Marketing Automation and CRM: a Match Made in Heaven Posted on February 18, 2021October 8, 2021 by Jess Lunk When it comes to iconic couplings, we’ve got Beyonce and Jay-Z, peanut butter and chocolate, and… marketing automation and CRM. Yes, just like the perfect matches that have come before them, sparks fly when marketing automation software meets small business CRM. How do we know? Because this collaboration is the edge that gives our platform the ability to bring small businesses more and better marketing capabilities (as well as achieve a better work-life balance) — and we’ve seen firsthand what a difference that can make. Having CRM software integrated into your marketing automation platform is a best of both worlds scenario. Once you use it, you won’t know how you ever survived without it. Here’s why these two tools work so well together and why they really are each other’s better half. What do CRM and Marketing Automation Tools do? Before you can look at the reasons behind why CRM software and marketing automation software complement each other so well, you have to look at what each of these tools brings to the table on their own. CRM Customer relationship management software tracks and stores customer data. It provides your sales reps with important information about prospects, clients, and their history and relationship with your brand. Your business’s CRM platform comes in handy in a lot of different situations, but it’s primarily about providing each customer (potential and otherwise) with the smoothest possible journey through the funnel. Examples of the types of information that your CRM makes easily accessible for you include contact and demographic data, past purchase records, communication history, email engagement, and customer service history. For a deeper dive into CRMs and what they can do for your business, check out our CRM article roundup. Marketing Automation On the other hand, a marketing automation platform streamlines the process of nurturing your leads through content and emails. By removing a lot of the rote tasks that go into sharing your content and monitoring engagement, marketing automation serves to disseminate your content more efficiently — all while ensuring that you can keep a close eye on how it’s performing and what’s making the biggest impact with your audience. Let’s Reduce These to Their Simplest Definitions A CRM helps you better understand leads so you can be more tactical in how you engage with and convert them. Marketing automation enables you to use that knowledge to nurture leads and turn them into customers. Are you starting to see the power in what can happen when these two work together? Benefits of Integrating Marketing Automation and CRM We can talk endlessly about the importance of marketing and sales working together. Combining marketing automation with CRM is a sort of picture-perfect encapsulation of why these two departments succeed when they work in collaboration and a reminder that more is better — at least when it comes to making use of your data. Both CRM and marketing automation offer a ton of value on their own. But neither can fully realize their potential without the other. And given that organizations that tightly align their sales and marketing efforts see 36 percent higher customer retention rates and 38 percent higher sales win rates, it makes sense to bring these two tools together to create a true power couple. If those stats aren’t enough, here are some other major benefits of combining marketing automation and CRM. Your Email Marketing Campaigns are More Effective Successful email marketing requires both personalization and audience segmentation. A CRM is essential for figuring out where contacts are in the funnel and what types of content are most likely to drive conversions. The result: emails that are opened and engaged with more and are more successful at moving customers to the next stage of their journey. Your Sales Process Gets Shorter Clients can tell when you’re just taking shots in the dark. If you want to show how much you value your relationship — and thus how much value you can provide to them as a product or service provider — you need to be able to show, and not just tell, that you’re paying attention. CRM and marketing automation integration can help you do exactly that. Since you’re tapping into your CRM to understand their needs, you can eliminate tons of back and forth, providing them with resources faster and shortening the sales process. Your Data Management Approach Improves When you silo your data, you run the risk of missing out on key patterns and trends. Bringing these two tools together allows you to unify your approach and make more meaningful connections — all to the betterment of your lead nurturing efforts. You can track things like whether there are certain points in your nurture campaigns where engagement tapers off. Or, you can more clearly identify when customers are ready for an upgrade or adjustment to their package or service offering. Marketing automation and CRM data provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions regarding your sales approach, customer service, product offerings, and entire business. Your Messaging Stays Consistent Trust and reliability are important if you want prospects to seal the deal and keep coming back for more. And while a lot goes into making those things happen, consistent messaging that stays on point and treats your leads like people (instead of just nameless entities) is crucial to conveying your brand’s authenticity. There’s no magic bullet for brand success. There are, however, obvious advantages that you can and should be capitalizing on if you want to compete in your field — and CRM and marketing automation integration are one of them. Don’t make things harder than they have to be. If you want to turn more leads into customers — and more customers into satisfied brand loyalists — make sure your CRM and marketing automation tools are joined at the hip. Interested in learning more about our integrated CRM and marketing automation tool? Check out a quick tour for a behind the scenes look.
