11 minute read
Televergence
by WBEC South
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A Nationwide Telecommunications Carrier
Deb Ward has been a pioneering leader for women in technology for over 32 years, being a formidable trailblazer in creating the first female-owned nationwide telecommunications carrier. Televergence's success comes from Deb's passion for excellence, constant thirst to learn and love for giving back.
TOLL FREE | LONG DISTANCE | CLOUD PBX
Our niche is providing premium Toll Free, Long Distance and Cloud Phone System services to companies with mission-critical needs, high call volume, and/or in-house or outsourced Contact Centers. With over 32 years in business, we have a rock-solid reputation. Our Executive Team has been together for over 12 years. Seventy percent of Televergence's revenue is derived from high volume users.
Televergence is 100% committed to protecting your brand and giving you the confidence to build a trusted relationship with us on your terms and timing. Our expertise and innovative service delivery model enable you to increase your diversity spend with the option to keep your existing carrier.
We are an additional resource and valued partner to your IT Team; driving savings and results through innovation, best and next practices, in operations, compliance, disaster recovery and business continuity.
VALUE DIFFERENTIATORS
Trusted Industry Leader: Services over 4.7M Toll Free numbers, which is 9% of total active numbers in the U.S. Superior Network / Premium Call Quality: Network uptime of 99.999% in the last five years Highly Innovative: Creating new methods to deliver service while adding layers of redundancy & business continuity Expertise: In Contact Center operational efficiencies, improving customer experience and regulatory compliance Omnichannel Solutions: All-in-one Contact Center Software, cloud or on-premise and bi-lingual BPO services Direct Access: To C-Level executives with immediate support from highly trained Televergence team members Exceptional Service: Average customer retention exceeds 15 years, clearly proving Televergence is a valued partner 10-30% Savings: Significant wholesale purchasing power with every Tier 1 Carrier which is passed on to you No-Risk & Ease of Implementation: Conversion requires minimal effort, time or resources. A simple paper change and exchange of IP addresses to try a small piece of business with Televergence while keeping your existing carrier Support Remote Workers: Cloud Phone System supports work from home, mobility and expansion of your national footprint through regional telephone numbers
DIGITAL MARKETING
The 3 Most Cost Efficient Ways to Reach Your Target Audience
By Whitney Lee, Founder & Principal, Sociallee PR & Digital Media
Whitney Lee Following the Covid-19 crisis, businesses are seeking out cost effective ways to stay in front of their audience—even large corporate brands. Between the struggle of hiring qualified talent and limited budgets, businesses are having to get crafty with their marketing tactics now more than ever. Below are our top three digital marketing strategies that businesses can take advantage of now to bring in the most results for the lowest cost:
Fully Alive Photograhy
1 | Email Marketing
Get right to the inbox of your potential customer! If they have given you their email address, obviously they have some level of interest in your business. If you are a business that involves online booking, this can be simple to acquire your past customers email addresses. In other situations, you will probably need to incentivize people to sign up. Enter to win a free item, stay or service—this usually does the trick! You can promote this via social media and website, and link directly to a sign-up form. If you are a brick and mortar establishment, utilize a QR code that customers can scan and go to the sign-up form. You do want to make sure they acknowledge that they are opting in. Pro tip: Make sure you keep your contacts on separate lists—not just all lumped together. This is called email segmentation and can definitely keep your subscribers much happier. For example, if you have multiple locations, segment your list based on location. If you’re offering something special at one location, you can just distribute an email to people in that area. If subscribers get info that isn’t relevant to them, they are much more likely to unsubscribe.
Most importantly, when you do send out emails, don’t make the entire message around selling. I preach this incessantly to my clients about email marketing, social media and more. Stop selling and start storytelling. People latch onto feelings and outcomes—not just a price tag. No one wants to be targeted with sales. What value can you give to them? Share knowledge about your industry, your geographical area or current events related to your business. Also, some low hanging fruit is automations. Almost every email software has the capability to set up automations—everything from a message that sends automatically to new subscribers, birthdays, or even on the anniversary of their last booking or purchase. Many businesses think they can rely on social media to reach their audience,
but just remember, those platforms could shut down at any time. You need another avenue to reach your customers—a database that you truly own. If you haven’t started email marketing, this is officially a sign! 2 | Social Media Ads
Many businesses see social media as a platform to blast out free messages, but it has definitely evolved into a “pay to play” world. Can your post go viral organically? Absolutely. But even a little paid budget on social goes a long way. The capabilities of targeting are truly incredible. You can serve your ad to an incredibly specific audience. Is your target audience working moms that love astrology, have elementary age kids and live within 10 miles of your business? Piece of cake. Many clients sometimes see smaller reach numbers on the ad results and say they want to reach thousands and thousands. My response to them is “Why would you want to pay for thousands of eyeballs that will never purchase from you?” The beauty of social ads is that when you really narrow down your audience, you are speaking directly to that special someone who may buy from you. And, since your target is so specific, you can spend less on the ads. Can we reach thousands? Sure. But wouldn’t you want to use a small budget to get to the right person? No brainer! A few other important details about paid social media campaigns: • Boosting on Facebook is a trap! Will it help your post get more likes, comments, and a higher reach? Sure. But that’s it. Find someone who knows how to work within Facebook
Ads Manager—that’s where the true magic is.
