this research phase, clients improve their ROI, understand their SWOT analysis, and can move forward confidently with Elite Vivant to the next phase of the project, Implementation Project.

Types of Projects Prerequisites:

Brand Blueprint: Branding blueprint customizes a clear strategy to reach goals, design alluring content, identify strengths and areas of growth, and reduce marketplace expansion costs.

Brand Audit: Brand Audits best serve existing brands; during a brand audit, we meticulously examine a brand’s marketing collateral, social media channels, customer engagement, and other relevant data to discover areas of strength and growth.

Digital Marketing Blueprint/Audit: This is a condensed version of the brand blueprint and/or audit. We focus our energy on researching and analyzing social media and email marketing efforts and goals to provide a concise digital marketing plan.

Your Business Vision

We want you to share what inspires your company and what drives you each day – your vision for your company. Additionally, we will discuss your challenges as well because as your partner, we will help you conquer your challenges so your brand grows and evolves. As entrepreneurs, we recognize the passion and drive within one another as well as the obstacles we need to overcome. This spark that kindles your joy and motivates you every day also inspires our team to create a unique project for your unique business.

Your Expectation & Level of Involvement

As we gain clarity about the needs of your brand and your vision, the collaborative process begins. It’s a team effort between your brand and Elite Vivant because as we work to provide you solutions, there will be tasks that you must complete in a timely fashion to meet project deadlines. To avoid delays, we openly communicate via your Asana Board and email to ensure you stay up-to-date on what needs to happen on your end and what we are working on. Due to the fact that we are a boutique agency and to ensure top quality deliverables, we only accept mutually beneficial partnerships.

Timelines

After agreeing to collaborate on projects together, project start dates are 2-4 weeks after our initial consultation. Project Prerequisites last about 4-6 weeks and then clients transition to the next phase, Implementation Projects.

Implementation Projects at Elite Vivant operate on a 3+ month timeline to ensure success with a clear start date and set deadline dates for our team to meet. Even though we are a boutique agency, we operate on a large scale since website, marketing, and brand identity are interconnected and influence the success of one another. Oftentimes, businesses choose to scale their business with us and add projects as they grow, so it’s important to identify short and long term goals for your business.

Investment

Hiring experts and investing time and money into your business will provide a greater ROI long term. We understand that all clients have differing budgets and we respect that. If needed, we prioritize projects into stages with mutually agreed upon payment plans to accommodate clients.

Our project prerequisites range from $1500-$5000 depending on the scope of the project.

The average client in an ongoing implementation project spends $2,500-$5,000 per month.

Prepare Your Questions

Bring all your questions about your goals, obstacles, our processes, and more! We answer these even though all of our clients start with a project prerequisite, we discuss all future solutions that will be part of the next phase, Implementation Project.

If you haven’t already completed our New Client Questionnaire, get started here to learn how your goals and our solutions align.

06 MayBusiness TipsFinancial AdvisorsFor the record

4 Tips That Will Help Financial Advisors Generate Leads That Last

Financial advisors have a tough task when it comes to lead generation. They must modernize their approach to sales, and sometimes it can be tricky to see how these tactics will work for them. However, we have solutions that work like a charm!

Gone are the days when cold calling was an effective approach to lead generation for anybody running any business. These days, that’s actually one of the least effective ways to do it. Newspaper ads and magazines are expensive with little return while many people get their news from Social Media.

With all that being said, financial advisors have to modernize their approach to lead generation. But, sometimes it’s difficult to understand where to put your digital marketing efforts and how it will benefit your business. These tips will help financial advisors learn how adapting to new lead generation techniques will give them the growth they desire!

1. Use the Power of Social Media

Social media could easily be considered as the most helpful tool to any business owner ever. And, I know, that’s a drastic generalization to make. But, it’s true! There is just so much that you can do with it. Everyone uses it. The connections that you can make online are virtually limitless. (See what I did there?)

It’s all a matter of knowing which platforms work for you. LinkedIn is great for financial advisors. You can filter through your own contacts and find the ones that are most likely to want to work with you. Also, LinkedIn is generally used by many high-profile clients. Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself!

