How to Enhance Inbound Marketing with Social Media Posted on December 18, 2019September 16, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Inbound marketing is one of the most impactful types of marketing that you can do for your brand. When executed consistently and adequately, it can be 10x more effective than outbound marketing at converting leads and can reduce the average cost-per-lead by as much as 80% in just five months. Those stats are no joke, people. Inbound marketing is all about making your audience more aware of your brand, building consumer trust, and, eventually, helping leads decide to partner with you. This is why having an active social strategy to fuel and enhance your inbound marketing is a no-brainer. The two go hand-in-hand. How Social Media Contributes To Inbound Marketing There are 3.2 billion active users on social media around the globe. That’s a large, crowded swimming pool, which can seem intimidating, but not tapping into it for your marketing purposes is a lost opportunity you just cannot afford. Luckily there are ways for you to target the most valuable demographic and send them the right content at the right time. So while you’re able to send messaging directly to people who make the most sense for your brand, you’re also casting a wide net and reaching out to those who may not have heard of your company. You’re creating an opportunity to generate new leads as well as target those who may be more qualified. It’s a win-win. Social is also a way for you to showcase your brand’s personality, which is a must for building trust with your audience. When you eliminate any barriers and share content that gives your audience a glimpse into the people behind the company, you become identifiable and relatable. And that does wonders for building the foundations of trust. Below, we’ll go over three social strategies that will improve your inbound marketing efforts and bring in more qualified prospects. 1. Sharing Gated Content Gated content is anything protected by a form. This means that if someone wants to download a piece of your content, they have to first provide their information and opt-in to your email marketing. By doing so, you can introduce them to your inbound marketing, start sending them educational content, and, hopefully, make them a client someday. When you actively share your gated content, you’re enabling a broad group of people to see it and possibly download it. It’s one of the most reliable ways to generate leads via social media. The best way to manage social media is to create a publishing calendar and designate specific days and channels that you’ll be sharing your gated content on. Stick to it, and track which gated content generates the most leads. You’ll get a clear idea of what your most valuable gated content is, and if you need to adjust the time and days you’re sharing it. 2. Using Paid Social Ads Have you ever been looking up a product, only to see that same exact product pop up in an ad on one of your social platforms later? It happens all the time, and while it may seem a little creepy, it’s just one of the ways social media helps target your audience for you. Using paid social ads, be it to promote a whitepaper, highlight a customer review or testimonial, or to advertise your company, is a great way to tap into a specific demographic. When social platforms pull in users, they’re able to gather specific information on them that is useful to marketers. Information like gender, region, age, etc. So, before you look into buying ads for Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, be sure to solidify your buyer personas as much as possible so that you know what your targeted demographic looks like. Also, designate some room in your budget for paid ads so you can test this out and see what’s working. You can always scale back or readjust based on what your means are and where you see the most bang for your buck. 3. Listening In Successfully using social media for inbound marketing isn’t just about putting things out there — it’s also about taking things in. Use your social channels as a way to know what your audience is thinking and talking about. This can include everything from tracking your mentions to giving your followers the ability to use social media to offer you feedback, ask you questions, and share their experiences regarding your product or service. Marketing is communication, but you’re missing out on a key piece of the puzzle if that communication only goes one way. Know when to drive the conversation and when to sit back and listen, and utilize both positions as a way to improve the utility of your inbound marketing strategy and customize your business offerings to your audiences’ needs. When it comes to social media and inbound marketing, the value should always be the main focus. From demos and special offers to delivering prospects, the information that they need to solve their problems, every single thing that you do on social media can and should help guide leads to a decision on whether or not to partner with you. As always, be sure to use data and analytics to inform your social media practices. The insights available through social platforms themselves and your analytic dashboards can tell you a lot about which channel is the most advantageous and when. Now go forth and get more out of your social media efforts!
BenchmarkONE’s Latest Feature: Landing Pages and Popups Posted on December 17, 2019January 11, 2021 by Allie Wolff Landing pages and pop-ups are here! Now, your small business can flawlessly map out a more efficient sales and marketing process at every stage of the funnel. BenchmarkONE users can now create unlimited landing pages and popups that seamlessly fit into their existing campaigns for more targeted communication. Attract More Visitors with Beautiful Landing Pages Easily tailor landing pages to your marketing campaigns, and follow-up intelligently with BenchmarkONE’s built-in marketing automation. Create beautiful, on-brand landing pages from our pre-designed library, or even build your own landing pages and thank you pages from scratch with our simple drag & drop builder. Setup up a subdomain on your existing website to seamlessly use customized, on-brand BenchmarkONE landing pages across all of your marketing campaigns. Increase Conversions with Popup Forms Add a variety of popups to your existing website, including popover, embedded, scroll box and top bar forms. With our flexible display rules, you can ensure that you’re showing the right message at the right time to keep visitors engaged and capture more contacts. Keep Track of Your Successes Robust landing page and popup analytics track conversion metrics so you can see what’s going right and where you can improve. Track everything from subscriber counts to conversion rate to top referral pages to make sure that you’re making the most out of your website and landing page traffic. With landing pages and popup forms, you’re just a few clicks away from optimizing your website, increasing conversions from your marketing campaigns and boosting ROI. Seamlessly integrated with BenchmarkONE’s CRM and marketing automation platform, you can provide a personalized customer experience for every lead you generate from your website. Say goodbye to duct-taped solutions and hello to a seamless customer journey from start to finish. Start using BenchmarkONE landing pages and popups today!
