The End of the Pandemic Business Strategies

by Mark Bloom | Jun 1, 2021 | Small Business Advice

How Can You Best Handle the End of the Pandemic?

Photo by Laura James from Pexels

The coronavirus that began spreading in early 2020 is still raging in parts of the world. If you run an international business, you still may be feeling the effects of the lockdowns, the uncertainties, and the downturn in the global economy. Here in the U.S., the vaccination rates have reduced the dangers of widespread infections, opening the economy to free commerce once again.

It’s been a long time coming. With the end of the pandemic in sight, you may wonder about the best strategy to take advantage of the public’s expansive spending mood. There are as many right answers as there are businesses. For example, you can:

Hold a grand sales event that includes both an indoor and an outdoor venue, if possible
Sponsor a “coming out” party for your customers, who are emerging from their homes
Host networking meetings and make the rounds, face-to-face again

What’s the Strategy for the Next Phase?

If you’re like most people, you crave some person-to-person contact. Masks are coming off for all those vaccinated, and the stores and restaurants are beginning to fill up. You could take a page from your pre-pandemic marketing plans to:

Ramp up your marketing budget
Plan for more active consumer spending
Renew your efforts to upgrade your website and online marketing efforts to support the in-person events
Remain flexible enough to adjust to changing conditions

No matter which path you plan to implement, one truth remains even more important than it was before we ever heard the word “coronavirus:” knowing your audience. Nearing the end of the COVID-19 crisis affected people in numerous ways. Many changed their spending habits as their priorities shifted. New markets emerged as others were destroyed. Do your research and know whom to target.

Can You Ignore Your Online Presence?

While you plan in-person events to celebrate the end of forced lockdowns, don’t forget to maintain your online marketing efforts. The pandemic changed the way people shop forever, and you need to have a strong online presence to stay in front of their searches.

Your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts drive traffic to your website. Your social media campaigns direct customers to your carefully crafted landing pages. But the content of your website, including those landing pages, is what clinches the deal. Revisit your marketing messages and your website content to align with the new realities here at the end of the pandemic. Consider:

How your previous customers view your business
How new customers will experience the image you’re presenting
What language you use to share with your audience
How your present your products and services to meet the new needs of the moment
How you can get new customers to “swipe right” to like your business

Getting consumers to like your business, products, services and messaging may be the next new thing — the end of the pandemic cycle, if you will. Make sure you’re connecting to your market. Hire Ray Access to get your messaging spot-on target. It’s an affordable, but oh-so-important step to attract customers as you maneuver a “new normal” and the end of the pandemic.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

When Friends Become Clients … and Vice Versa

by Mark Bloom | Apr 5, 2021 | Small Business Advice

Friends and clients: How do you manage when they're both the same person?

Can’t I Just Separate Business from Pleasure?

Ray Access has been in business for more than seven years, and in that time, friends and clients have overlapped several times. Friends have become clients, and long-time clients have become friends. Additionally, some friends have worked for the company, and some of the long-time contract writers have become friends. It happens. But when it happens, you have to take precautions to ensure that neither relationship suffers.

It’s common for small businesses to lean on friends and acquaintances when they’re just starting out. You may value friends and clients differently, depending on what they were first to you, but that’s a nightmare scenario. You don’t want to lose a friend because of business, and you don’t want to lose a client — or a productive employee — for any reason.

Are Friends and Clients Mutually Exclusive?

The short answer is No. It’s perfectly copacetic to have friends as clients and vise versa. The trick is to maintain the lines between the two roles. Some examples include:

You can’t go out to dinner with a client-who’s-a-friend and just write off the entire meal if it wasn’t for business.
It’s not wise to give your friend-who’s-a-client a special deal that hurts your business.

The real threat to friends and clients involves money and trust. Just as finances can break up a marriage, so too can it ruin a friendship. You may find it impossible to confront friends who are clients about an overdue invoice. Similarly, friendship inspires a certain amount of trust. Destroy that trust, and you destroy the friendship and lose a client. If you expect more from your client or your client expects more from you, someone is going to end up being disappointed.

How Do I Avoid the Pitfalls with Friends and Clients?