2. Put Yourself Out There At Webinars and Workshops

These days, we’re finding new ways to stay connected while we can’t physically be together. This is true for networking events such as workshops, where you’d traditionally gather in a hall or ballroom and interact with like-minded people.

When all this is over, we’re all likely to transfer some of these less-traditional meeting methods over to our new routines. Webinars and workshops will be a guiding light for financial advisors while they generate leads. This investment is one that’s well worth it. Beyond the connections you’ll make, you’ll also gather some valuable knowledge!

3. Rethink Your Advertisement

Did you know that the location of your ads is just as important as the quality of them. As we mentioned earlier, social media is a marketplace for leads. Imagine how much power social media ads could have for your business!

Facebook and Google are some of the most popular ad platforms out there. That’s not without reason. They’re user-friendly and their algorithm is built for business owners to get the most traction possible. Don’t forget to do some split testing of your marketing message and creatives to ensure that your audience is connecting and that you are not wasting advertising dollars.

4. Update Your Website

How long has it been since you’ve updated your website? If you’re unsure of the answer to that question, it is probably time to give yourself a much-needed revamp. A clean, professional, and user-friendly website increases the chance of leads following through. Providing them with valuable content such as relevant blog posts containing info they’d need (like this one will get them interested in what else you have to offer!

Now that you know how to generate more leads as a financial advisor, we would love to hear your thoughts! What tip are you thinking of using first? Let us know in the comments!

Are you looking to generate more leads? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

04 MayBusiness TipsFor the record

7 Ways To Create Your Own Luck In Business

Sometimes, it’s easy to be green with envy towards those who seem to have it all. You know exactly who we’re talking about. Opportunities seem to arrive to them on a silver platter. But, you can create your own luck in business— and in life. Here’s how.

Odds are, the concept of “luck” is, at least, in the back of your mind. You’ve probably grown too old to search for four leaf clovers in every grassy field you find. But, the general idea of how “luck” works tends to hold onto those magical elements that we were enamored by as children. However, especially in regards to business, you can create your own luck.

1. Understand how to embrace failures.

Failure is one of those tricky, subjective terms. Much like beauty, failure is in the eye of the beholder. Of course, mistakes do happen. Projects turn sour and don’t give the result you desired. But, what differentiates lucky business owners from self-perceived “unlucky” ones is how they handle these roadblocks.

Firstly, it’s important to learn about what went wrong in these mistakes and use these lessons in future endeavors. This strengthens your skill set in ways that can only happen through experience. Also, it’s good to thicken your skin using these less-than-ideal outcomes.

2. Stay resilient.

It’s easy to give up. In fact, giving up seems easier than staying resilient a lot of the time. Owning a business is an overwhelming job. There are so many different hats that are meant to be worn by one head. This is especially true if you’re just starting out. You don’t necessarily have your dream team backing you up just yet. So, the opportunities and wins you create are entirely on you.

It’s easy to become enveloped by the idea of “success” and how that relates to numbers. Business isn’t just a numbers game. It’s also a game of wits. Part of that is building up your endurance. Good things come to those who wait, and better things come to those who get up again when they fall.

3. Be flexible.

Flexibility is a key aspect to owning a business these days. In fact, millennial business owners are thriving because that generation favors flexibility in every sense of the word over any other that came before them. You don’t have to be a millennial to adopt this mindset, though. All business owners are encouraged to try new things and explore their self-imposed boundaries and break through them. This can start off as something small! For example, you can change your working hours to open yourself up to a myriad of different clients. Or, you can go to a social networking event to do the same. You never know who you could meet!

4. Build up your confidence.

As RuPaul famously says, “if you can’t love yourself, how are you gonna love somebody else?”

Self-confidence is just as essential in finding luck within your business as it is in finding luck in your everyday life. If you don’t believe in your work, how could you expect someone else to? The law of attraction states that the energy that you put into your projects and yourself is the energy that you receive in return. Many people simply refer to this as “karma.”

Whatever term you give it, and however seriously you take the concept, is once again dependent on you. Sometimes, people cling onto these ideas as a trial run and begin seeing results. Fake it ‘till you make it.

