Small businesses are a big deal.
Todayโs small businesses employ nearlyย 50% of U.S. workers. That keeps more money in local economies. Helping those communities to advance over time. Leading to more substantial and authentic cities and towns.
In fact, the longer a small business runs, the better the community becomes!
Successful small business owners strike a balance between progress and passion. Paring their passion project with a business need in their local community. They make sure that when their business grows and prospers, their communities benefit too. Striking this balance is the key to the longevity of a successful small business. And weโre here to help you get there.
This year, the Small Business Association (SBA) named three Constant Contact customers โSmall Business Persons of the Yearโ for their state. And all of them reach their goals by using online marketing and community involvement to balance progress with passion.ย
Start with a need and follow a passion
Successful businesses grow from two core elements: addressing a need in the community and following a passion.
Karla Deann Santi, Small Business Persons of the Year, South Dakota
Blend Interactive
In 2005, there was a need for firms that could build complex websites that were designed to be easy to use and that supported businesses with high levels of information. But in Karlaโs community, there wasnโt a company that offered both.
Thatโs why Karla and her team created Blend Interactive.
Blend Interactive provides a โblendโ of both ease of use and complexity of design. They build websites that can handle all the information and organize it in an easy, meaningful way for the consumer and the business. As a woman in a leadership role, Karla has acted as a role model for the company and a mentor for her community.
Mary & Chris Ginder, Small Business Persons of the Year, Illinois
Gindoโs Spice of Life
In 2011,ย Chris and Mary had a simple passionย โ ย making specialty sauces with fresh peppers, sea salts, and peppercorns โ the spices of life.
This passion led to the start of Gindoโs Spice of Life. And it pours over into everything they do. All the way down to Maryโs email signature, โHave a spicy day!โ
Today, Gindoโs helps their customers make memories in their own kitchens, all across the country.
David Heide, Small Business Persons of the Year, Wisconsin
Lilianaโs Restaurant
Executive Chef and Owner Dave Heide started Lilianaโs Restaurant, along with Charlieโs on Main and Little Johnโs, because of his passion for creating delicious food.
As a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, Chef Dave has won numerous awards in the restaurant industry. But he is also known in his local community for his philanthropy. He partners with local farmers and those in need to address food waste and giving people better access to fresh food.
Lilianaโs is a 100% family-owned restaurant, and the team creates initiatives and fundraisers to fight food insecurity in their community and abroad.ย
Plan your marketing strategy now and save time later
For small business owners, thereโs just never enough time.ย
But, savvy business owners know that by setting aside time to outline a marketing strategyย โย whether for a single campaign or for a whole yearย โ ย their marketing efforts will be more efficient and more effective. Giving them more time and money to spend on their passion projects!
Blend Interactive
As a tech company, Blend Interactive leaves nothing to chance when it comes to their online marketing strategy. And their online marketing tools are integral for monitoring the 3,125 contacts and 310 opportunities in their online tool.ย
By using a combination of online marketing tools, Blend has created an organized method for making sure that all their customers are responded to appropriately and continually engaged.
Lead scoring tools
The more information you have about your contacts and leads, the better youโre able to communicate with them.ย To facilitate this, Blend strategically separates customer leads based on their behaviors and information by using a lead scoring tool.ย
Email marketing
Instead of blindly sending the same message to everyone on their list via a mass email, Blend Interactive segments their contact list and sends specific, targeted information that resonates with each group.ย
Opportunities and pipelines
The Blend team also uses the pipelines from opportunities in their sales cycle. The opportunity pipeline is a way to track the life cycle of certain leads and make sure that no one has been forgotten.ย
Automation
Lastly, Blend uses automation. Blend is able to trigger emails to certain leads and lists of clients based on their behaviors. They give consumers the perfect message at the right time, without having to put in any extra time or effort.ย
Data analytics
Data is more than just statistics and graphs. It tells a story about what marketing tactics are working. Blend uses the analytics function to monitor their campaigns and improve them over time.
By taking the time to organize their marketing strategy and monitor the analytics functions to improve communications, Blend has seen increased sales.ย
For Blend Interactive, using our most advanced tools and integrations has helped them to reach award-winning success!
Gindoโs Spice of Life
The online marketing strategy of Gindoโs Spice of Life is as robust as its sauce selection. The team uses a multitude of features to help them reach their ecommerce and marketing goals.
Email marketing
Email marketing has the highest ROI of all marketing activities at $36:1. And Gindoโs takes full advantage of it.
Gindoโs uses their โSpicy Lifeโ newsletter to share discounts, recipes, events, and volunteer activities with their customers.ย And, about 12% of all people who open The Gindoโs emails click through the contents. At 7% higher than the industry average, this rate is phenomenal!
But the Gindoโs team knows that email marketing is only one piece of their online marketing strategy.
Social media
By connecting Gindoโs Facebook and Instagram accounts to their Constant Contact account, they are able to schedule their social media posts ahead of timeย โย giving the Gindoโs team more time to focus on their customers and their product.ย
Ecommerce
Since the business bases success on sales of their product, Gindoโs also uses an ecommerce store that integrates with their Constant Contact account.
And, in the past 12 months, Gindoโs generated 434 orders and over $22K in sales through their ecommerce platform.ย
Their January newsletter alone led to 30 orders and $1430.99 in salesย โย from one email!
Quite frankly, Gindoโs is killing it with their marketing strategy! Their use of marketing tools allows them to communicate often, and efficiently, with customers and increases their sales.
Itโs no wonder they won an award!
Lilianaโs Restaurant
Lilianaโs Restaurant has been a Constant Contact customer since 2008ย โย talk about longevity!ย
With so many years of experience using the Constant Contact marketing platform, Dave and the Lilianaโs team have developed a strategy that helps them consistently reach their goals.
