FLGOVCON 14 – Attracting Military Veterans

Business Resources, Federal GovCon

Today I am going to talk about how your company can benefit from hiring our military veterans and having a veteran friendly program at your company. One of your greatest company assets is your employees. I know you want great employees who give you their best and communicate well with your customers.

Sometimes finding cream of the crop employees is hard and takes a lot of work. I am going to go ahead and say that some of the very best employees are military veterans. They have a strong work ethic; they are disciplined, detail-oriented, they adapt to any situation or environment. Hiring a veteran brings strong leadership to your company and is just smart business.

Now I’d like to take a minute to say my motivation for talking about this today is for a couple of reasons. First of all one of our goals at Florida GovCon is to help small businesses gain a competitive edge and succeed by providing the knowledge that can help you make better business decision concerning government contracting, technology, software, social media, marketing, and more. We want you to be able to take your business to the next level. So helping your business learn techniques to find and keep veteran employees will ensure you have a strong and reliable work force.

The other reason is because helping veterans is something I am passionate about. After serving 11 years in the military and getting out of the Marines with a good conduct discharge I thought transition would be really easy. What I found out was there are challenges with finding a good company, and more importantly one that is the right fit. Sometimes there is a communication gap that is hard to get across due to terminology or even the “I vs team” issue. Even after finding a job it can be a real struggle and it might not last if it’s not the right fit. There really needs to be a level of understanding and respect for what our military veterans have been through.

Keep this in mind when thinking about hiring a veteran. Many go in at an early age and spend their life serving their country. They work their way up taking on enormous responsibilities. Think about some of the things they are responsible for: attack and support aircraft, hundreds of troops, deploying units around the world, protecting the nation. I could go on and on but I won’t. In the military you unit, your team is your family. They are like your brothers and sisters. Now think about your company and all the things that you are responsible for.

So these days I do everything I can to help transitioning veterans make a smooth transition. I help with resumes, coaching, networking and introductions. I volunteer at Project Transition USA to help teach monthly classes to transitioning veterans on how to use LinkedIn to create a brand, network, and find a job. I am a student Veteran mentor for the University of South Florida and a couple other veteran mentoring websites.

I want the veterans to find you I want to introduce them to you. Are you veteran friendly? Do you have a reputation for hiring veterans? Have you made it easy for veterans to find you?

How do you get these highly motivated, dedicated, and skilled veterans to join your company, and how do you keep them? That is what we are here to talk about today.

Another exciting thing I just wanted to throw in there is how awesome it is for the last episode of this series not only to be about helping you find the veterans and them finding you but it is also International Podcast Day! I love podcasting, I love helping veterans, and I love helping small businesses. Podcasting gives me the ability to talk about the things I love and to help others succeed at the same time. So for International Podcast day why don’t you help someone too and share this podcast with them. FloridaGovCon.com

So let me answer those questions attracting veterans!

First of all you want to be completely clear about the fact that you support and are interested in hiring veterans. You can add something about this on your website. A great thing to do is have a dedicated page or sub-domain where the information is veteran specific. You can talk about your goals of hiring veterans, you can have testimonials from currently employed veterans, you can highlight jobs available that would be a good fit for veterans, use words like leadership, challenge, team, and career. Having a dedicated page or sub-domain allows you to market directly to veterans and you can use a special URL even using the word veteran. Also on your website be sure to publish your mission statement and core values. This is something veterans understand as they are mission oriented and they will feel more at ease knowing what you stand for. Use military friendly language on your website, let them know about career paths, opportunities for promotion, team events, and that their family is also important to you.

Highlight your current veterans workforce! If you already have military veterans that are employees you can introduce them to potential new veteran candidates. Let them know there is someone that understands them and that will show them the ropes. Have an employee veteran be part of the interview process for veteran candidates. You can mention employee veterans, their branch of service, and how your company has benefited from hiring them. Let veteran candidates know that your company takes a special interest in helping veterans transition from the military to the corporate workplace.

