Get More Hours In Your Day: How Marketing Automation Turns Back Time Posted on January 6, 2022January 3, 2022 by Allie Wolff A day in the life of a marketer is akin to a juggling act. You have to plan out the day, check emails and respond to anything relevant, conduct a morning huddle with the team, monitor campaign performance, schedule social media posts, and more. While these tasks are critical, they can also be overwhelming and consume a huge share of your time. Fortunately, marketing automation helps you eliminate repetitive tasks and focus more of your time on high-value items on your to-do list and big-picture marketing plan. In this article, we’ll dissect how marketing automation helps reduce the amount of “things” you need to do in a day, turning back the clock and creating time so you can get more high-priority items accomplished. Daily Tasks that Marketing Automation Makes Simpler 1. Lead Scoring Lead scoring entails assigning leads a score in a bid to set apart more qualified leads from low-fit prospects. It’s an intricate and time-consuming process when done manually, but setting up workflows and triggers within your marketing automation software updates the lead lifecycle and saves you hours. You set up automated rules and use the tagging feature to score leads based on how they interact with your channels. For example, you can tell BenchmarkONE to add a “CRM” tag to contacts that frequently visit the product page on your CRM website. You can then configure automated rules such that when a lead with a “CRM” tag attains a score threshold, they are automatically added to the leads pipeline. Once the process is automated, you don’t have to lift a finger to score leads, saving you tons of tedious work. Breakdown To manually score your leads, you’ll want to first calculate your lead-to-customer conversion rate so you can use it as a baseline. New Customers / # of leads generated Next, take into consideration certain qualifiers, like industry, job title, marketing budget, actions they take on-site, etc., to help you to determine which are more desirable. Consider how many of your leads with those same attributes become customers to help you. From there, you’ll want to figure out the actual close rate for each qualifier. Determine how many people become customers or qualified leads with those qualifiers. Lastly, compare that to your lead-to-customer conversion rate. If it’s higher, you’ll know those qualifiers should get a higher score. As you can see, this process requires time and detail. First, you need to make sure you have all the information you need, and then you have to do your calculations and assign your lead scores. With that in mind, let’s estimate that manually scoring one lead can take you approximately 20 minutes and that, on average, you generate 30 leads a week. 20 x 30 = 600 / 60 = 10 hours 2. Lead Nurturing Once leads enter the pipeline, the next step is to convert them into customers. Lead nurturing can consume a lot of hours, especially if you’re dealing with hundreds or even thousands of leads. However, with BenchmarkONE, you could set up a drip-email campaign to send emails to leads when they perform a specific action. You could deliver targeted messages to leads based on their score, pages they visit, filling out a form, or position in the marketing funnel. Doing so saves you time and ensures you deliver messages to the right prospect at the right time. The result? You’re able to capitalize on the right moments instead of overlooking them because you’re busy doing other things. Breakdown Let’s stick with the 30 leads a week model and assume an email takes approximately 10 minutes to personalize and send. You’ll also want to consider the additional emails you’ll be sending within your drip campaigns. Let’s say you go with five emails per lead total. 10 x 5 = 50 x 30 = 1,500 / 60 = 25 hours 3. Campaign Promotion One of your roles as a marketer is to amplify your promotions and brand awareness through campaigns, content creation, and social media. These processes involve a lot of moving parts, and often need to work together to ensure your promos go as smoothly as possible. We covered email campaigns in point number two. However, email campaigns are just one side of the coin. Your social campaigns are just as important as they help you reach a wider audience engaged on other platforms. When we get busy, things fall through the cracks, and more often than not, social media gets neglected for other things. But when you are able to prioritize social media, you’re not only able to grow your audience; you’re able to take advantage of posting times that will yield higher engagement. Each social channel works differently. For example, to get the best results on Facebook, you should publish posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8.00 AM and 12.00 PM and LinkedIn on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9.00 AM. If you’re busy doing other things at these times, you’ll lose out on peak engagement blocks that could ultimately make your campaigns super successful. Automating social media is key because it ensures you’re not overlooking peak posting times and that you’re saving time with your social media strategy. Some marketing automation tools include social publishing and scheduling capabilities, while others integrate with social media software, allowing you to access your channels within the same platform. Whatever situation you find yourself in, utilizing a social media scheduler is an absolute must. Statistics show that scheduling posts all at once can save you up to six hours a week, and maintaining a consistent social presence bodes well for potential new followers and customers. 4. Collaboration Collaboration keeps marketing teams firmly fixed and working towards a common goal. While it’s indispensable, some aspects could be automated to save time for other high-value tasks. Take team meetings, for instance. Meetings follow a near-identical process: you schedule the meeting, invite other team members, prepare the agenda, and finally, have the meeting. High-value meeting-related tasks, like planning the agenda, can take at least twenty minutes. According to the latest statistics, marketing executives hold 12 meetings per week. With that amount of weekly meetings, the agenda planning alone takes four hours. However, with an all-in-one CRM, you can cut back on meeting time altogether. An all-in-one CRM is a tool that has marketing automation capabilities and CRM wrapped into one seamless package. Your sales and marketing team can have access to all your customer data and interactions, keeping them aligned and cutting down on catch-up time regarding your priority leads and accounts. Statistics show 71% of meetings are ineffective, which means that eight out of those 12 meetings executives hold a week aren’t actually necessary. By trimming the fat and eliminating those eight needless touch bases, you’d save two hours and forty minutes a week. Save Over 8 Hours a Day After adding up the hours saved and dividing it by five (assuming you only work five days a week, that is), the hours saved by marketing automation is astounding. Marketing has numerous aspects that could be automated to save time. We just highlighted a few of these tasks to give you a sneak peek into the time-saving benefits marketing automation affords you. It’s important to note, however, that these numbers are mostly estimates based on our predictions of how long these tasks should take the average marketing professional. Some people may take more or less time to complete the various tasks we covered, and some teams may be larger or smaller, which also can contribute to efficiency. Either way, marketing automation truly does save you a ton of time, and as marketers, small business owners, and company leaders, who couldn’t use that?