HubSpot vs. WordPress – Which is a Better Fit for Agencies? Posted on February 17, 2021December 15, 2022 by Katie Culp There are a lot of decisions that you have to make when you’re running a marketing agency. Some of them are easy; some of them not so much — and we think that choosing your CMS platform probably falls in the second category. Both HubSpot and WordPress provide backend software that agencies can use to build and maintain their websites. But there are a lot of differences that you need to consider if you’re deciding between the two, particularly when it comes to cost efficiency and ease of use. How do you break it all down? We’ve put together a helpful comparison of HubSpot vs. WordPress for you so that your agency can simplify the decision-making process and more easily see the differences between the two platforms. What Is a CMS? HubSpot and WordPress both fall under the designation of CMS — a.k.a. content management systems. A content management system is a platform where you can build and manage your website, including blog hosting, online lead generation forms, and SEO. Download our SEO Checklist to ensure your website is optimized for search. It’s really no longer an option to opt-out of having a website entirely (especially as a marketing agency that wants to help their own clients achieve digital supremacy). Instead, you need to be evaluating your available CMS options and choosing which one is most closely aligned with your marketing budget and your needs. There are countless CMS platforms out there for you to consider. We’ve narrowed it down to WordPress vs. HubSpot because these tend to be two options that appear on every business’s list of top CMS providers — and for good reason. Aside from name recognition, these platforms offer lots of the utility and security features that most companies need. However, the specifics vary, and you’ll want to understand how if you’re deciding between the two. Fundamental Differences: HubSpot vs. WordPress CMS When it comes to market shares, WordPress takes the cake, powering nearly 40 percent of all websites compared to just 0.3 percent for HubSpot CMS. WordPress got its start as a blogging platform and has stayed mostly true to its original roots, despite branching out into the open-source CMS platform that we know it as today. Meanwhile, HubSpot does a little bit of everything, including marketing automation and offering a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Check out our free CRM comparison guide to see how BenchmarkONE’s free CRM stacks up against other similar software plans. This leads us to what is perhaps the most notable difference: WordPress is primarily CMS focused, while HubSpot comes with lots of additional bells and whistles. Both have advantages, of course, but it depends on exactly what you need. For agencies that are simply looking for an effective, well-rounded CMS, HubSpot might offer too much stuff — along with a cost that reflects that breadth of added features. When you’re comparing HubSpot vs. WordPress, it’s not enough to just look at the big picture. Narrowing in just on their CMS capabilities, here’s a look at how they compare on a number of key points. Web Builds Website management is obviously a big part of any CMS. Both HubSpot and WordPress offer a wide range of tools for building, managing, and updating your website. Expect an easier learning curve with WordPress since its interface is so simple and streamlined. With HubSpot, you’ll have more overall features and customization options to choose from, but it’s going to take more effort to get your project off the ground. Blogging Both platforms offer a ton of utility for hosting a blog and all of the things that come with it, including audio and visual assets. Where they differ is in terms of complexity. HubSpot has lots of built-in blogging features that are ready to put to work, such as SEO tools, mobile optimization, and analytics. You can do all the same things on WordPress, but you’ll have to build many of the tools through downloadable widgets and plugins instead of having them ready from the get-go. This isn’t necessarily a disadvantage, though, since WordPress has a massive open-source marketplace for widgets, which allows you to pick and choose exactly what you need — no more and no less. Landing Pages Landing pages are an essential part of any website. Where HubSpot and WordPress differ is (again) in what’s included versus what you have to add yourself. Many agencies like having the freedom to pick and choose their landing page features, while others prefer to have them baked in from the get-go. Which One is Right for Your Agency? As with all software decisions, it depends! HubSpot definitely edges out WordPress in terms of standard features, but WordPress offers all of those and more through its open-source marketplace. Plus, WordPress usually ends up being more cost-effective since you’re only going to pay for the features you want and use. We recommend evaluating your precise needs and then comparing prices and features to find your best fit. However, keep in mind that if you decide to use HubSpot, you have to be all-in. Unlike WordPress, with HubSpot, you don’t get the freedom to use other marketing tools in conjunction, so there’s a bigger commitment to the platform and the cost.
Benchmark Acquires Popular Contact Management App, Contacts+ Posted on February 11, 2021February 10, 2021 by Jonathan Herrick We’re pleased to announce that Benchmark has added a contact management app to our family of sales and marketing software. Contacts+ is a contact management solution with apps for desktop and mobile that allows professionals, teams, and small businesses to store and sync contacts across devices, scan business cards, and clean contact data. Contacts+ is closely aligned with Benchmark’s vision of igniting relationships with simple sales and marketing tools. With this acquisition, we’ll continue to provide Contacts+ customers with amazing support and add development resources to continue to refine the app. We’ll also be exploring ways to leverage Contacts+ technology to help users connect more intelligently and efficiently with their contacts in Benchmark Email and BenchmarkONE. In addition to the Contacts+ platform, we are welcoming key team members from Contacts+ with leadership and experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and mobile app development. The added talent will drive innovation as we continue to grow Contacts+, Benchmark Email and BenchmarkONE. This is an exciting opportunity to help small businesses keep the focus on building relationships and we’re delighted to welcome Contacts+ into the fold. You can read all about the acquisition here on the Benchmark Email blog.