Educate your recruiters to target veterans and change the recruitment process to meet the goal of recruiting veterans. Highlight jobs already identified as a good fit for veterans. Have your recruiters explain why the veteran would be a good fit and how they could be successful in the position. Remember your job descriptions need to be translated into language that veterans can understand and match up with skills they had when serving in the military. You or your recruiters need to be skilled at gauging a veterans proficiency from their resumes. Many recruiters may not be able to translate military skills to a corporate job.

The resumes of many skilled veterans may not make it through your application tracking system if you have one. It should be setup to additionally recognize military related keywords. If possible in your applicant tracking system the resume could even be tagged to separate veteran resumes from the rest of them so a dedicated veteran recruiter can review them. Your recruiters may have to probe for the veterans accomplishments, collateral duties, awards and recognition to figure out if they are a fit for your company and how their experience can add value to your company. Remember they have been trained in a team environment where everything is we and not I so they are not used to talking about themselves or their achievements. It may take multiple rounds of open-ended questions, solid listening skills, and patience.

To be veteran friendly don’t just stop at the recruiters. Ensure you educate your employees about the importance of hiring veterans as well. You could even have a training program for your non-military employees. They can learn about the military community and what they bring to the table.

Once you have hired a military veteran match them up with a mentor, preferably also a veteran, who can show them the ropes of your company. The mentor will make the transition from military to regular life much smoother, and your new hire will feel like the company cares about their growth.

Start the team building right away.  On the veteran’s first day have the mentor show the veteran around and meet the teams and have lunch with the veteran. Introduce the veteran to the chain of command. Go over benefits, policies and procedures, dates for evaluations, career paths and timeline.

So with this information do what you can to make your company military-friendly and be a motivator for military veterans. Watch their leadership and dedication help transform and move your company forward!

And don’t forget to use your social medial accounts to spread the word about your company’s veteran opportunities, veteran friendly program, and your love for veterans and our country.

You can mention FloridaGovCon.com and International Podcast Day too!

Next week Jenny will be starting and is excited to bring you a new series about pricing strategies.

I hope that you have enjoyed this podcast and I hope you enjoy this series.

FloridaGovCon.com is brought to you by Solvabilty. If you have questions or want to learn more about what we can offer you go to Solvability.com and click on contact. There you can request a free system assessment. Thank you for listening and let me know how I can help you?

​FLGOVCON 13 – Small Business Marketing

Business Resources, Federal GovCon

I imagine your company provides great value to your customers. The product or service you provide may help them do amazing things or accomplish their mission in a timely manner. That has to make you feel really good. But wouldn’t you like to help even more people, and grow your business at the same time.

I am Pete Blum and today I am going to talk about Small Business Marketing and how you should be using technology tools to market your business by communicating the value of your product or service so you can reach new customers. What I will cover in this episode is Social Media Marketing, Leadpages, Meetup Groups, Podcasting, and SEO.

First let’s just talk about where to find your customer. Today almost everyone uses some form of social media. In previous episodes we have talked in detail about LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I also mentioned Periscope, Snapchat, and Instagram. Also let’s not forget all the various apps for listening to podcasts like iTunes, Podbean, Google Play, Stitcher, and more. You want to get the message about your product or service out there on all of these places so you can reach new and existing customers with your latest and greatest offer. Your business may only have a marketing person and not a marketing team. By leveraging social media you can get in front customers mostly for free and get them to come to your website or your business.

The best way to catch your customers attention on social media is with content. You can create well thought out messages to post, you can create eye catching images, you can give spreadsheets or documents, and you can give educational or promotional videos. You can share these things with your audience on your social profiles, pages, and groups.

For new promotions you can share 2 or 3 times in a day. For ongoing promotions at least once a day but don’t overdo it. No one wants to be spammed continuously by promotions. Also have more than one content type for each promotion so you can change it up and give your customers something new.

Most of the social media platforms have some sort of analytics that can help you determine what content you have that is working best. For example Facebook Audience Insights will tell you statistics on age, gender, relationship status, education level, job title, location, and more. Additionally with Facebook Reactions you can see how many people have liked, loved, and been wowed by your content. You can see comments and who has shared your content.