How To Ace Your Live Streams: A Checklist Posted on January 5, 2022December 28, 2021 by Guest Author Did you know that more than 90% of consumers increased their online video consumption in 2020? And nine out of ten of them want to see more videos from brands and businesses. Video content plays an important role in marketing these days, and if you’re not creating it, you’re missing out on excellent marketing potential. Live streams are a great way to use video marketing to reach your audience more personally. You’ll get to be more interactive, and your viewers will feel more connected to your brand. However, people have a very low tolerance for bad live streams. You’ll have to wow your audience right from the start or risk losing their interest. With that in mind, we’ve compiled an easy-to-understand guide you can read through to ensure your live streams are always amazing and hit the right spot for your audience. How Live Streaming Works Before we go into how to ace your live streams, let’s quickly determine how a live stream works. Technically, live streams are a way to deliver a video file to viewers a bit at a time from a remote location. The streaming video is sent over the internet in real-time and doesn’t have to be recorded beforehand. It is much more complicated to edit than pre-recorded content. This form of video creation is done by many different kinds of businesses, from pro chefs to fashion houses. You can do it too, just follow our checklist and allow room for creativity. A 6-Point Live Stream Checklist If you’ve decided that live streams are just what your marketing plan needs, you’ll love the advice we dish out here. The following checklist is in question form and is meant to help you determine whether or not you will be able to nail your live stream. You can use this checklist whenever you want to create a live stream and even add more questions tailored to your brand and business purposes. 1. Have You Finished Planning Your Event? Although many live streams seem spur-of-the-moment (and some of them are), most of them are planned ahead of time. Even live shows are planned in advance to ensure the best entertainment and avoid technical issues. You need to put the same kind of planning into your live streams that these shows do, or you’ll have a messy event that could go very wrong very quickly. A chaotic live stream may sound interesting, but it won’t have the same effect a well-planned one would. There are several factors to keep in mind when you plan your live stream. Who is your target audience? What kind of content do they want to see? Also, keep in mind that if your audience isn’t local, you’ll have to factor in time differences. Special holidays and festivals may also not be relevant to everyone in your audience. Buzzfeed managed to get more than 800K live viewers for their video about a watermelon because they chose an interesting title. Source You also need to plan around the platform that you choose to use. Research which platforms are best for your audience to ensure they actually get to see your content. Choose the best possible location for your stream as well. No one wants to watch an inferior stream negatively affected by the location (poor signal, weather interruptions, etc.). The lighting must be just right, the guests (if you have any) must be comfortable, and it shouldn’t be possible for passersby to cause an interruption of the stream. You should avoid shooting your live stream in a noisy area as well. Your audience won’t find it entertaining if they’re being screamed at by the host and can hear other people doing whatever they’re doing in the background. 2. Have You Chosen Your Platform? Your platform is very important — whatever you choose will be influenced by the goals you want to achieve. Here’s a look at the most popular live stream platforms and what they tend to be best for. YouTube Live If your aim is to boost revenue, YouTube Live is where you’ll want to be. Setting up an account and getting started is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t be too difficult. You can teach a class, host a live Q&A and even stream an event such as a music show with relative ease using YouTube Live. Also, make sure you keep in mind SEO practices that will ensure your YouTube video ranks in search results. Instagram Live You’ll find Instagram Live within the Instagram Stories Feature, and you can save the video content you create to your Stories. When using Instagram Live, your audience can engage with you through comments and likes as you stream, also growing your followers. Instagram is great for engagement, brand reach, and brand loyalty. It’s a popular platform as well, with roughly 500 million users interacting with it each day. Facebook Live videos shared on Facebook get a lot more interaction than traditional videos, so if you’re already active on the platform, you might as well make use of the live stream feature. It can go a long way to helping you grow your social media audience easily and effectively. You can also promote your live streams in advance, ensuring your audience knows when to tune in. After Facebook’s interface changed, using the live stream feature is easy and can be done right from the mobile Facebook app. TikTok Live TikTok is known for being awesome for short-form video content (a big marketing trend this year), and the platform also makes it easy to host live streams. It’s a great way to boost engagement and increase brand reach. All you have to do is open the app, select the plus sign (which is at the bottom of the screen), enter the name of your stream, and start your event. Viewers can engage with you by liking the stream and leaving comments, to which you can respond in real-time. TikTok Live is easy to use, and the platform promises that you’ll be able to grow your audience when using this feature. Twitter Live If you want to reach a wider audience than just your following, Twitter Live could be just what you need. The platform makes it easy to share and promote content to a larger audience. And once something gains traction on Twitter, it can easily go viral and get you a lot more views and engagement than you expected. You can go live straight from the mobile app. These are the most well-known live stream platforms; there are several other options if they don’t meet your requirements. You can use Twitch, Livestream, or Periscope as well. 3. Have You Prepared Your Equipment? The equipment you use is also of high import. Using inferior equipment will result in poor quality live streams that won’t be entertaining to watch. Laptop Using a laptop for live streams is fairly common. It comes with all the stuff you need: a camera, microphone, and can connect to the internet. If you’re on the move a lot, then having a laptop suited for remote work and live streams is also important. Keep in mind, though, that most laptops don’t have very impressive cameras or microphones, so you may have to use other equipment along with your laptop. Camera The camera you use should be able to capture audio and visuals very well. You may have to spend quite a bit of money on investing in a good camera, but it’s worth every penny. The better quality camera you use, the better your live stream will be. Microphone If you don’t want to rely on the microphone that comes with your laptop (or phone), you’ll have to get an external one. It’s a good idea to opt for one that is able to eliminate noise interruptions with in-built features such as the pop filter. Always test your microphone before a live stream to ensure it’s in working condition. Internet Access It goes without saying that you’ll need internet access to host and stream your event. Typically, you’ll need 6 Mbps for 720p videos and about 13 Mbps for 1080p videos. Go for as stable a connection as you can get. Recording Software When it comes to marketing, you’ll have to get used to using all kinds of software. Just like recording podcasts remotely requires specific software, recording live streams also needs certain types of software. When using an external camera, you’ll have to use encoding software for your recording to convert your camera’s footage into a format that the platform you use for streaming can understand. 4. Have You Prepped Your Guest Speakers? Having guest speakers is an excellent way to add extra flavor to your live streams. However, if your speakers aren’t prepped well enough, you could end up with some really awkward silence, and not in a funny way. Plan the questions that you want to ask your guests and give them to your guest speaker(s) so they can prepare their answers in advance. It may not be very spontaneous but doing so is better than having dumbfounded silences or guests who say ‘um’ and ‘ah…’ a lot. Allow your speakers to plan everything they want to say and do ahead so they won’t be as nervous when the camera starts recording. Be sure that you also know precisely what you’re going to say and do ahead of time, so there are no boring moments in your live stream. 5. Have You Cleared Up Your Shooting Location? Once you have chosen your location, it’s crucial that you prep it as well. You need a location that is well-lit and doesn’t have a lot of noise going on. Hosting a live stream at night in a pub with dim lighting, for example, isn’t the best idea. Your viewers won’t be able to see what’s happening very well, and there will be a lot of background noise. You should clear up the location, so there are no distractions to ensure the viewers’ focus will be on you. Don’t have anything behind you that can make them forget that you’re in the shot in the first place. A green screen might be a great idea to make your location a bit more personalized to the theme or topic of the stream. It’s a great idea to also do a site survey of your planned location. A detailed map of the area and information on things like where you’ll be able to plug in your equipment is essential. Expect the unexpected and plan for it. If you’re traveling to a location, go there extra early and pack backups of everything you can. Bring back-up batteries for the camera and lots of water — dehydration can ruin an otherwise brilliant live stream. Also, remember to keep an eye on the weather forecast. Even then, it’s a good idea to have some sort of backup plan in case it rains, and you need to protect your equipment. 6. Have You Done a Dry Run? If you want to make sure your live stream is a success, do a dry run ahead of time. Just like dress rehearsals ensure that a theatre show is 100% perfect, a dry run of your live stream will help you create the best content possible. Doing a dry run will also point out any issues that might pop up or any points in the agenda that need some attention. You will be able to avoid technical (and potentially embarrassing) mishaps. Sure, improv is funny, but it won’t do so well unless you’re aiming for that kind of content. Once you’re satisfied, you can start promoting your live stream with confidence. You can promote on your social media platforms to get started, and you can promote your event on your brand’s blog as well if you have one. Blogs are great for promotion purposes (and marketing in general), especially if you’re able to add expert insights to your articles. Do Follow Ups After Your Live Streams Once you’ve finished your live streams, you should follow up with those who attended the event. Thanking them for their time will make them feel valued, and they will be more interested in your future events. You can also ask them for reviews that can help those who didn’t attend regret missing out and ensure more interest for the next event. Now the ball is in your hands — use the steps you learned about here to plan your next live stream and impress your viewers once again! Author Bio Zoe is a content marketing strategist for SaaS brands like FollowUpBoss, Mention.com and more. Bylines: Ecwid, ProProfs, Score, etc. On the personal front, Zoe is a pho enthusiast and loves traveling around the world as a digital nomad.