5 New Sales Tactics to Try This Year Posted on February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 by Tricia O'Donnell The pandemic brought a lot of business sales strategies – and outcomes – to a screeching halt. This year, it’s all about finding ways to get back in motion again — which includes seeking out new tactics that will help boost sales and make up for lost revenue. In many ways, 2020 created a new reality for businesses, one centered around remote decision making and digital transactions. And surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, depending on how your business operated before), brands saw that customers were eager to make the transition. Source This means that an effective sales tactic in 2021 may look a little different. It should capitalize on this new reality, going with the flow instead of fighting against the tides. If a sales team is to be successful, they have to be adaptable. With that in mind, we’re exploring some of the major trends of the moment — and five sales tactics that will help you make the most of them this year. 1. Make a Bigger Investment in Video Video is one of the best alternatives to person-to-person product tours and demos — especially when multiple decision-makers are standing between your sales rep and a done deal. The growing popularity of the remote sales process suggests that customers not only like having the flexibility to move through the funnel at their own pace, they prefer it. Give them the freedom to do so by producing a series of videos on topics like how your product or service works and the challenges it can help solve. You’ll save time, and so will they — plus it will be one more opportunity to strengthen your brand identity. Another option that capitalizes on video is creating an on-demand tour of your product. Some people may be experiencing Zoom fatigue, and instead, they’d rather watch a video on their own terms. This, again, promotes flexibility, which can lead to a more positive experience for prospects. Just make sure you promote your video on your social channels and use it in your nurture campaigns so you can get the most out of it. 2. Focus on Remote Interactions Just because Zoom fatigue is real doesn’t mean using Zoom to connect is going to decline. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Zoom calls really are the new conference rooms. Your sales professionals may not be working from home forever. Still, it’s very likely that the benefits of remote interactions — including the flexibility, freedom, and fast-tracking they afford — won’t be given up just to go back to the status quo of long, often wasteful in-person meetings. Plan to incorporate more digital tools that enable remote interactions between team members and between reps and leads. You’ll still get the benefits of human contact without having to invest so much time and money into making in-person meet-ups happen safely. 3. Create Digital Events One sales tactic that we expect to see a lot of moving forward is digital events. Because while they may have been a necessity of the COVID era, they’re also a fantastic way to get a bunch of people in the same place at once. Instead of looking at virtual conferences, seminars, and demos as being lesser than their in-person counterparts, consider all of the advantages — such as easier sign-ups, greater accessibility, and significantly lower attendance costs. Hosting digital events, like webinars or networking get-togethers, are a great way to humanize your brand. And, if you co-brand or cross-promote, they can do wonders for your lead generation strategy. In fact, we held a co-branded webinar last month that generated over 140 new leads for us! Come up with creative virtual events that bring together your sales reps with leads, then promote them through social media and email marketing campaigns. Get the word out, and make sure you pack the hour with helpful tips and insights, so your digital event stays engaging. 4. Rethink Your Consumer Profiles Now is a great time to go back to the drawing board with your buyer personas, especially regarding their major preferences and challenges. 2020 brought changes on both ends of the sales spectrum, and your leads and clients may have had to adapt just as much as you have. Where do you start? Look at your analytics for the past year, particularly those around lead and client behaviors. By pinpointing exactly what your audience prefers, you can optimize your sales process for them — and you — without having to worry about trends and tactics that might not be your best fit. 5. Bring Marketing Into the Fold It’s always been a good idea to forge an alliance between sales and marketing. And today, with both teams focusing a bulk of their efforts online, it’s one of the most important sales techniques you can practice. Collaborate with marketing on things that can make your sales process run smoother and more efficiently — such as keyword research and SEO, sales enablement content, and paid ads geared explicitly toward sales services. Think of it as the new approach to cold calling, where instead of reaching out to new prospects directly, you’re baiting and dropping virtual lines for them to find and reach out to you. Every year is going to present its own unique challenges. When you’re devising your best sales tactics and practices for the near future, consider not just overall trends — but the trends that have had the biggest impact on your own unique sales process. Take what you’ve learned and apply it to your strategies for the new year, and before you know it, you’ll be headed in the right direction.
