PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 143 “Press Releases”

Nov

24

In business, we still consider press releases as a fundamental part of the communication cycle when marketing new product launches and events. It is, after all, a direct link to local media publications. But it’s hard to know how much it helps and if it’s worth the effort. After all, people’s attention spans have gotten smaller and press releases generally aren’t very short. Additionally, there’s so much media for people to consume, it’s hard to get through all the noise. From a journalist’s point of view, it’s a necessity. For a company, it can feel more like a throwaway tactic if it doesn’t result in increased sales, user engagement, or even web traffic.

But it’s a business standard for a reason. At the very least, it helps to establish credibility and gives companies the chance to control the narrative. For a smaller company, credibility is vital to success. If customers decide they don’t want to purchase from a larger company, they need to know they won’t regret buying from a smaller company. Seeing educational content on the company blog is a great start, but seeing press releases about the company from other sources is better. Companies are still able to control the messaging, but the fact that it comes from a different source adds to its overall credibility. So, while press releases are no longer useful in the same way they used to be, there is still a benefit to using them.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #journalism #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #presserelease #pressreleases #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #smallbusiness

How Personalized Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

Nov

22

With so many small businesses out there, it’s hard to convince customers to choose yours. Not only that, but you want those customers to stay with you long term. Customers want to feel special rather than just another customer. One way to do that is to personalize marketing messages to customers. Personalized marketing is when a business tailors marketing efforts based on collected customer data such as purchase history, interests, and demographic data.

According to Slideshare, 90% of customers find personalization very or somewhat appealing. And 80% of customers are more inclined to buy from companies that offer personalized experiences. Personalized marketing is, however, more than simply addressing customers by name in marketing emails. It can also include product recommendations based on purchase history, cart abandonment emails, birthday emails, and even personalized web pages or pop-ups for first-time or returning customers.

Benefits of Personalized Marketing

With so much content and advertisements out there, businesses won’t attract customers with irrelevant marketing messages. Personalized messages, however, will help retain customers and bring them back repeatedly. With personalized marketing messages, potential customers are more likely to convert into actual customers and purchase from you. It results in a better customer experience, one that may even be good enough to share online or with close friends. In turn, it simplifies the lead nurturing process, as personalizing improves the overall experience, increasing the likelihood that users will convert. And it’ll result in more customer engagement and feedback in the end.

As a business, you can also get valuable insight into your customers. By personalizing marketing efforts, you can see how customers shop, what they like, and what they don’t like. You can then use all this additional knowledge to see how effective your efforts are. More importantly, you can also improve in areas that could use an upgrade. With all this combined, it will ultimately lead to increased revenue.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #customerfeedback #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #sales #seo #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #web #webdesign #websites

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 142 “Social Issues”

Nov

17

Over the last decade, some companies have announced their support for or opposition to a social issue. And it’s happened much more in the past few years as there’s been more evidence of customers purchasing based on where brands stand on certain issues. But as a small business, it can be a risky move to do so. Even though there are many successful examples of brands achieving this, there are also many who have failed. If you decide to take a stance as a small business, extensive research and testing are necessary before you announce it publicly. But it’s also important to point out that even after all of that, it can still fail.

That’s why many companies, especially small businesses, opt to completely stay out of it. Sometimes, companies don’t realize just how smart customers are. If it seems like your company is just supporting or opposing something just to say something, your customers will pick up on it. And they won’t be happy about it. For any company, regardless of size, having something like this backfire on you can be catastrophic. So, sometimes it’s better to just stay out of social issues.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #brand #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #politicalissues #politics #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #smallbusiness #socialissues

Why Your Company Website Might Need a Redesign

Nov

15

The end goal of every company website is to drive conversions, increase website traffic, and grow sales. So, it’s important for every company, regardless of industry or niche, to update its website regularly. But your business website could also use a complete redesign every two or three years to stay up to date with everyone else. If you don’t, you risk keeping website elements that not only fail to convert users but also cause your visitors to leave before exploring the rest of what your site has to offer.

Before you go about the redesign process, consider what goals you want to achieve. Some examples include:

Being more visually aligned with your brand

Improving navigation on your site

Keeping users from bouncing off your pages so quickly

What Goes Into a Company Website Redesign?

Blue Pen Beside Black Smartphone on White Paper

When looking at your current site, what works, and what doesn’t? To better determine this, take a closer look at your target audience and your competitor sites. The content on your site should cater to your target audience and highlight what you offer. And the design should revolve around that, making sure it’s easy for your users to navigate. Looking at competitor sites will give you a better idea of industry standards. Plus, they’ll likely have a similar target audience, so their designs influencing some of your design decisions isn’t such a bad idea.