What are Unified Communications and How Do They Improve Collaboration in Your Small Business? Posted on December 29, 2021December 29, 2021 by Guest Author Technology breakthroughs have significantly contributed to the development of new and improved kinds of human contact. Consequently, people demand the best experience when engaging with others. Your employees, customers, and brand partners expect the best communication and collaboration possible. Thanks to modern technology, you can provide a unified experience, putting everything your employees require in one location, from video to material exchange and online chatting. You can get to the apps, resources, and records you need at any time, from any location, and on any device. It’s called unified communications. When considering the basics of running your small business, you should definitely add unified communications to your list. Let’s dive into what unified communications are, the benefits they come with, and the features to look for. What Is Unified Communications? Unified communications (UC) combines several business communication systems – such as audio calling, video conferencing, texting, attendance, file transfer, and so on – into one simplified interface to optimize user experience performance. UC technology enables a user to smoothly shift from one form of communication to another inside the same session. Many UC structures also interconnect with third-party business tools to improve data and resource centralization and processes. UC technology enables the unification of systems that provide real-time and delayed communication, ensuring that users on both sides have simple, quick access to all required tools in a standardized setting from any location and device. Many UC solutions incorporate team collaboration capabilities with messaging-oriented workflows and collaborative features like real-time file transfer and commenting. These advanced UC systems are also known as unified communications and collaboration systems (UCC). With remote work being more and more prevalent, especially right now, having tools that create efficiencies and unify your communication efforts is a must. How Does Unified Communications Work? UC platforms rely on various back-end systems to function. These systems operate in the background to provide a seamless user experience. Back-end infrastructure could include gateways, a UC platform/server, a visual overpass for teleconferencing, and a private branch exchange network or a VoIP system. While back-end systems enable unification, the front-end user gives access to all linked apps and services. Communication vs. Collaboration: Are They the Same? Having a communication plan is essential, especially for remote small businesses. But, a communication plan can take many different shapes, so it’s important to know which will serve your small business the best. The majority of businesses have: External Communication Strategy: This approach focuses on improving communication with customers, investors, and vendors. External communication plans usually embrace multiple channels, covering everything from VoIP to social networks. Internal Communication Strategy: This approach focuses on keeping personnel connected. It allows remote employees to interact with in-office colleagues via videoconferencing, and it provides real-time message communication. Internal communication, like external communication, frequently employs several channels. Something that sets the internal communication strategy apart from the external is that it incorporates collaboration. Collaboration, unlike communication, is about constructively working together towards achieving shared goals. For example, communication is when you phone someone using a VoIP channel to discuss an upcoming project. But, if you commence sharing screens and altering a document together while you’re chatting, that’s collaboration. Understanding the Benefits of UC for Collaboration UC is frequently praised for boosting team performance and allowing more interaction and engagement than the old phone-only method. And, it’s useful for everyone. Whether you’re the CEO, in customer service, or a department manager, UC is absolutely crucial across all levels of the organization. Certain UC technologies, such as webinar software, do more than just improve communication. They can help your small business generate leads, lower travel expenses, increase productivity, and improve engagement. Thanks to UC solutions, people can work from the office, their residences, or on the road utilizing several devices, including desktop and laptop computers as well as smartphones. The advantages of UC can also be extended to a company’s customer base. Users can immediately engage with businesses that combine UCaaS systems with social media, client-centered applications, or call center tools, offering real-time feedback and efficient infrastructure to maximize client satisfaction. What Features Should You Look for in UCaaS? There are several significant features included in all UCC software. These essential features are created to improve collaboration across all levels of a business. 1. Enterprise Telephony Enterprise telephony is a business phone infrastructure that includes services like call waiting, three-way calling, line transfer, and call redirection. With a centralized enterprise telephony system, you can easily handle inbound, outbound, and internal phone conversations across all business operations. Unlike a standard corporate phone system, which just allows you to make and receive calls, UC integrates cell service, video conferencing, group texting, SMS, fax, and other methods of communication into a single platform. 2. Meetings (Audio/Video/Web Conferencing) Voice over IP is a comprehensive solution for businesses to take advantage of the cloud’s capabilities and a reliable internet connection. VoIP not only provides businesses with more functionality from their phone connections but also saves them money. Face-to-face discussions are highly beneficial to a digital workforce, so ensure that your UC solution allows you to use high-quality video conferencing with HD video and audio. Most web video conferencing software qualifies as UC as they maintain offering communication services in addition to their primary product of hosting online video meetings. Videoconferencing is a powerful technology that practically every UC provider has incorporated into their offering in some form. 3. Unfiled Messaging Two major advantages of combining multiple systems into one are increased productivity and better responsiveness. Employees spend less time learning new procedures and are better prepared to respond to clients. Additionally, activities taken on multiple forms of communication are synchronized, so if a worker hears a voicemail and answers via email, both channels are adjusted to reflect those activities. The most significant advantage of unified messaging is cost reductions. Organizations are not required to provide IT assistance, personnel, and maintenance for a voicemail system created by one company and an email system designed by another. 4. Instant Messaging and Availability The UC experience includes instant messaging as a standard feature. We live in a fast-paced society where people require quick access to information. Instant messaging lets people connect in real-time over the internet using IM software. Prior to instant messaging, we were dependant on someone’s availability to take a phone call, their physical presence, or the speed of email response. Now, thanks to instant messaging, employees know which team members are available at any given time and can get the support they seek to finish work or assist clients. 5. Mobility Sophisticated mobility technologies arose as one of the best ways to allow scattered personnel to communicate and smoothly run a business, regardless of the various settings they were required to rotate among. Mobility also means having access to and utilizing the features and functions of a company’s unified communications system from any place and on any device. Communications services that offer strong mobility not only support the new hybrid workplace but also boost productivity in ways that will last long after this health crisis has passed. 6. Communication-Enabled Business Processes Thanks to CEBP, communication capabilities are smoothly integrated with enterprises’ processes, applications, and communication channels. The important word here is “smoothly,” meaning that end-users only need minimal training and effort to communicate successfully. CEBP has shown significant potential, and if adequately adopted, offered, and delivered, it will transform the way businesses interact internally and with their consumers, regardless of their size or financial resources. Individuals and business associates use communication and collaboration technologies to share information in real-time over various communication channels. Unified Communications has become a vital element of today’s corporate environment. Simultaneously, the number of employees working from home rather than at the office continues to rise. Now is the moment to upgrade your company’s communication infrastructure to make it future-ready, and we hope this article can help you bring a dash of valuable and new technology into your business. Author Bio Mitko Ivandjikov is a professional outreach specialist at Intercoolstudio, working with the team to increase their visibility and grow their customer base. He’s also an avid sports fan who spends his free time watching, reading about, or playing basketball. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
