Only 3 percent of your ideal customers are actively searching for your product, or are in an active buying mode, according to the author of the Ultimate Sales Machine, Chet Holmes. (Note: you should get this book on audible and listen to it now)
For both large and small business, this means that you need to constantly come up with new and creative ways to sell your company’s offerings and try to weed out the other 97%.
Naturally, this can get quite expensive, because “everybody” wants them, and so SEO, PPC prices go up, and hungry marketers will do anything (even use stupid, shady tactics) to get attention and grab marketshare.
Education-based marketing is a growing solution that is seeing brands provide more information and knowledge surrounding their products and services. The aim is to sell the solution without explicitly selling it. It will more naturally repel the people not interested, and draw your warmer audience in.
Not convinced?
Here are three reasons why education-based marketing is becoming more effective as a sales strategy.
1. You don’t come across as sales-aggressive
It’s a common trait to get frustrated with salesmen they can come off as pestering, money-hungry people with dishonest motives.
And once that reputation is established, it can be hard to shake.
However, with education-based selling, the sales strategy is so well disguised under the wealth of knowledge you’re providing, customers often come to a purchasing decision on their own, without feeling bothered by sales tactics.
Apple Rubber, for example, provides consumers with information on o-rings, including content about their function and what makes them so useful.
Without any aggressive advertising or promotions, the o-rings ultimately sell themselves by showing the consumer why they need them (and they do it in a fun, interesting and useful way!)
2. You establish yourself as an authority figure
Rather than providing your customer base with blanket statements about how great your product is and then asking them to trust you, you should establish yourself as an expert first.
By educating your potential and loyal consumers, you are communicating that you have a lot of knowledge about the industry and know what you’re talking about.
From there, when you tell them that your product is worthwhile, it holds more weight in the consumers’ eyes and selling becomes that much easier.
Not only will audiences begin to trust your word, but they’ll learn to rely on your expert opinion, creating a much deeper relationship with your customers and making the sales process long-term and efficient.
3. You’ll build your brand personality and provide extra value
These days, with social media marketing becoming such a major facet of any business strategy, consumers are looking for something more from brands over and above what they sell they’re looking for a personality they can relate to.
Education-based marketing is another addition to the strategy of displaying a brand personality, as it gives your company a voice, an opinion and an excuse to communicate with your customers.
…the education you provide to your audience is a value-add that can set you apart from your competitors.
Ultimately, in your consumers’ eyes, you’re not only the brand that sells that one product, you’re a unique and engaging entity that contributes to the conversation.
Education-based marketing is an effective method that draws customers in for the long-term.
By eliminating the negative connotations around selling, education-based marketing provides your audience with something extra and allows your products to sell themselves.
Improving the customer experience is simple with automated customer relationship management tools.
When applied correctly, these automated tools can single handedly improve the customer experience, all while boosting your business’ bottom line.
Here’s how.
Why Automated CRM Matters
How do you manage your customer relationships? Gone are the days when business owners turn to unmanageable spreadsheets.
Modern business leaders are increasingly implementing automated customer relationship management tools to better manage their contacts.
Automated customer relationship management comes in many forms, from personalized emails to targeted customer recommendations on a website based-on past purchases or interests.
Today’s CRM tools offer scalable personalization, no longer leaving personalization for a few “best” customers, but to all customers. CRM also leads to higher customer retention rates, which is key.
Returning customers will spend 31 percent more than a new customer, and retained customers are 60 to 70 percent more likely to buy from a business that they already have a relationship with than a customer who’s never done business with you.
CRM can also give you freedom, freeing up time from tedious tasks like data entry and customer information recording.
Essential Webmaster Tools
Customer relationships are the driving force of your company.
An automated and cloud-based customer relationship management tool, such as Infor CRM, can help you maximize the impact of every single customer interaction through industry specific capabilities, flexibility and scale and deep integration.
Infor CRM gives business leaders and their teams a seamless, easy-to-use platform that can be accessed across all teams, helping your company to work smarter, not harder, with a functional user experience.
Make use of Infor consulting services, articles and video tutorials on Infor CRM to ensure that your team is up to speed.
Helpful Automated Messaging
Customers come to your website to learn more about your goods or services. Your website is essentially an online version of a storefront for your business.
Here customers can get a glimpse of what you stand for, learn about your company and browse a selection of your offerings.
But who can they turn to when they have a question?
Think about the last time that you were in a department store.
You were probably looking around, getting to know the company, and then you had a question. You likely found a store clerk to talk to.
Like a store clerk, automated messaging services such as LiveChat can give your customers the chance to get answers to their questions without sending an email or dialing up your company by phone.