The Art of Passive Selling Posted on December 17, 2019December 12, 2019 by Tegan Arnold Remember when being sold something often involved pushy, over-zealous, salesmen and women? It wasn’t long ago that sales professionals would do anything to drive as many people as possible toward a purchase and create a very unpleasant sales process while doing so. It’s a wonder that approach worked for so many years, but I bet none of us miss it. With the internet and digital marketing, a new approach was formed. These two important developments forever changed the landscape of modern selling and the modern consumer. With information literally at their fingertips (and even a simple voice search away), consumers are more informed and savvier than ever. In fact, most have done a ton of research even before their first sales conversation or email, and they’re pretty much immune to and turned off by any aggressive selling tactics. Trust + Passive Selling = Nurture 92% of Americans say trust plays a role when making a big purchase decision. Customers aren’t going to use your product or services if they don’t trust you and the brand you represent. And while it may take some time to build that trust, it’s worth it if it means creating a relationship that lasts, and that is mutually beneficial. That’s where the passive selling approach comes in. With passive selling, the focus doesn’t rest on closing deals. Instead, you’re focusing on nurturing your leads by providing them with information tailored to their specific needs. It’s about giving your prospects the right tools to make their own educated decisions instead of aggressively pushing them toward a sale — a tactic that can destroy any semblance of trust and leave prospects with negative impressions of your company. The Principles Behind Passive Selling Effective passive selling is all about knowing your customers — their pain points, their behaviors, and their needs. It helps to have a marketing automation tool that can score your leads based on where they are in their journey and the actions they take on your site, as well as give you insight into what they do, their industry, and why they’re considering using your product or service line. Having this information only assures you’re sending them personalized content they can actually use. Tools aside, passive selling also involves listening to what your customers want and being willing to customize your product or service if that means it better helps them meet their goals. It involves using analytics for data-driven insights and making a pointed effort to really know your leads. You have to be prepared to use marketing techniques that don’t always have a sale as their end goal. Passive Selling and the Buyer’s Journey To use this approach, first, understand and identify where your buyers are in their journey. After all, being able to anticipate your customers’ needs is preferable to just throwing a ton of information at them and seeing what sticks. Let’s examine each stage, what buyers at that stage are typically needing, and the kinds of personalized content you to share at each stage so you can facilitate passive selling effectively. Awareness Consumers at this stage have an issue they need resolved and are typically conducting online searches and research to find a solution. They’ve come across your company and are just becoming aware of who you are and what you do. They are intrigued and have decided to download a piece of gated content or to subscribe to your email marketing to learn more. Personalized content to send: Since they’re still understanding what it is you do, make sure you send them essential content that easily explains exactly what it is your company does, your industry, and how you help solve your clients’ problems. Consideration By now, prospects have received your messaging for a while, and therefore are more familiar with what you do. They’re starting to seriously consider working with you or using your product and are weighing the advantages against other options. Personalized content to send: After engaging with them further, perhaps you’ve discovered the specific area they really need help with. Send them longer-form content that goes into more depth about that particular area, a case study that explains how you helped a client with the same goal/issue, or more information on your packages and pricing. Decision This is a crucial moment. It’s the part of the buyer’s journey when prospects decide to work with you, or they decide to go with another company. Personalized content to send: Enroll leads in a product or service demo, as well as send them customer testimonials and case studies to show proof of positive results. It’s also not a bad idea to send them product comparisons. While the specifics of engagement may change from customer to customer, the pattern of passive selling stays the same. The idea is that you offer more and more personalized information without putting forward an expectation of immediate results. Customers get to proceed at their own pace, and you end up with a foundational connection that is poised for brand loyalty and a long relationship. It’s tough to fake integrity today as a business. Peer-to-peer reviews and high rates of competition mean that customers are quick to see through the B.S. and have plenty of other options to fall back on. Therefore, you have to cultivate an environment of trust that puts your prospects first and acknowledges their importance. Provide your customers with educated, informed content, and try to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry through non-transaction-driven endeavors.