What is Your Target Audience and How to Find Them Online Posted on December 28, 2021January 26, 2022 by Jess Lunk Understanding your target audience is step one for most small businesses looking to get their marketing and sales efforts off the ground. But nailing down specifics of who you should be selling to isn’t always so straightforward. In fact, many businesses find that they think they have an idea of who their ideal customers are, but after they get off the ground and start acquiring some business, things change. Shooting in the dark or making assumptions won’t cut it. You have to take a calculated approach to establish your target audience if you want to be as accurate as possible. If you aren’t selling to the right people, then you won’t acquire new business. And if you don’t acquire new business, then you may not make it a full year. But don’t worry. We’re here to help you figure out everything you need to know about your target audience and how to engage them. But first, let’s start with the basics. What is a Target Audience? A target audience is a group of people who are most likely to purchase your product or service. In other words, it’s a cluster of people with similar traits — the overriding one being they have a challenge that your product or service solves. Some of the other traits used to describe a target audience include: Age Gender Location Education background Consumption habits Purchasing power For example, let’s say you run a small, mobile dog grooming business with your business partner. You love dogs, and you specialize in treating each pet as a unique customer with unique needs. Your target audience would obviously be dog owners, but since you’re able to take your business to your customers, you can open up your target audience to specific locations and neighborhoods based on what you know about those areas. Doing a search for dog parks and pet-friendly apartment buildings can help you decide which neighborhoods are the most saturated with each and, therefore, would benefit most from your services. Marketing your product without a target audience in mind is aimless and will result in a ton of money wasted on fruitless marketing efforts. Identifying a target audience helps you see what you’re aiming for, thus boosting the chances of hitting your target every time. What’s the Difference Between Target Audience and Audience Personas? While identifying your target audience allows you to understand your ideal customers to deliver targeted campaigns, its scope is still a bit broad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s extremely useful information, but the more specific you define your ideal customers, the more effective you can market to them. An audience persona or buyer persona is a fictional character representing an individual customer interested in your product or service. Building buyer personas entails zeroing in on your target audience and using data-backed research to pinpoint the archetypes of your ideal customers. Some brands take it a step further and assign alliterative names to audience personas to make them memorable. Some of the data you can use to define personas include: Personal information: name, gender, age, and location Business background information: job title, who they report to, how they influence decision making within their company Challenges: pain points and frustrations impeding business goals, their biggest concerns, and what keeps them up at night Objectives: short and long-term goals, how their performance is measured, the problem they need solved Let’s take a deeper look at what these personas would look like by applying the previous example of the dog grooming business. To boost your chances of landing a sale, you’d want to zero in on specific members of the neighborhoods you’re targeting. 1. Work-From-Home Walter Key demographics: Works long hours from his office located within his apartment. Key psychographics: His dog, Benny is his best friend but his job is first priority. Challenges: With his busy work schedule, it’s hard for him to get Benny groomed on a regular basis. Would value additional care for Benny that wouldn’t require a lot of work on his end. 2. Dog Fanatic Fran Key demographics: Works for a PR agency and has an expendable income. Key psychographics: She is a perfectionist and takes very good care of all her possessions, including her beloved dog Mitzi. Challenges: She wants to find a dog grooming service that is reliable, trustworthy, and that offers a more consultative approach to her extra special pet. The Importance of Defining Your Target Audience So by now, you know identifying your target audience is super important. But let’s take a closer look at the specific things doing so will allow you to accomplish. Advertise More Effectively Meredith Hill once said, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” The last thing you want as a brand is to market to everyone because your message will be so generic that no one will hear you. And you definitely won’t stand out. Knowing your target audience means you understand their pain points and compelling desires. As a result, you can better focus your messaging to resonate with their specific needs, not the whole universe. Maximize Time and Resources Identifying your target audience allows you to avoid inefficiency. In other words, you won’t waste your marketing budget reaching customers unlikely to purchase your product or service. More than that, it leads to better use of time. That is, you spend more time nurturing high-quality leads and less time pursuing low-value prospects. Stronger Referral Base Focusing on a specific target group, speaking about the challenges they face, and offering solutions to those challenges can benefit your brand. It establishes you as an authority in your niche and could win you a loyal customer base. The more customers you’re able to please by way of meeting demands and building trust, the more likely those customers will be to refer you to their peers. And we all know that the best customers are those that are referred by your existing, loyal customers. How to Define Your Target Audience It’s time to put these ideas in motion. Here’s a three-step process you can follow to identify your target audience: 1. Analyze Your Product or Service Look at your product features to determine the specific needs it fulfills. Determine who has those needs. What benefits does your product or service offer? Does it create efficiencies? Does it improve the workflow for certain individuals? Does it eliminate a burden for a certain group of people? Are you offering a specific skill that not a lot of people have? If so, what kind of people would benefit from that skill? The answer to these questions will help you uncover who your ideal customers are. 2. Perform Competitor Analysis The chances are good that you’re not the first brand to do what you’re doing. Scope out brands that are already dominating the market and find out who their target audiences are. You could target the same group or zero in on a niche the competitors overlook, especially if your product or service has a feature that benefits that particular niche. 3. Study Your Existing Customers This won’t work for brand-new startups. However, if you’ve built a commendable customer base, you could dig into existing customers to identify your target audience. Gather and analyze historical data on your existing customers. Ask yourself: What are their job titles? Who do they report to? What problems made them turn to your product? How do they find answers to their problems? What social media sites do they frequent? Find commonalities that can help you depict your target audience. Dig deeper to establish psychographic traits like attitude, values, personalities, opinions, and values. Are there shared interests or characteristics? If yes, use them to create a profile of your ideal customers. 4. Leverage Market Research If you don’t have an existing customer base or want an outside perspective, a bit of DIY market research can help fill in the blanks about your target audience and ideal customer. Tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Surveys not only let you build market research surveys but allow you to survey a specific audience through their platform. Online Tactics to Engage Your Target Audience Once you identify your target customers, you need to market to them and draw them around your brand. To meet them where they are, you should use the following: Social Media Ads Globally, more than 3.6 billion people use social media. Your target audience hangs out on one of these platforms — and you already know the channel they frequent. For example, if you’re targeting Chief Executive Officer (CEOs), your best chance for success is posting paid social ads on LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you’re targeting women aged 18-24, consider Instagram a known favorite for that demographic. Placing Guest Content on Sites They Read In addition, during your target audience research, you identified how your ideal customers consume content. You also probably know (or have predicted) their favorite websites and podcasts. Creating high-quality content is crucial for any well-rounded marketing plan, so all you have to do to reach them is to write guest content to place on these websites or offer to be a speaker in the podcasts they follow. Partner with Brands That Have Similar Audiences Lastly, explore possible partnerships with brands that have a similar audience. These aren’t competitors, rather companies that provide services to the same people you provide services to. So, in the instance of the dog grooming business, a partnership with a local dog food company would be extremely beneficial. Identifying your target audience is a crucial step in writing your marketing plan and mapping out your overall business strategy. It’s a step that cannot be overlooked, so make sure you dedicate enough time to figuring it out, and as long as you use this guide, you’ll be doing so successfully.
