• Innovative Strategies That Create More Profits

Author: harborcapitalgroupinc

Are Search Engines Missing Your Website?

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

 Some people have been saying that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is dead or at least no longer relevant to the current World Wide Web landscape. Believe it or not, the idea of the ineffectiveness of SEO has been going on all across the web for many years now, and it still creates quite an intense debate among website builders and business owners alike.

Major search engines such as Google and Bing are continually updating their search algorithms, so to say that SEO has changed quite a bit over the years is an obvious understatement. Despite the doubts, many websites or businesses continue to practice various methods of optimizations to increase online visibility and thrive. On the other hand, some who have tried implementing well-known tricks and techniques to acquire top spots in search engine results gain no benefit at all. Now, this begs the question about the specific practices those naysayers did.

 SEO is not math; while it does involve a lot of calculations, the practices do not follow the same formula all the time. When search engines change their algorithms, websites must also implement different optimization methods to stay relevant. Failure to keep up with the changes will render your website invisible.

SEO is not dead. It just evolves and gets better.

When it comes to digital marketing, especially increasing website traffic, you cannot afford to rely merely on links and keywords. While they are still essential parts of today’s SEO practices, there are just many more methods (and therefore works) required to obtain results within reasonable measure. Instead of just focusing on keywords and link-building efforts, today’s version of SEO demands constant attempts on your part of providing real values for visitors, such as user-friendly interface, relevancy to search queries, and useful, informative contents. A strong online presence is also the result of seamless integration with social media (and sometimes) advertising strategies. Having only one or two of those elements will not yield the results you need.

Every algorithm update aims to make the Internet better, more useful, and more effective for those searchers. When people say that SEO is no longer relevant, useful, or even dead, they most likely refer to specific optimization techniques that are now considered obsolete. SEO failed them because they used outdated methods.

Dead SEO Techniques

Older websites probably used the following methods to gain popularity. Still, you cannot merely follow their footsteps because some of those methods are now ineffective (or even bad) for website development. A few examples of dead SEO techniques:

All-out link building

Link building is an important part of SEO, both in the past and present. The most significant difference is that the old method did not care about the sources of the links. You could build or create as many links as you can, and almost certainly, your website would start to rank much higher. In many cases, people made dozens of sites and linked the contents heavily.

In today’s SEO, link quantity is no longer a reliable indicator of a good website. Other authoritative domains will link to an accurate, informative website. If your contents are fresh, well-written, and useful, it is not impossible to get linked by more popular sites.

Aiming for a high number of keywords

Targeting specific keywords remains an effective method to increase page rank, although, in the old days, there was an entirely different approach to that. It used to be that having more content target the same keyword was enough to gain more online exposure, but then search engines knew that it was a bad idea to rank websites based on the number of content they have. Some search engines do not rank an entire website, only individual pages. The new approach is to write a longer post and target multiple keywords instead.

Keywords Overuse

When you have tons of keywords within a single post used to be a great idea, all you needed to do was cramp as many keywords as possible in a relatively short post to reach sufficient keyword density. Search engines now despise the practice.

Appropriately implemented, SEO can do wonders for your website. Some of the most effective methods right now are as follows.

Page readability: not only does the interface need to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, but the contents have to be human-readable. People demand informative content relevant to their search queries, delivered on a website that is pleasing to the eyes in an instant. User experience and value of materials play crucial roles in today’s SEO landscape.

Topic and keywords: a combination of text- and keywords-focused content is preferable. You can use Google Trends to look for recent popular search queries and related keywords. Focus on trending search with low-competition keywords if possible.

 Let’s not forget about the marketing efforts. You must be willing to (slowly) promote your websites to gain popularity. Part of modern SEO is to integrate sites or your profile with social media, online communities, and relevant Internet forums. Be active and promote your ideas throughout the web; now and then, you can create a thread or give answers to others’ questions and link them to one of your pages.