Real-time answers can inspire purchases and keep your existing customers returning, and impress your first time clients.
In fact, according to LiveChat data, visitors invited to chat are 6.3 times more likely to convert into customers than those who don’t chat.
Modern Customer Self-Service
Today’s customers are more connected than ever before and these digitally savvy customers often act on their own timeframe and terms. Make sure that you offer what these connected customers need with a self-service portal on your company’s website.
The Salesforce Self-Service portal allows you to design and build mobile-friendly, and branded, portals that can enhance the customer experience. Best of all, the low-code option is easy to use and deploy.
Your customer relationships and your bottom line are related.
With mobile devices now accounting for 51 percent of American adult Internet usage, it’s not surprising that web design has followed the Internet’s move to the cloud.
A signal of the sea change came in 2013 when Adobe dropped its traditional desktop-oriented Creative Suite in favor of its Creative Cloud line.
This was a move that initially outraged veteran Adobe desktop users but which ultimately tripled Adobe’s recurring revenue and stock value, McKinsey & Company reports.
Today web design is mobile oriented, and designers typically work on their mobile devices from the cloud. Here are 10 cloud-based apps that web designers find handy.
1. Mozy
Backing up your website is vital for disaster planning to make sure you don’t lose all your hard work and your online business doesn’t go down. Mozy provides automatic cloud-based backups that you can set and forget.
Mozy’s cloud backup feature comes with MozyPro with pricing starting at $109.89 a year for 10 GB or with MozyHome starting at $5.99 a month for 50 GB. An enterprise version is also available.
2. Adobe Animate CC
Adobe Animate CC is the current successor to Flash, the longtime web animation standard which Adobe is now phasing out due to security issues, software changes and battery life limitations, Fortune reports.
Adobe Animate CC features include animation creation, the ability to convert old Flash ads to HTML5 Canvas, vector art brushes that let you modify and rescale drawings without losing quality and export tools for exporting video to 4K resolution.
You can get Adobe Animate CC as part of a Creative Cloud Single App plan for $19.99 a month, as part of the entire Creative Cloud apps suite for $49.99 a month or with Adobe Stock plus Creative Cloud for $69.98 a month.
3. Affinity Photo
Serif’s Affinity Photo is emerging as a cloud-oriented rival to Adobe Photoshop. Designed for Macs and named by Apple as the best Mac App of 2015, Affinity Photo provides a dedicated RAW editing workspace compatible with all major camera file formats and supports Photoshop files.
Among other advanced features, Affinity Photo’s layering method lets you adjust images and vectors without disrupting them, while providing instant previews so you can edit in real time. Affinity Photo is currently available for $49.99 with no subscription needed.
4. Codeanywhere
For designers who want to be able to work from any location, Codeanywhere provides a cloud cross-platform integrated development environment that supports development from anywhere using a web browser and mobile device.
Written entirely in JavaScript, Codeanywhere runs entirely in-browser, includes an FTP client and Dropbox integration, features a sandbox with MySQL support and supports over 75 programming languages. Pricing ranges from a freemium version to a business version for $40 per month.
5. Sass
CSS can get hard to handle when you have to juggle multiple style sheets to manage thousands of lines of code.
To deal with this issue, smart web designers rely on CSS pre-processors, the best known of which is Sass (Synthetically Awesome StyleSheet). Sass helps you create code that’s easy to maintain by letting you write CSS in the style of programming languages with variables and functions, for compiling into browser-ready CSS format.
An open-source program, Sass is free to install.
6. CodeKit
Like multiple CSS sheets, projects with multiple HTML pages can get cumbersome when you have to change one element across multiple pages.
To make editing easier, the CodeKit template engine adds variable and file import ability to HTML to let you make changes to multiple pages from a single template instead of editing pages individually.
CodeKit pricing options currently range from $32 to $39.
7. GridFox
Getting your layouts to display properly across a wide range of strings can be tedious. GridFox makes design layout easier by superimposing a reference grid over any webpage so can check your grid-based designs.
You can also modify grids and save them to the cloud for future use.
A Firefox add-on, GridFox is free.
8. Balsamiq Mockups
Wireframing simplifies web design by visually stripping sites down to their essential functional and user interactive elements.
Balsamiq Mockups lets you do wireframing from the cloud by providing hand-drawn style elements you can drag and drop to preview your site.
Pricing for the cloud-based version of Balsamiq Mockups ranges from three active projects for $12 per month or 100 active projects for $199 per month.
9. Grunt
Web design tasks such as minification and compilation are repetitive.