10 Hatchbuck Family Food Recipes to Get You In The Holiday Spirit Posted on December 12, 2019December 12, 2019 by Natalie Slyman When the holiday season rolls around, I get so, so excited. The joy of getting together with family and friends to share in each other’s presence, laugh (loudly), catch up, and of course, eat wonderful and delicious food is something that makes this time of year extremely special. Good food and tradition often go hand-in-hand. Nothing compares to grandma’s pasta or mom’s gingerbread house. And who could forget the staples, like your aunt’s turkey and your dad’s eggnog? Whatever that traditional holiday dish, drink, or meal is for you, we hope this year it’s just as good as you remembered it and that it finds you and yours healthy and happy. A few of us at Hatchbuck wanted to share some of our favorite family holiday recipes, from pies and cookies to cocktails and entrées. Feel free to try any of these with your family and friends this year to create new traditions and memories. Cast Iron Skillet Chicken Pot Pie Hatchbucker: Jessica Lunk “I love this recipe because you can use whatever meat or veggies you have to make something super yummy and filling!” Ingredients: 1 lb cooked chicken breast (or substitute your favorite protein) Olive Oil Chopped or Frozen Veggies. I like Onion, Celery, Carrots, Peas. 1 can of condensed cream soup. I like the cream of celery. 1 box Jiffy cornbread mix. Instructions: Make the cornbread mix and follow the cornbread mix instructions to preheat the oven Saute veggies in olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet Add cooked chicken Add cream of soup Pour cornbread mix on top Transfer skillet to the oven and bake according to the cornbread mix instructions Holiday Mashed Potatoes Hatchbucker: Tricia O’Donnell Coombs Ingredients: 3 pounds (12 medium) peeled, cooked potatoes One package (8 ounces) cream cheese 1/2 cup milk 1/4 cup butter Two eggs slightly beaten 1/2 cup sour cream 1 tsp salt Dash of pepper Instructions: Mash potatoes in a large mixing bowl with lumps removed. Add cheese and butter in small pieces. Mix well. Add in sour cream while mixing. Add milk to eggs and beat slightly. Add to bowl with salt and pepper and beat until blended. Place in a greased casserole dish and bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until lightly browned on top. Poppy Seed Bread Hatchbucker: Erin Posey “My mom cooks about 200 loaves every Christmas and delivers them all over the place. Every doctor, dentist, church worker, my dad’s employees, my coworkers, the mailman, etc. get one. People look so forward to this every year!” Ingredients: Bread: 3 cups flour 1 ½ tsp salt One ¼ tsp baking powder Three eggs 1 ½ cups milk 1 1/8 cups oil 1 ½ tsp poppy seeds 2 ¼ cups sugar 1 ½ tsp of each: vanilla, butter flavor, almond extract Glaze: ¾ cup of sugar ¼ cups orange juice ½ tsp each: vanilla, butter, almond Heat glaze over low heat until sugar is solved. Do not boil. Poke a few small holes in bread and pour over while the bread is hot. Instructions: Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder Add the eggs, milk, oil, poppy seeds, sugar, vanilla, butter flavor, and almond extract Bake in a loaf pan, full half full – 45 min at 350 Mix the glaze ingredients in a saucepan Heat glaze over low heat until sugar dissolves. Do not boil. Poke a few small holes in the bread and pour over while the bread is hot. Layered Salad Hatchbucker: Erin Posey “One of those gross but really yummy holiday traditions.” Ingredients: Head of lettuce 1 head of cauliflower 1 bag of frozen peas Green onion Mayo (not Miracle Whip) Package of Italian seasoning Bacon bits (Bacos work best) Grated parmesan cheese Instructions: Chop the lettuce, cauliflower, and green onions In a large bowl, layer the following, in even layers and this order: Lettuce, cauliflower, frozen peas, and green onions. Add a thick layer of the mayo, the package of Italian seasoning, bacon bits, and grated parmesan cheese. Let it sit overnight, then stir together completely right before serving. Cheesecake Pie Hatchbucker: Erin Posey “ This is an old family recipe from my husband’s great-grandma.” Ingredients: Pie filling: 2 – 8 oz. packages of cream cheese 3 eggs ¾ cup of sugar 2 tsp vanilla Juice of ½ lemon – no seeds Pie crust Topping: 1 cup sour cream ¼ cup of sugar 2 tsp vanilla Juice of ½ lemon – no seeds Instructions: Add all the pie filling ingredients into a bowl and mix. Put the pie crust in a pie baking pan, then add the filling. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees. Allow it to cool for 20 min. Mix together the topping ingredients. Pour on top and bake for another 10 min. Refrigerate for at least 5 hours before serving, preferably overnight. Granny’s Southern Pecan Pie Hatchbucker: Lindsey Stroud “This is my grandmother’s recipe, she lives in Louisiana.” Ingredients: Pie Filling: 3 Eggs, Slightly Beaten 1 Cup Sugar 1 Cup Karo Syrup (light corn syrup) 2 tbsp Butter 1 tsp Vanilla 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of Chopped Pecans Pinch of Salt Pie Crust: *Makes two 2 nine 9 inch crusts. 2 Cups of All-Purpose Flour (sifted) 3/4 Cup of Crisco 1 tsp Salt 4 tsp Sugar 9-10 tbsp Ice Cold Water Instructions: Blend all the pie filling ingredients together in a large bowl, except for the pecans. Once the ingredients are well-blended, stir in pecans and then pour into a 9-inch pie pan. Bake at 350 for about 50-55 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. For the crust, mix all the pie crust ingredients thoroughly and dived into 2 balls. Roll on a floured surface until desired thickness. Place rolled dough into pie pan and shape. Prick dough with a form around the sides and bottom. Monster Cookies Hatchbucker: Katie Culp “They are so ridiculous and take my mom an entire day to make!” Ingredients: 1 dozen eggs 2 pounds brown sugar 4 cups white sugar ¼ cup vanilla 1 pound margarine 3 pounds peanut butter 1 pound each of M&Ms, pecans, and chocolate chips 18 cups oatmeal 8 tsp baking soda Instructions: Cream margarine and sugars. Add the eggs, vanilla, and remaining ingredients Mix with your hands Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes Yiayia’s Dolmathes Hatchbucker: Allie Wolff “Dolmathes are my favorite