How the COVID Vaccine Will Affect Your Business Posted on February 10, 2021February 9, 2021 by Jonathan Herrick The world is a buzz about the various COVID vaccinations currently being developed and distributed. What’s more, there currently appears to be improvements in U.S. COVID numbers. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re all extremely hopeful that this horrific pandemic will soon be behind us. And while it’s true that the rollout has experienced some hiccups, business owners should still be giving a lot of thought to what vaccination will mean for us in the future. We’ve all become quite accustomed to doubling down on strategies, trying new methods to reach customers, and operating with limited staff at full capacity. While it may seem like that’s just business as usual for most small operations, the truth is we’ll all be pretty relieved once we’ve turned the corner. But that relief won’t come swiftly unless we’re fully prepared and know what to expect. To make up for lost time and hit the ground running when protocols and practices shift, there are some things small businesses should keep in mind. In this blog post, I’ll outline some of the major areas that will be affected by a vaccine rollout, as well as how your small business can prepare. In-Person Events Will Make a Comeback There’s been a huge shift to going digital for networking events and conferences. While it’s been extremely convenient and safe, once the vaccine becomes commonplace in-person events will most definitely resume. Working out travel logistics and keeping a closer eye on rescheduled conferences will be key. A lot of sales networking and education-building happens at these events, so you’ll want to be on the lookout for when they’re rescheduled. It’s also a good idea to start factoring them into your yearly budget, just in case. Employer Policies May Change The pandemic has forever changed how we all view public health. Ensuring the safety of your staff is now an even bigger priority than before, which means some businesses may be looking into the vaccine being a part of their policy in some way. To ensure the upmost safety, some companies may consider making the vaccine mandatory. There are a lot of issues and concerns surrounding this, so make sure you look into the various reasons why employees may resist this approach and what it can ultimately mean for the growth of your company. However, perhaps a more middle-ground approach is more your style. Companies may recommend or instill an honor code regarding the vaccine. It really just boils down to what works for your business and what keeps your employees feeling safe and happy. Sales Could Increase For a lot of businesses, sales took a major dip when the pandemic hit. In fact, a lot of businesses are still experiencing decreased sales and have adjusted their sales process because of it. But with a vaccine release, sales will hopefully start to pick back up again. It may take some time, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start thinking about what a higher demand will mean for your company. While we can all agree that an uptick in sales is great, after months of adjusting to a slower return, there will be quite an adjustment to account for. If you’re in eCommerce or retail, be prepared by increasing your stock, but do so mindfully. Don’t spend too much of your budget and resources on stocking up on tons of products until the vaccine rollout has reached a steady stride. Keep an increase in sales in mind when you’re putting together your sales forecasting for the next few quarters. Be reasonable while also accounting for some growth so your company can be as prepared as possible. In-Office Culture Will Be a Thing Again More and more teams moved to a remote work model, which offered tons of flexibility and safety during the pandemic. However, company culture took a hit and many teams (ours included) missed the office energy they worked hard to cultivate. With more people becoming vaccinated, we’ll eventually reach a safer spot and can welcome an in-office work environment again. While you’ve probably given most of your company culture events the heave-ho, there will be a time when you’ll want to incorporate them back into the mix. This means team happy hours, lunches, and outings will not be gone for good. Remote Employees and Remote Hiring Is Here to Stay Not everything will necessarily shift back to “normal.” The typical workplace will look a little different moving forward. By going remote, a lot of businesses experienced efficiencies and more flexible work schedules. Overall, studies show that productivity wasn’t sacrificed during this transition, so you may want to consider incorporating more remote work into your company structure. This could be an entire shift to remote or allowing for a couple of days a week of remote work. You may also want to open new positions up to candidates that live outside your region, which offer tons of other benefits (the wider your candidate pool, the more talent you’ll attract). Either way, having a more flexible work schedule can make your company more appealing to potential new hires and make your employees happier and more productive. Start looking into best practices for hiring remote and seeing if there are better office space options for a hybrid culture. While we aren’t out of the weeds just yet, I think it’s safe to start looking into the various ways your business may be affected by the COVID vaccine. Just make sure you stay realistic and keep an eye on how the rollout progresses. And best of luck navigating this new terrain!