Task runner program Grunt automates repetitive tasks by letting you install JavaScript plug-ins or by writing your own task scripts.
An open source program, Grunt is free.
10. Dropbox
Storing and sharing files is an essential part of collaborative web design.
Dropbox makes it easy to share files of any size between your devices or with other users by using simple drag-and-drop features.
Dropbox is free for 2 GB of storage space and costs $9.99 per month for 1 TB.
The ability to evolve and the agility to pivot in response to trends are crucibles upon which marketers’ work is often judged by consumers and organizations alike. One area in which this is especially apparent is content marketing. As surely as digital content marketing has become elemental, so too has the Web’s indiscriminate urge to disrupt it. – dmnews.com
How many times have you taken some sort of assessment or quiz online for fun?
Or, maybe you took an assessment or tried a useful calculator from a known, online brand?
The bottom line is that unless you have been living underneath a rock, you have heard or seen a number of different quizzes on a wide variety of subjects online.
The interactive content sweetspot focus areas (From convinceandconvert.com)
These quizzes are actually everywhere, so it is normal that you will see them going across your news-feed and taking over a big part of your social media experience.
They are becoming more and more popular in use for B2B marketing professionals as well.
“People aren’t satisfied with one-way communication anymore; they want to participate in a conversation. This is where interactive content comes into play. Instead of creating long, static documents, consider creating ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style assets” – Peter Arvai, CEO of presentation software company Prezi
“The shift from the traditional “click->landingpage->emailcapture->provideanswers” is turned on it’s head, of sorts. It’s about solving problems first, and providing (immediate) answers and leveraging content marketing second.”
However, these quizzes and interactive content engines are actually used for a whole lot more than simply taking up some time or as a fun way to brag to your friends about the great results that you got on a quiz.
The new interactive content marketing map (ioninteractive)
These online quizzes are actually a powerful framework and toolset that you can use for lead generation and viral engagement for your website.
Examples of interactive content tools you can add to your websites, blogs and social media channels:
All you have to do is strategically place an email capture just in front of the results of the quiz.
Most of the quiz takers are going to be itching to find out what their results are, so the best quizzes will actually fall in line with about a 50% opt-in rate. Plus, the lead quality is often higher.
When you want to be able to use a quiz on your website to help you with some great lead generation you will find that there are some major ways that you can really maximize your conversion rates.
A recent study from B2B Content Marketing Trends showed that ‘Producing Engaging Content’ was the biggest challenge, right before ‘Measuring Content Effectiveness’.
From ContentMarketingInstitute.com (CMI)
A new breed of marketing talent and content know-how will be needed, because interactive content also requires design and development expertise.
How to start building interactive content?
To begin a interactive content strategy, ask what data you want, and what service your buyers want.
Compare and contrast with what your sales teams want. Ask them to cooperate on building a quiz for the highest MQL‘s (marketing qualified leads) possible. Always keep your intended audience in mind first. How can this quiz really help them make decisions?
You’ll begin to see a positive shift in your sales accepted leads (SAL), all while your are educating and helping your customers and prospects. That’s a winning formula.
A popular trend today is that the highest converting quizzes are doing a great job of building up a decent rapport with their quiz takers well before they present the offer to opt-in.
As a person looking around online today, we all enjoy the ability to have a great conversation.
Talking with another person is a process that releases Oxytocin, which is a drug in the human body that makes us feel good.
These quizzes that are able to succeed on a conversational level are also those that generate the most leads.
In order to do so, you need to be able to create a connection, which can be done by using your personality.
Here’s an example of what Orbitz has done with a fun travel quiz:
Orbitz Travel Quiz Example
Any quiz that comes off as having personality will have the feel of being more human, which will then help the quiz taker to feel more comfortable so that they are willing to fill in their email address.
Wit and charm can go a long way to make someone feel as though they are talking to a real person when filling out a quiz that is filled with snark and personality.
Additionally, you can take the initiative to create your quiz as though you are talking to an actual person.
This can be done simply by thinking about a person that would enjoy your content or the quiz and write it as though you are speaking directly to them.
Stay Relevant
If you are putting together a quiz for your website that is going to be all about content marketing, you need to have a call to action that has to be about CONTENT MARKETING.
By the same token, if you are putting together a quiz on sharpening your writing skills, the call to action has to be about writing skills.
Basically speaking, the content has to be able to provide an experience that is continuous in order to captivate a quiz taker and there should be no call to action that is a surprise.
The emails are entering into their inbox and they will end up taking up space and the quiz taker’s valuable time.
Because you are asking for something of value, you need to be able to give them something that is valuable in return.