thing ever, and the lemon sauce that my yiayia puts on them is mind-blowing.” Ingredients: Dolmathes: Sliced onion ½ stick butter 1-8 oz. jar grape leaves 1 lb. hamburger meat ⅓ lb. pork sausage 1 medium dry, diced yellow onion 2 tsp dill or 3 tsp dried and crumbled mint leaves ½ cup of uncooked rice Salt and pepper Lemon Sauce: 3 eggs 1 ½ lemon Instructions: Dolmathes: Add grape leaves to a pot of boiling water. Let boil for about 2 minutes, then drain. In a large pot, place ⅓ cup water, sliced onions, salt, and pepper and simmer until liquid is gone. Add ½ stick of butter and saute onion until golden. Add 2 cups of water and simmer for five minutes. Add more salt as needed and turn off the heat. Mix together the hamburger, pork sausage, diced yellow onion, salt, pepper, dill or crumbled mint leaves, uncooked rice, and ⅓ cup of water. Spread the drained leaves out on a cutting board, vine side up and smooth side down. Add a tbsp of the meat mixture to each leaf. Wrap each leaf very tightly (sides first, then roll into a fat cigar size). Place the dolmas in a pot on liquid and cover. Let cook for 40 minutes. Lemon Sauce: Separate the three eggs and beat the egg whites till stiff. Add yolks and the juice of 1 ½ lemon. Add some liquid from pot until the bowl is warm. Pour lemon sauce into the large pot over dolmas. Sweetheart Cookies Hatchbucker: Natalie Slyman “Every year my mom and I make a big batch of various kinds of cookies for the holidays. These are my favorite ones.” Ingredients: ¾ cup sweet butter ½ cup of sugar 1 ½ cups flour 1 egg yolk Jam or preserves of your choice (I love raspberry) Powdered sugar Instructions: Mix all ingredients together in order listed, kneading in the flour. Chill dough several hours. Form tiny balls and place them in greased tins. Make a thumbprint in the center and fill with jam Bake at 350 degrees until cookies are very light brown, approximately 12 – 15 minutes. Let completely cool, then top with powdered sugar. Dad’s Bloody Mary Hatchbucker: Natalie Slyman “My dad loves Bloody Mary’s, so every Christmas morning, he makes one for me, and it’s delicious.” Ingredients: Tito’s Vodka Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix Tobasco sauce Garlic powder Salt and pepper Garnishes: Salt for rim of glass Lemon Lime Cheese stuffed green olives Celery Bacon Peppers Pickle spears Instructions: Mix together the vodka, bloody mary mix, Tobasco sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper in a cocktail mixer. Shake well. Pour over ice. Select garnishes of your choice. Enjoy! Happy holidays from all of us at Hatchbuck!
4 Simple but Effective Automated Marketing Strategies to Try Today Posted on December 11, 2019September 29, 2022 by Tricia O'Donnell Let’s be honest. The process of strategizing and implementing lead generation tactics, and tracking success can be incredibly time-consuming – especially given the number of channels in which to generate leads from continues to grow. That’s why the marketing tech gods created the ability for us to automate our marketing. Marketing automation has numerous benefits. But, in a nutshell, it takes much of the legwork out of tedious processes, enabling you to focus on your human strengths as a marketer while algorithms and software robots take care of the rest. It sounds like a dream, right? That being said, leveraging automation for effective lead generation isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Like anything else, it takes planning to realize measurable results, and it doesn’t hurt to have a solid idea of the tactics you want to automate, how you’ll measure success, and ways you’ll carry it all out. If you’re a little slow to hop on the bandwagon and are currently considering or in the process of adopting automated marketing, here are a few areas to get started with quickly. 1. Lead Capture Forms Capturing leads on your website is inbound marketing 101. Everyone that comes to your site is a customer, or at least has the potential to be one. But you won’t be able to track and engage those customers if they simply come to your site, look around, then leave. That’s why you need a way to capture those leads with forms. These forms often exist on the landing pages for downloadable content, like whitepapers or guides, or they can be filled out if someone wants a demo of your product. Automating this process enables you to enter new leads into your system and pull valuable information, like their name, email address, job title, etc. This information will help you determine where they are in the buyer’s journey so you can enroll them in your email marketing and start nurturing them. 2. Email Marketing Are you currently sending out weekly or monthly email newsletters to your leads or creating email drip campaigns? Doing so is a wonderful way to stay top of mind with your prospects as well as send them educational content tailored to their specific needs. The truth is, It’s highly unlikely that you’ll win over a lead with your very first outreach. It can take multiple interactions before a lead is ready to convert to a customer, but who’s got time to stay in contact with every prospect manually? That’s where automation can be a game-changer. With the right platform, you can build dynamic, personalized email campaigns so you can nurture leads while you sleep (or while you’re busy doing the various other tasks your job requires of you). It’s really that easy. To ensure you’re successful, make sure you track various metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and finish rate. Your marketing automation platform should be able to gather data on all these points, as well as which links within your emails are getting the most engagement. 