Using Surveys at Every Stage of the Buying Funnel Posted on August 8, 2019August 8, 2019 by Jessica Lunk The more that you can customize your content and recommendations to your audience, the better chance you have of guiding that audience down the sales pipeline. And even in the age of data-driven marketing, where every tidbit of information related to consumer behavior is mined, tracked, and analyzed, sometimes the best way to learn what you need to know is just to ask. Prospect and consumer surveys are powerful tools for marketing agencies. When used to their full potential, surveys give you reliable insights into what your leads are looking for and what their pain points are. Surveys can also point out flaws in your strategy, or lead you in new directions that you hadn’t otherwise anticipated. The key to getting as much actionable insight as possible out of your surveys is designing them in such a way that your customers — both current and potential — are inspired to not just click on the survey link but to follow through with completing it. In this article, we’ll go over the makings of a strong survey, plus ten types of marketing surveys that you should consider working in to your outreach strategy. What Makes a Good Marketing Survey? A poorly designed survey can be a turn off for customers and a waste of time for your marketing team. It’s important then to design your survey in a way that’s optimized for grabbing (and holding on to) attention. Here are some survey best practices you can follow to make your surveys shine: Keep it short. The average person has an attention span of just eight seconds. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to keep customers engaged with your survey. Let your customers know off the bat how long the survey will take, and aim to keep it as succinct as possible — otherwise you risk responders ending up as part of the 80% who abandon surveys halfway through. As an ideal, aim for the survey to take three minutes or less to complete. Understand how you will analyze results. To get the most out of your survey, think about how you ask your questions. Open-ended questions can be valuable for capturing new insights. However, it can be difficult to sort and analyze written responses. Multiple choice questions, on the other hand, give you a uniform set of data that you can draw conclusions from pretty quickly. Offer something in return. The information you glean from marketing surveys is valuable, so why not pay for it through some sort of customer incentive? Adding on an incentive — such as 5% off a customer’s next order or a free e-book — will almost certainly get you more responses. It can also help facilitate future conversions. As a bonus, many survey platforms, like SurveyMonkey, have built-in tools that make it easy to design surveys. 10 Types of Marketing Surveys to Try Out All stages of the buying funnel stand to benefit from a well-placed, well-designed customer survey. Use them in the awareness stage to qualify leads and learn more about what they’re looking for in a product or service solution. In the consideration phase, surveys can help you parse out what product or service features are big selling points and which could use some tweaking on their appeal. At the decision stage, use marketing surveys to push potential customers toward a conversion, such as scheduling a free demo. You could also learn valuable information about what other options they’re considering and what sets you apart. And in the post-purchase stage, surveys are invaluable for retaining leads and getting feedback on how and where your efforts succeeded. There are many types of surveys, and many of them have value in more than one stage of the funnel. Market Inquiry Surveys. Broadly focused surveys that help you hone in on general market trends and where you stand in relation to your competitors. Pricing & Value Surveys. Insight into what customers are actually willing to pay for your product or service. Customer Profiling Surveys. Narrow down your customer personas, including demographics, socio-economic backgrounds, interests, and more. Customer Service Surveys. Evaluate the customer service experience, including solution provided and process to get there. Funnel Tracking Surveys. Figure out where leads are in the buying funnel and what they need to move forward. Attitudes and Expectations Surveys. Determine whether the product or service you are offering meets customer expectations before and after purchase, as well as general customer attitudes about your company. Customer Retention Surveys. Post-purchase focused survey regarding what went into the decision process, satisfaction with purchase, and what a customer is looking for in order to purchase again. New Product Concept Surveys. Test drive new product or service ideas to see if they meet customer preferences and expectations in terms of purpose and value. Product Fulfillment Surveys. Determine whether customers felt their expectations were met based on advertising, packaging, and the product itself. Media and Message Surveys. Deduce how well your marketing efforts — including PPC ads, social media, email marketing, etc. — succeeded in their intended purposes. Where to Get Survey Respondents Now that you have the perfectly designed marketing survey, you need to get it into the hands of your survey takers. Depending on the aim of your survey, there are many creative places to find respondents. Your Website If you want to find out more about the people coming to your website, your website can be the perfect place to gather data. You can create an in-line call-to-action to take a survey on specific pages of your website. A survey exit pop-up is another great way to ask for feedback before visitors bounce from your website. Email Email is the best way to reach people who you already have contact info for. Many email marketing platforms, like Benchmark, even have built-in surveys you can send to your list. Trying to reach a more segmented audience, like current customers or prospects in a specific industry? Hatchbuck’s CRM is ideal for this. You can easily select a segment of contacts and send your survey in an email in just a few clicks. In Person Most survey software tools have a “kiosk” mode that will let you collect survey responses even if you aren’t online. Gather survey responses anywhere you have foot traffic – like your office, a tradeshow or a conference. Invest in a Panel Performing market research? Need to reach a specific segment of people that you don’t have access to? Tools like SurveyGizmo and Pollfish offer services that will send your survey to a specific audience that meets your requirements. With all marketing surveys, be sure to track not just the responses you get but the open rate and completion rate. Those data points will help you optimize your survey design and display to maximize the utility of your efforts.