There are a number of proven tips to maintain the friendship of your clients who started out as your friends. There are also some tips for keeping your clients happy, whether they’re friends or not. Friendships are relationships you enjoy. Clients are professional relationships. There are ways to nurture both, such as:

Be clear in your communications. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Make sure you’re understood and make sure you understand. Repeat everything back to your friend if you must. Don’t take for granted that the message you shared or the message you heard got through intact.
When in doubt, put it in writing. You may not need contracts for all your clients — and certainly not to maintain a friendship, but it’s not uncommon to put the terms of a business arrangement down on a page. More than anything, it can set deadlines and prevent misunderstandings.
Be proactive about problems and potential problems. Don’t make assumptions. When a problem or question pops up on your business radar, get it out in the open as soon as possible. Your friends and clients will appreciate your candor, and if there was something to the issue, you deal with it before it grows in scope.
Take your business seriously. If you take your business seriously, you do your work as a professional. Don’t miss deadlines just because your client is a friend. Similarly, don’t let a friend-who’s-a-client slide on a payment. It’s the first step to not getting paid at all. If your friends value your work, then they should pay on time.
Set definite boundaries. There’s a time for work and a time for play, but of course there may be overlap. It goes back to being clear. If you charge by the hour let your friends and clients know when you’ve started the clock — and when you’ve stopped it.

At certain times, you may question your decision to take on a friend as a client. If you feel taken advantage of, perhaps the friendship wasn’t as strong as you imagined. Talk it out — but do it at a time when you’re not feeling angry or threatened. A calm conversation can clear the air … or give you the gumption to pull the cord and let the relationship wane. There are many benefits to mixing friends and clients, but it takes some work too. Good luck.

How Outsourced Marketing Services Build Brands Faster

by Guest Blogger | Mar 8, 2021 | Small Business Advice

Get Targeted, On-Demand Services for Less!

Outsourced marketing services work when you need them and don't when you don't

Are you thinking of hiring third-party services to handle your marketing in 2021? You’re not the only one. The global outsourcing industry generates around $92.5 billion each year, and a big chunk of it is sure to go toward marketing efforts.

After all, promoting your products and building your brand is hard work. If you lack in-house expertise and can’t face the hassle of hiring marketing staff, then contracting outsourced marketing services makes complete sense. They benefit from your brand-building efforts in ways you may not even expect.

Get Instant Experience

You and your team may know nothing about the craft of marketing or brand-building. The latest trends for marketers may be a mystery to you. The idea of learning a whole new field may seem overwhelming. But none of those apparent disadvantages matter if you outsource the task.

Outsourcing allows you to leverage someone else’s expertise. You’re bringing on someone to show you the ropes, explain the best way forward and walk you through the nuances of formulating brand strategies and campaigns. It’s a way to jumpstart your branding.

No Need for New Hires

While you always have the option of hiring a full-time marketer for your in-house team, you know better than anyone how much time, effort and money that takes. You have to advertise the position, interview the candidates, train them and cross your fingers that you hired the right person. It’s messy and unnecessary.

By comparison, outsourced marketing services allow you to start straight-away. You can begin the process of building your brand without the rigmarole of hiring someone. Best of all, you can cancel the contract and find someone new if it doesn’t work out. Third-party services aren’t on the payroll. As a result, they work as much or as little as you need, without taking time off for sickness or vacations.

That’s good news when it comes to scaling marketing efforts. You’ll never have to pick up the slack from someone taking time off or pay someone’s wages when they’re not even in the office. All told, you’ll have more resources to invest in your brand.

Where Innovation Meets Needs

Another bonus of hiring outsourced marketing services is the education they’ll provide to you and your employees. By working with pros and seeing how they work, you’ll pick up the skills required to build a brand. With these new skills, you’ll be better prepared to have a more significant role in the current and future marketing processes. In time, you may no longer even need external support.

External services bring a fresh perspective, as well. They’ll shake things up, show you novel approaches to traditional problems and identify things you’ve done that can be improved. Get ready to innovate. You’ll explore exciting new marketing platforms, inbound advertising strategies, lead generation software, targeted advertisements and ideas to boost your brand.

Benefits of Outsourced Marketing Services

Outsourced marketing services are in high demand, and for good reason. They provide invaluable assistance to small business owners who struggle to advertise their products or services. They teach you how best to cultivate trust with your audience and develop your brand.

Have you been thinking about hiring third-party marketers for similar reasons? Perhaps these insights have revealed how they can help. Remember, if you can do it yourself or if you have the in-house expertise, go for it, but there are affordable third-party resources available to help.

This was a guest blog post written by Ester Adams.

How to Hire a Remote Team, Part 2

by Mark Bloom | Feb 22, 2021 | Small Business Advice

Why Do We Hire Remote Staff?

In Part 1 of this series, Ray Access outlined how we hire contract writers remotely, what we look for during those first few assignments and what we value in a remote worker. In this installment, you’ll learn a few more tips for hiring remote staff and gain an understanding on how to manage their work and expectations.