After that, it’s much easier to create a list of requirements. Some will involve the basic elements of a website like a simple navigation bar. But others will include industry-specific or even niche-specific features or add-ons. The clearer you are on your overall vision for your business site, the easier it will be to redesign. Once you have all those, you can implement those changes. But it also comes with a certain amount of risk. To help reduce the risk, try testing those new features to see what helps your site’s website traffic and what hinders it.

Outsource Your Website Redesign

Woman Wearing Red Top Holding Silver Macbook

Unless you’re like us, website development and design are probably not in your wheelhouse. Luckily, there are professionals who can easily take on the task of redesigning. People like us here at PSPINC. We specialize in helping small businesses grow online as a software design and development company. And redesigning your entire business site is a big overhaul. Outsourcing to a company like ours gives you more time to focus on other efforts in growing your business.

If you're looking to update or redesign your website, let us know! We're experts at helping small businesses grow online. And that starts with having a great website for your business.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #design #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #redesign #smallbusiness #tech #technology #update #webdesign #webdesigner #webdevelopment #website #websitebuilder #websitedesign #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 141 “Product Development”

Nov

10

When developing products for your business, it’s important to remember your audience. Regardless of what industry you’re in, customers regard you as experts. And you wouldn’t be running a small business if you didn’t have at least some kind of expertise. The product or service you create shouldn’t just serve you, but also your industry and your audience. Customers are smart, but don’t assume they know the same things you do. Because they don’t. So, don’t design your product in a way that requires them to know more than they do.

To make sure this doesn’t happen, it’s always a good idea to test your new product with someone who isn’t well-versed in your industry. As a tech company, we get our sales and marketing team to try out our new products. And it’s not only because they’re the ones who are trying to sell it. It’s also to see if there are areas where we could improve because if they don’t know how to use it, how can we expect our customers to know?

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #customerservice #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #officetips #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #sales #smallbusiness #softwaredevelopment #tech #technology #webdevelopment

What is Inbound Marketing?

Nov

8

Outbound marketing encompasses more of the promotional aspects of marketing; cold calling, TV ads, print ads, and even social media ads. Inbound marketing, however, follows a different approach. Instead of blatantly promoting products, it’s much more interactive, as it establishes a relationship between brands and customers. All by providing them with valuable content. Think of outbound marketing as pushing products while inbound marketing pulls customers in.

While outbound marketing is the more traditional way of doing things, inbound marketing aims to nurture relationships with potential customers and build credibility and loyalty. Inbound marketing strategies include social media, paid ads, email marketing, blogs, conversational chatbots, video, etc. To do this, inbound marketing has three stages: attract, engage, and delight.

1. Attract

A Couple Wearing Face Masks while Ordering at the Counter

At this stage, people aren’t ready to buy, but they will be interested in the content you provide, given that it’s valuable to them. To figure out what kind of content that should be, creating customer personas is a great way to start to give you a better idea of what the buyer's journey and progression look like. From there, you can create content that will best align with them as people, which will lead to more overall awareness and engagement.

2. Engage

a man getting recorded by someone else with their phone

With the knowledge learned about potential customers in the first stage, you can use that to your advantage now. From the customer journey and personas, determine what their pain points and goals are. With that, the content you create will be much more valuable to them, especially if you address the problems they initially had. Plus, it’ll keep your business at the top of mind when they are ready to purchase later on.

3. Delight

Person in Black Pants and Black Shoes Sitting on Brown Wooden Chair

In the last stage of the inbound marketing process, your business should not only understand what problems your potential customers are having, but also how to solve them. While inbound marketing can include advertising tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) and social media ads, they shouldn’t be interruptive. Instead, they should be relevant, helpful, and targeted, with specific keywords and phrases your buyer uses.

Inbound marketing isn’t a short overall process, but it’s well worth it for businesses in the end. While it can be time-consuming, customers appreciate content like this because it’s educational, entertaining, and most importantly, it doesn’t feel like they’re being sold to. Especially since it’s done in a nonintrusive way that invites customers to engage if they want to, unlike outbound marketing strategies. While it won’t result in a quick sale, it will, however, have a stronger influence on potential customers and result in more qualitative rather than quantitative leads. And in the long run, those customers are more likely to become loyal customers.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ads #blog #blogging #content #contentcreation #contentmarketing #customerjourney #digitalmarketing #inboundmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #outboundmarketing #paidads #ppc #pullmarketing #pushmarketing #socialmedia #tvads #video

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 140 “Transparency in Business”

Nov

3

For small businesses, transparency towards your customers is important. Especially if it affects a potential customer’s overall experience with the brand. For example, if one of your products is low in stock or your office reduces hours because of a holiday, it’s important to let customers know. Especially since this information could affect their overall experience with the brand. In line with that logic, being transparent with your customers also includes sharing positive news, like new product additions or sale promotions.