How to Get the Most Out of Every Blog Post You Create Posted on August 6, 2019August 23, 2023 by Allie Wolff There are a lot of misconceptions about blogging out there. It seems that a lot of content creators view writing blog content as a sort of one and done situation. But the content you create for your blog is worth its digital weight in gold which means you should be leveraging every piece of existing content you’ve created. Once you write a blog post that makes a big traffic splash, you might be tempted just to leave it be. What that really tells you is that content is relevant and ripe for further improvement. So, roll up your sleeves and pop open your analytics. It’s time to squeeze every last drop of use out of your excellent content. Drive email open rates and web traffic through drip campaigns First, a bit of a definition for the jargon uninitiated: a drip campaign is an automated email campaign that sends messages to your subscribers when they trigger an event such as signing up for a new product or service, subscribing to your newsletter, or an expiring subscription. You most likely already have these types of automated messages set up in your content marketing strategy. If you don’t, look into it! They’re an excellent way of staying in contact with subscribers. But how does your blog content play into this strategy? Simple. Snippets from your blog like an educational quote or catchy headline can help drive opens and clicks in your email campaigns. An easy way to do this is to include some of your top-performing or most recent blog posts in the email sent to new subscribers. Build up backlinks through resources and lists One of the best ways to increase your site’s relevance in the eyes of Google is to improve your backlinks. Quick definition: backlinks are when another site links to yours. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s worth a deep dive to improve your backlink strategies. Building these links is also possible through free link building tools and tactics. So, for your blog content, there are two types of pages that are easy to target: resources and lists. Resource pages act as a collection of links and information about a specific topic. Lists are, well, lists. If you’ve seen an article like, “100 Best CRMs,” that’s a list (sometimes referred to as a roundup). In either instance, if you find a resource or a list that features relevant content that your article either expounds upon or explains well, approach the site for a backlink. Repurpose your content for different mediums You spend countless hours writing blog posts, but if you stick to one medium, you’re limiting the number of eyes that will see them. So, for example, if your blog post contains a lot of data or research, maybe an infographic is a good route to take. Infographics are easy to share on social media and give people a great in-a-glance view of your work. Another option is to take your information to video. You can either produce a short overview video about your blog content for YouTube or Wistia or use it to create a deck to present during a live stream or webinar. Think outside the text, and your audience will grow. Link up your blog posts internally You’re missing out on a huge traffic opportunity if your blog posts don’t contain internal links to one another. You likely have blog posts that cover related or parallel themes. Heck, you might even have old posts that have lines that would directly lead into one of your newer articles. Don’t miss this opportunity. Take the time to audit your internal links relatively often. Go through your old posts and add links to your newer content. Also, make sure your new content contains links to your old posts. This not only helps with your relevancy through Google but also creates a rabbit hole for eager readers to go down. Internal links are a great way to get your readers to sink some serious time into consuming your content. Freshen up your popular posts Your best performing posts won’t stay popular forever. While Google certainly ranks time as a major factor for overall site relevance, it doesn’t look kindly to stagnant content. Not only that, but it’s fairly likely that your article will eventually get a little outdated. So, stay on top of it. There are two basic ways to do this. Either create a new version (no duplicate content!) of your article each year under a revised title and year or, more simply, add a note to the top of your current article that it was revised to reflect new information. Then, of course, add that new information in! This will keep your popular topics current, relevant, and search engine friendly. Feeling inspired, yet? There’s so much you can do with all the content you produce. Hitting post on your blog is just the beginning of an article’s life. So, get out there and renew it.