Look for the right person when hiring remote staff

But first, let us remind you what Ray Access is and why we hire remote staff. We are content specialists. We write website pages, blog posts, electronic newsletters and more for internet agencies and individual businesses. A remote business since its founding in 2014, we hire writers from around the English-speaking world. It doesn’t matter where they are, as long as they can deliver quality work.

What Else Do You Need to Know about Hiring Remote Staff?

Before you agree to add a remote worker to your staff, you still have to conduct a proper interview — whether by telephone, through an internet video call or by email. Rely on the typical interview questions as if you’re speaking with them personally. In the end, you take the same risks as if you were hiring in-person, since you don’t really know if the one you hire will work out or not.

When you interview by email, you really get a sense of their ability to communicate remotely. Without personal contact, hiring remote staff requires finesse and reading between the lines. One of the benefits — and drawbacks — of hiring and working remotely is not having to adhere to a 9-to-5 work schedule. That means much, if not most, of your communication is going to be through email.

How Can You Prove It’s a Good Match?

At Ray Access, once we and the candidate agree that a collaboration holds promise, we follow up with an assignment. We don’t make an offer of employment until we receive the first completed work, for which we provide a reasonable deadline and clear instructions. We pay for the job and can usually tell — by how the writer communicates and by the assignment itself — if the writer will work out with us.

While you may not be in the business of writing, find an assignment that gives you an opportunity to see how your remote candidates work. It also gives them a chance to prove themselves. It may be a detailed plan on how to approach a project, a project cost estimate or a short presentation. Provide directions and a deadline. Pay the candidates for the time needed to complete the project; it’s much less expensive than hiring the wrong person.

When you receive the submitted assignment, look for how well the candidates followed your directions. Review the body of the work for the quality and thoroughness of the work. Also, note if the assignment was handed in on time, early or late. If you’re deadline-driven business like Ray Access, adherence to a deadline is crucial.

How Do You Manage Expectations after Hiring Remote Staff?

We don’t expect our contract writers to nail that first assignment perfectly, so we provide coaching and guidance. We also have clear internal guidelines about how long it should take a new employee to get up to speed. If they still don’t get it after two or three more assignments, we usually let them go. No reason prolonging the stress on either side.

While giving your remote workers the occasional benefit of the doubt, remember that managing remote staff is a process. Give an occasional mulligan to an employee you trust. No one’s perfect 100 percent of the time. What you don’t want to see is the same mistake repeated over and over.

To manage your expectations, listen to your internal business instincts. Discuss the pros and cons of hiring remote staff with your partners, managers or even trusted employees. It’s easy to give too many chances to a remote worker, but you don’t want to let an improving remote worker go due to frustration.

Is Hiring Remote Staff a Balancing Act?

Managing a remote staff requires patience and compassion. You’re hiring someone to do a specific job. Since the new hire isn’t coming into the office every day, you need to make sure the work is getting done. You need a way to check, whether through an online project management tool, ongoing project reports or regular video meetings.

You want to pay for your staff’s best work while giving new-hires a chance to get up to speed, but don’t feel like you have to pick up the slack yourself. Track your employees’ work to assess their progress. To be able to sleep at night, learn to trust your remote staff, but develop a backup plan, such as setting earlier deadlines than needed.

You can save money by avoiding brick-and-mortar expenses, but as a trade-off, you need to maintain a level of authority over your business. Technology has its limitations, but you have to rely on it to grow your business. It’s a balancing act, for sure. But if your business can run with a remote workforce, you may find it’s worth the effort to build an infrastructure that supports hiring remote staff — and swift, efficient firing.

How to Hire a Remote Team, Part 1

by Mark Bloom | Feb 8, 2021 | Small Business Advice

What’s the Trick to Hiring Remote Staff?

Hiring remote staff works out better by following these tips

Ray Access has been a virtual company since its founding in 2014. Our work-at-home business model suits the type of work we do and the often-distant location of our clients. It simply doesn’t pay to keep an office when all our business is conducted via email and cell phone. And not having one keeps the overhead low.

Originally, Ray Access consisted of founders Linda Ray and Mark Bloom. We did all the work. But as the business grew, we needed help, eventually hiring (and sometimes firing) dozens of contract writers and support staff. Along the way, we’ve picked up insights into hiring remote staff, which we’d like to share if you’re considering doing the same.

How Do We Hire Remotely?

This question comes up a lot. How can we hire someone we’ve never met in person? The solution to this seemingly difficult problem is simple. After all, we ask the same of our clients. We want them to hire us to write their website content, blog posts or newsletters without ever actually meeting us.