Being honest with your customers will help you maintain relationships between your business and your customers. And for small businesses, those relationships are crucial in establishing a great reputation for your business as well as creating loyal customers. With a solid base of loyal customers and an exceptional reputation, your business could create brand evangelists, where customers will market for you by telling people how great your company is. And if you continue to nurture those relationships, you’ll always have a constant flow of business.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #customersupport #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #officetips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #smallbusiness #socialmedia #technology

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 139 “Putting Customers First”

Oct

27

If you’re struggling to sell products or services for your business, think about your customers. After all, they’re the ones who will be purchasing and using them. How can customers use your product or service, and what benefit are they gaining from it? While you may have some initial ideas, look into other possible uses. There are plenty of products that were originally created with a specific purpose, but customers found a completely different use than it was intended for.

But it’s important to keep your customers at the top of your mind. For them, it’s about if it’s worth the money they’re going to spend on it. Determine what value your product has and how you can better serve your customers. Get feedback from them to see what they like and what they don’t like about your products. And look into improving them to better serve them.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #customerservice #customersupport #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology

Back from Japan

Oct

26

Our founder and CEO, Ken Uchikura, just got back from his trip to Japan and brought back some snacks for us to try at our Bellevue office! Thank you, Uchikura-san!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #customerservice #customersupport #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology

How Businesses Can Improve Their Referral Programs

Oct

25

Word-of-mouth is one of the most underrated yet effective marketing tactics today, even in the face of growing digital avenues. It’s why so many companies have a referral system or an affiliate marketing program in place. A referral system utilizes recommendations and word of mouth to grow a business’s customer base and network. An affiliate marketing program is a little more specific and is more suited for individual content creators looking to easily monetize their content via a unique affiliate link. Then, content creators make money when users purchase using that unique link.

It can be as simple as inviting your Facebook friends to download a game to get in-app purchases or adding an affiliate link in your blog post. So, it’s not surprising that affiliate marketing grew exponentially in the U.S during the pandemic, from $6.2 billion in 2018 to $9.1 billion in 2021, according to The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) and PwC. And it’s only expected to grow even more in the next few years. But just because you have a referral system in place for your business, it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to succeed. Referral programs only work if brands get valuable referrals and referrers get meaningful incentives to make their effort worthwhile. When done well, it can be the competitive advantage your brand has when customers are choosing which brand to go with when looking at similar products.

Components and Benefits of an Effective Referral Program

delighted black female barista serving coffee in cup in cafe<br />

When it comes time to create a referral program for your business, the most important thing to keep in mind is simplicity. Upon looking at the page, potential customers should know exactly what they’d have to do as the referrer and what they’d gain from it. Those incentives shouldn’t only be clearly outlined, but worthwhile for customers. If customers don’t find value in your referral program, they won’t want to take part in it. Once they are part of it, open communication between everyone involved will be the key to success.

The popularity of referral and affiliate programs is largely because of how beneficial they can be for businesses. It’s much easier to generate new leads when compared to other channels. Referral programs essentially ask referrers to aid in marketing your brand and products, converting them from current customers to brand advocates. Referral programs will help increase customer engagement, conversion rate, customer loyalty, and overall brand awareness. And it’ll give your business a better idea of who your loyal customers are and how to improve their overall experience with the brand.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#affiliatemarketing #affililate #benefits #brand #brandawareness #business #businesstips #contentcreation #digitalmarketing #loyalty #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #onlinemarketing #referral #referralprogram #smallbusiness #technology

PSPINC Official Company Blog

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What’s New Newsletter Vol. 143 “Press Releases”

How Personalized Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

Benefits of Personalized Marketing

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 142 “Social Issues”

Why Your Company Website Might Need a Redesign

What Goes Into a Company Website Redesign?

Outsource Your Website Redesign

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 141 “Product Development”

What is Inbound Marketing?

1. Attract

2. Engage

3. Delight

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 140 “Transparency in Business”

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 139 “Putting Customers First”

Back from Japan

How Businesses Can Improve Their Referral Programs

Components and Benefits of an Effective Referral Program

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