3. Lead Prioritization Is there anything more frustrating than chasing a cold lead that either isn’t ready or will never be interested enough to buy from you? It’s a massive waste of time, and it can end up making you come off as relentless and pushy, leaving a bad taste in your leads’ mouths. Meanwhile, your hot prospects aren’t getting the full attention they deserve, and you aren’t capitalizing on them in the best way. Utilizing a CRM that assists with lead scoring, prioritizes, and alerts you when a hot lead exhibits buying behavior is a much more efficient and profitable use of your time. Most CRMs and automation platforms have functionalities that allow you to tag specific leads, or they can mark those hotter leads as qualified for you, based on particular characteristics outlined in their form or from their behavior. Just the thought of manually going through a lead list and figuring out which should be marked as a priority makes my brain hurt. Don’t make your job harder. Instead, find a CRM and marketing automation tool that does the heavy lifting for you. 4. Social Media Your audience is active on social media, which means your brand should be active there as well. But, again, who has the time? Thankfully, there are plenty of platforms, such as Buffer and Hootsuite, which enable busy professionals like yourself to automate their social media activity. Each service offers different functionality, and some offer free versus paid versions. Still, ultimately, the one you choose should allow you to schedule and monitor social posting so you can stay engaged while optimizing time. Just like email marketing, it’s essential to be able to track engagement from your social posts. This will help you see which posts and content you’re sharing in those posts, are resonating the most with your audience. You can also pull the most popular posts and reschedule them to get even more longevity out of them. As a business owner, your time is precious. Leveraging technology, like the four automation strategies above, can help you make the most of your availability and improve your chances of converting more leads into long-term, paying customers.
What is Technical SEO and Why Your Site Needs It Posted on December 10, 2019September 22, 2022 by Jessica Lunk SEO. Is it the bane of your marketing team’s existence or the guiding force behind your SEO strategy? If we had to guess, we’d say it’s probably both. We spend a lot of time talking about SEO, be it how valuable an SEO strategy is, or the dangers of skipping SEO altogether. And for a good reason. Your content-driven SEO efforts majorly impact how well your site performs and can make all the difference in attracting new customers to your website instead of your competitors’ pages. But with so much focus on keywords and shareable graphics, too many organizations are letting another key piece of the puzzle fall by the wayside: technical SEO. Whether you’re new to the SEO game or just need a refresher on what technical SEO is and why it’s so crucial for your site’s success, keep reading for the basics that will help you ace your efforts and better optimize your site’s performance. What Is Technical SEO? Technical SEO is a strategy designed to assist search engines in interpreting and qualifying the various pages of your site, which in turn helps those pages increase their rankings. Search engines rely on a lot of clues to figure out what your pages are about and where they fall in terms of relevancy and authority. These clues and indicators have a significant role in determining how well your pages rank and if they will ultimately rank higher than your competitors’ pages. SEO is a concerted effort to provide the right clues so that you can control what search engines pick up and, to a degree, how and where your site gets indexed. Front-end SEO, like keyword research, is part of this effort, but so is technical SEO. There are a lot of ways to optimize your SEO on the technical side. This includes: Increasing your page speed Optimizing your site for mobile use Removing duplicate and redundant content Adding specific features to your HTML code, such as structured data markups and Google AMP Adding an XML sitemap Fixing or removing broken links Bolstering your site’s security with Secure Socket Layers (SSL) For the most part, your site’s visitors aren’t going to know these technical aspects exist. And they don’t need to. Technical SEO is all about communicating with the search engines, providing them with the elements they need to determine that your site is reputable, secure, and worthy of snagging a top spot on the results page. The Benefits of Prioritizing Technical SEO Technical SEO helps customers find you. But there are some other benefits above and beyond maximizing your page ranking that make it worth your time. Here are three of them. 1. Offer a Better On-Site Customer Experience. Strong technical SEO does double duty, since the same things that help search engines do their jobs better also make your site more efficient and effective for its users. Today’s digital consumers don’t want to wait around for pages with slow load times, and they don’t have the patience for pages that can’t be easily viewed on mobile devices. When you improve things like loading speed and mobile integration for your technical SEO, you improve them for your customers, too. 2. Make Your Site More Secure. Better site security should always be the goal. Bolstering it through things like SSL and more robust HTML serves to strengthen the barriers between the internal workings of your site and the people and code that may seek to harm it. If site security is important to you — and it definitely should be — then technical SEO is only going to serve to amplify your security efforts and ensure your site is as safe from outside harm as possible. 3. It Spurs Better Content. Part of technical SEO is ensuring that you don’t have any duplicate content on your site, and that’s good practice whether you’re focusing on page rankings or not. Redundancy on your site is, at best, a waste of space and, at worst, a signal to your visitors that you’re not paying attention. Plus, duplicate content only competes with itself, and that is just plain counterproductive. By forcing you to hone in on duplicity, technical SEO serves as a helpful addition to your overall content strategy and a net for tracking content and being sure not to replicate it. To put your best foot forward with technical SEO, combine the efforts and expertise of your front-end and back-end teams. Everyone from your content strategists to your HTML developers has a role to play in making sure your website’s technical features are up to snuff, and that’s true whether you’re starting from scratch with your site or just performing regular maintenance or updates.