With each quiz that you are using for lead generation, the value will be in the results. This will mean that the more involved the quiz is, the more valuable your results will be.
You need to remember that having the approval to email someone is something that you should not take lightly.
We recommend displaying the results right after the quiz, and not holding the quiz taker ‘hostage’. Provide the results and recommendations, but allow them to download the results and get more relevant information by entering their name & email. (Note: test this for your own market!)
Solve A Problem
If a customer is going to be asking you a question, the chances are that there were other customers that have had the same question whether they realize it or not.
Some of these customers may simply be too shy to bring up the question or they just feel as though they would not enjoy the answer to the particular question.
Answering the questions that any of your current or potential customers may have will be the perfect way to generate content that you know they will appreciate.
Positive Is Always Better Than Negative
The bottom line is that there are two ways that you can offer your help:
One way is telling quiz takers that they are in trouble and they need your services so that they can get out of trouble.
The other way is to tell people that they are great, they just need your services to make them even better than they are currently.
Some of the quizzes that are the highest converting are those that will give people fun and really helpful answers to the questions that they have or those that are going to test them on their knowledge or expertise.
Social sharing / viral opportunity
Everyone likes to hear that they scored better than a friend or a family member on a quiz, so they will be more than likely to take the quiz themselves so that they can have bragging rights.
Keep your quizzes to the point, make sure that they load easily and always be strategic about the content that you have as well as the placement of your opt-in form.
Conclusion
When all is said and done, you will see that a well planned out quiz and interactive content can be a perfect viral engagement tool for your website.
Make sure to add social widgets (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn share buttons) and create sharing texts that entice the audience to take it also.
The power of the interactive content marketing model actually lies in the personalization. So, make sure that you are smart about the lead boxes that you use and have fun with your quiz options.
Brands can take their content marketing to new levels with interactive content and quizzes while providing great value, and making their sales teams excited about the new daily leads they get.
Data driven marketing is not just a way for businesses to refine and target their marketing efforts more effectively, but it has become a REAL expectation from customers as well.
“Arguably, the most important evolution in the history of marketing is the ability to understand what data you have, what data you can get, how to organize and, ultimately, how to activate the data” – Mark Flaharty, SundaySky
In its analysis of 2015, the analytical data platform Teradata (Download PDF: Global Data Driven Marketing Survey Report) revealed that “customers have grown accustomed to marketers’ knowledge of their preferences and anticipation of their needs.”
Therefore, the following appears to be true: (Please RT – click on bird!)
“Customer feedback implies that data driven marketing is not seen as intrusive but rather, is well-received” – Jon Rognerud (@jonrognerud)
Businesses are recognizing the need for data driven marketing and many are seeing how it aligns with their business goals and expectations.
They understand the importance of focusing on consumers and better predicting their actions, habits and preferences.
The biggest drivers of increased data marketing include:
Maximized efficiency of marketing investments
Improved knowledge of customers and prospects
Improved alignment with consumer preferences and needs
A growing availability of audience data, providing better data capabilities
A need to become more customer oriented
However, knowing why data driven marketing is important is different than knowing where your efforts need to focused.
While one of your primary goals may be to improve the efficiency of advertising campaigns, you need to know what type of data is going to help you accomplish this as well.
Data gathering efforts are typically focused toward:
Data related to offers, messages and content
Product development
Customer experience
Audience analytics and measurement
Predictive analysis
By capturing data in these categories, businesses can use the information for better consumer engagement across numerous channels, online and offline.
Some of the most popular channels for data driven marketing include websites, mobile apps, call centers, social media, in-store, direct mail and catalogs.
Don’t take my word for it though… let the data tell you this.
Data provides a logical approach to outlining your marketing strategies. Through testing and analyzing various channels, you can find which ones work well for your business.
As an example, while mobile apps can be effective in many industries, they aren’t suitable for all and there’s pre-existing data to prove this. You can use this data for determining the practicality of investing in these areas.
Data driven marketing is beginning to be recognized for the opportunities it creates as well.
Businesses that allow data to guide their marketing priorities are able to personalize the customer experience with:
custom messages,
acquiring analytical skills that can be used to leverage insights,
get higher customer acquisitions,
boost conversion and retention rates,
and improve efficiency by significant margins.
It is only a matter of time before the right data crosses your path. There is no better way to acquire data than to test the waters, make mistakes and learn from them.
That’s not to say that you will have issues. In the Teradata report, there are obstacles preventing marketing from becoming more data driven:
Report: obstacles to becoming more data driven
Here are 6 immutable laws of data driven marketing to guide you along the way:
1. Follow the data – internally and externally
While data driven marketing is mostly about the consumer, don’t forget that there is a lot to be learned from your employees and the obstacles they face as well.
