Posts

How to Make Time for Social Media

February 28, 2019

By Stepha Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Communications Specialist As a small business owner, you probably feel pretty rushed. You want to be sure that anything you do will be worth it in the long-run so your business can thrive. We can tell you with confidence that social media is definitely worth the manpower, but how can you allocate that priceless commodity, time? Here’s where to start. Take a look at your task list.If you’re trying to make time for anything, it only makes sense to take a look at what you’re actually doing over the course of your day. Now is a good time to create a list of tasks you already do, from the moment you wake up till the moment you quit work for the day. Be sure not to leave anything out! Now that you’ve made a list, take a close look at it. What items on your list absolutely have to be done every day? What items have flexibility? What items are you just not sure about in terms of long-term success? What items aren’t helping you reach your goals at all? Once you have a definitive list of must-do tasks, you have a great place

What Does It Mean to Reach Your Goals?

January 16, 2019

By Kimberly Stevens If you’re researching franchise opportunities, there’s likely some aspect of your life that you’re looking to improve. Whether it’s work-life balance, dissatisfaction with your current employer or a desire to learn a new skill, you’re ready to pursue a different path. But what does going for your goals actually look like? Here are our best tips for facing the challenges that come with stepping out of your comfort zone and moving toward a life you can live with passion. Embrace the intimidating moments.As humans, anytime we step outside our comfort zone, we instantly want to leap right back into it. For better or worse, it’s just the way we’re wired. This doesn’t mean that our instincts are insurmountable, it just means that doing anything new, like pursuing a new career, is going to take mindfulness and an extra shot of courage. We won’t beat around the bush: you’ll probably experience several intimidating moments as you prepare to start your new business. Pushing through means understanding that it’s all part of the process and trusting that the rewards are far more satisfying than the challenges are scary. Love your family and friends.We often use the word, “venturing,” when

6 Ways to Get the Most Reach Out of Your Business Website

January 3, 2019

By Sydney Arp, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Specialist & Designer Your business website has the potential to be one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal—if you know how to use it. Here are six ways you can give your monthly website traffic a boost and start seeing those leads convert to sales. 1. Update all your profile to include your website link.Most networking sites, including the majority of social media platforms, feature an area for you to link your website. Be sure to add your website link to your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Google My Business, Yelp and YouTube pages. You should also include your website link in your email signature—an often forgotten, but crucial marketing move. 2. Use social media to link back to your website often.If you’re a regular Facebook poster (we highly recommend it!), you have ample opportunity to sneak a link to your website in a couple of posts a week. Just be sure that you’re not saying the same thing over and over again. You can link to different pages of your site to point out various features, articles or other information you want your potential clients to know about. In

How to Finance Your NPI Franchise

December 20, 2018

By Sammi Marcellus, NPI, Inc.’s Recruitment Coordinator You’ve talked to an NPI franchise sales rep, read through the FDD and decided that you want to start a home inspection franchise. There’s one snag in the plan, though: start-up capital. Before you get discouraged, you should know that there are plenty of options out there to finance your business. It takes some searching to find the one that will work for you, but we’re here to help! Here are some of the best ways to get a loan that’ll get your new franchise up and running. Traditional Bank LoanThis is the first place entrepreneurs who are just starting out go to secure financing, and works well in the right situation. The ideal bank to request a loan from is one you already do business with—they’ll have a ready-made financial history to work from, which can shorten the process. If the bank you’re working with offers small business loan options, they’ll ask you to fill out a loan application, which can sound daunting if you’ve never encountered one before. Don’t sweat it, though—you’ll just have to have certain information regarding your business, including the legal structure, what services you’re selling, and personal

How to Segment Your Email List Like a Pro: Part 2

October 26, 2018

By Stepha Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Communications Specialist We’re back at it today, teaching you how to segment your email list for maximum impact in your email marketing campaigns! Make sure you check out the first post in this series here. Prune Your List WiselyLet’s say that you’re three email sends in on a well thought-out campaign with a list that’s been run through NeverBounce. Now is a great time to take a peek at your analytics and open rates to get a sense of the picture your contacts are painting. You’re likely to encounter these types of recipients: 1. The Ones Who Open Every Email: Great, yes, keep them around! 2. The One Who Open One or Two: Encouraging for sure, but we’ll have to pay close attention to the subject lines that seem to catch their eye. 3. The Ones Who Open None: Tough crowd. We’re going to have to make some choices. The latter two categories may make us feel like tearing our hair out, but these are actually the types of contacts that help us become savvy marketers. If every contact opened every email, there’s a chance we would never know what makes certain subject lines