7 Creative Ways Your Agency Can Close More Business Before the End of the Month Posted on August 2, 2019 by Jonathan Herrick It’s a problem that just about every company faces at one point or another: No matter how good the numbers are, they’re not quite where you’d like them to be. Maybe your agency is having a rough month, or maybe sales team victories are steady but slow. Maybe it’s February and you just realized that you’ve been tracking your sales thinking you had 30 days to work with. Whatever the reason, you’d just love to bring in some more sales before the end of the month. With enough focus and maybe a few overtime hours, your sales team can probably pull something off using traditional sales and marketing techniques. If you want to be more proactive, though, there are a few creative tactics you can use to bring in more business in the weeks that remain. Take Time to Listen It might seem a little odd, but one big way to increase the effectiveness of your sales team is to start listening to their sales calls. Don’t take this as an opportunity to put your team under increased scrutiny, though. The idea is twofold: to optimize your sales process, and to see if there are any new opportunities to serve your clients in better ways. You may learn that your pricing or packages need tweaking, or your sales team needs more training on handling objections. Set aside some time after hours to listen to recordings of random calls by members of your sales team. Make sure they know you have the same goal they do — to land more sales. Provide some positive feedback, and schedule a time with everyone to listen in on live calls as well. This might make some of your sales team members nervous, but it will also make them focus more on what they’re doing in the call. As before, provide positive feedback and build up the things they did right. After this, you can keep moving them along the right path by taking a few select recordings of each employee and listening to them with that person so the two of you can discuss how to improve their calls. Keep it light and constructive. Creative Sponsorships One great way to get potential customers to remember your name is to let them see it where they aren’t expecting it. Look into sponsorship opportunities in your target cities, especially if there are any available for community-based programs. This will create a moment of recognition with potential customers when they encounter your agency name in other settings and may even bring about a feeling of fondness since they know you care enough about your neighbors to sponsor important community programs. Work the Trade Circuit If there are any trade shows for industries that your agency works with, book a table and do some old-fashioned networking. Be sure to take plenty of business cards and creative freebies you might have that you can hand out to those you meet. Make them memorable, and make your booth a spectacle. Spending a day or two at these shows can put you in front of a lot of potential customers that you might never reach otherwise. Attract Local News Coverage Making the national news is great, as long as it’s good news they’re reporting on. But most of the time, being the subject of a national news story isn’t going to bring new customers and clients to your door. Making a showing on the local news just might. Local news stations are more likely to run community interest stories, and getting your agency noticed for doing positive things in your community can really help cement a good reputation among potential customers. Shift the Focus to Value Anytime sales are involved, potential customers will inevitably ask about total cost. If you’re trying to net more sales, though, see if your sales team can shift the conversation to talk about value instead. Rather than trying to convince potential customers that your agency’s prices are fair, approach them with a value-based tactic: Discuss what makes your agency’s offerings unique Detail how those unique attributes can benefit the customer Estimate how much that benefit is worth to the customer Create a value comparison by putting that estimate against your agency’s rates Customers are often less worried about the cost when you can show them how much that cost really gets them. Host a Webinar One tried-and-true method of bringing in more business in a number of industries is to host a seminar. Marketing webinars in particular are quite common. Many people attending a marketing webinar are already wanting something from you, and this gives you an advantage when it comes time to pitch the sale. Make your presentation engaging, educational, and very human, and you’ll walk away with a list of qualified leads. Sell in Specifics If you’re trying to close more business before the end of the month, have your sales and onboarding teams adjust their tactics a bit. Instead of keeping sales pitches and other tactics broad, tighten the focus and address specific targets. Use specific numbers and keep the goal of the pitch modest. This takes some of the pressure off of the sale since the customer knows exactly what you want, and setting a lower goal keeps the potential cost low as well. Even if you’re making smaller sales, you could make more of them. This strategy gives you a big customer pool to approach for additional services down the line.
7 Ways SMBs Can Tell If They’ve Partnered With The Right PPC Firm Posted on August 1, 2019August 1, 2019 by Jessica Lunk Pay-per-click ads are a great way to drive more awareness for your brand and more traffic to your site. And if you’re working with the right PPC firm, you should be getting regular updates on the performance of your paid ads. Turning those updates into actionable insights though is a task easier said than done. Businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, need to be smart with their marketing budgets. It’s important that you’re able to qualify where your ad dollars are stretching the furthest and where you might need to make changes or dial it back. In terms of PPC ads and the PPC firm that you work with, the goal is to identify key measures of success that you can use to monitor your paid ad campaigns and ensure that they’re pulling their weight. Here are seven of the best ways to do that. 1. Clickthrough rate If you’re paying for clicks, then it makes sense that your clickthrough rate would be a pretty telling metric in terms of how your ads are performing. The higher the rate, the better your ads are doing and the better job your PPC has done so far as choosing the right keywords and targeting your ads to the right audience. If you have concerns about your clickthrough rate, go back to the drawing board with your firm. It may be just a matter of tweaking the keywords or optimizing your ad design. 2. Conversion rate Click-throughs are a key metric, but the real goal is to turn those clicks into conversions. Look at how many clicks on your PPC ads led to conversions, whether those are purchases, newsletter subscriptions, demo sign ups, or any other behaviors that you’re driving toward. Keep in mind that a low conversion rate suggests you need to make click-through focused adjustments. For example, if you’re pulling in a ton of clicks but very few of those are leading to conversions, there’s a strong possibility that you’re not reaching the right searchers with your ads and that your firm needs to work on their targeting strategy. 