With Twitter Analytics you can see the impressions and clicks from your tweets. Twitter impressions are different from tweets since impressions are actual interaction or engagement after your tweet has been posted.

Under Influencers you can see the top accounts that tweeted links to your content.

And of course with Google Analytics you can get even more great information. Google Analytics is a web analytics service that that tracks and reports website traffic. You can get statistics that will help you improve your SEO and marketing efforts. Google Analytics is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. All you need to get started is a Google account.

You can set goals to help you move towards accomplishing your marketing deliverables. On the Admin page select “Goals” from the View column to track traffic to an opt-in, thank you, or confirmation page.

Next you can set up a campaign so that you can track your visitors based on links you specified in your goals. On the Google Analytics Campaign page you can track sessions, percentage of new sessions, new users.

You can also fine tune your Google Analytics to allow you to view all of your data based on certain specifications like location and lots of other choices by setting up Segments. To set up a segment you would go to your dashboard under reporting and click on “All Sessions” and then click the “New Segment” button. You can use Segments to compare one traffic type against another to see what is working best like your Facebook traffic compared to your Twitter traffic.

So I talked about content types including documents and spreadsheets. I also talked about page types like opt-in, thank you, or confirmation. Now I want to tie a lot of that together with what I think is one of the best tools out there for catching a customer’s attention and getting them to email you for more information.

Leadpages is the top rated landing page builder that can help you generate leads and sales for your company on the web, in emails, using text messaging, and using your social media accounts.

The first thing I want to talk about is the features. One of the things that makes Leadpages great right out of the box is their excellent landing page templates that you can customize for your own company. They have hundreds of both free and premium templates that cover everything you need. Categories are launch, opt-in, webinar, sales, upsell-bonus, pre-cart, thank you, and other.

Editing a landing page is really simple. Just click and add your own text, company logo, images, and more. You have the ability to hide elements or entire sections if you do not need them. Recently Leadpages has stepped up even more in the template area by creating drag and drop templates that basically give you control over the whole thing. Way better than the standard templates if you ask me. I love the flexibility. They keep adding new drag and drop templates so this is where I go first now when starting a new lead page.

You can create some very appealing, eye-catching Leadpages that will really help you convert a lead into a customer. You can use the links to your Leadpages and put them all over social media or on you website. Another option is to link your domain name to Leadpages at which point your lead page is your website.

Leadpages has four different ways to strategically help you generate leads and sales. Leadpages and yes the company and the main feature have the same name. We talked about the pages you can create and the ease in which you can create them.

They also have:

Leadboxes which are links or images that you can put on your site. When someone clicks it, it will generate a pop-up box where they can provide their name and email address to opt-in to your list.

Leadlinks is a feature which allows you to create a link that someone can send out in their email autoresponder and when someone clicks it, it can automatically register them for your list or register them for a webinar without them having to fill in their details again.

Leaddigits is a feature that you can use to get people to text a certain number that they give you, like 33444. Then they text the word you tell them to text, like FREE. They get a message back saying to text their email address only and they will get the free thing you promised them. Then they get added to your email list and automatically get emailed whatever is that you are offering. For example, you are on stage at a conference and want to tell the entire crowd about your awesome promotion. You tell them if they want more information and they text the word BOOK to 33444 you will be sure to send them the information and they will be emailed a free ebook right away.

The entire process behind these features is to capture email addresses of potential leads and turn them into sales. Another part of the process is to entice your customer by offering something for free if they provide their name and email address. This is accomplished by lead magnets. You could setup lead magnets in advance like a checklist, spreadsheet, document, or ebook so that when you create a Leadpage Leadbox, Leadlink, or Leaddigits you can offer them something for free by choosing it from your lead magnet list.

Along with these features Leadpages has integrations for several email and CRM providers, a WordPress plugin, webinar integration for GoToWebinar and WebinarJam. Also LeadPages has a two-step opt-in process. The two-step opt-in process asks your lead to click on a link before they see your opt-in box where they would enter their name and email address to opt-in to your list. By having just one button that they click shows they are already interested and when the pop-up box comes up they are more than likely to enter their information as they have already said yes once by clicking the first time. Leadpages has statistics that switching from a one-step opt-in process to a two-step opt-in process can increase conversions around 30 percent.