5. Be more outgoing.

We’ve all heard amazing stories of startup companies that began from somebody’s basement. One of the most famous examples of this is Steve Jobs and the creation of Apple. While he began his career from his basement, it’s worth it to explore your options. Now, this doesn’t mean to completely abandon your current setup and invest in an office space downtown.

But, opening yourself up to working with new people can take you to places you never dreamed were possible. It’s like the social networking events that were mentioned earlier. Allowing yourself to explore different opportunities brings luck to you.

6. Abandon excuses.

We all know one person who constantly has excuses. It’s almost like that is their job! This person seems to always have a reason to be late. And, to each their own. Excuses encourage comfortability. Comfortability won’t get you anywhere if you’re trying to increase your luck, whether that be in business or your day to day.

7. Remember the bigger picture.

One of the quickest downfalls for new business owners is that they give up too quickly. Many start to lose sight of their bigger picture goals. They forget why they started their business in the first place, and their dreams get lost in translation. Some see a few failures and roadblocks and call it quits before they can even begin to reach their potential.

People often don’t realize that success is not linear. There’s hills and mountains to climb in between every successful endeavor. And, what you get may not always be what you asked for. Sometimes, things change in-between when you started and where you end up. However, remembering the dream that you started off with can keep you motivated even during difficult times.

Michael Jordan spent many years training with coaches who had a hard time seeing past the fact that he didn’t meet the minimum height requirement. However, years of perseverance allowed him to become one of the most iconic basketball players in history.

Remember:
Luck is self-made. It’s related to the opportunities you create for yourself, but also who you surround yourself with. The people around you should be your biggest fans. They should constantly be encouraging you to conquer your goals in whatever you set out to do. When you surround yourself with the right people, luck will come to you. It’s important that they hold you accountable for your actions, but it’s more important that they hold you accountable for your potential.

Do you need a luck spark? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

08 AprBusiness TipsFor the recordWebsite

How to Throw Yourself An Epic Website Launch Party

Your website’s launch party is just as important as your business’s grand opening. First impressions are essential, because you can never repeat them! Here’s some great ways to make your website’s launch party a huge success.

The thought of hosting a party may seem downright impossible with the current state of the world. If you can’t gather with more than 10 people, how can you host a party that will be talked about for years to come? You want your website’s launch to signify the place your business will hold in your industry. Thankfully, you can still do that online!

Planning

Even though a virtual party probably seems like less work in the planning-department, it’s still important to have details ready and thought-out. Make sure your date, time, and RSVP list are sorted out well in advance. Other factors to consider are:

Your hosting platform
Activities
Content to post before, during, and after your party

Once you have your basics covered, it’s time to dive into the fun stuff.

Hosting Platforms

In an ideal world, your website’s launch party would be held at the perfect venue with the perfect guestlist. However, your home really can still be the perfect venue! Let’s start with the basics. How the heck do you host a virtual party?

Well, everyone’s been using Zoom to do pretty much everything! If you’re going this route, you can design fun backgrounds to give off the illusion that you’re at your dream venue, even if you’re just on your couch!

Pro Tip: Test out your technology before you use it! Make sure everything will run smoothly before your event so that minimal errors occur.

Activities

Virtual parties don’t mean that you have to leave the fun activities behind! You can host trivia games for prizes. Or, you can host a scavenger hunt on your website. This generates clicks and interest all at the same time, while allowing you to have fun with your audience!

Prizes can include:

Gift Cards for your products
A free trial of your services
Branded merchandise

Content to post

The content you post before the event should be engaging to get people excited to sign up and share the event with others. While the content after should thank and nurture your audience into become a customer/client.

Content before the launch party can include:

Countdown Graphics
60 Second Invitation
Photos of prizes

Content after the launch party can include

Email Campaign- Thank them for joining and more…
Video Recording on Social Media
Video that your business is now Live!

Your website’s launch doesn’t have to be hindered by social distancing. In fact, the fact that more people are home right now can improve the traffic to your website upon its initial launch. So, get planning and have fun!

Are you planning a website launch party and need some support? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

08 AprBusiness TipsFor the recordWebsite

12 Website Integration That Will Instantly Improve Your User Experience

Making your website user-friendly will keep new visitors interested in much longer periods of time. With these 12 integrations, the user experience is improved instantly.