The Basics of Running a Small Business Posted on December 22, 2021July 17, 2024 by Jonathan Herrick The nuts and bolts of starting a small business can seem overwhelming. You have to manage multiple tasks, from legal and intellectual property protection to sales and marketing. More often than not, the execution of these tasks shapes whether your business will take off or not. You’d like your business to take off and gain the means to grow revenue quickly. For that to happen, you have to get the hang of the basics of running a small business early on. Here are some of the fundamentals you should know about. 1. Make a Business Plan As Benjamin Franklin stated, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Put in a business context, if you don’t have a plan, success will remain elusive. Statistics have shown that entrepreneurs who enter the fray with a formal plan are 16% more likely to succeed. To give your business a high chance for viability, you have to create a solid business plan. The plan outlines your short and long-term goals, what you need to do to get there, steps along the way, and even helps anticipate unforeseen problems. It should answer questions such as: Why did we establish the business? Who is our target audience? What are our short and long-term goals? What are the possible costs and inputs for our business? (Salaries, rent, supplies, software development, insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc) It stipulates the strategies and timelines for each milestone (including mini-goals) and offers a benchmark upon which you can measure progress. Your business plan is a document you will reference time and time again. S it’s important that you put a lot of effort and thought into it. 2. Build a Marketing Strategy You can have a stunning product or service, but if your target audience doesn’t know about it, you’ll make no revenue. Your product or service won’t walk itself to the customer’s doorstep, not in the crowded marketplace with wall-to-wall noise. To inform your target customers about your product, you have to market it. You have to continually attract, build, and educate the target market about it. That can only happen if you plan and execute a solid marketing strategy. A marketing strategy should define your goals, such as product penetration, building brand awareness and identity, market development, and more. It should also be practical, measurable, and flexible enough to accommodate market changes along the way. 3. Craft a Proper Customer Acquisition Plan Customer acquisition is critical to the success of your business. Remember: no customers equals no business. So, if you want to keep your business sailing along, you have to master customer acquisition. In other words, you have to find and persuade potential customers to buy from your brand in a repeatable and measurable way. Keep in mind that acquiring new customers in the overcrowded market is easier said than done for various reasons. The greatest challenge is differentiating your business in a highly competitive niche, and the spiraling acquisition costs compound that problem. An excellent way to minimize the risk is to focus more on retaining existing customers. That’s because convincing existing customers to buy from your brand has a success rate of between 60-70%, whereas selling to a new customer has a success rate of 5-20%. 4. Hire the Right Talent During the inception stage, you may have to wear many hats to keep your business afloat. However, as you break even and expand, the need to hire employees will arise. Still, cutting operating costs should be a top priority to keep the business off the ground. To that end, you have to hire the right talent without inflating your wage bill. There are two ways to do that: Consider remote hiring. In an era where 46% of companies plan to adopt remote work permanently, you cannot step a foot wrong hiring remote talent. Offering remote work gives you a recruiting edge because 97.6% of employees prefer a flexible work model. Besides giving you a large pool of talent, it saves costs such as office rental charges and furnishings. Utilize freelancers and contractors. Freelancers give you an opportunity to source talent beyond your local market. Even better, hiring freelancers saves you both long-term recruiting and up-front costs. You won’t be paying a full-time salary, meaning you’ll sidestep the cost of paying benefits or retirement savings contributions. 5. Invest in Small Business Insurance The small business world is fraught with multiple unforeseen perils. Liability, property theft or damage, and natural disaster can occur when least expected. They can cause operations to grind to a halt or cause business closure in the worst-case scenario. Small business insurance offers a hedge against such things that could leave your business limping or grounded – for example, if a hurricane sweeps across your area and destroys your warehouse and everything in it. Insurance could provide compensation to replace packaging machines and inventory to bring operations back to life. Doing so protects your investments, helping ensure the business runs smoothly and stays on a course for success even after the rainy days. Grasp the Basics of Running a Small Business While many entrepreneurs start with exciting business ideas looking to take over the world, only a few hit that goal. Do you want to emulate the spectacular success stories of Uber, Bolt, Airbnb, and many others? It’s simple: grasp the basics of running a small business. Your brand may not grow to be a multi-billion dollar company, but having a plan and executing it well puts you on an upward trajectory.