Sometimes you have to look inward to engage customers more effectively.
Your employees will be the most familiar with important business procedures such as order management and client retention practices.
There is often data here that can be collected and analyzed to find valuable insights.
Address things that may be holding you back as well as things that are working well for the business. You can learn from both positive and negative data.
2. Don’t let data stunt creativity
Data driven marketing is about letting the numbers influence decision making but it shouldn’t interfere with creativity and exploration.
Use data and creativity – with a balance
Don’t let the metrics steer your business into a black and white decision making process.
There is such a thing as being too data-driven, where you lose the personal touch and human element that your business once had.
Let the data inspire and guide you rather than catering every action or task toward its findings.
3. Use technology for analytical insights and marketing automation
Whether you are marketing through a website, app, television or any other channel, technology is your assistant to data driven marketing and automation.
Use the tools and resources available to your for gaining analytical insights.
For your website, there is Google Analytics, which helps you better understand your traffic, where it comes from and how users behave once arriving at your website.
For virtually every marketing channel, there are analytical tools that gather data for you automatically, taking the hassle out of the process and making your job easier.
Similarly, most marketing channels have solutions that can help you automate some of the process.
For instance, for websites you can look into email marketing automation through MailChimp.
These tools create entirely new categories of data, allowing you to explore and come up with ideas.
MailChimp tells you which email subjects perform the best, your open rate and much more. The technology you use creates new data pathways that can inspire you.
4. Continue to measure and experiment
Having the right data on hand won’t help unless you integrate your findings and continue to measure and test the results.
Be adventurous and find what works for you and what doesn’t. Let the data guide you to make changes to your marketing campaigns.
With the right reporting setup, you will be able to view in real-time how your campaigns are responding to the adjustments.
Data driven marketing is sometimes a repetitive process of tinkering and learning but with the right tools, you will be able to deliver better content to your audience.
5. Redeploy and scale
When you’ve made your adjustments and got the formula just right, you’re ready to redeploy and start investing more money.
By continuing to measure and test, you will optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI and slowly raise the bar for quality score and effectiveness.
Scaling allows you to make use of your efforts and get more revenue out of the hard work and changes you’ve made by following the data.
6. Stay true to the user experience
It can be tempting to allow data to model every decision you make.
(From usabilitygeek.com)
When you do this, you often sacrifice the user experience for changes that the data suggests should be profitable but when implemented, does not prove to be as promising.
Remember to always stay true to the user experience and you shouldn’t have this problem.
Before making adjustments, imagine yourself as a consumer and how the change would impact your thoughts, opinions and overall user experience.
Sometimes data can compel you to make changes that sacrifice important attributes that were working for your marketing campaigns.
By staying true to the user experience you put value and engagement ahead of everything else and create the best possible outcome for the user.
All marketing executives in today’s markets want to serve their customers better. They want answers. You can find it in the data.
Resources, tools and further data-driven marketing research:
Drawbridge (enable marketers to sync cross device)
Liveramp (onboarding and unification of customer data across disparate systems)
What is the most important part of your digital marketing campaign?
It’s a trick question. (All of them are important!)
Imagine this: your business is like a 4-legged bar stool. Take any one of the four legs out and it will fall over.
Strangely, most businesses are like a three legged stool.
This is because while they have a great product/service, have wonderful and skilled salespeople with solid product knowledge, conversation skills and a team willing and able to fulfill the customers every need and desire…
Lead generation is one of the most difficult and intimidating parts of any B2B market places. There are so many different parts that it can be near impossible to know where to begin.
In this article, you’ll learn how to create quality leads for your business-to-business company and master the skill of lead generation (demand generation)… so you can take your business to the next level.
First, consider this chart from Content Marketing Institute. It shows that you must ensure an intelligent content plan and relevant marketing strategy.
“B2B marketers who have a documented content strategy are fare more likely to consider themselves effective”:
Get productive, and review your content marketing strategy and make sure you put one in place. It will positively impact all the steps below and make the job much easier.
Just think how your business life would change if you had a steady stream of customers or clients …ready, willing and able to buy from you, and lining up to give you their time & money?
The money is in the people who say “NO”?
Don’t you hate when people say “No” to your products and services?
Wouldn’t it be so much better if every person and every company wanted to work with you?
Your largest source of untapped wealth is the people who say “No”.
Think about this example:
Let’s say that today, 10 people respond to an online advertisement you run – that sends visitors to a custom landing page with a special offer or call to action.
You send these 10 people more information and 4 of them booked an appointment with you.