3. Bounce rate Just as you want to know which clicks led to conversions, you also want to know which clicks led to dead ends. Your bounce rate can illuminate areas of your site that aren’t optimized for activity the way you want them to, and like a poor conversion rate, could suggest that you’re PPC firm isn’t targeting your audience correctly. 4. Cost per conversion A good way to quantify just how well your PPC firm is putting your ad dollars to use is to calculate your cost per conversion—i.e. the dollar amount spent on each converting behavior. This is a bigger tell of ad success than your cost per click, since, as already noted, clicks themselves aren’t really the true driver of value. Equally key: put your cost per conversion into context. Look at it not just in terms of your overall spend on the PPC campaign but in terms of how much a particular conversion is worth to your company. Purchases and demo requests are going to have more of a positive impact on your bottom line than social follows and blog subscriptions, even if the latter conversions are still important. 5. Search impression share This handy metric uses a percentage score to tell you how many times your PPC ad showed up for a user versus how many times it could have shown up if you’d had it completely optimized. The higher the percent, the better your ad is doing. Budgetary constraints could be to blame for a low search impression share ratio, but it could also speak to individual areas of your PPC campaign strategy. 6. Your larger marketing goals When you first started working with your PPC firm chances are that together you established some highly personalized goals for your campaign above and beyond standard conversions. Always keep these goals in mind as metrics when you’re evaluating the wins and losses of your campaign, since they speak to your unique needs and objectives. Examples might include wanting to drive traffic to a particular page on your site more than others, or to build awareness around a specific promotion. In many cases, these goals will be the same—or at least highly related to—your overall conversion goals. The crucial part is that you identify what they are and regularly evaluate whether they are being met. 7. Your Quality Score Quality Scores are big picture measurements that let you know how various aspects of your campaign are performing when taken all together. The higher your Quality Score, the better your keywords, targeting, design, and more are doing. This score also takes into account outside factors, such as the landing page that your ad is leading to. Aside from giving a window into how your ads are doing, your Quality Score is critical for guiding your strategy. Google uses these scores to determine how much you pay per click, plus where your ads rank on a page. Taking into account all of these metrics, you should have a very clear idea of whether your PPC campaign—and the firm running it—is meeting its mark.
5 Off-The-Wall Strategies for Marketing Your Agency Posted on July 31, 2019March 16, 2023 by Allie Wolff Your agency does amazing, creative work for your clients, right? You pride yourself on the team you’ve built and the lead-generating, eye-catching content you churn out on a day-to-day basis. No matter what a client throws at you, you’re able to spin it and sell it. So, why is self-promotion for your own agency so tricky? It’s so difficult sometimes to succinctly package how awesome you are. You’re just too close to the product to accurately represent it. Creating your own ads, brand voice, and web copy can be a real struggle. There’s so much to package. Let’s take a note from all great artists and peruse some great, shameless self-promoting from other agencies in the industry. Maybe a little spark of inspiration is all you need to jump over that wall and get your agency on the map. 1. Border-line absurd sponsored ads Red Square Agency avoided the problem of concisely summarizing their company in their self-promotion by avoiding that altogether. While their ads, with headlines like “This ad features a cat” and copy stating, “It has nothing to do with Red Square Agency, but we hope you’ll click on it anyway” are strangely hilarious, they say nothing about their actual work. This type of campaign, where quirk reigns supreme, is a great way to catch your prospects off-guard. If your agency isn’t one to take itself seriously, perhaps you should think outside the box and sling some copy from left-field as an experiment. 2. Playful, shareable videos Look, no one shares commercials on social media unless they’re legitimately funny, touching, or educational. A video commercial that lays out your strengths and weaknesses in a dull way does nothing to highlight your creativity or imagination. Make a socially shareable video that has fun with what you do—the marketing industry is one of the most playful industries. Don’t be afraid to joke around with your potential clients; just keep it within reason. Your sense of humor can show in 30 seconds what kind of agency you are and what sort of relationship clients can expect with you. 3. Sincere testimonials from trustworthy creatives So, the cattiness of number two isn’t for everyone. Let’s try a more positive approach. Video testimonials for sharing on your social media can be a great way to let people know how you have touched their business lives. Authentic testimonials are a quick and direct way to allow potential clients to see the soul and value of your business. Marty Weiss and Friends, a collaborative marketing agency, took this idea in a slightly different direction. Marty asked his creative friends that he often collaborates with to create testimonial videos talking about their experience working with him as a creative. It shows that Marty Weiss takes the creative aspect of his agency seriously, and his brand represents a dedication to crafting truly unique campaigns. 4. Create white papers that speak to your ideal customers White papers and studies about the industry niche that your marketing agency works with—whether it be commercial foods, small businesses, health and beauty, nutraceuticals, or the thousands of other segments out there—can build serious ethos and logos with your future customers. Reel in clients with studies about the industry they participate in. Utilize the data you have collected from marketing their industry peer’s products and use it to create valuable learning tools for your potential customers. A great example of this in action is the Marlin Network, who markets for nationwide clients in the food industry. Their white paper on influencing operator purchases contains valuable information for current and future customers that builds a solid tie between the reader and Marlin. 5. Create a special gift for key customers Once you’ve identified a few big fish that you’d like to impress, a unique gift from your agency can be a way to do it. A nicely designed card is a simple gesture but doesn’t tend to go far enough to bat an eye. Think about your agency’s strengths in design—do you excel at websites? Product design? Perhaps a fun and engaging web project that is just for those ideal clients could be worth your time. Bloc D is a branding and communication agency. To sell the idea that they know what they’re doing when it comes to print and package design, they created chocolate bars in packaging that resembles Pantone swatches. It was a fun, unique, and impactful gift for their customers. At the end of the day, you’re an agency for a reason. Get your great minds together and collaborate on your messaging. Boil your agency down to a few key ideas and essences, then use those base words to decide your direction. From there, the sky’s the limit. Show the world what you can do.