What you need to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

We are now live in a world where people Google before they shop, visit Yelp before hiring services and use social media to get informed about the latest discounts from local retailers. Some even rely on YouTube or Instagram to get a glimpse of the products they consider buying.

Regardless of the business niche, you need a website to establish a presence in the virtual world and therefore stay ahead of the increasingly competitive market. Whether you are a retailer, contractor, consultant, or offering services of any sort, having no website is just as bad as giving away customers to your competitors. It doesn’t even matter if you run a small startup or a bigger sized company.

But having-a-website-alone is enough to attract visitors and customers; bear in mind that your competitors also have websites of their own. Your website must be optimized in terms of security, layout, performance, keywords, links (both inbound and outbound), and of course contents. You need to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which refers to the practice of increasing traffic to your website. There is a large variety of SEO software you can use to generate a website analysis report you can use to plan and execute your optimization strategy.

Why SEO?

By now, every business owner knows that a website is like an online representative of the company, ready to welcome customers any day anytime. It is the place where customers and partners can learn more about the company as well as its products in a convenient manner. People can even place an order via the Internet on the website from the comfort of home.

One thing to remember is that having a website does not guarantee you will gain more customers. Just because your company has a website, it does not necessarily mean you will generate more sales in an instant. You can only make money if customers are at your storefront, or visit your website to buy what you’re selling. The following are some of the things you can do to improve your chances of attracting visitors and converting them into loyal customers.

SEO Basics

Creating a website is the first step to establish an online presence, and thankfully it is quite easy. You don’t have to be a computer or software engineer to get the job done. There are free domains, free hosting services, and free templates you can use to see if the website can run as intended; if not, you can always try again without spending a dime. While free options are available, the premium ones are almost always miles better for business purposes. A website is a powerful marketing tool, and that is why you want to have it built and optimized by professionals. In addition to using a useful (and relevant) domain and reputable hosting service, you also need thorough and complete website optimization practices, including but not limited to the following.

On-page SEO: there is nothing complicated about this step. All you need to do is to make sure that you use the right title for every page, the right keywords relevant to the title, human-readable contents, useful Meta descriptions, quick loading time, and the likes. On-page SEO is about making the website function as it should.

Off-page SEO: the more challenging part is the off-page optimization. It involves more sophisticated techniques to acquire quality backlinks (links directed to your website/content) from the more authoritative sites, social media integration, guest blogging, and brand popularity, among others. The purpose of off-page optimization is to build a better reputation and make the website more authoritative.

Internal linking: make it a priority to link a post to another on your website. The goal is to tell search engines that all your contents are relevant to each other. It also promotes the idea that visitors will remain engaged with the website because it provides detailed information about a particular topic. Visitors will stay longer on the site, improving your chances of converting them into customers.

Key-phrase instead of keywords: while keywords are most likely inevitable, you may also want to target key-phrases. You use more words to target a specific idea and insert the same phrase several times in a longer post. Longtail key-phrases (consisting of at least three words) are traditionally seldom-used, which means you don’t have to compete with more websites. Search engines prefer key-phrases to keywords because key-phrases give more specific information.

Reinforced website security: search engines are more eager to index secure websites with “https” as opposed to “Http” in their addresses. HTTPS features an SSL certificate to indicate an encrypted connection to the site. Your information is secured as well as the visitors’. If your website is also an online shop, secure online transaction processing is a must.

Fast loading speed: minimize the use of large-sized multimedia files such as videos and images on every page, or at least compress them to the smallest size possible without adversely affect view quality. Another excellent method is to use a dedicated server rather than a “shared” one. Switching to a “lighter” theme and enabling browser caching also help. Mobile-friendly: search engines have now moved to prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their indexing processes. Every day, more people are using smartphones to access the web, so it makes no sense to skip this step. Being mobile-friendly means your website will work the same way across devices of multiple platforms.

Last but not least, you need good SEO software to perform detailed analytics of website performance. Based on the analysis, the software may offer suggestions on how to fix errors and increase online visibility.