One of them became a paying client.
That’s a 10% conversation rate on your advertisement. Not bad, although a lot of people said “No” during the period. (Note: I’m assuming that your campaign expenditure vs. return ratios are in balance, or that you are tracking and even considering loss-leaders.)
What’s important to understand is that they didn’t say “No” because they weren’t interested at all. They have already raised their hands when they responded to your ad.
This shows that they had a need for what you were offering as well as a desire. These are 10 interested and qualified people.
The reality is that they have a need, but weren’t ready to buy or make an appointment at that exact time.
To never contact these people again is a cardinal marketing sin.
Although this is a basic example, how many prospects who you KNOW would benefit from working with you … are you missing out on because of a lack of follow up?
This is the secret of 360 degree lead generation – finding the people who said “No” at some point and giving them more opportunities to say “Yes”.
The solution here is twofold:
CRM marketing. The age old auto responder and customer capture.
Doing SEO correctly (the strategies are different for B2B than B2C).
Let’s take each in turn…
STEP 1: CRM Marketing
“Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support” – WikipediA
A CRM is a product like Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot or Infusionsoft that allows you to create a prospect entry in their database and build auto-responder message series for your business segments.
This gives you the opportunity to follow up with prospects repeatedly, to build and nurture relationships and to offer your services or products over and over again …in a number of different ways.
You already know you need a CRM and auto-responder features, but are you using one? And if you are using an auto responder, are you using it as effectively as you could be?
You’re probably familiar with most of the concepts of good SEO so we’ll save you a lecture here.
Instead, let’s look at the differences of using SEO for business-to-business lead generation as opposed to business-to-consumer.
Keywords: They can be more difficult to research, analyze and optimize (but more rewarding when you do). Since there may not be a lot of obvious keywords available (and potential traffic) for B2B, the focus must be on quality over quantity. It will take more time to find high-intent search terms, but when you do discover them, it is like striking gold. You might begin by using the Google Keyword Planner. But don’t stop there, it’s very specific to paid search, and not organic (SEO)! Go out and search your topics and competitors in Google search directly, and look at the suggested searches at the bottom of the page of search results. Take a look at Google predictions via Instant Search.
Leverage social media: Social media marketing is invaluable for SEO purposes over time. While we don’t think Google is using the signals directly, we believe this will change over time. For now, the publishing of data across your key social networks not only builds traffic and visibility for your brand, but can have a “2nd wave effect” of links, which are still very important for higher rankings. However, many business-to-business companies think that social media is a place where you stay in touch with your friends – not where business is done. Social media, however, gives you easy reach and allows you to build and nurture relationships. (This speech from Gary Vaynerchuk might open your eyes [7 minutes of “Gary Vaynerchuk: I love Social Media because it sells stuff!”)
STEP 3: Retargeting: For When CRM’s fail
The importance of a full and complete CRM with an auto-responder sequence has been made very clear in case study after case study. This is one of your most important assets for lead generation and creating raving fan customers.
However, what if you never get an email address?
What about the people who say “No” the first chance they get? Can those people still become leads?
How does retargeting work to sell more? (Courtesy https://goldspacegroup.com/)
The answer is yes, due to the power of retargeting.
Done right, this can become your highly targeted “perpetual” traffic machine and with an improved customer segmentation matrix and lowered spend over time.
Again, you’ve probably heard of retargeting before. The question is, are you using it? Check the Guide To Retargeting here.
There’s one final step that most marketers overlook.
This step has five words: Double down on whatever works.
Ultimately, all marketing, online or off, is a test.
Your job when creating marketing campaigns is to try different things and see what works. As you’ve probably seen, what you think people will respond to, and what they ACTUALLY respond to are two very different things.
(That’s why SEO is such a powerful strategy when done right. Keyword-driven searches with high user intent that match your targeted, well-crafted pages and messages are GOLD!)
When you find a strategy that works, an ad that is getting profitable clicks, a landing page that is converting, a message that has a high click through rate or a sales letter that is making sales, double down on it.
Measuring these statistics is easy.
Your CRM will provide you with details on open rates and click through rates, and you must use Goals and UTM tracking in Google analytics (Click here for more information on Google goals) to get accurate statistics on your campaigns.
You’ve now learned a number of practical steps in this article. You can use these to create literally million dollar leads.
What strategy will you start with first?
BONUS:Get the free lead generation guide that will show you how to quickly get more leads from traffic. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.
Importance of a functional website for Small Business (SMB)
So the question becomes how to drive traffic to it, particularly without the marketing budget of a bigger company.