How to Set Up Views and Filters in Google Analytics – And Why You Should Posted on December 5, 2019December 5, 2019 by Allie Wolff Google Analytics is a fantastic resource for marketing teams. It can help you see how specific pages within your website are performing, help you figure out areas that could use some improvement, and assist in determining if goals are being met. Needless to say, when you know where to look, it can help you reduce tons of time and distractions over irrelevant data points typically experienced when doing a data-dive. This is mostly due to its ability to tailor analytics to specific campaign objectives and marketing strategies. What’s more, Google Analytics filters and views allow you to prioritize your data and hone in on the stuff with the most value. Instead of tackling huge swaths of information at once, you’re dividing it up into digestible subsets that offer better, more approachable insights. And in an industry where data dictates pretty much everything we do, that’s a significant advantage. Getting started with views and filters in Google Analytics is easy and totally worth the effort. So focus your attention on where it counts by using this step-by-step process: How To Create a New View Sign in to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account. Select the Account and Property that you want to apply a new view to. In the View Column, click + Create View and select whether your data is coming from a website or mobile app. Name your view. Make it descriptive so that you can easily pull it up when you need it. If you’re creating a view for a Google Ads account, your reporting time zone will automatically be inputted. Otherwise, you’ll need to do it yourself. Click Create View to save. How to Create a Filter For Your New View Sign in to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account. Select the Account and Property that you want to apply a new filter to. In the View column, click Filters and then + Add Filter. Select Create New Filter and name it. Again, make sure the name is descriptive and clearly denote what type of data subset it will be displaying. Choose whether you want your filter type to be predefined or custom. If you’re just getting started with Google Analytics filters, start with the predefined options to see if there’s already a filter type that meets your needs before moving on to the custom option. Head to the Available Views list and select the view or views that you want the filter to apply to. Click Save. **Note that you can add pre-existing filters to views instead of creating new ones. To do so, follow the steps above through clicking + Add Filter. There, instead of creating a new filter, select Apply Existing Filter. You’ll be able to choose which filters you want under a particular view. Be sure to click Save when you’re done. How to Create a Filter Without Going Through Views Sign in to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account. Select the Account that you want to apply a new filter to. Click All Filters and then + Add Filter. Choose a name for your filter and whether you want the filter type to be predefined or custom. Head to the Available Views list and select the view or views that you want the filter to apply to. Click Save. Organizing Your Filters By default, your filters will show up in the order that you created them. However, you may decide to change the order so that it’s organized in a way that makes more sense for your team. Here’s how to do it: Sign in to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account. Select the Account and Property you want to work under and navigate to the correct View. Under the View column, click Filters. Click Assign Filter Order and move your various filters up and down until they are organized how you like them Click Save. Verifying Everything is Ready To Go It’s a good idea to toggle back to your admin dashboard when adding new views and filters to make sure that they are showing up correctly. Check back in after a day or so as well to ensure that data is populating in the right places. Not seeing your views and filters, or having trouble getting where you need to go to set them up? Double-check that you’re in the admin view. Other accounts under your Google Analytics platform may not have the correct permissions that they need to access these tools. Views and filters can help you get a lot more utility out of your Google Analytics account. Put aside some time to set some up, using your campaign’s primary conversion objectives as guidelines for where to start.
