Wash Wisdom: Last minute holiday advertising

In this week’s edition of Wash Wisdom, discover some tips for last minute holiday advertising, building a diverse team and building a website.

4 last minute holiday advertising tips using Facebook

According to the article “Here Are Some Last Minute Facebook Advertising Tips For The Holidays” published by HigherVisibility and featured on smallbiztrends.com, if you haven’t already started holiday advertising, you’ve already fallen behind most other businesses, who began advertising as early as the beginning of September. However, the article states, there is still time, especially if you use Facebook: “More than half of the people in the United States say Facebook … is somewhat or very influential on their holiday shopping. The platform has become a super spot for e-commerce, as strategic posting and visual ads are wildly successful among users.”

Here are some tips the article offers on how to use Facebook for last minute holiday advertising:

Find a target audience. Figure out whether you’re trying to reach out to your existing audience, new customers or both. Depending on the audience, you will have to word your advertisement differently.
Retarget your audiences. Retargeting is a practice whereby you advertise to users you have already had exposure to or transactions with. You can add the Facebook Conversion Pixel and SDK to your website or mobile app to reach certain audiences with specific ads, but there are also other retargeting tools to use.
Target holidays shoppers. While a similar practice to retargeting, Facebook also offers ads specifically targeted to users who browse content related just to holiday shopping. Last year, this option ran from Thanksgiving to New Year’s and was accessible from the Facebook dashboard > Behaviors > Seasonal and Events.
Maintain your page. In order to best utilize Facebook this holiday season, make sure to keep posting content and regularly respond to questions and comments on your page. You can even update the cover photo to make it seasonal.

You can read the full article here.

Building a diverse and collaborative team

According to the article “Three Tips to Build a Diverse Team and Strengthen Your Business” by contributor Raquel Baldelomar on the Forbes website, having both a mix of male and female workers on a team as well as those from different backgrounds can bring many benefits to a company, but only if the team is collaborative; otherwise, it is prone to weaken a company instead. Baldelomar offers these three tips for building not only a diverse team but a harmonious one as well:

Think from their diverse perspectives. Being a leader means that you will never be able to please everyone, but you can try to understand them. Remember that people have feelings about issues outside of work, so you need to reach beyond your personal views and take others’ into account. When you show such empathy, you will be strengthening the trust in and performance of the entire team.
Promote cultural differences. Aside from embracing employees’ different languages, holidays and fashions, embrace how those cultures have affected their work ethic, creativity and collaboration. Culture shapes how two different people look at doing the same job, but as long as they both have a passion for the job as well as work ethic, they can overcome those differences.
Recognize every employee’s worth. While some employees will stand out more than others, remember that every employee provides some worth to your business, and you should show that appreciation. Making sure that everyone has their individual roles to play will prevent any one person from shouldering the majority of duties and carrying the team. You need a team with different skill sets, personality types and goals. Use each employee’s strengths to your company’s advantage and make employees feel that they have a voice. This will build trust between team members, opening communication between them.

You can read the full article here.

5 tips for building a dynamic website

According to contributor Melinda Emerson in the article “5 Tips for Building a Great Website for Your Business” on smallbiztrends.com, a website is critical to a small business. For those in the service industry, such as carwashes, it allows you to demonstrate your services and let customers see what you do. Since it is such a crucial marketing platform, you need to make sure your website is dynamic, and here are five pieces of advice that Emerson gives to make it so:

Make it stand out. Use the same tactics you would for other advertising channels. Begin by finding a memorable domain name, one that matches your business name in some way. Then, include your logo and any other brand-related slogans and symbols. Your overall website design (colors, theme, etc.) should correlate with your physical location or other marketing materials.
Design a user-friendly site. Because people move quickly across webpages, your site needs to be simple to navigate and understand. “A simple navigation path, top navigation tabs and a breadcrumb structure are strong elements of usability,” Emerson says. You want your users’ experience, or how one feels after using the website, to be positive. According to Emerson, features of user-friendly websites include: “easy searches, personalized recommendations, a seamless buying process, accurate product descriptions, testimonials and timely responses to customer service requests.”
Use a Content Management System. Content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, are the modern platforms for website building. WordPress is the most popular CMS. Using CMS platforms allow you to easily update content and add new features. There are also several themes you can choose from to match the personality of your company.
Design for both desktops and mobile devices. Nowadays, people look at websites on a variety of platforms, and your site need to be able to respond to these various screen sizes. If you use WordPress, use a template that allows for a responsive design.
Connect with customers. The first step is to market your website and use SEO best practices in order to drive traffic to it. However, you also want to connect with visitors and keep them coming back. Place social media and sharing buttons on your site.

Read the full article here.