 

Why Your Strategy’s General Policy Is Critical

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

SnapDeal is an Indian company that is very successful in selling high-transaction products to value-conscious customers. They have been successful because they adhered to the General Policy of their strategy. What they were willing to do and not willing to do. Sometimes the decisions were very difficult.

While merchants everywhere were touting the latest cell phone, they decided not to sell them because they could not make the transaction efficient enough to be profitable. Many people told them not selling cellphones was a mistake. They didn’t rule out selling cellphones, they ruled out selling cellphones until they could do it efficiently and make a profit.

Based on their strategy of selling to the value-conscious customer, their General Policy was if they were unable to make the transaction profitable, they would not sell the product regardless of its popularity and selling price.

By sticking to their general policy, it did not turn customers away. In fact, it solidified the  “Positioning” in their customer’s minds as a retailer of value products. Today the company is thriving in a very competitive marketplace,

This story illustrates the value of having a long-term strategy and adhering to the strategy’s general policy and coherent action.

Are you staying on the path laid out by your strategy?

The Perfect Value Proposition

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

Sarah LaFleur of MM LaFleur knew she had the perfect value proposition. Well designed, quality women’s clothes at affordable prices sold through her online platform. The only problem was that this was her definition of what people wanted. She was relying on direct mail marketing and Instagram. After a year, she was in trouble, She had lots of inventory, and her conversion rate was meager.

Then she started paying attention to customers and found out that while they liked her clothes and pricing, they still wanted to see and feel the clothes before deciding to buy. So, she put together a box, the “Bento Box”  of six clothing items, based on information from earlier email responses and told the prospect to look at the clothes, no-obligation, send back the clothes they didn’t want; and they would only be billed for the clothes they kept. Bingo! Her conversion rate went from 2% to 8%, and she is now doing great.

This may be hard to believe, but every zip code has hundreds of different mindsets, and many may not match yours, and maybe fewer still match mine. 🙂 The way to product-market fit is customer-centric, not product-centric.

 

Positioning: An Important Way To Differentiate Your Brand

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

SaaS companies are no longer unique, and most have many SaaS competitors with similar services.

This makes it difficult to break out and get attention.

Getting attention is similar to the problem marketers had in the ‘70s and ‘80s

when getting through the media noise was almost impossible.

That’s why its time  to take a look at your competitive position in the minds of buyers,

 

Marketing ROIs were getting expensive. Then, JackTrout wrote a book about “Positioning.”

The idea of positioning is to find and take a unique position in the customer’s mind. 

 

For example, many car rental companies were fighting each other at that time. 

Hertz was the acknowledged leader.

Avis realized that service was an essential outcome people wanted and a position no one owned.

So, they positioned themselves in the minds of consumers as being  #2,

because “We Try Harder” propelled them into number 2 and above the crowd.

 

Many SaaS companies are facing that same competitive environment today.

Therefore it’s time to take a look at your competitive position in the minds of buyers,

In an article by Yasmine de Aranda from Martet8, she stated you must ask the critical question, “

Why should a prospect choose you over the competitors”?

You need a compelling reason for them to buy from you.

Remember, they don’t care about your awesome company until they care about what you can do for them.

The right position will increase responses and conversions, a shorter buying cycle, higher retention, and scalability.

Some information you will need to create your positioning:

  • Who are your potential customers?
  • What outcomes are they trying to achieve?
  • Why are your competitors unable to achieve these outcomes?
  • How will your solution make your customer’s life better?

 

Don’t just write down the answers. Ask your customers for the answers.

We help turn ideas and startups into businesses by working with you as a consultant or

by guiding you through the development process with our online ClickVisor subscription-based platform.

The Customer Development Manifesto

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

 

There are 14 rules that makeup customer development manifesto. I have summarized them from Steve Blank’s book, “The Startup Owners’ Manual,” This a much longer post than I would like, but I think it is vital that you look at them in total.  Learn them and use them. You will be glad you did.