Partnership Outreach Email Mistakes You Need To Stop Making Posted on December 21, 2021December 21, 2021 by Guest Author If you’re looking to grow your business, partnerships are an extremely valuable way for you to do so. Why? Well, partnerships can help to get your product in front of more people, bolster your team, and get access to resources. But how do you go about building strategic partnerships? You can’t just snap your fingers and expect that to happen, right? Luckily, email outreach continues to be a crucial way for you to build relationships and open lines of communication. While email outreach isn’t the only way to approach a partnership, it’s definitely worth considering as part of your strategy. You just need to have a killer elevator pitch. Why is Email a Crucial Aspect of Your Partnership Outreach? Perhaps you have a brand that’s so enticing that potential partners are falling over themselves to work with you. For most companies, however, ensuring fruitful partnerships can feel like wading through treacle. Small businesses and startups, in particular, have a tough time inking deals with potential partners. While they’re flush with potential, they’re short on the resources and experience needed to realize it. In these circumstances, however, email outreach can be a great way to get the ball rolling. An email is an excellent method of reaching out to influencers who may not be aware of your business. It can help you amass credibility from the get-go, opening up doors that would otherwise be closed. It’s also an affordable way to get started, costing you nothing more than time to research and write the emails. Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Doing Partnership Outreach When using email outreach to build your potential partnerships, mistakes can be made easily. You may think a follow-up is harmless; however, the approach could be off, or the outreach could be too frequent, and your recipients may think you’re bombarding them with messages that are hard to distinguish from spam. So how do you ensure your emails don’t get lumped in with unsolicited emails? Check out these partnership email outreach mistakes to avoid if you want more people to respond to your messages and partner with your small business or startup. 1. Not Researching Your Potential Partner Letting assumptions about your potential partner lead you into false “assessments” renders your outreach email seven shades short of the mark. Before you fire off any outreach emails, you’ve got to do your due diligence. Without careful preparation, your outreach email will come across as weak, insincere, and unprofessional. Getting to know your prospect will almost always result in a successful outcome. Because when you take the time to learn more about the person on the other end, the emails you send will be more authentic and reflect your genuine commitment to establishing a mutually beneficial partnership. Here’s an example of how to use research as an ice-breaker in your outreach email. Image Source The prospect was so impressed by how the email creator took the time to offer such individualized attention that she replied right away. Image Source 2. Using the Wrong Tone of Voice in Your Outreach Although email outreach is a great way to connect with potential partners, it can also send you tumbling down the slippery slope of catastrophe if you don’t keep your tone in check. It’s important to think about how you are communicating with your prospect. Are you being too pushy? Is your approach too formal? Or perhaps you’re being too casual? Using a tone that’s too informal can make you appear an amateur, while using a tone that’s too lofty can make you seem like an obnoxious salesperson. Both of these things work against your goal of building trust. As a rule of thumb, you should aim for a friendly, professional tone. An excellent way to accomplish this is by avoiding overused buzzwords and simply conversing with your potential partners on a human level. The tone of your email should also depend on the person you’re emailing. For example, C-level executives from large corporations will appreciate formality. On the other hand, a more relaxed tone would work better with mid-level startup employees. The right tone is vital for keeping your prospects engaged and helping them feel comfortable with you. 3. Using Too Much or Too Little Text in Your Email Body The point of an outreach email is to pique interest. With a lengthier message, your email may come across as being boring and will potentially get ignored. On the other side of the coin, if you don’t give a detailed enough overview, your recipient may think you are lazy. If you can hit the sweet spot where they get the most out of it without wanting to click the delete button, then you’re good. However, be sure not to let brevity be an excuse for lack of courtesy. It’s alright to thank someone for something or wish them well. Your potential partners are humans, after all. Just don’t let your pleasantries take precedence over your message. Here’s an example of an email outreach that’s as long as it needs to be — and no longer — while still getting the point across and demonstrating appreciation for the recipient. Image Source 4. Using Spammy Subject Lines Your recipient’s inbox is already flooded with emails. For that reason, you must make sure your email subject lines attract immediate attention. Let’s face it; recipients are more likely to open an email if the subject line is interesting. So make it good, but don’t go overboard. It should convey the tone of the email without giving too much away. Image Source Also, avoid sending generic blanket subject lines or using shortcuts and tricks. While this may seem like a good way to increase your open rates, the reality is that these sorts of emails don’t actually help you in any tangible way. It can even hurt your endeavors down the line. So make sure to avoid spam triggers and salesy wording – as both detract from your chances of being read. The Power of Partnership Outreach Getting started with partnerships can seem intimidating. You are facing off against businesses that are already established, who have the inside track on partnerships. But don’t let this deter you. Partnerships are about one thing: value. And if you focus on providing value to your partners, they will be incentivized to work with you. Just make sure you take the time to write a thoughtful, personal email to get the conversation started. Author Bio Ahmad Benny is a London-born lover of technology, eCommerce, and digital marketing in general. He loves learning, researching, and curating value nuggets to save you time, money and help you achieve your goals.
Remote Work Is Here to Stay — Why Your Company Should Get On Board and Tips for Going Remote Posted on December 16, 2021December 16, 2021 by Jonathan Herrick The pandemic is keeping businesses on their toes. While some things are going back to normal, other things are forever changed. Remote work being one of them. Between Upwork’s estimate that 26% of Americans will telecommute through the end of 2021 and their projection that by 2025 around 22% of us will still be working remotely, it’s clear that at least a fifth of Americans actually like working from home. Which is no surprise, considering the freedom and flexibility it brings, the time and money saved on commuting, and the mental health benefits some experience as a result of better work/life balance. Not everyone prefers remote work, so brick-and-mortar offices won’t become obsolete anytime soon, but the ability to work remotely either full- or part-time is fast becoming a requirement for many job-seekers, who are in the power seat as worker shortages continue. And attracting future employees is not the only reason it’s worth considering adjusting your work requirements to include some remote options — remote work has benefits for employers, too. How Remote Work Can Benefit Your Business: Better employee retention and recruitment. Happy employees are employees who stay, and offering flexibility can lead to more applicants for job openings (and higher quality, since the net can be cast wider). Lower overhead. Of course, you’ll likely need to maintain an office space for those employees who prefer to come in, and/or to meet with clients, but remote work can still cut your overhead on things like square footage, utilities, and equipment. Plus, if you go fully remote, you can rent a flex space at an office-share company and save even more — which is part of why nearly 70 companies, including big names like Microsoft and Facebook, have decided to embrace remote work permanently after the pandemic ends. Increased staff productivity. So you’re worried that, if left to their own devices, your employees will slack off or otherwise be less productive? Well, the statistics are against you there: in one University of Chicago study, 30% of respondents reported being more productive when working remotely, and a 2020 FlexJobs survey found that 51% of people were more productive working from home during the pandemic, due to factors like fewer distractions and interruptions, quieter environments, and less office drama. If you’re considering taking your business virtual and offering remote work on either a full- or part-time basis, don’t let the process intimidate you. We’ve got your back with our top tips for making the shift to telecommuting. Tips for Going Remote Equip Your Business With the Right Tools Finding and relying on the right technology is probably the most important first step you can make since good tech is the foundation of any successful remote business. To help with that, here are just a few of our favorites: Zoom — This one’s the classic pandemic tool, star of many memes and SNL skits for a reason, but you also have Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, and plenty of other virtual meeting options out there. BenchmarkONE — Look, you need a marketing automation software to consolidate all your sales and marketing efforts in one place. We think ours is the best in the business, but you can decide for yourself with a free account. Buffer — Your social media strategy needs a centralized control room too, and Buffer is a great option for scheduling posts ahead of time and working as a team asynchronously. Slack — Speaking of asynchronous, Slack is a great way to keep communication channels open across differing work schedules and time