When hiring remote staff, it’s all about building trust. You want to trust that your remote workers are doing the tasks you’ve hired them to do. Some businesses pay by the hour; we don’t. We pay per project, so it doesn’t matter to us whether it takes 10 minutes or 10 hours to do the work. The pay is the same. Our clients get the same deal: their price is the same, regardless how long it takes us.

What’s the First Sign of a Good Hire?

The first hurdle is prompt, professional communication. When prospective team members contact us — or when we contact them — the promptness of the reply tells us how eager they are regarding our opportunity. An unanswered email or a late response doesn’t send a positive message. There are valid excuses, but prompt replies create a starting point for any remote relationship.

Promptness isn’t the only criterion. When we’re hiring remote staff, the level of communication is also pertinent. Our goal is to get to know someone we’ve never met. The only clue, so far, is the way they communicate. We value communication as much as an assignment that’s well done; therefore:

We expect well-crafted email messages. Misspellings and incorrect grammar usage are clues that the candidate isn’t a good fit for us. You may feel similarly.
An unprofessional tone is another deal-breaker. We offer a source of revenue for our freelance writers. In return, we expect them to take our expectations seriously and maintain a professional approach.

How Do We Set Expectations?

At Ray Access, we don’t hold formal interviews when hiring remote staff. If you do, use a phone call or a Zoom meeting to meet your prospective remote worker. Once a potential writer passes the communication test, we offer a test assignment. The writer gets paid for this work whether or not we deem it good enough to use — unless we find it’s been plagiarized.

Along with the test assignment instructions, we send our style sheet and non-negotiable guidelines, in which we set our expectations for communication and work. We’ve fired contract writers for repeatedly breaking these expectations, although we usually give everyone a second chance.

The test provides an example of their work and makes them feel like they’re really working for us. We provide some coaching and encourage questions. We give enough time to complete the assignment. The process gives us an insight to how new writers work, what they’re capable of and how well they respond to instructions. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, we pay them and send them on their way.

Read Part 2 for more tips about hiring remote staff in our next blog post.

How Outsourcing in 2020 Changed Businesses

by Mark Bloom | Dec 29, 2020 | Small Business Advice

Outsourcing in 2020 Prepared the Way for 2021

Outsourcing in 2020 meant saving money

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a number of fundamental changes in business. The businesses that have survived the assault on the normal world order either sustained considerable losses or adapted to the new ways that consumers shopped. Few businesses were unaffected by the coronavirus.

Some say the changes are for the better, as they forced businesses to become leaner and more efficient. Others point to the economic turmoil and ask how it could be good for business or the world. The fact remains, however, that the world is different than it was a year ago. These changes are likely to last into some or most of 2021, as vaccines roll out and other issues come to the fore.

Has Outsourcing Helped or Hurt Businesses?

Every time a business hires an employee, it incurs additional costs besides salary. Due to the pandemic, businesses learned that outsourcing in 2020 cut those costs. As a result, more and more businesses chose to outsource tasks that they had once hired people to do in-house. And so, outsourcing grew throughout the year.

In researching figures that reflect this new business reality, the principals of Ray Access learned more about outsourcing in 2020. In an effort to sum up the figures and impact of outsourcing on businesses last year — and so gain some insight into how businesses may behave in 2021 — we’ve decided to share an infographic about outsourcing statistics (see below or read the entire article at https://whydoeseverythingsuck.net/blog/outsourcing-statistics/).

What Are the Key Takeaways?

Nearly every industry saw their outsourcing investments grow. More than half of all small businesses outsourced some of their functions. Outsourcing in 2020 grew for many reasons, most often because businesses were interested in:

Increasing efficiency
Reducing expenses
Increasing flexibility
Improving in-house expertise
Allowing employees to do other tasks
Efficiently using available resources within the business

For all these reasons, more businesses made the shift to outsourcing in 2020. Many more will join them in 2021. And it’s become an international phenomenon as well, since the pandemic affected the entire world. While transitioning from in-house to an outsource model takes patience and a plan, it can reduce costs and become an industry staple.

That was 2020. For 2021, a comprehensive research project titled “Small Business Outsourcing Stats (2021 Edition)” from TechBehemoths.com covers similar information, but with updated data. It’s based on 324 surveyed companies from 38 countries.

When you want to outsource your content without sacrificing quality, contact Ray Access There are contractors in your area for every need, from graphics, PR and data retrieval to website design, development and marketing. Instead of simply hiring someone, save money and hire a contractor. Outsourcing in 2020 will become one of the major business trends for businesses in 2021.

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