Rule1 There are no facts inside your building. So get outside

The founder’s job is to translate the vision and hypotheses into facts. Facts live outside the building where future customers live and work. You can’t delegate first-hand experiences.  Only the founder can embrace the feedback, react to it, and adeptly make the decisions necessary to change or pivot key business model components.

Rule 2: Customer development is useless unless the product development organization can iterate the product with speed and agility.

It would be best if you paired customer development with Agile development. If you build the product without customer development (input), you will have a product that will be difficult if not impossible to change later, 

Agile engineering is designed to take customer input and deliver a product that iterates readily around a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or its minimum feature set,

Rule 3: Failure is an integral part of the search

Failures in an existing company are an exception. IN a startup your are searching, not executing, and the only wah to find the right path is tot try lots of experiments and take a lot of wrong turns, Failure is part of the process, But failures are not failures, per se. Still, part of the learning process, If you are afraid to fail in a startup, you’re destined to do so.

Rule 4: Make continuous iterations and  pivots

Learning means making frequent iterations and pivots, A pivot is a substantive change in one or more of the nine boxes of the business model canvas (like changing from a freemium to a subscription model). An iteration is a minor change in the business model (like a small price change.) Pivots are driven by learning and insights; Founders should not hesitate to make changes,

Rule 5: No business plan survives first contact with customers so use a business model canvas

Once the business plan has delivered financing, the business plan is useless. Founders have to realize that the business plan is only a collection of unproven assumptions. The difference between a static business  plan and a dynamic business model could be the difference between success and failure,

The business model describes the flow and visual overview of the critical components of the company:

  • Value Proposition 
  • Customer Segments 
  • Channels
  • Customer Relationships
  • Revenue Streams
  • Key Activities
  • Key Resources
  • Kay Partners
  • Cost Structure

Use the business model canvas as a scorecard by posting your hypotheses and modify them as you test and validate your facts.

Rule 6: Design Experiments and Tests to Validate Your Hypotheses 

To turn hypotheses (guesses) into facts, founders need to get out of the building and test them in front of customers. Your tests should be short, simple, and objective pass/fail tests. You are looking for strong signals. Ask yourself, what’s a simple test I can run and a simple measurement that will give me a pass/fail.  Try to use a mockup if possible, to save time and money.

Rule 7: Agree on Market Type, It Changes Everything.

Not all startups are the same. The relationship between the product and the market has different requirements.  The market types are as follows:

  • A new product into an existing market
  • A new product into a new market
  • A new product into an existing market  (as a low-cost or niche entrant) 
  • Cloning a business model that’s successful in another country

See the information on Market Types for more information,

Rule 8: Startup Metrics Differ From Those in Existing Companies

Startups used traditional metrics for a long time. We now know that startup metrics should focus on tracking the startup’s [progress converting guesses and hypotheses into facts rather than measuring the execution of the static plan. Do this until you are ready to scale the company,  Following are the kinds of metrics you should be looking at:

  • Do the minimum product features resonate with customers?
  • Who is the customer and have the customer hypotheses been validated?
  • Customer-validation questions might include” average order size. Customer lifetime value, the average time to first order, rate of sales  pipeline growth, improvement inclose rate and revenue per salesperson
  • Cash-burn rate, number of months’ worth of cash left, short-term hiring plans
  • Amount of time left until you reach cash-flow break-even.

Rule 9: Fast Decision-Making, Cycle Time, Speed and Tempo

Speed matters because bank balances are the only absolute that declines every day. The sooner iterations and pivots get done, the more likely you will find a scalable business. The most significant impediment fo cycle time is admitting you are on the wrong track, and you need to make a decision. And yes, uncertainty is a problem you have to overcome. Therefore you have to think about decisions as reversible. Tempo refers to all levels at the company including investors,

Rule 10: It’s All About Passion

Without passion, the startup is dead before it begins. Successful founders are wired for chaos, uncertainty, and speed. They are focused on customer needs and delivering a great product.