Websites have come a long way within the past decade. Integrating simple elements into your site will grasp your audience’s attention as well as provide them with an overall pleasant user-experience.

1. Payment Gateway

PayPal is perhaps the most famous payment gateway there is! Their commitment to security has made them a pioneer for payment gateways. The system is as close to a point-of-sale experience that your customers would get at a physical store. Using a payment gateway makes the final sale quick, easy, and safe for your customers.

2. Email Popup/Embed Form

You do have a mailing list, right? An email popup should be the first thing, or one of the first things, that a new visitor sees upon entering your site. Platforms like ActiveCampaign make it easy to integrate an email popup into your website.

Pro Tip: incentives like a free resource to solve a pain point or a 10% coupon for towards a purchase work wonders.

3. CRM Platform

Want to organize your leads in one spot as they travel through your sales funnel? A Customer Relationship Management Platform (CRM) is software that allows you to digitally organize your leads’ information. This tool is great if you’re either newly starting out with sales funnels or you’re fine tuning an already working one. It allows you to ditch the paperwork and keep everything in one, convenient location.

4. Videos

Videos are one of the most compelling forms of content out there. Depending on your needs, it’d be worth it to think about the length of your videos and how much editing will need to go into them. Editing programs such as iMovie for Apple’s OS have become

The physical process of integrating videos to your website will depend largely on the platform you use to run it. These days, most platforms feature a simple widget to embed videos.

5. Appointment Calendar

Client appointments are super important to a lot of independent businesses. In fact, they’re crucial for many! Having an appointment calendar system that’s easy to use will make leads be more likely to schedule an appointment. Systems like Oncehub are easy for both you and your clients/leads to use!

6. Chatbot

A chatbot is a simple yet essential form of communication between you and your leads! This artificial intelligence system can provide customer service to your clients right from your website. Chatbox really is a Smart tool. It remembers chat history and logs. Also, it stores information about your services so that it can help your clients through many different questions.

7. Social Sharing

A not-so-secret tip to gaining more leads is by having the ones that already know and love you spread the word! Think of social sharing like “old school” networking. You no longer have to meet up face-to-face or make a ton of phone calls to generate new leads. When you integrate social sharing through a service like Share This, the leads come to you!

8. Instagram Feed

Having a compelling instagram feed is essential in modern-business. This almost fills in for a traditional television commercial. Instagram can be used to promote your services while also actively engaging with your audience.

9. Google Analytics

As you’re keeping a close track of your sales funnels, Google Analytics are really helpful to pay attention to. This article can get you started quickly and give you a deeper understanding of how it all works. They track your demographics and the amount of daily traffic that your site receives.

10. Yoast SEO

Yoast helps you optimize keywords for SEO purposes. This makes your site way more searchable. The thing that makes Yoast stand out in the crowd is that it optimized all keywords, placing your content higher up on SERPs.

11.Facebook Pixel

Facebook Pixel is a tool that helps you track your ad performance. It also optimizes them so that they’re shown to the correct people, so the right leads are drawn to your business. Running Facebook ads is one of the most lucrative forms of modern advertising. They’re shown to an enormous audience all at once, and their clickable nature drives results.

12. Grammarly

Grammarly is the ultimate editor for your content if you’re running a DIY project. In fact, we used Grammarly to edit this blog post. It’s super convenient, and the free version will help you with any basic grammar corrections. If you need something more advanced, the paid-for version of Grammarly will help with things like syntax.

Having perfect or near-perfect grammar on your website makes your content more appealing and readable. If errors are too prevalent, the likelihood of your audience losing interest increases. Plus, proper grammar makes you appear to be more professional!

Which one are you most excited to try out or find the most valuable? Let us know in the comments!

Does your website need some integrations to help improve your business and your users experience? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

30 MarBusiness TipsFor the record

How to Raise Your Authentic Voice And Be Unapologetically You Online And IRL

With social media being open to everybody, we become easily susceptible to unwarranted comments. These sometimes do translate over to the “real world,” but they’re often much more difficult to face online. Raising your voice not only raises your confidence in online spaces, but in other social settings, as well.