Both the integrations and the two-step opt-in process I talked about are easy to setup and simple to add to your Leadpage or Leadbox.

Leadpages has three plans:

Standard for $37 a month if paid monthly, $25 a month if paid annually, and $17 a month if you pay for two years

Pro for $79 a month if paid monthly, $49 a month if paid annually, and $42 a month if you pay for two years

Advanced has no monthly plan and is $199 a month if paid annually, and $159 a month if you pay for two years

With Standard you have the functionality to create all the Leadpages and Leadboxes you want.

With Pro you additionally get Leadlinks and Leaddigits, access to affiliate programs, and A/B Split Testing.

The A/B Split Testing allows you to create two Leadpages for the same thing and it alternates using them so that you can determine what works better between the two. This helps you learn and improve on how you create your Leadpages.

The Advanced plan additionally gives you advanced integrations with CRM, 5 free Leadpages sub-accounts, 50 Extra Leaddigits Text-Messaging Campaigns, Free Leadpages Virtual Workshops, and a few other things.

Now about Meetup Groups, Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups with more than 9,000 groups to choose from.

Your first thought might be singles groups, camping, or something like that but Meetup is actually a good place to post your business event or training workshop. They have a category for “Career & Business” also a category for Education & Learning. Remember it is about finding people where they are at and bringing them to you or your website.

You can start a meetup group and then invite people to join. Others will find you based on searching key words and categories. Once you create a group you just go to your group and click “Schedule a Meetup”.

Podcasting! I am sure you can tell by now this is something I enjoy, in fact I am passionate about it. I think to myself all the time what information can I provide that will really help people. I enjoy helping small businesses and I really enjoy helping veterans. Podcasting is a way to get a message out there to people who are interested in what you have to offer. But you don’t just want to sell something you need to have a desire to educate and create value.

Podcasting fits right into your marketing plan. You can discuss promotions on your website, promote your social media accounts, tell the listens how you can help them and where to find you. One of the biggest benefits of podcasting is your listeners can be mobile, listen when they want and where they want, on the go.

If you wonder well how many people really listen to podcasts back in 2014 iTunes podcast subscriptions passed 1 billion, and that is just for iTunes. There are many other places where you can listen to podcasts, host podcasts, there are even paid podcasts out there. Paid podcasts are considered premium content.

If your company does not have a podcast you should consider one. It does require dedication. To keep your listeners and grow you need to consistently record based on you schedule. So if you say you are going to do a weekly podcast make sure it is weekly. You either have to make the time to manage and edit your podcast or you can source that out.

Now this is an area where I can help you out if you want a podcast but either don’t know how to do it or have no desire to manage it.  I can help you with a podcast launch or just the everyday management and editing of your podcast. If you need assistance go to FloridaGovCon.com and over to the right of the podcast episodes are links to the services I offer.

The last topic for this episode is SEO (search engine optimization). SEO really boils down to adding all the right key words to your website, your blog, your social media profiles and groups, and even to your podcast show notes so that you move up and stay in the first page of search results for your name or your business. When it comes to your website you could be using Go Daddy, WordPress, or something else. They all have some sort of basic SEO setting or a plugin where you can add keywords. For websites be sure to do it for every page, including filling in the description where available.

But don’t stop there, follow, comment, and share on your social networks so that others do the same in return. You are building a relationship and the goal is to grow your business through social engagement. You could end up in a blog article or be a guest on a podcast just by being part of a social media community. All of this goes towards improving your SEO.

If marketing has been a challenge for you and you were looking for some direction I hope that today’s episode has helped to give you some insight on where you can take steps to move forward and gain some new customers. If you need more information or want assistance implementing one of the things you learned about today you can contact me. I can offer services and training to assist you with your needs. Email me at peteblum@solvability.com and let me know how I can help you!

I hope that you have enjoyed this podcast and I hope you enjoy this series. It will be published every Friday at noon.

Thank you for listening!