10 Awesome Social Media Tools to Try This Year Posted on February 4, 2021July 28, 2021 by Natalie Slyman Managing social media shouldn’t be a pain, and it shouldn’t monopolize your entire schedule. Social media platforms are meant to be a fun new way to engage with others within your network. When you apply the right strategies, you can grow your following organically, which can impact your entire business. It never hurts to have a robust toolkit that will help ensure you’re doing all you can to be creative and that you’re engaging with your audience in the best possible ways. So, we’ve rounded up some of the best social media tools that will help you be as captivating as possible on your social platforms. Without further ado, here are some sweet social media apps and programs that you’ll want to add to your toolbox this year. 1. Content Studio Everybody knows that when it comes to getting traction on the Internet, quality content that people want to consume is the way to go. The problem is, when you’re a busy entrepreneur or business owner, finding the time to create and curate great content can be quite the challenge. Content Studio, a tool that allows you to quickly discover relevant and timely content to share socially with your audience, is a wonderful remedy to this conundrum. You can also use the platform to schedule your posts and automate your campaigns. It’ll even recommend images and hashtags. How easy is that? Pricing: Starts at $49 a month. 2. Insense Interested in influencer marketing but unsure of where and how to get started? Insense is a platform that lets you connect with influencers and run sponsored influencer campaigns. All you have to do is create a compelling brief, and influencers interested in working with you will respond. All communications can be handled directly through the Insense platform, making the process easy and convenient. So, no more individual vetting and outreach to get that coveted third-party credibility. Pricing: You can try a one-time campaign for free! Paid packages start at $300 a month. 3. Quuu Promote Another great way to connect with influencers is Quuu Promote, a tool that lets you promote your content by suggesting it to Quuu users. All you have to do is create a social media post that you’d like Quuu users to share and select the appropriate interest group for your content. Once approved, your post will then be suggested to the Quuu community. If it’s good stuff, users will naturally want to share it with their audiences, which can help you grow and increase traffic to key content. Pricing: Starts at $75 a month. 4. Lisa Ever take a series of photos and then wonder which one will get the most engagement on Instagram? It seems like such a trivial concern, but the truth is certain images just perform better. If you have been in this predicament before, let Lisa come to your rescue! Through the power of machine learning, the Lisa app will analyze your images and recommend the one it “thinks” will generate the most engagement. Lisa even suggests which relevant hashtags you should use with each photo. Pricing: Perhaps the best part. Lisa is completely free to use! 5. Story Slicer The latest and greatest thing in social media today is “stories.” Just look on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and you’ll see the power of stories being put to use on a daily basis. Story Slicer is a tool that lets you split longer video clips into shorter, more bite-sized ones that are perfect for creating and sharing stories on social media. All you have to do is pick a video and choose your preferred social platform. Story Slicer will then split the video into clips that are optimal length. Pricing: $1.99 to download the app. 6. Fastory With one billion active users, Instagram represents a veritable gold mine for marketers. Fastory is an online graphics editor that makes it easy to create static or animated stories. The simple-to-use editor guides users through a three-step process for creating engaging stories, including choosing animation, choosing or uploading a photo or video, and adding your logo. Master Instagram like a pro! Pricing: You can try the tool for free for seven days. Based in Paris, the small business package starts at 499€, which is about $609.99. 7. PixelMe You probably already know the value of shortening your URLs for social media sharing, but now you can get more bang for your buck by using PixelMe. This URL shortener also includes a retargeting pixel. When people click on your PixelMe links, you’ll be able to remarket to them with relevant ads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Pricing: They offer a free forever plan, but paid plans start at $17 a month. 8. Promo Video continues to be a popular way for people to consume content. Videos are a powerful marketing tool, but who’s got the time, let alone the equipment, to focus on creating high-quality, compelling marketing videos? With a library of over 23 million premium video clips and licensed music, Promo makes it ridiculously easy to create high-quality video content in just minutes. Choose from their library or upload your own, enter your copy and logo into the placeholders, add music, and voila! Pricing: Starts at $12 a month. 9. Crello Want to create eye-popping, professional-quality graphics without having to hire a designer? Crello is a simplified free graphic design tool that provides 30,000+ design templates as well as millions of design elements and stock images. Create graphics from scratch or choose one of Crello’s awesome free templates. Then just drag and drop to add, edit and move elements to create your perfect design. Pricing: You can get started for free, but the paid plan is only $9.99 a month. 10. Adioma People love infographics. They’re visually appealing, useful, and super shareable. With Adioma, you can create awesome infographics in just minutes. Simply type the text you wish to include, and Adioma will handle the design work for you, suggesting relevant icons and automatically adapting the design to the amount of text you enter. Impress your audience with professional-looking, informative and viral-worthy infographics. Pricing: Starts at $39 a month. These are just a few of the many creative and helpful social media tools that are sure to help your 2021 strategy reach new heights. What did we miss? Do you have a great new social media tool that you’re excited about? Let us know about them!