zones. Plus, there are reaction emojis for all those times that you want to agree to do an annoying task without having to actually say something enthusiastic (the thumbs-up and checkmark are your friends). Benchmark Email — Your marketing team will love you for this one, trust us. How else are you going to create a cohesive email strategy, with a consistent voice and effective targeting, from different locations across the country? An email marketing tool is a huge timesaver and a great way to ensure your outreach remains consistent even as your business shifts. Google Workspace — If you don’t already use a virtual document management system like Google Docs/Sheets, you’ll need one. These tools let different team members collaborate on the same document in real-time or asynchronously, with features like suggestions and comments to keep it all in order. Those are the must-haves, but there are more great tools to help you go remote on our blog! The bottom line is that you need tech that works for you, which makes going remote easier rather than harder. Communicate Clearly and Often Communication is a crucial part of developing trust when you work remotely or with remote employees and teams. Use all the digital tools at your disposal to stay abreast of what’s going on, run meetings (only the kind that couldn’t be an email, please), and stay connected throughout the day. Be careful with written communications, especially email. Although it’s great for relaying and receiving logistical and tactical information, updates on projects, quick questions and data sharing, it’s easy to create a web of long email chains that cause tasks and documents to get lost in the shuffle. Instead, try using project management tools like Slack or Basecamp to keep everyone on task and keep your email inbox clean. And, if the issue you’re dealing with is complex you should pick up the phone. If you’ve got a team that needs guidance or feedback as they tackle a challenge, video conferencing can work well. It’s important not to assume you’ll be contacted if a problem arises — check in regularly so that you aren’t chasing the ball when it starts rolling down the hill. Set Expectations and Goals Set clear goals and expectations for remote workers, including yourself. Lay out how you will support remote employees, how and when you will check-in. Make sure that if you have employees spending more time working outside the office than inside, that you have regularly scheduled phone calls or video conferences with them. Start the week with goal-setting — check-in with your remote workers to discuss what will be accomplished that week, and when and how you will connect to get updates on the progress of their work. As the business owner, if you prefer to work remotely you’ll have to set specific goals and expectations for yourself, deciding what will get done each day, week, and month. Whether you’re working from the office or remotely, you should always have evolving short-term goals and more stable, long-term ones. It might help you to stay on track by checking in with someone too — your business partner, a board member, or a coach — with whom you have a call every few days or once a week to make sure you’re hitting your goals and staying focused. Ask Questions — Lots of Them If you get an email or voicemail from an employee or your manager that is confusing, frustrating, or alarming, don’t complicate matters by shooting off an abrupt or equally confusing response. Take a minute to ask some clarifying questions, and be explicit, because you can’t just run down the hall to this person’s office and get a better explanation or interpret their facial expression or tone of voice. Try copying and pasting the exact part of their email that’s troubling you and asking questions specifically about that. The same technique works well on the phone too — repeat what was said that you don’t understand and then ask pointed questions. Define Metrics If you’ve got sales reps and other kinds of employees working remotely, make sure you are tracking sales metrics and monitoring their numbers regularly during the week. Numbers tell a story, and if they seem off, you can get on top of a developing issue quickly by finding out if there’s a deeper problem with the person — or the business. Numbers are also a way to know that an employee or team member is doing well, which you want to acknowledge and support. If those working remotely are trying to accomplish tasks that don’t have numerical targets, create project milestones so that employees with less concrete deliverables also have a way of measuring and illustrating their progress and successes. Don’t Treat Remote Employees Like Contractors or Freelancers Your remote workers still have career ambitions and are interested in growing with the company. Keep them in your sights — even if they are out of actual sight — for new projects and additional responsibilities. By fostering independence and rewarding their self-discipline and motivation with interesting new projects and more responsibility, you’ll build long-lasting loyalty among your staff. And if you’re the one doing the remote work, remember to act in the same way. You’re still running a business, so keep it professional. With more employees demanding remote work, and more and more companies agreeing that telecommuting has benefits for everyone involved, it’s clear that virtual work isn’t going anywhere. With clear communication, the right tools, and a positive attitude, going remote doesn’t have to be a struggle — and it just might be exactly what your business needs!
The 10 Most Important Web Metrics to Monitor for Your Business Website Posted on December 15, 2021December 9, 2021 by Guest Author Your business website is your center of operations. As far as your customers are concerned, your site is a reflection of your brand as a whole. And when you use your site to not only engage your potential customers but to also create revenue, it’s incredibly important that you understand how people relate to it. When you tap into your website structure and the journey your visitors take on your website, it can help you identify weak points in public-facing areas of the business, holes in your funnel, and missed conversion opportunities. This is why identifying and measuring the right web metrics is so important. What Are Web Metrics? Web metrics are numerical indicators of how well your website is performing and how it’s being used. Any data that can be measured and pertains to your website is a web metric. For example, the number of users your site receives in a given period is a web metric that can indicate the size of your customer base or the success of a marketing campaign. Web metrics are useful because they can help you to improve specific areas of your website that can, in turn,, impact your business in a larger way. For example, certain web metrics can help you uncover that a page on your site that isn’t converting is experiencing an error. By correcting the issue and making the page more user-friendly, you can not only improve conversions but keep customers coming back to that page to convert again and again. There are several ways you can collect web metrics, but the easiest and most efficient is to use your host’s inbuilt data collection abilities. If your site host doesn’t have these capabilities, there are options to purchase software that will collect this data for you. Top 10 Web Metrics to Monitor There are many metrics for your website that you can collect, but choosing the right ones will save on time and labor costs. These ten web metrics are among the most useful for making practical and effective changes to your website and business. 1. Average Time on Page This metric will tell you the average time a customer spends on each page of your site. How useful this metric is will depend on which area of your site it’s referring to. For example, imagine taking this metric for a long-form blog post on “How to Run a Successful Instagram Campaign.” Through a quick test, you establish that it takes seven minutes to read the post in its entirety and roughly two or three to skim the important information. Users spending under a minute on this page are likely deciding that this isn’t helpful to them. Given the specific nature of the title, you may need to re-examine your content creation strategy. In contrast, users spending far longer than seven minutes on this page may be struggling to understand certain concepts. This may indicate that you need to add more practical tips to your content. 2. Error Rate This metric will help you improve the general useability of your website. Image source Put simply; customers want a website that works. If your business page has a high error rate, you’ve likely got a lot of frustrated customers who may well be interested in your product or service but can’t access it. To lower your error rate, you need to look at possible causes. These can include: Too much pressure on the server Too many plugins Too much content on a page It’s always worth running useability tests on all pages of your site to reduce errors from the beginning. 3. Conversion Rate There are many ways to measure conversion rate, depending on what the desired customer action is. A conversion is when a site visitor completes a proscribed action, like making a purchase or signing up to a mailing list. The conversion rate of your site is the number of conversions compared to the total number of visitors. A high conversion rate indicates your brand messaging is effective and your sales funnel strong. If your analytics show a low conversion rate, consider why that might be. For example, the mailing list. Are you showing mailing list pop-ups at the appropriate point? Customers are more likely to sign up to a mailing list that they perceive as providing helpful advice or a reward of some kind. To improve your conversion rate, try using pop-ups on pages with the most useful information, like your blog page. 4. Number of Visitors This can seem like a vanity metric, but it’s anything but if you know how to use this data. The number of visitors to your site will tell you how large your active audience is. You can compare this to the size of your target audience generally to see how competitive you are in your niche. This metric is useful for determining the success of web or content marketing campaigns too. If your visitor numbers increase drastically after a campaign, it’s likely been successful. If visitor numbers increase but sales don’t, you can analyze which pages are common exit pages and examine these for weakness. Repeat visitors indicate your brand messaging is strong and you’re retaining customers. 