You’re missing out on so many capabilities if you just simply hit the boost button! • You can put any budget to it! We have clients who see results with a budget of $5/ day and we also have clients spending $5,000+ each month on social ads. The more money you put into it, the more results you will get. • Use a pixel! When you find someone to set up your ads within Ads Manager, also ask them to install a pixel to your website. When someone clicks through from your ad to a page on your website, it will create an audience of those people. Then you can serve ads directly to those people that are now warm leads!
3 | Influencer Campaigns
Influencer campaigns get a bad rep because of all the divas all over Instagram. They email your business just asking for free stuff in the promise they will promote you. But don’t let these freebie seekers ruin you. If you truly vet influencers and establish clear expectations, this can be the
cheapest form of advertising out there. So a few key points when you’re looking at working with an influencer.
• Do they get engagement? Look at their past posts. If they have 50,000 followers and they are getting 5 likes and no comments on their posts? Those are probably fake followers. • Have they done other collaborations with respectable brands in your industry? If they are a makeup influencer and they come looking for a free meal at your restaurant… probably not a fit. Her audience is following her for makeup content—not cheeseburgers. • Are they your target audience themselves? Birds of a feather flock together.
If the influencer fits the profile of your perfect customer, it’s likely their followers are too. Once you identify someone that could be a good fit, ensure you have an agreement in place—even if it’s just an email that clearly states what you are giving them and what they need to provide in return. How many posts will they share and on which platforms? How many stories will they share? Will they tag your business, use your location tag and hashtag? Usually, if you are very clear about what you are asking in return and they put it in writing they agree, they will do it. Pro Tip: If you have the capability, give them a trackable link to see how many visitors they are sending to your site. Awesome. If you’re able, give them a specific offer and code Even better. If an influencer brings in an amazing number of sales for you, maybe it could become an ongoing relationship. There are many influencers out there that will work completely in trade and they provide incredible content you can also share on your platforms. And that’s a Win-Win! WE
CYBER SAVVY
Cybersecurity Best Practices for Women Business Owners
By Theresa Jones, CMMC-RP, Principal at Evalv IQ LLC
Our worlds have become so connected and reliant on both the internet and technology, it is imperative that we understand the risks involved. Cybersecurity should be a top priority for any business. It’s not just the global and national companies that are being targeted by hackers but small business have also become victims. The great news is there are steps you can take to have basic cyber hygiene in place for securing your assets, employees, data, suppliers and finances. When protecting your business, always start with cyber liability insurance. Select the right policy to provide business interruption insurance if your internet goes out covering the missing revenue your business lost by the day. 1. Stop and Back Everything Up (and verify they are current) Although everyone is under the impression “my stuff is in the cloud,” everything needs to be backed up. There needs to be at least two copies of your backups in two totally different places and not connected to your network at all. Depending on the nature of your business you may even consider hard copies of certain records as well. 2. VPNs for All of Your Devices Virtual Private Networks are important because internet connections can be eavesdropped easily by malicious cybercriminals. Whether you are using wireless or wired connections, your data might be visible to others who can access the network. This is even more true for mobile devices for mobile banking, logging into patient portals, and quick investments via apps. 3. Physical & Virtual Firewalls Placing a firewall on your network should be a top priority. There are lots of options for firewall software out there, including physical hardware and virtual software. With technology evolving so fast there are a number of virtual solutions out that are cost effective to small business owners, so the investment cost should no longer be a factor in not having one. 4. Don’t Forget Physical Threats While you may be wary of hackers trying to breach your network, don’t forget that your hardware can be stolen too. Educate all of your employees and make them aware of the importance of any
data that might be contained on their cell phones or laptops, not only in the office but also when mobile. 5. Protect Against Viruses, Malware & Spyware Any device connected to the internet is at risk, so ensure you have installed the latest anti-virus protection software. Run regular checks, and make sure somebody is responsible for updating the software regularly. Check to make sure your printers, wireless access points, Bluetooth devices and monitors are protected. 6. Strong Passwords Are a Requirement Make sure every one of your employees has a strong password on all of their devices that contain sensitive information—and this includes you as an owner. You should also put in place a policy Theresa Jones to change passwords at regular intervals (quarterly at the very least). Password vaults can be an amazing tool to aid in securing passwords. Ensure all your employees know the importance of constantly maintaining cyber security best practices and have a set of clearly defined rules to follow. 7. Make Sure Your Vendors Are as Secure as You Be wary of any customers or other businesses that may be granted access to any of your systems and ensure that they are following similar practices to you. This also goes for subcontractors. It’s okay to check and request they fill out due diligence documentation to aid in the cybersecurity protection of your company. 8. Nothing is FREE There are a lot of free options for anti-virus software and other protection, some of which are quite reliable. Others aren’t as secure and may even contain malware. Never cut costs with using free tools, especially in regard to your cybersecurity. Good security software is always an excellent investment 10. Keep Business & Personal Information on Separate Devices Where possible, avoid using the same device for your business as you do in the home. Don’t store business information on a device you share with family, friends, housemates, etc. You never want the dangers of having fun affect the company’s bottom line. It is important to make sure all of these best practices are in place, especially with the increased level of remote working we have all started doing since COVID-19. WE