When it comes to your website, the quote is not “if you build it, they will come,” but rather “if you build it well, create valuable content and have a successful promotion strategy, then they might come.”
“SMB is an abbreviation for small and medium-sized business”
Here are FIVE WAYS to increase the number of visitors to your local or national website:
1. Consistent Content
Simply building a website is not enough; you need to give people a reason to visit the site and to keep coming back.
A survey by HubSpot found that 82 percent of companies that blogged once a day not only increased their site traffic, but were also able to convert that traffic into customers.
Likewise, when Entrepreneur Magazine increased its blog posts from twice a week to over 10 per week, its website traffic increased 300 percent over two months.
Convirza started publishing three blogs every weekday and saw a 210 percent increase in web traffic, which resulted in more new customers than any other three month period in company history.
You don’t need to add content multiple times a day or even every day to see results.
Posting consistent content that visitors can rely on is key.
Consistent updates to your website can also increase your search engine ranking by indicating to Google that the site is informative and relevant.
Its blog has articles written by outside cloud experts, business analysts and business owners.
Not only does this bring new perspectives on relevant content, but guest bloggers are likely to share and link to their articles, which directs new traffic to your website.
TIP: Learn more about Guest Blogging and other essential SEO tips.
TIP: Consider a strategic, helpful outreach program via Twitter and email marketing. (no spam!)
4. Link to Content
While you’re at it, post links to the content on your website on your social media pages.
LinkedIn has become a popular platform for finding industry-specific articles, so posting regular content on that forum can increase your website visitors and raise your profile within your industry.
Other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter work hand-in-hand with your website.
The more interesting content you post to those platforms, the more your social media presence grows.
The bigger your social media presence, the more you are able to direct new visitors to your website. Search engines tend to follow in time.
Unlike direct marketing, which relies on coupons and commercial spots, indirect marketing is brilliantly positioned to leverage inexpensive and effective online communication channels.
There can be some pitfalls to near constant communication with customers and potential customers.
But when done right, indirect marketing can create long-lasting relationships that keep revenue coming long after any coupon sale could.
1. Moody’s Analytics
Rapper the Weeknd (Twitter) said that “being forgotten is man’s greatest fear and staying relevant is a handicap for most”.
Rapper, The Weeknd aka Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye
Unfortunately, relevance is also a necessity for any business.
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.
In this context, value is not necessarily monetary.
Moody’s, the preeminent service and research company for investor financials, is making itself valuable to consumers by offering finance courses online.
“Moody’s Analytics is a subsidiary of Moody’s Corporation established in 2007 to focus on non-rating activities, separate from Moody’s Investors Service. It provides economic research regarding risk, performance and financial modeling, as well as consulting, training and software services.”
This is indirect marketing at its best.
Without ever saying the words, Moody’s reminds the consumer that it is the most knowledgeable in its field. This is how you build total authority.
2. Scholastic
One defining characteristic of indirect marketing is that it is omnidirectional. There is participation from the consumer that goes beyond printing a coupon.
Scholastic Home Page – Reading Club
A staple in children’s book publishing, Scholastic Books is using the social network site Pinterest very well in its indirect marketing approach.
“Scholastic Corporation is an American publishing, education and media company known for publishing, selling, and distributing books and educational materials for schools, teachers, parents, and children. Products are distributed to schools and districts, to consumers through the schools via reading clubs and fairs, and through retail stores and online sales.” – Wikipedia
Its Pinterest boards include fun, interactive topics, such as Book Bling and Hosting a Book Bash.
Not only does the Pinterest board keep Scholastic relevant as a book publisher, it lets the users place their ideas, which creates a type of dialogue between the company, consumers and potential customers.
3. Listerine
The mouthwash company’s campaign is a mix of great indirect marketing and a cautionary tale.
“Listerine is a brand of antiseptic mouthwash product. It is promoted with the slogan “Kills germs that cause bad breath”. Named after Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, Listerine was actually developed in 1879 by Joseph Lawrence, a chemist in St. Louis, Missouri.” – Wikipedia
Before 2005, Listerine mouthwash ads made the claim that it could replace flossing as an effective way of preventing tooth decay.
Listerine – Cool Mint
In one massive indirect marketing swoop, Listerine convinced consumers that its mouthwash was as good as flossing.
Like all great indirect marketing, the campaign took on a life of its own and made the Listerine brand name synonymous with all mouth wash.
The Listerine lawsuit in 2004 deemed the ads as misleading, forcing the company to stop running them, but the campaign had already done its job.
A class action civil suit was ultimately thrown out in 2010 because the judge found the claim overly broad since most people had not seen the relatively short-run ads.