5. Device Used It’s always a good idea to know what kind of device your customers are using to access your website. This is because desktop (accessed from a computer or laptop) and mobile (accessed from a tablet or smartphone) sites often have different layouts and won’t function on the other type of device. Mobile traffic as a percentage of total web traffic. Image source. Most websites will have a functional desktop version because it will have been built using a desktop site. However, if you see that a lot of your customers are coming from mobile devices, consider investing resources into optimizing your mobile site. This includes making sure the layout is clear and any content loads quickly. You should also consider whether your customers are coming to you through a mobile browser or an app. Your app retention rate will be heavily affected by poor functionality. 6. Loading Speed Related to error rate, a poor loading speed may affect whether your customers stay on your website for more than a few seconds. You could produce a great product or service, but you need to get customers to see it in the first place. They need to read about its benefits and see what industry advice you have. All of this involves making sure that website visitors have a positive first impression. To fix a slow-loading website, there are a few things you can do. Of course, it won’t always be a problem on your end, but it’s best to have your website at peak functionality. Plugins can often cause a slow website, particularly when they take up a lot of room in the server. You can disable these to see if it improves your loading speed. You should also make sure you don’t overload pages with large content files like videos or large images. A functional website is the bedrock of any customer nurturing campaign. If this is part of your strategy, you’ll want to pay particular attention to direct functionality metrics like loading speed. 7. Exit Pages These pages are the final pages your visitors are on before they leave your site. Some pages will have naturally high numbers of exits – a sales confirmation page or a stand-alone blog post – but others can indicate a problem. If you’re finding exit pages that aren’t at a natural endpoint, you should consider optimizing these pages to stop visitors from leaving in the middle of their visit. For example, test the pages for functionality and useful information. 8. Session Duration This metric differs from the average length of time on a page because session duration refers to a user’s time on your website as a whole. A very short session duration could indicate your sales funnel isn’t strong. Customers could be facing difficulty logging in, finding the right information, or the right page. You can use this metric to find weak points on your website. Ideally, you’ll know where customers are coming to your site from and which page is causing them to leave. 9. Requests Per Second This is the number of requests your server receives per second. A high number of requests indicates you have a lot of people trying to access a certain part of your website. Image source The major benefit of this metric is being able to foresee and prevent future functionality issues. A high number of requests means you should work on making sure your server can cope with these to avoid time-outs and error messages. 10. Bounce Rate Finally, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who enter your site and leave after a single-page session. A high bounce isn’t always a cause for concern. For example, if a helpful blog post is getting a lot of traffic, this may invite a higher bounce rate. However, if a page in your sales funnel has a high bounce rate, there may well be a fault on this. Final Thoughts Tracking web metrics for your business website will help you optimize it for customer use, promoting good customer relationships and potentially increasing conversions. If testing for each of these metrics is a time pressure your business can’t afford, it’s possible to automate testing of certain elements of your site. Places where this might be beneficial include simple metrics like visitor numbers, the device used, and requests per second. You should act on these metrics if they indicate your business website is underperforming. This is a simple way of making your company more competitive. Author Bio Kate Passby is the Head of Marketing at Global App Testing, a trusted and leading end-to-end functional solution for challenges in testing in agile. Kate has over eight years of experience in the field of marketing, helping brands achieve exceptional growth. She has extensive knowledge of brand development, lead and demand generation, and marketing strategy — driving business impact at its best. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
Why Agencies Need to Prioritize Their Marketing Posted on December 9, 2021October 21, 2022 by Katie Culp Is your marketing agency prioritizing client campaigns at the expense of your own? We get it — when you’re running a business, especially a small business, you want to do everything that you can to keep clients happy and coming back. It’s your client-focused efforts that keep the lights on and directly impact your bottom line, after all, and it’s tough to retain customers if you’re not putting out exceptional work. If this sounds like your agency, you’re not alone. Many marketing agencies find it difficult to prioritize their own marketing, especially if it means taking time or resources away from paying work. However, doing so is a mistake that could come back to haunt you if you’re looking to scale your business into something bigger. Here’s what to know about prioritizing your own marketing, including why it’s a smart strategy and how to start doing more of it. Why Agencies Should Prioritize their Own Marketing When you’re running a marketing agency, it can seem like there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish all that you need to do for your client’s campaigns, let alone your own. That doesn’t mean that you should put your agency’s marketing on the back burner, though. Prioritizing your marketing has a few big advantages, all of which are worth a bit of extra time and effort: It Shows Off Your Skills Would you trust a copywriter who couldn’t put together their own “About” page? Or a graphic designer who didn’t have their own logo? Your agency’s ability to market itself effectively shows potential and current clients that you know what you’re doing and can apply the same skills to their campaigns. If you want to make your agency indispensable, then you have to showcase your abilities. This includes showing off your creative and strategic abilities on your website with case studies, customer testimonials, and samples of work. It’s also smart to apply for awards so you can get industry recognition and credibility. It Expands Your Business Successful marketing equals more prospects, more leads, and more sales — all of which most agencies could probably use. If you’re not marketing your services, you’re almost certainly missing out on profit potential. Look into paid advertising as a way to reach a wider audience on engaged platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. You can use these platforms to tap into the exact type of audience you’re looking to work with, which ensures the dollars you spend aren’t wasted. It Establishes Brand Presence Becoming an industry leader isn’t something that happens passively. Self-promotion will get your business in front of more people, in turn, building credibility and helping establish your agency’s reputation. If you’re able to make your agency a household name, then you’ve won half the marketing battle. There’s nothing like brand recognition to add a little clout to your agency; just make sure you’re supporting that clout with solid work and a diverse content strategy that’s rooted in insight and educational tips from your leadership team. How to Prioritize Your Marketing There are still only 24 hours in a day and much fewer in a workday. That means you’ll have to work your own marketing into your existing workflow — and we’ve got some tips on how to do it. Designate a team. This is a big one. Agencies are notorious for working nimbly, but if you have a dedicated team focused on your internal strategy, then you’re going to get a lot accomplished. Decide who will be responsible for overseeing your agency’s campaigns and the team members they’ll be working with. And if you don’t have anyone currently in-house that has the capacity, look into hiring someone. State clear goals and initiatives. Create an outline of exactly what you want to achieve and how you intend to achieve it. Think both short- and long-term, and make sure to be as specific as possible with your objectives. These will serve as great markers to check against after your marketing plan has gained momentum. Establish a process for creating content and marketing materials. Determine what your workflow will look like. Marketing automation and collaborative software will be hugely helpful here for assigning work, tracking progress, and seeing what’s working and what’s not. Put together an editorial calendar. Try to plan out at least a month or a quarter’s worth of content at a time. This gives you enough headway to get everything done, which is essential when you’re not getting paid for the work and could easily brush it aside without accountability. Put together a social media calendar. Plan out social media, too, and automate your posts in large batches so that most of the work you’ll have to do later on is related to engagement or timely commentary. Use tools. Marketing tools are your best friend, especially if you don’t have a ton of time or in-house resources. Aside from the tools we’ve already mentioned, look into others like chatbots, CRMs, and SEO platforms that can help you get as strategic as possible. Stop putting off your agency’s marketing strategy. Doing so will only hurt your brand in the long run. We know it’s easy to do so for the sake of your paying clients and putting their needs first, but if you continue to let your own marketing suffer, it could end up costing you big time.