7 Steps to Creating a Successful Account-Based Marketing Strategy Posted on July 29, 2019October 21, 2022 by Guest Author In today’s marketing climate, more and more B2B companies are transitioning to using account-based marketing (ABM) to attract and convert prospects into paying customers. Much of the reason they are making the shift is that they often have to convince at least five key decision-makers within a company to make a purchase, resulting in extremely long sales cycles so they’re setting their sites on key accounts rather than attempting to attract anyone and everyone. Source: Harvard Business Review Simply put, businesses must quickly gain trust while also minimizing their risk of losing deals. By simultaneously targeting multiple decision-makers within a prospective company, they ensure they can speed up their sales cycle. What is ABM? ABM is a marketing strategy that focuses on developing, executing, and monitoring campaigns that are designed to target specific accounts. It reverse-engineers the traditional marketing funnel. Rather than doing a Hail Mary pass on every single business you think may want to your product, you focus all your resources on those that you know have a need for your product. Why does an ABM strategy work for B2Bs? Rather than focusing on generating the most number of leads possible with each campaign, account-based marketers emphasize the quality of the leads they generate. By doing this, they don’t have to waste much time and effort to weed out those that aren’t a good fit for their products and services. Providing a personalized and highly-targeted approach to your target accounts can also significantly improve client relationships. This is crucial in today’s fiercely competitive digital economy because this is one of the primary factors your target accounts will consider when they decide whether or not they would buy from you. It’s for these very reasons why 62% of B2B marketers are now implementing an ABM strategy. How to create a successful ABM strategy 1. Align your sales and marketing teams. According to Aaron Haynes, CEO of Loganix, the success of your ABM strategy is dependent on how well these two teams work together. Unfortunately, that is often easier said than done when teams are working in silos. Haynes recommends getting both teams together is the first step to begin the collaboration process. Ideally, have both teams in the same room. However, if your teams are working remotely, you can do this by scheduling a video conference. “Only by bringing these two teams together can you identify potential roadblocks and challenges either team experiences while working with each other,” Haynes explains. “Otherwise, these roadblocks and challenges will spring up, which can affect the results of your ABM strategy.” Once these are sorted out, brainstorm the details of your ABM strategy – from the goals you want to reach to the key accounts you’ll be targeting to the different metrics to observe. Not only will these strengthen the sales and marketing alignment within your business, but also they’ll ensure that both teams will be held accountable for the entire strategy. 2. Assemble your core ABM team. To execute your ABM strategy, you’ll need to track down these people (or some variation of these roles) to be part of your marketing team: A marketing manager to handle your marketing automation platform and ensuring your contacts and accounts are properly aligned based on what stage they are of your buyer’s journey, A sales manager who will take care of managing the details of your key accounts to ensure they’re up-to-date, Account executives who will be in charge of executing your ABM strategy, and Content creators who are responsible for developing personalized and targeted content in different formats. 3. Invest in the right account-based marketing tools. You need to ensure you have the right tools in place not only to help your team effortlessly execute your ABM strategy but also help you monitor and track its progress. Here are a few suggestions. Hatchbuck One critical tool to have in place when launching an ABM approach is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. It will help you track and monitor whether or not you’re reaching your overall marketing goals with your current ABM strategy. Hatcbuck’s CRM allows you to monitor the activity of your leads on your website in real-time. This information can help your marketing team develop and launch email drip campaigns that will nurture your leads. Source: Hatchbuck At the same time, you can set triggers to quickly notify your sales team when your leads are ready to buy. That way, they can quickly jump in and engage with them, increasing the likelihood of closing a sale. It also gives you real-time progress updates for each stage of your pipeline so that you can