20 Articles On CRMs: What They are and How They Benefit your Marketing and Sales Strategy Posted on February 3, 2021February 2, 2021 by Natalie Slyman Staying organized isn’t as easy as you’d think. There’s always a call to hop onto or an email that pops up, causing you to drop what you’re doing and move on to the next thing. Keeping track of your to-do list, your important contacts, and your completed tasks feels more like a chore than part of the job. Which is why having a CRM is an invaluable resource. CRMs not only help you achieve work-life balance, but they also keep track of your customer data, track your leads, what stage they are in the buyer’s journey, how they’re engaging with your website and email content, and help your company grow. CRMs were designed to enable sales teams, but they can influence just about every department of your company when used correctly. Ensuring you’re using them to their fullest potential requires some assistance, so we wrangled up all our best blog posts on CRMs for you to check out. See below for all the CRM resources you can handle. 1. 5 Ways a CRM Can Improve the Customer Experience Used correctly, a CRM can help you leverage valuable insights to create and deliver incredible customer experiences that will keep people coming back time and time again. Learn the various ways a CRM will help you improve the experience of your customers. 2. 8 CRM Stats That Will Help You Get Company Buy-In Are you sold on a CRM but need some additional help persuading your other team members? Check out these compelling stats that are sure to get your team on board with a CRM that works for your business. 3. 6 Creative Ways to Use Your CRM for More Than Sales We said it earlier, and we’ll say it again: your CRM benefits more than just your sales department. Whatever your business size or industry, the right CRM tool can help make the entire operation more efficient. 4. 6 CRM Features Your Business Should Be Using But Probably Isn’t If you’re using your CRM the same way you’d use an Excel spreadsheet, we have a message for you: you can do so much more! 5. What’s Included in an All-in-One CRM? An all-in-one CRM does more than help you organize your contacts. It helps you use tactics that push them further down the funnel, closer to a sale. Balancing functionality with price will help you pick the all-in-one CRM that will work best for your unique use case. 6. 6 Tips For Making the Most of Your CRM in Your Marketing Efforts Your CRM is a marketing goldmine of information that can teach you how to better serve your current and future customers. Here’s how you can ensure you’re making the most of it for your marketing strategy. 7. 5 Reasons to Ditch the Spreadsheets and Switch to a CRM Spreadsheets are so 2020. Use a CRM to easily access whatever data you need, knowing it’s automatically up-to-date and accurate. 8. 5 Time-Saving CRM Hacks Every Sales Manager Should Know About A CRM is designed to make the job of managing a sales team easy and efficient. These CRM hacks will help you make the most of what little time you have. 9. 5 Questions to Ask When Evaluating a CRM There are a lot of CRM options out there, so you’ll want to make sure you pick one that fits your needs and goals. Here are some questions to ask yourself before making your selection. 10. 6 Reasons Your Small Business Needs a CRM What’s the best way to keep your customers happy and engaged with your brand? The right CRM tool for your small business. No more wasting time; here’s why you need a CRM right now. 11. How To Ensure CRM User Adoption In Your Small Business It never hurts to get additional buy-in from your team when introducing a tool. Here are some ways to ensure your team is just as excited about a new CRM as you are. 12. 6 Tips for a More Organized Small Business CRM Just like keeping a tidy desk or computer, a well-organized CRM can be an invaluable foundation for a small business. Here’s how to ensure you keep your CRM tidy and get the best use out of it. 13. Rethinking The Sales Funnel With CRM A CRM will allow you to provide relevant content to leads, gauge which prospects are likely to become customers, and bring leads into the sales funnel. 14. Benefit From CRM Automation Without Losing The Human Touch CRM automation is exploding as a way for businesses to foster relationships and fuel growth more efficiently. And it’s not at the cost of your brand’s humanization. 15. Complexity died with the Blackberry. Long live the simple CRM Simplicity really doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Read this blog post on why a simple CRM solution is the best way to go when it comes to picking a CRM tool for your business. 16. Email and CRM: Where Marketing Automation Meets Personal Sales Follow-Ups Having access to both a CRM and email capabilities allows you to automate your marketing and provide leads with personal follow-up. 17. How to Use a CRM to Better Run Your Business A CRM is an invaluable tool. In fact, it can contribute to every aspect of your business. Read this blog post to learn how. 18. 20+ CRM Stats You Need to Know for 2021 It’s important to know what is happening in the CRM world so you can stay up to speed and competitive. Here are 20+ CRM stats for this year. 19. How to Use CRM Software to Perfect Your Sales Pitch A lot goes into an effective sales pitch, and you have to make sure you nail it. Having a CRM can help in more ways than one. 20. Bad CRM Data: The Silent Killer of Your Business If your CRM isn’t giving you the real insights you need to better know your customers, you’re in trouble. Here’s how to avoid bad CRM data. We hope you find these twenty articles on CRMs helpful! We know picking the right tool can be overwhelming, as well as figuring out the best way to use one, so make sure you bookmark these for future reference.