How to Get Your Internal SMEs to Write for Your Blog Posted on December 3, 2019November 26, 2019 by Natalie Slyman There is more than one subject matter expert at every company. Frequently, the thought leader or role of SME is assumed by the CEO, president, co-founder, or a VP. In reality, many people within your company are thought leaders. The way I think of it is, every member of your team is an expert in their own right. Maybe their area of expertise is HR, marketing, sales, customer service, or client retention. Whatever department they work in, job title they have, or area within your company they excel in, tapping into it and using that expertise to fuel your blog content has numerous benefits for your company and the SMEs. Benefits of Your Internal Team Writing For Your Company Blog Have you ever looked at your blog’s editorial calendar and asked yourself, “How will I possibly think of any other unique topics to write about?” When you focus a lot of your efforts on building out your blog and strategizing beneficial topics to cover, it doesn’t take long to start worrying about draining the well dry. But, when you tap into other resources and open your blog up to internal SME contributors, you create an opportunity to cover a lot of ground with your blog content. And that’s just one of the perks. Other benefits of having your team write for your blog are: Helping them build their portfolio of published content, motivating them, and empowering them to share their expertise more. Showing your audience that you aren’t a company with just one expert; instead, your entire team has a wealth of knowledge to share. The ability to build out your editorial calendar. It’s cost-effective. But how should your marketing team go about getting other team members to contribute and write content for the company blog? A Step-By-Step Process for Managing Internal Blog Contributors Before you embark on this process, it’s essential to have the understanding that you or someone from your marketing team will be doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of management and facilitation. This will allow the marketing team to be the driving force behind these efforts and to manage the process in a way that is most beneficial for everyone. It will also make sure everything stays on-strategy since the marketing team owns that and can check the content against that at each stage of the content creation process. 1. Brainstorm Every content creation process should start with a good brainstorm session for topic ideas that you know your audience will find useful. This could be a monthly meeting with your marketing team, or if you’re a team of one, carve out some time on your calendar every month to pull ideas for your blog for the upcoming month. Make sure each blog topic idea has a few descriptive lines or even a brief outline. Doing so will help you dive into each specific topic more and identify the best internal SME for each. Also, when you send the topic idea to your SME, you’ll be able to provide him or her with enough information and direction. 2. Designate SME and Reach Out Once you have your topics finalized, it’s time to designate which internal SME makes the most sense to speak on which topic. Keep in mind each SME’s skill set, area of focus/department, and any personal passions related to what they do at your company. Once you have an idea of who is going to byline which topic, then you can begin your outreach. When reaching out to your SMEs, know that like you, they are very busy, so make sure you give them plenty of time to review the topic(s) you had in mind for them. They may decide that they don’t want to speak on the particular topic you’ve assigned them to or instead that they’d like to take it in a direction you hadn’t initially planned for it to go. As long as their new idea or direction aligns with your blog’s strategy, is still applicable to your audience, and further pushes the thought leadership of your company, it should be fine. 3. Decide On Creation Process Not everyone is a writer. Some people need a little extra help putting their ideas to paper (or laptop), so this step is an important one. Based on the preference of the SMEs, you’ll have to determine if they’ll want to write the article themselves, or if they’d prefer to do something different, like an interview or questionnaire. Keep in mind that the process you choose, if the SME prefers it, should only help create a higher quality piece of content in the long run. So, it’s okay if the creation process is a bit more time-intensive if the end product is a piece of beautiful, strategic content. If your SME would prefer to write the article, give him or her a specific, hard deadline. Make sure you check in with him or her along the way to see how it’s going and provide an outline or support material/research to work with. If he or she would prefer an interview or questionnaire, make sure you identify the most critical questions to ask that will get you the meat of the article. Be specific and detailed, and ask follow-up questions if need be. 4. Write Article If your SME chooses not to write the article, then you’ll need someone else to do the heavy lifting. This may be you, someone else on the marketing team, or a freelancer. Whoever it is, make sure the SME’s answers are being used to drive the piece and nail his or her tone and message. 5. Edit and Apply SEO Strategy If your SME wrote the piece, you’ll need to perform an edit to make sure it flows nicely, delivers on-message, and is clear and grammatically sound. If you had a freelancer or someone else on the marketing team write this piece, you’ll still want to edit it once he or she is done writing it. This is an excellent stage in the process to incorporate tactics that will help your SEO strategy. Make sure to identify any keywords (or add them into the article) and link to applicable content of yours, which will help that content rank when those terms are searched. 6. Review and Approval From SME The SME may have some edits, which is fine. Just make sure the edits don’t end up changing the direction of the article. Also, it’s important that the SME feels that the article reflects his or her point-of-view and tone. You want the SME to be proud of this piece and want to share it out on their social channels once it goes live. 7. Schedule Blog Post Once you’ve received approval, it’s time to figure out when you’d like to publish the article. If you haven’t already, add the article to your editorial calendar, set it up in your marketing automation platform, and schedule it to go live on the designated date. Make sure you create any necessary images to help explain any of the major points and to keep the piece engaging. 8. Distribute Making sure people actually see the article is fundamental, otherwise, what was the point? Once the article is live, share it with your team and the SME who authored it so they can share it out and get as many eyes on it as possible. Also, share it with your sales team in case it addresses an area that can help them in their conversations. Another great idea is to add the article to your newsletter and email drip campaigns so that it assists in nurturing prospects who are in a specific area of the buyer’s journey that this article applies to. You want to make sure you get the most out of your blog content, so distribution is a very important step in the process. Engaging your internal SMEs and getting them excited about writing for your company blog is no easy feat. But, when you have a tried-and-true process in place, you’re much more likely to see success and create an internal team of thought leaders. Just make sure you routinely check in on each blog post’s performance so you can make any adjustments to the process where needed and determine how useful your content is for your audience.