Email marketing
Their email marketing approach is all about engaging their contact base, and it works!
The number of people who open and click through their email is 3%, which is way above the industry average of 1%.
While itโs true, not everyone will open your email, donโt let these small percentages fool you. Email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing tactic. And a click-to-open rate over 2% is phenomenal!
Lilianaโs has found that email is a great way to stay in touch with the people in the community and collecting emails is the first step in the process. To collect email addresses for their list, Dave and the team use sign-up forms on their website.
Email automation
Email automation is another tool to save time and continue your marketing strategy without thinking about it. The Lilianaโs team uses email automation and sign-up forms hand-in-hand.ย
One of the ways the Lilianaโs team does this is by asking contacts for their birthday information right on the sign-up form.
By collecting this information, Dave and the team set up birthday email automations that send on the customerโs birthday with a special offer for free beignets within 30 days of the customerโs birthday.ย
This is a great way to show customers that youโre invested in them, without investing a great deal of time. And who doesnโt love free food?
And thatโs just one of the ways the Lilianaโs strategy effectively engages their contact list.ย By utilizing tools that help them save time, they have more time to focus on the restaurant itself.
Now thereโs some award-winning smarts!
Give back to the community
So much of a small businessโ brand is based on how the owner and employees of the company interact with their neighbors. Youโre part of your community as a business and a consumer.ย
Keeping a steady, and purposeful relationship with the community helps you connect with your audienceย โย in a meaningful way.
Plus, doing good things just makes you feel good!
Blend Interactive
Mentorship and community growth
Blend Interactive, located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is at the center of a growing tech community.
But when she started Blend Interactive, Karla didnโt have a local mentor in the tech industry that she could turn to. Now, she strives to be that mentor for other tech entrepreneurs.ย
Karla believes itโs her obligation to give back to her community and share the knowledge that the Blend team has learned through their experience with running and growing a small business.
To do this, Blend offers two different opportunities for anyone looking to get started in the web development world. They call these โBLENDshipsโ BLIP (Blendโs Little Internship Program) and BEEP (Blendโs Education Exchange Program).
BLIP offers undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to understand what itโs like to work at a web development firm.ย
BEEP offers mentorship between applicants and Blend team members, and is available to anyone.ย
Blend values teaching others about web development. And the team is eager to offer advice and experience to those looking to get startedย โย no matter where they are in their professional life.ย
Blend Interactiveโs vision is clear: To do good now, and help the future community shape the internet for good.
Gindoโs Spice of Life
Underserved populations and local farms
Good food shouldnโt be reserved for the wealthy or well-off.
Not only does Gindoโs provide awesome sauces for your kitchen, but the company also makes a large effort to support those in need.ย
Getting SAUCE-y
Thatโs why Gindoโs partners with Students Advocating for Underserved Children Everywhere (S.A.U.C.E.). S.A.U.C.E. is a student advocacy group that assists children in need through community education and fundraising and volunteer efforts in local nonprofits such as Kids in Need and the Child Advocacy Center.ย
Gindoโs partners with the students of S.A.U.C.E. to create three specialty hot sauces to support their mission. Proceeds of each sauce go directly to its corresponding organization on the bottle.
Gindoโs is passionate about helping children in need and they use their business to help them in a meaningful way.
But Gindoโs giving spirit doesnโt stop there.
Shopping local
Specialty hot sauces wouldnโt be here without their main ingredient โย peppers! Thatโs why Gindoโs also makes sure to partner with local farms for the freshest and highest quality ingredients for their sauces.ย
By teaming up with local farms, Gindoโs is refocusing its economic impact on the local community.
Partnerships with locally-owned farms encourage financial stability for farmers and help more small businesses do big things.
Lillianaโs Restaurant
Staying local, acting global
Small businesses have a local footprint, but they can also make an impact in global causes.
Then
During the recent pandemic, Chef Dave created NOM NOM NOM boxes.
He connected chefs who had closed their restaurants with hungry customers in the area.
Each week, local farms provided local ingredients, chefs cooked delicious meals to be sent in NOM NOM NOM boxes, and customers received a great meal without visiting a restaurant.ย
Proceeds from the boxes were used to feed children and families experiencing unemployment, food insecurity, and homelessness.
Now
The conflict in Ukraine is ongoing and uncertain.
Lilianaโs recognizes that many people in Ukraine need assistance, and so many more in the US are trying to help โย in any way they can.
For Chef Dave and Lilianaโs Restaurant helping meant deciding to make a popular Ukrainian dish, Varenyky. And the team is donating 100% of the proceeds of their sales of the dish to World Central Kitchens to help Ukrainian families stay healthy and avoid hunger.ย
With every difficult moment, Chef Dave adapts and finds a way to fight food insecurity. And by recognizing a way to use the restaurantโs product for a good cause, Lilianaโs is feeding people at home and abroad.
Weโll help put your plan in motion
Here at Constant Contact, we strive to help busy small business owners like you, by offering a platform that helps you manage your marketing activities so you can focus on what matters most โ your product, your passion, and your community.ย
By sharing these stories, we hope you will glean something that will help you with your small business.
And, we hope you will find the inspiration you need to start creating a marketing strategy that will guide you to increased profits or donations.
Set up the marketing tools and resources available now, so you can comfortably move forward with measurable goals and a plan to reach them.
Just like the businesses above, you can do this. And weโll be here for you, every step of the way. Just let us know how we can help you.
The post Progress and Passion: How SBA Winners Strike a Balance In Their Communities appeared first on Constant Contact.