Small Steps K12 Schools Can Take To Go Digital Posted on February 2, 2021February 1, 2021 by Jess Lunk In the pre-pandemic world, the idea of taking efficient steps toward going digital probably wasn’t a top concern for most K12 schools. And while the future of communication is going digital, it’s hard to prioritize it when it’s already a struggle to get parents engaged digitally. Fast forward to the present, where most of us are working from home and relying heavily on digital tools to help us stay connected. Embracing the digital landscape is now a must, both for adapting to pandemic protocols and in preparing for whatever might be next on the horizon. Of course, K12 educators and communicators already have a lot on their plates, and adding the need for a complete digital transformation can be tough to prioritize. But the world doesn’t wait, and neither can school districts. To help ease k12 communicators into this transition, we’re sharing small steps they can take toward going digital, along with actionable tips that even the busiest education professional can implement. 1. Bring Your Newsletter Online We recently surveyed K12 school communicators about how newsletters function at their institution. Most of the respondents said they’re sending digital newsletters and sending them out via email. However, there is still a portion who are printing out newsletters and mailing them or sending them home with students. This practice poses issues. Sending newsletters home with students doesn’t guarantee that the parents will actually receive them in a timely manner, if at all. And if you mail your newsletters, the information they cover is at least a few days old. Things can change on a dime, and there’s nothing like a swift and timely digital newsletter to keep recipients as informed as possible in those circumstances. Additionally, parents prefer digital communication over paper. By disseminating your newsletter digitally instead of on paper, you could expect to see more engagement than you would via paper. So if your school is still relying on printed newsletters, start looking into digital solutions to save yourself time, effort, and paper, while also making stronger connections with your audience. Marketing automation solutions for schools are out there; you just have to find the right tool for your needs. For example, BenchmarkONE’s K12 Edition offers school communicators all the email automation functionalities they need, as well as ways for them to grow and update their list, like landing pages, forms and FTP for SIS contacts. 2. Write a School Blog You didn’t get into the education space to become a content marketer on the side. But there are advantages to writing and maintaining a school blog, including the creation of an online hub where students, parents, internal staff, and others can easily go when they’re looking for things like back to school protocols or other essential information. Want to get students in on it? A school blog is a great place to teach digital literacy and inspire creativity in the classroom. Ask for submissions, or start a school club dedicated to keeping your blog updated with relevant news, events, and interesting tidbits. It’s important to maintain consistency with this, so have students meet regularly and create an editorial calendar that will hold them accountable. They’ll also learn to work within strict deadlines and the importance of creating well-written, informative content. 3. Try Out Virtual Professional Development Professional development is a necessity. It’s also incredibly time-consuming and can cut into your already limited in-person capabilities. Enter a whole host of new ed-tech tools dedicated to bringing PD off campus and into the digital realm. Your school’s teachers and staff can learn when they want and where they want, with self-paced lessons geared toward particular short and long-term goals. Your higher-ups will be able to track progress on both an individual and group scale, and you won’t have to worry so much about collective PD burnout. It’s best to start slow with this and focus on maybe a couple of sessions a quarter. This will ensure the staff isn’t too overwhelmed and can easily balance their lesson plans and existing workload. It’s important that there’s a check-in after they’ve done a few sessions by either holding a staff-wide meeting or administering a survey. Their input will help determine how practical this approach is and if it’s something your school will want to instill regularly. 4. Keep Lines of Communication Open Most K12 educators are used to communicating with their students during school hours and school hours only. But those hours aren’t necessarily in tune with when kids are in the best headspace to complete their work. For one school principal, a majority of his school’s students have been answering emails and turning in assignments between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. during the pandemic. The digital world opens up so many more opportunities for staying connected with students and flexibility for helping them do their work when it makes the most sense for them — instead of trying to function when their developing brains might not be as focused. Your school doesn’t have to throw all rules and deadlines out the window, but bringing on additional digital streams of communication is likely only to benefit students and their capacity to excel. 5. Take It Slow and Steady What’s crucial as K12 schools turn to more digital solutions is keeping progress at a steady pace and not investing too much too soon into every possible tool at your disposal. Technology only works if it works for your needs, and going digital just for the sake of it can be confusing and costly, not to mention ineffective. We recommend evaluating your school’s biggest goals and challenges first. From there, evaluate what digital solutions might be at hand to help you address them. Some may be obvious due to their utility and low cost (for example, digital newsletters), while others, primarily various types of ed-tech, will require significant research before you commit. The world is going digital, and K12 schools have to keep up. And while the pandemic may have moved up the timeline, these necessary changes were bound to happen eventually. Look to digital tools as a way to expand your horizons, including increased communication, increased participation, and increased efficiency. Once you get going, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier than you thought to make the transition.