Why Customer Satisfaction Matters and Five Effective Ways to Measure It Posted on November 27, 2019December 20, 2023 by Jessica Lunk Having satisfied customers is important. Everyone knows this. If your customers aren’t satisfied, they’ll part ways, they won’t return, and they definitely won’t leave a company review singing your praise. In fact, they may leave a bad review, which is even worse. Bottom line: When you don’t make an effort to keep your customers happy, then expect to lose their business. And if you’re losing their business, you’re also losing their money, which means your yearly revenue will undoubtedly take a hit. This can lead to even more significant problems, like employee lay-offs and cut-backs on perks and benefits to make up for the loss. It’s a domino effect disaster, one that shouldn’t rely on a solid lead generation strategy to save it. That’d be like trying to fill a bucket when it has a hole in it. You need to plug the client retention leak first. So, before client retention becomes an issue you can’t control, take strides towards measuring and tracking your customer satisfaction rate. Here are some tactics to try: Ways to Measure Customer Satisfaction 1. Surveys Customer surveys are a common, cost-effective way to measure customer experience or satisfaction. But before you start sending your customer surveys, you have to take into consideration their schedules and demands. They’re busy people, and you want to maintain a stable relationship with them, so don’t send them a lengthy, time-intensive questionnaire. Here’s a recommended survey flow that will ensure you’re considerate while still getting the answers you need: Intro – Convey why participation in this survey is necessary. Make sure they understand that they play a significant role in helping your company improve, and without their candid responses, you won’t be able to offer them the best service and platform possible. Questions – Ask the right questions to get you the information you need. This is the most critical part of the survey, so make sure the language is simple, straight-forward, and the questions are easy to fill out. It’s best to provide multiple choice answers or have customers answer based on a scale rating (i.e., 1-5, 1 being the most negative option and five being the most positive option). Catch-alls – Provide an area for your customers to give any specific feedback they have that maybe they weren’t able to address in the questions section. This will make sure nothing gets overlooked. It also helps every customer feel heard. Design – A clean design with plenty of white space and readable font will help increase the number of survey takers. Nice touches – like a progress bar – can help keep users engaged throughout the survey. And, don’t forget to add your own branding. Thank you – It never hurts to include a small incentive for survey takers to finish your survey. A five dollar gift card or branded t-shirt are small tokens of appreciation that can go along way toward improving customer retention. To get started, you can use online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or Typeform, which both have free options. 2. Net Promoter Score Net Promoter Score or NPS is another excellent way to track customer experience and overall satisfaction with your services. The way it works is to have your customers score you on a scale of 0-10 on your quality of service. Numbers 0-6 are “detractors,” 7-8 are “passives,” and 9-10 are “promoters.” You subtract the detractors percentage from the promoters percentage. Calculating your NPS score is simple, and all customers have to do is click a number. If you don’t want to complicate things with tons of data, polls, and questions, an NPS scoring system is a great way to take your company’s pulse on customer satisfaction. 3. Referrals Getting customer referrals are great for so many reasons. We’ve found that when a client was referred to us, they enter the sales process with a lot more knowledge on what we do and how we do it, so there are fewer questions, less convincing on our end, and the partnership is lengthier because they know exactly what to expect. Referrals are also a great way to identify satisfaction among your clients. Nothing says that you’re doing a solid job with your business than if your current customers want to share you with their friends and other industry contacts. After all, if people are referring you to others, that means they must be happy with your quality of work. Simply track the amount of referrals you receive a month and subtract lost clients from that number. It’s similar to calculating your NPS, and it will show you if your business is growing effectively 4. Intent to Repurchase Knowing whether or not an expiring contract is going to be renewed helps a company financially plan for the upcoming month and quarter. It can help determine if specific goals are going to be met, or if you’ll, unfortunately, be in the red. That’s why the intent to repurchase method is a no-brainer. It can be looped in with whatever standard renewal process you currently have in place. Typically, about 30-45 days out from your customer’s contract renewal date, you should be ready to discuss renewing your services so you can retain their business and keep them as recurring revenue. Whatever your process looks like, be it a phone conversation, a lengthy presentation, or a quick email notification, ask the question, “Do you intend to repurchase from us within 30 days?” The more positive responses you get and the more customers that renew tells you that their experience with you is a positive one. 5. Interactive Visual If you have the capabilities, create an interactive image to send to your customers that can track their engagement in a quick, fun way. You’ve heard of companies having suggestion jars where employees can add a suggestion or request anonymously and put it in the jar for management to consider. Why not make an interactive version of that idea? For example, you could create three separate jar images, one representing a level of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction). You then send this visual to your customers in an email, and they can click on one of the jars to add their vote, indicating how they feel about your relationship and service. (Hatchbuck’s CRM is perfect for tracking this type of interaction via email). Don’t let the fear of knowing what your customers think of you prevent you from tracking customer satisfaction index for continuous improvement. Putting it off could result in real damage to your brand and operations. Start by trying one of the methods above to see how you like it. Or, test out one method one quarter, and another the next, and so on. Being able to improve what you do so you can do right by your customers and not be blindsided by their feedback will ultimately improve the workings of your business and help you continue to grow year over year.