How to Segment Your Email List Like a Pro: Part 1

October 24, 2018

By Stepha Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Communications Specialist In our last post, we went over why cleaning your contact list is crucial for running a successful email campaign. Now it’s time to talk about how to use the analytics information you’ve gathered from your open rates to create even more wins down the road. Let’s start with going more in-depth on the topic of bounce rates. What is a Bounce?Simply put, a bounced email is an email that wasn’t delivered. This could happen for a number of different reasons, and depending on the reason, it is considered a hard or a soft bounce. A high bounce rate will eventually lower your sender score significantly. Hard BouncesHard bounces occur when an email is sent to an invalid email address. This may mean: Soft BouncesA soft bounce refers to an email that gets to a recipient’s mail server, but does not make it to their inbox. This type of bounce might occur because: Bounced addresses are almost entirely out of your control, but what is in your control is whether or not you send messages to them. And just to reiterate, it’s never a good idea to send emails to bounced addresses.

Cleaning Your Email List: Why It’s Important and How to Get Started

September 12, 2018

By Stepha Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing Communications Specialist Whether you’re brand new to email marketing or you’re about to click send on your 100th message, your email’s success is only as good as your contact list. You may have heard terms like “clean” and “scrub” in relation to your list and wondered what they mean and how to get started. We’re here to break it all down for you and explain why it’s important to polish up your list so it’s as “clean” and up-to-date as possible. What is a Clean Email List?In short, to clean your list means to fully verify it. This means you’re making sure that each address is not only valid and deliverable, you’re taking steps to avoid wasting funds and effort on contacts who aren’t interested in your business. Cleaning your list usually involves two stages: So what’s the big deal in the grand scheme of things if your personal list or campaign isn’t getting the best results? Shouldn’t that affect your business only? A cut-your-losses-and-try-a-different-subject-line type scenario? Well, that’s exactly the way it used to be till spammers started taking advantage of their sending freedom in a big way. If you’ve had an email

Why You Should Consider Using a Call Center

August 21, 2018

By Zach Vesper, NPI, Inc.’s Marketing & SEO Specialist This might seem like a familiar situation: you’re out on an inspection, and while talking to your client, your business phone rings. Now you have a dilemma—do you risk looking unprofessional by stepping away from your client to take the phone call, or do you ignore it and hope they leave a voicemail? If this happens often for you, there’s a simple solution: making use of a call center. Call centers can make your inspection business run more smoothly while delivering a host of other benefits, too. 1. You’ll stop missing phone calls.Imagine never having to be in that difficult situation again. Using a call center to answer calls to your business and book inspections allows you to give your full attention to each client, all while ensuring you don’t lose out on future inspections. Here’s a statistic that should worry any small business owner: of all the people who call your business and can’t get through, 85 percent won’t call back, and 75 percent of those people won’t leave a message. Instead, they’ll just move on to the next company, which is likely your direct competition. The bottom line is

What Does NPI’s National Accounts Department Do?

June 19, 2018

By Kenn Garder, NPI, Inc.’s National Accounts Manager At NPI, we continue to support our franchisees long after they leave our Omaha training academy. Not only do we continue to offer advice, marketing coaching and general guidance, we also help you land paid inspections. Here’s how our National Accounts Department helps refer our inspectors commercial work across the U.S. We Do the LegworkWe know training our franchisees for commercial inspection work helps them diversify their offerings and sharpen their skillset. We also realize that knowing the right people is a huge part of owning a successful small business. National Property Inspections’ National Accounts Department aims to offer our franchisees an advantage over other inspection companies by referring business directly to them from clients across the country. Our Omaha office acts as a central point of contact for commercial clients, among them brokers, investors and large companies, many with recognizable household names. Most of these individuals and operations have the need for multiple commercial inspections in one or more states (think a retail chain with hundreds of locations across the country.) This need comes with unique challenges for not just the client, but also the inspector. How do the client and

How to Hire Employees and Help Them Succeed

May 9, 2018

By David Stamper, NPI, Inc.’s President & CFO So your business has grown to the point that you simply have too much work and can’t do it all yourself—congratulations! This is a great problem to have, but hiring employees to help your business grow can be daunting. Whether you’re bringing on your first employee or your 10th, it’s important to follow a few simple guidelines to avoid bad hires and set your new employee on a path to success. Define the role you’re hiring for.Before you even start thinking about looking at resumes, you need to know exactly what position you’re trying to fill. This starts by defining what your new hire will be in charge of and what their day-to-day responsibilities will be. It helps to be as specific as possible at this point—if you’re hiring another inspector, you’ll want to include details about what they’ll be expected to do in the field, like climbing ladders, going into crawlspaces or operating specialized equipment. If you’re hiring a marketing person, be clear about which marketing and social media platforms they should be familiar with (Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and what you want them do be able to do, whether