monitor your progress and see if you’re meeting your set goals. Source: Hatchbuck ZoomInfo One of the biggest challenges B2Bs face when setting up an ABM strategy is ensuring your sales and marketing teams are reaching companies that are fit your target account profile. Using a platform like ZoomInfo helps you quickly search companies based on their industry, number of employees, services, and tools they currently use. Source: ZoomInfo From there, you can compile these and create a list that you can now pass to your ABM team to begin targeting. SalesIntel SalesIntel is a sales intelligence platform that delivers verified direct numbers of the target account’s key decision-makers to your sales team. Not only will your sales team bypass gatekeepers, but they’ll also increase their chances of securing a meeting by up to 147%. Everstring Everstring‘s platform allows your ABM team to develop a predictive behavior model where lead demonstrate common behaviors they’ve identified so they’re more likely to convert into sales. Source: Everstring 4. Identify and prioritize your target accounts. This is the clincher of your ABM strategy because if you end up choosing the wrong accounts to target, you can be wasting a significant amount of time and resources. It will also help you determine which distribution channels to include in your ABM strategy to make sure that you put your business in front of your target account. There are three methods to find the right accounts to target for your account-based marketing strategy. Gather data from your sales team. Your sales team is responsible for converting all the leads passed through from your marketing team. As such, they‘ll be in the best position to provide you with the common characteristics shared by those leads that were the quickest to convert. Utilize LinkedIn’s account targeting. LinkedIn’s marketing solutions allow you not only to run native ABM campaigns within the social media channel but also help you find target accounts based on your ideal customer profile. Source: LinkedIn What’s great about this is that because this is primarily a social media network for professionals, your sales team can immediately begin the engagement process by sending a personalized message or InMail to these critical decision-makers to get things started. Conduct look-alike modeling. Look-alike modeling is a strategy that helps you find accounts that share similar characteristics of your pinpointed key accounts that are looking for your product or service. 5. Craft create your content. Content is still king in an ABM strategy. So make sure that you have a well laid-out plan to create your content. One thing to remember when creating the content for your ABM strategy is that the materials you provide in your lead nurturing campaign should be more personalized and targeted. That means that you need to create content that’s targeting their specific pain points and challenges. Also, keep in mind that your target accounts have several key decision-makers. Often, these key decision-makers come from different departments, have varying position levels, and may even reside in different geographic locations. So make sure your content resonates with the majority—if not all—of these key decision-makers to convince them to choose to buy your product or service. 6. Deliver the VIP treatment. Your target accounts are part of your business’s A-list. Naturally, they should be treated as such. One way to achieve this is by providing them with excellent customer service. This is one of the critical factors they consider because they want to be sure they can reach you when they need help. Also, they expect that you can provide them with a solution they can quickly implement so that their business won’t get compromised. 7. Track and monitor your results. No doubt, your ABM strategy will help you generate results. The only question is: what type of results are you getting? For that, you’ll need to monitor and track the progress of your ABM strategy not just on your website but also your CRM and distribution channels. To make things easier for you and your ABM team, use a tool like Databox which will consolidate real-time metrics from different platforms into one dashboard. Through this, you can see which parts of your ABM strategy are working and which ones need to be tweaking. With advancements in marketing technology, account-based marketing is no longer a strategy that’s exclusive to large enterprises. Through the steps and tools shared here, you can now use ABM strategies to target your small business’s key accounts, convert them into clients, and generate revenue to scale. Author Bio Kevin Payne is a content marketing consultant that helps software companies build marketing funnels and implement content marketing campaigns to increase their inbound leads.