Rule 11: Startup Job Titles Are Very Different from a Large Comp[any’s

I an existing company, titles reflect the way tasks are organized to execute in a known business model,  Startups demand execs who are comfortable with uncertainty, chaos, and change — maybe daily. For example, rather than business development, sales, and marketing, the tile might be Customer Development Team.

Rule 12: Preserve All Cash Until Needed. Then Spend

Once you find that repeatable and scalable business model, spend all you can to make the company grow. But, you need repeatable sales, not just one-offs like friends and acquiesces, you need a pattern or pathway you can replicate. Is your return on investment higher than your costs? If your goal is to get outside funding, you need to deliver 10x the investment.

Rule 13: Communicate and Share Learning

You need to share everything you learned on the outside of the building with everyone inside the building. Technology enables us now to share information in real-time through management tools and dashboards. One way to do this is with a daily company-development blog which will let everyone keep track of the entire development process (hypotheses, tests, results, people talked with, questions, etc.)

Rule 14: Customer Development Success Begins With Buy-In

To be successful, everyone on the team needs to understand ad agree that the Customer Development process is different. Everyone must accept the process and realize that its fluid and a search for the business model. Everyone needs to understand and agree that the old way of executing a business plan doesn’t work for startups.

Summary

Following these rules will help you achieve a successful company. Its the only approach for web-based businesses where you need constant customer feedback and product iteration. Also, doing things quickly and conserving cash enables you to pivot as necessary.

 

 

The New Startup Model 

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

According to Steve Blank, entrepreneur, and professor at Stanford, a startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.

A little history. Until 1950, the traditional way to start a new business was to use traditional tools and methods. But, as entrepreneurship grew, and many startups failed, entrepreneurs realized that startups are not just small versions of large companies.

Large companies knew and understood who the customers were, their business model, the problems involved in their company, markets, and industry. Startups, on the other hand, we’re searching for a repeatable and profitable business model.

The startup model required different rules, roadmaps, skill sets, and tools to minimize the risks and optimize the entrepreneur’s chances for success.

Some of these new tools include

  • agile development, an incremental and interactive approach to engineering that allows product development to pivot to customer and market feedback,

  • A business model design which replaces statistic business plans with a nine-box map of critical elements,

  • New tools for creating and fostering winning ideas

  • Lean Startup which allows the customer and agile development  to process simultaneously

  • Lean  user interface designs to  improve web/mobile interface and conversion rates

  • Venture and entrepreneur finances were attractive to managed funds, which freed up innovation.

These processes and tools allow startups to refine and scale their ideas faster and more affordably.

Different types of entrepreneurship

The main types of startups we are concerned with here are:

Small business entrepreneurship: the 5.9 million small businesses that make up 99% of all U.S. companies and employ 50% of all nongovernment workers. Most of thee entrepreneurs define success as making a profit, not build a 100 million dollar business,

Scalable startups are entrepreneurs that start a company believing their vision will change the world and generate 100s of millions of dollars in sales. They are looking for a scalable business model and require venture capital.

Buyable startups are relatively new With the advent of developing low-cost apps, startups can fund themselves (often on credit cards) and raise small amounts of money, The goal is to get acquired by large companies.

 

Positioning: An Important Way to Differentiate Your Brand

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

SaaS companies are no longer unique and most of these companies have lots of SaaS competitors with similar services, This makes it difficult to break out and get attention.

Getting attention is similar to the problem in the ‘70s and ‘80s when getting through the media noise almost impossible. Marketing ROIs were getting expensive. Then, JackTrout wrote a book about “Positioning.” The idea of positioning is to find and take a unique position in the customer’s mind. For example, there were many car rental companies at that time, all fighting each other.   Hertz was the acknowledged leader. Avis realized that service was an essential outcome people wanted, so they positioned themselves as being #2, so “We Try Harder,” which propelled them into number 2 and above the crowd.

Many SaaS companies are facing that same competitive environment today. Therefore it’s time to take a look at your competitive position. 