Everything You Need to Know About Sales Prospecting Posted on January 27, 2021January 27, 2021 by Tricia O'Donnell You can’t have a sales funnel without leads. While we often talk about client retention being the big money maker for your business, there’s no denying the importance of maintaining a steady stream of new prospects. Sales is an ever-changing enterprise, and this has been particularly true in 2020. To succeed with your goals, it’s crucial that you use all of the tools you have at your disposal to capture new leads and nurture them into customers. And sales prospecting is a big part of that. More than 40 percent of sales professionals cite prospecting as the most challenging part of their job, even more so than closing deals (36 percent) and qualifying leads (22 percent). But because at least 50 percent of your prospects aren’t going to turn into customers, it’s crucial that you’re constantly working to bring new prospects into the fold. There’s a lot depending on getting sales prospecting right. So what’s it all about? Here’s a quick guide to sales prospecting to get you started, including the key tactics you need to know to excel at it. What is Sales Prospecting? Sales prospecting refers to any action that you take with the specific goal of finding new potential customers for your product or service. More so, it’s about finding the most qualified prospects, setting your sights on the people and businesses who are most likely to benefit and engage with what you’re selling. It’s probably not a big surprise then that so many sales reps consider prospecting to be their biggest hurdle. After all, you can’t qualify a lead — and you certainly can’t close a deal — until you’ve prospected someone in the first place. Lead vs. Qualified Lead vs. Prospect vs. Customer As an individual moves through the funnel, their designation changes — and so does the best way to engage with them. While there is some overlap between the primary designations, here are some of the main variances that set them apart. A potential buyer starts as a lead, which is an individual who is a potential customer for your brand and who has expressed some degree of interest in your product or service. This can be something direct like reaching out for more information, but is more often through things like visiting your blog, signing up for your email newsletter, or following you on social media. A qualified lead is someone who has taken their expression of interest up a notch, perhaps by signing up for a demo or engaging in some back-and-forth with your sales team. If all goes well, they become a prospect, which is a type of lead who is most likely to close. In addition to giving key signs of interest in moving forward, prospects align with your customer persona and target audience, and they’re ready (or almost ready) to make a decision. If all works out, a prospect turns into a customer or someone who has gone on to seal the deal with a purchase. However, you could still consider a customer as a prospect since they’re a highly qualified lead who you could sell to again. How to Qualify Leads Being able to qualify leads is a necessity for prospecting since it helps you decide who’s really worth your efforts and attention. To do it, start by considering what stage of the buyer’s journey an individual is in. The majority of leads are hanging out in the awareness stage, while more qualified leads are in the consideration stage. Prospects are in the decision stage and just need to be nurtured to pull the trigger on a sale. There are also a number of qualifying characteristics to consider. Does your lead align with your buyer personas in terms of: Region Industry Job title Company size Company budget The more of these characteristics you can check off, the more qualified a lead is. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to compare a lead’s demographics against existing buyer personas as you decide whether or not they’re likely to become a prospect. If you are using marketing automation software (which we highly recommend), qualifying your leads is super easy because it’s done automatically. Using software, like BenchmarkONE, you can segment and tag your leads based on qualifying factors, so you can send more personalized drip campaigns that will move them through the funnel. Prospecting Tactics There are two primary methods of prospecting: outbound and inbound. Outbound sales are initiated by you, rather than the potential buyer — think cold outreach, targeted marketing and ads, guest contributed content, and various networking tactics. Essentially, it’s about casting as wide of a net as you can, qualifying the “fish” that you catch, and nurturing them to a sale. Inbound sales are initiated by leads themselves, particularly those who are past the awareness stage and ready for consideration or decision. The key to attracting inbound leads is to have outbound content that leads back to your website, as well as implement an SEO strategy that gets your site to populate in search results. It’s also important that your website has high-quality content that keeps visitors engaged and interested in signing up for your email outreach. Effective sales prospecting requires a bit of both tactics combined with properly qualifying the leads that come in. The better you get at it, the easier time you’ll have figuring out who your best leads are, and, by default, the easier time you’ll have meeting your sales goals.