Is Your Business Ready To Go Global? Posted on July 26, 2019July 26, 2019 by Guest Author Marketing to an international audience is challenging. It’s especially difficult to navigate in the accounting space, as different laws, languages, and tools can create barriers to entry. But for one busy Canadian accountant, Juliet Aurora, overcoming these obstacles was one of the best things she ever did for her practice. TSheets by QuickBooks recently caught up with Aurora, who started her bookkeeping business, AIS Solutions, back in 2000. Since then, she’s worked mainly with local businesses. In 2016, though, she earned two international clients — a US-based business and business in Barbados. “Serving clients outside my local area gave me my first taste of serving markets internationally,” said Aurora, “as well as having the opportunity to enjoy visiting my client onsite in Barbados.” In 2016, Aurora’s team launched Kninja, a training and support community for accounting and bookkeeping professionals, which was intended from the start to reach a global customer base. In fact, their mission is “to educate and empower bookkeepers and accountants across the globe to help them build their Firm of the Future.” Since the challenges that bookkeepers and accounting professionals face in building their practices are so similar, Aurora says the advice they seek is universal and not too specific to a physical location. 3 tips for going global But despite the similarities between accounting professionals around the world, Aurora says marketing to a global audience was still challenging. She had to overcome language nuances and software limitations, but in the end, she was able to gather some insider advice on how to make it work. Here are Aurora’s three tips for taking your business to international markets. 1. Get to know your target market This might sound obvious, but unless you have a picture of the type of customer you want to target, you’ll have a very hard time finding those leads. And as Aurora notes, this doesn’t only mean making sure you’re speaking the language. You also have to look at the fundamental values of the clients (or customers). “Similar to marketing locally,” she explains, “having a solid understanding of your ideal client is fundamental.” Interview people in your target geographic location so you can get a better understanding of what drives them. Better yet? Visit and meet those people in person. That way, you’ll have a true picture of the audience you’re trying to benefit. 2. Leverage technology to fill the gaps If you have clients all over the world, you’ll soon realize that it’s impossible to remain awake at all hours to serve people in different time zones. For that reason, it’s critical to put the right tools in place so that your clients feel like you’re giving them the attention they deserve, even if you’re fast asleep. Automate as much of your messaging and resources as possible so that customers everywhere feel like they’re getting the answers they need when they need them. 3. Set clear expectations “If you don’t have a team that can provide service across all time zones, make sure you communicate that to your clients at the onset,” said Aurora. The worst experience a client (or customer) can have is to feel like they’ve been let down. At the same time, don’t let your honesty derail the experience. Find ways to let people know upfront where you’re going to be or where your company is based, and what you’re going to do for them from afar. Tell them the best way to get in touch with you, and make it easy. Highlight the benefits of working with you, as opposed to the competition, while still acknowledging that some of the work you’ll do for them will be from a different time zone. Reassure them that this distance will not negatively impact the service you provide. Challenges come with rewards Aurora says that being able to help businesses succeed, no matter where they are, is the biggest benefit of working with international clients. “With Kninja, I’ve been able to speak with accounting professionals around the world and realize that we all have similar struggles, and that similarities exist between small businesses around the world.” Since she and her husband both love to travel, their ability to visit their Kninja customers and make new friends is a big bonus. But it’s something they would never be able to do without the technology available today. “Our world is becoming significantly smaller with the expansion of technology,” said Aurora. “Through the use of tools like QuickBooks Online and Zoom, we can literally provide services to anyone in the world. I believe that as the general population becomes more comfortable with the cloud, and the need for a physical location no longer becomes a requirement, the potential for us to service clients will increase exponentially.” Getting your business ready to take on global clients takes some thought and preparation, but as Aurora well knows, there’s no better way to expand your horizons — both professionally and personally. AUTHOR BIO Kim Harris studied journalism at Mills College. After teaching English in Thailand for three years, she returned to Boise, Idaho to begin her career in content marketing. When she’s not telling the world about TSheets by Quickbooks, you’ll find her spending time with family and friends, learning about wine, or planning her next adventure.
5 Ways to Boost Profits Using Technology Posted on July 25, 2019July 21, 2021 by Erin Posey Without a doubt, it’s an exciting time to own a business. Technological advances have made it possible for companies to be more efficient, produce and ship products faster, capture more opportunities, boost customer loyalty and, most importantly, make more money. Think this is something only other business owners do? Think again. In fact, here are five specific ways any entrepreneur can take advantage of technology to become more profitable. Automated accounting With digital banking technology as advanced and secure as it has become, today’s businesses are able to process orders much more efficiently. Payments into and out of an account can be seen and accounted for in real-time, thereby speeding up the sales and shipping process and improving cash flow. Automating as many of these accounting functions as possible will save you time and money while providing you better access to and control over your funds. Invoicing software Invoicing customers manually can take hours upon hours away from your day-to-day operations. Thanks to technology, now you can automate this administrative task so you can focus your time and effort on other important business initiatives. It also makes tasks like accounts receivable and order tracking much faster and more efficient, which makes for a better experience for both the business owner and the customer. Don’t have the capital to invest in software? There are plenty of secure online alternatives as well. Email marketing While social media and other online platforms certainly have their place, email remains one of the most effective tools for generating, nurturing and converting leads. But what small business owner has the time to draft, send, monitor and respond to emails all day? Enter email marketing software, which lets you automate the entire process, from start to finish. Stay in touch with prospects, improve the customer experience, build on those relationships and increase client loyalty without having to invest hours upon hours in the process. CRM to cut costs and maximize opportunities. A customer relationship management system can provide even the smallest of businesses with a much broader reach and enable them to make a significantly bigger impact. How? By automating time-consuming lead and customer management tasks. A CRM will let you know when you need to follow up, send an invoice, etc. so nothing will slip through the cracks. In the meantime, you’ll be able to focus more of your time and attention on things like driving revenue and growing your business. Sales funnel software Are you wasting precious time on dead-end leads? Do you know exactly where each prospect is in the sales process and what you need to do to get them to the next stage? Sales funnel software can help you optimize your time by identifying the highest-probability leads and keeping track of every step of the process for you. What’s more, the vast majority of follow-up and lead nurturing can be fully automated. This can dramatically reduce your sales cycle and increase your close rate, which will ultimately improve your profitability. Technology has revolutionized the way businesses operate and opened many doors of opportunity to smaller businesses, enabling them to compete on a much larger scale. The five types of technology listed above can be leveraged specifically to help small companies improve operations and boost their bottom line.