In an article by Yasmine de Aranda, from Martet8, she stated you have to ask the key question, “Why should a prospect choose you over the competitors”? You need a compelling reason for them to buy from you. Remember, they don’t care about your awesome company until they care about what you can do for them.

The following are some questions you need to create your positioning statement.

1 What data collection and monitoring procedures have you designed to help you get and analyze customer information? Don’t rely on your instincts to generalizations. You will need this data to help you test, adjust and validate your assumptions as you create your positioning statement.

2 Get a detailed understanding of your customers and the outcomes they want. What different outcomes do they want? Have they tried alternative solutions? What concerns do they have? With this kind of data, you can begin to profile the customers you want.

3 Look at your competitors through your customer’s eyes. Look at both competitors and indirect competitors. Look at their positioning and strategy. What outcomes, if any, are they touting?

4 Measure your positioning strategy by sales results. For example, the number of leads per month, the number of qualified leads per month, the time to close, churn rate changes, the average cost to acquire customers and average lifetime value.

 Don’t just write down the answers. Ask your customers for the answers. The right position will get you increased responses and conversions, a shorter buying cycle, higher retention, and scalability. 

 

Customer-Centered: How Can I Help You?

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

In today’s world, most people realize that you must put the customer first, not the product. ?

But does that mean that you accept everything the customer tells you? NO, 

But it doesn’t hurt to be customer-centered and ask how can I help you.

 

According to David Stucer, in a Sales & Marketing article, you believe the customer when

he is talking about his issues. You do want to pay attention when they tell you their needs

when they tell you what’s broken in their lives, when they tell you why where they are hurting?

 

A customer comes to you or wants to do business with you because he wants you to solve his problem.

Therefore you have to show him how you can solve his problem or issue.

 

As David would say: “We hear you, we can help you, here is how.”

This is easier said than done, however. You can grasp the problem conceptually,

but most people have difficulty conceptualizing the solution.

Make it easy for them to see how you can solve the problem,

 

People often jump to talking about their company and their product or services.

That’s certainly not customer-centric. The customer doesn’t want to hear about your business;

they want to hear about how you are going to solve their problem.

 

You  will get a better reception if you focus on how your business can help him improve his business,

As David would say, “People are far less concerned with doing business with an awesome company

then they are about whether the company can solve their problem”,

What you want to do is consistently tell the story in every media,

about how you solved this problem and that problem related to their problem, market, or industry.  

 

 

Jim Zitek/Harbor Capital Group 

https://https://harborcapitalgroupinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Braintopview-1.jpg.com 

 

 

Customer-Centered: How Can I Help You?

Posted on by harborcapitalgroupinc

In today’s world, most people realize that you have to put the customer, not the product first. But, does that mean that you accept everything the customer tells you? NO,

 According to David Stucer, in a Sales & Marketing article, you believe the customer when he is talking about his issues. You do want to pay attention when they tell you their needs when they tell you what’s broken in their lives. And when they say why where they are hurting?

The reason a customer comes to you or wants to do business with you is that he wants you to solve his problem. Therefore you have to show him how you can solve his problem or issue. As David would say: “we hear you, we can help you; here is how.”

Solving the problem is easier said than done, however. You can grasp the problem conceptually, but most people have difficulty conceptualizing the solution. Make it easy for them to see how you can solve the problem,

Most often, people jump to talking about their company and their product or services. That’s undoubtedly not customer-centric. The customer doesn’t want to hear about your business; he wants to hear about how you are going to solve his problem. 

The wrong way to go about it is to put the spotlight on your company. The longer you talk about your company, the less time you have to listen and speak to them about their problem, And there is a good chance that after a short time they will stop listening and turn you off,

You  will get a better reception if you focus on how your business can help him improve his business, As David would say, “People are far less concerned with doing business with an awesome company then they are about whether the company can solve their problem”, You will also begin to build a relationship with that client,

That’s customer marketing, getting the attention of people who have a need you can meet.