Let’s face it, we often find ourselves saying “sorry” several times a day. Have you ever apologized when someone else accidentally bumped into you? There are many reasons for this bizarre phenomenon, and trying to get through each one would be a lot to unpack. To put it simply, we’ve been conditioned to be overly apologetic from day one. Society is just formatted that way.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should filter yourself in certain situations out of fear. For example, on your business’s social media platforms, it’s important to speak in a voice that seems authentic for you. Audiences these days value authenticity and voices that they can relate to. All kinds of brands use humor and relatability to reach their customers.

One example that really comes to mind are brands on their Twitter accounts. Restaurant chains’ social media interns in particular have a lot of fun with each other! Wendy’s and McDonald’s have literal and figurative beef. It’s fun to watch the silly exchanges and disses that they toss at each other.

Like this gem:

This example is obviously very petty and silly. Your social voice doesn’t have to be this outspoken! But, it’s important to remember to have fun with it sometimes, whatever that may mean for you.

The beef (that pun is too good to resist) between Wendy’s and McDonald’s is also an amazing sales tactic. Their audiences are watching to see what happens next, as if they were watching reality TV. Retention is always the main goal.

In “real life,” a way to approach this could be adding a sense of humor to your branding. Whether that be through witty catch phrases or avant-garde logos, standing out by appearing to be human is a great idea.

If you feel like you’re being talked over in social settings, don’t be afraid to assert yourself and set boundaries. Even if you aren’t a total expert in your field, pretend that you are. Faking it ‘till you make it may be a cliché, but it holds some truth. Women have to do this to a different extent than men. We’ve all heard of “mansplaining,” and oh, boy, is it real.

Chronic mansplainers are unfortunately tough to avoid in business. But, you don’t have to roll up your sleeves and declare a permanent protest against men in general if you face it. Instead, present yourself with an aura of confidence, even if it’s faux confidence. The goal here is to eliminate the word, “sorry” from your vocabulary unless you’ve actually messed up. Permanently.

Once you do this, you’ll be able to be yourself authentically and unapologetically in any space that you enter.

Does you brand voice lack direction and a clear strategy? Complete our New Client Questionnaire so that we can understand your needs and provide the best fit solutions.

12 MarBusiness TipsFor the record

5 Ways to Use Your Tax Refund to Grow Your Business

Tax season can be a stressful time. However, it can also be a productive one. The money you receive in your refund can help you grow your business and accomplish your yearly goals.

We’re at a point where our sole focus can be on obtaining the success we envision. Tax season can be stressful. But, once you receive that refund, the biggest question is: “what do I do with it?” This year, dedicate your tax refund to your business and watch as it blossoms. Here are 5 ways you can implement this money for growth:

Pay off your debt. This should be your first priority. Using your refund to pay off any loans or other forms of debt is soothing to the soul. Once you do this, it’ll be much easier to focus on other aspects of your budget.
Update your website. Hiring a web designer is a worthy investment into your business! This could help you keep your website competitive. In a largely-digital market, it’s important to keep your site engaging and user-friendly. Make sure you remember your brand story when consulting your designer!
Build your personal brand. Along those lines, having a cohesive brand story is incredibly If your audience knows what you’re about, you’re more likely to retain their attention. A confusing story won’t have them so inspired to invest in what you do. At Elite Vivant, we offer Network Growth Program that will help you tell your story and connect you to Center Of Influence within your industry.
Content creation. It can be overwhelming providing your brand with engaging content. Social media is a large beast and there are so many different platforms to learn. Our expert photographers can shoot the right photos to tell your brand’s story effectively and aesthetically. But, cute pics are not the only way to keep people engaged! It’s important to invest in products that will keep your audience hooked.
Similarly, overall marketing can be costly. Ads are everywhere! Facebook’s ads program and Google AdSense can be confusing if you’re new to digital marketing. Hiring a professional to navigate through this complicated territory will ease the process and reach new clients. Email marketing is a great idea to look into as well. You don’t want to overwhelm your clients’ inbox, but it’s an easy way to directly contact them about new products and services.

Don’t let tax season overwhelm you! Instead, use it as an investment to propel you towards your goals. If you have a clear vision for your Queendom/Kingdom, all you need is to place yourself on the throne.

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