5 Vital Email Deliverability Tips for 2019 Posted on July 24, 2019 by Jessica Lunk It’s 2019, and email looks quite a bit different than it did even just five years ago. Sure our main platforms may have stayed the same (Gmail and Outlook probably aren’t going anywhere, at least no time soon), but our inboxes — and our relationship to them — have undergone a massive shift. So too have the powers that be who are in charge of deciding what ends up in front of us and what ends up in spam. For the most part, this shift is a good thing — we could all use a little bit less spam. But for marketers, nuances in email deliverability can complicate campaigns and make it more difficult to connect with leads and customers. Email isn’t everything in a marketing campaign, but it is incredibly important. You can’t make an impact if no one is even seeing what you’re sending out, which means you have to take certain steps to ensure your emails end up where they’re supposed to and that you’re reaching as much of your audience as possible. But first…why is email deliverability such a problem, and why now? The Changing Tides Emails and email providers have both gotten more complex over time. This has created a two-fold problem. One: robust filters work overtime to ensure that recipients only see what’s truly relevant to them. Google especially has cracked down on spam, in part to better curate individual inboxes, but also to protect users from potentially dangerous links. In the second quarter of 2018, only 85% of marketing emails ended up in customer inboxes, meaning 15% failed to reach their target audience. When you take into account that in the same year 281.1 billion emails were sent and received every day, the scope of that 15% failure rate really comes into focus. Meanwhile: emails themselves are no longer just words on a page — many times, they feature designs and features that only work right when all of the correct functions are in place, and it can be hard for email providers to keep up. It’s why you may have noticed the fuss over Outlook not rendering properly, or why your emails look great for some subscribers and not so great for others. What this all adds up to is a need for marketers and marketing agencies to enhance their game in terms of addressing barriers around email deliverability, optimizing their email campaigns in such a way that they’ve got a better chance of ending up in front of subscribers. It’s probably only going to become more of a struggle as the complexities of emails and email platforms grow, so get to work now incorporating email best practices so that you’re a step ahead when and where it counts. Best Practice #1: Stick to Opt-In Subscribers Only Getting marked as “spam” by recipients can result in less traction over time, so it’s important that you only send emails to those who explicitly choose to receive them. Plus, only sending emails to those who have expressed interest in hearing from you means higher open rates, higher engagement, and a higher chance they’ll want to continue seeing your emails in their inbox. Best Practice #2: Keep It Consistent (But Not Too Consistent) Find the sweet spot in terms of how often you reach out. Sixty-nine percent of U.S. email subscribers report receiving too many emails as the reason they unsubscribed. Use data to drive your frequency, taking note of what others in your industry are doing and what your subscribers are responding to. Best Practice #3: Get Analytical If you’re struggling with email deliverability, you’re going to want to know about it. Your marketing platform offers data around bounce rates and spam rates, so use it to your advantage. If you’re not ending up where you need to be, consider making a change to your format, your platform, or your content strategy. This is important even if you stick to opt-in subscribers since among that group, 21% of emails still don’t make it into the inbox. Best Practice #4: Keep It Legal Under the CAN-SPAM Act, marketers are obligated to follow certain legal parameters with their emails. This includes avoiding deceptive subject lines, clearly identifying the message as an ad, and honoring opt-out requests. Fail to adhere to these rules, and in addition to a defunct email campaign, you’ll also face up to $16,000 in fines per violation. Best Practice #5: Make It Obvious Who the Email is Coming From Generic “From” names that don’t make it clear who the sender is are likely to be noted as spam, or blocked altogether. Always include your brand name when saying who the email is from, and never leave recipients guessing whether an email is legitimate or not. If you’re doing the basics correctly, you should be just fine when it comes to email deliverability. Just remember to keep up to date with your practices, since things are always changing and you never know when the rules will change too.