4. Toms
Social responsibility is another of the indirect marketing features.
Toms shoes – social responsibility company – One For One
Toms Shoe Company (Twitter) used this to gain great leverage as well as do some good for children in need.
“The company was founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, an entrepreneur from Arlington, Texas. It designs and sells shoes based on the Argentine alpargata design as well as eyewear. When Toms sells a pair of shoes, a new pair of shoes is given to an impoverished child, and when Toms sells a pair of eyewear, part of the profit is used to save or restore the eyesight for people in developing countries.” – Wikipedia
As an indirect marketing method, philanthropy is a great way to get brand recognition, positive perception and increased loyalty without spending a cent on advertorial marketing.
5. The Hustle
Coupons are not fun. The engagement associated with indirect marketing is fun.
Is it stuff that you would line the virtual parakeets cage with or is it something that is going to make a difference?
While it is important to have a website that is updated regularly, it is more important to put out 4 killer posts a year than 365 pieces of mindless dribble.
Use your social media account to toss out tidbits and hints to your audience. However, leave your website for the content with teeth and fangs.
This is the content that will be shared and linked to over and over again. It is the content that makes amateur bloggers into masters of their domain!
4) Become An Online “Bum”
Early in your online career, you are going to have to get use to sleeping on the couches of many other websites.
It is an opportunity to get the exposure you need and to build your own site.
You do this through guest posting and while it may seem like everyone and their Nana are doing it, it is still a viable option.
However, you need to be selective with the sites you plan to post on.
Choose only high authority sites that are going to help your name become more famous. For these sites, you will want to create content that is incredible.
While it seems like a step backward in creating such good content for other sites, it is a small price to pay for authority.
5) Choose A Professional Design
While your mom may love that free theme you are using, it is not going to fly with an online audience.
They expect you to be an authority and a professional. There are many professional themes available online.
A few hundred dollars (or less) to start. That is a reasonable price to pay to be seen as an authority. You can build from there. They key is this: Start Simple.
However, if you are looking for a way to step things up a notch, hire a professional web designer. Consider getting professionally developed sites added to your portfolio.
In order to be seen as an authority, you have to brand yourselves so people will take notice.
While using a premium theme is a step up, it is still a theme thousands of other online professionals are using. Search engines see this as a “footprint” too.
Hire a designer and come up with a plan that is going to help set your site apart from all the millions of sites that are online.
Choose to make your site unique and professional look for your niche or field of expertise. Add tools and content. Ask this question: What is my audience asking about? Then proceed to answer those questions. TIP: Write an e-book and give it away!
6) Your Own Property Online
Just like there is an importance of having a real theme so is the same as having a professional domain and hosting account. And, don’t use me @ gmail or yahoo, or worse, aol.com. That just lacks professionalism.
While it is fine to start out with WordPress, Tumblr or Medium, you have to grow up and play with the big boys at some point. A domain is going to set you back about $10 for the year while hosting is about $4 a month.
People will not see you as an authority if your site is owned by another company.
Again it is all about perception online and how you want people to see you. By building a site on someone else’s platform, you are only building links and authority to their site, which they do not need.
Celebrity Maker Clint Arthur started simple. You can too.
Take the time to get your own professional URL and build all of your links to that site.
7) Promote Yourself – Not Affiliate Products
At this stage of the game, the only thing you should be promoting is yourself. There should be no ads or affiliate links in your content.
Let people know who you are and what you stand for before you start selling.
In fact, there should not even think about promoting products until you have a large following. Or at minimum, a passionate list of followers that you regularly engage with.
If you know a good product, let people know, just don’t link to it with an affiliate link. Again, this may seem counterproductive to you, but it will help your authority.
People will see that you are simply not another marketer looking to make a quick buck off them.
The best way to start promoting yourself to an audience is through social media and blog commenting.
Direct outreach is a good way to go too – assuming you have quality things to share, and don’t spam.
Look for questions that you can answer thoughtfully. Once again it is not about spamming your website all over the Internet.
It is about giving people helpful information that they can use to solve a problem or create a better life.
By not promoting products early on and choosing to help people you are setting the stage to become the ultimate authority in your niche.
CONCLUSION:
How to become an authority/celebrity online:
That is all there is to becoming an authority.
Don’t you wish it could be that easy in real life?
These steps can be performed in any order that you see fit.
If it does not apply to you, simply skip over it and make your way to awesomeness even faster. The one thing to remember is you are not going to be an overnight authority, it does take time and persistence to do so.
Implement just one step or all 7 and you will be on the way of becoming an authority in the eyes of your audience.
Need a branding and content marketing authority boost? See below:
